Ein ebenso radikaler wie befreiender Blick auf die Wurzeln unserer Schuldenkrise
Seit der Erfindung des Kredits vor 5000 Jahren treibt das Versprechen auf Rückzahlung Menschen in die Sklaverei. Die Geschichte der Menschheit erzählt David Graeber als eine Geschichte der Schulden: eines moralischen Prinzips, das nur die Macht der Herrschenden stützt. Damit durchbricht er die Logik des Kapitalismus und befreit unser Denken vom Primat der Ökonomie.
Ein radikales Buch im doppelten Wortsinn, denn Graeber packt das Problem der Schulden an der Wurzel, indem er bis zu ihren Anfängen in …
Ein ebenso radikaler wie befreiender Blick auf die Wurzeln unserer Schuldenkrise
Seit der Erfindung des Kredits vor 5000 Jahren treibt das Versprechen auf Rückzahlung Menschen in die Sklaverei. Die Geschichte der Menschheit erzählt David Graeber als eine Geschichte der Schulden: eines moralischen Prinzips, das nur die Macht der Herrschenden stützt. Damit durchbricht er die Logik des Kapitalismus und befreit unser Denken vom Primat der Ökonomie.
Ein radikales Buch im doppelten Wortsinn, denn Graeber packt das Problem der Schulden an der Wurzel, indem er bis zu ihren Anfängen in der Geschichte zurückgeht. Das führt ihn mitten hinein in die Krisenherde unserer Zeit: Von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart sind revolutionäre Bewegungen immer in Schuldenkrisen entstanden.
Graeber sprengt die moralischen Fesseln, die uns auf das Prinzip der Schulden verpflichten. Denn diese Moral ist eine Waffe in der Hand der Mächtigen. Die weltweite Schuldenwirtschaft ist eine Bankrotterklärung der Ökonomie. Der Autor enttarnt Geld- und Kredittheorien als Mythen, die die Ökonomisierung aller sozialen Beziehungen vorantreiben.
Im Kern ist dieses Buch ein hohes Lied auf die Freiheit: Das sumerische Wort »amargi«, das Synonym für Schuldenfreiheit, ist Graeber zufolge das erste Wort für Freiheit in menschlicher Sprache überhaupt.
David Graeber ist einer der Begründer der Occupy-Bewegung.
This book challenged my thinking on things I thought I knew in exciting ways, in spite of my sharing a similiar politics. I've always been hesitant to read Graeber, but I was pleasantly surprised with this one.
I read Debt right after The Dawn of Everything (also by Graeber), and my opinion of these two books is closely interlinked. The combination is an extensive unwinding of the sort of economic and social history I learned in school. I've had to re-imagine the ways that humanity developed our relationship with agriculture, with technology, and with the interplay of social obligations which we now categorize as money and economics.
The core insight and question isn't any of those individual revelations. What Graeber is trying to get you to think about is the stickiness of contemporary social relationships & structures, and the ways that we have lost the ability to imagine the possibility of change. No economic or political system has ever been as committed as ours is to narrowing the realms of the possible and foreclosing the ability to imagine other ways of organizing society. Historically, social dynamics …
I read Debt right after The Dawn of Everything (also by Graeber), and my opinion of these two books is closely interlinked. The combination is an extensive unwinding of the sort of economic and social history I learned in school. I've had to re-imagine the ways that humanity developed our relationship with agriculture, with technology, and with the interplay of social obligations which we now categorize as money and economics.
The core insight and question isn't any of those individual revelations. What Graeber is trying to get you to think about is the stickiness of contemporary social relationships & structures, and the ways that we have lost the ability to imagine the possibility of change. No economic or political system has ever been as committed as ours is to narrowing the realms of the possible and foreclosing the ability to imagine other ways of organizing society. Historically, social dynamics have been much more fluid, with a significantly greater ability for groups to deliberately redefine the parameters of their politics, or simply to walk away from situations which no longer serve their needs.
In this sense, I'm reminded of Le Guin's famous statement that:
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
In fact, Le Guin was underselling the case! The divine right of kings was a relatively short-lived novelty as a political system, which many people routinely walked away from, and which suffered umpteen disruptions and overthrows. Our contemporary political systems are at once more brittle than monarchy, and more intent and effective than any before seen at punishing defiance and making other systems seem impossible. I cannot imagine a society which aspires to total surveillance and imprisons so much of its population being anything less than terrified about the possibilities of change and people's ability to manifest that.
Truly an eye-opening pair of reads which I highly recommend.
