ABSTRACT
Even on its strictly practical side, exchange in primitive communities has not the same role as the economic flow in modem industrial communities. The place of transaction in the total economy is different: under primitive conditions it is more detached from production, less finnly hinged to production in an organic way. Typically, it is less involved than modem exchange in the acquisition of means of production, more involved with the redistribution of finished goods through the community. The bias is that ofan economy in which food holds a commanding position, and in which day-to-day output does not depend on a massive technological complex nor a complex division of labor. It is the bias also of a domestic mode of production: of household producing units, division of labor by sex and age dominant, production that looks to familial requirements, and direct access by domestic groups to strategic resources. It is the bias of a social order in which rights to control returns go along with rights to use resources of production, and in which there is very limited traffic in titles or income privileges in resources. It is the bias, finally, of societies ordered in the main by kinship. Such characteristics of primitive economies as these, so broadly stated, are of course subject to qualification in specific instances. They are offered only as a guide to the detailed
analysis of distribution that follows. It is also advisable to repeat that "primitive" shall refer to cultures lacking a political state, and it applies only insofar as economy and social relations have not been modified by the historic penetration of states.
