RIP Graeber

[Anonymous No.19342154]

Best book of the year, everyone should read this. What books should I read next?

[Anonymous No.19343414]

>>19342154
I love Graeber. The Utopia of Rules is excellent.

But as with all Jewish anarchists, he makes the fundamental mistake of underestimating the evil nature of gentiles, and overgeneralising human nature based on his own experience of family and community.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.19343435]

>>19343414
You overestimate the “human nature” meme. Minds are extremely malleable.
Instead we should approach it from the earthly nature of materialism as the main driver of this human reaction.

[Anonymous No.19343503]

>>19343435
You misunderstand my point.
Being that human beings, while malleable, have patterns and forms of behaviour.
The marxist believes we are clay.
But the ceramicist knows that clay has properties: fire it at the wrong temperature, with the wrong humidity and it will break. Glazing involves chaotic processes that yield unexpected results, sometimes disastrous.
Graeber, like so many New York Jewish anarchists, grew up in a uniquely nonviolent, literate, and communalist working class environment. This informs his beliefs about human beings.
These beliefs are wrong.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.19343600]

>>19343503
Nietzsche believes in the clay more.
But socialists aren’t wrong for trying to undo the damage of state capitalism. Like I’d have a small fortune if I had a dollar for every time I heard the myth of the Myth of the Nobel Savage. We’d be better off in that state of nature, but who actually believes in going back but conserva-trads and an-prims? No, it would be something else entirely. A literate, space age, nuclear age people living without state capitalism would be free to do wonders.
Graeber’s studied cultures. This is his anthropology. What you’ve been raised on is wrong.

[Anonymous No.19343649]

>>19343600
I'm starting to understand why people here despise you.

Every time I make this point to Leftists, they fail to listen or properly engage with the point I'm making: that Jewish philosophers, raised with a certain set of values, form judgements about human nature and human beings that are ultimately misleading.
The last person I said this to came out with the sheer idiocy that: 'Marx wasn't jewish' -- before going on to call me a fascist.

As for 'what I've been raised on', you have literally no idea what I think or believe -- or indeed, what I have thought, and have believed -- only that I think there is a mistake in assuming that minds are so malleable that society could be reconstructed, either through a planned vanguard revolution by intellectual elites, or by an anarchistic recreation of society.

Studying cultures doesn't give you some enlightened understanding of human beings. The conditioning of childhood is hard to shake. Graeber is a victim of his own benevolence.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.19343690]

>>19343649
This jewish anthropologist studies different cultures. His bias is anarchist. Not a very popular bias even among the Jewish population.
This is all I have to go on for you and I find you lacking.
The conditioning of childhood is hard to shake. Let’s see what a childhood is like without odious systems of greed molding them.

[Anonymous No.19343706]

>>19342154
Am I the only one that thinks that Graeber's affirmation of human agency kind of falls through the cracks in that he recognizes that a significant number of deliberate egalitarian societies in America were organized in such a way only after the collapse of hierarchical societies (I'm thinking here of the Mississippi river societies or the Maya).

This pattern or whatever you want to call it makes me think that we won't be able to do shit with regards to climate change and a social transformation can only be realized after major ecological catastrophe.

[Anonymous No.19343709]

>>19342154
It's truly incredible

>>19343503
David Graeber is not a Marxist, and has been critical of Marx. That being said, I really do think you should try to learn more about Marx - who I'm not especially a fan of - from a source other than Youtube videos and pop non fiction books. It's very obviously reflected in your conceptual vocabulary that this is where you've learned about these things

[Anonymous No.19343715]

>>19342154
Seems like more neoliberal propaganda
I'll pass

[Anonymous No.19343720]

>>19343690
>I find you lacking
now who's odious

>Not a very popular bias even among the Jewish population.
Jewish population in first half of the 20th century in new york was a hotbed of anarchism. Graber's mother was in the garment industry -- which is the birthplace of American syndicalism.

>Let’s see what a childhood is like without odious systems of greed molding them.
Right, then quickly! Let's abolish all the systems of privilege and oppression! Let's give power over to the workers, and have direct democracy, and move forward into a brighter tomorrow, although without saying what precisely that tomorrow will be! Perhaps it shall combine a cybernetic economic system of decentralised planning, with regional labour councils that coordinate production and distribution of resources! Perhaps it will be a resource-based economy, or a foundational economy, or a system of market socialism, but not like in Yugoslavia!

What a wonderful world it will be!

[Anonymous No.19343728]

>>19343709
I'm criticising him for his Anarchism. I never said he was a Marxist. And I've read Capital -- in fact, I used to host a Marxist reading group.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.19343729]

>>19343706
Sort of prophetic the way things are going. Thinking of Le Guin’s Dispossessed
An anthropologists daughter

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.19343757]

>>19343720
State capitalism is odious. You are just coming up lacking.
Most lower classes found out about socialism back then.

[Anonymous No.19343778]

>>19343728
not that guy but what changed your mind on marx

[Anonymous No.19343783]

>>19343757
Ultimately, what stopped me being a Leftist, and destroyed my optimistic faith in the possibility of human beings creating a better, wholly different kind of world, were meetings and conversations with other Leftists, and the enduring feeling that you are unpleasant and closed-minded people who should never be allowed to secure power.

The fact that you refuse to properly engage with my point (that there was something specific about the New York Jewish working class -- indeed, all Jewish communities, especially in the shtetls and ghettos, with their communalism and intelligence and sobriety -- and that this informs the Leftist view of humanity), but instead resort to insults and straw men just reinforces that feeling.

>Most lower classes found out about socialism back then.
This is asinine.

[Anonymous No.19343787]

>>19342154
Anarchism is silly and infantile.

[Anonymous No.19343805]

>>19342154
I like Graeber's work because it challenges a lot of old under-criticized assumptions, but it still feels too normative to me. I don't see a reason to judge the people of the past; they're dead. I'm also a determinist, so I don't think it could have gone any differently.

[Anonymous No.19343807]

>>19343787
It's amazing how frequently "infantile" is used in conjunction with "anarchism". Like it's never "childish" or "adolescent" or "immature". It's like every Liberal hears someone else say it, smirks, and thinks, "Heh, yeah - these kids! Grow up like me! Infantile is a smart sound word!" and then they say it, and someone else hears it, and the loop goes on.

[Anonymous No.19343818]

>>19343778
Living and working in a number of different companies; meeting people from all works of life; recognising that rolling the dice is never worth it, and all we can hope to do is hang on, as tightly as possible, to those manners and norms of courtesy and deference, order, virtue and rule, that keep us from descending into the pit of anarchy -- that is, real anarchy, historic anarchy: no utopian ideal community, best described as (and in) science fiction, but brutish, violent, authoritarian, and destructive.

Also I began to doubt these dogmas:
That people are equal,
That race is not real,
That human beings are ultimately good (or at least neutral),
That the environment drives our development more than our genes,
That we have a duty to the world.

[Anonymous No.19343822]

>>19343818
>companies
meant to say countries

[Anonymous No.19343824]

>>19343435
But Graeber's book is as anti-materialist as you can get.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.19343848]

>>19343783
I think you overstate some. Yeah, bourgeois living isn’t the same as proletariat living and these two groups are different still in other countries. (I’m just an uneducated prole). But you assume monoliths where there aren’t any about a lot of people.
>you are unpleasant and closed-minded people who should never be allowed to secure power.
good thing the whole project (unless you’re a tankie) is to cede power to the plurality.
>asinine
There were a lot of socialists in the US late 19th early 20th century. Lots of different ethnicities.

>>19343824
The world we live against shapes us, then we shape it, and back and forth it goes. How does the book make a claim for spirituality and supernatural providence?
>>19343787
GET OUT OF THE THREAD ALREADY

[Anonymous No.19343871]

>>19343848
>There were a lot of socialists in the US late 19th early 20th century. Lots of different ethnicities.
My claim is not: 'socialism and anarchism are jewish' (although it's true that there is a massive overrepresentation of jews among anarchist and socialist thinkers)
My claim is: 'jewish leftists' view of humanity is misinformed, being based on their background and experience as jews'

>to cede power to the plurality
Except this doesn't happen in practice.

[Anonymous No.19343894]

>>19343848
I'm not interested in what the theory tells us, and what Anarchists/leftcoms/libsocs want (or say they want). I'm interested in what actually happens in history.

And what happens is:
1. Revolution turns authoritarian, decays into totalitarian (or at least violently autocratic) society.
2. Revolution is insufficiently authoritarian, defeated by counterrevolution (or external invasion) that institutes totalitarian (or at least violently autocratic) society.

The exception is Labour Zionism, which eventually turned neolib anyway (because it was compelled by the external realities of existing in the middle east).

[Anonymous No.19343940]

>>19343848
>I’m just an uneducated prole

why do people like you always say stuff like this
what purpose does this serve? there's a sort of mocking self-satisfaction to it; a kind of 'circumstance-signalling' where you appeal to an earthier, working-class, heroic nature, by virtue of your social position
and imply that your opponent is some sort of effete entitled aristocratic
it's one of the many behaviours that has led me to despise leftists

[Anonymous No.19343950]

>>19343848
>>19343940
it's the sort of thing mao used to do: spitting and farting and using deliberately crass speech to mock his more upper-class comrades
like him you would most likely also throw landowners down wells, and smash up temples, and murder tibetan lamas

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.19343951]

>>19343871
>view of humanity is misinformed, being based on their background and experience as jews'
And that’s a whole book of who gives a fuck. You’re depressed people aren’t easily organized and he wasn’t. This has been very clear. I said you overstate it. I disagree.

In Direct Democracy, you have a short learning curve. What would make it seem a long curve is that everyone has to learn it. This would take a while to get used to for a global population.

>>19343894
I’m a student of history too. You read Against Leviathan?

[Anonymous No.19343988]

>>19343951
>You’re depressed people aren’t easily organized and he wasn’t.
No, I don't trust the people doing the organising.

>a student of history
How do people end up talking like this?

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.19343994]

>>19343940
I’m just saying I’m not from a privileged background. Very working class, no university training. Trying to clear things up. I don’t know my opponent at all, but I’m guessing we’re similar at this point.
Are you threatened that a worker would know any of this stuff? What’s it to you?

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.19344021]

>>19343988
Who are the people doing the organizing?
You said you were at one point.
I didn’t trust some of the people in this Graeber book either

[Anonymous No.19344049]

>>19343951
>direct democracy
Imagine being a materialist who doesn't understand that their own theory implies that humans will never exceed their mediocrity
Holy fuck what an idiot.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.19344066]

>>19344049
0/10

[Anonymous No.19344080]

>>19344066
It's true, materialism reveals that your meme ideologies are the feverish daydreams of the uncritical and the foolish. You assign normative values to the interactions of particles.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.19344494]

>>19342154
>What books should I read next?
Graeber’s Debt and this one. Scott might be a little less fun to read, but I’m getting a lot out of it

[Anonymous No.19344516]

>>19343503
>Being that human beings, while malleable, have patterns and forms of behaviour.
Your mistake is assuming those patterns are form are inherently and exclusively evil. They are not.

[Anonymous No.19344576]

>>19344516
Where do I make this mistake?