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Overall: very interesting, makes some good points, I didn't understand everything and didn't agree with everything I did understand but feel like I learned a lot.
That said, I feel like he did a bit of sleight of hand, and would be interested to hear from those who know more about history than me: He gives many examples of different approaches to money and society, then discusses the history of modern capitalism. He says that it has always been centered around violence and slavery (or near slavery: sweat shops etc) and seems not to be able to function without them, hence the difficulties when civil rights removed the ability to exploit women, african americans etc quite so much, and in fact it needs workers to become increasingly productive for stagnant wages.
But while many of the other systems he mentioned may be more stable, and may not rely so much on violence...they all had slaves too, and usually treated women as the property of men (though the extent to which it sucked to be a women and/or slave definitely varied). If there are societies that don't do these things, he didn't mention them. So to create a truly just society we will need something entirely new, not just an end to capitalism. Of course "not truly just but better than we have now" would certainly be a good place to start.
Also: While I see the logic in focussing on the history of Eurasia, especially since I'm not sure we have records of the relevant kinds of monetary systems elsewhere, it would have been nice if he'd at least given a cursory justification for ignoring the rest of the world beyond some general isolated examples and descriptions of degradation and downfall. Especially since I know African and pre-Columbian American societies have actually influenced the West beyond being convenient people to plunder. Though he was still more inclusive than most other history (he even included the POV of women every now and then omg!)
The way he pointed out how massively important women and people from outside Europe were, as well as a fairly brief discussion of the origins of racism, made me wish he'd even noticed disabled people exist. He talked about the "non industrious poor" and assumed it was always on purpose lol lol lol. Queer people got a brief mention in Greek attitudes to pederasty and that was about it (aside from some "men in dresses" in ancient Sumeria). I don't just mention this as a tick-the-box inclusiveness thing, I am left wondering if these POVs would make a genuine difference, since I don't trust him to notice if they would (and maybe they wouldn't! I DON'T KNOW)
This was less an audiobook and more a guy just reading the book, but he read it pretty well. There were errors and reread passages and some OOC asides, plus some unfortunate silly accents (thankfully MLK got an audio grab)
Now my rough notes on chapters 4-12, taken as I went, neatened up only a little. I may try for a more thoughtful response later. These are all his opinions, aside from some asides from me.
People get more angry about debt peons than slavery and caste systems. Workers tend to only revolt when in debt instead of just owned. Debt is a contract between equals, and if you can't pay it back it's considered your own fault. There's an unstated assumption that morality is about reciprocity. Yet what about parenthood? A parent who asks to be paid back seems like a jerk.
baseline communism: to each from their ability, to each according to their need. Exists to some degree amongst pretty much everyone but the maximum "from" and minimum "need" varies. In some societies you are expected to give away a request for anything from a huge set of "trivial" objects. In most societies there is a group of people you are reciprical to, if only family.
A bunch of complicated stuff about the nature of society I can't summarise.
So many silly accents, stop it, reader dude :/
Histories of currency act like it doesn't matter what the specific coinage was, ignoring, for example, that SLAVE WOMEN were used as currency in Ireland, or that a man's women and children were often sold for the father's debts. (People did not actually spend slave girls to buy things, they said "I want six slave girls' worth of barley" etc)
Social currency (in a "human economy"): used almost solely for marriage/religion etc, eg things to do with human beings, not objects/commercial concerns. "Bride price"/"bride wealth" not actually about buying the woman, but about acknowledging the woman-sized debt eg the "perfect wedding" is a man marrying his sister's husband's sister, both families gain and lose a woman.
Blood wealth (reimbursement for murder) uses similar repayment. NOT an actual repayment, since nothing can really repay for a life, just an acknowledgment of guilt and peace offering. Sometimes a dead man was replaced by a wife from the murderer's family, or (in matrilineal families) replaced by an adoptee from an enemy raid.
Currency often stuff used for jewelry: gold, shells etc.
These "human economies" do badly when they encounter commercial ones.
In Africa during the slave trade merchants took advantage of debt pawns by creating reasons to owe them money, or set up strict law systems with the usual punishment being sold into slavery. Created horrible violent chaos, then provided "order" at a price. Much like organised crime.
Human economies taken advantage of by powerful commercial societies who made ceremonial "ownership" literal and sold people they gained through ceremonial debt relationships.
You become a slave in circumstances in which you would otherwise be dead: POW, breaking the law, about to starve. You are socially dead, you cannot have debts, get married etc.
Honour (as in medieval europe): your ability to degrade others, and willingness to play by the rules and put yourself in danger of the same degradation. The value of a slave is the honour which has been extracted from them. The more slaves you own the more prestige you have, even if they don't do any work. Honour is a zero sum game. To dishonour a man, steal their women and take their honour (by making them be a washerwoman), thus adding to your own. Honour needs degradation as a contrast.
Honour price: the price of hurting someone's dignity/honour, their ability to protect what was theirs. Kings etc had higher honour. Cows and slave girls were the currency. To obtain a wife/serf you pay their honour price and absorb their honour.
Yet honour ALSO means honesty and not caring about money.
Slavery is tied up with Patriarchy.
Why has growing civilisation made society more sexist? Conquest leads to taxes, which leads to markets. This turned women into commodities (Why do women not ever sell "their" men instead?This is not addressed), which made men more invested in "protecting" eg controlling their women.
If you can't pay your debts, your women can be taken in leui of money, thus equating honour and money.
Sumerian "prostitutes" were divine priestesses and highly respected. But this slowly turned into red light districts including "transvestite men" (OR POSSIBLY TRANS WOMEN, AUTHOR) and debt peons.
Nomads reacted against this urban society and all the prostitution (which their women were sold into after getting into debt to rich urbanites) by being more patriarchal. Virginity became a monetary commodity. Administrators and merchants keep poor people as debt peons or in danger of it.
First example of a reference of veils was the punishment for slave girls or prostitutes who wear them to look like "respectable" women (those who cannot be bought or sold)
And of course the rich mocked and were disgusted by the poor selling their daughters...to pay their debts to the rich.
The ancient greeks saw money as a sign of degradation. ANYONE can spend money, and everyone wants it, so the desire for money is common. Thus they preferred a gift economy between rich friends.
Old school patronage had responsibilities on both sides. But creditors have no responsibility....and also are equal to their debtor.
Axial Age: Buddha, Pythagorus and Confucius (the fact that there is more to the world than Eurasia and North Africa is elided :/). Coinage, slavery, war all interconnected: Soldiers fight, paid with loot turned into coins, captured POWs made into slaves who churn the economy. Selfishness, "rationalism", materialism, and in reaction religions of charity, the soul, and selflessness. People and their choices are no longer defined by their complex social ties to others. A gold bar gets you the same amount of grain from a stranger, enemy, social bettter/inferior, or cousin.
Romans changed "freedom" from "the ability to make friends and form relationships" to "the ability to do anything", affected by the centrality of slavery in theor society.
Every now and then there'd be a debt crisis and the only way to solve it seemed to be cancelling all debts.
In the middle ages this all collapsed and it was all tiny villages and religions holding all the gold across Eurasia, credit/debt based on trust and no coins.
Ancient India developed money and thus slaves, then those kingdoms collapsed in the middle ages and Hinduism took over, mixing the "everyone knows their place" caste system and stuff like debt peonage, but not as harshly.
Markets and capitalism are opposed: capitalism is about getting the objects you want, while capitalists want to get more money and thus a monopoly.
China considered merchants to be immoral but useful, and it was a highly beuracratic Confucian market based state. Karmic debt, familial debt. Pay it back by bringing people to buddhism, or donating to the temple. Temples were effectively capitalist, needing more money to expand and convert everyone, to the extent that China was running out of metal for coins. So of course the government shut them down and melted the metal buddhas.
Middle East: Muslims didn't want to be soldiers, or turn their own people into slaves. So POWs were turned into soldiers. Merchants did ok but banking was no career since interest was forbidden. Banks gave out personal cheques but this was not money since the state had no hand in it. Merchants were seen as romantic heroes who went on adventures, eg Sinbad. Government interference with the market was considered sacriligious. Adam Smith copied examples from 10th century Islamic texts, but they see division of labour as mutual helping, not selfishness, and value cooperation over competition.
Christians opposed all ursery, but were in favour of charity. So rich people gave the poor "gifts" and the poor gave themselves eg serfdom replaced debt peons.
Kings forced Jews to be money lenders, protected them until a debt crisis hit, then tortured and took body parts until they gave them their money.
Ursery is only allowed against enemies. Commerce was seen as connected to sin and violence, whether people liked it or not. Merchants, especially in Italy, sat in governments that made war and were soldiers and pirates themselves. (if you make money lending illegal and consider it violence, only the violent criminals or their vassals will be money lenders...)
At this time the idea of an "adventuring knight" from the middle ages came into existence, even though real middle age knights were thugs. The fictional knights are more like romanticised merchants a la Sinbad.
Corporations (an organisation which is treated as a person, owns land etc) started with monastic abbeys.
China needed silver for it's booming silver based economy, which they traded for silks etc with Europe. This funded and motivated the colonisation of the Americas.
Rich europeans manipulated the political system to make poor people have to use metal money, leading to angry peasants who were sent off as soldiers/colonial prisoners etc (HELLO AUSTRALIA). "Adventurers" got stuck in loans so nasty that they ended up stripping whole cities and still being in debt, filled with shame and self righteousness, while the creditors didn't want to know where their money was coming from. Kings tried to save the Indians but they and everyone else were in so much debt it didn't stick.
In England it became easy to get debtors sent to jail or even killed, and so since village life was based on credit anyone could get people they hated punished, and village life was messed up. And thus even informal debt became more demonised and paying in cash was seen as more "moral". But there wasn't enough cash to go around, so everyone felt dirty. (this reminds me of the attitude to sex, haha) There wasn't enough cash so workers were allowed to "steal" rope etc, and then once there was enough cash in 1800 this was suddenly considered theft.
Paper money: a debt owed by the King, for a while the only money anyone could access (and only the rich). Several speculative bubbles encouraged governments to think all money had to be based on precious metals. The materialism of the age made everyone deeply uncomfortable with the idea that money is based on nothing but public trust.
All this started before the Industrial revolution. First stock markets were based in conquest. Capitalism has never been based on free wage labour, but on debt peons, slaves, and sweat shops. The factories of the industrial revolution borrowed techniques from plantations.
Smith's model of "the market" with no credit/debt aka sin did not resemble reality, then or now, but was very attractive, and so people tried to make it a reality.
Waged labour used to be an exception, something you did as a young person before becoming an independent farmer/artisan or peon etc.
Any time the capitalist system thinks it will last forever, people become willing to lend out massive amounts of money (since they feel confident that it will eventually be paid back, with interest)...and then everything comes crashing down. To be stable, people must be convinced of imminent apocalypse, and since the Victorian era they usually have been: revolution, atomic war, global warming, etc.
In the 70s American money went off the gold standard, turning US dollars into THE currency, with anyone who wouldn't use them being sanctioned/bombed since the US has the world's most powerful and most extensive military. The US debt increased with "loans" they would never pay off (and the value of which goes down over time due to inflation) being taken on by poor countries with US bases.
Chinese tributaries were given genourous gifts to keep on side. China may be willing to buy American (debt) as part of a long term plan to make America a tribute state.
To avoid revolution, there was a tacit promise that harder work means more wages, and there is basic education etc for everyone. In the 60s African Americans, women etc started wanting equal rights. But capitalism needs someone to be the slaves.
Neoliberalism: By the 1980s productivity and wages stopped being connected, everyone got political rights that didn't do much and "capital"/"property", except that meant mortgages, and they didn't make the money that was promised. Almost everything run by the market and capitalism.
Impossible to live in modern life without debt, yet it is seen as a personal sign of weakness. (Side note from reader disagreeing. I think the reader is forgetting about the privilege required to 'escape' the system :P) Chief source of debt is illness, and then there's college or even *gasp* wanting to have fun.
Capitalist states have to put a lot of violence (armies, repression etc) to keep the system not only around but so powerful noone can imagine an alternative.
The only people to look at a house of objects and think of them only in terms of what they can be traded for is a theif or debt collector.
Some stuff about how capitalism makes us all miserable self hating jerks.
"The industrious poor need stable banks to borrow money from the idle rich" lol. (The non-industrious poor are immoral and all deserve to got to hell, obviously) "Cancelling student loans is unfair on those who have paid their loans off already"! Subtext that work is itself a moral good and thus helping people work less is immoral.
The book ends with a paeon to the non industrious poor, assuming they are all doing so on purpose to have fun, lol lol. He suggests we cancel all debts and start again, as has happened throughout history. A debt is a promise perverted by maths and violence.
That said, I feel like he did a bit of sleight of hand, and would be interested to hear from those who know more about history than me: He gives many examples of different approaches to money and society, then discusses the history of modern capitalism. He says that it has always been centered around violence and slavery (or near slavery: sweat shops etc) and seems not to be able to function without them, hence the difficulties when civil rights removed the ability to exploit women, african americans etc quite so much, and in fact it needs workers to become increasingly productive for stagnant wages.
But while many of the other systems he mentioned may be more stable, and may not rely so much on violence...they all had slaves too, and usually treated women as the property of men (though the extent to which it sucked to be a women and/or slave definitely varied). If there are societies that don't do these things, he didn't mention them. So to create a truly just society we will need something entirely new, not just an end to capitalism. Of course "not truly just but better than we have now" would certainly be a good place to start.
Also: While I see the logic in focussing on the history of Eurasia, especially since I'm not sure we have records of the relevant kinds of monetary systems elsewhere, it would have been nice if he'd at least given a cursory justification for ignoring the rest of the world beyond some general isolated examples and descriptions of degradation and downfall. Especially since I know African and pre-Columbian American societies have actually influenced the West beyond being convenient people to plunder. Though he was still more inclusive than most other history (he even included the POV of women every now and then omg!)
The way he pointed out how massively important women and people from outside Europe were, as well as a fairly brief discussion of the origins of racism, made me wish he'd even noticed disabled people exist. He talked about the "non industrious poor" and assumed it was always on purpose lol lol lol. Queer people got a brief mention in Greek attitudes to pederasty and that was about it (aside from some "men in dresses" in ancient Sumeria). I don't just mention this as a tick-the-box inclusiveness thing, I am left wondering if these POVs would make a genuine difference, since I don't trust him to notice if they would (and maybe they wouldn't! I DON'T KNOW)
This was less an audiobook and more a guy just reading the book, but he read it pretty well. There were errors and reread passages and some OOC asides, plus some unfortunate silly accents (thankfully MLK got an audio grab)
Now my rough notes on chapters 4-12, taken as I went, neatened up only a little. I may try for a more thoughtful response later. These are all his opinions, aside from some asides from me.
People get more angry about debt peons than slavery and caste systems. Workers tend to only revolt when in debt instead of just owned. Debt is a contract between equals, and if you can't pay it back it's considered your own fault. There's an unstated assumption that morality is about reciprocity. Yet what about parenthood? A parent who asks to be paid back seems like a jerk.
baseline communism: to each from their ability, to each according to their need. Exists to some degree amongst pretty much everyone but the maximum "from" and minimum "need" varies. In some societies you are expected to give away a request for anything from a huge set of "trivial" objects. In most societies there is a group of people you are reciprical to, if only family.
A bunch of complicated stuff about the nature of society I can't summarise.
So many silly accents, stop it, reader dude :/
Histories of currency act like it doesn't matter what the specific coinage was, ignoring, for example, that SLAVE WOMEN were used as currency in Ireland, or that a man's women and children were often sold for the father's debts. (People did not actually spend slave girls to buy things, they said "I want six slave girls' worth of barley" etc)
Social currency (in a "human economy"): used almost solely for marriage/religion etc, eg things to do with human beings, not objects/commercial concerns. "Bride price"/"bride wealth" not actually about buying the woman, but about acknowledging the woman-sized debt eg the "perfect wedding" is a man marrying his sister's husband's sister, both families gain and lose a woman.
Blood wealth (reimbursement for murder) uses similar repayment. NOT an actual repayment, since nothing can really repay for a life, just an acknowledgment of guilt and peace offering. Sometimes a dead man was replaced by a wife from the murderer's family, or (in matrilineal families) replaced by an adoptee from an enemy raid.
Currency often stuff used for jewelry: gold, shells etc.
These "human economies" do badly when they encounter commercial ones.
In Africa during the slave trade merchants took advantage of debt pawns by creating reasons to owe them money, or set up strict law systems with the usual punishment being sold into slavery. Created horrible violent chaos, then provided "order" at a price. Much like organised crime.
Human economies taken advantage of by powerful commercial societies who made ceremonial "ownership" literal and sold people they gained through ceremonial debt relationships.
You become a slave in circumstances in which you would otherwise be dead: POW, breaking the law, about to starve. You are socially dead, you cannot have debts, get married etc.
Honour (as in medieval europe): your ability to degrade others, and willingness to play by the rules and put yourself in danger of the same degradation. The value of a slave is the honour which has been extracted from them. The more slaves you own the more prestige you have, even if they don't do any work. Honour is a zero sum game. To dishonour a man, steal their women and take their honour (by making them be a washerwoman), thus adding to your own. Honour needs degradation as a contrast.
Honour price: the price of hurting someone's dignity/honour, their ability to protect what was theirs. Kings etc had higher honour. Cows and slave girls were the currency. To obtain a wife/serf you pay their honour price and absorb their honour.
Yet honour ALSO means honesty and not caring about money.
Slavery is tied up with Patriarchy.
Why has growing civilisation made society more sexist? Conquest leads to taxes, which leads to markets. This turned women into commodities (Why do women not ever sell "their" men instead?This is not addressed), which made men more invested in "protecting" eg controlling their women.
If you can't pay your debts, your women can be taken in leui of money, thus equating honour and money.
Sumerian "prostitutes" were divine priestesses and highly respected. But this slowly turned into red light districts including "transvestite men" (OR POSSIBLY TRANS WOMEN, AUTHOR) and debt peons.
Nomads reacted against this urban society and all the prostitution (which their women were sold into after getting into debt to rich urbanites) by being more patriarchal. Virginity became a monetary commodity. Administrators and merchants keep poor people as debt peons or in danger of it.
First example of a reference of veils was the punishment for slave girls or prostitutes who wear them to look like "respectable" women (those who cannot be bought or sold)
And of course the rich mocked and were disgusted by the poor selling their daughters...to pay their debts to the rich.
The ancient greeks saw money as a sign of degradation. ANYONE can spend money, and everyone wants it, so the desire for money is common. Thus they preferred a gift economy between rich friends.
Old school patronage had responsibilities on both sides. But creditors have no responsibility....and also are equal to their debtor.
Axial Age: Buddha, Pythagorus and Confucius (the fact that there is more to the world than Eurasia and North Africa is elided :/). Coinage, slavery, war all interconnected: Soldiers fight, paid with loot turned into coins, captured POWs made into slaves who churn the economy. Selfishness, "rationalism", materialism, and in reaction religions of charity, the soul, and selflessness. People and their choices are no longer defined by their complex social ties to others. A gold bar gets you the same amount of grain from a stranger, enemy, social bettter/inferior, or cousin.
Romans changed "freedom" from "the ability to make friends and form relationships" to "the ability to do anything", affected by the centrality of slavery in theor society.
Every now and then there'd be a debt crisis and the only way to solve it seemed to be cancelling all debts.
In the middle ages this all collapsed and it was all tiny villages and religions holding all the gold across Eurasia, credit/debt based on trust and no coins.
Ancient India developed money and thus slaves, then those kingdoms collapsed in the middle ages and Hinduism took over, mixing the "everyone knows their place" caste system and stuff like debt peonage, but not as harshly.
Markets and capitalism are opposed: capitalism is about getting the objects you want, while capitalists want to get more money and thus a monopoly.
China considered merchants to be immoral but useful, and it was a highly beuracratic Confucian market based state. Karmic debt, familial debt. Pay it back by bringing people to buddhism, or donating to the temple. Temples were effectively capitalist, needing more money to expand and convert everyone, to the extent that China was running out of metal for coins. So of course the government shut them down and melted the metal buddhas.
Middle East: Muslims didn't want to be soldiers, or turn their own people into slaves. So POWs were turned into soldiers. Merchants did ok but banking was no career since interest was forbidden. Banks gave out personal cheques but this was not money since the state had no hand in it. Merchants were seen as romantic heroes who went on adventures, eg Sinbad. Government interference with the market was considered sacriligious. Adam Smith copied examples from 10th century Islamic texts, but they see division of labour as mutual helping, not selfishness, and value cooperation over competition.
Christians opposed all ursery, but were in favour of charity. So rich people gave the poor "gifts" and the poor gave themselves eg serfdom replaced debt peons.
Kings forced Jews to be money lenders, protected them until a debt crisis hit, then tortured and took body parts until they gave them their money.
Ursery is only allowed against enemies. Commerce was seen as connected to sin and violence, whether people liked it or not. Merchants, especially in Italy, sat in governments that made war and were soldiers and pirates themselves. (if you make money lending illegal and consider it violence, only the violent criminals or their vassals will be money lenders...)
At this time the idea of an "adventuring knight" from the middle ages came into existence, even though real middle age knights were thugs. The fictional knights are more like romanticised merchants a la Sinbad.
Corporations (an organisation which is treated as a person, owns land etc) started with monastic abbeys.
China needed silver for it's booming silver based economy, which they traded for silks etc with Europe. This funded and motivated the colonisation of the Americas.
Rich europeans manipulated the political system to make poor people have to use metal money, leading to angry peasants who were sent off as soldiers/colonial prisoners etc (HELLO AUSTRALIA). "Adventurers" got stuck in loans so nasty that they ended up stripping whole cities and still being in debt, filled with shame and self righteousness, while the creditors didn't want to know where their money was coming from. Kings tried to save the Indians but they and everyone else were in so much debt it didn't stick.
In England it became easy to get debtors sent to jail or even killed, and so since village life was based on credit anyone could get people they hated punished, and village life was messed up. And thus even informal debt became more demonised and paying in cash was seen as more "moral". But there wasn't enough cash to go around, so everyone felt dirty. (this reminds me of the attitude to sex, haha) There wasn't enough cash so workers were allowed to "steal" rope etc, and then once there was enough cash in 1800 this was suddenly considered theft.
Paper money: a debt owed by the King, for a while the only money anyone could access (and only the rich). Several speculative bubbles encouraged governments to think all money had to be based on precious metals. The materialism of the age made everyone deeply uncomfortable with the idea that money is based on nothing but public trust.
All this started before the Industrial revolution. First stock markets were based in conquest. Capitalism has never been based on free wage labour, but on debt peons, slaves, and sweat shops. The factories of the industrial revolution borrowed techniques from plantations.
Smith's model of "the market" with no credit/debt aka sin did not resemble reality, then or now, but was very attractive, and so people tried to make it a reality.
Waged labour used to be an exception, something you did as a young person before becoming an independent farmer/artisan or peon etc.
Any time the capitalist system thinks it will last forever, people become willing to lend out massive amounts of money (since they feel confident that it will eventually be paid back, with interest)...and then everything comes crashing down. To be stable, people must be convinced of imminent apocalypse, and since the Victorian era they usually have been: revolution, atomic war, global warming, etc.
In the 70s American money went off the gold standard, turning US dollars into THE currency, with anyone who wouldn't use them being sanctioned/bombed since the US has the world's most powerful and most extensive military. The US debt increased with "loans" they would never pay off (and the value of which goes down over time due to inflation) being taken on by poor countries with US bases.
Chinese tributaries were given genourous gifts to keep on side. China may be willing to buy American (debt) as part of a long term plan to make America a tribute state.
To avoid revolution, there was a tacit promise that harder work means more wages, and there is basic education etc for everyone. In the 60s African Americans, women etc started wanting equal rights. But capitalism needs someone to be the slaves.
Neoliberalism: By the 1980s productivity and wages stopped being connected, everyone got political rights that didn't do much and "capital"/"property", except that meant mortgages, and they didn't make the money that was promised. Almost everything run by the market and capitalism.
Impossible to live in modern life without debt, yet it is seen as a personal sign of weakness. (Side note from reader disagreeing. I think the reader is forgetting about the privilege required to 'escape' the system :P) Chief source of debt is illness, and then there's college or even *gasp* wanting to have fun.
Capitalist states have to put a lot of violence (armies, repression etc) to keep the system not only around but so powerful noone can imagine an alternative.
The only people to look at a house of objects and think of them only in terms of what they can be traded for is a theif or debt collector.
Some stuff about how capitalism makes us all miserable self hating jerks.
"The industrious poor need stable banks to borrow money from the idle rich" lol. (The non-industrious poor are immoral and all deserve to got to hell, obviously) "Cancelling student loans is unfair on those who have paid their loans off already"! Subtext that work is itself a moral good and thus helping people work less is immoral.
The book ends with a paeon to the non industrious poor, assuming they are all doing so on purpose to have fun, lol lol. He suggests we cancel all debts and start again, as has happened throughout history. A debt is a promise perverted by maths and violence.