Online Seminar 23 November - 4 December: David Graeber On the moral grounds of economic relations

[Keith Hart]

Everyone has heard of Marcel Mauss's The Gift, some have even read it. But it remains one of the most misunderstood texts in the anthropological canon. This is mainly because gifts are usually thought of as a unitary category opposed to the self-interest on which commerce depends. David Graeber begins by showing that the idea of the gift combines transactions based on diverse sociological principles. In this he is closer to Mauss than are many contemporary interpreters of the essay. But what he takes from Mauss is a vision and method that is counter-intuitive from a modernist perspective. This is that the basic forms of economic life are present in all societies, but are given different emphasis in particular combinations. This means that radical alternatives to capitalism can build on established practices that have been subordinated to money-making, but by no means eliminated.

David rejects the bourgeois assumption that exchange is always the dominant factor in economic life. It is however one of three modes of economic organization that have a claim to being universal in varying degree. The others are communism and hierarchy. By the first he does not mean the pattern associated with socialist states in the twentieth century, but 'everyday communism', from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs, a principle that he claims is synonymous with 'baseline sociality'. Hierarchy often draws on a rhetoric of reciprocity, but its principle is quite the opposite of exchange.

David Graeber is a distinguished economic anthropologist whose Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value (2001) has been seminal and Lost People (2007), on a former slave community in Madagascar, is a unique historical ethnography. His reflections on economy have culminated in a synthesis, Debt: The First 5,000 years (January 2011). But to some extent all this work is a means to a political end. David is a well-known anarchist whose engagement has led to the publication of Direct Action: An Ethnography (2009) and several collections of essays.

David may be something of a revolutionary, but he is also a tremendous scholar with a passion for learning. There is no living anthropologist from whom I have learned as much as from him. I am sure you will too. Please do not hesitate to join in our discussions. On the moral grounds of economic relations: a Maussian approach may be found on the OAC Press main page and a pdf version downloaded, if you prefer.

[Jens Kjaerulff]

Dear All, (in part addressing John McCreery and Heesun Hwang responses to my earlier input where I touched on 'flexible capitalism')

I find that especially with electronic fora, there is truth to the saying that 'less is more'. I realize that what I wrote earlier may have distracted from the core of what I intended as constructive input to the debate when I entered it. It is this:

It seems to me that David's main point, is that different types of transactions exist simultaneously, even in what Mauss called archaic societies. This is why David, in his responses here, repeatedly has pointed to the tensions and ambiguities entailed in this perspective, as something central in his paper.
I think this is a brilliant point to make. I then ask: does this perspective not inherently entail a dimension of action that requires addressing as a consequence, i.e. a temporal and reflexive dimension, that is lacking in Mauss (and many subsequent uses of him), but present in other approaches to transaction? In other words, does David's generous reading of Mauss, in fact entail a need for a more generous reading also of other approaches, even if it requires us to get beyond what Keith yesterday called the 'class action suit' against them in the 1970s?

Maybe it doesn't – I consider David very knowledgeable on this, a view I base in part in my reading of his value book, where he seems to be making a point about action along lines similar to what I try to get at here. Given the points made in the paper we consider, I am above all curious as to his view on this matter.

John and Heesun then, as for my take on Flexible Capitalism:
I am presently writing about flexible capitalism from the perspective of exchange theory, taken broadly, which is why I am interested in this. My own research has centered more narrowly on people variously working from home via the internet (commonly known as 'teleworking'). In this context I have found interesting tensions and ambiguities with regard to the multiple kinds of relationships people participate in (e.g. work and family relations), and I have found that new information technologies are embraced in part to deal with this, e.g. to in fact subvert at least some versions of the kind of exploitation you seem to get at, John. In light of this, and in light of the kind of macro-sociological analyses that dominate this field of research (which in David's terms resonate more with Marx than with Mauss), it is interesting that much telework is in fact embraced informally, and that as such, telework is much more widespread than commonly assumed. This is all I mean by a 'bottom-up' perspective. I intend this to compliment and complicate the more conventional macro-sociological approaches. I am certainly not trying to explain 'flexible capitalism' as such, in market-fundamentalist terms, as merely a phenomenon arising from 'consumer-choice', as you seemed to understand it John. I surely did not explain this very well, but I dont think this is the place to expand any further on my own work. If you are interested in knowing more, I refer you to a monograph I have recently published based on this research (see www.internetandchange.com).
Above all, I am interested in David's perspective on what I have raised here, because in presenting my material over the years, I have found the so-called 'class action suit' to be a real problem, and perhaps it takes some kind of Maussian leverage to overcome it...

[Jens Kjaerulff]

At the risk of overstaying my welcome, I will try to briefly give another example of the take on flexible capitalism I am trying to pursue. It requires you to follow the link I inserted in my last posting, and look at the front cover of my book.

This cover is based on a map from 1782, of one of the villages where I did fieldwork. It shows the outline of the enclosures as they were implemented in this village at the time, i.e. the transition to private property and agrarian capitalism. The reason this map is interesting, is that it shows a type of enclosure design, that was less common. Most commonly enclosures (at least in Denmark) took the shape of a chess board, whereas the design you see here is more like a pizza or a star (the literal translation is 'star-enclosure').

In many historical accounts, the rationale for this division of land is presented as having to do with the efficiency and monetary gain of individualized production. This perspective relies in particular on government documents, and on other documents written by officials who could in fact write at this time (as Polanyi observed, laissez-faire was planned). Indeed the most efficient layout was the chess-board design, which leveled the village, and moved farms out on the fields, each in the center of an individualized plot of land, where the distance between crops, and tools and storage, was shortest.
This leaves questions as to why the pizza design was then sometimes chosen. To figure this out is complicated, simply because written sources from the perspective of those who practiced farming are more limited. But a case can be made, that the pizza design was a compromise, or 'flexible' solution of you will: the village was kept intact this way (as you can see on the map), as were the social relations it helped uphold, which were valued for many reasons (indicated by the few written sources that exist on this), among them as a shield against the dark forces out in the fields, the vicinity of the Church in the village, cooperation in case of fire, etc. In other words, the Pizza design reflects a mode of capitalist production, but one of a peculiarly subverted kind ('communist' in David's terms), that grew from the bottom-up, as it were.
I think this may serve as an illustration of the point that David is trying to make with Mauss, that various kinds of relationships simultaneously coexist, if in a strangely ambiguous fashion. I take it to suggest that 'flexible work' is really not particularly novel. But this argument hinges on incorporating the perspective of farmers, actively involved in reflecting on and shaping these relationships.
I hope this help illuminate where I am coming from, though I should say that this historical perspective is one I did not find space (or skills) to adequately cover in the book, but I hope for a more thorough engagement with it down the road.

[David Graeber]

The ecological aspect is often lacking in my work, truth to tell; it wasn't fully developed in my value book either. In my debt book (for which this argument was developed) I do take on the notion of "debt to nature" which I find problematic, since it assumes that "nature" is an equal party to an exchange, essentially, i.e., that one can see oneself as on some level the formal equivalent to the entire cosmos (which of course includes oneself), and therefore able to form a contractual relationship with it, which is borderline insane. Hence my interest in the ancient literature on sacrifice, and "debt to the gods" where the language of exchange, contract, and debt is always first proposed, then found wanting. Sacrificial ritual thus becomes recognition of the impossibility of framing a relationship as debt, recognition that one does not stand apart from the cosmos - or at least so can be read. I like this, but there's still the problem that always arises when we talk about placing humans and other aspects of the cosmos, nature, etc, on an equivalent, continuous plane of interaction where "rights" and "agency" or whatever you want to attribute exists equally on all sides, which is, we can self-consciously discuss what it means to do so, but as far as we know, anyway, those we have now constituted as equal parties to a moral process of interaction can't - at least not with us! This is what I always worry about. If you want to extend the political sphere to include ants and moss and whatnot, how will that not lead to devaluing our relations with other humans (i.e., if some racist says he considers people of some group he dislikes no better than animals, I would like a better reply than 'well yes, but animals should be treated better too').

This is a digression I guess but it shows why I've hesitated pursuing this direction, perhaps to the detriment of my theory. Some who have gone there - Bataille, with his "the sun gives without receiving" is the obvious precedent (which then leads to a curious exaltation of Aztec human sacrifice) - have often moved in frightening directions with it. I'd be curious how you think such pitfalls could be avoided because I'd like to believe they can.




Geoff Chesshire said:

This is a really fascinating discussion of the various forms and functions of gift, as seen primarily from an economic perspective. The categories of communism, exchange and hierarchy cover a wide range of economic relationships, and I agree that gift is a medium for building and maintaining each of these kinds of relationships. I must admit that I had been disappointed in the past that Mauss almost always refers to gift as a form of exchange. However, David's essay and all of the discussion here has shown me that it was only that I had been so stuck on the term "gift exchange" that I had ignored the wider range of economic relationships that Mauss was describing in terms of gift.

Having got over that hurdle, I find that now I am stuck on the notion of gift discussed primarily as a mode of economic expression. I prefer to consider gift from a broader ecological perspective, which includes but is not limited to the economic perspective. I think this may help to understand the gut-level reaction to the word "communism" that several people have expressed, and which I felt also: How is it that communism is the highest motivation that we can ascribe to gift? How about Lewis Hyde's concept of the gift, which I would summarize as any expression of the creativity of our inalienable, irrepressible, intrinsic life-force? From an ecological perspective, I would extend this concept of gift to any expression of the creativity inherent in all life, not only in human life.

From an ecological perspective, we observe and learn from the complex systems (natural, social, cultural, etc.) in which we find ourselves, hopefully to find our healthy, co-creative niches within them. From a more specifically economic perspective, we then apply what we have learned: we attempt to manage, control and optimize these systems for the benefit of (some) humans. It is understandable then, that from an economic perspective we see gifts primarily as given and received by/from humans to meet human needs/goals/objectives, while we externalize nature's gifts as mere accessible resources. However, often when we engage in exchange, really we are sharing nature's gifts. For example, suppose an apple tree grows on "my" land and a orange tree grows on "your" land; when we economically "exchange" apples and oranges, mostly we are sharing nature's gifts. So it is also with the gifts of human creativity, such as the ideas we are all sharing in this discussion. On the other hand, I would not say the same of productivity, which comes into view more from an economic perspective but not so much from an ecological one.

I would be interested to hear what others think about the relationship between ecological and economic perspectives of gift, and how these might or might not map into the categories under consideration: communism, exchange, hierarchy.

[David Graeber]

Oh, I wasn't aware you'd been vainly trying. I must have missed some posts! Apologies. By the way there's no link to the text version only the video.



Keith Hart said:

I will make one more effort to get David to talk about the contemporary political relevance of this paper. Perhaps there has been a degree of compartmentalization between this seminar and the events discussed here. So let's try some triangualtion with this:

Tagged as: anarchist anarchistbookfair2010 bookfair culture cuts guy_debord left richard_barbrook workers_struggles

Does the word 'Revolution' has any meaning anymore? Is there any point to political writing? and was the last British election actually a coup d'état by the civil service?

This and other questions are put to Dr. Richard Barbrook, winner of the 2008 Marshall McLuhan Prize for 'Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology' and a University of Westminster lecturer.

He begins by discussing Guy Debord's 'The Game of War', as a way to think about politics, and maybe a way of improving how we practice politics better.

You don't have to see the video of the interview to get the idea.

[David Graeber]

My answer to your last question would be "yes." I'm a little dubious of Mauss' advocacy of the redistributive feast, potlatch-style, as the salvation of modern capitalism. I'm not sure he really believed it himself to be honest. It doesn't appear anywhere in the rest of his political writings, which are voluminous, but meant for proletarian audiences: there he's an devoted anti-capitalist who believes in creating socialist capital through cooperativism that will gradually displace bourgeois capital. I strongly suspect the political conclusions of "The Gift" are something of an anomaly - Mauss normally strictly separated his political and academic writings, and the one time he mixed them, he assumed he was writing for a bourgeois audience and said things tailored for that audience that he might have felt was appropriate but probably didn't put all that much personal stock in. But this is speculation.

One thing I would emphasize, if I were trying to be Maussian, which I am here, is that there is a global market system, yes, but it's not total. It's not like everything is reduced to the logic of capital. Maybe ticket give-aways are, but capitalism can only reproduce itself by maintaining or even some might say producing social relations and even social worlds that work by a logic utterly alien to it and I think it's absurd to say that these things only exist for the sake of capitalism, or their only significance is that they help (right now) to reproduce it.

This is rather abstract I confess but I think it's important to emphasize. Alternatives are all around us.


NIKOS GOUSGOUNIS said:

This discussion is bringing a lot of anthropological material related to the gift theory and practice, however I nothing heard about the future of gift exchanges in a new multicultural and non ethnocentric Universe where cosmopolitan attitudes of rich and poor are faced to the globalised economy as motivated mainly by monstruous multinational companies. By this I mean that even if peoples mentalities change in the West regarding the idea of the strict nation-state and tending to a soft and liberal cosmopolitanism, the globalised model of economy much facilitated also by banks , does not permit the expression of free cosmopolitan actions such as gift exchanges and ticket free spectacles starting from artistic ceremonies and festivals and going to athletic shows such as World football Cups or Olympiades. In the contrary all is highly commercialised while art and athletism serve well as pretexts for new profit makers and open incredible new horizons of business. What anthropology has to propose to this new commercialised World system and what could be the possible role of gift exchange among individuals or free ticket offers ( a sort of gift to the audiences) under present circumstances ? If massive gift exchange especially through the western invention of holidays ( by the pretext of the holy days of Xmas etc) is not fitting anymore to the Maussian theory, then what ? Have we to reinvent a new and more efficace theory about gifts based on the moral grounds of economical relations ( as the title of this seminar says) ?

[David Graeber]

That's an enlightening analysis. I guess the danger in deconstructive readings is that they do start from, and end in, texts. Does it make a difference that Marx isn't the author of the phrase "from each according to their abilities..." and never used it all that systematically - it's actually first attested in writing in Louis Blanc but seems to have been a popular catch-phrase in the French worker's movement, and then broader European workers' movement, of the time, and just been taken up from workers by the movements' intellectual supporters? Maybe it doesn't make much difference.



Toby Austin Locke said:

Let us start by saying that the centred 'conceptual structure' of which he speaks is Marxism in its traditional, textual and logocentric context. This 'conceptual structure', I sure we will all agree, has on some level become part of the contemporary academic hegemony. Discussions of class, property, hierarchy etc.. become framed by the 'conceptual structure' expressed in Marx's critique of capitalism. It is hard to discuss class without relation to 'predicate' information: commodity, wealth, accumulation, proletariat, bourgeoisie etc... as such class becomes defined by the 'predicate' information/ concepts.

Now let us extract from the 'conceptual structure' of Marxism, and the concepts predicate Marxism itself, the idea of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” this becomes what Derrida refereed to in the above passage as “X” or what David refers to as “communism”. The task of the deconstructionist would be to establish a meaning of X which does not necessarily exclude the predicate concepts but potentially acknowledges them. With this newly extracted concept X we are able to find a use for it which extends beyond the previously necessary paradigms that come with Marxism as conceptual apparatus. The extracted concept can be of greater use now both in understanding traditional Marxism as well as developing new angles of thought which are less reliant on academic hegemony.

Nihilistic readings of Derrida and other post-modernists tend to see his activity as counter productive: breaking down useful ideologies into useless individual concepts. This is not how I read Derrida and, I don't believe this is what he intended. He was not trying to destroy our intellectual 'progress' but instead he wished to 'shake up' and challenge the very foundations of the way we think by reducing widely used ideologies to their constituent sections. This is something I feel David achieves very well in this piece, as well as in others. The working defenition of communism given by David escapes some of its reliance on the other concepts of Marxism and provides an excellent method of developing new modes of thought.

[Philip Swift]

This is less a question, and more a register of appreciation for David's exceptional paper and the great discussion it's generated. I know precious little about the 'gift' literature in anthropology - a shameful admission - but this has been a wonderful education. David's position - that there's no reason why the logic of the gift should be singular - reminds me somewhat of Don Handelman's argument in Models and Mirrors that ritual (another anthropological staple) doesn't have to conform to the solo organisational dynamic that anthropology so often imagines.

I just wondered, in the light of David's last articulation of his worry about extending the sphere of politics to non-human entities such as ants and moss, etc, as to whether or not this might have been an implicit critique of Latour; certainly, the mention of ants (ANTs) suggested as much - though perhaps my imagination ran away with me!

(I appreciate that this query is peripheral to the issues of the paper. Apologies.)

[David Graeber]

yeah, I didn't go. If I remember the tickets were pretty expensive.


Keith Hart said:

Just to put David's argument in an old left context, my attention has been drawn to the other side in the discussion of communism:

The Idea of Communism

An all-star cast of radical intellectuals discuss the continued importance of communism. Do not be afraid, join us, come back! You’ve had your anti-communist fun, and you are pardoned for it—time to get serious once again!—Slavoj Žižek

Responding to Alain Badiou’s ‘communist hypothesis’, the leading political philosophers of the Left convened in London in 2009 to take part in a landmark conference to discuss the perpetual, persistent notion that, in a truly emancipated society, all things should be owned in common. This volume brings together their discussions on the philosophical and political import of the communist idea, highlighting both its continuing significance and the need to reconfigure the concept within a world marked by havoc and crisis.

[David Graeber]

Yes, it is peripheral, but if you're curious, yeah, I do have a problem with that too. Maurice Bloch, interestingly enough, believes that Latour, and also Thevenot and Boltansky (don't know about Callon), if I remember, are all basically Catholic thinkers - devout believers who have a very specific moral agenda lying behind the theoretical interventions. I wouldn't know but it's an interesting thought. I do think the politics behind much of ANT is kind of dubious - and the idea of treating rocks, moss, germs, ideas, and so on as agents - while actually much less radical than it seems (since they are careful to add only humans can act as truly political agents, assembling alliances between) - is ultimately kind of silly; it's the ultimate apotheosis of the political principle, now become a principle of ontology, the explanation of everything, and like any such one-principle-explains-all theories, ultimately a bit ridiculous. Also the political implications are kind of scary - most obviously in Callon's writings on markets, which are either almost unimaginably ignorant, or intentionally parroting the worst sort of naive "markets develop bottom up" bourgeois ideology.

But yeah, that's a bit of a digression.


Philip Swift said:

This is less a question, and more a register of appreciation for David's exceptional paper and the great discussion it's generated. I know precious little about the 'gift' literature in anthropology - a shameful admission - but this has been a wonderful education. David's position - that there's no reason why the logic of the gift should be singular - reminds me somewhat of Don Handelman's argument in Models and Mirrors that ritual (another anthropological staple) doesn't have to conform to the solo organisational dynamic that anthropology so often imagines.

I just wondered, in the light of David's last articulation of his worry about extending the sphere of politics to non-human entities such as ants and moss, etc, as to whether or not this might have been an implicit critique of Latour; certainly, the mention of ants (ANTs) suggested as much - though perhaps my imagination ran away with me!

(I appreciate that this query is peripheral to the issues of the paper. Apologies.)

[Philip Swift]

Thanks David, for responding to my straying question.

I very much like the project you espouse, by the way, with its political, ethical stress on the possibilities afforded by other ways of living and being. It seems to me that this was (is) always the original, incipient potential of anthropology, even if we often forget it.

Thanks again.

[Keith Hart]

Just checking in to prove that your hyperactive chairman is still here. I spent most of yesterday trying to get out of a snowbound airport and today will be fully engaged in Oslo. Actually it is more to reassure me, since you are all doing fine without me. I am particularly grateful to Jens and Julieta for telling us more about their work which is surely one of the bonuses this kind of discussion has to offer. And to David for his considerate and always sharp responses. Geoff's intervention did provoke a line though ANT about human/non-human interaction that David summed up quite pithily, saving me from the rant that would have come out if I were asked to comment on Latour/Callon, which thankfully I was not. (Latour was trained as a Jesuit by the way). It does seem that we should tackle the relationship between economic and ecological approaches in view of the contest between market and green ideologies for world domination. But perhaps not here.

We have a couple of days left for anything you might have wanted to say, but didn't think it was appropriate. Or if you would like to return to a point made earlier. The thread will be closed on Sunday.

[heesun hwang]

Thank you, Julieta and Jens. For Julieta; your research sounds very interesting - though the context and how things actually went were very different, I've been also interested in Korean 'public' architectures and their implications on political matters. Maybe later I could write something about the problem with my little knowledge about national construction projects in Korea. For Jens; I'll read your book - I suppose the book is dealing with a subject I'm interested in. Thank you for acknowledging the source. And your provisional interpretation for the geographical organization sounds very interesting.

And then, one more question to David;

David wrote in the comment for Geoff : "I like this, but there's still the problem that always arises when we talk about placing humans and other aspects of the cosmos, nature, etc, on an equivalent, continuous plane of interaction where "rights" and "agency" or whatever you want to attribute exists equally on all sides, which is, we can self-consciously discuss what it means to do so, but as far as we know, anyway, those we have now constituted as equal parties to a moral process of interaction can't - at least not with us!"

I'd like to point out a few questions relevant to Geoff's and David's thoughts whether some changes take place in the notion of 'equality' 1) when we theorize the concept of gift as suggested by David (this was one of my implicit questions in my first response I think, esp. in the last part) and 2) when we take into accounts non-human 'actors' in 'ecological system' (this is a little bit rhetorical add-on, but the word 'ecology' shares the root with 'economy' as is known - oeconomia). I raise this question because when we accept to the basic definition of 'communistic' relationship, what is most important in it is 'ability' to give or to receive, which might be rather counter-intuitive to the common usage of the word.

Certainly there's a danger of reducing every type of beings into the same homogenous actors when we seek an epistemological ground for a more generalized explanation that covers everything, especially when other relevant terms used in the discussion as a whole remain intact. But as far as I know, there are theorists who refuse to do so even when they look like doing something similar to that. In that sense my favorite is Haraway's discussion on 'companion species' because she is against 'animal rights discourse', but at the same time seeks to find different ways of forming a relationship with non-humans(esp. dogs). In the Manifesto, she cites the linguistic philosopher Hearne's discussion on 'literal anthropomorphism'('Human' should attribute the same Right to 'Animal') and a sort of heuristic anthropomorphism that enables human and horse communicate with each other; figuring dogs or horses's behaviors and feelings in human language. There's no 'equal right' that applies both to dog/horse and human, but in the context of our discussion here, the relationship is not completely proprietary (property relationship has been the 'official' rule (not necessarily 'dominant') in the so-called 'commodity relationship' not only among humans but also with non-humans) - more suitable description might be 'exchange relationship' in our discussion. Haraway's concern is not on the matter of 'equality' which she basically sees 'dangerous', but on the matter of finding a way to live and do common activities together yet in a better way. Doesn't this sound 'communistic'? At least for me, that does. The word 'companion' comes from 'com-panis'; a family in the sense 'those who share meals together' which is not in itself a homogeneous category (there are many hierarchies relevant to even familial sharing of food), which also shares the root with 'company', but at the same time an examplary case for 'communistic relationship' in David's explanation as well.

However, I think this will be a very ambitious project - to build a theory of gift that extends to the non-humans altogether though I'm interested in this problem very much - and in line with Keith's moderation, I prefer not to ask further about this problem.

But I do want to ask whether something does change in the concept 'equality' when we adopt David's conceptualization on different codes of actions; it seems to me that in case of communistic moral, the 'equality' becomes a concept for 'an act of giving based on ability principle not on other principle' (the problem gets complicated because there's one more dimension in it as well (amity vs. hostility)); in case of exchangist moral, it becomes a concept for 'equivalence' that needs to be achieved ; in case of hiearchical moral, there seems to be virtually none. It requires only one party's ability to give, and I think this well figures out its difference against 'communistic gift' as was discussed in the previous responses.

In this context, I wrote a few days ago in a response that "... I don't think an act of giving is necessarily 'voluntary' if that implies an action enacted by 'free will'; I was just saying that the actor who gives just gives what (s)he is able to give. This might not even be a conscious action, like in an example given in the essay - a worker hands a tool to the next; I suppose the worker knows that (s)he is passing it over, but without the consciousness that (s)he is 'giving'; but it certainly enables the taker to do the work as well, and if the situation is assembly line, then (s)he will be able to pass something to the next."

In the extreme, what is important in 'ability to give' is not 'voluntariness'. This again raises the core question that I wanted to ask to David; the value of the conceptualization 'morality', rather than that of another concept.

I think this question will be relevant to Keith's question about the relevance of David's argument on the current discourse on communism. Will it? I hope so. I also think that the word 'communism' in the common sense is too much focused on property relations as David suggests.