this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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oh my god
i thought Graeber was some sort of marxist based on the amount people bring him up
He is, read Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value.
This analysis isn't wrong, it's just partial. There's stuff like labor exploitation, gendered hyperexploitation, etc. But there's also something where desirable jobs have less bargaining power because the labor pool is flooded (Firefighters are an example of this). Graeber's argument is a non-structural articulation of the same phenomena. In the case of teachers, the amount we pay them is very much a decision made fairly arbitrarily. It's mostly a matter of public investment, the decisions around which are massively over-determined to the point where you do have to talk about things like subconscious decision-making and cultural values.
If your issue is with taking the subconscious into account in your analysis, then you're putting yourself in opposition to incredibly influential Marxists like Adorno.
but are the material considerations of systems of exploitation not more pressing? it just seems silly to be talking about subconsciousnesses when everything you said (and i'd tack on the capitalists' control over bourgeois government) is so much more salient
e: but yeah you got me, it isn't inherently marxian or not to talk about psychology shit.
I agree, they are, but Graeber's the type of dude to prioritize making a playful argument over making a rigorous one. Debt has a whole chapter arguing that Muslim banking is better than European Banking because it obeys Abrahamic usury laws. He then included a footnote basically saying "I know it's still capitalist, I mostly wrote this chapter to troll evangelicals."
Like, he has brilliant insights, but not necessarily brilliant analysis. Take him as a supplement to your theory, not your main meal.
lmao he sounds like a fun read. i might do him eventually but i want a stronger sense of theoretical standards around those subject matters beforehand. i don't want him to be the only one telling me how ancient banking worked
uhhhhhhhhh yeah can i get a Mao sandwich hold the Deng, with some of those Graeber fries? and some Villa dip on the side please
Throw in the Situationist International and Midnight Notes and this is just my politics
IME, he's solid on the anthropology, so he can be your guy on ancient baking. Just don't let him be your guy on revolution.