[P2P-F] DEBT: THE FIRST FIVE THOUSAND YEARS (!!!) - it's real! it's a book and you can hold it in your hands

Wed Jul 13 06:37:50 CEST 2011

Dear David,

As you perhaps know, we have a book of the week program on the p2p
foundation blog, and I would like to feature your important book there,

THis would require a general presentation followed by 2 significant
abstracts, to be published on alternate days on a given week,

If you agree, we would need some of that material,

Michel

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 10:03 AM, David Graeber <david.graeber at mac.com>wrote:

>
>
> Greetings, Everyone I've Ever Met,
>
> I can't believe I'd ever finally get to say this but - DEBT: THE FIRST FIVE
> THOUSAND YEARS, is out!
>
> (And if you don't believe it - below are some bits culled from today's
> Amazon Web Page:)
>
>
> This is a work of scholarship, and politically engaged, but it's also an
> attempt to break out of the usual academic and activist ghettoes, and I
> wrote it that way because I think that there's a conversation we need to be
> having, not just nationally but also globally, that we began to have for a
> few months after the financial crash of 2008, and which has, since, been
> indefinitely postponed. We seem to hanging in this bizarre state of
> suspension, where most people understand that everything we thought we knew
> about money, markets, debts, and the role of government is no longer true
> and probably never was, yet there is a kind of taboo over discussing any
> better ways to think about them.
>
> What better moment, it seems to me, than to start reexamining the
> historical record and to put our situation in a larger - much, much larger -
> context. So that's what I did. A few examples of what I turned up (much of
> which, I must admit, surprised even me):
>
>
>        * that virtual money is nothing new - in fact it is the original
> form of money
>
>        * that the first word for "freedom" recorded in any human language
> is a Sumerian word for debt relief
>
>        * that our current core conceptions of freedom and rights trace back
> to Roman slave law
>
>        * that most rebellions, insurrections, and revolutions in world
> history have been over issues of debt
>
>        * that rather than markets and states being in some way opposed
> principles, markets - particularly ones that operated on cash instead of
> credit - largely emerged as the side-effect of military operations, and
> through most of history were maintained through government policy
>
>        * that contemporary free market ideology (and in fact many of Adam
> Smith's specific phrases and examples, such as the pin factory) is derived
> from Medieval Islam
>
>        * we have every reason to believe that, as we now enter a new phase
> of virtual money, there will be major structural changes in the very idea of
> what an economy is and what it's for that determine what global society will
> be like for at least the next five hundred years
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> please forward wildly, irresponsibly, even to places where it's completely
> inappropriate
>
>

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