Mesopotamia. Besides redistributive elements we encounter tributary elements –
agricultural land assigned for services rendered or on condition that part of the yield
be given to the palace.
Thus, one has to reckon with two separate – although interacting – economic
spheres (Renger 1990 a). One is based on subsistence agriculture performed on small
lots, characterized by life in small villages and hamlets of the Babylonian countryside.
Reciprocal exchange and traditional solidarity are the dominant principles governing
social and economic relations in the rural sphere. The other is determined by the
economic organization of the large institutional households and its redistributive
system and is characteristic of the Mesopotamian urban society. Nevertheless, reciprocal
modes of exchange also play a role in the urban sphere, as is the case of the redistributive
system infringing on the rural sphere.
Market exchangeFor Polanyi, market exchange is the latest stage in his sequence of modes of exchange.
However, before one assumes the existence of market exchange as a decisive economic
factor for ancient economies, one should clarify the role of market exchange (Renger
1993 ) since the abstract term ‘market’ denotes a complex process relating to the
exchange of goods and services – in short, the three-fold relations between supply,
demand and resulting price (Wallerstein 1990 ). As for ancient Mesopotamia: was
there enough demand for a sizeable market exchange? A number of questions need
to be asked. Were there institutionalized markets on a periodical basis, or markets
of an irregular yet institutionalized nature? Was it determined by the type of goods
offered or determined by its function, such as to serve the allocation of daily necessities
or to fulfil other expectations? When discussing the need for market exchange, one
has to ask: who were the participants; who would supply a market with what kind
and amounts of goods; with what kind of money would recipients pay and where
would the money come from; to what quantitative degree would such a market take
care of the dietary requirements of the populace; and what other means existed to
sustain a person’s livelihood, i.e. subsystems (rations, reciprocal exchange) and what
would such system cover (Renger 1984 )?
Furthermore, one has to ask whether and in what manner market exchange was
possible and necessary to provide for the livelihood of the populace. In the redistributive
era of the fourth and third millennia, economy and society were organized as theoikos
of the patrimonial ruler. All agricultural land was controlled by the great institutional
households of that time into which practically the entire population was integrated
and provisioned through a redistributive ration system. Since the second millennium,
subsistence agriculture on family-farmed plots produced everything needed, just about
securing the livelihood of the producers. Practically no marketable surplus was left
to supply a market in the true sense, there was no need to provision oneself via a
market. Producing for one’s own needs limits demand, total or near total consumption
of one’s production limits supply (Renger 1993 : 101 ). Besides the need to satisfy the
basic nutritional necessities, the necessity to provide for one’s clothing – this being
part of the rations in redistributive systems – and shelter, there exists a need for tools
and utensils. Utensils such as agricultural tools were either produced within individual
households or, like pottery, in a cooperative way within a village. Only tools and
— Economy of ancient Mesopotamia —