‘The Utopia of Rules’, David Graeber (2015) – A Book in Five Minutes, no.22
Channel: ramblinactivist
Date: 2022-12-10

Ramblinactivist’s Videos, 2022/40, 10th December 2022.

What do Extinction Rebellion and Hollywood superheroes have in common? They both uncritically preserve the bureaucratic status quo by breaking the rules of everyday conduct.

Published in 2015, ‘The Utopia of Rules’ is a book about bureaucracy; how bureaucracy, not politics, is the true organising force of modern society; and why the basis of state bureaucracy is the regularisation of force and violence. Bureaucracy represents a means for power to facelessly enforce order by making people do things to one another that, without the justification of bureaucratic rules, would ordinarily appear callous or inhuman.

‘The Utopia of Rules’ expresses some profound ideas about how people strive to make change – and how easily those actions can be negated by bureaucratic rules.

For the referenced text and an audio podcast of this post, goto:
http://www.fraw.org.uk/blog/reviews/022/index.shtml
NOTE: There's a link to a free copy of the book in this page.

You can find more of these reviews in ‘A Book in Five Minutes’ here:
http://www.fraw.org.uk/blog/reviews/index.shtml

Finally, it would really help to promote this work if you could follow, subscribe, or like my social media presence – which can be accessed from the link above. In today’s digital analytics popularity contest, all that button-pressing means something in this messed-up world.

Chapters:
00:00 Opening titles.
00:35 Book review.
06:35 After-thoughts.
12:00 Closing credits.

#davidgraeber #bureaucracy #power #politics #protest #politicalscience