How the jubilee idea inspired the oppressed

Peter Linebaugh

George Rosso, a reader of this blog, sent me a link to an article called Jubilating–Or, How the Atlantic Working Class Used the Biblical Jubilee Against Capitalism, with Some Success  by a radical writer named Peter Linebaugh.  It was published in Radical History Review 50 (1991).  

This article is a much fuller account of the Jubilee concept – the periodic cancelling of debts, freeing of slaves and returning of land to its original owners – than does Michael Hudson’s book, which was mainly about the Jubilee as practiced in ancient Near Eastern history.  

It tells how the Jubilee idea in the Christian Old Testament inspired slaves, the dispossessed and other oppressed people in modern history.  It continues to inspire the Latin American liberation theologians and Palestinians (many of.whom are Christians) trying to reclaim their land.

Linebaugh went into the Jubilee idea and its connection with liberation movements more deeply than Hudson did and of course more deeply than I am doing here.  If you care about this topic, you should read it in full and not be content with my summary.  But I’ll try to hit a few highlights.  

I’ll start with the Jubilee song of Thomas Spence, who wrote it in 1782 (sung to the tune of “America” or “God Save the King”).

I

Hark! how the Trumpet’s sound,

Proclaims the Land around

The Jubilee!

Tells all the Poor oppress’d,

No more shall they be cess’d;

Nor Landlords more molest

Their Property.

II

Rents t’ourselves now we pay,

Dreading no Quarter-day,

Fraught with Distress

Welcome that day draws near,

For then our rents we share,

Earth’s rightful Lords we are,

Ordain’d for this.

And all the World releas’d 

from Misery.

The Fir-trees all rejoice,

And Cedars lift their voice,

Ceas’d now the Feller’s noise

Long rais’d by thee!

IV

The Sceptre now is broke,

Which with continual Stroke

The Nations smote!.

Hell from beneath doth rise,

To meet thus Lofty Eyes,

From the most pompous size,

How brought to nought!

And all the World releas’d

from Misery.

The Fir-trees all rejoice,

And Cedars lift their voice,

Ceas’d now the Feller’s noise

Long rais’d by thee!

V

Since then this Jubilee

Sets all at Liberty

Let us be glad,

Behold each one return

To their Right, and their own,,

No more like Doves to mourn,

By Landlords sad!

Do we need a 21st century debt jubilee?

“AND FORGIVE THEM THEIR DEBTS”: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year by Michael Hudson (2018)

Michael Hudson is an economist who says that the chief economic problem in the world today is that individuals and nations owe more debt than they ever can repay.  And “debt that can’t be repaid, won’t be repaid.”

He has written in many books and articles that, unless there is a writedown of debt, lenders will grow richer and richer and the indebted public will grow poorer and poorer until there is an economic collapse.

In this 2018 book, he argues that debt write-downs actually were economic policy in the ancient Near East, and are supported by the Hebrew Bible and the teachings of Jesus.

The saying on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, “Proclaim liberty throughout the land,” is a quote from Leviticus 25: 10.   According to Hudson, this refers forgiveness of debts and freeing of slaves (who are enslaved because they can’t pay their bills) in the periodic Jubilee year.

Such language is now interpreted as an aspirational goal, but Hudson maintains it was intended as policy.

There is reason why, in the Ten Commandments, there are separate commandments for “thou shalt not commit adultery” and “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”

It meant it was a sin to try to acquire one’s neighbor’s wife as a bondservant in return for payment of debt, along with his ox, his ass, his manservant or maidservant or anything else that is one’s neighbor’s.

When the Lord’s Prayer said, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” Hudson says, it meant literal debt forgiveness as well as forgiveness of sins.   The word for “debt” in many European and Near Eastern languages is the same as the word for “sin.”

This goes against the grain of present-day thinking, in which debt repayment is regarded as an absolute moral obligation.   True, bankrupts normally don’t have to fear debtors’ prison, as was the law in early 19th century England, let alone be sold into slavery, as was the case in ancient Greece and Rome.

But student debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy and debtors’ prisons are coming back in the form of sentences for contempt of court.  Debt slavery still exists for individuals in some parts of the world, and the international banking system does not show mercy for indebted poor nations.

If an obligation is absolute and unlimited, it is equivalent to a religion.  Debt repayment is regarded as an absolute obligation, and compound interest makes it a potentially unlimited one.  It really is a kind of religion, the service of Mammon.   And the Bible teaches that one cannot serve God and Mammon.

How excess debt stifles economies

Economist Michael Hudson had a good explanation of how excess private debt leads to economic stagnation.

If private debt grows faster than GDP, the debt/GDP ratio will rise.  This stifles markets, and hence employment.  Wages fall as a share of GDP.

This is precisely what is happening. But mainstream models ignore the overgrowth of debt, as if the economy operates on a barter basis. 

[Australian economist Steve] Keen calls this “the barter illusion,” and reviews his wonderful exchange with Paul Krugman (who plays the role of an intellectual Bambi to Keen’s Godzilla).

Krugman insists that banks do not create credit but merely recycle savings – as if they are savings banks, not commercial banks.

It is the old logic that debt doesn’t matter because “we” owe the debt to “ourselves.”  The “we” are the 99%, the “ourselves” are the 1%.

Krugman calls them “patient” savers vs “impatient” borrowers, blaming the malstructured economy on personal psychology of indebted victims having to work for a living and spend their working lives paying off the debt needed to obtain debt-leveraged homes of their own, debt-leveraged education and other basic living costs.

Hudson has written extensively about debt, and how unpayable debt leads to financial crises.   As he is fond of saying, debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid.