Purchase and sale profits and losses of course

As soon as we talk about trade, everything is double-sided. Purchase and sale, profits and losses, of course. But as the word itself: it means as well as operations on products and values as human relations, even when "it is point of traffic and trade", as specified by the old grammarians. Heath recalled how "the friendship formed gradually over time, by a long trade". The word therefore expresses the sociability, reciprocal sharing, regular attendance. "Carnal trade", in the old style, meant no prostitution...

Obviously, these two faces of the Word are intimately related with the idea of Exchange. On Exchange of goods for money, goods against other services against salary, or eyes, yet messages and experiences, this is trade. If asked which is first, the economy or sociability, we will find the chicken and egg dilemma: the trade gather humans, who between them all the more business they are in relationship. The two sides, interdependent, continue to refer to the other. But each side, commerce-business or trade relations, is itself double.

For any business is also competition. It does not merely to collect humans, it generates conflicts, competitions, wars. Business partners are also rivals. Allies today, competing tomorrow. So in the company. Kant, in 1784, named this internal tension "the insociable sociability of men ..., that is their penchant to enter the society, however linked to a general opposition that continually threatens to dissolve this company". What brings individuals and communities is also what divides them and opposed them. By bringing together, trade is also what makes it entre-déchirer. This is more or less visible as tensions are more or less acute. They grow, as everyone knows, in times of crisis.

That finds today Each element of our "double sided" asserting itself more intensely. On international trade, interdependence is increasing at the same time, competition has increased. The nations in Europe especially, but in the rest of the world, discover more related both to each other, and less solidarity that they believed. On social relations, the crisis, reinforcing solidarity and, on the other hand, the clashes to sharpen. Social groups are all embedded in the same boat, but they also know that their interests diverge and their conflicts are increasing.

The crisis has obviously not created this duality, which is ancient and permanent. But she accuses the traits of each face of Janus, it usually blurred tensions overhang or project outboard. It shows how the human trade, whatever it is, is inhabited a fundamental internal tension that cannot be set aside. Must know what it is of such a situation. The pessimistic solution, version Schopenhauer, is in his famous parable of the hedgehogs: cold is to shake the against each other for warmth, but they hurt with their Quills, so they move away, and again have cold and closer, etc. Thus are the men in society. Until they find through the codes of politeness and good conduct, a kind of average distance, where it warms somewhat, but where one protagonist less.

Less realistic, but more optimistic is the judgment of Kant. According to him, instead of complain of the rivalry of human need "thank nature for their incompatibility of mood, for their vanity which makes the jealous rivals for their insatiable desire to possess and even domination!" "Without this, all of the excellent natural provisions which are in humanity sommeilleraient forever without developing".