I'm hardly an expert on this topic, but I would recommend David Graeber's "Debt: the First 5000 Years".
It provides a historical view of money's origination and original utility, while positing a alternative approaches to organizing an economy towards the end of the book.
I picture trade as a symbiotic relationship where two people bring what they have(skills, materials, etc) to the table, and learn how to help each other with them.
That's a very individualist perspective. Commodity trading at the scale of nations doesn't typically work this way. You're dealing with more regional monopoly producers and monopsony wholesalers. Trade isn't about what one person can give another person. It's about what one industry executive can extract from a municipal population.
Nationalisation of wholesale production is a prerequisite for any modern era socialist project more ambitious than a street level operation.
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I'm hardly an expert on this topic, but I would recommend David Graeber's "Debt: the First 5000 Years".
It provides a historical view of money's origination and original utility, while positing a alternative approaches to organizing an economy towards the end of the book.
That's a very individualist perspective. Commodity trading at the scale of nations doesn't typically work this way. You're dealing with more regional monopoly producers and monopsony wholesalers. Trade isn't about what one person can give another person. It's about what one industry executive can extract from a municipal population.
Nationalisation of wholesale production is a prerequisite for any modern era socialist project more ambitious than a street level operation.