Graeber and Debt (1)

I have just completed reading a book called "Debt: The First 5000 Years" by David Graeber. The interesting feature of this book is that it is written by an anthropologist, but deals with the issues of economics. If this is good anthropology, I am puzzled by it. I am not sure if all anthropologists write like this, but this book rambles from topic to topic in a very disjointed way for nearly 500 pages. I felt like a thorough editing would have reduced it to a more readable size.

I also found his approach economics quite strange. He seemed to create a lot of straw men and knocked them down without much point. He would state an economic theory, in a slightly twisted way, and then show that things did not operate in that way in some society.

Graeber’s approach to markets and the free exchange of goods and services is odd. He assumes that in most exchanges one person is ripping the other off. He does not understand that a free exchange only takes place, if both parties get something. That want more than what they had before. If that is not the case, it was not a free exchange.

Graeber puts a lot of effort into showing that Adam Smith ignored credit transactions and over emphasised cash transactions, without seeming to understand that cast is critical to what Smith was saying about free markets.