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Debt

Debt

The First 5000 Years
Narrative non-fictionBusiness & EconomicsHistory
Pages
576
Published
2011
Language
English

Synopsis

Before money, there was debt. For 5,000 years, societies have been shaped by the dynamic between debtors and creditors, with debt and its forgiveness at the heart of political, legal, and religious debates. Concepts like guilt, sin, and redemption, central to our understanding of morality, all stem from ancient discussions about debt.

Prose complexity
7/10

Vibe

Thought-ProvokingIntellectualReflectiveComplex

Genres

Business & Economics History Philosophy & Religion Sociology Economics Politics & Society

About the author

D
David Graeber

David Rolfe Graeber (/ˈɡreɪbər/; February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist, anarchist activist and author known for his books Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011), The Utopia of Rules (2015) and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (2018). He was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. As an assistant professor and associate professor of anthropology at Yale from 1998–2007 he specialised in theories of value and social theory. The university's deci...

Frequently asked questions

  • What is David Graeber's central argument in Debt: The First 5,000 Years?

    Graeber, an anthropologist, argues that money and markets did not arise from barter, as classical economics assumes, but from earlier systems of credit and debt obligations between people who knew each other. He traces how debt has shaped morality, law, religion, and politics across 5,000 years of human history, and argues that the modern conflation of debt repayment with moral virtue obscures debt's real, and often violent, history.

  • Has Debt: The First 5,000 Years won any awards?

    Yes. It won the first Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing in 2012, and the same year won the Gregory Bateson Book Prize, awarded by the Society for Cultural Anthropology.

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