Just Debt: Theology, Ethics, and Neoliberalism by Ilsup Ahn (review)

Narrative theologians insist that religious life is not a matter of assenting to doctrinal propositions, but of participating in communal stories that texture our life-worlds. In Just Debt, Ilsup Ahn makes an analogous argument with respect to debt. Philosophers and economists since the eighteenth century have mystified debt and rendered it amoral, thereby enabling creditors to prey mercilessly upon the poor. Arguing that behind each debt lies a story, Ahn proposes “regrounding the amoralized economy of debt in the social world of culture, religion, and communities” (5). Ahn turns to the Abrahamic traditions to glean values to reposition debt within the social-ethical plane.

The book’s first three chapters consider the genealogy of amoral debt, neoliberal financialization, and default and bankruptcy. Economists have mis-appropriated Locke’s labor theory of value, wrongly assuming that money is a commodity like any other, and is therefore subject only to the logic of exchange: The only ethical obligation is that the debtor must repay. This amoralization enables creditors to rationalize vast human suffering: Tanzania in 2000 spent nine times more on debt servicing than health, while 1.6 million Tanzanians were living with AIDS (70). But where Locke conjectured that money and debt emerged from a barter economy, anthropological research suggests instead that debt preceded money as part of a “moral economy of gift exchange” (31). Within a storied and communal context, moral responsibility for debt will be shared by all affected parties. So in cases of sovereign insolvency, the principle of “equal proportionality” (74) urges creditors to assume partial responsibility, rather than demand full repayment with no regard for the resulting social misery.

The final three chapters consider religious wisdom regarding debt. Islamic ethics emphasize transparency and trusting relationships, condemning lending with interest (riba) and excessive risk (gharar). While in practice Islamic banks deploy de facto interest mechanisms, the important point for Ahn is that Islam conceives debt as a gift to the needy. Ahn considers Jewish ethics of Sabbath and Jubilee as principles of restorative justice: on this basis, aid to third world countries is understood as reparations for colonialism, and rich nations also owe an ecological debt to poor countries. Interpreting the 2008 crash as a personal and structural failure of virtue, Ahn applies Christian virtue ethics to debt economy. Ahn relies on Kathryn Tanner’s notion of “unconditional gift” (146), suggesting that God’s grace transcends debt and invites humans to do likewise.

Ahn deftly weaves together insights from social sciences and humanities, so that when he argues in chapter 4 that derivatives are unethical on the basis of gharar, readers who are nonspecialists in either Islam or economics will follow his reasoning. Ahn is perhaps less successful in placing the Abrahamic traditions themselves in conversation. In what ways might the values and “stories” of these traditions complement or illuminate one another? Secondly, while Ahn is aware of the structural violence of colonialism and neoliberalism, he does not consider interlinkages between debt, neoliberalism and white supremacy. Recent works by Keri Day (2015) and Cedric Johnson (2015) on neoliberalism and race probably appeared too recently for consideration; however, Edward Baptist’s (2014) work on slavery and the development of credit and capitalism, as well as Douglas Blackmon’s (2008) work on debt bondage and convict leasing would be interesting dialogue partners. Given Ahn’s interest in the Occupy movement, he might have considered also the Movement for Black Lives, whose platform links economic justice, debt forgiveness, police brutality, and reparations (https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/). Nonetheless, Ahn’s book is an important resource for readers concerned with global debt and economic justice, as well as those interested in applying interreligious scholarship to social ethics.