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by tablespoon
1799 days ago
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> Now I am starting to acknowledge and recognize reactionaries and unbelief. Constant. Overwhelming. Exhausting. > Worse, any progress begats pushback, backlash, doubling down. > It's like we can't win. > Today, I subscribe to David Graeber's theories for making social progress. Work in the margins. Push forward where you can, strategically. Don't storm the castle. Conserve your strength. Pick your battles. Take the (really) long view. Do you have any links or references that go into that in more detail? It sounds interesting. I do kinda feel like too much progress too quickly seems to just break society. |
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Utopia_of_Rules
Last year, I binged on his audiobooks (local library), and own the hard copies to leaf thru.
Sorry, can't vouch for how accessible his ideas are. I'm very primed to hear what Graeber has to say. Chomsky, McLuhan, Postman, etc. And every book about policy work (organizing, lobbying) that I can find.
The Democracy Project might be his best primer on his theory of social change. First part is the back story on Occupy Wall Street. The second part is the Anarchist critique of classical Liberals (today's Democrats and Republicans in the USA). As an active member of the Democratic Party, Graeber is very challenging, hard to hear. But ultimately I agree with his observations. TLDR: The answer is always more participatory democracy, and what that'll look like.
(The Democracy Nerd podcast has an episode on Oregon's citizen juries, for just one example of participatory democracy. https://democracynerd.us/episode/exporting-oregon-style-demo...)
"Debt: The first 5,000" reprogrammed my head. Graeber simply tries to answer the question "What is money?" by listing all the different notions thru our known history. (eg We had "virtual currency" centuries ago.) Any one blathering about money, debt, crypto, spending, currency, etc is hard to take seriously if the omit (ignore) the questions Graeber asks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt%3A_The_First_5000_Years
Right now, I totally agree with Graeber's model for advocating change. Based on my own experiences doing policy work, and observing others.
But I don't think his (now decade old) views on money, debt, and power are nearly radical enough. Sadly, Graeber recently passed, so we'll probably never learn his thoughts on modern monetary theory (MMT) and such.
Also, I'm now keen to learn about Marx and Marxism, if only to better understand Graeber's criticisms. I still haven't found anything accessible to noobs like me.