000 Years, Debt - Updated and Expanded: The First 5

Graeber's book is a monumental investigation of debt and money in terms of how these entities have actually existed in relation to each other over the course of history. His investigations show that throughout history, there have been as many economic arrangements and monetary practices as there have been societies. The modern world, in which one monetary regime dominates the civilized world, is an extreme anomaly in this regard.

Graeber demonstrates fascinating connections between commodity money and the institutions of military government, war, and slavery. He recounts the rise of the creditor in European history (though with a disappointing vagueness as to the actual identities of these creditors). In doing so, Graeber builds a compelling and overwhelming case that the modern monetary regime is an artifact of a specific set of historical circumstances (which in many cases are historical crimes) and NOT a natural product of financial and economic evolution. Thus, the modes of economic intercourse and practices that our economists claim to be natural, efficient, and unassailable, when presented in their historical context, in light of their true evolution throughout the ages, betray a wholly different character, that of a capricious, arbitrary racket placed in the service of the elite classes. This is the triumph of the book--that upon reading it the modern serf can look a his condition and see that there is nothing inevitable about it, and that those who claim that it is are liars. Graeber wishes for his reader to realize that there is a universe of possibilities that are left untouched and unexamined in the official spectrum of policy which could be applied to building a better, more prosperous, more fair, AND more free society.

This book was well written and for the most part, interesting. The problem is that David Graeber has a clear agenda so it's hard to know what's true and what isnt. You can also tell that when he hands in his books the publisher tells him to add another 140 or so pages (so that they can bump the price of the book up) so he winds up repeating things and drawing his ideas out.

Early on the book Graeber had me hooked with some astounding pieces of information and superb insights on early history; he articulates an alternate and very plausible theory regarding the origins of current moral and economic paradigms:

He proposes that "credit" occurs naturally in all human societies between the people comprising them, that credits forms moral obligations only vaguely appraised that bind those individuals as a community; he then goes on to distinguish it from "debt", which he defines in contrast as being precisely quantifiable, a byproduct of money (and ultimately of standing armies and war) that made it possible to reduce human relationships to impersonal arithmetic affairs.

Once he starts to get philosophic tough, he ends up mixing too much of his political views with "history" and loosing objectivity to the detriment of his work, though I do agree that debt shouldn't be used as a moral gage and a that lot of the ideas he proposes seem worthy of further exploration and debate.

The book is worth reading, the sections covering antiquity are superb, but there's definitely room for improvement: Graeber could sharpen his knowledge of contemporary economics (I'd advise to take what he's got to say on this matter with a grain of salt), condense some of the background information eliminating any biased comments, and expand a section expressing his views and reasoning before jumping to the book's conclusions.

Everything you've ever learned about the history of economics and the emergence of markets and trade is a lie, or at least that's the premise of Graeber's book. He makes some good points, like banks and banking weren't always mainstays of trade and commerce as they are today, and that issues we face today, such as sovereign debt and financial crises, are actually inventions of the banking sector, and how the idea personal debt even came about in the first place. He doesn't, however, make it into a political diatribe for or against a certain system or policy. Rather, he impartially explores the very origins of the idea of "debt", from the late stone age through the earliest civilizations, and right up to how it continues to evolve today. Whether your interest in economics and debt is professional, academic, personal, or just as an engaged citizen, you owe it to yourself to read and understand Graeber's book.

A text this important is remarkably rare. Graeber lays out the corpse of our contemporary "society" and dissects it expertly to reveal the metastases within. We live in a world plagued by a religious devotion to bullion which is all consuming.

David has done what no other author has done quite so well. He has proven without a shadow of a doubt the lies that currently make up our economy and the valuation of our society. This is a eye-opening and sobering account of the centuries of lies still being told. If an alien civilization were to ever find us, they would think we are all insane valuing and motivating our society based on essentially two useless elements of the periodic table; silver and gold. Add our acceptance of the notion of debt and the economy as Adam Smith described and economists keep espousing, and they would avoid us or write humans off as a lost cause.

I'm only halfway through this book at the moment, but what I have already read, impresses me greatly. Money; debt; economy: all appear to have arisen from how we humans relate to one another. The author makes a point that most human societies exist with a basic level of "communism" for its members: that debts to one-another "pay" for services rendered; and that our debts are the basis for much of our relationships with others. Money appears to handle trade with outsiders; it also can function as a social currency, that is used to "buy" access to a wife, pay debts, or obtain social status. And our relations with government and local leaders, is dominated in part by their past ability to sell our family members into debt-peonage and slavery: as well as their ability/willingness to forgive such debts (i.e. the "Jubilee" of Judaic lore). And if you ever haggled with someone in a foreign market, this book explains that practice as well.

A well researched book, which takes an unorthodox approach to analyse classic economic theories about money and debt. Brilliantly written by an author who has a solid background in anthropology and economy. A book which everyone working in banking and finance or with an interest in sociology should read.

I already knew that I was interested in Dave Graeber's work when I bought Debt. I'd read a copy of Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology and it was really excellent as well. The main idea that I was attracted to in Debt is the idea that economies are not impersonal forces that can be calculated like the equations of a particle physicist, but rather that they are networks built by not necessarily rational human actors for the specific purposes of satisfying particular needs and wants. Satisfying the needs and wants of the moneyed classes in particular.

I was not prepared for the implications of this idea when fully fleshed out however. Some of the conclusions Graeber comes to are truly startling. There seems to be no good way to argue against them however, even if one were inclined to. An example of this can be seen in these very reviews as a matter of fact. Several of the more negative reviews posted for this book are derived from an incident that took place over the course of several blog posts on the Mises Institute, an Austrian Economics think tank[...], a heterodox branch of neo-classical economics that is often the basis for a variety of libertarian capitalist ideologies.

One of their fellows wrote an article condemning Graeber for his misunderstanding of economics, and their economic theories in particular. And of course, in all proper lynch mob mentality, several of the commentors there rushed over to the store to give Debt poor reviews. Of course, when all this was brought to the attention of Dr. Graeber, he posted a long and thoroughly devastating rebuke of the criticisms laid out in the original blog post. In his rebuke, he called out the original poster for not having even read his book, preferring the intellectually lazy and dishonest shortcut of basing his review of Debt on a few lines from an interview about the book. Dr. Graeber then went through and dismantled the Austrian argument point by point. There has been no response posted.

Debt undercuts all of your high school economics assumptions about how society has developed its commercial interactions and replaces them with a well thought out and well supported global history of human level interactions. Reading it leaves the reader open to new forms of thought, new forms of association, and as Dr. Graeber hopes towards the end of the book, open to more authentic forms of freedom.

I thought I knew a little about money and economies, Dr. Graeber showed me how little I know. I would reccomend Debt, the First 5000 Years to anyone interested in learning how we got to where we are today.

Fantastic book. A bit lengthy, but very well researched and readable. Graeber's training is in anthropology, and he uses that to expertly discuss the history of money, which he argues (contra Adam Smith) begins with debt, proceeds to currency, and only rarely deviates to bartering. It starts with the earliest accounting of debt in the Middle and Far East and ends with an explanation of the Federal Reserve. Read it.

Graeber's book is absurdly ambitious, but even its divergences and a few overlong chapters can be forgiven in the wake of its importance. No doubt if it isn't already being taught it will become required reading in the same way Howard Zinn's 'A People's History' has. A crucial investigation into a concept and its ugly history that looms larger and larger in everyday life.

Being a business news editor this sounded like a must read history book. I was not disappointed and I'm giving it to my brother for his birthday.

DebtThe1st5kY covers immense ground while only occasionally becoming a little tedious. It covers subjects as varied as the nature and genesis of taxation, coinage and markets (instituted by governments believe it or not), debt and the rise of the veil, the role of debt in the slave trade, interest rates and the moralisation of debt, sweeping right on through to present day financial system woes and wobbles.

An excellent, well researched and annotated economic history book by an anthropologist, putting today's crises in clear context. Debt would appear to be a far more fundamental mainstay of economics and business than even cash (never mind barter) - it's all just a question of how we manage it!

Parts of this book are very interesting - the historical / anthropological parts about the origin of debt and money especially. The socio - philosophical ruminations are way too stretched out and sometimes close to postmodernist word games. The book is also way too long - so much erudition is remarkable but does not necessarily have to be shown off so much. The kind of book you are glad you read in the end but sorry you did not find an abstract instead.

This guy knows his subject and does his research. Full of surprises, and, no, history didn't happen the way your education has misled you to believe. If you want to know what went wrong to put us where we are with the stinking economy where the rich feed on all teh rest of us, this is it. Might even help us figure out a way out of this mess.

This is an interesting book that should be read by everyone. The author's main thesis is that over the last five thousand years there has been a double standard with regard to money and money obligations. Among the rich money and obligations have been looked upon as a relationship that can always be renegotiated and rearranged, but when the poor owe an obligation to the upper classes, it is viewed as a sacred, serious obligation. The prime example described were debtor's prisons. There were two tiers to these debtor prisons: One for the rich was, as we could expect, like holiday camps, and the another for the lower classes was a horrorshow. The author succeeds admirably in describing the types and permutations of those sacred obligations over history and throughout the world, although he seems to concentrate on describing the "sacred obligations." The author is an anthropologist by profession. Therefore his description of the "sacred obligation" is often painfully detailed about an obscure tribe in Africa or a far off village in Bulgaria. But then the author makes a fascinating and illuminating analysis of shifts in monetary policy and trends, beginning five thousand years ago and proceeding to the present financial crisis. The book consists, therefore, in two parts; the first being an anthropological treatise and the second a historical analysis. The book therefore has something for everyone. The author has the wonderful ability to make monetary policy intelligible and interesting. This book is a keeper, a book that could be consulted with in the future after it is placed in the shelf. I'd give it ten stars if I could. Highly recommended.

I enjoyed reading this book very much and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in economics, history, governance and generally in the "human condition". The book's writing style is free of technical jargon and lecturing and has a rather easy-going conversational feel to it - it's as if you met the author at a party and engaged him in a conversation about debt, with the author doing most of the talking, naturally. Nonetheless, it is a very far-reaching and certainly thought-provoking book. The text begins with the traditional story we are told in Econ 101 about the origins of money in barter; then it briefly touches upon the primordial debt theory and, after brushing both aside, launches into the "wilderness" of reality. A scene unfolds after a scene: Madagascar under the French colonial rule, Babylon of the time of Nehemiah, the African tribes of Lele and Tiv, the ancient Greece, China and India, West Africa during the slave trade and so on to the present days.

The history of debt is a history of human relations. Each scene in the book leads the reader to certain observations, which in some instances are never laid out completely bare but remain to be gleaned. Some of these observations comprise systematic views, such as when the author shows that virtual and metals money alternate throughout history. According to one anecdote (a different version of it is presented in the book), Plato was sold into slavery by Dionysius the Elder, the tyrant of Syracuse. Dionysius was in a constant need of money for military campaigns against the Carthaginians. He taxed Syracuse heavily and robbed temples, once replacing a golden mantle with a woolen one on a statue of Zeus. Projection of power and military campaigns demanded mercenaries, mercenaries demanded gold, and the need for gold trumped everything else - philosophy and philosophers included. Intuitively, one can see how men like Plato could adopt religion as a stick to beat the tyrants and the materialism of that era with it, going into the Middle Ages, followed by a "rediscovery" of the power politics at the onset of the modern times. Can we prove this inference? Certainly not, but intuitively it feels plausible and logical.

The book has many scenes of debtors: Cortes, King Casimir and others. Debt dehumanized and dishonored debtors. However, we never really see the lenders. They are faceless, referred to as the Genoa financial center or the creditors or some such. Nor do we see the motives, personal outcomes and moral dilemmas of engaging into lending: do the lenders carry a responsibility for the actions of Cortes and Casimir? We are told that Cortes had never escaped the trap of debt and all the gold that he plundered in the New World went straight to his lenders and then straight to Asia to pay for spices, silk and porcelain. Casimir apparently showered lucrative court offices onto his lenders, while eying church property. There seems to be a huge difference between Dionysius and the Romans and Casimir as far as collection of precious metals is concerned. The former two obtained precious metals though conquest, taxation, expropriation and occasional sale into slavery of a hapless philosopher, while the latter borrowed it. Why was this wealth available to be borrowed? Who, and how was it accumulated? Why couldn't Casimir simply expropriate it? We are told that he could not because ever since Knights Templar the lenders have been "territorial". That is clearly not enough of an explanation, and unfortunately, the rise of the lender to the kings goes largely unexplored.

Present financial arrangements are to some extent carry-overs from the personal arrangements between kings and their private lenders. And as such they are very difficult to understand for a democratic polity. The text indeed points out that actual modern monetary arrangements are stranger than anything conspiracy theorists could imagine on the most imaginative of days. And that indeed there is a master behind a curtain. But that's not enough. The lenders to the kings have become the lenders to democracies. And just as Casimir had been reduced to being a sovereign in the name only, so are the democracies being reduced to democracies in the name only. I would be looking forward to a history of the lender. Perhaps, it would intimate a way out the current predicament.

This is an amazing book. The attempted construction of a grand narrative of history is something that anthropology has unfortunately gotten away from and it is great to see one of the foremost anthropologists of the era revive that practice.

I think it is essential reading for anyone interested in economics or finance. No, it isn't about today, but it puts what's happening today in an historical context - something the newspapers or TV will never do for you. Creditors and debtors have been around a long time and much of our history has been determined by how the two groups interact.

I found "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" insightful and that the historical material of "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" was substantiated by some additional historical reading I was doing as research in another area of study. Also, the book provided substantiation of my own thinking in regards to societal structure and looming effect of debt. So, I found it

The one-star review of faux-libertarians and neo-conservatives are enough to make this required reading for anyone who wants to understand the origin of debt and of currency itself and the role it has played throughout history.

Graeber paints a rich historical panorama of ideas about debt from ancient Babylon to the present. The book is a treasure of intellectual history, one that indifferently debunks with current research (not just Graeber's) much of the propaganda of monarchists, religious apologists, free market economists, socialists, communists, and others, which propaganda is the stuff of most people's thoughts. We forget that modern sociological and anthropological science only began in the last 150 years, which puts many sacred cows in jeopardy. True, to appreciate intellectual history, one must have an intellect, not just an animus against anarchists (see previous review; in Philosophy 101 attacking the man is called the ad hominem fallacy for a good reason). True, the book has many grim details, but that is because, as Walter Benjamin said, the history of civilization is also a history of barbarism, and -- being written by the winners -- orthodox history tends to put a fine gloss in things. Unfortunately, many people cannot handle the truth.