Georg Lavander on KPFA re-airing the 2011 talk
Why We Owe: David Graeber on the Origins of Debt
Georg Lavander on KPFA re-airing the 2011 talk recorded by Allan Campbell, producer of People United at KOOP radio in Austin Texas and featured on Bread and Roses Radio 2 Dec 2011
July 2015
Why does debt take priority over people’s lives? Why is it more “moral” to pay back loans? Some old languages refer to debt and guilt with the same word. It appears that any situation of arbitrary inequality starts to blame the victim with the word “debt”. The language of politics becomes the language of debt. One of the most surprising aspects of the research was the entanglement of money with violence. Exact calculations became necessary in legal frameworks in order to calculate fines, penalties and damages. Markets and coins accompanied wars and armies. Money has the potential for violence. Religions started as anti-war movements. Credit instruments have always been most used in transactions. Coinage emerged much later and with it periodic debt crisis and the cancellation of debt. Every period of credit money (as opposed to coinage) had to invent something to protect debtors or cancel the debt. Today is the opposite – protection is set up for the creditors (the IMF). Economically it is an insane idea that nobody should ever default. Debt is a social arrangement. Debt is a promise that can be transferred to third persons and it should be renegotiated as circumstances change. Like politicians who give promises and don’t keep them.