Citing the political compass AND Graeber in the same post while singing the praises of currency is peak :galaxy-brain:
people really get their understanding of politics from a shitty right-libertarian meme
The political compass and its consequences has been a disaster for the human race
I'm going to admit right now the only thing I've read from Graeber is his essay on superheroes and the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises, "Super-Position." That said, I feel like there's no way this person actually read Bullshit Jobs. Surely they can't have read a book, particularly not a book by one of the few good public intellectuals, and come away still being this stupid.
The best thing to read of Graeber if you are a pure theory Marxist is the Towards a (Marxist Antrophologist) Theory of Value.
If you read that you know and understand a lot of what he means. If you read stuff like Debt the first 5000 years it isn't so much saying Marxism is wrong and "this" is right, but showing what is there on the table. In the newer Dawn of Everything it is slightly more problematic, but still good, since it was co-written with someone who truly isn't a critical Marxist or leftist (as commonly understood). The newest is still nice to see how awesome alternatives to capitalism could be, which were crushed by force, while it doesn't speak of the noble savage but in fact tries to do away with that conception.
Another point about the newest book, which I haven't read properly is this: some argue that the examples of pre capitalist societies which have force, violence, gendered violence and such are counter examples to patriarchy being born from capitalism. However this is wrong on multiple counts. What is shown is not that one has no alternative to patriarchy and violence or such; but that it takes material and social conditions to do away with those. Furthermore the kind of patriarchy as example known of feudal times of course did change when capitalism came to be - and that in specific ways (Debt talks a bit more about that and how the Slave Trade impacted social structures and how debt drove it and the systems of force which would crush you and deal violence if you didn't give what you owe and would take your property).
The patriarchy we have currently is one that is deeply rooted in what is. It is a mesh that contains all the capitalist, racist structures and so on and trying to do away with that without dealing with capitalism will not end well.
Of course Graeber could be more communist though, but the propaganda in terms of "baseline communism" how we deal with friends in a quasi communist manner is good. Another thing I would like to underline is that Graeber is aware that now is not the past and that what is now is different to what was. Graeber is pretty clear in that what Marx/Engels wrote in Capital 3 Chapter 48, that is:
The actual wealth of society, and the possibility of constantly expanding its reproduction process, [...] [do] depend on its productivity[...]In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases;
thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. [... Humans] must wrestle with Nature to satisfy [their] wants, to maintain and reproduce life[..], and [they] must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production.
With [their] development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of [their] wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised [humans], the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.
Which if you read Graeber is precisely what he tells, that we are living in times in which there are immense productive capabilities. This enables us a lot which wasn't possible earlier and the spaces of interventions and alternatives that Graeber talks about are there, however he does seldom tell how to fill them.
However often Graeber is read as liberal and then you will miss alternative readings of his texts - which anyhow aren't without fault.
Back to the original point: There are also short papers/book reviews by Graeber which are easy reads and show the general direciton of his thought which is that the world has to be changed and it is the people and activists who have to do it and that it has to do with taking away the power from those people, institutions and structures who currently hold it.
Another point about some Leftist/Marxist critiques (or honestly just two Trotkist groups I know) of Graeber which is that he presents an alternative reading to what money and currency is to what Marx wrote in Capital.
This in my opinion kinda misses the point a bit that Marx and Graeber try to make. Marx worked in a way that he took in the current state of knowledge and the current research ideas - Smith, Says, Ricardo etc. - and then put them to rigorous testing, wrangled with them, added a bit, threw theories and counterexamples against them and looked at evidence (the amount of data and statistics Lening, Engels, Marx have done is impressive). For example the idea that there was a society which bartered three chickens for a cow and such and then there came longer lasting things like coins isn't quite what we have evidence for and yet Marx presents parts of that in his writings. Parts which were taken by Smith and adjusted. Smith invented those examples though and while those after Smith (and a bit Smith himself) did think that this is how money came to be I am skeptical that this is what Marx thought must have happened and that it is essential to Marx's theory that the way of how money/currency comes into being is unchanged.
I would on the contrary argue that for Marx analysis of how money/(currency)/capital work in Capitalism within his books it matters little. Since the tool and framework Marx used were analytical and somewhat static/statistical averaging for the system of industrializing capitalism and the development of it that he focused on. For the motivation and workings of capitalists it matters little whether currency came into existence as I-owe-you-staff-markings, coins you had to pay taxes in and only the occupying army had those tokens, or if you wanted something that lasted longer in your pocket than a dead chicken.
They possibly did, I mean didn't Graeber advocate basic income at the end of Bullshit Jobs? That's a pretty cringe takeaway from the guy that literally wrote the book on debt.
Graebers point isn't that UBI would fix our situation though, but that alternatives are possible and there are examples of alternatives around. No single thing would make Graeber say: This is good enough now, lets all stop now (not only cause he is dead).
Sure, but this guy's kinda dumb and needs to read some more books.
as soon as they said "political quadrant" a big buzzer sounded and "PCM: OPINION DISCARDED" flashed up in red
The OP really had me for the first 10 out of the 11 tweets. And then had to end all that with "And the reason we can't have all the nice stuff I just said? REPUBWICANS"
God fucking dammit
If there were not an
IsraelGOP, we would have to invent one to make sure our interests were preserved~ Joe Biden
