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> There are no factual mistakes in “Debt” that impact the solidity of Graeber’s conclusions or historical narratives, most inaccuracies were minor and corrected

by unmole 5y ago

> There are no factual mistakes in “Debt” that impact the solidity of Graeber’s conclusions or historical narratives, most inaccuracies were minor and corrected in subsequent editions without changing the character of the book or the arguments within. It's been a while since I read Debt but I distinctly remember Graber's disingenuous take on Adam Smith's famous "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest." Graber argues that this is wrong because English (Or was it Scottish?) shopkeepers of the time mostly sold goods on credit and thus the customers were in fact depending on their benevolence. I don't know about you but to me that is complete batshit. The book also makes a way too big of deal about The Myth of Barter. While that is interesting from an anthropological perspective, Graber makes it sound like the bulk of modern economics is somehow based on this myth. I get why the book is popular. It posits to tackle big questions and contains the usual tropes against the state, big business, banks etc. that a left leaning audience will be more than willing to eat up. But I don't think it provides any new perspectives on economics that bear any resemblance to the real world.

quadrangle 5y ago
I don't think your summary of why Debt was/is popular will hold up to scrutiny. If you investigate with an open mind why people appreciate the book, it won't be merely because it plays up anti-state and anti-biz, anti-bank tropes. There's tons of other books that do that which people do not find comparable insightful. The emphasis of the myth of barter and the rest of the stuff about how debt works is interesting especially because it doesn't set out to make the story simpler. He makes the story far more complex and intriguing. It leaves people with the capacity to hold more lightly to our assumptions about the nature of money and power and the economy. None of these things should be taken as inevitable laws of society or something. We recognize that there are many different ways to think about these things. And the simple part is to stop thinking that we all know some supposedly obvious idea like "we must pay our debts" and to start wondering a lot more about all the complexity and presumptions that go into how debt fits into our relationships and situations. I doubt you'll find readers of Debt who come away extra confident that they now know the answer to how things "really" work. Most readers probably feel more that they have a view of how much there might be out there to understand, and they are willing to be less overconfident and more questioning about it all.
- unmole 5y ago
  Actually I don't completely disagree with your comment. "The book asks big questions" would be a better discription than what I originally wrote. The book makes for excellent dinner table conversation. But I stand by my assertion that it does not provide any new perspectives on economics that bear any resemblance to the real world. And if anything, it makes it difficult for the reader to understand the financial system because of its factual inaccuracies.
  - quadrangle 5y ago
    Given that a decently large portion of the book discusses the anthropology of money and debt in a wide array of diverse cultures, the idea of lacking "resemblance to the real world" seems wrong to me. The real world includes all those different situations that are starkly different from the current dominant economic case. The core of the book in my reading is not a description of the dominant financial system. I read it as a discussion of multiple factors that influence how debt can be used in a wide variety of ways in societies. And the parts that discussed our current financial arrangements might not be precise in all regards, but they were still more accurate by my understanding than the wrong-but-common concepts that are asserted by most naive citizens and used in most political rhetoric.
    - unmole 5y ago
      > Given that a decently large portion of the book discusses the anthropology of money and debt in a wide array of diverse cultures, the idea of lacking "resemblance to the real world" seems wrong to me. The real world includes all those different situations that are starkly different from the current dominant economic case. Ignoring the quaint cultural practices of remote tribes does not diminish one's ability to understand the economics of the real world that they live in. Having an inaccurate picture of they actual system they live in on the other hand is far more damaging. > but they were still more accurate by my understanding than the wrong-but-common concepts that are asserted by most naive citizens and used in most political rhetoric. That is a rather low bar. But the book still has quite a few howlers: - US treasury bonds are literally the safest securities on the planet. Graber calls them a debt that will never be paid. - Graber claims that the global status of the dollar is maintained in large part by the fact that it is, again since 1971, the only currency used to buy and sell petroleum, glossing over the fact that the US dollar was the reserve currency since Bretton Woods. He then follows up with what can only be called a conspiracy theory, suggesting that the US invasion of Iraq was possibly motivated by Saddam Hussein's switch to the Euro. - Graber likens the large holdings of US treasures by Western Europe, Japan and Korea to a tribute system which siphons wealth from these supposed client states to the American Empire. But when it comes to China holding vast quantities of the very same treasuries, he says from China's point of view, this is the first stage of a very long process of reducing the United States to something like a traditional Chinese client state.
justin66 5y ago
I haven't read Debt yet but I have a copy in front of me. Yours is the second critique here that seems to be based on a misreading or misunderstanding of the work. You've not fully quoted Adam Smith: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Graeber's refutation, in part: The bizarre thing here is 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 means that customers appealed to their benevolence all the time. There's nothing disingenuous here. Benevolence (mutual trust and an interest in both one's well being and the well being of the other party in the relationship, informed by some knowledge of one's own needs and the needs of the other party, if you'd prefer to unpack it) is needed to establish a credit relationship. None of this seems like "complete batshit." Some of the stuff that comes later might be, I haven't read it. (have you read it?)
- unmole 5y ago
  I've looked at that section of Debt again and it's even worse than I remember. > You've not fully quoted Adam Smith That's a strange objection because neither did Graber. The lines appear in the middle of a long and dense paragraph from the chapter Of the Principle Which Gives Occasion to the Division of Labour[0]. I don't understand why you feel the second line in anyway changes the point about rational self interest driving specialisation. Have you read the Wealth of Nations? > Benevolence (mutual trust and an interest in both one's well being and the well being of the other party in the relationship, informed by some knowledge of one's own needs and the needs of the other party, if you'd prefer to unpack it) is needed to establish a credit relationship. Sure, it makes sense if you redefine benevolence. FWIW, the dictionary definition[1] is inclination or tendency to help or do good to others; charity. Conflating credit to charity is disingenuous on it's own but Graber doesn't stop there, he says Adam Smith > wants to imagine a world in, which everyone used cash, in part because he agreed with the emerging middle-class opinion that the world would be a better place if everyone really did conduct themselves this way, and avoid confusing and potentially corrupting ongoing entanglements. We should all just pay the money, say "please" and "thank you," and leave the store. Except that this is unfounded speculation by Graber. Or to use Graber's favourite turn of phrase, an attempt at de-legitimization. There is nothing in the actual text where Smith suggests anything of the sort. Further, Graber claims Smith > created the vision of an imaginary world almost entirely free of debt and credit, and therefore, free of guilt and sin Again, there is nothing in the text to support the idea that Smith saw debt as sin. The only kind of debt Smith took exception to is public debt[2] and that was for entirely different reasons. 0: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/adam-smith/the-wealth-of-nations/text/chapter-1-1 https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/adam-smith/the-wealth-of-n... 1: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/benevolence https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/benevol... 2: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/adam-smith/the-wealth-of-nations/text/chapter-5-3 https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/adam-smith/the-wealth-of-n...

by unmole 5y ago

quadrangle 5y ago

I don't think your summary of why Debt was/is popular will hold up to scrutiny. If you investigate with an open mind why people appreciate the book, it won't be merely because it plays up anti-state and anti-biz, anti-bank tropes. There's tons of other books that do that which people do not find comparable insightful. The emphasis of the myth of barter and the rest of the stuff about how debt works is interesting especially because it doesn't set out to make the story simpler. He makes the story far more complex and intriguing. It leaves people with the capacity to hold more lightly to our assumptions about the nature of money and power and the economy. None of these things should be taken as inevitable laws of society or something. We recognize that there are many different ways to think about these things. And the simple part is to stop thinking that we all know some supposedly obvious idea like "we must pay our debts" and to start wondering a lot more about all the complexity and presumptions that go into how debt fits into our relationships and situations. I doubt you'll find readers of Debt who come away extra confident that they now know the answer to how things "really" work. Most readers probably feel more that they have a view of how much there might be out there to understand, and they are willing to be less overconfident and more questioning about it all.

unmole 5y ago
Actually I don't completely disagree with your comment. "The book asks big questions" would be a better discription than what I originally wrote. The book makes for excellent dinner table conversation. But I stand by my assertion that it does not provide any new perspectives on economics that bear any resemblance to the real world. And if anything, it makes it difficult for the reader to understand the financial system because of its factual inaccuracies.
- quadrangle 5y ago
  Given that a decently large portion of the book discusses the anthropology of money and debt in a wide array of diverse cultures, the idea of lacking "resemblance to the real world" seems wrong to me. The real world includes all those different situations that are starkly different from the current dominant economic case. The core of the book in my reading is not a description of the dominant financial system. I read it as a discussion of multiple factors that influence how debt can be used in a wide variety of ways in societies. And the parts that discussed our current financial arrangements might not be precise in all regards, but they were still more accurate by my understanding than the wrong-but-common concepts that are asserted by most naive citizens and used in most political rhetoric.
  - unmole 5y ago
    > Given that a decently large portion of the book discusses the anthropology of money and debt in a wide array of diverse cultures, the idea of lacking "resemblance to the real world" seems wrong to me. The real world includes all those different situations that are starkly different from the current dominant economic case. Ignoring the quaint cultural practices of remote tribes does not diminish one's ability to understand the economics of the real world that they live in. Having an inaccurate picture of they actual system they live in on the other hand is far more damaging. > but they were still more accurate by my understanding than the wrong-but-common concepts that are asserted by most naive citizens and used in most political rhetoric. That is a rather low bar. But the book still has quite a few howlers: - US treasury bonds are literally the safest securities on the planet. Graber calls them a debt that will never be paid. - Graber claims that the global status of the dollar is maintained in large part by the fact that it is, again since 1971, the only currency used to buy and sell petroleum, glossing over the fact that the US dollar was the reserve currency since Bretton Woods. He then follows up with what can only be called a conspiracy theory, suggesting that the US invasion of Iraq was possibly motivated by Saddam Hussein's switch to the Euro. - Graber likens the large holdings of US treasures by Western Europe, Japan and Korea to a tribute system which siphons wealth from these supposed client states to the American Empire. But when it comes to China holding vast quantities of the very same treasuries, he says from China's point of view, this is the first stage of a very long process of reducing the United States to something like a traditional Chinese client state.

justin66 5y ago

I haven't read Debt yet but I have a copy in front of me. Yours is the second critique here that seems to be based on a misreading or misunderstanding of the work. You've not fully quoted Adam Smith: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Graeber's refutation, in part: The bizarre thing here is 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 means that customers appealed to their benevolence all the time. There's nothing disingenuous here. Benevolence (mutual trust and an interest in both one's well being and the well being of the other party in the relationship, informed by some knowledge of one's own needs and the needs of the other party, if you'd prefer to unpack it) is needed to establish a credit relationship. None of this seems like "complete batshit." Some of the stuff that comes later might be, I haven't read it. (have you read it?)

unmole 5y ago
I've looked at that section of Debt again and it's even worse than I remember. > You've not fully quoted Adam Smith That's a strange objection because neither did Graber. The lines appear in the middle of a long and dense paragraph from the chapter Of the Principle Which Gives Occasion to the Division of Labour[0]. I don't understand why you feel the second line in anyway changes the point about rational self interest driving specialisation. Have you read the Wealth of Nations? > Benevolence (mutual trust and an interest in both one's well being and the well being of the other party in the relationship, informed by some knowledge of one's own needs and the needs of the other party, if you'd prefer to unpack it) is needed to establish a credit relationship. Sure, it makes sense if you redefine benevolence. FWIW, the dictionary definition[1] is inclination or tendency to help or do good to others; charity. Conflating credit to charity is disingenuous on it's own but Graber doesn't stop there, he says Adam Smith > wants to imagine a world in, which everyone used cash, in part because he agreed with the emerging middle-class opinion that the world would be a better place if everyone really did conduct themselves this way, and avoid confusing and potentially corrupting ongoing entanglements. We should all just pay the money, say "please" and "thank you," and leave the store. Except that this is unfounded speculation by Graber. Or to use Graber's favourite turn of phrase, an attempt at de-legitimization. There is nothing in the actual text where Smith suggests anything of the sort. Further, Graber claims Smith > created the vision of an imaginary world almost entirely free of debt and credit, and therefore, free of guilt and sin Again, there is nothing in the text to support the idea that Smith saw debt as sin. The only kind of debt Smith took exception to is public debt[2] and that was for entirely different reasons. 0: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/adam-smith/the-wealth-of-nations/text/chapter-1-1 https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/adam-smith/the-wealth-of-n... 1: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/benevolence https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/benevol... 2: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/adam-smith/the-wealth-of-nations/text/chapter-5-3 https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/adam-smith/the-wealth-of-n...