David Graeber – a life to remember

JVL Introduction

We reproduce here David Graeber’s own mini-biography followed by an essay of his, with Andrej Grubačić, on Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid.

That work, (first published in 1902) is the most important produced by the great Russian revolutionary and foremost theorist of the anarchist movement, Pyotr (Peter) Kropotkin. Debunked by bourgeois critics, ignored or dismissed by the Marxist left, it has, argues the authors, a heightened relevance today.

Mutual aid has emerged as a key concept used by activists and mainstream journalists alike in the occupy movements, and the various solidarity projects confronting the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is invoked in migrant solidarity mobilisations in Greece and in the organization of Zapatista society in Chiapas. “Even scholars “, remark the authors ironically, “are rumoured to occasionally use it.”

In a challenge to much socialist thinking the authors throw down the gauntlet arguing that the ‘only viable alternative to capitalist barbarism is stateless socialism, a product, as the great geographer (Kropotkin) never ceased to remind us, “of tendencies that are apparent now in the society” and that were “always, in some sense, imminent in the present.”’

[In our reposting below, we have reversed the order of the two articles, putting David’s mini-biography first.]

This article was originally published by Truthout on Fri 4 Sep 2020. Read the original here.