On the contrary, under a thin coat of radical anti-capitalism, Unable to find a problem with exchange, Graeber resorts to a moralistic distinction between historical examples of markets using currency (bad and originated/sustained by militaristic states) and those using credit (state-free and good).Graeber must then turn his eyes, romantically and uncritically, towards markets based on personal credits in the past, which he calls ‘pure’ and ‘friendly’ (sic).The culmination of Graeber’s pretentious project to attack Smith ends up in a cul-de-sac. “Ale women”, or local innkeepers, served beer, for example, and often rented rooms; customers ran up a tab; normally, the full sum was dispatched at harvest time. To Graeber, this again shows the triumph of the IOU system. But Graeber does not seem too worried. It only makes sense if levying taxes was really a way to force everyone to acquire coins, so as to facilitate the rise of markets, since markets were convenient to have around. Why women, then? Keynesians like this sort of logic. And we were given detailed examples of such moral obligations extracted from anthropological studies, which corroborated such a qualitative distinction; and showed that moral obligations are based on direct relations, and as such can never be repaid in terms of money or valuable presents. In To summarize this view, the foundation of the human economy is built on bartering and swapping for mutual benefit: it makes us human, and let us specialize. That is the tacit model, anyway.

One bit of world history I’d never heard before reading this book, which Graeber nominates as “the  most consequential twist of history that no one remembers”, is how China turned away from the IOU system and went back to precious metal currency in the 1400s. This led to the reversion of the vast Chinese market to an uncoined silver standard. The woman could not be convinced – because, she stated, ‘debts must be repaid’.This strong statement seemingly gave Graeber many sleepless nights, and the imperative to resolve what he saw as a moral dilemma: on the one hand, it is universally believed that ‘debts must be repaid’; on the other hand, creditors are, morally condemned in every culture.
p. em.

If there is a distinction between currency and credit, t here must be a distinction between the ‘IOUs’. But maybe they weren’t. Sure it has biases and like Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a bit too idealistic, but still -- wow -- an amazing read. The fact that the dollar was ‘floated’, Graeber adds, has allowed for the creation of money ‘out of nothing’ : thus these are new times of ‘virtual money’, Graeber concludes.However, there is a problem. Almost invariably, they involve institutions (usually not strictly coincident to the state, usually larger) to protect debtors. The global financial crisis has been caused by a corrupt credit system and as such it ha s caused popular outrage; yet the ensuing protests, lacking focus, petered out and failed to overthrow capitalism. Rather, as soon as he stumbles into facts which contradict his theory, he just cleverly highlights the bits that fit in, hides the bits that don’t fit in, and distracts us from considering the whole.An example of this method, the Middle Ages.

Besides giving innumerable dimensions to the key concepts, it also adds a sort of magic. It is only in the current era, writes anthropologist David Graeber, that we have begun to see the creation of the first effective planetary administrative system largely in order to protect the interests of creditors. Credit systems seem to arise, and to become dominant, in periods of relative social peace, across networks of trust, whether created by states or, in most periods, transnational institutions, whilst precious metals replace them in periods characterised by widespread plunder. Title. All these interesting theories are deliberately left unconnected. For example, the ‘cool’ expression ‘virtual money’ is used to broadly cover extremely different forms of credit and/or money based on credit.

Maybe we are a bit too picky. ‘This must be true’, he adds, ‘because even when gold and silver coins were in use they almost never circulated at their bullion value’. If we work for an employer, we spend many hours of the month in their office, shop or factory, expecting to be paid a wage in exchange. But Graeber will tell you otherwise: hard metal coinage comes from violence, war, and as he calls it, the “Military-coinage-slave complex” of empire. If he’s done this to ancient Greece, what has he done to medieval India? Indeed, there is a good fit. Otherwise there must be radical dishwashers, that are radical through the content of their work. What’s more, origins matter.


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