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


  • Lawless low Barr’s depths of depravity
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Lawless low Barr’s depths of depravity
    21 Oct 2020
    Brutal Boss Tweet extorts the border— Lawless low Barr screams, “Law and order!”  $campaign manager  masquerading as proper copper— Third Reich thug; mirror-avoiding
  • Liberalism & Fascism: The Good Cop & Bad Cop of Capitalism
    Gabriel Rockhill
    Liberalism & Fascism: The Good Cop & Bad Cop of Capitalism
    21 Oct 2020
    Fascist modes of governance are a very real and present part of the so-called liberal world order.
  • Reformism Isn’t Liberation, It’s Counterinsurgency
    Dylan Rodríguez
    Reformism Isn’t Liberation, It’s Counterinsurgency
    21 Oct 2020
    You can’t abolish systemic anti-Blackness and racial-colonial violence by protecting the system itself.
  • Letters from Our Readers
    Jahan Chowdhry, BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers
    21 Oct 2020
    This week Third World unity, police brutality in Democrat-run cities and the failures of the presidential debates were on your minds.
  • BAR Book Forum: Yarden Katz’s Book “Artificial Whiteness”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Yarden Katz’s Book “Artificial Whiteness”
    21 Oct 2020
    The models of the human “self” offered within AI commit to white male superiority and individualism.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us