Trade with outsiders splits a self-sufficient group into opposed producer factions

Evidence

Even given a certain technical division of labor, as long as the small, primitive group is self-sufficient, a pervasive equality exists in that each member of the group works for the group itself; every achievement is sociologically centripetal. However, as soon as the boundaries of the group are ruptured and it enters into trade in special products with another group, internal differentiation develops between those who produce for export and those who produce for domestic consumption—two wholly opposed inner modes of being. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 600

Categorization

  • XREF: The export-vs-domestic split is a proto-stranger dynamic — the trader who crosses boundaries becomes the differentiated, mobile figure central to my essay’s urban-observer argument. — connects to: Trade custom carries no moral authority when an industry is evenly split — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 540