Debt: The First 5,000 Years

Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Melville House Publishing, 2014) is a non-fiction book by anthropologist David Graeber. Graeber uses comparative examples from anthropology, archaeology, economics, history, and ethnography to upend the traditional history of debt told by economists. Graeber began to write the book in mid-2008, when the US and global economy faced a downturn. He hoped that this financial crisis would spur people to think about how to change our capitalist system so that it was more inclusive and accessible. This did not happen.

Graeber focuses on the last 5,000 years in part because he believes there has been a collapse in our collective imaginations. To him, it feels like technological advances and sociopolitical complexity have caused people to believe that there are no other alternatives to our current financial order. He hopes the diverse political, economic, and social arrangements described in Debt will spark new ideas for how we view debt, work, money, and freedom.

Summary

The first four chapters of Debt describe a dilemma: We do not really know how to think about debt. In fact, Graeber suggests in Chapter 1 that we have profound moral confusion when it comes to the concept of debt.