>anthropologist David Graeber [...] Money cannot be separated from state violence.
I've read David Graeber's book. I do agree with him that the common (e.g. John Locke) narrative about money arising from direct barter is probably wrong. Money actually comes from credits/debits (aka delayed consumption).
However, I disagree you need government enforced violence for the basic apparatus of money. Perhaps it's a matter of defining "money" in different ways. I'm talking about "money" as a more basic expression of human bookkeeping.
If you have a small community where everybody knows each other, the people can cooperate to keep track of "accounts" of who owes what. They can write the debts/credits on a public church ledger or hypothetically leave it to the reliable memory of a trusted village elder. (E.g. you don't need government for women to spontaneously start trading scrips for future babysitting hours.) What governments enable is scalability.
With government standardized money, strangers can transact the units of account across a larger administrative area.
>If you have a small community where everybody knows each other, the people can cooperate to keep track of "accounts" of who owes what.
Well, those people are then the government. In small scale communities it's one and the same -- they can all join together and deal with anybody who doesn't play nice. And these punishments are the analogous of e.g. prison.
So, what you say is true, but not very important in practical use, as we don't live in such small communities, and don't deal strictly in our own community even.
Sure, 2 people also don't need government. They can keep tabs, and if one doesn't repay or cheats, the other can always beat them up or stop dealing with the first. But they're basically acting as a government in themselves (in that they assume the role of government officials like law enforcement, law-making, etc).
"Government is not required" would made actual practical sense if somehow the technical solution used instead of money took care itself of debt repayment and ensured punishment (or make it so that punishment is redundant) of wrongdoers.
Right, that's today's situation. My "government not required" is talking about how ancient money can arise spontaneously without a separate entity that we think of today as "government". If we think of "money" at its basic level of keeping track of "promises", "favors", and "trust" ... all those human instincts of coordination can precede old governments like the Roman Empire and Egyptian pharaohs. It just can't do so on a large scale among strangers.
>2 people [...] they're basically acting as a government in themselves
If we go back & forth by then redefining "government" to mean "any humans coordinating" then I suppose we could stretch "governance" all the way back to human invention of fire. If we use this all-encompassing idea of "government", then I suppose it means nothing preceded government.
>If we go back & forth by then redefining "government" to mean "any humans coordinating" then I suppose we could stretch "governance" all the way back to human invention of fire.
And what would be strange about that? I see no reason to constrain government to only mean the modern(-ish) state. Ancient Rome was also a government, Babylonians had kings, jungle tribes had rulers and elders, etc etc.
I'd say any human community had a governance structure way into prehistory.
>If we use this all-encompassing idea of "government", then I suppose it means nothing preceded government.
Yes -- but I don't find that strange. What would precede government? If there was anything, it would more like primate animals living in packs akin to animals, but with no other structure in their "communities". As soon as some structure emerges, they also need ways to decide what they do, assign responsibilities, punish bad behavior, etc.
I've read David Graeber's book. I do agree with him that the common (e.g. John Locke) narrative about money arising from direct barter is probably wrong. Money actually comes from credits/debits (aka delayed consumption).
However, I disagree you need government enforced violence for the basic apparatus of money. Perhaps it's a matter of defining "money" in different ways. I'm talking about "money" as a more basic expression of human bookkeeping.
If you have a small community where everybody knows each other, the people can cooperate to keep track of "accounts" of who owes what. They can write the debts/credits on a public church ledger or hypothetically leave it to the reliable memory of a trusted village elder. (E.g. you don't need government for women to spontaneously start trading scrips for future babysitting hours.) What governments enable is scalability. With government standardized money, strangers can transact the units of account across a larger administrative area.