David Rolfe Graeber (/ˈɡreɪbər/; February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Bullshit Jobs (2018), and The Dawn of Everything (2021), and his leading role in the Occupy movement, earned him recognition as one of the foremost anthropologists and left-wing thinkers of his time.
up to what size & technological level?
There are historical examples with tens to hundreds of tousands of inhabitants. Those are actually quite common.
Graeber's book "The dawn of everything" has some good examples.
For those of us without the book, what sort of examples does it give?
Early agricultural societies in the fertile cescent that existed for 1000+ years and build rather large cities and more recent various meso-american ones that existed in a sort of patchwork with others, but which due to the climatic conditions and later pillaging by European invaders didn't leave much historical records.
The thing is there is no tipping point. You have small size hunter gatherer groups who are egalitarian and others aren't. Same for agricultural societies and cities and on and on. There are even groups that change depending on the season. The Dawn of Everything is a very enlightening book about this topic
In what way is the "technological level" dependant on a state?
From the top of my head: The Neo-Zapatistas in Chiapas show that both metrics can be answered with "quite high/a lot".
my thought is actually that higher levels of technology begin to whittle away at the workability of more "free form" social organization.
For example, I'd argue that American Indians were living in something much closer to anarchy than anything else when the technologically vastly superior Europeans arrived with guns and absolutely demolished them.
I think anarchist societies could probably solve problems that require high technology (electricity, sewage, water distribution...), probably in ways we can't imagine. But I don't think they can solve the "higher technology oppressor" problem.
American Indians were mostly killed by the germs that the European invaders accidentally brought. In actual battles the Europeans didn't fair so well as they were usually vastly outnumbered and the Europeans that defected or got captured mostly preferred to stay with the Indians afterwards. And yes, never trust history written by the winners.
I disagree. The native Americans were "technologically" quite advanced when it came to stewardship of the land. Think agriculture (food and forests), language and the like. Europeans basically enacted biological warfare on them.
Native American societies were quite sophisticated. Some were closer to anarchy, some weren't. A lot of what we would like to know got wiped out before any European met them; initial contact was towards the south, but disease spread northward before Europeans did. The writings we do have about their society come from Europeans, which is hardly the best source.
What we can gather from archeology is that they had cities just as big as European ones at the time, and had trade and agriculture on the same level, as well. North America was a fully anthropogenic environment--altered to be better for humans--and the common perception of "vast, untouched wilderness" comes from the fact that Europeans were visiting a century after disease had ravaged the native population.
Edit: rereading your post, what society could solve the "higher technology oppressor" problem?
Chiapas has a lot of what it does because of Mexico. The anarchists didn’t create the sewer or power systems for example
Is there a reason why anarchists couldn't build these infrastructures?
The fact that this is one of the areas that anarchist communities historically struggle with?
Can you give examples? I'm not aware of any historical precedents where these attempts failed.
"Sorry babe, can't have toilets. If a king or president doesn't sign this bill we can't invent plumbing" - A conversation that totally happened in every commune ever.
Here’s an example from Rojava
“ The village asked the Rojava government for help, but were told the authorities can’t do anything. They lack the money, expertise, and the personnel. This is a common refrain in the autonomous region of northern Syria where the Kurdish-led administration has built a quasi-state but is hemmed in by neighbours with whom relations range from frosty to openly hostile.
Rojava is, to a large extent, dependent on the benevolence of foreigners to fund and oversee big-budget projects like waste management. Officials across Rojava said they have shown representatives of European organizations the problems they face, like lack of water treatment facilities, and were given promises of help. But they have seen little results”
https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/21032019
This is by no means unique. Anarchist societies IRL frequently lack the expertise needed for these projects because the skilled people who can do them tend to work in places that compensate them better than others for their work.
This is why the Dead Kennedy’s have that line “Anarchy sounds good to me until someone says ‘who will fix the sewers?’”
That is not exactly a credible source. To quote the wikipedia on it:
And besides, you are really arguing that a semi-functional, mostly representative organ in the middle of a civil war doesn't have the resources to maintain sewers?
This is less an example of how anarchism can't do this or that, but rather that you can't have your insular little utopia if you're surrounded by powerful entities whose interests directly oppose yours. There is no right life within the wrong one.
I still don't see why a sewage system is cathegorically out of the question when the problems here are less "you can't organise the construction of a sewage system" and more "we still live in a globalised system which is fundamentally based on competition."
Did you miss the quoted bit where they talk about how they lack the of resources and expertise are a common problem? That’s the problem anarchists face IRL. The people that have these skills are incentivized to leave anarchist societies for ones that compensate them fir these skills.
Skilled labor will pursue higher compensatiom in many cases. Humans are humans after all and many are not motivated purely by altruism
Classical economics? Sociology? Psychology? If you think humans are primarily motivated by altruism please explain the West's rightward shift.
First that's just incorrect. People have been motivated by compensation for longer than neoliberalism has existed (1930s )
Second you don't need to mention capitalism if ypu mention neoliberalism as Liberalism is always capitalist
Third woth two words you proved you know very little about economics and political philosophy as your reply makes zero sense. Last I checked both intro courses were still free online from MIT. You should look into them so you can at least learn what neoliberalism is
This just goes to show that theory heavy anarchists and other leftists need to bring that theory to the blue collar working class who works the water treatment plants and other infrastructure. A lot of them are union jobs it shouldn’t be too hard to get people down with anarchist concepts if explained in a way that’s not theory heavy.
Which means you are hoping they are motivated by altruism and I don't believe everyone is.
People can be motivated to pitch in because they rely on everyone else to pitch in. For some, that's growing food, and for others, its keeping the plumbing running.
I refer you back to the previous comment
You can believe what you want about altruism. Mutual aid is not necessarily altruism.
It is when one job involves life risking work and the other does not.
150 seems to be the number for humans.
The article formatting is hosed because it's so old, but this is the most important thing I've ever read to describe wide swaths of human behavior. Give it a shot and the world will make loads more sense.
https://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
Funny note; For all the times I've posted that here and on reddit, not one soul has come back and said any part of it was bullshit.
it seems accurate to say that most people conceive only of "people i know well enough to fully humanize" and "all other humans."
I take a huge issue with the portrayal that all of us are willing to fuck over the second group all the time with no acknowledgement that over the centuries we've built elaborate customs and mores for interacting with strangers or within groups or between groups.
The author focusing on hypothetical examples of monkeys mistreating monkey strangers exclusively is inaccurate to the reality we all live in. There are monkeys out in the real world who just help monkey strangers altruistically. Just stopping to help change a tire gives the lie to the author's premise.
Are there asshole monkeys? Sure. But we're not all assholes to monkey strangers.
AND even in small knit monkey communities sometimes there are "defectors" (game theory term) and the society can react to them in many different ways.
Article says nothing of the sort, only that it's understandable why we view things like a busload of dead kids in Iran as less tragic than our mom dying. I think you're focusing on single trees, missing the forest.
It's describing a psychological barrier, like you have a limited amount of mental space for a really 'knowing' people. People are complex and varying and it takes a lot of space and effort to learn their differences (and that's important, some people can be dangerous or whatever). Once you run out of space (so to speak) their existence is mentally more abstract and less likely to come to your mind when you're making your decisions. That negligence is the source of conflict, not you literally not thinking of them as people and harming them intentionally.
This article isn't wrong, but it seems to be emphasizing that we remember our limitations and think critically when dealing with complex issues. It doesn't really match this post which seems to be promoting living in tiny, isolated, self sufficient villages. It's occurring to me in real time that he means communes
I was answering a single comment, not the post in general.
Oh, my bad. Still an interesting read, though
Exactly, please explain how anarchists would approach the problem of redoing the entire US electrical grid (this is critical from a security perspective and would increase efficiency).
Radicalize the workers
I wish it were that simple.
Thats such a silly question that shows a deep lack of understanding what anarchism actually means.
Why are you bothering to reply then unless your goal was to be rude to someone else? You certainly have nothing constructive to offer in your comment.
Dont bother replying. im blocking you because you clearly aren’t worth it
No, I am asking a practical question about the real world and the comment they made was just insulting me. How would anarchists confront a real world technological problem that they absolutely would face in a modern society. How would a non-capitalist non-authoritarian government fix this issue.
The capitalists would incentivize this work through higher wages.
The authoritarian might force those who can fix the issue to do the same (provided they don't have the ability to compensate someone better)
How do anarchists get the people who have these skills to do the work other than hoping that multiple people who have those skills choose to do so?
This is such a sad world view that you have.
And kinda ironic given that you are writing this on a platform developed and run by such highly qualified individuals not because they are paid for it or forced to do it, but because they think it is the right thing to do. And there are so many similar example all over the world, not only in the digital realm. And you know what? People that live somewhere tend to appreciate working water supply and sewerage systems and are willing to fix it themselves if not prevented by some government or company. It's not that hard to do, and I have personally done it before.
I don't think you get to define what this space is for others.
I also think ypur real issue is you don't have an actual answer for this practical problem that isn't fully mired in utopianism.