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Graeber 5000 years of debt
Graeber 5000 years of debt





In the Bible, as in Mesopotamia, “freedom,” came to refer above all to release from the effects of debt. Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began “comparing power with power, measuring, calculating” and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.” The last line is something of an anthropological classic, and similar statements about the refusal to calculate credits and debits can be found throughout the anthropological literature on egalitarian hunting societies.

graeber 5000 years of debt

We don’t like to hear anybody say thanks for that. “And since we are human we help each other.

graeber 5000 years of debt

The man objected indignantly: “Up in our country we are human!” said the hunter. In competitive markets, trust itself becomes a scarce commodity.įreuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. Note: All the “Notes:” are my own additions and can be ignored if they don’t make sense. There were lots of surprising insights in his book, not the least of which is the way Graeber shows even the most capitalistic society is communistic at its roots.

graeber 5000 years of debt

Graeber re-examines the last five thousands of years of history starting from this new view of debt: from the Sumerian King who grants loans to the farmers in return for their obedience to the modern capitalist system which forces laborers into debt as a way of forcing them to serve the system. Money was created a way to more easily track something that pre-existed it: debt.ĭebt, in fact, is the basis for society and the primary vehicle through which power is exercised. Graeber, an anthropologist, provides convincing evidence that story is completely wrong. Everyone that’s taken an economics class has heard the story about how money was created: people used to barter with each other but it got really inefficient because what if I wanted to trade my shoes for bread, but the baker didn’t need any new shoes so money was created to form a medium of exchange.







Graeber 5000 years of debt