Debt: The First 5,000 Years

Our 2024/2025 read is another highly cited but intimidating David Graeber book! He argues that debt should be central to studying the economy and money. He also thinks about creating a humane money system.

Read along with us every Thursday in 2024/2025.

Afterword: What the book is and isn’t

Chapter 1 On the Experience of Moral Confusion

Chapter 2 The Myth of Barter

Chapter 3 Primordial Debts

Chapter 4 Cruelty and Redemption

Addendum David Graeber’s (2012) Notes on the Violence of Equivalence

• Part 1: A humane economy and the purpose of money

• Part 2: What are social currencies and operationalising the humane economy

• Part 3: Lele of the Congo - The social currency of blood debts

• Part 4: Tiv of Nigeria - How slavery transformed a social currency

Chapter 5 A Brief Treatise on the Moral Grounds of Economic Relations

• Part 1: Communism - First Moral Principle

• Part 2: Exchange - Second Moral Principle (Separation in Equivalence)

• Part 3: Hierarchy - Third Moral Principle (Violence, Charity, and Non-Equivalence)

Chapter 6 Games with Sex and Death

• Part 1: Foundations - What is a humane society? What is primitive money? What is the principle of money in this society?

• Part 2: Example - What happens during brideprice or bridewealth exchanges?

• Part 3: Example - What happens during blood money payments?

• Part 4: Example - In what instance does money stand in for people?

• Part 5: Example - When a system of debt becomes the means for the destruction of people

Chapter 7 Honour and Degradation

• Part 1: Honour and its roots to violence - The uncomfortable relationship between honour and slavery

• Part 2: Honour and the degradation of women in Early Medieval Ireland and Mesopotamia - Some possible roots in brideprice abuse and mixing social with commodity currency

• Part 3: Honour and further degradation of women - The origin of patriarchy is a counter-culture backlash against temple sexual rituals in Sumeria

• Part 4: Honour and the transformation of Greek heroic society - The bifurcation of Greek society between elite (gift) and ordinary folk (commodity)

• Part 5: Conclusion - The Western value of freedom and property rights is a false equivalence

Chapter 8 Credit versus Bullion

• Graeber proposes his monetary thesis: during peacetime, credit systems trump coinage

Chapter 9 The Axial Age

• Part 1: The Mediterranean War Complex: During the time of war, coinage use expands

• Part 2: The Indus Valley Civilisation: They existed for three thousand years without coin use

  • Addendum (Part 1): The Indian Republics: The Vedic Culture created a soldier class without money

  • Addendum (Part 2): The Indian Republics: The Rigveda provided the cosmic-social foundation of the soldier class

  • Addendum (Part 3): The Indian Republics: The political and religious experimentation between Vedic, Buddhism, Jainism

  • Addendum (Part 4): The (end of) Indian Republics: How the monarchy won

• Part 3: The Chinese Dynasties: The ritual warfare of the Shang Dynasty - the recruitment of army conscripts by kin

  • Addendum (Part 1): The networked kingdom of the Zhou - the rise of ritual bureaucracy and army professionalisation

  • Addendum (Part 2): The Eastern Zhou - the transition period in coin use

  • Addendum (Part 3): The Warring States - evidence of the rise of bureaucracy and a professional army

• Part 4 The Axial Age: Materialism 1 - The pursuit of profit in China

• Part 5 The Axial Age: Materialism 2 - Substance - The coinage-military-slavery complex resulted in the materialist turn in Greek philosophy

Chapter 10 The Middle Ages

• Part 1: The Roman Empire: The military failure of Rome

• Part 2: Ashoka’s Age and Buddhist Expansion: the foundation of charity and commerce in Buddhist monasteries

• Part 3: Monasteries and Temples: the First Indian Banking System

• Part 4: Early Capitalism in Chinese Buddhist Monasteries: the spread of monastic capitalism to the Far East

• Part 5: Financial Freedom in Medieval Islam: the merchants establish the credit system

• Part 6: The Medieval Christian Church as Both Sacred and Secular: How Europe became Christian kingdoms

• Part 7: The Tolerance of Usury for the Outsider in Medieval Christianity: How Usury Targeted Non-Christians

• Part 8: The Credit/Debt Relations Among the Peasantry, Aristocrats, and the Church: Church canon law had nothing to do with things happening on the ground

  • Addendum (Part 1): Medieval Genoa: A case of mercantile capitalism and freedom

  • Addendum (Part 2): The Republic of St. Peter: How the Papal States are a result of the debt relations between high-status offices

  • Addendum (Part 3): The Temporal and Spiritual Exchange in the Hanseatic Network: how commerce became entwined with conversion in the Baltic Region

  • Addendum (Part 4): Crusading and Redemption: the costly Christian debt repayment plan

  • Addendum (Part 5): For the Love of Cod: how Christian fasting created the fish market

• Part 9: Conclusion: Why did Western Europe develop Capitalism?

Chapter 11 The Age of the Great Capitalist Empires (1450-1971) The Age of Extraction: The Money and Metals Grab

• Part 1: Lagging Western Europe and The Bottomless Metal Sinks of Asia

• Part 2: Violent Hypercapitalism: Debt and the Business of Colonial Terror

• Part 3: The Christian Roots of Self-Interest and Capitalism

• Part 4: The Virtue of Self-Interest: How self-interest became a moral high ground

• Part 5: The King is in Debt: The unique evolution of paper money into stock markets in the West

• Part 6: The Paradox of Freedom and Debt in Western Capitalism: Freedom comes at the cost of debt peonage with free(d) labour

• Part 7: The Gambler in Western Casino Capitalism: In casino capitalism, the figure of the gambler does not play by the rules

• Part 8: The Apocalypse in Western Casino Capitalism: Whether it is France’s court capitalism or Britain’s industrial capitalism, the apocalypse is perpetual

Chapter 12 The Beginning of Something Yet to Be Determined (1971 onwards)

• Part 1: The Magic Money of Capitalism (and the Missing 9/11 Gold): The fetishisation of money/gold is its seeming ability to appear and disappear

• Part 2: The U.S. Dollar: Backed by Power, Not Gold—The apogee of Western hypercapitalism is the use of a single world currency not backed by any valuable metal!