Book Talk on History of Capitalism & Colonization

Nicki’s Wonder List
Show Notes
“Book Talk on History of Capitalism & Colonization”
Season 02, Episode 04

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In this book talk episode, Nicki shares a few titles on the history of capitalism and colonization.

List on Bookshop.org

Book Titles

Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Updated and Expanded by David Graeber (Author)  

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici (Author)

Decolonizing Wealth, Second Edition: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance By Edgar Villanueva (Author)

My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem (Author)

Further Reading & Links

The Book on Fire Podcast - podcast season about Caliban and the Witch

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Transcript

Book Talk on History of Capitalism & Colonization

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Nicki: Hello, welcome to Nicki's Wonder List, a podcast about exploring story in a time of collapse. I'm Nicki Youngsma

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Nicki: In this book talk episode, I'm going to be sharing a few titles on the topic of the history of capitalism and colonization.

So, I came to this topic because, , these words, come up so often, , just living in the world that we live in, which is really shaped by, this thing, this thing that we call capitalism. And like, there's so much harm that has happened and is continuing to happen. Um, I've been curious about, like, you know, how did we get here? You know, we being humanity.

 And, You know, like, what is allowed for us to arrive at this point of, you know, , such extreme wealth inequality, pollution, fascism, biosphere loss, all these things.

And a lot of resources that I found, like, treat the rise of capitalism as, like, this inevitable, you know, thing, kind of, like, grass growing. And, like, that just really didn't feel, like, enough for me.

Um, so I've been searching for more of just, kind of, like, what is the beginning of these systems, because, like, they haven't existed for all of time. and I think it's important to, like, understand the context that we're operating, because like, , that's part of how to stop the harm, um, so anyways, I've got some books, , that kind of help give me some understanding,, and perspective, , to how we got here and why, um, in this world that's shaped by this thing we call capitalism.

DEBT the first 5,000 Years by David Graeber

Nicki: So the first book that I have today is called Debt, the First Five Thousand Years by David Graeber. So this book came into my radar, uh, cause it just kind of kept coming up a lot in some classes that I was taking, or people that I know would bring it up.

And so I . I got it from the library and I got the ebook 'cause that was what was available and I just kept checking it out 'cause it's kind of a long book, like it's beefy. Um, and it took me a while to get through it and especially like getting through it on a, on an ebook on my phone, um, you know, is not my favorite reading experience, but I can read a book if I have to.

And I really wanted to keep reading this. Like, it was really compelling, and then I got to the end of the book and I really wanted to look up the footnotes and I just, like, couldn't make it work on this ebook library edition. So I went and I bought the book, um, so I could have it. And, um, you know, it's a hardback cover that I have.

So the author of his book was an economist, an anthropologist and a leading figure in the Occupy movement. This book is, for me, I think it's just super rich. Um, the first thing being like, it makes me think about, when I was a teenager and in a, history class and reading about the Reformation and how one of the things that happened in that period of time was the legalization of interest bearing loans. And like, this book is, um, All about that.  I mean, it's about more than just that, but that's a big part of this book

 So the author, outlines how economists kind of, , say that, , money was invented to, replace bartering and, um, and the author refutes, like, this premise, um, and argues that, like, for the last several thousand years, humans have been using really, um, sophisticated credit systems, and that has created classes of debtors and creditors.

 And they argue that a lot of ancient debates about debt, like, come in through language and, like, ideas about morality and how, like, this still is present in our world today and it's helped shape the world that we have today.

 So the book is organized into several chapters, , and the first half of the book examines, conventional economic history, and ideas, , like the myth of barter. and then the second half of the book outlines, , debt and credit systems that have cycled through history. And it really focuses on the eastern hemisphere , like India, Greece, China. And outlines how when economists have talked about money, really they're talking about coinage and coinage was something invented by states, , who needed standing armies and, , professional soldiers.

And, there's just a whole bunch of other things in this book, , other little tidbits that kind of piqued my interest , you know, the, um,, history of, dueling, for instance.

Like, dueling being the practice of when, , people, typically men, , challenge each other because someone got offended or something and they take their guns out to someplace and then they say they're going to shoot each other, but they don't shoot each other. But sometimes they do shoot each other, that kind of thing.

Um, that is like an artifact of something having to do with debt. , And so, you know, there's just like things like that in this book that are just threaded through it that I , find really fascinating and, um,

and something I think is also very poignant that the author speaks to is that they say that people genuinely can imagine the end of the world before they can imagine the end of capitalism.

 And it's taken a lot of violence for us to get to that point. And there's this need that we have to reimagine what the world can be like. Um, so that's a message that sits with me and I think about a lot.

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation by Cecilia Federici

Nicki: The next book that I've got today is called Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation by Cecilia Federici.

So this was a book that I read because it was the primary text for a class I took, about the witch hunts, that happened in Europe, during the late medieval and early modern era.

And, it was really rich and, like, also very difficult to read. Um, there's also a podcast , that focuses on this book. Called The Book on Fire and there's a season devoted to, um, the hosts who discuss kind of like a book club, you know, this text, um, which I found to be really helpful and I'll link in the show notes.

 So it's, written by , like a Marxist scholar and the premise of this book, um it's kind of an academic text. It's not super huge. Um, it's about 250 pages or so and there's some illustrations in there.

The argument is that, uh, that the author presents in this book is that in order, , for the foundation of capitalism, to form, there needed to be a societal transformation that happened.

That capitalism was a counter revolution, actually, , um, and that societal transformation was premised on. detaching people from, uh, the commons, , from land, communal lifeways, from indigenous life practices.

And , the way they did that is by creating a torture campaign and focusing on, on women and gender non conforming, people. and that capitalism in itself was not a revolution at all. It was a counter revolution in order to, create the social order to meet the labor needs of the emerging merchant class.

 And, you know, I found it to be, interesting and like, this is a sobering read.

And the, the author writes that historians tend to ask us to believe that the witch hunts were, like, reasonable, like, in the contemporary belief structure, , of late medieval, early modern Europe at the time. And this text is like, no, that's not the case at all.

, the author outlines how the heretic movements and how, um, the Inquisition's treatment of heretics, , that informed the witch hunts, but like, the witch hunts were actually politically motivated, and, , the formation of nation states are really dependent on, you know, creating this societal transformation, and they make it relevant because, you know, in the book they also share how they noticed this, even though they're a historian, they, found these same patterns happening when they worked in Africa in the 1980s and they were in Nigeria and there was a debt crisis.

And,, , uh, The IMF and the World Bank were part of you know, implementing the structural adjustment program. And part of doing that was like privatizing the land and taking things out of the commons, um, for people who are living there.

And, the author was seeing parallels between witnessing that experience, at that time, and their research in, uh, the witch hunts.

 I think one of my biggest takeaways from this book is it's really helped me recontextualize the discourse around gender expression, access to reproductive health care, and abortion. you know, the story that I feel like I've inherited is like, Things were really bad for women in the past, and now we finally are out of that, and life is getting better for everyone, and this is, you know, is called the Myth of Progress.

 Um, I think for me, like, I've always thought about access to reproductive health care being, A thing about people's opinions, and like uh having to, to navigate in between that and then laws being reflecting, you know, people's opinions , and what this work does for me is it kind of like zooms out, the scope or, you know, like, uh, being able to get like, what is the, actually the bigger picture and the bigger picture has to do with people who are in positions of power, who want to restrict and control access to resources.

And they do that by creating mythologies, , by creating laws, by enacting violence against people if they don't comply with that. And that's very sobering. And we're seeing that play out today in the United States and other countries. The reframing helps me see it as it is not new, and it helps me regulate in spite of that.

Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance by Edgar Villanueva

Nicki: The next book I have today is called Decolonizing Wealth, Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance by Edgar Villanueva.

So I found this book also because I was in a class, in which this was the primary text. I, I read the book and I also, you know, to the audiobook. I always like it when there's an audiobook version, 'cause sometimes it's like, I can't, get to reading a book. So it's like having it, you know, having it in a car is really nice or being able to listen to an audiobook while you're doing stuff around the house is nice. Um, so I always really appreciate being able to access a book in a different way.

 There's a lot of things I took away from this book. Um, first of all, the author works in the philanthropy industry in the United States. And, they're Indigenous. They're a member of the Lumbee tribe. And, um, gosh, they just lay out, so much stuff that I had to spend a lot of time thinking about.

 So the book is divided kind of into two sections, where the first section, um, talks about like, you know, where it hurts, you know, where's the harm? Did that start happening? So there's some history, then there's some memoir pieces, kind of the author's own story about how they got to working in this industry, and then their observations and experiences from doing this work, where you're in the work of, you know, distributing money from people who have it to people who don't. who need it and don't have it. Um, and like, there are so many dynamics, and it's, it's messy.

And then the second section of the book is, kind of like some of the solutions, , you know, a roadmap, essentially, for how to start interrupting the harm, how to heal from the harm, you know, individually and collectively, um, around how we relate to money.

And, the book talks a lot about the dynamics of wealth and money. , and, , what happens when money goes from people or entities who have it and then how it gets transferred to the people who need it, who are asking for it. And, um, you know, this can be looked at from the scope of like , how nonprofits work, how, grants work, how endowments work.

You know, and one of the things I took away from this was thinking about even just on my own personal scale, like how do dynamics of money work in my own life? You know, how do you think about deservedness, or like, um, if you give money to someone, do you think you should , , have a say in, like, what happens to that money?

 You know, things like that. I think that, um, one of my biggest takeaways from this book was, you their phrasing of this thing called the colonizer virus. And, I just really loved that phrase because they kind of describe how the act in the history of  colonization, , has warped our institutions, , our brains, like our ways of relating to each other. It just goes in these different levels. as An infection, you know, it's something that perpetuates harm and it does not provide health, so, um, that's just a takeaway I have, you know, something I've kind of, that's stuck with me, um, from reading this book is, um, reckoning with this thing called the colonizer virus.

My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma in the Pathway Toward Healing by Resmaa Menakem

Nicki: Another book that I have got today is called my Grandmother's Hands, Racialized Trauma in the Pathway Toward Healing by Resmaa Menakem.

So, the author is a somatics practitioner and they talk about epigenetic trauma in this book and how people inherit the trauma of their ancestors and it lives in their own nervous systems. And because of that, it continues to inform how we act , , and then also cycles of harm and violence are perpetuated because of this.

So firstly, there's, um, the book is . kind of catering to three main audiences, , folks who identify as white, people who identify as Black, people who identify as police officers. And, um, the part that I focused on for myself is, , the part of, identifying as white. , that part of the book, the author outlines how intergenerational trauma , that started out in Europe during , You know, times of war, times of the Inquisition, times of the witch hunts, um, how all of that like, all of that trauma was carried in the bodies of the people who settled and, colonized North America and beyond. Um, so a lot of this, this trauma was exported into people and, imported to colonial projects, including the United States where I live. Um so I found that to be really interesting and how,

 The way it's outlined is it talks about the history, uh, of these, , audiences in this, you know, this particular lens, , of epigenetic trauma, and then so, in order to heal from that, to stop repeating the cycle, the author provides, you know, one, this outlook and, you know, language around epigenetic trauma.

And then two, , some things you like you could start doing now, like questions you can be asking yourself, as well as like somatic practices. To help interrupt what's happening in the body. Um, so the author offers some, exercises and some, um, things that like a reader could do.

So, for example, one might be like, uh, rubbing your sternum or rubbing your, um, stomach or humming. , those are some things that are like off, that are offered in the book.

I found this book to be accessible, and easy to read, and, um, the way it's outlined with, like, the chapters and kind of, giving really concrete steps that a reader could follow, and begin doing that kind of work. So for me, it was helpful to have those really concrete things to do, , and , kind of connect what is like the historical context and then what are things I can do.

 So that's part of, you know, my takeaway from this book.

Nicki: So together these books really offer me a lot. First I feel like they give me insight into how capitalism operates and how it's created the world that we live in today. I really like these books together, like I feel like they really work together for me. Um, first of all, Debt, The First Five Thousand Years, and Caliban and the Witch.

Both of these are primarily academic texts, , and they kind of talk about, like, the big picture for, like, what it took for capitalism to form.

And, um, you know, that involves the creation of empires the nation state, standing armies, coinage, and then using violence to create class structure and hierarchies.

 And I feel like, those things kind of answer some of the questions that I felt like I wasn't getting earlier on, And then with my grandmother's hands and decolonizing wealth, I feel like these really work together too. , in the Decolonizing Wealth the author talks about this notion of a colonizer virus and how it infects every level of life and it's been doing that and causing all of this harm, ,

and then my grandmother's hands also speaks to that, um, and it provides some treatment, some things you can do to treat the colonizer virus. And like they both talk a lot about relationships and reflection work, interior work, um, and how those things are part of what is going to make you get better and what is going to make people get better and society become, more healthy.

And , yeah, I, I really think about , these working together in that way. It's like one's outlining the illness and the other's like providing a treatment.

I think most importantly, these books together for me, offer things that I think are necessary for imagining a different reality and building that reality. And in order to do that, you know, I think it's important to like recognize the story of what created what we have. So that way you can spend some time to unpack that and imagine something else that's life giving. and sustaining, because we need to do that more than ever.

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Nicki: If any of these titles peak your interest, then go to the show notes, to buy books through the Nicki's Wonder List storefront on Bookshop.org. Purchasing through this storefront means you'll be supporting authors, independent book sellers, and this podcast.

Thank you for listening to Nicki's Wonder List. Until next time.

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