David Graeber Institute
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"It’s become fashionable lately to say that capitalism has entered a new phase in which it has become parasitical to forms of creative cooperation. This is nonsense. It has always been parasitical."
- David Graeber
“No, it’s not ‘normal’ for humans to be in competition all the time.
It’s not normal to work for most of your waking hours of the day.
It’s not normal to be stressed 24/7.
Stop taking a few hundred years of capitalism and pretending that’s just how being human is. It’s not.”
Honestly, if our economic system doesn't take care of the elderly, the disabled, and the homeless while those in care work such as nurses and cleaners live in poverty while having no free time, then what is even the point of having an economy?
Happy Birthday to Sir David Attenborough who turns 100 years old this week.
He is someone whose words we should all stop and think about.
"What would happen if we stopped acting as if the primordial
form of work is laboring at a production line, or wheat field,
or iron foundry, or even in an office cubicle, and instead
started from a mother, a teacher, or a caregiver?
.
We might be forced to conclude that the real business of
human life is not contributing toward something called the
economy but the fact that we are all, and have always been,
projects of mutual creation."
.
- David Graeber
We could easily feed, house and provide healthcare to everyone many times over.
Overpopulation arguments ignore the elephant in the room, which is the unequal distribution and consumption of resources.
The earth can support billions, but it cannot support billionaires.
If Neoliberalism & transferring even more money to the Super Rich worked then everything would be flourishing.
We've been doing it for years & all its done is make everything worse. Only an idiot would think giving even more money to the Super Rich will solve anything.
When David Graeber warned Labour not to abandon its principles, give up socialism and become a Centrist Party, he was ignored and even mocked by the Labour-Right.
But his prediction that abandoning socialism would ruin the party was correct, and history has proven David to be right.
A reminder for today that all the aspects of our economic system are made up and we can have a new and better system if we want.
It does not have to be this way.
The likes of Musk and Thiel want us to be fighting with each other and hating each other so we don't unite against them.
“Bullshit jobs are not just jobs that are
useless or pernicious; typically, there
has to be some degree of pretense
and fraud involved as well. The
jobholder must feel obliged to
pretend that there is, in fact, a
good reason why her job exists,
even if, privately, she finds such
claims ridiculous.”
.
- David Graeber
Interesting though how people who do bad things in the world of finance/business find ways to justify their behavior.
We should be taxing wealth, not work. Graeber said this back in 2009, and now it is becoming clear to many more people that taxes on wealth (especially extreme wealth) are needed.
Under modern capitalism, new technology that should be used to shorten the workweek and make life easier for people, instead is used to throw workers out of jobs, boost stock prices and to enrich billionaires.
Maybe it is not such a bad idea to think of alternatives to this system.
They don't want a free media.
We could employ everyone to build social housing, hospitals, new railways, and schools. Instead, trillions are poured into war, bailouts, and corporate subsidies while basic infrastructure crumbles and millions struggle to survive.
This is why we need an alternative to neoliberalism.
From David Graeber's book, Utopia of Rules.
“We modern-day humans tend to exaggerate our differences. The results of such exaggeration are often catastrophic. Between war, slavery, imperialism and sheer day-to-day racist oppression, the last several centuries have seen so much human suffering justified by minor differences in human appearance that we can easily forget just how minor these differences really are.”
From Dawn Of Everything.
By David Graeber and David Wengrow.
"The working classes are the caring
classes, and always have been. It
is just the incessant demonisation
directed at the poor by those who
benefit from their caring work
that makes it difficult, in a public
forum to acknowledge it.”
.
- David Graeber
"Human beings are projects of mutual creation. Most of the work we do is on each other. The working classes just do a disproportionate share of that work.
They are the caring classes, and always have been. It is just the incessant demonisation directed at the poor by those who benefit from their caring work that makes it difficult, to acknowledge it."
- David Graeber
If you sell clothes, you need customers.
An economy where the poor have money is good as then you will have customers. An economy where the Billionaires have everything may mean you'll struggle to have customers.
Peoples' experiences in the world of work are different to the myths about meritocracy that we are told.
“All human beings are
projects of mutual creation.
Most of the work we do is
on each other.”
—David Graeber
Maybe it's worth thinking of alternatives to the current economic system.
The Jewish Bund.
The new book on the legendary socialist movement from the Jewish community is a big hit.
We will have a talk with the author Molly Crabapple this Thursday.
Our next discussion - this Friday
End-of-the-World Economics, with Prof Steve Keen and Caleb Wellum
The next talk in our series with Prof Michael Hudson takes place tomorrow (22nd May).
1pm NYC, 6pm London.
Here is the link to the event page for the talk: https://youtu.be/ps6iOpG1Xek
Our next discussion will take place on Thursday
Prof Michael Hudson will speak with @Kathleen_Tyson_
They will discuss GOLD!
Our next livestream is on Friday!
We will discuss the rise and fall of modern empires, with guests, Francoise Verges and Vijay Prashad
Our next talk is about Sudan.
and what Sudan's War Taught Us About the Unfinished Decolonization.
June 18th. 1pm London. 6pm NYC.
End-of-the-World Economics
With Prof Steve Keen and Caleb Wellum.
They will discuss on our Youtube channel about energy and how it is not a "factor of production," rather it's what makes production possible at all.
From Wall Street to Warfare
Michael Hudson and Ann Pettifor. Discussion on our youtube page.
Our next talk is on Friday (15th May)
Prof Steve Keen will be joined by Caleb Wellum.
They will discuss 'How Our Changing Relationship To Energy Is Reshaping Societies.'
Our next talk in the series with Michael Hudson takes place on Friday (22nd May).
He will be joined by Kathleen Tyson, and they will discuss the Post-Dollar World.
Thursday: Our next livestream will take place.
We will talk with the historian of science, Irina Podgomy about reading bureaucracy.
1pm NYC time. 6pm London. (7th May)