The Bonds of Debt: Borrowing Against the Common Good

“Dienst throws new light on what it means for humanity to be tied up in the golden skeins of debt: we’re only now realizing what a huge change to human life, psychology and the fabric of everyday experience is involved in the creation of a financialized economy.” —Paul Mason, author of Postcapitalism “A smart and easily understood book … Dienst has a new and thrilling idea … debt is exactly what bonds us and makes our kind of sociality possible.” —Charles Mudede, Stranger “The most original thing about Dienst’s reading of debt, a reading that is very close to the truth, is that it locates it at the very center of human sociality.” —Slog “Richard Dienst’s most radical proposition in this wonderfully clear and provocative little book is that we are burdened not by too much debt but by too little. Yes, we must discover ways to refuse and escape the regime of debt to the figures of power and institutions that rule over us, but we must also, and perhaps more importantly, recognize indebtedness as a basic human condition and create social ties that at once bind us to each other and free us. The combination of these two tasks is an exciting, even revolutionary, project.” —Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire “I spend my life studying the financial markets and I often wonder what it all ‘means.’ Dienst takes up that question in a thoroughly admirable way in this book. And as a bonus, it also includes a wonderful takedown of the odious Bono.” —Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer “Holds up debt as a hopeful idiom of identification through which we might build a new radical politics … an eminently readable collection of essays deserving of a large audience.” —Mark Kear, Society and Space “Astute portrait of the recession … on one rich canvas.” —Nick March, National