Voici un livre capital, best-seller au Etats-Unis et en Grande-Bretagne, en cours de traduction dans plus de dix pays, commis par l’un des intellectuels les plus influents selon le «New York Times,»« »initiateur d’«Occupy Wall Street»« »à New York.
Un livre qui, remettant en perspective l’histoire de la dette depuis 5000 ans renverse magistralement les théories admises. Il démontre par exemple que le système de crédit précède la naissance de la monnaie et que la dette a donc toujours structuré nos économies et nos rapports sociaux. Ainsi, l’endettement a …
Voici un livre capital, best-seller au Etats-Unis et en Grande-Bretagne, en cours de traduction dans plus de dix pays, commis par l’un des intellectuels les plus influents selon le «New York Times,»« »initiateur d’«Occupy Wall Street»« »à New York.
Un livre qui, remettant en perspective l’histoire de la dette depuis 5000 ans renverse magistralement les théories admises. Il démontre par exemple que le système de crédit précède la naissance de la monnaie et que la dette a donc toujours structuré nos économies et nos rapports sociaux. Ainsi, l’endettement a toujours été une construction sociale fondatrice du pouvoir. Si autrefois les débiteurs insolvables ont nourri l’esclavage, aujourd’hui les emprunteurs pauvres, qu’il s’agisse de particuliers des pays riches ou d’États du tiers-monde, sont enchainés aux systèmes de crédit. Forts de ce déni, les économistes entretiennent une vieille illusion : celle que l’opprobre est forcément à jeter sur les débiteurs, jamais sur les créditeurs.
L’histoire récente le montre, les États ont davantage tendu à protéger les créanciers. Et nous avons oublié une leçon déjà enseignée par les dirigeants mésopotamiens : à partir d’un certain moment, si l’on veut éviter l’explosion sociale, il faut effacer les dettes, « effacer les tablettes » dit Graeber.
Il montre également que le vocabulaire des écrits juridiques et religieux de l’Antiquité (des mots comme « culpabilité », « pardon » et « rédemption ») est issu en grande partie de ces affrontements antiques sur la dette, et qu’il fonde jusqu’à nos conceptions les plus fondamentales du bien et du mal. Sans en avoir conscience nous livrons toujours ces combats…
Un essai essentiel et foisonnant qui nous permet de mieux comprendre l’histoire de notre passé, celui de la crise des crédits en cours ainsi que l’avenir de notre économie.
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.
