Hi Kevin

"In the opening scene of  Wealth, notice that the disposition to truck and
barter is evidently a disposition to trade for the sake of trading -  i.e.
it is not, in the first place, instrumentally guided at all."

Chapter II of Wealth Of Nations, paragraph 1:

'It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain
propensity in human nature which has no such extensive utility; the
propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.'

There is no mention of 'trade', nor any mention of 'trade for the sake of
trading'.  It is about exchanging 'one thing for another', and as it is a
'propensity in human nature' and 'the necessary consequence of the faculties
of reason and speech', it most decidedly pre-dates anything to do with money
as a medium of exchange', or commercial markets, or 'capitalism', or
Polanyi's constructions which he puts on it (Polanyi, Karl, [1944] 2001, The
Great Transformation: the political and economic origins of our time, Beacon
Press, Boston).
  
Exchange is of ancient vintage as a behaviour.  We now call this 'trade'
relating it to its monetisation, but that does not cut off pre-capitalist
exchange in markets from markets prior to mid-19th century (a belief of
Polanyi's) because agricultural societies used coinage (the Bible mentions
shekels in the Old Testament, when Abraham weighs the shekels he pays for a
field; WN p 41), which takes the history of money to 6 - 8,000 years ago.
  
If people know they want to 'better themselves', they know the mutual
advantages of exchange.  As in primates, grooming has benefits in bodily
comforts, and as the exchange implies reciprocation (or no further grooming
sessions), some idea of mutual benefit must be involved.  I think there is a
case to be made for 'exchange', which includes 'trade' using money as a
recent evolved behaviour, of humans, with analogues among other primates.

Gavin Kennedy