A quick comment may be appropriate on the subject of the so-called ‘rolling Jubilee’, a programme initiated by an organization calling itself Strike Debt. The purpose of this programme is to support debt relief for individuals. This follows up on the idea for a Biblical-type ‘jubilee’ of debt cancellation and nonpayment in the wake of the current crisis, one advocated for by, among others, the prominent anarchist anthropologist David Graeber and many of his followers around the Occupy movement, as well as by some of the post-Keynesian critics of the financial order, like Steve Keen. Whatever the merits or demerits of this proposal as such, the specific form of the rolling Jubilee is worth examining. The notion is here to use donated money to buy up junk debt for pennies on the dollar in the secondary market, and then instead of attempting to enforce the debt obligations, to abolish them instead. The website calls this ‘a bailout of the 99% by the 99%’, and as a fairly original and creative approach to using the financial markets for the purposes of radical politics, it has rightly garnered some attention. Continue reading “On the Rolling Jubilee”