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Quote by David Graeber

“... most Amazonians don't want to give others the power to threaten them with physical injury if they don't do as they are told. Maybe we should better be asking what it says about ourselves that we feel this attitude needs any sort of explanation.”

Quote by David Graeber

Book:Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
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Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

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David Graeber
David Graeber

David Graeber is an American anthropologist known for his research on economic anthropology, anarchism, and critical theory. His work explores the issues of economic relationships and power structures in modern society. more

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“When it (Self-management in revolutionary Spain) was not sabotaged by its enemies or hindered by the war, agricultural self-management was an unquestionable success. The land was united into one holding and cultivated over great expanses according to a general plan and the directives of agronomists. Small landowners integrated their plots with those of the community. Socialization demonstrated its superiority both over large absentee landholdings, which left a part of the land unplanted, and over smallholdings, cultivated with the use of rudimentary techniques, inadequate seeding, and without fertilizer. Production increased by 30—50 percent. The amount of cultivated land increased, working methods were improved, and human, animal, and mechanical energy used more rationally. Farming was diversified, irrigation developed, the countryside partially reforested, nurseries opened, pigsties constructed, rural technical schools created, Pilot farms set up, livestock selected and increased, and auxiliary industries set in motion, etc.”

SocialismCommunismAgricultureAnarchistSelf ManagementRevolutionary Spain
Book:For a Libertarian Communism
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“Nor does the Anarchistic scheme furnish any code of morals to be imposed upon the individual. "Mind your own business" is its only moral law. Interference with another's business is a crime and the only crime, and as such may properly be resisted. In accordance with this view the Anarchists look upon attempts to arbitrarily suppress vice as in themselves crimes. They believe liberty and the resultant social well-being to be a sure cure for all the vices. But they recognize the right of the drunkard, the gambler, the rake, and the harlot to live their lives until they shall freely choose to abandon them.”

RightsMoralityVicesSocialistAnarchist
Book:The Individualist Anarchists: Anthology of Liberty, 1881-1908
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“How can he describe such abominations ? And how come he doesn't collapse under the weight of the abominations he describes?' Well it takes exceptional fortitude - or, alternatively, a special form of cowardice. At all events, you have to be abominable to come to terms with abomination. A kind of moral law, of terroristic superstition, denies you the right to speak of anything whatsoever if you are not involved in it. [...]. Either 'You are in cahoots with the object you speak of' or 'You don't know what you are talking about. In fact, speaking of something and being part of it are two quite different things. The finest example is death: you have to be alive to talk about it. But this is true of anything - of politics, economics, art. You have to be a stranger to something to speak about it in a strange – that is to say, original – way.[...] In fact, you have absolutely to collude in what you are speaking about and at the same time to be somewhere else altogether. You have to love it and hate it. You have to be the thing you speak of and to be violently against it. This is the law of hospitality, and it is the law of hostility.”

Abomination
Book:Fragments
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