Scan barcode
A review by schinko94
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
5.0
This is hands down the most important book published in the 21st century. When David Graeber passed, we lost an incredibly talented anthropologist and an even better person. RIP.
Graeber is what Yuval Noah Harari tries to be, but isn't. This work is sprawling in terms of the historical ground that it covers, but the fact that it does so in just over 500 pages is nothing short of miraculous. The thesis of this work is that debt, not money, came first, and that therefore every single "rational economist" stakes their life's work on a system that is predicated on a total falsehood. The myth of barter is an outright lie: There is no society anywhere on earth, at any point in history, that started its economy by replacing its primitive barter system with money.
The implications of this thesis are, as you might expect, profound and unsettling. It means that our entire economy has been achieved with a level of violence so terrifying that it can't be computed. It also means that the pendulum of economic history has mostly swung between one of two maxims: credit economies and cash economies. We are currently in a credit economy, and we will undoubtedly swing back to a cash economy in an apocalyptic fashion. Either that, or we will destroy the planet and our species via climate change first.
This book isn't all doom and gloom though--Graeber ends the book with some optimism and a suggestion to broaden our horizons in order to see our potential futures. Contrary to what our creditors might like us to believe, we do have a choice in the matter, and that choice stems from our understanding that debt is a figment of the imagination. Debt is real in its consequences, of course, but the execution of those consequences also involves the sacrifice of one's humanity at the altar of capital. If we want to build a world that is inhabitable for future generations, we have to act in every way possible to resist the callousness with which modern capitalists want us to remain in debt eternally. Through this resistance, there is hope for everybody who clings to their humanity with enough fervor that it can never be taken away.
Graeber is what Yuval Noah Harari tries to be, but isn't. This work is sprawling in terms of the historical ground that it covers, but the fact that it does so in just over 500 pages is nothing short of miraculous. The thesis of this work is that debt, not money, came first, and that therefore every single "rational economist" stakes their life's work on a system that is predicated on a total falsehood. The myth of barter is an outright lie: There is no society anywhere on earth, at any point in history, that started its economy by replacing its primitive barter system with money.
The implications of this thesis are, as you might expect, profound and unsettling. It means that our entire economy has been achieved with a level of violence so terrifying that it can't be computed. It also means that the pendulum of economic history has mostly swung between one of two maxims: credit economies and cash economies. We are currently in a credit economy, and we will undoubtedly swing back to a cash economy in an apocalyptic fashion. Either that, or we will destroy the planet and our species via climate change first.
This book isn't all doom and gloom though--Graeber ends the book with some optimism and a suggestion to broaden our horizons in order to see our potential futures. Contrary to what our creditors might like us to believe, we do have a choice in the matter, and that choice stems from our understanding that debt is a figment of the imagination. Debt is real in its consequences, of course, but the execution of those consequences also involves the sacrifice of one's humanity at the altar of capital. If we want to build a world that is inhabitable for future generations, we have to act in every way possible to resist the callousness with which modern capitalists want us to remain in debt eternally. Through this resistance, there is hope for everybody who clings to their humanity with enough fervor that it can never be taken away.