Debt: The First 5,000 Years

by David Graeber

The predominant school of political thought under the Warring States was that of the Legalists, who insisted that in matters of statecraft, a ruler’s interests were the only consideration, even if rulers would be unwise to admit this. Still, the people could be easily manipulated, since they had the same motivations: the people’s pursuit of profit, wrote Lord Shang, is utterly predictable, “just like the tendency of water to flow downhill.”59 Shang was harsher than most of his fellow Legalists in that he believed that widespread prosperity would ultimately harm the ruler’s ability to mobilize his people for war, and therefore that terror was the most efficient instrument of governance, but even he insisted that this regime be clothed as a regime of law and justice.