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>Have you ever read the Economist? Pretty much every article they write about markets is about how to better mitigate exactly the problems you list. I think ma

>Have you ever read the Economist? Pretty much every article they write about markets is about how to better mitigate exactly the problems you list. I think maybe you are looking at the situation and thinking that both the Economist and Graeber are "on the left", which from a US political standpoint would be somewhat accurate. Looked at in other context though, compared to Graeber, and Sahlins, who he studied under, the Economist would be better viewed as free market apologists offering helpful criticism whereas Graeber and Sahlins' work often questioned economic activity from a different perspective and has been used by people who question the very basis of modern economics and markets. For example, Sahlins' work was referenced extensively in Bob Black's essay The Abolition of Work. And Graeber published Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. From that perspective, the idea that the Economist is on the left is a bit simplistic and not very relevant.

simonh 5y ago
I think you have to be pretty far on the right for the Economist to be at all left of you. They're very much liberal yes, in the old school sense Milton Friedman used when he described himself as a liberal. Nowadays in American political discourse liberal is a code word for socialist, and that's not the Economist at all. Not that I have any particular hostility to socialism either. I think it's generally wrong and misguided, but mostly in a well meaning, bumbling Sir Kier Starmer sort of way. Occasionally in a pernicious, righteous, nasty minded Jeremy Corbyn sort of way. I can often work with socialists though, but I'm European so you get used to it. I think Graeber is most likely a Marxist, and I've commented on that and what I think of it elsewhere in the thread. Spoiler - not much.
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  >I think Graeber is most likely a Marxist, and I've commented on that and what I think of it elsewhere in the thread. I think that is the misinterpretation. Graeber and Sahlins' work seems to me to be interpreting things from outside a left/right capitalist/communist framework entirely, at least as much as possible, considering how much we have been trained to think within those frameworks.
  - simonh 5y ago
    That's fair enough, but I think the same criticisms I have of Marxist theories of value also apply to Graeber.
- SaberTail 5y ago
  > I think Graeber is most likely a Marxist Graeber was a self-proclaimed anarchist[1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110629033208/http:/www.villagevoice.com/2005-05-31/people/take-it-from-the-top/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110629033208/http:/www.village...
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    Wow. Thanks for that. That is interesting that he even mentions Bob Black. From what little I have read from Graeber I got the impression that he, like Black, considers communism/Marxism as authoritarian and irreconcilable with anarchy as capitalism.

simonh 5y ago

I think you have to be pretty far on the right for the Economist to be at all left of you. They're very much liberal yes, in the old school sense Milton Friedman used when he described himself as a liberal. Nowadays in American political discourse liberal is a code word for socialist, and that's not the Economist at all. Not that I have any particular hostility to socialism either. I think it's generally wrong and misguided, but mostly in a well meaning, bumbling Sir Kier Starmer sort of way. Occasionally in a pernicious, righteous, nasty minded Jeremy Corbyn sort of way. I can often work with socialists though, but I'm European so you get used to it. I think Graeber is most likely a Marxist, and I've commented on that and what I think of it elsewhere in the thread. Spoiler - not much.

SyzygistSix 5y ago
>I think Graeber is most likely a Marxist, and I've commented on that and what I think of it elsewhere in the thread. I think that is the misinterpretation. Graeber and Sahlins' work seems to me to be interpreting things from outside a left/right capitalist/communist framework entirely, at least as much as possible, considering how much we have been trained to think within those frameworks.
- simonh 5y ago
  That's fair enough, but I think the same criticisms I have of Marxist theories of value also apply to Graeber.
SaberTail 5y ago
> I think Graeber is most likely a Marxist Graeber was a self-proclaimed anarchist[1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110629033208/http:/www.villagevoice.com/2005-05-31/people/take-it-from-the-top/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110629033208/http:/www.village...
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  Wow. Thanks for that. That is interesting that he even mentions Bob Black. From what little I have read from Graeber I got the impression that he, like Black, considers communism/Marxism as authoritarian and irreconcilable with anarchy as capitalism.