Thought this was an interesting and well reasoned critque of some aspects of the Dawn of Everything, particularly how Graeber’s conclusions could lead one to take a misinformed wrong path toward changing modern society that may give poor results.
I saw that video a while ago and found the critique very unconvincing. I recommend actually reading the book, because it gets misrepresented in the video above.
To be fair I think this video was made before the book was actually out. Not sure why he decided to do that but I think I remember him saying in another video that the book was better than expected.
The guy seems to be an orthodox marxist (or maoist?), and Graeber is implicitly questioning the validity of the marxist concept of material determinism in that book (with some pretty compelling historical evidence). Obviously that didn’t go down well with the true believers 😅
I’m mostly familiar with him from his series on why all marxist revolutions were dictatorships, where he’s quite scathing towards Marxism and all of its offshoots, and instead points out how Anarchist thinkers predicted all those poor outcomes, and how superior their solutions and methods were.
Overall from what I’ve seen of him, his opinions remind me of Bookchin’s more than anything (though I’m basing that on old interviews and the few things I’ve read of Bookchin’s).
Hmm, I admit I have only seen a few of his videos, but those I have seen had a strong entryism smell of trying to cater to an Anarchist audience without actually being an Anarchist himself. But maybe I am wrong and he just spend too much time in ML circles.
I don’t know if he’s put words to his exact ideology but it seems to be anarchist or at least anarchist adjacent, albeit with lots of heterodox opinions on various things. But you’re right that he’s very pro-materialism.
I generally enjoy his content but I haven’t read the book so this series was a bit beyond me.
I also remember this segment in which he said that he found the book was better than the previous published articles (which were to be turned into a book), even tho his criticism was based on them, not the book itself.
