If you are new here, we are reading David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Catch up and join us on Thursdays in 2025. My first slow read here on Substack in 2023 was David Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything. These two books showcase his thesis on the development of humanity by looking at how people organise themselves and their world around human values and choices. Unique among his peers, Graeber still asks the big questions in anthropology.
Dear Reader,
The whole Christendom is approaching the cancellation of all its debts from the past and present with the upcoming Easter Sunday celebration. The price is penitence and sacrifice (fasting and silence) during the high week of this Lenten Season—the Triduum—from Maundy Thursday (Witte Donderdag), Good Friday, and Black Saturday.
God is dead
I noticed they also cover the primary crucifix at the tabernacle in purple (the colour of sorrow). It’s a good sign since it is a global tradition. Also, one important traditional practice is the Tenebrae (Matins and Lauds prayers combined), which will symbolically snuff out the candles to signify the absence of God. It will be my first time to join in, at least online (live at 1500 CEST). I love rituals and our world needs more of them.
We just had Palm Sunday when Jesus of Nazareth entered Jerusalem, greeted with swaying palms. In our case here, we had boxwood twigs instead of palm.
Buxus Sempervirens. Appears in the Book of Isaiah. From the Muenster Bibelmuseum
The photo of the mother of the Instagrammer, her aunt (from left), and their friends show off their palmpassenstokken with baked hen bread, the buxus leaf twigs and three eggs, shot from the backyard of their house in Amsterdam in 1938, singing,
Palm palm Pasen, ei koerei, over ene zondag, krijgen wij een ei, 1 ei is geen ei, twee ei is een halluf ei, drie ei is een paasei!
Palm, palm, Easter, egg clucking hen, after one Sunday, we will get an egg. One egg is no egg, two eggs is half an egg, three eggs is an Easter egg!
I am assuming that the three eggs refer to the Triduum preceding Easter. During the Tridentine Mass at Oss, the priest blessed the buxus leaf, and the procession began. The leaves will eventually be placed in the crosses and at home.
It’s a great tradition, and this has since been added with dried peanuts and fruits, signifying the promise of a spring blooming season. Every childhood needs a ritual outside of the capitalist/consumer symbolic system.
Onward,
Melanie
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In this holiest of religious seasons, did Graeber finally, finally, concede the roots of the capitalist system to Christianity? He did. Apparently, he has shared this view alongside his mentor Marshall Sahlins for a long time.1 Their goal, of course, is to better question the admittedly Christian-Western anthropological lens to investigate other realities.
Can we escape such a lens?
The answer is beyond the scope of this newsletter. However, one thread we can investigate now is
to connect the Christian roots of secularised capitalism and the financial structure of debt.
the intertwining of the violence by Cortés and the inevitability of the twinning of capitalism and the state
Christian Roots of Capitalism
As a reader, we are confronted with a vile view of who Hernán Cortés was
a greedy and vicious conquistador for gold and silver
a pitiful person, who, with Mexico’s gold and silver at his disposal, grovelling at Charles V’s feet to borrow and appease his creditors
It was as if, hitting the jackpot, Hernan Cortes suffered what all lotto winners endure—back to where they started—poor and indebted.
The bloodshed in Mesoamerica coincided with the Church’s indulgence system—another excess form of debt. This system was instituted by medieval theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, and promulgated by the Council of Constance in 1415. It is defined as
the extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment due, in God’s justice, to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the Church in the exercise of the power of the keys.
Example of an indulgence given by a Bishop or Pope, 1455. From the British Library
Though Christ has redeemed all sins, penitence must still be paid. As formalised in 1254, sinners faced Purgatory for their wrongdoing. The indulgence by the living shortens their and others’ time spent in Purgatory.
Though indulgences were not meant to buy forgiveness, they were often abused—functioning as a preemptive erasure of sin (see how it was used during the Crusades). This devotional practice is built on the good works of saints, the Virgin Mary, and by Christ. Together, it formed the ‘treasure of merit’ held by the Church and selectively distributed to their members—never sold, but exchanged for an offering. It is easy to see how such a debt/credit system devolved into a financial transaction.
In both instances, debt underpinned Cortés’ conquests and the Church’s indulgences.
Return to Eden: Protestant Reformation
A key driver of the Protestant Reformation was to reform the corrupt practice of indulgences. That is, removing the language of money and transactions in spiritual matters.
Martin Luther’s (1483-1546) sermon on usury in 1524 sought to formulate a moral and business ethics around money, business, and the divine. For Christians, sacrifice is the central ethical practic. His first three admonitions include:
expect to be robbed of your property
give freely to anyone in need
if you lend any property and it is not returned, then do without it
However, he conceded that this was an ideal Christian arrangement. Nevertheless, order was necessary
‘…a strict, hard temporal government that will compel and constrain the wicked not to steal and rob and to return what they borrow, even though a Christian ought not demand it, or even hope to get it back…let no one think that the world can be ruled without blood; the sword of the ruler must be red and bloody; for the world will and must be evil, and the sword is God’s rod and vengeance upon it.’
The latter rule especially applies to non-Christians, a classic insider-outsider tolerance of usury found across the Abrahamic religions.2 It appears that it is impossible to rid the language of money in human relations.
Return to Eden: Credit vs. Interest
There was another attempt to bypass the negative aspects of usury and the nature of men. This time to look into credit relations and their reliance as ‘extensions of mutual aid’ between friends and kin. In other words, love and amity. This is a tricky proposition because in doing so,
all moral relations came to be conceived of as debts
p. 330, Graeber
Thus, in early (Christian) communities, credit and mutual aid is another religious interpretation of ‘love.’ However, curiously, love is a Christian conceptual symbolon of credit. It has two forms found in Christendom: self-love and love for God. Graeber traces this from St. Augustine, who distinguished these two types of love: beginning in his multiple-volume autobiography, Confessions (AD 397-400) and later in The City of God (ca. AD 426).
Self-love is what St. Augustine attributed to his own choice to commit thievery,
Theft is punished by thy law, O Lord, and by the law written in men’s hearts, which not even ingrained wickedness can erase. For what thief will tolerate another thief stealing from him? Even a rich thief will not tolerate a poor thief who is driven to theft by want. Yet I had a desire to commit robbery, and did so, compelled to it by neither hunger nor poverty, but through a contempt for well doing and a strong impulse to iniquity. For I pilfered something which I already had in sufficient measure, and of much better quality. I did not desire to enjoy what I stole, but only the theft and the sin itself…
Pomona Britannica by George Brookshaw, 1812 from the British Library
We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart--which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself.
My sole gratification in them was my own sin, which I was pleased to enjoy; for, if any one of these pears entered my mouth, the only good flavor it had was my sin in eating it. And now, O Lord my God, I ask what it was in that theft of mine that caused me such delight; for behold it had no beauty of its own--certainly not the sort of beauty that exists in justice and wisdom, nor such as is in the mind, memory senses, and the animal life of man; nor yet the kind that is the glory and beauty of the stars in their courses; nor the beauty of the earth, or the sea--
The enticements of the wanton claim the name of love; and yet nothing is more enticing than thy love, nor is anything loved more healthfully than thy truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity prompts a desire for knowledge, whereas it is only thou who knowest all things supremely. Indeed, ignorance and foolishness themselves go masked under the names of simplicity and innocence; yet there is no being that has true simplicity like thine, and none is innocent as thou art. Thus it is that by a sinner’s own deeds he is himself harmed.
St. Augustine saw self-love as pathways to selfishness and evil. This characterised his distinction between the city of man driven by self-love and the city of God.
Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience.
It seems the inevitable conclusion is that the nature of man cannot fully be overcome simply by mutual aid or love-based credit to fellow men. One way out of it is a secular explanation, as Graeber rightfully observes, turns self-love into self-interest.
Men are naturally inclined to good; so that when they draw no gain or advantage from evil, good is more pleasing than evil to all of them. But because their nature is frail, and the occasions inviting to evil infinite, they are readily turned from their natural bent by self-interest.
The term (self)interest is directly linked to creditworthiness, similar to the trust between kin and friends that we began with in this section. It is not unusual for Guicciardini to make this link, since Florence was the heart of the debt/credit system in Europe.
In this world of ours they manage their affairs well who keep their own interest always in sight, and measure every action by this gauge. Mistakes will, however, be made by those who do not rightly apprehend wherein their true interest lies; who, for instance, think it always to consist in some pecuniary gain rather than in honour, and in knowing how to maintain their credit and good name.
Because men are evil, it is necessary to have the might of the government to instil order.
…For which reason (self-interest), not to do violence to their nature but to maintain its authority, wise legislators have contrived a spur and a curb in the shape of reward and punishment; and unless these be in use in a commonwealth, few indeed of its citizens will be found good. Whereof we have daily proof in Florence…
…For surely it is for the interest of a city that worthy men should at all times exercise influence. And although the ignorant and fanatical politicians of Florence have constantly judged otherwise, they might have recognised how disastrous would have been the government of the Medici had there been none about them but fools or knaves.
St. Augustine and Guicciardini both recognise the endless pursuit of desire as the nature of man. This perpetual upward cycle (be it interest or sin) parallels the relentless capital growth (Latin capitale).3 The result is an environment of ruthless competition that requires the hand of the state to temper the hearts of men.
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In a surprising turn, Graeber finally includes religion in his analysis of the roots of the credit/debt system. He outlines how theologians failed to overcome the intrusion of the language of debt in non-economic matters.
the corruption of the Church indulgence practice
the concession of Protestant Reformers to reasonable interest instead of a blanket ban on usury
Ultimately, the problem is the predilection of men to self-love or self-interest. Graeber made an astute observation that these two terms are interrelated. We can trace the mathematical/accounting language of Guicciardi’s ‘interest’ from St. Augustine’s ‘love.’ In both cases:
St. Augustine’s city of men is ruled by self-love; while the city of God, rejects men’s self-interest—Guicciardi’s distinguishes between tempestous self-interest that destroys honour and true creditworthiness as the real interest
Both agree that the nature of men cannot be sated—thus, it is an endless cycle of growth (in interest or sin for St. Augustine) and capital (for Guicciardini)
The nature of men require a strong arm of government, if not God
It seems no matter what, we cannot escape the language of debt in non-economic matters. ‘All moral relations came to be conceived as debts,’ in the Western condition, Graeber concludes. For Graeber, this is an epistemological problem. For me, it confirms the direct link between Christianity and capitalism.
Guicciardini, Francesco. 1890. Counsels and Reflections of Francesco Guicciardini. Translated by Ninian Hill Thomson. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
Luther, Martin [Philipp Robinson Rössner, ed.] 2015. On Commerce and Usury (1524). London: Anthem Press
St. Augustine’s Confessions Book 1-13 [translated by Albert C. Outler Ph.D.] Public Domain
St. Augustine’s City of God Volume II [translated by Rev. Marcus Dods M.A.] Public Domain
The Western Illusion of Human Nature: With Reflections on the Long History of Hierarchy, Equality, and the Sublimation of Anarchy in the West and Comparative Notes on Other Conceptions of the Human Condition
Graeber says that this position came to be embraced by Calvin. By 1650, all Protestant denominations (later on, belatedly by Catholics) adhered to a similar rule. Five percent interest was deemed to be acceptable.
Graeber traces the term capital from Italian bookkeeping techniques that refer to any leftover funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money or money carrying interest when one has balanced property, credits, and debits in the balance sheet (taken from Braudel’s Civilisation and Capitalism, Graeber, p. 445).
Thanks for reading, David!