Direct Exchange

Tags: Austrian Economics Overview, Value and Exchange

08/12/2008 Joseph T. Salerno

Exchange is the foundation of the division of labor. Each party to an exchange must expect greater psychic benefit than what he is giving up. Thus, trades are not equal, they are win-win activities. Property and ownership are value-free and a pre-condition of a free market.

All exchanges derive from appropriation or production. Social relations arise out of productive commercial exchanges. A goal (Mises’) is the complete unfolding of division of labor to include the entire world (social cooperation). It is inequality that brings about this division of labor and increase of productivity.

An Alice J. Lillie Seminar. This lecture covers pp. 79-185 in the Scholar’s Edition of Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State.

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