ABSTRACT
The barter myth – the claim that money emerged from a prior system of direct exchange – occupies a foundational place in modern economic thought. While standard critiques of the barter myth emphasize its lack of empirical support, this article advances a more capacious approach that situates the myth within the conceptual formation of economic modernity itself. Earlier monetary writings generally treated money as inseparable from political authority and social order. By contrast, the barter myth imagines a world of isolated individuals exchanging goods without monetary mediation, presenting exchange as the natural basis of human society.
The article proceeds in two steps. First, it traces the semantic history of the terms associated with barter across several European languages, showing that they carried shifting and often negative meanings before being incorporated into a narrative of economic origins. Second, it analyzes the conceptual functions of the barter myth within eighteenth-century political economy.
The article identifies three major effects. First, the barter myth establishes exchange between formally equal individuals as the primary form of social relation. Second, it displaces money and public authority from the center of social coordination, making it possible to imagine society as self-regulating. Third, it allows value to be conceived as prior to monetary institutions, creating the conditions for modern theories of value grounded in labor, utility, or scarcity.
Jean-Michel Servet, The Barter Myth and the Conceptual Foundations of Economic Modernity (2026) 1 Money on the Left: History, Theory, Practice no 2.
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