ations and Nationalism (journal)

From, the nation is not the cause, but the result of the state. It is the state t
hat creates the nation, not the nation the state. Every state is an artificial mec
hanism imposed upon [people] from above by some ruler, and it never pursues any
other ends but to defend and make secure the interests of privileged minorities
within society. Nationalism has never been anything but the political religion of
the modern state. [Nationalism and Culture, p. 200 and p. 201] It was created to
reinforce the state by providing it with the loyalty of a people of shared lingu
istic, ethnic, and cultural affinities. And if these shared affinities do not ex
ist, the state will create them by centralising education in its own hands, impo
sing an official language and attempting to crush cultural differences from the pe
oples within its borders.
This d in Spain for about 10 months, the Ukranian Free Territory for 3 years, an
d arguably the Paris Commune for 2 months.
is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.
5
Debt: The First 5,000 Years book review (self.bestofthefray)
submitted 5 years ago by bright_viragomarch weather, lousy
A friend of mine recently asked what our 9.5 year old kids will think of war, as
the US has been at war in Afghanistan/Iraq their entire lives. My answer, after
reading David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years
, would be war=debt and debt=war and that is the way it's always been.
Contrary to current popular opinion, debt is nothing new. We are not more (finan
cially or morally) indebted now than any culture or society has ever been. What
has changed over time, as anthropologist Graeber demonstrates, is the use of vio
lence - not just by states, but also by individuals - to enforce debt slavery an
d debt peonage (modern "wage slavery"). Graber suggests that debt is what happen
s when an exchange between two individuals disrupts the inherent equality betwee
n them. We change when we owe, and that imbalance makes possible some cruel cons
equences (debtors prisons, slavery, death in the Roman coliseum, selling your ch
ildren to pay for a debt owed to a merchant, owing your soul to the company stor
e are just a few of the ways humans have found to punish our debtors.)
Because Graeber is an anthropologist and a radical, he challenges all of the rec
eived wisdom one would expect from a similar tome written by an economist. He de
bunks the popular myth that "once upon a time everyone bartered for everything a
nd then we invented money" by demonstrating that there are absolutely no histori
cal records in the world to back this up. His stories from cultures around the w
orld are truly engaging, though sometimes repetitive. Highly recommend this one.
19 commentsshare
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[ ]Leg-iron 3 points 5 years ago
I'm disturbed by how debt is so heartily encouraged; the more you have, the bett
er your credit rating? WTF?
I tried to play the Game.
Bought a house on three lots in a tiny nowhere-burg, made the payments and paid
the taxes and learned over time that the driving force pushing me to work each d
ay was fear.
Fear that the next financial crisis to come along would be the one to put us und
er. Fear of the stress that barely scrapin' by puts on the husband/ wife dynamic
. Fear of losing everything. Fear of her leaving me because of my financial inad
equacies...
There'd been the accident (medial meniscus tear) at high school football practic
e that snowballed into a staph infection requiring months of pricey treatment. P
ic lines and them whut tends 'em don't grow on trees...
Soon after, a slip-up at work left her with a herniated disc in her lower back.
Prognosis: Lifetime cripple. Proven wrong by a hot-shot back surgeon from outta
town; unfortunately long after the insurance got shut down and she was fired for
"missing too much work".
Christ Almighty! The only way she could negotiate the stairs (her bedroom was on
the upper floor) was to drape herself across my shoulders with her arms around
my neck and I'd pack her either up or down. Even that hurt like hell; how was sh
e supposed to go in and work a shift sorting freight?
The Jeep broke down.
Work slowed down. The money slowed down and the plastic took another hit.
Now we're playin' "Who gets paid this time? Who's most P.O'ed?"
This all came to a head in the spring of '08 and, due to a series of strange (an
d bittersweet) events, now owe nobody nothing. No plastic, no loans to pay off.
Flip-side, I don't own much-a nothin' now.
One might wonder as to how the rent gets paid, food and lights-n-heat and intern
et access gotta get paid for somehow...
Folks don't necessarily need to know. Probably wouldn't approve, anyway.
Back to debt; I paid everything off. We didn't default on a single bill.
One might think that this would be just exactly what a lender would be looking f
or; a history of payin' up and no current expenditures to compete with them gett
in' their monthly envelope...
They look at me like I'm a leper. "Why don't you have a credit card any more?" "
Are you sure that you don't have any undisclosed debt?" (What's wrong with you?)
So screw it.
Screw this whole system; it's rigged to take a guy like me, wring his ass dry fo
r twenty five years, and then smugly question his financial stability and close
the door in his face when he does attempt to participate in The Great Owing-game
.
There's ways around the legalities. There's sympathetic sorts that don't need to
use a check to pay fer services rendered, that don't write much down and can ea
sily "lose" a tenant. It's been long enough that I don't garner the suspicions o
f the local constabulary (unlike my younger days) which is a handy trait to have
workin' for ya during certain endeavors...
TL:DR
I'm taking myself out of the Game.
To owe is to be owned.
I'm loathe to put the collar back on.
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[ ]WB2 2 points 5 years ago
Leg...amazing story and I am right there with you buddy. Fear of failure is a hu
ge motivator in the culture of debt. The book in the review is one that should b
e taught in history classes and economics classes everywhere....Although I am a
bit surprised that virago did not bring up Jubilees....well done everyone.
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[ ]bright_viragomarch weather, lousy[S] 2 points 5 years ago
That was my reader's digest review, hoping to spur some discussion. I share Grab
er's desire for a Jubilee
.
One of the tricky things about debt is that we have all this moral baggage on fi
nancial transactions and financial baggage on moral relationships. We have this
concept that people should pay their debts, come hell or high water. But, why, e
xactly? The problem is that, for countries like Haiti, the people there are debt
slaves to France for something they never agreed to, according to Graeber's ana
lysis.
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[ ]WB2 3 points 5 years ago
The term Jubilee is really nothing more than a way of saying "all debts are clea
red, start all over again". In essence, this happens continuously throughout hum
an history in regards to currencies and soveriegn debts. Either through conquest
or decay, national currencies and debts are always cleared sooner or later. The
issue is whether or not the cost of doing this is so great that it destroys the
economic underpinnings of the people involved. Look at what happened in Versail
les afterr WW1. They made Germany pay for the cost of the war which created a mo
nster for them until Hitler stopped paying. They were free again and started the
game all over with a new currency and new books. Many modern nations have done
the same. TARP was the same thing really. The money lost was virtual money, noth
ing was lost but a balance sheet item that in and of itself was completely bogus
. I am not a Ron Paul dude or a gold bug, don't get me wrong. I am merely saying
that at some point the debt is so great relative to your ability to pay it off
that your only recourse is to inflate or default. We are not there yet by any me
ans but if the rightees austerity becomes the way forward, the economy will shri
nk, the costs will grow and the debt could become unmanageable. That is what the
book is really about, the history of debt being created, assumed and then forgi
ven. Been going on since Babylon which is where the term Jubilee all began if I
remember correctly.
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[ ]Leg-iron 1 point 5 years ago
Thanks for your top-post.
Obviously, it pushed one of my "Big Red Buttons", introspection accompanied by v
enting (on you poor folks) is cathartic.
I'm leery of the Jubilee thing.
But then, I'm leery of religion in general.
They keep telling me to be a sheep, "part of the flock"...
Where I come from, sheep are food.
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[ ]WB2 3 points 5 years ago
Leg...the key to understanding your reluctance to a jubilee is that you, myself
and everyone else thinks that paying your debts is part of your sense of honor,
integrity and duty. It is. But then, is it for the folks that truly run our live
s? When my mother had a stroke and was incapable of handling her life, I became
her legal guardian. Making a few calls to her creditors and telling them they we
re out of luck was one of the greatest pleasures of my life. We walked from debt
s to Citibank, a local bank and one other credit card. I told each one they had
no business loaning my mother money when she had zero income for the last 15 yea
rs of her life. They called the manager on every call. I said to each one of the
m "There is nothing to collect, she has no money and I am supporting her. If you
think I am going to pay you first before supporting her, you are nuts." It was
one of the most satisfying things I have ever done. The world kept going.
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[ ][deleted] 5 years ago
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[ ]Leg-iron 1 point 5 years ago
Aye, laddie... e'en ye and me.
It all depends on where one resides on the ol' Food-chain, eh?
"Blessed is the Carnivore, that he may strengthen the Flock by winnowing out the
Weak and Easily Duped..."
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[ ]Leg-iron 2 points 5 years ago*
Thanks.
The frustration (looking back on it) stemmed from having grown up with an unwrit
ten, but firmly entrenched, Ozzy-n-Harriet-ish set of rules that dictate How A M
an Takes Care Of His Family, only to find that the goal-posts have moved and the
rules are now considered quaint and naive.
Although I was a somewhat undisciplined young beast (post-service) and revelled
in the Art of Amok-runnin', I stepped away from the bikes and the patch-wars and
all the craziness that I'd steeped myself in.
I devoted myself to one concept, The Good Husband.
But for a blue-collar mook, with a blue-collar sweetie-n-pups, the Game is rigge
d. When a person's value is judged by how much money that they make for someone
else, and that value is negated because making money for someone else has used t
hat person up, (physically or mentally) ones self-worth takes a pretty serious h
it.
It begins to seem like there's a system in place that's working exactly like the
system-designers want it to; fleece the chump, and hurry! There's another batch
waiting right behind him...
I may sound it, but I ain't bitter. (That's the curse of having a limited intell
ect; one relates to most all situations anecdotally.)
Oddly, once all the physical stuff was sold, donated or thrown away, most all of
the stress went with it. There's something to be said for the ascetic's life; I
live comfortably (sorta) on the $100 or so a week that passes through my beggar
's bowl.
I'd rather wake up from a good night's sleep happy than have a big ol' TV or the
 latest SUV. The good night's sleep is a treasure unto itself!
Jubilee? Pah.
That is more historical proof that those in control (priests in this case) like
to tweak the rules in their favor: "When the field reverts in the Jubilee year i
t shall become holy unto the LORD, as a field set apart; and it shall become own
ed by the priests."
Sounds like another way to skin ol' Joe Farmer out of a couple of hectares o' so
d in the Name o' God.
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[ ][deleted] 5 years ago
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[ ]Leg-iron 2 points 5 years ago
Still feels sorta like Bush's $600 tax rebate; everybody feels good but nothing
really good comes of it.
I'll not disparage the tenets involved, but I'll not ascribe to 'em, either.
I have been taught by bitter experience not to lower my guard in the presence of
perceived Piety.
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[ ]bright_viragomarch weather, lousy[S] 2 points 5 years ago
Sorry, I went back to the basis of the term Jubilee, instead of providing a link
to what it might look like in practical terms today. This should be more applic
able to the discussion at hand
because the current use of that old term doesn't mean giving any of your hectare
s to your local priest :-).
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[ ]bright_viragomarch weather, lousy[S] 2 points 5 years ago
Hey L-I, it was TL, but I read it anyway, and thanks for sharing your story.
To owe is to be owned. Yeah, that's the hell of it. And that we can be/believe t
hat we can be (or others should be) owned at all says something about what debt
does to us. The system is rigged, but it's the devil we know, and so it goes on
and on.
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[ ]Leg-iron 1 point 5 years ago
I do run on, don't I?
Now that I'm out of the cycle, I can't bring myself to jump back in.
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[ ]bright_viragomarch weather, lousy[S] 2 points 5 years ago
We're the same way. Paid cash for our new furnace & AC unit, even got a discount
for doing it.
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[ ][deleted] 5 years ago*
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[ ]bright_viragomarch weather, lousy[S] 2 points 5 years ago
Graeber, quoted in the interview linked by WB2 below: "[in many societies throug
hout history] it's really important to remain in debt to people because debt in
a way is sociology, it is social relationships....There are plenty of societies
where people are giving each other gifts but you always give them back something
a little bit more or a little bit less than they gave you because if you give t
hem an exact equivalent you're really saying I don't want to have anything to do
with you any more."
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[ ]Leg-iron 1 point 5 years ago*
Pssst...
Just outside the text-box, lower right.
"Formatting help".
It da shnizzle, yo.
Edit back:
Yer welcome!
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[ ]WB2 3 points 5 years ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnOqanbHZi4
The author is interviewed by Thom Hartman.
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[ ]bright_viragomarch weather, lousy[S] 2 points 5 years ago
Thank you for that link! I checked the book out of the library and don't have a
copy handy to refresh my memory on some key points.
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[ ]davetoWhat? 3 points 5 years ago
Observation.
Imagine 'botf' as a society.
And then think of the comment of overpaying or underpaying instead of exactly pa
ying the debt, in order to have a reason to remain tethered to your transaction
partner.
This is exactly what we do here. Our tribal instincts (but with posts instead of
chickens and goats).
[e.g. Leg-iron (felt) overpaid you for your post, later felt bad and apologized
for it (i.e. the obligation he left you). Snolly (felt) he underpaid, showed a m
ild bit of embarrassment. etc.]
Or not. You know ..
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[ ]bright_viragomarch weather, lousy[S] 2 points 5 years ago