John Holbo on debt and baseline communism

Feb 2015

External link

Reciprocity vs. Baseline Communism

“Graeber construes reciprocity narrowly, by way of emphasizing that not everything is it. I see his point, but the result is that consistency requires him to regard things like the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do to you – as iffy cases. The Golden Rule is too subjunctive to guarantee actually equal exchange results, after all. “We are not really dealing with reciprocity here or at best only with reciprocity in the broadest sense” (Chapter 6). The ‘here’ here refers to commons and things every member of the community can call upon others to provide. But it would also seem to cover observances of the Golden Rule.”