Like most of us, you probably learned in school that people invented money to replace barter, markets are guided by The Invisible Hand, and a debt is a kind of sacred promise. Like much else you learned in school, says anthropologist David Graeber, this is wrong. Markets are constructed by states, while the appearance of debt, slavery and money in human affairs coincide with the appearance of violent empires, and recede when empires are in decline. Debts are only sacred, Graeber explains, when the poor owe the rich, and there are key distinctions between debts and promises. Graeber, the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years is interviewed by C.S. Soong on KPFA's Against the Grain...
The Origins of Debt, Money, Slavery and Empire
An Against the Grain Interview by C.S. Soong and Sasha Lilley
KPFA.s Against the Grain is consistently one of the best interview shows around. We at BAR steal ideas from them all the time. You can find a link to Debt: The First 5,000 Years here.
listen
http://www.againstthegrain.org/files/files/atg/atg_2013.01.07_graeber.mp3
Congo police killings, Eritrean festivals attacked, the climate crisis, and resisting US militarism.
Maurice Carney is Executive Director of Friends of the Congo.
Elias Amare is a journalist and editor at Horn of Africa TV.
Forrest Palmer is a native of Los Angeles, California who is now an electrical engineer residing in Houston, Texas
Margaret Kimberley was among the guests on Women Rising Radio Program 45: Resisting US Military Bases and Domination
