Debt, slavery, and violence in history

[globaleconomicollaps]

I spotted this on metafilter today:

Debt, slavery, and violence in history
August 23, 2009 7:31 AM

Debt: The first five thousand years. Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber (previously) writes about "debt and debt money in human history" in Eurozine. Lots of thought-provoking stuff here; I'll put a sample in the extended description. (Via wood s lot.)

Commodity money, particularly in the form of gold and silver, is distinguished from credit money most of all by one spectacular feature: it can be stolen. Since an ingot of gold or silver is an object without a pedigree, throughout much of history bullion has served the same role as the contemporary drug dealer's suitcase full of dollar bills, as an object without a history that will be accepted in exchange for other valuables just about anywhere, with no questions asked. As a result, one can see the last 5 000 years of human history as the history of a kind of alternation. Credit systems seem to arise, and to become dominant, in periods of relative social peace, across networks of trust, whether created by states or, in most periods, transnational institutions, whilst precious metals replace them in periods characterised by widespread plunder. Predatory lending systems certainly exist at every period, but they seem to have had the most damaging effects in periods when money was most easily convertible into cash.

posted by languagehat (22 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite

[ricket]

Re: Debt, slavery, and violence in history

Good article.

Ive always wondered about money (and debt) and what role it is supposed to fill versus how it actually has been used throughout history. Money should only be used as a means of "translating" the values of good and services that are not necessarily indivisible between each other. To use money for anything else always seems to get people in trouble.

As an aside, the author does have an interesting writing style with long sentences that I, personally, have to read a couple of times to get the idea of what he is saying. The sentence structures could be arranged slightly better...

For example:

To put the matter somewhat crudely: if one relegates a certain social space simply to the selfish acquisition of material things, it is almost inevitable that soon someone else will come to set aside another domain in which to preach that, from the perspective of ultimate values, material things are unimportant, and selfishness – or even the self – illusory.