So Graeber's analysis evolved and grew? That doesn't seem like the bad thing this review makes of it. He still seems like an anarchist even if he is saying that the conception of the state and its history is a flawed category, and how "equality" in contemporary discourse ends up as calls for technocratic tinkering unconcerned with any potential for non-capitalist social formation.
Like the reviewer clearly sees his position develop over time and then invokes Hayek as if that's a fair comparison:
Here, he appears almost to be ridiculing himself and the Occupy movement (if also Thomas Piketty), or Graeber and Wengrow appear to be ridiculing earlier Graeber. Do I hear a touch of Friedrich Hayek?
Graeber's rejection of the concept of the state undermines one of the basic assumptions of anarchist thought, which is anti-statism. As the reviewer says,
But this “simplistic” conception of the state is also the conception that fuels or articulates the anarchist critique of the state, from William Godwin to Mikhail Bakunin to Emma Goldman [...] In late Graeber, this looks simplistic and nonempirical. “The state” is a concept that falls apart under analysis and should be abandoned. Of course, that makes anti-statism just as senseless, for what is an anti-statist fighting against, really?
Same logic applies to his rejection of egalitarianism, which is also an important aspect of anarchist thought. I think late Graeber would dismiss anarchism as based on the same flawed Enlightenment assumptions that he spends debunking in The Dawn of Everything.
I think Graeber remained a radical throughout his life, but not an anarchist in his later works. Unless you're using a more expansive definition of anarchism?
So Graeber's analysis evolved and grew? That doesn't seem like the bad thing this review makes of it. He still seems like an anarchist even if he is saying that the conception of the state and its history is a flawed category, and how "equality" in contemporary discourse ends up as calls for technocratic tinkering unconcerned with any potential for non-capitalist social formation.
Like the reviewer clearly sees his position develop over time and then invokes Hayek as if that's a fair comparison:
Graeber's rejection of the concept of the state undermines one of the basic assumptions of anarchist thought, which is anti-statism. As the reviewer says,
Same logic applies to his rejection of egalitarianism, which is also an important aspect of anarchist thought. I think late Graeber would dismiss anarchism as based on the same flawed Enlightenment assumptions that he spends debunking in The Dawn of Everything.
I think Graeber remained a radical throughout his life, but not an anarchist in his later works. Unless you're using a more expansive definition of anarchism?