Graeber on the real origins of money

A short clip here from the late great David Graeber, recovering some of his material from his work ‘Debt: the first 5000 years’

The following points are important:

• The origin of free markets linked to Islamic history (listen at 24 minutes), an enabling factor of this is shariah law itself which is outside of a ‘state’/government. In addition, because there is no state apparatus fierce competition is not the main driver but transactions are done on the basis of mutual aid.

• The barter story is a myth, no anthropological evidence exists to support this

• The only way two parties can understand an equivalent value is where a monetary system is already is existence thereby assigning some concept of value

• Money’s existence has been linked to violence and war

• The origin of much of Adam Smiths theories have their place in works by Al Ghazali, as well, I may add, Ibn Khaldun