When you take away the violence from the market, even it starts shifting into something else - not exactly paradise, but it… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
It is assumed in many parts of the world that democracy is a group of people facing a certain problem, who come… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
Debt is the most effective way to take a relation of violent subordination and make the victims feel that it's their fault. — David Graeber Copy Share Image
I think we need to think of capitalism as a very bad way of organizing communism. Much of what we do is… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
Anarchism is surprisingly effective in solving actual problems largely because anarchists have thought a lot about solving actual problems on a micro… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
We need each other to do things that we can't do for ourselves. If we are intimately connected with each other, we… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens—like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It’s never entirely clear… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
There are markets extending from Mali, Indonesia, way outside the purview of any one government which operated under civil laws, so contracts… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
The best way to think about anarchism is as a combination of three levels. On the one hand, the sort of instinctual… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
Capitalism is like this fractal thing where anything that contains an element of capitalism anywhere inside it is just something that turns… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
The question we should be asking is not why people are sometimes cruel, or even why a few people are usually cruel… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
If history shows anything, it is that there's no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
Student loans are destroying the imagination of youth. If there’s a way of a society committing mass suicide, what better way than… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
You would think that if neoliberals were in any way honest, after the collapse of the Soviet Union the first thing to… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
People don't have an ongoing relation unless it's a form of debt because everything is an exchange, so ongoing relationships are incomplete exchanges, and… — David Graeber Copy Share
I would like, then, to end by putting in a good word for the non-industrious poor. At least they aren’t hurting anyone. Insofar as… — David Graeber Copy Share
“But if Smith was right, and gold and silver became money through the natural workings of the market completely independently of governments, then wouldn't… — David Graeber Copy Share
“A revolution on a world scale will take a very long time. But it is also possible to recognize that it is already starting… — David Graeber Copy Share
“money has no essence. It's not "really" anything; therefore, its nature has always been and presumably always will be a matter of political contention.” — David Graeber Copy Share
We 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… — David Graeber Copy Share
The working poor are the people suffering out subprime mortgages and fatal loans and more and more of our money - you know, capitalism… — David Graeber Copy Share
“Solitary pleasures will always exist, but for most human beings, the most pleasurable activities almost always involve sharing something: music, food, liquor, drugs, gossip,… — David Graeber Copy Share
“The criminalization of debt, then, was the criminalization of the very basis of human society. It cannot be overemphasized that in a small community,… — David Graeber Copy Share
If you imagine that everything is an exchange, then we're supposed to just transact and walk away. If we haven't walked away and we… — David Graeber Copy Share
“As Pierre Bourdieu was later to point out in describing a similar economy of trust in contemporary Algeria: it’s quite possible to turn honor… — David Graeber Copy Share
[A] great embarrassing fact… haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate… — David Graeber Copy Share
“As the events of 2011 reveal, the age of revolutions is by no means over. The human imagination stubbornly refuses to die. And the… — David Graeber Copy Share
