Debt: The First 5,000 Years

A fascinating book!

This deep-history look at debt is unlike anything I've ever read on the subject. The author, an anthropologist, looks at the idea of debt in human relations, stretching back to early recorded history. It gives a very full context for a topic much in the news right now. And brings to light how varied different cultures view the idea of debt....Time for a Jubilee Year, anyone? Graeber relates how it's the biblical 7th year in which all debt is forgiven!

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

The Guns, Germs and Steel of Economics

Anthropologist David Graeber has written one of the most fascinating nonfiction books of the year. Debt, something we listen to debates about nearly around the clock, is something we understand very little and the conventional wisdom is based off of assumptions made be economists who never researched the actual history of human interaction with this oldest of institutions. It's origins, realities and complex world history is rendered incredibly easy to understand in Graeber's measured and crystal clear writing. Amazing book.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

Read this book ... several times!

This book evokes a radical rethinking of self in relation to group. Graeber contrasts the concept of "human economy" with "debt society" to accomplish this. Graeber understands "human economy" as alternative to "debt society," which is based fundamentally on violence and power.

Graeber's ideas give new meaning not just to the nature of debt, but also to the personal, intellectual and spiritual bondage caused by the warped ideas of self that necessarily emerge from debt societies. Graeber contrasts violent, power-based debt-society with human-economy where self emerges from the shared experience of a web of family and societal relationships, which he contrasts with debt society's violent severing of personal connections.

David Graeber's integrating premise for this book is that debt reflects culture's origin in violence. Graeber shows how violence pervades even individual self-image through dualistic, cultural myths, for example we are taught to see our minds and our bodies as separate entities!

Reading the book, I recommend several readings, I am reminded of the ideas of Stanford linguist Rene Girard and theologians James Alison and Gil Bailie. All three explore human relations through the twin lenses of human desire and mimetic violence, which they find at the heart of the sacred structures of all human-created cultures.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

A must read for anyone interested in econ and it's effects on public policy

David Graeber walks his readers through a wealth of anthropological evidence about the nature of money, debt, and the social issues surrounding them. What we actually see happening in history flies in the face of all prevailing economic assumptions about these issues.

- There were never any barter economies

- By far, the most prevalent and naturally occurring economic systems were credit economies. Daily transactions involving the exchange of money were rare, including during the period Adam Smith was writing "The Wealth of Nations". Smith was fully aware of this fact.

- When money was used, it was consistently a result of a governments raising armies and finding a way to compensate them. Money was effectively the result of a government mandate, backed by violence.

- The most successful, and best example, of an actual free-market that wasn't backed by violent coercion was the Islamic societies in the Middle Ages, where usury "charging interest on loans" was forbidden.

- He makes a distinction between capitalism and the free-market, and makes a compelling case that capitalism is rooted in violent coercion.

It would be a mistake for anyone to treat this as a "hostile work", as Graeber isn't really out to critique so much as have a frank discussion of the facts and what's lead up to our economy today. It's better treated as a source of information to absorb into your own world-views.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Questioning the Unquestioned

I have wanted to read this since the blog Crooked Timber conducted a seminar centered on Debt. After reading it I was not fully convinced the Mr. Graeber's conclusions, but I was pleased to have read a serious, thoughtful attempt to think about and describe debt and money, and the moral, ethical, and social issues surrounding them. Mr. Graeber's background in anthropology brought a new perspective to the issues; it was refreshing to have a matter that is critical to the structure of our world examined afresh from outside the discipline of economics. Finally, it was bracing to read a book that questioned the permanence of the current zeitgeist; will our mindset toward capitalism survive another century? An interesting work.

Essential reading for the 21st century

Graeber is one of the chief influences on the Occupy movement, not only because he been active in it literally from day one but because his ideas about debt, money, and social attitudes about them as expressed in this book resonate so deeply with the protesters, many of whom are virtual slaves to their student debt. The principle question Graeber poses is why paying back one's debt to lenders has assumed such enormous moral significance to the point that, if given a choice between forgiving debt or letting people starve, most politicians anyway would choose the latter. Even liberals quake at the notion of letting debtors off the hook under any circumstances. Graeber was curious about why debt repayment became such a moral imperative. Was it always that way in history? Do all societies have similar attitudes? The answers, rooted in Graebers deep historical and anthropological research, are complex and surprising. Graeber shows by example mainly that economists are woefully inadequate to the task of gettinh at the roots if these questions, let alone finding solutions to the social problems they pose.

Provocative and enlightening

The author confirmed all my deepest suspicions about the nature of debt and capitalism.

Excellent

A rather different perspective on debt.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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