That much of the psychology and morality around money traces its origins to the violence and slavery that have been part of creditor-debtor relationships for thousands of years.That the conflation of these two different kinds of money led to debt peonage, slavery, the demotion of women’s status, and other iniquities that one might expect to happen when human relationships are mediated by the same currency as commercial transactions.That the first money used for commerce took the form of credit: tallies of transactions and loans denominated in a common unit of account and periodically settled by delivery of various commodities.Indeed, this kind of money is to be found even in societies without a significant division of labor. That money originated as “social currencies” used to rearrange relationships among human beings (marriage, funerals, blood money, and other social functions), and was not used to buy and sell things.It is a magisterial and deeply scholarly history of how debt – and money – came to be what it is today, and how human relations evolved around it.ĭebt: The First 5000 Years covers a vast sweep of history, anthropology, and political economy, arguing not so much for a single thesis as for a braid of complementary ideas. This and many other paradoxes become transparent in David Graeber’s recent book, Debt: The First 5000 Years.
Neither the malingering debtor nor the creditor who hounds her have much claim to our moral approval. Islam, Christianity, and Judaism have all gone so far as to prohibit lending money at interest. Few moneylenders enjoy positive portrayals in literature. Yet, paradoxically, we also tend to look askance at lenders, at those who enrich themselves by lending money at interest to others. We even speak of “redeeming” a promise, hinting again at the moral dimensions of debt repayment.
Most folks, thinking themselves as honorable people, feel a strong moral obligation to “make good” on their debts, to honor their debts, to follow through on what looks very much like a promise to repay. Do mortgage debtors, credit card debtors, and student loan borrowers have a moral obligation to pay back their debts? Is it unethical for debtor nations to default on their loans? We see this today in discussions about the debt crisis. For as long as there has been such a thing as money, morality and debt have been intimately intertwined.
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