Born in 1961, David Graeber is an American professor of anthropology* (the study of human beings, particularly human culture, practices, and beliefs) and a social activist supporting anarchism* (the political position that there should be no government).
In his 2011 book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Graeber tells the story of debt in human history and argues that money, markets* (systems in which goods and services are bought and sold), and our current economic system were created to help the wealthy take advantage of the poor.
Debt gives readers an alternative to the traditional understanding of economics.*
David Graeber, the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), is an anthropologist and professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics* in England. He has published many books on topics related to both anthropology and politics,* and has also been involved in international activist movements focused on anti-globalization* (opposition to the increasing economic, cultural, and political connectedness across continents), anti-capitalism* (opposition to the economic and social system of capitalism, in which trade, production, and property are held in private hands), and the support of debt relief.
Graeber was born in New York in 1961, where his parents exposed him to leftist politics at an early age. His mother was a garment worker and his father fought against the right-wing General Franco* in the Spanish Civil War* (1936–9). Both were active in labor union* politics (a union is an organization of traders, workers, or laborers who join together to negotiate for things such as better salaries or working conditions). While Graeber’s father was associated with anarchist movements during his time in Spain, he never claimed to be an anarchist; David Graeber, however, began to consider himself an anarchist at the age of 16.
Graeber received his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1997. In graduate school, Graeber won a prestigious Fulbright Fellowship* to conduct ethnographic* fieldwork—the study of a people in the place where they live—on the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. While there, he saw firsthand the devastating effects that large amounts of government debt can have on developing countries.*
Graeber has been active in protest movements for years. He served as an intellectual leader in the Occupy Wall Street* movement, which started in 2011 and opposes economic and social inequality. Graeber has been credited with coining the group’s anti-inequality slogan “We are the 99%.”1
David Graeber’s 2011 book Debt: The First 5,000 Years asks whether our economic system and its morals are fair. As Graeber writes, “this book is a history of debt … but it also uses that history as a way to ask fundamental questions about what human beings and human society are or could be like.”2 To do this, Debt takes a critical look at some of the founding “myths” of modern economics. It also offers different ways of thinking about economies, using the insights of anthropology.
Since the time of the influential Scottish economist Adam Smith* (1723–90), economics has been grounded on the idea that human relations are based on exchange: on trading one thing for another. Graeber says this makes it seem “as if our ties to society, even to the cosmos itself, can be imagined in the same terms as a business deal.”3 One of the central themes in the book is Graeber’s argument that exchange is not the most fundamental thing about humanity.
Smith, who pioneered economics as a field of study, argued that money was created in ancient times to make barter* more convenient. In a moneyless barter system, something is traded directly for something else, so that two people can do business together only if each has something the other wants. Graeber argues that there is no evidence to show that money was created for this purpose. Smith also claims that the state and the free market—an economic system in which parties are free to buy and sell goods and services without government interference—are opposing forces. Graeber, on the other hand, says the two “were born together and have always been intertwined.”4
Graeber says that “the very principle of exchange emerged largely as an effect of violence,” and that money and markets find their origins “in crime and recompense, war and slavery, honor, debt, and redemption.”5 This is an important secondary theme in Debt.
At the same time, Graeber uses his background in anthropology, studying human society, beliefs, and practices, to discuss the “moral basis of economic life.”6 He suggests that human beings shift between different types of economic interaction with one another. Of these different types, “exchange,” Graeber argues, usually occurs among strangers.
Graeber also describes differences between the market economy and the pre-market economy, which he calls the “human economy.” Human economies are “economic systems primarily concerned not with the creation of wealth, but with the creation, destruction, and rearranging of human beings.”7 In these economies, money is not used to buy things, but rather to maintain relations between people. When states and empires introduced market systems, exchange became the chief form of interaction between people.
The final argument in Debt is that money and debt have historically alternated between virtual and physical forms. Graeber says this demonstrates that money, debt, and the system of capitalism*—in which trade, production, and property are in private hands—are not a fundamental part of human nature. They are social creations that can be undone.
Debt was first published in 2011, and written in a time of global economic turmoil, when many were already questioning the fairness of the dominant economic system. Two major economic crises together have demonstrated the devastating impact that excessive debt can have on quality of life. The global financial crisis of 2008* was caused in part by financial institutions lending many people far more money in home mortgages than they could possibly repay. The government response to the crisis focused on stabilizing the financial system by rescuing banks, rather than on providing debt relief for individuals. In the ongoing European debt crisis,* nations in southern Europe that have borrowed enormous amounts of money are being pressured to reduce their national budgets in favor of repaying loans to wealthier countries and institutions. These budget cuts have led to enormous political fallout by worsening the problems of widespread unemployment and poverty—issues that have led some to challenge their assumptions about justice and debt. Graeber’s book provides a framework for thinking about these issues.
Graeber believes his arguments will only become more relevant over the coming years: “There is very good reason to believe that, in a generation or so, capitalism itself will no longer exist.”8 Graeber sees Debt pointing the way toward this future reality. He urges readers to believe they can play a role in determining the future of the system: “What I have been trying to do in this book is not so much propose a vision of what, precisely, the next age will be like, but to throw open perspectives, enlarge our sense of possibilities; to begin to ask what it would mean to start thinking on a breadth and with a grandeur appropriate to the times.”9
The author brings significant new insights into these economic issues by examining them through the lens of anthropology. While Debt makes no policy prescriptions other than simple debt relief, it quickly became a hit in international activist circles. Graeber has positioned himself as an influential voice in debates about not only debt, but about the kind of society we should aspire to live in.
1. David Runciman, “The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement by David Graeber – Review,” Guardian, March 28, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/28/democracy-project-david-graeber-review.
2. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2011), 18.
3. Graeber, Debt, 18.
4. Graeber, Debt, 18.
5. Graeber, Debt, 19.
6. Graeber, Debt, 18.
7. Graeber, Debt, 130.
8. Graeber, Debt, 381.
9. Graeber, Debt, 383.