A discussion and bashing of Graeber's Bullshit Jobs idea, was a quite interesting read!
This tactic does not confront the market head-on. It displaces the struggle over production to the construction of a parallel social sphere in which desire can be uncoupled from the profit motive. What we get in Graeber, however, is a premature post-capitalism, in which the aggressive automation of the post-war period is seen as a cue for humanity’s jump from the sphere of necessity to that of freedom.
He's a technological determinist utopian, not a Marxist class war materialist. If you think "Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism will save us" but you don't spend your time fighting for the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, you're just advertising for Bezos
UBI is very bad, folks, never forget that. Money is fake and not a "material" need. People need healthcare, shelter, food, clothing, purpose, etc. Cutting them a check and leaving it up to the market doesn't solve the issue, it makes it worse.
We need Medicare for All, a program to build 2 million homes a year, nationalize Amazon and use it to distribute food and household goods (free/cheap), and make workplaces more democratic.
I agree with your point, but Graeber did spend a lot of his time fighting for the proletariat. He was very active in anarchist/black bloc circles and took part in the anti-FTAA protests in Québec.
Good stuff. It wouldn't occurr to me to categorize graeber under the same umbrella of atomizing post-left philosophy as foucault, but this crit makes a great argument.
I don't view his theory of bullshit jobs as an absolute explainer and critique (since it came from a rather random observation, with massive feedback & confirmation) but rather as a good example of how corporate neoliberalism has reached a level of absurdity and internal crisis, that should be abolished ASAP. The only real criticism I have with it, is that it treats the solution of this less as a political struggle and more as a organizational problem, cuz in the end capital has to be confronted and destroyed. Anyway, it's still a good contribution for the left.
