David Graeber "Debt: The First 5000 Years of History"

David Graeber was one of the activists and leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement and even came up with one of the protest slogans - “We are the 99%”

David Graeber "Debt: The First 5000 Years of History"

author American ethnographer (studying slavery in Madagascar for two years), anthropological theorist, Occupy Wall Street activist. The antipode of the leader of liberal historians is Niall “The Rise of Money” Ferguson.

in a nutshell The history of debts - the evolution of the idea and concept of “debt”. It is debt that is the key concept in the capitalist system, it is on the basis of debt that modern economies function, it is thanks to debt that America remains an empire, and that is why violence is growing - because debt can only be accurately calculated with the help of violence. But the worst thing is

that “the threat of violence turns relationships between people into mathematics,” despite what is known: people do not behave like automatons.

details “Debt” is not only a study of history and an outline of the nature of modern crises, but also (not in form, but in essence) a proclamation. There are specific recipes here on what to do. Since debt abolishes morality and allows murder, from one debtor to entire nations, then it is obvious that the idea that duty and morality are one and the same thing is false; and since capitalism with its free markets is not at all natural for humanity, then debts can and should be abolished.

quote “The reason why current economics textbooks begin with descriptions of imaginary villages is that there are no such villages in real life. Even some economists have been forced to admit that the Land of Barter that Smith wrote about does not exist.”