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 GraeberRevolutionary constituencies always involve a tacit alliance between the least alienated and the most oppressed.
David GraeberWe are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens - like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It's never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?
David GraeberI would like, then, to end by putting in a good word for the non-industrious poor. At least they arenโt hurting anyone. Insofar as the time they are taking time off from work is being spent with friends and family, enjoying and caring for those they love, theyโre probably improving the world more than we acknowledge.
David Graeber[A] great embarrassing factโฆ haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in theft.
David GraeberIt 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 GraeberTraditional hedonism...was based on the direct experience of pleasure: wine, women and song; sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll; or whatever the local variant. The problem, from a capitalist perspective, is that there are inherent limits to all this. People become sated, bored...Modern self-illusory hedonism solves this dilemma because here, what one is really consuming are fantasies and day-dreams about what having a certain product would be like.
David Graeber