Review: Debt: The First 5,000 Years

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There has been a decades long debate between anthropologists and economic theorists as to whether modern economies have their roots in ancient barter systems Who knew? Well, apparently Marcel Mauss did and, in a way, the author here wrote the book refuting the barter basis theory that Mauss never got around to. Another fascinating point made clear is that the archaeologically verifiable history of coinage only records a recurring wave of currency economies intermixed with waves of credit-based systems. Debt and credit, the author finds, devolved from temple actualizations of spiritual debt to become the engine of debt and conquest. The result was debtor prisons, keeping up with the joneses, hopeless struggles of organized labor and modern debt peonage of the working poor. As such, the conclusions are fairly radical, but it doe give a way to interpret the commonly visualized The Productivity–Pay Gap.

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