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A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse – David Graeber
It’s not that revolutionary dreams aren’t out there. But contemporary revolution- aries rarely think they can bring them into being by some modern-day equivalent of storming the Bastille.
David Graeber • A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse – David Graeber
What would happen if we stopped acting as if the primordial form of work is laboring at a production line, or wheat field, or iron foundry, or even in an office cubicle, and instead started from a mother, a teacher, or a caregiver? We might be forced to conclude that the real business of human life is not contributing toward something called “the e
... See moreDavid Graeber • A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse – David Graeber
In most of the world, the last thirty years has come to be known as the age of neoliberalism—one dominated by a revival of the long-since-abandoned nineteenth- century creed that held that free markets and human freedom in general were ultimately the same thing.
David Graeber • A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse – David Graeber
Clearly, an antiwar movement in the sixties that is still tying the hands of U.S. military plan- ners in 2012 can hardly be considered a failure. But it raises an intriguing question: What hap- pens when the creation of that sense of failure, of the complete ineffectiveness of political action against the system, becomes the chief objective of thos
... See moreDavid Graeber • A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse – David Graeber
for the last quarter millennium or so, revolutions have consisted above all of planetwide transformations of political common sense.
David Graeber • A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse – David Graeber
Is it possible that this preemptive attitude toward social movements, the designing of wars and trade summits in such a way that preventing effective opposition is considered more of a priority than the success of the war or summit itself, really reflects a more general principle? What if those currently running the system, most of whom witnessed t
... See moreDavid Graeber • A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse – David Graeber
Revolutions are thus planetary phenomena. But there is more. What they really do is transform basic assumptions about what politics is ultimately about. In the wake of a revolution, ideas that had been considered veritably lunatic fringe quickly become the accepted currency of debate.
David Graeber • A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse – David Graeber
In fact, most of the economic innovations of the last thirty years make more sense politically than economically. Eliminating guaranteed life employment for precarious contracts doesn’t re- ally create a more effective workforce, but it is extraordinarily effective in destroying unions and otherwise depoliticizing labor. The same can be said of end... See more
David Graeber • A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse – David Graeber
Until 1968, most world revolutions really just introduced practical refinements: an expanded franchise, universal primary education, the welfare state. The world revolution of 1968, in contrast—whether it took the form it did in China, of a revolt by students and young cadres supporting Mao’s call for a Cultural Revolution; or in Berkeley and New Y
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