Beholden. Rebecca Solnit and David Graeber on anarchism as a problem-solving tool, the return of debtors’ prisons, and why communism is ingrained in capitalism. Photo courtesy Steve Rhodes via Flickr In Debt: The First 5,000 Years, author and Occupy Wall Street intellectual founder David Graeber debunks myths that have shaped the general discourse on debt for centuries. The assumptions, myths, and outright falsities permeating our conceptions of debt and money—and why the latter is superior to bartering—blend history and fiction in ways that usually fail to see.
Who is constructing these narratives about our preoccupation with money, and why do we insist on believing them? In discussing topics ranging from the origins of free market capitalism (Islam) to the virtues of anarchism, Graeber and his conversation partner, Rebecca Solnit, make the case that we do not need to satisfy ourselves with the politico-socioeconomic status quo. –The editors Rebecca Solnit: So lovely to see you all here. David Graeber | The History of Debt at Occupy Onwards | NYC | 17 Dec 2012. Debt. The First 5,000 Years David Graeber “Brilliant … and unexpectedly funny.” —The Spectator (selected as a book of the year) Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. With the passage of time, however, virtual credit money was replaced by gold and silver coins—and the system as a whole began to decline.
DAVID GRAEBER teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. “An absolutely indispensable—and enormous—treatise on the history of money and its relationship to inequality in society.” “Mr. “Debt [is] meticulously and deliciously detailed.” “Written in a brash, engaging style, the book is also a philosophical inquiry into the nature of debt — where it came from and how it evolved.” “One of the year’s most influential books. “[A]n engaging book. Seminar on Debt: The First 5000 Years – Reply. Let me begin with an apology—for two things, actually. First, for the fact this response to the seminar on my debt book was so long in coming. It happening that at the time the seminar was going on I was desperately trying to finish a book with a very firm deadline (not to mention I was also struggling with a flu, which added all sorts of interesting complications.
I did finish it though. Only just.) Second, for the fact that, to make up for the delay, I seem to have overcompensated and the response became… well, as you can see, a little long. Sorry. Allow me also to remark as well how flattered I am by so much of this discussion. The stupid Apple thing. Impersonal relations. Another brief corrective while I’m at it: I’m also not saying that having lots of social relations are always inherently good and therefore the loss of social ties is always bad, violent, or oppressive. Human Economies. The problem is that I use the term in three increasingly inclusive senses. 3. 2. 3. A. 3. David Graeber’s Debt: My First 5,000 Words.
In the final lines of his introduction to Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber writes that “[f]or a very long time, the intellectual consensus has been that we can no longer ask Great Questions.” And as he put it in a guest post over at Savage Minds: The aim of the book was to write the sort of book people don’t write any more: a big book, asking big questions, meant to be read widely and spark public debate…[T]he credit crisis —and near collapse of the global economy in 2008—afforded the perfect opportunity. In the wake of the disaster, it was as if suddenly, everyone wanted to start asking big questions again.
Even The Economist, that bastion of neoliberal orthodoxy, was running cover headlines like “Capitalism: Was It A Good Idea?” (my italics) It’s a hard book to review, though, because it’s doing several irreducibly different things at once (which I’ll try to lay out in as logical a fashion as I can manage). Now, the long version. What is Debt? – An Interview with Economic Anthropologist David Graeber. David Graeber currently holds the position of Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths University London. Prior to this he was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University. He is the author of ‘Debt: The First 5,000 Years’ which is available from Amazon. Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland. Philip Pilkington: Let’s begin. Most economists claim that money was invented to replace the barter system.
But you’ve found something quite different, am I correct? David Graeber: Yes there’s a standard story we’re all taught, a ‘once upon a time’ — it’s a fairy tale. It really deserves no other introduction: according to this theory all transactions were by barter. The story goes back at least to Adam Smith and in its own way it’s the founding myth of economics. By the time the curtain goes up on the historical record in ancient Mesopotamia, around 3200 BC, it’s already happened. DG: Well it tends to pivot radically back and forth.