Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

The Origins of Debt, Money, Slavery and Empire
21 Sep 2011
🖨️ Print Article

Like most of us, you probably learned in school that people invented money to replace barter, markets are guided by The Invisible Hand, and a debt is a kind of sacred promise.  Like much else you learned in school, says anthropologist David Graeber, this is wrong.  Markets are constructed by states, while the appearance of debt, slavery and money in human affairs coincide with the appearance of violent empires, and recede when empires are in decline.  Debts are only sacred, Graeber explains, when the poor owe the rich, and there are key distinctions between debts and promises.  Graeber, the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years is interviewed by C.S. Soong on KPFA's Against the Grain...

The Origins of Debt, Money, Slavery and Empire

An Against the Grain Interview by C.S. Soong and Sasha Lilley

KPFA.s Against the Grain is consistently one of the best interview shows around.  We at BAR steal ideas from them all the time.  You can find a link to Debt: The First 5,000 Years here.



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://www.againstthegrain.org/files/files/atg/atg_2013.01.07_graeber.mp3

More Stories


  • Ben Passmore
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance
    10 Oct 2025
    Ben Passmore is the author of the graphic novel: “Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance,” published by Pantheon Books. Ben Passmore is an award-winning political cartoonist who has…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    "Left" Except for Haiti
    08 Oct 2025
    The latest interference from the United Nations ensures that Haiti’s “gang” problem will continue and that its cause, an illegitimate governing structure brought about by the UN, U.S. and their…
  • We Charge Genocide
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Genocide Stalks the U.S.A., Paul Robeson, 1952
    08 Oct 2025
    “We, the people, charge genocide.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor , Dan Kovalik
    Is the UN Charter Worth the Paper It’s Written On?
    08 Oct 2025
    In practice, the UN Charter ensures that the world’s most powerful nations are free to wage war at will without UN intervention or even censure, as the US has time and again.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    enemy within
    08 Oct 2025
    "enemy within" is the latest from BAR's Peat-in-Residence.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us