Jeff Russell

As to Graeber, I only ever heard him self-identify as an anarchist, who is also an anthropologist. Never as a Marxist. :) As an anthropologist he was aware of being in a position to testify to the extraordinary and huge variety of ways in which humans have organised things for themselves. Which he took as a sign that the range of human possibility was, and is, huge, and not pre-determined, which is why anarchy made sense to him. This is what I most appreciate about his work - the sense that whatever IS, is not a sentence, nor is it inevitable, and that there are many, many, other possible ways... and that the possibilities are as wide and as broad as we let them be.

I do think that in "Debt" he firmly quarreled with what he probaby would call the Adam Smith "just so" story of barter preceding - and inevitably developing into - money (granted, he says, Adam Smith did not have the wealth of ethnographic material we now have, and was free to let his imagination rip when trying to figure this out). Because, he says, ethnologically, it is nonsense. Nowhere in any ethnographic source ever described from direct observation, is barter (in the "spot trade", or this for that, sense) ever actually found to precede money. Although barter can often succeed money, whenever folk used to trading in money have to deal with the money disappearing - eg in prisons. In relation to this detail, I think he may have annoyed economists of all kinds, both the classical kind, and of the Marxist kind. ;)

But also, it really IS a good book. Please do post something when you get around to reading it. I'd be interested in your thoughts on it. :)

Re Girard, yes, the concept that all human culture and mythology arose following the (purported) first fully human cultural act - a human sacrifice - is what really put me off him. Still, perhaps there are others who find something of benefit in his work. Who am I to say?