David Graeber

What Happened to David Graeber?

From Los Angeles Review of Books

I BOW TO few in my admiration for the anthropologist, economist, radical leader, and delightful prose stylist David Graeber, who died unexpectedly in 2020 at the age of 59. Since I read his little book Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology in 2004, I’ve been telling anyone who seemed inclined to listen that he was the most important anarchist thinker since Peter Kropotkin, who died in 1921. His ideas, including those beautifully captured in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), helped motivate and shape the Occupy movement, which took inspiration from his commitments to radical democracy, egalitarianism, and “prefigurative politics”—the idea that people seeking to make a revolution should try to live and organize now in a way they’d want to arrange their lives together in the future.

Review: The Dawn of Everything

From A las barricadas, translated by Freedom News UK

After reading a few Marxist criticisms of Graeber and Wengrow’s book, I decided to take a look because if something displeases a Marxist, it will surely make me laugh. After a cursory glance, I understood the rejection.

Bonjour Tristesse’s "Against Leviathan!"

From DIY Conspiracy

Trespasser’s Ἀποκάλυψις, and the Leftist Rejection of Modernity in Black Metal

Punishing new albums by Bonjour Tristesse and Trespasser exemplify black metal's tradition of rejecting modernity, while envisioning a more sustainable and equitable future.

No Really, What is Anarchism?

from The Bates Student via Center for a Stateless Society

Zaheer in The Legend of Korra (voiced by punk rock legend Henry Rollins) who seeks to bring down all governments, prompting the protagonist Korra at one point: “The idea of having nations and governments is as foolish as keeping the human and spirit realms separate [a reference to a previous season’s plot]. You’ve had to deal with a moronic president and a tyrannical queen. Don’t you think the world would be better off if leaders like them were eliminated?”

The Witch in the Smoke

The Witch in the Smoke

From Just Seeds by Roger Peet - Art & Politics, Today's Extinct Animal

David Graeber died last week, and in mourning his loss and considering his contributions, I read, at a friend’s suggestion, his 2011 summary of Occupy on the Al Jazeera website. He begins by talking about the questions that people often asked him, at that time, about aspects of the communications and decision making structure within Occupy that they found confusing, and which they thought unlikely to find purchase among the general public. The example he gives is the general wry contempt that most journalists had for the twinkly fingers of agreement, and the sprawling consensus process. His response to those journalists was to observe that Occupy’s explosive spread into cities and towns across the country showed that the thing it was doing was something that inspired people across America, regardless of the minutiae of process. The idea that a new form of relating to other people could be created ad hoc wherever you were was the force at the heart of the idea, and what propelled it.

In Memoriam: David Graeber, 1961-2020

In Memoriam: David Graeber, 1961-2020

From C4SS by Kevin Carson

It’s conventional to start an obituary article with a brief biographical summary, so here it is.

One of David’s pet peeves was being referred to as an anarchist anthropologist, so I’ll say that David Graeber, an anarchist and an anthropologist, died at age 59 Wednesday, September 3rd in Venice of as yet unreported causes

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