Debt: The First 5,000 Years Audiobook

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 ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.

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"There have been a few books which have radically broadened my understanding of the world. Jane Jacob's Systems of Survival, Marvin Harris' cultural materialism books, Disaster Capitalism, a few others. To this short list I now have to add Debt: The First 5,000 years. Combining history, anthropology, finance, and other disciplines Graeber shows how a broad range of cultures from China to Europe have had their societies shaped by their understanding of debt (and vice versa). The sections on Islamic attitudes towards finance were particularly interesting to me, as was Graeber's careful distinction between market economies, human economies, and capitalist economies. Through it all Graeber keeps his viewpoint firmly on the ordinary person and how they were affected by the thoughts and actions of kings, philosophers, and religious institutions on what precisely debt meant, and what the nature of money was."

— Larry (5 out of 5 stars)