Debt and Work as Ideological Weapons

This 2013 essay from David Graeber hit me today as I am trying to launch a business and applying to and getting rejected for dozens of jobs in this bullshit economy.

I am interested in the future of society and work that doesn’t focus on maximum profit for others through mass exploitation of humans and the planet.

Here are a few quotes that stood out to me:

“This is precisely the system that has imposed free market orthodoxy, and opened the world to financial pillage, under the watchful aegis of American arms.”

“Politics itself is just a matter of creating the conditions for growing the economy by allowing the magic of the marketplace to do its work. All other hopes and dreams—of equality, of security—are to be sacrificed for the primary goal of economic productivity.”

“The morality of debt and the morality of work are the most powerful ideological weapons in the hands of those running the current system.”

I encourage you to read the full essay and open up some discussion in the comments here or via email: A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse.