my understanding is that this doesn't work out in practice, much the same way Christian teachings are ignored or "loopholes" are found. but boy is that the exact right attitude, on paper, to have towards money.
lol no it's just like Christian & Jewish Usury proscriptions---abandoned & legalistically excused as the economic system came to rely on banks
You know you're doing well as a society when you have to write out "By contrast, this [other culture] thinks [social institution] should benefit the community."
Should we support rich man #5 or all of humanity/society? It's an open question that has a lively ongoing debate.
There exist Islamic banks though and "islamic" states do have no problems with charging interest. The prohibition against interest also meant antisemitic tropes that were shared with Christians were shared in regards to Jews, who were stereotyped as bankers and financiers, marginalizing the heterogeneity of the group and discriminated against them. In cases were Jewish people were traders who gave credits acts of violence against them were not uncommon.
In some parts and time periods of Europe cause interest payment was seen as somewhat unmoral Jews who were forbidden in participating in plenty of economy were allowed to do that in parts, which served local feudal elites well as violence against Jews was accepted and had hundreds/thousand years of continuity.
this combined with forgiving all debt every 7 years sounds like a neat way to organize society...
Graeber showed in both Debt the first 5000 years and The Dawn of Everything that people did in fact lend money even when such or similar rules existed.
i wouldn't argue that societies are, trans-historically and a priori, unable to support such policies. but i think it's pretty evident that the whole web and structure of social relationships would need to be fundamentally different for that to be the case.
I mean Debt 5000 years and Dawn of Everything both are online, while there is some critique they give good counter balance to common ideas about money and credit. I do think there is value in thinking how a society in which that is the case could be (and in fact we do have societies in which jubilees happen, when people die) but Debt 5000 is a good foundational text.
They would, it would just be grounded in kinship. How often have you lended a friend money not actually super concerned with whether or not you get paid back? Or, for a more socialist alternative, a lending cooperative could view no-interest loans as a social good and see defaults as the price of a healthy society.
i'd love public banking and i'd love a society where intimacy and trust were cardinal, but i'm not sure that those are identical with, or produced by, at the margin, frequent jubilees.
sure, but individual discharging of debt through bankruptcy (which could be, like, hedged against) probably isn't the same thing as regularly reoccurring jubilees for all borrowers.
I think it depends somewhat. I'm told that the Somali community in Minneapolis has made it work sometimes with a system where people form, idk, I guess a coop? And pay in. Whenever the coop has enough money they buy a house for a family, and then it keeps rolling.
I'm also told that attempts to set up Islamic banking in the US are very difficult because the entire US financial system is set up for not that.
in Graeber's Debt history book, a lot of attention is paid to the linkages in language and values between religious institutions, banks and debt. islam and christianity proscribed lending at interest. jews had routine jubilees (wide spread forgiveness). i can't remember explicitly what was going on with buddhism/hinduism/confucianism, but rules and reforms abound.
even the ancient greeks had this whole line of logic about the profanity of interest. it was articulated that nature was from The Gods and thus could reproduce and grow itself. money was recognized as a specifically human invention, artificial and distinct from nature. and to charge interest was to profane the gods by giving man's creation the power of gods.
fascinating shit that capitalism has completely ignored and apparently it's going to boil the planet! what a coincidence.
One can only conclude that the Greeks were correct and interest is profanity
According to graeber at least, the loopholes were a relatively modern invention, and this was taken pretty seriously during the Islamic golden age. Partly, this was due to an acceptance of merchants in Islam. They didn't have a problem with merchants making money, but then along the back of that was an assumption of mutual aid. Interesting stuff.
The loophole for merchants in the Middle Ages was uneven business partnerships where one person would provide the funding to the person who was actually going to do the work. Then, the person who gave the money would get their money back in full plus a percent of the total profit (if the venture was successful). (from this book https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691139319/under-crescent-and-cross)
Bonds in Islamic countries are called Sukuk, instead of interest they transfer ownership of a real asset that provides income or is temporarily leased with rent payments to the holder of the Sukuk instead. The end result is the same as a bond and they function basically like an asset backed loan.
The reason that Jews have a larger than average presence in the banking sector is that Christians also weren’t allowed to engage in usury. Islamic banking will likely fade as Muslim countries integrate more into Russian and Chinese financial systems.
"Usury" has always been specially defined by Catholicism such that only the church can issue and benefit from such debts. It's not a blanket ban so much as a consequence of the merger between the Roman state and Christianity.
Are you sure you’re not talking about indulgences? With that said, I don’t know how old the Vatican bank is so maybe you’re right idk
I remember reading somewhere that the Iranian banking system works like that, but I don't if it's true (or still true today)
Plus you could start wearing those Saudi Arabian robes and be ready for global warming
Leviticus 19:9-10
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.
Exodus 22:25-27
If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall not exact interest from them. If you take your neighbor’s cloak in pawn, you shall restore it before the sun goes down; for it may be your neighbor’s only clothing to use as cover; in what else shall that person sleep? And if your neighbor cries out to me, I will listen, for I am compassionate.
Christians have these rules too, they just don’t give a fuck what the Bible says.
They also have rules that resemble progressive taxation. Also, housing and farming assets for sustenance are not taxable. Then again, most religions have rules resembling those. In real life application, it is another story.
