Blood and Money

War, Slavery, Finance, and Empire

By: David McNally

Narrated by: Tim Getman

Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Blood and Money tells the story of money as a history of violence and human bondage. 

In most accounts of the origins of money, we are offered pleasant tales in which it arises to the mutual benefit of all parties as a result of barter. In this groundbreaking study David McNally reveals the true story of money's origins and development as one of violence and human bondage. Money's emergence and its transformation are shown to be intimately connected to the buying and selling of slaves and the waging of war. 

Blood and Money demonstrates the ways that money has "internalized" its violent origins, making clear that it has become a concentrated force of social power and domination. Where Adam Smith observed that monetary wealth represents "command over labor", this paradigm shifting book amends his view to define money as comprising the command over persons and their bodies.

©2020 David McNally (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing

Blood Money

The book started off pretty slow but it actually picked up nicely and met my expectations.

Interesting ideas worth a listen

The text contains a number of interesting ideas and is brief enough that I consider it worth a listen even if one doesn't quite follow or buy all of it. The performance by Tim Getman is very good, bringing a lot of life into what might have otherwise been a rather lugubrious affair. The text veers into academic jargon often enough that you may want to have some familiarity with concepts like dialectics, semiotics, and deconstructionism, but doesn't go deeply into them. Also, this is a Marxiet analysis and assumes a certain level of understanding and acceptance of (at least for the purposes of evaluating the ideas presented) the underlying ideas of Marxism. Unfortunately, the text also highlights why it's important for an author to read their own work aloud frequently because the little tics and habits we all have ("to be sure...") become very apparent when read aloud for hours on end!

Intriguing Perspective

An intriguing perspective on money, capitalism and empire. The first couple chapters required serious effort to follow the information-dense discussion, which laid the groundwork for the second half of the book. With that background, the final chapter provides an enlightening insight into the current global economic environment.

Headshaker!!

Wow i did not know how far the rabbit hole would take me!! Mind building and thought provoking, great book sad sad song.

Very Insightful but a little preachy in places

So I found the actual meat of the text to be very interesting and insightful but at times, particularly in introductions and conclusions, I found the language to be a little emotive to the point of being preachy. This is probably in large part due to the difference between my British world view and that of the, presumably American author. This is overall a knit pick as it is confined to very small parts of the book and is massively outweighed by the excellent quality of research and analysis displayed in majority of the book.

Felt like communist propaganda..

I wanted a historical view of money and its effects positive and negative. This felt more of a «why captialisme is wrong» type of book.