David Graeber

[Joseph K]

I was saddened today to hear of the death of David Graeber. I read his book on debt about four or five years ago, it is a very interesting and well-written book. I haven't read any other book of his, but I have enjoyed several essays and always found myself in agreement with him on recent political happenings. He always struck me as an affable person in interviews, and it is particularly sad given his age of 59.

[Richard Barrett]

Yes indeed. I haven't (yet) read the book on debt, but the "bullshit jobs" essay and its later expansion into a book constitute I think some of the most clear-sighted and important political writing in the current era. The philosophical essay "Revolution in Reverse" is also something I find myself returning to:

Right and Left political perspectives are founded, above all, on different assumptions about the ultimate realities of power. The Right is rooted in a political ontology of violence, where being realistic means taking into account the forces of destruction. In reply the Left has consistently proposed variations on a political ontology of the imagination, in which the forces that are seen as the ultimate realities that need to be taken into account are those (forces of production, creativity…) that bring things into being.

[Joseph K]

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/13/the-center-blows-itself-up-care-and-spite-in-the-brexit-election/?fbclid=IwAR3YYEVgh4XECZNIbpO0_Lc-1ctDHi9eJGw_g49VSSslSJKNgXeuXgVSPdU

This is an excellent article that I'm reading for the first time...

[Richard Barrett]

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/0...JKNgXeuXgVSPdU

This is an excellent article that I'm reading for the first time...

Thanks, bookmarked for later.

[Serial_Apologist]

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/0...JKNgXeuXgVSPdU

This is an excellent article that I'm reading for the first time...

I'm no longer sure any more if it's salutary to have ones theory-formulating agreements with the perspective presented re-inforced in that very comprehensive article, or depressing. One can only go on thnking, I've told you so over and over again, for decades, if actually only saying it vociferously in family arguments and politely to the point of condescension in discussions with people one assumes to be open-minded on civilised forums such as this one. But, leaving all that aside, it's always interesting to note foreign correspondents seizing their freedom to critique politics abroad to express views that would be equally germane to their own ruling orders: one sees this in BBC correspondents like Lise Doucet, broadcasting from America and so on, in critical tones that would not be allowed back in this country, as they would be judged too biassed.

Basically, middle-of-the-road, or centrist politics, retains popular legitimacy for as long as capitalism can be re-modelled in ways accordant with representative parliamentary democracy - which is how the ruling class maintains social peace. From the American New Deal through to the rise of Thatcher/Reaganomics this was achieved by means of mixed economics, with the profits generating sectors backed up (a) by law, (b) welfare nets including social security and (in Britain) the NHS, and (c) judicious taxation. But by the latter stage the ruling class had become ideologically split as to its views on the working class: were they there to be the primary agency of profitability, which meant keeping the masses under control, if necessary at the whim of dictat from on high; or were they to be courted in their other role as consumers? Natural gravitational tendencies within the ebb and flow of capitalist economics would ordinarily predispose those at the top to keep the whip handle close to hand in the event of uppitiness from the lower orders, but a new factor had now entered the equation, one that meant you had to take account of the desires of those whose spending power was now a determining force in driving the machine, and so the permissive wing of conservatism that had always governed the behaviour of many who lived in castles and stately homes or on private islands, notwithstanding the puritan middle class ethics that had contributed in the successful building of Victorian Britain, and which had trickled down to help inform the cultural ethos of the 1960s and '70s, was to be given full rein: dictators of fashion and popular mores could always bludgeon over-indulgence in the "wrong" quarters with the threat and then the reality of mass unemployment when the tide turned, as it inevitably would, and, should that fail, there were always blacks, foreigners, or choose your otherwise most easily identifiable scapegoat to appeal for support. This is not to disparage the cultural liberalisations of the 1960s and '70s but to point out the nefarious purposes to which they were vulnerable.

As the writer says, centrist politics have failed in most if not all post-WW2 advanced economies, though he doesn't enter into underlying causes; what he does accurately highlight are the pecularities of Ango-centric cultural milieu that distinguish the kind of populisms, borne of anti-bureaucratic frustrations, from their manifestations in countries which knuckled down to the new, middle-of-the-road postwar order.

[Joseph K]

‘To save the world, we’re going to have to stop working’

https://www.bigissue.com/latest/environment/david-graeber-to-save-the-world-were-going-to-have-to-stop-working/?fbclid=IwAR1R5i4HxAYDkWxTMNXR5LWlwmdWHnXL1WcYMutBsWBdx8hevIJlN9exyC0

[Serial_Apologist]

‘To save the world, we’re going to have to stop working’

https://www.bigissue.com/latest/envi...8hevIJlN9exyC0

On the one hand he seemed to argue that consumerism was not the world's problem, and that we should stop being puritanical about the worthiness of work, but on the other that consumerism produces short life product. I would have thought one of the greatest pleasures for consumerism enthusiasts is being free to throw old stuff out in preference for new. Also, while having many agreements there'd be a few issues with what he lists under unnecessary work, which we could iron out. The main issue concerns the very investments that would make a more leisured lifestyle a viable option, given their essentialness to procuring the taxable profits that would be needed to service one. Any sensible middle-of-the-roader economist will cite the vulnerability of pension schemes whose money has nevertheless been invested in dodgy enterprises: where the social and environment-sustaining jobs are going to get commensurate funding levels from leaves an unaddressed gap in thinking, one that is much longer in lead time terms than the duration of a right-wing Brexit-fulfilling Tory government. There is a clear 180 degree polar opposite tension when trade union leaders say foreign investment-supported pension funds must not by default treat sweatshop workers the way they do in Sri Lanka etc which no right-minded moral pleading alone will overcome. This is where the arguments fall down unless the fluctuating uncertainties that keep the capitalist system's richest beneficiaries in the driving seats are addressed by creating a financial alternative in which huge surpluses are no longer needed to hedge against the inevitable next time, which now comes with ever increasing frequency. Is one to pin ones hopes on the "venture capitalists", or on some Letts-type alternative currency spontaneously arising from economically marginalised communities? A good subject for a Panorama, I'd wager!