Name: Gavin's review of Debt, Updated and Expanded by David Graeber
Item: Debt, Updated and Expanded
Rating: 2
Author: Gavin

David Graeber

Now in paperback, the updated and expanded edition: David Graeber’s “fresh . . . fascinating . . . thought-provoking . . . and exceedingly timely” (Financial Times) history of debt Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: he shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

The First 5,000 Years

Debt, Updated and Expanded

Michael Miller Jr. 

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. --

Debt

Gavin

Exciting and well-written but unreliable and unfocussed. The main thesis is that debt isn't straightforward accounting: all systems of debt require a hidden moral assumption, which is that it's bad to be indebted, that debt overrules other moral claims like equity or even survival:

  paying one’s debts is not the essence of morality, that all these things are human arrangements and that if democracy is to mean anything, it is the ability to all agree to arrange things in a different way.

To establish this he goes into an array of human economies: slaving, gift economies, Kula rings... but the brute fact of diverse institutions doesn't really connect with his moral thesis. Then this all goes towards his grand equating of the market and the state (so that people will resist both of them). 

He argues that formal debt (of accountants and lawyers) causes poverty and violence relative to traditional informal debt (of cousins, dowries, and sheep). But this is wildly inconsistent with the last two hundred years of social development; poverty is a fraction of what it was, and violence (including state violence, including incarceration as violence) is also down.

He gets worked up about "the myth of barter", the largely silly idea that there was generally a transition from pure barter economies to money economies at some point in cultural history. Even if we grant this, his estimation of the significance of barter being rare is excessive. It doesn't have any clear moral bearing.

His debt Jubilee idea, coming as it did post-Recession, is superficially good, especially since giant financiers had just received trillions in bailouts. But if we made debt forgiveness a common concern, we'd just be redistributing money to those best at obtaining credit via excessive self-esteem, credentials or scamming. And post-Jubilee credit system would immediately dry up, or sting us with vast interest rates. They couldn't exist otherwise, and then homeowning and car purchase would again be only within reach for the rich.

There are dozens or more or less serious errors in it. (Still less unreliable than most anarchism and most cultural anthropology.) If you still want to read it, you really should take note of the huge errata others have helpfully contributed to Graeber, not that he'd thank them:

- Henry Farrell
- Ann Leckie
- Noah Smith
- Gabriel Rossman
- Brad deLong


This is 4/5 for style and ambition, provided you don't take any particular claim too seriously. Read Clark and McCloskey for real Big Economics.

A fascinating chronicle of little known history of Debt Must we always repay our debts? Wasnt money invented to replace ancient barter systems? Apparently not, according to Yale-bred anthropologist David Graeber. In a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom, Graeber radically challenges our understanding of debt. He illustrates how, for more than 5000 years long before the invention of coins or bills there existed debtors and creditors who used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods. He argues that Madagascar was held to be indebted to France because France invaded it, reminds us that texts from Vedic India included God in credit systems and shows how the dollar changed European society forever in the sixteenth century. He also brilliantly demonstrates how words like guilt, sin and redemption derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history of how it has defined the evolution of human society, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.

The First 5000 Years

Bouke van der Bijl

An anthropological inquiry into how money came to be, ending with a political message. There was never a true barter society like some economists like to say. There was never a quaint little village where cheese mongers traded wheels of cheese for shoes, until someone ‘invented’ money. Instead there is plenty of reason to believe that people traded by using ‘IOUs’ (I owe you) which are slips of paper that for example would show ‘this paper entitles the holder to the value of a wheel of cheese from Joe the cheese monger’. Sometimes this was a literal slip of paper, most most of the time it would just be a feeling you kind of keep track of in your head. 

There was also a lot of details on usury and excessive debts. In some societies debt holders would be able to not just take possession of someone’s land and animals, but even their wives and children. Some societies allowed sentencing a debtor to death! It’s been recognized through the centuries that excessive debts can have an enormously destabilizing effect, and kings would sometimes call for a forgiveness of all debts in society. It also explains why Islam does not allow lending money with interest, because it was recognized that it can have very bad consequences. 

In short, this book is quite thorough in the different sorts of debts it explains.

Matthew Royal

A thoughtful dive into the history of currency, what we all owe each other, and the philosophies of equality and merit we take for granted underpinning everything. Ultimately, Graeber critiques capitalism without suggesting any quick fixes. 

He ascribes a considerable amount of intentionality and architecting to our current system, and his historical storytelling sometimes invisibly transitions into factually unsubstantiated musing, but his ideas are gristle for thought, and good leads into more reading on the philosophy of value.

Félix

It's obvious, I am not a fan. Yes, I agree - we have to look at concepts as debt with criticism - ethically, historically or anthropologically. But I don't like how the critique is made in this book. 

It has to do with how the subject is approached - Debt: The First 5,000 Years reads like a way too long essay of an economics second term students who couldn’t cope with his eco 101 professor using a barter myth as introduction and example - yet wasn’t patient enough to get through 3rd term to realize that economics isn't about that. Like a pupil refusing to want to learn more about mathematics because nobody in real life would buy 5000 melons for $5 and sell them for 6. 

It has to do with the book's purpose. Thankfully, Graeber wasn’t shy about opening his motives when writing his book, as he tells them himself in the appendix, yet as introduction it would have been more honest. His goal was to participate and to influence the political debate at the time written (Occupy Wall Street, the subprime mortgage crisis, the US social issues from student loans and credit card debts) and his book read like this. In essence, it’s less a history book rather than an overlong essay about why Graeber thinks Debt (or government, Banks, etc.) are the root of violence in society. “The First 5,000 Years” is merely a tool for forming a narrative for the author's idea about debt. It represents a more or less chronological collection of cherry-picked historic, theological or anthropological anecdotes related to debt which are carefully formed to a narrative suiting Graeber’s motive - and excluding everything which doesn’t fit. That's why I think the title is dishonest. To me, “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” suggests a more profound "history of ideas" about debt. Yet, all the reader gets is a rather biased selection of anecdotes embedded in a narrative told in a "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" style - because obviously, Graeber sees the big picture correctly. Who would dare to doubt it?

The author doesn’t refute from bending definitions as he pleases in arguments which go like this: “You will be surprised, but our contemporary capitalist society is much more communist than you’d expect - you will see later why”. A few dozen pages later comes the magic trick: Communism in his definition is the basic cooperation for a common goal. Well, surely then you will see communism everywhere. What a surprise. I don’t see anything wrong with other interpretations of definitions, but to play this game with the reader in this way undermines my trust in the soundness of his arguments.

The book is in every way extremely western-centric and constantly framing global historical developments from a US-American point of view. The chronology is neatly segmented in the eurocentric phases of first axial age /antiquity, second middle age, and third capitalism. (Btw., here lies another definition trick. Capitalism, according to Graeber, is the accumulation of money and the binding of others by debt in an organized, military scale. Forget anything about capital, industrialization, and the development of a concept of economic growth non-existent before - Graebers skips this discussion altogether.) 

Unfortunately, he will gaslight his way through the book to make you believe his assumptions and see the matter from his view. According to him, in today’s world - as in the origin of debt itself - there is a quasi-religious mantra holding all of it together - a firm belief that “One must always pay one's debt”. Well, I don’t know what joint-stock companies and companies with limited liability are for - if not for reducing the personal risk of small business owners or larger stockholders in a case of default. In many, if not most countries, personal bankruptcy gives special status to borrowers and attributes the default risk to the creditor. Then suddenly, he turns it around pretending that - surprise surprise - not everybody has to pay their debts back, as the banks can get around it by getting bailed out by the taxpayer. First he tries to convince you to something that isn’t necessarily true, then turns an exception (or better - one of the many cases his first statement isn’t true) he fits it nicely in his doctrine. Whether about economics - or morality, Graeber doesn’t touch any existing categories and prefers to define on his own. He doesn’t even acknowledge knowing them.

But in the end, this is not what the book is about - its core is indirectly about US-American politics, yet his essay culminates in the vision of a big global reset of dues and debts in the aftermath of the catastrophic collapse of the finance sector of 2009 since he is convinced: This crisis was different from any before in the world!

To be fair, some anecdotes and ideas are fascinating. I am convinced to have learned a lot. Some stories or links in the big picture between interpretations of debt and money are delightful and interesting - for example about the origins of the barter myth that Adam Smith amplified (and which Graeber showed to me is taught in a few universities as an introduction in economics. It wasn’t in mine as it isn't in many I assume, so somehow the multiple repetitions of how wrong this myth is and how much it proves that economists are wrong hadn’t the effect the author intended, I guess. It just got annoying rapidly. Not only that, but it should be made clear that the barter myth is not an assumption on which economics is founded on - it's an example used to teach mathematical basics to undergrad students - even if Adam Smith believed it to be somewhat of a natural state two centuries ago.). 

In my opinion, the book could have been good if Graeber had given it a more honest scope; for example, giving his opinion view on the origin of the US-American debt crisis with some historical background about the issues of debt, and if he had condensed it to maybe half the size (similar to this review) - I am convinced no content and core message would have had to be sacrificed.

Nelson Zagalo

Brilhante, incisivo e ao mesmo tempo angustiante. David Graeber é um antropólogo especializado em economia, o que lhe dá uma visão bastante distinta do comum economista, já que coloca lado a lado o humano e as finanças, estudando em profundidade as suas implicações e dependências. O facto de ter sido professor em Yale e agora na London School of Economics, apenas possível pela qualidade do seu trabalho, garante sustentabilidade ao que afirma ao longo de todo este livro, mesmo quando se afirma como anarquista. Graeber foi um dos principais mentores do movimento Occupy Wall Street, nomeadamente da sua premissa de partida, "We are the 99 percent”.

“Debt: The First 5,000 Years” é um trabalho de fundo sobre os papéis do dinheiro e poder na organização das sociedades humanas que explica o modo como toda a nossa civilização se sustenta em processos de dívida. Graeber dá conta dos primeiros registos escritos que dão conta dessas mesmas dívidas, algo que não me surpreendeu já que essa é uma percepção que fui construindo com a visita a vários museus arqueológicos, nos quais vi alguns dos primeiros registos em pequenas pedras, tendo percebido que na generalidade se tratavam de inventários, heranças ou sentenças judiciais de pagamentos de dívidas.

São vários os mitos desmontados por Graeber ao longo do livro, um dos mais gritantes, o da economia de troca, algo que existe no nosso imaginário como uma cultura existente anterior ao dinheiro, e que por isso mesmo vimos florescer nos anos recentes como tentativa de resposta aos efeitos da austeridade, mas que aqui ao longo de muitas páginas, dezenas de exemplos, e muita história vamos perceber como nunca tendo passado de mero desejo do nosso imaginário. Seria insustentável desenvolver a civilização até ao ponto de complexidade que chegámos, baseado numa economia desse género, já que a possibilidade de trocas entre indivíduos seria imensamente mais lenta e reduzida na ausência de um qualquer registo (dinheiro) que garante a troca entre todos e em qualquer momento.

Graeber começa o primeiro capítulo de forma brilhante tocando o âmago da discussão do momento, a crise das dívidas soberanas, explicando como se chegou a este ponto, como evoluiu a sociedade por meio de uma obsessão quantitativa suportada por um moralismo judicial, no qual o FMI é o píncaro global, o grande cobrador de dívidas. Nos vários capítulos que se sucedem vários momentos da história da evolução da civilização são apontados como basilares, nomeadamente processos de exploração, desde os Romanos à expansão colonial europeia, ao tráfico de escravos, tráfico sexual, etc.. Tudo processos de poder e domínio por via da dívida permanente entre partes, que serve de justificativa moral na exploração do mais fraco pelo mais forte.

"Why debt? What makes the concept so strangely powerful? Consumer debt is the life-blood of our economy. All modern nation-states are built on deficit spending. Debt has come to be the central issue of international politics. But nobody seems to know exactly what it is, or how to think about it.
The very fact that we don’t know what debt is, the very flexibility of the concept, is the basis of its power. If history shows anything, it is that there’s no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt — above all, because it immediately makes it seem like it’s the victim who’s doing something wrong." p.5-6

“It is the secret scandal of capitalism that at no point has it been or­ganized primarily around free labor. The conquest of the Americas began with mass enslavement, then gradually settled into various forms of debt peonage, African slavery, and "indentured service"-that is, the use of contract labor, workers who had received cash in advance and were thus bound for five-, seven-, or ten-year terms to pay it back (.. ) This is a scandal (..) because it plays havoc with our most cherished assumptions about what capitalism really is­ particularly that, in its basic nature, capitalism has something to do with freedom.” p.350 

Concordando com muito, ou toda a forma como Graeber desconstrói e critica o desenvolvimento e estado da nossa civilização, o seu encanto esvai-se quando chega o momento de propor alternativas. Mas seria expectável que um homem só, num tempo de uma vida pudesse chegar a propor tal alternativa? Ou mesmo recuando a Marx e ligando ao mais recente trabalho de Piketty? O que acaba por se imensamente mais angustiante é perceber que se estes que tiveram a capacidade de destrinçar a malha que nos encurrala, tal prisão invísivel, não conseguiram ver como, que podemos então nós esperar? Existirá mesmo alternativa?

Acredito que sim, mas só num nível de consciência e autocontrolo muito superior ao que temos atualmente enquanto sociedade. O grande problema é que se somos profundamente gregários, cooperativos e colaborativos, não somos menos profundamente dependentes uns dos outros para sobreviver, daí que a dívida seja a base da civilização, porque ela é no fundo a base da classe mamífera, que ao contrário da dos répteis, não consegue sobreviver individualmente, apenas em grupo.


Também em: http://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/2...

Rjyan C Kidwell

I think it's easy to be a little jarred by the beginning of this book-- I definitely thought the "The First 5,000 Years" subtitle indicated I was in for an organized, itemized history of debt, followed by some reflections, and that is certainly not how Graeber plays it. He starts us out with a few scattered historical anecdotes, some fun bits of contemporary anthropology, and a lot of his original thinking on the subject of the origin of ownership and guilt. I will admit, I was kind of wary at first, but in my opinion, by the end of the book, Graeber does make the case that the fundamental issues involved in discussing debt are so deeply-ingrained in our patterns of thought that a vigorous excavation and displacement of some of our assumptions is necessary. And I am very glad I had these particular assumptions displaced. His style of writing is enjoyable and clear, and I will most definitely read another book by David Graeber.

Tara King

Loved this book. Changed the way I think about money and it's an anthropology book, besides!

Ilia Markov

This is a very important book, mainly because it challenges some of the long-held assumptions on which contemporary monetary and development policy exist. Slightly long at times.

Fat Geisha

Udit Desai

A revised and updated edition of the international bestseller. Graeber, one of the early organisers of Occupy Wall Street and a well regarded academic, presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom; he shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods, long before the invention of cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we first see a society divided between debtors and creditors.

Michael Miller Jr. &
Debt, Updated and Expanded by David Graeber

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Debt, Updated and Expanded by David Graeber