Karl Marx, who knew quite a bit about the human tendency to fall down and worship our own creations, wrote Das Capital in an attempt to demonstrate that, even if we start from the economists' utopian vision, so long as we also allow some people to control productive capital, and, again, leave others with nothing to sell but but their brains and bodies, the results will be in very many ways barely distinguishable from slavery, and the whole system will eventually destroy itself." - Meaning and context.">
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Chapter Eleven, "Age of the Great Capitalist Empires", p. 354
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Karl Marx, who knew quite a bit about the human tendency to fall down and worship our own creations, wrote Das Capital in an attempt to demonstrate that, even if we start from the economists' utopian vision, so long as we also allow some people to control productive capital, and, again, leave others with nothing to sell but but their brains and bodies, the results will be in very many ways barely distinguishable from slavery, and the whole system will eventually destroy itself.

— David Graeber

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Karl Marx, who knew quite a bit about the human tendency to fall down and worship our own creations, wrote Das Capital in an attempt to demonstrate that, even if we start from the economists' utopian vision, so long as we also allow some people to control productive capital, and, again, leave others with nothing to sell but but their brains and bodies, the results will be in very many ways barely distinguishable from slavery, and the whole system will eventually destroy itself." in the context of "Chapter Eleven, "Age of the Great Capitalist Empires", p. 354" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "David Graeber" (Quotes, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011)) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

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#David Graeber#capital#distinguishable#demonstrate#economists#productive#eventually#creations#tendency#worship#attempt#utopian
David Graeber

About David Graeber

David Rolfe Graeber (February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist who was a Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths. In addition to his academic work, Graeber has a history of both direct and indirect involvement in political activism, including membership in the labor union Industrial Workers of the World, a role in protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City in 2002, and support for the 2010 UK student protests movement. He is co-founder of the Anti-Capitalist Convergence.