The following comes from an interview Boston Review web editor, David V. Johnson did with David Graeber, an anthropologist at Goldsmiths, University of London and an anarchist / activist, best known for being the “Anti-Leader of Occupy Wall Street.” He is also the author of a recently published book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, in which he “marries his academic and activist selves by dissecting our moral confusion about debt, showing both how contingent our intuitions are in the light of anthropology and how our obtuseness has led to the mass suffering of austerity programs and financial crashes”. The first of the two-part internview can be found here. In it Graeber talks about why we don’t put children’s lives ahead of corporate shareholders, what it means to be a conservative todays, and the tradition of debt jubilees (a subject I’ve addressed in this space before).
“The current political regime in Washington is a great example of the fundamental conservatism of global leaders. I think that’s one of the explanations for why you have young people finally showing up in the streets. We had this guy who ran as a candidate of change. He didn’t run as a radical, but he had all the social-movement rhetoric that made you think that actually he was going to do things differently. His candidacy mobilized grass roots supporters as if this were a social movement. It was all very self-conscious, and all these young people became politicized and thought this was going to actually mean some kind of profound change.
And what do we get? We get this guy who is basically a classic conservative. The word conservative has changed in contemporary American English; now it means “extreme radical reactionary” or “right-winger.” But in the old-fashioned sense of wishing to conserve existing institutions in as much a viable long-term form, that’s what Obama turned out to be. Pretty much everything he’s done is along the lines of “How can we save the auto industry? How can we preserve the banking system without nationalizing it, without changing it in any fundamental way?” He did not map out a great new vision of a health system. He said the system we have is not viable, but here’s a plan where we can preserve the same principles of profit-driven private health in a form that will be sustainable. So basically this is a guy who is willing to make heroic efforts not to change.
And yet it’s at a moment when you have Democrats seizing both houses of Congress, a charismatic President taking leadership over the financial crisis where it’s almost impossible not to change anything, and a popular rage against existing financial elites willing to accept emergency measures . . . If at a moment like that you can’t get any sort of progressive change through electoral means, it’s not going to happen.”
This is precisely why we must demand the change we voted for almost four years ago. The entire political landscape has been co-opted over the last few decades, driven so far to the right that what now passes for the mainstream left, the Democratic Party, represents the status quo. Progress? Forget about it! The Progressive movement isn’t even on the radar today – at least not in any meaningful way within the Democratic Party.
This is yet another unfortunate example of how corporate money, controlled by the uppermost 1% has stolen the American political process from we the people. What we need is a widespread grassroots campaign of primary challengers to every Democratic office up for grabs this year, by real progressives committed to reforming the electoral system.
One good candidate in each district with a few knowledgeable, net-savvy assistants could completely upset the apple cart and change the game forever. We might not all win, or even get past the primary, but a few would get through, and one or two would probably win.
There are 2 reasons why too many Dems–w/ the exception of folks like Grayson–are succumbing. They’ve bought into the 1% dogma that it is better to be “cool” than ethical, and better to be rich than anything else: unlike FDR or even Hoover who still shared a sense of public responsibility. With Reagan as popular as he was, who would dare stray too far? Better not to be TOO critical.
That’s why we had Clinton with NAFTA and Obama refusing to be too hard on banks (despite his populist ptich.) That’s why we have Dems who love summering on Martha’s Vineyard (and renting from Repug families no less), spending lavishly on showy designer duds (too bad stuff isn’t made here), sending their spawn to pricy private schools (UNLIKE Jimmy Carter who sent Amy to a public school), etc. In short, they want nothing less than other 1%ers and fellow alums. (Btw, it’s the same in the UK too.) None of this would be offensive if they took half the effort of an FDR to get things moving–to restore jobs, to limit CEO compensation, reinstate Glass-Steagall and other regulations, raising taxes on the wealthy, etc. But as it is, we can’t help but wonder whose side they’re on: even if we concede that they are more palatable than any of the GOP clowns.
It may take a while to get a 3rd party going, but it is doable. Remember that the Republican party was once a radical party that helped abolish slavery. And that in Britain, it took a recombination of Whigs and Radicals to get a relatively progressive Liberal party rolling.
I’ve been a third party kinda guy since my first election, way back in the dark days of St. Ronnie, but over the years I’ve become aware of the perils of third party politics under our current system. I’d love to see a strong Green Party, and even the Libertarians (where I started out), but until we manage to fix the money problems in the elections, I don’t see how we can ever expect to reform/upgrade our archaic constitution to do away with things like the electoral college, and make issues like ballot access and proportional representation remotely possible.
It’s a bit ironic when one considers that the two major parties in the US today are branches of the same original party, Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans. They really are two sides of the same coin.
I didn’t realize you were a Libertarian–how did you end up changing? Or rather, what you made you switch?
But yes, Jefferson’s original party does sum up the lack of differences between our 2 parties today: both beholden to corporate interests–one by 100%, the other by 99.99%.
I’m a libertarian (small-’l') these days. I’ve been everything from card carrying Libertarian to right-wing lunatic Republican, to Democrat, to anarcho-socialist. I don’t really know what I am anymore. There isn’t a label that fits me really.
I’m not sure how I got here, other than finding fatal flaws in every ideology. I think people should be free to make personal choices based on facts rather than propaganda, and trusted to do the right thing until proven otherwise (driving drunk, theft, fraud, etc.). That’s when we need a strong government to step in and correct the situation, whether that means punitive action to repay a social debt, or regulation to prevent the corrupting influence of money and power from aggregating to one place or social class. It’s tough to describe without going into specific issues – which I’ve been trying to do here for about four years now.
The key to a fair, free, and just society, I think, does not lie in any single ideology, but in a consensus developed from open debate and dialogue based on informed decision making. Unfortunately, we can’t have that right now for several reasons; the first being the aforementioned corruption of our elections, and the second being the inability of many people to think for themselves and do the brain work required to come to one’s own conclusions. It’s so much easier to let Rush or Glen, or Rachel, or Keith tell us what to think and just pick a side.
The really funny thing about all this (our ongoing conversation) is that when I set out on this journey +/- four years ago, one of my goals was to produce a body of work comparable to Paine’s Commonsense, for the 21st century. I’m by no means comparing my ideas or thinking abilities to Mr. Paine or his contemporaries, but someone needs to do it.
OK, I’m having a real problem imagining you as a right wing lunatic:) That must have been a brief, but intense spell!
But I do agree that we need open debate and dialogue based on informed decision making: and that latter element is crucial. The problem indeed is that too many don’t bother to inquire or think for themselves. Instead, they prefer to rely on intangibles like charisma and self-identification: if I like such-and-such a party/politician/pundit, will that make me “cool?” Would I be happy having a beer w/ so-and-so? They also like clever soundbytes and quips. That’s why we have so many Beckbots, Palinbots, Obamabots, etc.: all of which in turn encourages the bigwigs to throw yet more money at the elections because they know how gullible most people are.
Paine was a true independent. He knew that party politics were full of BS and that at the end of the day, it was all about pandering to the person with the purse strings. That’s why the Tory and Whig parties were so indistinguishable even if Whigs did a better job of paying lip service to “liberty” and “rights.” But what good is a government if it creates a far worse society than a purportedly less civilized one? Especially a govt that protects a minority of people at the expense of so many others? That’s why Indians, Paine believed, led much happier lives than Europeans even if they were dirt poor: at least their leaders had a sense of fair play and honor. And at least they didn’t stick their noses in other people’s affairs, like creating silly laws prohibiting divorce if a relationship didn’t work out. Funny how an “infidel” people had a sounder sense of morality than most Christians.
Alas, we are missing this fundamental sense of right and wrong–perhaps more so than ever.
I just happened to find this recent quote from Bruce Springsteen:
“A big promise has been broken. You can’t have a United States if you are telling some folks that they can’t get on the train. There is a cracking point where a society collapses. You can’t have a civilisation where something is factionalised like this.”
Can’t wait for his new album, “Wrecking Ball.”
They don’t call him The Boss for nothing.