Over the past two decades, indebtedness has been at the centre of the world's attention, but social conflicts against private debts have only rarely been studied. Drawing on a global database of 65 cases ranging from 1765 to 2020, we offer a preliminary glimpse at such mobilisations. We find that anti-debt conflicts seem to have increased exponentially since the early 1980s and that they have involved different social classes with various political objectives, ranging from ‘populist’ to ‘revolutionary’, hence their multifaceted ‘awkward’ nature. Credit/debt relations are an underestimated root cause of many economic conflicts because of their foundational role in the (mis)workings of capitalism, their lasting consequences in terms of discipline and dispossession, and their potential to change one's class location, downwards or upwards. While the repression of anti-debt protests and the particular subjectivity associated with debt have often deterred mobilisations, we argue that the situation seems to be changing, as ever more people are discontented with the ‘debtfare state’ and the financialisation of everyday life, including that of farming.

在过去的二十年里，债务一直是世界关注的焦点，但对私人债务的社会冲突却鲜有研究。利用从 1765 年到 2020 年的 65 个案例的全球数据库，我们初步了解了此类动员。我们发现，自 1980 年代初以来，反债务冲突似乎呈指数级增长，并且它们涉及具有不同政治目标的不同社会阶层，从“民粹主义”到“革命性”，因此具有多方面的“尴尬”性质。信用/债务关系是许多经济冲突的一个被低估的根源，因为它们在资本主义（错误）运作中的基础作用，它们在纪律和剥夺方面的持久后果，以及它们向下或向上改变一个人的阶级位置的潜力。