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A Practical Utopian's Guide to the Coming Collapse

A Practical Utopian's Guide to the Coming Collapse P OL I T IC S : Ge t D ow n A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse W 3 David Gr aeber e used to think we knew. Revolutions were seizures of power by popular forces aiming to transform the very nature of the political, social, and economic system in the country in which the revolution took place, usually according to some visionary dream of a just society. Nowadays, we live in an age when, if rebel armies do come sweeping into a city, or mass uprisings overthrow a dictator, it’s unlikely to have any such implications; when profound social transformation does occur—as with, say, the rise of feminism—it’s likely to take an entirely different form. It’s not that revolutionary dreams aren’t out there. But contemporary revolutionaries rarely think they can bring them into being by some modern-day equivalent of storming the Bastille. At moments like this, it generally pays to go back to the history one already knows and ask: Were revolutions ever really what we thought them to be? For me, the person who has asked this most effectively is the great world historian Immanuel Wallerstein. He argues that for the last quarter http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Baffler MIT Press

A Practical Utopian's Guide to the Coming Collapse

Graeber, David
The Baffler – Mar 1, 2013
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Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2013 David Graeber
ISSN
1059-9789
eISSN
2164-926X
DOI
10.1162/BFLR_a_00129
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

P OL I T IC S : Ge t D ow n A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse W 3 David Gr aeber e used to think we knew. Revolutions were seizures of power by popular forces aiming to transform the very nature of the political, social, and economic system in the country in which the revolution took place, usually according to some visionary dream of a just society. Nowadays, we live in an age when, if rebel armies do come sweeping into a city, or mass uprisings overthrow a dictator, it’s unlikely to have any such implications; when profound social transformation does occur—as with, say, the rise of feminism—it’s likely to take an entirely different form. It’s not that revolutionary dreams aren’t out there. But contemporary revolutionaries rarely think they can bring them into being by some modern-day equivalent of storming the Bastille. At moments like this, it generally pays to go back to the history one already knows and ask: Were revolutions ever really what we thought them to be? For me, the person who has asked this most effectively is the great world historian Immanuel Wallerstein. He argues that for the last quarter

Journal

The Baffler – MIT Press

Published: Mar 1, 2013

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