The last few years of crisis politics were a prime example of how on the one hand profits are privatized, while on the other hand losses are socialized. The deep crisis of capitalism has left in its wake a sovereign debt crisis. The answer of the political class has been fiscal consolidation. Finance capital’s claims on returns are guaranteed and collected by the state. The invisible hand of the market is joined by the visible fist of the state. Struggles over state finances will be central battlefields in the next few years.
That is no doubt the reason why the publication of David Graeber’s book Debt: The First 5,000 Years was greeted with euphoria, even by the bourgeois press. In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Frank Schirrmacher wrote that Graeber »opens the reader’s eyes to what’s going on right now,« and furthermore, »Graeber’s text is a revelation, since one is no longer forced to react to the system itself within the system of apparent economic rationality.« Der Spiegel opines: »his book on the nature of debt and its economic and moral basis is already regarded as an anti-capitalist standard work of the new social movements which have emerged during the world economic crisis.« This is in reference to the Occupy protests. Even the chief economist of the Deutsche Bank group reviewed Graber’s book positively in the monthly economic policy journal Wirtschaftsdienst (4/2012) with regard to the question of the future of central banking. Since May 2012, the book has been available in a German edition. Continue reading “Debt and Punishment. A critical review of David Graeber’s ›debt‹. The book is missing an analysis of capitalism”