É convencional iniciar um artigo de obituário com um breve resumo biográfico, cá vai ele. Uma das irritações favoritas de David era referirem-se a ele como antropólogo anarquista, como tal direi que David Graeber, anarquista e antropólogo, faleceu aos 59 anos na quarta-feira 3 de Setembro em Veneza de causas ainda não conhecidas. Foi activista…

Di Kevin Carson. Originale: In Memoriam: David Graeber, 1961-2020, pubblicato il 4 settembre 2020. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. È abitudine iniziare un necrologio con una breve biografia. Eccola: David detestava essere definito antropologo anarchico, dirò dunque che David Graeber, antropologo e anarchico, è morto a cinquantanove anni mercoledì tre settembre a Venice per cause tuttora…

In his book Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism, Chris Matthew Sciabarra makes the astute observation that  “[j]ust as relations of power operate through ethical, psychological, cultural, political, and economic dimensions, so too the struggle for freedom and individualism depends upon a certain constellation of moral, psychological, and cultural factors.” This is something that Dakota…

It’s conventional to start an obituary article with a brief biographical summary, so here it is. One of David’s pet peeves was being referred to as an anarchist anthropologist, so I’ll say that David Graeber, an anarchist and an anthropologist, died at age 59 Wednesday, September 3rd in Venice of as yet unreported causes.  He…

I’m a big fan of Aurora and hope that her contribution to this symposium helps encourage more anarchists to engage fearlessly with the mathematical dynamics of an anarchist society. But I must admit my disappointment, I was hoping her contribution would seriously engage with the arguments for markets and either present a novel alternative or…

Di Black Cat. Originale pubblicato il 7 ottobre 2019 con il titolo Money Without the State. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. David Graeber, in Debt, attacca quello che definisce “il mito del baratto”, l’idea che il denaro sia un’invenzione collettiva, uno standard universalmente riconosciuto per evitare i problemi del baratto. E ha perfettamente ragione: è un…

Graeber, in his Debt, attacks what he refers to as ‘the myth of barter’ — the idea that money is a communal invention and agreed-upon standard to avoid the problem of having to barter. He’s entirely correct — such a myth is false. However, some of his overzealous fans are incorrect — he at no…

Di Rai Ling. Originale pubblicato il 23 settembre 2019 con il titolo Postmodern Discourse in the Corporate Boardroom. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. Ad un recente incontro d’affari ho capito come le gerarchie aziendali portino spesso a distorsioni della realtà e ad una concorrenza a somma negativa. Come analista, elaboro “quadri operativi” che forniscano istruzioni attendibili…

During a recent business meeting, I noticed some ways in which corporate hierarchy leads to negative sum competition and distortions of reality. At my current job in data analytics, I build live business “dashboards” to provide actionable insights to upper management; this includes working with different departments to create new data pipelines and ensure the…

This is not a review of Bullshit Jobs. My verdict on the book is simple: it is good, and you should read it. You should, actually, probably read it before you read this. I’ll be re-explaining some of the concepts in it, but I will not cover them in the same depth as the book…

This month, C4SS Senior Fellow Roderick Long was featured in Reason magazine with a review of David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. “Bullshit jobs” are defined by Graeber as “so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify [their] existence.” The book discusses the rise of such jobs in the modern economy, pointing fingers squarely…

Non le Aziende e non lo Stato Di Kevin Carson. Originale pubblicato l’otto marzo 2016 con il titolo People Make Things – Not Corporations, Not Government. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. Su Facebook Doug Henwood, autore di Wall Street e direttore del Left Business Observer, parlando di aziende del “settore pubblico” che fanno meglio del “settore…

Abolish Work: A Lazy Exposition of Philosophical Ergophobia (LBC Books 2016), by Nick Ford It’s “no class but the leisure class” in Nick Ford’s new book: Abolish Work: A Lazy Exposition of Philosophical Ergophobia. Before continuing, I must acknowledge that this book includes two essays written by yours truly, which are credited to “Mr. Wilson”. Both…

On Facebook, Doug Henwood — author of Wall Street and editor of the Left Business Observer — recently pointed to the U.S. Arpa-E agency’s development of an advanced storage battery as an example of the “public sector” outperforming the “private sector” (March 3 at 10:48AM).  “While VC is funding the world’s first stabilized action camera,”…

Land Allocation Rules are Necessary Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder to William Gillis As an alternative to what Will regards as the typical approach in advocating for a set of property rules — basically a sales pitch promoting the features of one compared to all the others — he proposes “one where we don’t exclusively compare prefigurative…

A little ways into The Utopia of Rules, an anarchist critique of state and corporate bureaucracy, author David Graeber asks, “Why are we so confused about what police really do?” It’s an important question, as the problem of police violence and impunity in America can no longer be ignored. For far too long, argues Graeber,…

Wolfi Landstreicher. “Anarchy on the Market? A critical look at Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy” Modern Slavery 2 (Fall-Winter 2012/2013). Landstreicher begins with a critique of my approach in defending the labor theory of value in terms of Ludwig von Mises’s a priorism: But what if someone doesn’t accept the a priori assumption that there…

David Graeber. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy (Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2015). This book is, properly speaking, not a book at all, but a collection of essays loosely clustered around the common theme of bureaucracy. Of the material in the book, only the long introductory essay…

É 2015. Alguém aí viu nossos carros voadores? E, além dos apetrechos eletrônicos legais, onde está a tranquilidade e segurança econômica que nos prometeram em De Volta para o Futuro II? Por que elas parecem estar tão ausentes quanto seus aparelhos de fax e laserdiscs? E por que, nestes cinquenta anos da Feira Mundial de…

Molly Sauter. The Coming Swarm: DDOS Actions, Hacktivism, and Civil Disobedience on the Internet (New York, London, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2014). “The aim of this work,” Sauter writes, “is to place DDoS [distributed denial of service] actions… in a historical and theoretical context, covering the use of the tactic, its development over time, and…