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  • Debt - Updated and Expanded

  • The First 5,000 Years
  • Written by: David Graeber
  • Narrated by: Grover Gardner
  • Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (186 ratings)

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Debt - Updated and Expanded

Written by: David Graeber
Narrated by: Grover Gardner
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Publisher's Summary

Now in audio, the updated and expanded edition: David Graeber's "fresh...fascinating...thought-provoking...and exceedingly timely" (Financial Times) history of debt.

Here, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: He shows that 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, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to 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 without knowing it.

©2014 David Graeber (P)2015 Gildan Media LLC

What the critics say

"Controversial and thought-provoking, an excellent book." (Booklist)

What listeners love about Debt - Updated and Expanded

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    3 out of 5 stars

Interesting but heavy

Very important and interesting information that I think everyone should know. However, as Graeber says in the book this started out as an academic book; hence it is a dense book that takes a lot of time and concentration to listen to. Graeber’s later work is an easier listen for the layman, but this book covers topics that are equally important to
understand.

2 people found this helpful

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Changes your framework

As best as I can understand the main thesis, it is saying that debt, once quantified, became an instrument of control even often to the extent of slavery. Debt is also now the foundation of inequality as it affects different classes differently, because it is applied most usuriously to the ‘industrious poor’ and most generously to élite ‘rentiers’.

Time to re-think capitalism. On to the Piketty books.

2 people found this helpful

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Historical substance but otherwise a vanity piece.

Not the worst book Graber has written, several others vye for that position and this title definitely has some substance in the historical aspects presented, particularly regarding the myth of Barter as the origin of money... However, that's where the substance pretty nearly ends. Much of the opinions and conclusions drawn are based on ideological assumptions of an empty headed academic-activist typical of today's modern age.
While I can't confirm nor disprove the anthropological evidences presented, many of the findings regarding ancient and historical peoples seem reasonable and plausible. However, Graber continuously injects ideological assumptions even within the ancient references. He colours the actions of the past with assumptions made from a very distant and emtremely different modern lens. He casts dispersions of modern motivations and interpretations regarding ancient and tribal people's and the actions of those peoples much in the same way many modern ideological writers and would be re-writers of history do, specifically that of the "Noble Savage. " while in succeeding chapters then throws the modern developments of economy, capitalism and freedom, as we know it today, entirely under the bus. He very much twists the concepts of contractual freedom and debt peonage/slavery together much as many activist writers of his kind do, as if they are one in the same... And as is typical, continues the the ideological persecution of the "rich" then takes it to another level and extends that persecution to "the industrious working class." In the end he goes so far as to suggest that it's, somehow not only ok to be a member of the "idle poor, " (what he calls the non-industrious) but Infact that they are people who should be placed upon a pedestal, their debts cancelled in the spirit of equality and suggests that "Biblical style Jubilee" (universal world wide debt forgiveness) is the answer to all our modern problems because, as is also typical, people who lend are clearly "the evil doers" in this world. Never once does he bring up the origination of money, in a modern context, nor call into question the morality of unlimited creation, or unlimited needs of all, being satisfied by the very real practicalities of a world of limited resources. I actual question whether this guy thinks for himself at all.

Still as long as one keeps an actual open mind and doesn't just take this guy on his word alone or lend too much authority to his, obviously one sided, politically motivated erudition and writing then there may still be some elements of substance to be found with this work. Just be prepared to have that thrown at you from the self-serving perspective of a political activist because he couches nearly everything in the book within a cloak of his ideology.

Should you read this? Probably not. Does it have any value at all? Perhaps a little. 🤏🏽

One thing I will give him is that he's a decent writer and the beginning chapters are compelling enough to keep reading/listening later he goes off the tracks.

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Interesting, if just a bit forgettable

For such a long book about debt, I can only recall a handful of highlights. Maybe this is on me. Interesting and worth a listen, while at the same time a bit long and boring.

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  • TM
  • 2022-09-07

Very eye opening!

A great overview of the various ways we have structured money throughout the past 5000 years. Although at times it may get fairly heavy with details, the overall picture is easy to follow and fascinating. Narration is clear and easy to listen to.

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Kinda annoying style of writing but is enthralling

Great sprawling material. A true accounting for the history of money and relations between people and power.

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Great Book

Great book. I'll need to listen a couple more times to get more information out of it. This book has a big communist bias, that can be expected from an institutional academic. I still gave it 5 stars. Color within the lines boys.

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Marxist propaganda

Was interested in the thesis and started enjoying some of the anecdotes about tribal behaviour but kept being derailed by the arrogant sniping at Adam Smith et al. Unnecessary and not compelling. Regardless I pushed on.

Then I got to the argument that sharing was mans default state, sharing music, stories etc. This disturbed me, as it is obviously complete nonsense. We compete in sports voluntarily, we sell music, we use stories to influence etc.

Couldn’t get any further. Marxist, university level crap theory that does not fit reality.

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excellent

a very important contribution towards understanding the futility of capitalism. well organized and well written.

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Wow...

Exceptional analysis. So glad I took the time to consume this, I'll have to listen to it 100 more times I think but I'll get the physical book and make notes... important information... it's time for that discussion, I think.

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  • James C. Samans
  • 2016-08-14

Transformative to the point of being revolutionary

What did you love best about Debt - Updated and Expanded?

As we grow up, even before we study economics as a formal discipline, we're given a series of "truths" about human interaction - first and foremost the depiction of a world without money as a barter economy, as well as the "natural" human inclination to act for self-advantage, and these serve as the baseline for our reasoning. Thus, reasonable people applying their intellects to questions of human interaction and morality reach conclusions that can be supported by the underlying assumptions.

What David Graeber shows us in "Debt" is that virtually every such assumption is actually incorrect, either outright wrong or misinterpreted as a matter of historical record, so that all of our later reasoning is upended.

What did you like best about this story?

Before going back thousands of years to begin his unveiling, the author presents us with a scene from a cocktail party where he interacts with several people - one of them a banker, another working with a non-governmental organization. It's immediately clear from this interaction just how transformative Graeber's perspective is.

That Graeber is himself "on the left" is well-known - he self-identifies as an anarchist, and is considered to be one of the figures at the center of the early Occupy movement (see another of his books, "The Democracy Project," for details on this) - but this opening scene reveals even before anything else is discussed how the people we regard as "liberal" are really part of the same worldview as those we call "conservative," and that challenging the underlying assumptions is no more welcomed by one than the other.

What about Grover Gardner’s performance did you like?

Gardner is an excellent narrator, and his tone is just right for the subject matter.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, but coming in at nearly 18 hours, that's simply not possible. "Debt" is best listened to in substantial chunks, such as while commuting from place to place; I listened to it on the train, in the car, and while walking. There's a lot here, and it takes time to think about it and absorb the implications.

Any additional comments?

Some people post reviews calling this book "biased." There are certainly some value judgments made by the author, but what most such reviews really seem to be doing is taking issue with the audacity that an anthropologist would present an historical record - well supported by research, mind you - that shows the conventional wisdom on which our current economic thinking is based are all wrong. The negative reviews most often come down to incredulity that someone would dare to tell us that something "everyone" knows to be true (because we were told it was true) could actually be false.

What makes this so amusing is that the people writing such reviews, angry that their worldviews might be so completely wrong and unable to countenance such an idea on an intellectual level, rail that Graeber is "promoting his ideology," even though they're the ones left flailing around defending something whose bases have just been discredited.

You'll get nothing from this book is your intent is to get nothing. If you respond to being presented with very detailed, clearly valid interwoven evidence that much of the world's history just isn't the way that you imagine by saying "Well heck, what does he know?", then your view isn't going to be transformed, because you're taking your current economic beliefs - for whatever reason - purely on faith.

For those of us who studied economics and accepted its premises on faith but built our later understanding on reason from that starting point, reading "Debt" is a really disruptive experience that calls into question almost everything we think and know. It's a great read the first time and better the second.

119 people found this helpful

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  • mminto
  • 2017-01-13

This book peeled my eyes open.

This is one of those rare A+ books. Dense with information and history, it shattered much of what I had thought about money, motivation, and mandkind as a whole. As a former scientist, I was astounded by how many my views of society and culture shifted as the result of reading this book. Truly eye opening.

30 people found this helpful

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  • Kristin
  • 2015-12-13

Amazing description of debt history

I will qualify I am not a supporter of his protests or really ideals; however I thought this book was extremely well done with an objective perspective that made it a wonderful history lesson.

An excellent perspective on human history and the role debt played. Highly recommend, very easy to listen to and understand.

30 people found this helpful

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  • Matt
  • 2016-05-09

Insufferable

There is some good information here but it is completely buried beneath the author's heavy handed political and moral sermonizing. In cases where I had extensive prior knowledge of a subject, the author's descriptions were misleading at best, which makes it hard for me to trust the other information in this book.

28 people found this helpful

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  • ProfGolf
  • 2017-02-09

Great insights but theme is hard to follow

The beginning and end of the book are absolutely riveting. They present a highly original reexamination of fundamental economic, social and moral tenets that calls into question many near universal assumptions about human relationships and political organizations.

However the long middle of the book is an academic treatise on several historical societies. I'm sure the author has a clear vision of how these meandering surprises connect to the core theme of debt, but I found myself frequently unable to see their relevance. So that part of the book was a tedious slog for me.

I am going to try rereading it without the middle chapters to see if I can gain a better understanding of the main arguments of how debt relates to violence and social organization. I think there is an important message here.

26 people found this helpful

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  • Toast
  • 2016-10-01

Goes off the deep end halfway through

Any additional comments?

The premise introduced in the beginning of the book--that the history of money consisted of a progression from credit to currency to barter, rather than the other way around, was interesting and compelling. There's a passing mention of how refusing to allow nations to default on debt amounts to moral hazard (true enough), but unfortunately after that things went downhill. Midway through the book the author switches to a strange view of the world where he insists that because we don't charge a coworker money for passing them a hammer when working together, we're all really communists (actual example from the book). All of which is part of an elaborate straw man version of traditional economics where all human interactions must be self-interested exchange, which the author constructs, then attacks for distorting reality to make all interactions fit that model. All of which seems like projecting on the author's part, since he immediately follows that with examples where he twists all kinds human interactions so that he can try to portray them as communism.

21 people found this helpful

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  • Nancy
  • 2016-08-05

Should be listed as political ideology not history

The author is so polarized and vocal in his political view of debt and its positives and negatives that I can't trust his interpretation of history. The first several hours are him laying out his agenda, bashing all prior economic theories and theorists, and talking about hypothetical situations that demonstrate how wrong they are. His view and discourse show so much bias that I don't trust his presentation of the book topic to be a reasonable and balanced interpretation of historical data. I was looking for a historical and educational book rather than political economic agenda.

21 people found this helpful

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  • Andrew P.
  • 2018-08-07

Debt

This book, by David Graeber, has left a deep impression on me. I particularly liked his observation that some things being ‘worth more than money’ was precisely what led to a price on humans. Priceless family members as collateral for a loan (so the debtor is sure to pay) -> hard times prevent repayment, so the creditor takes the human collateral - > the creditors now must write off the debt or create a market for humans to recoup -> the market now decides the value of people through a sick, but obvious, chain of events which requires stripping the surrounding context of the valued community member to turn them into a thing people can buy. The author covers another dozen or so issues with examples to provide color.

18 people found this helpful

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  • wbiro
  • 2016-10-19

Far More Interesting than the Title Implies

After a few very dull and tedious philosophy books, this book was a lively relief.

There is lot of interesting general and specific history here, and many good stories/accounts.

Most curious was the theory that the barter system never existed outside of speculative fantasy (still having no evidence of every existing before monetary systems).

18 people found this helpful

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  • P. Wang
  • 2017-02-14

Good observation bad political rant

This book was written by an anthropologist. The book covered not just the West, but also other civilizations throughout history, which is really nice. The stories are interesting but its interpretations at times seems a bit tenuous.

It raised my eyebrow in the first 10 minutes when the author proclaimed that IMF is imperialist and kind of evil. I was intrigued (and slightly outraged) and that stopped me from instantly returning the book.

The book got a bit more interesting when it went through the history of debt from an anthropological perspective. There were examples from all ethnic and historical backgrounds.

Unfortunately the book was littered with the author's far left political philosophy, which was very boring. The last two chapters are entirely political rants which could have been omitted and would have made the book more interesting.

Spoiler: at the end of the book, the author called for a universal debt amnesty. Listen at your own risk.

17 people found this helpful

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  • Baptiste
  • 2018-09-03

Wannabe deep thinking on the essence of money

Really bad reading (listening), D. GRAEBER takes never-ending paths to express simple concepts and ideas.. Cheap

1 person found this helpful