Adorno located unequal exchange and profit-seeking in ancient Greek trade with barbarians

Evidence

Adorno mentions slavery in antiquity: ‘Exchange also played a role for the Greeks: when they received materials from the barbarians, these would certainly have been more valuable than what they gave up for them. And getting more than one gives is teleologically immanent in the principle of exchange’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1147

Categorization

• XREF: Links to Marx’s notion that profit presupposes unequal or exploitative exchange; and to Polanyi’s embeddedness critique that Adorno resists. — connects to: Odysseus’s cunning mirrors the irrationality of early capitalist exchange
• QUESTION: Is Adorno here reading a modern profit logic back into antiquity — the very anachronism his critique of exchange society is meant to expose?