Does anybody know the libertarian position on a Jubilee Year?

lambert's picture

Here's how Graeber concludes his great book, which I too have been reading. Debt, The First 5000 Years, pages 390-91:

It seems to me that we are long overdue for some kind of BIblical-style Jubillee: One that would affect both international debt and consumer debt. It would be salutary not just because it would relieve so much genuine human suffering, but also because it would be our way of reminding ourselves that money is not ineffable, that paying one's debts is not the essence of morality, that all these things are human arrangements and that if democracy is to mean anything, it is the ability to all to agree to arrange things in a different way, It is significant, I think, that that since Hammurabi, great imperial states have always resisted this kind of politics. Athens and Rome established the paradigm: even when confronted with continual debt crises, they insisted on legislating round the edges, softening the impact, eliminating obvious abuses like debt slavery, using the spoils of empire to throw all sorts of benefits at their poorer citizens (who, after all, provided the rank and file of their armies), so as to keep them more or less afloat--but all in such a way as never to allow a challenge to the principle of debt itself. The governing class of the United States seems to have taken a remarkably similar approach....

What is a debt, anyway? A debt is just the perversion of a promise. It is a promise corrupted by both math and violence. If freedom (real freedom) is the ability to make friends, then it is also, necessarily, the ability to make real promises. What sorts of promises might genuinely free men and women make to each other? At this point we can't even say. It's more a question of how we can get to a place that will allow us to find out.

So, corrupt math and violence. Libertarians should be against that, right?

NOTE "Freedom is the ability to make friends." Lot s of food for thought there.

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"libertarians" are not a monolithic group

but a great many of the american "libertarians" believe that a business owner's right to make money trumps an individual's rights if the two should clash.

Alcuin's picture

Leviticus 25

Leviticus 25:10:

"And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family." (King James Version).

Interestingly enough, the words "proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof" are inscribed on the Liberty Bell.

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MontanaMaven's picture

Cosmic

Wonder if Tom Paine snuck that in?

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Alcuin's picture

Origin of Inscription

According to Catherine Millard and D. James Kennedy (yes, thatone!), authors of The Rewriting of America's History, it was Isaac Norris, Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly and a Quaker, who requested that the passage from Leviticus be inscribed on the bell. Interestingly enough, the bell was ordered in 1751, which was the year of the Jubilee.

The important thing is to never stop questioning. - Albert Einstein

Jeff W's picture

“proclaim liberty…It shall be a jubilee unto you”

And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. It shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.—Lev. 25:10

There's something immensely satisfying about the fact that that inscription on the Liberty Bell, and the idea of “liberty” enshrined in it, refers specifically to the Biblical jubilee and the freedom inherent in debt forgiveness.

It's interesting that Millard and Kennedy refer to [PDF] the phrase inscribed on base of the Liberty Bell—the first sentence of the Biblical citation—as the “full verse,” which seems to be its own way of rewriting history.

Every apathetic citizen is a silent enlistee in the cause of inverted totalitarianism.—Sheldon Wolin

Alcuin's picture

Kennedy the Evangelist

D. James Kennedy re-write history? Perish the thought!!

The important thing is to never stop questioning. - Albert Einstein

Eureka Springs's picture

Jubilee says it all

What an easy joyous mike check - occu-goal "Jubilee!" would be. I've suggested it in a few groups... maybe someday it will catch on.

I just started reading Graeber's - Direct Action.

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