From its complexities emerge a number of simple, vitally significant points-for instance, that states foster markets because “modern money is based on government debt, and that governments borrow money to finance wars.” It’s a book not only of anthropology, of history, of economics, but also of philosophy: to read it is to reconsider your sense of such basic ideas as freedom, guilt, and equality, as well as money, credit, and, of course, debt.

Debt is extraordinarily complicated and erudite - a work of historical synthesis of even greater scope than, say, Fernand Braudel’s three volumes on the development of capitalism between 1400 to 1800 or Perry Anderson’s diptych on Europe’s historical development from antiquity to feudalism (though Graeber is, by trade, an anthropologist rather than a historian). In this case, a little paranoia might not be such a bad thing, but I presume that one of Graeber’s main reasons for writing this remarkable book was the hope that shedding a little light on how money got to be what it is might help transform the system. Writing about the global financial system that, however falteringly, commands the world at present, David Graeber remarks, “In part, these systems work because no one knows how they really work.” No wonder that few things inspire as much persistent paranoia as banking.

Graeber debt