30:10 - I think Marx summarizes this well, _“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.”_ This feedback loop between the objective/material and the subjective/ideal (in Graeber's reframing, how the economic/material environment shapes that moral/ideological component) famously constitutes what is known as "dialectical materialism" in marxism, basically the foundation of understanding history as a holistic process (aka "process metaphysics") between zero-sum tidal material forces that fuel a society's "mode of production" (ie class, defined in terms of ownership/control of material property), etc. etc.
I like your approach to this subject. It's very refreshing to see this type of analysis of Eurocentric economy. Capitalism is morphing into *Technofeudalism* Yanis Varoufaikis talks about this extensively.
@@EepyBnnuy Privatized money is what we have today. Banks create dollars and they are privately owned. The same owners of the Si Fi banks also own the Federal Reserve. Plus, hedge funds, pension funds and so on are the major creditors for developing nations' debt - for example Argentina.
@@EepyBnnuy yeah. Although "crypto" has a lot of the same trappings as fiat. Centrally controlled, monetary system easy changed. That's why Bitcoin is the only one worth taking seriously.
Maybe she actually refers to credit economy. This can exist whether you have fiat or not. Rapid expansion of credit that's not connected to increasing economic output tends to lead too an economic crash. Fiat or not.
3400 BC Sumerian had a highly developed economic system, we even have writings talking about dodging taxes, they also had a highly developed sense of religion in an urbanised environment. It is also the case that with today's society, the more remote you are the less useful is money, or more accurately less transferable.
Graeber's view is very Neitchean. I'm thinking particularly regarding "moral thinking" and the elites view of the underclass at the end of the Axial Age.
You confuse the timeline. Interest calculation happen in Summer before two millennia BC, by that time Summer is the state with money, markets, banks and it wages wars - but no coins yet. Interest is used as profit sharing mechanism and has nothing to do with enforcing morality. The periodic debt forgiveness in Near East happens not because of revolution but because of degradation of public infrastructure and inability to wage war during debt crisis. Then at 8th BC Greece emerges from its dark age, takes over practice of interest calculation from NE merchants, but refuses to do debt forgiveness on principal. It is then coins are invented first as a means to forgive debts in Agean and later become symbol of debts which must never be forgiven. All of this is in the Debt5000 book but its compressed there. More details on origin of interest can be found in Michael Hudson "And forgive them their debts" more on rise of humanistic religions and wars of axial age in "Collapse of Antiquity". Research of Michael Hudson was a basis for David Graeber's account of of Summer and rise of interest.
Hello chaps, just a little confused about the 8th BC bit - I assume you don't mean 8th Century BC, so what timescales are we looking at for these events?
@@jamesportrais3946 the book conspicuously named "Debt the first 5000 years". The story begins somewhere around 2900BC, but this is a story of Near East (the Sumer and the Accad). At around the 8th century BC merchants from NE met Greeks (presumably at the island of Samos), the merchants brought trade goods and advanced them to Greeks on conditions of interest bearing loans (same logic that guided their own contract with the temple back at home). This is how interesting bearing debt arrived in Greece. Then, around the 7th century BC Greeks invent coins and practice quickly spreads through the world. The author of the video picks up a story here, in the 7th century and the beginning of the economy of coins.
@@flashvoid Fabulous answer - thanks! But what about sea shells? Surely sea shells have been regardable as currencies in countless places and countless times - perhaps into pre-history? Could/should they not be classed as coinage?
@@jamesportrais3946 Yes. Primitive currencies. This was one of the origins of David's insight into the economy but it's all collected in a different book - Towards the Anthropological theory of value. It's a heavy academic read unlike debt but immensely rewarding if you manage to dig through it. In the end primitive currencies are a misnomer - they never really used as a currency. If you want a teaser look at the North American story. Wampum. The only people who used this primitive currency to buy beer and pay taxes - were Europeans. The Iroquois, who are usually portrayed as primitive in this story, did exchange it from Europeans but it had only two kinds of uses inside. Between different tribes it was a mode of tribute and within a tribe it was a medium of politics - they didn't have writing and instead weaved it into the pictures to illustrate words at speeches.
I'd like you to consider the case of Carthage. Carthage had a largely mercenary army, coinage and slavery. Its religion and ideology had nothing to do with Axial Age religions and were not developing in that direction. The Carthaginians were notoriously hostile to Greek (and Greco-Roman) philosophy; this may be the most distinguishing feature of their society. Then again, possibly it was their insistence on the use of coinage. A major culture, with similar economic background, was growing in a completely different direction. Your theory needs to explain that.
If you went to the subreddit. You missed the big part and sharing how most people are doing it to pay down student debt, and their mortgage, then quit doing OE. Is it not better to have a workforce who is not stressed about paying back debt (which is much higher than previous generations), and can enjoy life outside of work which then helps them be more productive at work?
If the concepts of nuggets of wisdom is a legitimate characterization of isolated thinker/Philosophers, then the true value of the nugget goes away with the individual Philosophers. This is why there's no substitute for genuine scientific reduction that can overcome the illusion of separation delusion that religionists make into monstrous abuses of truth.
This fills in a piece of the ancient mystery puzzle for ms. I was aware of city-states ALWAYS requiring wealth in order to run things, thus the raiding of neigboring city-states to aquir quick wealth. With the inevitable diminishing returns they had to turn inward and exploit their own citizens thru usury to enhance their coffers. The Code of Hammurabi legitimizes the legal code regarding the ownership and rights/responsibility of slavery. Usury has rose and fallen ever since, currently it is on the rise again. With the exhaustion of the populations wealth the ruling elite quickly fall back to old habits/exploitations, with the advantage of disttraction the people with another of many external threats. Great video, Thanks 👍🤔
@@lowersaxon You say that, like you know the future. Bitcoin is not slow. ineffective? you can send millions around the world without a third party, prone to wild manipulations? True but what currency isn't
1:37 'practices that played off of the contrasting strategy' - it's not fight per se - that's the thing. It's ambiguous interaction - and what if we kept it free from characterization? Minimized that part?
2:06 the dark ages? How about murky? Still grasping about for an orientation, exactly what to do with this new found religion? I mean, you wanted a map (some guidance), then you get to have second thoughts about the map you came up with, right? And the process never stops from there
Interesting theory, and David Graeber has many followers. Worth considering seriously. Also, thanks for the brilliant presentation of the digest here, on it's own worth watching. So much on RUclips is paraphrase, this adds dimensions for busy viewers!
@32:49 Islam doesn't forbid interest/usury the Qur'an prohibits economic exploitation which it terms Riba. The mythology of interest-Riba equivalency, which persists till today, began 300 years after the Qur'an was revealed by the Hanafi schooled scholar al-Jassas, per Prof. M. O. Farooq's peer reviewed articles on this subject. What the video and David Graber also get wrong is there was a massive rise in literacy throughout the Muslim areas of the world during the dark ages to the extent more books were produced in this era therein than in all other areas combined until the advent of the printing press.
In the bible it says that you shall offer your slaves freedom after 7 years. If they answer that they want to stay, you can keep them as slaves for the rest of their life without offering them freedom again.. I believe it was the raise of humanism and not religion that ended the slavery.
Humanism is just secular Christianity and was literally just another form of Cultural Christianity with extra Classicism (Greece and Rome) until about the French Revolution.
@@RuthvenMurgatroyd No, humanism is a human thing, if you are religious or not. I am a atheist and do not need a "holy" book to tell me if something is wrong to do. If you honestly believe you need a book to tell you it is wrong to murder your neighbour, i don`t know what to say. "Christian values" is not at all typical Christian, they are typical human. Its human to value a traditional family for example. But the Christians say it is so to sell their religion. Just like it is not "The American dream" to have success more then it is the dream of most humans on this planet, but it make the Americans feel that they are better then the rest of the planet. Most people are locked in the box their nation and religious propaganda put them in, to believe they are better then "the other".
@@HrRezpatex To understand the American dream you have to understand the prospects the average lower class European had for social mobility up until just recently after the second world war let alone non-Europeans. There is a reason so many people from so many nations chose America to emigrate to. But back to the main point, that might be true for you at an individual level but you're completely ignoring the historical development of humanism because, I can only assume, you are either completely ignorant of it or know that it corroborates my first post.
@@RuthvenMurgatroyd You are free to believe i am completely ignorant. You are also free to believe in the invisible man in the sky. And i know history, real history.
@@HrRezpatex Christianity is based on internal contradictions that can never be resolved but recursively propel the Christian forward. You've already found your resolution whether it's nihilism, asceticism, hedonism, etc. Your life is literally meaningless.
Who defeated slavery "White Christian men". Islam and Judaism didn't get rid of slavery, neither did any other religion outside the European diaspora the anti slavery movement was a uniquely European Christian one everyone else had slaves with islam and judaism explcitly encouraging it, you should read their books sometime.
Yeah, "White Christians" were also the only people who wrote Jim Crow laws and lynched people because of their race (something they cannot change, unlike religion), a food for thought I guess
Political and social scientist must stop to justify their theories on the basis of history. From a historiographic perspective this monocausal explanatory model is just wild and hardly defenseble in its extremely huge scope.
DARK AGES 😂😂😂 go in Naples, and see most famous exhibit - "Il Cristo Velato" (The Veiled Christ); a remarkable piece of sculpture by Giuseppe Sammartino. Sculpted from a single piece of marble, the work shows a dead Christ covered in a veil that almost feels life-like...
The religions didn't beat the complex. The classical liberal scientific community moved the power to the merchants. The problem is that the militaries adjusted in concert with said merchants. i.e. fascist merchantilism. Religion lost completely.
I KNEW IT! Middle management is the eternal beast that the second coming of Christ is prophesized to defeat leading us all into salvation by means of freedom from micro management. YES! I'M SO EXCITED! Edited to add that I'm subscribed now.
And then you start claiming communitarianism is the way 🖕 Talk about bankers domination and corruption of scoiety and then I'll be interested. Paradigm shift is just that - a paradigm. Get over yourself, we have not changed since the days of Noah.
Attention ladies. if you’re not talking about the Military-Coinage-Slavery complex on the first date then it’s not gunna work out 😂😂
Hah!
Word
She sets the bar too high
"Let's keep in mind we're talking about paradigm shift in economics governance and knowledge systems."
Swoon
😂
A 'true' reflection of social reality, I'm still laughing 😃
This was absolutely fascinating. Thank you for breaking this down into an understandable format.
30:10 - I think Marx summarizes this well,
_“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.”_
This feedback loop between the objective/material and the subjective/ideal (in Graeber's reframing, how the economic/material environment shapes that moral/ideological component) famously constitutes what is known as "dialectical materialism" in marxism, basically the foundation of understanding history as a holistic process (aka "process metaphysics") between zero-sum tidal material forces that fuel a society's "mode of production" (ie class, defined in terms of ownership/control of material property), etc. etc.
Historical Materialism, NOT Dia Mat!
@@lowersaxoncan you elaborate?
happy to see an economist who actually knows history and one who actually read Graeber
Right
hell yes! thank you so much!
I'll probably still reread the book, but I am so very happy you are doing this series
I like your approach to this subject. It's very refreshing to see this type of analysis of Eurocentric economy. Capitalism is morphing into *Technofeudalism* Yanis Varoufaikis talks about this extensively.
Im more of a Theocratic Decentralized Imperialist myself.
😎
literally the best channel on youtube
The credit economy you're referring to is privatized money. We have a centralized fiat banking system currently.
The fact most people have forgotten this and don't realize this is a root cause of corporatism is insane.
Would privatized money be like crypto?
@@EepyBnnuy Privatized money is what we have today. Banks create dollars and they are privately owned. The same owners of the Si Fi banks also own the Federal Reserve. Plus, hedge funds, pension funds and so on are the major creditors for developing nations' debt - for example Argentina.
@@EepyBnnuy yeah. Although "crypto" has a lot of the same trappings as fiat. Centrally controlled, monetary system easy changed. That's why Bitcoin is the only one worth taking seriously.
Maybe she actually refers to credit economy. This can exist whether you have fiat or not.
Rapid expansion of credit that's not connected to increasing economic output tends to lead too an economic crash. Fiat or not.
3400 BC Sumerian had a highly developed economic system, we even have writings talking about dodging taxes, they also had a highly developed sense of religion in an urbanised environment. It is also the case that with today's society, the more remote you are the less useful is money, or more accurately less transferable.
Indeed, we have not changed since the days of Noah. This is self important communitarian drivel.
This was very interesting, thanks Ashley! So many parallels to our current economic system and it helps me understand how we got here.
I think this might me my favourite RUclips channel , sharing the same interests and philosophy of how things work.
Professor Michael Hudson has a series of both textbooks and academic papers on debt, debt jubilees, and Religion.
Graeber's view is very Neitchean. I'm thinking particularly regarding "moral thinking" and the elites view of the underclass at the end of the Axial Age.
I've started Seeing Like a State, but havne't finished it yet.
One of my favourite authors. Thank you for analyzing it!!
I just picked this up again. Yesterday. Perfect timing.
Is populus a technical term? I would have expected "populace".
This is nerd asmr right?
Excellent summary of a fascinating theory. I'm eager to get a copy and dig in for myself!
Thanks!
You confuse the timeline. Interest calculation happen in Summer before two millennia BC, by that time Summer is the state with money, markets, banks and it wages wars - but no coins yet.
Interest is used as profit sharing mechanism and has nothing to do with enforcing morality. The periodic debt forgiveness in Near East happens not because of revolution but because of degradation of public infrastructure and inability to wage war during debt crisis.
Then at 8th BC Greece emerges from its dark age, takes over practice of interest calculation from NE merchants, but refuses to do debt forgiveness on principal. It is then coins are invented first as a means to forgive debts in Agean and later become symbol of debts which must never be forgiven.
All of this is in the Debt5000 book but its compressed there. More details on origin of interest can be found in Michael Hudson "And forgive them their debts" more on rise of humanistic religions and wars of axial age in "Collapse of Antiquity". Research of Michael Hudson was a basis for David Graeber's account of of Summer and rise of interest.
Thanks for the info and book recommendations.
Hello chaps, just a little confused about the 8th BC bit - I assume you don't mean 8th Century BC, so what timescales are we looking at for these events?
@@jamesportrais3946 the book conspicuously named "Debt the first 5000 years". The story begins somewhere around 2900BC, but this is a story of Near East (the Sumer and the Accad). At around the 8th century BC merchants from NE met Greeks (presumably at the island of Samos), the merchants brought trade goods and advanced them to Greeks on conditions of interest bearing loans (same logic that guided their own contract with the temple back at home). This is how interesting bearing debt arrived in Greece. Then, around the 7th century BC Greeks invent coins and practice quickly spreads through the world. The author of the video picks up a story here, in the 7th century and the beginning of the economy of coins.
@@flashvoid Fabulous answer - thanks! But what about sea shells? Surely sea shells have been regardable as currencies in countless places and countless times - perhaps into pre-history? Could/should they not be classed as coinage?
@@jamesportrais3946 Yes. Primitive currencies. This was one of the origins of David's insight into the economy but it's all collected in a different book - Towards the Anthropological theory of value. It's a heavy academic read unlike debt but immensely rewarding if you manage to dig through it.
In the end primitive currencies are a misnomer - they never really used as a currency.
If you want a teaser look at the North American story. Wampum. The only people who used this primitive currency to buy beer and pay taxes - were Europeans.
The Iroquois, who are usually portrayed as primitive in this story, did exchange it from Europeans but it had only two kinds of uses inside. Between different tribes it was a mode of tribute and within a tribe it was a medium of politics - they didn't have writing and instead weaved it into the pictures to illustrate words at speeches.
Would really love a review of Michael Mann’s book “On Wars”. I think you give the best explanations and insights into these very complex topics.
I'd like you to consider the case of Carthage. Carthage had a largely mercenary army, coinage and slavery. Its religion and ideology had nothing to do with Axial Age religions and were not developing in that direction. The Carthaginians were notoriously hostile to Greek (and Greco-Roman) philosophy; this may be the most distinguishing feature of their society. Then again, possibly it was their insistence on the use of coinage. A major culture, with similar economic background, was growing in a completely different direction. Your theory needs to explain that.
A tangent that I find quite interesting is that Rastafarians refer to the enslaving debt-seeking West as Babylon.
If you went to the subreddit. You missed the big part and sharing how most people are doing it to pay down student debt, and their mortgage, then quit doing OE.
Is it not better to have a workforce who is not stressed about paying back debt (which is much higher than previous generations), and can enjoy life outside of work which then helps them be more productive at work?
One of your best videos. Great job!!
If the concepts of nuggets of wisdom is a legitimate characterization of isolated thinker/Philosophers, then the true value of the nugget goes away with the individual Philosophers.
This is why there's no substitute for genuine scientific reduction that can overcome the illusion of separation delusion that religionists make into monstrous abuses of truth.
You miss just answered questions.
I didn't know I was looking for.
😊
19:28
Interesting! Said this way, some current events make more sense.
I have become a student of yours. Thank you for the instruction! 🙏🏾
This fills in a piece of the ancient mystery puzzle for ms.
I was aware of city-states ALWAYS requiring wealth in order to run things, thus the raiding of neigboring city-states to aquir quick wealth. With the inevitable diminishing returns they had to turn inward and exploit their own citizens thru usury to enhance their coffers.
The Code of Hammurabi legitimizes the legal code regarding the ownership and rights/responsibility of slavery. Usury has rose and fallen ever since, currently it is on the rise again.
With the exhaustion of the populations wealth the ruling elite quickly fall back to old habits/exploitations, with the advantage of disttraction the people with another of many external threats.
Great video, Thanks 👍🤔
Oh, dang! 1ne minute in and my curiosity is peaked, but I didn't see Epsd 1ne. Gotta go back so I don't spoil Epsd 2wo.
Catch you on the flip side!
It’s a good thing we have bankruptcy laws today inside of going into slavery
"Different by Design."
Clive Burgess (1997)
Does your channel have a discord
Love the last part of this video about the way the moral memes spread
I fail to see how this applies to that historical period. Coins were around well before.
Great summary. Thank you. IMO, it does not end that well to the millions of modern-day slaves across Asia, Africa, S. America. Etc.
So coming of age with a new form of money “Bitcoin”?
No. Bitcoin will never be the dominant form of money. Bitcoin is slow, ineffective and prone to wild manipulations.
@@lowersaxon You say that, like you know the future. Bitcoin is not slow. ineffective? you can send millions around the world without a third party, prone to wild manipulations? True but what currency isn't
@@thestonemaster81 Bitcoin is slow relative to creditcard network transactions, but fast relative to shippping bars of gold halfway around the world
17:00 Compound system sucking bottom 20% dry.
0:54 the military coinage slavery complex
1:11 antithesis to the military coinage slavery complex
1:37 'practices that played off of the contrasting strategy' - it's not fight per se - that's the thing. It's ambiguous interaction - and what if we kept it free from characterization? Minimized that part?
Reference how Terrence Deacon speaks of energy gradients in incomplete nature. (I am attempting to have mental models, here)
2:06 the dark ages? How about murky? Still grasping about for an orientation, exactly what to do with this new found religion?
I mean, you wanted a map (some guidance), then you get to have second thoughts about the map you came up with, right? And the process never stops from there
2:54 morality violence economics. And our mind with a front row seat!
ha, she said, "Moral gays" 8:08
Interesting theory, and David Graeber has many followers. Worth considering seriously. Also, thanks for the brilliant presentation of the digest here, on it's own worth watching. So much on RUclips is paraphrase, this adds dimensions for busy viewers!
Oh hey, another James C Scott fan!
Jacob Soll is a good next read to Graeber.
Thank god we are transitioning. It's in the stars! Yay!
@32:49 Islam doesn't forbid interest/usury the Qur'an prohibits economic exploitation which it terms Riba. The mythology of interest-Riba equivalency, which persists till today, began 300 years after the Qur'an was revealed by the Hanafi schooled scholar al-Jassas, per Prof. M. O. Farooq's peer reviewed articles on this subject.
What the video and David Graber also get wrong is there was a massive rise in literacy throughout the Muslim areas of the world during the dark ages to the extent more books were produced in this era therein than in all other areas combined until the advent of the printing press.
Thanks, very interesting
Very good video
In the bible it says that you shall offer your slaves freedom after 7 years.
If they answer that they want to stay, you can keep them as slaves for the rest of their life without offering them freedom again..
I believe it was the raise of humanism and not religion that ended the slavery.
Humanism is just secular Christianity and was literally just another form of Cultural Christianity with extra Classicism (Greece and Rome) until about the French Revolution.
@@RuthvenMurgatroyd No, humanism is a human thing, if you are religious or not.
I am a atheist and do not need a "holy" book to tell me if something is wrong to do.
If you honestly believe you need a book to tell you it is wrong to murder your neighbour, i don`t know what to say.
"Christian values" is not at all typical Christian, they are typical human. Its human to value a traditional family for example.
But the Christians say it is so to sell their religion.
Just like it is not "The American dream" to have success more then it is the dream of most humans on this planet, but it make the Americans feel that they are better then the rest of the planet.
Most people are locked in the box their nation and religious propaganda put them in, to believe they are better then "the other".
@@HrRezpatex To understand the American dream you have to understand the prospects the average lower class European had for social mobility up until just recently after the second world war let alone non-Europeans. There is a reason so many people from so many nations chose America to emigrate to.
But back to the main point, that might be true for you at an individual level but you're completely ignoring the historical development of humanism because, I can only assume, you are either completely ignorant of it or know that it corroborates my first post.
@@RuthvenMurgatroyd You are free to believe i am completely ignorant.
You are also free to believe in the invisible man in the sky.
And i know history, real history.
@@HrRezpatex Christianity is based on internal contradictions that can never be resolved but recursively propel the Christian forward. You've already found your resolution whether it's nihilism, asceticism, hedonism, etc. Your life is literally meaningless.
Wasn’t it defeated by about a 1000 year dark age?
The New Enlightenment by Ashley... . are you now a professor in charge of your own faculty? If not, you should be.
Thanks Ash
Who defeated slavery "White Christian men".
Islam and Judaism didn't get rid of slavery, neither did any other religion outside the European diaspora the anti slavery movement was a uniquely European Christian one everyone else had slaves with islam and judaism explcitly encouraging it, you should read their books sometime.
Yeah, "White Christians" were also the only people who wrote Jim Crow laws and lynched people because of their race (something they cannot change, unlike religion), a food for thought I guess
Political and social scientist must stop to justify their theories on the basis of history. From a historiographic perspective this monocausal explanatory model is just wild and hardly defenseble in its extremely huge scope.
Maybe read the book
DARK AGES 😂😂😂 go in Naples, and see most famous exhibit - "Il Cristo Velato" (The Veiled Christ); a remarkable piece of sculpture by Giuseppe Sammartino.
Sculpted from a single piece of marble, the work shows a dead Christ covered in a veil that almost feels life-like...
The religions didn't beat the complex. The classical liberal scientific community moved the power to the merchants. The problem is that the militaries adjusted in concert with said merchants. i.e. fascist merchantilism. Religion lost completely.
I KNEW IT! Middle management is the eternal beast that the second coming of Christ is prophesized to defeat leading us all into salvation by means of freedom from micro management. YES! I'M SO EXCITED!
Edited to add that I'm subscribed now.
PS thank the Romans Gravitas
And then you start claiming communitarianism is the way 🖕
Talk about bankers domination and corruption of scoiety and then I'll be interested. Paradigm shift is just that - a paradigm. Get over yourself, we have not changed since the days of Noah.
Graeber really did make Jared Diamond look like an idiot. And I'm here for it!!!
It's just a simulation. How can anyone trust people who write about history especially with an ideological drive in mind?
@@tuckerbugeater , And that's why Diamond was such an idiot.
@@tuckerbugeater everyone is eating from the garbage can of ideology, my guy