David Graeber Institute
LightNews LightNews
banner
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
David Graeber Institute
@davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
18K followers 2.7K following 850 posts
A platform for projects related to David Graeber’s legacy, developing his ideas and projects that will take on a life of their own, continuing and contributing to his work.

https://davidgraeber.institute
Posts Replies Media Videos
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
If you talk about forgiving or cancelling debts nowadays, you may face a variety of insults from conservatives

But it is something built into Biblical law. Maybe those conservatives need to read a book about the history of Debt.
"Nehemiah quickly found himself confronted with a social crisis. All around him, impoverished peasants were unable to pay their taxes; creditors were carrying off the children of the poor. . His first response was to issue a classic Babylonian-style "clean slate" edict-having himself been born in Babylon, he was clearly familiar with the general principle. All non-commercial debts were to be forgiven. Maximum interest rates were set. At the same time, though, Nehemiah managed to locate, revise, and reissue much older Jewish laws, now preserved in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus, which in certain ways went even further, by institutionalizing the principle. The most famous of these is the Law of Jubilee: a law that stipulated that all debts would be automatically cancelled "in the Sabbath year" (that is, after seven years had passed), and that all who languished in bondage owing to such debts would be released." . - David Graeber (Page 81/82 of Debt: First 5000 Years)
November 11, 2025 at 3:06 AM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Time for the Democrats to get rid of Chuck Schumer and the other "Centrists" in the Party.
The Centre has become this pure set of performative symbols and at the same time you get to feel morally superior which is ultimarely what liberal centrism is all about. the ability to feel better than other people.
November 10, 2025 at 4:14 AM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Is this new system we are moving to even Capitalism,

or is just Feudalism with modern technology?
'Financialization' is often represented as being characterized by a kind of casino capitalism; as a matter of conjuring value out of nothing; as an abstract game detached from what is often called the 'real economy.' But financialization to put it in somewhat crude Marxist terms marks a shift of the center of gravity of surplus extraction from wages and commerce to various forms of rent taking, that is, direct extraction, through semi-feudal relations of extraction where financial interests work closely with state power as to create conditions of mass indebtedness." — David Graeber
November 8, 2025 at 3:25 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
So-called "Centrism" does not work.
everywhere the centrist argument the left has to abandon its principles to fight fascism leaving the only choice between corporate bureaucrats and nazis has had the effect of empowering nazis. thats a failed formula every time.
November 5, 2025 at 2:30 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
David Graeber, a Jewish New Yorker, would be smiling today to see a Socialist win in his city.
I just want a kinder world than this.
November 5, 2025 at 3:38 AM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Maintaining the status quo is an essential part of the job of the mainstream media.
It is becoming increasingly obvious, in fact, that the role of the media is not only to tell Americans what they should think, but to convince an increasingly angry and alienated public that their neighbors have not come to the same conclusions. The logic is much like that used to dissuade voters from considering third parties: even if the third party challenger states opinions shared by the majority of Americans, Americans are constantly warned not to “waste their vote” for the candidate that actually reflects their views because no one else will vote for that candidate. It’s hard to imagine a more obvious case of a self-fullling prophecy. The result is a mainstream ideology—a kind of conservative centrism that assumes what’s important is always moderation and the maintenance of the status quo—which almost no one actually holds (except of course the pundits themselves), .
November 2, 2025 at 3:23 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
It is a neo-liberal myth, the idea of an unregulated bank.
"There’s no such thing, for example, as an unregulated bank. Banks are institutions to which the government has granted the right to issue I.O.U.’s that it will recognize as legal tender. The government regulates everything from a bank’s reserve requirements to its hours of operation; how much can be charged in interest, fees, and penalties; what sort of security precautions can or must be employed; how its records must be kept and reported; how and when clients must be informed of their rights and responsibilities; and pretty much everything else." . - David Graeber
October 31, 2025 at 4:23 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Please do have a read of some of David Graeber's words on the policy of Universal Basic Income.
We have got a real problem the way society is structured. I point this out when we think about the robots taking our jobs. Why can’t we just redistribute the jobs in a reasonable way so that everybody does a little and then we enjoy ourselves? We have a stupid system where you don’t get any money unless you work. So we could change that. We could just give people the money. There are many different solutions. You could try to shorten working hours. But I like that one that is called a universal basic income. It’s like language. Everybody contributes to this civilization, this culture, and knowledge. So why don’t we just pay everybody for that? . - David Graeber
October 27, 2025 at 10:53 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
One of the most important political messages on the internet.
anyone who thinks the way to head off the tide of fascism is by limiting the range of political choices to either fascists or pro business neoliberal technocrats is dooming us to fascism. David Graeber.
October 26, 2025 at 7:40 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Modern capitalism is not as different to slavery as we think.
Capitalism has reduced the vast majority of human beings to a condition of following someone else's orders who no control over their own circumstances that for most of human history would have been seen as fit only for slaves.
October 26, 2025 at 1:12 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Back in 2010, David Graeber wrote, Against Kamikaze Capitalism

This is a quote from that piece.
"Neoliberalism was the system that managed to convince everyone in the world that financial elites were the only people capable of managing or measuring the value of anything, even as in order to do so, it ended up promulgating an economic culture so irresponsible that it allowed those elites to bring the entire financial architecture of the global economy tumbling on top of them because of their utter inability to assess the value even of their own financial instruments." . - David Graeber
October 23, 2025 at 1:34 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Dancing frogs have become a symbol of resistance in the USA.

Interestingly, over a decade ago David Graeber wrote a piece on the power of such symbols in protest movements.

The piece is called - On the Phenomenology of Giant Puppets. Here is an extract.
I also want to ask why it is that American police seem to hate the giant puppets (at protests). As many activists have observed, the forces of order in the United States seem to have a profound aversion to giant puppets. Often police strategies aim to destroy or capture them before they can even appear on the streets. As a result, a major concern for those planning actions soon became how to hide the puppets so they would not be destroyed in preemptive attacks. What’s more, for many individual officers at least, the objection to puppets appeared to be not merely strategic, but personal, even visceral. Cops just hate puppets . - David Graeber
October 22, 2025 at 1:21 AM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Michael Hudson on the problem of how an economy that just works for just for the Finance sector - is holding everything back.
October 20, 2025 at 1:10 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
One of the key elements of the book Bullshit Jobs, is that many jobs are not Bullshit and essential.

Those jobs are the pillars of the economy. Just the jobs are not well paid and the workers not well appreciated.
"We're starting to recognize that the more directly your work benefits others, the less you're paid and worse you're treated. With the pandemic, we see that these 'essential' or 'front-line' workers are also those expected and willing to risk their lives for the sake of others, though, what is less often remarked is how much this is the case even in ordinary circumstances. Not only is work which most benefits others less compensated, it's almost always more dangerous." – David Graeber
October 19, 2025 at 3:30 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Michael Hudson explains the problem of asset price inflation.
October 19, 2025 at 3:15 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
The great tragedy of the global economic malaise is that it is caused by a shortage of something that is essentially costless to produce - money. Steve Keen.
October 16, 2025 at 12:38 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Michael Hudson will be giving another talk about Debt to the David Graeber Institute on Friday!

Come along to the live stream: t.co/lqqbsUH2hW
October 15, 2025 at 11:39 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Modern capitalism has more in common with Feudalism and the oldstyle slave-system than most people realize.

From: davidgraeber.org/articles/tur...
"In the case of slave mode of production, the exploiters directly own the primary producers; in feudalism, both have complex relations to the land, but the lords use direct jural-political means to extract a surplus; in capitalism, the exploiters own the means of production and the primary producers are thus reduced to selling their labor power. The state, in each case, is essentially an apparatus of coercion that backs up these property rights by force." . - David Graeber
October 15, 2025 at 3:06 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
BOOK! For those interested in diving deeper into David Graeber's work.

'The Ultimate Hidden Truth Of The World,' is a collection of essays by David Graeber that was published in 2024.

The book is edited and introduced by @nikadubrovsky.bsky.social
BOOK! For those interested in diving deeper into David Graeber's work. 'The Ultimate Hidden Truth Of The World,' is a collection of essays by David Graeber that was published in 2024. The book is edited and introduced by @nikadubrovsky
October 14, 2025 at 1:04 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Yes.
“Everyday we wake up and collectively make a world together; but which one of us, left to our own devices, would ever decide they wanted to make a world like this one?” — David Graeber, “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory”
October 12, 2025 at 4:39 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
"The colonized is indebted to the colonizer for being colonized."

David Graeber speaks about the brutality of Debt in history.
October 11, 2025 at 2:14 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
One of the biggest Thatcherite myths is that Capitalism and a society with markets are the same thing.

David Graeber pointed out this is not historically true.
October 9, 2025 at 11:40 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
David Graeber on the police.

From an interview he gave a few years ago with the Scottish publication called Bella Caledonia. davidgraeber.org/interviews/t...
"The police don’t actually end up spending their time fighting violent criminals. Instead, they enforce administrative regulations and endless rules. So rather than protecting us against violence, police actually bring the threat of violence into situations where it would have never occurred otherwise. Most incidents of violence —domestic violence, a drunken brawl, or gang fights— the police don’t get involved. On the other hand, try driving down the street with no license plates: how long will it be before you are surrounded by people with weapons." - David Graeber
October 7, 2025 at 8:22 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
One of David Graeber's most interesting pieces was from 2013 called - 'A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse.'

Here is an extract.
"What would happen if we stopped acting as if the primordial form of work is laboring at a production line, or wheat field, or iron foundry, or even in an office cubicle, and instead started from a mother, a teacher, or a caregiver? . We might be forced to conclude that the real business of human life is not contributing toward something called the economy but the fact that we are all, and have always been, projects of mutual creation." . - David Graeber
October 6, 2025 at 9:44 PM
davidgraeberinst.bsky.social
Always worth stopping to think about what Noam Chomsky has to say.
“Capitalism has always been a system of class war, one in which the rich and powerful fight an unending battle to control society and its institutions.” . - Noam Chomsky
October 6, 2025 at 1:51 PM