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Debt: The First 5,000 Years
AuthorDavid Graeber
SubjectAnthropology
PublishedJuly 2011 (Melville House)
The author, in 2015
Graeber on Debt, interview and monologue
External videos
video icon Graeber interviews on debt, Democracy Now!, 2011

Summary

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Debt probes the philosophical nature of debt, its origins, and its evolution. The book's author, David Graeber, cites anthropological evidence from the Ancient Near East through modern Madagascar to show how conceptions of interpersonal obligation compare between Western society of recent centuries and the traditional societies that preceded it.[1] Debt contends that money and financial debt have turned the natural human inclination and responsibilities to help one another into financial features, and in turn, degraded human ethics over centuries.[2] Graeber also uses historical examples to contend that the widespread absolution of debt, in the style of the biblical Jubilee, is a reasonable practice.[3]

The book's narrative is non-linear[4] and its breadth does not lend towards summary.[5] The chapters of its first half trace anthropological ideas of interpersonal obligation, redemption, honor, and barter before launching into a loosely chronological sequence of historical stages from prehistory through ancient civilizations, the Axial Age, the Middle Ages, the "Age of Great Capitalist Empires", and, since 1971, "the Beginning of Something Yet to Be Determined".[4] Graeber often breaks the general chronology to make connections across eras and cultures.[6] Runaway markets are a common theme.[7][8]

The invention of money

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Graeber writes that social exchange was the foundation for what would become economic transactions. At the heart of social interaction were mutual obligations. Exchanges in resolving murder, marriage, parentage, and treaties bound the exchangers in ties of love, hate, envy, and spite. These debts could not be precisely quantified and thus could never be precisely repaid. Even the idea of repaying these debts, he writes, would be offensive.[9] Present-day nuclear families preserve some of these qualities, such as the offense taken at the idea of one's parents giving their child a bill of childhood expenses.[10] By not quantifying their social relations, these "human economies" avoided making morality into impersonal calculations.[11]

The author then dismantles "the myth of barter", the popular story that cumbersome barter economies necessitated the invention of money.[11] While many standard economics textbooks retell this Adam Smith story, Graeber writes that there is no historical or anthropological evidence of barter preceding money. He ties the necessity for money to trust. Throughout history, trade happened between people who knew and trusted each other, and could become mutually indebted (as a kind of credit) instead of requiring immediate recompense. Barter only occurred between strangers, whose low trust and unlikelihood of future repayment required immediate settling of debt. In this way, credit between debtors begat money. The first money then, was a form of credit between debtors, like a bar tab or virtual IOU, rather than a physical commodity like gold or shells.[12]

Money and debt cannot exist without each other, Graeber writes: Money exists to satisfy debt, and debt, defined as "an obligation to pay a certain sum of money", cannot exist without money.[11]

Graeber argues that disembedded markets governed by neoclassical economics are a recent and arbitrary construct in human history.[7]

...

By this perspective, exchange, which is inherently uneven between two parties, was less about prices and transactions but overlapping social obligations. An obligation becomes a debt when it can be quantitatively calculated. He argues credit systems preceded money and barter, citing societies with currencies separate for everyday transactions and relationship-based indebtedness. Tribes of Africa and North America, for instance, had currencies for marriage and to mitigate consequential injuries (such as manslaughter) from becoming blood feuds. For instance, losing a daughter in marriage required recompense in brass rods or wampum.[7] Those special token currencies could not be exchanged for other items of trade since they had no equivalent or price, but recorded a form of distinct obligation only repayable through distinct forms of restitution.[13] Graeber also uses the examples of blood debts, in which debtors or their children are pledged as pawns until a debt could be repaid, or if repayment was impossible, defaulting could lead to slavery.[14] These exchange systems are superstructure, he argues, built atop "baseline communism": an underlying web of mutual, everyday cooperation including such interactions as requesting directions or a light.[15]

Graeber calls this "baseline communism" the "raw material of sociality" and "ultimate substance of social peace", and suggests that commitment to this form of reciprocity can counteract markets and debt traps, reinforce a mutual belief in the continuance of society, and assure that debts will be repaid. The author includes "baseline communism" alongside exchange and hierarchy as the three moral foundations of economics, appearing in all human societies.[16]

Cycles of credit and bullion

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The latter half of Debt proposes that human history's dominant mode of exchange alternates between credit and bullion. For example, ancient agrarian cultures (3,500–800 BC) used credit money, Axial Age cultures (800 BC – 600 AD) used coins, the Middle Ages reverted to credit, and capitalist empires (1450–1971) relied on gold and silver bullion. Graeber argues that the United States' formal detachment from the gold standard in 1971 will constitute a new era of the long cycle, of which we are at the beginning.[16]

Graeber also argues that these cycles are driven by state violence, as credit proliferates in times of peace and trust, and is supplanted by precious metals in times of war and distrust. Bullion is simpler to trade and steal while credit requires a network of obligations.[16] Building on Geoffrey Ingham, Graeber extends a "military-coinage-slavery complex" in which early empires. For example, during Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia, the Persian mines and mints (coinage), staffed by enslaved prisoners of war, were repurposed to provide for Alexander's military. When those empires fell, the states of the Middle Ages used abstract money: paper, tally sticks, promissory notes. Capitalist empires returned to bullion, combining war, commerce, and colonial slavery. So while the global turn towards fiat currency, away from the Bretton Woods system's gold-backed bullion in 1971, would appear to be another turning of the cycle, away from war, empire, slavery, and debt bondage, instead we've seen the opposite, Graeber writes: the free-floating dollar appears to be entrenched in military power even deeper than before. Though, the author notes, we are only at the beginning of this period, if the pattern holds.[17]

At its end, the book is unoptimistic toward the future of capitalism and nation-states warring over national debt, propelled by environmental and nuclear threats. Nevertheless, Graeber intends to inject hope and reignite social possibilities by suggesting that humans can transform their institutions by building atop "baseline communism" in accordance of ability and need.[18] From the limited solutions Graeber offers, he favors a jubilee absolution of debt from which new social institutions can arise, ideally reflecting democratic rule, social inclusion, and anti-commodification.[19]

unsorted

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Graeber extends the arguments of anthropologist Marcel Mauss, who argued that primitive economies were based on voluntary gift-giving and, contrary to prominent teachings, early economies were not based on barter. Instead, primitive societies gave gifts to bind each other in mutual obligation. The Pacific societies studied by Mauss expressly chose mutual indebitedness over economic self-interest. Graeber traces this lineage to the present day by contending that relationships based on immeasurable duty and interdependence subsided as societal interactions became more transactional and money became valued in itself rather than as a token of favors. For instance, under ancient Mesopotamia, the oldest record of interest-bearing loans, farmers unable to repay debts lost their families into debt bondage. But before society could collapse, the kings would sporadically cancel all debts, as in the biblical Jubilee.[1] This option of state-canceled debt is among Debt's recurrent themes.[8]

The author reviews moral debts and its ties with religions, which refer to incalculable cosmic or divine debts, or debts greater than simply those owed to society. Monarchs sometimes reaffirmed their power by invoking such existential debts. Debt is also associated with sin in many languages. In the 17th century, as people began to treat each other as equals and "please" and thank you" shed their feudal connotations, individuals recognized receipt of natural rights but rather than a form of liberation, these ultimately became liberties to enslave oneself through one's own autonomous labor.[1]

Graeber lauds several solutions to this sort of new feudalism, including a biblical Jubilee absolution of debt for developing countries. The author affirms leisure time as a better measure of affluence than higher wages.[1]

While Graeber emphasizes the destructive power of markets, he takes larger issue with the idea that markets and states are dichotomous. It is false to separate them, he writes, because states create markets by guaranteeing the property rights and rules, and markets require states...[8]

Publication

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Graeber recounted the book's publisher, Melville House, contacting him in 2007, prior to the financial collapse, as an author who could have public appeal.[20] The Brooklyn-based independent publisher[21] was excited to hear about his work on the topic of debt, and Graeber was enticed at the prospect of writing for a broader audience than his activist and anthropologist peers, to influence a larger debate.[20] Melville House initially planned for a short book on the economy, which grew into a comprehensive exploration of financial relations. Melville House felt that an anthropologist and his knowledge of human impact would fulfill a missing need in the public dialogues on global finance.[2]

Graeber sought to apply anthropological research on human experience to contemporary issues—a practice, he has said, anthropologists abandoned. Graeber also wanted to expose "false views of money", such as debt as a zero-sum resource. For instance, alternative to the understanding that debt cancellation requires taxpayers to bail out other sectors, debt can instead be made unenforceable and thus cancelled without countermeasure, as in his recommended jubilee.[22] The author intended the book's subtitle—"The First 5,000 Years"—as a provocation. He felt that the economic order at the time of publication was untenable and likely to change within one or two generations.[23]

Keith Hart was Graeber's foremost influence in writing Debt. Hart, among the first anthropologists to discuss heterodox economics, distinguished between bullion and credit theories of money, and how money, paradoxically, is both. Atop this analysis, Graeber added historical examples of societies shifting between both uses.[20]

Intellectually, Graeber also saw himself as reconciling the traditions of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss. The Marxist tradition, as he puts it, is about seeing how all things fit into a totality based on exploitation, but as a perspective, it risks making its adherents into cynics overcome by powerlessness. Alternatively, in Graeber's description of the Maussian tradition of cooperativism, all social possibilities are present—including democracy, dictatorship, oligarchy, individualism, and communism at once—and reinforce rather than contradict each other.[24]

Debt was released in July 2011 and was a success for its publisher.[21] By December, Debt was in its sixth printing, with growing demand. Its release coincided with "debt crisis" newspaper headlines for the United States Congress debt ceiling standoff and, two months later, Occupy Wall Street, in which the author was a major figure. Print sales outpaced ebook sales, and the former were especially popular in independent bookstores. When chain buyers hesitated at the author's obscurity and the book's intellectual and political content, Melville House opted for "underground" publicity through the Internet. Leading blogs, such as the economic blog Naked Capitalism, brought Debt enough visibility to catch the attention of mainstream outlets.[2] The book was translated first to German,[25] and subsequently into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Dutch, and Slovenian.[26]

Reception

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Debt received the Society for Cultural Anthropology's 2012 Gregory Bateson Book Prize[27] and the 2012 Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing.[28]

The author recounted Debt's press coverage as uneven: extensive press in Germany, some press in the United Kingdom, and disappointingly little in the United States, which he attributed to the country's greater policing of public discourse. A year after its release, Graeber told Anthropology Today, "almost no major newspapers or magazines have reviewed it" and National Public Radio took two or three interviews that did not air.[22] Shows expressed more interest in the author than the book. He had a cover story in Bloomberg Businessweek and appeared on Up with Chris Hayes (MSNBC) and Need to Know (PBS), but media outlets and chain buyers hesitated at the topic's intellectualism and politics, the author's obscurity, and the book's price and cover.[2] Despite this, Debt sold well and further propagated on local radio and Internet publicity,[22] especially via online blogs. The book reached both the #2 spot in Amazon Germany's bestseller chart and Amazon Italy's top ten.[2]

Economist Thomas Piketty and celebrity Russell Brand praised the book.[29] Anthropologist Gillian Tett wrote that the book was both interesting and timely, especially its call for a jubilee for personal and national debts.[29] Thomas Meaney for The New York Times described the book as a field report on Western economic and moral collapse.[1] Critics noted the book's timeliness in coinciding with the 2008 financial crash,[29][19] and British historian Robin Blackburn thought that the choice to not address the crash was a missed opportunity, given how Graeber's point on market-state connectedness was proven by the big banks' reliance on a state capital bailout.[19]

Aside from its anthropological contribution to global history, Debt functioned as an "intellectual credo" for Graeber as an "anti-capitalist scholar-activist".[4] The New York Times suggested that Debt may surpass Graeber's anarchist activism as his most important contribution to Occupy Wall Street.[1] The book was common within Occupy movement makeshift libraries across the United States.[30]

The Times reviewer suggested that Graeber's anthropological examples appeared too distant from his utopian solutions for today,[1] and the New Left Review wished that Graeber had outlined how a post-jubilee world would look or work.[19] Debt, the reviewer wrote, illuminated the need for works on how healthy credit should function.[31]

Graeber noted an exceptional reception in Germany, where Debt remained a best seller for eleven weeks and sold over 100,000 copies. On his tour of Germany, he interviewed across major media outlets, including an appearance on a Maybrit Illner show panel with politicians.[25] Graeber postulated that the book owes its German popularity to the country's intellectual discontent towards topics of debt, often portrayed as an inescapable moral discourse. He also felt that anthropology was more effective a vehicle than economics for his message, as ideological factions in economics made it easier to write off sets of ideas.[24]

Legacy

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Looking back on this moment, we know the debt will be cancelled. Among those taking a long-term perspective, everyone agrees on that. The question is, How will that be done, and what’s going to happen after that?

David Graeber, 2014[32]

The book made Graeber famous[29] and was the subject of a June 2018 conference at the University of Birmingham.[33] Debt's advocacy for a jubilee absolution of debt was the impetus for Strike Debt, an offshoot of the Occupy movement that purchased and forgave monetary debt on the secondary market.[34] The group also advocated for debt erasure as public policy and for eliminating the stigma behind defaulting.[35]

Notes

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g Meaney 2011.
  2. ^ a b c d e Habash 2011.
  3. ^ Cook 2013, pp. 85–86.
  4. ^ a b c Blackburn 2013, p. 141.
  5. ^ Cook 2013, p. 86.
  6. ^ Blackburn 2013, pp. 141–142.
  7. ^ a b c Blackburn 2013, p. 142.
  8. ^ a b c Blackburn 2013, p. 147.
  9. ^ Cook 2013, p. 87.
  10. ^ Cook 2013, pp. 87–88.
  11. ^ a b c Cook 2013, p. 88.
  12. ^ Cook 2013, pp. 88–89.
  13. ^ Blackburn 2013, pp. 142–143.
  14. ^ Blackburn 2013, p. 143.
  15. ^ Blackburn 2013, pp. 143–144.
  16. ^ a b c Blackburn 2013, p. 144.
  17. ^ Blackburn 2013, p. 145.
  18. ^ Blackburn 2013, pp. 148–149.
  19. ^ a b c d Blackburn 2013, p. 149.
  20. ^ a b c Appel 2014, p. 168.
  21. ^ a b Deahl 2011.
  22. ^ a b c Houtman, Gustaaf (October 2012). "The Occupy Movement and Debt: An Interview with David Graeber". Anthropology Today. 28 (5): 17–18. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8322.2012.00898.x. ISSN 1467-8322.
  23. ^ Lateu, Jo (February 1, 2014). "David Graeber". New Internationalist (469): 46. ISSN 0305-9529.
  24. ^ a b Appel 2014, p. 170.
  25. ^ a b Appel 2014, p. 169.
  26. ^
  27. ^ https://culanth.org/pages/prizes
  28. ^ Allen, Katie (May 2, 2012). "'Dazzling' winner for Bread and Roses award". The Bookseller. Retrieved January 7, 2019.
  29. ^ a b c d Jeffries, Stuart (March 21, 2015). "David Graeber interview: 'So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on March 26, 2017.
  30. ^ Cook 2013, p. 85.
  31. ^ Blackburn 2013, p. 150.
  32. ^ Appel 2014, p. 173.
  33. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on October 5, 2017. Retrieved September 6, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  34. ^ Cook 2013, pp. 83–85.
  35. ^ Cook 2013, p. 84.

Bibliography

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Further reading

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What endures across time and space is the flexibility of debt as a concept that underwrites morally murky ideologies and ethically ambiguous practices. David Graeber in Debt: The First 5,000 Years has provocatively suggested that "the real origins of money are to be found in crime and recompense, war and slavery, honor, debt, and redemption." Graeber is my interlocutor throughout this book, as I seek to set his bold claims in historical context and test their validity in light of the ways that early moderns understood debt bondage, ways that fashioned the framework for thinking about forfeiture for the next four hundred years. The question that drives me is: What can the historical imagination of debt tell us about our present imaginary? My innovation, however, is to begin not with this question but rather with what I understand to be the answer: Institutions are able to protect creditors because the state assists them in penalizing debtors. Who could have ever imagined such a phenomenon?


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