Budapest Post

Cum Deo pro Patria et Libertate
Budapest, Europe and world news

David Graeber, influential in Occupy Wall Street, dies at 59

Goodbye, my friend.

David Graeber. My friend. He wrote about crushing debt, pointless jobs and the negative effects of globalization. And he played a leading role in the Occupy Wall Street movement. A professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, Graeber studied anarchism and anti-capitalist movements, and challenged the world to respond to the plight of Kurds in the Middle East.



“bullshit job into five categories. I will call these: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters.” 
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“I am using the term “box tickers” to refer to employees who exist only or primarily to allow an organization to be able to claim it is doing something that, in fact, it is not doing.” 

― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory


David Graeber, the radical anthropologist, provocative critic of economic and social inequality and self-proclaimed anarchist who was a coiner of “We Are the 99 Percent,” the slogan of the Occupy Wall Street movement, died on Wednesday at a hospital in Venice. He was 59.

His death was announced on social media by his wife, Nika Dubrovsky, an artist. She did not specify the cause, but Dr. Graeber reported on YouTube last week that he had been feeling ill.

A public intellectual, professor, political activist and author, Dr. Graeber captivated a cult following that grew globally over the past decade with each book he published.

In “Debt: The First 5000 Years” (2011), he explored the changing definitions of borrowing and who owed what to whom. He advocated a “jubilee” of loan forgiveness. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Thomas Meaney called the book “more than a screed” and praised its “brash, engaging style.” In “The Utopia of Rules” (2015), Dr. Graeber ridiculed the bureaucracy that is typically associated with government, but that also permeates the corporate world and everyday business transactions.

In “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory” (2018), he wondered what happened to the 15-hour week that the economist John Maynard Keynes, in 1930, had predicted would be possible by the end of the 20th century. (“This book asks readers whether there might be a better way to organize the world of work,” Alana Semuels wrote in her Times review. “That’s a question worth asking.”)

“In technological terms, we are quite capable of this,” Mr. Graeber wrote. “And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. Huge swaths of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they believe to be unnecessary.

“The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound,” he added. “It is a scar across our collective soul.”


“If no one had an army, armies would not be needed. But the same can be said of most lobbyists, PR specialists, telemarketers, and corporate lawyers. Also, like literal goons, they have a largely negative impact on society. I think almost anyone would concur that, were all telemarketers to disappear, the world would be a better place.” 
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory



Dr. Graeber admitted that imposing an objective measure of social value would be challenging, and that a world without, say, teachers, wouldn’t work.

“But it’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer,” he was quoted as saying in The Guardian in 2015, “were all private equity C.E.O.s, lobbyists, P.R. researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish.”

He was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale in 2005 when the university informed him that his contract would not be renewed. He attributed his termination to his unguarded derogation of capitalism, and of both the political and academic establishments. Thousands of supporters signed petitions urging Yale to reverse its decision, in vain.

He received invitations to deliver prestigious lectures and was recruited to teaching positions elsewhere. At the time of his death, he was a professor at the London School of Economics.

Dr. Graeber was regarded as something of a leader — or at least someone others in the protest movements for environmental, social and economic justice and against the drawbacks of globalization tended to follow.

He played a leading early role in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in Lower Manhattan in 2011. But he insisted, despite repeated accounts giving him sole credit, that the group’s slogan was collaborative.

“No, I didn’t personally come up with the slogan ‘We are the 99 percent,’” he said on his website. “I did first suggest that we call ourselves the 99 percent. Then two Spanish indignados and a Greek anarchist added the ‘we’ and later a food-not-bombs veteran put the ‘are’ between them. And they say you can’t create something worthwhile by committee!”

As protests raged around the world in 2017 after President Donald J. Trump’s election, Dr. Graeber told The New York Times: “We tried to warn you, with ‘Occupy.’ We understood that people were sick of the political system, which is fundamentally corrupt. People want something radically different.”

David Rolfe Graeber was born on Feb. 12, 1961, in Manhattan to self-taught leftist intellectuals. His father, Kenneth, who fought with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, had a blue-collar job at an offset printing plant. His Polish-born mother, Ruth (Rubinstein) Graeber, was a garment worker who performed in her union’s musical, “Pins and Needles,” which ran on Broadway in the late 1930s.

Raised in Penn South, a union-sponsored co-op apartment complex in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, David translated Mayan hieroglyphics while he was in junior high school and so impressed professional archaeologists that he won a scholarship to Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 1984 from the State University of New York, Purchase and, while pursuing his doctorate at the University of Chicago, won a Fulbright fellowship to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Madagascar.

He finished his thesis on magic, slavery and politics and received his degree in 1998. Two years later, he was hired by Yale.

He was, he said, an anarchist in spirit at 16, but avoided involvement in politics until 1999, when he participated in protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle. He was surprised at how fast and far he could rise in a leaderless, anarchic movement.

“If you’re really dedicated to this stuff, things can happen very quickly,” he told Businessweek in 2011. “The first action you go to, you’re just a total outsider. You don’t know what’s going on. The second one, you know everything. By the third, you’re effectively part of the leadership if you want to be. Anybody can be if you’re willing to put in the time and energy.”

Among his other books was “The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement,” published in 2013. His “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity,” written with David Wengrow, is scheduled to be published next year by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Dr. Graeber became involved in British politics last year, supporting the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in the general election as “a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world.”

He remained surprisingly optimistic to the end, despite his sometimes apocalyptic warnings and the disappointment he expressed at how different the world he inherited as an adult was from the one he had envisioned as a child.

“Speaking as someone who was 8 years old at the time of the Apollo moon landing, I have clear memories of calculating that I would be 39 years of age in the magic year 2000, and wondering what the world around me would be like,” he once said.

“Did I honestly expect I would be living in a world of such wonders? Of course. Do I feel cheated now? Absolutely.”


“This last is important. Even in corporate environments, it is very difficult to remove an underling for incompetence if that underling has seniority and a long history of good performance reviews. As in government bureaucracies, the easiest way to deal with such people is often to “kick them upstairs”: promote them to a higher post, where they become somebody else’s problem.” 
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory






AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Vatican hosts first Catholic LGBTQ pilgrimage
Apple Unveils iPhone 17 Series, iPhone Air, Apple Watch 11 and More at 'Awe Dropping' Event
France joins Eurozone’s ‘periphery’ as turmoil deepens, say investors
France Faces New Political Crisis, again, as Prime Minister Bayrou Pushed Out
Nayib Bukele Points Out Belgian Hypocrisy as Brussels Considers Sending Army into the Streets
France, at an Impasse, Heads Toward Another Government Collapse
The Country That Got Too Rich? Public Spending Dominates Norway Election
EU Proposes Phasing Out Russian Oil and Gas by End of 2027 to End Energy Dependence
More Than 150,000 Followers for a Fictional Character: The New Influencers Are AI Creations
EU Prepares for War
Trump Threatens Retaliatory Tariffs After EU Imposes €2.95 Billion Fine on Google
Tesla Board Proposes Unprecedented One-Trillion-Dollar Performance Package for Elon Musk
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Trump Administration Advances Plans to Rebrand Pentagon as Department of War Instead of the Fake Term Department of Defense
Big Tech Executives Laud Trump at White House Dinner, Unveil Massive U.S. Investments
Tether Expands into Gold Sector with Profit-Driven Diversification
‘Looks Like a Wig’: Online Users Express Concern Over Kate Middleton
Florida’s Vaccine Revolution: DeSantis Declares War on Mandates
Trump’s New War – and the ‘Drug Tyrant’ Fearing Invasion: ‘1,200 Missiles Aimed at Us’
"The Situation Has Never Been This Bad": The Fall of PepsiCo
At the Parade in China: Laser Weapons, 'Eagle Strike,' and a Missile Capable of 'Striking Anywhere in the World'
The Fashion Designer Who Became an Italian Symbol: Giorgio Armani Has Died at 91
Putin Celebrates ‘Unprecedentedly High’ Ties with China as Gazprom Seals Power of Siberia-2 Deal
China Unveils New Weapons in Grand Military Parade as Xi Hosts Putin and Kim
Rapper Cardi B Cleared of Liability in Los Angeles Civil Assault Trial
Google Avoids Break-Up in U.S. Antitrust Case as Stocks Rise
Couple celebrates 80th wedding anniversary at assisted living facility in Lancaster
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
The White House on LinkedIn Has Changed Their Profile Picture to Donald Trump
"Insulted the Prophet Muhammad": Woman Burned Alive by Angry Mob in Niger State, Nigeria
Trump Responds to Death Rumors – Announces 'Missile City'
Druzhba Pipeline Incident Sparks Geopolitical Tensions
Cost of Opposition Leader Péter Magyar's Economic Plan Revealed
Germany in Turmoil: Ukrainian Teenage Girl Pushed to Death by Illegal Iraqi Migrant
United Krack down on human rights: Graham Linehan Arrested at Heathrow Over Three X Posts, Hospitalised, Released on Bail with Posting Ban
Asian and Middle Eastern Investors Avoid US Markets
Ray Dalio Warns of US Shift to Autocracy
Eurozone Inflation Rises to 2.1% in August
Russia and China Sign New Gas Pipeline Deal
Von der Leyen's Plane Hit by Suspected Russian GPS Interference in an Incident Believed to Be Caused by Russia or by Pro-Peace or by Anti-Corruption European Activists
China's Robotics Industry Fuels Export Surge
Suntory Chairman Resigns After Police Probe
Gold Price Hits New All-Time Record
UK Fintechs Explore Buying US Banks
Greece Suspends 5% of Schools as Birth Rate Drops
Apollo to Launch $5 Billion Sports Investment Vehicle
Bolsonaro Trial Nears Close Amid US-Brazil Tension
European Banks Push for Lower Cross-Border Barriers
Poland's Offshore Wind Sector Attracts Investors
×