Debt: The First 5000 Years is a 2011 book by David Graeber which explores the historical relationship of debt with social institutions such as barter, marriage, friendship, slavery, law, religion, war and government; in short, much of the fabric of human life in society. It draws on the history and anthropology of a number of civilizations, large and small, from the first known records of debt from Sumer in 3500 BC until the present.
Summary
On The Experience of Moral Confusion
The Myth of Barter
Primordial Debts
Cruelty and Redemption
A Brief Treatise on the Moral Grounds of Economic Relations
Games with Sex and Death
Honor and Degradation, or, On the Foundations of Contemporary Civilization
Credit Versus Bullion, And the Cycles of History
The Axial Age (800BC-600AD)
The Middle Ages (600AD-1450AD)
Age of the Great Capitalist Empires (1450-1971)
(1971-The Beginning of Something Yet to be Determined)
External Links
- Debt: The First 5000 Years at libcom.org