David Graeber

2020 has been full of death and grief, and one more person has died. In the first week of September, David Graeber, anarchist, author, activist, anthropologist and historian, died suddenly. 

Graeber's books included: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, which first started off as an article in Strike! Magazine, Debt: The First 5000 Years, and Direct Action: An Ethnography, plus The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. He was also one of the editors of Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Transformation. Just one quick online search reveals so many journals and articles by Graeber, inlcuding in Rolling Thunder The Shock of Victory: An Analysis of Our Unclaimed Triumphs - there are also books due to be published later this year, including one co-written with his partner 'What are Kings'. 

 

“Debt is the most efficient means ever created to take relations that
are fundamentally based on violence and violent inequality and make them
seem right and proper.”


"The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger."  

 

"Neoliberalism isn't an economic program - it's a political program
designed to produce hopelessness and kill any future alternatives."


 

"...in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more
obviously one's work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be
paid for it. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy
way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class
of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage
collectors, or mechanics, it's obvious that were they to vanish in a
puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic."


 

At the Freedom Shop we still have Possibilities ($32), Revolutions in Reverse ($25) and Constituent Imagination ($31) but a lot of his work can be found online, check out the Anarchist Library, Libcom and especially his own website: https://davidgraeber.industries/ 

 

David Graeber - "Are You an Anarchist?"


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