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
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
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 more
David 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
It does often seem that, whenever there is a choice between one option that makes capitalism seem the only possible economic system, and another that would actually make capitalism a more viable economic system, neoliberalism means always choosing the former. The combined result is a relentless campaign against the human imagination. Or, to be more
... See moreDavid Graeber • A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse – David Graeber
If, on the other hand, we stop taking world leaders at their word and instead think of neoliber- alism as a political project, it suddenly looks spectacularly effective. The politicians, CEOs, trade bureaucrats, and so forth who regularly meet at summits like Davos or the G20 may have done a miserable job in creating a world capitalist economy that
... See moreDavid Graeber • A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse – David Graeber
We cannot really conceive of the problems that will arise when we start trying to build a free society. What now seem likely to be the thorniest problems might not be problems at all; others that never even occurred to us might prove devilishly difficult. There are innumerable X-factors.
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
... 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.