Sulaiman Hakemy - An Analysis of David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years

An Analysis of

The First 5,000 Years

Sulaiman Hakemy

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ISBN 978-1-912302-23-9 (hardback)

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Debt is one of the great subjects of our day, and understanding the way that it not only fuels economic growth, but can also be used as a means of generating profit and exerting control, is central to grasping the way in which our society really works.

David Graebers contribution to this debate is to apply his anthropologists training to the understanding of a phenomenon often considered purely from an economic point of view. In this respect, the book can be considered a fine example of the critical thinking skill of problem-solving. Graebers main aim is to undermine the dominant narrative, which sees debt as the natural and broadly healthy outcome of the development of a modern economic system. He marshals evidence that supports alternative possibilities, and suggests that the phenomenon of debt emerged not as a result of the introduction of money, but at precisely the same time.

This in turn allows Graeber to argue against the prevailing notion that economy and state are fundamentally separate entities. Rather, he says, the two were born together and have always been intertwined with debt being a means of enforcing elite and state power. For Graeber, this evaluation of the evidence points to a strong potential solution: there should be more readiness to write off debt, and more public involvement in the debate over debt and its moral implications.

Born in 1961, US anthropologist and activist David Graeber was weaned on leftist politics, and declared himself an anarchist at age 16. He became an anthropology professor, and his early cultural research in Madagascar exposed him to poverty that he saw as caused by pressures to repay excessive government debt. Through a combination of activism and scholarship he has devoted much of his career to developing an intellectual basis for undermining capitalism. In his 2011 book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Graeber uses the insights of an anthropologist to argue that debt plays a toxic role in human relations.