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


  • Before Tulsa there was Bethesda:  The Cover-up of MAAFA (Genocide) and the Continuation of State Sponsored Racial Terror
    Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist
    Before Tulsa there was Bethesda:  The Cover-up of MAAFA (Genocide) and the Continuation of State Sponsored Racial Terror
    02 Jun 2021
    The Black community in Bethesda and descendants of those buried in Moses Cemetery demand an immediate halt to the destruction of their ancestors’ resting place.
  • Bob Wing’s Strategy to Build the “Anti-Racist State” to Replace the “Racist State” is Liberal Social Imperialist Nonsense
    Quetzal Cáceres
    Bob Wing’s Strategy to Build the “Anti-Racist State” to Replace the “Racist State” is Liberal Social Imperialist Nonsense
    02 Jun 2021
    What Wing has done is taken an important formulation and neutered it to serve neoliberal multiculturalism.
  • Biden is Anti-Haiti, and His Haitian-American Press Person Doesn’t Give a Damn
    Pascal Robert
    Biden is Anti-Haiti, and His Haitian-American Press Person Doesn’t Give a Damn
    02 Jun 2021
    The current Haitian president is perhaps the most ineffectual US stooge to date, but Joe Biden and his Haitian American press person couldn’t care less.
  • BAR Book Forum: Tamika Nunley’s “At the Threshold of Liberty”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Tamika Nunley’s “At the Threshold of Liberty”
    02 Jun 2021
    How Black women gave the term “liberty” its meaning and expanded the scope of liberty in the nation’s capital during the nineteenth century.
  • BAR Book Forum: Justin Podur and Joe Emersberger’s “Extraordinary Threat”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Justin Podur and Joe Emersberger’s “Extraordinary Threat”
    02 Jun 2021
    Western media outlets, NGOs and powerful governments allied with the United States work in unison to deceive people about foreign policy.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us