Does it refer to the fact that gift giving in modern society is affected by that economy? It feels -at least to me- way far from it, so I'm not sure my assumption is true.
Gifts are one way of defining a private world of love and ritual which is different from, and in contrast to, the impersonal capitalist economy. Yet gift giving in modern society is affected by that economy. This is most obvious in the case of monetary gifts, whose value lies entirely in the capacity to purchase things in the marketplace. However, it also exists in the case of gifts of things where those gifts consist, as most do, of things that are purchased. There is a problem here. In advanced capitalist societies, consumption by individuals of things that they do not produce is a massive activity. There is a danger here that purchased gifts will lose their significance in the face of all the things that individuals purchase for themselves. Gift giving separates a world of love and ritual from the capitalist economy, but in the end the two systems of meaning cannot be entirely separated because they are interconnected.