Bullshit Jobs and Real Change: The Revolutionary Thought of David Graeber
Dr Adam North talks about what we can learn from David Graeber. Described as "one of the thinkers of his time," Graeber's ideas seem more relevant today than ever before.
The Radical Legacy of David Graeber: Why His Ideas Still Matter
David Graeber—anthropologist, activist, and author—passed away five years ago, but his influence continues to grow. Known for his radical clarity and interdisciplinary insight, Graeber challenged the systems we’re taught to accept: debt, work, bureaucracy, inequality. His legacy isn’t just intellectual—it’s political, emotional, and deeply practical. He didn’t just want to describe the world. He wanted us to remake it.
Exploring all of Graeber’s work would take more space than I have here, so instead, I’ll focus on a few ideas that have most shaped my own thinking.
A Vision of Radical Possibility
Graeber was more than a scholar—he was a committed activist. He played a key role in shaping the intellectual foundations of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement and was a staunch advocate of anarchism, direct democracy, and mutual aid. His political vision wasn’t about seizing power but about building alternatives to it. He believed meaningful change comes from the bottom up: from people organising, cooperating, and imagining new ways to live together.
His final book, The Dawn of Everything (co-authored with archaeologist David Wengrow), challenges the conventional story of social evolution. It disputes the idea that hierarchy and inequality are inevitable outcomes of civilisation, or that democracy is a uniquely Western invention. Drawing from anthropological and archaeological evidence, Graeber and Wengrow argue that human beings have always had choices about how to structure their societies—and we still do.
This message is profoundly empowering. In a world facing climate collapse, economic inequality, and political disillusionment, Graeber’s work reminds us: we are not prisoners of history. We can imagine and build a better world.
Could You Be an Anarchist?
Anarchism is often misunderstood as chaos or lawlessness, but Graeber was committed to showing that it is, at its heart, a practical and humane philosophy. He had a gift for communicating complex ideas with simplicity and humour, as shown in his short essay Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!
In it, he asks five simple questions:
If there’s a queue to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn—even when no one’s enforcing the rules?
Are you part of a club, team, or voluntary organisation where decisions are made collectively rather than imposed from above?
Do you believe that most politicians are self-serving and that our economic system is fundamentally unfair?
Do you tell your children—or were you told—that it’s good to be kind, share, and play fair?
Do you reject the idea that some people are simply destined to rule over others?
If you answered yes to all of these, Graeber suggests, then you may already be an anarchist—whether you realise it or not.
It’s a clever, disarming approach that reframes anarchism not as radical rebellion, but as everyday ethics.
(Read the full piece here.)
Work, Bullshit Jobs, and the Value of Time
One of Graeber’s most powerful contributions in recent years was his critique of modern work, especially in his book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. He argued that a huge number of people are stuck in jobs that serve no real purpose—roles that exist primarily to keep people busy or to reinforce bureaucratic hierarchies.
If you feel your job is meaningless, and no one would notice if you stopped doing it, you likely already have what Graeber identified as a “bullshit job”. Meanwhile, roles that are clearly essential—teaching, journalism, nursing, construction, social care—are often underfunded, undervalued, and treated with contempt when workers demand better pay or conditions.
Graeber’s insight was stark: people who seek meaningful work are often punished for it. His writing gave language to a quiet despair felt by millions—and, more importantly, offered hope that work doesn’t have to be this way.
Graeber didn’t just critique the system, he imagined what could replace it. A world where work is creative, cooperative, and voluntary rather than alienating and pointless. As he said in a 2018 lecture in France:
“… until the emergence of capitalism, it never occurred to anyone to write a book on the conditions that would create the most wealth; they argued about the conditions that would create the best people”.
It’s time, he suggests, to return to that conversation—and I agree.
Conclusion
David Graeber’s legacy is one of intellectual courage, moral clarity, and radical imagination. He dismantled the myths that sustain inequality—and offered tools to build something better in their place. For readers today, Graeber’s work is more than just theory. It’s an invitation: to reimagine the world, and to act on that vision.
