An Interview with David Graeber

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interviewed by OxMag’s editor Ben Kuebrich.

What does an anarchist organization look like, and why has our culture had such trouble putting the terms anarchy and organization together?

Well, I always say that you could equally well say that anarchists are the only people who really believe in organization because they think that people can organize themselves without anyone pointing a gun at them and forcing them to do it.

Anarchist organizations can look like anything, really. Basically, any form of organization that does not require an appeal to at least the threat of people showing up with guns and telling everyone to shut up and do what they're told. Any time a group of people sit down together and figure out the solution to a problem, or resolve a conflict, without appeal to lawyers or police, then they're being anarchists even if they might not know it.

In the past, I've made the point that anarchist decision-making tends to work by consensus, that there's a natural fit between anarchist ideals of self-organization and consensus process - something which really emerged as much from the feminist tradition, incidentally, as from the anarchist, though by now these strains have become almost indistinguishable. I got a lot of flack for this, but all I really meant was, if you can't call the cops or otherwise use force to make people go along with your decisions, then you're going to end up with a consensus process of some sort or another no matter what you call it. Even if you hold a majority vote, actually, to make your decision, you're going to need consensus in order to enforce it.

 
Why did you get flack for promoting consensus decision making? Is there a sort of paradox about a democracy without dissent? How do you grapple with these two concepts?

Well, for me, the real power of consensus is that it does preserve dissent. Consensus is not unanimity. It's a problem-solving mode; it's a way of getting people who probably disagree profoundly in perspective to find a way to decide how they will act. It's not a way of deciding what you think - in fact, in good process, one is very careful to avoid getting into issues about the definition of reality (i.e., is this primarily an imperialist war or a capitalist war, etc, etc). We assume that people are going to have radically different, even incommensurable, assumptions about the nature of reality. But in practice, so long as people share certain basic commitments, that doesn't matter; it doesn't get in the way of their coming to effective decisions together. In fact, if you think of what you're doing as problem-solving, then having a lot of radically different perspectives is actually kind of useful.

The same goes for dissent - good consensus is not unanimity. It's an agreement to go ahead with a certain course of action. Some people in the room may well think that course of action is pretty stupid, and say so in the meeting, but if it's clear most people want to do it, the question is whether they are willing to go along with it, or if their objection is based on a fundamental matter of principle. If it is the latter, of course, they always have the right to block. But mostly they let it be known they dissent and then go along anyway. But the point is that was their decision, they didn't have to, and the fact that they knew they were free to have halted the whole process in its tracks if they wanted to makes their compliance with what they in fact think is a stupid idea take on a whole different meaning. I've been in that situation a lot, and it's strangely liberating - going along with something you agree with because you decide you don't want to mess things up for other people, even though you also know if you really wanted to, you could. In a way it's a very profound experience of freedom.

 
Do you put anarchy into everything that you do? For instance, in your teaching practice, what do you do to create horizontal relationships? Have you practiced consensus decision making in the classroom?

To be honest, in teaching I'm rather traditional. Well, I lecture. Then in seminars I'm pretty free-form - probably too free-form. But remember, freedom is infinitely diverse. There is no one "anarchist" way to do something. As soon as we start thinking that way, we open the door to every sort of hidebound sectarianism. Obviously, there are certain ways of behaving that are clearly not anarchist, that are impossible to square with the idea of a free society. And, in a deeply hierarchical society such as our own, some of that will inevitably creep into anything we do. Sometimes the worst thing you can do is pretend you are in an equal situation when you're not - i.e., walk into the room and say, "hi, let's just sit and rap," when in fact, you have to write up a grade for these people. Of course, you can also just give everyone an "A", but then you get in trouble with the hierarchy. (Actually, that was one of the complaints against me at Yale - that I was too easy a grader on the graduate students. Because I figured grad students, after all, they're here because they really want to be. If they don't want to do the work they're not hurting anyone but themselves. They at least should be able to experience an environment where they can say whatever they like and not have to be looking over their shoulder every minute. But as I say, even that small gesture was enough to get me in big trouble at a place like Yale.)

 
In your last semester at Yale you taught a course called “Direct Action and Radical Social Theory.” What was on the syllabus?

You want me to send it to you?

 
In Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, you give three points to solve global poverty: amnesty of all global debt, cancellation of patents over 1 year old, and the elimination of restrictions to travel and residence. Is this the only way to solve global poverty and what do you imagine will have to happen before these three conditions are met?

Oh, well, you have to bear in mind that program was meant as a bit of a joke. I was trying to show that first of all, it really wouldn't be that hard for the rich people  who meet in endless posh hotels to discuss what to do about global poverty to come up with a program that would actually eliminate it, and second of all,  that they would never even contemplate putting such a program through.

I was drawing attention to their hypocrisy. They like to sit around talking about intractable problems, but actually, they are the problem, and no amount of talk will ever change that. If someone came up with a serious proposal they'd shoot it down instantly. So, yes, I think that program would work. I also don't imagine anyone would ever enact it.

 
So do you envision a solution to problems like global poverty coming through an anarchist philosophy, one that might include things like opening boarders, canceling debt, and eliminating patents?

Well, over the long term, yes. Of course, then there's the question of what is poverty. Obviously when basic human needs, like adequate nutrition or medical care or drinking water, etc, are not being met, yes, that is poverty by anyone's book. But then, if you go by income, that's a very different thing. In Madagascar, the poorest people on behavior are these people called the Mikea, who are in fact hunter/gatherers. They have zero cash income a year. Yet they're hardly the most miserable.

I think we need to rethink the most basic questions of what is well-being, what is happiness, what is freedom. So a basic guaranteed level of resources to everyone on earth, this is a necessary starting point, certainly, we need that. But all the statistics are wildly skewed in favor of a view of what human life is all about, what economic success is, for individuals and societies, that is itself part of the problem.

For me the big question is: how do we create a situation where everyone has enough of their elementary needs guaranteed that they have the security to pursue those things they decide are truly valuable in life?

 
Since our technological advancements are moving along so quickly in a way that consumes us, does it add a sense of urgency to our social arrangement?

To be honest I just don't think that's really true. If you want to talk about the apparent speed of ecological destruction, sure. But do you really think technology is speeding up so fast?

Actually, I think one of the really interesting things about the last fifty years or so is how little technology has advanced, compared, at least, with what we thought was going to happen.

Think about it: if you were growing up in 1890 or 1905, what did you imagine would have been achieved by, say, 1950 or 1960? We'd be able to fly in the air, maybe even have rockets to space. We'd be able to have radios, telephones, super weapons, ships that go underwater, moving pictures,  all sorts of things like that. And so we did. Almost all the things they were imagining at the turn of the last century actually did come true.

 Then think about all the things we were imagining if we were growing up in the '50s or '60s: warp drives, interstellar travel, teleportation, death rays, anti-gravity, cloning and cryogenics, robots that you could order around to do your chores and have conversations with, etc, etc. We haven't got a single one of them!

Or this: I remember reading a book in the '60s when I was a tiny kid, called Future Shock. It pointed out that the time it took for the maximum speed that humans could travel to double kept getting shorter and shorter - a thousand years, a hundred years, fifty years, ten, five, one... At this rate we'll be on other planets in no time. But what happened? After the book came out, it all immediately stopped.

I call this my "vulgar materialist explanation for postmodernism." I remember it came to me when I was watching some recent Star Wars movie. The movie was terrible, but the special effects were awesome. And I remember thinking "wow, remember those crappy sci-fi movies from the '50s with their cheesy special effects? I bet they'd be really impressed if they saw this!” And then I realized, no they wouldn't. They thought we'd actually be doing this stuff by now! Not just coming up with much better ways to simulate it. And then a little bulb went off in my ahead. Aha! Simulation! The only technologies that have actually advanced significantly have to do with communication, representation, and also medical technologies. But that's about it. The other ones are lagging way, way behind what anyone imagined. We're trapped making fantasy versions of stuff we thought we'd be doing for real.

And if we actually did have Mars bases by now, or if Baudrillard had a pair of anti-gravity boots, then I can bet you postmodernism, as a sensibility, would never have happened.

On the other hand, social change, that really has happened - with the feminist movement most notably, in ways that changed the very most basic fabric of our daily existence in ways perhaps even more profound than we thought that technology would do.

So that's interesting. It means human possibilities are not quite what we thought they would be. We always guess wrong. On the other hand, you never know what might happen.

 
Most of the technological advancements you mentioned above happened in war or in preparation for war. With our list of disasters on the horizon (nuclear war, global climate change, oil crisis), what do you imagine for the future?

Well, I'm not sure all the technological breakthroughs really come from war. Many do. Others, like TV, could actually be thought of as social possibilities that were just lying around for years until governments decide to push them.

But I do think you're right, we seem to be skating from one disaster scenario to the next.

I think it's becoming apparent even to some of the people in power that capitalism, as a system, is never going to stop coming up with new ways to destroy the planet. It seems almost as soon as we put aside the daily fear of nuclear holocaust, we shift immediately to the danger of global warming... It's just not a viable long-term system. As I say, I suspect even some of the people on top are beginning to pick up on this. And remember: capitalism is an engine of infinite growth. Capital must expand. Firms must expand. "Economies" must expand. If you haven't grown three or four percent a year, it's considered a catastrophe. But of course, you can't do that forever, especially not on a finite planet.

Now that large slices of the world's population that had previously been marginalized or excluded - China and India most obviously - are joining the game as full players, it's becoming increasingly obvious that the game is not a viable game. It can't go on forever.

This is where I think there's a major opening for those interested in developing new forms of democracy, new forms of economic life based on mutual aid and self-organization. Because, let's be honest, in fifty or certainly a hundred years, if the planet is still here, and still habitable, it will be because people will have at least abandoned the imperative for infinite expansion. But that means whatever economic system we'll have at that point it won't be capitalism. It'll have to be something else.

But here's the rub: there's no guarantee it will be something better. It could be a lot worse. Pretty easy to imagine, actually. In times of crisis and catastrophe, or in the wake of catastrophe, it is very easy for people to accept almost any authoritarian arrangement they think might guarantee a minimal level of security. One could see the current arrangement in Russia as one possible hint of what a post-catastrophic society might be like.

People have abandoned any thought of ideals or principles. Power is its own justification.

That's one nightmare scenario - Putin's Russia, mafia thugs or authoritarian police states - except much, much worse. There are lots of other ones. But since it's so obvious we might end up with something even worse than capitalism, wouldn't this be an appropriate moment to at least start trying to imagine something that's actually better?

I think there will be a great call for visionaries like us in the near future. Of course they'll try to co-opt us. But possibilities will open up that we haven't had for a very long time too.