[weatherlight]

Graeber's background in economic anthropology offers a fresh lens through which to view economic history, highlighting the social and cultural dimensions that traditional economic theories sometimes overlook. His work has encouraged interdisciplinary dialogue, prompting economists and historians alike to incorporate broader socio-cultural understandings into their analyses. While his approach differs from conventional economic theorizing, it complements it by adding depth to our understanding of economic phenomena.

[sebmellen]

I don’t say this as an accusation, but your writing is remarkably similar to ChatGPT output.

[ksaj]

Missing the giveaway "However..." clause that nearly all ChatGPT descriptions have in them.

[Natsu]

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]

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]

> 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]

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]

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]

Perhaps, but David Graeber wasn't a Marxist. David Gaeber was an anarchist who was very sympathetic to/with ideas around direct democracy.

[LudwigNagasena]

Depends on what you mean by "Marxist", I guess. His anarchism is certainly way more Marxist than anarchism of Proudhon or Kropotkin.

[rendall]

Grabber was an anarchist, neither a communist nor Marxist.

[rendall]

Autocorrect strikes!

[LudwigNagasena]

Right, but are there _actual_ contributions to economics or the history of economics that were consequences of his “stimulation”?

Also, saying that he single-handedly prompted “economists and historians alike to incorporate broader socio-cultural understandings into their analyses” is a huge denigration of institutional economics, behavioural economics, Austrian economics, social economics, etc.

[weatherlight]

It's a relatively recent addition to the discorse, having been published just over a decade ago.

It's definitely apart of the heterodox tradition in economics (without diminishing what's already there), which often takes longer to be integrated into the mainstream.

So, I guess time will tell?

[LudwigNagasena]

I would even take any contribution to heterodox economics. But what was actually contributed?

[weatherlight]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_anthropology#Barter