{"id":13335,"date":"2015-03-24T22:34:24","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T22:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on\/"},"modified":"2015-03-24T22:34:24","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T22:34:24","slug":"david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on\/","title":{"rendered":"David Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of\u00a0Bureaucracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

mostlysignssomeportents<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\"image\"<\/figure>\n

Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber follows up his magesterial Debt: The First 5000 Years<\/a> with a slim, sprightly, acerbic attack on capitalism\u2019s love affair with bureaucracy<\/a>,
\n asking why the post-Soviet world has more paperwork, phone-trees and
\nred-tape than ever, and why the Right are the only people who seem to
\nnotice or care. <\/p>\n

The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy<\/a>
\n is only 180 pages long \u2014 three essays, an introduction and an
\nafterword \u2014 but I made more than 80 notes as I read it, underlining
\npassages and dog-earing pages I wanted to come back to and\/or read aloud
\n to other people and talk about further.\n<\/p>\n

\nUnlike the enormous and comprehensive Debt<\/i>, Utopia of Rules<\/i>
\n is mostly argument, not history. It sets out to investigate the problem
\n of \u201cbureaucracy\u201d \u2014 basically, rules, and the simmering threat of
\nviolence that underpins them. Hidebound adherence to awful, runaround
\nbureaucracy was always the sin laid at the feet of slow-moving,
\nStalinist states under the influence of the USSR. Capitalism, we were
\ntold, was dynamic, free, and open. But if that\u2019s so, why is it that
\nsince the USSR imploded, bureaucracy under capitalism has exploded<\/i>?
\n If you live in a western, capitalist state, you probably spend more
\ntime filling in paperwork, waiting on hold, resubmitting Web-forms,
\nattending performance reviews, brainstorming sessions, training
\nmeetings, and post-mortems than any of your ancestors, regardless of
\nwhich side of the Iron Curtain they lived on.\n<\/p>\n

\nMoreover, the anti-authoritarian Left has always had a critique of this
\nkind of hidebound adherence to rules. The left-wing uprisings in 1968
\nspraypainted walls with \u201cDemand the impossible!\u201d Today, if the Left can
\ncritique bureaucracy, it can only do so in the language of the Right: by
\n attacking civil servants and unions, when almost all the red tape you
\nencounter in your daily life comes from trying to get your \u201cfree market\u201d
\n HMO to pay up, get your bank to correct its errors \u2014 or, if you\u2019re
\nunlucky enough to need welfare in America or the UK, from dealing with
\n\u201caccountability\u201d officers, much beloved by the right, who require you to
\n complete paperwork straight out of a USSR-themed Ren Faire, all the
\ntime. Sometimes in triplicate.\n<\/p>\n

\nBureaucracy is pervasive and metastatic. To watch cop-dramas, you\u2019d
\nthink that most of the job of policing was crime-fighting. But it\u2019s not.
\n The police are just \u201carmed bureaucrats.\u201d Most of what police do is
\nadministrative enforcement \u2014 making sure you follow the rules
\n(threatening to gas you or hit you with a stick if you don\u2019t). Get
\nmugged and chances are, the police will take the report over the phone.
\nDrive down the street without license plates and you\u2019ll be surrounded by
\n armed officers of the law who are prepared to deal you potentially
\nlethal violence to ensure that you\u2019re not diverging from the rules.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis just-below-the-surface violence is the crux of Graeber\u2019s argument.
\nHe mocks the academic left who insist that violence is symbolic these
\ndays, suggesting that any grad student sitting in a university library
\nreading Foucault and thinking about the symbolic nature of violence
\nshould consider the fact that if he\u2019d attempted to enter that same
\nlibrary without a student ID, he\u2019d have been swarmed by armed cops.\n<\/p>\n

\nBureaucracy is a utopian project: like all utopians, capitalist
\nbureaucrats (whether in private- or public-sector) believe that humans
\ncan be perfected by modifying their behavior according to some ideal,
\nand blame anyone who can\u2019t live up to that ideal for failing to do so.
\nIf you can\u2019t hack the paperwork to file your taxes, complete your
\nwelfare rules, figure out your 401(k) or register to vote, you\u2019re
\nobviously some kind of fuckup.\n<\/p>\n

\nBureaucracy begets bureaucracy. Every effort to do away with bureaucracy ends up with more bureaucracy.\n<\/p>\n

\nBureaucracy lies. The point of coming up with rules is to ensure that
\nthey\u2019re evenly applied. But everyone knows that rules aren\u2019t evenly
\napplied. When we replace informal, arbitrary systems with formal sets of
\n rules, the arbitrariness moves up a level \u2014 moves up to \u201cwho has to
\nfollow the rules and who doesn\u2019t.\u201d Sell a joint, go to jail. Launder
\nbillions for the Sinaloa cartel, defer some of your bonus for a few weeks<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cEverybody knows\u201d would be a good alternative title for this book. Like the Leonard Cohen song<\/a>,
\n reading this book (especially the introduction, which is the sort of
\nthing that someone should turn into a 20-minute info-video) makes you
\nrecognize that there\u2019s a huge, awful, lying center to the world as we
\ninhabit it. As Graeber says, bureaucracies are supposed to be
\nmeritocracies where people are hired and promoted based on talent, not
\nbecause of birth or personal connections. But we all know that\u2019s
\nbullshit \u2014 and we also all know that the only way to rise in the
\nBureaucratic Utopia is to pretend that it isn\u2019t bullshit.\n<\/p>\n

\nGraeber wants us to demand the impossible. To stop making capitalism. To
\n wake up in the morning and just walk away from the lie. To refuse the
\nintimidation of latent violence. To reclaim the critique of rules and
\nprivilege that was the Left\u2019s to take to the streets in 1968.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn these three essays, a brilliant introduction, and a fabulous
\nafterword (about the relationship of Christopher Nolan\u2019s Batman movies
\nto Occupy and capitalism), Graber manages to tease out something
\nwordless and important, about how we might imagine a world where we
\ndon\u2019t need violence to keep us in check and stop letting the people who
\nsay we do run the show.\n<\/p>\n

The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

mostlysignssomeportents: Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber follows up his magesterial Debt: The First 5000 Years with a slim, sprightly, acerbic attack on capitalism\u2019s love affair with bureaucracy, asking why the post-Soviet world has more paperwork, phone-trees and red-tape than ever, and why the Right are the only people who seem to notice or care. The Utopia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-3t5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}