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A review by read_all_nite
The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement by David Graeber
5.0
David Graeber has written an extremely accessible book about, not only the origins and inner workings of the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy movement, but about the issues it brought to the fore. What exactly is democracy and what are the origins of the concept? What myths have we held about "freedoms"? What is equality? What are alternatives to our current repressive debacle of a political/economic system? The book also delineates strategies used by protest movements around the world.
This book affirmed so many of the random thoughts I've had swirling through my head for the past 25 years or so, like, "If this corporate economic environment keeps it up, this is eventually gonna an awful lot like feudalism." And, "You know, not every governmental regulation is such a great regulation." It also clarified many concepts and terms that I had never understood before. Until I read this book, I never actually knew what an anarchist was. I just assumed they were the scary people who threw Molotov cocktails. The hand gestures used by Occupy General Assemblies just seemed sort of silly to me. Now I understand their purpose. In fact, Graeber has an entire section on the most common questions he is asked about Occupy. While I always thought of myself as liberal, I have never truly explored the variations or differences of my fellow left wingers. I never thought about the planning, the drawing on experience, the strategy involved in creating the sorts of changes we want to see in the world. Graeber lays a lot of that out in a way that a reasonably intelligent person with a passing interest can understand. He has the academic credentials to lay out cogent arguments, and the boots-on-the-ground experience to show how theory impacts action and every day activity.
At the end of the book, almost parenthetically, he makes the argument for working less, not more, and for a truly horizontal, anarchic society. I'm not sure, economically, how that would all come out in the wash, and he is frank to state that nobody knows how a new economic system would work, just as the inventors of capitalism didn't know how that would look in the ensuing years. But clearly, capitalism isn't working, it is a moral and social disaster for 99% of us, and environmental disaster for 100% of the planet. Graeber enthusiastically endorses alternatives. Very thought provoking work.
This book affirmed so many of the random thoughts I've had swirling through my head for the past 25 years or so, like, "If this corporate economic environment keeps it up, this is eventually gonna an awful lot like feudalism." And, "You know, not every governmental regulation is such a great regulation." It also clarified many concepts and terms that I had never understood before. Until I read this book, I never actually knew what an anarchist was. I just assumed they were the scary people who threw Molotov cocktails. The hand gestures used by Occupy General Assemblies just seemed sort of silly to me. Now I understand their purpose. In fact, Graeber has an entire section on the most common questions he is asked about Occupy. While I always thought of myself as liberal, I have never truly explored the variations or differences of my fellow left wingers. I never thought about the planning, the drawing on experience, the strategy involved in creating the sorts of changes we want to see in the world. Graeber lays a lot of that out in a way that a reasonably intelligent person with a passing interest can understand. He has the academic credentials to lay out cogent arguments, and the boots-on-the-ground experience to show how theory impacts action and every day activity.
At the end of the book, almost parenthetically, he makes the argument for working less, not more, and for a truly horizontal, anarchic society. I'm not sure, economically, how that would all come out in the wash, and he is frank to state that nobody knows how a new economic system would work, just as the inventors of capitalism didn't know how that would look in the ensuing years. But clearly, capitalism isn't working, it is a moral and social disaster for 99% of us, and environmental disaster for 100% of the planet. Graeber enthusiastically endorses alternatives. Very thought provoking work.