12/15/2023 0 Comments Beholder 2 debts![]() ![]() If tensions about the accumulation of private debts did not turn into full-blown crises more often, one reason was that the same advantages that protected citizens from overburdening debt also weakened solidarity with those who got crushed by its weight. Direct economic help was restricted to citizens and remained narrowly circumscribed in extent. The privileges and opportunities of the free population had their limits, however. In classical Greece, a large segment of the free population escaped the vicious circle of peasant indebtedness amply documented for other premodern societies because the social ecology of a Mediterranean city-state culture offered non-elite citizens opportunities to thwart exploitation and escape poverty. Far from being just another tool of exploitation in the hands of the powerful, the consensus that one must pay one’s debts underpinned commercial cooperation between groups of different status and occupation. The chapter argues that the effective meaning of the notion that “one must pay one’s debts” depended on the prevalent structures of trust, power, and economic opportunity in society. Why was the notion that “one must pay one’s debts” considered both a bond of social cohesion and a cause of civil strife? And why are so few full-blown debt crises on record, although debts were pervasive aspects of life? Classical Greece presents a useful case study to test and modify Graeber’s stimulating claims about the role of debt in Axial-Age societies. ![]() Private debts in classical Greece present an apparent paradox.
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