The groundbreaking international best-seller that turns everything you think about money, debt, and society on its headāfrom the ābrilliant, deeply original political thinkerā David Graeber (Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me ) Before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goodsāthat is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditorsāwhich lives on in full force to this day. So says anthropologist David Graeber in a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Renaissance Italy to Imperial China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like āguilt,ā āsin,ā and āredemptionā) 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.
Recommended on 3 episodes:
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Debt: The First 5,000 Years,Updated and Expanded
by
David Graeber
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National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (The Politics of the International Economy)
by
Albert Hirschman
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The Economic Consequences of the Peace - Classic Illustrated Edition
by
John Maynard Keynes,
S. Harris
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How to Think Like an Anthropologist
by
Matthew Engelke