A Review of Michael Hudson’s new book AND FORGIVE THEM THEIR DEBTS
The money lenders don't just want to earn interest on their loans, but they want to get all the collateral too, says Michael Hudson. Their aim is to own everything. They have already bought up most of the world by forcing privatisation on third world countries.
To say that Michael Hudson’s new book And Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure, and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year (ISLET 2018) is profound is an understatement on the order of saying that the Mariana Trench is deep. To grasp his central argument is so alien to our modern way of thinking about civilization and barbarism that Hudson quite matter-of-factly agreed with me that the book is, to the extent that it will be understood, “earth-shattering” in both intent and effect. Over the past three decades, gleaned (under the auspices of Harvard’s Peabody Museum) and then synthesized the scholarship of American and British and French and German and Soviet assyriologists (spelled with a lower-case ato denote collectively all who study the various civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, which include Sumer, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, Babylonia, et al., as well as Assyria with a capital A). Hudson demonstrates that we, twenty-first century globalists, have been morally blinded by a dark legacy of some twenty-eight centuries of decontextualized history. This has left us, for all practical purposes, utterly ignorant of the corrective civilizational model that is needed to save ourselves from tottering into bleak neo-feudal barbarism.
This corrective model actually existed and flourished in the economic functioning of Mesopotamian societies during the third and second millennia B.C. It can be termed Clean Slate amnesty, a term Hudson uses to embrace the essential function of what was called amargi and níg-si-sá in Sumerian, andurārum and mīšarum in Akkadian (the language of Babylonia), šudūtu and kirenzi in Hurrian, para tarnumar in Hittite, and deror (דְּרוֹר) in Hebrew: It is the necessary and periodic erasure of the debts of small farmers — necessary because such farmers are, in any society in which interest on loans is calculated, inevitably subject to being impoverished, then stripped of their property, and finally reduced to servitude (including the sexual servitude of daughters and wives) by their creditors, creditors. The latter inevitably seek to effect the terminal polarization of society into an oligarchy of predatory creditors cannibalizing a sinking underclass mired in irreversible debt peonage. Hudson writes: “That is what creditors really wanted: Not merely the interest as such, but the collateral — whatever economic assets debtors possessed, from their labor to their property, ending up with their lives” (p. 50).
And such polarization is, by Hudson’s definition, barbarism. For what is the most basic condition of civilization, Hudson asks, other than societal organization that effects lasting “balance” by keeping “everybody above the break-even level”?
Unz Review
Hudson shows that the Western way of viewing life and the world is only one of many ways.
ReplyDeleteI have lived in several different countries, as my late father did before me. My own house today has nine bedrooms, plus my own. I have two Mexican tenants, plus seven Mayan tenants from Guatemala. The presence of Mayans was purely by chance, and was not something I planned. One Mayan has his daughter staying with him. Another has his brother temporarily; and another has his son with him temporarily. All the Mayans speak different languages. (There are 21 Mayan languages in all). None speak English; hence everyone in my house, including me, must communicate in Spanish. Linguistic variants among the Maya are separate languages, not merely dialects. I can sort of speak one of them, called Popti (also known as Jakaltek) because it includes a lot of Spanish, but the others are alien to me. One tenant speaks Q'eqchi (pronounced ketch-EEE). Another speaks K’iche’ (pronounced kee-CHAY). Another speaks Mam. I don’t know one word of these.
Anyway my point is that different peoples have different ways of interpreting reality. For the Mayans, reality is cyclical. Mayans focus on the mathematics of eternity, meaning that everything for them is based on time, which is measured in recurring cycles of hundreds and thousands and billions of years. Shamans and healers are called “day keepers” (i.e. guardians of the Mayan calendar) which in its simplest form is divided into 260 days (the time of human fetal gestation).
All of this sounds like primitive mumbo jumbo, but Mayan shamans are sober and sophisticated mathematicians who don’t do drugs.
None of my Mayan tenants practice this stuff. They simply go to work every day, like most other people in the USA, but they explained a few things to me. Mayan culture has some similarities with Chinese culture, including the belief that human civilization is not “above” nature. For Mayans, if we make an enemy of the earth, we make an enemy of our own body, and thereby doom ourselves.
Long before the Spaniards came, Mayan civilization was ended by a prolonged drought. The Mayans’ ancestors were the Olmecs, which flourished about 1,000 BC.
All I’m saying is that modern Westerners imagine that their view of the reality, with parasitic creditors reigning supreme, is the only possible view. Few Westerners can imagine anything outside their pathetic little cocoons, since they have never traveled outside their little comfort zone.
My first exposure to an alien reality was India, where I lived for 2 ½ years. That was a bit of a shock at first, but now it’s no big deal to me. I even leaned to speak Hindi, but I have since forgotten it. (I have forgotten Russian too. If you learn a language in your adulthood, rather than your childhood, you must use it every day, or you will lose it.)
I was looking at some reader comments at the Unz review blog, and I was struck by how limited and parochial most of the comments were.
If we are to survive, we must break out of the current mind-set. Ancient cultures can give us guidance in this.
By the way, don't assume that I regard all Native American tribes as "noble savages."
ReplyDeleteI don't.
For example, I've never been a fan of the bloodthirsty Aztecs. The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs was karmic justice.
I'm a vegan. I will not kill a fly or a cockroach or a tree unless I think it's absolutely necessary. Life is too precious to throw it away.
ReplyDeleteAnyway I shall shut up about this.
“How many people are vegan in the US?
ReplyDeleteThe “Vegetarianism in America” study published by Vegetarian Times showed that ..... Approximately 0.5 percent, or 1 million, of those are vegans,”
You are in a VERY small minority with this here....
In the US we employ agricultural price subsidies....
ReplyDeleteWhat does the number of vegans have to do with anything? It's a personal choice, nothing more.
ReplyDeleteThe “Idiocy in America” study published by Moron Times showed that .....Approximately 0.0000000000000000001 percent, or 1, is as stupid as you.
You are in a VERY small minority with this here....
In the US we employ fossil fuel price subsidies...
ReplyDeleteAgain, what does this have to do with anything?
“What does the number of vegans have to do with anything? “
ReplyDeleteI’m just saying you are putting yourself in a very small cohort of people with this... You run the risk of isolating yourself here...
Same with this:
ReplyDelete“I will not kill a fly or a cockroach”
Extreme minority behavior here.... not many would say that...
"You run the risk of isolating yourself here..."
ReplyDeleteI merely noted a personal preference. If it offended you, then your problem is you.
Incidentally I like how you quote me out of context in a feeble attempt to attack me. What I wrote was, "“I will not kill a fly or a cockroach unless I think it is absolutely necessary."
If that offended you, then you are more crippled than I thought.
I suppose I should pity you, but I get the same pleasure from laughing at your idiocy as you get from ripping the wings off butterflies.
It’s not offensive...
ReplyDelete