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 GraeberThe notion that a society could be regulated entirely by market forces is a utopian fantasy: an impossible dream generated by imagining what the world would be like if everyone's behavior was utterly consistent with some abstract moral ideal-in this case, economic theories that assume all human action is based on calculating, systematic, (but scrupulously law-abiding), greed.
David GraeberWe don't live in a capitalist totality. Capitalism couldn't survive as a totality anyway. We live in this complex system and we already live communism and anarchism in a million forms everyday.
David GraeberWhen you take away the violence from the market, even it starts shifting into something else - not exactly paradise, but it doesn't become the market in the way we see it now.
David Graeber