“How is it that moral obligations between people come to be thought of as debts and as a result, end up justifying behavior that would otherwise seem utterly immoral?”

A friend recommended Debt: The First 5,000 Years as a veritable bible of the Occupy movement, so I thought I’d pick it up. Its concern is distinguishing between moral obligations, as occur in a human economy, and market obligations (debts) that occur in a commercial economy. Graeber is worried that our modern economy has confused the two. Financial debts are denominated in money, and so are easily enforceable and transferable: moral obligations, like owing someone a favour, are not.

The book asks great questions, questions that aren’t studied nearly enough, like the effect of being in a perpetual state of debt on humanity, whether early cultures truly used a barter system (answer: usually only with strangers, not within the village, where non-market bonds held sway), whether debts of money and debts of morality are the same, and whether alternative systems to the current one exist. Overall, though, I was disappointed. His answers often feel confused, often asserting something only to disagree a few paragraphs later, or introducing what often felt like irrelevant distinctions instead of meaningful insights.

Unfortunately, as a result I struggled to find the book compelling. He makes blanket statements that barter economies never existed or world literatures condemned lending, for example, before backtracking and noting large exceptions shortly after. He also asserts that debts in monetary units are enforced by violence while moral debts are not, yet surely social norms and codes of behaviour, including what may be seen as a debt to society, were frequently enforced by violence. If you’re willing to overlook such claims, however, there are also important insights: it’s probably true that monetary debt’s ability to be transferred between creditors makes it more impersonal, and so justifies otherwise outrageous behaviour, for example. There are also great stories in it, like the discussion of the Tiv, who worried about being tricked into turning into witches by being fed human flesh.

The book does therefore have strengths. The questions and stories are interesting, and if a psychologist happens to write a book about the effects of debt on the human psyche, I’d definitely read it. For the nature of financial markets and moral markets, however, I found Michael Sandel more compelling and more clear, and for studies of how ancient cultures felt about debt and exchange, I’d turn first to Jared Diamond. If this is a subject you’re interested in, it’s definitely worth picking up Debt, but I’d start first with Diamond or Sandel, to get a grounding in the subject.

You can get a copy of Debt here (or in the UK or Canada). Or, wait for my review of Diamond’s The World until Yesterday, which I’ll post in the next few weeks.