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The happy anarchist David Graeber has died
He was a renowned scientist, thought leader of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and an avowed anarchist.
Talking to David Graeber wasn’t always easy. I did my first interview with him on the streets of Frankfurt, surrounded by policemen and protesters. The day before, law enforcement officers had dissolved the Occupy movement. Graeber was there to cheer on the protesters.
However, Graeber did not initially make a name for himself as a pioneer of the protest movement, which caused a worldwide sensation in 2011. He had previously attracted the attention of social scientists with his book “Debt, the First 5,000 Years.”
Graeber was an ethnologist and occasionally taught at the world’s most prestigious universities, for example, Yale, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics.
He was recognized as a scientist: David Graeber. Image: Getty Images
In the tradition of ethnologists, his bestseller “Debt” grew out of personal concern. The idea came to him during his field research in Madagascar:
“In Madagascar I saw children die of malaria because the government stopped fighting mosquitoes to save money. The government saved because the International Monetary Fund forced it to do so. When I told this story at home, they said, ‘Why are you upset? You have to pay the debts. ”› That got me thinking at first and then curious. I wanted to know: Why is the morality of debt so absolutely flawless? Why Paying Bank Debt Is More Important Than Babies’ Lives “
With debt, Graeber turned the spotlight on a blind spot in classical economics. He sees money as a lubricant that keeps the economy going, but does not play a role in itself.
Graeber, however, acknowledged that money is more than that. Money is also credit, and credit is a central element of any human society. In tribal societies, people regularly borrow from each other and thus become dependent on each other. This provides the glue that holds society together.
It knows no central power: tribal societies. image: Ian Macharia, Unsplash
In the original tribal societies there was no centralized power. With the emergence of power structures, the character of credit changes, it becomes debt. Anyone who can no longer pay his debts has to enslave his son, his wife or themselves. “Debt is never a matter for the rich, it is always for the poor,” Graeber said.
Debt and credit are the dominant theme in economics. Today every teenager knows the term fiat money and you can watch tons of videos on YouTube. When Graeber published his book about ten years ago, this discussion was still reserved for a small group of specialists.
The term “shit jobs” has also become popular. Graeber introduced it as a kind of subordinate clause in his book “The Democracy Project.” It does not refer to shitty jobs like monotonous work on the assembly line or hard work on construction sites.
This job is necessary, shitty jobs are not. They are usually highly specialized activities carried out by highly trained people. Lawyers, for example, who write the long texts that we click with each update and that we have never read. Or marketers who sell us things we don’t need. Or managers who monitor us.
Graeber explained:
“Most people would like to have creative jobs, but they are busy with boring administrative tasks on a daily basis. I suspect that most of these shitty jobs are redundant. “
Graeber hit a nerve of our time with the term shit jobs. It immediately spread throughout the world. Graeber later expanded his subordinate clause to an actual book.
Even better known than shit jobs is the term Graeber coined for the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement: “We are the 99 percent.” That brings us to his status as one of the leading activists.
OWS was born out of the anger of the people that Wall Street bankers received unlimited credit from the Federal Reserve after the 2008 financial crisis, while many commoners were evicted from their homes.
It was kind of a precursor to Black Lives Matter: Occupy Wall Street. Bild: AP / AP
OWS activists occupied Zuccotti Park near Wall Street, held regular demonstrations, and pointed out the blatant injustice of American society: One percent owns everything, 99 percent owns nothing.
The movement was copied around the world. Also in Zurich, protesters first occupied the Paradeplatz and then the Lindenhof. After that, OWS disappeared as fast as it appeared. Graeber cared little about this. He explained:
“We were never a populist movement seeking short-term success. We strive for broad moral change in society. So we think in the long term, like the movement to abolish slavery or feminism. It takes years or decades for the desired effects to appear. Still, in one or two years we have accomplished more than any other social movement we can think of. “
After all, Graeber was also a proud and outspoken anarchist. However, it did not correspond in any way to the stereotype that Trump and the Republicans are currently trying to create. He was neither violent nor fanatic. On the contrary, he despised violence and possessed wit and irony. And he fought for a world without power or debt. A world that he describes as follows:
“We don’t want a vanguard, a central committee that has to decide what is good for the people. It is paradoxical that in modern societies we think that people cannot make sensible decisions together, whereas this is normal for people in supposedly primitive peoples. I have seen this over and over again in my field research in Madagascar. We have to rediscover direct democratic forms. “
RIP: David Graeber. Image: wikimedia / Thomas Altfather Good
David Graeber died in Venice at the age of 59 for unknown reasons.
