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Debt: The First 5,000 Years

4.28 of 5 stars 4.28 · rating details · 1,641 ratings · 317 reviews

Before there was money, there was debt

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. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal o...more

Hardcover, 534 pages

Published July 12th 2011 by Melville House (first published 2011)

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Mar 06, 2012 Petr Havel rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book led me to re-think some of the fundamental aspects I have always thought our modern society is based upon: the basis of the current monetary system, market economies, the illusion of barter markets and most fundamentaly the way that debt is intertwined into the fabric of human interaction.

Overall this is pleasant read, as an overview of market and monetary history from an anthropological perspective. The book starts to lag in sections where the author tries to apply his own solutions t...more

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Jun 28, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: social-history

Okay that's much better! Thanks for all the reviews

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Sep 22, 2011 zerospinboson rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

I haven't finished reading yet, and I will try to write a more substantive review of this book once I've had time to wrap my head around the contents, but until such time has come, I would simply propose to consider this book the new answer to Douglas Adams's Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything. If you've ever wondered whether there is a connection between -- to name just a few things -- simple social obligations, the invention of money, slavery, taxation, coinage, the disapp...more

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Jan 23, 2012 Patrick rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a very thought-provoking analysis of the relationship between morality, debt, property, and money. Essentially, the author explores, through history and anthropology, the tension between the common beliefs that one should always pay one's debts and that to make a profit on lending money is wrong. In particular, this issue bears on our political unwillingness to change a situation where the vast majority of Americans will spend their lives paying off debts to a tiny minority who enjoy lud...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Jeffrey Greggs rated it 5 of 5 stars

Definitely one the most interesting anthropologies I have read in years, almost like a Discours sur l'inégalité for the 21st century. It is a startling new vision of the way debt has operated in different societies historically, and it presents compelling moral objections to economic principles that are widely regarded as certainties.

Debt is also packed with examples from and insights into the whole of recorded history. Far too many examples to dilate upon here, but for two personal favorites s...more

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Feb 03, 2012 Mike Dillon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: economy, anarchism

Fantastic book. To quote the words of Arundhati Roy: "The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable."

Thanks for helping me see more clearly the true contours of the life we live. I guess I'm accountable now.

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Nov 27, 2012 Bobsimmons rated it 5 of 5 stars

Reading this book has made a permanent change in the way I think about money and debt. This is one of handful of books I have read which has opened my mind to an entirely new way of thinking about something. David Graber explores the meaning of debt as a way of organizing society in many different cultures including our own. Highly recommended.

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Mar 29, 2013 Kirk Battle rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's very interesting because Graeber is engaging with capitalism as an ideology and tearing into it with a lot of classic anthropology arguments. It's more Zizek and Taleb Nassim than Adam Smith.

So far Graeber has done a compelling job of arguing that money is not actually an intrinsic component of civilization or even an economy. The classic excuse by economists is first we had barter, then we had to create money in case people could only barter with goods people didn't want. I'm not sure how...more It's very interesting because Graeber is engaging with capitalism as an ideology and tearing into it with a lot of classic anthropology arguments. It's more Zizek and Taleb Nassim than Adam Smith.

So far Graeber has done a compelling job of arguing that money is not actually an intrinsic component of civilization or even an economy. The classic excuse by economists is first we had barter, then we had to create money in case people could only barter with goods people didn't want. I'm not sure how much anyone ever took this myth seriously, it's main function was just to illustrate the obvious utility of having a currency at all.

Graeber's argument is that first we had credit systems, then we had money as an extension of it. Since credit systems vary vastly by community, you don't even really need money in a variety of setups. Money is not a thing. It is a mechanism for measuring credit and, more importantly, for measuring debt.

It's actually an important distinction on a macro level. That isn't "money" you're spreading around, it's debt. And the more of it you print and distribute, usually to stimulate a market into existence, you're just putting more people into debt. Which eventually might cause people to raise some questions.

It gets bogged down at a few spots but it is still really interesting. Explaining slave economics in Africa was pretty mindblowing, other stuff I'm curious about. Connecting the development of Patriarchy to debt in agrarian cultures seems sorta...not a stretch exactly because I see his logic but it seems like a gross over-simplification. The reduction of people into property via the meshing of human economies and markets is just too complex. I still don't follow all of the stuff he's talking about.

I suppose I wish there was more discussion on the why of this stuff. You've got people selling their offspring into debt slavery and then that slowly turning into chattel slavery. Were their outside forces causing increased demand for food? Why was Greece in so much debt in 600 BC?

I enjoy this sort of history, a narrow focus on a single aspect and discussing its impact across civilization, but it is much bigger than a book on the history of alcohol or candy. Maybe too big.

Choice Quotes:

"To be made a slave is to be stripped of any possible honor…The problem is that honor is, by definition, something that exists in the eyes of others. To be able to recover it, then, a slave must necessarily adopt the rules and standards of the society that surrounds him, and this means that, in practice at least, he cannot absolutely reject the institutions that deprived him of his honor in the first place."(less)

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Mar 15, 2013 Christoph rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Many writers, commentators, talking heads, evangelists, drive-by philosophers, and the like tend to use a very common device of pointing to the extraordinary nature of "our time" if not as the basis of their thesis at least to emphasize it. As a matter of fact, history, if not contemporary history, is littered with examples of this. I'm sure it speaks to the narcissistic nature of these people or at least their latent desire for attention over substance, but whatever the case, David Graeber is n...more Many writers, commentators, talking heads, evangelists, drive-by philosophers, and the like tend to use a very common device of pointing to the extraordinary nature of "our time" if not as the basis of their thesis at least to emphasize it. As a matter of fact, history, if not contemporary history, is littered with examples of this. I'm sure it speaks to the narcissistic nature of these people or at least their latent desire for attention over substance, but whatever the case, David Graeber is not one of these folks. In Debt: The First 5,000 years, we are provided an amazingly intense and exhaustive study on the nature of debt and all that comes with it through the lens of history, language, culture, and economics. On the one hand, it sets the stage for one of the most boring books one could imagine. That would be if someone took the approach that I opened with or that of the extremely simplistic view of taking the notion at face value.

But Graeber doesn't do that. Instead, he takes us on a truly innovative and unique meditation on the meaning of debt, its practice throughout human civilization in all of its modes not just monetarily, and its impact on the cultures and societies that have utilized this concept, which by the way is basically ALL of them! The book is divided into two major sections: a philosophical study of debt on a grand scale but through a very learned lens of anthropological analysis and a historical study drawing on the points established in the first part through the lens of marxist analysis. Through this process we are provided a a kind of 30,000 foot view of human history, but it is interjected with points by swooping down on an almost unending number of concrete examples in an amazingly cogent and clear way.

One of the most refreshing things about the book is its almost total absence of commentary. Graeber never tries to interpret events beyond the evidence, never tries to be an ideologue on political or historical matters, never tries to load an argument with weak construction or logical fallacy. The reader is therefore left to create their own ideas and associations to our current time, if so desired. Sure Graeber has a worldview on display here, and he has never been quiet about the foundations of this view, and of course there is a narrative voice here, its basically unavoidable in a work presented in this way. But the approach is much more academic and unbiased then many other similar works out there.

A full critical analysis of the work is almost impossible here. The amount of space one could devote to addressing all the points and ideas expressed could be a book in-itself. Things I liked about the book include the evaluation of debt in its transcendental formulation such as a debt to society or family and how naive the notion is. The analysis of christianity (small C) at least in its origins as communistic (another small c) is one of the most well researched and constructed forms of the concept I have ever read, itself not necessarily an original idea. He then does an excellent job of showing its slow conversion to the hierarchical and therefore, debt-laden practice it has become today through the Reformation to the rise of Evangelical sects. And I make that observation, but I want to emphasize that to some extent christianity is a very bit player in this book, the analysis of Aryan-Indian and Chinese culture, as well as the other Abrahamic religions, is equally insightful. But probably the most innovative part of the book is the historical model proposed as a fluctuation across four distinct ages between fiat and commodity forms of exchange. In this process, he smashes the notion of barter as a viable or at least actual form of exchange in any time in history. This is one of a number of iconoclastic actions he takes in this book. Another very interesting idea he presents, this in the conclusion, is the notion that the citizenry of most of the world are truly the largest creditor today, while the banks and governments of the world are the largest debtors in a seemingly endless cycle of capital booms and bust needing constant "bail-outs" to continue chugging along. And where do these bailouts come from? Not from the illusory wealth created by the elite class but from the taxes and future value expected from the production of the lower classes.

So after all this, why do I say that Graeber is not one to wave his hands and say the end is near or that this situation we are in today of economic calamity is somehow momentous or exceptional? Well, because he never does this. Actually, the current economic climate we are in today is basically an aside in this book. The reason is that all the conditions and situations and events we are experiencing today are retold in innumerable examples throughout history, again without any attempt to link them, but the implications stand there almost unavoidable in so many depictions. To Graeber, there is nothing unfathomable about how we got into this situation. It is the result of five thousand years of human and social evolution that have lead us here and it may not be inevitable but it is completely logical based on the realities of our past.

Many times when nihilists or pessimists are outed as such, their immediate response, as if it were a defense, is to claim that they are in fact realists. I would suggest reading this book if you find yourself in this situation to see what a realist is: someone who can understand things as they actually exist without a need to interpret them in either a positive or negative light. Mr. Graeber is a realist. Really, if anything, he could be accused more of being an optimist, because throughout a retelling of many an inhumane, or debase, or crushing situation of what some might call the human condition during the times of slavery, or indenture, or torture, or domination, only the slightest tone of respect and appreciation can be heard in his observations. The most telling moment of this optimism is in the conclusion. Here he provides one instance of commentary by remarking on where we should go now as a society in this moment we find ourself. It is not a doom and gloom proclamation or a sneering rebuke of humanity, instead it is a challenge to us all to reject money as a tool of human control and materialism, acknowledge our role as part of a collective with immense power; power that should be used to demand or force an end to the existing order of what amounts to a new form of debt peonage. You could call Mr. Graeber an anarchist for such a view, a socialist, maybe even secret satanist. But if there were any -ism I would use to characterize Mr. Graeber, probably humanist would be ideal.(less)

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Mar 11, 2013 Void lon iXaarii rated it 2 of 5 stars

I would call this an interesting but dangerous book. As opposed to other books in which every moment was a learning and enlightening enjoyment this book was exhaustingly tense because I found it to be a very confusing mix of dangerous (but plausible) ideas written in a smart way, and interesting historical or world data. So, I'll start the review with the negative things, and then move onto the positive ones:

- the author seems to have a clear agenda, of attacking capitalism & free market ide...more I would call this an interesting but dangerous book. As opposed to other books in which every moment was a learning and enlightening enjoyment this book was exhaustingly tense because I found it to be a very confusing mix of dangerous (but plausible) ideas written in a smart way, and interesting historical or world data. So, I'll start the review with the negative things, and then move onto the positive ones:

- the author seems to have a clear agenda, of attacking capitalism & free market ideas, and to this end he's willing to use what I would call disloyal weapons. I'm happy to hear of opposing ideas when they are argued logically and without resorting to trickery, but the author uses a large amount of mixed and confusing philosophical debate to confuse, and imposes language with moral undertones to push his arguments: for example in his attempt to vilify clear quantization of values as we do through currency he calls the non-monetary solution "human economy" (the other one must be inhuman, right?). Similarly he perverts the concept of familiar/church/friends sharing which I haven't heard any free market/capitalist people deny (on the contrary they seem to more often have healthier family & social relationships while their opponents like Marx have broken families, suicidal children and other tragedies), aaa, where was I? yes, he perverts these positive relationships by calling them "comunistic", thereby bringing their positive aura onto a social/political system that has caused millions of deaths and huge suffering... I find such trickery disloyal

- from the title and description I had assumed the book would be largely filled with historical data, but mostly i had to endure philosophical bla-bla-bla and a particularly non-objective style of exposition

- i call this a dangerous book because I know there are a lot of people out there with soft logic abilities, and less historical knowledge or analytic abilities, and they might be tricked by the book, so i would recommend the book only if you've read at least another 5 historical and economics books with a more analytic lean, be it from the ruthless logic of Rothbard & Mises or the historical facts of people such as Sowell

- I liken the authors style and method to Marx because like him his goal is to attack capitalism (did you know that not capitalists but Marx coined the term with the purpose of attack?), and they are both very smart people with high entertainment value/intelectual writing and both spend a lot of time attacking something while then being unsurprisingly blank at proposing anything better in a consequent matter so that others can poke holes at their position too, instead they are positionless and thus can't be attacked themselves. Also the author seems very tricky in his attacks... does he mean to attack the system whereby people save first and then use those savings? does he propose that debt spending is better? does he think that nothing can/should be quantized and we should all remain in a primitive society style (yes, he searches a lot in history and present for obscure examples of tribes to argue his points, but doesn't seem to notice that maybe there's a reason those were left behind). Instead he seems to define capitalism as everything he can cherry pick through history and present day that is bad, which of course makes it very easy to argue against them.

There are howerever good things in the book too:

+ while IMHO setting up straw many arguments and guilty parties he does seem to see some big problems, he sees how the system today will probably go through a historically recurrent reset of debt and maybe complexity

+ he dares to talk about subjects such as the American empire, the support it gets from countries with troops stationed in their territories, and such things

+ while with some biases he does bring forth very interesting historical data about debt & credit based system in the past

+ if you have the right historical and economics background, particularly if you are versed in hard money ways of thinking it may provide some interesting alternative points of view which should improve your perspective as to possibilities of not just where we have been but where we might be going

Overall I'd say it was a useful addition to my mental library, but one filled with many logical, moral and ideological traps, which is why I wouldn't advise it to many people as I find the author to be brilliantly smart and subtle, and some of his propositions are expressed in such ways that few people will be able to uncover them, let alone respond and fight them.(less)

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Jan 28, 2013 Sandra Glenn rated it 5 of 5 stars

I became fascinated with the concept of 'money' a few years ago and quickly found my research hitting a brick wall: The Standard Narrative that supposes people first bartered directly (I'll give you twelve chickens for that goat), then began to use money to make such trade easier, and then credit was invented to simplify money transactions.

Graeber's is the first book I've found that cuts through that conceptual handwave and actually looks at the history of money and debt through the eyes of an...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Austin Wimberly rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book made me think which is one of the best compliments I can give any piece of writing. As a layperson who is not well versed in economics or anthropology, I found this book a tad difficult. In the early chapters, it seems like Graeber takes for granted that his audience is as familiar with the material at hand as he is, so certain ideas are sort of briefly presented without as much depth as I might have liked. However, this is a survey of 5000 years, so how deep can it be and still fit on...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Fred Garnett rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'd not read any of David Graebner before but this is the only book that makes sense of the current credit crunch. This is not because he explains how derivatives and sub-prime mortgages work, like Michael Lewis does in, or he gives an overview of the economic context, like Gillian Tett and others do, but because he shows that state debt has a 5,000 year-old history (the anecdotes about Alexander the Great are terrific) because it is used to pay for war. The origins of our current, obviously cyc...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Brishen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Economic systems have had a notoriously hard time finding a way to work money in- a result of construction for some and a deliberate omission for others. An undergraduate economic course will usually describe the foundations of any economic system as one of barter further explaining that introducing money is utility increasing as it makes this barter much more efficient. Graeber starts off his monumental book by examining how this is completely historically inaccurate and that instead economies...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Dave rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: financial

Much of this book is very dry, having said this, this is one of those books that forever changes the way I will view the world. It covers the last 5000 years extensively….. The monetization of every human need, misery and desire. The compli...city of religion, in our acceptance to this condition…….. How misguided popular economic beliefs are. We defend with religious like zeal the disparity of our current system of economics and the current powers will villainies and demonize any competing econo...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Lee Foust rated it 5 of 5 stars

Hadn't read a book on banking or economics since college in the 1980s and __The Money Lenders__. Mostly this is because, although a life-long fan of Gothic literature and horror movies, nothing has ever scared me more than __The Money Lenders__, a truly terrifying read. The international banking coalition is even more frightening than the so-called terrorists or the super powers and their nuclear stockpiles! Unlike a political edifice, subject often to voting, or revolution, or a coup, the banks...more

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Oct 07, 2012 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I had a difficult time slogging through Debt. It shares a similar problem with Niall Fergeson's completely unreadable "the Ascent of Money:" it mixes in the author's politics and political leanings with history to give everything this weird political sheen (in this case left to Fergeson's right.) In this case, Graeber's book covers more facts than political lecturing but it's bumped several stars for being overt.

However, Debt is a worthy read for anyone interested in the span of history from ear...more I had a difficult time slogging through Debt. It shares a similar problem with Niall Fergeson's completely unreadable "the Ascent of Money:" it mixes in the author's politics and political leanings with history to give everything this weird political sheen (in this case left to Fergeson's right.) In this case, Graeber's book covers more facts than political lecturing but it's bumped several stars for being overt.

However, Debt is a worthy read for anyone interested in the span of history from early Sumerian - Middle Ages. The sections on Babylonian debt-based society and the Roman slave society are especially strong; the entire chapter on the Axial Age and the move to coinage over debt to pay for mercenaries is good and solid read full of meaty "stuff." The effect of the fall of the Roman Empire on the coinage left in circulation and how that contributed to the Dark Ages while the smaller communities returned to earlier debt and borrow strategies is also good. I liked the breakdown on how debt goes back to wife trading and wife purchasing with cows as demonstrated in Africa and moving from that to a more generalized market -- the first people to ever price physical objects were, of course, thieves who needed to sell them for other things. And the most precious commodity is a human being.

Debt falls down in the Islam chapter and the China chapter, both which feel thin and full of conjecture. China has a big piece to play in the Cortez-dumping-silver-on-the-European-economy section but otherwise, it's glossed over. The chapter on the rise of Islam and the role it plays is dry and nearly unreadable.

What I want to say about Debt is to skip the boring parts and read the interesting ones. Skipping to halfway through the book to the Axial Age chapter is a good strategy. Skip everything after the Middle Ages -- Graeber hardly has interest in things like 18th century stock bubbles (although mentioned) and the rise of the East India Company. Saying, "Yeah this is a great book on ROME!" is good. Saying, "This is a great book on the history of monetary policy!" is not. It's an okay introduction to the genesis of debt, a great discussion about ancient and near-ancient monetary policy, and a fairly terrible one on the modern day.

Not a waste of time, but not 5 stars either. A good 3.5 star book.(less)

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Sep 13, 2012 Nigel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I surprised myself by finishing this book in under the 5000 years mentioned on the cover. The analysis was thought provoking in a philosophical kind of way; it wasn't a light read; it wasn't always a fun read; sometimes I learnt a little about history; sometimes i learnt too much (to take in) about history. Lots of sections flew over my head; I'm not too proud to say it. I'm not stupid, and I'm not a genius but what I CAN say is - if you do happen to be stupid, throw this book away NOW.

The writ...more I surprised myself by finishing this book in under the 5000 years mentioned on the cover. The analysis was thought provoking in a philosophical kind of way; it wasn't a light read; it wasn't always a fun read; sometimes I learnt a little about history; sometimes i learnt too much (to take in) about history. Lots of sections flew over my head; I'm not too proud to say it. I'm not stupid, and I'm not a genius but what I CAN say is - if you do happen to be stupid, throw this book away NOW.

The writer would clearly win the jeopardy topic "what happened to human transactions over the last 10,000 years." He knows his stuff, right down to those technical details that leave most of us pretending to listen. I learnt the most in the Axial age section; in my opinion the best. Interesting sections on Rome and Greece.

Here's the rub - maybe I'm too cynical - but seems to me this is that rare & clever book that gives you the impression that everything is connected, across thousands of years, in some philosophical and practical dimension. In that sense, and the sense that it was epic, it reminded me of Das Kapital & other such ambitious texts about the shape of society.

I guess what I expected was history and what I got was history and philosophy. Otherwise a very smart book that makes you think about money and debt differently, which to be honest is all the author really wants. People to stop using cash and debt as any sensible moral yardstick.

He's saying (I think) that the Economist's story that, money "saved us" from barter is bollocks. To summarise 500 pages (and therefore ensure I'm wrong) in one sentence?

Government precedes the market by creating the pre-conditions (e.g. for a fiat currency); barter (where it did exist) was based on trust and credit within only small communities; money is the devaluation of that trust & of a natural love contained within human nature; money as a yardstick is built on dehumanisation & spread through war; debt as perceived in the modern age (as a moral obligation by creditor to lender visa versa) is ultimately a consequence of a society whose morals are based on this finalised dehumanisation process. (less)

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Aug 10, 2012 Keith Akers rated it 4 of 5 stars

I picked this book up hoping for some insight into our financial problems in their historical context. Well, I got that, and then some. This is a very impressive book, but the first thing you need to understand is that it doesn't have much to do with economics; it has to do with anthropology. So don't go to this book for information on the Federal Reserve or Keynes.

His pet peeve is the idea that money originated as a way to deal with the inconveniences of barter (I have corn, but don't need the...more I picked this book up hoping for some insight into our financial problems in their historical context. Well, I got that, and then some. This is a very impressive book, but the first thing you need to understand is that it doesn't have much to do with economics; it has to do with anthropology. So don't go to this book for information on the Federal Reserve or Keynes.

His pet peeve is the idea that money originated as a way to deal with the inconveniences of barter (I have corn, but don't need the shoes that George could trade for the corn he wants). Actually, as Graber shows, systems of credit PRECEDE the use of money.

That's his first big insight, but there are many others. There are a lot of individual insights into politics, religion, "sin," debt, debts to society, debts we can never repay, credit, interest, honor, slavery, social cohesion, money, and so forth.

The main weakness, if it is a weakness, is that it isn't always clear where exactly he is going with his insights. He can talk "around" a subject for a long time without being clear what his conclusions will be. He finally asks the question "so what is debt, anyway"? (I've paraphrased his question) only after about 120 pages.

So . . . what is wrong with our society? How could we make it better? (Does all this mean we should be vegan?) Should we centralize, or decentralize, our political decision-making? I think he is very much interested in these questions and similar questions. But if you asked him he might very well say that he doesn't know. The one very positive suggestion he makes at the very end is for a debt holiday -- just cancel all debts. I'd vote for that, and we've already paid off the mortgage.

I think the answer is that it's not just a question of getting better economists on the job; it's a question of re-examining our ideas of what it means to be a part of society, and part of what it means to be human. This book is currently on my list of books to read a second time (along with Craig Dilworth's book Too Smart for Our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind).

Only after reading the book and looking for information about the author and other reviews, did I discover that he's one of the people actively "organizing" (if that's the word) the Occupy movement. For somebody with anarchist credentials, he's got an awful lot of footnotes in there.

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Aug 03, 2012 Justinbwood rated it 1 of 5 stars

Almost unreadable, which is unfortunate because there is important material here. We should understand the history of debt more completely. This book needs an expansion and rework of the scholarship within.

The author is trying so hard to prove points above and beyond providing historical perspective that he ends up invalidating his own arguments in the quest. He makes it quite clear from the beginning that he seeks to score points against capitalism. In and of itself that is not an issue, as the...more Almost unreadable, which is unfortunate because there is important material here. We should understand the history of debt more completely. This book needs an expansion and rework of the scholarship within.

The author is trying so hard to prove points above and beyond providing historical perspective that he ends up invalidating his own arguments in the quest. He makes it quite clear from the beginning that he seeks to score points against capitalism. In and of itself that is not an issue, as there are plenty of points to be made in that regard, and enlarging the scholarship perspective on economics and earlier cultural views is needed. However, it quickly becomes clear that these efforts cloud if not completely call into question some of the material presented.

For instance, he clearly states that debt exists prior to money and that other economists lived in a world of fiction arguing otherwise. But then he cites the earliest written descriptions of money and debt, and in those texts they exist at the same time. All we can know at that point is that they both existed, not which came first. Coinage, certainly, but not money, not as cited. We can apply logic to the problem as to which came first and speculate, but it is in areas like this that he begins to really fall off.

I was going to go into detail around some of the absolutely broken logic around barter, but it's probably unnecessary. For the critical reader, the lack of cogency and twisting of definitions to fit his point, will make progression almost impossible. Suffice it to say, he really misses the point.

The cultural examples he provides as proof of the non-existence of barter (even though they are barter??!!) hint at the rich relationship between culture, politics and economics, a primordial soup that gives birth to trade and money. He claims to be exploring this ground but then basically ignores it and goes off on logic tangents. His quest to fit facts to his thesis means he often misses the forest because of the fallen leaves on the ground.

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Jul 24, 2012 Stas added it

Graeber became a "famous academic anarchist" when Yale didn't renew his job contract about 10 years ago. I read then about the case and looked up his essays on the Madagascar. I was fascinated by them and emailed him, excitedly, sharing some quotes from Sara Kofman's book on Nietzsche, which I thought resonated with the way Graeber was uncovering class tensions in the seemingly timeless rituals he observed in Madagascar. Graeber wrote back immediately, very warmly. I wish I'd saved his reply.

No...more

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Jun 17, 2012 Caitlin O'Sullivan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

I think of Goodreads stars as the following: 1, shouldn't have been published; 2, terrible; 3, pretty good; 4, really good; 5, everyone should read this (because it's eye-opening, incredibly skillful, and/or beautiful).

Debt is a five-star book.

Graeber's history encompasses not just history, but anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, political science, economics, religious studies, and finance as he details the history and definition of "debt." The conclusions he draws are--especially i...more

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May 13, 2012 Doug rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: business, nonfiction

This book presents some really intriguing ideas into human relationships, the nature of money and property, the development of civilization and capitalism and how they all relate to each other. He presents a model that really turns the traditional model of the development of capitalism on its head.

To understand the history of capitalism, however, we have to begin by realizing that the picture we have in out heads, of workers who dutifully punch the clock at 8:00 am and receive regular renumerat

...more This book presents some really intriguing ideas into human relationships, the nature of money and property, the development of civilization and capitalism and how they all relate to each other. He presents a model that really turns the traditional model of the development of capitalism on its head.

To understand the history of capitalism, however, we have to begin by realizing that the picture we have in out heads, of workers who dutifully punch the clock at 8:00 am and receive regular renumeration every Friday, on the basis of a temporary contract that either party is free to break off at any time, began as a utopian vision, was only gradually put into effect even in England and North America, and has never, at any point, been the a way of organizing production for the market, ever, anywhere.

This is why Smith's work was so important. He created the vision of an imaginary world almost entirely free of debt and credit, and therefore, free of guilt and sin; a world where men and women were free to calculate their interests in full knowledge that everything had been prearranged by God to ensure that it will serve the greater good. (p. 353-54)

The pieces are there, but the book jumps around a bit (I don't know how he can totally avoid discussing the time period from 1800-1970). He seems to vindicate Balzac's observation that behind every great fortune is a great crime, since it seems that almost all government debt is rooted in war, and the need for some liquid form of exchange, instead of relying on credit based on relations, has its roots in conquest.

It is the secret scandal of capitalism that at no point has it been organized primarily around free labor. . . . This is a scandal not just because the system occasionally goes haywire, as it did in the Putumayo, but 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. For the capitalists, this means the freedom of the marketplace. For most workers, it means free labor. (p. 349-50)

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Apr 01, 2012 Mark Oppenlander rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: business-economics, anthropology-sociology

This book is profoundly troubling. At times it made me laugh, at other times it made me cry, and some times I just wanted to yell and scream at the page. It is the kind of book that makes you wish you could sit down with the author over a cup of coffee and have a good long conversation . . . or debate.

The book itself is an exhaustively researched anthropological history of the concept and practice of debt. Sound dull? It's not. Graeber looks at Africa, India, China, Europe and more in a endlessl...more This book is profoundly troubling. At times it made me laugh, at other times it made me cry, and some times I just wanted to yell and scream at the page. It is the kind of book that makes you wish you could sit down with the author over a cup of coffee and have a good long conversation . . . or debate.

The book itself is an exhaustively researched anthropological history of the concept and practice of debt. Sound dull? It's not. Graeber looks at Africa, India, China, Europe and more in a endlessly fascinating and comprehensive journey through time and space. Along the way he explores the invention of money, the development of credit structures, the creation of the concept of interest and more. He challenges basic economic theories and formulations, taking a fair number of shots at ideas such as communism, capitalism and the "free" market, suggesting that most of these models are not what they purport to be at all.

Graeber's conclusions are startling. For one, he draws a strong correlation between the growth of the use of currency and the practice of violence; specifically the raising of armies, planned wars of aggression and so forth. He shows that before currency, people worked out their livelihoods either through communal ecomomic systems or ones that involved various forms of indebtedness - without currency.

In doing this, he drags the legs out from under what he calls the "myth of barter" that he says is at the heart of all economic theory today. Instead he provides some alternate explanations for how and why (and when) money evolved.

He describes the challenges that occur when human economies intersect with commercial economies and how this clash of cultures inevitably leads to various forms of slavery, whether literal or through debt peonage. Again, much of this is deeply disturbing, and although some of his conclusions seemed force, many of them seem all too plausible.

He then brings his reader inexorably forward in time all the way to the world economic crisis of 2008 and shows it as the inevitable outcome of capitalism as a world economic system not being able to deliver on its promises - because it can't and never will be able to do so.

I do think that he misses the mark in some places. For example, he tends to paint with a pretty broad brush when he writes of Christendom's involvement with all of this, saying that Christianity helped encourage the materialistic divide that made modern economics possible. This seems to me to be generalizing from the behavior of certain more gnostic segments of the Christian church, and not necessarily looking at a more nuanced picture. He is also pretty tough on Adam Smith, who himself understood some of the limitations of his much lauded economic theories, assuming that they would be read in the context of his larger "Theory of Moral Sentiments" - a point that Graeber mostly ignores. Also, in his rush to indict our current systems, Graeber attacks attempts at positive change such as microfinance, preferring to throw the baby out with the bathwater. He is an angry man, and this is a prophetic work. I just wish he had tempered some of his sweeping generalizations.

Having said all of that, I think this is an important book. If you read it, it will probably push your buttons, whether for good or for ill I don't know. But anyone interested in the morality of the market or economics should read this book and consider what Graeber has to say. There's a lot of good critique in here, despite his occasional excesses.(less)

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Feb 16, 2012 Bill added it

This is a book that made an impression on me. I will say right up front that it doesn't totally hang together. It sets out to make a step by step case, and gets carried away with its own ideas. It is intellectual for a popular book, but not tight enough for an intellectual book (which is probably fine by me). It attempts to sell you on a grandiose prediction or statement of where we are in the arc of history and where we are going at the end of the book. It is easy to get swept up in that sentim...more

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Nov 25, 2011 Aron rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's not often that one reads a book on political economy that is as thrilling to read as a detective novel, but Graeber's Debt is just such a book. Perhaps because he is an anthropologist, not an economist, he is able to take on a seemingly boring and pedestrian topic, and write an eye-opening book which addresses the origins of the current crisis of capitalism.

Graeber's theme is a simple one. What makes us human is our relationship with others, starting with our mothers, then family and then t...more It's not often that one reads a book on political economy that is as thrilling to read as a detective novel, but Graeber's Debt is just such a book. Perhaps because he is an anthropologist, not an economist, he is able to take on a seemingly boring and pedestrian topic, and write an eye-opening book which addresses the origins of the current crisis of capitalism.

Graeber's theme is a simple one. What makes us human is our relationship with others, starting with our mothers, then family and then tribe. Left to ourselves human beings would organize co-operatively and naturally share with each other the fruits of our labor. The goal in our life is to enjoy human interactions.

Over the course of 5000 years, this form of natural relationship has become completely distorted. We now see our life goal as to be producers/ consumers whose function is to exploit the world. We base human relationships on cold calculations of gain and loss, credit and debit.

Since such a world view (often referred to as 'capitalism') thwarts our basic nature, Graeber provides an anthropological/ historical survey of how the world ended up where it is today. His central thesis is that our current view of how society ought to be organized, can only have been created and maintained by violence. War, which rips apart all human relations, and removes individuals from their web of connections, is what allows us to place financial value on another human, as opposed to the inherent idea that every human is invaluable.

When summarized in this way, Graeber's thesis may sound simplistic and reductionist. But while his basic thesis IS a simple one, what makes the book brilliant is the depth of research and intelligent analysis that supports his argument and gives it depth and richness. By providing an overview of the concept of debt across 5000 years of history and ranging over many cultures across geography and time, Graeber convincingly makes his radical arguments seem almost self evident.

There are times, of course, where Graeber's ideas do come close to being reductionist, despite the vast wealth of well documented data he provides (and yes, read the footnotes too! Lot's of interesting details are contained therein). For example, in trying to contrast the "non-imperial" Medieval era to its predecessor the "imperial Axial" age, he leaves out a discussion of counter examples like the Mongols & the Turks. Similarly since one of his main goals in the book is to provoke people out of their conventional thinking, on more than one occasion he exaggerates to make a point. For example, while Medieval Islam has much to be admired, I am not convinced it was as much the anarchistic market system that Graeber tries to argue it was, nor, for related reasons, should one expect brilliant economic insights to come out of modern day Islamism. But Graeber is both too intelligent and too much the academician (in a positive sense) to fall into the trap of becoming a propagandist. He duly notes what he leaves out and acknowledges when his arguments are unconventional. And he always indicates that he may be over emphasizing some point precisely because it is too often ignored or trivialized.

A while back in a review of Rushkoff's awful book which covered similar themes, I lamented that there was not yet a contemporary book that provided a coherent criticism of modern day capitalism. Sure Marx still has much to teach us, but so much has changed since Das Kapital was written, and Marx' alternative system has proven itself a dismal failure. Graeber's has now provided us with just such a book - a compelling, provocative critique of financial capitalism and neoliberalism. And his call to action is neither another utopian vision nor a feel-good New Age trope. Rather, by surveying the rich and varied approaches to organizing societies over the past 5000 years, Graeber gives us tools to help us begin to re-imagine a better future for humanity.(less)

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Jan 01, 2013 Hans G. rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a very interesting and important book. Graeber's writing style is engaging and provocative, enjoyable and fascinating.

Graeber has been accused as being overly political in his interpretation of history and anthropology. There is a warrant of truth to this accusation, but Graeber is dealing with highly political, and deeply moral, dilemmas which dominant history and have implications for contemporary circumstances, an apolitical book would be impossible (many philosophers of science (righ...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Andrew R. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Graeber, writing with an accessible and yet masterful academic style, produces the perfect companion book to both Douglas Rushkoff's LIFE, INC (a good primer on the issues of money, debt, and society) and Charles Eisenstein's SACRED ECONOMICS (more poetic, free-wheeling and spiritually resonant, as well as a good bit deeper than Rushkoff.) This book is really the historical background one needs to synthesize Rushkoff and Eisenstein and as such, should be required reading.

As far as the text itsel...more

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May 12, 2013 David Carver rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

The blurb on the front of the book calls David Graeber a "brilliant, deeply original political thinker." Replace "thinker" with "book" and you have Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Graeber takes to task those who equate "capitalism" with "the Market," arguing that, instead, capitalism is a late historical development and is a particular understanding and reading of the market, one that reduces all human interaction to the logic of calculated exchange. It is this logic that has prompted, and justifie...more

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Aug 02, 2012 Marty rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: financial, non-fiction

I really wanted to give this book 5 stars. It is definitely the most interesting non-fiction book I've read in a long time, although also one of the most disorganized, which, alas, prevented me from bestowing that final star. I hate to say it, but this brilliant anarchist author and thinker could use an editor with some good old-fashioned Leninist discipline.

His is a very ambitious book. As promised (at least in the reviews I read,) Graeber completely overthrows the conventional monetary histor...more I really wanted to give this book 5 stars. It is definitely the most interesting non-fiction book I've read in a long time, although also one of the most disorganized, which, alas, prevented me from bestowing that final star. I hate to say it, but this brilliant anarchist author and thinker could use an editor with some good old-fashioned Leninist discipline.

His is a very ambitious book. As promised (at least in the reviews I read,) Graeber completely overthrows the conventional monetary history as first imagined by Adam Smith. He convincingly shows how Smith and his acolytes got it backwards: "we did not begin with barter, discover money, and then eventually develop credit systems. It happened precisely the other way around. What we now call virtual money came first; coins came much later, and their use spread only unevenly, never completely replacing credit systems. Barter, in turn appears to be largely a kind of accidental byproduct of the use of coinage or paper money."

Graeber also is convincing in his contention that the formation of ‘markets’ were everywhere dependent upon the stern hand of the state. There was nothing free or invisible or for that matter non-violent about the creation of markets anywhere or anytime, notwithstanding the “false choice between state and market that so monopolized political ideologies for the last centuries that it made it difficult to argue about anything else.” On this point, Graeber’s ability to draw from a vast reservoir of scholarship across many disciplines, cultures and languages serves him well. For example, he finds plenty of real life examples across time and place to back-up his point that the more intricate and complicated a system of credit and debt, the more likely one is to find state violence, slavery, and wars of conquest.

Where he is less convincing, or perhaps I should say where his evidence is less compelling, is his claim that the last 5,000 years has been marked by a cycle of real or metal-based money followed by a period of credit money (or “virtual” money), the former marked by “professional armies, predator warfare, untrammeled usury and debt peonage” and the latter by peasant revolts, religiously-inspired critiques of market-society, and eventual mass debt forgiveness.

It is not that this is an implausible theory (to me it is not) or a false dichotomy (not at all.) The problem is that I don’t think Graeber offers enough evidence for such a sweeping theory of world history. I’m also having trouble seeing our present era of hyper-indebtedness and popular capitulation to the primacy of financial capitalism as the “final effects of the militarization of American capitalism itself.” Much as I wish that were the case, and that we were on the verge of a golden era of debt forgiveness and virtual money, I fear that it is somewhat more likely that we will see a great deal of deflation, resource depletion and violent suppression of any nascent urge to stand against the global financial oligarchy along the way of whatever comes next.

On that cheery note, I nonetheless pledge to remain open-minded, and I sincerely hope that Graeber and his followers are right. Meanwhile, read the book.
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About David Graeber

David Rolfe Graeber is an American anthropologist and anarchist.

On June 15, 2007, Graeber accepted the offer of a lectureship in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he currently holds the title of Reader in Social Anthropology.

He was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him, and his te...more

More about David Graeber...

Books by David Graeber

Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire

Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams

The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement

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Quotes from Debt: The First 5,000 ...

“Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man objected indignantly:

"Up in our country we are human!" said the hunter. "And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.

... The refusal to calculate credits and debits can be found throughout the anthropological literature on egalitarian hunting societies. Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began "comparing power with power, measuring, calculating" and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt. It's not that he, like untold millions of similar egalitarian spirits throughout history, was unaware that humans have a propensity to calculate. If he wasn't aware of it, he could not have said what he did. Of course we have a propensity to calculate. We have all sorts of propensities. In any real-life situation, we have propensities that drive us in several different contradictory directions simultaneously. No one is more real than any other. The real question is which we take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilization.” — 16 people liked it

“Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began "comparing power with power, measuring, calculating" and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt.” — 10 people liked it

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