We have an idea in the 21st century that capitalism is the market, and that both are naturally opposed to bureaucracy, which is the state. This dense little book is an attack on that complacent thinking, and it continues some of the arguments that brought Graeber prominence for Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
Both books belong to an anthropological tradition that takes approaches normally reserved for weird foreigners and applies them to Western culture, with electric results.