“But if Smith was right, and gold and silver became money through the natural workings of the market completely independently of governments,… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
[A] great embarrassing fact… haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
There are markets extending from Mali, Indonesia, way outside the purview of any one government which operated under civil laws, so contracts… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
Adam Smith actually took all his best ideas and lines from sources from medieval Persia. But one thing he doesn't take is… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
States created markets. Markets require states. Neither could continue without the other, at least, in anything like the forms we would recognize… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“We can observe the process in the very earliest records from ancient Mesopotamia; it finds its first philosophical expression in the Vedas,… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“This is a great trap of the twentieth century: on one side is the logic of the market, where we like to… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
The notion that a society could be regulated entirely by market forces is a utopian fantasy: an impossible dream generated by imagining… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
When you take away the violence from the market, even it starts shifting into something else - not exactly paradise, but it… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“Tally sticks were quite explicitly IOUs: both parties to a transaction would take a hazelwood twig, notch it to indicate the amount… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
Free market ideology - does anyone know where it first comes from? It comes from medieval Islam, and specifically, Shari'a. Because Shari'a… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
People don't have an ongoing relation unless it's a form of debt because everything is an exchange, so ongoing relationships are incomplete exchanges, and… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
I would like, then, to end by putting in a good word for the non-industrious poor. At least they aren’t hurting anyone. Insofar as… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“But if Smith was right, and gold and silver became money through the natural workings of the market completely independently of governments, then wouldn't… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“A revolution on a world scale will take a very long time. But it is also possible to recognize that it is already starting… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“money has no essence. It's not "really" anything; therefore, its nature has always been and presumably always will be a matter of political contention.” — David Graeber Copy Share Image
We don't live in a capitalist totality. Capitalism couldn't survive as a totality anyway. We live in this complex system and we already live… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
The working poor are the people suffering out subprime mortgages and fatal loans and more and more of our money - you know, capitalism… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“Solitary pleasures will always exist, but for most human beings, the most pleasurable activities almost always involve sharing something: music, food, liquor, drugs, gossip,… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“The criminalization of debt, then, was the criminalization of the very basis of human society. It cannot be overemphasized that in a small community,… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
If you imagine that everything is an exchange, then we're supposed to just transact and walk away. If we haven't walked away and we… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
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