Destutt de Tracy on society as “nothing but a succession of exchanges” (1817)

In the first chapter of his treatise on political economy (1817) Destutt de Tracy declares that human beings are naturally social and group together for mutual protection and because they share a “natural disposition to sympathy” or a sense of fellow feeling with each other. In every community there emerges a desire to better satisfy one’s own as well as the group’s needs which results in the division of labour and the exchange among the members of various goods and services. From this come’s Tracy’s quite startling conclusion that “society is nothing but a succession of exchanges”. This might sound to some ears like the crudest form of economism but in Tracey’s worldview it is the cement which bonds a society together in a deep social way. The types of exchanges he has in mind are simple barter without money, exchanges involving money, as well as work done in common. However, they all have one thing in common, and that is the mutually beneficial nature of these exchanges. Over an extended period of time this “continual succession of exchanges”, this “innumerable crowd of small particular advantages”, is what constitutes society itself and leads to “the wonders of perfected society”. Thomas Jefferson was so impressed with this line of thinking that he arranged to have Tracey’s work translated and published in the U.S.