David Graeber Quotes - Page 2

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• The best way to think about anarchism is as a combination of three levels. On the one hand, the sort of instinctual revulsion against forms of inequality in power; on the other hand, a reappraisal of what one is already doing in egalitarian relations; and then the projection of these principles on all sorts of relations.

  David Graeber

  Thinking, Hands, Levels

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The difference between capitalism and feudalism is that under capitalism, they make money directly through wages, manufacturing, and commerce and under feudalism, it's directly through juro-political means.

  David Graeber

  Mean, Differences, Political

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Capitalism is like this fractal thing where anything that contains an element of capitalism anywhere inside it is just something that turns into capitalism. It is an incredibly defeatist attitude. If you choose to look at reality that way, I suppose you can, but you have to do enormous violence to reality to do so consistently.

  David Graeber

  Attitude, Reality, Looks

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• There are markets extending from Mali, Indonesia, way outside the purview of any one government which operated under civil laws, so contracts weren't, except on trust. So they have this free market ideology the moment they have markets operating outside the purview of the states, as prior to that markets had really mainly existed as a side effect of military operations.

  David Graeber

  Military, Government, Law

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Money has always been a particular problem for revolutionaries and anti-capitalists. What will money look like 'after the revolution'? How will it function? Will it exist at all? It's hard to answer the question if you don't know what money actually is. Proposing to eliminate it entirely seems utopian and naive.

  David Graeber

  Looks, Answers, Revolution

  "Note worthy: what is the meaning of money?" by David Graeber, www.theguardian.com. December 16, 2011.

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• But in the years since the neoliberal project really has been stripped down to what was always its essence: not an economic project at all, but a political project, designed to devastate the imagination, and willing - with it's cumbersome securitization and insane military projects - to destroy the capitalist order itself if that's what it took to make it seem inevitable.

  David Graeber

  Military, Order, Years

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• We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt.

  David Graeber

  Jobs, Self, Finishing

  David Graeber (2013). “The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement”, p.68, Spiegel & Grau

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• The working poor are the people suffering out subprime mortgages and fatal loans and more and more of our money - you know, capitalism is operated by extracting money, not so much directly being paid.

  David Graeber

  People, Suffering, Mortgage

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Meanwhile, the U.S. debt remains, as it has been since 1790, a war debt; the United States continues to spend more on its military than do all other nations on earth put together, and military expenditures are not only the basis of the government's industrial policy; they also take up such a huge proportion of the budget that by many estimations, were it not for them, the United States would not run a deficit at all.

  David Graeber

  Running, Military, War

  "Debt: The First 5000 Years". Book by David Graeber, 2011.

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• Revolutionary constituencies always involve a tacit alliance between the least alienated and the most oppressed.

  David Graeber

  Alliances, Revolutionary, Oppressed

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• You would think that if neoliberals were in any way honest, after the collapse of the Soviet Union the first thing to do is get rid of the Red Army and the KGB, and build up the economy. Instead, they just get rid of the economy and keep the military and the KGB.

  David Graeber

  Military, Army, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• What about precarious labor? It's actually not the most efficient form of labor at all. They were much more efficient when they had loyalty to their workers and people were allowed to be creative and contribute - you know that what precarious labor does is that it's the best weapon ever made to depoliticize labor. They're always putting the political in front of the economic.

  David Graeber

  Loyalty, People, Political

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• What is debt anyway? A debt is just the perversion of a promise. It is a promise corrupted by both math and violence.

  David Graeber

  Math, Promise, Violence

  David Graeber (2014). “Debt - Updated and Expanded: The First 5,000 Years”, p.505, Melville House

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• It's true that most American citizens think of themselves as living in a democratic country. But when was the last time that any Americans actually sat down and came to a collective decision? Maybe if they are ordering pizzas, but basically never.

  David Graeber

  Country, Thinking, Decision

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• The fascinating thing about standard economic stories is exactly that: they assume that everybody wants that kind of closure. That all human relations are forms of exchange, because if everything is an exchange then it's true that we're both equals. We walk up, I give you something, you give me something, and we walk away. Or I give you something, you don't give me something right now, and you owe me. So if we have any ongoing relationships at all, it's because somebody is in debt.

  David Graeber

  Giving, Stories, Ongoing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• It affects every aspect of our lives, is often said to be the root of all evil, and the analysis of the world that it makes possible - what we call 'the economy' - is so important to us that economists have become the high priests of our society. Yet, oddly, there is absolutely no consensus among economists about what money really is.

  David Graeber

  Roots, Evil, Important

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• If you imagine that everything is an exchange, then we're supposed to just transact and walk away. If we haven't walked away and we still have a relationship, it's because there's a debt.

  David Graeber

  Debt, Imagine, Walks

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Communism is the basis of all sociality and it's the basis of cooperation.

  David Graeber

  Cooperation, Communism, Bases

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The example of Russia reminds us that keeping up that enormous dead weight of the security apparatus required to enforce the ideological conformity to preempt anything that looks like an alternative or a social movement is destroying capitalism.

  David Graeber

  Russia, Movement, Weight

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Within a capitalist corporation, someone says, "Lend me a wrench," and someone asks, "Yeah, what do I get?" You assume that the idea of each according to his or her abilities, each according to his or her needs - in solving a problem - is actually the only thing that works. And in situations of disaster, there are often communistic notions of improvisation, where you basically exchange hierarchies and all of a sudden all those things that are luxuries that you can't afford, you have them in an emergency.

  David Graeber

  Ideas, Luxury, Needs

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Adam Smith actually took all his best ideas and lines from sources from medieval Persia. But one thing he doesn't take is the underlying assumption they have that the basis of a market is mutual aid.

  David Graeber

  Ideas, Lines, Assumption

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• We need each other to do things that we can't do for ourselves. If we are intimately connected with each other, we just give things to each other; if we don't know each other we find another way to handle it. If you think about it, each according to his or her abilities and each according to his or her needs is sort of the same thing as supply and demand.

  David Graeber

  Thinking, Giving, Needs

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• If you look at history, there seems to be a regular pattern: the country with the most powerful military also happens to be the one with the world trade currency. That gives them an enormous economic advantage, which causes goods to flow into their country.

  David Graeber

  Country, Powerful, Military

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• What we're already doing is communism. The first step we have to make is to realize that we're already closer to it than we think.

  David Graeber

  Thinking, Firsts, Steps

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• You can't have cutthroat competition when there's no one stopping you from actually cutting each other's throats. In order to build up trust we also have to think about each other's needs and it creates an entirely different dynamic.

  David Graeber

  Cutting, Thinking, Order

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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