Debt: The First 5,000 Years

In this chapter, Graeber grapples with how to conceive morality. He starts by exploring what debt is and “how it’s different from other sorts of obligations that human beings might have to one another—which, in turn, means mapping out what those other sorts of obligations actually are” (90). Neither contemporary anthropology, which also holds that moral life comes down to exchange and debt, nor 19th century travelers’ accounts from non-Western countries, which do not tell the perspective of the local inhabitants, offer help with this problem.

For this reason, Graeber creates a new theory. He suggests that there are three moral principles that ground economic relations, all of which occur throughout the world: communism, exchange, and hierarchy.

Graeber defines communism “as any human relationship that operates on the principles of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’” (94). This means that people must help others who are not explicitly enemies when they need it according to their own abilities. This type of obligation occurs throughout human societies—from the Nuer, a pastoralist group in southern Sudan, to teams at Burger King and Exxon Mobile.