Occupy, Debt, Morality, Jubilee

The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.

The Biblical Tradition of Jubilee

Leviticus 25:2 – Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them: When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto HaShem.

Roots in other ancient cultures

Was this practiced?

Radical as the idea of canceling debts and restoring the population's means of subsistence seems to modern eyes, it had been a conservative tradition in Bronze Age Mesopotamia for some two millennia. What was conserved was self-sufficiency for the rural family-heads who made up the infantry as well as the productive base of Near Eastern economies. Conversely, what was radically disturbing in archaic times was the idea of unrestrained wealth-seeking… …The Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule have become so dissociated from the economic legislation of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy that whoever takes these laws in earnest is considered utopian and anachronistic if looking backward nostalgically, or radical if adopting there as a guide for current activism. Yet these laws formed the take-off point for Christ upon his return to Nazareth's synagogue, and for his denunciation of the money-changers who had taken over Jerusalem's temple. As late as medieval Spain the tradition of the Jubilee Year was kept alive by Maimonides and Ibn Adret… Until fairly recently most Biblical historians doubted that these policies really were applied in practice… [but] it has become clear that the freedom advocated by the Covenant Code of Exodus, the septennial year of release in Deuteronomy and the Jubilee Year of Leviticus's Holiness Code were not just abstract literary ideas, but concrete legal practices freeing rural populations from debt servitude and the land from appropriation by absentee foreclosers. What made the revival of these releases revolutionary in Israel was their removal from the hands of rulers to become a sacred popular commandment.

Slavery and debt-slavery

Nehemiah 5:3 Some also there were that said, We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn, because of the dearth. 4 There were also that said, We have borrowed money for the king's tribute, and that upon our lands and vineyards. 5 Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them; for other men have our lands and vineyards. 6 And I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words. 7 Then I consulted with myself, and I rebuked the nobles, and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of his brother. And I set a great assembly against them.

What made Nehemiah, Ezra and other contemporary founders of Jewish religion unique was the way in which they reworked these archaic cosmological traditions to elevate the spirit of social justice to the plane of sacred covenant. – Michael Hudson

Debt and Morality

In Sanskrit, Hebrew, Aramaic, 'debt,' 'guilt,' and 'sin' are actually the same word. Much of the language of the great religious movements – reckoning, redemption, karmic accounting and the like – are drawn from the language of ancient finance. But that language is always found wanting and inadequate and twisted around into something completely different. It's as if the great prophets and religious teachers had no choice but to start with that kind of language because it's the language that existed at the time, but they only adopted it so as to turn it into its opposite: as a way of saying debts are not sacred, but forgiveness of debt, or the ability to wipe out debt, or to realize that debts aren't real – these are the acts that are truly sacred.5 > The way violence, or the threat of violence, turns human relations into mathematics will crop up again and again…it is the ultimate source of the moral confusion that seems to float around everything surrounding the topic of debt (Debt, p14) > It seems to me that we are long overdue for some kind of Biblical-style Jubilee: one that would affect both international debt and consumer debt. It would be salutary not just because it would relieve so much genuine human suffering, but also it would be our way of reminding ourselves that money is not ineffable, that paying one's debts is not the essence of morality, that all these things are human arrangements and that if democracy is to mean anything, it is the ability to all agree to arrange things in a different way. (Debt p 390)

Jubilee as Relief Valve

Thoughts, Points, and Questions

It's notable how much of the Tanakh is basically about economics and commericial law.

God's property

The 50-year cycle is too long for individuals; it is a reset for clans or families

Bankruptcy law is a form of individual debt forgiveness.

Debt forgiveness and restructuring, default, hyperinflation

Would a modern jubilee be   fair ?

Jubilee destroys the credit system; this can be harmful

Solution: Stochastic jubilee!

With a fixed date for wiping out debt obligations, the economy would come to a standstill many years in advance…The solution is obvious: rather than fixing a date for the jubilee, it should be a random draw with a 2% chance in any given year. This would necessitate an additional 2% risk premium on all contracts–a burden to be sure, but one that is bearable… One way to think about the agonizing negotiations taking place in Europe today is that they are attempting to work out the dimensions and modalities of a partial jubilee in real time under crisis conditions. Wouldn't it be a lot easier to work out a preventive system that operates routinely and, except for its timing, predictably?8

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