Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology Quotes

“We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens—like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It’s never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“A revolution on a world scale will take a very long time. But it is also possible to recognize that it is already starting to happen. The easiest way to get our minds around it is to stop thinking about revolution as a thing — “the” revolution, the great cataclysmic break—and instead ask “what is revolutionary action?” We could then
suggest: revolutionary action is any collective action which rejects, and therefore confronts, some form of power or domination and in doing so, reconstitutes social relations—even within the collectivity—in that light. Revolutionary action does not necessarily have to aim to topple governments. Attempts to create autonomous communities in the face of power (using Castoriadis’ definition
here: ones that constitute themselves, collectively make their own rules or principles of operation, and continually reexamine them), would, for
instance, be almost by definition revolutionary acts. And history shows us that the continual accumulation
of such acts can change (almost) everything.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“The theory of exodus proposes that the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state is not through direct confrontation but by means of what Paolo Virno has called “engaged withdrawal,”mass defection by those wishing to create new forms of community. One need only glance at the historical record to confirm that most successful forms of popular resistance have taken precisely this form. They have not involved challenging power head on (this usually leads to being slaughtered, or if not, turning into some—often even uglier—variant of the
very thing one first challenged) but from one or another strategy of slipping away from its grasp, from flight, desertion, the founding of new communities.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you don’t have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going on, and therefore, generally speaking, you don’t. Hence the sure-fire way to simplify social arrangements, to ignore the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires, and mutual understandings that human life is really made of, is to make a rule and threaten to attack anyone who breaks it. This is why violence has always been the favored recourse of the stupid: it is the one form of stupidity to which it is almost impossible to come up with an intelligent response. It is also of course the basis of the state.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“If there is no way to compel those who find a majority decision distasteful to go along with it, then the last thing one would want to do is to hold a vote: a public contest which someone will be seen to lose. Voting would be the most likely means to guarantee humiliations, resentments, hatreds, in the end, the destruction of communities. What is seen as an elaborate and difficult process of finding consensus is, in fact, a long process of making sure no one walks away feeling that their views have been totally ignored.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“Residents of the squatter community of Christiana, Denmark, for example, have a Christmastide ritual where they dress in Santa suits, take toys from department stores and distribute them to children on the street, partly just so everyone can relish the images of the cops beating down Santa and snatching the toys back from crying children.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“Since one cannot know a radically better world is not possible, are we not betraying everyone by insisting on continuing to justify, and reproduce, the mess we have today? And anyway, even if we’re wrong, we might well get a lot closer.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“In other words if a man is armed, then one pretty much has to take his opinions into account. One can see how this worked at its starkest in Xenophon’s Anabasis, which tells the story of an army of Greek mercenaries who suddenly find themselves leaderless and lost in the middle of Persia. They elect new officers, and then hold a collective vote to decide what to do next. In a case like this, even if the vote was 60/40, everyone could see the balance of forces and what would happen if things actually came to blows. Every vote was, in a real sense, a conquest.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“... one must oneself, in relations with one's friends and allies, embody the society one wishes to create.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“Majority democracy, we might say, can only emerge when two factors coincide:
1. a feeling that people should have equal say in making group decisions, and
2. a coercive apparatus capable of enforcing those decisions.
For most of human history, it has been extremely unusual to have both at the same time. Where egalitarian societies exist, it is also usually considered wrong to impose systematic coercion. Where a machinery of coercion did exist, it did not even occur to those wielding it that they were enforcing any sort of popular will. (p. 89)”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“Once during the protests before the World Economic Forum, a kind of junket of tycoons, corporate flacks and politicians, networking and sharing cocktails at the Waldorf Astoria, pretended to be discussing ways to alleviate global poverty. I was invited to engage in a radio debate with one of their representatives. As it happened the task went to another activist but I did get far enough to prepare a three-point program that I think would have taken care of the problem nicely:
- an immediate amnesty on international debt (An amnesty on personal debt might not be a bad idea either but it’s a different issue.)
- an immediate cancellation of all patents and other intellectual property rights related to technology more than one year old
- the elimination of all restrictions on global freedom of travel or residence.
The rest would pretty much take care of itself. The moment the average resident of Tanzania, or Laos, was no longer forbidden to relocate to Minneapolis or Rotterdam, the government of every rich and powerful country in the world would certainly decide nothing was more important than finding a way to make sure people in Tanzania and Laos preferred to stay there. Do you really think they couldn’t come up with something? (p. 79)”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“A los académicos les encanta la teoría de Foucault que identifica conocimiento y poder y que insiste en que la fuerza bruta ya no era un factor primordial en el control social. Les gusta porque les favorece: es la fórmula perfecta para aquellos que quieren verse a sí mismos como políticos radicales aunque se limitan a escribir ensayos que apenas leerán una docena de personas en un ámbito institucional”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“...státní aparát [...] skupina lidí, kteří si jako jediní osobují právo - alespoň tehdy, když jsou ve své oficiální roli - používat násilí.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“It's as if the endless labour of achieving consensus maska a constant inner violence - or, it might perhaps be better to say, is in fact the process by which that inner violence is measured and contained - and it is precisely this, and the resulting tangle of moral contradiction, which is the primal fornt of social creativity.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“The result has been strangely paradoxical: anthropological reflections on their own culpability has mainly had the effect of providing non-anthropologists who do not
want to be bothered having to learn about 90% of human experience with a handy two or three sentence dismissal (you know: all about projecting one’s sense of Otherness into the colonized) by which they can feel morally superior to those who do.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

“... most Amazonians don't want to give others the power to threaten them with physical injury if they don't do as they are told. Maybe we should better be asking what it says about ourselves that we feel this attitude needs any sort of explanation.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology