Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

The Origins of Debt, Money, Slavery and Empire
21 Sep 2011
🖨️ Print Article

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.



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://www.againstthegrain.org/files/files/atg/atg_2013.01.07_graeber.mp3

More Stories


  • Trump Derangement Syndrome Returns
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Trump Derangement Syndrome Returns
    05 Apr 2023
    If democrats were smart, Donald Trump would be a disgraced former president, forgotten by all but his most ardent admirers. But they aren't smart and they may have given him a political resurrection.
  • ESSAY: New Creation or Familiar Death? An Open Letter to Black Students in the North: Vincent Harding, 1969
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: New Creation or Familiar Death? An Open Letter to Black Students in the North: Vincent Harding, 1969
    05 Apr 2023
    Vincent Harding’s reflections on the expansion of Black Studies in the 1960s offers an ominous warning on the hiring of Black faculty and administrators today.
  • Paul Rusesabagina is free after being kidnapped and taken to Rwanda in 2020. But Rwanda's president Kagame no doubt exacted a high price from the U.S. in exchange for his freedom and will resume pillaging Congo with no fear of interference.
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    US Uses Rusesabagina’s Release to Whitewash Its Decades of Support for the Kagame Regime
    05 Apr 2023
    Paul Rusesabagina is free after being kidnapped and taken to Rwanda in 2020. The US claims credit for pressuring Rwanda to release him, hoping to distract the world from its decades of support for…
  • U.S. Push to Strip China's Developing Country Status an Attack on Development Itself
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    U.S. Push to Strip China's Developing Country Status an Attack on Development Itself
    05 Apr 2023
    The U.S. attempt to diminish China's economic success is a bipartisan project, and a unanimous congressional vote to strip China of developing nation status is just the latest act in the…
  • Whoppers of Boss Tweet...
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Whoppers of Boss Tweet...
    05 Apr 2023
    Whoppers of Boss Tweet…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us