Debt: The First 5,000 Years

by David Graeber

It’s the former—the erosion of hierarchy—that really seems to have been at stake in the “debt crises” that struck so many Greek cities around 600 BC, right around the time that commercial markets were first taking shape.74 When the author of Constitution of Athenians spoke of the poor as falling slave to the rich, what he appears to have meant was that, in harsh years, many poor farmers fell into debt; as a result they ended up as sharecroppers on their own property, dependents. Some were even sold abroad as slaves. This led to unrest and agitation, and also to demands for clean slates, for the freeing of those held in bondage, and for the redistribution of agricultural land. In a few cases, it led to outright revolution. In Megara, we are told, a radical faction that seized power not only made interest-bearing loans illegal, but did so retroactively, forcing creditors to make restitution of all interest they had collected in the past.75 In other cities, populist tyrants seized power on promises to abrogate agricultural debts.