Read it some time ago, very good overview why bureaucracy is needed but also why it grows and is a method of executing power.
What an incredible book. A poignant look at how and why bureaucracies are created and maintained, how they are a form of game that’s opposed to actual play, how each of us has a responsibility to actively imagine a better world and create the conditions under which it can come into existence, and a surprise analysis of Christopher Nolan’s film “The Dark Knight Rises” which (trust me) makes sense in this context.
A clear recommendation for anyone who wants to look critically at how we as a society run the world. It’s also not too dense (as opposed to some other political philosophy works) and written in a very approachable way.
A collection of essays with an almost-clever title but too many detours.
Far too often, I found myself having to re-read parts of essays in order to understand whatever the main point was. There were so many times that the content just meandered somewhere, tried to build into the point, and created confusion about whatever he was trying to describe.
At one point, I was 40 pages into an essay with another 10-20 to go, and it started feeling like he was trying to justify why it was okay to like fantasy literature and games despite the bureaucracy within them. I doubt that was his intent, but that was precisely the way they felt due to the way he writes.
So much of what was said was entirely superfluous, which... is fine. But again, for someone who was touted as being the 'most readable' theorist, this was …
A collection of essays with an almost-clever title but too many detours.
Far too often, I found myself having to re-read parts of essays in order to understand whatever the main point was. There were so many times that the content just meandered somewhere, tried to build into the point, and created confusion about whatever he was trying to describe.
At one point, I was 40 pages into an essay with another 10-20 to go, and it started feeling like he was trying to justify why it was okay to like fantasy literature and games despite the bureaucracy within them. I doubt that was his intent, but that was precisely the way they felt due to the way he writes.
So much of what was said was entirely superfluous, which... is fine. But again, for someone who was touted as being the 'most readable' theorist, this was pretty unreadable.
In The Utopia of Rules, David Graeber dives into a form of government that is controlling a larger chunk of our lives each year: bureaucracy. A group of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats controlling our lives seems against the American ethos, but public or private, it continues to grow. Graeber's collection of essays explores how bureaucracy intersects with structural violence, popular culture, poetic heroism, and occupy.
https://libcom.org/files/David_Graeber-The_Utopia_of_Rules_On_Technology_St.pdf
In The Utopia of Rules, David Graeber dives into a form of government that is controlling a larger chunk of our lives each year: bureaucracy. A group of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats controlling our lives seems against the American ethos, but public or private, it continues to grow. Graeber's collection of essays explores how bureaucracy intersects with structural violence, popular culture, poetic heroism, and occupy.
https://libcom.org/files/David_Graeber-The_Utopia_of_Rules_On_Technology_St.pdf
Sometime in 2000 I came across an ad in the newspaper telling of a panel that will take place in a club in Tel-Aviv on the topic of "can there be revolution in Israel?". Naive, young, libertarian me understood this to be a debate on whether Israel is in danger of a revolution. I was wrong. It was a panel of anarchists bemoaning the fact that revolution will never occur in Israel for various nonsensical reasons.
Many years have passed since. I drifted left and now consider myself a social-democrat, and I've enjoyed my fair share of arguments with naive, young libertarians. And yet, reading Graeber's "The Utopia of Rules" brought me back to that sensation from over 15 years ago. The reason was that I simply did not expect to fall head first into a rant about the capitalist, democratic (he doesn't call it that, of course) world.
And …
Sometime in 2000 I came across an ad in the newspaper telling of a panel that will take place in a club in Tel-Aviv on the topic of "can there be revolution in Israel?". Naive, young, libertarian me understood this to be a debate on whether Israel is in danger of a revolution. I was wrong. It was a panel of anarchists bemoaning the fact that revolution will never occur in Israel for various nonsensical reasons.
Many years have passed since. I drifted left and now consider myself a social-democrat, and I've enjoyed my fair share of arguments with naive, young libertarians. And yet, reading Graeber's "The Utopia of Rules" brought me back to that sensation from over 15 years ago. The reason was that I simply did not expect to fall head first into a rant about the capitalist, democratic (he doesn't call it that, of course) world.
And let's be clear: a rant is exactly what this book is. While his previous excellent [b:Debt: The First 5,000 Years|6617037|Debt The First 5,000 Years|David Graeber|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390408633s/6617037.jpg|6811142] was replete with evidence, this book feels more like idiosyncratic musings. No argument goes beyond anecdotal evidence, and interpretations that may be plausible but are certainly not conclusive suddenly become undisputed facts. Every once in a while there's an interesting insight. The idea of "interpretive labour", for example, is a useful tool to consider social relations. Some of the ideas about games vs. play are interesting, if not completely original, and unfortunately aren't taken in any interesting direction because the whole discussion is a bit of a digression. But they never become anything bigger than that. And for every somewhat interesting insight there is another that appears completely asinine. The entire argument that the reason the predictions of sci-fi from the 1950's have not come true is because the Powers-That-Be didn't want them to (rather than that they are impossible) is one such glaring example. (But Jules Verne's predictions came true! Graeber whines, as if contemporary authors such as H.G. Wells have not produced predictions that never came close to being realized -- primarily because that has never been an interest of most sci-fi literature).
Maybe it's my fault. I thought the use of the word "stupidity" in the title was merely an attempt to grab attention by being cheeky. But Graeber actually uses "stupidity" as a theoretical category, albeit one that is never really defined. We're just supposed to agree that bureaucracy is stupid because Graeber once accidentally signed where he was supposed to print his name and vice versa.
But it was the stellar Debt that got me to read Graeber's new book, and here is why The Utopia of Rules is not just a bad book, but an evil book - because it actually ruined Debt for me, retroactively. So here's a conclusion you don't often hear in a book review: if you enjoyed Graeber's Debt, do yourself a favour and steer clear of The Utopia of Rules.
I am a bit on the fence about this bundle. First of all, I hadn't expected it to be a bundle -- I figured that Graeber would provide an integrated critique of bureaucracy, since he seems to have been working on the topic for a while. Of course, essays can be perfect vehicles for the development of new ideas, and The Utopia of Rules certainly delivers in terms of exploration, but it falls a little short when it comes to substance.
That is not to say there's nothing of interest here: Graeber's style is intact and he explores some very interesting ideas. He argues that bureaucracy is predicated on violence and the power gradients that stem from it and introduces a concept he calls interpretive labor, which is roughly the same as the psychological theory of mind, but is contextualized within class society. The logic that takes him …
I am a bit on the fence about this bundle. First of all, I hadn't expected it to be a bundle -- I figured that Graeber would provide an integrated critique of bureaucracy, since he seems to have been working on the topic for a while. Of course, essays can be perfect vehicles for the development of new ideas, and The Utopia of Rules certainly delivers in terms of exploration, but it falls a little short when it comes to substance.
That is not to say there's nothing of interest here: Graeber's style is intact and he explores some very interesting ideas. He argues that bureaucracy is predicated on violence and the power gradients that stem from it and introduces a concept he calls interpretive labor, which is roughly the same as the psychological theory of mind, but is contextualized within class society. The logic that takes him there -- through the anthropological observation that bureaucratic forms are uninteresting and the feminist critique of one-sided empathy -- is fascinating in its complexity.
Another promising idea is that bureaucracy appeals not because it leads to a fair, meritocratic society (it doesn't), but because predictable rules appeal to a society that is suspicious of play. Here Graeber makes use of the distinction between games and play, something that couldn't be pulled off in my native language, but nonetheless makes all the sense in the world to me. He explores the promise that play has to change the world, in an argument that is explicity based on the Situationists and other ludic, anarchist movements. For Graeber, the dichotomy that is at the core of the left-right divide is that of play versus (violent) order --which is a refreshing thought in an era that is stuck in the Cold War logic of states versus markets -- and clarifies that this is exactly why the Left should resist being tempted by bureaucracy.
It doesn't make sense to summarize the book, so let me stop there. If you are interested in seeing a solid first step towards a critique of bureaucracy that is deeper, more coherent and more productive than the common right-wing one, Graeber's collection is where you should be.
