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
Predatory Capitalism Has Driven Down Wages and Created a Dystopia for Workers.
Whatever the strengths and limitations of Critical Race Theory, the debate over its usefulness to establishment circles is indicative of the American Empire’s rapid decline
German Nazis, Italian Fascists, British, French, Belgian democracies – all are the same, imperialist exploiters .
Legal scholar Francis A. Boyle told Ann Garrison that a “Responsibility-to-Protect” intervention in Ethiopia would be illegal and catastrophic.
“…there are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns—things we do not know we know…” -- an infamous War Criminal
