If Only...
Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire
by David Graeber
(AK Press, 2007)
433 pages. Paper. $22.95
Reviewed by Lawrence Jarach

Being forced out of the tenure track at Yale University and getting a new academic post in England, anarchist professor of anthropology David Graeber was something of a celebrity (even outside of activist and anarchist circles), if only briefly. Not nearly as hated by right wingers as that other professor, he was still attacked for visibly participating in street protests, and for not toeing the mainstream academic line despite anthropology having a long history of harboring radicals. Anarchists (interested in anthropology or not) have weighed in either in support of or critical of Graeber, both in relatio to his troubles with Yale and concerning his relations with other anarchists. Commentators have alternately cited his academic or street activist credentials as a way to celebrate or dismiss his views and/or his activism.

I wasn´t that excited to read this volume, mostly because I thought his Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology was annoyingly substandard. In that long pamphlet, Graeber studiously ignored every contemporary anarchist andor anti—statist anthropologist as well as those of previous generations, showing him to be at least a little more self—absorbed than warranted—are we really supposed to believe that he is the first anarchist anthropologist? This refusal to place himself within a long history and context seriously undercut his analysis and conclusions. Possibilities offers less pontification and more prosaic forays into radical social science, and is, therefore, much more interesting. Even so, there´s not much to inspire the anarchist who isn´t already a fan of anthropology.

Most of the entries were written for academic journals, while others were published separately in a couple of academically oriented anarchist periodicals; only one was written specifically for this collection. As I read through most of them, I found myself nodding in agreement, but there was nothing especially interesting anywhere; almost everything Graeber says could have been published in any of the hundreds of anthropology texts written between the mid—1960s and the early 1980s that I read as an undergraduate. There are really only two essays in the collection worthy of comment: "Manners, Deference, and Private Property," and "There Never Was a West."

"Manners" has a three-sentence tangent on ritualized rebellions, a fascinating topic in its own right. Among others, such rituals include Mardi Gras (and other forms of Carnival), Halloween, New Year´s Eve, April Fool´s Day, and other moments set aside for the inversion of traditional hierarchiesand roles of inequality. In hierarchical societies that remain stable most of the time, these rituals allow those in subordinate classes and castes to lash out at those who have power and control without fear of reprisal. In most cultures that include hierarchies rulers expect, and encourage, at least one day where the plebs get a chance to mock those with established authority. Displays of public drunkenness, lascivious (and, on occasion, non-heteronormative) dress and behavior, and a generalized ridiculing of rulers are all tolerated (to varying degrees) as metaphorical release valves for the built-up pressures of living within institutionalized hierarchies. During my undergraduate studies I intuited that these rituals are ingeniously deliberate built—in mechanisms to maintain social control within classbased cultures, Graeber, however, notes offhandedly but authoritatively, that "Carnivalesque rituals of rebellion might have served, in the eyes of the masters, as means of reinforcing social order, but they had a notorious capacity to spiral out of control...Rebellions do occur... Hierarchies have been smashed..." (46). I was immediately intrigued by those few sentences, wanting him to follow up with at least one or two historical events that had originated as ritualized rebellions, but alas, no such satisfaction was forthcoming. It´s the only mention. And without any examples of such rituals spiraling out of control—and presumably leading to the smashing of hierarchies— Graeber´s assertion falls flat, and is totally disappointing.

In "There Never Was a West," Graeber explores how ideologues have shaped the modern understanding of the idea (if not the practice) of democracy. To say that the term is one of the most contentious among contemporary anarchists might be an understatement; theoretical battles are fought, friendships and alliances are created and dissolved, and all manner of miscommunication can be blamed on particular (if not peculiar) understandings of the term, and what it means specifically for its anarchist promoters and detractors.

Acknowledging that most human communities prefer to use unanimous decision—making processes (proven by extensive anthropological research), Graeber offers this explanation:

"it is much easier, in a face-to-face community, to figure out what most members of that community want to do, than to figure out how to change the minds of those who don´t want to do it. Consensus decision—making is typical of societies where there would be no way to compel a minority to agree with a majority decision... If there is no way to compel those who find a majority decision distasteful to go along with it, the last thing one would want is to hold a vote... Voting would be the most likely means to guarantee the sort of humiliations, resentments, and hatred that ultimately lead [to] the destruction of communities." (341)

Further, Graeber notes that "Majority democracy...can only emerge when two factors coincide: (1) a feeling that peopleshould have an equal say in making group decisions, and (2) a coercive apparatus capable of enforcing those decisions" (342). Majority democracy is what most anarchists mean when they use the term, unless they modify it with "direct," which is almost never explained. If it is explained, though, it starts to sound exactly like consensus (itself a problematic process that, disappointingly, Graeber never critiques), making it unclear why it is necessary to use the term democracy in the first place. Perhaps there’s some kind of sentimental liberal American attachment to the word/idea. Equally plausible is the desire to make anarcho—activist methods palatable to liberals and progressives in the interest of building alliances. Either way, democracy remains impossible without some authoritarian mechanism to make certain that decisions are carried out. That mechanism might be formal, embodied in the barely disguised conformity lurking in the terms tactical unity and accountability; or informal, through the use of ostracism and/or self—criticism.

Graeber almost immediately reminds readers that democracy “appears to have been coined as something of a slur by its elitist opponents: it literally means the ‘force’ or even ´violence’´ of the people. Kratos, not archos” (342-3). In addition, since democracy is meaningless without some mechanism of enforcement, it makes perfect sense that virtually all statists in the modern era would adopt the term as their own. In the context of the active criticisms and very public protests of institutions like the World Band and the imf, he insists that it is "precisely when one considers the problem of the modern state’s monopoly on coercive force that the whole pretense of democracy dissolves into a welter of contradictions" (365):

Globalization has simply exposed the rotten underpinnings, by creating the need for decision- making structures on a planetary scale where any attempt to maintain the pretense of popular sovereignty, let alone participation, would be obviously absurd. (367)

Naturally this analysis will never convince those anarchists who prefer their anarchism to sound like an unterrifying form of Jeffersonian democracy. They will continue to be attached to the delusion that it is the language of autonomy for working class and poor people that frightens other do-gooders, rather than the theory and practice of oppressed people actually exercising autonomy and self—organization. Savvy social workers (professional or voluntary, state employees or anarcho-activists) will never create the conditions for their own obsolescence.

Unfortunately, this incisive discussion of democracy is buried within more than three hundred other pages of ultimately dull essays. One wonders if AK Press, flush with their successful championing of that other harried professor, were hopeful that Graeber´s troubles with Yale might also generate some sales, and so published an exhaustive collection that might be interesting to those who were obsessively curious to discover what all the stink was about. But there’s no stink here; there’s just a collection of essays written by an academic activist published by a non-academic press. While more than just his peers will now be able to see them conveniently located in one volume, it doesn´t come close to being a satisfying anarchist title.