David Graeber’s Debt: the First 5,000 Years is a brilliant work that reinterprets history in a new way and shows how payment of interest-bearing debt has come to be regarded as the obligation that overrides all moral obligations.
Here is a set of links to articles that explain what Graeber is all about. The first is an article in the New Yorker about who Graeber is.
David Graeber and the Anarchist Revival by Kalefa Sanneh for the New Yorker.
Next some links to Graeber explaining his ideas in his own words.
What Is Debt?: an Interview with Economic Anthropologist David Graeber
Debt: the First Five Thousand Years by David Graeber. This is his outline of the basic idea of the book for the Anarchist Library.
And some links to critiques and reviews.
The Debt We Shouldn’t Pay by Robert Kuttner for the New York Review of Books.
David Graeber’s Debt: My First 5,000 Words by Aaron Bady for The New Inquirer.
The Very Last David Graeber Post by Brad DeLong. A scathing critique of the concluding chapter of Debt by a professor of economics.
Debt: the First 500 Pages by Mike Beggs for Jacobin magazine. Why he found Graeber’s main arguments “wholly unconvincing.”
In Defense of David Graeber’s Debt by J.W. Mason for Jacobin magazine.
And the full text of the book.
Full text of ‘Debt: The First 5,000 Years’ [added 4/29/2015]
Tags: Anthropology, David Graeber, Debt, Debt: the First 5000 Years, Economics
Phil Ebersole's Blog 
September 9, 2013 at 11:15 pm |
This closely aligns to the book “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” where he talks about how large international banks have enslaved developing nations with debt and thus controlling them. He argues that its not the military that makes a country strong, but a countries ability to enslave another with debt.
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