By Danny Dorling, November 18th, 2024
The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World is a collection of previously published articles, almost all sole authored by the academic, activist and anarchist, David Graeber. Graeber’s philosophy is that everyone is an anarchist at heart: none of us like being bossed around. Though he has a point, this idea risks underestimating the degree to which people vary, and to which we can all be conditioned by our circumstances. That said, I have always enjoyed what he has to say because it is so often novel, bringing to light ideas that are rarely discussed in the academic mainstream. His influence is greater than any other recent anarchist, especially following the 2011 publication of Debt: The First 5000 years, published in the year when almost a thousand occupy movement encampments were briefly established in cities in over eighty countries. Before him,the best known modern anarchist was Colin Ward, author of The Child in the City (1978), who had a less combative style.
Graeber died four years before this latest book was published. Giving an overview of Graeber’s thinking and his contribution to anarchist thought in the text’s foreword, Rebecca Solnit writes: “In order to believe that people can govern themselves in the absence of coercive institutions and hierarchies, anarchists must have great faith in ordinary people, and David did.” What may grate on readers is Solnit’s assumption that some people are ordinary while others are great, that only some have the courage of their convictions. Graeber also moves between suggesting we can all be anarchists, to putting a few on much higher pedestals than others. At times he talks despairingly of many of his colleagues.
