#Moses Finley

[jeannereames]

Hello Dr Reames! Do you have recommendations for books about historiography? I really need to understand what it is and how it works

So, the intro book I use in my own undergrad methodology class is this one:

Gaddis, J. L. (2002) The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

He's not an ancient historian, but that doesn't really matter, except that some of the issues unique to ancient history won't be addressed. Still, it's a very good introduction for a reasonable price. You can almost certainly find one used. For something specific to the ancient world, see below.

I have one caveat, and it's kinda a big one. He doesn't much like the social sciences, and repeatedly questions their validity. That bothers me, and I wonder why he's so negative about them? Perhaps he's run into one-too-many historians overusing (or flat misusing) social science tools like a shiny new toy. ;-)

But social science tools are perfectly fine, as long as properly employed. He does point out some of the (very real) issues with them when applied to history...but they're hardly the kiss of death.

For ancient history SPECIFICALLY, I recommend Stan Burstein's recent book on the topic:

Burstein, S.M. (2022) The Essential Greek Historians. Hackett (for Cambridge).

I particularly like it because he doesn't limit himself to "the usual suspects" (Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius). They're there, but he moves on and addresses Greek writers well into Roman Imperial times, and uses a variety of sources, including some epigraphic (The Parian Marble, for instance).

This keeps his book from falling into the same problems as Finley's famous The Portable Greek Historians, which did stick to the Usual Suspects (see above). And it's shorter, too!

So there ya go, one "general" book on historiography, and one aimed specifically at ancient history by a towering scholar in the field (and a very nice guy, btw, who's even shorter than me!).

[irate-iguana]

Lately, I have not been able to conduct research without getting Moses Finley jumpscared.

[breitzbachbea]

It is so evil when a piece of writing makes you feel like it disrespects your time.

[lvnleah]

Month One

word count: 3.2k

find the series masterlist here!

May 22nd 2024 | 1 month old.

Leah pushed open the front door, quietly shutting it behind her as she slipped her bag off of her shoulder. The house was enveloped in a calm quietness, the kind that followed the business of the day. She took a deep breath, the familiar feel of home wrapping around her like a comforting blanket.

Walking into the living room, Leah's heart melted at the sight before her. Finley was nestled on your chest, both of you deep in an evening nap. She smiled, slipping her shoes off and tiptoeing softly into the kitchen.

Leah had grown to love moments like this. She’d been out with a few of her friends today, the first time since Finley was born. She’d had a nice day catching up with everyone over coffee and a walk in the park but all she wanted was to come home to you and Finley. She set to work on dinner, something that she’d improved on a lot over the past few weeks.

As the aroma of dinner began to fill the air, you stirred slightly. Your eyes fluttered open, and you instinctively placed a hand on Finley's back, feeling the warmth of your baby. Leah peeked around the corner from the kitchen, her face lighting up as she saw you awake.

"Hey, pretty girl," she whispered, her voice soft. "Dinner will be ready soon."

"Hi," you replied, a smile spreading across your face as you adjusted Finley slightly. "How was coffee with Lia and Kim?"

"Good. I missed you both," Leah said, returning to the kitchen, “Couldn’t stop thinking about you both.”

You gently transferred Finley to the Moses basket, making sure he was comfortably settled before joining Leah in the kitchen.

You slipped your arms around her waist and under her shirt, “How was Lia and Kim?”

She nodded as she continued to cook, “They were good too, obsessed with all of the cute photos I showed them of Finley. How about you and Finley? Any adventures?"

You laughed softly, sitting down at the table. "Nothing too dramatic. We went to the shop quickly, I survived and then we ran into Mrs. Havers from next door. She couldn’t stop cooing over Finley."

Leah chuckled. "She’s sweet. Always has been."

As you sat down to eat, the conversation flowed easily. Leah recounted the highlights of her day with Lia and Kim. You shared your own stories from the day, from the funny moments with Finley to the small difficulties of the day.”

After dinner, you both tidied up, the chore made lighter by shared jokes and occasional affectionate glances. By 8:00, Finley woke up, ready for his evening feed. Leah took him in her arms, rocking him gently.

"Hello, little man," she cooed, her fingers lightly tickling his tummy. "Did you have a good nap?"

Finley looked up at Leah, a wide grin spreading across his face. "There it is," Leah said, her eyes shining with joy. "Such a happy boy."

"Look at that smile," Leah said, her voice full of awe as Finley beamed up at her. "He's growing so fast."

"Too fast," you agreed, as she handed him over to you for a feed.

You settled into the cosy corner of the couch, cradling Finley as he latched on. Leah sat beside you, her head on your shoulder as her hand gently rubbed Finley’s hair.

"It's hard to believe he's already a month old," Leah said quietly, her eyes never leaving Finley's face. "It feels like just yesterday we brought him home."

You nodded. "I know. Every day, he changes just a little bit more. I want to remember all of it."

As the evening progressed and Finley fell back asleep, Leah carefully took him and placed him back in the Moses basket. She turned to you with a smile.

"Stay here," she said, leaning in to give you a quick kiss on the lips. "I have a surprise for you."

Curious, you watched as Leah disappeared down the hallway. You heard the sound of running water and the soft clinking of glass, but you couldn’t quite piece together what she was up to. A few minutes later, she reappeared, holding out her hand to you.

"Come with me," she said, her smile widening.

You looked at Finley who was sound asleep in the Moses basket “But what about—”

Leah interrupted you, “He’s fine, he’s sound asleep and we’ve got the baby monitor. He’ll be okay.”

You took her hand and let her lead you down the hallway. The door to the bathroom was slightly ajar, and as she pushed it open, you gasped in surprise. Candlelight flickered around the room, casting a glow on the walls. The bathtub was filled with steaming water and bubbles up to the side.

"Leah, this is incredible," you whispered, turning to look at her.

"I thought you might like a little relaxation," Leah said, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "You’ve been amazing with Finley, and I wanted to do something special for you."

Tears of gratitude welled up in your eyes as you pulled her into a hug. "Thank you," you murmured into her hair. "This is perfect."

Leah helped you undress, her hands gentle and loving. She turned off the taps and helped you into the bath, the warm water enveloping you instantly. You sighed in contentment, feeling the tension melt away.

Leah sat on the edge of the tub, dipping her fingers into the water and tracing gentle circles on your skin. "You deserve this," she said softly. “How did you find going out with Finley alone?”

You sighed, leaning back against the tub's edge. "It was... okay, I guess," you began, "I mean, it wasn't as overwhelming as I thought it would be, but I still felt this knot of anxiety the entire time. What if he started crying and I couldn't calm him down? What if I forgot something important? There were so many 'what ifs' running through my mind."

Leah nodded, "It's completely normal to feel that way. I feel anxious about him all the time, we’re new mums it’s expected," she reassured you. "You're doing an amazing job. It's all so new to us, and it's okay to feel anxious."

You sighed again, nodding your head, "I know, but sometimes it feels like I'm just barely keeping it together. Like today, I was so anxious when we were in the store. I kept checking on him every few seconds, making sure he was okay. And then running into Mrs. Havers... I was so nervous she'd think I wasn't doing a good job or something."

Leah squeezed your hand gently. "Mrs. Havers adores you, and she thinks you're a wonderful mom. Everyone does. And most importantly, Finley thinks you're perfect."

You smiled, feeling a bit of the tension ease. "I just want to be the best for him, for you. I worry that I'm not enough sometimes."

Leah's eyes softened, and she leaned in to kiss your forehead. "You are more than enough. You are everything to Finley and me. It's okay to feel anxious and to have these moments. We'll get through them together."

A tear slipped down your cheek, not from sadness but from the overwhelming love you felt. "Thank you," you whispered. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

Leah smiled, brushing the tears away. "You'll never have to find out. I'm here, every step of the way.

You tried to lift your hand to wash your hair, but the effort felt overwhelming. The fatigue from the day, combined with the anxiety, made your hands tremble slightly. As you fumbled with the shampoo bottle, it slipped from your grasp, splashing into the water and sending bubbles everywhere. Frustration welled up inside you, and you let out a small, defeated sigh.

"Hey, it's okay," Leah said gently, noticing your struggle. She reached for the shampoo bottle, her eyes full of understanding and concern. "Let me help you."

Tears of frustration blurred your vision as you nodded, unable to find the words. Leah's touch was tender as she applied the shampoo to your hair, her fingers massaging your scalp in soothing circles.

"You don't have to do everything on your own," she whispered.

"I'm sorry," you said softly, your voice cracking slightly. "I just... I feel so overwhelmed tonight."

Leah leaned down, her lips brushing against your forehead. "You don't have to apologise. We're in this together, remember?"

As she continued to wash your hair, you allowed yourself to relax, knowing that you had a wife who understood and supported you every step of the way.

For a while, you both sat in comfortable silence, the only sounds being the gentle sloshing of the water and the faint crackle of the candles. Leah handed you a glass of chilled water with slices of lemon, and you sipped it gratefully.

As the water began to cool, Leah handed you a fluffy towel and helped you out of the bath. She wrapped you in it, rubbing your arms gently to warm you up. "Feel better?" she asked, her eyes searching yours.

"Much better," you said, leaning in for a kiss. "Thank you for this. It was exactly what I needed."

Leah smiled, her eyes full of love. "Anything for you.”

Leah took the towel and began drying your hair with gentle, careful strokes. "Let's get you nice and cosy," she said, her voice full of warmth. She continued to towel dry your hair until it was only slightly damp.

Once you were both back in the bedroom, you changed into a spaghetti strap top with a pair of small shorts. Since giving birth, you had been insanely warm every night.

Leah retrieved the hairdryer from the drawer. "Sit down," she instructed, patting the edge of the bed. You sat down, and she stood behind you, turning on the hairdryer.

As Leah dried your hair, she hummed softly. You closed your eyes, allowing yourself to fully enjoy the moment.

"There you go," Leah said once all of your hair was dry, turning off the hairdryer. "All dry and ready for bed."

You turned to face her, your eyes shining with gratitude. "You always know how to make me feel better," you said softly.

Leah smiled, cupping your face in her hands. "That's because I love you," she replied, leaning in for a kiss.

"You get into bed," Leah said. "I’ll go get Finley.”

You nodded, feeling the weight of exhaustion settle in. As you climbed into bed, Leah slipped out of the room, returning a few moments later with Finley, who had woken up and was fussing lightly. She brought him over, his little body cradled against her chest.

"Looks like someone wanted to join us," Leah said with a smile, sitting down beside you.

You reached out, taking Finley from her arms and cradling him in your own, “Little man hungry?”

Leah tapped her phone, checking the time, “He is due a feed in half an hour, I think he is though.” She laughed, nodding to Finley who was currently searching your chest with his mouth.

You settled back against the pillows, adjusting your top to allow Finley to latch on. His tiny mouth found its mark, and he began to nurse contentedly. You and Leah switched on your TV in the bedroom while he fed, catching up on your favourite TV programme.

Once Finley had finished nursing, Leah carefully burped him before she walked around the bedroom, rocking him gently as he drifted back to sleep.

"He's out like a light," Leah whispered, placing him in the next to me crib beside you. She returned to bed, sliding under the covers and wrapping her arms around your waist.

You moved closer to Leah, practically laying on top of her as your head rested on her chest. Her hand played with your hair gently as she watched TV.

You hadn’t been able to be this close to her in ages, the early stages of your pregnancy were fine but once your bump grew it became harder. Then after you gave birth, your stomach was too tender so being able to be close again with Leah was amazing.

Leah kissed the top of your head, her fingers threading through your hair. "I missed this," she murmured. "Just having you close."

You nodded, chest. "Me too. It's been a while since we could just…be close.”

Nighttime with a newborn was unpredictable, so you soaked in the quietness as Finley slept in his crib beside you. Just as you started to drift off to sleep, Finley's cry pierced the quiet, bringing you both back to reality.

Leah groaned softly, her hand rubbing your back in a tired, but affectionate gesture. "I'll get him," she whispered, sliding out of bed.

You watched as she slipped out of bed and walked round to the crib, lifting Finley gently. "Hey, little guy," she cooed, cradling him against her chest. "What's wrong?"

Finley's cries softened as Leah gently swayed back and forth, “I think he just wanted a cuddle," she said, patting his back gently.

Within minutes, Finley's cries turned into soft whimpers, then contented sighs. She smiled at you, “Clingy boy.”

Climbing back into bed, Leah pulled you close again. You both fell back to sleep, Leah’s arm draped over your waist as you both fell asleep.

The night continued in a similar pattern, short bursts of sleep interrupted by Finley's needs. At 2 a.m., Finley's cries pierced the silence once again. You stirred first, rolling over and rubbing your eyes as you felt Leah sit up beside you.

"I've got this one," Leah murmured, already getting out of bed. She reached for Finley, his small body producing cries that you didn’t think were possible. "Shh, little man. Mumma’s here."

You watched as Leah cradled him, her voice soft and soothing. "I'll get his bottle ready," you whispered, slipping out of bed.

In the dim light of the kitchen, you prepared a bottle. Although you were mainly breastfeeding Finley, giving him a bottle during the night worked better for you. Every other feed, you were trying to give him a bottle. You loved breastfeeding but sometimes it felt overwhelming and tiring.

By the time you returned with the bottle, Leah had settled back into bed, Finley nestled in her arms as she gently rocked him. His tiny cries still breaking the silence.

"Here you go," you said, handing her the bottle.

Leah smiled, guiding the bottle to Finley's mouth. "There you go, Bubs," she whispered, watching him with loving eyes as he fed.

Once Finley was full and drowsy, Leah burped him before placing him back in the crib, his tiny legs kicking slightly.

You both laid back down, exhaustion pulling you into a light sleep. Only a couple of hours later, at 4 a.m., Finley's cries rang out again, more insistent this time.

You yawned, rubbing your eyes. "I'll get him," you said, sitting up and turning to the crib that was on your side of the bed. Finley's face was red, his tiny fists waving in the air.

"Hey Bubba, shhh it’s okay! Mummy’s here," you murmured, lifting him into your arms. "What's got you so upset eh?"

Leah sat up. "Want me to take him?"

"I'll try to settle him," you replied, bouncing him gently. You checked his diaper, found it clean, and tried to nurse him, but he wasn't interested. He continued to cry, his wails echoing through the quiet room.

After a few more minutes of failed attempts to calm him, Leah spoke up. "Here, let me try," she said softly, taking Finley.

Leah began to pace the room, humming a gentle tune, a tune you recognized instantly. "Breakaway" by Kelly Clarkson. Finley's cries gradually turned to whimpers, but he still seemed restless. Leah kept walking, her voice low and soothing.

"Grew up in a small town, and when the rain would fall down," she sang quietly, planting a kiss on Finley’s forehead. "I'd just stare out my window, dreaming of what could be."

You watched as Leah moved around the room, the glow of the nightlight making her visible. Finley's eyes started to droop, his little body relaxing in her arms.

"Trying hard to reach out, but when I tried to speak out, felt like no one could hear me," Leah finished, her steps slowing as Finley's breathing evened out.

But when she tried to put him down, his eyes snapped open, and he started to fuss again. Leah hushed him back to calmness, continuing to sing the song. When she eventually finished the song, after singing it twice, she tried once again but Finley woke up and cried in her arms.

"Looks like the little man doesn’t want to be put down tonight," she said, resuming her gentle pacing.

She paced up and down the bedroom a few more times until Finley was completely settled. She climbed back into bed, bringing her knees up to her stomach to lay Finley on them.

Finley started up at her, his dark blue eyes that were identical to Leah’s focused on her face. "Look at you," Leah murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. "You just wanted some extra cuddle time, didn't you?"

You watched from your side of the bed, "He seems to have you wrapped around his little finger," you said softly.

Leah chuckled quietly, her fingers gently stroking Finley's cheek. "I suppose he does," she admitted. "But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Would I, Bubba?

As Finley began to settle, his tiny breaths becoming steady, Leah carefully laid him back in the crib, making sure he was comfortable. She then returned to bed, her movements slow and gentle to avoid waking him.

"I think he's finally out for a while," Leah said, slipping under the covers beside you. She turned onto her side, her face close to yours. "How about you? Need anything else before we try to get some more sleep?"

You shook your head, leaning in to kiss her. "No, I’m good. You?”

Leah smiled, “I’m fine.”

At 6 a.m., just as the first light of dawn was breaking through the curtains, Finley's cries filled the room once more. You and Leah exchanged tired, knowing looks. This time, you both got up together.

Leah reached for Finley, lifting him into her arms. "Good morning, little one," she said, her voice soft but weary.

You prepared another bottle, and together you sat in bed, watching as Finley fed, his tiny hands gripping Leah's fingers.

After feeding, Finley was more alert, his wide eyes taking in the world around him. You both knew he wouldn't go back to sleep easily. Leah cradled him, humming softly, but he remained awake, his gaze fixed on her face.

With a resigned smile, Leah stood up and started to walk around the room, singing Breakaway quietly once again. You watched them, your heart full despite the exhaustion. Finley's eyes finally began to droop, lulled by Leah's voice and the gentle sway of her movements.

Eventually, he fell asleep once more, and Leah carefully placed him back in the crib. She turned to you, her eyes tired but filled with love. "We made it through the night," she laughed.

You nodded, wrapping your arms around her. "One night at a time," you replied.

You both climbed back into bed, Finley sleeping peacefully beside you. You were both quick to fall asleep, arms draped around each other as you both knew it wouldn’t be long before your day was starting.

[lionofchaeronea]

Current reading is The World of Odysseus by Sir Moses Finley, originally published in 1954. It's Sir Moses's attempt to reconstruct the society of "Dark Age" Greece (=the tenth and ninth centuries BCE) by close reading of the Iliad and Odyssey. As great a historian as he was, I'm finding the book a little disappointing. Sir Moses seems to have had little interest in, or appreciation for, the history of ideologies (ironic in a Marxist), nor for the complexity of gender roles in the Homeric poems: all he wants to do is strip the epics down to a supposed "kernel of truth," as if everything else were so much rust that needed to be sanded away. At times, I've found myself genuinely wondering whether he'd really paid attention to what he was reading. Some of his dogmatic statements are breathtaking in their wrongheadedness: there's "no trace of the polis in the Homeric poems" (what about Troy in the Iliad or Ithaca in the Odyssey, both of which show many hallmarks of polis-organization?); the poems have nothing to say about Greek colonization, and so must predate it (what about Odysseus in Odyssey IX making plans to colonize and develop the island of Polyphemus?); Penelope is "little more than a convenient 'mythologically available character'" with no real personality (seriously?) Granted, criticizing a book that's seventy years old, in a field where so many methodological advances have since taken place, is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but still -- I can't help but feel that the whole exercise could have been improved by a shift in perspective on his part.

[gallopinggallifreyans]

I would love to hear your opinions about ancient currency! And any recommendations you have for learning more about the Roman economy!

oh boy i am SO glad you asked! I'm going to put everything under a readmore because it's a Lot.

I have a few opinions on Greek coinage, specifically that of the introduction of coinage to Athens, though I'm working on a proposal for studying Spartan coinage rn.

Current publications re:Athens haven't really determined For Sure who introduced coins; it's a toss-up between Solon and Pisistratus but I'm in the Pisistratus camp for reasons that I can absolutely summarize in a separate post, as I've written and published a paper in my undergrad journal that (hopefully) holds weight in the current hodgepodge of thoughts. If you'd like that, I can write it up and link it here!

Re:Spartan coinage, I think the Spartan homoioi were real idiots. Most city-states were using silver (and very occasionally gold) for their coins, but Spartan homoioi were using iron spits. The spits (obeloi) were six to a drachma, which was the exchange rate for a long time. And by long time I mean there was no such thing as a floating conversion, coins were just the most portable form of precious metal, which was intrinsically valued. Outside Sparta (even the perioikoi) most city-states would have used ingots pre-coinage and that evolved into stamped metal, i.e. coinage. The Spartans considered themselves to be very religious and followed the Great Rhetra (unsure if Lykourgos existed), which maintained that silver and gold were holy and could not be used, so they used iron.

Unfortunately, the rest of Greece didn't follow that, and used silver in their coins, especially influenced by Attic-Ionian city-states who were in regular trade with Persia and further east, i.e. regions that valued precious metal outside their religious significance. Essentially, Spartans kinda screwed themselves over re:trade outside Sparta; they couldn't even trade in contemporary currency with the rest of Lakonia and forced their subject city-states into the same position. This is supported mostly by the explosion of Messenian and other Lakonian coinages after Sparta collapsed, though I want to see if I can find more text evidence, since I (an archaeologist) tend to rely too heavily on material. It's a whole thing, personally I believe this was a significant factor in Sparta's collapse, though other things factored in as well. Sparta was incredibly insular both in its trade/economy and religious practice and that combination led to its downfall.

For the Roman sources, I recommend starting with the Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy by Walter Scheidel, and The Ancient Economy by Walter Scheidel and Sitta von Reden. Von Reden has excellent articles related to the ancient economy in general, and most are available on JSTOR, so I recommend giving her stuff a look.

I also highly recommend reading Moses Finley's work The Ancient Economy (no relation to Scheidel and Von Reden's work), as it lays the foundation for much of our current school of thought. Peter Temin's subsequent work, The Roman Market Economy argues against Finley and kicks off a whole debate about how to define an economy without using capitalism as the basis, because capitalism as we know and define it did not exist then, and it is incorrect to assume that. We can call it protocapitalist, but not capitalist.

Slavery in Rome is a nuanced subject that is integral to learning about its economy — I suggest keeping an open mind and treading carefully with respect to post-1492 slave trades. Noel Lenski's chapter "Framing the Question" (linked; you need access through your institution) discusses the slave trade against a Finleyan model, while Scheidel (him again) talks about how to determine the wages of slaves (JSTOR link). W. V. Harris talks about the demography and geography of slaves here (JSTOR link). These three are good starts for learning about Roman slavery, but if you want more sources, I can pull some up for you.

I don't want to overload you with sources, so in general I'll recommend anything by Scheidel, Von Reden, Nicholas Purcell and Peregrine Horden (connectivity), Seth Bernard (coins and emissions), Astrid Van Oyen (tech innovation), and Willem Jongman (economic structure). As with the slavery sources, if you want direct links I can definitely find them for you! I'm always happy to share info :)

[dailyanarchistposts]

I want to talk about money as a moral technology. One of the things that really fascinated me when I was working on my book on debt was the tendency of the logic of the market to colonise and invade other forms of morality, even the language of religion. Almost all the great world religions are incredibly rich in the language of finance – think about words like redemption – and this happens not just in Christianity but pretty much everywhere.

Morality tended to be treated as a matter of paying one’s debts. This was one reason that I actually entered into this particular intellectual journey; I was fascinated with the moral power of the idea of debt, and its tendency to trump any other form of morality, so that people can justify things which they would never dream of trying to justify in other circumstances: the starvation and death of babies, for example, on the grounds that ‘the country took out a loan’.

The invasion of the language of morality by the language of debt and money seems to be part and parcel of another phenomenon, which is the reduction of all social relations to forms of exchange. You find that almost all the great world religions begin with the premise that morality is simply a matter of paying one’s debts. In Brahmin theology for example, all forms of morality are basically forms of debt. It starts with the debt to the gods, which is a debt of life, on which one pays the interest in the form of sacrifice, and will eventually pay the principal when one dies.

If one looks closely, though, the other examples that Brahmins use completely subvert the idea that these moral obligations really are debts. They say you have a debt to your parents that you will pay by having children; you also have a debt to a sage that you will pay by learning wisdom and becoming a sage. You also have a debt to humanity as a whole for making your life possible, which you will pay by being generous to strangers. None of these take the form of repaying debt in the classical sense. Ultimately, what they all seem to imply is that one erases the debt by realising that you owe all this to a totality which includes you, so the idea of debt becomes meaningless. Your debt to the gods is in fact a debt to the universe itself. You cannot really pay a debt to the universe, because that would imply that you and the universe are equal partners doing a business deal; that is, you and everything else that ever existed, including yourself, are making the deal. It is the absurdity of that which annihilates the idea of debt. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition there is a similar notion of primordial debt, but in fact it turns out that what is sacred is not paying one’s debts but the cancellation of debts: redemption. It is almost as if everyone has to start out by saying, ‘morality is really just paying one’s debts’, and then they move away from it.

The question is: Why do they have to do that? Why is it that popular conceptions of morality are already framed so deeply in debt that they always seem to have to start with those premises, even though they then inevitably move away? The best answer I could come up with is that it has to do with relations of power. Essentially, the one thing that history reveals over and over again is that a morality of debt is the most powerful way to make relations of arbitrary, violent power not only seem moral but to cast the victim in the role of the sinner, the person to blame. Mafiosi understand that, of course; so do heads of conquering armies, who generally announce that everyone owes them their lives because they have the power to kill them. It puts you in the position where you can be the benevolent person and the victims are running round, scrambling, feeling miserable and inadequate. It tends to be quite effective for a while. The problem is that it periodically explodes. As Moses Finley pointed out, there seems to be one revolutionary programme in all of antiquity, which is cancel the debts and redistribute the land, in that order.

Debt seems to inspire people to rebel more than any other form of inequality, perhaps because it is premised on an initial notion of equality. If you are saying that you are lower caste you are saying that you are fundamentally inferior, which presumably people do not like, but accept as part of the natural order of things. But if you recast this in a language of debt, you are essentially saying, ‘we should have been equals, but you messed up somehow’. It seems to rankle a lot more, and the common response – which you encounter over and over again in history – is to say, ‘well, wait a minute: who owes what to whom here? We make your food’.

However it is framed, what tends to happen is the only way to resist this language of debt as morality is to cast your response in that same language, in a way that actually expands the zone to which that debt applies. It causes you to reformulate moral relations in the same language. You see the same thing happening nowadays in debates over third-world debt. Who owes what to whom? That is exactly what people end up saying: ‘you owe us for colonialism’; before you know it, this applies to all sorts of historical wrongs, zones that you never thought to commoditise, like ecological damage. The rebellion against debt becomes incorporated in the language of debt. With that language of debt, of course, comes the logic of exchange: that everything, essentially, can be framed in market terms.

This relation of money, debt and morality changes regularly over time, depending on the dominant conception of money, which itself depends on the dominant money form that people use in a given historical period. It seems that there are quite regular shifts across Eurasia, at least, between what I would call periods of virtual credit money and periods of commodity money, where most people are actually using some form of object, usually gold and silver, in everyday transactions, and people conceive money to be a thing. I was fascinated to discover that there is no consensus at all among economists about what money is. You would think if there was anything that economists could agree on, that would be it, but, in fact, money is a bit of a stumper for economists. The dominant schools throw their weight behind the idea of money as a medium of exchange; there are equally compelling arguments that money should be thought of as a unit of account, and therefore the tokens of money are actually tokens of debt. On this view, money is essentially circulating debt. Economists like Keith Hart argue that if you look at the two sides of a coin, you regularly see the same thing. There is one side which is a symbol of state authority, of trust and agreement, money as a social relation, which is credit; on the other side is the actual number of a unit of money, which implies that money is a commodity or a thing.

That tension is always there in the definition of money. What I would add is that, over time, the definition of money shifts back and forth. But, interestingly, virtual credit money comes first. As far as we know, if people went to the marketplace in Sumer, they certainly did not bring anything resembling cash. They certainly did not have coins; they did not even manufacture scales. They probably had the technology to do so, but they did not manufacture scales accurate enough to weigh out the tiny bits of silver that would be required to buy a pig, a sheep, a hammer, a shirt. It seems that everyday transactions were largely based on credit. Certain things did circulate in silver, for certain grains, and so on, but essentially the weight was on a credit economy, which also meant that it made it periodically possible to cancel debts, which is much harder to do in periods of commodity money. The period where money was invented, where cash currency was invented, also corresponds to what Karl Jaspers famously called the ‘Axial Age’, during which you also see the rise of major world philosophies and major world religions, in exactly the same place where money is first created: in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the Ganges Valley in India and the northern plains of China. It seems that coinage is invented largely as a side-effect of military technology, which is closely tied to taxation systems. Gold and silver are the sort of thing that soldiers who have been engaged in looting are most likely to be carrying around. Itinerant, heavily armed soldiers are possibly the people you would least like to extend credit to, if you are a local merchant. But they do have gold and silver. Eventually, after an initial period where money is created by merchants brokering things with soldiers, the state comes in and discovers that the easiest way to provision troops is simply to systematically give them the little bits of precious metal and then tell everyone in your country to give them back again. Suddenly you hire everyone in your kingdom to provision soldiers.

It worked brilliantly well. The fascinating thing about the Axial Age is you have standing armies; currency tends to follow standing armies. You also have the rise of world religions, which in almost every case systematically negate some of the moral logic of these impersonal cash markets which are enabled by commodity currencies, so that ideas of charity seem to always crop up simultaneously. It is as if you say, ‘let us create a space where we have this thing called self-interest’, and if we then simply try to get as many material things as possible for ourselves, someone else is going to come and say ‘all right, well, here we will have a space where we think about why material things are not important; it is better to give than to receive’. This happens pretty much regularly in every place.

The astonishing thing is that it all coordinates really closely across Eurasia. In the Middle Ages those empires reach their apogee, and they collapse. With the disappearance of standing armies and chattel slavery, coinage largely disappears, but instead of reverting to barter, people in fact revert to credit systems. These systems of credit are essentially controlled by the moral and religious systems which originally rose in opposition to the world of cash transactions closely identified with militarism and the state which had come before. With that came the bans on usury, which did not exist in the ancient world at all. It seems that in periods where you conceive money to be a social relation, a system of social conventions – Aristotle’s definition, again, was not widely adopted in antiquity but was then adopted in the Middle Ages – it becomes possible to do things like they did in the ancient world: debt cancellations in medieval Islam and Christianity, or bans on usury, which is much harder to do in periods where you consider money to be a thing.

Despite the fact that both the Athenian and the Roman constitutions were essentially created in a reaction to debt crises, ancient economies almost never resorted to full-on debt cancellations. Instead, they set up redistribution policies, where they essentially threw money at the problem, so that coinage became a sort of moral technology. For example, in ancient Athens people were actually paid to go to the agora and vote. There are all these mechanisms of redistributing money through political means, so that people did not fall so far into debt they would become slaves to the rich and thus destroy the military base of the state.

Starting in 1450, and even before the Iberian discovery of the Americas, commodity money returns in the form of bullion, and with it comes the rise once again of large empires, of standing armies, of chattel slavery, which reappears, however, in a profoundly altered form. I would argue that that period is the one that we are coming out of now, but only very slowly and haltingly. The usual cut-off point is 1971, when Nixon took the dollar definitively off the Gold Standard.

It is interesting that the ban on usury that held during the Middle Ages was gradually eroded. I have always felt that one reason why the Church was so adamantly opposed to usury as against other elements of emergent capitalism was because the morality of debt was so powerful that they could recognise a moral rival when they saw one. The fact is that debt is the most effective means to turn people into utilitarian rational actors, as economists like to imagine, where one has little choice but to see the world simply in terms of possible sources of profit and danger. One of the things I was quite fascinated with was to look at the histories of some of the people who behaved in the most bizarrely, irrationally acquisitive means you can imagine, becoming paradigms for the insatiability of human beings: the conquistadores, for example. The conquistadores were all completely in debt. They started out in debt and they never really got out of it. One reason that they were constantly looking for new kingdoms was because, even after the conquest of the Aztec kingdom, Cortez managed to get himself in debt again 15 years later and started conquering again. All the men were entirely in debt and needed to do whatever they needed to do to get gold, and so committed large atrocities to pay it back.

That kind of manipulation of debt as a form of morality in itself was unleashed and became naturalised, when you think of money as a natural thing: as an object, rather than as a social relation. As a moral technology, money allows certain types of morality to emerge which are incredibly powerful. The people in power, who originally discovered the power of the morality of debt so long ago, do not want to give them up. One of the great mysteries is when you have periods of virtual credit money, whether it is in ancient Mesopotamia or in the Middle Ages, what you normally see is people creating some means to ensure that those with the power to create credit do not effectively end up enslaving everybody else. It happens over and over again and takes different forms, hence periodic debt cancellations in ancient Mesopotamia, the famous jubilees in ancient Judea, and the various usury laws. You find that they were in combination with things like Buddhists promulgating pawn shops and other alternatives to the local loan sharks. The first prevalent use of pawn shops was actually a religious thing, by Buddhist monks in China and later, I believe, the Dominicans took it up in Europe, presumably independently.

There are all these overarching mechanisms created to protect debtors in periods of virtual credit money. Where are our versions of these mechanisms? Granted, we are only 40 years in. This is not very long by the standards we are talking of – 1,000 or 500-year cycles. But we have done exactly the opposite. What we have ended up doing is creating institutions like the IMF, or Standard & Poor’s for that matter: institutions designed to protect creditors against debtors, rather than debtors against creditors. Unsurprisingly, the result for the last 40 years has been an unending series of global debt crises. Consider third-world debt, which led to surprisingly successful forms of resistance, first in East Asia, and then Latin America, from where the IMF has largely been kicked out. These debt crises are continual, they are mounting; it seems to buck the historical trend for an economy based on credit money.

This is why I emphasise the power of money as morality. I believe that there is a contradiction between the long-term interests in the system and those ideological mechanisms that would seem to be legitimating it. The morality of debt and the morality of work seem to be two areas in which the capitalist virtues, the virtues of the economic system, are deeply inculcated into popular consciousness and broadly accepted. To question that opens doors that I think a lot of people are very frightened to open, despite the fact that at this point debt cancellation is almost inevitable.

The reason I say ‘almost’ is because there is such resistance. It is remarkable. It is so clearly in the interests of the ruling class to start cancelling debts in a big way. The Federal Reserve has been trying really hard to get mortgage debts cancelled and they have made no headway for the last year. What is holding it back? It has to be some attachment to this fundamental moral idea, because there are not that many moral underpinnings to the system left.

One of them is the moral value of work. Keynes predicted that by now we could easily have a four-hour day, if we were so inclined, and we could remark, ‘Well, obviously we are not, but obviously this shows that rather than being happy with the amount of goods we want, it has something to do with desire, it has to do with consumerism.’

I do not think that is true at all. I think that if you look at what most people do during the day, they are not doing much that contributes to the production of consumer products. In fact, an unexplored phenomenon in America today is just how many people are secretly convinced that they do not really do anything during the day: that their jobs are completely meaningless and worthless, and probably should not exist. I meet people like this all the time. I know so many people who were at their wits’ end, did not know what to do, went to law school, and are now corporate lawyers. I have hardly met a single one of them who would not, at least if drunk, say, ‘Actually, this job is completely stupid and should not exist.’ You can make money doing this and not being a poet, or whatever they were doing before. It tells you something interesting about what we call the market that there seems to be a very limited demand for poets and talented musicians but an almost infinite demand for corporate lawyers.

I think that we have to think about this in moral terms. Think about all the people who are working four hours a day. You know, there are so many people who go into work and they sit there for eight hours but they do about three or four hours’ worth of work and the rest of the time they are on Facebook or tweeting or downloading pornography or something. I talk to people and so many of them say that, ‘Well, actually I do about two or three hours,’ so in fact we are working fourhour days, but owing to this profound morality of labour we are not willing to actually acknowledge it.

We might want to think about the parallel with the Soviet Union. The Soviet system, I really believe, was based on a fundamental contradiction, in that they inherited an essentially anarchist constituency with a Marxist ideology. During the 1920s and 1930s, it was often noted that the difference between anarcho-syndicalist unions and socialist unions was that the anarchist unions were always asking for fewer hours, and the socialists were always asking for more money. Essentially, the socialists were those who bought into the productivist-consumerist system; anarchists just wanted out: ‘We want to have nothing to do with this. We want to work as little as possible.’ There was a famous debate between Marx and Bakunin over where the revolution would come: would it be the advanced industrial proletariat in Germany? Bakunin said, ‘No, no, it will be the recently proletarianised peasants and artisans of Russia and Spain,’ and, of course, Bakunin was right. So these anarchist constituencies who wanted fewer hours ended up creating revolutions that ended up with a Marxist-productivist elite claiming to want to create a consumer society but utterly incapable of doing so. However, one social benefit that they gave them was that you could not get fired from your job, so in fact people were working four-hour days.

The great contradiction, to me, of these systems was they could not acknowledge or take responsibility for the one social benefit they actually did provide to the public, namely job security on four hours work a day. If you think about it, going from being a backward economy to launching satellites into outer space on four-hour days is pretty impressive. But they could not acknowledge what they were actually giving people. Everybody was pretending to work for eight hours; in fact, they were working four.

It seems that our own societies are beginning to resemble that more and more, as so much work is hollowed from any sort of meaning or point, yet nonetheless people end up feeling obliged, for moral and ideological reasons, to do it more and more. I think a lot of politics can be explained by this. I have always argued that a lot of right-wing populism is based on resentment of people who get to have meaningful jobs. The cultural elite are seen as the people who get to monopolise the jobs where you can actually get paid to do something which is not just for the money. You know, how dare those bastards take all the altruistic jobs?

Similarly, I find fascinating the resentment of autoworkers, or teachers. I think it can only be explained in those sorts of moral terms, that there seems to be a sense that, ‘You guys actually get to do something real. You get to teach kids and make cars, you want benefits too?’ At any rate, I think that we need to think again about how the kind of morality that money enables, both in terms of debt and work, becomes a driving political force in itself, and that many of the issues that we think of as economic issues are also actually political issues in disguise.

[thefundiemuseum]

(Semi-Serious) Name Predictions for SiRen Baby #4

Here's what we know about Josiah + Lauren's taste in baby names.

Asa Matthew

Bella Milagro

Daisy ???

Ezra ???

It's not a great dataset, and I usually don't like to count names from miscarriages when considering someone's taste. (Those names are often more symbolic than anything, like River Bliss or Halleli Grace or Jubilee Shalom.) But because SiRen has kept the ABC theme accounting for losses, I think we can safely say that "Asa Matthew" is the name they would have given their firstborn son, had Lauren not miscarried.

And because we don't know Daisy's or Ezra's middle names, and Matthew and Milagro are Josiah's and Lauren's middle names, respectively, I won't try to guess Baby F's middle name. (Though it would be fun if they kept up the M middles. Daisy Mae? Ezra Moses?)

With all this in mind, here are my thoughts on Baby F's name.

For girls, SiRen has opted for cutesy names that could pass as nicknames. It's not Isabella; it's Bella. It's not Margaret; it's Daisy. Also, both names are kind of common as dog names, which I won't consider as a requirement, but it does sort of speak to the vibe we're looking for.

Freya. It's trendy, two-syllables, and I've definitely known a dog or two names Freya. AFAIK, Freya isn't short for anything, but it also doesn't lend itself to nicknames, which seems to be part of SiRen's name choices.

Flora. I like that it fits the nature vibes of Daisy without being too matchy.

Finley. I'm on the fence about Finley (or Finnley, or Finnly, or however you want to spell it.) It's a little too gender neutral to fit beside Bella and Daisy, but it is trendy enough for me to consider it.

Note: If Jessa hadn't already used it, I'd say Fern would be a great fit. (On the flip side, Daisy would be a contender for Jessa if Lauren hadn't used it!)

For boys, Lauren has opted for biblical names that are a little more trendy that the usual Johns and Jacobs. Asa and Ezra are biblical, but they aren't as in-your-face about it as, say, Enoch and Nehemiah. They're kind of cool names, you know? Does the name sound like it would fit on a young British actor who is suddenly cast in a bunch of upcoming films and TV? Then it's probably a good fit.

Felix. It's biblical, and it fits right in with Asa and Ezra.

... there are almost 0 F names in the Bible. It's like Felix, Festus, and Fortunatus. That's it. So now we have to look to more modern names.

Forrest. It's 2 syllables, kind of trendy, and matches the nature vibe of Daisy.

Finn. It isn't 2 syllables, but it absolutely sounds like a dog name and fits right in with Bella and Daisy.

I've seen folks on Tumblr and FJ throw out Faith as a possibility, and. . . maybe? I'm not sure if SiRen are into virtue names. (Though, when they announced Bella's name, I'm pretty sure they made a point that her name means "beautiful miracle.") And, on reflection, I can't think of any good virtue names that they could have used up to this point. (Blythe? Ever? Destiny? The options aren't great.)

All of that to say. . . I'm dunno. I'm just not convinced that it fits with the rest of them. Granted, plenty of people have kids whose names don't make a good sibset. (Exhibit A: Spurgeon and Henry. Exhibit B: Jana, Joy-Anna, and Johannah.)

Anyway, we may never know Baby F's name, or what name SiRen would have chosen for Baby C, or any of their future kids' names, and I'm just gonna have to be okay with that.

(((Alright, but just for kicks, I'm gonna predict Felix Malachi and Freya Maeve because letter themes are fun.)))

[dionysus-complex]

learned today that renowned classical scholar Moses Finley was fired from Rutgers and had to leave the US after being investigated for communist sympathies by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s, and that he married his wife Mary in 1932 at the age of 20 years old and was married to her for 54 years before the two passed away exactly one day apart in 1986

[berlinauslander]

Arguments about debt have been going on for at least five thousand years. For most of human history-at least, the history of states and empires-most human beings have been told that they are debt-ors. Historians, and particularly historians of ideas, have been oddly reluctant to consider the human consequences, especially since this situation-more than any other—has caused continual outrage and re-sentment. Tell people they are inferior, they are unlikely to be pleased, but this surprisingly rarely leads to armed revolt. Tell people that they are potential equals who have failed and that therefore, even what they do have they do not deserve, that it isn't rightly theirs, and you are much more likely to inspire rage. Certainly this is what history would seem to teach us. For thousands of years, the struggle between rich and poor has largely taken the form of conflicts between creditors and debtors—of arguments about the rights and wrongs of interest pay-ments, debt peonage, amnesty, repossession, restitution, the sequestering of sheep, the seizing of vineyards, and the selling of debtors' children into slavery. By the same token, for the last five thousand years, with remarkable regularity, popular insurrections have begun the same way: with the ritual destruction of the debt records-tablets, papyri, ledgers, whatever form they might have taken in any particular time and place. (After that, rebels usually go after the records of landholding and tax assessments.) As the great classicist Moses Finley often liked to say, in the ancient world, all revolutionary movements had a single program: "Cancel the debts and redistribute the land."s

Our tendency to overlook this is all the more peculiar when you consider how much of our contemporary moral and religious language originally emerged directly from these very conflicts. Terms like "reck-oning" or "redemption" are only the most obvious, since they're taken directly from the language of ancient finance.

[absolute-immunities]

trying to imagine the arch-reactionary Maurice Cowling and the communist Moses Finley exchanging “advice and criticism”

[breitzbachbea]

ACTUALLY I want to add Ancient Sicily by Moses I. Finley to the Bad Books List. It was Alright, but I don't feel like I really learned anything and that fucking thing REEKED of the 1960s. I still feel betrayed by my professor suggesting it and after I read it and complained, he was like "Oh yes, Finley certainly has. A Viewpoint" in a derogatory way and I was like. SO YOU KNEW YOU MADE ME READ A MID-BOOK?!

[dlittle30]

Moses Finley's persecution by McCarthyism

MI Finley (1912-1986) played a transformative role in the development of studies of the ancient world in the 1960s through the 1980s. He contributed to a reorientation of the field away from purely textual and philological sources to broad application of contemporary social science frameworks to the ancient world. His book The Ancient Economy (1973) was especially influential. Finley was born in…

[formfromanarchy]

"Arguments about debt have been going on for at least five thousand years. For most of human history -at least, the history of states and empires- most human beings have been told that they are debtors. Historians, and particularly historians of ideas, have been oddly reluctant to consider the human consequences; especially since this situation -more than any other- has caused continual outrage and resentment. Tell people they are inferior, they are unlikely to be pleased, but this surprisingly rarely leads to armed revolt. Tell people that they are potential equals who have failed, and that therefore, even what they do have they do not deserve, that it isn't rightly theirs, and you are much more likely to inspire rage. Certainly this is what history would seem to teach us. For thousands of years, the struggle between rich and poor has largely taken the form of conflicts between creditors and debtors-of arguments about the rights and wrongs of interest payments, debt peonage, amnesty, repossession, restitution, the sequestering of sheep, the seizing of vineyards, and the selling of debtors' children into slavery. By the same token, for the last five thousand years, with remarkable regularity, popular insurrections have begun the same way: with the ritual destruction of the debt records-tablets, papyri, ledgers, whatever form they might have taken in any particular time and place. (After that, rebels usually go after the records of landholding and tax assessments. ) As the great classicist Moses Finley often liked to say, in the ancient world, all revolutionary movements had a single program: "Cancel the debts and redistribute the land.""

David Graeber - Debt: the first 5000 years