Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

PRIMORDIAL DEBTS 63
interest-bearing loans existed in Vedic India-which obviously has a
bearing on whether priests really saw sacrifice as the payment of interest
on a loan we owe to Death.47 As a result, the material can serve as
a kind of empty canvas, or a canvas covered with hieroglyphics in an
unknown language, on which we can project almost anything we want
to. If we look at other ancient civilizations in which we do know something
about the larger context, we find that no such notion of sacrifice
as payment is in evidence.48 If we look through the work of ancient
theologians, we find that most were familiar with the idea that sacrifice
was a way by which human beings could enter into commercial relations
with the gods, but that they felt it was patently ridiculous: If the
gods already have everything they want, what exactly do humans have
to bargain with 49 We've seen in the last chapter how difficult it is to
give gifts to kings. With gods {let alone God) the problem is magnified
infinitely. Exchange implies equality. In dealing with cosmic forces, this
was simply assumed to be impossible from the start.
The notion that debts to gods were appropriated by the state,
and thus became the bases for taxation systems, can't really stand
up either. The problem here is that in the ancient world, free citizens
didn't usually pay taxes. Generally speaking, tribute was levied only on
conquered populations. This was already true in ancient Mesopotamia,
where the inhabitants of independent cities did not usually have to pay
direct taxes at all. Similarly, as Moses Finley put it, "Classical Greeks
looked upon direct taxes as tyrannical and avoided them whenever possible.50
Athenian citizens did not pay direct taxes of any sort; though
the city did sometimes distribute money to its citizens, a kind of reverse
taxation-sometimes directly, as with the proceeds of the Laurium silver
mines, and sometimes indirectly, as through generous fees for jury
duty or attending the assembly. Subject cities, however, did have to pay
tribute. Even within the Persian Empire, Persians did not have to pay
tribute to the Great King, but the inhabitants of conquered provinces
did.51 The same was true in Rome, where for a very long time, Roman
citizens not only paid no taxes but had a right to a share of the tribute
levied on others, in the form of the dole-the "bread" part of the famous
"bread and circuses. "52
In other words, Benjamin Franklin was wrong when he said that
in this world nothing is certain except death and taxes. This obviously
makes the idea that the debt to one is just a variation on the other
much harder to maintain.
None of this, however, deals a mortal blow to the state theory
of money. Even those states that did not demand taxes did levy fees,
penalties, tariffs, and fines of one sort or another. But it is very hard