Direct Action: An Ethnography, anarchist scholar David Graeber’s long-awaited 600-page sociological/anthropological study of the anti-globalisation protest movement, is now available from AK Press.
He says it’ll also be available from Amazon in a couple of days.
I didn’t even know about this! It looks amazing. What do you think about his take on markets/wage labor (which I guess is a pretty standard social-anarchist take)? I think he assumes a bit too much; why not take on the experiments of Josiah Warren??
What do you think about his take on markets/wage labor
Yeah, I have no objection to wage labour per se; I think what makes wage labour objectionable is the (state-imposed) absence of viable alternatives, and if given such alternatives people still found it convenient (as many surely would) to work for wages, no prob. (Of course the presence of alternatives would force wage-labour working conditions to be a lot nicer than they are now.)
Part of being a left-libertarian is that one is always fighting a battle on two fronts — against the “pro-capitalist” assumptions of one’s rightward allies, and against the “anti-capitalist” assumptions of one’s leftward allies.
But despite various disagreements with Graeber, I always find him eminently worth reading.
On a slightly off-topic note, Douglas Rushkoff has a new essay up on Edge.org titled: “Economics Is Not a Natural Science“.
Though much of it is confused, his main points of contention are centralized currencies, chartered monopolies, and (implicitly) IP laws. Unfortunately, he conflates these aberrations of state capitalism with the market tout court.
Well said!
Didn’t realize the release was so imminent! Thank you Roderick.
That is quite possibly the sexiest book cover I’ve seen this year.
also http://invisiblemolotov.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/fragments-of-an-anarchist-anthropology/ for anyone who hasn’t already read it.
The cover is truly cool, yes.
I’m surprised no one wrote a reply to Graeber’s question on the site.
equi did in the comments. Graeber was just being forgetful in that instance, I cleared the edition with him almost a year before in a more social anarchist context (whereupon he saw that FoaAA’s working cover) and he asked if, in addition to the monograph we could publish a collection of his shorter articles — whereupon, after sending us a preliminary lot, he trailed off and never finished the rest of what he implied was coming.
Graeber’s book has gone from not being listed at all on Amazon (yesterday) to being listed with a Sign up to be notified when this item becomes available notice (today). We’ll see what the morrow brings.
Ordering from Amazon, when the publisher has them in stock seems roundabout, particularly as AK could really use the retail-level support to keep going.
But don’t you know roundabout methods are more efficient? 🙂