Debt: The First 5,000 Years,Updated and Expanded
by David Graeber
ISBN 13: 978-1612194196
Book description

The groundbreaking international best-seller that turns everything you think about money, debt, and society on its headā€”from the ā€œbrilliant, 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 goodsā€”that 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 creditorsā€”which 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 ā€œguilt,ā€ ā€œsin,ā€ and ā€œredemptionā€) 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.


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by @zachbellay