Graeber’s Cycles of History

In 2011, at the height of what became known as the Great Recession and in the aftermath of the European debt crisis, David Graeber published his bestselling Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Graeber’s broad-ranging exploration of debt and emphatic rejection of conventional economic wisdom could hardly have been any timelier, and the book elicited a wide response both in academia and beyond. Within the study of the ancient world, the volume under review is one of the first comprehensive and explicit responses to Graeber’s ideas. In the following review essay, we offer critical reflections on this volume, as well as on Graeber and where his ideas have taken us so far.While the years following the 2008 global financial crisis witnessed an outpouring of popular publications on money and economics, Graeber’s Debt stood out, not only due to its stimulating and persuasive style but also by providing an anthropologically informed, historical perspective going back to early Eurasian antiquity. As such, it has done an impressive job propagating scholarship on money, debt, and the moral economy of the ancient world to a wider audience. However, much more than providing a historical exposition, the main purpose of Debt is programmatic: It offers an ideologically informed call to rethink the concept of financial debt and its social and political implications in the (anticipated) post-2008 economic order (Graeber 2011: 14–19). Rather than providing a meticulous historical analysis, Graeber uses history as a lens through which to understand tensions in the contemporary political economy (see Joseph 2013: 661–63; also noted by Papaconstantinou in Ch. 10 of the volume under review, 149–50).In particular, Graeber uses the historical record to develop a grand theory according to which credit (virtual money) and cash (physical money) dominate in the economy in alternating cycles. The social meaning of debt and the ways in which it shapes social relations is argued to fluctuate between socially embedded forms of debt (in times of credit), conceptualized within socially embedded economies, and impersonal and quantifiable debt (in times of cash) regarded as characteristic of market economies. Following the dominance of virtual credit money in the early agrarian empires of Eurasia, Graeber observes a fundamental shift to cash and impersonal debt during the Axial Age (800 BCE–600 CE) with the invention and spread of coinage, followed by a shift back to virtual credit during the Middle Ages (600–1450 CE). For the Axial Age, the confluence of broader changes in economic life is explained by Graeber with reference to what he calls a “military-coinage-slavery complex,” an adaptation of the phrase “military-coinage complex” created by sociologist Geoffrey Ingham (2004: 99) echoing Eisenhower’s 1961 warning against the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.”1 Within this military-coinage-slavery complex, imperial expansionism was sustained by markets and metal coinage, which in turn relied on slave labor for working the mines (Graeber 2011: 229, 248). Coined money stimulated the spread of market logic throughout society which, Graeber argues, cannot be seen in isolation from the rise of Axial Age materialist philosophies.It is in Graeber’s emphasis on the Axial Age, a chronological label used by Karl Jaspers to link the emergence of contemporary philosophical movements in Greece, India, and China in the mid-first millennium BCE (Jaspers 1949),2 that Mediterranean antiquity receives considerable attention in Graeber’s historical narrative. While Graeber does not aim to provide a comprehensive analysis of debt and economic modes of thought in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, the prominence he gives to these societies within his interpretive framework provides ample material for specialists to discuss. It offers an opportunity for historians of antiquity to engage in broader debates regarding the long-term conceptualization of money and debt. This has the potential to enrich our own specialist discourses while also reaffirming the relevance of our discipline and perspective to anthropologists and historians of other periods who are interested in these themes.In this sense, the volume edited by J. Weisweiler is a more than welcome contribution. It explores how the diverse ideas and theories in Debt could be relevant for historians of antiquity, putting Graeber’s ideas regarding the role of money and debt in the Axial Age to the test through a series of historical case studies. A programmatic introductory chapter by Weisweiler precedes ten chapters, each with a different historical focus, ranging from first-millennium BCE Babylonia, through Greece and Rome, to the early Islamic world and early medieval Europe. In this way, the volume provides a chronologically, geographically, and culturally diverse canvas that transcends specific disciplines and is broadly equipped to assess Graeber’s grand narrative for the ancient world.The publication of this volume provides a chance for us to reflect on Graeber’s ideas and their impact so far on our field. To that end, we will first offer our thoughts on Weisweiler’s engagement and will then explore new possibilities for a critical dialogue.Considering Debt’s popular success, one could well ask why it took our field so long to respond to its ideas. The honest answer would be that its impact on the study of ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern economies has been surprisingly small.3 True, the more theoretical and anthropological approaches to ancient economies or money in the earlier chapters (2–7) of Debt have been referenced by historians of antiquity (e.g., Heymans 2021; Tinguely 2024; Murray and Bernard 2024). To our knowledge, however, there appears to have been no engagement with Graeber’s historical model of debt, making Weisweiler’s volume a relevant and perhaps overdue response.Both Graeber’s anthropological approach and his historical model have provided inspiration for Weisweiler’s volume. In the introduction, Weisweiler formulates two main goals: first, to “test the accuracy of this grand narrative of ancient history” and second, to “offer a history of ancient credit systems that takes seriously the dual nature of debt as both a quantifiable economic reality and an immeasurable social obligation” (2 italics original). This approach is adopted, Weisweiler explains, to offer a counterweight to the sway that New Institutional Economics (NIE) has held over the study of the ancient economy since the 2000s (5–9).4This explicit framing of the volume in opposition to NIE is an important step toward a broader debate about our conceptualization of ancient economies, as there has been little criticism of NIE from the perspective of ancient history (notable exceptions are Viglietti 2018, 2021, 2024; Bernard 2022). Graeber can indeed be read as an alternative to NIE, with its emphasis on market mentalities, and can thus function as a source of inspiration in this respect. However, in showing where Graeber’s ideas might lead us, it is equally relevant to understand where he was coming from. Graeber’s work was also part of a broader discourse of economic anthropology, and his conception of the economy as always navigating on a spectrum between the market-driven and the socially embedded takes inspiration from the work of anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins, Chris Gregory, and Keith Hart (in particular Sahlins 1972 2004; Gregory 1982 2015, 1997; Hart 1986; Hart wrote an afterword for the volume under review Ch. 12). A thorough discussion of Debt would then also have benefitted from an active engagement with the broader discourse on exchange, debt, and money (e.g., Appadurai 1986; Bloch and Parry 1989; Humphrey and Hugh-Jones 1992).The volume under review does not engage with this discourse, presumably because it emphasizes the historical framework laid out in Debt. The introduction focuses on the military-coinage-slavery complex that according to Graeber was typical of the Axial Age, though this is rebranded by Weisweiler as the “Currency-Slavery-Warfare complex” (Ch. 1). In general, Weisweiler is positive about what this framework can bring to the study of the ancient world (although he also offers useful criticism, see below). He especially highlights how Graeber’s model helps us to understand the differences between the monetized economies of the Axial Age on the one hand and less intensive modes of exchange in the preceding and following periods on the other, as well as how it helps to see warfare and slavery as key features of the political economy of different Axial Age states (16–17).The various contributors to the volume fruitfully use Graeber’s work to reflect on the role of debt and money in various historical and cultural contexts throughout antiquity. It should be noted, however, that engagement with Graeber in the chapters is highly variable. Some authors take on a specific aspect, such as R. Seaford, whose chapter is almost the only one to engage with Graeber’s interest in the interaction between Axial Age spirituality and the materialism of monetization (Ch. 3, see also Ch. 8; this is not surprising since Graeber 2011: 244–47 relies strongly on Seaford 2004 as well). Others, notably R. Payne and A. Rio, focus on the Axial Age as a chronological concept in relation to materialism and the Currency-Slavery-Warfare complex, although they do not engage with the theoretical and historical objections against such an Age in the first place (Chs. 8 and 11; see n. 2). Others again seem more interested in the anthropological aspects of Graeber’s work, especially his idea of debt as both a quantifiable economic reality and an immeasurable social obligation—and thus they connect better to the volume’s second professed aim.Therefore it seems to us that Weisweiler is too optimistic about the volume’s “test” of Graeber’s historical model. As a result of the variability in the way Graeber’s work is addressed, the overall analysis is rather diffuse. In addition, we are critical regarding the selection of case studies and the degree to which these enable an effective assessment of Graeber’s model. Certain periods or regions that would have been very relevant for putting Graeber’s reconstruction of the Axial Age to the test are lacking in the volume. Of course, a volume of this scope cannot possibly provide full coverage of the geography and time frame under discussion. However, we believe that the omission of chapters scrutinizing the transition into the Axial Age, especially in the context of coin producing societies—early Greece, Republican Rome and the Hellenistic world—weaken the volume’s ability to critically evaluate the validity of Graeber’s historical thesis. This early period plays a central role in Graeber’s reconstruction of how debt and money change in the Axial Age and how the military-coinage-slavery complex functions as the mechanism behind this. It would thus seem logical for the start of the Axial Age to have received more attention.5Perhaps more fundamentally, we would have appreciated more critical engagement with Graeber’s concept of an Axial Age characterized by a military-coinage-slavery complex, as part of a framework of cyclical changes in the meaning of debt. Overall, Weisweiler seems to accept this model as having value for historical analysis; it only needs further nuancing and fine-tuning. This accommodation most clearly presents itself in Weisweiler’s adaptation of Graeber’s military-coinage-slavery complex to a Currency-Slavery-Warfare complex. The change in terminology is not explicitly discussed, but it implies a change in focus from Graeber’s emphasis on coinage as the ultimate form of cash to the inclusion of other forms of cash (metal) money, as exemplified in the chapter by R. Pirngruber (Ch. 2). Indeed, in his introduction, Weisweiler draws attention to the existence of monetized market economies typical of the Axial Age that use uncoined precious metal as cash money rather than coinage, such as the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Empires. He posits that “from the seventh century BCE onward Mesopotamian cities reached the same level of ‘deep’ monetization as the most monetized Greek and Roman cities. . . . In this sense, Graeber was correct to observe that there is a link between the formation of impersonal markets, the creation of large territorial states, and the spread of metal currencies” (16), thus widening the scope of Graeber’s model beyond societies that produce coinage.This does not mean that Weisweiler is not critical of Graeber at all. He points out two important problems in Graeber’s historical narrative. First, the Currency-Slavery-Warfare complex does not offer a satisfying explanation for the spread of coinage in the first millennium BCE: while coin production remained limited in Persia, a large territorial empire that made extensive use of mercenaries, it spread quickly in the world of the Greek polis, where both these circumstances were lacking. Second, based on the contributions by Rio (Ch. 11) and A. Papaconstantinou (Ch. 10), he criticizes Graeber’s idea that around 700 CE the typical Axial Age characteristics and their resulting inequalities disappeared. Again, however, these points of critique do not really seem to affect the general model offered by Graeber: they are mainly aimed at accommodating the model, by adjusting the chronology or by focusing on currency rather than coinage as characteristic of the Axial Age.We have two objections to this tacit acceptance of Graeber’s model. The first is that once we accept the substance of the model—which ultimately serves an ideological argument—this severely limits critical and independent historical analysis. Graeber presents the Axial Age as the period in which impersonal and quantifiable debts first become a common phenomenon: the start of a development that, with breaks and interruption, still shapes current attitudes to debt. When accepting this framework, specialists of a historical period or region can only further or chronological of antiquity have more to however, as of the contributors In draws attention to the that such a model for historical and points out that we to how such new ideas to be in different historical circumstances in Papaconstantinou of engagement with the of historical as one of the main of the model by Graeber states that, since Graeber history to an it is of central that historians his framework of alternating periods with attitudes to debt can be of this us to a second The overall acceptance of Graeber’s ideas critical assessment of within his Weisweiler both accept Graeber’s model of historical between and socially embedded economies (Graeber 2011: and that debt can be a quantifiable economic reality and an immeasurable social at the same time (Graeber 2011: However, there is a in Graeber’s work that more explicit discussion. In the first part of Graeber the moral of economic relations and how the main modes of economic interaction that he and are always However, he to the historical discussion of the Axial Age, the market seems to have become a on its Indeed, an important review of Graeber’s work has out this Graeber much of the chapter in which he out this the of these . . . over the following chapters, he this to a in which . . . are by 2013: Papaconstantinou [Ch. also to this Weisweiler’s volume offers a welcome and important engagement with Graeber’s work by historians of antiquity. However, we that this engagement can be by our specialist historical perspective to explore points of rather than accommodating to Graeber’s narrative. In the of this review essay, we offer our own in this For we will to the of cash and coinage and how early forms of cash money the role of coinage in Graeber’s Graeber’s cyclical history of credit the emergence of cash is characteristic of the broader of changes he with the Axial cash is and and more to than socially and impersonal exchange from two historical known and for the role of cash and coinage little attention in Weisweiler’s we to that this of cash is from the idea that cash does not in itself social as was long by in his of the Bloch and Parry we that cash can equally new social or in attention to such implications of money we that the opposition between virtual credit and cash is not to social and the context and of money how cash to its is a key characteristic to Graeber’s earlier theoretical work on the of of value (Graeber 2011: the and of cash in the historical model of Debt rather cash is with coinage, is thought to debt and is a of the Axial does this of cash to change the Axial Age Graeber takes a interest in materialist that seem to with the Axial from the work of Seaford he points out how became with ideas around the time that coinage was and spread (Graeber 2011: Seaford however, is as coinage, other forms of cash that and As the use of money in the Near Weisweiler to Graeber’s military-coinage-slavery complex to a Currency-Slavery-Warfare complex that does not the to coin as a specific cash what do we to the emergence of these philosophical following emphasizes the Great as the the military-coinage-slavery complex into full with his (Graeber 2011: Ingham As also by however, this at a time coinage been in use in the Greek world for at two and in the for much the that coinage time a full of economic this and and what Graeber offers us is an of material forms of money as social as currencies” in or is little for a potential spectrum of forms in between and little interest in the social characteristics of money in a market context or the aspects of social (see Appadurai that a more of early forms of cash money that around the start of the Axial Age can to this First of we have ample of cash money used in contexts where a complex or the existence of markets is not us that the between cash money, and warfare is not and not For uncoined was used as cash money in and early Republican Rome, a society in which were not and slavery was (see on of a slave in little about money use in markets in this early period of Roman but coinage was in the and early it still took a century or so for this society to the of monetization by Weisweiler on early markets and in the Roman on monetization from BCE Indeed, forms of money and early Roman coinage are in contexts and and and that were an important context of use at in the of Roman money and coinage more these early forms of cash that it little to understand money in of a between social and While it is indeed that the material characteristics of cash were to impersonal exchange the production and use of cash are social in For it has been that the introduction of coinage in the Roman world can be as part of a over what at the of political and social forms of or In this coinage was an important for a specific social new of the Roman a this the early Age early forms of cash can be regarded as social and at the same For it is in the context of the of imperial in the century BCE and the of the order that to the use of as an exchange with both social and economic This in large part of or or and is known from with from the This that this of exchange was a specific social with to precious metal who to their social in the new order such for exchange, they were in as well as for their own the for exchange were not cash but of value a social In the Age and of or notably in the form of or and not only a emphasis on precious as the of value but to these and the through which these were Heymans In to the value these of are thus of social and This to the case of where that and other were not by as in general, but because they for the of social 2011: these early forms of cash were not as the result of of economic and are more to to specific social than to a rather (see Heymans and in where there is a level of coinage can also an important role in the creation of social and a of for can indeed be seen to reflect our to as a to economies. the same the used money, they were not in they were that was but of value that through the for around in the were explicitly to their of the the we have on cash in response to Graeber’s emphasis on cash as the form of money in the Axial Graeber’s historical model the impersonal characteristics of we believe that and study of specific historical contexts offers a much and more of the role of cash money in early forms of cash that we have based on historical of their and economic contexts of to that any form of money, is a social rather than a of the social these new forms of cash can be seen to the formation of new social This social is to the of in to other forms of debt. that in the role of money in the first-millennium its material characteristics more than that offered by both Graeber and Weisweiler we are critical of Graeber’s historical that cash and social forms of debt prominence in alternating throughout Eurasian is a between such a grand theory and the specialist discourses from which this theory draws and or criticism can indeed be throughout the contributions to Weisweiler’s volume, especially where the social of debt are different contexts in the Axial the same we are equally critical of the we observe in Weisweiler to Graeber’s framework and his of Axial Age believe that our field can from a more explicitly critical approach to we are to ask what Graeber has to our field. While specialists of the ancient economy might that the historical narrative offered in Debt does not the dominance of NIE within economic history an for to anthropological to this Graeber has in attention to and scholarship that could new and critical into the study of the ancient A more active not or with Graeber but with the broader discipline and he could be for our field and its place within the broader historical