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I made a prediction that I was going to find out that Graeber was a communist thinker before I looked him up just now. I was not surprised.

• ekidd 3y ago
  There's a rather unusual strain of Marxism (not communism!) in anthropology. As I understand it, Marx argued that the conditions of the material economy would ultimately dictate what social structures appeared. Ideology was "downstream" of economic production, and less important. Now consider archaeology (which is part of the anthropology department in the US). A high-profile dig may involve many specialist researchers: people who study seeds, people who study pollen, people who study abrasion in stone tools. If the evidence is sufficiently preserved, then a team like this can lean quite a bit about food production and trade patterns. Meanwhile, nobody can tell you much about ideology. Maybe you've got some burials, or some stone statues that might be religious. But you've got zero written records, and anything you say about religion or ideology is likely to be completely made up. So in an anthropology department, "Marxist" may mean, "deeply interested in the means of production, which we have lots of concrete material evidence about, but much less interested in making unsubstantiated guesses about religion." Or at least that's how my anthropology professors explained it.
  • LudwigNagasena 3y ago
    > Or at least that's how my anthropology professors explained it. Yeah, that's how they explain it, yet somehow it always ends up being about communism.
• weatherlight 3y ago
  Graeber wasn’t t a Marxist or a communist. (he actual refutes Marx ‘s theory of material conditions by pointing out several Native American tribes from the Pacific Northwest who had the same material conditions but organized their societies in radically different ways.)
  • LudwigNagasena 3y ago
    It is uncharitable to Marx to simplify his whole work down to a "theory of material conditions". It would be hard to find a modern Western anthropologist or a sociologist who wouldn't be indebted (pun intended) to Marx. There is a famous phrase attributed to Milton Friedman, "We are all Keynesians now". Even if many economists may not share his view, his mode of thinking has been deeply integrated into modern economics. The similar thing can be said about Marx in relation to the kind of anthropology and sociology Graeber was doing.
    • weatherlight 3y ago
      Perhaps, but David Graeber wasn't a Marxist. David Gaeber was an anarchist who was very sympathetic to/with ideas around direct democracy.
      • LudwigNagasena 3y ago
        Depends on what you mean by "Marxist", I guess. His anarchism is certainly way more Marxist than anarchism of Proudhon or Kropotkin.
        • namaria 3y ago
          Bikeshedding this conversation about culture, anthropology, economics, and philosophy into armchair analysis of scholars' opinions certainly shows how shallow it is to try and dismiss a massive book by a world class academic as "anecdata" because you don't agree with some of its conclusions.
          • LudwigNagasena 3y ago
            I don't understand why you are trying to accuse me of bikeshedding. Seems like you are just trying to dismiss me because I don't agree with you? I've asked numerous times for actual contributions to economics or the history of economic thought based on the book in question. But it seems that people enjoy pontificating about Marxism or "offering a fresh lens" more than a grounded discussion.
• rendall 3y ago
  Grabber was an anarchist, neither a communist nor Marxist.
  • rendall 3y ago
    Autocorrect strikes!