A well-known fable:

A rich man was on vacation at the seaside and saw a poor fisherman enjoying the sunshine leisurely. He felt incredible and couldn't help asking him, "Why don't you go to work?"

The fisherman replied, "I have worked today. I have fished enough for one day."

It's a pity for the rich man: "Then you can catch more fish and earn more money."

"What do you need so much money for?"

"You can buy more boats and catch more fish, … then you can own your own fleet, then you can set up an ocean shipping company … and finally become a millionaire."

"How about becoming a millionaire?"

"Then you can lie on the beach and bask in the sun without doing anything."

The fisherman smiled: "am I not basking in the sun here now?"

I think this fable most vividly summarizes the two opposing economic logics of primitive affluent society and modern affluent society. For example, according to Galbraith's book Abundant Society, the modern affluent society is that "more people die from too much food than from too little food". In such a society, demand does not stimulate production, but "production creates the desire it tries to satisfy, and production just fills the gap it creates", and modern advertising and marketing institutions also emerge as the times require, leading consumption. What Celine wants to talk about with a book "Stone Age Economics" is another situation-the primitive rich society, production is for use, not for exchange; Its goal is clear and limited. Humans "don't want much, but there are many ways to meet their needs" (p 17). Fishermen and rich people regard leisure as a kind of freedom, but they earn money and enjoy it in different ways. The difference between Gong Sidang's "freedom of ancient people" and "freedom of modern people" can be omitted.

That is to say, primitive society (not limited to tribes in the late Stone Age) is by no means as modern economists take it for granted that the living environment is extremely bad, materials, especially food, are seriously scarce, and the production technology is simple and backward, so people have to work all day and have no food and clothing. On the contrary, people in primitive society can easily fill their stomachs, and then they can spend a lot of time to see how many festivals the ancients had. Chatting, dancing, sleeping and having fun are the main activities of this group of people, so that some pioneers in the early West thought, "I don't know how these barbarians spent their time before our church taught them to smoke" (p28).

Matching this leisurely life, we have a set of economic theories to reinterpret the concept and economic significance of human property, as well as the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of commodities: for example, for nomadic tribes, wealth is an inconvenient burden; "Economy was only a part-time job in primitive society, or just an activity of some people in society" (P100); "The purpose of production is to use it to meet the livelihood needs of producers" (p78), which is the most common mode of family production; Family chiefs and tribal chiefs use traditional rules and rituals to distribute products, and generosity is more like "imposed debt" to force people to share goods; Reciprocity with products as gifts is the most extensive form of exchange between relatives and tribes, and the so-called buying and selling and bargaining mostly occur outside relatives, villages and tribes; People only consume the most basic products, neither saving nor advancing. There are too many things to send to relatives and heads, not enough to eat, and other relief. Under the guidance of economics, primitive humans are not as rich as modern humans in material, but they are "rich".

Primitive prosperity marked by "low production" and "low consumption" is at the expense of people having to bear the pain of low life expectancy, high death or birth control, and displacement is also common; Moreover, the mode of family production is relatively fragile, and the imbalance of its labor efficiency often breeds the tendency of group separation, which needs the protection and containment of chieftain-style political authority, and often leads to inequality between people, which in turn leads to social division and even disintegration.

If we compare the respective economies of modern affluent society and primitive affluent society, we will find that there are great differences between them, and we can even say that each has its own purpose. If the former can be defined as "surplus economy", then the latter is a "survival economy". Keynes once divided human needs into absolute needs and relative needs. We can use the English words "need" and "want" to correspond. The former category is that no matter what society and circumstances, everyone is necessary, such as the minimum material security of food and housing. The latter kind of satisfaction has no practical value, but rather produces a sense of superiority to others. Keynes believed that the first demand can be realized as long as the productive forces are developed, and the second demand can never be met. He said in 1927, "assuming there is no large-scale war and no large-scale population growth, the economic problem may be solved within one hundred years, or at least hopefully within one hundred years? Economic problems are not always human problems. " (Keynes: Persuasion Collection) According to Sarlins, this economic problem about "need" was solved as early as the Stone Age. At the beginning, human beings used talent to achieve peace, not state violence as in modern society; They use various forms of marriage and taboos to limit population growth; They are content with poverty and have plenty of leisure time, even "in a whole year, they spend less than two hours on food every day on average" (p32). However, in modern society, people are addicted to endless spiritual satisfaction. Franklin's "time is money" is regarded as a wise saying, and hard work and selfless work have become the spirit of capitalism. Even if they lose their jobs, workers "fall into involuntary idleness" (Henry? Georgian). The economic effects of the two societies on time are completely different.

Of course, dividing economic logic into "survival economy" and "surplus economy" is only an "ideal type" construction that simplifies the facts. Selin himself has never looked at the primitive rich society and the modern rich society in a completely opposite way. He found that the original rich society was not completely a "survival economy", with lazy Lele people and diligent Busong people. Compared with the "rich banquet" of the modern rich, the "rich banquet" of Indian chiefs did not give more, and the principle of reciprocity goes hand in hand with the fact of exploitation. In a rich society, workaholism and procrastination coexist, so a modern "fisherman" can rarely live in moderation.

But to say which economics is better and more reasonable, we can't simply ask whether we want to be fishermen at once or try to get rich, just make a choice. Galbraith asked, "Who can say for sure that the damage caused by hunger is more painful than his neighbor's envy of owning a new car" (Galbraith: affluent society)? According to Salins, all kinds of economic phenomena should be explained by their cultural background, not the other way around. Economic rationality "is just an expression of culture, which is manifested in the meaning system around the use of materials" (p7). For example, "Everyone's workload increases with the evolution of culture, and their leisure time decreases" (p43), "The total number of hungry people increases correspondingly and absolutely with the evolution of culture" (p44), "The working years in a person's life may be seriously reduced due to various cultural reasons" (P63) ... The introduction of new technologies can be used to improve production efficiency and shorten working hours. At the beginning, human beings chose the latter because its culture endowed leisure with higher value, which made it "less attractive to earn more" (Max? Weber: Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism). Then, the scarcity of material in society is not caused by the lack of technical means, but depends on the gap between its cultural goals and its ability to achieve them. Different cultures are not only economically contradictory, but also morally incompatible. Here, I want to quote another anthropologist, Westermarck, to prove that "different societies and individuals hold different ideas about how widely various moral principles can be applied inside and outside the collective, and what to do when their interests conflict with others". These moral judgments are based on the emotional response of the basic impulse to repay virtue with good and hatred with evil. These feelings are greatly influenced by the various moral feelings held by him in a specific era and a specific region. Moral standards vary greatly in different times and cultures. "

Problems arise from this. Since culture is so crucial, how can they survive? In the past, various cultures were distributed in four directions, and the communication was sparse and long. It is really incomprehensible to regard foreign customs as "Arabian Nights". You can also use Zhuangzi's "A child is not a fish, how can you know the joy of a fish" to understand that it is generally peaceful. However, after the discovery of the new continent, the world has become more closely linked and cultural exchanges and conflicts have become more frequent. If the west solved the problem by colonial conquest and economic infiltration in the first 500 years, how will globalization deal with it in the new era? Huntington described the clash of cultures as "clash of civilizations", Joseph? Nye called the external influence of culture "soft power". We made a package for culture and then declared it "Chinese studies". In other words, we always try our best to promote our own culture and let others bear the cost of cultural change. Therefore, "there are always Eskimos who try their best to teach African residents how to live." Another question is, if two cultures can play a leading role in the same society, what forces have realized the transformation between them?

Of course, Salins didn't know about the cross-cultural difficulties. He only talked about "Stone Age Economics" in order to win the praise of Xiang Zhuang's sword dance, but his purpose was to prove that "capitalism is not an innate economic model in human history, and the more common economic model in human society is not capitalism" (p363). As one of the translators said, "If someone can sell modernity, why not sell' non-modernity'-as long as things are rare. It even helps us to raise the banner of' multiple modernity'. " (Zhang Jingwei: Reflecting on ethnography, it's hard to classify) Sellings wants to sell such an anthropological perspective and care, and reflect on his own situation by comparing with others.

As for "material practice is composed of culture" put forward by Salins, its purpose may be to prove Marx's consciousness of material decision, and then completely subvert the ontological basis of modern economics. But anyway, I have always been skeptical about determinism, but Weber's "affinity" is more appropriate. In my opinion, all determinism is either caught in an infinite loop of circular argument or entangled in tautological statements. If material practice is composed of culture and "production carries the whole cultural structure" (p3), what determines production? Is it necessary to go back to material practice? This causal inference always comes down to a thing-in-itself that is not determined by external things. In addition, the connotation of the word "culture" is changeable, and the extensiveness of its concept is always difficult to express accurately. Some philosophers think that we can only know limited and local things. Absolute, initial, infinite and so on are beyond human grasp, because it does not depend on other things, and we cannot be attached to or different from anything else. However, rational thinking always tends to associate something with absoluteness to prove its rationality. Indeed, we must have an absolute, relative things must be based on absolute, otherwise it is inconceivable. This is definitely the entity behind all phenomena. The ancients classified it as God, Heaven and Tao. Enlightenment thinkers defined it as nature, sociologists called it "society" and anthropologists called it "culture". Perhaps people's thinking can never get rid of the limitations of rationalism.