Graeber - Debt

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Teilweise sehr beeindruckende Darstellung zu Beginn des Buches, viele lesenswerte Beispiele und Anekdoten. Leider wenig überzeugende Analyse der Jetzt-Zeit auf den letzten 60 Seiten des Buches. Eine ausgezeichnete Rezension des Buchs hat Till von Treeck verfasst.

Außerdem zieht sich ziemlich stark das Motiv von Krieg als dem Vater aller Dinge durch das Buch, ja es kommt zu einer gewissen Privilegierung von Gewalt und Militär. Besonders wenig überzeugend ist das dann, wenn die US-Schuldenprobleme größtenteils auf Militärausgaben zurückgeführt werden, obwohl es doch vor allem mit Verteilungsproblemen zu tun hat.

Hinzu kommt eine Wachstumskritik, die keine Möglichkeit für dauerhaft-nachhaltiges Wachstum sieht.

Sehr interessant hingegen die Schilderung von islamischen Wirtschaftheorien und der Umstand, dass bereits lange vor Adam Smith islamische Gelehrte das Stecknadelbeispiel als Beleg für die Vorteile von Arbeitsteilung angeführt haben (p. 279). Auch spannend die Schilderung der chinesischen Dominanz.

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"As the great classicist Moses Finley oftn liked to say, in the ancient world, all revolutionary movements had a single program: 'Cancel the debts and redistribute the land.'" (p. 8)
"the crucial factor (...) is money's capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic - and by doing so,to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene." (p 14)
"Some of it is just the nature of the evidence: coins ar preserved in the archeological record; credit arrangements usually are not." (p. 22)
"It just means that it's (barter, Anm.) almost never employed, as Smith imagined, between fellow villagers. Ordinarily, it takes place between strangers, even enemies." (p. 29)
"Credit Theorists insisted that money is not a commodity but an accounting tool. (...) You can no more touch a dollar or a deutschmark than you can touch an hour or a cubic centimeter." (p. 46)
pp. 52 ff.: retelling the story behind "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"
"The core argument is that any attempt to separate monetary policy from social policy is ultimately wrong. Primordial-debt theorists insist that these have always been the same thing. Governements use taxes to create money, and they are able to do so because they have become the guardians of the debt that all citizens have to one another. This debt is the essense of society itself." (p. 56); later, on p. 71: "what we really have, in the idea of primordial debt, is the ultimate nationalist myth."
"Faced with the potential for complete social breakdown, Sumerian and later Babylonian kings periodically announced general amnesties: 'clean slates,' as economic historian Michael Hudson refers to them. Such decrees would typically declare all outstanding consumer debt null and void (commercial debts were not affected), return all land to its original owners, and allow all debt-peons to return to their families. (...) In Sumeria, these were called 'declarations of freedom'" (p. 65)
"What makes debt different is that it is premised on an assumption of equality." (p. 86)
"Through most of history, when overt political conflict between classes did appear, it took the form of pleas for debt cancellation" (p. 87)
Definition of debt (p. 120, Herv. i. Orig.): "Debt is a very specific thing, and it arises from very specific situations. It first requires a relationship between two people who do not consider each other fundamentally different sorts of being, who are at least potential equals, who are equals in those ways that are really important, and who are not currently in a state of equality - but for whom there is some way to set matters straight."
"Procreative sex was considered natural (after all, animals did it). Non-procreative sex, sex for pleasure, was divine." (p. 181)
"States seem to have played a complex dual role, simultaneously fostering commoditization and intervening to ameliorate its effects: enforcing the laws of debt and rights of fathers, and offering periodic amnesties." (p. 185)
"the king and slave are mirror images, in that unlike normal human beings who are defined by their commitments to others, they are defined only by relations of power." (p. 209, Herv. i. Orig.)
"the existence of markets was highly convenient for governments, and not just because it made it so much easier for them to provision large standing armies. By insisting that only their own coins were acceptable as fees, fines, or taxes, governments were able to overwhelm the innumerable social currencies that already existed in their hinterlands, and to establish something like uniform national markets." (p. 227)
"The Confucian state may have been the world's greatest and most enduring bureaucracy, but it actively promoted markets, and as a result, commercial life in China soon became far more sophisticated, and markets more developed, than anywhere else in the world. This despite the fact that Confucian orthodoxy was overtly hostile to merchants and even the profit motive itself. (...) What this meant in practice was that they were pro-market but anti-capitalist." (p. 260)
"Almost all of the new forms of paper money that emerged (in China, Anm.) were not originally created by governments at all; they were simply ways of recognizing and expanding the use of credit instruments that emerged from everyday economic transactions." (p. 270)
"Even more dramatically, Smith's most famous example of division of labor, the pin factory, where it takes eighteen separate operations to produce one pin, already appears in Ghazali's Ihya, in which he describes a needle factory, where it takes twenty-five different operations to produce a needle." (p. 279); Endnote 85 on p. 438: "It is becoming more and more clear that a great deal of Enlightenment thought traces back to Islamic philosophy: Decartes' cogito, for example, seems to derive from Ibn Sina (a.k.a. Avicenna), Hume's famous point that the observance of constant conjunctions does not itself prove causality appears in Ghazali, and I have myself noticed Immanuel Kant's definition of enlightenment in the mouth of a magic bird in the fourteenth-century Persian poet Rumi."
"Christians appear to have first adopted Islamic financial techniques to finance attacks against Islam." (p. 291)
"Those making the decisions did not feel they were in control anyway; those who were did not particularly care to know the details." (p. 319)
"It was only the Islamic prohibition against usury, really, that made it possible for them to create an economic system that stood so far apart from the state." (p. 321)
After quoting Smith's famous passage on the "benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker": "The bizarre thing hereis that, at the time Smith was writing, this simply wasn't true. Most English shopkeepers were still carrying out the main part of their business on credit, which meant that customers appealed to their benevolence all the time." (p. 335)
the political is that dimension of social life in which things really do become true if enough people believe them." (p. 342)

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Von „https://wiki.dobusch.net/index.php?title=Graeber_-_Debt“

 Teilweise sehr beeindruckende Darstellung zu Beginn des Buches, viele lesenswerte Beispiele und Anekdoten. Leider wenig überzeugende Analyse der Jetzt-Zeit auf den letzten 60 Seiten des Buches. Eine ausgezeichnete Rezension des Buchs hat [http://www.gegenblende.de/16-2012/++co++a5ccf7aa-e6d0-11e1-a14d-52540066f352/ Till von Treeck] verfasst.
+Außerdem zieht sich ziemlich stark das Motiv von Krieg als dem Vater aller Dinge durch das Buch, ja es kommt zu einer gewissen Privilegierung von Gewalt und Militär. Besonders wenig überzeugend ist das dann, wenn die US-Schuldenprobleme größtenteils auf Militärausgaben zurückgeführt werden, obwohl es doch vor allem mit Verteilungsproblemen zu tun hat.
+Hinzu kommt eine Wachstumskritik, die keine Möglichkeit für dauerhaft-nachhaltiges Wachstum sieht.
+Sehr interessant hingegen die Schilderung von islamischen Wirtschaftheorien und der Umstand, dass bereits lange vor Adam Smith islamische Gelehrte das Stecknadelbeispiel als Beleg für die Vorteile von Arbeitsteilung angeführt haben (p. 279). Auch spannend die Schilderung der chinesischen Dominanz.
 == Exzerpt ==
 * "States seem to have played a complex dual role, simultaneously fostering commoditization and intervening to ameliorate its effects: enforcing the laws of debt and rights of fathers, and offering periodic amnesties." (p. 185)
 * "the king and slave are mirror images, in that unlike normal human beings who are defined by their commitments to others, they are defined ''only'' by relations of power." (p. 209, Herv. i. Orig.)
+* "the existence of markets was highly convenient for governments, and not just because it made it so much easier for them to provision large standing armies. By insisting that only their own coins were acceptable as fees, fines, or taxes, governments were able to overwhelm the innumerable social currencies that already existed in their hinterlands, and to establish something like uniform national markets." (p. 227)
+* "The Confucian state may have been the world's greatest and most enduring bureaucracy, but it actively promoted markets, and as a result, commercial life in China soon became far more sophisticated, and markets more developed, than anywhere else in the world. This despite the fact that Confucian orthodoxy was overtly hostile to merchants and even the profit motive itself. (...) What this meant in practice was that they were pro-market but anti-capitalist." (p. 260)
+* "Almost all of the new forms of paper money that emerged (in China, Anm.) were not originally created by governments at all; they were simply ways of recognizing and expanding the use of credit instruments that emerged from everyday economic transactions." (p. 270)
+* "Even more dramatically, Smith's most famous example of division of labor, the pin factory, where it takes eighteen separate operations to produce one pin, already appears in Ghazali's ''Ihya'', in which he describes a needle factory, where it takes twenty-five different operations to produce a needle." (p. 279); Endnote 85 on p. 438: "It is becoming more and more clear that a great deal of Enlightenment thought traces back to Islamic philosophy: Decartes' ''cogito'', for example, seems to derive from Ibn Sina (a.k.a. Avicenna), Hume's famous point that the observance of constant conjunctions does not itself prove causality appears in Ghazali, and I have myself noticed Immanuel Kant's definition of enlightenment in the mouth of a magic bird in the fourteenth-century Persian poet Rumi."
+* "Christians appear to have first adopted Islamic financial techniques to finance attacks against Islam." (p. 291)
+* "Those making the decisions did not feel they were in control anyway; those who were did not particularly care to know the details." (p. 319)
+* "It was ''only'' the Islamic prohibition against usury, really, that made it possible for them to create an economic system that stood so far apart from the state." (p. 321)
+* After quoting Smith's famous passage on the "benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker": "The bizarre thing hereis that, at the time Smith was writing, this simply wasn't true. Most English shopkeepers were still carrying out the main part of their business on credit, which meant that customers appealed to their benevolence all the time." (p. 335)
+* the political is that dimension of social life in which things really do become true if enough people believe them." (p. 342)
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