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David Rolfe Graeber (/ˈɡreɪbər/; February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Bullshit Jobs (2018), and The Dawn of Everything (2021), and his leading role in the Occupy movement, earned him recognition as one of the foremost anthropologists and left-wing thinkers of his time.
Graeber radicalized me. Bullshit Jobs was my first book, later I read Debts and Dawn. Now I work a bullshit job and spend my working hours on lemmy and podcasts
up to what size & technological level?
There are historical examples with tens to hundreds of tousands of inhabitants. Those are actually quite common.
Graeber's book "The dawn of everything" has some good examples.
For those of us without the book, what sort of examples does it give?
Early agricultural societies in the fertile cescent that existed for 1000+ years and build rather large cities and more recent various meso-american ones that existed in a sort of patchwork with others, but which due to the climatic conditions and later pillaging by European invaders didn't leave much historical records.
The thing is there is no tipping point. You have small size hunter gatherer groups who are egalitarian and others aren't. Same for agricultural societies and cities and on and on. There are even groups that change depending on the season. The Dawn of Everything is a very enlightening book about this topic
In what way is the "technological level" dependant on a state?
From the top of my head: The Neo-Zapatistas in Chiapas show that both metrics can be answered with "quite high/a lot".
my thought is actually that higher levels of technology begin to whittle away at the workability of more "free form" social organization.
For example, I'd argue that American Indians were living in something much closer to anarchy than anything else when the technologically vastly superior Europeans arrived with guns and absolutely demolished them.
I think anarchist societies could probably solve problems that require high technology (electricity, sewage, water distribution...), probably in ways we can't imagine. But I don't think they can solve the "higher technology oppressor" problem.
American Indians were mostly killed by the germs that the European invaders accidentally brought. In actual battles the Europeans didn't fair so well as they were usually vastly outnumbered and the Europeans that defected or got captured mostly preferred to stay with the Indians afterwards. And yes, never trust history written by the winners.
For example, I'd argue that American Indians were living in something much closer to anarchy than anything else when the technologically vastly superior Europeans arrived with guns and absolutely demolished them.
I disagree. The native Americans were "technologically" quite advanced when it came to stewardship of the land. Think agriculture (food and forests), language and the like. Europeans basically enacted biological warfare on them.
Chiapas has a lot of what it does because of Mexico. The anarchists didn’t create the sewer or power systems for example
Is there a reason why anarchists couldn't build these infrastructures?
The fact that this is one of the areas that anarchist communities historically struggle with?
Can you give examples? I'm not aware of any historical precedents where these attempts failed.
Here’s an example from Rojava
“ The village asked the Rojava government for help, but were told the authorities can’t do anything. They lack the money, expertise, and the personnel. This is a common refrain in the autonomous region of northern Syria where the Kurdish-led administration has built a quasi-state but is hemmed in by neighbours with whom relations range from frosty to openly hostile.
Rojava is, to a large extent, dependent on the benevolence of foreigners to fund and oversee big-budget projects like waste management. Officials across Rojava said they have shown representatives of European organizations the problems they face, like lack of water treatment facilities, and were given promises of help. But they have seen little results”
https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/21032019
This is by no means unique. Anarchist societies IRL frequently lack the expertise needed for these projects because the skilled people who can do them tend to work in places that compensate them better than others for their work.
This is why the Dead Kennedy’s have that line “Anarchy sounds good to me until someone says ‘who will fix the sewers?’”
This is less an example of how anarchism can't do this or that, but rather that you can't have your insular little utopia if you're surrounded by powerful entities whose interests directly oppose yours. There is no right life within the wrong one.
I still don't see why a sewage system is cathegorically out of the question when the problems here are less "you can't organise the construction of a sewage system" and more "we still live in a globalised system which is fundamentally based on competition."
Did you miss the quoted bit where they talk about how they lack the of resources and expertise are a common problem? That’s the problem anarchists face IRL. The people that have these skills are incentivized to leave anarchist societies for ones that compensate them fir these skills.
That is not exactly a credible source. To quote the wikipedia on it:
A number of international and Kurdish sources have described Rudaw as affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, particularly the current President of the Kurdistan Region Nechirvan Barzani.
Rudaw Media Network was temporarily banned in Syrian Kurdistan due to its partisan news and alleged smear campaigns against the Kurdish political parties which oppose the Kurdistan Democratic Party, a ruling political party led by the Barzani family members.
And besides, you are really arguing that a semi-functional, mostly representative organ in the middle of a civil war doesn't have the resources to maintain sewers?
Exactly, please explain how anarchists would approach the problem of redoing the entire US electrical grid (this is critical from a security perspective and would increase efficiency).
Thats such a silly question that shows a deep lack of understanding what anarchism actually means.
Why are you bothering to reply then unless your goal was to be rude to someone else? You certainly have nothing constructive to offer in your comment.
Dont bother replying. im blocking you because you clearly aren’t worth it
Which one should I start with?
I've not read them all, so I can't really rank them, but I do share Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You! often, and of course there are the renowned Bullshit Jobs and Debt. I'm sure other folks can add their own suggestions..
Okay so you might mot like this, but todays society is way more advanced, and there are some good things I can't live without. Dental care is IMO a good example.
Now my theory is that our society is built on egomaniacs, power hungry narcissistic people and outright sadists (used by them). They make the wheels grind, they make you work for 48h a week instead of seeing your family.
But it also furthers society. In a wrong wretched way.
To have anarchy, or communism, we need to do away with those people, but we also must make people get out of bed and work too, I mean in a perfect society where everything is provided, who would like to be a hard working dentist?
And before you jump on me, Marx himself described a fenomena (I'm paraphrasing) where 1 company have normal working conditions and another with the aforementioned conditions. The second company will obviously win in the long run.
So you can't just make a law, or "not letting it happen" because other societies will, and then they will conquer you in some way because they are stronger or maybe just richer or have the equivalent of "dentists".
I'd love living in an all caring nice society, but how? Empirically it just doesn't seem to work.
The syndicalist answer is to get the whole working class into unions. Those unions take over their companies and become worker-owned co-operatives. They preference working directly with other companies doing the same. At some point, this reaches critical mass. The state then becomes unnecessary because the co-operatives handle everything between themselves.
Don't forget, too, that a lot of "work" being done in a modern office takes, perhaps, 10 hours a week. People aren't doing real work for 40 hours. That suggests that a company can be just as successful as any other while substantially reducing hours.
I know about that idea, but it doesn't adress the problem posed, at all?
Those people will just take over unions. I live in France were the unions are strong, and I can tell you the yes, it's way better than no unions but no it isn't lala land either and the battle of the egos is all over the place.
I also know that most office hours are totally wasted, but how come no one seems to have successfully made a job where you only do those effective hours possible?
Unions alone are necessary, but not sufficient. They have to actually take over their companies for this to work. The number of workers in a co-operative in France is about 5%.
I also know that most office hours are totally wasted, but how come no one seems to have successfully made a job where you only do those effective hours possible?
That's a very good question for capitalism.
I only heard about Bullshit Jobs recently. Now, knowing he's an anarchist anthropologist, definitely putting it in my ever-growing-rarely-shrinking book list.
ever-growing-rarely-shrinking book list.
✊ The struggle is real fam
Further evidence that only the good die young. My man was too great for this world.
Question from someone uninformed on anarchism. How would an anarchist society do something huge, like for example get to the moon. It seems like that requires an intense pooling of resources and a level of coordination accross multiple industries, scientific disciplines, manufacturing techniques, etc.
... But they study those societies by their bones.
We don't owe the future tall buildings, smog, and a persistant thread of civilizational narrative. Humans living on their own terms might just die.
I didn't actually know about this guy. Reading up on him now. Thanks for posting!
How many of those societies have undergone an industrial revolution?