Excellent interview with David Graeber

lambert's picture

Read the whole thing, but this paragraph caught my eye:

Why is it that a promise made by a politician to the people that elected them—to provide free education for instance—has a less moral standing than the promise that politician has made to a banker? It seems insane. But it’s simply assumed nowadays.

What a good question.

Perhaps one of our Nobelists will address it.....

NOTE And now go read, or re-read, lets's excellent and very detailed explanation of a debt jubilee.

If you liked this post, buy the author some books.

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MontanaMaven's picture

"A coin is just a promise"

I ended my Graeber piece on his last essay "Kamikaze Capitalism" with his discussion of money and debt and which promises should be kept. Here's the final paragraph of the essay.

Really a coin is just a promise, and the only real limit to the amount of money we produce is how many promises we wish to make to one another, and what sort. Under existing arrangements,
of course, there are all sorts of other, artificial limits: over who is
legally allowed to issue such promises (banks), or determine what
kinds of promises have what sort of comparative weight (in theory,
“the market,” in reality, increasingly bureaucratized systems
of financial assessment.) It is such arrangements that allow us to
pretend that money is some kind of physical substance, that debts
are not simply promises – which would mean that a government’s
promise to pay investors at a certain rate of interest has no greater
moral standard than, say, their promise to allow workers to retire
at a certain age, or not to destroy the planet), but as some kind
of inexorable moral absolute. Yet it’s this very tyranny of debt –
on every level – that becomes the moral imperative that forces
oil from the earth and convinces us that the only solution to any
moral crisis is to convert yet another portion of free human life
into labor.

In this interview and in his book "Debt, The First 5000 Years", he talks a lot about his experience researching in Madagascar. The villagers needed a well, so they built in themselves rather than trying to get "a grant" or borrowing. That would incur debt. The idea of parallel governing has caught on with OWS. The declaration of human rights says that everyone should be entitled to a safe and healthy roof over their head. There are plenty of empty homes, so why not put people in them?
(I love the story of the Occupiers in Seattle who built structures with rope and timbers when they were informed they could not use nails. Another example of imagination like the Aquapy rafts in Oakland. Makes me smile.)

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx

lambert's picture

Got a link on the rope and timbers story?

It's awesome!

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi

MontanaMaven's picture

First hand reporting on Western Coastal Occupies is awesome

I meant to do this as a Quick Hit- Wild Wild West Coast
By CHRIS FARAONE | November 23, 2011

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx

Jessica Yogini's picture

"The Art of Being Ungoverned" (book) might interest

anyone who found Graeber's discussion of Madagascar interesting.
"Ethnic groups" that are actually past social movements that succeeded to some degree.
Examples of how others have used human creativity rather than fight on the fronts where the elites can unleash their violence.

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