The Philosopher

David Graeber

The face

The background

Nationality:
American
Schools:
Anarchism
Branchs:
Economic anthropology, Social Anthropology
Period:
21st century

The synopsis

David Rolfe Graeber (February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist social and political activist. His influential work in social and economic anthropology, particularly his books *Debt: The First 5,000 Years* (2011), *The Utopia of Rules* (2015), *Bullshit Jobs* (2018), and *The Dawn of Everything* (2021), and his leading role in the Occupy movement earned him recognition as one of the foremost anthropologists and left-wing thinkers of his time. Born in New York City to a working-class family, Graeber studied at Purchase College and the University of Chicago, where he conducted ethnographic research in Madagascar under Marshall Sahlins and obtained his doctorate in 1996. He was an assistant professor at Yale University from 1998 to 2005, when the university controversially decided not to renew his contract. Unable to secure another position in the United States, Graeber entered "academic exile" in England, where he was a lecturer and reader at Goldsmiths' College from 2007 to 2013 and a professor at the London School of Economics from 2013. In his early scholarship, Graeber specialized in theories of value, social hierarchy and political power, and the ethnography of Madagascar. In the 2010s he turned to historical anthropology, producing his best-known book, *Debt: The First 5000 Years* (2011), an exploration of the historical relationship between debt and social institutions, as well as a series of essays on the origins of social inequality in prehistory. In parallel, he developed critiques of bureaucracy and managerialism in contemporary capitalism, published in *The Utopia of Rules* (2015) and *Bullshit Jobs* (2018). He coined the concept of bullshit jobs in a 2013 essay that explored the proliferation of "paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence."

The works

The quotes

Consensus isn't just about agreement. It's about changing things around: You get a proposal, you work something out, people foresee problems, you do creative synthesis. At the end of it, you come up with something that everyone thinks is okay. Most people like it, and nobody hates it.
David Graeber
It is assumed in many parts of the world that democracy is a group of people facing a certain problem, who come together to solve it in a way where everyone has an equal say.
David Graeber
If you look at history, there seems to be a regular pattern: the country with the most powerful military also happens to be the one with the world trade currency. That gives them an enormous economic advantage, which causes goods to flow into their country.
David Graeber
Money has always been a particular problem for revolutionaries and anti-capitalists. What will money look like 'after the revolution'? How will it function? Will it exist at all? It's hard to answer the question if you don't know what money actually is. Proposing to eliminate it entirely seems utopian and naive.
David Graeber
It's true that most American citizens think of themselves as living in a democratic country. But when was the last time that any Americans actually sat down and came to a collective decision? Maybe if they are ordering pizzas, but basically never.
David Graeber
It affects every aspect of our lives, is often said to be the root of all evil, and the analysis of the world that it makes possible - what we call 'the economy' - is so important to us that economists have become the high priests of our society. Yet, oddly, there is absolutely no consensus among economists about what money really is.
David Graeber
We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt.
David Graeber
It's a difficult business, creating a new, alternative civilization.
David Graeber