Marcel Mauss's Essai sur le don remains one of the most provocative texts in social theory. Its central claim — that gift exchange is never free but always involves obligations of giving, receiving, and reciprocating — has been endlessly debated. Living Value Theory returns to Mauss not to adjudicate these debates but to ask what the gift reveals about value as such.
The gift, for LVT, is a value transaction that deliberately refuses the form of market exchange. It creates a different kind of social bond — one based on obligatory reciprocity rather than equivalence. This is not a primitive survival in modern societies but a structural alternative that persists precisely because market exchange cannot do everything that social life requires.