Debt, 10th Anniversary Edition: The First 5,000 Years, Updated and Expanded - Hardcover

David Graeber

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 161219933X ISBN 13: 9781612199337

Publisher: Melville House Publishing, 2021

Synopsis

Before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors - which lives on in full force to this day. So says anthropologist David Graeber in a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the centre of political debates from Renaissance Italy to Imperial China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like 'guilt,' 'sin,' and 'redemption') derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today.

About this title

About the Author

DAVID GRAEBER (1961--2020) was an American professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, who also taught at Goldsmiths College and Yale University. One of the original organizers of Occupy Wall Street, Graeber was also the author of The Utopia of Rules and numerous other books, as well as writing for magazines and newspapers including The Guardian, Harper's, The Baffler, n+1, The Nation, The New Inquiry and The New Left Review.

THOMAS PIKETTY is professor of economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, associate chair at the Paris School of Economics, and Centennial Professor of Economics in the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics. His book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

Edition details

• Publisher: Melville House Publishing
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 161219933X
• ISBN 13: 9781612199337
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 560