From the category archives:

David Graeber – Debt Seminar

The world economy is not a tribute system

by Henry Farrell on February 22, 2012

In a blogpost in July of last year, David Graeber talked about why he wrote _Debt_.

bq. But in a way, Keith had it exactly right. The aim of the book was, indeed, 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, but at the same time, without any sacrifice of scholarly rigor. History will judge whether it’s still possible to pull this sort of thing off (let alone whether I’m the person who will be able to do it.)

He further advised that writers of such books should:

bq. back up your statements with extensive, detailed references that actually do say what you think they say. Good scholarship is more appreciated by popular audiences than academic ones. This is a bit scandalous but I have found it to be true. I have about 100 pages of notes and bibliography in the book and non-academics commenting on the book rarely fail to note, approvingly, that I don’t ask anyone to take my word for what I say, but back up all my claims with numerous references. Some show signs of actually having checked a few to make sure I was on the level. It’s an interesting comment on academia that we almost never do this.

There’s a lot to like about _Debt_, but I don’t think that it delivers on this promise (or, at least, not on the scholarly rigor bit). Much of the specific historical discussion in the book is beyond my pay grade – while I’m interested in the discussion, and enjoyed Graeber’s reconceptualization, I can’t say that much about it. Hence, this response will focus on the stuff that I do know a little more about – today’s international political economy, and the relationship between money and military force within it.

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The unmourned death of the double coincidence

by John Q on February 22, 2012

Jumping in first, I want to recommend Debt: The First 5000 Years as a book that ought to interest just about everyone interested in the way societies are organized. I learned a lot from it, well beyond the core point about the centrality of debt. I haven’t managed to collect my thoughts into a coherent response, so I’m just going to put one or two of them up for discussion, and read the other posts with interest

My first observation is that while economists are the target of quite a few well-armed barbs in Graeber’s book, his message is one that will actually make economics a bit easier to do, by ridding us of the need to treat money as a medium of exchange, designed to overcome the problem that barter requires “a double coincidence of wants”

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David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years begins with a conversation in a London churchyard about debt and morality and takes us all the way from ancient Sumeria, through Roman slavery, the vast empires of the “Axial age”, medieval monasteries, New World conquest and slavery to the 2008 financial collapse. The breadth of material Graeber covers is extraordinarily impressive and, though anchored in the perspective of social anthropology, he also draws on economics and finance, law, history, classics, sociology and the history of ideas. I’m guessing that most of us can’t keep up and that we lack, to some degree, his erudition and multidisciplinary competence. Anyway, I do. But I hope that a Crooked Timber symposium can draw on experts and scholars from enough of these different disciplines to provide some critical perspective. My own background is in political philosophy and the history of political thought: so that naturally informs my own reactions as do my political engagements and sympathies. So mine is merely one take on some of the book’s themes.

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