And what he achieves on this journey is not only substantiating that, historically speaking, goods almost always changed hands using credit (disproving the ‘myth of barter’ which is central to classical economic theory), he also shows how some of our core philosophical and political assumptions about civilisation are based on myths about debt and money which simply do not hold in the light of evidence. Taking us on a journey through a broad array of cultural and historical conceptions of money, Graeber succeeds in turning conventional wisdom in monetary theory on its head. Anchoring his argument in rich historical evidence going back to the first societies where use of money is found, Graeber shows how this has played out in civilisations from Mesopotamia and Imperial China to Greece and the capitalist empires. Only by severing humans from their unique social contexts can they be given a monetary value and treated as identical to something else. The short answer is violence and moral perversion Graeber argues that whereas a favour cannot be calculated, debt is precisely calculation of equivalence between disparate objects and, historically, of people.

The basic question asked in ‘Debt’ is how a promise or social obligation turns into debt resulting in behaviour that would otherwise be considered immoral. Graeber’s achievement is a highly readable and thought provoking re-writing of monetary history, which has the potential to change the reader’s understanding of debt as a moral concept, economics, and the role of debt-based money in the development of states, markets and capitalism. It has received widespread attention across the blogosphere as well as in academic debates about money in economic theory. If you haven’t already gobbled it up.Ībout a year after its publication ‘Debt – The First 5,000 Years’ has already attained status as a landmark piece of scholarship on the nature of debt and money. It was difficult to really communicate the depth and breadth of this book in the space available but hopefully it will whet your appetite for a book which is bound to change the way you think about money, debt and society. This review of David Graeber’s ‘Debt’ appeared in Volume 16 of the International Journal for Community Currency Research.

History of debt david graeber