David Graeber Quotes

Everyone sees they cannot well live asunder, nor many together, without some rule to which all must submit.

Agreeing to share prosperity, rather than let it divide us, is infinitely preferable to the alternative.

The fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to none.

What belongs to everybody belongs to nobody.

The State is the nation socially organized.

We shall have to share out the fruits of technology among the whole of mankind. The notion that the direct and immediate producers of the fruits of technology have a proprietary right to these fruits will have to be forgotten. After all, who is the producer? Man is a social animal, and the immediate producer has been helped to produce by the whole structure of society, beginning with his own education.

When I talk about 'everyday communism', I am teasing a little. It is a provocative idea. But then we all do a lot of sharing a lot of the time. We don't draw up contracts for everything.

Communism is the basis of all sociality and it's the basis of cooperation.

We are a social animal, power only exists in a social sense, we have to work in groups.

No society can function as a society, unless it gives the individual member social status and function, and unless the decisive social power is legitimate.

Religion supports and perpetuates the social organization it reflects.

Informal relationships are not mere minor interstitial supplements to the major institutions of society. These informal relationships not only include important decision-making processes, such as the family, but also produce much of the background social capital without which the other major institutions of society could not function nearly as effectively as they do.

In a shared fish, there are no bones.

The society which we have built can in no way be termed "state socialism."The social organization which we have created can be termed a Soviet, socialist organization which has not yet been quite completed, but is in its root a socialist organization of society. The foundation of this society is public ownership.

Man is a social animal formed to please in society.

We are members of one great body. Nature planted in us a mutual love, and fitted us for a social life. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole.

Lies are the mortar that binds the savage individual man into the social masonry.

Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the parts of civilised community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together.

We don't live in a capitalist totality. Capitalism couldn't survive as a totality anyway. We live in this complex system and we already live communism and anarchism in a million forms everyday.

They may be all comprehended under three heads - 1st, Superstition; 2d, Power; 3d, the common interests of society, and the common rights of man.

As a matter of fact, a modern society is many societies more or less loosely connected. Each household with its immediate extension of friends makes a society; the village or street group of playmates is a community; each business group, each club, is another.

Within even the most social group there are many relations that are not as yet social.

Food is one of the great organizing tools.

A leader is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals and a people reverts to a mob.

Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.