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Debt: The First 5,000 Years Hardcover – July 12, 2011

4.4 out of 5 stars 589

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Before there was money, there was debt Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems€”to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods€”that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the a

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Winner of the Bateson Book Prize awarded by the Society for Cultural Anthropology

“One of the year’s most influential books. Graeber situates the emergence of credit within the rise of class society, the destruction of societies based on ‘webs of mutual commitment’ and the constantly implied threat of physical violence that lies behind all social relations based on money.” 
—Paul Mason, The Guardian

 “The book is more readable and entertaining than I can indicate... It is a meditation on debt, tribute, gifts, religion and the false history of money. Graeber is a scholarly researcher, an activist and a public intellectual. His field is the whole history of social and economic transactions.” 
Peter Carey, The Observer

"An alternate history of the rise of money and markets, a sprawling, erudite, provocative work."
Drake Bennett, Bloomberg Businessweek

"[A]n engaging book. Part anthropological history and part provocative political argument, it's a useful corrective to what passes for contemporary conversation about debt and the economy."
Jesse Singal, Boston Globe

"Fresh... fascinating... Graeber’s book is not just thought-provoking, but also exceedingly timely."
Gillian Tett, Financial Times (London)

"Terrific... In the best anthropological tradition, he helps us reset our everyday ideas by exploring history and other civilizations, then boomeranging back to render our own world strange, and more open to change."
Raj Patel, The Globe and Mail

"Graeber's book has forced me to completely reevaluate my position on human economics, its history, and its branches of thought. A Marxism without Graeber's anthropology is beginning to feel meaningless to me."
Charles Mudede, The Stranger

"The world of borrowing needs a little demystification, and David Graeber's 
Debt is a good start."
The L Magazine

"Controversial and thought-provoking, an excellent book."
Booklist

"This timely and accessible book would appeal to any reader interested in the past and present culture surrounding debt, as well as broad-minded economists."
Library Journal

Praise for David Graeber


“I consider him the best anthropological theorist of his generation from anywhere in the world.”

—Maurice Bloch, Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics

"A brilliant, deeply original political thinker."
Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell

“If anthropology consists of making the apparently wild thought of others logically compelling in their own cultural settings and intellectually revealing of the human condition, then David Graeber is the consummate anthropologist. Not only does he accomplish this profound feat, he redoubles it by the critical task—now more urgent than ever—of making the possibilities of other people’s worlds the basis for understanding our own.”
—Marshall Sahlins, Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago

About the Author

David Graeber teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire, and Direct Action: An Ethnography. He has written for Harper’s, The Nation, Mute, and The New Left Review. In 2006, he delivered the Malinowski Memorial Lecture at the London School of Economics, an annual talk that honors “outstanding anthropologists who have fundamentally shaped the study of culture.”

In the summer of 2011, he worked with a small group of activists and
Adbusters magazine to plan Occupy Wall Street. Bloomberg Businessweek has called him an "anti-leader" of the movement. The Atlantic wrote that he "has come to represent the Occupy Wall Street message... expressing the group's theory, and its founding principles, in a way that truly elucidated some of the things people have questioned about it."

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Melville House; First Edition (July 12, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 544 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1933633867
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1933633862
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.71 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1.79 x 9.28 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 589

About the author

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David Graeber
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David Rolfe Graeber (/ˈɡreɪbər/; born 12 February 1961) is a London-based anthropologist and anarchist activist, perhaps best known for his 2011 volume Debt: The First 5000 Years. He is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.

As an assistant professor and associate professor of anthropology at Yale from 1998–2007 he specialised in theories of value and social theory. The university's decision not to rehire him when he would otherwise have become eligible for tenure sparked an academic controversy, and a petition with more than 4,500 signatures. He went on to become, from 2007–13, Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.

His activism includes protests against the 3rd Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001, and the 2002 World Economic Forum in New York City. Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and is sometimes credited with having coined the slogan, "We are the 99 percent".

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by David Graeber Edited by czar [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
589 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2011
As most of the other reviewers have noted, this is a brilliant and revolutionary book. The author has synthesized a great deal of information from anthropology, history and economics over 5,000 years to come up with a compelling and original account of debt. The accomplishment is even greater, because he makes clear that debt is intimately related to money, capitalism, war and slavery; so understanding debt will change your view of all these things.

The bad news is the author made some inexplicable choices that may cause many readers to discount or misunderstand the book. The first is to continually emphasize abusive practices associated with debt: predatory or fraudulent lending, debt for consumption, debtors' prison and enslavement for debt. Only on the edges of the story, usually under the term "commercial debt," will you see what a debt defender would emphasize: informed and non-desperate parties agreeing voluntarily to a contract in which the lender supplies funds to buy assets expected to return more than the interest rate on the debt, and agrees that if the venture fails she will own the remaining assets but have no personal recourse against the borrower. If the venture succeeds, the lender gets repaid with interest and the borrower gets any additional profit as compensation for his efforts. If the venture fails, the lender takes a loss (or at least gets a lower rate of return than would compensate for the risk) and the borrower has nothing to show for his work. No courts, no violence.

Someone might argue that the violent practices are inherent to debt and abusive loans are far more common than loans of mutual advantage. But the author doesn't argue this. Anyway, the points would be irrelevant to his thesis. The book discusses the fundamental idea of debt and the conclusions apply equally to the best and worst loans. There is a lurid focus on the most egregious actions related to debt, in most cases of which debt merely provides some euphemistic terms for violence and robbery (like a carjacker "borrowing" your car or a bully "paying back" your imagined insult with a punch). I found the material exaggerated and unconvincing. Terrible things have been done in the name of debt, but the book presented little evidence that the terrible things wouldn't have been done anyway, nor was there any attempt to weigh the amount of debt abuse against the amount of mutual benefit from legitimate debt. The material is likely to mislead casual readers into thinking this is a hysterical anti-debt screed when it is in fact a brilliant and subtle examination of the nature of society.

Even more important is a key omission. Nowhere does the author mention the most important point about money and credit--that they stimulate extraordinary technological and cultural change. No nonspecialist would care about Neolithic exchange practices if they hadn't revolutionized humanity with the adoption of agriculture, permanent settlements, technological change and long-distance trade networks. The Athenian owl coin would be a minor curiosity except that it ended thousands of years of civilizations rising and falling leaving little behind but crumbling ruins and dead language texts. Every society that joined the money web since has had its language and technology preserved for other societies to build upon. This did not lead to steady progress but it did lead, for the first time in human history, to progress. Paper money in Reformation Europe led to technologies that conquered the world, and not just militarily.

Whether you like that progress is another matter. Or you may feel we could have had the progress without all the evils associated with money and debt--even that money and debt were effects not causes of the changes. Regardless, leaving technological progress out of the story makes an unbalanced account.

Finally, one of the author's key points is that debt can have the effect of ripping a person out of social context to be treated as a source of repayment rather than a friend, neighbor, son and so on. This is a brilliant point, well-argued and important. But it has an obverse side the author misrepresents. Some people run away from traditional societies and small towns for the anonymity of a city. They shed what they consider the burdens of social ties to create and join less personal organizations. Debt in its quantified and impersonal form was undoubtedly created by these types of people.

The author treats social refugees as either evil or deluded. If unsuccessful, they are caught in a debt trap that destroyed everything of meaning in their lives. If successful, they are addicted to the pursuit of money, which cannot buy them happiness. In fact, many people have at least some tendencies in these directions at some points in their lives. Some are mainly escaping intolerable or suffocating situations. Others are looking for excitement and adventure. Or they may want to pursue ideas that require wider contacts (and therefore relatively impersonal and rational human relations) than their traditional social ties can provide. Not everyone who flees the family farm is after world domination or mindless stockpiling of gold. You'd think someone who didn't understand this would spend his time arguing with his friends and teaching his children, not writing a book.

This is a great book, but it could reach a wider audience if the author spent less time bashing creditors (and Europeans, if anything bad happens in the book and a European male is within a hundred years and a thousand miles of it, you know who will get the blame) and more serious time on the people who like debt and the changes they cause in the world. Perhaps he disputes the conventional views of these things, in fact I think that's a near certainty, but ignoring them makes his insights hard to connect with anything else.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2011
David Graeber is a man after my own heart. Since the crisis in 2008, I've been reading up on economics in order to understand what was going on around me. i read milton friedman's monetary history of the united states, keynes's general theory, Minsky's stabilizing an unstable economy, galbraith's crash of 2008, adam smith's theory of moral sentiments and the wealth of nations... and a whole bunch of other stuff that i wouldn't want to bore you with. the point is i read literally thousands of pages of stuff in a whole bunch of different formats in order to understand what was going on around me. Eventually I came to view money (but notably not some other things) in ways similar to Chartalists. Money isn't my only interest however, and as i started to branch out i came to look at other social sciences for insights into economics. i read a few economic sociology books and a few political science books.

then i came to anarchism. anarchism was interesting to me because there views on the state seemed to have a lot of affinities with chartalism and i wanted to learn more, especially their views on what a non-capitalist society might look like. unfortunately, to my great annoyance, some of the anarchists i know seem to hold anachronistic views about government default almost in reaction to keynesian ideas about achieving full employment. it must be nice to be a radical who thinks capitalism is going to collapse on itself any day now because the government will go "bankrupt". anyways through a chapter written by a chartalist about anarchist economic thought (here: (...), i found David Graeber's book fragments of an anarchist anthropology. i was deeply impressed by that book. the method of presentation, the meticulous citation and the ideas presented were very interesting. i remained (and still remain) unsure about anarchism (particularly by questions of food distribution and production to an overpopulated planet and by the ability of societies to coerce people into not being coercive) but i certainly was interested in his writing.

Then, a few months later, i heard about this book! i mean an author i was deeply impressed with and wanted to read more of is publishing a book on my favorite subject where he takes up a position I hold, and am surprised anarchists haven't been taking up! talk about a mind reader!

He wrote this book from a perspective that holds largely Chartalist views of money, but this book is so much more then that. it gets across a large body of historical and anthropological literature that is related and is able to make connections in ways you haven't considered. I've already talked about how much i like his writing style.I like everything about this book although i wished he had talked more about "practical metallism" ie the Gresham's dynamics involved with using metal or paper as money even if it is taxes that give money value. i also think he is uniquely positioned to talk about why printing money in a society of peasants might be more inflationary then printing money in a society of workers, but alas David Graeber can't write every thought I've ever had (although he's trying!) if you're reading this David Graeber, i would love to have a conversation with you. maybe when i get back home to new york city for thanksgiving we can meet at occupy wall street. oh it's almost needless to say, i read this book in 3 days in between college classes (never let school get in the way of learning). pick it up.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly eye opening read
Reviewed in India on June 1, 2021
Graeber spins forth a version of history that is lesser known to us novitiates of capitalism. Brings into question a lot of the myth and assumptions that we operate on. Definitely recommend to anyone who is wondering how the world is so broken.
2 people found this helpful
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HOHLFELD Patrick
5.0 out of 5 stars Conforme aux attentes
Reviewed in France on June 20, 2020
Conforme
René Michaud
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the very best books I have read
Reviewed in Canada on November 7, 2014
One of the very best books I have read. Sheds a bright light on the origines of the economy and the fairy tales that surround it. Brillant! I love the anthropologist perspective; the way debt has evolved through small family clans to modern society. I have to admit that, having researched the "economist" ways of managing natural resources and the "unlimited growth" paradigm (in a finite world, this is quite a bite to chew for an engineer), my understanding is that the economy has very little place for actually putting theories to the test... In science, theories are thought up, tested in practice and if they fail, well you've learned something! In economy it seems to me the theory just has to make sense.. and there it is, it must be that way things work... And just look at how it "works"!

This is a very nice complement to any research on the "mechanics" of economy that, in the end, are quite drab readings, and usually offer an incomplete perspective since the basic nature of economy is in fact social(no I'm not a socialist!!) through human exchange. I highly recommend this reading to anyone curious of how our world works... Also read Zarlenga.

BTW, nothing particularely marxiste, communist (except the fact the we, as humans do share "common" riches... and no I'm not a communist for using the word common!), this is a perticular and interesting view and has been cited in a white paper by economists from the IMF (... damn commies!) ;)
3 people found this helpful
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Antonio Serra Devecchi
5.0 out of 5 stars Imprescindible
Reviewed in Spain on February 19, 2013
Una obra de lectura mas que recomendable en estos iempos que corren. Ofrece una interesante prespectiva de la deuda; con rigor, crudeza y lejos de cualquier discurso "economicista"
M. Mainelli
5.0 out of 5 stars Community, Trust and Debt
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 3, 2011
If you're thinking about studying economics, you should read this book first. If you've already studied economics, you should read this book, but be prepared to be disappointed in the critical faculties of your previous teachers. If you're studying economics, don't read this book - it contradicts too much of what you need to amass to pass your exams - yet.

Seriously, this is a great book. It teaches, generates reactions, inspires new thoughts and encourages further exploration. You want to strangle the author at a couple of points, and he's not short of opinions worth strangling someone about. There are (some) laughs. A previous reviewer rightly notes the lacuna of Hayek. But ... Graeber is an anthropologist squaring off against entire professions and generations of economists and financiers and bankers and government monetary policy-makers across a new battlefield (the study of how people behave). He scores some telling hits - the myth of the origins of barter, new ways of looking at the reasons behind the rise (till recently) of the West (and it isn't pleasant), the rise and fall of paper money in China, why the state matters, faith-salvation-and-debt, and builds a fundamental premise - communities form when people are prepared to be indebted to one another.

If this were the last book on the subject, sure it's incomplete and has a few flaws. But it's not the last; rather a fundamental read along an important road - when would we know our financial system is working?
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