Who was the first economist that essentially outlined the aprioristic nature of exchange? That both parties benefit, and that social cooperation will occur as a basic tenant of the social nature of man.
I am trying to find something specifically to cite.
Maybe this?:
Close, that topic is most specifically about comparatiev advantage. Is there anything more fundamental thats just simply about exchange and that both parties win during an uncoerced exchange?
I’m not sure if this is what you want, but it’s one passage of HA I think is really important.
X. EXCHANGE WITHIN SOCIETY
1. Autistic Exchange and Interpersonal Exchange
Action always is essentially the exchange of one state of affairs for another state of affairs. If the action is performed by an individual without any reference to cooperation with other individuals, we may call it autistic exchange. An instance: the isolated hunter who kills an animal for his own consumption; he exchanges leisure and a cartridge for food.
Within society cooperation substitutes interpersonal or social exchange for autistic exchanges. Man gives to other men in order to receive from them. Mutuality emerges. Man serves in order to be served.
The exchange relation is the fundamental social relation. Interpersonal exchange of goods and services weaves the bond which unites men into society. The societal formula is: do ut des. Where there is no intentional mutuality, where an action is performed without any design of being benefitted by a concomitant action of other men, there is no interpersonal exchange, but autistic exchange. It does not matter whether the autistic action is beneficial or detrimental to other people or whether it does not concern them at all. A genius may perform his task for himself, not for the crowd; however, he is an outstanding benefactor of mankind. The robber kills the victim for his own advantage; the murdered man is by no means a partner in this crime, he is merely its object; what is done, is done against him.
Hostile aggression was a practice common to man’s nonhuman forebears. Conscious and purposeful cooperation is the outcome of a long evolutionary process. Ethnology and history have provided us with interesting information concerning the beginning and the primitive patterns of interpersonal exchange. Some consider the custom of mutual giving and returning of presents and stipulating a certain return present in advance as a precursory pattern of interpersonal exchange[1]. Others consider dumb barter as the primitive mode of trade. However, to make presents in the expectation of being rewarded [p. 195] by the receiver’s return present or in order to acquire the favor of a man whose animosity could be disastrous, is already tantamount to interpersonal exchange. The same applies to dumb barter which is distinguished from other modes of bartering and trading only through the absence of oral discussion.
It is the essential characteristic of the categories of human action that they are apodictic and absolute and do not admit of any gradation. There is action or nonaction, there is exchange or nonexchange; everything which applies to action and exchange as such is given or not given in every individual instance according to whether there is or there is not action and exchange. In the same way the boundaries between autistic exchange and interpersonal exchange are sharply distinct. Making one-sided presents without the aim of being rewarded by any conduct on the part of the receiver or of third persons is autistic exchange. The donor acquires the satisfaction which the better condition of the receiver gives to him. The receiver gets the present as a God-sent gift. But if presents are given in order to influence some people’s conduct, they are no longer one-sided, but a variety of interpersonal exchange between the donor and the man whose conduct they are designed to influence. Although the emergence of interpersonal exchange was the result of a long evolution, no gradual transition is conceivable between autistic and interpersonal exchange. There were no intermediary modes of exchange between them. The step which leads from autistic to interpersonal exchange was no less a jump into something entirely new and essentially different than was the step from automatic reaction of the cells and nerves to conscious and purposeful behavior, to action.
I’m not sure how far back it can be traced but Menger certainly knew it…
… Not only does the general principle of all economic exchanges of goods, according to which both parties must
derive an economic advantage from an exchange, maintain it validity unimpaired in the case of monopoly, but within the
trading range delimited by this factor, the monopolist is not completely unrestricted in influencing the course of economic…
economic events. Not only does the general principle of all eco-
nomic exchanges of goods, according to which both parties must
derive an economic advantage from an exchange, maintain its
validity unimpaired in the case of monopoly, but within the
trading range delimited by this factor, the monopolist is not
completely unrestricted in influencing the course of economic
According to Rothbard, Turgot wrote about the reverse inequality of values implicit in every exchange. I don’t know if he was first, though.
Read more: New Light on the Prehistory of the Austrian School - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily http://mises.org/daily/2357#_edn13#ixzz0os9sAcBs