A tremendous loss. I would highly recommend Debt: The First 5000 Years to anyone here.
I think for me, the past decade.
It's valuable, and part of a conversation which is quite current.
But it isn't gospel.
Making factual errors that economic historians have to point out doesn’t help to demistify it, unfortunately.
I also wouldn’t expect someone who probably wouldn’t be able to pass the Ideological Turing Test to “demistify” the opposite view. Graeber didn’t know much modern economics and can’t adequately engage with the economic literature, he made foolish claims like “ economists still teach their students that the primary economic role of government—many would insist, its only really proper economic role—is to guarantee price stability.”
I am not saying there is nothing to criticize in economics, but to criticize something you need to understand it, so naturally some of the best criticisms of economics come from economists and adjacent professions, and that’s how the field keeps changing and developing. Just like any other academic discipline.
> Honestly, have you read the book?
Because the quote you provided is not from the book being discussed.
That's exactly what he was doing. The fallacious story he debunks about money appearing naturally via barter was one I first read in an economics textbook (Mankiw I think).
Modern economists really don't tend to spend a lot of time on historical analysis. That includes the default theory on the origin of money. This is a point that this example was supposed to illustrate. It is far from the only one but it has the benefit of being fairly clear cut.
They do tend to spend their time on polemics (driven by the way politics has driven the profession and the monetary incentives therein) or building elaborate mathematical models instead (driven by what i'd call 'hard science envy').
It wouldn't be the only academic profession to have intellectual blind spots, of course, and Graeber wouldn't be the first person to point out this one. Niall Ferguson, a more right-leaning historian/economist, has also made this point.