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# The Axial Age (800 BC-600 AD) [[606]], [[607]] | # The Axial Age (800 BC-600 AD) [[606]], [[607]] | ||
# The Middle Ages (600 AD-1450 AD) [[610]], [[611]], [[612]] | # The Middle Ages (600 AD-1450 AD) [[610]], [[611]], [[612]] | ||
| − | # Age of the Great Capitalist Empires (1450-1971), [[612]], [[614]] | + | # Age of the Great Capitalist Empires (1450-1971), [[612]], [[614]], [[615]] |
# The Beginning of Something Yet to Be Determined (1971-...) | # The Beginning of Something Yet to Be Determined (1971-...) | ||
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[[category:debt]] | [[category:debt]] | ||
[[category:History Of Money]] | [[category:History Of Money]] | ||
Revision as of 21:44, 5 August 2012
Debt, The First 5000 Years, by David Graeber (2011)
Read by Robin Upton from episode 576, an ongoing reading List of Episodes
David Graeber takes an anthropologist's view of money and debt, looking at evidence outside the purview of economists such as Vedic texts, and anthropologists' accounts. He finds some cherished beliefs of economists to rely more on blind faith than evidence, and goes so far as to reflect on economists' predilections for particular interpretations - making this book a veritable slaughterhouse of economists' sacred cows.
Graeber shows, for example, that not only has there never been any evidence that money evolved from barter, but that for over a century, there has been a lot of evidence that it didn't. Disregarding such conventional wisdom, he describes a very different picture of the world's economic history, one in which money and debt are not an impartial, amoral facts of economic life, but go hand in hand with state sponsored imperial violence.
His exposure of the false dichotomy between states and markets reveals centuries of economic discussions to be vain. Graeber cites a mass of historical evidence that 'the market' is not a quasi-natural phenomenon that seeks to emerge in spite of government, but has frequently required careful manipulation by governments firstly to bring it about (usually first in connection with soldiers) and then to maintain it. He mixes insights from psychology, anthropology and history to paint an unconventional but compelling picture of the impact of money, one that differs sharply from the flattering fables spun by highly paid economists and economic historians. Indeed, he suggests we think hard about the very idea of considering 'the economy' to be separate from other facets of life.
Several themes recur throughout the 5 millennia of history which make up the book, such as the oscillation between credit systems that rely on a degree of social affinity and neighborliness and the use of precious metals and cash which do not. Another main theme with a particular of relevance to the modern reader is the perpetually recurring debt crises in which a huge proportion of the population had been reduced to debt slaves or one form or another. It has favorably reviewed, one reviewer calling it "a work of immense erudition"<ref>http://thememorybank.co.uk/2012/07/04/in-rousseaus-footsteps-david-graeber-and-the-anthropology-of-unequal-society-2/</ref>.
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