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
By using gang laws, authorities can do an end run around First Amendment protections on freedom of association
The Black bourgeoisie, including the next generation of them after Obama, will continue to derail us with their empty promises of inclusion.
The country’s new leftist president struggles to honor his people’s "right to stay home" by fighting poverty and expanding access to education.
Black “Maternals” Yoked to the Wheel of Group Survival
The highly toxic herbicide and multi-purpose poison arsenic was key to the production of cotton in the United States and Mexico, and in the process sickened and killed a multitude of Black and brow
