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Elliott Freed on David Graeber and Natural Law

Only just come across Elliott. He seems an interesting - and suitably radical - writer. His account here of the first couple of chapters of Graeber’s last book, written with archeologist Dr. David Wenbrow, makes it seem highly intriguing: Why the Native Americans had a so much better life than the Europeans who eventually destroyed them…

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Nearing the top of my to-read pile, Graeber and Wenbrow that is. I genuinely hadn’t realised until fairly recently that David Graeber was by training an anthropologist. He was ‘that anarchist bloke’ I first encountered in Strike magazine a few years ago, which is where he first wrote of Bullshit Jobs.

The mag is long-defunct, which may be a good thing as most contemporary anarchists have gone the Crimethinc/ANTIFA route: social justice with some extra swear words, essentially. They were just getting pronoun-frenzied when I stopped my subscription. Also very haphazard in sticking to publication dates, which I guess displays a sort of cussedness, but I don’t see why you can’t be an organized anarchist :wink:

Anyhoo: I believe the two authors wrote the chapters alternately. They had assembled their final draft just three weeks before DG died, I remember being shocked and saddened by the news (which was claimed as a Covid death by some).

By contrast to this sympathetic review, Darren Allen wrote a fairly scathing one. He has always characterised David Graeber unflatteringly; he has read the whole book though. I recall a discussion with him in which he sneered at Buddhism and implied it was Taoism with a few fluffy bits, and I haven’t quite liked him/his writing as much ever since. But he has never claimed to be likeable. (His Self and Unself is really a difficult read, which I shelved half-read with vague good intentions of returning to it . . . one day.

Even so, here’s the link for an alternate take.