The Moral Nature of Debtand the Making of Responsible Debtor

The significance of debt relations is constantly growing in the present-day world, so do economic problems related to debt. Credit relationships on market are usually treated as morally neutral despite the fact that debt generates a number of moral contradictions. This paper suggests an understanding of debt that draws on the anthropological theory of gift. It enables to expose the moral content of the utilitarian market exchange as compared to gift exchange and to differentiate between various forms of debt. This approach is used for analyzing consumer credit and for demonstrating that debtor’s behavior is paradoxically determined by striving to avoid the moral obligations of debt. The main moral imperatives are indicated that govern consumer credit - independence and necessity, calculativeness and quantification. This article demonstrates that making the borrower responsible for growing debt makes credit burden increasing rather than restraints it.