The Total Social Fact: The Gift Binds All Spheres of Life
Modern economics views the gift as a market margin; however, Marcel Mauss proves that it is a total social fact. It is a foundation where law, religion, the economy, and politics intersect. The gift is not a selfless gesture, but a mechanism based on a triple obligation: giving, receiving, and reciprocating. Understanding this logic allows us to diagnose the hidden assumptions of global capitalism and the emerging algorithmic power.
Potlatch, the Welfare State, and the Metaphysics of Things
The archaic potlatch is a radical form of exchange, essentially a wealth war. Excessive generosity and the destruction of riches served to build status, and the inability to reciprocate meant a loss of rank or enslavement. In this system, credit is not an invention of banks, but a logical consequence of the gift, which always imposes a deadline for return.
Mauss points to the metaphysics of things: the Maori hau (the spirit of the gift) or the Indian anna. An object carries a part of the giver and seeks to return to its source, which compels the repayment of the debt. Today, this logic is continued by the welfare state. Social security systems are an institutionalized gift: society recognizes it owes a structural debt to the individual that wages never fully exhaust.
The Paradox of the Free Gift, Marketing, and Digital Platforms
There is a profound paradox of the free gift: if a gift is to build solidarity, it must create an obligation. A gesture that expects nothing does not function as a social glue. Modern marketing exploits this anthropological norm of reciprocity to build structural debts of gratitude and behavioral addiction in customers through freebies and the freemium model.
Digital platforms implement a model of accumulation through gift: they offer free services in exchange for data and attention. This logic takes different forms depending on culture. In the Arab world, the gift builds trust but clashes with Western compliance. In the US, the philanthropic potlatch of billionaires dominates, while in Europe, the gift is bureaucratized within public services and progressive taxation.
AI Data, the Uberization of the Gift, and the Limit of the Gift
In the era of artificial intelligence, AI data becomes the modern hau. By providing information, users surrender fragments of their own subjectivity, creating an asymmetrical debt to platforms. Simultaneously, there is an uberization of the gift: social media atomizes relationships, turning recognition into microtransactions (likes, points), which disperses the traditional density of obligations.
However, a limit of the gift emerges: too much pressure on the obligation to reciprocate turns generosity into social coercion or symbolic violence. To avoid digital debt-slavery for information, we must distinguish between the gift as a tool of domination and the gift as a condition of community. Selfless gestures, such as volunteering or blood donation, remain essential enclaves of a logic that transcends pure calculation.
Summary: The Ethics of Algorithms
The challenge of the future is the ethics of algorithms and the design of fair systems of obligation. Data should not be a free raw material, but a gift requiring reciprocity: transparency and profit-sharing. A gift that does not strengthen solidarity is a contradiction. In the digital world, can we still distinguish generosity from a sophisticated form of debt? Who is dealing the cards in this game for our subjectivity? The time has come to define the rules before we are trapped in a digital potlatch.
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