tlariv reviewed Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
Graeber wasn't afraid of big topics
5 stars
Profound and compelling. It has changed the way that I see money, debt, and ideas of morality.
542 pages
English language
Published March 21, 2014
"Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems--to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There's not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates …
"Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems--to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There's not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like guilt, sin, and redemption) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it"--Publisher's description.
Profound and compelling. It has changed the way that I see money, debt, and ideas of morality.
How much do I love this book? Well it's the only book I have a pair of earrings made to look like.
Unravels everything I thought I knew about money, economic systems and debt. As dull as those topics sound, these unravelings expose a lot of assumptions about human nature. This is a book about human nature as much as it is about debt. History is far weirder and more compassionate than we've been led to believe.
I could read this over and over until I have it memorized.
I'm normally a slow reader - I picked this one up, read it pretty quickly and have subsequently read everything else that Graeber published within about one year!
There's a 2,000 year old joke contained within that I've been retelling people since reading this
... oczywiście mimochodem przypominająca anarchistyczną (w radykalnym tego słowa znaczeniu) przeszłość ludzkich społeczności.
Czytałem przez jakieś dwa lata i miałem miejscami poczucie że czytam wciąż to samo na nowo. Niemniej mnogość przypisów, przykładów (czy bardziej anegdot) robi wrażenie. Na ile książki Graebera są faktycznie zgodne z rzeczywistością — pozostawiam środowisku do rozstrzygnięcia. Narracja Graebera oczywiście zyskuje na jego lekkim, łatwo przyswajalnym piórze.
Jest tu wiele o walutach, spłacaniu, kasacji i etyce długu, barterze, religii, rodzicielstwie i państwie. W imponujący sposób autor opisuje tu historie finansowe z Chin, Indii, Mezopotamii, Rzymu, Egiptu, na przestrzeni stuleci. W pamięci zapadł mi przeciekawy opis buddyjskiego rozwoju korporacjonizmu i samonapędzającego się wzbogacania klasztorów opartego na religii wzrostu, niczym wspolczesne MLM-y, ukróconych potem przez konfucjańskie chińskie rządy.
„Jeśli historia czegokolwiek uczy, to tego, że nie ma lepszego uzasadnienia sposobów opartych na przemocy, nadania im pozorów moralności, niż przedstawienie ich w kategoriach długu — przede wszystkim dlatego, …
... oczywiście mimochodem przypominająca anarchistyczną (w radykalnym tego słowa znaczeniu) przeszłość ludzkich społeczności.
Czytałem przez jakieś dwa lata i miałem miejscami poczucie że czytam wciąż to samo na nowo. Niemniej mnogość przypisów, przykładów (czy bardziej anegdot) robi wrażenie. Na ile książki Graebera są faktycznie zgodne z rzeczywistością — pozostawiam środowisku do rozstrzygnięcia. Narracja Graebera oczywiście zyskuje na jego lekkim, łatwo przyswajalnym piórze.
Jest tu wiele o walutach, spłacaniu, kasacji i etyce długu, barterze, religii, rodzicielstwie i państwie. W imponujący sposób autor opisuje tu historie finansowe z Chin, Indii, Mezopotamii, Rzymu, Egiptu, na przestrzeni stuleci. W pamięci zapadł mi przeciekawy opis buddyjskiego rozwoju korporacjonizmu i samonapędzającego się wzbogacania klasztorów opartego na religii wzrostu, niczym wspolczesne MLM-y, ukróconych potem przez konfucjańskie chińskie rządy.
„Jeśli historia czegokolwiek uczy, to tego, że nie ma lepszego uzasadnienia sposobów opartych na przemocy, nadania im pozorów moralności, niż przedstawienie ich w kategoriach długu — przede wszystkim dlatego, że to ofiara sprawia wówczas wrażenie strony postępującej niewłaściwie”.
„Finley lubił powtarzać, że wszystkie ruchy rewolucyjne w starożytnym świecie miały jeden program: Anulować długi i podzielić na nowo ziemię ”.
„wielka część współczesnego języka religii i moralności ma u swych źródeł pojęcia takie jak dzień zapłaty czy odkupienie”
„w idei długu pierwotnego mamy do czynienia z doskonałym długiem nacjonalistycznym”
„Myśliwy nie uważa się za człowieka dlatego, że potrafi dokonywać kalkulacji ekonomicznych. Bycie prawdziwym człowiekiem oznacza dla niego niezgodę na prowadzenie tego rodzaju rachunków, odnowę liczenia i pamiętania, kto co komu oddał”.
„wyrównanie rachunków [w sensie dosłownym, ojca z synem] oznacza, że obie strony mogą się rozejść. Przedstawiając swoje wyliczenia, ojciec dał do zrozumienia, że już wkrótce nie będzie miał ze swoim synem nic wspólnego”.
„jednym ze skandali kapitalizmu jest to, że zasady panujące wewnątrz większości firm mają charakter komunistyczny [...] Im większa potrzeba improwizacji, tym bardziej demokratyczna staje się współpraca [...] W następstwie wielkich katastrof ludzie zachowują się podobnie, przechodząc na prowizoryczną wersję komunizmu. Hierarchie rynki i tym podobne stają się luksusem na który nikogo nie stać”
„Nie przynieść niczego, to ustawić się w roli wyzyskiwacza. Przynieść dokładny ekwiwalent to dać do zrozumienia, że nie chce się dłużej utrzymywać kontaktów z sąsiadem. [...] Kobiety potrafiły spędzić znaczną część dnia, idąc wiele kilometrów, aby zwrócić zupełne drobniaki w niekończącym się obiegu darów, do którego nikt nigdy nie dorzucał sumy dokładnie odpowiadającej wartości otrzymanego przedmiotu — a czyniąc to nieustannie odtwarzały swoje społeczeństwo”
„Angielskie słowo free pochodzi od niemieckiego rdzenia oznaczającego przyjaciela. Wolność była bowiem możliwością nawiązywania przyjaźni, spełniania obietnic, życia we wspólnocie równych”.
It can be dense or dry, but I enjoy the history of world economies and what Graeber had to say about bartering and Adam Smith.
I read Debt right after The Dawn of Everything (also by Graeber), and my opinion of these two books is closely interlinked. The combination is an extensive unwinding of the sort of economic and social history I learned in school. I've had to re-imagine the ways that humanity developed our relationship with agriculture, with technology, and with the interplay of social obligations which we now categorize as money and economics.
The core insight and question isn't any of those individual revelations. What Graeber is trying to get you to think about is the stickiness of contemporary social relationships & structures, and the ways that we have lost the ability to imagine the possibility of change. No economic or political system has ever been as committed as ours is to narrowing the realms of the possible and foreclosing the ability to imagine other ways of organizing society. Historically, social dynamics have …
I read Debt right after The Dawn of Everything (also by Graeber), and my opinion of these two books is closely interlinked. The combination is an extensive unwinding of the sort of economic and social history I learned in school. I've had to re-imagine the ways that humanity developed our relationship with agriculture, with technology, and with the interplay of social obligations which we now categorize as money and economics.
The core insight and question isn't any of those individual revelations. What Graeber is trying to get you to think about is the stickiness of contemporary social relationships & structures, and the ways that we have lost the ability to imagine the possibility of change. No economic or political system has ever been as committed as ours is to narrowing the realms of the possible and foreclosing the ability to imagine other ways of organizing society. Historically, social dynamics have been much more fluid, with a significantly greater ability for groups to deliberately redefine the parameters of their politics, or simply to walk away from situations which no longer serve their needs.
In this sense, I'm reminded of Le Guin's famous statement that:
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
In fact, Le Guin was underselling the case! The divine right of kings was a relatively short-lived novelty as a political system, which many people routinely walked away from, and which suffered umpteen disruptions and overthrows. Our contemporary political systems are at once more brittle than monarchy, and more intent and effective than any before seen at punishing defiance and making other systems seem impossible. I cannot imagine a society which aspires to total surveillance and imprisons so much of its population being anything less than terrified about the possibilities of change and people's ability to manifest that.
Truly an eye-opening pair of reads which I highly recommend.
This book takes a very abstract subject and, through great examples and engaging writing, makes it come alive. I learned a lot from it.
The book is clearly not a light reading, the text is dense with notes, quotes and references. I liked the way it is organised and the clear prose of Graeber.
I think this is probably one book that should be read by anybody who is interested in politics and economics, because it helps grounding modern concepts into the roots those concepts have: money, debt but also community, sharing, slavery and so on.
Definitely worth the read. Gets a bit too chatty at times, could use a slightly tighter structure, but the contents is great, and there is a lot of food for thought. The language is accessible and I probably didn't understand every point he made but just the many examples he gives themselves draw a picture of what "money" and economics is, what its roots are, how it shapes not only our economy but also our culture and social relations, and the most important parts: There's nothing God-given about this and things can be different.
David Graeber is a master of taking a familiar idea, then leaving it precisely where it is, and moving you as a reader around it to see it from unexpected angles. In Debt he does this masterfully. Beginning with a critique of the moralistic perspective of debt ("one should pay one's debts"), followed with a sharp denial of a common claim by most modern economists (that barter preceded money), Graeber lays into five thousand years of economic history via meticulous research and his own brand of coy, enjoyable writing.
From an anthropological analysis of contemporary societies to a historical analysis that thankfully takes in European and non-European views, the book is appreciably ambitious. It seamlessly links debt and contemporary economics to war, plunder and violence, something that has been long discussed but rarely so eloquently. It is also not without its flaws or a few broad claims, but Graeber's way …
David Graeber is a master of taking a familiar idea, then leaving it precisely where it is, and moving you as a reader around it to see it from unexpected angles. In Debt he does this masterfully. Beginning with a critique of the moralistic perspective of debt ("one should pay one's debts"), followed with a sharp denial of a common claim by most modern economists (that barter preceded money), Graeber lays into five thousand years of economic history via meticulous research and his own brand of coy, enjoyable writing.
From an anthropological analysis of contemporary societies to a historical analysis that thankfully takes in European and non-European views, the book is appreciably ambitious. It seamlessly links debt and contemporary economics to war, plunder and violence, something that has been long discussed but rarely so eloquently. It is also not without its flaws or a few broad claims, but Graeber's way of writing was always to present a polemic argument that challenges a status quo. The final argument, well presented, infers that debt is maybe not as necessary as we all believe, or at least that it might be worth society trying to go without it for a little while.
This book started out good but sorta fell apart in the second half. Graeber's historical analysis leaves a lot to be desired. Seems to fall into all of the same pitfalls other anarchists do. Also, statements like "Communism = Love" and "Freedom = able to make friends" are eye-rolling.
Debt is an anthropologist's take on the history of money, debt, and political economy. The book is largely an attack on many of the assumptions mainstream economists make about human nature and human history. Foremost among those false assumptions is what Graeber calls the Myth of Barter - the idea that prior to money, trade happened only through barter. Graeber, like others before him, points out that a society or economy organized around barter has never existed. Instead, the earliest human societies organized trade around centralized communal distribution or (much more commonly) credits and debts, often elaborately measured and recorded.
Graeber then re-tells 5,000 years of economic history, arguing that history can be seen as a cycle between debt-based and money-based societies. He explains that the first money-based societies were largely an outgrowth of imperialism, war finance, and slavery. The general idea is that imperial states began to raise professional …
Debt is an anthropologist's take on the history of money, debt, and political economy. The book is largely an attack on many of the assumptions mainstream economists make about human nature and human history. Foremost among those false assumptions is what Graeber calls the Myth of Barter - the idea that prior to money, trade happened only through barter. Graeber, like others before him, points out that a society or economy organized around barter has never existed. Instead, the earliest human societies organized trade around centralized communal distribution or (much more commonly) credits and debts, often elaborately measured and recorded.
Graeber then re-tells 5,000 years of economic history, arguing that history can be seen as a cycle between debt-based and money-based societies. He explains that the first money-based societies were largely an outgrowth of imperialism, war finance, and slavery. The general idea is that imperial states began to raise professional armies and hire mercenaries. The soldiers, travelling far from home and not trusting that those around them would be around them for much longer, could not rely on credits and debts. At the same time, the states needed a way to mobilize occupied territories in support of their armies. The states, conveniently in possession of new slaves to work the mines and looted gold, began minting coins. They paid the soldiers in coins, then required occupied territories pay taxes in those same coins. Markets then sprung up around the armies as occupied people found ways to earn gold coins by providing for the soldiers. Oftentimes when the armies moved on, markets and coinage would dry up and locals would go back to using credits and debts for trade amongst themselves. States in China, India, and the Mediterranean all developed money in this way from roughly 500 - 300 BCE. Graeber notes that most major world religions arose around the same time, and argues that many of them are responses to debt crises and moral questions raised by cash economies. As empires fell and the Middle Ages began, power shifted away from governments and towards these religious institutions. Churches and temples sucked up gold and introduced new attitudes towards merchants, debt, and interest-bearing loans. As a result, society shifted back towards debt and credit, while still using the currencies of dead empires as units of account. The pendulum swung back towards cash economies in the 1400s due to relaxed attitudes towards interest and growing imperial aspirations in Europe, as well as demand for silver and gold in China. Graeber argues that we are currently in another great swing towards a debt-based society, and have been since 1971 when Nixon ended the international gold standard.
Throughout the book, Graeber also includes discussions about religious conceptions of debt, moral theories of various forms of economic relations, and "social currencies" that some isolated cultures use to organize relations and debts. I liked his acknowledgement that what libertarian economists often call the free market is in fact heavily reliant on enforcement of property rights (both physical and intellectual) and debt obligations, and that the distinction between the state and market is largely false because money and markets have always been intimately connected to state policy and politics. I also appreciated his general attitude that human nature and human history is complicated, and that intellectual frameworks that attribute human behavior to a single motivation (whether it be self-interest, honor, or mutual aid) are necessarily wrong. Overall, I found many of his insights to be extremely interesting, and I think most of his main ideas are convincing. However, his analyses sometimes rest on little more than anecdotes, obscure passages of religious texts, or even etymologies. Insofar as he makes critiques about the current state of the world, his statements strike me as slight generalizations, making me wonder if perhaps his historical observations (about which I am far, far less qualified to question) are similarly overgeneralized.
A thoughtful dive into the history of currency, what we all owe each other, and the philosophies of equality and merit we take for granted underpinning everything. Ultimately, Graeber critiques capitalism without suggesting any quick fixes.
He ascribes a considerable amount of intentionality and architecting to our current system, and his historical storytelling sometimes invisibly transitions into factually unsubstantiated musing, but his ideas are gristle for thought, and good leads into more reading on the philosophy of value.
Un antropólogo analiza los preceptos de la economía mediante el estudio de comportamientos y culturas reales, destruyendo el mito del trueque y mostrándonos una historia compleja y sumamente interesante de los fenómenos económicos y sus a veces terribles consecuencias.
Everyone really needs to read this book. I just finished it today and will probably need to go back and read it again to fully process it. But my very, very brief summary would be - Everything you know about the economy is wrong. Debt is not evil, in fact it can be key to human relationships. Barter didn't come before money. There is a straight line connection between cash, government, war, slavery, and the deterioration of all human relationships. We all need to stop being industrious little worker bees and start imagining a different kind of economy before the whole thing goes to shit even more than it already has.