Are there any plans that anyone knows of to compile David Graeberβs work posthumously? Much like Mark Fisher, did David have a blog or similar that he posted content to?
Thanks all
As the title states, I'm a fan of his works of history. But given how explosive the claims and revelations I'd love to hear from people qualified to weigh in on it.
Working in a shit job is like nonconsensual BDSM. The boss can torture you but you don't have a safe word. Unless you have another and better job lined up, and then "I quit" becomes your safe word.
(Note: in the book, "shit job" = you are treated like shit but you are actually performing a service, e.g. fast food worker, retail etc. "Bullshit job" = you may be treated well, or you may be micromanaged, you usually aren't treated as badly as in a shit job - but your job provides no useful service to anyone and you know it.)
He also discusses how UBI would mean "I quit" would always be available as a safe word. Really interesting book, I highly recommend it!
Eu acho importante as pessoas que sabem ingles saberem que tem esse acesso e por ele conhecerem mais a fundo o universo da Esquerda, do Marxismo, do Socialismo, do Anarquismo, etc
Pq eu com frequencia, quando eu falo de questoes politicas da esquerda, so marxismo, do anarquismo, tem gente aqui que me chama de conservador, direitista, etc.
Tem muita coisa interessante para quem gosta de vasculhar e descobrir obras e pensamentos.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index
Para quem tem preconceito pelo nome "Anarquista" no site, ou pq sou eu sugerindo, como alternativa tem o Marxist Internet Archive:
https://www.marxists.org/index-mobiles.htm
Nao eh tao rico quanto o Anarchist Library mas tem muita coisa boa como as cartas com comunicacao privadas que Lenin escreveu em ordem da data que ele escreveu, por exemplo, e que da para aprender muita coisa por eles. Entre outros materiais interessantes.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs
I'm only a few chapters into it, mostly listening on audiobook while doing repetitive tasks, and its already blowing my mind. Like how Debt completely re-writes the history and origin of currency and money, this one is doing the same thing, except for civilization in general.
David Graeber, the (now sadly deceased) anthropoligist, theorised that the industrial revolution effectively did reduce our work weeks to 15 hours as predicted by Keynes, but a "Puritan-Capitalist" work ethic has made the labor of capitalism into an almost religious duty.
Workers did not reap advances in productivity as a reduced workday because society holds work as one of the highest virtues, even if that work is pointless. Graeber postulated that over half of all work in our society is pointless.
I'm sure many of us have been caught slacking by the boss because there is nothing to do, only to be told to "look busy" or perform a pointless task. A core problem is that this inflates the amount of "bullshit jobs" in our society, as we quickly punish percieved idleness and replace it with pointless tasks, and rarely challenge the legitimacy of these tasks.
Graeber identified five basic types of bullshit jobs:
- Flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks;
- Goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists, community managers;
- Duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing bloated code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive;
- Box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers, quality service managers;
- Taskmasters, who manageβor create extra work forβthose who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals.
Anyone want to share any stories of bullshit jobs they've had?
I came across a video of David Graeber doing a talk, and I wanted to highlight some of the points he made, and get the subs feedback on whether they've experienced the concepts he talked about.
He talks about three concepts which I think are directly related to each other:
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Work should be suffering
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Leisure should be consumerist
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The Pleasure at Being the Cause
Work should be suffering
I'm sure we're all familiar with this one. In the capitalist mindset, work is valuable to the extent that it is unpleasant. Graber explains:
> They really seem to have convinced people that if you aren't working harder than you want to be, working at something you don't particularly enjoy, preferably under the orders of somebody you don't like, then you're just a bad person, you know, you don't deserve help, you don't deserve relief, no one should love you, [laughs] and how that happened is one of the things I've tried to investigate over the course of the book. You know, how it is that we see work as this kind of an act of self-abnegation, it's a secular hairshirt, it's supposed to be suffering - to the point where if you get anything out of work, it lowers the value, rather than making it better, even the knowledge that you are helping other people.
>So there's this perverse idea that not only is it generally true (exceptions to every rule), that the more your work benefits others, the less you're likely to get paid for it - but people think that's okay! In fact a lot of people think that's right! βwell, we shouldn't pay teachers too much, you don't want people who are greedy teaching our children,β that sort of thing. And you know that comes out of this idea that work should be suffering, so anything you get out of it mitigates its self sacrifice value.
> And that is the flip side of a system of consumerism, you know βwe deserve our furtive consumer pleasures because we spend most of the day sufferingβ and therefore the uselessness of work actually adds to its value in some perverse way, unconscious way, rather than enhancing it. Something like that must be going on. Why is it that it's considered acceptable that nurses and the guy who gives you train information, people who actually help you in some way, should pay the cost of austerity and bankers shouldn't? You know, how does that make any kind of moral sense to anyone? It can only be through some sor
... keep reading on reddit β‘I hadnβt ever read David Graeber until the last few years. A few things made me skeptical of him even before I started reading him. First are his ties to economic institutions. He was a professor at the London school of Economics, which could be excused. He is an anthropologist after all. Maybe he looks at these institutions from an outsider perspective, kinda like Chomsky criticizing the Vietnam war while he worked at MIT...but then his books receive praise from not only establishment liberal staples like the New York Times but also from the bourgeoise capitalist establishment rags like Bloomberg, Buisiness week and the Financial Times. Not the kind of institutions that usually sing the praise of anarchists. This along with the observation that among the people I knew who liked his work it seemed to be middle class anarcho liberals and not working class anarchists who were fans of his.
Now I have only read Debt and the Dawn of Everything, but whether it is his intention or not he seems to be sabotaging the anarchist project by moving the goal posts from imagining a radical new society to one of changing society from within.
In Debt he defines Communism as βFrom each according to his ability, to each according to his need.β Then he elaborates further.
βOur thinking about communism has been dominated by a myth. Once upon a time, humans held all things in common-in the GarΒ den of Eden, during the Golden Age of Saturn, in Paleolithic hunterΒ gatherer bands. Then came the Fall, as a result of which we are now cursed with divisions of power and private property. The dream was that someday, with the advance of technology and general prosperity, with social revolution or the guidance of the Party, we would finally be in a position to put things back, to restore common ownership and common management of collective resources. Throughout the last two centuries, Communists and anti-Communists argued over how plauΒ sible this picture was and whether it would be a blessing or a nightΒ mare. But they all agreed on the basic framework: communism was about collective property, "primitive communism" did once exist in the distant past, and someday it might return. We might call this "mythic communism"-or even, "epic communism"-a story we like to tell ourselves. Since the days of the French Revolution, it has inspired millions; but it has also done enorΒmous damage to humanity. It's high time, I think, to brush the entire argument aside. In fact, "communism" is not so
... keep reading on reddit β‘
This new book is receiving wide praise for its reimagining of human history and I'm curious how it's viewed among historians, anthropologists and history laymen like myself. As it is harshly criticising the works of popular authors like Stephen Pinker and Jared Diamond, and is basically discarding much of the enlightenment as a worldview, I expect the book to come with bold claims and interesting arguments.
However, a hundred pages in and I'm skeptical. The book seems more interested in ridiculing than offering something new. And the beliefs it purports to upend are not beliefs I've heard from anyone in the field (ie indigenous thought is "simpler" than Western thought). I'm left with the feeling of the authors furiously kicking in open doors and acting smug about it.
I have admittedly not finished the book but I would love some further motivation to do so. Any thoughts on this? Am I missing something important?
Anarchist and anthropologist David Graeber (who passed recently, Rest in Peace) wrote a book all about jobs that are... well, bullshit.
I'd attach the link, but the subreddit won't allow links that have already been posted and yet I think that you folks would get a lot of out of this book.
