Debt, the first 5,000 years

Saw this linked in another thread.

erasmatazz.com/library/book-reviews/book-reviews-for-2016/debt-the-first-5000-years.html

Is it legit? Is Graeber a big dummy?

Some of it is legit probably but none of the criticism undermine Graebers basic points. That a short popular science book covering thousands of years of economic history simplifies some things and generalises a lot should be evident. He also seems to be deeply triggered by Graebers insistance of the role of the state in monetarizing economies and facilitating different economic styles without offering any evidence to the contrary.

I wouldnt trust Graebers last chapter on modern economics too though, its way to simplified and short to accuratly describe what is modern capitalism. Overall I dont see how this criticism undermines any of the basic thrusts which are made in Debt. That history is complicated is pretty clear, and Graeber highlightes often how muddled things where in reality so I dont see how just claiming that other factors where also relevant or that "temples where razed at other times too" is a valid criticism of the large scale trends and developments described in the book.

Pretty awful and treats its main subject's (debt) thesis as historically transcendental (and most importantly and probIematically as invariantly important/central) rather than as a reproduced (always differently!) symptom of the development of the division of labour. Check out PDF related for a short critique of the biggest problems.

As far as "radical" anthropologists goes he's far from the worst, though (*cough* Neil Ferguson), and he frequently has interesting things to say on modern topics. That that's really it for me.

I mean, the first half of the review is pretty much the reviewer being angry that Graeber didn't elaborate on some things (such as unit of account, which is pretty much how Graeber described the Babylonian system working, just without using the term). The historical errors seem legit enough (especially regarding Athens, Bookchin is rolling in his grave), though I haven't gotten that far into the book. Mind you, the reviewer is mostly talking about the latter, history half of the book. The former, anthropology half of the book seems to be pretty good from what I've read of it.
Basically, read with caution.

Pretty sure he does talk about societies that only used coinage to keep track of "unpayable" debts(like having knocked someone's tooth out or marrying someone's daughter.), that is "money of account". Long time since I read it though so I don't know where in the book this is

But Graeber does talk about the very early use of precious metals as a unit of account, and unlike the reviewer he uses historical sources to prove his point (that most transactions were still based on credit):

independently) were among the few people who did, often, actually use silver in transactions; but even they mostly did much of their dealings on credit, and ordinary people buying beer from "ale women," or lo­cal innkeepers, once again, did so by running up a tab, to be settled at harvest time in barley or anything they might have had at hand.35

Makes me think the reviewer actually didn't read the book

Holy shit I love leftcoms now

Now this is just an outright lie. Of course there's no citation for where he supposedly claims this(the 9th citation leads to a joke footnote) because nowhere does he actually say that debt has always been based on war, violence and crime. Get the fuck out

Why? You can read Aufheben and CWO articles without loving left communism lad.

Hah. You see, this is the point with Graeber: since he offers to origin-point of the subject of debt that goes beyond the usual pop-anarchistic "hierarchy caused this!" or really anything that ties hierarchy or the actual historical root of hierarchy itself and hierarchy's leavings (endemically tied to productive relationships and developments, i.e. modes of production!) we are left to guess where Graeber's ultimate beginnings lie, and since his Debt is riddled with insane quantities of moralization around social bads, the best Graeber manages to make us stop our analysis at is just the evidently manifested existence of social bads as such. Debt 's usefulness ends after it gives us a bunch of empirical observations and moralizations, precisely because it fails to give us a proper historical understanding of the why to Debt's why as such. It is only in the mind of a person like Graeber that we can find other almost hilariously idealistic statements like "Live as if you were free", quite ironically reminding us of the Hegelian-Young Hegelian discourse that mirrored almost entirely the pattern of the problems above with such notions as "things happen and are as the reflection of consciousness" versus the historical materialist outlook.

>erasmatazz.com/personal/politics/to-the-idiots-who-rejected.html

Oh dear fucking Lord no. I have been seeing this brand of cuck the entire 15 years I have used the internet, and personal experience tells me that they have absolutely nothing worthwhile to say. For some reason, they always play this role of "purple country wise centrist". If he were younger, he would proudly post pictures of his befedoraed self on his site.

Sorry but I'm not bothering with his opinions.

Yes

Where is this moralization? I'm flipping through the book right now and can't seem to find it, what there's a lot of however is anthropological studies of social relations, debt and money

This may be hard for you to grasp, but when writing the history of debt, Graeber starts at the first written historical evidence of it, namely from 3500 BC Sumer. If you want to speculate about the social and economic relationships that formed the conditions which debt was born from, be my guest. You're not doing to find any historical or anthropological evidence though, but I'm guessing that won't stop you

Was meant as a reply to

Except the book is framing the history of the world as credit=good and currency=bad, which is such a blatantly wrong take on history I don't even know where to start (no, the Islamic Caliphates were not more prosperous and peaceful than ancient Greece just because they used credit).

Personally it didnt seem that way to me, it just described how money was introduced often by states to be able to extract taxes more easily.

Again, point me towards where he does this. He simply points out that modern currency was born out of the need to feed large roving armies or extract taxes

Yo read his election piece.

International political analysis straight out of cuck/b/

…i cannot imagine anyone coming away with a more wrong understanding of the book's thesis