Expectations in the last century seemed to be promises for the future, and the working hours will be short, our children will take long vacations and they will have great flexibility in choosing work and working hours, while economic and technological progress will reduce the daily working hours.

There was no question that these ideas would not be realized, as communications technology, transportation tools, the automobile and aircraft industries provided what saves time, makes life faster and reduces burdens, and experts began to wonder what people would do with their long spare time, but what actually happened was completely different. .

Anarchist anthropologist David Graeper, author of the best-selling books on capitalism and bureaucracy, was one of those skeptics of future promises and modern work, and published several books bearing critical ideas of modern life before he departed at the age of 59 in early September.

Graiber is known for his critically acclaimed writings on bureaucracy, politics and capitalism, was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement and professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) at the time of his death.

His latest book, "Dawn of Everything: A New History of Mankind", is expected to be published in the fall of 2021, according to a report by the British Guardian newspaper.

Graber was born in New York in 1961 to politically active parents. His father fought in the Spanish Civil War, while his mother was a member of the International Women's Garment Workers Union.

Greber first attracted academic interest due to his teenage hobby of translating hieroglyphs into the Mayan language.

After studying anthropology at the State University of New York and the University of Chicago, he was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Fellowship, and spent two years in anthropological fieldwork in Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean.

Debt History

His book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, made him famous, as Graber explored the violence that underlies all social relationships based on money, and called for the erasure of sovereign and consumer debt.

While the book received mixed reviews from critics, it achieved record sales and praise from everyone, from the French economist Thomas Piketty to the English comedian Russell Brand, according to the Guardian report.

The author studies the relationship between debt and ancient and modern social institutions, such as marriage, law, war, and systems of government, and sees that debts are imposed by the state by the power of the army and police.

In his view, debt is one of the oldest historical trade routes, stressing that cash and barter were developments on the ancient idea of ​​debt recorded in the Sumerian civilization around 3500 BC, and he described Greber's author as possibly the most read general anthropology book in the 21st century.

Democracy and political struggle

Graber followed suit in 2013 with his intellectual project “Democracy: History, Crisis, Movement” on his work with Occupy Wall Street and then “Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Joys of Secret Bureaucracy” in 2015, which was inspired by his struggle to settle his mother's personal affairs before her death. .

An article published in 2013, titled “The Rubbish Jobs Phenomenon,” led to his 2018 book of the same title in which he argued that most white-collar jobs are meaningless and that technological advances have increased people's work, not reduced it.

“Huge sections of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks that they think are unnecessary. The moral and spiritual damage caused by this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. And yet, nobody speaks,” he said in his book. Almost about that. "

Absurd functions

Greber studies what he calls "nonsense jobs" in his book, arguing that a world without teachers or dockers is a world that will certainly get into trouble, but it is not entirely clear how humanity would suffer if both private equity executives, lobbyists, or Public relations researchers, telemarketers, bailiffs, or legal advisors.

He considers that nonsense jobs mainly include white-collar jobs in modern companies, stressing that many jobs in post-industrial societies are useless and useless, which is consistent with a poll in the Netherlands in which more than a third of those surveyed considered their jobs to be meaningless. .

"If the technology was designed for anything, that would motivate us all to do more. In order to achieve this, the jobs created should have been blatantly absurd," says Greber.

In his book "Utopia of the Rules," Graber goes further in his analysis of what went wrong, and says that technological progress was supposed to lead to our teleportation to new planets, and lists some other expected technological wonders that he is disappointed in not having, such as flying cars. Outstanding animation, immortality drugs, intelligent robots, colonies on Mars.

“As someone who was 8 years old at the time of Apollo landing on the moon, I have vivid memories that I will turn 39 in the magical year of 2000, and I wonder what the world around me will be like. Did I honestly expect that I would live in a world of such wonders? Do I feel cheated now? Absolutely. "

In 2011, he became involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, which he described as an "experiment in a post-bureaucratic society."

He was the owner of the famous slogan "We are the 99%," and said, "We wanted to prove that we can do all the services that social service providers do without endless bureaucracy."

He recounted what happened, “In fact, at one point in Zuccotti Park, there was a huge plastic garbage bag containing 800,000 dollars. People kept giving us money but we wouldn't put it in the bank. You have all these rules and regulations. "Wall Street" owning a bank account. I always say the principle of direct action is the bold determination to act as if one were really free. "