Debt: The First 5000 Years

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Debt: The First 5,000 Years
OCLC
426794447

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a book by anthropologist David Graeber published in 2011. It explores the historical relationship of debt with social institutions such as barter, marriage, friendship, slavery, law, religion, war and government. It draws on the history and anthropology of a number of civilizations, large and small, from the first known records of debt from Sumer in 3500 BCE until the present. Reception of the book was mixed, with praise for Graeber's sweeping scope from earliest recorded history to the present; others raised doubts about the accuracy of some statements in Debt.

Premises

A major argument of the book is that the imprecise, informal, community-building indebtedness of "human economies" is only replaced by mathematically precise, firmly enforced debts through the introduction of

credit-worthy. Graeber proposes that the second argument follows from the first; that, in his words, "markets are founded and usually maintained by systematic state violence", though he goes on to show how "in the absence of such violence, they... can even come to be seen as the very basis of freedom and autonomy".[1]

Synopsis

Graeber lays out the historical development of the idea of debt, starting from the first recorded debt systems in the

Jubilee
.

Graeber argues that

credit historically appeared before money, which itself appeared before barter. This is the opposite of the narrative given in standard economics texts dating back to Adam Smith
. To support this, he cites numerous historical, ethnographic and archaeological studies. He also claims that the standard economics texts cite no evidence for suggesting that barter came before money, credit and debt, and he has seen no credible reports suggesting such.

The primary theme of the book is that excessive popular indebtedness has sometimes led to unrest, insurrection, and revolt. He argues that credit systems originally developed as means of account long before the advent of

ritualized warfare
.

Graeber suggests that economic life originally related to social currencies. These were closely related to routine non-market interactions within a community. This created an "everyday communism" based on mutual expectations and responsibilities among individuals. This type of economy is contrasted with exchange based on formal equality and reciprocity (but not necessarily leading to market relations) and hierarchy. The hierarchies in turn tended to institutionalize inequalities in customs and castes.

The great

Republic).[citation needed
]

When the great empires in Rome and India collapsed, the resulting checkerboard of small kingdoms and republics saw a gradual decline in standing armies and cities. This included the creation of hierarchical caste systems, the retreat of gold and silver to the temples and the

letters of credit, and cheques (in the Islamic world).[2]

The emergence of the Atlantic slave trade and the massive amounts of gold and silver extracted from the Americas—most of which ended up in East Asia, especially China—stimulated the reemergence of the bullion economy and large-scale military violence. All of these developments, according to Graeber, directly intertwined with the earlier expansion of the Italian mercantile city-states as centers of finance that defied the Catholic Church's ban on usury and led to the current age of great capitalist empires. As the new continent opened new possibilities for gain, it also created a new area for adventurous militarism backed by debts that required the economic exploitation of the Amerindian and, later, West African populations. As it did, cities again flourished in the European continent and capitalism advanced to encompass larger areas of the globe when European trade companies and military outposts disrupted local markets and pushed for colonial monopolies.

The bullion economy ended with the

government bonds. By comparing the evolution of debt in our times to other historical eras and different societies, the author suggests that modern debt crises are not the inevitable product of history and must be resolved in the near future in a way similar to the solutions, at least in principle, as applied during the last 5000 years.[3]

Anti-capitalist critique

Concept of "everyday communism"

See also: Primitive communism, Original affluent society, and Gift economy

In Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Graeber proposes a concept of "everyday communism" which he defines as situational behavior that conforms to the logic of 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.' When analysing peasant lives, he writes: "The peasants' visions of communistic brotherhood did not come out of nowhere. They were rooted in real daily experience: of the maintenance of common fields and forests, of everyday cooperation and neighborly solidarity. It is out of such homely experience of everyday communism that grand mythic visions are always built".[4]: 326  Also, "society was rooted above in the 'love and amity' of friends and kin, and it found expression in all those forms of everyday communism (helping neighbors with chores, providing milk or cheese for old widows) that were seen to flow from it".[4]: 330 

Closer to home, he gives this example: "If someone fixing a broken water pipe says, 'Hand me the wrench,' his co-worker will not, generally speaking, say, 'And what do I get for it?' ... The reason is simple efficiency... : if you really care about getting something done, the most efficient way to go about it is obviously to allocate tasks by ability and give people whatever they need to do them."[4]: 95–96  Moreover, we tend to ask and give without thinking for things like asking directions, or

small courtesies like asking for a light, or even for a cigarette. It seems more legitimate to ask a stranger for a cigarette than for an equivalent amount of cash, or even food; in fact, if one has been identified as a fellow smoker, it's rather difficult to refuse such a request. In such cases—a match, a piece of information, holding the elevator—one might say the "from each" element is so minimal that most of us comply without even thinking about it. Conversely, the same is true if another person's need—even a stranger's—is particularly spectacular or extreme: if he is drowning, for example. If a child has fallen onto the subway tracks, we assume that anyone who is capable of helping her up will do so.[4]: 97 

The thing which makes it "everyday" is this argument: "communism is the foundation of all human sociability. It is what makes society possible. There is always an assumption that anyone who is not actually an enemy can be expected to act on the principle of "from each according to their abilities", at least to an extent,

Brooklyn Rail article, "Did communism make us human? On the anthropology of David Graeber".[6][clarification needed
]

Recognition

The book won the inaugural Bread and Roses Award for radical literature,[7] and the 2012 Bateson Award of the American Society for Cultural Anthropology.[8]

Critical reception

Journalist

New York Review of Books called the book "an encyclopedic survey ... an authoritative account of the background to the recent crisis ... an exhaustive, engaging, and occasionally exasperating book."[9] Journalist and activist Raj Patel of The Globe and Mail said, "This is a big book of big ideas: Within its 500 pages, you’ll find a theory of capitalism, religion, the state, world history and money, with evidence reaching back more than 5,000 years, from the Inuit to the Aztecs, the Mughals to the Mongols.”[10] Journalist Gillian Tett of the Financial Times compared the book to the works of Marcel Mauss, Karl Polanyi, and Keith Hart.[11]

Economist Julio Huato, associate professor of economics at

modern capitalism, are problematic.[12]

Economist and historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, a professor of economics at

commercial society rests is severely flawed.[16]

Beggs–Mason debate

The book was reviewed by way of a debate in the

Schumpeter, for Minsky and Leijonhufvud, for Henwood and Mehring ... it is a fine complement."[18]

References

  1. ^ "Seminar on Debt: The First 5000 Years – Reply". April 2, 2012.
  2. ^ According to Graeber, some of the "Western" tradition on free market and commerce outside of governmental intervention described by Adam Smith repeats almost verbatim the words of Islamic, Persian scholars like Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and Al-Ghazali, and Smith had Latin translations of some of their works in his library. Hilder, Trevor E. (August 8, 2012), Book Review: "Debt - The First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber, Muslim Heritage, retrieved May 26, 2014
  3. ^ Meaney, Thomas (December 8, 2011). "Anarchist Anthropology". The New York Times Book Review. The New York Times Company. pp. BR47. Retrieved December 11, 2011.
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-1612191294
    .
  5. ^ Swift, Richard. "Pathways & possibilities". New Internationalist. 484 (July/August 2015). Retrieved August 15, 2015.
  6. ^ Knight, Chris (June 2021). "Did communism make us human? On the anthropology of David Graeber". Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved January 30, 2022.
  7. ^ Alison Flood (March 6, 2012). "New prize for radical writing announces shortlist". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 2, 2012.
  8. ^ "David Graeber Awarded the 2012 Bateson Prize". Cultural Anthropology. Archived from the original on March 3, 2014. Retrieved August 24, 2013.
  9. ^ Robert Kuttner (May 9, 2013). "The Debt We Shouldn't Pay". The New York Review of Book. New York. Retrieved May 25, 2014.
  10. ^ Raj Patel (May 3, 2018). "A key to unlock the door of debtor's prison". The Globe and Mail. Toronto. Retrieved June 16, 2019.
  11. ^ Gillian Tett, “Debt: it’s back to the future”, Financial Times (9 September 2011). Retrieved 13 November 2011.
  12. ^
    ISSN 0036-8237
    .
  13. ^ "Jeffrey Rogers Hummel". Cato Institute. Retrieved April 18, 2023.
  14. ^ a b Henderson, David (2012) "Hummel on Graeber". Liberty Fund.
  15. ^ "George Selgin". Cato Institute. Retrieved April 18, 2023.
  16. ^ a b Selgin, George (2016). "The Myth of the Myth of Barter". Alt-M. Retrieved August 28, 2022.
  17. ^ Mike Beggs (August 2012). "Debt: The first 500 pages". Jacobin Magazine. Retrieved May 25, 2014.
  18. ^ J. W. Mason (September 2012). "In Defense of David Graeber's Debt". Jacobin Magazine. Retrieved November 10, 2015.

External links

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