From Gift to Debt

This chapter draws together writings in economic anthropology alongside insights from a number of heterodox economists, juxtaposed with the radical critique of capitalism outlined in recent prison writings by Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, to argue that basic concepts of political economy and economics need a radical rethink, in the light of indigenous or “precapitalist” economies. The extreme form of capitalism characteristic of present times needs to be understood as based on debt and war, used by a viciously undemocratic elite to accumulate wealth and power. A rethinking of economics is happening to some extent anyway, though only at the margins of the discipline, with minimal impacts on policy. What this chapter offers is some insights from anthropology and indigenous perspectives, to suggest that the long journey into today's debt-based ultra-capitalism emerged out of systems of reciprocity or fair exchange that are characteristic of indigenous or tribal societies, that we need to rediscover and basically, in some form, return to

Debt · Economics · Law and economics · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Development, Ethics, and Society · Turkey's Politics and Society · Finance