Divergence and Disagreement in Contemporary Anarchist Communism:

Social Ecology and Anarchist Primitivism

Stephen Millett BSc (Econ), MSc. Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Central Lancashire 2002

Abstract
The strand of Nineteenth-Century Anarchism known as Anarchist-Communism conceived of the abolition of both state and market, and their replacement by a system of free distribution of goods organized through federated communes. While briefly this was the most developed and sophisticated strand of anarchism, it suffered an eclipse in the face of both the failure of the Russian Revolution, and the rise of the essentially a-theoretical industrial syndicalism that blossomed in many countries during the early decades of the twentieth century. With the expansion of the state and capitalism after WWII new forms of contestation appeared, most notably, in terms of Anarchist Communist theory, in the United States. In the 1960s and 1970s two currents emerged which represented the first significant development in anarchist communist theory for fifty years. These were the Social Ecology of Murray Bookchin, and a current which grew up around the Detroit underground paper Fifth Estate, later known as Anarchist Primitivism. It is these two strands that are the subject of this research. Not surprisingly these two perspectives, appearing around a decade apart, and both in the same country, dealt with many of the same issues. What is more surprising is that in virtually every area, the conclusions they arrive at are completely different. In this research I locate these two strands historically as developments of Anarchist Communist theory, and examine their theories in four key areas: The Primitive, History, Reason and Rationality, and Technology. Examination of these areas serves to define the projects themselves, as well as highlighting how they disagree. To explain why they disagree, this work uses a methodological approach suggested Quentin Skinner. Skinner argued that in order to fully understand a text in the history of ideas, it is necessary to understand the authors intention in writing it. The study therefore examines not only the texts, but also the backgrounds of the writers concerned, their aims in producing it, and their approaches to debate with other theorists and perspectives. Through a combination of textual analysis and recovering the intentions of the writers, the high levels of disagreement can be accounted for.

Introduction Outline Anarchism & Anarchist Communism in History and Theory The Nature and Purpose of this Research Chapter 1 Terms and Definitions Bookchin and Social Ecology Anarchist Primitivism Chapter 2 Methodology Describing the Project Quentin Skinner & the meaning of texts in the history of ideas Skinners method applied to this project Chapter 3 The Primitive Introduction What is the Primitive? When was the Primitive? Bookchin on the Primitive and Organic Society Anarchist Primitivists on the Primitive Chapter 4 History Bookchin on History Anarchist Primitivists on History Chapter 5 Reason Bookchin, Social Ecology and Reason Anarchist Primitivists on Reason and the Sacred Chapter 6 Technology Bookchin on Technology Anarchist Primitivists on Technology Chapter 7 Overview Chapter 8 Conclusions Bookchin and Social Ecology Anarchist Primitivism Accounting for Disagreement Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Green Anarchist Deep Ecology and Anarchism Backgrounds Bookchins Background Backgrounds of Anarchist Primitivist Writers and Publications A Note on Sixties Radicalism Hegel and History Context and Considerations Backgrounds Aims Approach to Debate Engagement and Disagreement Format Heritage and Influences Period References Style

15

26

35

75

124

161

205 212

Appendix 4 Appendix 5 Appendix 6

Bibliography

284

INTRODUCTION
OUTLINE
When George Woodcock announced in 1962 that anarchism, at least as far as it had previously existed as a political idea and movement, was to all intents and purposes dead, few would have disagreed with his conclusion.1 But in the decade that followed this pronouncement anarchism reemerged, frequently in new, vibrant and iconoclastic forms, to stake a claim to be one of, if not the only, radical opposition at the end of the twentieth century. Initially emerging out the Civil Rights, anti-war and student protests of the 1960s, anarchist ideas have since become a central pillar of the Green movement, inspiring activists and theorists alike. Nineteenth century, or Classical, anarchism consisted of a variety of forms, and some of these were reflected in the anarchist activity and theory of the 1960s and 1970s. Although usually not considered a theoretical creed, the communist form of anarchism that emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century did begin to develop a sophisticated and wide-ranging critique of state and capitalism, which included a call for the abolition of the division of labour and the market economy. It was in North America, however, during the 1960s and 1970s, that two strands emerged that, while they could be located historically as part of the anarchist current, sought to expand and develop the anarchist critique, taking into account the changed circumstances of the late-twentieth century. These two strands Anarchist Primitivism and Social Ecology represent, it will be argued, the first significant development of anarchist communist theory for over half a century. Given their common resistance to both capitalism and the state, and their emergence at around the same time, and in the same country, it is not surprising that both these strands have tended to grapple with the same problems the role and nature of reason and rationality; the desirability or otherwise of modern technology; and the question of progress, explored through examinations of anthropological views of primitive society, as well as through attempts to develop a new theory of history. However, what is perhaps surprising is that despite these similarities, these two approaches come to significantly different conclusions in every case. The purpose of this study is to offer a preliminary definition of both strands through examining how they approach four core subjects (which will also highlight the differences in their conclusions) and to offer an explanation as to why these disagreements have occurred. Given the similarities, it will be shown that these disagreements cannot be accounted for simply in terms of theoretical differences, but rather are due to the different aims of the proponents, and the ways in which they disseminate their ideas and manage disagreement and conflict.

Woodcock 1963, 443.

ANARCHISM & ANARCHIST COMMUNISM IN HISTORY AND THEORY

Anarchism - Instead Of A Definition
Attempting a strict definition of anarchism is as thankless a task as it is likely to be fruitless. Cahm notes that anarchism, encompassing as it does such a broad spectrum of ideas, cannot be as precisely defined in ideological terms as marxism.2 Marshall expands on this further: It would be misleading to offer a neat definition of anarchism, since by its very nature it is anti-dogmatic. It does not offer a fixed body of doctrine based on one particular world-view. It is a complex and subtle philosophy, embracing many different currents of thought and strategy.3 Millers attempt at a concise and overarching definition of anarchism appears to leave him stymied: Of all the major ideologies confronting the student of politics, anarchism must be one of the hardest to pin down. It resists straightforward definition. It is amorphous and full of paradoxes and contradictions.... Faced with [these], we may begin to wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or merely a jumble of beliefs without rhyme or reason.4 Woodcock has more success when he argues that, historically, anarchism is a doctrine which poses a criticism of existing society; a view of a desirable future society; and a means of passing from one to the other.5 John Clark adds to this list a fourth point, an anarchist view of human nature: The anarchist believes there are qualities of human beings which enable them to live together in a condition of peace and freedom.6 But attempts at more rigid definitions, dealing with specific anarchist criteria, are likely to remain problematic. The reason for this is the number of different positions that can, and have been, included under the rubric, many of which appear to have little in common with the others. Vincent refers to individualist, collectivist, mutualist, communism, and anarcho-syndicalist forms.7 Sylvan, being exceptionally pluralistic, notes that there are a number of varieties, including individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarcho-syndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms and now ecoanarchisms.8 Probably the only thing that all these have in common is a rejection of the modern state.9
2 3

Cahm 1989, ix. Lower case m in marxism in original Marshall 1992, 3. 4 Miller 1984, 2, 3. 5 Woodcock 1986, 11. 6 Clark 1984, 15. 7 Vincent 1992, 119. 8 Sylvan 1993, 231. 9 Although whether state is synonymous with government is again an area of contention. See Sylvan 1993, 216. It is the case in this study that many key terms elude a clear and strict definition. Sometimes this is because the term in question is contested in its own field, as for example primitive and civilization are in anthropology. In other cases the way the term is used by the writers examined may be contentious, for example in the case of

Anarchism therefore appears as a quintessential political example of a concept best served by a Wittgensteinian family resemblance approach, rather than by seeking an essentialist definition, since there is no essence which can reasonably be claimed to apply to each and every case. In looking at anarchism it is easy to see, as Wittgenstein did for games, not a unitary essence but a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.10 But it is questionable whether developing such an approach, to attempt to list the elements of the resemblance, would be of use for this project. There are many varieties of anarchism which do not form a part of this study, which focuses primarily of one particular sub-type, anarchist communism. What I intend to do, then, is focus on anarchism as an historically located body of theory, rather than as an abstract idea. In this, I will concentrate on the socialistic (as opposed to individualistic and/or market-oriented) forms of anarchism. In so doing I will not be seeking a definition of anarchism outside of the principles which have been articulated by the theorists of anarchist communism. Here the argument is that anarchist communism is a clear strand of anarchist thought that suffered a marked decline in the mid- to late-twentieth century, but re-emerged in the form of the two strands examined in this research, Social Ecology and Anarchist Primitivism. The nature and development of these strands, which appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, will be examined in the work that follows. For the moment it should be noted that Social Ecology is primarily the work of Murray Bookchin, while Anarchist Primitivism emerged mainly through the work of Fredy Perlman, John Zerzan, the collective based around the Detroit underground paper, the Fifth Estate. This research constitutes an examination of the work of these writers. (The backgrounds of the major proponents of these strands are outlined in Appendix 3.) This study is concerned with anarchism as a political theory. That is, it is not concerned with anarchist activism, with what those who call themselves anarchists actually do, but with bodies of theory that frequently (although not always) underpin such activity. It is widely believed - and this is true also of some anarchists - that anarchism is related purely to action, and usually violent action at that. But although anarchism has always attempted to be an eminently practical doctrine, dealing with realizable solutions to everyday problems, it has also generated a rich and varied body of theory. Of course, it is not possible to completely separate theory and practice, since all practice is based upon a theory, however loosely formed, and all theory implies some form of practice. In this case, however, I will be concerned only with texts rather than with any forms of activism these may have inspired. (It should be noted, however, that neither strand has led directly to new or widespread forms of anarchist practice.) It is important first though to differentiate anarchist political theory from an anarchist
technology. With no accepted, uncontested definition to refer to, understanding exactly what is being argued for or against is problematic. 10 Wittgenstein 1972, 32. (Philosophical Investigations 66.)

sensibility, and to locate anarchism chronologically. Kropotkin, in his entry on Anarchism in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, saw the anarchist vision as representative of a tendency which [has] always existed in mankind.11 For him it was expressed in the writings of Lao-tse, in Stoic philosophy, and in millennial Christian movements in the Middle Ages.12 This approach is still found today, for example in the work of Marshall, who states that Anarchism is usually considered a recent, Western phenomenon, but its roots reach deep in the ancient civilizations of the East.13 As will be seen, both the strands looked at here see historical precursors to anarchism in a variety of prenineteenth century philosophies and social movements. The second view is that anarchism is a comparatively late offspring of the Enlightenment and the French Revolutionary era.14 On this reading, anarchism arose as a distinctive political strand first in the writing of William Godwin (17561836), but came to the fore only in the later nineteenth century, most prominently in the writings of Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin.15 There is also a third view, sometimes related to the first above, that anarchism (or more correctly, the state of anarchy) can be found in, and/or has existed in the past in various primitive forms of society. (For example in Barclay, People Without Government. Again, this will be found in the strands looked at below.16) It is not necessary that any view exclude another. Anarchism as a political theory is clearly a product of a particular historical period. This does not, however, preclude it being a universal and trans-historical sensibility or psychosocial orientation, engendering a variety of social movements (of which anarchism as such could be argued to be a contemporary manifestation). Equally, neither of these excludes the possibility of acephalus societies being examples of anarchic political and economic organization. Providing that none of these is claimed as the origin of a unitary anarchism, a plurality of views certainly seems possible. As far as this study is concerned, it is the second view that will be most relevant in terms of the field directly researched; that is, this research will concern anarchist political theory seen in the context of its emergence in the nineteenth century through its decline, and re-emergence in the latetwentieth century. However, the theorists themselves will also locate anarchism, or its antecedents, in the other two areas; finding the practice of anarchy, and quasi-anarchist texts, existing prior to the nineteenth century. As such, these areas will be examined as part of the research, but this will be within it, as opposed to it being part of the framework of the research itself.

11 12

Kropotkin 1993, 10. ibid., 10-11. 13 Marshall 1992, 53. 14 Vincent 1992, 117. 15 See Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). For examples of the later development of anarchist ideas, see Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851); Bakunin, God and the State (1882); Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread (1892). Also, Malatesta, Anarchy (1891); Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894); Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays (1910). 16 Barclay 1990.

Anarchist Communism & Syndicalism The Decline And Reemergence Of Anarchist Political Theory
Anarchist communism emerged in the 1870s, a hybrid of anarchy in the political sphere and communism in the economic, indicated by the maxim from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. This contrasted with earlier forms of anarchism which still utilized market forms, or distribution according to work done.17 But what was most significant was not simply the idea of free distribution, as important as this was, nor even the abolition of the political state; it was the anarchist communist demand for the abolition of money, any form of market, and the division of labour. As such, it stood in opposition not only to the forces of the state and capitalism, but also to those ideologies which advocated primarily class- or trade union-based organization. For the communists the ideal was a society organized as a federated commune of communes, not one based around workers or peasants in their already existing places of work. Although the economic problem under capitalism was pre-eminent, the effects this has on society as a whole meant that, as Kropotkin, the most significant anarchist communist thinker, argued, it is not a mere question of bread. It covers the whole field of human activity.18 Unfortunately, though, it was class-based trades unionism, in the form of revolutionary syndicalism, which proved the most attractive to the mass of workers. Syndicalism emerged in France in the 1890s (syndicat is French for union). Its fundamental doctrine, that the workers themselves should achieve their own liberation, was not new, dating as it did back to Proudhon and Bakunin. With the growth, and increasing legalization, of trade unions, this tenet came to indicate a unionoriented movement that conducted the class struggle on a purely economic basis, and avoided all forms of political organization. Such was the difficulty in achieving a successful communist insurrection that many anarchist communist thinkers, including Kropotkin, became attracted to syndicalism. The result of this was a dilution of anarchist communist theory, and a concomitant refocusing of anarchism around class and union issues, with a tacit acceptance of capitalist industry and the division of labour. (It also suggested the need for centralized union structures that was at odds with the decentralist ethic of communism.) The decline of a rigorous anarchist communist perspective meant that insufficient attention was paid to the counter-revolution that occurred in the 1920s, particularly in the Soviet Union, and anarchism ceased to offer a critical voice in the debates about the future of the liberatory project. As a significant theoretical force communism had declined, by 1930, to little more than a formal defence of principles, without any critical depth.19 Syndicalism remained a significant presence until its demise in Spain after 1936 signalled the end of the organized anarchist movement. What anarchist groups remained tended to be insular and atavistic. French anarchism took no
17

See for example the mutualism of Proudhon and the collectivism of Bakunin. For a communist argument against collectivism see Kropotkin 1995. 18 Kropotkin 1993, 40. 19 Pengam 1987, 77.

new directions. It merely followed with diminished vigour the paths laid down in the fruitful years after 1894.20 Gombin refered to a moribund movement, in which what anarchists groups there were defended an ideology which they regarded as inviolable, a finished system to be rejected or accepted as a whole.21 In the US, a similar situation applied. Commenting on one particular anarchist publication, Paul Buhle noted that it had many reprints, articles by old personalities [...], and an oppressive feeling of bitterness and hostility.22 Much the same appears to have been the case in Britain, where Woodcock referred to an atmosphere of dense and parochial fanaticism which is the characteristic of the remnants of a dying movement.23 The theoretical baton was passed entirely to the Marxists. The changes in capitalism that occurred after the Second World War encompassing science and technology, the structure and significance of the working class, the expansion of the media and the growth of mass society, increasing state intervention in economy and society, the growth of capitalism into a global economy, colonialism and national liberation struggles, and the threat of nuclear annihilation all required critical and in-depth analysis, and this was carried out from a Marxist perspective. Similarly, questions relating to spontaneity and organization, the nature of the revolutionary subject, and the prospects for radical social change, were also primarily the remit of the Marxist left. However, it was perhaps inevitable that these developments, suggesting as they did radical critiques not only of the state and capitalism, but also of unionism and a class analysis, would engender an anarchist communist resurgence. It is the contention of this work that Social Ecology and Anarchist Primitivism do, in fact, represent such a resurgence. It is not that these currents focus on the issue of free distribution that communism implies (although they do argue for this implicitly), but that they manifest the anarchist communist arguments for the abolition of the state, the wage system, the market, and the division of labour, while at the same time rejecting a strict class-based perspective. Ultimately, both seek the liberation of humanity as a whole from all unnecessary constraints. However, given the paucity of anarchist communist theory (and the difficulty of obtaining what little there was) it would not be surprising if radicals seeking to expand revolutionary theory would turn first to Marx, and later Marxists, and seek a transcendence of this work, rather than that of anarchism. This is, in fact, what has occurred with both the strands to be examined; as will be seen, although both became familiar with Classical Anarchism, this was after their initial attempts to develop a new theory, and anarchism as such played only a relatively small part in this process. One further point is the relevance of Green or ecological issues to both strands. These were, significantly, a concern of certain earlier anarchist communist thinkers such as Kropotkin and Elise Reclus, though obviously their approach was considerably different from that of todays Green

20 21

Woodcock 1986, 269. Gombin 1975, 85. 22 Paul Buhle quoted in Deleon, 1973, 520n. 23 Woodcock 1968, 54.

political thinkers.24 Both Bookchin and the Anarchist Primitivists have contributed significantly to radical Green thought, although in the case of Bookchin it was more central to his work and has occupied this position from its inception; the Primitivists came to be more concerned with issues of political ecology as their theoretical perspectives developed. Nevertheless, it is the case that both have located the human relationship with nature as a central element of anarchist communist thought.

THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THIS RESEARCH

Reasons For This Research
There are several reasons why these two strands are considered worthy of in-depth study. Both Anarchist Primitivism and Social Ecology share the following characteristics. 1. They are developed, sophisticated, and extensive. The complexities of the power structures that represent the modern state, military, and corporate hierarchies, underpinned by modern science and technology, require a sophisticated analysis to attempt to offer a libertarian theory of resistance. Although their emphases and approach differ, both bodies of work have attempted to offer such an analysis, through an ongoing attempt to unravel the dynamics of capitalism, state and technology. 2. They have demonstrated longevity. Both strands have bodies of work that cover more than two decades. In the case of Bookchin, he has been producing anarchist material since the early sixties. The FEs libertarian communist orientation occurred in 1975, and a definable Primitivist position had emerged by 1980. Both strands are still producing work at the time of writing. 3. They are focussed critiques. Both strands have been reasonably consistent in the focus of their critique over the years. This is not to say there have not been some changes in perspective and emphasis, or that (as will be seen) contradictions have not appeared. But the general thrust of the work i.e. a libertarian critique of state and capitalism in the late twentieth century, particularly focussing on technology and Green issues, has been maintained. 4. They engage with environmental problems and the human-nature relationship. Another notable feature of both strands is their attempt to formulate an anarchism that includes a theory of nature, an attempt to show how the human-nature divide can be reconciled. This was more of an explicit concern for Bookchin, whose earliest writings were concerned with ecology, than for the Primitivists who articulated a specific perspective on nature largely as a response to their engagement with Deep Ecology (although it was implicit in their position). 5. They are influential. Both these strands have been (and continue to be) influential, in green and anarchist circles.
24

Reclus was, like Kropotkin, a geographer of some repute as well as being a significant anarchist communist thinker. See Marshall 1992, Chapter 20.

Despite this, though, there has been only limited exploration of Social Ecology and Anarchist Primitivism in green and anarchist literature. Bookchins work has frequently been considered by writers on the Green movement and Ecologism; there have been many articles on his work, some responding to contentious points he has made, particularly regarding Deep Ecology. 25 There have been two anthologies of articles about Social Ecology, one sympathetic, the other more critical.26 There has, however, been far less consideration of the Anarchist Primitivist strand. There may be a number of reasons for this, one of which is possibly the format in which the work is published - that is, in underground newspapers and journals, and as articles rather than books. However, the influence of this area cannot be dismissed lightly. Currently the Fifth Estate appears only occasionally, but was in print regularly, monthly, bimonthly or quarterly, from 1975 to the late 1990s; it had an Anarchist Primitivist orientation for much of this time. The Anarchist Primitivist-influenced Anarchy: Journal of Desire Armed (hereafter Anarchy: JODA) has been in print for more than twenty years (and still appears quarterly), and has a large enough readership to maintain consistently high production values. In addition, not only are early Anarchist Primitivist books still in print, but new anthologies of writings appear regularly (most recently David Watsons Against the Megamachine). Despite this, the Fifth Estate (hereafter FE) gets only the briefest of mentions in Peter Marshalls extensive history of anarchism, Demanding the Impossible.27 Although there has been a relatively large amount written on Bookchin as a green theorist, there has been little examining his work as a development of anarchist theory. Regarding the Anarchist Primitivists, there has been little work of any kind on their ideas, although they also, as I have argued, represent a major development in anarchist (communist) theory. The purpose of this study, within certain parameters, is to remedy this situation to look at Bookchin and Anarchist Primitivism as anarchist thinkers, in fact as the proponents of the only significant developments in anarchist communist theory since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Advantages Of Proceeding With This Study At This Time

There are two reasons why it is advantageous to begin a study of this area at this time. First, there is a significant body of work. There has been a considerable amount of work produced over the past thirty years, in the form of numerous articles as well as several books. In the course of this, the major themes that will be examined have been explicated in sufficient detail for the study to be carried
25 26

See for example Atkinson 1991; Eckersley 1992b. Clark 1990 and Light 1998. 27 Marshall 1992, 503. The Fifth Estate is a newspaper produced by a group of friends organized into a publishing collective. (See Appendix 6) As such there is no party-line or ideological view to be adhered to. Equally, there is no Fifth Estate group outside of the collective that publishes the paper (although individuals, particularly David Watson, have published elsewhere). Because of this the paper and collective will be treated as synonymous and the italicised Fifth Estate will be used to refer to both.

out. Second, the initial development of the work appears to be at an end. Although there have been changes in the emphasis of the approaches, the general tenor was set out early on and has not been altered. What has occurred is a clarification of positions, as views regarding certain areas have been made more explicit. Although sometimes this has been through work written on the writers initiative, it has frequently been in response to an opposing position (or at least what is seen as such) held by others. This may be a criticism of a position articulated elsewhere, or in response to a direct challenge. A good example of this is in the case of Deep Ecology/Earth First!. Both Bookchin and the FE challenged what they saw as a tendency toward a reactionary approach in Earth First! writing, and a lack of a social critique in Deep Ecology philosophy, but this brought responses that in-turn forced counter-responses from Bookchin and the FE. Through these, their position on a number of issues was clarified. (This will be covered in more detail below.) However, this process of initial development and clarification seems to have at least slowed down, if not (at least for the present) stopped altogether. Bookchin is now nearly eighty. Although he has published a three-volume history of popular revolutionary movements, he has not developed his theoretical work further. In fact, much of his recent work has consisted of attacks against those he sees as being insufficiently committed to a fundamentally Enlightenment tradition of belief in human progress, rationality and modern technology, as well as to the necessity of social activism over (for Bookchin) self-indulgent individualism. Despite Bookchins undoubted influence, there have been few other writers willing to pick up the baton of Social Ecology as he has defined it. There have been developments inspired by his idea of a radical municipal politics28, but as yet none of his ideas of dialectic, reason in nature, and history. Of the key contributors to the Anarchist Primitivist strand, Fredy Perlman died in 1985. Another writer who contributed a number of articles and letters, Bob Brubaker, died in Japan in the early 1990s. The FE, which was at one point appeared monthly, then quarterly, now appears only erratically, and rarely carries any pieces which add to the debates of the previous decades. David Watson, who wrote many of the key articles in the FE (often as George Bradford or under another pseudonym), has not contributed an article to the FE since Swamp Fever in the Fall 1997 issue. The regular journal representing the milieu is now the (usually) quarterly Anarchy: JODA which carries pieces by John Zerzan, Bob Black, Michael William, and others. However, although having a broadly Anarchist Primitivist perspective its orientation is toward a general anti-authoritarian radicalism, and it does not have an editorial collective with the intention of developing a broad theoretical position, as did the FE. Further, the theoretical work that appeared in Anarchy: JODA early on, which revolved around the editor Lev Chernyi/Jason McQuinns ideas on alienation and critical theory, has declined as McQuinn has become more involved with the production of another

28

For example the journal Democracy and Nature.

quarterly journal, The Alternative Press Review.29 Although John Zerzan still writes, and is published frequently in Anarchy: JODA, he has not added significantly to his work of the 1980s; Zerzans position could still be described as that outlined in his five origins essay of that period. (This will be examined in the chapter on the Primitive.) In terms of the methodology used in this work, the investigation of the historical context in which the writers have worked in order to ascertain their intentions in writing requires that the debate studied be, to a large degree, closed, and that all work relevant to the debate has been examined. The fact that the initial development of the work is complete means it is reasonable to argue that this closure has been achieved.

The Purpose Of The Study

The purpose of this study is threefold. 1. To outline and expand on the backgrounds and so development of the two perspectives under consideration (locating them in the current of anarcho-communism.) 2. To thoroughly investigate the two perspectives through expanding on four areas covered by both - the primitive, history, reason, and technology. 3. To compare the two perspectives using these four areas and attempt to offer an explanation of why they differ in their conclusions.

Texts
The texts studied comprise the bulk of written material on the two perspectives being analyzed. The period under consideration is from Bookchins first eco-anarchist text of 1964 to the present; and from Perlmans early Marxist texts to the present (although Anarchist Primitivism evolved as a current in the late-70s). This covers the entire period in which relevant work in this area has been produced. It would be impossible to study every text which has any degree of relevance, due to the amount of material produced, the length of the period under study, and the fact that much of it has appeared in obscure U.S. and Canadian underground newspapers and magazines. However, it is reasonable to assert that all significant work relating to the development of these currents, particularly in the areas focussed on, has been considered.

Structure
The structure of the work is as follows:
29

Lev Chernyi and Jason McQuinn are both pseudonyms, although the real name of this writer is unknown. The original Lev Chernyi was a Russian anarchist poet executed by the Bolsheviks in 1921.

10

Introduction & Context Briefly locate anarchism as a political theory in a historical context. Chapter 1. Terms & Definitions Define the context and explain the terms used Anarchist Primitivism and Social Ecology including their validity.

Chapter 2. Methodology Four chapters will examine four areas significant to both strands. Chapter 3. The Primitive Chapter 4. History Chapter 5. Reason Chapter 6. Technology

Chapter 7. Overview Chapter 8. Conclusions

Two significant appendices are attached, one exploring the backgrounds of the major proponents, and the other examining the possible factors that may account for the disagreements. The factors considered here are: their backgrounds; their aims; their approach to debate; their degree of engagement with the other strand; the format in which they publish; their heritage and influences; the chronological period in which the work was done; the references they use; and their styles of writing. Other appendices cover the relationship between Deep Ecology and anarchism, the British journal Green Anarchist, the context of nineteen sixties radicalism, and Hegels philosophy of history.

Analysis
This work is primarily an analysis of texts rather than of social movements. The four key chapters can perhaps best be seen as equivalent to the data sections of a more empirically-oriented piece of work. As such, they are not intended to include the main body of critical analysis, which appears in the overall conclusion which is based on a comparison of the data, illuminated by the backgrounds and biographies of the principle actors. In addition, there is no objective position from which to criticize the positions taken by the authors under consideration. The analysis is based on internal comparisons, not on a particular external methodological or analytical position. However, there are inevitable elements of analysis and criticism that will appear in the four data chapters, based largely around the issue of coherence. There is an assumption that coherence is an objective of the author, at least in the case of a particular body of ideas or an outlook. By this is meant that one persons ideas may not remain the same over any period, and they may change their opinions, but within certain parameters a high degree of coherency may be expected. So, for example, the Anarchist Primitivist position developed

11

over time, and it would not be expected that there would be a necessary agreement between early and later, more mature texts. However, within the more mature position a higher degree of coherency would be expected. It will be noted if radical changes in argument over time are not acknowledged by the author concerned, particularly if the later view undermines their earlier work. It is inevitable that in attempting to ascertain the exact nature of the position being advanced any ambiguities or even contradictions in this position will become apparent. These ambiguities and contradictions will therefore be noted as part of the explanatory process. Where contradictions appear they will be treated as such and not ignored, nor resolved within a wider schema if this would be inappropriate. Since Social Ecology is largely the work of a single author, whereas Anarchist Primitivism is an amalgam of the work of many authors, this first point, that of internal consistency, is likely to be more relevant in the case of Bookchin and Social Ecology than to Primitivism. In the case of Anarchist Primitivism, differences in viewpoint will be highlighted, particularly when these appear explicitly between the authors themselves, but differences between different authors can be reasonably viewed only as differences, not as contradictions (although ambiguities can still appear, both in the works of individuals and in the project as a whole, so far as such exists). I will note alternative interpretations and questions of evidence where appropriate, but will not expand on these unless they meet the criteria noted above. (Also of note is whether at a later date an author explicitly rejects, or continues to accept, previously held positions.) There is another area where more critical analysis will appear in the data chapters, and this is in the case of evidence. If the overall conclusions drawn, particularly if these lead to differences with the other strand, appear to depend on questionable evidence, or if those conclusions do not appear to necessarily follow from the arguments that preceded them, this will be noted. However, when dealing with history, archaeology and anthropology, the question of evidence is contentious within the fields themselves, so alternative possibilities will be referred tomore to indicate that these exist rather than to offer a correct answer.

A Common Project
The aim of this study is to explore two different strands that are a part of the same overall current. There are two possible areas of difficulty which could arise in this approach: first, are these areas genuinely part of such a current?; and second, are there sufficient points of contact in order to facilitate a meaningful comparison? The second question can be answered straightforwardly, since there are four areas which are crucial to both strands, and on which a sufficient amount has been written to provide adequate material for study these are technology, reason and rationality, the primitive, and history, and these are the areas that make up the four key chapters of this research. The first question is more difficult to answer, although it is necessary that it should be, since it is possible to argue that if, as will be shown, the theorists of the two strands draw different conclusions, could this not suggest that they are not essentially part of the same current? If this were the case then the

12

fact that they disagree would be unsurprising. What is particularly problematic is that not all of the writers consciously identify themselves as part of this current; in fact, some of them seem to avoid identification with an ideological current of any sort. Is this ambiguity resolvable? I believe that it is. First, there is a current, anarchist communism, which can be identified as having central tenets, of which both strands can be seen as a part; the arguments they put forward are essentially anarchist communist. Second, and conversely, there is an absence of elements in their theories which could seriously compromise this identification. Further, despite the avoidance of a direct commitment to anarchism or anarchist communism as such, it has will be shown in the Chapter 1 that among many Anarchist Primitivist theorists a loose identification with anarchism is evident, even when in the form of a commitment to anarchy rather than anarchism as an ideology. So it seems reasonable to argue that both these strands are, in fact, a part of the same current. There is, however, one other degree of similarity, and this expands the discussion slightly, since it allows work which was developed prior to an outright commitment to anarchist communism to be considered. This is that it can be shown that they shared one intention in developing their theories, namely that both intended to develop a post-Marx radicalism in the context of post-Second World War developments in state and capitalism. As will be seen, both started with a concern to make sense, from a revolutionary perspective, of the contemporary world, and both began with Marx as a significant ideological tool; but both also saw Marx as too limited to provide all the answers they were seeking, and so sought a post-Marx solution. This connection with Marx does raise a point regarding interpretation. Although elements of his work have been carried forward into their own works, in for example the form of analytical approach, their anarchistic orientation has also developed through a reassessment and a rejection of much of Marxs work. This rejection and reassessment has often been explicit, in that texts have directly challenged what is seen as the Marxian world-view, with the intention of offering a more valid and comprehensive alternative. This is clear in, for example, both strands rejection of the centrality of class struggle, the primacy of economic social explanations, and identification of communism as mode of production. However, the interpretation of Marxs work is still debated. Most significant have been attempts to draw out a humanistic Marxism, often based on his earlier works, to oppose the objectivist orientation that is seen as leading to bureaucratic state socialism. Other debates have centred on the relevance of structuralism to Marxism, and the precise nature of the interaction between means and forces of production. More recently, attempts have been made to rehabilitate Marx in the cause of political ecology.30 It would be a significant task to assess the merits of the critiques of Marx contained in the works studied, given the varieties of possible interpretations of Marx, and particularly given the
30

For an overview of the debates see David McLellan, Marxism After Marx: an introduction, London: Macmillan, 1979. For Marx and Ecology see David Pepper, Eco-Socialism, London: Routledge, 1993.

13

enormous body of work carried out by subsequent Marxists. This is not, however, the purpose of this study, which is (as has been noted) to assess the anarchist texts studied. I have therefore not attempted to assess whether their criticisms, evaluations and interpretations of Marx are correct such a view would in any case, given the numerous interpretive possibilities already mentioned, be impossible. In fact, for the purposes of this study, the validity or otherwise of their views of Marx is not of great relevance it is important only to the extent that they believed them and that these views were therefore important in the development of their respective positions. For example, it is open to debate whether Marx defined humans primarily in terms of production - what is important is that both perspectives believe that he did and attempted to offer alternatives to Marx that did not do so. It is their beliefs which are significant, not whether another interpretation was possible (if they had interpreted Marx differently, they would in all likelihood then followed a different political path). Although numerous different interpretations of Marx are possible, largely both Social Ecology and Anarchist Primitivism have tended to view Marx in the same way, hence their turn to anarchist communism in order to explicate what they both see as a more relevant and viable social theory.31

31

Although this applies particularly to Marx, who has had a significant impact on both strands, it also applies to other political and philosophical positions which are criticized in the works studied.

14

CHAPTER 1 TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

BOOKCHIN & SOCIAL ECOLOGY
Bookchin first used the term social ecology in 1964, in Ecology and Revolutionary Thought 1. He did not, though, apply it as a description of his political position until much later, in The Ecology of Freedom, first published in 1982 (although this work was begun in the early 1970s). The term as Bookchin uses it derives from E. A. Gutkinds Community and Environment: a discourse on social ecology, which is an argument for the necessity of the creation of human communities embedded in nature. In discussing the need for a healing of the split between humanity and nature, Bookchin quotes Gutkinds aphorism the goal of social ecology is wholeness.2 However, the term itself has been in use at least since the 1930s, referring to the study of social structure in relation to the local environment, and in particular to the sociological anthropology of Robert Ezra Park and the University of Chicago.3 This social ecology was a more direct transposition of a biological framework to sociology than the more speculative and philosophically-oriented ideas of Gutkind and Bookchin.4 It was based on a form of metaphoric reductionism that led to, for example, the direct comparison of ethnic and economic groups with plant invasions.5 Bookchin criticizes Park for such reductionism, arguing that while the search for a meaningful link between society and nature is essential, it cannot be achieved by ignoring the differences between biological nature and human society. For Bookchin it is Gutkinds philosophical concept of wholeness, but developed along Hegelian and Aristotelian lines, that bridges the gap between biological reductionism and a meaningful social ecology. What Bookchin means by the term Social Ecology, in its fullest expression, is an overarching philosophical and political position that will be explicated in the chapters which follow. There seems no reason to doubt Bookchins anarchism. He has identified with and propagated the doctrine since the early sixties, from Post-scarcity Anarchism to Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism.6 Moreover, he has also been identified as an anarchist by political commentators. Victor Ferkiss identified Bookchin as an eco-anarchist in the 1970s, a description that was accepted by Bookchin.7 Robyn Eckersley also put Bookchins work under this rubric, in her book

1 2

Bookchin 1974, 62. Bookchin 1991b, 22, from Gutkind 1953. 3 Morris 1957, 1. 4 See ibid. Chapter 1, The Concepts of Ecology. 5 Bookchin 1991b, 30-31. 6 See also his stated commitment to anarchism (Bookchin 1980, 22) and his naming of an ecological society as anarcho-communism (ibid., 66). 7 Ferkiss 1974, 75f. Bookchin refers to this in Bookchin 1980, 92n.

15

Environmentalism and Political Theory.8 Peter Marshall, in his extensive history of anarchism, Demanding the Impossible, devotes a chapter to Bookchin and Social Ecology.9 During the 1990s Bookchin began to develop a critique of other contemporary forms of anarchism, which he gathered under the rubric lifestyle anarchism. (Bookchins criticism of Lifestyle Anarchism will be examined more fully in the section Engagement and Disagreement in Appendix 6.) Broadly, Bookchin sees Lifestyle Anarchism as essentially individualistic and concerned only with liberating the desire of the ego. It proponents are varied and include some that can be classed as Anarchist Primitivists. Against this Bookchin counterpoised what he termed Social Anarchism, an Enlightenment-inspired strand which is based on the exercise of human reason and direct, face-to-face democratic institutions. In this respect Social Anarchism seems similar to Social Ecology. However, not only has Bookchin tended to not use the latter term in his recent works, he has also increasingly emphasized the democratic political element of his thought, which he initially called Confederal, now Libertarian Municipalism. Whereas once this was a part, albeit a crucial one, of his wide-ranging social and political outlook i.e. Social Ecology or Eco-anarchism, he has now given it centre-stage, and as a consequence is promoting what he calls Communalism or Anarchist Communalism. 10 Arguing that anarchist communism, as a term, is too vague regarding the actual social organizational structures of revolution, Bookchin states that he wishes to propose that the democratic and potentially practicable dimension of the libertarian goal be expressed as communalism:11 Today I prefer the word communalism, by which I mean a libertarian ideology that includes the best of the anarchist tradition as well as the best in Marx. I think neither Marxism nor anarchism alone is adequate for our timesWe need a left libertarian ideology for our own time.12 It is the democratic dimension of anarchism.13 He considers communalism to be unsullied, and locates it as part of the vocabulary of revolutionary libertarian socialism: What communalism and libertarian municipalism have in common is that they both refer to a program to create direct-democratic, face-to-face assemblies, in which people make policy decisions about their community.14

8 9

Eckersley 1992a, Chapter 7, Ecoanarchism. Marshall 1992, Chapter 39, 602-622. 10 Bookchin argues that the aim of the anarchist project should be the creation of direct-democratic citizens assemblies, a libertarian polity through which people would manage the affairs of their locality. Such localities, or municipalities, would be federated, but ultimate control would lay with the assembly. As a means to achieving this people should aim to create a local, neighbourhood, or municipal political forum which can act as a starting point for a radicalization of the political process at local level. This would act in opposition to politics at the state level, eventually superseding it through mass local political action and organization. See for example Biehl 1997, Chapter 8. 11 Bookchin, 1999, 152. Emphasis in original. 12 Vanek 2001. 13 Bookchin 1995b, 57. Emphasis in original. 14 Bookchin 1999, 152; 312.

16

This suggests that communalism is not the same as libertarian municipalism, although elsewhere he equates the two.15 For the origins of the term, Bookchin suggests that it emerged out of the Paris commune of 1871.16 Interestingly, Bookchin does not mention two other sources of the word, one of which, that of Kenneth Rexroth, he is certainly aware; in his book Communalism, Rexroth uses the term to describe attempts, throughout history, to live communally, and Bookchin refers to this work in The Ecology of Freedom.17 It is also a widely used term relating to politics in Africa and Asia, particularly the Indian subcontinent where it refers to an attitude which emphasizes the primacy and exclusiveness of the communal group and demands the solidarity of members of the community in political and social action.18 This does not undermine Bookchins use of the term, but does suggest that perhaps it is not as unsullied as he suggests. The question posed, though, is whether this definitional reorientation amounts to a change in emphasis, away from anarchist communism. Bookchin argues that the term communism is frequently misused and associated with statist forms. He does not state that he is against anarchist communism, simply that he is avoiding the term. He also wishes to promote his municipalist political programme, hence his increasing focus on first confederal, then libertarian municipalism, and now on communalism. His belief that Communalism can be equated with the Commune of Communes of the anarchist communists also suggests that he still sees his work as being part of that current.19 The problem arises with his statement that a left libertarian ideology for our own time consist of the best of the anarchist tradition as well as the best of Marx.20 This ties in with his recent arguments in favour of a reconstituted revolutionary left: I do not care what you want to call this Left social anarchism, or libertarian socialism, or libertarian communism. But minimally it has to be a form of socialism.21 Is this suggesting a shift to a more orthodox, perhaps Marx-inspired Left? I think the answer is both yes and no. Bookchin has never disguised his debt to Marx, and he frequently quotes him favourably (although he is also very critical of many of his formulations). It is certainly the case that recently Bookchin has, in opposition to the perceived bourgeois individualism of lifestyle anarchists, stressed the communist and social-activist elements which he considers define revolutionary anarchist communism. Bookchins corpus includes many strands, some that do not always fit well together. But in many cases he can stress one or another in order to show a particular point, without abandoning the
15 16

ibid., 152; Bookchin 1997, 176. Bookchin, 1999, 312. 17 See Bookchin 1991b, 202f. 18 Kearney 1967, 5. 19 Bookchin 1995b, 57. 20 Vanek 2001 21 Bookchin, 1999, 311.

17

whole. Whereas in the 1960s and 1970s the threat, as he saw it, was from Marxist political parties and neo-Marxist theorists, which encouraged him to emphasize what was wrong in Marx, today the threat comes from individualistic lifestyle anarchists, and cleaving to Marx, with qualifications, does not seem inappropriate.22 So while this change of name, and Leftist slant, represents a difference in emphasis, it does not represent a significant break in Bookchins project (and is also consistent with his previous reactions to ideological challenge). At this stage, therefore, Bookchins project can still be considered a part of the stream of anarchist communism; this may not, however, always be the case. There is one point about social ecology which should be noted. It has already been mentioned that the term itself was not invented by Bookchin, but had been in use in a different form for many years. Although Bookchin has undoubtedly been central in the widespread use of the term, and it is often associated with him it has been suggested that Bookchins name is synonymous with social ecology broadly, it refers to any attempt to view human society as being integrated with the natural world. 23 As ecology has become both politicized and radicalized, so too has the general term social ecology. Social ecology, then, can refer to any attempt to relate environmental problems to the structure of human society.24 As an example of this ambiguity, the section Social Ecology of the collection Environmental Philosophy contains pieces not only by Bookchin, Biehl and John Clark (when he was more enamoured of Bookchin than he is today) but also a piece by Joel Kovel, who is more oriented toward Marx, and also by George Bradford. As will become apparent below, there are considerable differences between the positions of Bradford and Bookchin. In order to differentiate between social ecology as representing any view that sees the environmental problems as situated in social organization and in turn seeks radical social change, and Bookchins own specific formulation, the latter will be written with the initial letters in upper case i.e. Social Ecology. 25 There is also the question of whether Bookchins work alone is sufficient to an understanding of Social Ecology. As already stated, in its capitalized form Social Ecology is a strand of ecological and anarchist thought begun by Bookchin. But it is also a strand of thought that is almost entirely Bookchins alone, as Andrew Light notes: While other schools of thought such as the collaborative projects of the Frankfurt School seemingly required multiple personalities in order to meet the aspirations of the theoretical enterprise, Bookchin has risen to the task of filling in a complete body
22 23

For Bookchins critique of lifestyle anarchism, see Appendix 6. Ross 1991, 116. 24 Ecology has evolved into the green science of life. In so doing it has crossed the philosophical boundary from its original concern with linear simple relationships characteristic of grey mechanistic reductionism to considering the interconnectedness of all life and its dynamic interactions within a holistic concept of existence. (Johnson 1991 s.v. Ecology, emphases in original.) 25 In her Radical Ecology Caroline Merchant attempts to construct a social ecology which is based on Marx and Engels, with anarchist social ecology as a subsection. Since ecosocialists and ecomarxists call themselves such, and social ecology tends to be the domain of anarchists, this typology is unconvincing. See Merchant 1992, Chapter 6.

18

of theory largely by himself.26 Although many people have been influenced by Bookchin, none have attempted to expand on his vision in any significant way. (Light notes, following Clark, that the strong identification of Bookchin with Social Ecology, as well as his attacks on those he disagrees with within the ecology movement, discourage developments in the theory.27) In fact, in the course of this research it became apparent that only Janet Biehl has produced any additional work that illuminates Social Ecology, and she admits that her ideas come largely from Bookchin himself.

ANARCHIST PRIMITIVISM
Many people have employed the term primitivist or primitivism in a number of contexts and for a number of different reasons over many years. It has tended to represent more of a sensibility or orientation rather than a formal movement, and this is something that continues in its contemporary manifestations. In his book on primitivism as a literary current, Michael Ball argues that the nostalgia of civilized man for a return to a primitive or precivilized condition is as old it seems as his civilized capacity for self-reflection.28 Hme, of the French organization and journal Interrogations, outlines the way it has been used among North American radicals: The label primitivist has been primarily used in North America to describe a current of thought which has critiqued the logic of progress, civilization and modernity. This milieu is anything but monolithic: some people posit a pre-language golden age, while others accentuate community and defend past and present indigenous groups. Still others want something new, something which, to our knowledge, has never existed. It was this group as a whole (with nuances) that I was referring to above when I was speaking of our current. The Fifth Estate is this outlooks most typical journal. In recent years it has influenced a number of other journals: Anarchy in the U.S., Demolition Derby in Canada, and Interrogations in France. 29 As Hme notes, this is far from a monolithic perspective, comprising as it does widely differing opinions in a number of key areas. Even the use of the term itself is contested. Hme and Interrogations reject the term as being limited and fragmented. They argue that contemporary nonindustrial societies are erroneously labelled primitive, and that while studying such societies can offer a contrast to Western, industrial, capitalist ways of life they should still be viewed critically.30

26 27

Light 1998, 9. ibid., 8-12. 28 Ball 1972, 1. On Primitivism in art see for example Colin Rhodes, Primitivism and Modern Art, London: Thames & Hudson, 1994. 29 Hme 1993, 45n5. 30 Here, the error in employing the term primitive derives from the view that this is a West-centred concept, in which primitive is such only by comparison with the developed or advanced world. But Hme also wri tes that I reiterate there is nothing which demonstrates that primitive tribes exist in Africa. He quotes this from a letter he wrote to a friend at the FE, and the point is not expanded on. It can be presumed that he does not reject the term primitive completely, but only its application to contemporary societies. So if primitive is meant to

19

Further the desire for a better world and the overthrow of civilization does not require a model from the past. Others in the milieu, although seeing some relevance in valorising the primitive, do so with reservation - their critique is not based upon a primitive ideal, and they spend little time investigating such or including it in their arguments. This is true of Lev Chernyi/Jason McQuinn and the journal Anarchy: JODA, and Feral Faun, a regular contributor, who aligns him- or herself with Interrogations.31 Bob Black, a writer on the fringes of this milieu, also does not consider himself a primitivist (although he suggests that George Bradford, John Zerzan and Feral Faun are Genuine anarcho-primitivists). 32 However, as will be seen in the chapter on the Primitive, the extent to which the primitive is seen as a model for the future varies, and there is a question as to the extent this is true of the FE. John Zerzans rejection of all forms of symbolism and mediation with nature sets the clearest pro-primitive agenda, and comes closest to positing the primitive as a model, but this position has been strongly criticized in the pages of the FE. The other writer considered at length in this work is Fredy Perlman. Although Perlman rejected all -ist labels (see below) in his posthumous biography Having Little, Being Much his widow Lorraine writes: Fredys observation that ideas are in the air was borne out again in the late 1970s: the Eat the Rich Gang, like Fredy, took up a primitivist perspective in order to evaluate the society we live in.33 Although Perlman himself would not have accepted the term, it seems reasonable to apply it to his work. So, given that the term primitivist is rejected by some who might be considered to come under this umbrella, is the term relevant at all? There are in fact reasons why its use is valid. The term has been used in the FE, first in 1986: The evolution of the FE has been characterized by a willingness to re-examine all the assumptions of radical criticism, which has led it away from its earlier libertarian communist perspective toward a more critical analysis of the technological structure of civilization, and toward a criticism of the trajectory of western civilization, combined with a reappraisal of the indigenous world and the character of primitive or original communities. In this sense we are primitivists.34 When Michael William used the term - anti-authoritarian primitivists - to describe the milieu, George Bradford replied that it was fascinating to see primitivism treated as a political tendency with

refer to some form of chronologically ancient form, no examples of this form exist today. For a discussion of validity or otherwise of the term primitive see C hapter 3 below. 31 See Faun 1993, 74. 32 Black 1997, 105. 33 Perlman 1989, 119. The Eat the Rich Gang were (or became) the core members of the FE staff. 34 Fifth Estate 1986, 10. Emphasis added.

20

a coherent viewpoint.35 He stresses that their particular brand of primitivism was only a single manifestation of a much broader social current, representing both a discourse and a social movement that has occurred throughout history, but not a political tendency with a programmatic position.36 He continues, therefore, because this phenomenon does not belong to us alone, but is rather a natural and recurring response to civilizations horrors, as well as diverse and even contradictory literary-artistic-critical discourse, and even less a coherent practice, it is important to be clear that this is no single vision, and does not automatically suggest what we (...) primitivists, anti-authoritarian or otherwise, believe.37 This emphasizes the diversity of primitivism as a generic term, but also shows that it is not be rejected in toto, although it is only accepted with caution. Although William accepts the term primitivism, he notes that it is used, by the way, with considerable reluctance in this essay, because among other reasons there is no agreement about what it means; on the other hand, I do not reject the term because it accurately describes my vision and desires.38 In his book Beyond Bookchin, this ambiguity arises again, and Watson/Bradford uses the term in both positive and negative senses. For example, the view that we can return to a pristine, pre-civilizational age is only held by some naive, self-described primitivists, but Sahlins view on relative poverty and primitive affluence is a large part of what a critical primitivism might entail. 39 While Bookchins defense of progress is merely the counterpart to a dogmatic primitivism which claims that we can return in some linear way to our primordial roots, it is also the case that Primitivism...reflects not only a glimpse at life before the rise of the state, but also a legitimate response to real conditions of life under civilization.40 Watsons characterization of primitivism as a diverse sensibility and associated social movement disguises what is distinct about the specific project of the FE and the rest of the milieu noted above. Against the claim that primitivism emerged from the ultra-left, as Luther Blisset has argued, Watson points out that primitivism has emerged in North America from many sources, and includes Earth First!-ers, radical environmentalists and others who have in no way been influenced by the ultra-left.41 It is in this context, however, that the specific anarchist orientation of the FE and others sharing similar views becomes significant. It will be noticed that the term anarchism has not featured in this overview. Perhaps strangely, given the overall anarchist orientation of the Fifth Estate and of Fredy Perlman and John Zerzan, that
35

Bradford n.d., 30. William writes of Bradford/Watson As the pe rson who, in his critiques in the Fifth Estate, has probably been the most responsible for popularizing the term primitivist (William n.d.[c], 32). 36 Bradford n.d., 30, emphasis in original. 37 ibid., 31. 38 William n.d.[a], 18. 39 Watson 1996, 50; 94. 40 ibid., 103; 240. 41 The overthrow of civilization is the task of communism, Blissett 1996, 84. Watson 1997, 19.

21

too is a contested term. It is not contested, however, so much for content - as far as anarchism, at least in its communist variant, represents opposition to the state and capitalism, indeed seeks their abolition and replacement by autonomous communes, all the currents here would be in agreement. They have, however, two reasons for avoiding the term. First is an aversion to ideological labels of all kinds, which are seen as reducing the individual to a mere representation of a set of ideas: In spite of Fredys interest in and sympathy toward the anarchist tradition, at no time did he answer to the designation anarchist; he insisted that any label reduces the individual it is applied to. Earlier he had refused to answer to Marxist or Situationist.42 Second is the suggestion that any ideology, including anarchism, requires adherence to a preexisting body of thought, in with certain ideas are deemed either acceptable or unacceptable. In refusing to accept the orientation of Classical Anarchism, there have been frequent disagreements with conventional anarchists, particularly over the rejection of modern technology. (See chapter on Technology) In addition, the existence of what is often seen as anarchist dogma has led some writers to conclude that truly revolutionary thought, and consequently action, can only occur beyond the realms of conventional anarchism, which by its conservatism is an impediment to anarchy. The term anarchy, suggesting a way of being and living, is favoured over anarchism as an ideological body of thought.43 This refusal of anarchism as ideology and of the label anarchist is shown clearly by the example of the Fifth Estate. As has been noted, the FE has never been a specifically anarchist newspaper. This was made clear in a comment appended to a review article of a book on anarchism that appeared in 1978: In a recent letter to Marcus [Graham], we stated that none of us on the staff consider ourselves anarchists nor the Fifth Estate as an anarchist newspaper, though obviously our ideas owe enormously to anarchists and anarchism... The mere idea of an ism implies for us the subordination of the individual to a body of principles, to an ideology, and all ideologies are reductionist, even those which appear to be liberatory... We have printed it as part of our on-going discussion about the definition of our lives and our activity.44 Ironically, as a result of this statement, the FE received a letter from a group of anarchists that distributed money raised from fundraising dinners for anarchist groups, stating that since they disagreed with the FEs view of anarchism they would no longer be able to donate funds to the FE. The FE responded: We, of course, have never disguised our criticism of anarchismboth the official variant which ended in the Spanish debacle of the 30s as well as ideology which
42 43

Perlman 1989, 83. Perlman also said that the only -ist name I respond to is cellist (Perlman 1989, 96). See for example Anarchism and Other Impediments to Anarchy in Black n.d., 149 -152. 44 Fifth Estate 1978b, 3, 15. The author of the article, Marcus Graham, edited the anarchist journal MAN! from 1933 to 1940. See Ammunition Books reference, FE 286, 9.

22

tends to freeze critical thought upon those already agreed upon tenets. However, we do feel that we share a commonality with those who call themselves anarchists as we also call for the destruction of capitalism, the abolition of the State and the construction of a libertarian community.45 Graham himself supported the FE in this dispute, reiterating his opinion that the FE is the most consistent anarchist newspaper that the anarchist movement in this country has ever issued.46 So although the FE rejected anarchism, they did not reject anarchy as a goal; as they stated in 1986: We are not anarchists per se but rather pro-anarchy, which is for us a living, integral experience, incommensurate with Power and refusing all ideology.47 This position is also reflected in Bob Blacks Anarchism and Other Impediments to Anarchy, in which he argues that anarchism is a form of accommodation to the current order and therefore not revolutionary, concluding that, We need anarchists unencumbered by anarchism.48 There is some evidence that the strict anti-ideological position has softened over time. Watson appears happy to note, without qualification, that according to the University of Michigan Library Labadie Collection archivists, the FE is the longest enduring English-language anarchist newspaper in North America.49 Later in the same book, in the article The Unabomber and the Future of Industrial Society, he refers to the FE as an anarchist antitech journal.50 It seems, then, that although generally the Anarchist Primitivists have rejected the label anarchist or the ideological term anarchism, this is part of their rejection of all ideolo gies and their work, however named, is unequivocally in the current of anarchism. However, attempts to formulate a specific, clearly delineated anarcho-primitivism have been resisted. Watson has apparently become less favourable towards the term primitivism, and its anarchist derivative, as it has tended to congeal into a more explicit and clearly defined position. This is made clear in his criticism of John Moores attempts, in the UK, to codify an anarcho-primitivist quasi-ideology.51 Watson argues that Moore constructs his thesis on an extravagantly interpretative reading of handful of texts. Against Moore he states that there is no primitivist praxis outside of any other radical or anarchist activity, and that apparent attempts to put primitivist ideas into practice in Detroit, which Moore refers to, cannot be distinguished from anarchist infoshops and storefronts anywhere else. Further, Moores description of the primitivist project are more or less simply anarchism: Perhaps the FE bears some blame for using the term primitivist at all in our desire to affirm and explore the meaning of aboriginal ways...But to speak of the primitive

45 46

Fifth Estate 1979, 2. Graham 1979, 2. Graham also made up the funds lost through the withdrawal of the donation. 47 Fifth Estate 1986, 10. 48 Black n.d., 151. 49 Watson n.d., xi. 50 Ibid, 258. 51 See Moore 1996; n.d.

23

does not require a political primitiv-ism. 52 Watson goes on to reiterate, more strongly, the point he made in Demolition Derby: The FE collective is not an organization or political tendency; our critical perspectives on civilization and technology, like our philosophical and ethical orientation in general, give us no qualitative insight into how to transform or dismantle mass society.53 Primitivism is a collection of sensibilities which represents a social phenomenon [which] has existed since antiquity, a movement[ ] of contestation and revolt.54 This now leads back to the validity, or otherwise, of the terms anarchist-primitivist and anarchist-primitivism. One point raised by Watsons comments above is that if the praxis of the FE, and others of similar views, can be placed under the rubric anarchism, is there any need for a new term, anarchist primitivism? If anarchism is seen as a unitary body of thought, then the answer would by no. But if sub-types are accepted, as they have tended to be historically - for example in the cases of communism and syndicalism - then the use of an additional descriptive term is valid. In this case, it indicates a particular anarchist orientation that can be located historically and philosophically. So, although there is no political programme of anarchist primitivism, there is certainly an identifiable group of writers/publications, a group that is recognized (as will be seen below) within the milieu itself. It is also, for the purposes of this study, a useful heuristic device, shorthand to identify one of the currents being examined. The bulk of the work I will be looking at comes from the Fifth Estate (in particular David Watson), Fredy Perlman, and John Zerzan; all of these can be treated under the rubric anarchist primitivism. Lev Chernyi/Jason McQuinn and the journal Anarchy: JODA are not strictly anarchist primitivist, but close enough to be with its orbit or sphere of influence. John Zerzan and Michael William (who as has been noted is comfortable with the term primitivist) are regular contributors to Anarchy. Feral Faun, Hme, and Bob Black are more peripheral figures and are quoted only rarely. Given this, their exclusion from the term does not affect the direction or content of this work. I think I have shown that the currents I will be looking at can be seen as anarchist, and that the term primitivist, although contested, is valid. One other argument for the use of the term is that of current usage. In the Anarchist Press Review, carried in Anarchy: JODA, the FE is consistently referred to as an anarcho-primitivist tabloid, and as advocating an anarchic primitivist perspective.55 Also described has been the anti-technological anarcho-primitivism which is largely associated with the Fifth Estate group.56 Another possible description would be anti-civilization,
52 53

All quotes Watson 1997, 18, emphasis in original. Watson 1997, 18. 54 ibid., 19. 55 For tabloid quotes see Anarchy: JODA 31 Spring 92, 11, Anarchy: JODA 37 Summer 93, 19; for perspective see Anarchy:JODA 25 Summer 90, 7. 56 Chernyi 1991, 8.

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perhaps with the addition of anti-technology. The FE is described in this way in the Anarchist Press Review, as well as Anarchist Primitivist.57 However, this term seems unsatisfactory in that it, like Primitivism, only describes one part of the current, but it does not mention its anarchist orientation (unless implicitly). And unlike Anarchist Primitivism, it is not a term that is in current use. As has been noted above, although not all of the writers in the broader milieu accept the classification Anarchist Primitivism, those that I am considering as central to this work can be included within it. Perhaps a broader, more inclusive study would have to use a different, more inclusive term.

57

Also, a letter to Anarchy: JODA referred to anti-tech/civ., and this was used by Feral Faun in a reply outlining the currents that are often referred to as anarchist primitivism. See Faun 1993.

25

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY
DESCRIBING THE PROJECT
The primary question posed by this study is: Why do the two strands disagree? For this to be a meaningful question at all presupposes that the strands could be expected to agree. The first stage is therefore to show that some form of agreement could be expected. This is done through showing that: a) The two strands are part of the same current i.e. anarchist communism. b) They both deal with the same issues, and cover the same area i.e. the four themes covered in this research. c) Within these themes, their broad aims are the same i.e. challenging contemporary, conventional views of the primitive, instrumental reason, and the role of technology (although this is not strictly true of their views on history and progress); also challenging Marxist and syndicalist, mainstream environmentalist, and Deep Ecological viewpoints. d) There is at least some commonality of background i.e. were both initially influenced by Marx and Marxist groups and thought. e) They utilize, in many cases, the same sources. This will be achieved mainly by a reading of the texts themselves, although biographical material will be used where appropriate, for example in exploring the intellectual backgrounds of the proponents. Once an expectation of agreement has been shown to be reasonable, it is necessary next to show how the strands differ. The broad methodology used for this stage is to examine what the writers say, that is, it is textual. This has two aims: first, in so far as it becomes clear what is said, it allows a comparison of their conclusions. But second it also demonstrates to what extent what they say, as well as the conclusions they reach, can be seen to be reasonable. This reasonableness can be seen in two areas. i. Are their arguments and the points they make clear within the internal structure of the text? That is, do their arguments make sense? This is not only in the context of a particular text, but over a number of texts where these refer to the same point or argument. This is not to say whether or not they are true in some objective or verifiable sense this is, in any case, rarely possible in the field of theory. Rather the purpose here is to note ambiguity, both theoretical and literary or stylistic, as well as any obvious contradictions, which undermine the case being made. Since in order to compare these two strands it is necessary to know what they are actually saying, these points are often noted because they make knowing what they are saying difficult, suggesting a number of possible interpretations. ii. Do the conclusions that they draw relate satisfactorily to the arguments and points made

26

prior to the conclusion that is, do they lead to the conclusion? Here I am concerned with the internal logic of the argument. Again, there are two points in drawing attention to this area; where a breakdown in the logical progression leads to questions about what is actually being said; and whether this leads to the differing conclusions.

The next stage, having shown the differences, is to attempt to account for them. In the analysis considered above, the texts are treated as autonomous. The question arises, is it possible to account for these differences simply through an analysis of the text? Whether or not this would be true for all cases of text, it is certainly not true for the works studied here. As already discussed, in order for the texts to be comparable they must show fundamental similarities, and given this it is unlikely that any obvious reasons for the disagreements will appear in the texts themselves. So, if the answer to this is no, then a further methodological approach is required. Here I will utilize an approach suggested by the work of Quentin Skinner.

QUENTIN SKINNER & THE MEANING OF TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

Skinners work borrows from the speech-act analysis of J. L. Austin. Austin argued that meaningful utterances embody three acts; locutionary, perlocutionary, and illocutionary. A locutionary act is simply uttering something, the act of saying what one says.1 Such an act will have an unambiguous meaning which is contained within the sentence itself its sense and reference.2 A perlocutionary act is an act performed by uttering something an act which produces an effect. For example, inspiring, impressing, persuading, irritating. These relate to the effects of an utterance on the hearer (or reader), and are a consequence of saying what one says.3 Of the three, illocutionary acts are the most important, both to linguistic theory and to Skinners work, since they seem to represent something that is both intrinsic and crucial to acts of communication. An illocutionary act is an act performed in uttering something, in saying what one says.4 That is, it embodies the utterers intention in making the statement; examples here are promising, asking, suggesting, and ordering. Whereas a locutionary act will have a meaning, an illocutionary act will have a force. As an example, Austin gives the statement Its going to charge. It may well be clear what the speaker is saying, given the context in which it is said, but not what they mean by it: is it to be a warning or a factual prediction? Now, to mean an utterance as a warning, it seems clear, is to intend it to be a warning, to intend that it count as a warning. This intention may be frustrated, of course, in any number of ways. But one thing seems clear enough: a necessary condition of any utterances having a certain force is that the speaker intend it to have
1 2

Forguson 1973, 161. Austin 1975, 93. 3 Forguson 1973, 161. 4 ibid.

27

that force. 5 That is, there is a clear connection between the illocutionary force of the utterance, and the intention of the utterer; if an utterance has a particular illocutionary force, this must be the intention of the utterer, and similarly the intention of the utterer is necessary to produce the illocutionary force. As noted in the quotation above, the utterers intention may be frustrated. For the utterers illocutionary intention to succeed they need to secure uptake, that is the hearer must understand both the meaning of the utterance and its intended force. This may not occur, since the intended receiver may not hear the utterance, or may not understand the language. In this case the illocutionary act will have failed, but the utterers intention will still have existed. (It might also be the case that someone else might hear the purely factual statement and take that as a warning, but this again would not alter the intention of the utterer.) Skinner seeks to apply this insight regarding speech-acts to the study of historical texts. He argues that to understand a text requires more than simply recovering the literal meaning of the text (its locutionary meaning); what is necessary is to recover the authors illocutionary intentions, what they intended in writing what they did. Skinner argues that if we understand by meaning what the writer means by what he or she says in their work, this is equivalent to the intended illocutionary force, since this represents the authors intention in writing a particular work. In this case, to fully recover the meaning of a work requires gaining uptake of the authors intentions in writing it to understand[ ] the nature and range of the illocutionary acts which the writer may have been performing in writing in this particular way.6 What is significant, then, is not just what was said, but why what was said was said, given all the other things that could have been said and the ways in which this could have been done. For Skinner meaningful utterances are arguments, either for or against something, and are consequently an intervention in a debate: to understand such an utterance requires also understanding why that argument, why that move: I am claiming, that is, that any act of communication always constitutes the taking up of some determinate position in relation to some pre-existing conversation or argument. It follows that, if we wish to understand what has been said, we shall have to be able to identify what exact position has been taken up.7 The social context in which the work was produced may offer, on its own, some insights into the work itself, but cannot offer answers to fundamental questions of its meaning as intended by the author. For example, the emergence of an environmental movement provides a context for Bookchins critiques of it, but this fact does not help in understanding the texts themselves, nor Bookchins intention in writing what he did.
5 6

ibid., 167. Tully 1988, 76. 7 ibid., 274-5.

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I therefore aim to consider the writers intentions in producing their work. I will argue that the intentions of the authors, in the cases considered, are notable in three respects: 1. They seek to engage with practical political, social and economic circumstances. 2. They seek to engage with other writers or groupings doing the same thing i.e. engage in debates. 3. They each have what could be described as meta-agendas overarching aims and approaches to their work and the work of others My concern is not only, then, with the individual texts themselves but with the authors overall project. The question arises as to how these intentions can be recovered. Skinners concern is with texts of considerable significance in the history of ideas, with key texts. He suggests that in order to attempt to recover the writers intentions it is necessary to grasp the nature and range of things that could recognizably have been done by using that particular concept, in the treatment of a particular theme, at that particular time.8 This would require describing the total historical context in which the work was developed; when this is done, it is possible to see what the writer is doing that is different, and so what their intention was in writing how the work was intended to be taken by the intended audience. In theory, describing this context in its entirety would demand reading everything ever written; but in practice it will be possible to only consider texts that contribute in some form or other to the debate. There will come a point at which further texts add so little to the potential understanding of the intentions of the author that the hermeneutic circle is, in effect, closed. Where Skinners approach seems particularly valuable is that he argues that recovering the writers intentions means to be able to say he must have been intending, for example, to attack or defend a particular line of argument, to criticize or contribute to a particular tradition of discourse, and so on.9 To be able to say this with any degree of certainty implies that it is possible to achieve a greater understanding of the text, to understand it as a part of an active process on the part of the writer to be understood in a particular way. If this is so it offers the possibility of explaining the disagreements in a way which a simple analysis of the text in isolation would not. It should be mentioned that Skinners method is not universally accepted, and has been subject to considerable criticism. These are considered in depth in Meaning and Context, but three perhaps are worth considering here. One is that speech-act analysis offers nothing significant to the interpretation of texts. Skinner obviously disagrees with this, arguing that in order to understand a text
8 9

ibid., 77 ibid., 76

29

it is necessary to both understand what the text means and what the author may have meant in writing it.10 Further, speech-acts (that is, the embodiment of a force in an utterance) are facts about language: Anyone who issues a serious utterance will always be doing something as well as saying something, and doing it in virtue of saying what is said.11 Whether the force is always transmitted as the writer intends, and whether the intention contained within can always be satisfactorily recovered do not detract from this fact. The other two criticisms relate to whether the writers motives and intentions can be seen to stand inside or outside of the work. One argument is that the writers motives and intentions stand outside the work, and any critical assessment should focus on the text. The other is that these factors are inside the work, but because of this do not require any separate form of study. Skinners reply is that, first, while motives (being contingent and antecedent to the work itself) may be considered to be outside the text, intentions are a feature of the work itself.12 Motives for writing may stand outside the work; intentions in writing are a part of the work, since they contain the illocutionary force which is a manifestation of the writers intention in writing. However, simply because it is inside the text, does not mean it is possible to recover it from the text: What a writer intended by writing in a certain way can be found from the work itself. But what a writer intended to do in writing in a certain way requires a separate form of study.13

SKINNERS METHOD APPLIED TO THIS PROJECT

My approach to attempting to understand the disagreements follows Skinners in that I am concerned to develop an understanding of the context in which the work was developed, not only in terms of the external conditions relating to the production of the work, but also to the backgrounds, aims and approaches of the writers considered. From this I will attempt to construct some understanding of what the writers intended in writing the individual texts, and also (more broadly) their intention in writing their texts as a whole i.e. their overall project. Two factors appear relevant. First, the intended meaning of the text may have been apparent at the time, but will have to be recovered by later interpreters. Skinner notes that, regarding complex, historical cases it may be almost impossibly hard to recover what the writer was doing in saying what was said.14 Second, the intention of the author may transcend a particular text, that is, there may be a meta-agenda which is identifiable over all of, or over a significant part of, the writers career. My contention, then, is that in order to understand why they disagree, I need to understand why the

10 11

ibid., 271 ibid., 262 12 ibid., 74 13 ibid., 75 14 ibid., 271

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writers wrote what they did in the way they did. Regarding again my own attempt to utilize elements of Skinners methodology, it is certainly the case, as will be shown, that the subjects covered and the way they are approached is conditioned, at least in part, by the nature of the debates current in this area of political theory at that time. Notably, though, in exploring the context much of the information will be gathered from the writers under consideration, from interviews and retrospectives. A problem that arises from this is to what extent the writers own comments regarding his activity can be accepted as being valid. In fact, no such comments can be accepted as unequivocally true, but it seems reasonable to consider them as valid unless other evidence leads one to question their veracity. Additionally, it should be kept in mind that the uttering of such statements in themselves suggests something of the writers intent, even if these may not be correct. If someone, for example, claims to have been influenced by a particular theorist, the fact that they wish to be considered as part of a particular stream of thought, and intellectual current, is in itself significant even if the extent of this influence may be questionable. Further, statements made at different periods may well contradict each other, and in this case the truth of the statement is often less important than the fact of contradiction. Clearly, it was (and still is, where this is relevant) the intention of the writers to influence the political debate in the areas they chose to work within. But there is also another level of intention, which is how they intend their work to be taken, or the purpose of their doing what they do in the way that they do it. In other words, even given a particular area of enquiry, and an intention to influence debate, there are a large number of possible approaches to how this can be done. For example, in a paper or journal or a book; academically or colloquially; objectively or polemically; confrontationally or sympathetically. As noted, subscribing completely to Skinners methodology involves seeking to describe the total historical context in which these ideas have been formed. Skinner himself notes that this may well require engaging in extremely wide-ranging as well as extremely detailed historical research, and even this may be insufficient to fully expose the authors intentions.15 I am not, therefore, in this study, intending to describe such a total context, although I will locate the two strands within current debates in the fields of most relevance. I will not be attempting to explore fully such areas that will be covered as the philosophy of technology and anthropology, environmental ethics, evolutionary biology, and cultural history, for example. My approach is, rather, to utilize four elements in an expanded approach which does not rely entirely on the text as autonomous object. The first is to stay with the text, but examine its structure as well as attempting to extract information not related directly to the political argument being developed. So the material studied is still the texts, but the approach is different. This includes examining format, references, quoted influences, and approach to debate. Second, to use work produced by the writers, or from within the groups considered, but not directly the political texts; this includes biographical and autobiographical

15

ibid., 275

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treatments, interviews, and debates. Third, to use commentaries and other work outside of the area under consideration, such as biographical work from outside the group, and criticism. Fourth is to generalize from contemporary social and political conditions, that is to be aware of external events and note their possible influence, as well as assess the options that would have been available to the thinkers at that time. My aim will be seek to locate the work studied in its broader social context, and to attempt (after Skinner) to ascertain the intentions of the writers in writing. To achieve this the following factors will be considered: the backgrounds of the writers; their stated aims in producing their work; their approach to debate; the degree of engagement between the two strands; the format in which work has been published; the style of the writers; their heritage and influences; the chronological period in which the work was carried out; and the way in which references to other works are used. This is done in Appendix 6. I will not be attempting to create a self-contained field of exploration in which every possible relevant text will be considered although other texts outside of those I am studying directly will be referred to, they will not be explored in depth. They are largely peripheral to the debate considered, which is essentially quite narrow in scope. The format of the publications, limited circulation papers, articles, books from small publishers, and the material itself a revolutionary critique of the contemporary age, in the form of anarchist communism, at a time when such critiques are unfashionable has meant that this work has not tended to permeate greatly mainstream political thought. The only exception to this is Green political theory, and in this case only really with Bookchin. Consequently as far as there has been a debate, it has largely been with the field of radical politics and anarchism which will be covered as part of the research. The only area of theory which has tended to permeate the other way, that is into the strands under examination, is Deep Ecology. It is certainly the case that Deep Ecology represents a significant third leg of the radical ecology stool in North America. Lev Chernyi, editor of the paper Anarchy: JODA suggests that radical ecology (in the US at least) has tended to congeal around three perspectives, which he identifies as Deep Ecology, anarcho-primitivism, and social ecology.16 Deep Ecology is not examined at length in this work is because it is not in itself an anarchist political theory (See Appendix 2). Where there is an engagement between Social Ecology or Anarchist Primitivism and Deep Ecology the issues raised in the process of the argument are sufficient to cover the relevant aspects of Deep Ecology theory, without any further expansion. The only factor considered which does not rely on information directly related to the proponents is Period. This is an attempt to broadly contextualize the work in terms of what ideas were current at the time that their ideas were being developed. But this is only a brief overview and does not claim to be exhaustive or in fact to offer any primary insight; it merely points out what broadly the period they worked in could offer the theorists.

16

Chernyi, 1991, 8.

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While not every possible text will be considered, the narrowness of the subject area does mean that it is not unreasonable to argue that the hermeneutic circle, while perhaps not completely closed, has at least been only left slightly open. That is, although other texts not considered in depth may offer something to an understanding of the total historical context, their contribution would be so small as to not undermine this methodological approach. One other outcome of this effective closure of the debate is that, whereas as noted Skinners approach has tended to be applied to older texts where the passing of time has meant that the debates under consideration can be said to be settled, this project can consider texts from the recent past. It seems clear that further historical distance will not shed any greater light on the intentions of the writers under consideration than is currently possible. One problem in using biographic material is the varying amount of this available for each individual under scrutiny. Bookchin has contributed a large number of interviews, and some later ones in particular refer extensively to his political involvement and intellectual development. In addition, a short biography has been produced by Janet Biehl. Of the Primitivists, Perlman has a posthumous biography, which also throws some light on the activity of the FE, and it is possible through the paper itself to trace the history of the FE. But there is much less available about the individual members of the paper, even when these are known by name. This is even the case regarding David Watson, the FEs leading and most significant individual contributor. Comparatively little has also been written about John Zerzan, although this has been ameliorated to some extent by increased interest in his work following the recent anti-capitalist and anti-globalization activism. The question is, does this disparity in coverage undermine this aspect of the research? It is certainly the case that more information about all the proponents would be welcome, but it is not clear that there is insufficient information available to enable reasonable conclusions to be drawn. The lack of individual information relating to the FE members has led to the FE being treated, from a biographical perspective, as a single entity. This is valid because the theoretical perspective developed therein has been almost entirely through the pages of the paper, which itself has been (particularly in its early years) the material articulation of a close-knit collective. Although there was never a party line that was clearly codified and had to be adhered to, it was clearly the case that all the writers subscribed to a similar outlook, even if there were disagreements over certain points. Thus in the development of the Primitivist position, as articulated in the pages of the FE, the individual biographies are less important than the direction and orientation of the paper itself, and of the collective that produced it.17 While, for example, Watson is the most significant writer, his work was developed in a collective context (through discussion prior to a particular article being written, and subsequently regarding its publication in the paper) which would minimize the influence that could be given to his own
17

Although it is possible to have a Primitivist orientation and not be an Anarchist Primitivist, in the sense explored here, for this work Primitivist and Anarchist Primitivist will be interchangeable.

33

biography. Work produced would have, through this process, been as much an FE work as that of an individual author. This can be demonstrated by the case of John Zerzan. He was not a part of the FE collective, and while his work was clearly significant, the FE members became increasingly critical of not only his contents of his argument, but the way in which it was argued. Consequently, he separated himself from the FE, and now publishes elsewhere. (The difference in opinion is covered in the chapter on the Primitive and in Appendix 6.) In Appendix 3, I outline the backgrounds of the major proponents of Social Ecology and Anarchist Primitivism, and in Appendix 6 I consider how these, as well as other factors which are relevant, contributed to determining their intentions and the general context in which the works were produced. In the chapters below I will begin to examine the theories themselves, through their approaches to the Primitive, History, Reason, and Technology.

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CHAPTER 3 THE PRIMITIVE

INTRODUCTIONWHAT IS THE PRIMITIVE? WHEN WAS THE PRIMITIVE?
The concept of the primitive is problematic, even for anthropologists. Stanley Diamond notes that anthropologists cannot agree on a definition of primitive, and goes on to develop his own schema which sees the primitive ending around the time of the emergence of civilization in the Upper Palaeolithic/ Neolithic.1 Adam Kuper has gone so far as to question whether there is such a thing as primitive society, although his definition of primitive society has been criticized for being idiosyncratic and therefore not supporting his argument that the term, as used by anthropologists generally, is invalid.2 Equally, the members of the Man the Hunter symposium could not agree on a definition of hunters. However, an evolutionary definition, confin[ing] hunters to those populations with strictly Pleistocene economies, was rejected since, as Marshall Sahlins pointed out, nowhere today do we find hunters living in a world of hunters.3 Pierre Clastres refers to two types of society (utterly irreducible to one another), primitive societies, or societies without a State [and] societies with a State.4 From the perspective of anarchism, it is this definition which is most significant, although as will be seen it is not simply in this political sense that primitive societies are valorized, but also in respect of their technologies, economies and epistemologies (that is, their cultural formations.) Another question, and one referring back to the question raised by the Marshall Sahlins regarding hunters above, is the degree to which modern primitive societies are representative of those that existed tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. This is obviously an extremely significant question, and it will be touched on during the course of this chapter - but largely it is beyond the scope of this study.5 In fact, nearly all questions of evidence are beyond this work, since they refer to debates that would each occupy a study in themselves. In addition, it is rarely possible to decide on the correctness of any particular view, since facts depend on standpoint and interpretation. Works which are in agreement with the general perspective of the writer(s) are frequently cited, those that disagree ignored or their inadequacies pointed out. What is important as far as this work is concerned
1

Diamond 1974, 117. Note that Diamond rejects a direct connection between a lack of agriculture and/or writing and the primitive since nascent civilizations existed which also demonstrated these characteristics. (Diamond 1974, 128). Cf. Clastres (1987), who argues that horticultural non-state i.e. primitive societies have existed. 2 Kuper, 1988; Hallpike, 1992. 3 Lee & Devore 1968, 4. 4 Clastres, 1989, 200. 5 Anthropologists have always been aware of the possible dangers of generalizing about prehistoric hunting and gathering societies on the basis of what is known about contemporary groups, but they have done it anyway, and probably with considerable justification. Much of what we know about prehistoric foragers suggests that they must have been very similar in important ways to surviving groups. (Sanderson, 1995, 22)

35

are the standpoints, how the evidence is used, and where possible some assessment of whether the viewpoint represents a reasonable perspective given the evidence cited. In addition, neither the Anarchist Primitivists nor Bookchin are anthropologists, they are merely using work already done, so in this respect they are doing no more than those who wrote the works cited. The issue that arises is again one of interpretation. The problems involved in interpreting anthropological evidence are highlighted by L. Susan Brown who notes, in reply to Bookchin (although this could apply equally to the Primitivists), that he employs anthropological data in an effort to demonstrate that this original nonhierarchical community actually existed. This task is, however, a difficult one; the anthropological data lends itself to such wide interpretations that almost anything can be said about so-called primitive societies.6 However, there does appear to be a general acceptance that such a thing as primitive egalitarian societies existed, although these may not have been the only form of society in existence at any time.7 Even given this Marshall Sahlins, who has been instrumental in challenging the view of the poverty of hunter-gatherer life, argues that if egalitarian is taken to mean a society in which no one outranks anyone...even the most primitive societies could not be described as egalitarian in this sense.8

BOOKCHIN ON THE PRIMITIVE AND ORGANIC SOCIETY

It is quite difficult to disentangle Bookchins views on the primitive. He first considers the category at length in The Ecology of Freedom, where his aim is to show that alternative forms of being (that is, being human) are within the realms of human nature: There is very much we can learn from preliterate cultures... particularly about the mutability of what is commonly called human nature. Their spirit of in-group cooperation and... egalitarian outlook...provide compelling evidence of the malleability of human behaviour in contrast to the myth that competition and greed are innate human attributes.9 Hierarchic social organization and the attempt to dominate nature are social and cultural artefacts, and early societies do not exhibit these to any great degree. In addition, though, he stresses that these were still recognizably human societies, and the individuals functioned in much the same way - certainly with the same cognitive processes as we do. So comparisons with and extrapolations to contemporary humans and human society are valid. His initial work, then, accentuates the positive elements that he perceives in primitive or, as he terms them, organic societies. However, the rise of a political primitivism in the 1980s, which has challenged Bookchins views of reason, history and the role of technology has encouraged him to emphasize the negative aspects of the primitive, arguing
6 7

Brown, 1993, 160. See Sanderson 1995, 22-3. 8 Sahlins, 1958, 1. 9 Bookchin 1995b, 41.

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against those who would valorize it that it does not represent a golden age for humanity in any respect. Bookchin does not define organic society clearly. At the beginning of Chapter 2 of The Ecology of Freedom, The Outlook of Organic Society, he begins by referring to so-called primitive or preliterate communities and to preliterate peoples.10 On the second page he introduces the term organic society, which he uses because of their intense solidarity internally and with the natural world.11 Elsewhere he refers to this organic, basically preliterate or tribal society.12 However he also frequently uses other terms such as primordial society; primordial community; preliterate societies and preliterate communities.13 He has also referred to aboriginal people.14 His use of various terms is such that on one page in The Ecology of Freedom he uses the terms primordial domestic community, preliterate society, primordial societies and preliterate communities.15 This variation of terms makes it difficult to establish exactly which group either geographically or chronologically Bookchin is referring to, a problem exacerbated by his use of the term organic society to apparently cover human communities from the early-Palaeolithic to the Neolithic, as well as surviving primitive communities today. Perhaps significantly, in his later work Re-Enchanting Humanity Bookchin does not use the term organic society at all. This ambiguity is not aided by Bookchins use of other terms, such as clans, tribes and bands which he refers to occasionally, but without indicating exactly what the differences are. 16 These problems continually arise throughout Bookchins work, but as will be shown the ambiguities generated are exacerbated by his later attempts to counteract the political neo-primitivism that emerged in the 1980s.

The Basis of Organic Society

For Bookchin what is crucial about primitive or organic societies is that they lacked institutionalized hierarchies and structures of domination. He writes that they were strikingly nondomineering and that they demonstrated an absence of coercive and domineering values.17 Rather these societies are deeply ingrained with a cooperative and communal ethos which permeates all aspects of their cultures, leading to a rejection of both acquisitiveness and personal possessions. A manifestation of this ethos can be found in their language. Bookchin refers to Dorothy Lees work on the Wintu tribe, whose way of expressing possession is to say to live with rather than to have. For Bookchin this
10 11

Bookchin 1991b, 43. ibid, 44. 12 Bookchin 1990b, 47. 13 For primordial society see Bookchin 1991b, 83, 84; for primordial community see ibid., 74; for preliterate societies see ibid, 320; for preliterate communities see ibid. 77. 14 Bookchin 1990b, 49. 15 Bookchin 1991b, 80. 16 ibid., 76. 17 Bookchin 1990b, 47; Bookchin 1991b, 45.

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implies not only a deep sense of mutual respect for person and a high regard for individual voluntarism; it also implies a profound sense of unity between the individual and the group.18 He argues that in these societies there was little or no hierarchy, and each individual and thing was valued for what it was, for its unique traits rather than it being compared to something else.19 Bookchin has been strongly influenced by the work of Paul Radin. For Radin, the key features of primitive peoples, which Bookchin applies to organic societies, are complete parity or equality between individuals, age-groups and sexes; usufruct and later reciprocity; the avoidance of coercion in dealing with internal affairs; and finally, what Radin calls the irreducible minimumthe inalienable right (...) of every individual in the community to food, shelter and clothing irrespective of the amount of work contributed by the individual to the acquisition of the means of life.20 Particularly significant here is the practice of usufruct, the freedom of individuals in a community to appropriate resources merely by virtue of the fact that they are using them.21 But Bookchin stresses that this is not communal property, since property as ownership does not exist; in fact, the emergence of property, even of a communal variety, as a category in itself marks the first step towards private property.22 Bookchin makes the point that freedom and equality as concepts do not exist in organic society, since unfreedom and inequality do not exist to give their antitheses meaning. So as far as these principles were maintained it was done unconsciously.23 Bookchin argues that for this process to function effectively, society must be committed to compensating for the natural inequalities that exist within it and which affect each individuals ability to produce, whether it be because of extremes of age, or though illness or handicap.24 That is, organic society does not ignore differences, but recognizes them in order to compensate for them, according to what he terms the equality of unequals.25 Bookchin contrasts this to the inequality of equals that is central to justice, that is a formal equality before the law which accepts inequalities in social position (See History chapter). This essentially egalitarian social form is maintained (i.e. reproduced) through a socialization process which begins with the process of child rearing. For the Hopi, for example, the process of weaning the child involves disconnecting it from the mother but connecting it to the group. This process downplayed the role of the individual and promoted instead strong attitudes of intragroup

18 19

Bookchin 1991b, 45. This was presumably an example of unity in diversity. 20 Bookchin 1991b, 56. 21 ibid., 50. 22 ibid. 23 ibid., 143. 24 These natural inequalities are contrasted to the systemic and artificial inequalities of state and class societies. 25 Bookchin 1991b, 144.

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solidarity.26 He notes that coercion in dealing with children is notably rare because the parents respect the personality of their children.27 Where appropriate, children are treated in much the same way as adults, and are actively encouraged to become a part of the social organization of the community.

Differentiation in Organic Society

Organic societies are not homogenous wholes - each member is differentiated from the others along the lines of age, gender and lineage (kinship). Bookchin is concerned with process, and his descriptions of organic society reflect this insofar as he describes elements which change as well as those which are essentially static (that is, those traits that resist the emergence of hierarchies).

Age
By age Bookchin means the difference between the old and the young, although no actual ages or age-bands are given. His criteria is that the old are vital repositories of knowledge and wisdom but have no part to play in the material survival of the tribe (i.e. hunting or giving birth) and therefore represent a separate interest.28 The old share a common interest independent of their sex and lineage.29 Fearful that they will be abandoned if the tribe faces hard times, they are driven to create a proto-political institutional sphere to make their cultural power material and in so doing safeguard their well-being. However, this contention is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, there is a question as to whether the material well-being of the elders really was threatened in the way Bookchin suggests. He states that the anthropological literature is replete with examples in which the old are killed or expelled during periods of hunger, but he gives no references. 30 However, in relation to this point Paul Radin argues that the difference between primitive and civilized communities is that in aboriginal societies, in case of famine or disaster, the whole community without exception suffers...The whole group, as a positive cohesive unit is involved. In consequence, there is generally no disorganization or disintegration either of individuals or of the group as such.31 This would appear to cast doubts on Bookchins argument, and is particularly problematic in that it comes from a source from which he draws heavily. Secondly, Bookchins view depends on the argument that although knowledge and wisdom are vital - elsewhere he writes that the old people... were the living repositories of [the tribes] lore, traditions, knowledge, and collective experience... they were the custodians of its identity and history - the cultural sphere is subordinate to the material.32 (See Chapter on History for this development.) That is, whatever value was attributed
26 27

ibid., 45. ibid., 49. 28 ibid., 81. 29 ibid. 30 ibid., 82. 31 Radin 1953, 22-3; also Watson 1996, 94. 32 Bookchin 1990, 53.

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to the culture of the tribe, in the form of knowledge and wisdom, this would always be separated from and deemed less important than, material considerations. However, as is noted in the section on the Anarchist Primitivists, this material-culture dichotomy is not apparent in any society, as Dorothy Lee makes clear: I know of no culture where human physical survival has been shown, rather than unquestioningly assumed by social scientists, to be the ultimate goal.33 It would be expected, as the quote from Radin above indicates, that the cultural strength of the group and the importance of the elders would make the tenuous existence of the elders which Bookchin suggests unlikely. In addition, if the primitive relationship with nature, although hard, was not defined by permanent scarcity and fear of famine (which is also what Bookchin seems to suggest, though not unambiguously, as will be seen) it would seem unlikely that fear of material failure would be so great as to cause the elders to expend so much time and energy in attempting to offset it. Ironically, Bookchins argument seems more based on how civilization reacts to the non-productive rather than how primitives do so.

Gender34
There is a sexual division of labour in organic society; men were engaged primarily in hunting and pastoral tasks, including the defense of the community and its relationship to the outsider, while women were engaged primarily in domestic, food-gathering, and horticultural responsibilities.35 However, this division of labour is complementary, and men and women respect each others equally important roles.36 Generally, women enjoy a relatively high status in organic society but this is undermined by the emergence of the expanded social sphere (see below).37 Bookchin stresses, though, that this division of labour is not simply biological, it is also a gendered one; an economy that acquires the very gender of the sex to which it is apportioned.38 Bookchin seems to be suggesting by this that the domestic economy was ordered around caring and nurturing. Presumably this is what he means when he writes elsewhere: It was [woman] who...made the sharing of food a consistent communal activity and even a hospitable one that embraced the stranger, hence fostering sharing as a uniquely human desideratum.39 Bookchin considers the difference in the temperament of the two sexes to be significant. The male is a specialist in violence, so courage, strength, self-assertiveness, decisiveness and
33 34

Lee 1959, 72. Bookchins view of gender relations in organic society has been questioned by L. Susan Brown (Brown 1993, 161) and Mary Mellor (Mellor 1992, 123-131). 35 Bookchin 1991b, 52. 36 ibid., 53. 37 ibid., 57; 76. 38 ibid., 53. 39 ibid., 59.

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athleticism are necessary for the survival of the community and will therefore be valued. 40 He suggests that a man having these traits will be envied by other men and admired by women. However, Bookchin asserts this rather than providing any evidence. It is based on his view that organic society was preoccupied with the problem of survival and obliged to share its resources, [so] a good hunter is an asset to all.41 This assumes not only the problem of survival but also that hunting involved primarily big game animals and that such was a vital part of the nutritional needs of the community. It has been noted, however, that modern hunter-gatherer studies have been persistently preoccupied with redressing the early male bias which characterized these societies as hunters, to the neglect of the real subsistence base which generally includes wild plants, and in some cases fish, in greater proportions than meat.42 The female, on the other hand, is a specialist in child rearing and food-gathering and will be prized for caring and tenderness. (Why these attributes would be relevant to food-gathering is unclear.) Bookchin argues that depending on its orientation either towards male or female these values will be projected onto society as a whole. But even a patricentric community need not necessarily be hierarchical; this only occurs with the emergence of a distinct social sphere that is in conflict with the domestic.43 For Bookchin early human communities were really domestic societies, structured around the work of women, and were often strongly oriented...toward womans world.44 The significance of women in social evolution for Bookchin is demonstrated by his assertion that it probably they who were responsible for the development of horticulture. He suggests that the transition from hunter-gatherer to horticulture caused social life to acquire matricentric qualities. Women did not have any institutional forms of power, since these had not yet emerged; rather, in separating itself from a certain degree of dependence on game and migratory animals, [society] began to shift its social imagery from the male hunter to the female food-gatherer, from the predator to the procreator, from the camp fire to the domestic hearth, from cultural traits associated with the father to those associated with the mother.45 Woman had a key culture role in promoting sharing as well as, through foraging activities, helping awaken in humanity an acute sense of place.46

Kinship & The Social Sphere

Kinship relations are of primary importance in organic society because they are clear, insofar as they are linked through the mother:
40 41

ibid., 79. ibid. 42 Seymour-Smith 1986, 141. 43 Bookchin 1991b, 80. 44 Bookchin 1990b, 53. 45 Bookchin 1991b, 58 46 ibid., 60.

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The blood-tie and the rights and duties that surround it are embodied in an unspoken oath that comprised the only visible unifying principle of early community life.47 This clearly gave a high status to woman, through whom descent was measured (although this assumes both a recognition of the role of women in reproduction, and matrilineal descent). However, although this is an adequate social glue initially, it is too limiting since it offers no means of permitting any (as Bookchin puts it) social advances: They do not allow for a social solidarity based on conscious alliances, on further social constructions and elaborations.48 One possibility in extending the blood oath is through inter-tribal marriage, but this is still limited and limiting. The only alternative is the development of secondary oaths, which although being less important than the blood oath can still function as a meaningful link with other communities. Bookchin considers these social oaths the first attempts by humanity to move from a purely biological community to a broader, more inclusive human society. They marked the emergence of a social sphere which began to increase in importance relative to the older domestic sphere.49 Bookchin argues that hunting and protecting the group was the responsibility of men because of their mobility and physical prowess so it was a reasonable extrapolation of this to require that men become the administrators of the newly emerging social sphere i.e. organizing alliances as well as defence. Consequently, the sphere evolved an increasingly male orientation. However, because of the fundamental ethos of complementarity and equality the increasing status of the male did not in itself lead to hierarchy and domination. Initially this sphere was still complementary to the domestic sphere, and what civil leaders there were had no coercive power but were rather advisors, teachers, and consultants, esteemed for their experience and wisdom. Whatever power they do have is usually confined to highly delimited tasks such as the coordination of hunts and war expeditions. It ends with the tasks to be performed.50 The simple process of the emergence of the civil sphere, then, did not in itself generate hierarchy, and the civil sphere was able to be accommodated within the complementarity of organic society life. Again, he notes that the domestic and civil spheres do not come into conflict until the civil sphere begins to organize hierarchically.51 For Bookchin this occurs through the manipulations of

47

ibid., 53. Strictly, rights and duties are anachronistic here. It is also not clear what an unspoken oath is and how this is visible. 48 ibid., 54. 49 ibid., 55. Bookchin notes that what he terms the contractual idea of association was not a part of the internal structure of organic society. Treaties and alliances only occurred outside of the tribe or clan strucgure, they did not occur within the tribe. That is, there was no notion of exchange or equivalence, and internal relations were organized around usufruct and the equality of unequals. 50 ibid., 55. Cf. Clastres 1987. 51 ibid., 80.

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the elders, as will be explored in the chapter on History.

The Relationship of Organic Society to Nature

Bookchins thesis is that the domination of nature by human begins with the domination of human by human, that is it is a direct result of hierarchical and domineering social organization (as opposed to the idea that the necessary attempt to dominate nature led to domination within human society).52 The attempt to dominate nature, then, is not a necessary part of human progress, but the result of warped social organization. Not surprisingly, then, a non-domineering society would exhibit a non-domineering attitude toward nature, and this is the point that Bookchin makes. Organic societys sense of communal harmony was ... projected onto the natural world as a whole.53 Its epistemology, which was structured around animism and magic, was unifying rather than dividing and conciliatory rather than oppositional.54 Bookchin rejects the view that primitive magic is a form of coercion rather they project their own needs into external nature and external nature is conceptualized at its very outset as a mutualistic community.55 Rites and magic are a form of communication, of mutual participation. Magic and ritual (initially at least) although having a coercive aspect (i.e. attempting to produce a given effect) were also persuasive. 56 The overarching value system of organic society creates a sense of unity between the individual and the wider society. And from this, argues Bookchin emerges a feeling of unity between the community and its environment.57 Faced with a natural world over which they have little if any control, organic communities maintain an outlook which is a combination of dependence, even fear, and reverence which Bookchin suggests develops into a sense of symbiosis, of communal interdependence and cooperation.58 Their dependence forces them to be a part of nature, and they could have no pretensions to controlling it. But they also recognize its fecundity, and do not view it as stingy and withholding, a view Bookchin imputes to Civilization: Rarely did the savages even try to wrestle with nature; rather they coaxed it along, slowly and patiently, with chants, songs, and ceremonials that we rightly call dances. All this was done in a spirit of cooperation within the community itself, and between the community and nature.59 Their rituals and ceremonies aim not only to keep nature at bay, but also to bring it into the
52

The idea of progressive changes in human society related t o changing economic conditions is found in Engels Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. See Chapter 4, Anarchist Primitivists on History for a further critique of this position. 53 Bookchin 1990, 48. 54 Bookchin 1991b, 98. But Bookchin stresses that there was a clear differentiation between humans and animals, and primitives were not bio- or eco-centric (Bookchin 1990, 49). 55 ibid., 99 56 Bookchin 1990b, 49. 57 Bookchin 1991b, 46. 58 ibid. 59 ibid., 319-20.

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community in a positive way, promoting the fertility of crops or bringing changes in the weather: The organic community is conceived to be part of the balance of nature... in short, a truly ecological community or ecocommunity peculiar to its ecosystem, with an active sense of participation in the overall environment and the cycles of nature.60 Primitives saw the whole world as alive. Nature begins as life, he writes; From the very outset of human consciousness, it enters directly into consociation with humanity.61 What this creates is a social nature. What the magical ceremonial does, in effect, is socialize the natural world and complete the involvement of society with nature... the ceremonial validates nature as kin.62 The harmony of organic society with the natural world came directly from the internal social harmony, their cooperative spirit.63 People in organic society did not love nature, they lived in a kinship relation with it, a relationship more primary that our use of the term love.64 However, their vulnerability meant that this relationship had another side; there was an ambiguity that permeates the outlook of the primordial world toward nature a shifting outlook that mixes reverence or ecological adaptation with fear.65

The Neolithic Village Community

I have given this a separate section since this is a problematic area in Bookchins view of the primitive. If Bookchin sees a golden age anywhere in pre-history, it is with the Neolithic village community: In the remains of early Neolithic villages, we often sense the existence of what was once a clearly peaceful society, strewn with symbols of the fecundity of life and the bounty of nature. Judging from the building sites and graves, there is little evidence, if any, that social inequality existed within these communities or that warfare marked the relationship between them.66 At the dawn of history, he continues, a village society had emerged in which life seemed to be unified by a communal disposition of work and its products; by a procreative relationship with the natural world..; by a pacification of the relationships between humans and the world around them.67

60 61

ibid., 46. ibid., 47. 62 ibid., 47-8. 63 ibid., 49. 64 ibid., 49. Note Bradfords argument that the human interaction with nature should be based on human sociality. See the chapter on Reason. 65 ibid., 82. 66 ibid., 60. 67 ibid., 61.

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Whereas hunter-gatherers left the world as they found it, the horticulturalists were able to change the earth, but in sympathy with it rather than in conflict. 68 This period represents a balance between human need and ingenuity and the wider natural world. There appears, however, to be a number of problems with this as it stands. Bookchin devotes considerable space to looking at hunter-gatherer communities, and draws conclusions based on this form of society and economy. His analysis of changes within the group and the emergence of the social (civil) sphere is largely located in this area. However, Bookchin sees horticultural societies the Neolithic village as primarily matricentric. It is not clear here either how this matricentricity developed if hunter-gatherers were, over time, increasingly patricentric, nor how this matricentricity collapsed into patriarchy (he suggests that the internal solidarity [of the village] began to decay69). Further, if the first hierarchies to emerge were based on age, there would appear to be only two possibilities by the time of the Neolithic village. Either these hierarchies were reasonably concrete, in which case how could a matricentric, egalitarian social form develop?; or they were not concrete, in which case given that the primary motivation for their development was the internal structure of the hunter-gatherer society, there would be no need for them to develop in the Neolithic village community. When Bookchin writes out of the skin of the most able hunter emerged a new kind of creature: the big man he is clearly suggesting that a male proto-hierarchy emerged from within the hunter-gatherer community, so again how did a matricentric horticultural community develop if this were the case? And how was this big man significant if hunting had ceased to be as important? 70 As will be noted in the section on Bookchin Against the Primitive, he argues that warfar e was not only widespread but increased over time, and that this change was one of the main reasons for the increasing importance of the civil realm, which gave men increasing status and led to a more patriarchal orientation as well as a solidifying of political hierarchies. But he argues that Neolithic communities were largely egalitarian, so again the question arises that if this were so how could this process of development occur? Bookchin specifically refers in one passage to matrilineal, horticultural societies in which women took similar social roles to men, but uses this only to illustrate that men did not have to wrest social power from women since it did not at that point exist; this still does not answer the question of how it emerged in such societies. 71 Bookchin notes that horticultural communities were matricentric whereas hunter-gatherers were patricentric, but states that on this obscure shifting ground of prehistory, one senses a slow crystallization of social norms and moods along male-oriented lines.72 This represents a vague assertion that is not particularly convincing. As part of his dialectical and
68 69

ibid. ibid. 70 Bookchin 1990b, 57. 71 Bookchin 1991b, 78. 72 ibid., 78-9.

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processual approach, Bookchin stresses that social change is not necessarily unidirectional, and that hierarchical growth may become arrested and even regress to a greater parity between age and sex groups.73 However, it is not clear how a society in which hierarchy had taken hold, in the form of the institutions and subjective reorientations that Bookchin describes, could then return to a more pacific and egalitarian state. One possibility is that Bookchin is suggesting that any regression is only partly successful and perhaps the likelihood of a subsequent reemergence of hierarchy is increased. (This would be similar to Perlmans argument regarding the relative ease with which civilizations can reconstitute themselves (see History chapter)). Overall it would seem that the sort of gradual changes that Bookchin suggests occurred in hunter-gatherer society to bring about hierarchies would not have facilitated the emergence of matricentric, pacific and egalitarian communities he describes. Further, the cause of the collapse of the Neolithic horticultural proto-utopian community must have been either internal or external. If external, then this would tend to go against the dialectic, since it would be warlike tribes that destroyed a possibility of humanity progressing to a more complete next stage, rather than a necessary internal process. But if internal, again it is difficult to see how the changes Bookchin suggests could have occurred within such a society.

Bookchin Against the Primitive

Bookchin has from the outset held a critical view of primitive or organic societies, in that he has always noted what he sees as their weaknesses as well as their strengths; but in his later writings this has been accentuated by his desire to distance himself from what he sees as an unnecessary and regressive adoration of the primitive by some contemporary writers. (This is linked to his critique of Lifestyle Anarchism; for a view of the primitive of which he is critical, see following section, Anarchist Primitivists on the Primitive.) In The Ecology of Freedom he discusses the development of matricentric horticultural communities, and adds a lengthy footnote. In this he refers to writers who view hunting-gathering communities as truly pacific, egalitarian, and probably matricentric societies.74 Bookchin rejects this view, but he does so in a curious passage which follows: Leaving aside the significance of such crucial social developments as writing, urbanity, fairly advanced crafts and technics, and even the rudiments of science none of which could have been developed by Paleolithic nomads - I hold that the case for hunting-gathering as humanitys golden age is totally lacking in evolutionary promise.75

73 74

Bookchin 1991b, 12. ibid., 58n. 75 ibid.. Although there is occasionally some ambiguity around the use of technics which is discussed below, it is used by several writers quoted here as an alternative to technology; I have consequently used it in this way

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This passage is problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, the arguments made by Sahlins et al that hunter-gatherers lived in the original affluent society does not depend on those social developments that Bookchin refers to. Rather, Sahlins argues that we are inclined to think of hunters and gatherers as poor because they dont have anything; perhaps better to think of them for reason as free.76 Their critique is one based around limited needs, small numbers of possessions, and low levels of work, rather than cultural attributes. The developments Bookchin refers to are a part of civilization and would require a social organization which would be the antithesis of hunter-gatherer life. More crucially, Bookchins own arguments for organic society not only would appear to support many of the points put forward by Sahlins and others, but also do not themselves depend on these same social developments. Although Bookchins historical outlook requires an evolutionary potentiality within humanity and nature, he does not argue that this, i.e. the potentiality, is what made organic society egalitarian and ecological. The last sentence would appear to be significant, but the English is poor, since whatever is lacking in evolutionary promise, it is not the case for the hunter-gatherers living in a golden age. But hunter-gathering could well have been a golden age for those who lived at that time, and this would have no relation to evolutionary promise. Bookchin seems to want to criticize the Palaeolithic for not being a proto-civilization, something which he imputes to the Neolithic. In this view, the Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers represent merely a staging post for civilization, the first elements of which were the Neolithic villages.77 However, the problem immediately appears that if organic society was as Bookchin has described it (in the previous section), what exactly was wrong with hunter-gatherer life? Bookchins ambiguous view on this will be further outlined in the rest of this section. For Bookchin a crucial negative aspect of organic society was its parochialism, partly because it led to a fear of strangers and encouraged warfare, and also because it prevented the emergence of expanded notions of freedom based on the recognition of a universal humanity.78 They were also vulnerable to developing hierarchies, since what freedom they had was unconscious, and they themselves were guileless: The very lack of a distinction between freedom and domination leaves organic society unguarded against hierarchy and class rule. Innocence exposes the community

myself. 76 Sahlins 1974, 14. 77 Bookchin appears to hold the view that contemporary egalitarian hunter-gatherer communities devolved from earlier horticultural ones (Bookchin 1995b, 44). However, it is difficult to see what use Bookchin can make of this assertion. There must at some point have been pre-horticultural i.e. hunter-gatherer societies. If Bookchin is arguing that nothing can be inferred from contemporary hunter-gatherers, then this causes problems with his own use of anthropological evidence. See Black, 1997, 112. 78 Bookchin 1990b, 50.

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to manipulation on the most elementary levels of social experience.79 The suggestion that organic society is characterized by warfare is made by Bookchin on several occasions, and he does appear to see it as a permanent feature of primitive life: As bands began to increase in size and number, as they began to differentiate into clans, tribes, tribal federations and make war on each other, an ever larger social space emerged that was increasingly occupied by men.80 So for Bookchin warfare was an ever-present part of organic society. However, he does not give any evidence for this widespread pre-civilizational warfare, nor does he suggest in what time-period(s) it occurred. He does not even suggest how warfare became such a significant feature of tribal life, which is strange given his assertion of the non-domineering nature of organic society, nor does he imply that this warfare, even if it occurred, might be noticeably different from what we understand as warfare today or from any form of civilized warfare. He suggests that tribes were at war with one another over land and game, even going to far as to suggest that warfare could have originated with horticultural communities: Warfare may have even emerged or developed among seemingly pacific and matricentric horticultural communities which tried to expel more pristine hunting and gathering peoples from woodlands that later were turned into farm lands. Let us be quite frank about this: matricentric or pacific as early farming communities may have been, they probably were very warlike in the eyes of the hunters they managed to displace.81 In a later interview he suggested that tribes were chronically fighting with each other, pastoral communities were invading agricultural communities, the world was in a state of continual upheaval.82 Here, pastoral communities were the invaders. But foragers were also aggressive: Foraging communities often kill off most of the animal life in their territory, which obliges them to go to war with still other foraging communities that do have game. 83 This appears to link with his ideas of human culpability in animal extinctions, which will be examined below, but it seems odd that foraging communities i.e. gatherers, should carry out the widespread slaughter of animals of any kind. He goes on to make the point that at that point in history the warrior was a necessary and very important person. Young men were needed by the community for its protection and they had to be so trained.

79 80

Bookchin 1991b, 5; 140 ibid., 78 my emphasis. See also Bookchin 1990b, 56f. 81 Bookchin 1990b, 77. 82 ibid. 83 Bookchin 1999, 280-1.

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Chiefs were necessary to marshal military forces against marauders.84 Since he has previously referred to agriculture, it seems that the point in history that Bookchin is referring to is the Neolithic, which he elsewhere suggests is a time of peace and a harmonious relationship with nature; here, he is stressing its violence and organized military structure. In certain respects it might seem more likely that settled agriculturalists would tend toward organized violence, since there are a larger number of people gathered in one place and they have something valuable to defend. Indeed, one study of 633 primitive cultures supports this view, concluding that the collectors, lower hunters and lower agriculturalists, are the least warlike. The higher hunters and higher agriculturalists are more warlike, while the highest agriculturalists and the [pastoral peoples] are the most warlike of all.85 This, of course, does not fit well with Bookchins assertions regarding the egalitarian and pacific nature of the Neolithic village community. Bookchin also argues that organic societies are preoccupied with the problem of survival86 in a world that is often harsh and insecure.87 This is a point that he makes early on, but it appears more forcibly in his later work. In band and tribal societies, he writes humanity was almost completely at the mercy of uncontrollable natural forces and patently false and mystified visions of realitythe lives of our early ancestors were most certainly anything but blissful. In fact, life for them was actually quite harsh, generally short, and materially very demanding.88 This would appear to suggest a Hobbesian perspective that is somewhat at odds with the spirit of his portrayal of organic societies elsewhere. In seeking to undermine the notion of primitive affluence, Bookchin has recently argued that, In serious anthropological research, the notion of an ecstatic, pristine hunter has not survived the thirty years that have passed since the Man the Hunter symposium.89 This approach has led to something of a battle of evidence between Bookchin and those still inclined to promote what he considers a romantic view of the primitive. It is certainly the case there are continuing debates in anthropology, not only over the status of contemporary hunter-gatherers but also over their historic significance. As such neither side can claim unequivocally to have proved its case, and these arguments could conceivably continue indefinitely; it is therefore not my intention to examine each claim and counter-claim made by Bookchin, Watson and others, but only to outline the arguments presented.90
84 85

ibid., 279. Wright 1965, 63. There is a question regarding the difference between higher and lower hunters and agriculturalists, but the general point of correlating warfare with settlement is clear enough. 86 Bookchin 1991b, 79. 87 ibid., 81. 88 Bookchin 1995a, 122; Bookchin 1995b, 46. 89 Bookchin 1995b, 44. 90 For the debate see Bookchin 1995a and 1995b; Watson 1996; Black 1997; Bookchin 1999.

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To support his anti-primitivist arguments, Bookchin has latterly utilized Edwin Wilmsens argument that most contemporary examples of hunter-gatherers devolved from horticultural societies, and were forced into their present limited circumstances against their will. They represent not an approximation of Palaeolithic life, but rather an underclass created by colonialism.91 Bookchin also argues that it is not true that hunter-gatherers ate well or that they were relatively healthy; they were in fact subject to disease and hunger, and this is something that Richard Lee, one of the proponents of the primitive affluence hypothesis, has subsequently admitted.92 But Bookchins argument regarding the unravelling of a myth of primitive affluence does not represent the whole of the debate in anthropology since there is, despite Bookchins suggestion to the contrary, a continuing debate. For example, David Watson notes that an overview of Sahlins work in Current Anthropology in 1992 largely supported his conclusions (the main article argued that Sahlins original essay made an important point, and is a king that could and should be scientifically reclothed). 93 Wilmsens arguments have been accepted in some circles, but have also been criticized.94 However, in 1994 Mark Cohen still argued in favour of the primitive affluence hypothesis: A review of recent literature on the San and other hunter-gatherers suggests that they are indeed somewhat less affluent than once portrayed. But is also suggests that stereotypes based on the original descriptions are not as misleading as some critics would have us believe.95 Cohen has also been involved in research on diet and nutrition, and his conclusions are at variance with the view put forward by Bookchin. It has been noted that Cohen and others have presented some extremely persuasive evidence to the effect that the quality of diet and nutrition worsened rather than improved after the advent of agriculture.96 It is certainly the case that Lee amended his figures during the 1970s, to take into account activities not included in his earlier studies, such as tool-fixing and housework, but it is not clear that this undermined his earlier conclusions; he has in any case not subsequently abandoned the idea of primitive communism. 97 Bookchin appears to have moved from largely supporting one argument to wholly supporting an almost opposite argument, although the evidence available, like much of that in anthropology, is
91

Bookchin 1995a, 44-5; Bookchin 1995b, 137. See Edwin Wilmsens revisionist view of the Kalahari tribespeople, Land Filled With Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari (Wilmsen 1989). 92 Bookchin 1995a, 137-38; Bookchin 1995b 36-7; 44-5. 93 Bird-David 1992, 34. 94 See Wilmsen & Benbow 1990. For a broadly Primitivist critique of Wilmsens book see Black 1998 -9. 95 Cohen 1994, 275. 96 Sanderson, 338. 97 See Black 2001. On Lees continued commitment to primitive communism see, for example, Reflections on Primitive Communism, Lee 1991. Bookchin has quoted Lee to show his admission of the poor livelihoods of certain San-speaking peoples, but the quotes given do not appear where referenced. See Bookchin 1999, 192 and Lee 1979.

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open to a variety of interpretations. It would certainly appear to be true that the case for primitive affluence cannot be dismissed with quite the certainty that Bookchin expresses in his later work. And once he has adopted this position, it leads to other equally critical assessments of primitive peoples.98 From Bookchins (later) perspective, it would not be surprising if early humans treated nature primarily as a source of the means of survival, and demonstrated an instrumental outlook toward the natural world. This is, in fact, what Bookchin argues in his 1991 introductory essay to The Ecology of Freedom, Twenty Years Later, as well as in Reenchanting Humanity and Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism. I will quote the following passages at length to demonstrate the ambiguities in Bookchins language as well as his argument: In fact, prehistoric peoples seem to have intervened into their environment as resolutely as they could. As soon as Homo erectus or later human species learned to use fire, for example, they seem to have put it to work burning off forests, probably stampeding game animals over cliffs or into natural enclosures where they could be easily slaughtered. The reverence for life of prehistoric peoples thus reflected a highly pragmatic concern for enhancing and controlling the food supply, not a love for animals, forests, mountains.99 Having gained the ability to use fire, erectus probably burned away forests to create grasslands on which game were to subsist for millions of years.100 The exigencies of life in a demanding world usually throw aboriginals into competition with other life-forms, a conflict that may lead to severe environmental changes that render a given habitat unfit for other animals. These changes, in turn, may result in the complete extermination of food animals, indeed their wanton destruction on a large scale.101 This instrumental approach was inevitable because primitives were living in a natural world and were the same as any other animal, using their habitats to the full and trying to survive by any means possible. 102 The most crucial example of this instrumentalism comes with the problem of the Pleistocene extinctions. Bookchin notes that there is a debate around whether climate change or early human overkill was responsible for these extinctions, but seems to favour the overkill argument. This is based on the assertion that it is unlikely that so many species would have been unable to adapt to climatic changes such that it would result in their complete annihilation. One significant piece of evidence, noted by Bookchin, was the discovery of a fossilized mastodon which appeared to have adapted to the post-glacial bog environment which had previously been assumed to have been an unfit

98

Of course, if Bookchin rejects all evidence from contemporary hunter-gatherers as representing in any way the lifeways of early humans, then this undermines any claims he himself makes for anthropological support for his view of organic society. 99 Bookchin 1995b, 42. Note the use of seem twice and probably once in the first part of the paragraph. 100 Bookchin 1995a, 139. Note the use of probably. 101 ibid., 125. Note the use of may. 102 Bookchin 1991a, xliii. Bookchin 1995a, 140.

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habitat for that species.103 Instead of climatic change, the overkill hypothesis sees the crucial factor in the extinctions being over-hunting by early humans. Bookchin suggests the wildlife that the grasslands and forests supported were often hunted unrelentingly, sometimes in gross disregard of their dwindling numbers.104 He argues that we are not obliged to accept the overkill argument to agree that many now-extinct fauna were hunted down by proto-Indian foragers and ultimately exterminated.105 Presumably, this means that the mass extinctions that overkill refers to may not have occurred, but these peoples still exterminated whole species of animal. One of Bookchins pieces of evidence to support this is that at one archaeological site an estimated 123,000 bison were stampeded over a jump site over the centuries. The problem with this is we are not informed over how many centuries. If we take three centuries as an example, this figure would only amount to an average of 410 per year, which may be a considerable number but is hardly likely to cause an extinction - since, as Bookchin himself notes, to exterminate the plains herds Europeans had to slaughter over 40 million bison.106 Bookchin agrees there is a debate about the cause of the Pleistocene extinctions, and as in many areas of archaeology and anthropology there are reasonable arguments on both sides. But Bookchin does not mention counter-arguments, for example as put-forward by Russell Graham: The overkill hypothesis proposes that the instantaneous and massive elimination of late Pleistocene species was the result of the zealous predatory habits of Upper Paleolithic hunters. However, many facets of the extinction are not adequately explained by overkill. For instance, the overkill hypothesis would predict that the late Pleistocene extinction in specific geographic areas should be directly correlated with the first appearance of efficient human hunters. In Australia, man appears more than 15,000 years before the extinction event, and in Ireland humans first appear during the Mesolithic, more than 3000 years after the extinction of the Irish Elk, Megaceros.107 So the unchallenged primacy Bookchin gives to the overkill hypothesis seems questionable. A further potentially significant problem with Bookchins thesis regarding the nature of primitive society appears in Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism. I will include the quotation in
103 104

1991a, xl; Bookchin 1995a, 140. 1991a, xli. 105 Bookchin 1995a, 141. 106 It has been noted that the annual animal kill by Indians at the time of colonization has been estimated at one million which does not seem to have endangered the herds (Hester 1967, 179). Even at the end of the nineteenth century, with 84000 buffalo going to commercial markets, the Indians only killed a total of 405,000 per annum. Viewed in this perspective, it hardly seems p ossible that the Plains Indians would ever have exterminated the bison just to satisfy their own needs (Hester 1967, 179). Note also that Hester argues that the stampede was probably not used until after 7000 B.C., and prior to this kills were usually less than a dozen animals at a time (ibid., 181). 107 Graham 1986, 132. See also Hester 1967. Hester argues that although there is evidence of primitive groups hunting to the degree of killing off their food supply (178-9) he concludes that: Examination of the archaeological evidence for the reduction of animal populations by the hunting of early man reveals that evidence to be inadequate and ambiguous The North American evidence, although limited, does not indicate that mans hunting was an important factor i n the late-Pleistocene extinction (Hester 1967, 186, emphasis in original).

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full because it presents serious difficulties with Bookchins whole approach to organic society: Another concern is the extent to which prehistoric hunter-gatherers or foragers at various times lived in nonhierarchical societies. If the burials at Sungir (...) some 25,000 years ago allow for any speculation (...), the extraordinarily rich collection of jewelry, lances, ivory spears, and beaded clothing at the gravesites of two adolescents suggest the existence of high-status family lines long before human beings settled down to food cultivation. Most cultures in the Paleolithic were probably relatively egalitarian, but hierarchy seems to have existed even in the late Paleolithic, with marked variations in degree, type, and scope of domination that cannot be subsumed under rhetorical paeans to Paleolithic egalitarianism.108 If we take this statement at face value, Bookchin is arguing that Palaeolithic egalitarianism is at best an oversimplification and at worst a myth. But if his organic society cannot be found in the Palaeolithic, it is difficult to know where it could be found. In effect, this statement suggests that organic society cannot be characterized meaningfully as being egalitarian, which would appear to undermine Bookchins other statements on the egalitarian nature of organic society. It could be objected that Bookchins emphasis on process and dialectic is consistent with the statement, by suggesting that early egalitarian societies had already succumbed to internal hierarchic tendencies by the late Palaeolithic. This, though, is problematic for two reasons. First, this is not the point that Bookchin makes, i.e. he does not refer to a process of the formation of hierarchies but instead stresses the existence of domination in the Palaeolithic. Second, even if this were the case, given the long time-scale of hierarchic development, the existence of such forms of domination that Bookchin is suggesting in turn requires proto-hierarchic formations deep into the Palaeolithic. The question again arises: Where, then, Organic Society? It is difficult not to conclude that to accept the statement quoted above, as it stands, causes serious difficulties with the idea of organic society that Bookchin advances elsewhere. I would like now to look at the following passage criticising the notion that hunter-gatherers were free(er) because their technologies were limited: Although a hunter-gatherer community may be free from the needs that beleaguer us, it must still answer to very strict material imperatives. Such freedom as it has is the product not of choice but of limited means of life. What makes it free are the very limitations of its tool-kit, not an expansive knowledge of the material world.109 This passage is interesting for a number of reasons. First, Bookchin accepts that this community is free from the needs that, he admits, beleaguer us - that is, these needs are not necessary and are in fact a hindrance. Second, he notes that the hunter-gatherer community still has to answer to material imperatives. As David Watson notes, In an ultimate sense, every society obeys such imperatives, and it is suggestive of some of Bookchins writings on technology and post-scarcity that he implicitly

108 109

Bookchin 1995b, 38. Bookchin 1991b, 69.

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argues for a society that in some way does not have to do this. 110 And third, Bookchin completely dismisses the expansive knowledge of the world that such cultures did have, knowledge that kept them in reproductive existence for millennia, and which contemporary science is attempting to recover. Bookchins statement suggests a reliance on scientific positivism which is also reminiscent of his work elsewhere (see Chapter 5 on Reason). Overall, Bookchins criticisms of neo-primitivists do little to clarify his own position. One question Bookchin raises in Reenchanting Humanity is: Can we draw any conclusions about prehistoric societies from studying modern-day primitives? He argues that modern people (presumably modern primitives) are not like Palaeolithic people and that we do not know how those (Palaeolithic) people actually viewed the world. He singles out Max Oelschlaegers idea of a primitive consciousness, which seem to rest on inferences made from modern aboriginal values, which may have little to do with Paleolithic values.111 He continues: Palelolithic people live in such vastly diverse climatic and environmental conditions that they could hardly have shared a common sensibility - still less the unified set of values and beliefs that ecomystics and primitivists so eagerly impute to them. 112 However, when in The Ecology of Freedom he questions whether the contemporary tribal groups considered by anthropologists such as Radin can be regarded as models for early periods of human social development he comes to a different conclusion. 113 These groups will have been affected by civilizations over time, but because of this the solidarity that existed in Radins aboriginal civilizations... may have been far more intense in prehistory.114 That is, he not only extrapolates the conditions of modern primitives back into prehistory but accentuates them. He goes on to suggest that: The cultural facts of dress, technics, and environment that link prehistoric peoples with existing primitives is so striking that it is difficult to believe that Siberian mammoth hunters of yesteryear... were so dissimilar from the Arctic seal hunters of de Poncins day.115 At one point Bookchin also writes of the few organic societies that have survived European acculturation, suggesting here that contemporary primitive societies can be considered examples of organic societies.116 This statement is particularly problematic given Bookchins criticism elsewhere (as noted) of the status contemporary hunter-gathers. Despite his criticism of primitivists regarding the nature of anthropological evidence,
110 111

Watson 1996, 93. Bookchin 1995a, 126. 112 ibid., 126. 113 Bookchin 1991b., 57. 114 ibid. 115 ibid.. Bookchin is referring to Gontran de Poncins, previously mentioned on page 51 of Ecology of Freedom. (Apostrophe misplaced in original.) 116 ibid., 55.

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Bookchin himself has been criticized for the same thing. David Watson notes that Bookchin states that, we must look within the primordial community to find the early embryonic structures that transformed organic society into class society, and comments, this is not easy to do, since there is little actual verifiable evidence of these structures.117 These points show that Bookchins later work casts serious doubts on his scholarship and highlights considerable problems in analysing his conceptualization of the primitive. His determination to undermine contemporary primitivist approaches has led to him increasing the ambiguity regarding the nature of primitive society that was latent in his earlier work. It has therefore become increasingly unclear exactly what point Bookchin wants to make about primitive society. His attempt to show the mutability of humans, while valid, flounders given the problems highlighted above fundamentally the uncertainty of when and where is or was organic society. Bookchins methodology is also questionable. He responds to L. Susan Browns claim that his evidence for non-hierarchic societies and gender equality is open to question by stating that we have no way of knowing what life was really like then anyway: What I tried to present in [The Ecology of Freedom] was a dialectic of gender equality and inequality, not a definitive account of prehistory... I used modern data speculatively: to show that my conclusions are reasonable.118 Given this it is tempting to suggest that for Bookchin, All that is solid melts into air! there is simply no way in which his claims can be made solid enough to be analyzed.

ANARCHIST PRIMITIVISTS ON THE PRIMITIVE

There is no definition of the primitive in the Anarchist Primitivist literature. It is a characterological category (located in the characteristics of primitive society) rather than a chronological one (located in time), although there is a chronological element to the extent that primitive society was the first form of human society and has subsequently been replaced by civilization. As well as primitive and primitive society the Primitivists also use the terms primal society and primal peoples, archaic peoples and original communities.119 George Bradford notes that the word primal has replaced primitive (although he does not say by whom or in what context) and quotes Stanley Diamond to the effect that both derive from the same root meaning before or earliest, original, primary. Diamond goes on to argue that this term

117 118

Bookchin quote in Bookchin 1991b, 74. Watson, 1996, 97. Brown 1993, 161 and Bookchin 1995b, 43. 119 In Against History Fredy Perlman writes I wouldnt use the word Primitive to refer to people with a richness of life. I would use the word Primitive to refer to myself and my contemporaries, with our progressive poverty of life (Perlman 1984, 9 -10). Perlman uses the word primitive in this context to mean underdeveloped or backward, although in the sense of quality of life rather than technology. This appears to be an idiosyncratic usage that Perlman does not use elsewhere and has no wider implications.

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does not imply historically an inchoate time of cultural origins nor psychiatrically the period when supposed primary processes were directly expressed.120 Instead, it refers to pre-civilizational institutions. This approach, seeing the primitive as referring to pre-civilizational social structures is the best generalization of the Anarchist Primitivism outlook although, as will be seen below, John Zerzans approach comes close to that rejected by Diamond. The concept of the primitive is used to make a number of points for the Primitivists. These points are basically in opposition to progressive ideologies in general but, initially at least, particularly against Marxist-oriented accounts of human development (broadly historical materialism). The points are as follows: 1. Primitive societies were not involved in a struggle with nature that required the development of radically innovative technologies or forms of social organization. 2. Primitive societies are complete in themselves and are not merely either the first steps of any form of progress, nor (in the case of modern primitive societies) stunted societies that have been left behind in the evolutionary process. 3. Marxist categorizations, emphasizing the determinant role of production, are invalid for primitive societies and are incapable of explaining these societies satisfactorily. 4. As a consequence of 2 and 3 above, there are no contradictions in the structures of primitive societies which lead to the emergence of the state and classes.

The Primitivists stress six characteristics of primitive societies, the exploration of which will demonstrate how these arguments are developed. The characteristics are: 1. The absence of a formal economy 2. The preeminence of the symbolic and the absence of a separate sphere of production 3. The absence of coercive political power 4. A participatory and egalitarian epistemology 5. A harmonious ecology 6. The active limitation of needs and the refusal of power and civilization

Although a number of authors are used to support the Primitivist case, four are quoted most frequently, and they will tend to predominate in this study: the anthropologists Marshall Sahlins, Pierre Clastres and Stanley Diamond, and the social theorist Jean Baudrillard.121 There are broadly two approaches to the Primitive in Anarchist Primitivism. The first is that which appears in the FE, primarily in the work of David Watson, but also Bob Brubaker, and implicitly in the work of Fredy Perlman. This view sees in the primitive an original, essentially
120 121

Diamond, 1981, 123-129 cited in Bradford 1993, 46n. Also referred to on a number of occasions is the work of Paul Radin and of Dorothy Lee. Notably Bookchin relies almost entirely on the work of these writers to support his claims for organic society. See Bookchin section.

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egalitarian and pacific human community which lived in harmony with nature. This may or may not have described all primitive communities, but is a sufficiently general description to include the majority. As such, the primitive offers an insight into the possibilities of being human, as well as suggesting some of the essential and necessary features of such a community. If anarchists or other radicals wish for a community that shares the values of the primitives, it will be necessary to learn from them and their communities. However, they do not appear to suggest a static, unchanging form of primitive community, nor that the primitive represents a pure state of humanity that can be returned to. The other approach is that put forward by John Zerzan. Zerzan sees in humanitys distant past a time of complete harmony and wholeness, but one which only existed because it was without (in fact, prior to) all symbolic mediation even language and art. The rise of symbolism was the fall of humanity. For Zerzan, this should be the goal of the anarchist project a return to the primitive, conceived of as this pristine non-symbolic, hunter-gatherer way of life. These two positions have created a tension in primitivist literature, between Zerzans maximalist and literal primitivism, and the more sceptical and perhaps tentative primitivist orientation of the FE, a tension that has been fruitful in that it has resulted in some clarification of views that may otherwise have seemed almost identical. Further, some of the problems in the work, particularly in Zerzans approach, have been highlighted in the debate and these points will be noted below.

The Characteristics of Primitive Society The Absence of a Formal Economy

With Marshall Sahlins, primitive society is seen as The Original Affluent Society, in which needs are minimal and the tool-kit (technologies) of the primitives is kept small.122 This is possible because the natural environment provides sufficient food and materials to support human social existence without highly developed technological systems. From an economic perspective, this poses a substantivist alternative to the formalist view that the conventional economic outlook of capitalist society can be universalized to apply also to primitive societies: Formalism versus substantivism amounts to the following theoretical option: between the ready-made models of orthodox Economicstaken as universally valid and applicable grosso mundo to the primitive societies; and the necessityof developing a new analysis more appropriate to the historical societies in question and to the intellectual history of Anthropology. Broadly speaking, it is a choice between the perspective of Business, for the formalist method must consider the primitive economies as underdeveloped versions of out own, and a culturalist study that as a matter of principle does honor to different societies for what they are.123 A key event in the development of this revisionist anthropological view was the Man the Hunter Conference in 1966, in which the participants sought an assessment, as well as a
122 123

Sahlins 1972. ibid., xi-xii.

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reassessment, of the ways of life of hunter-gatherer peoples.124 Underpinning the conference was the point made by the conveners that to date, the hunting way of life has been the most successful and persistent adaptation man has ever achieved.125 Although there were a number of different and sometimes divergent viewpoints, the important general point made was that, contrary to the generally accepted Hobbesian view, life in the state of nature is not necessarily nasty, brutish, and short and is not characterized by a constant struggle for survival.126 In fact, time spent in tasks that can be recognized as working are kept to a minimum. The anthropologist Richard B. Lee, found during one field study that the !Kung San, at least during the month of this study, appeared to spend less than half their days in subsistence and appeared to enjoy more leisure time than the members of many agricultural and industrial societies.127 Surrounded by plenitude hunter-gatherers find no need either to hoard or to cultivate. Their technics are particularly well suited to the environment and cannot therefore be considered to be underdeveloped. Pierre Clastres argues that if one understands by technics the set of procedures men acquire not to ensure the absolute mastery of nature (...), but to ensure a mastery of the natural environment suited and relative to their needs, then there is no longer any reason whatever to impute a technical inferiority to primitive societies.128 Primitive society, then, represents an exemplary balance of humanity and nature to the mutual benefit of both.

The Preeminence of the Symbolic & the Absence of a Separate Sphere of Production.129
The concept of mode of production, of a conventional view of economics, is not applicable to primitive society. In fact, it is not production but non-production which is integral to the social stability of these societies. Meaning for primitive societies is generated by and confined within this order, and cannot be reduced to either survival, or to an abstract need to produce: There is neither a mode of production nor production ... There is no dialectic and no unconscious in primitive societies. These concepts analyze only our own societies, which are ruled by political economy.130 The cultural system of primitive society excludes the possibility of a mode of production, of an attempt at a proliferation of goods through a project of labor. It attributes meaning to sharing, reciprocity, and the destruction of the surplus which makes acquisitive accumulation an inconceivable act. In every case, primitive
124 125

See Lee & DeVore, 1966. Lee & Devore, 3. 126 Lee 1966 in Lee & Devore 1966, 43. 127 Lee 1979, 258-9. 128 Clastres 1989, 19, emphasis in original. Note that Clastres refers to mastery of the natural environment, which is somewhat at odds with the idea of a reciprocal and harmonious relationship with nature. 129 The role of the symbolic in primitive society will also be discussed in chapter 5 on Reason; here its role is stressed over more economic-oriented interpretations of primitive social structure. 130 Baudrillard 1975, 49.

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societies organize the practical functions of culture by such an attribution of meaning.131 This can be construed as an attack on historical materialism, and is one developed by Jean Baudrillard in Mirror of Production and Pierre Clastres in French Marxists and Their Anthropology. Their argument is that the universalizing of Marxian categories is invalid that the claim that marxism can have something to say about every type of society because it is acquainted with each ones operating principles beforehand is not only untrue, but indicates the failure to recognize the fundamental differences between primitive societies and those organized around political economy. 132 Both writers are critical of the Marxist anthropologist Maurice Godelier, who argued that the fundamental task of economic anthropology is to analyze the role of the economy as determinant in the last instance.133 Godelier seeks to locate the economic as a separate element in primitive society, arguing that their economies produce not only sufficient for subsistence but also a surplus destined for the functioning of social structures (kinship, religion, etc.).134 But Baudrillard argues that this separation is invalid it is an absurd attempt to make a separate function of the social: Primitive society does not exist as a separate instance apart from symbolic exchange...For the primitives, eating, drinking and living are first of all acts that are exchanged: if they are not exchanged, they do not occur.135 Primitive societies are therefore not based around utility and calculation but around gift exchange and symbolic meaning: Sharing, reciprocity, and the gift are the dialogue carried on by the members of primitive communities in order to ensure social continuity.136 In primitive societies: Every institution...was structured in accordance with a social logic based on norms of sharing, reciprocity and gift exchange.137 The gift is mentioned on several occasions in the Fifth Estate in relation to the primitive, and although it is never defined or analyzed by the FE staff a useful outline appeared in 1982, in the form of an article by Lewis Hyde.138 Hyde argues that tribal peoples, as he terms them, distinguish

131 132

Brubaker 1981. Clastres 1982, 16-17. Lower case m in marxism in original. Notably, though, one anthropologist who argues most fervently for the existence of primitive communism, Richard Lee, is himself in favour of a historical materialist interpretation. See Leacock and Lee 1982, 5ff. 133 Cited in Baudrillard 1975, 72. 134 Cited in Baudrillard 1975, 78. 135 Baudrillard 1975, 78-9. Cited by Brubaker 1981, 19 and 1988-89, 18. 136 Brubaker 1981, 19. 137 Brubaker 1988-89, 18. 138 This article took up the majority of the issue and appears, according to the FE introduction, to have been a

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between capital and gift. While capital is static and used to instigate the growth of wealth, the gift must be kept moving. Gifts are not set aside, but are rather consumed constantly: Gifts form a class of property whose value is only in their use and which literally cease to exist if they are not constantly consumed. When gifts are sold they change their natureThe gift is property that perishes.139 In fact, selling a gift destroys it as a gift, since it removes it from the gift circle.140 Gifts are therefore non-economic, symbolic but nevertheless essential elements of primitive society.141 To sum up, primitive society cannot be analyzed in terms of separate spheres which interact with, or inhibit, each other: Production, technics, the economic: these are not limited in some principled sense by primitive society. They simply do not exist as autonomous activities directed toward a fanticized end called progress.142 There are no separate spheres that have to be constrained by the social. In fact, it is the emergence of these spheres as separate entities that constitutes the dissolution of primitive society itself (see also chapter on 5 Reason).

The Absence of Coercive Political Power

Primitive societies are largely egalitarian, and the power relations that do exist are symbolic and social rather than coercive. The French anthropologist Pierre Clastres, frequently referred to by Anarchist Primitive writers, argues that in primitive societies a distinct political sphere cannot be isolated from the social sphere.143 Clastres disagrees that power can be viewed simply as a social relationship based on command and obedience; rather, it is a much more fluid concept which also includes forms of social power that do not exhibit the standard command-obedience nexus: It is not evident to me that coercion and subordination constitute the essence of political power at all times and in all places.144

significant influence on their developing perspective. P.Solis (Watson/Bradford) notes that it is its discussion of so-called economic activities on a non-economic, or cultural and ethical plane, which is so impressive (Solis 1982, 3). 139 Hyde 1982, 5, 4 emphasis in original. 140 Hyde 1982, 10. 141 Gift exchange is a cultural phenomenon since its meaning lies in the relationship not in the gift itself i.e. not in the object. Dorothy Lee recounts how white traders tried to flood the market with the thin pieces of copper that were of great value to the Bella Coola people. Their perception was that the coppers must have some intrinsic value. But the coppers neither had nor lacked value in themselves. They were symbols...they acquired and conveyed only the value inherent in the situation in which they participated. No on wanted to buy a copper unless he was ready to go through the long and expensive procedure of infusing it with value...Being true symbols, they could acquire valid existence and value only through participation in meaningful situations (Lee 1959, 88). 142 Brubaker 1988-89, 19. 143 Clastres is referred to in, for example, Brubaker 1981, Perlman 1984, Bradford 1993. Clastres 1994, 88. 144 Clastres 1989, 13.

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While he argues that political power is universal (since it is a necessity of any society) he believes it has two forms: coercive and non-coercive. Coercive political power that is, political power of the State is a specific case of a more generalized form. In primitive, i.e. non-State, societies, political power is a function of the social. Although there are chiefs in primitive society, they cannot be seen to be in any way equivalent to the incumbents of statist institutions. Rather, it is more a symbolic role, with the chief acting as a sort of unpaid civil servant.145 In fact, not only is the role unpaid, but it also frequently entails a responsibility of extreme generosity. Greed and power are incompatible; to be a chief it is necessary to be generous.146 In the examples Clastres uses, the chiefs political power comes from his prestige, fairness and verbal ability, i.e. it is a role beneficial to the society as a whole. 147 The chief is in effect the manifestation of the social will, insofar as he has no power outside of that conferred on him by society: Primitive society is the place where separate power is refused, because society itself, and not the chief, is the real locus of power.148 As will be noted in the chapter on History, it is the development of coercive power (the State) that undermines and eventually dissolves primitive society, and allows the emergence of the economy, i.e. production, work, exploitation and classes. This is therefore firstly a political change. Although it is not considered in any great detail, it is significant that part of the egalitarian nature of primitive societies is the equal status of women. John Zerzan notes that there is a growing body of evidence in support of the proposition that relations between the sexes are most egalitarian in the simplest foraging societies.149 Fredy Perlman in Against His-story refers, obliquely, to the importance of women in pre-civilizational Sumer.150

A Participatory & Egalitarian Epistemology

The Anarchist Primitivists argue that there is a primitive outlook on the world which revolves around myth and symbolism. (This will be covered in more depth in chapter 5 on Reason.) This particular outlook allows for societies which are internally egalitarian as well as being ecological, that is they do not engender ideas or practices of domination or exploitation. The primitives have a vision of the world which is radically different from our own: Mythic consciousness apprehends and intervenes in the world, participates in it, but

145 146

Clastres 1994, 89. Clastres 1989, 31. 147 ibid., 30. 148 Clastres 1989, 154. 149 Zerzan 1994, 41. This is also an area of anthropological debate. Mary Mellor, after looking at the evidence for the equal status of women in primitive societies, argues that the case is not proven and that claims for primitive affluence should be questioned since the work done by women was not studied sufficiently (Mellor 1992, Chapter 4). However, see also Leacock 1987, 21 the initial egalitarianism of human society included women. 150 Perlman 1982, 17-18.

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this does not necessitate a relation of domination.151 They are essentially participatory rather than oppositional. In the pages of the FE this perspective is frequently associated with the idea of the sacred.

A Harmonious Ecology
The ecological outlook of primitive societies derives largely from their epistemology, although it is also a function of their lack of accumulation and production. (Bob Brubaker suggests that production is based on the view of nature reduced to raw materials for human use, which is not the case with primitive societies.152) Bradford states clearly that the primitive outlook specifically animism protects the land by treating its multiplicity of forms as sacred things, each with its own integrity and subjectivity. Primal society affirms community with all of the natural and social world.153 while Brubaker suggests that primitive people had an intensely cooperative, subjective, social relationship with nature.154 Primitive culture therefore maintained an integrating relationship with nature, a projection of the egalitarian and reciprocal essence of the society onto nature, which was not perceived as a separate entity. It was not possible to formulate dominating or exploitative concepts about nature since these were not present in society (cf. Bookchin). One way in which culture mediates ecologically with nature is illustrated in Lewis Hydes article on the gift. He writes that Maori priests return a gift of some of the hunters catch back to the forest, a practice we now understand...is ecological.155 Ecology, as a science, is the study of natural cycles, and a key element of the gift is its cyclical nature: So the circle is a sign of ecological wisdom as much as of gift. We come to feel ourselves as one part of a large self-regulating system...the circle of gifts replicates and harmonizes with the cycles of nature and in so doing manages not to interrupt them and not to put man on the outside.156

The Active Limitation of Needs and the Refusal of Power and Civilization
The conventional economic view of humans is that they are naturally acquisitive, that is human wants are infinite.157 Capitalism is therefore the logical outcome of human progress, an attempt
151 152

Bradford 1993, 43. Brubaker 1989-90. 153 Bradford 1993, 43. 154 Brubaker 1988-89, 18. 155 Hyde 1982, 5. 156 ibid. 157 The ultimate purpose of economic endeavour is to satisfy human wants for goods and services. The problem is that whereas wants are virtually without limit, the resources...available at any one time... are limited in supply;

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to satisfy this drive. However, an alternate radical view can also be held which suggests that human well being is dependent on material productivity, or at least that increasing such productivity is a legitimate and ultimately liberating human activity. This is based on the belief that however positive certain aspects of primitive existence might be, these societies are still affected by conflicts that encourage technical and economic changes. These might be struggles against nature, or against other tribes, but these struggles are such that changes will be desirable and therefore adopted whenever possible. An increased ability to meet material needs increases leisure time and consequently allows for the development of culture. However, if these material production is not sufficient to meet the needs of all members of the society, then an elite will tend to control what surplus there is for their own benefit, in the form of a class or proto-class structure. But since these developments, whatever their negative aspects, still bring benefits to most, if not all, the members of the society, they can be seen as progressive: Engels himself points out that for all its magnificence the primitive system had severe limitations, one of which was that the solidarity of the free and equal ended at the tribal borders. In the absence of a specific peace treaty, war prevailed between tribe and tribeand it often ended, not with the subjection, but with the extermination of a tribe. Thus to the slaves slavery meant progress to the extent that those captured in war were at least kept alive instead of being slaughtered.158 If this view is accepted then primitive societies should be subject to a dynamic which will encourage the development of technical means and forms of social organization to increase material production. If they do not innovate or create surpluses, this can only be due to a lack of their ability to do so. The Anarchist Primitivists argue, however, that given what is known of primitive societies, both in their internal structure and relating to their contact with civilization, this view is difficult to sustain. In fact, primitive societies have resisted progress in so far as it represents the emergence of power, economy, production, and technics, and they have also rejected civilization when they have come into contact with it. Diamond notes that primitive peoples have been fascinated, repelled, conquered, administered and
i.e., resources are scarce relative to the demands they are called upon to satisfy (Pass 1988, 154). The question of what constitutes genuine human needs and how this relates to wants is significant, but highly problematic and has been a concern of psychologists, sociologists and e conomists. There are generally accepted basic needs, such as food and shelter, which are necessary to survival, and other possible psychological needs such as love and approval. Beyond those, particularly regarding consumer goods, there are large areas of disagreement. Economists use the concept of felt needs , those needs that are not basic or essential to survival but still seem to be necessary, as another term for wants. Marxs invocation of the communist slogan to each according to their needs certainly included basic needs, but it is not clear that this was all that was intended. While Marx suggested that capitalism promoted inhuman needs, he believed that a socialist society would, through the unalienated application of productive forces, b e organized to meet human needs. Far from being a primitivist, Marx saw the creation of a world of material objects as a positive expression of mans species-nature (Springborg 1981, 113). Hence Marx could argue for the overthrow of capitalism, but the maintenance of advanced forms of production. 158 Fleischer 1969, 70. This is also essentially Bookchins argument.

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decimated by civilization, but they have hardly ever chosen to civilize themselves.159 And as Watson notes of primitive societies, The vast majority of [them] never evolved into state societies they were dragged in by imperial incursions.160 The argument adopted (and developed) by the Anarchist Primitivists is that primitives, either consciously or through unconscious or semiconscious cultural forms (such as myth and ritual) resisted power and the development of technics and production since they were aware that this would entail the destruction of their societies. Clastres notes that primitive society had a very early premonition that powers transcendence conceals a mortal risk for the group, that the principle of an authority which is external and the creator of its own legality is a challenge to culture itself. It is the intuition of this threat that determined the depth of their political philosophy. For, on discovering the great affinity of power and nature, as the twofold limitation on the domain of culture, Indian societies were able to create a means of neutralizing the virulence of political authority.161 Although there are differences in emphasis between Zerzan and the FE, he too stresses the resistance to radical innovation, arguing that there was an immense resistance to abstraction and objectification, as if it was somehow seen for what it was.162 The same is true of agriculture, which was possible but never implemented: Based on observations of surviving tribal peoples, it is apparentthat huntergatherers possessed an enormous and intimate understanding of the nature and ecology of their local places, quite sufficient to have inaugurated agriculture perhaps hundreds of thousands of years before the Neolithic revolution. But a new kind of relationship to nature was involved; one that was evidently refused for so many, many generations.163 The extent of this resistance is such that Clastres argues that a process of the dialectical emergence of the state from within primitive society is not possible: A separate power is not possible in a primitive society, for reasons deriving from their internal organization; that it is not possible for the State to arise from within primitive society.164 The emergence of the State (in the form of overt power relations) and subsequently economic exploitation and classes represents a rupture, a break with primitive society and the creation of a new (state) form, not a development of primitive society, even a dialectical one. As will be noted in the chapter on history, it is the emergence of power which is the crucial development, not the emergence
159

Diamond, 24. See also Perlmans fictional account of the arrival of Europeans in the area now known as Detroit, through the eyes of Native Americans, The Strait, Perlman 1988. 160 Watson 1996, 98. 161 Clastres 1989, 44-5, cited in Bradford 1993, 43. 162 Zerzan 1988, 38. 163 ibid., 39. 164 Clastres 1989, 214. Clastres notes that primitive societies are often viewed anthropologically as being incomplete, since they lack a State (Clastres 1989, 189).

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of the economy. Power dissolves the cultural restraints to economy embedded in primitive society; production and the creation of surpluses was always possible but resisted: All evidence shows a thought-out suppression or institutionalized festive sharing or destruction of surplus. 165 Economic factors were not (and could not be) the determinant in the breakdown of primitive society. This approach, emphasizing resistance to the emergence of power and production, is in effect an argument against the conventional view of humans mentioned above, that they are naturally acquisitive and that radical economic change is desired by primitive societies. Instead it locates the ideas of acquisitiveness, as well as those of need and scarcity, in a concrete cultural context; they do not describe humans per se, but only those under certain historical conditions, i.e. civilization. The primitive represents an example of another dimension of humanity, highlighting the possibility of what Sahlins calls the Zen road to affluence, based on the premises that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting a Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plentywith a low standard of living.166

The Uses of the Primitive167

It could be thought that Primitivism entails a belief in the necessity to, in some way, return to the Stone Age. This does not, however, appear to be what Primitivists actually suggest (although, as will be seen below, there is some ambiguity regarding what is actually implied by certain approaches). Rather they utilize the primitive (particularly its characteristics as outlined above) to act as a demonstration of the possibilities of human existence, as offering actual, practical models of alternative ways of living and different outlooks on the world. The characteristics of primitive society outlined above demonstrate that rather than being the first stage in the development of humanity it is, as Brubaker puts it, an antipode of the civilized world.168 They are clear that they are not suggesting
165

Bradford 1993, 46n. As an example Brubaker refers to the curious belief held by peasants and laborers in present -day southwestern Columbia (sic), that the accumulation of money is unnatural, being a contract with the devil (Brubaker 1981, 18). Woodburn refers to Sanctions on the accumulation of personal possessions (Woodburn 1982, 442) while Hyde refers to the difference between pre-capitalist proverbs and fairy tales and more capitalistic ones such as You cant have your cake and eat it and a penny saved is a penny earned (Hyde, 1982). An amusing example of the cultural restraint of the urge to power is provided by Richard B. Lee. The ox which he presented to the !Kung tribespeople for the Christmas feast was ridiculed as for lacking in meat and fat. Since the animal looked a reasonable size Lee was perplexed, and became worried when he was informed that the absence of meat was such that it could cause a fight between the tribesmen at the upcoming feast. But when the moment of butchering arrived the ox proved to be more than adequately supplied of both meat and fat; the ridicule had been a carefully orchestrated practical joke. There was, however, a serious purpose to the deception. [W]hen a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief of a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants and inferiors. We cant accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle (Lee 1997, 32). 166 Sahlins 1972, 2. 167 This is the title of chapter 6 of Diamond, In Search of the Primitive (1974). 168 Brubaker 1984, 10. Italics in original.

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a return to the Stone Age:

We are not posing the Stone Age as a model for our Utopia nor are we suggesting a return to gathering and hunting as a means for our livelihood.169 Elsewhere they have written: We are not the primitivist party; we have no program calling for a return to a hunter-gathering existencewe do not raise the question of a primitivist critique of modern civilization as a call for a hunter gatherer existence. 170 What they suggest instead is that a study of primitive society can create a new frame of reference, not only highlighting alternative possibilities for human existence, but doing so in a context which shows these possibilities to be actually human, since they have existed, rather than being a utopian projection: 171 An examination of the past reveals not blueprints for a new society but different modes of being which, contrasted with the spiritual hollowness of capitalist society, are suggestive of the rich possibilities of human existence...like poet and anthropologist Stanley Diamond we are engaged in a search for the primitive in which we consider the primitive mode of being a serious and desirable alternative.172 This search should be understood as an exploration and elaboration of a pre-civilized cross-cultural human potential, and employed as a standard by which to criticize civilized existence. [It] is not an effort to idealize a primitive golden age to which we can return. What it entails, rather, is the identification of subtle human attributes which have been lost amid the cacophonies of civilization, and an assessment of their possible relevance to our lives.173 The idea of the primitive, then, is utilized to offer both an alternative view of human nature (of the possibilities of human existence) and to also to show concrete examples of really-existing (and really existed) anarchy: No affirmation of aboriginal lifeways can provide unambiguous answers to the manifold, unprecedented theoretical and practical exigencies humanity faces today But their lifeways, their histories, remind us that other modes of being are possible. Reaffirmation of our primal past offers insight into our history not the only possible insight, to be sure, but one important, legitimate entry point for a reasoned discussion about (and an impassioned reaction to) this world we must leave behind.174

169 170

Fifth Estate 1979c, 6. Brubaker 1983b, 2; Solis 1985, 25. 171 ibid., 25 emphasis deleted. 172 Brubaker 1983b, 2, 4. 173 Brubaker 1981, 18. 174 Watson 1996, 240.

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Zerzan on the Primitive

Zerzans ideal is not The Primitive in general, as represented by diverse forms of social organization, but rather with only a particular form of the primitive a pre-symbolic, completely unalienated form. He contends that there was a period in which humanity lived completely at one with nature a primal unseparated Edenic unity. Numerous myths refer to such a period and these are the generalized memory of an original Eden the reality of which was hunter-gatherer life.175 This Edenic existence continued until the later Upper Palaeolithic, which saw the sudden appearance of symbolic activities.176 For Zerzan it is these symbolic activities which he specifies as Time, Language, Art, Number and (as a material element) Agriculture that represent the fall and the appearance of which led to fully-fledged class and state societies. Time, language, number, art and all the rest of culture, which predates and leads to agriculture, rests on symbolization.177 Referring to the cave paintings of approximately 30,000 years ago, i.e. the emergence of art, Zerzan concludes: Language, myth, religion and art thus advance as deeply political conditions of social life, by which the artificial media of symbolic forms replaced the directly-lived quality of life before division of labor. From that point on, humanity could no longer see reality face to face; the logic of domination drew a veil over play, freedom, affluence.178 So whereas other writers in this milieu see important elements in most, if not all, pre-industrial cultures, Zerzan rejects, or is at best sceptical of, those that embody any of his five canonical forms of alienation. I will now look briefly at each of these forms, and so at Zerzans ideal primitive society.

Time
For Zerzan the consciousness of time represents a clear break with an unalienated, prehistorical condition. The beginning of time literally constitutes the Fall.179 For primitive peoples life was lived in a continuous present, a no-time. 180 Time is an abstraction which only exists when people become separate from it, become alienated from the permanent ecstatic immediate.

Language
As with time, language represents a deep...separation from the natural world; for Zerzan it is the fundamental ideology.181 Both language and ideology are system[s] of distorted communication between two poles and predicated upon symbolization and both also create [ ] false

175 176

Zerzan 1988, 10. Zerzan 1994, 24. 177 Zerzan 1988, 64. 178 ibid., 32. 179 ibid., 7. 180 ibid., 8. 181 ibid., 22.

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separations and objectifications through [their] symbolizing power.182 Through creating a symbolic mediation, both alienate people from the immediate and spontaneous and become a means (if not the primary means) of organizing reality and the world. Through this symbolization of thought language is the key element of culture and therefore fundamental to what civilization is.183 Zerzan sees language appearing at approximately the same time as cave paintings (art), approximately 30,000 years ago. It is not clear exactly what forms of communication primitives used, although he suggests there was an earlier state of more total and authentic communication.184 As to why language evolved, he agrees with the hypothesis that it was invented for lying although he writes elsewhere, Language was elaborated for the suppression of feelings; as the code of civilization it expresses the sublimation of Eros, the repression of instinct.185 Language brings about the possibility of naming, and naming is an act possibly the first act of domination; man became master of things only because he first named them The beginning of humankinds separation from and conquest of the world is thus located in the naming of the world.186

Number
Number which Zerzan considers the most momentous idea in the history of human thought is a rarefied form of language, and therefore suffers from its defects, but to a greater degree: 187 The purpose of the mathematical aspect of language and concept is the more complete isolation of the concept from the senses. Math is the paradigm of abstract thought.188 Prehistoric languages had many emotive and tactile words, but apparently had few number words; one, two, and many, since any more were unnecessary.189 Numbers are an abstraction that are disconnected from an immediate object; if a personal relationship is had with people, animals, or geography, numbers are not necessary to cognitively organized knowledge or experience. As Zerzan notes, even today when a large family sits down to dinner and it is noticed someone is missing, this is not accomplished by counting.190 Because of its high degree of abstraction, number can only be seen as impoverished naming and is one of the categories aimed at control of what is free and unordered.191

182

ibid., 23; Zerzan, 1988, 23-4. Although Zerzan actually refers to speech as being this rather than language as such. 183 ibid., 23. 184 ibid., 29. 185 ibid., 27; 29. 186 ibid., 30. 187 ibid., 38. 188 ibid., 37. 189 ibid., 38. 190 ibid., 39. 191 ibid., 39.

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Art
Art is another form of symbolization and therefore also of separation and alienation: All art, as symbolization, is rooted in the creation of substitutes, surrogates for something else; by its very nature, therefore, it is falsification.192 It first appears in the form of cave paintings around 30,000 years ago, an appearance Zerzan puts down to social anxiety; people felt something precious slipping away.193 Art appears as a response to an increasing social complexity and division of labour; it is a necessary device for holding together a community based on the first symptoms of unequal life.194 It acts as a social glue that was unnecessary in the primal unity. As humans became separated from themselves and nature, art acted as a form of symbolic mediation:195 Art provided the medium of conceptual transformation by which the individual was separated from nature and dominated, at the deepest level, socially.196 This process eventually leads to civilization, a condition in which life ... is lived almost wholly in a medium of symbols.197 Art, then, along with ritual/ceremony and later religion, is both a necessity in the development of division of labour and the emergence of civilization (creating the cultural terrain in which these changes the ascendancy of the symbolic can occur) and a response to it compensation and palliative.198

Agriculture
Zerzan makes a number of charges against agriculture, which include, as Bob Brubaker notes in his defense of agriculture (see Contra Zerzan below), that agriculture is domination over nature, that is always detrimental to nature, that it is the beginning of production, and that it leads to the rise of civilization.199 Culture - in the form of time, language, art, number - leads to agriculture, but in material terms it is agriculture which does the most damage: 200 As the materialization of alienation, agriculture is the triumph of estrangement and the definite divide between culture and nature and humans from each other.201 It is the birth of production and of domestication; in domesticating animals and plants man
192 193

ibid., 57. ibid., 54. 194 ibid., 55. 195 Zerzan sees the agent of this change as being the shaman cf. Bookchin, in chapter 4 History. 196 Zerzan, 1988, 56. 197 ibid., 57. 198 ibid., 58. 199 See Brubaker, 1988-9, 18. 200 Zerzan follows the suggestion that agriculture emerged from religion and ritual rather than out of a need to produce i.e. because of any shortage. Symbolization leads to agriculture, which becomes the materialization of the fallen symbolic order (Zerzan, 1988, 70). 201 ibid., 63.

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necessarily domesticates himself.202 Whereas hunted animals are free and seen as equals domesticated animals are merely chattels. Hunting, unlike agriculture, does not entail a relationship of domination.203 Domestication created material and psychological changes, instigating production and increased division of labour, and a mentality of domination which not only did irreparable damage to the human-nature relationship, but also led to male violence toward women, and their subsequent domestication.204 The environmental consequences of this were enormous. Whereas hunter-gatherers are reliant on nature (and aware of this reliance), the agriculturalist is trying to order nature on his or her terms. There is immediately a possibility of damaging eco-systems through overproduction, monoculture or forest clearing. Farming... created the potential for rapid environmental destruction.205 Overall, the process of domestication, the emergence of the concept of work, as well as the ability to create surpluses, led to civilization. This is not incidental, since food production by its nature includes a latent readiness for political domination.206 Agriculture is, according to Zerzan, the indispensable basis of civilization.207

Contra Zerzan
As already mentioned, Zerzans maximalist position is not one which is shared by all others in the Primitivist milieu. In fact, the publication of his pieces on time, language, art, and agriculture in the Fifth Estate brought a variety of critical replies, which as well showing the differing positions within the milieu, also demonstrate some of the problems with Zerzans approach. 208

Time
Bob Brubaker does not accept [Zerzans] equation that a sense of time equals alienation arguing instead that Zerzan has a nave conception of the primitive.209 Rather than seeing primitives as living (or having lived) in a pristine state of un-alienation and wholeness, Brubaker argues that they experience many of the same troubled human emotions as we do. What is crucial is the social structure of these societies that allows these to be accommodated without generating individual neurosis or social disruption. George Bradford is also critical of Zerzan, noting that the consciousness of time is not the same as the regulation of time there are different forms of time and

202 203

ibid., 63. ibid., 66. 204 ibid., 68. 205 ibid., 71. In addition it provided an inferior diet to that of the hunter-gatherer, leading to a marked decrease in the diversity of available foods and an increase in disease. 206 ibid., 68. 207 ibid., 63. 208 There was no FE response to Zerzans article on Number. A letter regarding this piece from Jason MacQuinn was published in FE 322, although it did not add anything to the debate. MacQuinn (Lev Chernyi) is editor of Anarchy: Journal of Desire Armed. 209 Brubaker 1983a, 7; ibid., 5.

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even foraging has its cycles and seasons, its best times of day.210 The key to the primitive sense of time is implicit in ritual and myth. The sense of timelessness and immediacy can be recreated and relived here, but they also engage in purposeful, planned, temporal activities.211 Bradford concludes: Human life if it is to maintain continuity, cannot be timeless, with out [sic] a past and a future, and ecstasy by definition cannot exist except in contrast to the rather more mundane activities of the rest of life.212

Language
George Bradford argues that Zerzan errs in assuming the worst about language, that it can be adequately described in utilitarian terms. That is, language is seen as a purely instrumental form which has no essentially human purpose separate from domination. Instead, Bradford argues, it is possible to see language as a symbolic interaction, rooted in instinct, which seems to evolve in the human being (...) as the form of its sensuous practice with nature.213 He continues: It seems clear that despite the inevitable appearance of certain instrumental qualities, language began as a form of play, of reciprocity, a parallel sexuality, a joyful... expression of essences and experiences which had no exact signals.214 If language now seems banal and devoid of meaning, that is a reflection of our time. (Zerzan himself says as much when referring to the reduction in the number of verbs used over time.215) Bradford concludes I believe that language is not a separation, but an organ which connects us to the world.216 Brubaker has argued (although not directly as a critique of Zerzan) that Mumfords discussion of the development of language is apposite. Mumford ties language to the human pursuit of significance, and Brubaker argues that it enabled people to create a common universe of meaning. Without the signifying activity of language, which invested objects, actions, and human emotions with meaning, human society could never have developed. Culturerevolves around language.217

Art
Bradford begins we should beware of unitary critiques which suppress the multiplicity of meanings in what is considered to be aesthetic activity.218 Symbolic activity is not a only a human characteristic, but occurs among other animals, so to represent it as a break from a wild and free past (even if this approach is accepted) would appear to be false. Even early human technics demonstrate
210 211

Bradford 1983b, 7. ibid., 8. 212 ibid. 213 Bradford 1984a, 7. 214 ibid. 215 Zerzan 1988, 32. 216 Bradford 1984a, 8. 217 Brubaker 1981, 19. 218 Bradford 1987a, 6.

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an aesthetic sensibility, as do other artefacts of the period: So it may be possible to distinguish what occurred among prehistoric peoples (...) as something other than art, that specialized category that occurs in hierarchic civilization.219 Again, ritual and myth represent a form of human accommodation with nature, and with the realities of life and death. The use of art represents a kind of separation but also the existence of a reality which is layered or multifaceted.220

Agriculture
Brubaker criticizes Zerzans view that agriculture represents a totality, that the rise of civilization was virtually assured once farming replaced hunting and gathering as the dominant mode of human existence. Brubaker argues that symbolism, not agriculture, was the sun around which primitive life revolved.221 This symbolic order maintained not only social harmony between humans but also a harmonious relationship between humans and the rest of nature. Since production did not exist as a separate category, food cultivation was not production but was still located within this spiritual, symbolic order. As such it was neither anti-ecological nor did it represent the beginning of civilization: None of the objective, rationalist, purposive or exploitative characteristics typical of a system of production were present in primitive agriculture. This agriculture served only one purpose: to seal the relationship among individual members of society, and between society and nature.222 Primitive, small-scale domestication is best seen as a variety of predation rather than as the first step to full-scale productivism. These cultures were still located in their eco-system and by-and-large sought peaceful coexistence with their neighbours. Examples of agriculture leading to despoliation of land are found with large-scale production of agricultural-based civilizations, rather than with smallscale primitive societies. As to the question of whether agriculture led directly to civilization, Brubaker reiterates the importance of the symbolic social order, and the importance of the dispersion of power throughout society. In order for power to take hold, and civilization to emerge, it is this social order that has to be dismantled, and agriculture itself is not responsible for this. In other words, culture is the significant element of primitive societies, an entity in its own right, whereas Zerzan reduces culture to a mere reflection of agricultural production.223 George Bradford argues that Zerzans conclusion is in effect that all cultivation ... must be

219 220

ibid., 7. ibid. 221 Brubaker 88-9, 18; ibid.. 222 ibid., 18. 223 ibid., 20.

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abolished if we are to be free.224 Bradford rejects this, and also the idea of a pristine untouched and untouchable nature. All human interaction with the land will bring about changes, but how these changes occur and on what scale depends on the social form: We and the land have both gone through an enormous series of historical changes, and we are not about to abolish all domestication of species and return to the paradise of the Pleistocene.225 Also, as Clastres notes, since the political is preeminent in dissolving or supporting the primitive social form (and if dissolved, facilitating the rise of the economic) it would be expected that different economic forms could exist if the political form were maintained. Clastres argues that this has been the case. The change from hunting to agriculture, and occasionally from agriculture to hunting, appears to have been affected without changing the nature of those societies in any way... In other words, as regards primitive societies, a transformation at the level of what Marxists term the economic infrastructure is not necessarily reflected in its corollary, the political superstructure, since the latter appears to be independent of its material base.226 So a change to agriculture does not necessitate a breakdown of the political structures of primitive society, and hence does not lead directly to production, division of labour, the state and classes. (Bookchin makes a similar point.) Both Brubaker and Bradford are critical of the implicit outcome of Zerzans thesis - that is, how can the current population of the planet survive with a hunter-gatherer economy? Fantasies about an ultimate return to hunting and gathering do little to assist our liberation here, in the real world, writes Brubaker, while Bradford comments: While it is within reason to deconstruct industrialism and mass technics, it is a sad and despairing fantasy to argue for the abolition of plant cultivation (let alone the abolition of language) without the Malthusian mass die-off envisioned by deep ecology catastrophists.227 So although there is a consensus that the Hobbesian view of the primitive should be rejected, and that in so doing a reevaluation of the anarchist political project becomes necessary, there is a considerable difference among Anarchist Primitivists as to exactly what the primitive condition entailed (or entails) and so what such a re-evaluation actually requires. Although they all deny they wish for a return to the stone age, exactly what their critique does require of and in the present is not clear.

224 225

Bradford 1989b, 36. ibid., 37. 226 Clastres 1989, 202, cited in Bradford 1993, 46n. 227 Brubaker 1988-9, 20; Bradford 1989, 38.

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CHAPTER 4 HISTORY
BOOKCHIN ON HISTORY
As will be seen in the chapter that follows, in seeking the roots and causes of oppression and domination in human society Bookchin focuses on hierarchy rather than on class. Bookchins aim is to explain how and why hierarchies emerged from egalitarian organic society, highlighting the countervailing tendencies that always exist in opposition to them, and so show how these hierarchies can be overcome and dissolved. Bookchin does outline what hierarchy means in the context of his social theory: By hierarchy, I mean the cultural, traditional and psychological systems of obedience and command, not merely the economic and political systems to which the terms class and State most appropriately refer. I doubt that the word can be encompassed by a formal definition. I view it historically and existentially as a complex system of command and obedience in which elites enjoy varying degrees of control over their subordinates without necessarily exploiting them.Hierarchy is not merely a social condition; it is also a state of consciousness, a sensibility toward phenomena at every level of personal and social experience.1 Firstly, Bookchin stresses a continuity between humanity and nature: At its inception, human history is largely natural history as well as socialhuman history can never disengage itself or disembed itself from nature. Consequently, the essence of nature diversity, complexity and spontaneity is part of human history: What unites society with nature in a graded evolutionary continuum is the remarkable extent to which human beings, living in a rational, ecologically oriented society, could embody the creativity of nature.2 The potential of humanity is to be nature-rendered-self-conscious, but in order for this to be achieved it must develop self-awareness, and the ability to make choices about social organization, which can only come about through history and this includes an awareness of history, freeing humans from the endless cycles of myth and giving them the ability to both recognize and make progress (toward greater freedom).

Bookchins Theory of History

History is the central element of Bookchins work and permeates all aspects of it. Because of this, any attempt to look at his view of history requires looking at the work in toto. Bookchins view of history is essentially Hegelian, although he differs significantly from
1 2

Bookchin 1991b, 4. Bookchin 1990b, 35.

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Hegel in many areas, as I will show.3 Centrally, Bookchin seeks to introduce an active nature into the Hegelian schema by utilizing an evolutionary perspective. Nature is then able to replace Geist as the container of reason and dialectic is naturalized or ecologized.4 For Bookchin, as for Hegel, History is not a random series of events, however causally connected they may be. History has meaning, but it is a meaning derived from nature, which Bookchin sees as fecund and driven toward greater complexity and diversity. Bookchin follows Hegel in seeing History as being a process of increasing freedom, although his emphasis differs. (On Hegel, see Appendix 5.) The aim of social ecology, according to Bookchin, is to provide answers to the questions What is nature? What is humanitys place in nature? And what is the relationship of society to the natural world?. 5 For Bookchin it is imperative not only that these questions are answered but that the answers avoid dualism, reductionism and monism. Humanity should not be seen as separate from nature but neither should it subsumed in an undifferentiated whole. Our connection to the natural world is organic and cannot be understood adequately using a mechanical model and its associated forms of reason. Bookchins views on freedom and Reason in nature are explored in greater depth in the chapter on Reason (below). Here it is sufficient to say that Bookchin believes that there is an overarching telos in nature which leads towards toward greater self-consciousness and freedom. The process through which this occurs is the dialectic; each phase of evolution contains potentialities for further evolution toward greater diversity and complexity. Each phase emerges from the previous one, and does not replace but rather contains the earlier form within it (as the earlier phase contained the later one, in the form of a potentiality). Like Hegel Bookchin sees this as not merely a method to be used by the observer but an ontological reality; this is how natural evolution occurs.6 However, the dialectic is neither mechanical nor teleological. For Bookchin it is about emerging possibilities not about strictly determined paths (or natural laws). Neither is there an end point which can be reached, since each phase will create contradictions which will have to be overcome through further development.7 For Bookchin the dialectic shows how different elements in nature are connected without them all merging together; it allows interconnection with individuation (or unity-in-diversity). This also helps to answer the questions Bookchin poses above, since now humanity can be seen as both a part of nature but also as being different to it. Culture and society are not then opposed to nature but are part of the evolution of humans out of nature i.e. they are natural. The eventual aim of this natural dialectic is freedom and self-consciousness, which occur with the evolution of humanity out of nature and its own social and cultural development over time. Humanity does not come into the world
3 4

For an outline of Hegels theory of history, see Appendix 5. A Philosophical Naturalism in Bookchin, 1990a, 17; Thinking Ecologically in Bookchin, 1990a, 162. 5 A Philosophical Naturalism in Bookchin, 1990a, 7. 6 ibid., 26, 29. 7 A Philosophical Naturalism in Biehl, 1997, 203 -8.

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self-aware; its consciousness of its position vis-a-vis nature and its awareness of the potentialities of freedom, can only come about over time, as a process, and this process is History. Since it emerges from, and is also a part of nature, it would be expected that the goals of human history are those of natural history, and this is what Bookchin suggests: History... is the rational content and continuity of events (...) that are grounded in humanitys potentialities for freedom, self-consciousness and cooperation, in the selfformative development of increasingly libertarian forms of consociation.8 History... is an account of a development that unfolds as a consequence of the rational elaboration of humanitys potentiality for freedom and self-consciousness.9 When Bookchin refers to rational, he means proceeding according to immanent logic (Reason) of the dialectic of freedom i.e. according to the potentiality for development inherent in any particular historical moment. With humanity there are vastly increased possibilities for freedom, but as said before these have to be developed rather than simply being (they have to become). While Bookchin sees freedom, in a limited and undeveloped form, in nature, he denies that it also contains domination or hierarchy. These are human social constructions and are not found in the natural world.10 There is, therefore, no justification for them in human society, and neither have a part to play in the evolutionary process. So history for Bookchin is concerned with freedom and selfconsciousness. Since history is a rational dialectical process, what is must have emerged or evolved out of what came before (since nothing could have appeared from nothing). Forms of domination appear by reworking existing non-hierarchical, egalitarian social forms, but these forms of domination in themselves open up new possibilities for freedom which can emerge at a later time (although the potential for their emergence does not mean that they must emerge). This historical process is not linear, and includes advances and setbacks over long periods of time; but nevertheless there is an ongoing legacy of freedom: The dialectic of freedom has emerged again and again in recurring struggles for freedomthat have abidingly expanded overall goals of freedom, self-consciousness and cooperation as much in social evolution as a whole as within specific temporal periods.11 Events that are not part of this legacy are simply events, whereas the overall historical flow can be comprehended as a whole: Dialectical logic can hardly be treated coequally with eruptions of brutalitysince in
8 9

Bookchin, 1994a, 4. Bookchin, 1995b, 238, all emphases in originals. 10 Bookchin is not arguing here that there is no killing or ugliness in nature, rather that it is meaningless to describe natural structures in the terms of humanly created ones. An ecosystem can better be described as an interconnected web rather than as a hierarchy. See Bookchin 1991b, 25-7. 11 Bookchin 1994a, 8.

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no sense can episodic capacities be equated with an unfolding potentiality.12 The acts of brutality and cruelty, of the diminution of freedom, are part of the legacy of domination and as such are irrational. Although, as Bookchin points out, it can be easily objected that irrational events, unrelated to this actualization [of the potentiality of freedom], explode upon us at all times, in all eras and cultures, these events, because of their irrationality, are not history; they remain simply events, outside of rational historical development, since they are not rooted in humanitys potentialities for freedom, self-consciousness, and cooperation.13

Rational HistoryFreedom & Progress

Bookchin clearly believes that history has been progressive. He suggests that progress is the advance of freedom...over domination and growing self-consciousness and mutuality.14 Although this occurs in the realm of ideas he also sees a material and social aspect; progress in the overall improvement...of humanitys material conditions of life as well as the development of social institutions that foster continual self-development and cooperation.15 History is not a series of necessarily progressive stages but instead consists of potentialities that either are or are not realized (or actualized). 16 Perhaps the statement which best sums up Bookchins view of freedom, progress and history is that given in Remaking Society: Progress in its truly authentic sense: a widening of social struggles to encompass more and more fundamental issues and a sophistication of the concept of freedom itself.17 Like Hegel, Bookchin locates freedom in the social organization of people, not in the isolated individual. Bookchins freedom is an active freedom, not a realm but a practice.18 It is not freedom from, but freedom to do; it is meaningful social activity. Such freedom is manifested in the institutions of a society: The individual is, indeed, truly free and attains true individuality when he or she is guided by a rational, humane, and high-minded notion of the social and communal good.19 Also like Hegel Bookchin sees a key example of this as being the Greek polis. At one point he goes so far as to equate freedom with active citizenship in the Periklean and Hellenistic sense.20 The significance of Christianity comes from its sense of the historical, replacing the endless cycles of myth with the idea of change and development, development in which humans could play a part; and
12 13

ibid., 7. History, Civilization, Progress in Biehl, 1997, 227. 14 Bookchin, 1994a, 8; Thinking Ecologically in Bookchin, 1990a, 170. 15 Bookchin, 1994a, 9. 16 Bookchin, 1990a, 116. 17 Bookchin 1990b, 95. 18 Bookchin, 1991b, 263. 19 Bookchin, 1990a, 120. 20 Bookchin, 1991b, 187.

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from its concept of a universal humanitas, of all people being equal in the eyes of God. Although the official church tended to be authoritarian and elitist, these ideas stimulated heretical Christian sects through the ages, from the Cathars through the Gnostics to the Puritans, all of whom added their own contribution to the idea of freedom. (See below) Examining Bookchins narrative shows this pattern. History is the rational emergence and development of a greater freedom, both in theory and in practice. But there is also a legacy of domination, which is irrational but at the same time is the result of immanent social conflicts which necessitate the changes this legacy brings about, and so also contributes to the expansion of freedom. Bookchin also suggests that history is punctuated with turning points, crucial times of revolutionary change which offer the possibility to move rapidly to a greater freedom.

Irrational HistoryDomination
Although hierarchies have material form i.e. state, government, armies, classes, they are at least equally social, cultural, political and psychological. Bookchin does not claim that economic and class factors are unimportant. He has argued recently that he intended the concept of hierarchy to enlarge and broaden existing concepts of social oppression, rather than replace a class analysis completely.21 Rather than class being the predominant historical oppression, Bookchin argues that hierarchy preceded classes, and that classes emerged from preexisting hierarchical structures. Bookchins view of organic or preliterate societies has been explored in the chapter on the Primitive. Broadly (and without taking into account the ambiguities in Bookchins view) he sees them as essentially egalitarian and based around social norms of usufruct and complementarity, and in a more-or-less harmonious relationship with wider nature (although he does not consider them perfect or exemplary). Bookchin stresses that the origins of hierarchy and domination do not lie in the human struggle with nature. It was not the case that humanity, in order to cope with difficult natural conditions, created social hierarchies and classes to overcome them. Rather, early humanity lived in a largely harmonious relationship with the rest of the natural world, and except in times of famine or drought, their material needs were met. Consequently, the outlook of organic societies toward nature was benign. It was the breakdown of the internal, egalitarian social structures of these societies, and the emergence of the domination of humans by other humans, that led to socially created scarcity and ideologies that cast nature as unyielding. So the attempt to dominate nature antedates, and is in fact caused by, existing intra-human forms of domination. Bookchin argues that before class society could develop these fundamental non-hierarchic elements in organic society had first to be undermined. That is, political forms had to develop in order to facilitate the emergence of proto-class and eventually class systems: Even before material surpluses began to increase significantly, the roles each individual played began to change from egalitarian relationships into elites based
21

Bookchin 1999, 271.

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increasingly on systems of obedience and command.22 These structures must be regarded as more fundamental than classes. They were hierarchies rooted in age, sex, and quasi-religious and quasi-political needs that created the power and material relationships from which classes were formed.23 In developing his approach he stresses the limitations of a strict materialist interpretation of history. Technological changes, such as the plough, were a necessary condition for the emergence of cities, classes, and exploitation but they were never a sufficient condition. Other, psychological and cultural, factors were at least as important. 24 Two points are crucial to Bookchins historical schema: first, the process of the emergence of hierarchies is very gradual, and can only happen by subtly utilizing existing social forms in order to undermine them. States do not appear fully-formed, but emerge gradually from out of organic society, and frequently develop only into an incomplete hybrid of egalitarian and hierarchical forms. Second, in order to develop and function, the State needs a psychological, as well as a material, dimension: The State is not merely a constellation of bureaucratic and coercive institutions. It is also a state of mind, an instilled mentality for ordering reality.25 Rule through force alone is difficult to sustain for any length of time, so the cooperation of the oppressed classes is required for the continuation of state authority (cf. Perlman, below) But this change in perspective, of outlook, can only occur as a gradual process of cultural change: Hence, neither spontaneous or immanent explanations of the States origins, economic accounts of its emergence, or theories based on conquest () explain how societies could have leaped from a stateless condition to a State and how political society could have exploded upon the world.26 This process of change involves the altering or reworking of the existing culture, slowly adapting it to the emerging forms of domination and hierarchy, eroding memory of the original, organic society:27 From time immemorial, hierarchies and classes have used shifts in emphasis to reverse social relations from systems of freedom to those of rule, without dropping a single term from the vocabulary of organic society.28 It is worth noting, however, that despite Bookchins claim that he is not seeking to replace a class analysis, neither class nor class struggle feature greatly in his work. Partly this is because Marxs work is still seen by Bookchin as crucial, and so there would be little point in re-examining this area
22

Bookchin 1991b, 74. Note the problematic use of language the phrase Even before suggests no connection between the events, as if material surpluses would have increased independently of the breakdown of egalitarian relationships. 23 ibid., 74. 24 ibid., 96. 25 ibid., 94. 26 ibid., 95. 27 ibid. 28 ibid., 247.

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in the light of Marxs still-relevant contributions. But it is also the case that Bookchins emphasis is in part the result of his wider political aims and the period in which he was writing. In this respect he was attempting to develop a new political agenda that moved beyond the crass materialism of many Marxist groups and parties that were active at that time. For Bookchin it is not possible to reduce what are in effect trans-class issues, such as environmental problems and the oppression of women, to Marxist economic categories. He was therefore offering his work as in part a refutation of such attempts, as well as defining a political agenda for the New Social Movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, it should be noted that Bookchin uses a processual approach, which he refers to as dialectical (though the extent to which it in fact is such is open to question and will be explored later in the chapter). He writes of The Ecology of Freedom: This book does not march to the drumbeat of logical categories, nor are its arguments marshaled into a stately parade of sharply delineated historical eras. I have not written a history of events, each of which follows the other according to the dictates of a prescribed chronologythis book focuses on a few general ideas that grow according to the erratic and occasionally wayward logic of the organic rather than the strictly analytic.29

The Legacy of Domination

The legacy of domination begins with the undermining of the norms of organic society. Organic society in its natural, egalitarian state is essentially domestic, that is based around social necessities such as obtaining and preparing food, birth, and child-rearing. The threat to this comes ultimately from the creation of a separate social sphere, which develops into a civil sphere. This is not necessarily a threat to the domestic orientation of the community, since both spheres could coexist; but it is within this social sphere that hierarchical differentiation first appears, and it is this process that eventually brings it into conflict with the domestic sphere, and the community at large. The engineers of the first chink in the egalitarian armour were the elders. Because they did not have a secure material position the potential harshness of nature was a threat to them, since they would be the first to be sacrificed if the well-being of the tribe was threatened by difficult material conditions. To increase their importance they created institutional roles for themselves, which developed over time into a nascent hierarchy based on age, manifested through rituals such as initiation ceremonies. But the elders fear of nature permeates the tribe at large, and encourages the use of rituals and magic to gain some control over certain aspects of nature. This provides the opportunity for power to crystallize around the shaman, a key figure in the development of hierarchy, since his is an elitist position available only to a chosen few he in effect professionalizes

29

Bookchin 1991b, 13. Process philosophy has been defined as The doctrine that either what is is becoming, or that what is ultimately consists in change, or both. Honderich 1995, 720 s.v. process philosophy. Bookchins stress on development rather than simply change leads him to reject the subs umption of dialectic under mere process philosophy. See Bookchin 1990a, 170.

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power.30 But the shamans own position is insecure, since he cannot in fact control nature, and he is therefore forced to seek alliances with other nascent power groupings, or to encourage their emergence where they do not exist. Through his quasi-religious role he creates the ideological mythos that supports the creation and expansion of power structures in organic society, validating authority in the elders, and amplifying the masculine temperament of those communities that are patricentric, so encouraging violence and aggression.31 The shamans attempts to secure his position generate a belief that nature is manipulable, that animals can be controlled and brought to the hunter. This undermines the sense of mutuality and symbiosis, the first of a series of reorientations of outlook and perception, of subjective changes, which are central to the development of hierarchy. Bookchin refers to various ways of mentalizing the entire realm of experience along lines of command and obedience which he calls epistemologies of rule.32 The establishment of these quasi-hierarchies fatally undermines the unity of organic society, and begins the process which will eventually lead to both statist hierarchies and economic classes. At this point, however, these developments still occur within the existing structure of organic society, and the norms of complementarity and usufruct are sufficient to supress the emergence of repressive economic structures. This is a preclasspreeconomic, period in social development, where there is no property, not even in the form of a primitive communism.33 The shaman is replaced by the priestly corporation, and this in turn by institutionalized theocracy. A warrior elite also emerges, although it is not entirely clear from Bookchins work why this is so. He suggests that in a domestic society men feel undervalued and so tend to evolve an identity of their own, an independent social arena, or civil sphere. Although this sphere need not be detrimental to society as a whole, it can be oriented toward warfare, arrogance, and subjugation.34 He suggests that the growing influence of the male civil sphere was due to an increase in inter-tribal violence and warfare. The great hunter became a great warrior, who gained prestige and therefore social power in the civil sphere. This big man figure itself tends to become entrenched and autocratic; if he utilizes his blood relatives as allies and supporters a dynasty develops; if he uses a group of companions and advisors, a monarchy and associated aristocracy can appear.35 These warrior societies become politically centralized and militaristic. Nearby communities are to react aggressively or defer. Like Perlman, Bookchin argues that Sooner or later, both [communities] would have had to confront each other as tyrannical chiefdoms.36 But, also like Perlman, Bookchin
30 31

Bookchin 1991b, 83. ibid., 85. 32 ibid., 89. 33 ibid., 86. 34 Bookchin 1991b, 251. 35 Bookchin 1990b, 57-60. This argument assumes that the figure of the great hunter was indeed significant in organic society. See also the chapter on The Primitive. 36 Bookchin 1991b, 252.

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suggests that most communities simply moved away to avoid this fate. The emerging warrior elite proved more destructive to organic society than the theocracies; whereas the priests gained their power through mediation and persuasion, the warrior relies on coercion. Whereas the priests could have power within a democratic clan structure, this is not possible with the warriors. The eventual result was the replacement of the priests by warriors, who took their place at the head of the newly formed proto-statist institutions that gradually undermined and eventually replaced the clan or kinship system.37 As the warriors carved out their own civil sphere in the cities, the old ties of organic society became increasingly tenuous and vulnerable to the emergence of new and overt class structures. It is worth noting briefly the role of the city in Bookchins schema. It is the arena where social rather than biological affinities are preeminent, and so where the significance of the kinship group and blood-tie is decreased. The strength of the blood oath, crucial to organic society, was such that only the emergence of civic ties, which could replace blood ties, could undermine it.38 Where there might seem to be a large number of possible significant developments in the legacy of domination over the centuries until the rise of capitalism and the state in Europe, Bookchin mentions only two; the religious-political compact of the Bedouin, and the repressive rationality of the Greeks. Both are seen as contributing to the development of the epistemologies of rule that were to profoundly influence European culture. Bookchin himself is brief here, but his point is twofold. Both currents seek to deal with vital human issues history, coherence and rationality but both also resort to justifying oppression and a separation from nature; the Bedouin in the form of a nameless, allpowerful god to which humanity must be subservient, the Greeks in seeing the polis as an ordered space against the barbarian world outside and creating an epistemological tradition which universalized hierarchy as rational.39 These two streams formed the basis for the European intellectual tradition. There is, however, one other crucial strand, which is necessary for the success of the legacy of domination. That is the necessity of humanity to internalize, through guilt and self-renunciation, a psychology of self-repression, a state within. It is through this that the State can rule without continuous recourse to physical violence.40 Morality is a crucial factor in the evolution of repressive authority structures, a morality that Bookchin argues appeared first in the necessity of deference to the patriarch, who embodied in a social form the very system of authority that the State later embodied in political form.41 Summing up his initial position on the development of hierarchy, Bookchin writes: The legacy of domination thus develops as a manipulation of primordial institutions and sensibilities against each other, often by mere shifts of emphases in social reality
37 38

See ibid., 93-4. See Bookchin 1991, 90; 1992, 30. 39 Bookchin 1991b, 111. 40 ibid., 112-113. 41 ibid., 120.

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and personal sensibility. Abstraction and generalizationare used not to achieve wholeness or completeness but to produce a divisive antagonism in the objective and subjective realms. Other possible epistemologieshave been ignored.42 Bookchin also applies this process to the emergence of the state and capitalism. The state he sees as arising less through violence and coercion than through taking over and politicizing social functions the state is a hybridization of political with social institutions.43 As this process continues social and political life become inextricably intertwined and the state develops a political epistemology. When he looks at the emergence and rise to ascendancy of capitalism, Bookchin rejects the idea that it evolved out of feudalism: Capitalism was not born within the womb of the new European feudalism and there was no inevitability about its birth.44 Medieval Europe consisted of a mixed economy of serfs, tenant farmers, and yeomen [and] craftsmen... who co-existed with the capitalists.45 The traditional resistances to unrestrained commerce still existed, manifested particularly in the theory and practice of the confederated citystate. Although there were emerging class struggles within the cities as trade increased throughout Europe, equally these differences were put aside as all classes united as citizens against outside threats. In addition, these cities frequently formed confederations or leagues, often with the aim of defending the rights of the cities against the challenge of absolutism: In this sense [Europe] was not feudal merely in the sense of being pre-capitalist, but contained within it a variety of historical possibilities.46 Bookchin refers to this as a rich, highly variegated, and fluid period in history, when societal development could have followed very different directions from the one toward which it moved.47 It was in England that capitalism achieved its historic breakthrough, although even this was dependent on various social, political and economic reasons and was therefore not an unavoidable fact of history:48 It was the extraordinary combination of technical advances with the existence of a highly variegated society, relatively free of the cultural constraints to trade that prevailed in antiquity, that gave economic ascendancy to the capitalistic component of the mixed economy over all its other components.49 Bookchin also suggests that religion played a crucial role, with Puritanism creating the appropriate psychological conditions to promote capitalist expansion, as opposed to the Catholicism of, for
42 43

ibid., 112. ibid., 124. 44 Bookchin 1990b, 133. 45 ibid., 87. 46 Bookchin 1992, 133f. 47 ibid., 135. 48 ibid., 91. 49 Bookchin 1992, 204.

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example, Spain. However, he also imputes a broader significance to Christianity in general, including Catholicism: Perhaps the most important ideological factor to foster the development of capitalism in European society was Christianity, with its strong emphasis on individuation, its high regard for the redemptive role of labor, its elevation of an abstract Supernature over a concrete nature, and its denial of the importance of community as distinguished from the universal Papal congregation.50 In addition to these ideological factors the infrastructure of Europe created a safe-space for proto-capitalist development; Italian merchants created a network of business houses, credit institutions, trading depots and warehouses, which linked the Italian city-states with the towns of northern Europe. This was supplied and protected by the Venetian navy. This growing trade began to link Europe economically, at the same time undermining traditional relationships.51

Market Economy & Market Society

Bookchin argues that although before the Second World War capitalism represented a market economy, this economy did not penetrate into the lives of workers beyond the farm or factory where they worked. Capitalism was not a pure system but a hybrid which contained a vast number of preindustrial features, a largely preindustrial everyday life of family relationships, personal associations, and community ties.52 There was an authentic and contesting proletarian culture that was still rooted in the pre-capitalist world, a culture that could offer a resistance and an alternative to capitalism: Historically, the power of preindustrial lifeways to survive and preserve a moral sense of social life depended on the existence of an underground culture in towns, neighbourhoods, and cities to countervail the power of the market and the official culture. They depended, in effect, upon the power of a popular culture to resist the elite culture and the inability of the elite culture to penetrate the popular one.53 However, after the Second World War this alternative culture began to be undermined as capitalism and the state penetrated increasingly into society at large: By the middle of the present century, large-scale market operations had colonized every aspect of social and personal life.54 The market economy, which had previously largely been confined to the factories and financial centres, expanded into a market society The market society that we call capitalism.55 In a market society, the values of capitalism permeate popular culture such that capitalism becomes itself the only
50 51

Bookchin 1991b, 252. Bookchin 1992, 130-3. 52 Kick It Over 1985, 17; Bookchin 1995b, 153. 53 Bookchin 1992, 223. 54 Bookchin 1997, 94. 55 Bookchin 1989a, 21; Bookchin 1997, 90.

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(or at least, by far the predominant) culture. It penetrates and undermines human subjectivity, and hollows out both community and personality itself.56 Whereas proletarian and popular culture carried with it the memory of previous ways of being, the market society seems to have obliterated from most peoples memory another world that once placed limits on growth, stressed cooperation over competition, and valued the gift as a bond of human solidarity.57 The market society has produced a totally commodified world in which people resemble the very commodities that they produce and consume.58 The proletariat does not offer an authentic resistance to capitalism since it has been domesticated through the deadening industrial routine of the factory to the point where it is now conditioned to managerial hierarchy and rationalized production techniques:59 The working class has become completely industrializedIt has no sense of contrast, no clash of traditions, and none of the millenarian expectations of its antecedents. Not only has the mass media commandeered it and defined its expectations (), but the proletariat as a class has become the counterpart of the bourgeoisie as a class, not its unyielding antagonistthe working class is simply an organ within the body of capitalism, not the developing embryo of a future society.60 However, there is a further development which is parallel to the spread of capitalism; that is the penetration of society by the state. This centuries-long, gradual process details the spread of the state in both a subjective form (the acceptance of hierarchy and the legitimacy of the state), and an administrative form (the replacement of social functions by state or political ones). The eventual result of this, argues Bookchin, is the growing together of the State and society and with it, a dissolution of the family, community, and mutual aid, and social commitment:61 Society is thus reorganized in such a way that it becomes indistinguishable from the StateDomination fulfills its destiny in the ubiquitous, all-pervasive State.62 What has largely replaced the sinews that held community and personality together is an all-encompassing, coldly depersonalizing bureaucracy.63 So at the end of the twentieth century Bookchin sees a society that is devoid of community, which is completely compromised by both capitalism and the state, in which individuals very personalities are moulded by bureaucracy and the language of the market. Not only does the proletariat no longer offer any opposition to capitalism, but few if any areas of society are free from the influence of capitalism and state. Society is both State as well as market. Domination has

56 57

Bookchin 1990b, 137. Bookchin 1989a, 21. 58 Bookchin 1991, xviii. 59 Bookchin 1990b, 134. 60 ibid., 132. 61 Bookchin 1991b, 139. 62 ibid., 127;139. 63 Bookchin 1991b, 138.

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sedimented over every aspect of social life.64

The Legacy of Freedom

Bookchin argues that, as a concept, freedom does not exist in organic society: Lacking any institutionalized structure of domination, they have no way of defining a condition that is still intrinsically part of their social lives.65 Indeed, throughout a large part of its history, freedom conceived as a cluster of ideals and practices has existed unconsciously, in the form of unstated customs and humanistic impulses.66 It was only when this practically existing freedom was challenged by tendencies toward domination and hierarchy that it became articulated. But the unconscious nature of these freedoms, the absence of freedom as a concept, actually encouraged the emergence of domination, since these communities were naively open to manipulation by elders, shamans, and the like. Bookchin describes freedom as a voyage of discovery, that begins with its early practice and limits in organic society, its negation by hierarchical and class civilizations, and its partial realization in early notions of justice.67 It should be noted that Bookchins journey, in The Ecology of Freedom, is a rapid one Odysseus on p146; through Babylon, Hebrew Palestine and Athens to Rome on p152; Archilochus on p153 to Epicurus on p157; Pauline Christianity by p159, Machiavelli, Locke and Hobbes by p161; Bentham on p163, John Stuart Mill on p165. It is questionable whether such a swift and cursory examination is sufficient to allow Bookchin to fully explain his ideas. Broadly, Bookchin suggests that usufruct, complementarity and the irreducible minimum constituted a system he refers to as the equality of unequals that is, in organic society differences between individuals are recognized and compensated for. (Bookchin refers to this as authentic freedom.68) Although this was undermined as hierarchies and classes developed, it was still a central principle of early societies. Bronze-age warrior societies were already class societies but increasing trade required a new ethos which challenged earlier, egalitarian principles: the notion of equivalence.69 This was manifested as Justice, which introduced the notion of the inequality of equals i.e. a theoretical equivalence that concealed real inequalities. The principle of compensation for real inequality is removed. However, what justice achieved was breaking the barriers raised by primordial and archaic parochialism legal rights were able to include the outsider or stranger, thus
64

Bookchin 1991b, 124. Given the Euro-American focus of Bookchins work, the society he is referring to directly is that of the United States, and also Western Europe. But given the global nature of capitalism this analysis could presumably be applied to other countries. 65 ibid., 140. 66 ibid., 142. 67 ibid. 68 ibid., 144. 69 ibid., 147. Bronze-age is post-neolithic.

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paving the way to a more inclusive understanding of humanity.70 The arena for this was the city, where the biological forms of affinity can be replaced by social and political forms. Bookchin points to the Emperor Caracallas edict conferring citizenship on the entire nonslave male population as juridical recognition of the formal disappearance of the blood group into a universal humanitas that sees a common genesis for every free individual.71 There is, however, another side to the emergence of a new freedom, a new form of assertive autonomous individuality, which develops particularly through the demands of the civitas for citizens to perform civic functions. The expansion of the polis into the cosmopolis causes conflicts within the psychology of the individual, since they are no longer able to comprehend the whole of their living space easily. While this generates neuroses, it also forces the development of a new form of subjectivity which anchors the individual not within the small, and potentially parochial polis, or even the new, expanding cosmopolis, but rather in the kosmos. This expansion is marked by the Stoic Epicetus ideal of a universal citizenship, an ideal reworked in turn by Christianity into a new sensibility of heightened subjectivity and personal involvement, evident particularly in Augustines Heavenly City.72 While freedom began to emerge through the idea of justice and in the form of the autonomous individual, it was still not freedom as an articulated concept. Despite the appearance of the word freedom in Sumerian texts, and some popular revolts to restore the norms of organic society that occurred in antiquity, in terms of a coherent theory and practice it is not until the emergence of Christianity that freedom appears as a significant factor in history. For Bookchin, the idea of utopia is a measure of the consciousness of the possibilities of freedom at a particular time in history. To that extent, the history of the concept of freedom is the history of the articulation of what freedom could be, and the fact that it is a humanly attainable possibility. Christianity has played a crucial role in the articulation of utopias throughout the history of Western Europe. Equally, there has been an ambiguity in Christian teaching, which from Augustine onward has contained a current in opposition to political authority. This oppositional current has provided fuel for chiliastic movements which opposed organized religion and some of which sought the abolition of Church and State. Bookchin argues that the essence of Christianity, at least in its non-statist and nonauthoritarian form, is a belief in the immanence of radical social re-organization, that is of a Utopia on earth. Initially, this was believed to be primarily in the hands of God, and as such only lead to political quietism and martyrdom. However, these chiliastic visions never disappeared entirely from Christianity, and reemerged as part of the Christian radicalism of the Middle Ages. The cultural
70 71

ibid., 150. ibid., 152. This occurred in 212 AD. Bookchin admits that Caracalla was only really inter ested in expanding the empires tax basebut still sees this as creating a worldly sense that all human beings, even slaves, belonged to the same species (Bookchin 1990b, 82). Perlman also refers to this: Emperor Caracalla imposes yet another burdensome tax by calling all subjects Citizens and therefore accountable for citizenship tax (Perlman 1984, 117). Both therefore recognize the ultimate motive of allocating citizenship to raise taxes, but Bookchin sees this as having a positive side. 72 Bookchin 1991b, 159.

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tradition of the equality of unequals was never entirely eradicated and remained a part of society, even if largely underground. When the feudal system of authority broke down the oppressed often returned to this egalitarian system. Bookchin sees this as essentially quietistic, since it was focused on a past that was not in reality recoverable. But with the historical orientation of Christianity, to look back to the Garden of Eden was actually to look forward to its recovery.73 But utopias were increasingly not only located historically, but also geographically; that, is they existed in space. The Garden of Eden was an earthly garden, existing in nature itself, not in heaven (an example of this is the English utopia Land of Cockaygne). As a real place, it was somewhere that could exist in reality. Clearly, if utopia could exist in place and time, it (and so freedom) was a realistic goal of radical movements. There were, however, limitations on what could be achieved at that time. Bookchin notes that these utopias tended to fall into one of two categories, either consumerist or productivist. Consumerist utopias focus on freedom to consume, are not concerned with work or technics, and are essentially hedonistic. Nature is seen as bountiful. Productivist utopias, at this time, are ascetic and see nature as ungiving; equality is gained through denial. That Bookchin sees this as a function of technological inadequacy is made clear in the discussion of Technology that follows later. These utopian visions inspired a Christian radicalism that entered into disputes with the Church which were more than simply doctrinal; they involved a challenge to the hierarchic structure of the Church, demonstrating in fact a grossly underrated anarchic dimension.74 These movements became laboratories for experiments in freedom, with some proclaiming a religion of hedonism and calling for a life based on pleasure and desire. Some of these strands, such as Gnosticism with its search for inner knowledge, were essentially apolitical, but there were overtly political, communist strands in Christianity, manifested in various strands of nonconformity. Bookchin refers to an ethical arena for godly citizenship, an arena in which the individual was answerable only to God. 75 The revolutionary implications of this doctrine appeared when the Reformation forced social activism onto what was an otherwise essentially spiritual agenda, creating a quasireligious anarchy in opposition to Papal authoritarianism. 76 Bookchin argues that this trend faded from the Enlightenment, when potentially liberatory currents became focused on nationalism, property ownership and institutional centralism. This was particularly noticeable in the replacement of the closely-knit, intimate and decentralized political grouping which had characterized earlier movements by the Party, simply a mirror-image of the nation-state.77 But where this radical thrust tended to die out, others elements emerged to strengthen and expand the concept of freedom. What the late-eighteenth and nineteenth century did was provide freedom with a solidly naturalistic, technologically viable, and solidly
73 74

ibid., 174. ibid., 200. 75 ibid., 186. 76 ibid., 187. 77 ibid., 189.

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material base.78 Bookchin goes so far as to argue that this period represents a possible turningpoint of history, where a move to a harmonious community was a real possibility. That this did not occur was in part due to the power of capitalist and state material force, but also in part to capitalist and statist ideology infiltrating the revolutionary movement, and encouraging an economistic and scientistic outlook that ignored the possibilities of choice, freedom, and imagination. However, despite this failure the undercurrent of resistance was maintained. In particular, the earlier forms of consociation, the essential communal character of cities, were maintained by workers, both individually and through labour movements, that retained a vital continuity with precapitalist lifeways and values.79 But after the Second World War, even this contestation began to atrophy, as the market economy began to mutate into a market society, permeating those areas of life previously outside of the domain of state and capitalism. In addition, urbanization relegated cities to a relatively minor role vis-a-vis the nation-state.80 (This process has been outlined in the section on Market Economy and Market Society, above.) Given his view of the expansion of capitalism and the deterioration of proletarian culture, it would not be surprising if Bookchin remained pessimistic about the chances of radical social change. But instead he argues that we are at another turning point in history, with greater opportunities than ever before to move to a post-scarcity society. Why does Bookchin see this period as one in which a liberated society of free individuals could emerge and be sustained? What are the historical conditions he discerns in the present, the current manifestations of the Legacy of Freedom? And, as he puts it himself, what is the historical subject that will create a free society? What is the context in which that subject is formed?.81 The first reason for optimism on Bookchins part is that capitalism has forced issues of economics, technics and production onto the radical agenda. This cannot now be ignored, and any utopian project must be productivist, that is must get to grips with how the necessities of life will be produced after the revolution. Capitalism has forced the material onto the stage of the ethical, and this concern with work, technics, and needs must now be confronted in order that it may be transcended. This is not a purely negative requirement, since it is now materially possible to expand the idea of freedom to encompass the best of both ascetic and hedonistic alternatives a freedom that is ecological, rational, and artistic.82 The second reason is that this material perspective, which arose in the nineteenth century, can be liberated from the purely scientistic and economistic by the utopian current had become lost, but reemerged with the New Left and counterculture in the 1960s. In fact, not only was the essence of pre-Marxian socialism rediscovered, but it was expanded further into both

78 79

Bookchin 1990b, 124. Bookchin 1992, 214. 80 Bookchin differentiates between the City, as an arena of citizenship, and Urbanization. See Bookchin 1992, Chapter 1. 81 Bookchin 1991b, 214. 82 ibid., 217; 218.

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political and cultural domains. Although the New Left and counterculture were a failure in bringing about a permanent revolutionary change, they left a legacy that was crucial for the social movements that came later. Of these the most important, for Bookchin, were those based around ecology and feminism, which promised an even more expanded and inclusive view of freedom. The key for Bookchin here is his own work on social ecology, which he refers to as an attempt made in 1964 by anarchist writers to rework libertarian ideas along broadly ecological lines [which] anchored ecological problems for the first time in hierarchy, not simply in economic classes.83 What was crucial about both social ecology and early feminism was this focus on hierarchy, and this represented a strand of radicalism that was crucial in articulating a new, expanded liberatory project. By focusing on all forms of hierarchy, and the environmental degradation that would affect everyone, these movements offered the possibility of creating a constituency that could overcome class and other forms of social division. For Bookchin here was the historical possibility for the reemergence of the People as a revolutionary force. What was particularly significant was that these two movements were manifestations (and perhaps foci) of a wider reaction against expanding state bureaucracies and global corporations, that is a desire for re-empowerment at a local level. Indeed, Bookchin claims not only that a resurgent localism is desirable but that it is a reality: Localism, in fact, has never been so much in the air as it is today a latent dual power seems to be emerging today in which the local base of society is beginning to challenge the authority of its seemingly invulnerable state and corporate apex.84 This period, then, from the 1960s to the 1990s at least, represents another of historys turning points, in which the possibilities (both material and subjective) exist for a concerted effort to move to a non-hierarchical, ecological society: The ideals of freedom are now in placeand they can be described with reasonable clarity and coherence.85 With a combination of a highly developed idea of freedom, modern technology and a radical municipal politics, an ecological society is a possibility. Such a society would represent a further advance in the theory and practice of freedom, being a transcendence of both first nature and second nature into a new domain of a free nature, a nature that in a truly rational humanity reached the level of conceptual thought.86 With this achieved, humanity would not simply achieve its own potentiality, but would have achieved
83 84

Bookchin 1990b, 154; 155. Bookchin 1992, 255; 256. 85 Bookchin 1990b, 170. 86 Bookchin 1997, 224, emphasis in original. Bookchin refers to the natural world (largely) untouched by humans as first nature and society as second nature, stressing the emergence of society as itself a part of nature (Bookcin 1990b, 26).

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its potentiality as nature-rendered-self-conscious. For Bookchin, this implies that humanity could be a rational expression of natures creativity and fecundity [and] that human intervention into natural processes could be as creative as natural evolution itself.87

Ambiguities and Problems Narrative and Evidence

There are many problems with Bookchins theory of history, both in terms of his metahistory of progress toward greater freedom, and the narrative of actual events that he uses to support this. Dealing with the narrative first, the main problem can be summed up as, Is enough sufficiently unambiguous historical, anthropological and archaeological evidence ever available to support anything other than conjecture?. Bookchin apparently thinks the answer to this question is yes, since he bases his thesis on the evidence he presents. But as one (otherwise sympathetic) reviewer noted, The scenario he constructs is not wholly persuasive, and his picture of preliterate peacefulness and egalitarianism is homogenizedeven sanitized. He downplays the importance of technoeconomic factors, but the corresponding emphasis he places on age stratification as the key to domination is unconvincing and suffers from such a paucity of evidence that it reads at times like a Just-So story.88 This is particularly the case in the book Remaking Society, a primer of Bookchins ideas here he writes that gerontocracy probably preceded patricentricity, and later that status, as I have already pointed out, appeared between age-groups, but offers no references or supporting evidence in either place. 89 Notably, in the first statement he uses the qualification probably. In his introduction to the 1991 edition of The Ecology of Freedom he comments that, of the chapter in which he articulates his views of gerontocracy and hierarchy, I would want to revise nothing: My treatment of the immanent, indeed dialectical origins of status relations in early societies has stood up beyond my greatest expectations, as recent data indicates. I would only note that all the evidence I could cull gives chronological priority to the emergence of gerontocracies over patriarchies.90 He also suggests that his work on The Emergence of Hierarchy traces a logical and anthropologically verified development toward a complex hierarchical society.91 However, he gives no references to support this statement, except Janet Biehls book Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics which criticizes the perceived ecofeminist focus on the primacy of patriarchy.92 Despite the lack of evidence that Bookchin provides, he seems to suggest that the scenario he describes can be equated
87 88

ibid. Emphasis in original. For a critique of this position see Eckersley, 1992b. Field 1984, 161. 89 Bookchin 1990b, 55; ibid., 62. 90 Bookchin 1991a, lvii. 91 ibid., xxiv. 92 See Biehl 1991 42-56.

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with fact. Having outlined his argument in Remaking Society he writes, The causes of hierarchy, then, are not a mystery.93 Elsewhere he seems to base his entire political philosophy on his historical interpretation: If this interpretation of human consociation and its origins is sound, it may provide the basis for a reconstructive approach to an ecological society.94 If, of course, this interpretation is not sound, this would appear to cast doubts on the whole of Bookchins thesis. There is also some uncertainty about the status of class and class struggle. Bookchins argument that hierarchies preceded, and actually made way for, classes is clear enough, but their subsequent development and historical role is less so. As has been pointed out, although Bookchin claims that hierarchy is not intended to replace class, that class society is very real, and has existed for thousands of years, and that class struggle always exists in one form or another, Bookchin says little about the role of classes or the conflicts they cause. 95 He notes, for example, that in Greece and Rome class-conflicts, although existing, rarely involved deep-seated internal social changes.96 Clearly, rarely does imply more than one occurrence of such social changes, but what these were and their significance is never addressed.

Metahistory
There is perhaps a question mark over Bookchins use of the dialectic. The dialectical process is one by which internal obstacles and contradictions in social life lead to the emergence of a more comprehensive form of social organization, although as noted this need not be a linear process. However, Bookchin refers to two distinct legacies, those of freedom and of domination. He does not make it entirely clear how, if at all, these two interact. He writes that the legacy of freedom...has always cut across the legacy of domination, which does not appear to suggest a dialectic. He has also written that: The two [legacies] have interacted, competed, and to some extent been stimulated by each other for better or worse, in a genuine dialectic.97 Elsewhere, when he refers to the freedom of the material dispensation of capitalism (presumably its ability to provide a large quantity of material goods), he writes that it has arisen ironically...from bourgeois social relations. He has also written that, It remains one of historys great ironies that the citywas to produce the very factors that led to its own undoing.98 These are questionable dialectical statements; irony does not sit well with dialectic.
93 94

Bookchin 1990b, 65. Bookchin 1991b, 318. 95 Bookchin 1999, 271. 96 ibid., 195. 97 Bookchin 1991b, 139 my emphasis; Bookchin 1999, 278-9. 98 Bookchin 1992, 123.

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There also arises the question of whether good and bad effects and consequences can be separated in the way Bookchin seems to argue that they can. He is highly critical of more primitivist approaches which criticize civilization in toto, but since he offers no definition of civilization himself it is not always easy to discern exactly what it is he wishes to defend. In fact, he seems uncertain of what exactly characterizes civilization. He contrasts preliterate, nonhierarchical societies with civilizations based on hierarchy and domination, but elsewhere refers to civilization, with its hallmarks of reason and technics.99 He has also suggested that the word civilized denotes no monumental advance in the human condition over so-called primitive societiesapart from certain technical and scientific amenities that may have lightened humanitys material burdens.100 By referring to two separate legacies, Bookchin attempts to separate the positive side of civilization from its negative side. In The Ecology of Freedom Bookchin puts the word in quotation marks, implying civilization as it is, is not civilization as it should be (although he later abandoned this stylistic feature in response to primitivist rejections of civilization as such).101 When he writes: What civilization has given us, in spite of itself, is the recognition that the ancient values of usufruct, complementarity, and the irreducible minimum must be extended from the kin group to humanity as a whole.102 it almost appears as if the fact that civilization has provided anything of substance for freedom is fortunate. Elsewhere he goes on to refer to civilization as the long wintertime of domination and oppression.103 He also writes that the failings of civilization have been enormous and have claimed a ghastly toll in blood. But let us recognize that civilization has also had a progressive side.104 Here, civilization is characterized by its failings, but there has been a progressive side as well. But stressing the potentiality of the dialectical progress of freedom, he argues that the rational developments of this progress, the achievements of civilization, are Civilization, indeed a civilizing continuum that is nonetheless infused by terribly barbaric, indeed animalistic, features.105 Here Civilization is the sum of rational, progressive ideas and movements of freedom, with irrational evil struggling with it. Bookchin refers to what he calls the social question, that is why civilization despite its many far-reaching advances, has never been fully rational and free of exploitation.106 Or, to put it another way, why has evil always tainted the gains of civilization? There was a demonic incubus that had perverted every advance of civilization with the poison of hierarchy and domination [while] humanitys extraordinary gains under
99

Bookchin 1991b, 12; Bookchin 1990b, 21. Bookchin 1992, 34n. 101 See Biehl, 1997, 225. 102 Bookchin 1991b, 322, emphasis added. 103 ibid., 61. 104 Bookchin 1999, 131. 105 Bookchin 1994a, 7. 106 Bookchin 1990b, 84.
100

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civilization have always been tainted by the evil of hierarchy.107 But this assumes again that the evil can somehow be separated from the benefits. Bookchins analysis seems to make it clear that it was the evil that was the historical driving force. The breakdown of organic society was not a choice of free human beings in order to overcome parochialism; it was rather a process of unconsciously evolving hierarchy which created firstly social, then political and economic power, then located it in the hands of various social groupings. The development of civilization was largely at the hands of these elite groupings, in their own interests, not those of humanity as a whole, who often resisted attempts to remove their traditional rights (again as Bookchin points out). The question of how positive and negative parts of history interact leads in itself to the question of the extent to which the course of history, as Bookchin describes it, was necessary. Were there alternatives to the state and class society, or were these necessary for the development of greater freedom? Again, Bookchin is ambiguous. He stresses potentiality rather than a fixed telos, and choice over inevitability, but he is clear about the limitations of organic society and the necessity that they be overcome: To be expelled from the Garden of Eden can be regardedas an important condition for its returnbut on a level that is informed with a sophistication that can resolve the paradoxes of paradise.108 In 1995, in the preface of the revised edition of The Philosophy of Social Ecology, he still seemed unsure of whether the evils of civilization were an historical necessity: Paradoxically, in its emergence out of barbarism indeed, out of simple animality humanity may have had to depend upon priests, chieftains, and perhaps state-like formations to overcome parochialism, lack of individuality, kinship bonds, gerontocracies, and patriarchies Evils these are, to be sure, but, if we are to believe Michael Bakunin, socially necessary evilsThe groundwork for making a civilizatory process possiblemay have required what we would regard today as unacceptable institutions of social control but that at an earlier time may have been important in launching a rational social development.109 Not only does this passage suggest that unacceptable institutions of social control were a necessity, it also undermines Bookchins view of dialectic in history by beginning with the distinctly undialectical term Paradoxically. In Remaking Society Bookchin refers to the Turning Points in History, which could have led people to either achieve a rational, ecological society or an irrational, anti-ecological one.110 He notes three of these turning points: the rise of the warriors, the emergence of the city; and rise to ascendancy of the nation-state and capitalism. But in the case of the city, for example (and as
107 108

ibid., 157; 84. Bookchin 1991b, 140, 141. 109 Bookchin 1996a, xvi-xvii, cited in Bradford 1996, 90. 110 Bookchin 1990b, 76.

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Bookchin himself notes), although it created a civic arena this was not achieved without the loss of many profoundly important attributes of tribal and early village life.111 Communal ownership gave way to private ownership, and classes emerged from earlier hierarchies. Pre-existing hierarchies remained in place, although they were subtly reworked. The result was that, hierarchy, in effect, became embedded in the human unconscious while classescame to the foreground of an embattled and bitterly divided humanity. Viewed from its negative side, then, the city consolidated the privatization of property in one form or another: class structures, and quasi-statist or fully developed statist institutions.112 That anything beneficial came out of this process seems accidental at best. Bookchin does not appear to be able to offer motivating forces for progress that are not reactions in some form to more negative social norms. It is in fact the progress toward freedom that appears incidental, given that it has largely been unconscious. He is equally clear that neither capitalism nor the nation-state were historical necessities, nor were they a precondition for the establishment of a cooperative or socialist democracy.113 Before their rise to ascendancy in Europe there was an equal possibility of the dominance of the confederated city-state, while cooperative and guild industries could have developed into the infrastructure of a cooperative society.114 What is problematic here, however, is the stress Bookchin places on the importance of technology in a liberatory society. This will be explored in more detail in the chapter on Technology, but Bookchin argues that without technologies that can provide for the mass of people to be sufficiently free from work and struggle to be able to take part in the democratic running of the community, elites will always emerge and revolutions will fail. Given this argument it is difficult to see how a successful liberatory movement could appear without advanced technologies being available; and perhaps more importantly, given the high degree of division of labour necessary to develop the technologies Bookchin seems to favour, and the resistances to breaking down existent cultural forms that he also stresses, would such a development have been possible without the amoral dynamism of capitalism? (For example, the claim he makes above that hedonistic sects could not succeed on a large scale because of insufficient resources. See also the chapter on Technology.) It is noticeable that Bookchins historical narrative and the analysis he bases on it are Eurocentric, and he accepts this explicitly: [I]t was primarily in Europe that a remarkable constellation of historical and ideological factors converged to produce a common emphasis on reason, the importance of the individual, and a healthy naturalism... While non-European civilizations fell into cultural torpor, Europe gathered considerable momentum from the interplay of its constituents, giving it a dynamism unequalled anywhere else in the
111 112

ibid., 83. ibid. 113 ibid., 89. 114 ibid., 92.

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world.115 However, elsewhere he is critical of Marx for the European centricity of his sense of history and his belief in the progressive nature of capitalism:116 By far, the great mass of human beings who occupied the planet before the Age of Exploration had developed alternatives of their own to capitalism, even to class society. By no means do we have the right to regard them as arrested societies that awaited the gentle caress of civilizationWhat we so arrogantly call the stagnation of many non-European societies may well have been a different, often highly sensitive, elaboration and enrichment of cultural traits that were ethically and morally incompatible with the predatory dynamism Europeans so flippantly identify with progress and history.117 This paragraph seems to be a validation of non-European societies and a criticism of European ones. Moreover, it seems to suggest there were possibilities for these other societies own progressive advancements without European civilization, a civilization that largely imposed its own form on those societies it did not destroy outright. If this is accepted, then European civilization appears as a dynamic but flawed social and cultural form that the rest of the world would have done better without. This seems to be supported by Bookchins observation that: What renders European societyso historically and morally unique is that it surpassed by far every societyin the extent to which economic classes and economic exploitation colonized the most intimate aspects of personal and social life.118 The uniqueness of European society is not in any progressive form but in its cultivation of capitalist exploitation. It has already been noted that Bookchins claims for an emerging localism seem to be exaggerated. This appears equally to be the case for the claimed influence of his work on feminist theory in the 1960s and 1970s. Social ecology, he states, was increasingly reworked by early radical feminist writers into a critique of hierarchical forms, not simply class forms. Transcending class analysis, radical feminism developed a broad critique of hierarchy, drawing heavily from the literature and the language of social ecology.119 Bookchin, however, gives no references to support this claim, and the literature on Second Wave feminism does little to back him up. That Second Wave feminism that emerged out of the civil rights movement and New Left as a distinct movement in itself was in many respects due to the inability of men in these and other political groups to accept the legitimacy of womens political demands. Based in womens own experiences of their personal and individual relationships with men, as well as in the wider socio-

115 116

Bookchin, 1995a, 249. Bookchin 1991b, 87. 117 ibid., 87-88. 118 ibid., 97. 119 Bookchin 1990b, 155; 156.

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economic sphere, the movement was extremely antagonistic to all forms of male power. Although some feminists still attempted to work in a socialist or Marxist framework, others attempted to breakaway from economic class orientations altogether. Radical feminism represented a heterogeneous tendency which chose to concentrate exclusively on the oppression of women as women (and not as workers, students, etc.).120 Consequently the agent of oppression upon which radical feminists focused was patriarchy, or more specifically a particular form of patriarchy defined as a system of social relations in which the class of men have power over the class of women, because women are sexually devalued.121 As noted above, radical feminism was a heterogeneous movement, and radical feminists possess[ed] no single core doctrine which informed their theories; but the focus on patriarchy appears completely different from (and indeed, at odds with) Bookchins transclass and universalizing notion of hierarchy.122 Certainly, later feminists examined whether patriarchal culture contained an ontological preference for dualisms that necessitated in-built cultural hierarchies, but this work was the product of the 1970s and 1980s, and there is no evidence that this work was directly related to Bookchins.123 Although it is possible that Bookchins ideas permeated early feminism, there is no evidence that this occurred in a way to affect the direction or focus of the movement, certainly not in the way he suggests. That his work has influenced later ecofeminists seems clear in an early article on ecofeminism, Ynestra King cites her debt to Bookchin in gaining an understanding of social ecology, although she argues that without feminism it is incomplete.124 However, there are many other writings crucial to the development of ecofeminism which do not focus on Bookchin Susan Griffins Woman and Nature (1978) references only his early Our Synthetic Environment, while Mary Dalys Gyn/Ecology (1978) does not reference Bookchin at all. As has been pointed out, the concept of ecofeminism appeared spontaneously across several continents in the 1970s and 1980s; while Bookchins work undoubtedly influenced some of these currents, it does not seem realistic to claim that it underpinned them all.125 What is significant here is not just the bad history, but the fact that Bookchin is attempting to subsume a separate political and philosophical current within his own. In this way, not only do radical feminism and ecofeminism become a part of the developmental current of social ecology, but their continued and fruitful existence then supports Bookchins argument regarding the development of a legacy of freedom that his theory of history demands. The above points demonstrate a problem that appears to be implicit in Bookchins theory of history. If history is indeed a process of the ever-expanding ideas of freedom, as well as humanitys

120 121

Bonnie Kreps, in Koedt et al 1973, 328. Cited in Whelehan, but no details of the article title given. Humm 1995, 201. 122 Whelehan, 69. 123 See e.g. Plumwood 1993. 124 King 1983. 125 Gaard & Gruen 1993, 1.

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consciousness of its own potential for freedom, then Bookchins work would appear to be the latest, and possible most crucial, manifestation of this. He was, after all, the first thinker to articulate the idea of a libertarian dialectical naturalism as both an ontological reality and as a basis for both political action and as the foundation for an ecological society. From the point of view of philosophy, the culmination of history must be the works of Murray Bookchin.

ANARCHIST PRIMITIVISTS ON HISTORY

History is not a subject that is dealt with specifically in the pages of the Fifth Estate or other papers. Where a historical outlook is mentioned it is frequently in the context of a reference to Fredy Perlmans book, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!. While this book should not be taken as an attempt to develop a philosophy of history (for reasons which I outline below) it does appear to reasonably sum-up the primitivist view of history as a regressive process, although there may be disagreements about the significance and interpretation of particular events. (The skeleton of an historical outline is also found in John Zerzans work, and this will be examined briefly at the end of the chapter.)

Fredy Perlmans Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!

Perlman did not intend to write, and has not written, a conventional historical narrative. Instead he has produced a visionary chronicle of human life from prehistory to the present day, a pseudo-mythic account which eschews both dates and conventional referencing. 126 Certain writers are mentioned by name, e.g. Norman Cohn, Frederick Turner, Arnold Toynbee, and events, social movements, cultural epochs, appear in the text which provide a chronology of sorts. This obviously makes checking the evidence presented within the book difficult (although it has not been written as a factual book containing evidence). There is no reason, however, to believe that Perlman has simply made up events in order to support his ideas; he read extensively, including Toynbees A Study of History and Mankind and Mother Earth, the work of anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Pierre Clastres, and also apparently carried out a systematic study of world history, starting with the Cambridge Ancient History series.127 Nevertheless, his non-systematic and non-conventional approach poses problems for interpretation and analysis, some of which will be examined at the end of the chapter. Perlman begins the essay by seeking to identify the enemy the wrecker of the biosphere. It is clearly not all of mankind, since only certain people at certain times and in certain cultures carry out environmental and human destruction, particularly on a large scale. 128 He surveys the options that appear in radical literature the Capitalist mode of production (from the Marxists), the State (from Anarchists), Capital (from Camatte), Technology/Civilization (from the New Ranters), or the Western
126 127

Moore 1997, 130n16. Perlman 1989, 18; 114; 109. 128 Specifically he rejects this option as posed by Toynbee, in Mankind and Mother Earth (Toynbee 1978).

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Spirit (from Frederick Turner).129 He rejects the first two options as being insufficiently comprehensive in scope, is more favourable towards Camatte and the New Ranters, but is most impressed with Turners Western Spirit. In Beyond Geography: the western spirit against the wilderness Turner attempts to discover the cultural, and ultimately spiritual, origins of the colonial mentality of Western Europe that led to the conquest of the Americas and the destruction of many of its inhabitants. The Western Spirit is the hero who pits himself against the Wilderness, who calls for a war of extermination by Spirit against Nature, Soul against Body, Technology against the Biosphere, Civilization against Mother Earth, god against all.130 While supporting Turners cultural and psycho-social analysis (and continuing along those lines in Against His-story), Perlman suggests that Turner does not name the monster or describe its body.131 This is the task that Perlman sets himself. Perlman calls the monster Leviathan, an originally Biblical term he borrows from Hobbes. Perlman uses Hobbes metaphor of Leviathan as but an artificial man, constructed not of the organic but of springs and wheels.132 Hobbes Leviathan refers to the political state, but Perlman uses the term to refer to civilization, which tends to suggest a cultural as well as political form. Perlman does not define what he means by civilization/Leviathan, in terms of a set of characteristics, and there is no generally accepted definition. One writer notes that terminological confusion is as dense as everthere is no perceptible consensus about what the term civilization ought to mean.133 As will be seen, for Perlman civilization is less about achievements than about constraints. He compares it unfavourably to culture, a property of free communities, which no longer exists in Europe by the end of the Inquisition: If by culture we mean the ways and wisdom of communities of free human beings, Europe is no culture and has no culture. The last Europeans who have culture are the radicals burned by the Inquisition. Whats left is Civilization, something very different from culture. Civilization is a humanly meaningless web of unnatural constraints, it is the organization of repression within the entrails of Leviathan. Civilization is the culture of Leviathans springs and wheels.134 This description does suggest that, strictly, Civilization is not exactly the same as Leviathan, and that it perhaps represents a psychological and cultural aspect which interacts with the more material

129

See Camatte 1995. Although Perlman does not specify who the New Ranters are, this term probably refers to the neo-Luddite tendency whose most well-known proponent is the writer Kirkpatrick Sale. See Sale 1996. For Turner, see Turner 1992. 130 Perlman 1984, 4. 131 ibid., 5. 132 ibid., 26. 133 McNeil 1995, 14. 134 Perlman 1984, 208, emphasis added.

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springs and wheels i.e. technology, of Leviathan proper. Given that this has not been expanded on by Perlman, however, in this research Leviathan will be considered synonymous with civilization. Perlmans concern is not with history as a series of events but with His-Story, which is essentially the story of civilization, or Leviathan. His-story is a chronicle of the deeds of the men at the phallus-helm of Leviathan.135 Perlman does not indicate whether he originated the term His-story or borrowed it from elsewhere, although he claims that the word history has been demystified by Mary Jane Shoultz, who appears to have been an acquaintance of Perlman.136 When we speak of real History, of History proper, we mean His-story. It is an exclusive masculine affair.137 Whereas Hobbes envisages Leviathan in the form of an English man, Perlman suggests that someone from prototypical ancient city-state Ur who wished to conceptualise the state could not see it metaphorically as a machine (since they did not exist at that time) but would view it instead as an artificial animal: He might think of it as a worm, a giant worm, not a living worm but a carcass of a worm, a monstrous cadaver, its body consisting of numerous segments, its skin pimpled with spears and wheels and other technological implements.138 Consequently, Perlman also uses the word Worm to describe the land-bound, military Leviathan, and later Octopus as a metaphor for sea-borne, mercantile empires. Perlman has certainly been influenced by Arnold Toynbee, having read A Study in History and Mankind and Mother Earth, which is specifically referred to in the text. Perlmans view of civilizations as being unitary shares much with Toynbee: An intelligible field of historical study is not to be found within any national framework; we must expand our historical horizon to think in terms of an entire civilization.139 This also means his approach tends to suffer from the same problems as Toynbees, which will be referred to below. His-story is simultaneously plural and singular; while there are as many His-stories as there are Leviathans, civilizations tend to enter into conflict with each other, usually ending in the absorption of one of the protagonists.140 There is therefore a tendency for civilizations to become Civilization, a locally or eventually globally dominant, unitary whole. His-story, by definition, does not exist outside of the context of civilization; pre-civilizational
135 136

Ibid, 42. See Perlman 1989, ix. 137 Perlman 1984, 41. He also refers to Shoultz calling literacy Maleliteracy This the gender orientation of the historical narrative is a point that has been made by many feminists, who have sometimes used the counter-term herstory, although this is etymologically questionable since the Latin root from which the word history derives has no connection with the English word his. See Tut tle, 1986, 142. 138 ibid., 27. 139 Toynbee 1948, v. 140 ibid., 42.

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communities did not have His-stories: Such a community was a plurality of individuals, a gathering of freedoms. The individuals had biographies, and they were the ones who were interesting. But the community as such did not have a biography, a His-story.141 Perlmans view of pre-civilizational communities is that they were egalitarian, and that their inhabitants lived in a plentiful State of Nature. The details of this perspective are discussed elsewhere (see chapter on The Primitive). What is important to note at this point is that Perlman envisages these communities as being highly individuated and strongly linked by kinship bonds. They do not contain impersonal [i.e. coercive] institutions.142 Without writing or other means of recording, traditions were passed on orally, and the reliance on myth over history allows for a constant regeneration of tribal life (as the significant events of the past are brought repeatedly into the present). This fluidity means there is no power-base within the tribe, no means of some having more power over others (and indeed, little motivation to do so). Perlman has three things to explain if his theory of history is to make sense how did civilization emerge; how was it maintained (reproduced); how did it spread? How he attempts to answer these questions is best explored by looking at some elements of his narrative.

Emergence
Perlman follows the anthropologist Stanley Diamond who argues that civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.143 History begins with the emergence of the first civilizations, in the Indus valley, later known as Sumer. These civilizations grew not because of any necessity, nor because of material conditions, but in effect through an historical accident. Perlmans suggestion which he admits is highly speculative is that a roving band of primitives decided to settle in this area. Although potentially fertile, due to the rich alluvial soil, the combination of floods one year and drought the next make life in the area hard. For reasons which Perlman does not make clear, the settlers decide to stay in the area rather than move away; but the only way this is possible is with the building of an irrigation system. A strong, young man is appointed to supervise the building works Perlman refers to his as a Lugal, Sumerian for strongman. Although the irrigation system was built as a cooperative venture within the existing primitive community, the problems of trying to maintain it in the face of the difficult conditions led to the gradual emergence of an early technocracy, based around the Lugal and others who built and maintained the irrigation works. (Perlman stresses that this would have taken at least hundreds of years to occur and become entrenched and suggests that attempts by those who managed the works to expand there power would have been resisted by the community at large, perhaps going as far as
141 142

ibid. Perlman notes he borrows this term from Toynbee, but does not specify where in Toynbees work it is found. Perlman 1984, 16. 143 Diamond 1974, 1.

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political assassination of the Lugal.) Perlman postulates that a trigger for this change may have been the failure of one of the villages in the area to maintain their part of the system, leading to it repeatedly flooding the works of another village. The flooded villagers demanded reparations in the form of labourers to help rebuild the damaged works. Although seemingly innocuous in itself, this act has two highly significant outcomes; the idea or concept of being worked for emerges, and the physical act of supervision of workers begins. Those who are not able or do not wish to work are expected to bring tribute instead, and in order to keep track of the tribute early number and writing systems were introduced. This signals the introduction also of a proto-class system and an elite of younger males, a warrior elite. Over time other changes occur in Ur, mentioned briefly by Perlman a notion of history as the dynastic chronology of the leaders of Ur; and the perceived superiority of city dwellers over outsiders. When the period of drainage reparations is over the young men, particularly the Lugal and his kin, do not wish to return to manual labour. So foreign prisoners captured during a hunting expedition are brought back to the village and put to work, at first on the irrigation system, but soon in other tasks such as repairing houses and working the land. This in turn requires yet closer supervision and organization the promotion of some of the Lugals cousins to sub-Lugals or Ensis in effect, it requires the creation of a social system of slavery.144 Since there is now a value for captured foreigners, these increase in number. There now exists a clearly defined group who work, and an equally well-defined group who do not. The emergence of a political infrastructure has led to the emergence of a class system. Once this has occurred it is possible for a surplus to be developed, for goods to be hoarded, and this in turn promotes trade. Civilization has begun. The first Leviathan, then, arises in Sumer. Since it consists of forced labour, inequality, and regular bloody warfare, it is not difficult to accept his assertion that civilization is not welcomed by the non-civilized. How then does it spread?

Reproduction
Civilization is a psychological and cultural system, a set of socially accepted meanings, before it is a class or state system. For Perlman, it is this change in meaning over time from meanings associated with egalitarianism, conviviality and an affinity with nature to those based on domination, repression and alienation which constitutes both the driving force and the most significant outcome of the Historical process. Perlman recognizes that force is insufficient to account for the long-term maintenance and reproduction of Leviathan. Instead, psychological factors are crucial in not only keeping the workers/slaves in their oppressed state but also in allowing this state to be transmitted through time to subsequent generations. This will be examined in more detail below, in
144

Lugal in Sumerian means big person; the derivation of ensi is uncertain, approximate translations suggest city ruler or prince. These probably represent local titles that were eventually incorporated into a hierarchy in which the lugal became the pre-eminent figure, above the ensi. All definitions from Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, at Britannica.com.

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the section on the Psychology of Leviathan; here it is sufficient to outline the principle of a character armour, using Reichs term, which the worker or zek wears, which suppresses his or her free humanity.145 The longer the armour is worn the harder it is to remove. Eventually the external constraint is internalized. In this case, the individual identifies with their role in Leviathan, and although they are rarely entirely Levithanized and resistance is always a possibility, this only tends to occur under certain circumstances. Civilization is reproduced, then, through the activities and outlooks of its members, without the need for overwhelming physical force.

Spread
Since civilization is first of all a cultural and psychological phenomenon, i.e. located in societal perceptions and shared meanings and symbols, it requires the altering of these perceptions and meanings, rather than actual physical conquest and imposed rule. Ironically, it is through the resistance to civilization that civilization itself takes hold. In the face of the civilized Sumerians, some nearby communities move away, a process which is of some success while there are areas of the globe which are free from the civilizing influence. But many others, who are greatly attached to their homeland, prefer to stay and resist. For those that choose to stay there are two alternatives; to form war parties and fight, or to wall themselves in. But in order to do either the fundamental social structures of the communities must be altered. To challenge the Leviathanic armies, villages have to join together, but unless they destroy the Leviathan completely they cannot afford to return to their old ways; once ganged up, as Perlman puts it, they stay ganged up. When they capture Sumerians, they are likely to put them to work on fortifications. They also seek new forms of military technology in an attempt to gain an advantage. The brave fighters succeed in defeating only themselves.146 City walls keep out the invaders, but need to be maintained not for a few years but for generations, and this requires a permanent division of labour. What was at first voluntary becomes compulsory. Their attempts to preserve their communities, to preserve life against death fail; they create internally what they were attempting to repel externally.147 This process resistance leading to a Leviathan occurs repeatedly throughout history, and explains the expansion of civilization even in the face of concerted resistance. However, although civilizations are very powerful, in their both material and psychological forms, they are not omnipotent. Firstly, civilizations follow cycles of growth and decline, and all eventually disintegrate. (This appears to be an empirical observation Perlman does not offer any reasons why this has to be the case; it simply is.) Second, since people are not naturally either leaders or led, and since there is an essential humanity which can be uncovered if the armour is removed, resistance to civilization (by the civilized) is common (See below) Given the degree of resistance, and
145 146

The word zek, as prison slang for prisoner, appears in Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago. Perlman 1984, 34. 147 Perlman borrows the phrase life against death in this context from Norman O. Browns book of the same name. Brown 1985.

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given also that Leviathans invariably decompose, the question arises as to how the process of HisStory has continued for so long? Perlman offers several possibilities.

Longevity
The Leviathan, being non-human, does not disappear even when it has collapsed. The rich and powerful have an interest in reconstituting Leviathan (one not shared by the zeks) and they have the political and military knowledge, as well as the technology (including writing and number), at least to attempt to do so. But even when the Leviathan has been extirpated, those left behind are still armoured. In fact, some of the resisters are frequently so armoured that they seek to launch a Leviathan of their own. The resisters wish to reject civilization and return to the state of nature is made more difficult since the land is now a wilderness, by which Perlman means an artificially denuded environment created by generations of warring and exploitation. The cultural and psycho-social changes, the knowledge of Leviathan and how to maintain one, as well as the extensive armouring of the former Leviathanic subjects, remain behind after the Leviathan has collapsed. As Perlman notes, these are the conditions facing the resisters. The old communities have been destroyed; the resisters have to start over again. But the ways of the primitives take generations to recreate, and it is far easier to relaunch Leviathans. Before the resisters communities can become established, they are overwhelmed by newly emerging civilizations. A further difficulty for the resisters is that the psychological processes inherent in Leviathan cannot easily be kept at bay. As has been noted, the very act of resistance itself leads almost inevitably to Leviathan-ization, a change in psychology and social organization that undermines the resisting community even when it does not change into a Leviathan proper. Broadly, then, His-Story consists of the emergence of civilizations which expand to absorb and conquer the uncivilized, while encouraging the creation of more civilizations at their borders. These civilizations eventually collapse, and for a while a particular area may be free, but another civilization always arises somewhere to continue the process.

The Psychology of Leviathan

The primary repressive force over time is not material (although there is a material element to it) but psychological. Repression of the natural, free individual is necessary in order for the materialization of civilization initially in the form of a political elite, then surplus, and then later as a class system. Politics brings about production which is in turn necessary to support the expansion of political power, in the form of state, bureaucracy, royalty, organized religion and military. There certainly appears to be a Freudian element to this approach; it was Freud who argued that civilization requires repression, that it is built up upon a renunciation of instinct [and] presupposes precisely the non-satisfaction (..) of powerful instincts.148 Not surprisingly he believed that civilization was a

148

Freud 1985, 286.

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significant determinant of neurosis and that it was easier for the non-civilized to be healthy than the civilized; indeed, according to Norman O. Brown, Freud maintained that human history can be understood only as a neurosis.149 As has been noted, Perlman suggests that force is insufficient to account for the long-term maintenance and reproduction of Leviathan. Instead, psychological factors are crucial in not only keeping the workers/slaves in their oppressed state but also in allowing this state to be transmitted through time to subsequent generations. Originally, Perlman argues, the zek wears his coerced role like a heavy armor or an ugly mask.150 As such, it does not affect the zeks sense of self, of his sense of humanity. But the longer the armour is kept on the harder it is to remove. The individuals inner life, his ecstasy starts to dry up, to suffocate: The once-free human being increasingly becomes what Hobbes will think he is. The armor once worn on the outside wraps itself around the individuals insides. The mask becomes the individuals face. Or as we will say, the constraint is internalised. The ecstatic life, the freedom, shrinks to a mere potentiality.151 Perlman does not indicate where this concept of armouring is derived from, although Reich is the likeliest candidate.152 For Reich, armour constitutes the total defense apparatus of the organism, consisting of the rigidities of the character and the chronic spasms of the musculature, which functions essentially as a defense against the breakthrough of the emotionsprimarily anxiety, rage and sexual excitation.153 Building on Freuds view of the generation of neurosis through repression, Reich maintained that thwarted instinctual drives create anxiety which the character has to assimilate and divert. This armour is the totality of the defenses built up by the individual against his repressed needs. It is reflected in his behaviour and helps diminish his psychological tensions by damming up in the unconscious anything that might arouse anxiety.154 For Reich, this is directly related to sexual repression, but Perlman uses the term more widely to encompass any form of the repression of essential humanity. Armour, in the sense in which Perlman uses the term, is the repression of this essential humanity and its replacement with outlooks, reactions,
149 150

Freud 1958, 102; Brown 1985, 12. Perlman 1984, 38. 151 ibid., 38 152 According to Turner, Mumford "characterizes [the] cultures [of the Neolithic Revolution] as possessed of armored personalities"(Turner 1992, 29). But Turner dislikes footnotes, and does not reference this quote. I have been unable to locate it in Mumford's work. For a specific reference to Reich, see Perlman's reference to Moses' response to the resurgence of primitive religion amongst his followers Moses...turn[s] his back on them. He lets the armor take over. He stiffens. W. Reich will say he becomes rigid (Perlman 1984, 57). Perlman is here ref erring to Reich's analysis of the physiological effects of armouring, although Perlman's use still suggests a psychological effect. 153 Reich 1973, xix. 154 Cattier 1971, 126.

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and patterns of thought and behaviour which are conditioned by, and in turn support, civilization. This armour functions at the level of the unconscious and so the actor is unaware of these reactions and behaviour. This argument presupposes an essential humanity or human nature which is being repressed, and it does appear that Perlman believes that such can be meaningfully considered. Regarding resistance to Leviathan, which I look at elsewhere, he writes: I take it for granted that resistance is the natural human response to dehumanization and, therefore, does not have to be explained or justified.155 To be human in some way implies being pre-civilizational, that is wild, natural; to be a zek requires domestication.156 This wild, free nature is always part of humans, but is suppressed and repressed by civilizational armouring. (Perlman does not suggest how this nature is maintained over centuries of civilization.). The nature of the resistance to civilization is discussed more fully below, but it is significant that it is frequently embodied in religious or quasi-religious forms and suggest a form of collective psychotherapy, that is touching at a symbolic level the unconscious, unrepressed (un-armoured) core of being. The process of overcoming this repression is described in ecstatic rather than in rational terms it is not a deliberative process but a celebration of life and nature. It also is more likely to occur when Leviathans are decomposing, suggesting that the armouring process has to be active, that is ongoing, in order to maintain a sufficient degree of repression. When this does not occur, many of the members of civilization, rather than seeking to prolong or bolster it, attempt to flee it and return to a pre-civilizational state. A final point relating to the psychology of Leviathan is the significance of religion, particularly Judaeo-Christianity, which is crucial to His-Story. As well as being the primary agent of armouring, it creates the cultural conditions for the separation of humans from nature (and so from their natural selves). Initially Perlman argues that in the earliest civilizations the State of Nature was reduced to religion, that is religion embodied the urge or drive to oneness with nature. In that respect it was opposed to Leviathan, although its effects were limited as long as it remained isolated, in the Temple. But Judaism reversed this orientation toward nature. The transcendent and other-worldly god of the Old Testament is severed from all natural ties; in fact, rather than recognizing the interconnectivity of the separate elements of nature, the Mosaic code gives dominion to its followers over the rest of the earth. It is, as Perlman notes, both anti-human and anti-natural, shrouded in dogma.157 It is Leviathan in religious form, and the promised land will not be an Eden, but a new Leviathan. In reifying Leviathan into a Concept, Moses Leviathan is immortal, and although its original manifestation is eventually swallowed, its Concept will one day light the way of monstrosities undreamt by ... Moses.158 As already outlined in the narrative, Perlman sees
155 156

Perlman 1984, 184. ibid., 58 157 "This is Leviathan's declaration of war against all Life"(Perlman 1984, 59). 158 ibid., 59.

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Christianity evolving from the resistance against Rome. Through its conversion from a way to a religion, and its adoption by Constantine, Christianity becomes a central element in the development of the Western Spirit; Perlman suggests that the spread of Christianity will in time turn out to have been as important as the conquest of the lands.159

Resistance
Perlmans chronicle of Leviathan would be immersed in pessimism if he did not stress the human resistance to civilization that has existed since the first civilizations of the Middle East. Central to Perlmans thesis is the view that civilization is an aberration not a natural progression to a better way of life; in fact, the uncivilized have never chosen to become civilized, but have always had civilization forced upon them. Accommodation to civilization only occurs through an increasing degree of self-repression, and so all humans, at some unconscious level, want to escape.160 Initially, those faced with the emerging Sumerian Leviathan seek to destroy it, although as has been seen the resistance itself tends to create new Leviathans. But those caught within a Leviathan also resist; despite the armouring, they never become altogether reduced to automata: People never become altogether empty shells. A glimmer of life remainsthey are potential human beings.161 Although the powers of the resisters are usually limited while the Leviathan is in the ascendant, their opportunities increase when it (inevitably) slips into decline, and many people succeed in escaping Leviathan.162 The resistance as Perlman describes it is a primal urge to escape bondage, inspired by a memory of a better time, an Eden. The act of resistance is essentially an ecstatic one, with the resisters feeling overwhelmed with freedom on the lifting of the burden of civilization. (See also section on Psychology) On the collapse of the Roman Empire, Perlman writes, people are not waiting for the dawn. They are dancing already. They are recovering the lost community before the last day.163 As the process of Leviathanization is cultural and psychological, so is its resistance. Since the causes of repression are located in the subconscious, this is the area from which the urge to resist comes, from revelations, dreams or visions. These experiences act to shatter the individuals connection with Leviathan, and allow them to reconnect with their unarmoured humanity. Perlman refers to the wakened person i.e. return to primitive mentality.164 The emergence of capitalism and the modern state generates considerable resistanceas

159 160

ibid., 148. ibid., 211. 161 ibid., 37. 162 ibid., 43. 163 ibid., 107. 164 ibid., 205.

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Perlman writes All this progress is fiercely resisted by its victims.165 Ironically, it is the Church itself which allows this dissent to flourish. The Church originated in resistance, committed to overthrowing the Roman Leviathan, then became one itself. But resistance is still part of its heritage, and this is something with which the Church, and its followers, always struggle. The Church induces in its believer ... a condition some of our contemporaries will call schizophrenia.166 Because the doctrine of Original Sin is the key to the Churchs power, it must maintain the concept of an original Eden from which humans have been expelled, and thus the Church itself is the vehicle that carries the memory of an Eden to human beings who have never been outside the entrails of Leviathan.167 So much of the resistance appears in the form of heresy, particularly as Manicheanism. European contact with the Americas again offers the first recorded instances of contact between civilization and primal peoples, certainly on a large scale and with attempts at forming settlements. Although this contact is devastating for the indigenous population, a significant minority of invaders withdraw from civilization and go native.168 For Perlman such resistance, the possibility of withdrawal, is not only always possible, but inevitable, since (as noted above) resistance is the natural human response to dehumanization.169 Consistent with his rejection of materialist interpretations of history, resistance is not dependent upon material or technological conditions, and in Against His-story Perlman at no point refers to class as being an element of resistance.

The Western Spirit

The Western Spirit is a term used by Frederick Turner and adopted by Perlman. Although Turner never defines the term explicitly, it refers to the culture and psychology that developed in Europe that led to its aggressive colonialism and often genocidal approach to other cultures: By the fifteenth centurythe civilization was possessed of deep-set, long-established attitudes toward the wilderness and indeed all unimproved nature, toward those who lived in the wilderness, and toward the relationship of civilization to these.170 Perlman writes that: By Western Spirit [Turner] means the attitude or posture, the soul or spirit of Western Civilization, known nowadays as Civilization Wilderness embraces all of Nature and all the human communities beyond Civilizations ken.171 Perlmans perspective is similar to this, although he argues that Turners subtitle is far too polite:

165 166

ibid., 186. ibid., 199. 167 ibid., 201. 168 ibid., 271. For more on this see Turner, 1992; also Sakolsky & Koehnline 1993. 169 Perlman 1984, 184 170 Turner 1992, 21-2. 171 Perlman 1984, 3.

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The Western Spirit is not only against Wilderness; it is against nature as well as humanity, against truth as well as beauty.172 He also uses a different chronology from Turner, suggesting that the Western Spirit began to emerge with the rise of the Roman Empire, and came to fruition with the construction between 171 and 161 of the limes, wooden palisades and later stone and earth walls, which marked the northern border of the Empire, and prevented free movement across the continent.173 What is it about this period that Perlman thinks led to the emergence of the Western Spirit? Because it is not human, Leviathan does not have human limitations; the Roman legionnaires do not fight as individuals but like the parts of a machine, apparently without fear or consequence to casualties. Enemies are frequently massacred, entire tribes destroyed. And the overall strategy of the Empire continues regardless of who is Emperor, beyond the lifetime of individuals: A twenty year war is terribly long. A war that lasts twenty generations is beyond the imaginations grasp.174 For Perlman the war between the Franks and Alans and Rome is an existential struggle between freedom and Leviathan. By the time the Empire finally begins to crumble, the Leviathanic process has profoundly affected the formerly free tribes: They still remember themselves as free human beings --but all they remember of their freedom is the freedom to kill Romans and the desire to destroy Rome. 175 But although the Empire has collapsed, its memory remains as an ideological construct, almost a psychological necessity. The tribes can no longer return to their old ways of life, so they continue to perpetuate the Leviathan.176 The crucial role of Christianity in the development of the Western Spirit comes from the vacuum left in Europe by the emigration of Constantine to the East. Rome is no longer the capital of an empire, and in fact there is no Western Empire, but a mirage maintained through distortion and deception. The need to lie to perpetuate the political and theological system, Perlman suggests, becomes a key feature of European culture.177 What follows the collapse of Rome is not another Leviathan, but the release of the frustration of Romes enemies in in an orgy of violence which probably has no precedent. Europe becomes the domain of numerous bands and tribes; but in order

172 173

ibid., 141. Perlman does not mention the limes explicitly, but refers to the Romans walling in Gauls and Celts, and skirmishes with border guards (Perlman 1984, 141-2). There is some ambiguity around Perlmans chronology, since he refers to the Western Spirit beginning twenty to twenty-five generations before Constantine moved the Roman capital to Byzantium (in 330 A.D.). Taking a generation as thirty years, it is difficult to get the events Perlman refers to defeat of the Etruscans (396-90 B.C.E.), invasion of Iberia (second century B.C.E.), subjugation of Gaul (50 B.C.E.), construction of the limes to fit his timeframe. 174 ibid., 142. 175 ibid. 176 ibid., 143. 177 ibid., 141.

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to resuscitate the Leviathan a unified head is needed. The Franks have been sufficiently Leviathanized to seek political and military power and while the Church provides the ideology of conquest, the Franks provide the military force. Each reinforces the other. Perlman argues that this process, of attempting to recreate a Leviathan in Europe, is managed and overseen by the Popes and the Catholic Church. Initially the Church is frustrated because the collapse of the Empire has allowed the Leviathanic armour to slip from the majority of the people at large, the the complete collapse of the institutions and habits of subordination.178 Eventually, however, the priest who has hierarchy embedded in his brain wears down the opposition of the villagers, though the use of miracles, the scriptures, and the idea of Original Sin: By sinning, people fell from happiness into misery. Remaining sinful, theyve remained miserable ever since.179 Religion saps the energy of resistance; the villagers are reduced from proud, free and violent human beings into submissive, unfree and violent zeks.180 Perlman is clear that any successes of the Church are not due to its theological message, but because of its commitment to the principles of the Roman Leviathan. The Church gains power because it is Roman, not because it is Christian.181 Charlemagnes conquering of the northern tribes for the Holy Roman Empire opens up the whole of Europe to Christianity. The invading army and the hierarchic social relations it imposes restrict practical freedoms, while the Church attempts to pacify the serfs through religion and abnegation. However, this increased material repression creates a greater resistance. The Church attempts to channel this into greater spiritual and psychological repression: They try to make every peasant a repressed monkThis violent repression of everything natural is the main link between the Catholicism of the West and the Judaism of the Levant.182 The priests attempt to turn the violence that the repression generates in the peasants back onto themselves: The peasant is to declare war against his own self, against his body and all its needs and drives.183 The result of this is not only mental and spiritual repression but also acts of self-inflicted violence and mutilation.184 But this internal repression and violence can also, and perhaps has to, be focused outwards, and this occurs for the first time during the First Crusade, called by Pope Urban II in 1094. According
178 179

ibid., 149. ibid., 150; 151. Freud makes an explicit connection between religion, civilization and guilt. Religionshave never overlooked the part played in civilization by a sense of guilt. Furthermorethey claim to redeem mankind from this sense of guilt, which they call sin. From the manner in which, in Christianity, this redemption is achievedwe have been able to infer what the first occasion may have been on which this primal guilt, which was also the beginning of civilization, was acquired (Freud 1985, 329). 180 ibid., 150. 181 ibid., 151. 182 ibid., 155. 183 ibid., 156. 184 See Turner 1992, 72-5.

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to Perlman, the Pope calls it to deflect the violence, to turn it against others.185 This is the analysis of Turner, which Perlman follows, quoting Turner: It is the Crusades that truly commence the pattern of large-scale, international Christian violence against all unbelievers that at last bears its cindered fruit in the ruins of Tenochtitln.186 Under the banner of the big lie, Perlman writes, people whose free communities are repressed beyond retrieval nevertheless retrieve lost communities, lost kinship and lost freedom, but only during the instant when they slaughter imagined enemies of all they have lost:187 Fields of corpses are the confirmation of the Westerners regeneration. The lost humanity is regained by means of a sacrificial act. The humanity of others is the offering.188 The conditions for the materialization of the Western Spirit are now in place: the internal and external repression engendered by the Church; increasingly rigid social hierarchies; the development of capitalism in the form of the expanding realm of the commodity, and the organization and regimentation of labour, particularly in the merchant cities. For Perlman the burgeoning Western Spirit turns the European into a new sort of person, a Worldeater: Worldeater swallower of worlds and destroyer of the Biosphere is already an apt, functionally descriptive name for the Western Leviathan by the time of its inception in Crusades against Infidels.189 There is still considerable resistance, ironically generated by Christianity itself. As noted above, because of its origins as a crisis cult organized to resist the Romans, there is an inherent contradiction in the teachings of the Church. The doctrine of original Sin tells of a fall from Eden, so the concept of an Eden is an integral part of the repressive apparatus, but it also keeps alive the memory of a paradisal state. Anti-catholic and even anti-Christian heresies emerge; but here the Church uses crusades and the Inquisition to suppress the heretics, channelling the violence into the heart of Christendom. Europe has now become the secular home to aggressive merchants and feudal Lords, and the religious home to a Church which calls for persecution, torture, and mass executions: Europeans flee from the Church, from Europe, from themselves, in ever greater numbersThey rush to be anything other than what they are. Meaning, freedom and community are elsewhere, and henceforth Europeans will keep reaching elsewhere

185 186

Perlman 1984, 183. Turner 76, cited in Perlman, 175. Turner considers that the significance of the Crusades is that through them Christian civilization embarked on its first concerted effort at regeneration through sacrificial violence. Turner, 76. 187 Perlman 1984, 174. 188 ibid., 175. 189 ibid., 196.

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for them.Europeans are already looking for America190

Progress
Throughout his narrative, Perlman at no point suggests that any part of Leviathanic His-story is an improvement on what went before (i.e. the primitive state of nature). Not only is the entire project against both humanity and wider nature, but the process is cumulative in the sense that the current world-encompassing Leviathan is a result of millennia of psychological and cultural, as well as material and technological, changes (or more strongly, regressions). He is particularly critical of the stages theory of history suggested by Lewis Henry Morgan, a work which underpins Engels The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, and which stresses both the desirability and necessity of economic and technological development. Perlman summarizes, critically, this theory thus: Man exists for thousands of generations as a Savage. Then, three hundred or so generations ago, material conditions become favorable for something higher than savagery. These conditions include agriculture, metallurgy, the wheel, etc. Once he has all these things, Man is able to generate a surplus product, a margin. () This surplus, this margin, is what supports, literally feeds, the brave new world that now becomes possible: kings, generals of armies, slavemasters, bosses of labor gangs. Man had always wanted rulers, permanent armies, slavery, division of labor, but he couldnt realize these dreams until the material conditions became ripe. And as soon as they did become ripe, all progressive-minded Savages leapt unhesitatingly to the higher rung.191 Perlmans antipathy to this view is already apparent in his work as outlined above, but will be explored further in the section on Productive Forces below. Perlman views civilizations holistically, insofar as he does not separate one aspect, for example art, from any other, for example, slavery. No part of Leviathan can offer redemption for any of its other parts. Athens is consequently simply another Leviathan, the forms of freedom an illusion of Athenian Rhetoric illuminated by the Western Spirit.192 The only parts of the narrative that represents something human are the various forms of resistance to Leviathan that occur (see section on resistance below.) The resistance is the only human component of the entire His-story. All the rest is Leviathanic Progress.193 But this resistance cannot be construed as progressive, in that later forms are no more likely to succeed, nor are they better equipped, than earlier ones. Rather, since this resistance is always an attempt to break out of civilization and return to some form of original state of nature, it is not aided by civilizational developments, such as technology, as these are antithetical to the original state. Since
190 191

ibid., 208. ibid., 15. See Engels 1986. 192 ibid., 86. 193 ibid., 184.

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the connectivity with nature, and with other humans, is also primal (that is, instinctual), and is repressed by civilization (which is one of its means of enslavement), there are also no cultural benefits to be accrued. Indeed, the further away the resisters are from the primal state and the more enveloped by civilization, the harder it becomes to resist successfully. It is certainly not the case that later resisters have any material advantages over those that came before, since these are not crucial to the liberating process, and may in fact be counter-productive. (For more on this, see the chapter on Technology.) As has been noted, Perlmans rejection of historical materialism means that he does not tie resistance to changing material conditions; there is no historical advantage to resisting in a time of greater productivity.

Productive Forces
Perlman rejects the preeminence of economic or productive forces in the development of Leviathan. Materialist theories, he argues, suggest that before civilization humans lived in a struggle with nature which included constant insecurity and insufficiency of goods. At some (relatively recent) point certain key developments occurred, including agriculture and the wheel, which increased productivity (improved the material conditions) and allowed the creation of a productive surplus or margin. This surplus allowed or facilitated social and political changes, which were in many respects positive (greater security and opportunity) but which also had a negative side (the emergence of class and other forms of social hierarchy). Weighing up the pros and the cons, though, the primitives invariably decided in favour of civilization. Perlman argues that, in fact, pre-civilizational societies are not involved in a struggle with the natural world, or with each other, and are therefore not constantly seeking improved technologies and forms of organization to increase their productive capacity. Indeed, there is no separate arena of production in primitive societies; it is indissolubly linked to the material and symbolic structure of the society as a whole. Many of the implements used throughout various revolutions in production are, in fact, unchanged from those of previous periods. This is true of the original Sumerian condition; the material conditions, argues Perlman, did not change for generations. The development of the irrigation works affected the concrete living conditions of the settlers, but did not alter them to be significantly better than other primitive groupings. There were no material changes which directly generated a social and political transformation. Rather, it was not until the appointment of the first Lugal that is, a political change that material conditions began to alter. The creation of social and political hierarchy, and the psychology that accompanies it, frees people to act in ways which were always possible, but rejected: The surplus product makes its appearance together with the vessels that hold it. Human communities have long had baskets and vases, although rarely more than they could carry from winter to spring camps. They did not need them. With the rise of the

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first Leviathan there is a virtual technological revolution in vessel production.194 Once the office of Lugal (the impersonal institution) was created, it triggered a series of events already outlined. The creation of Leviathan is only possible through the dissolution of the primitive community with its holistically-balanced social structure, and its replacement with stratified proto-class structure: The first Leviathan does not revolutionize the material conditions of production, for it institutes these; it is itself synonymous with material conditions of production. The first Leviathan revolutionizes the conditions of existence itself and not only of human beings but of all living beings and of Mother Earth herself.195 So the crucial development was not changes in material conditions of production but their very emergence which is synonymous with the dissolution of primitive society as an undifferentiated whole and this was a product of civilization, not a cause of its emergence. Production only comes into existence as a separate category when political changes allow it.196 As well as not being causal as regard the initial appearance of civilization, material factors were equally insignificant in its subsequent development, and also in the development of countercivilizational resistances. So, when considering the emergence of civilization, its subsequent development, and resistance to this development, none of these were instigated by (or necessitated) either changes in or the appearance of particular configurations of material and technological means. The point at which Perlman takes up the issue of productive or material forces directly is regarding Islam. Productive forces, he argues, cannot give rise to a new social form, since they do not exist apart it: Silver mines and water wheels do not give rise to the Islamic Leviathan; It gives rise to them. The types of technologies developed by a Leviathan depend primarily on the type of Leviathan in question, not on the state of development of global productive forces.197 To expand on this, Perlman notes that the Phoenicians developed an advanced maritime technology that was not taken up elsewhere and was not developed further. It was only matched when a similar social form i.e. a similar type of Leviathan (a mercantile Octopus) appeared much later. He takes up the issue of production again regarding the decline of feudalism and the rise of capitalism. He rejects the idea that the Church was the midwife of capitalism, arguing that it was committed neither to commerce itself nor to the flexible nation-state that would favour capitalist expansion; rather, the Church favoured a centralized Leviathan on the imperial Roman model. The productive forces of Rome, Perlman argues, were among the worlds ripest, but the West let them rot.198 The manor
194 195

ibid., 29. As Perlman acknowledges, this point is made by Lewis Mumford. See Mumford 1966, 24-27. ibid., 29. 196 See Clastres 1987. 197 ibid., 137. Perlman is here rejecting a strict technological determinism. 198 ibid., 161.

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remained essentially static for centuries and never developed into a territorial state. Based on these points, Perlman concludes that whatever the process of the emergence of the capitalist nation-state in Europe, it is erroneous to suggest that it is the result of an internal dynamic of economic forces. His suggestion is that the previous Western form effectively collapsed, and the crucial influences came from outside, primarily from the mercantile Octopus of Islam, either directly or through Scandinavia. What was crucial for Europe was the lack of an effective cultural constraint on the development of commerce: As soon as they discard their Roman antipathy to commodity exchange and their Catholic antipathy to financial transactions, Europeans...look to Islam for the rest of the armor that goes with the commercial ways.199 Christianity is significant insofar as the Judean call for dominion of the earth remains a part of it in the form of an extreme androcentrism, at odds with the more nature-sensitive outlook of the European tribes. From Christianity the Franks learn that Earth can be one mans preserve, and can be treated like any other war booty.200 The rise of capitalism is underpinned by a particular outlook on the world, a commercial mentality, which arrives in Western Europe along a long and convoluted path. It originally occurs in Islam, related to Mohammads struggle against encroaching Leviathans. It takes hold in Europe through the Vikings, and later Venetians; this is possible because Christianity, unlike Islam, offers no restraints on trade. (Perlman suggests the term Islamization to sum-up this process, but rejects it since only the commercial ideology not the religion is adopted.201) At the same time, Christianity undermined both the existing feudal social order and the individual sense of self, which facilitates the penetration of unrestrained commerce, i.e. proto-capitalism. The activities of the Burghers pressurizes the manorial lord, who is forced to become an economic calculator. His response is to seek to increase the productivity of his serfs, through rationalization and the appointment of supervisors; and to become increasingly interested in agricultural technology. The latter, however, is imported, as in case of the water wheel, common in Mesopotamia: The so-called productive forces do not give rise to Leviathanic social relations in Western Europe any more than elsewhere. The technology is nothing but the Leviathans armory, and both arrive in the West together...The vaunted technological ingenuity of the Burghers will be another Western lie.202 The collapse of the manorial system and the rise of the market society, therefore, is not an internal process, but the result of a series of conflicts and influences from outside of Europe. The Church plays a key role in this, but not as the initiator of this process. Rather, in seeking to increase its
199 200

ibid., 173. ibid., 148. 201 ibid., 173. 202 ibid., 178.

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power it becomes a primary motivator in this development, not only the greatest single merchant in Europe but also fully armed with the theological justification for most forms of commercial venture.203 Catholic Agro-Business is pioneered by Cistercian businessmonks, but this does not develop dialectically from earlier forms of agriculture; it is initiated as a calculated commercial venture. As well as land and its produce, the Church freely sells relics and absolutions; if it has any antipathy to trade at this point, it is only to the trade of others.204 In effect, then, the rise of capitalism and the nation-state was not due to material-economic or technological factors, but rather to a variety of cultural influences which altered perceptions and meanings, thus removing constraints on certain forms of behaviour while actively encouraging others.

Rejection of Dialectical Progression

As is clear from the narrative, Perlman at no point suggests that later conditions emerge as inevitable or necessary products of earlier ones. His Leviathans are unstable and all decompose, or are swallowed by other Leviathans. Such resistance as there is does not seek to promote the Leviathanic form, nor aid its development, although it may be the case that the resisters develop their own Leviathan as an unwanted by-product of the act of resistance. In particular, the most significant Leviathanic development, that of the Western Spirit, did not develop out of the previous Leviathan (that of Rome) nor out of the existing socio-economic structures (feudalism) but was rather a result of external influences on a particular social and cultural organization. In reality the primary effect of Rome was the creation of Leviathanized knights and the emergence, on its collapse, of a power-vacuum into which stepped these knights and the Catholic Church. But while the Church was committed to the relaunching of a European neo-Roman Empire, the now semi-Leviathanized and warlike Franks precipitated their own downfall through their aggressive military ventures. These brought them into contact with more-or-less Leviathanized opposition, either with Islam directly or with its clients in Scandinavia or Eastern Europe. It was this conflict, which gave the Islamic octopus its foothold in Europe, which launched the next Leviathan, through the spread of commerce and the emergence of the nation-state (and the consequent undermining and eventual destruction of the manorial system). The Catholic Church, although left behind as long as it clung to dreams of a reconstituted Rome, still offered the cultural conditions which supported the rise of capitalism. And any opposition the still other-worldly and imperialistic Catholic church may have offered to the nation-state was in turn undermined by the emergence of the this-world and state-oriented Protestantism. In this account while there are clearly progressions in that certain events lead to others, the actors involved are often at odds which each other, and with the eventual course of history. The most significant elements in the emergence of the Western Spirit, and the capitalist nation-state, come from outside of Europe and are not part of an internal developmental
203 204

ibid., 180. ibid.

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process. Perlman also rejects any inevitability of the emergence of Civilization. As can be seen from the narrative, the emergence and subsequent development of Leviathan(s) depends on numerous factors, and such Leviathans that do appear are unstable and always resisted, although rarely successfully. The example of pre-Colombian America makes a useful comparison point, since this was a clearly recorded example of pristine non-civilized communities coming into contact with a heavily Leviathanized culture.205 From this perspective, the emergence of civilization/Leviathan from non-civilized communities is not inevitable. As Perlman notes, if we think of Eurasia as a freak and of His-story as an aberration, we can just as easily convince ourselves that the community of freedoms we call Nature or Paradise would never have vanished if the Europeans had not brought Leviathanic holocausts across the water.206

Problems
The biggest problem with an analysis of Perlmans work is how is it to be taken? George Bradford has referred to Against His-story as an intuitive history of the megamachine, and it is certainly the case that intuition is favoured over a rigid adherence to a conventional historical narrative structure.207 Perlman is opposed to academia in so far as it colludes with the State and Capital in maintaining the cultural illusions that are necessary for both to keep functioning. Perlman in fact sees Scientists, Engineers, Doctors and Professors, [who] will be eventually known simply as experts or Executives as products of Leviathan itself, part of the process of separating reason from nature and putting it at the service of Leviathan.208 Although academically trained himself, Perlman distanced himself from this area after his short teaching appointment in Michigan (1967-68). By the time of Against His-story he refers to academics as armored bullies, who stand guard and demand the password, Positive Evidence. No vision can pass by their gates.209 As already noted, after writing of the breakdown of primitive society in Sumer, he comments that There is no positive evidence for any of this.210 When an introduction to an excerpt of Against His-story in the FE referred to his treatment of seminal and provocative problems and to Turners historically solid interpretation, Perlman replied that such statements were pompous, stock phrases that do not actually mean anything: My essay, Against His-story does not aspire to be an historically solid interpretation.211 Given this lack of focus on positive evidence, what can be said of Perlmans work? Perhaps it is best viewed as a counter myth. Re-assessing the primitive

205

Perlman deals specifically with the resistance of native Americans to Leviathan in his novel The Strait (Perlman 1988). The interest in the American Indian is no doubt due in large part to the nationality of the writer. 206 ibid., 248. 207 Bradford 1993a, 45. For further considerations of Perlmans style, see Style in Appendix 6. 208 Perlman 1984, 227. 209 Perlman 1984, 2. 210 ibid., 19 211 Perlman 1983, 2

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positively leads, by necessity, to reviewing the idea of progress, and so of history. Perlmans ongoing concern (as demonstrated in his 1969 essay The Reproduction of Everyday Life) was with how and why human beings colluded in their own oppression.212 If primitive life is not seen as a constant struggle with cruel nature, then a purely progressive view of history leading to the present is impossible to maintain. Perlmans aim, therefore, is to construct a plausible alternative to the myth of progress and history. By looking at the past from a different perspective than of the necessity and desirability of civilization, Perlman is attempting to highlight alternative interpretations of historical events. However, any work of this kind is limited evidentially in two ways. First, those outside of civilization do not have written records to preserve their tales and visions; and second, the victorious civilizations literally write history. Any attempt to record the history of civilization from the view of the outsider and resister is inevitably limited by lack of evidence and therefore will depend to a large degree on speculation. Perlman simply makes this ambiguity part of his project, rather than apologizing for it. There are a number of problems raised by this account, although they are more to do with the issues of plausibility and accuracy than with the internal consistency of the work. Notably, the role of the oppression of women is marginal, and although Perlman mentions it is appears incidental rather than crucial. From Engels onward this has been considered an important issue, and is still thought of as a vital factor in the historical emergence of domination and exploitation today. According to Lerner, the subordination of females is a crucial part of the growth of class systems and the collapse of the egalitarian primal communities. The mental construct of domination that facilitated slave economies developed from the original oppression of women. This is a possibility that Perlman does not take into account.213 The issues of social and technological change are not adequately explored. Perlmans view seems to be that primitive society was unchanging, and that any change there is is necessarily for the worse. Neither proposition seems plausible. Clearly, changes had occurred in social structure and technology prior to Sumer, since early proto-towns had been built (e.g. Catal Hyk), even if these were organized along more egalitarian lines. No mention is made of the Neolithic revolution or the rise of agriculture. It is also not made clear why civilizations collapse; Perlman simply notes that they do, and suggests at the end of the book that the current civilization will collapse also. While Perlman does not have to provide an explanation for this process for his argument to make sense, it would perhaps have been a useful area to explore.214 There is also the point that forms of proto-civilization appeared elsewhere, notably in the
212 213

See Perlman 1992. Lerner 1986. 214 Toynbee links the rise of civilizations to the presence of a dynamic and creative minority within society, and decline to the failure of the same. Civilizations rise when they are able to successfully overcome challenges and decline when they are unsuccessful. See Sorokin 1969.

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Americas, which were unconnected with the Middle East. While these may not have become fullyfledged Leviathans, there are obviously questions raised about the process of state formation that are not answered in Perlmans account. It is not clear that Perlman is advocating a single cause i.e. irrigation, for the emergence of civilization, as Wittfogel did. Wittfogel argued that the management required by irrigation systems generated early State structures and the increased production of food encouraged class society.215 However, studies of Mesopotamian irrigation structures have shown that early, small-scale irrigation systems did not require centralized control, and that their expansion occurred when early state and urbanization was already in place.216 Perlmans account seems to fall somewhere between these two views, since although he sees the early irrigation system as being integrated in primitive society, it still generates a proto-technocracy; so the irrigation system neither required nor created a state formation, it did require some form of technical management and this ultimately led to fissures opening up in the society which encouraged the growth of power structures. It was not the management of the irrigation system per se but rather its management under inclement conditions when the works were regularly washed away by floods. He writes that the water works grow more extensive every year, but gives no reason as to why this should be the case. 217 Given this, some of his explanations of changes in early Sumer seem difficult to maintain. He offers no explanation as to why the settlers stayed in such an inhospitable area, given that the rest of the world offered more than adequate living conditions he simply comments that they are tenacious.218 It is also not clear if Perlman is suggesting that this process could, and perhaps would, be repeated elsewhere; would any attempt at technological management in inclement conditions promote the conditions favourable for the emergence of power structures? If so, this seems close to arguing that a struggle with nature and subsequent technological development are the crucial elements in the emergence of civilization, and that would be bordering on the Marxist approach to history which Perlman rejects. The arguments advanced in Primitivist circles (and to a degree by Bookchin) stress the importance of culture as a restraint on economic and productive activity, and of the non-economic and transitory nature of power in primitive society. This approach allows for a counter-progressive schema that attempts to explain why progress occurred so erratically over such a long period of pre civilizational time. However, although Perlman stresses the long period of time in which protocivilizational power structures developed in Sumer, it is not clear that he explains why and how these cultural restraints were overcome. If the psychological conditions of the state were not yet in place, why did anyone follow the new Lugal? Would not the memory of Eden that Perlman suggests is still significant millennia later be much stronger in early Sumer? These difficulties do not necessarily undermine Perlmans general point, but they suggest many difficulties with his approach.
215 216

See Bailey & Llobera 1981, particularly Part III The Wittfogel Watershed. See Adams 1966. 217 Perlman 1984, 19. 218 ibid., 18.

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Perlmans argument as to the inception of the Western Spirit also seems problematic he does not make a convincing case that this period of warfare was so completely unique in history. Gwynne Dyer considers the frequency of warfare in early civilizations, arguing that the city-states were almost constantly at war with each other, or recovering from war, or preparing for another war.219 This warfare was particularly vicious, as Dyer notes regarding the victory of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III who took Arzashku, the royal capital of Urartu, in 858BC: He impaled the defenders on sharpened stakes and then piled their severed heads against the city walls... The Assyrians had the reputation of being particularly ruthless even in the ancient world, but Shalmanesers behaviour was by no means unusual.220 Although this would tend to support the critique of civilization, it does suggest that the violence and warfare that Perlman argues was significant in the development of the Western Spirit was not in any way unique, or at least not in a way that Perlman makes clear. Finally, by positing a dichotomy between civilization and primitive Perlman appears not to allow for the possibility of any social change that is not a form of domination. The implication of Against His-story is that everything that has occurred or has been learnt under the aegis of civilization should be abandoned as part of the ecstatic return to the primitive. If Against His-story is read as expressionistic and propagandist, and therefore deliberately simplifying, this approach is perhaps understandable; however, as is noted in the section Uses of the Primitive in the Chapter on the Primitive, the possibility and desirability of a return to the primitive is not a widely held view in Anarchist Primitivist circles. Perhaps if he had lived to be writing today Perlman may have amended or expanded his earlier work. Certainly, David Watson has been more critical of the either/or approach in his recent work, noting how conquest and domination has in turn led to new forms of resistance. But since these forms of resistance are also a part of civilization: to oppose civilization as a totalityif one could be sure what that meantcould only imply somehow opposing not only the repressive and dehumanizing aspects of civilization but also the valuable and painful historical experience that has nurtured new insight.221 He also refers to an alternative vision of progress, stressing that weve inevitably learned some things along historys way, things we didnt necessarily need to know before, but which are probably indispensable to us now.222 Again, though, this ambiguity (as has be pointed out in the chapter on the Primitive) revolves around the failure to define civilization or the primitive, making it difficult to separate positive and negative
219 220

Dyer 1986, 20. Dyer 1986, 15. 221 Watson, 1997, 18. 222 ibid., 19.

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elements, or to pinpoint what might or might not be valuable from an anarchist perspective.

Zerzan on History
I will only briefly mention here John Zerzans view of history, since his ideas have been examined in the chapter on The Primitive. Zerzans claim that the origins of domination can be reasonably clearly identified, separates his view from others in the milieu.223 For Zerzan, the concept of Time signalled the first appearance of alienation. The crucial development of a division of labour came about because of an increase in population brought about by the breakdown of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but this is contradicted by his claim that it has been shown that agriculture caused, rather than was the result of, population increases.224 He has argued that division of labour is fundamental in accounting for the growth of estranging conceptualisation (in his work on Number), although this raises the question of what caused the increase in the division of labour. 225 Agriculture is the materialization of alienation, but came about not because of the need to increase production but initially for religious (i.e. symbolic) reasons. He suggests that language arose with the beginning of technologyin the sense of division of labour and its concomitants, such as a standardizing of things and events and the effective power of specialists over others.226 The use of with here suggests that language did not precede division of labour, but was part of its development, which again raises a question as to the origins of division of labour. Overall, Zerzan does not offer a precise historical schema, even a hypothetical one; rather, he asserts particular possibilities within each separate piece of criticism, which offer a broad impression but not a clear and unambiguous argument. (For criticisms of Zerzans approach and scholarship, see the chapter on the Primitive and Style in Appendix 6.) In terms of an approximate chronology, Zerzan locates the emergence of trade and surpluses with Cro-Magnons, that is during the Upper Palaeolithic period, which began around 35,000 years ago. Also at this time language either began or registers its first real dominance.227 Art also emerged during this period. By about 10,000 B.C. extensive division of labour had produced the kind of social control reflected by cities and temples.228 This division of labour, however, would have occurred without writing, which did not appear until around 3000 BC. Agriculture appears in the Neolithic, 9000 to 7000 BC and creates food surpluses which allows classes to emerge on the basis of this, mathematics, writing and calendar had appeared by 3000-3500 B.C.E.. Subsequent changes in these
223

For example, George Bradford argues that no explanation and no speculation can encompass the series of events that burst community and generated class society and the state (Bradford 1993a, 44). Also, for Perlman talking, symbolising, etc. are not mentioned in Against His-story, and do not appear to be relevant to his argument. 224 Zerzan 1988, 11; 69. 225 ibid., 41 226 ibid., 28. 227 ibid., 32. 228 ibid., 33.

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areas are invariably in the form of the expansion of domination and domestication, and an increase in alienation. However, with Perlman Zerzan also sees resistance as being a crucial element in history, in so far as the ascendancy of civilization did not occur for so long because it was resisted by early humans. He also believes that this resistance is still occurring today in the workplace, in schools, and in society at large, although this is often manifested as anger and anti-social and irrational violence rather than as organized opposition.229

229

See Zerzan, The Promise of the 80s, in Zerzan 1988, 197-223.

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CHAPTER 5 REASON
BOOKCHIN, SOCIAL ECOLOGY & REASON
Presuppositions for an Objective Reason
Although Bookchin is quick to point out the limitations of reason, it is not reason as such that he is concerned with, but rather the reduction of reason to only its instrumental, analytical form what he calls conventional reason. This form of reason, structured around the internal consistency of propositions is useful and necessary for everyday life.1 It is the basis of mathematics and of engineering and the practical application of the sciences. In conventional reason, Bookchin notes, truth is identified with consistency, and it is a useful truth in these areas of life.2 However, in attaining this consistency there are casualties, most crucially values: [T]o achieve this consistency, conventional reason must at the same time remove values from the realm of its discourse and concerns. The values, ideals beliefs, and theories we cherish are irrelevant in conventional reason, and moral issues are regarded as arbitrary, matters of personal mood and taste. Conventional rationality is conceived as a skill, a technique, an instrument for achieving certain ends, irrespective of the moral character of the ends or purposes they serve.3 The problem with reason, then, is that in its being reduced to this conventional form, all ethical issues are removed from its remit. The consequence of this is, whereas once reason held the promise of ushering in a better world through banishing superstition and undermining the arbitrary power of church and monarchy, today we mistrust reason because it has enhanced our technical powers to alter the world dramatically without providing us with the goals and values that give these powers direction and meaning.4

1 2

Bookchin 1990a, 17. Ibid, 18. 3 ibid.. Bookchin refers to Horkheimer and Adorno as presenting some of the most incisive critiques of reason (Bookchin 1991b, 271). Conventional or instrumental reason is essentially what Horkheimer refers to as subjective reason. Subjective reason is essentially concerned with means and ends, with the adequacy of procedures for purposes more or less taken for granted and supposedly self-explanatory. It attaches little importance to the question of whether the purposes are reasonable. It if concerns itself at all with ends, it takes for granted that they too are reasonable in the subjective sense, i.e. that they serve the subjects interest in relation to self -preservation (Horkheimer 1947, 3-4). An alternative form of reason, which Bookchin refers to as Reason or dialectical reason, is what Horkheimer calls objective reason. Objective reason asserted the existence of reason as a force not only in the individual mind but also in the objective world in relations among human beings and between social classes, in social institutions, and in nature and its manifestationsThis concept of reason never precluded subjective reason, but regarded the latter as only a partial, limited expression of a universal rationality from which criteria for all things and beings were derived. The emphasis was on ends rather than on means (Horkheimer 1947, 4-5). 4 Bookchin, 1991b, 271.

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For Bookchin the solution to this dilemma is not that reason is abandoned as a concept but that other, more appropriate forms of reason found in different strands of Western philosophy should be recovered. 5 He attempts to utilize these other forms, so overcoming the deficiencies of conventional reason through developing an alternative philosophical basis for reason (and ethics) which he calls dialectical naturalism.6 This has two elements, both of which are lacking in conventional reason; it posits a reality which has a meaning and order that are accessible to humans; and it is able to accommodate process and development. Bookchin claims that reason was once perceived as an immanent feature of reality, indeed, as the organizing and motivating principle of the world.7 In this world-view, the perception of an ordered world, indeed the ability to know the world, implies that this world is objectively ordered. Indeed, the very ability to know implies that the world is orderly and intelligible and that it lends itself to rational interpretation because it is rational.8 Bookchin traces this perception back to the Presocratics. Bookchin does not argue that the specific views of the Presocratics are valid, but favours their insight and conceptual formulations. Presocratic physics and metaphysics sought to explain the world in terms of moral meaning rather than simply cause and effect. Pythagorean terms such as arche (form), kosmos (combining order with beauty) and krasis (equilibrium) demonstrated this, as did the key idea of isonomia or cosmic equality (the equality of all elements) in which, according to Bookchin, the Presocratics anchored their interpretation of nature.9 In addition Presocratic thought was consciously infused by a sophisticated notion of cosmic justicedikaisyne, which imparts a sense of justice to nature as well as society. 10 Bookchins argument is that these notions created the idea of nature as a commonwealth, a polis, immanently egalitarian and self-regulating. 11 However, over time these ideas became reworked into statically transcendental concepts, a regression, according to Bookchin, that philosophy never fully overcame.12 The democratic-egalitarian view of nature was replaced by an

Bookchin has little patience with the popularity of Eastern philosophies. He suggests that there is much that is wrong with them, although they are often uncritically accepted as being 'ecological', while there are more useful trends in Western philosophy which are overlooked because the whole area is regarded as oppressive. While there is some truth in this, Bookchin unfortunately seems only to know Eastern philosophy through the populist literature he criticizes. He therefore rejects Eastern philosophies en bloc, rather than seeking a synthesis of East and West. 6 This phrase has also been applied to Engels' Dialectics of Nature. Bookchin is critical of Engels whom he considers was too "enamoured... of matter and motion as the irreducible "attributes" of Being" such that "in his work, kineticism based on mere motion tended to invade his dialectic of organic development" (Bookchin, 1990a, 15). The developmental nature of the dialectic became lost in Engel's materialism and reliance on physical laws. 7 Bookchin, 1991, 10. 8 Bookchin, 1990a, 58. 9 Ibid, 60. 10 Also significant is "Its counterpart, adikaisyne, [which] marks every transgression of the law of the measure and the peras or limit of things and relationships. It demands reparation and the restoration of harmony" (ibid., 62). 11 ibid. 12 ibid.

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elitist and hierarchical one, creating outside agents that were responsible for whatever order there was in the universe. Nature itself became degraded to a chaotic and irrational form, while justice and order became the province of human society. This transition, argues Bookchin, is more important than a simple contest between mechanism and organicism.13 The debates between idealism and materialism still occur on the terrain mapped out by the split considered above. But while the influence of the ancients permeated the modern world, it did so only in a limited form, offering to the founders of modern science the premise that the universe was orderly and could therefore be understood, but without the idea of cosmic justice and equality. Descartes mechanism was therefore a translation of the sense of order into mechanical form. For Bookchin it is not Descartes but Kant that made the most significant contribution to the undermining of a nature philosophy. Kant argued that it was not possible to know the thing-in-itself, thus obliterating the grounding for the any nature philosophy based on ontological reality. All that was possible was knowledge created by the subject; objects must conform to our knowledge.14 If metaphysics tells us anything, it is about the subject rather than the object. Bookchin highlights his criticism with a quote from Karl Jaspers: Kant does not, like all earlier philosophers, investigate objects; what he inquires into is our knowledge of objects. He provides no doctrine of the metaphysical world, but a critique of the reason that aspires to know it. He gives no doctrine of being as something objectively known, but an elucidation of existence as the situation of our consciousness.15 Kant, writes Bookchin, left us alone with our own subjectivity.16 But Bookchin argues that nature philosophy requires a really-existing, ontological nature, and this is lost in Kants formulation. Neither Hegel nor other post-Kantians were able to escape this trap. In both Husserl and Heidegger reality is distilled into intellectuality, and the formalizations of the human mind are the exclusive point of entry into Being.17 Bookchin also criticizes systems theory, which he isolates as a key element of contemporary ecological philosophy, but which is flawed by still being immersed in Kantian subjectivism.18 The way out, for Bookchin, is to allow that it is reasonable, if not necessary, to attribute properties to nature we are obliged to formulate new premises that provide coherence and meaning to natural evolution.19 We need to choose presuppositions that yield coherence and meaning to
13 14

ibid., 63. Kant, 1981. 15 Jaspers, 1962, 50. 16 Bookchin, 1990, 64. Bookchin does not suggest that Kant's argument represented a complete disaster. "That Kant's epistemological turn greatly enlarged philosophical thought is hardly arguable" (Ibid, 73). 17 Bookchin 1990, 66. 18 It is unfortunate for the development of Bookchin's ideas, but also indicative of his desire to engage with contemporary debates, that he brings in Kant on page 64 of Philosophy of Social Ecology, then moves on to systems theory on page 66, which continues until page 73. A more profound engagement with Kant may have helped the explanatory and developmental nature of this work. 19 ibid., 73.

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reality20 presuppositionless philosophy is, for Bookchin, a myth. Bookchin chooses two such presuppositions; exactly why he chooses these is not made clear, although from Bookchins overall approach it would appear that he sees them as part of a historical development of the ideas of freedom (See chapter on History.) To begin Bookchin claims the very right to attribute properties to nature, a philosophical (as opposed to scientific) quality he asserts was demonstrated by the Renaissance notion that matter and motion are basic attributes of nature.21 He then moves to his first presupposition, which he suggests is an advance on this Renaissance idea, transforming motion into development Denis Diderots sensibilit. In DAlemberts Dream Diderot puts forward a materialist philosophy which seeks to offer an alternative to theistic idealism and Cartesian dualism.22 He suggests that all matter is imbued with sensibility, which functions as a materialist spirit (but which, unlike Descartes version, exists in space).23 Since all matter has this quality, all matter is potentially alive the difference between the organic and the inorganic is one of organization.24 There is no need for external forces; since an internal dynamism accounts for all changes, life can be seen as essentially self-creative.25 To account for the question of how molecules combine to make up a complex organism, and become more than what they are, Diderot (who did not consider the possibility of cell division) suggests a building up from the smaller and simpler to larger and more complex. Contiguity becoming continuity is... like two drops of mercury merging to become one.26 In this melting together, the whole contains the parts but does not obliterate them, and the harmony of the whole is maintained by a collective consciousness whose presence is felt in every molecule of the organism.27 For Bookchin sensibilit implies an active concept of matter that yields increasing complexity from the atomic level to the brain.28 The second presupposition is the alternative pathway to Kantianism that Hegel opened up with his phenomenological strategy.29 Admittedly, Bookchin gives the reader little to go on here, given the breadth and complexity of Hegels thought. Bookchin offers a quote from the introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit, in which Hegel writes of the path of natural consciousness which presses forward to true knowledge.30 Bookchin is particularly impressed by this notion of pressing forward, which he sees as an immanence in this knowledge. He continues: To a remarkable extent, the self-movement of consciousness in the Phenomenology
20 21

Bookchin 1990, 73. ibid., 74, emphasis in original. 22 Wilson, 1972, 561. 23 Furbank 1992, 329. 24 Crocker, 1966, 312. 25 ibid., 316; 312. 26 Wilson, 1972, 564. 27 Crocker, 1966, 317. 28 Bookchin, 1990a, 75. 29 ibid., 76, emphasis in original. 30 Hegel 1977, 49.

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largely parallels the self-movement of consciousness in historical reality, although the strategy is captive to natural reality and the ethical universe it opens for ecology. 31 For Bookchin, taking the two presuppositions outlined above suggests that Nature itself seems to write natural philosophy and ethics.32 Bookchins conclusion is that it is neither possible nor desirable to accept Bertrand Russells image of humanity as an accidental spark in a meaningless void.33 Rather, nature itself should be seen as creative and developing, indeed as self-moving, a form of participatory evolution. Bookchin begins his exploration of the concept of participatory evolution by arguing that evolution has been marked until recently by the development of ever more complex species and ecocommunities.34 This, he asserts, may be seen as a source of greater stability. But moreover, it may also be regardedas an ever-expanding, albeit nascent, source of freedom within nature, a medium for objectively anchoring varying degrees of choice, selfdirectiveness, and participation by life-forms in their own evolution.35 Bookchins argument is based on the belief that evolution cannot be seen simply as a series of chance events, as mere randomness, but instead has direction and active striving: I wish...to contend that the increase in diversity in the biosphere opens increasingly new evolutionary pathways... in which species play an active role in their own survival and change.36 Bookchin early on introduces the idea of choice, which he qualifies by the stating that it is rudimentary and nascent.37 He goes so far as to equate choice with freedom, although this is in turn qualified, being dim and germinal.38 As species and ecocommunities evolve they become more complex, and this process creates new possible evolutionary paths. This increasing complexity increases the number of paths (the possibilities) and with it the possibilities for species to act selfselectively. Those species that can participate in their own evolution are encouraged, which creates ever more complex species and ecocommunities. Bookchin uses the Hegelian term unity in diversity to illustrate the idea that evolutionary success is achieved not through individual species but whole
31 32

ibid. Bookchin, 1990a, 77. Despite the clear influence that Hegel has had on Bookchins thought, his conclusions here are by no-means as self-evident as he claims and, as with Kant, he does his ideas and his readers a disservice in his cursory approach. 33 Bookchin, 1990a, 77. 34 Bookchin, 1990a, 106. Bookchin prefers the term ecocommunities to ecosystems. 35 ibid.. Although the idea of choice and participation in nature appears idiosyncratic, there is some scientific support for Bookchins view. Contemporary physics suggests that the steady unfolding of organized complexity in the universe in a fundamental property of nature (Davies, 198 7). When applied to biology in the field of Quantum Biology this approach seeks to explain the results of experiments which suggest that under some circumstances, bacteria may be able to choose which genes to mutate (McFadden 2000, 21). 36 Bookchin 1990a, 107. 37 ibid. 38 Bookchin, 1986, 73. However, he makes the point (similar to that which he makes about ethics) that there is in reality no choice or freedom in nature; it is merely "an evolving ground" for these elements, which require human conceptualization, human culture to give them meaning (Bookchin, 1990, 150).

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ecosystems and that the most successful (that is, simultaneously the most stable and developing) ecosystems are the most diverse and complex. He also makes the point that it is the species themselves that lead to this increasing complexity; there is no need to create an explanatory external agent to account for evolution.39 Bookchin seems to be suggesting an internal natural mechanism in seeking to preserve itself, to maintain its identity, as he puts it, every organism is exercising some form of choice that is, it is choosing alternatives that favor its survival and well-being.40 As the complexity of ecocommunities increases, so too do the alternatives available to the organisms - there is a widening horizon of evolutionary possibilities.41 Given the mechanism he suggests, he is being reasonable in arguing that life both creates these possibilities and pursues them - that is, life has both the drive to evolve and the ability to do so (although this is processual, and could only occur over a sufficiently long time). The end of this evolutionary development is (self) consciousness that is, humanity, which is nature rendered self-conscious.42 When this point has been reached, the pursuit of complexity and diversity can be willful, self-reflexive, and consciously creative.43

Dialectic
It is at this point that dialectic, the second element of Western philosophy that Bookchin wishes to recover, becomes significant. He identifies three reasons why conventional reason is of little use in understanding the evolutionary processes. First is the principle of identity, that A must equal A. Although valid in dealing with discrete objects, it does not address the problem of change, particularly the question of becoming. 44 Second is the conventional notion of causality, modelled on kinetics. Again, this is adequate in dealing with discrete objects, since causality involves spatial and temporal changes which do not affect the underlying structure or identity of the objects involved. When objects do change Bookchin uses the example of sand becoming soil conventional reason can only treat these as two separate and unconnected entities. From these two presuppositions of conventional reason he derives the third, that history is a layered series of separate phenomena.45 Whatever the connections between different levels of history, they can only be conceptualized as separate entities, and analyzed in that way. Now for Bookchin, as noted, these presuppositions make conventional reason incapable of grasping evolution, which is based on development and continua. Dialectical reason, though, offers greater hope. Bookchin has been strongly influenced by Aristotle and Hegel, arguing that Aristotelian
39 40

Hence Bookchin's rejection of Bergson's elan vital (ibid., 108). Bookchin, 1986, 73-4. 41 ibid. 42 According to Bookchin, both Fichte, in Vocation of Man (1800) and the anarchist geographer Elisee Reclus stated that humanity is nature rendered self-conscious. Bookchin disagrees insofar as this is only a potentiality not yet achieved. 43 Bookchin 1986b, 74. 44 Bookchin, 1990a, 13. 45 ibid., 22.

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notions of causality and Hegelian dialectic are virtually congruent Like Aristotle, Hegels entire goal is to comprehend the notion of wholeness.46 But he feels that their dialectic needs to be modified for it to be ecological. The problem with the dialectic of Aristotle and Hegel is that it assumes that nature is static, rather than dynamic and evolving. Because of this both tend to be overly teleological; In an ecological dialectic, by contrast, there would be no terminality that could culminate in a God or an Absolute.47 (Conversely, conventional evolutionary theory relies on chance and does not accommodate any idea of purpose.) Bookchin does not consider himself a teleological thinker, since he is not positing an endpoint: Dialectical naturalism...does not terminate in a Hegelian absolute at the end of a cosmic developmental path, but rather advances the vision of an ever-increasing wholeness, fullness, and richness of differentiation and subjectivity.48 He prefers the Aristotelian term entelechy, which suggests that a phenomenon was drawn to actualize its full potentiality for achieving the highest form specific to itto develop intrinsically and extrinsically toward the formal selfrealization of its potentialities.49 Teleology as the reaching toward an end-point is here replaced by the giving-of-meaning to causality, in terms of a striving toward the better, rather than predetermination.50 Dialectical reason differs from conventional reason in that causality is cumulative, that is the implicit original is not replaced by the later explicit result but is absorbed into and developed beyond the explicit into a fuller, more differentiated, and more adequate form.51 Of course, the explicit is not the end of the development, but simply the next stage of the ongoing dialectical process. Bookchin does not see dialectic as simply an analytical method, but believes it accurately represents the reality of natural processes: Dialectical reason, conceived as the logical expression of a wide-ranging form of developmental causality, is more than a method. Precisely because it is a system of causality, it is ontological, objective and therefore naturalistic. It explicates how processes occur in the natural world as well as in the social.52 This is a perspective that Bookchin discerns in both Aristotle and Hegel, for whom dialectic is more than a remarkable method for dealing with reality... Dialectic is also, in fact, an ontological form of causality. It is, in effect, both a way of reasoning about the causality in the form of development and, simultaneously, an account of the
46 47

Bookchin 1991b, 287. ibid, 169. 48 ibid., 30. 49 Bookchin, 1991b, 283. 50 Ibid., 284. 51 Bookchin 1990a, 31. 52 ibid., 29.

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objective world.53 This is important; dialectical reason is not simply the province of human subjectivity and rationality, however much that might successfully understand natural processes. Rather, reason is a property of nature itself, the striving toward complexity and subjectivity that Bookchin sees in evolution: Reason, in this sense, is not a matter of personal opinion or taste. It seems to inhere in objective reality itselfin a sturdy belief in a rational and meaningful universe that is independent of our needs and proclivities as individuals. This mode of reason... expresses the logos of the world and retains its integrity and validity apart from the interplay of human volition and interests.54 So Bookchin sees an overarching ordering principle reason in nature. Because of this, the other of the prime failings of conventional reason, that it does not offer any value, can be overcome, since nature can now offer the grounds for an objective ethics. This is a problematic area, and I am not sure that Bookchin makes a convincing case even on his own terms. I will look at this in more detail below, but first I will look at how Bookchin claims nature provides an ethics. Dialectical reasoning is concerned with potentiality and becoming, that is with a process of discerning the what-should-be from the what-is. Bookchin uses the term eduction to describe this process: If deduction consists of the if...then inferential steps we take...eduction renders the latent possibilities of phenomena fully manifest and articulated.55 This what-should-be is, for Bookchin, an ethical proposition; from it, humans can make judgements about the present and speculations into the future. But since this is referring to nature, how does it apply to humans? Bookchin stresses that humanity is simply a part of nature, although one which is extremely complex. It has emerged or evolved as part of natural evolution, and has the potentiality at least to be nature rendered self-conscious. In order to know our place in this continuum, and to create an ecological and balanced society, we need to understand this evolutionary process (or at least its direction) and act accordingly. And, since natural evolution is ordered around a directiveness of increasing complexity and diversity, this gives humans clear guidelines for how their societies should be organized: Let me emphasize that dialectical naturalism not only grasps reality as an existentially unfolding continuum; it also forms an objective framework for moral judgements. The what-should-be can be seen as an ethical criterion for the truth or validity of an objective what-is. Ethics is not merely a matter of personal taste and values; it is factually anchored in the world itself as an objective standard of self-realization. Whether a society is good or bad, moral or immoral, for example, can be objectively determined by whether it has fulfilled its potentialities for a rational and
53 54

ibid., 26-7. Bookchin, 1991b, 271. 55 Bookchin 1990a, 166-7. Educe, "To bring out, elicit, develop, from a condition of latent, rudimentary, or merely potential existence." s.v. Oxford English Dictionary 1991.

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moral society.56 It is important to mention, since Bookchin stresses this point himself, that he does not see nature as being ethical. First nature is never cruel or kind, heartless or caring, good or bad: First nature may reasonably be regarded as the ground for an ecological ethics or, if you like, the necessary condition for moral behaviour. Social ecology, by conceiving first nature as an evolutionary tendency toward greater subjectivity, sees in the achievement of a rational, self-conscious, and relatively free nature the establishment of an ecological society. But... first nature in itself is not ethical. [...] For better or for worse, human beings are the sole ethical agents that exist.57 What he says instead is that nature offers the matrix for an ethics. That is we, as self-conscious ethical agents, can derive an ethics from nature, without suggesting that nature, outside of humanity, is itself ethical: If one grants that ethics is an eminently human creation, that human beings can add a sense of meaning to first nature by virtue of their interpretive powers, that they can confer values as well as create them, then humanity is literally the very embodiment of value in nature as a whole.58 In fact, without humans, value would disappear from the Earth. How this ethics is manifested in reality is related to Bookchins theory of history. The relationship between Reason and History has been explored in the chapter on History; here it is sufficient to say that for Bookchin, history is the rational unfolding of humanitys potential for freedom, self-consciousness, and cooperation.59 But this is a social potential, and rational history is manifested in the social realm. The way out of the current irrational social and economic order is the creation of a rational societythe potential for which exists in the presentwhich would approximate an ecosystem and would be structured along directly democratic lines, inspired by the Athenian polis: Minimally, the actualization of humanitys potentialities consists in its attainment of a rational society.60 Bookchin departs from Hegel, then, in deriving his ethics from nature; but he is following Hegel in arguing that, historically, it is resolved into social institutions (see Appendix 5).

Ambiguities and Problems

Bookchin has, then, claimed that there is a direction in nature, that this is amenable to human understanding, and that such an understanding can provide an ethics. It is beyond the scope of this analysis to discuss the feasibility of these claims; but what is worth examination is whether
56 57

ibid., 35. Bookchin, 1991a, xxxv; ibid., xxxiv. 58 ibid., xxxvii. 59 History, Civilization, and Progress in Biehl 1997, 227. 60 ibid., 234.

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Bookchins argument is internally consistent, and whether he is sufficiently clear in the points that he makes.

Dialectic, Reason and Ethics

There appear to be a number of ambiguities in Bookchins terminology, particularly regarding the connections between reason and ethics. I will highlight these by looking at three problematic statements that Bookchin makes. Statement 1 Reason...can be lifted from its fallen position by a libertarian ethics rooted in a radical social ecology.61 This places ethics in the primary position, lifting reason. But where would such an ethics come from? In fact, Bookchin argues that an objective ethics can only be derived from nature and reason. So reason can only be lifted from its fallen position by an ethics derived from reason. Statement 2 The matrix from which objective reason may yet derive its ethics for a balanced and harmonized world is the nature conceived by a radical social ecology.62 Here, reason is deriving an ethics from a conception of nature. But objective reason is a property of nature, a property which Bookchin argues allows us to derive an objective ethics. Radical social ecology is either a subjective perspective or a medium of perceiving the truth in nature that is, that there is an objective reason within it. It is this latter that Bookchin argues, so the sentence above actually suggests that objective reason derives its ethics from a nature which can provide an ethics because it has an objective reason. Statement 3 Dialectic is not simply an ontological causality; it is also an ethics.63 Dialectic is ontological, a property of nature. Ethics is not, it is something which can only be derived from nature by conscious, moral subjects i.e. humanity. But if dialectic is an ethics, then this implies that ethics is itself ontological and resides in nature. These three statements, if taken independently, appear to make sense, but taken together, and in the context of Bookchins work as a whole, they only add to the confusion. Is it possible that some clarification could be found in explicating the connection between reason in the world (objective reason), and human reason/rationality (subjective reason)? One possible solution is to stress Bookchins idea of a Logos in nature, largely derived from the Greeks, for whom:

61 62

ibid., 353. Bookchin, 1991b, 274. 63 History, Civilization, and Progress in Biehl 1997, 235, emphasis deleted.

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the Logos already implied an identity of thinking and Being, in that it signified both order itself and the knowledge of order.64 If the Logos is here seen as Bookchins reason, then this can represent both the order of the universe (which for Bookchin is dialectic) and knowledge of it, which is human reason/rationality, in its dialectical form. The human subject does not create the order of the universe, but traces [it] out comprehendingly.65 In this comprehension the human subject is able to derive an ethics, which does not exist in the Logos qua ethics (since that is the domain of humanity only). The emergence of humanity out of First Nature as part of the evolutionary process, and its own subsequent evolution, is a history of mind and self-consciousness that cannot be separated from natural evolution. In this case, from an historical/dialectical perspective, Logos/Reason is not only knowledge of the universe, but the very ability (neurologically as well as conceptually) to know it. The ability to know is not simply out-there (in the form of an ordered and comprehendible universe), but is part of human subjectivity.66 For Hegel, the identity A=not-A allows the identification of (objective) reason being with (subjective) reason knowing which are identical in their difference: Subjective reason is identical with the objective world-reason. Our reason is the absolute reason. There is no confusion either of terms or of thought.67 So if Bookchin is suggesting something along the lines of Hegel, for whom reason [is] the unity of thought and reality, does this clarify his position? 68 It is certainly possible that a fuller investigation of the relationship between objective and subjective reason might clarify some of the issues that arise in Bookchins work regarding reason and ethics in effect the link between philosophical theory and philosophical practice. But at present this has not occurred, and given the limited nature of an exploration of this area in Bookchins work I do not think this gives him a way out; as the quotes above show the relationship between reason and ethics is still unclear. Bookchin takes insufficient care in many cases in his writing, making statements, which although initially comprehensible, do not sit well with his work as a whole. Another problem with Bookchins ethics is that it is at once grandiose and limited. While Bookchin hopes that a dialectical naturalism can answer such questions as what is nature, what is humanitys place in nature, what is the thrust of natural evolution, and what is societys relationship with the organic world, he does not suggest how people should derive guidelines to help them live their everyday lives. 69 As David Watson notes, Bookchin criticizes Bertrand Russell for his view that human life was an accident, yet Russell was an admirable social activist...ethical behaviour is far
64 65

Marx 1974, xxi. ibid. 66 See for example Bookchin 1991b, 275. 67 Stace 1955, 103. 68 Gadamer 1976, 56. 69 Bookchin 1990a, 16.

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more complex than possessing the right ideology.70 (And this problem is not overcome even if contemporary science demonstrates a basis for Bookchins view of directionality in nature, since science does not in itself provide an ethics.) Bookchins search for objectivity tends to remove ethics from the human sphere; in the end, the anarchist goal of free association is reduced to a naturalistic dictatMutualism is an intrinsic good by virtue of its function in fostering the evolution of natural variety and complexity.71

Science and Positivism

In developing his naturalistic philosophy, Bookchin makes many assertions. It is worthwhile considering the basis on which he does so, since his claims are both normative and objectivescientific. He writes: Minimally, we must assume that there is order in the world... Minimally, too, we must assume that there are growth and processes that lead to differentiation... Finally, minimally, we must assume that there is some kind of directionality toward evergreater differentiation or wholeness insofar as potentiality is realized in its full actuality.72 Here, he stresses assumptions, and elsewhere he writes of the need for a sturdy belief in a rational and meaningful universe.73 His introduction of Diderots sensibilit and Hegels phenomenology (above) were presuppositions. However, elsewhere he stresses instead the current state of scientific knowledge, particularly in physics and biology, which, he argues, not only support his view but makes it unchallengeable: Contemporary sciences greatest achievement is its growing evidence that randomness is subject to a directive ordering principle that requires no greater intellectual justification that being itself.74 Janet Biehl, who has also written on social ecology, although conceding that her ideas are derived from Bookchin, notes that, when one looks over the course of the development of the universe... it is hard to attribute it exclusively to randomness... a directionality is apparent in the evolution of the cosmos. Looking back in retrospect, this is simply a factnot mere hypothesis and must be philosophically accounted for.75 These passages indicate a reliance on science as an explanatory and interpretative medium that is carried over to other parts of their work. Bookchins relationship with science, though, (and, conversely, with the non-scientific) is ambivalent. Early on, he stressed that for him ecology was

70 71

Watson 1996, 48. Bookchin 1990a, 83. 72 Ibid, 27. 73 Bookchin 1991b, 271. 74 Bookchin 1990a, 84. 75 Biehl 1991, 114-5.

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significant in terms of revolutionary thought because since the Renaissance the development of [such thought] has been heavily influenced by a branch of science.76 But by the middle of the twentieth century the potentially liberatory sciences had been coopted by state and capitalism, to the degree that we have begun to regard science itself as an instrument of control over the thought processes and physical being of man.77 The critical edge of science had been blunted. But one scientific discipline retained something of that critical edge, in part because of the nature its subject matter ecology. Bookchin argued that because ecology dealt with issues of life on the planet, it could not be assimilated into a dominating, hierarchical system, since such would lead to the destruction of life itself: The issues with which ecology deals are imperishable in the sense that they cannot be ignored without bringing into question the survival of the planet itself. The critical edge of ecology is due not so much to the power of human reason but to a still higher power, the sovereignty of nature.78 Ecology, then, could be the science that would inspire the development of a contemporary libertarian revolutionary perspective. In this respect, his focus on science as the key explanatory method is consistent. However, elsewhere he was written that what is required if change is to occur in the world is a new sensibility and a new consciousness. But these cannot be poetic alone; they must be scientific...[or rather] a transcendence of both into a new realm of theory and practice, an artfulness that combines fancy with reason, imagination with logic, vision with technique...poetry and imagination must be integrated with science and technology.79 He has also written favourably of the perspective of organic society. A libertarian reason, he has suggested, is one that bears witness to the symbiotic animism of early preliterate sensibilities without becoming captive to its myths and self-deceptions: Even though animals have not been persuaded by rituals and ceremonials to seek out the hunter, we would do well to respect the animals and plants we consume by using an etiquette, perhaps even ceremonies, that acknowledge their integrity and subjectivity as living beings. For here nature has offered up a sacrifice to us that demands some kind of recompense in turneven an aesthetic one. Nor are we alone the participants and audience for that ceremonial; life surrounds us everywhere and, in its own way, bears witness to ours.80 Here Bookchin seems to offer a justification not only for ritual and metaphor (even going so far as to argue that denied its aesthetics and ceremonials, an ecological sensibility becomes a mere pretense at what we ... call ecological thinking) but also suggesting a role for some form of critical animism. 81
76 77

Bookchin 1974, 57. ibid. 78 ibid., 59. 79 Bookchin 1991b, 20. 80 Bookchin 1991b, 303. 81 ibid.

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Indeed, this is not without precedent; elsewhere he has written that complementarity...presupposes a new animism that respects the other for its own sake.82 However, Bookchin later distanced himself from these views, a change of position that has been examined in the chapter on the Primitive. Referring to his earlier work, he wrote in the late1990s that: I even maintained that the animistic qualities of aboriginal subjectivity were something that Westerners could benefit from emulatingI later came to realize that I was wrong in many of these respects.83 Bookchins change of emphasis occurred in part because of the emergence of strands of radical politics which endorsed his earlier views regarding the significance of primitive modes of reason, though without some of the caveats he attached. In attempting to refute these currents, both Bookchin and Biehl restated their belief in the explanatory power of science, and stressed their rejection of nonscientific epistemologies. Biehl in particular is highly critical of the use of, and reliance on, myth and metaphor in some strands of ecofeminism. She notes several times that the problem with myth and metaphor is they do not explain anything at all.84 In fact, magic and mythopoesis cannot replace clearly valid and tested scientific explanations and we cannot return to a time when analogy and intuition were the only available alternatives to rational and factually verifiable accounts of the world.85 Bookchin himself is critical of epistemological primitivism, arguing that it is ludicrous to believe that preliterate or primitive peoples had more insight into the natural world that ourselves, in view of the brilliant explanations given by modern science.86 Bookchin has also argued recently that the primitive outlook towards nature was a combination of ignorance and an instrumental means of acquiring food: Late Paleolithic foragers, to be sure, knew very well how to survive under extremely inhospitable conditionsTheir knowledge of their habitats and their ability to gain subsistence from them was exceptional in every degree. Bookchin does not claim that techniques discovered by band and tribal peoples are lacking in practical value and adds, perhaps slightly facetiously if anyone today wanted to hunt mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, and longhorn bison with spears and bows and arrows, the lore about animal behaviour accumulated by our late Paleolithic ancestors might indeed be valuable (although why some forms of hunting, animal husbandry, and herbalism practiced by primitive groups might not be valuable in a contemporary setting he does not say).87 But, he argues,
82 83

Bookchin 1980, 268. Bookchin 1999, 187-8. Although he has still argued that some forms of ritual are acceptable, but they must be practiced knowingly (see Bookchin 1991a, li). Bookchins fear seems to be a loss of subjectivity that leaves the participant vulnerable to authoritarian manipulation. 84 ibid., 92, emphasis in original. See also ibid 84; 89f. 85 ibid., 92; 95. 86 Bookchin 1995a, 132. 87 Bookchin 1995b, 136.

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their knowledge about the real sources of climatic, geological, and stellar events would have been minimal. Their spiritism was in large measure a compensation for their ignorance, an attempt to explain the unknown and all that which was clouded in mystery.88 So Bookchin rejects any association of primitive non-scientific epistemological forms with a valuable alternative form of reason or rationality, preferring instead to see them as either archaic forms of contemporary instrumentalism, or as erroneous and so irrelevant attempts to explain an otherwise inexplicable universe. He concludes that mythic knowledge and the belief in magic, so important to animism, are a self-delusion.89 In the end, Bookchin appears to find it difficult to conceive of any ecological sensibility that is not purely rational, in the sense of being the result of human intellectuality. In turn, he resorts to positive science to validate his philosophy. His notion of reason requires an understanding of the unfolding of life in the universe, but he offers no way that this can occur outside of the scientific method. It seems fair to point out that Bookchin and Biehl are concerned that the irrational can be manipulated by elites. Any philosophy that cultivates emotion at the expense of reason, however well intentioned, must grapple with the history of the twentieth century.90 But whether that bloody history can be explained as the result of the irrational is questionable, since many of the perpetrators of the centurys crimes would have no doubt claimed they were acting rationally. Even were ther e some truth in this claim, the assertion that the nationalistic mythology of the Third Reich can be equated with ecologically motivated mythologies today, or with the mythologies of primitive tribes seems unfair and unrealistic.91

ANARCHIST PRIMITIVISTS ON REASON & THE SACRED

While reason and rationality are important elements of the Primitivist critique and developing theoretical perspective, they are not approached in anything like a systematic way. This is in large part due to the nature of the publication primarily newspapers and journals which constitute the bulk of Anarchist Primitivist output. Ideas tend to be developed in the context of what could kindly be called debates, but which would often be better termed arguments. Unlike in the case of technology, no articles have appeared dealing with this subject area exclusively. Rather, the debates that there have been have tended to refer to reason and rationality in the course of other debates, primarily regarding religion and the spiritual. Anarchist Primitivist views on reason/rationality have appeared in two publications, the Fifth Estate and Anarchy: JODA. The FE early on rejected the totalizing claims of conventional,
88 89

ibid., 134. Bookchin 1991a, il. 90 Biehl 1991, 99. Also cited in Watson 1996, 46. 91 Bookchin does not seem to agree with this point, going so far as to see in the Paleolithic shaman "the predecessor of the Pharaoh, the institutionalised Buddha, and...a Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini" (Bookchin, 1987, 229).

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instrumental forms of reason and science, choosing instead in their reassessment of the primitive to focus on the symbolic and the spiritual. This outlook has been criticized in the pages of Anarchy: JODA particularly by the editor Lev Chernyi. Chernyis primary concern is with the problems of dualism and alienation, and while he agrees with the FE regarding reason and science he is critical of their focus on the spiritual, arguing that such a perspective is inevitably a precursor to dualistic and alienating religion. John Zerzan goes further, adopting a more overtly primitivist approach, maintaining that all symbolic thought is alienating, and arguing for a completely unmediated existence. These debates will form the core of the overview of the Anarchist Primitivists on reason and rationality.

The Fifth Estate and the Spiritual Choosing Their TargetsRationalism, Scientism, Positivism
The pro-spiritual position adopted by the FE became explicit only in the 1980s. A precursor appeared in 1980, when the FE published a lecture by the American Indian activist Russell Means. Although noting differences between their own opinions and those of Means they were also struck immediately by the similarities in the conclusions [he] has reached and our own.92 Means calls the target of his piece Europeans and European culture, but as the FE note, he is not describing the culture of European peoples in their totality but the culture of capital. Means argued that it was not capitalism that was responsible for the colonization of the Americas and the subjugation of the native inhabitants: No, it is the European tradition; European culture itself is responsible. Marxism is just the latest continuation of this tradition, not a solution to it Distilled to its basic terms, European faith including the new faith in science equals a belief that man is God.93 This view can only lead to environmental destruction. There is, however, an alternative tradition, that of the American Indians: It is the way that knows that humans do not have the right to degrade Mother Earth, that there are forces beyond anything the European mind has conceived, that humans must be in harmony with all relations or the relations will eventually eliminate the disharmony.94 Means devotes one section of his paper to rationality; he writes: Humans are only able to survive through the exercise of rationality since they lack the abilities of other creatures to gain food through the use of fang and claw. But rationality is a curse since it can cause humans to forget the natural order of things in ways other creatures do not. A wolf never forgets his or her place in the
92 93

Fifth Estate 1980, 7. For a similar argument see Turner 1992. ibid., 10;11 94 ibid., 11

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natural order. American Indians can. Europeans almost do... Europeans consider themselves godlike in their rationalism and science.95 Noting this passage, the FE comment that they agree with Means view of rationality, concluding: Rationalism is part of the problem: we must begin to trust our dreams. What Means understands by rationality is not clear; it is unlikely that he means that all forms of reason are necessarily to be abandoned. In a later debate with Bookchin over this paragraph, David Watson suggests that Means is arguing (from a Native American perspective) not for an abandonment of reason as such but a more expansive, transcendent reason.96 So if for the FE, rationalism is part of the problem, what is the rationalism they are opposing? The FE do not offer their own definition, but one philosophical definition suggests that it is the position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge, or, more strongly, that it is the unique path to knowledge. However, this is complicated when it is qualified that the term does not generally designate a single precise philosophical position; there are several ways in which reason can have precedence, and several accounts of knowledge to which it may be opposed. Furthermore, the very term reason is not altogether clear.97 As will be seen in the discussion that follows, the rationalism that the FE are opposed to can perhaps be illuminated by looking at its opposite an irrationalism that includes a belief that knowledge can be obtained through non-logical and non-empirical modes of direct cognition.98 That is, there are forms of knowledge which can be obtained outside of the normal and accepted means of reasoning. Rationalism is probably best viewed in this context as less of a philosophical term (where it is usually opposed to empiricism) than a cultural and political term. Its boundaries were made clearer in a piece published in the FE in 1988, when the FE referred to the essence of the individual character of the paper. They listed as notable: their critique of technological civilization; their reappraisal of primitive society and its relevance, both as a model for anarchy and as an alternative, visionary epistemology for people today; their critique of scientism, positivism and rationalism; and their affirmation of a sacred or spiritual dimension in nature.99 All of these points, to a greater or lesser degree, are included in their view of reason and rationality. Here rationalism is linked with scientism and positivism, creating a triumvirate of epistemological domination, located in Western
95 96

ibid., 10 Watson, 1996, 68. 97 Audi 1995, 673, s.v Rationalism. 98 Honderich 1995, 418 s.v. irrationalism. Bradford also sees in the irrational a form of bonding or communion, between humans and between humans and nature, which is notable given his views on the necessity of an environmental ethic based on human sociality. See Bradford n.d.[b] and section on Deep Ecology, Intrinsic Value and Biocentrism. 99 Fifth Estate 1988, 5.

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European culture, to which the FE are opposed.100 In rejecting these views, the FE are not rejecting reason as such. Like Bookchin, they argue that reason itself is not the problem, but the idea that there is only one form of reason, or that reason can be adequately described by only a portion of its possibilities. David Watson argues that without the extra-rational and intuition, reason is incomplete, gaunt.101 Indeed, they are generally not opposed to science, but to its reduction to an ideology of scientism on the one hand, and as the theoretical basis for modern technology on the other. T. Fulano notes that: Though I am in no way a great defender of science, the notion that a scientific world view demands a technological outlook is simply not necessarily so.102 And Dave Watson/George Bradford frequently sites favourable scientific evidence to support his views, and is clear that he is believes that scientific reasoning can offer explanations.103 Nevertheless, any form of knowledge, scientific or otherwise, cannot lay claim to objective truth; all knowledge, even the scientific, is fundamentally metaphorical. Joseph Weizenbaum, himself a scientist, writes in a passage quoted by David Watson that: Scientific demonstrations, even mathematical proofs, are fundamentally acts of persuasion... Scientific statements can never be certain; they can only be more or less credible.104 Conventional claims for scientific knowledge do not recognize these limits, instead claiming that science provides objective truth about an objective reality.105 But this view of world/nature/cosmos is both epistemologically and ontologically barren; the human subject is removed and separated from an objectified nature which is viewed as a passive object.106 As such, it can be exploited at will. Dogbane Campion notes that

100

Scientism has been defined as the belief that natural science (possibly only physics) alone knows what is real; and that what science through its models and formulas knows is "there," real in itself, the way it really is (Gilkey 1989, 286). Positivism is the view, first articulated by Comte, that the only true knowledge is scientific knowledge (Jary & Jary 1995. S.v. Positivism). 101 Watson 1995, 8. 102 Fulano 1981, 7. 103 Watson 1996, 50. Richard Watson notes that "[George] Bradford is not anti-scientific. He accepts most of what biologists have discovered about ecology and evolution" (Watson, 1990). 104 Weizenbaum 1984, 15-16, in Watson, 1996, 74n. 105 Theodore Roszak writes that although objective knowledge is not ever possible, a belief in objectivity is that is, a psychology of objectivity. This psychology allows a depersonalized conduct which consequences are apparent in the contemporary world. Only those who have broken off their silent inner dialogue with man and nature, only those who experience the world as dead, stupid, or alien and therefore without a claim to reverence, could ever turn upon their environment and their fellows with the cool and meticulously calculated rapacity of industrial society (Roszak 1972, 168). 106 For a more developed and feminist approach see Plumwood, who argues that the problematic human/nature relationship in western thought is the result of a dualism which excludes nature from the domain of the "protagonist-superhero of the western psyche, reason ...Reason in the western tradition has been constructed as the privileged domain of the master, who has conceived nature as a wife or subordinate other" (Plumwood, 1993, 3).

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along with an authoritarian, hierarchical and instrumentalist civilization goes an authoritarian, unitary, homogenized and instrumental form of knowledge. The rationalist wants to suppress the otherness of nature and spirit, to reduce nature to a passive object for domination and to banish spirit altogether.107 So, the scientistic/positivist/reductionist worldview removes a vital element of human connection with reality, invalidating experience (particularly empathic and spiritual experience), through classifying it pejoratively as subjective. In its place it substitutes a denuded and limited reality that neither satisfies the human requirement for meaning nor allows us to live in harmony with the rest of the natural world. The question then arises, what do the FE posit as an alternative to this limited and reified form of reason? Their approach stresses the alternatives they see as offered by primitive society. This has been examined in greater detail in the chapter on the Primitive; here, however, it is sufficient to refer to the two key elements which are perceived as being crucial to the primitives non-rationalist epistemological orientation: symbolism and the spiritual.

Symbolism
The FEs idea of symbolism derives in large part from the early work of Jean Baudrillard. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Baudrillard sought to move away from the Marxist emphasis on production and class struggle, believing that Marxian concepts only led to a replication of the present socio-economic system, a more efficient and equitable organization of production rather than as a completely different sort of society with a different logic, values and life activities.108 To develop a framework in which to explore this radical alternative Baudrillard turned his attention to primitive societies. Utilizing the anthropology of Georges Bataille and Marcel Mauss, Baudrillard developed the concept of symbolic exchange. This is a cyclical, reversible relationship between things which he contrasts to consumption, production and all realization of either use values, sign values or exchange values.109 By being outside of any form of production and accumulation, symbolic exchange constitutes a genuine negation of capitalist productivist society.110 Historically, the fundamental break is between symbolic and productivist societies, and the future, necessary break with capitalism is a return to societies organized around symbolic exchange. Precisely what Baudrillard means by symbolic exchange is not clear, since he never clearly or consistently defines this central concept, but it appears to encompass every activity which constitutes non-productive activity, from primitive communism, through festivals and gift-giving, to libidinal and even violent displays of unrestricted desire. 111 (This latter derives from Batailles argument that part of human nature is the need to expend excess energy.) The FE borrow directly
107 108

Campion 1990, 19. Kellner 1989, 44. In this he was like many other French thinkers who were influenced by the uprising of 1968 and who sought a new, non-class-based, revolutionary perspective. 109 Butler 1999, 3-4; Kellner 1989, 43. 110 Kellner 1989, 44. 111 ibid., 45.

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from Baudrillard, arguing that primitive symbolism is at once the ordering principle of primitive society and its means of interpreting the world.112 Primitive symbolism promoted and sustained both egalitarianism and a non-exploitative relationship with nature. According to Brubaker, every institution in primitive society...was structured in accordance with a social logic based on norms of sharing, reciprocity and gift exchange. 113 This system of symbolic exchange underpinned, in fact defined these societies, to the extent that primitive society does not exist as a separate instance apart from symbolic exchange.114 There did not exist in these societies a separate productive sphere; rather tribal society was constructed around symbolic meaning that integrated production and the economic as well as the technical, tribal history and cosmology, interpersonal and inter-tribal relationships, and relationships with the natural world: In the primitive symbolic order, nature was perceived as an integral part of society, not as something separate; at the same time, society was seen as existing within the natural world. Primitive symbolism truly was the humanization of nature and the naturalization of humanity.115 Despite the importance of symbolism to the FE critique of rationalism, as well as in their valorization of the primitive, the term is never clearly defined. Baudrillards own concept is, as noted, ambiguous, and the FE neither explore this at length, nor note the influence of Bataille and Mauss, or any implications of this intellectual heritage. In claiming that primitive society is based around symbolism without offering an adequate definition or exploration, the FE are constantly at risk of a lack of clarity which undermines their claims. It is not even possible to refer to a common definition other than Baudrillards since, as with most technical and specialist terms, there is some ambiguity about what symbolism actually means. Raymond Firth notes one anthropologist who commented on an anthropology symposium on symbolism that, in none of the papers contributed was the term symbol ever defined; the class of symbols was never distinguished from the class of non-symbols. The papers were admirable as contributions to anthropology, he thought, but it was not clear why they had been labelled contributions to the study of symbolism, nor why their authors had imagined they were studying symbolism at all.116 Even a dictionary of anthropology fails to furnish a generally acceptable usage: The terms symbol and symbolism have been subject to widely varying uses and interpretations in anthropology, and those anthropologists who are linked together by a common concern for semiotics, symbolism or symbiology by no means share a

112 113

Brubaker, 1988-9, 18. ibid. 114 Baudrillard, 1975, 78-9, in Brubaker, 1988-9, 18. 115 Brubaker, 1988-9, 18. The quote is from Marx, 1844 Manuscripts. 116 Firth 1973, 54n.

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common theoretical orientation or even a common vocabulary.117 So, are there any other possible definitions of symbolism found in anthropology and sociology which suggest a possible frame of reference? In the field of anthropology there is a symbolic perspective which challenges the Enlightenment view of the preeminence of reason and rationality in defining society. As well as an Enlightenment-influenced strand, anthropology also has another, conflicting thread, which has been termed Romantic. This Romantic perspective stresses the possibility that theres something more to thinking than reason and evidence culture, the arbitrary, the symbolic, the expressive, the semiotic that many of our ideas and practices are beyond logic and experience.118 What this means is that the conceptual underpinnings of a social order are (ultimately) nonrational and that many of the customary practices of a society from table manners, dress codes, to child training practices and techniques of punishment are symbolic expressions of those nonrational choices.119 Symbols have also been related to the generation of cultural meaning; the members of a society have a culture, which is a system of shared meanings, and this system of symbols and meanings represents the reality of the world in which they live their lives.120 Anthony Cohen writes that community is where one acquires culture and when we speak of people acquiring culture... we mean that they acquire the symbols which will equip them to be social.121 Symbols, continues Cohen, give us the capacity to make meaning, and in so doing also give us the capacity to make sense of the world.122 However, not all acts and objects are symbolic if this were the case, the term would be meaningless. According to James Peacock, acts and objects can be distinguished according to whether their functions are primarily symbolic or technical, although he considers the distinction arbitrary and things that both functions will always be served depending on context. The primary function of the symbolic is to express a configuration of consciousness.123 The FE argue that in contemporary, techno-capitalist societies, the technical aspect is allocated a separate, often privileged sphere; this is the concentration on expertise and efficiency. This was not, they continue (citing anthropological evidence), the case in primitive society. Rather, in those societies the technical was effectively subordinate to and absorbed within the symbolic. This is what Brubaker means when he writes in the FE, symbolism...was the sun around which primitive life

117 118

Seymour-Smith, 1986, 273. Shweder 1984, 38. 119 ibid., 46. 120 Dolgin 1977, 33. 121 Cohen, 1985, 16. 122 ibid, 16. 123 Peacock, 1975, 4; 2.

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revolved.124 It is possible to suggest one hypothetical way in which a primitive symbolic view could be different from a contemporary one, using an example introduced by Peacock. Attempting to differentiate between symbolic and technical, he uses the example of a rite to increase the fertility of a field, compared to the act of the farmer ploughing it. Since the function of the rite is to encourage food to grow, from our technically-oriented perspective we might argue this is a technical act. But Peacock says that the immediate function...is expressive, that is symbolic. However, the farmer ploughing the field is a technical act, since While he is plowing, his immediate job is simply to plow, to follow the mule and break the ground.125 However, the FE would argue that in many cases it would incorrect to imply a purely technical motivation to the farmers action. In Beyond Bookchin, David Watson cites Dorothy Lee, who provides a number of counter-examples; the tribesman who before chopping out a wild bee hive explains his act to the bees; and the Hopi horticulturalist who believes that the corn is lonely without his ceremonies and therefore willingly gives up its body for food in return for his company. These examples of anthropomorphism blur the symbolic-technical distinction.126 The above example represents one possible way in which the symbolic can be separated from the technical and conventionally rational, and to a degree clarifies what the FE mean by symbolism in this context. However, there is also one problem with the conceptualisation of symbolism as a revolutionary opposition to contemporary society, and that is the possibility that the symbolic is central in generating meaning in each and every society. So, symbolism is not only central to primitive society, but also to modern techno-capitalist society. This is the view articulated by Marshall Sahlins, who is of particular significance because he has influenced the primitivist outlook through his book Stone Age Economics. Sahlins argues that materialist or utilitarian arguments, which claim that cultures are based on practical activity, self-interest and utility do not stand up to closer (and particularly, anthropological) examination. Rather, Sahlins stresses the importance of symbolic reason, or more broadly, meaning. What is distinctive about humans is that they live according to a meaningful scheme of [their] own devising the decisive quality of culture [is] not that this culture must conform to material constraints but that it does so according to a definite symbolic scheme which is never the only one possible. Hence it is culture which constitutes utility.127 What makes Sahlins point particularly relevant is that he disagrees with the view that if primitive societies are not organized by a strict material rationality, at least we are.128 Instead, he argues that the objects and persons of capitalist production are united in a system of symbolic valuations The uniqueness of bourgeois society consists not in the fact that
124 125

Brubaker, 1988-9, 18. Peacock, 1975, 3. 126 Watson, 1996, 53-4. 127 Sahlins 1976, ix-x. 128 ibid., 210.

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economic system escapes symbolic determination, but that the economic symbolism is structurally determinant.129 So, whereas, In bourgeois society, material production is the dominant locus of symbolic production; in primitive society it is the set of social (kinship) relations.130 The FE do not discuss kinship relations, an omission which has been touched upon in the chapter on the Primitive. Here, though, what is crucial is that if Sahlins contention is accepted, then it makes little sense for the FE to argue that what differentiates primitive and capitalist societies is symbolism per se, since this can be conceived of as the universal determinant of all societies. The FE therefore seem to only make half an argument, and as such any insight into the relative role of reason, rationality and symbolism in primitive and contemporary societies is limited.

The Spiritual
One aspect of symbolism that is particularly stressed is, as already noted, the spiritual or sacred. In primitive society, this symbolism was inextricably linked to a religious sensibility, and such a link is also evident in the FE. A notion of the sacred is important to me, wrote George Bradford in 1984, in a debate about Christianity and anarchism, but I find little in christian traditions which is consonant with the sacred traditions which draw me, those of primal peoples.131 In 1988, Dogbane Campion (also Bradford) attempted to link such a sensibility to the anarchist project per se: A vision of human liberation and a cooperative, nonhierarchical society will go nowhere if it does not reject the present technological, social and economic structures of life, and unless it is linked to a renewal of the sacredness of nature, its interrelatedness, and our connectedness to it.132 If we are to envision the intangible human spirit that has motivated anarchists and like-minded radicals for the last century or so, we must also see the fundamental spirit that resides in the natural world.133 In a debate with Anarchy editor Lev Chernyi on this issue (the other side of which I look at below), Dogbane Campion argues that it is not possible to separate the notion of the sacred from the other aspects of primitive life: These societies were saturated in myth, saturated in the sacred; we cannot approve of their sense of kinship and community, their reciprocity and communism, their stateless anarchy, their sensitive integration with the natural world, and then dismiss their profound sense of the sacredness of nature and the cycles of life.134 As noted earlier, symbols are able to confer meaning on actions and objects, and Campion
129 130

Sahlins 1976, 210; 211. ibid., 212. 131 Bradford, 1984d, 10. Lower case c in original. 132 Campion, 1988, 14. 133 ibid.. Looking at this from the point of capitalism rather than from anarchism, David Watson (Campion) has written that Capitalism isnt simply an economic systemthough that is how it names itself. It is a disorder of the Spirit (Watson 1992, 1). 134 Campion, 1990, 19.

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follows Mircea Eliade who argues that myths provide exemplary models which transmit cultural meaning through time by utilizing unchanging (or slow changing) symbolic forms. Those acts which have no meaning are therefore profane. Campion notes that all meaningful acts, therefore, connect humans with the nonhuman other, the sacred.135 He suggests that primal peoples are able, through their sacred connection, to live in a dual reality in which the subject/object distinction is blurred and interconnectivity is more forcibly expressed and felt.136 He quotes Cassirer to the effect that the primal persons approach to reality is "sympathetic", rather than either theoretical or practical: Primitive man by no means lacks the ability to grasp the differences of things. But in his conception of nature and life all these differences are obliterated by a stronger feeling: the deep conviction of a fundamental and indelible solidarity of life that bridges over the multiplicity and variety of its single forms.137 Consequently, the primitive does not see humans as privileged but as an equal part of nature. Raymond Firth notes the connection between the interest in symbolism that arose in the eighteenthcentury and the Romantic Movement, and Cassirers outlook does seem to express the Romantic conception of the symbol, which always partakes of the Reality which it renders intelligible; and while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a living part in that Unity, of which it is the representative.138 The symbolic offers not an objective description of reality but a participatory mediation with it. J. Robert Barth comments that it is not that the Classical (as opposed to the Romantic) spirit is not religious, but that the numinous or transcendent is seen as separate from the world of everyday reality and everyday action. Ethics are part of the human domain, with metaphysics and religion existent but separate: The sacred, the numinous, the transcendent are not present but absent; they are pointed to, but they are not encountered. There is no great need for symbol in such a world-view, for there is no need to express the mystery of two interacting worlds. In the Romantic view, however, these two worlds...can and must be embraced by the translucence of the symbol, in which both worlds can be seen in the light of a single vision.139 This symbolic reconciliation, seeing both worlds in the light of a single vision, does not obliterate the differences in those worlds for the primitive, whose forms of ritual still respect ambivalence and limit, and who can therefore live with different, contrasting, in some ways incommensurable forms

135 136

Ibid, 19. The historian Richard Drinnon writes, in an article reprinted in the FE, " In [tribal peoples'] metaphysics the religious, intellectual, social and economic realms form a seamless whole... they have never made our alienating disjunction between subjective inner life and objective outer reality" (Drinnon 1987, 15). 137 Cassirer, An Essay on Man, 109, in Campion, 1990, 19, no further reference given. 138 Coleridge 1972, 30. See Firth 1973, 93ff. 139 Barth 1977, 142.

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of knowing.140 The Classical vision outlined above by Barth is the essence of the reductionist, scientist, positivist epistemologies of Capital, and has created only a world from which spirit is banished: a world in which nothing is sacred.141 While this focus on the spiritual suggests a form of religion, the FE do not specifically refer to their idea of spirituality as such. Whereas there has been an overt promotion of paganism by some proponents of Deep Ecology, there has been no similar attempt by the FE. The original Dogbane Campion piece began as a criticism of those anarchists at a convention who picketed a pagan meeting saying Down with Religion. But he admits that, although suggesting possibilities in paganism, pagans themselves should practice caution in their attempts to recreate [a] sense of the sacred [since a] sense of the sacred, even of the sacred in nature, can be manipulated for authoritarian purposes.142 Elsewhere he writes, reiterating the Anarchist Primitivist refusal to be a primitivist party: We cant pretend to have some spiritual program or a new religion; it would be ludicrous and manipulative and end up a horrible simulation of the forms of primal animism without any of their content.143 While they are concerned to demonstrate the importance and validity of the symbolic and sacred, the FE raise other epistemological and ontological questions. Unfortunately, these are only touched upon and not examined in any depth. Nothing, not even science or social ecology writes David Watson, explains anything definitively... there are other ways of knowing.144 These other ways, which go under the collective rubric of the extra-rational, include intuition, myth, dreams, and visions, all of which are specifically referred to, although this list is probably not exclusive. 145 The question of what sort of knowledge these experiences provide, and knowledge of what, is not addressed specifically. The writer Theodore Roszak has referred to gnosis, a type of knowledge which seeks an ecstatic insight into the purpose and place of human existence in the universe, a glimpse of the eternal.146 There is a suggestion that these techniques allow access to a form of reality which is not normally available to human experience. Watson suggests that there are some experiences that can only be known by these alternative modes, although this sentence is unclear in that experiences cannot really be known, he appears to be arguing that whatever is provided by the techniques cannot
140 141

Watson 1996, 65. Campion 1990, 19 emphasis in original. 142 ibid., 18. 143 Campion 1990, 20. Also, despite a recent resurgence of interest in Feminist and Ecofeminist circles in the Goddess, there is no association made with this in the Fifth Estate. 144 Watson 1996, 50 145 It is arguable whether or not intuition is a part of reason, since "the term 'reason' has been used to refer to intuitive knowledge or infallible insight on the one hand and to thought...on the other, and these are legitimate uses" (Aaron 1971, 176). These are referred to in the FE as "techniques of seeing" or, after Mircea Eliade, as "technique[s] of ecstasy" (Campion 1990, 19). 146 Roszak, 1974, 22.

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be experienced in any other way. 147 This reality cannot be comprehended in its entirety we must have respect for, according to Watson, what we do not know and especially for what we cannot know.148 Our grasp of this reality, though, is never objective but always subjective, metaphorical and limited. Roszaks ecstatic insight could be seen as essentially mystical, although the FE do not refer to mysticism and mystical experiences specifically. Mysticism is not included as part of the extrarational David Watson separates the two when he states that Bookchin considers any and all mysticism and extrarational modes of knowing vaporous but there seems to be no reason why such phenomena should be excluded or rejected by the FE, and in fact as described it would appear to fit in well with the FEs participatory and experiential epistemology.149 Mystical experiences are always apprehensions of the One which reveal the metaphysical unity of all things.150 From a naturalistic (as opposed to a theistic) perspective, this experience becomes an apprehension of the unity of Nature or the Cosmos. William James writes our normal consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it...there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.151 Here, the mystical experience represents a different form of consciousness from the rational; but does this separate it entirely from reason? Another writer on the philosophical dimension of mysticism, T. Hywell Hughes, argues that the focus on the discursive logical aspects of reason is inadequate, since these aspects cannot yield insight into the deep realities: But we must maintain that the mystics deeper insight into truth, his wider grasp and more direct contact with reality, are activities of reason, of that faculty of capacity in man that enables him to find and realize his kinship with the larger truth of the world.152 So here, even mystical experience can be absorbed within a wider, less limiting definition of reason. This suggests again less a discarding of reason than Watsons argument for an evolved reason...a rounded, vital synthesis of primal, archaic and modern.153

Deep Ecology, Intrinsic Value & Biocentrism

The FE have an ambivalent relationship with Deep Ecology, noting its strengths as above, but also being among its staunchest critics on many issues. Since Deep Ecology has promoted a more spiritually-oriented stance, one would expect some overlap with the FE position. However, what is also significant is that the FE have developed their own position in the process of criticizing certain aspects of Deep Ecology (as well as Earth First!). This is particularly evident in noting the differences

147 148

Watson 1996, 50. Watson 1995, 8-9. 149 Watson 1996, 45; Lev Chernyi of Anarchy: JODA does deal with mysticism directly. See below. 150 Stace 1961, 15; Audi 1995, 515, s.v. mystical experience. 151 In Stace 1960, 12. 152 Hughes, 1937, 106-7. 153 Watson, 1996, 72.

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between the Deep Ecology focus on intrinsic value and biocentrism, their sense of the sacred, as well as the perceived lack in Deep Ecology of an adequate social critique.154 In a letter to the FE in 1988, as part of the debate on the FE criticism of Deep Ecology, Lone Wolf Circles states that: Deep Ecology is an academic term for the sacred world view shared in common by all races in their ancestral past, a recognition of the sacred (intrinsic, equal) value in all things.155 Although in the same issue Bradford states that he thinks he shares a biocentric perspective with Earth First!/Deep Ecology, it would not be reasonable to conclude that the spiritual position of the FE is essentially the same as that of Deep Ecology. Later, when he had spent more time looking at the issues surrounding Deep Ecology specifically and environmental ethics generally, Bradford in fact distanced himself from this view. The problem with Deep Ecology which is highlighted by the FE is its lack of a social critique, or a recognition of the social causes of environmental problems.156 According to Bradford, the idea of intrinsic value is one attempt to answer the question: How are we to live with/in nature?. However, it flounders in being based in scientific naturalism, that is, an attempt to use science to discover enough about nature in order to develop an ethic. But Bradford notes that the scientific view of nature and the world is only one view, sciences description of the world is a description of its world.157 While science is increasingly suggesting that humanity is kin to the rest of creation, only a strand in the complex web of life, and dependent on the biotic stability and integrity of the whole, the method of this discovery and the terms in which it is developed cannot be separated from its conclusions. 158 So, however valuable these insights, the
154

Biocentric, also Ecocentric. In contrast with an anthropocentric or human -centered worldview, an ecocentric worldview suggests that humans are part of the web of lifenot at the top of creation but equal with the many other aspects of creation (Devall, 1991, 248). 155 Circles, 1988. From the perspective of environmental philosophy Something is intrinsically valuable if it is valuable in and for itself if its value is not derived from its utility, but is independent of any use or function it may have in relation to something or someone else (Callicott, 1989 , 131). 156 Bookchin has also criticized Deep Ecology for these reasons. See particularly Bookchin 1987. Since the concern of this paper is not with Deep Ecology directly, there will be no examination of whether Bradford is correct in his assessment and criticism of Deep Ecology. Some Deep Ecologist may find Circles statement problematic in itself, although on the significance of intrinsic values see the first of the Basic Principles of Deep Ecology, summarized by Sessions and Naess: The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes (Devall & Sessions 1985, 70). Whether, though, Deep Ecology is necessarily based in scientific naturalism is questionable. See for example the following from Arne Naess. Academically speaking, what I am suggesting is the supremacy of environmental ontology and realism over environmental ethics as a means of invigorating the environmental movement in years to come. If reality is as it is experienced by the ecological self, our behaviour naturally and beautifully follows the strict norms of environmental ethics. We certainly need to hear about our ethical shortcomings from time to time, but we change more easily through encouragement and through a deepened perception of reality and our own self. That is, deepened realism. How can that be brought about? The question needs to be treated in another paper! It is more a question of community therapy than community science: a question of healing our relations to the widest community that of all living beings (Naess, 1995b, 236). 157 Bradford, 1989, 10. 158 ibid., 9.

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processes through which they occur undermine the outcome that deep ecologists are seeking, since it tends to erode the essentially spiritual intuition of inherent value as soon as it starts to suggest it.159 Science is problematic, then, because it is part of a human pursuit, limited by and dependent on human perceptions; it is part of the process by which humans have become separated from nature; and, as a combination of these two, science (and the technological apparatus which supports it) are part-and-parcel of capital. Given these points, it is extremely difficult to differentiate between anthropocentrism and biocentrism, and therefore to develop an effective ethics. As Bradford notes, Given the corrosiveness of scientific naturalism and the limitations of knowledge, on what ground does [Deep Ecology] base its ethical (which is to say political) decisions?160 It is not possible to choose certain parts, outlooks or aspects of contemporary techno-capitalist civilization and utilize those in an ecological manner while leaving the rest of the system untouched. The choice is only between two wholes, an ecstatic vision in which everything is alive, and that of capital, within which everything becomes lifeless, dead matter.161 But this ecstatic or spiritual vision, while necessary, is not sufficient; it must still be integrated with a resistance to capital and the reemergence of community: The destruction of nature is bound to the collapse of human community itself, and the two crises are one, to be resolved together.162 Further, this resistance must itself be integrated with a new connection with the land: The Situationist image of people making a revolution to realize their own desires is incomplete; they must also establish a community with the land.163 Elsewhere, Watson (Bradford) argues that renewing [the primitive] sensibility [toward the land] may turn out to be one of the crucial steps needed to create an ecological culture. And, he continues, Deep ecologys attempt to gather such insights is one of its strengths.164 But a grounding in political critique is vital, and without it Deep Ecology is severely lacking: A spiritual identification with the natural world that maintains an instrumental attitude towards humanity ought to be suspect from the start.165 In Bradfords ethical view, grounded as it is in the social and in community, our place in the wider world, or even wider cosmos, is important and significant to us, but is limited in the wider scheme of things. This limitedness can be expressed by a sense of reverence, which Bradford suggests is
159 160

ibid., 10-11. ibid., 11. 161 Bradford, 1989a, 13. 162 Bradford, 1988, 12. 163 Campion 1990, 20. 164 Watson, 1996, 54. 165 ibid.

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fundamental to a reawakening of our proper relationship to the planet and to ourselves.166 This would come from the spiritual view that Bradford perceives is held in primitive societies, societies in which instrumental value (along with production and economy) does not exist.167 It is Capital-asculture (or civilization) that creates the dichotomies and dualisms that prevent a harmonious relationship with nature, and instrumental value, based on the idea of humanity struggling with an intransigent Nature, is a key ideological component of this. The idea of attempting to repress instrumental value while valorizing intrinsic value therefore does not go far enough in replacing the lifeless vision of capital with an ecstatic vision these are two incompatible worldviews. For Bradford, human sociality and kinship offer the potentiality for an environmental ethic...rooted in an explicitly human context and ... not...based on a perspective of neutrality or one-dimensional identification with the otherness of nature.168 Human and planetary liberation are inextricably interlinked and a genuine sense of sacredness cannot be separated from the human communities in which it exists: A reverence for life that defends biodiversity and ecological integrity is vital. But we defend the planet both for ourselves and for the other. Our revolt against this civilization goes far beyond an imperative [for a new ethic], for moral reasoning is inadequate Our biophilia must be linked to the unfettering of our own wildness and to the breakdown of the repressive apparatus and character armouring, the external and internal modes of domination. It means nurturing those subjective forces and communities capable of withstanding capital and recreating a visionary, free society beyond the demands of Power.169 We must see ourselves as part of a human community within a wider natural community, rather than positing dualistic alternatives of bio- versus anthropocentrism. For Bradford, biocentrism cannot ... replace a social critique or social solidarity.170 To go back to the original point of entry of this part of the discussion, according to Bradford Circles identification of deep ecologys intrinsic value with an idea of the sacred in nature is not satisfactory. Bradfords contention is that sacredness cannot be a-social and a-political, nor can it be reduced to a scientifically-based ethical system.171
166 167

Bradford 1989a, 13 Human need, conceived of instrumentally, is transcended through the holistic sense of reverence and connectivity with the rest of the natural world. For example, Dorothy Lees point that for the Hopi corn is not nutrition; it is a totality, a way of life (Bradford 1989a, 14). 168 ibid., 16. Bradford notes the importance of Kropotkin in the articulation of this perspective. 169 Bradford 1989a, 17. The term biophilia is taken from E. O. Wilsons book of the same name. 170 ibid., 16. Biocentrism has also been criticized by Lev Chernyi in Anarchy as being simply another constraining and obfuscating ideology. See A Note on Biocentrism, Anarchy: JODA 16, 11; Biocentrism: Shackler of Desire Anarchy: JODA 18, 19; If nature abhors ideologiesbiocentrism is no exception Anarchy: JODA 17, 19. Also Biocentrism: Ideology Against Nature by Mikal Jakubal, reprinted from Live Wild or Die 1, Anarchy: JODA 19, 20-21 171 In another comment on Lone Wolf Circles letter, Feral Faun argues that Circles use of the word sacred to mean intrinsic, equal is incorrect, and it in fact means separated and set -apart. He goes on: Of course, Lone Wolf Circles says basically that everything is sacred. But that is both blatantly untrue

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Although Bradford has attempted, in formulating the position outlined above, to avoid a dualistic perspective that separates humans from nature, the question arises: to what extent are quasireligious epistemologies inherently dualistic? In fact, whether symbolic representation and the idea of the sacred is a manifestation of alienation is a question which has been raised in the Anarchist Primitivist circle.

Lev Chernyi and the Opposition to the Sacred

The FEs commitment to a sacred world-view has not gone unchallenged in Primitivist circles. One particular area of dissent is in the journal Anarchy. The editor, Lev Chernyi, has written a number of pieces, primarily in the form of two dialogues, which reject the idea of the sacred and the role of religion as suggested in the FE. The first was about religion specifically, with Jay Kinney, the second with Dogbane Campion about the sacred, a debate begun in the pages of FE, and continued in Anarchy. Campions view has already been outlined in the previous section. Briefly, Kinney argued first that what individuals (whether anarchists or whoever, but in the context of the debate, specifically anarchists) believe is their own business, and they should not be discriminated against on the basis. However, Kinney also does not believe that religious conceptions are inherently authoritarian but rather represent basic human needs. Im convinced that the spiritual impulse is universal, he writes, and human needs include a desire for a healthy relationship with the whole of life, for a sense of wholeness. The whole neednt be defined as a deity... variously it can be understood as Gaia, Mother Nature, the Void, the Ecosystem, Life, the Universe, etc. However all cultures in all times and places have had some metaphor(s) for this (as well as methodologies for experiencing it).172 Chernyis position is based around the concept of alienation. In an overview of this position, the Columbia Anarchist League (known as C.A.L.), which broadly constitutes the organizational basis for the journal Anarchy writes, the word alienation denotes the process by which peoples acts can become estrangedand no longer appear or be felt as their own.173 Although alienation is found in
andmeaningless. It tells us nothing. It is just as meaningful, and more true, to say nothing is sacred (Faun 1990, 18). However, other writers have suggested that such a conception of a universal sacredness is not only possible but is a part of the Native American Indian worldview. But when one asks a traditional Indian, How much of the earth is sacred space? the answer is, unhesitatingly: All. Sacred space is a place where human beings find a manifestation of divine power, where they experience a sense of connectedness to the universe. There is no paradox between universal sacredness and particular sacred spaces because in the traditional Indian view, all of nature is sacred, but in certain spots the spirit power manifests itself more clearly, more readily (Hughes and Swan 1993 , 173). 172 Kinney 1988a, 19. 173 Columbia Anarchist League 1989, 23. The majority of theorizing in Anarchy is the work of Lev Chernyi (or Jason McQuinn, another pseudonym). Given the content of this work overall, it seems likely that "AS WE SEE IT" is largely the work of Chernyi/McQuinn. The basis for the concept of alienation is essentially Marxian Marx asks How does it happen that human beings project upon outside objects, upon reified abstractions, those powers which are truly their own?

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the realm of work, it appears in all social activity, and is embodied not only in social institutions but also in such cultural forms as tradition, custom, convention and sensibility: This results in an entire social world that always appears to be out of anyones control, moving inexorably along its own mystifying path according to its own hierarchical and alien logic.174 Not only does alienation cause social and economic crises, but it is also the cause of the current ecological crisis. A combination of capitalist social relations and techno-scientific rationality has succeeded in turning every aspect of our selves and our world into potential resources.175 The culprit here is not only the alienating economic system of capitalism, but also an alienated science and technology. In a critique similar to the FEs, C.A.L. argue that modern science has reduced the very idea of nature to whatever can be mined or extracted... Scientism, or positivism (in other words, science conceived as an ideology), has so succeeded in enchanting and mystifying our experiences of our natural and social worlds that most people now unself-consciously speak...as if scientific descriptions really are identical with the reality that we live!176 Chernyi does suggest, though, that science and reason do have potentially useful role to play; while no system of ideas will ever by adequate for apprehending anything completely...they can give us certain finite and relative handles on the reality we live.177 C.A.L. note that repression is not external but is internalized by the oppressed. This internalized repression is termed Character, the form taken by alienation in the individual, an unconscious layer of armouring that develops to protect the individual from the realities of hierarchical and alienated society. But this protection comes at the cost of deforming the individuals personality, since this protection requires an adaptation to the prevailing social norms: Hierarchical capitalist society demands that human beings be treated everywhere as if they are really only objects. The development of character is our way of becoming those objects and forgetting that we were once something more.178 Ideology, they continue, is the manifestation of character in the realm of logic, language and symbols. It is the means by which alienation and hierarchies (...) are all rationalized and justified

(Bottomore and Rubel 1963, 21) although the term has been used in numerous contexts, for example in existentialism, which may also have been influential. See Bottomore 1991, s.v. Alienation. 174 ibid., 24. 175 ibid. 176 ibid. emphasis in original. 177 Chernyi, 1988f, 20, emphasis in original. 178 Columbia Anarchist League 1989, 25 (all quotes). Character is a term borrowed from Wilhelm Reich., referring to an individuals stereotyped manner of acting and reacting (Reich 1973, xix). Character can develop into an armour, which an individual develops as a defense against his emotional excitations, resulting in rigidity of the body, lack of emotional contact, deadness (ibid.). This concept is utilized by Perlman in Against His-story. CAL refer to Reichs book Character Analysis as a classic text.

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through the deformation of human thought and communication.179 Ideology, seen as a distorting lens though which the oppressed view the world, includes God, the State, Technology, Capitalism, Individualism, Socialism (and Anarchism), and Religion, which, with Morality, are always ideological by their very definitions. 180 Borrowing from the Situationists, C.A.L. argue that the essence of ideological mystification is the spectacle, defined as the organization of appearances made possible through all the modern media of communication.181 This media is able to reorganize the appearance of reality to suit the dominant social order, not simply in terms of its content but rather through its form: Whatever the overt messages, the ubiquitous, but covert message produced is that each of us is only a powerless spectator in a world over which we can have no control. Our only choice is to select between the options allowed us by the invisible powers which determine everything else.182 However, the alienating nature of the institutions, culture and social relations engenders resistance, which is widespread in society, if often unconscious: The engendered resistance within the heart of our everyday lives is a natural and spontaneous response to the imposition of authoritarian social relationships. It is a generalized, yet usually unconscious movement of negation which contains within itself the seeds of all potentially conscious movements for libertarian social change.183 This is a brief outline of the position of C.A.L., and Chernyi, and given this position Chernyi not surprisingly rejects the idea that anarchy and religion are compatible. Early on in the discussion with Kinney, Chernyi suggests that one of the problems with the debate is that Kinney has not defined religion. Chernyi suggests that religion consists of any doctrine which postulates the existence of a god or of supernatural beings. From this, he goes on: If we can accept this as an adequate definition then it becomes clear that the essential nature of religion consists in its division of the world into two spheres the supernatural and the natural, or in other words, the divine or sacred and the profane. Far from being a holistic conception, religion can then be seen as in actuality dualistic, metaphysically dividing the world in two that might otherwise be considered an indivisible whole. This, I believe, is the concept of religion that atheists usually criticize, and that is essentially incompatible with anarchism.184 For Chernyi, human enslavement occurs because concepts are abstracted and fetishized as realities,
179 180

Columbia Anarchist League 1989, 25. ibid. On anarchism as ideology, they write Even resistance, revolution and anarchy often take on ideological dimensions... For this reason we tend to avoid use of the word "anarchism" (with its implications of an overly closed, system-based theory and practice) in favor of the words "anarchy" and "anarchist theory," which suggest a more dialectical and pragmatic attitude towards a theory and practice always subject to development and change (ibid., 25). 181 Columbia Anarchist League 1989, 25. 182 ibid., 25. 183 ibid., 25-6. 184 Chernyi 1988b, 20.

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and these abstracted realities come to govern how people live. Kinney suggests that his religious or spiritual view might be conceived of as a sentient, all-pervading consciousness.185 Chernyi points out that in itself this is simply a possible view of the world, a theory, which makes no metaphysical claims to be the absolute or to more real than human experience.186 Even calling this consciousness a god, metaphorically, does not qualify it as a religion. But, he continues: Suppose then that we take the next logical step and call it a god in fact... We now believe in this conception of reality despite any evidence pro or con that is meaningful or true. We have entered the realm of dogmatism, dualism and mysticism. We have set up a metaphysical idea and attributed to it a reality that it does not earn through our senses and rational thought.187 For Chernyi, it is in fact only the products of our senses and rational thought that can be part of reality: My experience is my only reality, and nothing outside my experience can possibly be real in any meaningful way for me. (...) By saying that nothing outside of my experience can possibly have any reality for me, I mean that if I have no indication, no hint, no effect to attribute a cause to, etc., then there is nothing there for me.188 He is clear that he does not only mean sense-data, and does not deny the reality of so-called spiritual or mystical experiences; but he refuses to separate these experiences from any other experiences. Experience is real; it is attempts to interpret this experience that lead to metaphysical speculation and religion.189 Chernyi does briefly explore mysticism, in which he sees as valid the idea (...) of the immediate apprehension of reality without the capital R.190 As such, it is not the apprehension of an external object from which we are separate (which takes us back to dualism), but rather the shedding [of] all conceptual layers which confuse us until we get to the point where we realize and accept the fact that we are always already there.191 Rather than a futile search for a Reality which is an object mysticism should be the spontaneous self-revelation or intuition of the concrete, unmediated reality that we live.192 But Chernyi sees this approach not only in what is conventionally called mysticism (what he calls "genuine mysticism") but also in dialectical phenomenology, in the Taoist and Zen traditions, and in the work of Stirner, Merleau-Ponty, and Paul Goodman. 193
185 186

Kinney 1988a, 17. Chernyi 1988f, 22. 187 ibid. 188 Chernyi 1988e, 21. 189 Chernyi 1988g, 23. 190 This reference is to an article by Ken Wilber, "Quantum Questions: The Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists" sent to Chernyi by Kinney. Chernyi, 1988f, 22. 191 Chernyi, 1988f, 22, emphasis in original. 192 ibid. 193 Chernyi refers to his position as Dialectical Phenomenology, and his view of the mystical experience does seem similar to the phenomenological reduction "a return to original experience and the original world, divested of the superstructure of theories added to it by the sciences... Through the reduction we meet again a really living human being instead of a subject thinking itself or a photographic plate... The world becomes again the

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Religion, then, is not wrong for objective or rationalist reasons, but because it obscures and mystifies genuine human desires, which are turned into abstractions. As another contributor to Anarchy has written, these desires are repressed by civilization, particularly in its industrial form which drains our lives of beauty, of creativity, of passion, of ecstasy but can be experienced without needing to be translated into metaphysics. 194 In fact, focussing on religion and the otherworldly obscures the causes of our malaise (civilization, industrialism, and capital) thus preventing us from breaking free while at the same time enabling the continued functioning of despirited humans as a part of the megamachine. In his later debate with Dogbane Campion, Chernyi continues his attack on the idea of the sacred (and the possibility of its reconciliation with a libertarian perspective). Here he focuses particularly on the desire to adopt the religious views of primitive societies. For Chernyi, as suggested above, the basis of religion is the same as the modern faith in technical rationalism, and it was in these original religions that alienation began: Religious alienation has been the foundation for the modern alienation embedded in capitalist relations and technique.195 The sacred logically implies the profane, creating a fundamental dualism, dividing our naturally whole experience or our world into two rather arbitrary conceptual spheres.196 Chernyi argues that primitive religion could well have incubated the seeds of alienation that were to evolve into modern civilization. Faun agrees, claiming (although without references) that there is evidence that the concept of the sacred played a major role in the development of property and exchange, authority, sex roles, work, agriculture and the domestication of animals. In other words, it is a major source of this alienated civilization.197 And Zerzan, who sees agriculture as the materialization of alienation, argues that the domestication of both animals and plants has its roots in religion rather than in response to a shortage of food.198 Chernyi argues that the promotion of alternative religions as part of an anti -Enlightenment politics is misplaced because the opposition to the Enlightenment project is still couched in Enlightenment terms, that is as a series of dualisms. Anti-Enlightenment radicalism accepts the Enlightenment premises, but inverts them, on the principle of my enemies enemies are my friends. But both Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment traditions are essentially identical and therefore limited:

real world" (Luijpen, 1965, 102-3). Chernyi would no doubt add 'ideologies' to 'sciences'. 194 Faun 1988, 21. 195 Chernyi 1990b, 21. 196 ibid., 18. In his response to this Campion refers favourably to the work of Mircea Eliade, who argues that in primitive society acts without mythological meaning are profane. See also Campion 1990. 197 Faun 1990, 18. 198 Zerzan 1988, 63; 70.

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Both involve a reification of experience which suppresses the priority of that which is directly lived in favor of fetishized abstractions that are viewed as more important and fundamental.199 As has been noted above, for Chernyi once religious or spiritual metaphor becomes religious or spiritual reality, alienation begins: Thus religious animism can be seen as the earlier form of dualism, separating the world into animating spirits and animated bodies.200 Chernyi believes that it is not from this false Enlightenment/counter-Enlightenment dichotomy that anarchists should draw inspiration but from what he calls a third perspective, neither spiritual nor scientific which he considers is embodied in a counter-tradition which includes disparate elements as millenarian peasant revolts, slave revolts, certain of the Anabaptist movements, the early Taoists, and stateless primitives: The most important principle distinguishing the countertradition from the sacred/enlightenment traditions(s) is its emphasis on the abolition of social alienation in the lived experience of the community rather than through a merely symbolic reconciliation.201 He does not reject reason or theory, but rather the totalizing claims of objective knowledge: For the counter-tradition...rationality is always seen as an outgrowth of life and nature... This form of rationality is skeptical (...) of all metaphysics and theology. It is dialectical and phenomenological rather than transcendent. It is always bound to finite living, social and historical beings, their desires and their worlds, not to any supposed transcendental realities in which everything is perfectly real.202 Chernyis commitment to a lived, unmediated experience leads him (as suggested in the quotation above) to reject the symbolic: For me, a suspension of all belief in the symbolic is an absolutely necessary precondition for any genuine reconciliation of our social alienation.203 This is also the position of the proponent of the most undiluted form of primitivism, John Zerzan The belief in the possibility of an unalienated existence is found most strongly in Zerzans work, although with far stronger primitivist connotations. (As discussed in the chapter on the Primitive.) Briefly, Zerzan believes that primitives connected directly to the world, without any form of mediation; they lived in an Eden-like paradise of the immediate. But the emergence of language, as well as (the concepts of) time, art, number and agriculture caused (or was the result of) a fall from this paradisal state, and the beginning of a process which led eventually to civilization, viewed as
199 200

ibid., 21 ibid. 201 ibid. 202 ibid., 23. 203 Chernyi 1988h, 25 emphasis in original.

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repression and exploitation. Zerzan is unambiguous about his target symbolic life is the essence of civilization. Symbols trap and limit us: We seem to have experienced a fall into representation whose depths and consequences are only now being fully plumbed. In a fundamental sort of falsification, symbols at first mediated reality and then replaced it. At present we live within symbols to a greater degree than we do within our bodily selves or with each other.204 Culture is our fall from a simplicity and fullness of life directly experienced, from the sensuous moment of knowing, which leaves a gap that the symbolic can never bridge.205 Symbolic form and cultural norms, such as ritual, are for Zerzan nothing more than ways of channelling experience into prescribed channels, leading to both the limitation of the individual and the emergence and growth of authority: Ritual facilitates the establishment of the cultural order...Ritual authority structures play an important role in the organization of production (division of labor) and actively further the coming of domestication. Symbolic categories are set up to control the wild and alien.206 Where Bookchin sees in the shaman the first political professional, Zerzan sees both the first specialist and the first cultural practitioner, who went on to assume ideological leadership:207 The original specialist became the regulator of group emotions... Centralized authority, and most likely religion too, grew out of the elevated position of the shaman.208 This assertion is rejected by Bradford/Watson, who argues that the evidence there is suggests that the shaman was a person who possessed particular (possibly psychic) gifts and utilized these for the benefit of the rest of society. Following Paul Radin, he argues that becoming a shaman is not really a matter of choice...but a profound response to involuntary psychic crises.209 The assertion (or assumption) that because a person has a useful, and perhaps unique, role in society they will become an expert or specialist and therefore in some way powerful is typical of the unfortunate logic that imposes modern categories of civilization onto contexts to which they do not apply.210

The main problem with the Anarchist Primitivist perspectives on reason is their undeveloped nature. Virtually all of the work in this area is in the form of dialogues and responses to the criticisms of others. As such, no systematic outlook is developed, and both pro- and anti-symbolic/sacred
204 205

All the above from Zerzan, 1990, 29. ibid., 30 206 ibid., 34 207 ibid. 208 ibid. 209 Watson, 1996, 61. 210 Bradford, 1993a, 46n.

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positions are undertheorized. Regarding the FE, there is a lack of a definition of symbolism or an adequate exploration of its nature, which suggests that although they may well make a valid point, exactly what that point is, is not clear. There is also the problematic use of anthropological evidence, which is mentioned by Chernyi, and has been covered in the chapter on the Primitive. By far the longest piece quoted from is Bradfords Return of the Son of Deep Ecology which takes up much of a single issue of the FE. Because of its length and consequent focus, his idea of an ethics based in the human capacity to be social is the best developed of the FEs arguments, but compared to the amount of work that has gone into the numerous articles published in various journals on Deep Ecology, biocentrism, and environmental ethics, it is still insufficiently explored. Similar arguments apply to Chernyis work, and while his eclectic and comprehensive Dialectical Phenomenology is intriguing, it remains at best only the basis for a theory of noninstrumental reason, rather than the theory itself. And as with much of Zerzans approach, exactly how a rejection of all forms of symbolic interaction would be manifested is unclear. Despite differences, the Primitivist position does seem to offer a broader conception of a libertarian rationality, taking seriously the attempt to merge poetic and scientific in a way Bookchin struggles with. Its main problem is the lack of any indication of how such a cultural change, with or without a new spiritual form, could come about. Bookchins arguments against over -reliance on feeling, intuition, and myth are important, even if his defence of reason tends to sit uneasily between reified reason and rationalism. In this vein, much of the Anarchist Primitivist work seems questionable an over-reliance on anthropological evidence, perhaps? Clearly, primitives (whoever they might have been) did not always get it right, and indulged in some unpleasant and unecological practices. On what basis do we not do the same? How is this new merging of instrumental and libertarian reason to occur? (Bookchin always has his municipal political programme to fall back on, however much that might be open to criticism.)

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CHAPTER 6 TECHNOLOGY
BOOKCHIN ON TECHNOLOGY
Bookchin deals extensively with technology in many of his works, although he does not attempt a unified theory of technology, being something of an agnostic on technology as such.1 Nevertheless its centrality to his thought is clearly seen when he writes whether we like it or not, the human species was organized by biological evolution ... to mediate its relationship with the nonhuman world technologically.2 Making technology the focus of evolutionary necessity while at the same time avoiding defining its qualities has generated a thread of ambiguity which runs through his work, making attempts at drawing out coherent positions difficult. In looking at Bookchins view of technology and its relationship to Social Ecology, three perspectives can be identified. These are all integral to the social ecological project, and are not separate entities but are interlinked. Bookchin analyzes technology from three perspectives: 1. 2. 3. Material Social-Ethical Ecological

The Material
Bookchins revolutionary aim is a free humanity, living in harmony with nature. This requires freedom from material need, and he describes his anarchic ideal as a post-scarcity society. Material scarcity, for Bookchin, implies two things: First, suffering on the part of the majority of people, who have to toil to survive and who are therefore unable to develop their creative human capacities; and second, since the acceptance of natural scarcity necessitates authorities to oversee production and distribution, the existence of an ideological justification for ruling elites and an economic class system, in fact for all forms of social hierarchy.3 If nature is regarded as stingy and withholding, he argues, then the historical project of humanity can legitimately be considered as the domination of nature, which becomes a necessity if the needs of humans are to be met. To accomplish this, in order to harness the natural world ... it is necessary to harness human beings as well, in the form of slaves,

Ferkiss 1993, 174. Technology as such implies a metaphysical or ontological orientation, in which technology is conceived of as as a total structure which must be analyzed in terms of its own inherent elements (Mitcham & Mackey 1971b, 22). This is the approach taken by Friedrich Dessauer, and most familiarly by Heidegger in The Question Concerning Technology (Heidegger 1977). 2 Bookchin 1995d, 12. 3 Bookchin 1974, 9.

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serfs, and workers.4 Bookchin, however, rejects this interpretation; the stinginess of nature is a myth which has always been used to justify the stinginess of exploiters in their harsh treatment of the exploited.5 His view is that the relatively harmonious relationship with nature which characterized organic societies only broke down with the development of internal hierarchies and systems of command and obedience. The attempt to dominate nature is in fact not the cause but the result of the domination of some humans by other humans. The acceptance of the need for, on the one hand, toil and, on the other, hierarchy generates a mentality of obedience and debasement among the many who increasingly become merely fodder for the whims of chiefs, kings and other rulers. Scarcity, therefore, provides the subjective means of domination, through guilt and the suppression of desire, internalized in the worker-subject (see also chapter 4 on History). Because of its material basis, Bookchin does not believe that ideological change alone will be sufficient to overcome the problems of hierarchy, domination and exploitation. Rather, he argues that all previous revolutions have failed because of the problems of material scarcity because of the need for work, people are unable to take their place in the revolutionary upsurge for long enough to keep the revolution in permanence.6 It consequently falls into the hands of a political elite who organize social change for their own ends. All previous revolutions, he writes, have been particularistic revolutions: Thus far every social revolution has foundered because the peal of the tocsin could not be heard over the din of the work shop. Dreams of freedom and plenty were polluted by the mundane, workaday responsibility of producing the means of survival.7 However, writing from the mid-1960s on, Bookchin is optimistic that this state of affairs need not continue in the future. There is now the possibility of a generalized revolution, supported by modern production and technology, which has created the objective, quantitative basis for a world without class rule, exploitation, toil or material want. The means now exist for the development of the rounded man, the total man, freed of guilt and the workings of authoritarian modes of training, and given over to desire and the sensuous apprehension of the marvelous.8 The development of technology under capitalism, therefore, has reached the point where scarcity can be overcome, and the objective material conditions for both a successful revolution and a post-scarcity society now exist.9
4 5

Bookchin 1990b, 32. Bookchin 1990b, 32. In fact, Bookchin rejects the idea of exhaustible resources. 6 Bookchin 1991b, 130, emphasis deleted. 7 Bookchin 1974, 130-1. 8 ibid., 33. 9 Bookchin agrees with Marx who argued that capitalism produces a profound sense of scarcity that no society before had generated in the human spirit (Bookchin 1990b, 137). Only improved technology can overcome

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Before looking in more detail at Bookchins idea of post-scarcity, it is worth examining why he thinks modern technology can bring it about. Bookchin does not praise modern technology in the abstract; he does not refer simply to increased production, but instead attempts to delineate how and why modern technology could form the basis for a post-scarcity society. Such was Bookchins regard for this technology that in his earlier work, particularly Toward a Liberatory Technology, he examined in some detail the potential of specific technologies available at that time to promote and support a post-scarcity anarchy. So why does Bookchin view this technology as being the precondition for a post-scarcity society, and how could it help bring such a society into existence?10 Bookchin sees in modern technology the possibility of freeing humanity from the need for the toil of heavy manual labour. Also important is that it is amenable to rational planning, thus expanding the possibilities for such laboursaving devices. New technology no longer depends on fortuitous invention, but can be systematically designed for any purpose required.11 So the previous limitations on technological development, when inadequate technological systems would remain in place since they could not be replaced, or technology could not be developed to solve certain specific problems, no longer apply. Practical, technological solutions to problems of productivity are now available. Bookchin identifies three reasons why this is now possible: 1. The increased use of science, mathematics and analytic methods in industry. 2. Industrial growth, which has increased output by both replacing humans with machines, and subdividing tasks into units which are amenable to mechanization. 3. The development of computers and automated control systems.12 The third point, Bookchin suggests, could eventually lead to a fully automated and cybernated production system, in which it would be possible to automatically manufacture small packaged factories without human labour ... Machines would make and repair most of the machines required to maintain such a highly industrialized economy.13 So many, if not the majority, of human needs can be met technologically because the underlying principles guiding technological innovation have been identified; it is simply a question of putting them into practice. In a rational society technology would be able to be developed for the good of the community; and it would require further development, since Bookchin does not see modern (that is,
this. 10 The present tense is used here on the question of whether Bookchin still holds these views on technology, see below. Also e.g. Bookchin 1995a, 26. 11 Bookchin 1974, 95. 12 ibid., 98-9. 13 ibid., 10. He also suggests that one possibility for a future society would be to solve the problem of technology by moving it all underground; but he does not see this as the best option since the value of the human interaction with machines would be lost if all contact were severed. However, he does consider this as a technical possibility (Bookchin 1974, 133-4).

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1960s to early 1970s) technology as being sufficient in itself to underpin a post-scarcity society, but insists that much more sophisticated and versatile technology could easily be made available.14 Whereas many in the Green movement argue that there is a limit to the natural resources that can be utilized by humans, Bookchin suggests that in fact technology will be able to overcome these limitations. He has noted the possibilities of extracting trace elements from earth, air and water, and of obtaining unlimited supplies of energy from solar, wind, wave, and geothermal power. He has also favoured the genetic improvement of food plants to increase yields and offer increased protection against predators and disease. If used in an ecological context, Bookchin argues, these would promote an abundance of energy, raw materials, and food, without a concomitant hierarchical, oppressive social structure. However, he is clear that the preconditions for freedom must not be mistaken for the conditions of freedom. The possibility of liberation does not constitute its reality.15 The technology of capitalism can be used in ways which are detrimental to both the environment and human freedom, and so the mere existence of this technology does not in itself mean that a postscarcity society has been achieved. This could only come about if society, and its technology, had a sound ethical basis. In addition, this technology should not simply be a means toward increasing consumption; Bookchin is quick to point out that post-scarcity is not about mindless affluence, rather, it means a sufficiency of technical development that leaves individuals free to select their needs autonomously and to obtain the means to satisfy them.16 What this passage suggests, and Bookchin stresses this himself elsewhere, is that a key element in the post-scarcity society would be a free subject, who would not require external force or governance to either achieve post-scarcity or, in such a society, abuse it. Indeed, there is a direct relationship between the materially post-scarcity society and its members; post-scarcity presupposes that individuals have the material possibility of choosing what they neednot only a sufficiency of available goods from which to choose but a transformation of work, both qualitatively and qualitatively. But none of these achievements is adequate to the idea of post-scarcity if the individual does not have

14 15

Bookchin 1990b, 69. ibid., 34-5. He has also written that capitalism at midcentury... created all the indispensable technological preconditions for a libertarian communist society (Bookchin 1995c, 2). However, elsewhere he has stated It is important to make the need for technology that can remove modern fears of scarcity a part of the revolutionary project, that is, post-scarcity technology. But such a technology must be seen within the context of a social development rather than as a "precondition" for human emancipation under all conditions and in all eras (Bookchin 1990, 137-138). Bookchin does not make it clear exactly what this 'social development' entails; but it is difficult to imagine how a technological ensemble which is result of a particular economic system can be imagined to exist 'under all conditions and in all eras.' As for "preconditions", it is Bookchin himself who considers technology a precondition[ ] for a libertarian communist society. I can only presume that he is reiterating the point of the first quote above, and that 'conditions' would be a more accurate word than "preconditions." 16 Bookchin 1991b, 261.

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the autonomy, moral insight, and wisdom to choose rationally.17 He rejects outright any enforced (even voluntary) decrease of needs that is, affluence through material limitations arguing instead that in a truly free society ... needs would be formed by consciousness and by choice, not simply by environment and tool-kits.18 In fact, Bookchin goes so far as to argue that modern technology must be permitted to exhaust its specious claims as the token of social progress and human well being; ecological alternatives need to be a reasoned choice, not a necessity.19 The free society Bookchin refers to, with its wealth of culture and individual creativity, is based on the Athenian model.20 His libertarian or confederal municipalism envisages the creation of directly democratic neighbourhood fora initially in opposition to the state, then as the means of organizing the post-scarcity, post-revolutionary society. 21 The citizens of the new polis would, as in the ancient one, have to be educated, contemplative, autonomous, and rational, largely spared unnecessary toil in order to give them the time to participate in the political process but in Bookchins post-scarcity society, most work would be done by machines rather than being the province of a slave class. Bookchins view of post-scarcity therefore requires technology to provide the material conditions to allow the development of an active citizenry who, freed from toil and the fear of scarcity, will be able to develop an ethical perspective that will reject the claims of mindless affluence in favour of a different good life. Technology has a crucial role to play in the nurturing of this ethical society, and it is to this aspect of Bookchin technological outlook that I turn next.

The Social-Ethical
In looking at technology in a social-ethical context we are, to a degree, moving into a different phase of Bookchins writing, in which he stresses the ethical role of technology. It is not that the idea of the post-scarcity society or the role of technology in it is absent from his writing of this period, nor that this ethical sense was not present in his earlier work; but in the nineteen seventies he began to focus more on what he termed ecotechnologies and their relationship to an ecological (and

17 18

ibid., 69. Emphasis in original. ibid.. The idea of affluence through material limitations has been suggested by the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, and is a key element of the anarchist primitivist view of technology. See following section. 19 Bookchin 1991b, 262. Bookchin also makes the somewhat bizarre statement that It is obvious that we cannot do without many technologies (not even the technologically sophisticated binoculars with which we watch birds or whales or the cameras with which we photograph them) (Bookchin 1990a, 19). Since he sees this as obvious, he does not make it clear why we cannot do without what would appear as inessential and possibly superfluous items. 20 Bookchin 1991b, 69. 21 Janet Biehl writes that although Bookchin has used the term 'confederal municipalism', in the Bookchin Reader she has, at his request, changed all references to his preferred 'libertarian municipalism' (Biehl 1997, xi.).

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ethical) society.22 Modern, capitalist society is oriented toward material abundance, and therefore any judgment of the value of a technology is based purely on its efficiency and cost. Bookchin contrasts this to the classical view, in which techn, which included both arts and crafts had a far more ample meaning. It existed in a social and ethical context in which... one asked not only how a use-value was produced but also why.23 For Bookchin the failure of modern technology to fulfil its promise, and our resulting ambivalence toward it, is the result of the detachment of technics/technology from this context and our conceptualization of not only technics but also reason, science, matter and labour in an instrumental, functional way. We lack, he writes, a sense of the social matrix in which all technics should be embeddedof the social meaning in which technology should be clothed.24 Bookchin attempts to unpick the relationship between technology and social organization, and rejects a technological determinist approach. Technology alone cannot be held responsible for the social and economic changes that occurred in Europe because the knowledge and techniques central to the industrial revolution, and to the emergence of industrial capitalism, had been known for some timein some cases, several centuries. But despite this technological knowledge, it was only at a particular time, and in a particular society that these events and developments took place. In fact, significant technological changes occurred in Europe from the eleventh century onward that produced no decisive changes in medieval social relations.25 Further, the introduction of the factory system, crucial to the emerging process of industrialization, occurred with little or no change in the fundamental technical processes; these were simply re-ordered and worked in one place rather than in individual homes.26 Expanding his horizon, he looks elsewhere to test what he considers to be the argument of the technological determinists that the social relations of a society are dependent on its technical abilities and artefacts or tool kit. In the cases of the Iroquois and the Inca, both of whom he argues had the same tool kits, he notes that they had marked social institutional differences while one was a loosely organized federation, the other was a centralized city-state. He also suggests that the so-called Neolithic Revolution, whatever its effects, produced far less widespread social change than has often been suggested; in fact, the underlying communal values of organic societies seem to have, largely, remained preeminent.27 Bookchins point is twofold. First, that technological change
22

For a fuller explanation of Bookchins view of ethics and freedom, see chapters on Reason and History. Bookchin contends that what is necessary for a liberatory society (and conversely the lack of which is the problem with our present society) is the correct ethical perspective, a different view of the 'good life'. He believes that an objective ethics is derivable from nature, a view he describes as dialectical naturalism (the philosophy of social ecology). At this point a detailed examination of the philosophy is not necessary; it is sufficient to say that Bookchin maintains that an ethical position held by society as a whole--an ethical worldview--is necessary, and permeates all elements of that society, including technology. 23 Bookchin 1991b, 221. 24 ibid., 240. 25 ibid., 250. 26 Bookchin 1991b, 250. See also Ferkiss 1993, 48-49. 27 Bookchin 1991b, 244ff

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did not usually seriously affect existing cultures, due to the strength of their community structures; and second that differences between (more-or-less) authoritarian and libertarian societies were political and cannot be reduced to differences in technology. Indeed, Bookchin goes further; not only does technology not determine social relations, but social relations do determine technology. What defines a libertarian technology, and differentiates it from an authoritarian one, is the society and culture in which it exists. In the final analysis the potency and aesthetic qualities of earlier technical forms such as exquisitely designed pottery...beautifully crafted furnishings...carefully wrought ornaments derives not from anything intrinsic to those forms, but rather from the nature of the societies which developed and used them, societies in which the artisan [was] conceived as a self-creative being, a self-productive subject.28 What differentiates libertarian from authoritarian technics is not, then, the technical artefacts themselves but the emergence of an institutional technics: The priestly corporation; the slowly emerging bureaucracies that surround it; indeed, the very belief systems that validate the entire hierarchical structure and provide the authoritarian core of an authoritarian technics.29 These institutional structures deform subjectivity, with workers suffering under the whip of spiritual degradation which is even more degrading that simple material exploitation. In these societies, libertarian technologies (which required liberated subjects) were impossible; to this degree then, these structures are technical.30 Conversely, A liberatory technology presupposes liberatory institutions; a liberatory sensibility requires a liberatory society.31 Focussing on the size or individual technologies simply deflects attention from the real social and institutional issues. So, for Bookchin the historic problem of technics lies not in its size or scale, its softness or hardness, much less [its] productivity or efficiency ...; the problem lies in how we can contain (that is, absorb) technics within an emancipatory society.32 Although the solution to this dilemma does not lie in the past, he utilizes an historical analysis in order to illuminate possibilities gleaned from those earlier societies containment of technology. Bookchins view is that those societies had an overarching religious (and later ethical) perspective into which technics fitted. Not that this perspective was always conscious; but in effect their view of the world was such that technics could not take a hold. In preindustrial societies, technics was usually adaptive rather than innovative...elaborat[ing] a new technical ensemble fully within the cultural constraints of society.33 The latent exploitative powers were kept under control and consequently The ability of

28 29

ibid., 241; 242. ibid. 30 ibid., 243. 31 ibid. 32 ibid., 240. 33 ibid., 244, emphasis deleted.

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technics to alter a societal structure significantly was the exception.34 This was the fundamental orientation of social technics until capitalism subvertedthe integrity of the human community: Once societal constraints based on ethics and communal institutions were demolished ideologically and physically, technics could be released to follow no dictates other than private self-interest, profit, accumulation, and the needs of predatory a market economy. The time-honored limits that had contained technics in a societal matrix disappeared, and for the first time in history technics was free to follow its own development without any goals except those dictated by the market.35 A particular understanding of labour and matter underpinned this cultural stability. Contemporary views of labour and matter, he argues, are riddled with ideology; necessarily so, since There is no irreducible technical ground from which to formulate a value-free theory of technics and of labor.36 Bookchin is particularly critical of Marx in this respect, whom he sees as having a largely technical interpretation of labor and an overly abstract view of matter.37 The contemporary view of matter is purely quantitative and despiritized while labour is an abstract activity extrinsic to human notions of genuine self-actualization.38 For Bookchin, these outlooks are the products of the epistemologies of rule, epistemologies which support hierarchical social and political structures and authoritarian technics. They facilitate both the domination of human by human and the attempt to dominate nature (see chapter 4 on History). For a contrast with the modern perspective he looks to organic society, whose outlook offers a qualitatively different realm of imagery and a richly sensuous form of sensibility.39 Nature in organic society was spiritized and personified: Not only was the natural object (living or not) a subject in its own right; so, too, were the tools that mediated the relationship between the workers and the material on which they worked. The labor process itself assumed the organic character of a unified activity in which work appeared as an element in a gestative process literally an act of reproduction, of birth.40 Here, not only the worker but also the material itself is embodied with subjectivity, so that concrete labor...confronted concrete substance, and labor merely participated in fashioning a reality that was either present or latent in natural phenomenon.41 In line with his naturalistic philosophy, he suggests that the basic underpinning of this animistic approach that there is a Way in nature is, despite its now untenable basis in myth, still relevant,
34 35

Bookchin 1991b, 259; ibid., 244. ibid., 260; 254. 36 ibid., 227. 37 ibid., 226; 229f. 38 ibid., 224. 39 ibid., 230. 40 ibid., 231. 41 ibid., 233.

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since it...hints at a more complete logic.42 He sees this way as a truth in nature, and its manifestation in myth and religion does not detract from this. However, he is not in favour of mythic and religious forms, since they do not promote rational thought, preferring instead what he perceives as another manifestation of the way, the entelechial causality of Aristotelian physics. This view assumed that a phenomenon was drawn to actualize its full potentiality for achieving the highest form specific to it to develop intrinsically and extrinsically toward the formal self-realization of its potentialities... Accordingly, matter ... is latent with potentiality indeed, it is imbued by a nisus to elaborate its potentiality for greater form.43 Aristotles four causes suggest a different view of technology, one in which the final cause becomes an integral part of the technical process. Seeing a rationality in nature, the key to a successful technics was going with the flow of nature: 44 The use of tools and machines called for a series of explanations that were not only mystical but also ethical and ecological explanations rather than strictly pragmatic... Here, the concept of an appropriate technology was formulated not in terms of logistics and physical dimensions but in terms of an ecological ethics that visualized an active nature as just, comprehending, and generous. Nature abundantly rewarded the food cultivator (or the artisan) who was prepared to function symbiotically in relation to her power of fecundity and her injunctions.45 This is also an emphasis on a particular aspect of the dialectical process that Bookchin sees in nature the elucidation of potentiality. Today our design imagination, as he calls it, must be capable of encompassing this flow, this dialectic (...), not to cut across it with wanton arrogance.46 Technics should again mediate between worker and object, finding the right way rather than being viewed simply instrumentally (for more on dialectic see the chapter on Reason). It should be noted though, that in line with Bookchins later rejection of primitive animism, he has also rejected this interpretation of primitive technics: Suffice it to say that there is a good deal of primitivistic animism in Heideggers treatment of the revealing that occurs when techn is a clearing for the expression of a crafted material not unlike the Eskimo sculptor who believes (quite wrongly, I may add) that he is bringing out a hidden form that lies in the walrus ivory he is carving.47 Exactly what this rejection means for Bookchins overall view of technology and his neo-Aristotelian approach is not clear. In the early 1970s, Bookchin developed the idea of ecotechnology, a technology that would
42

ibid., 234; 237. As noted in the chapter on the Primitive, Bookchin is not today as favourable toward animistic interpretations. 43 ibid., 283. 44 ibid., 283f. The four causes are Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final. 45 ibid., 294. 46 ibid., 237-38. 47 Bookchin 1995a, 169. On techne, Bookchin here uses the accented e thus , but elsewhere uses .

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be an integral part of an ecocommunity. Although the prefix suggests this would be intended to function in an harmonious relationship with nature (which will be covered in the next section), for Bookchin humanity is itself a part of the natural world and its relationship with wider nature depends on the relationships within human society itself. So an ecocommunity can only be in harmony with wider nature if there is internal harmony between the members of the community i.e. it is a postscarcity anarchist community. Ecotechnology, therefore, has a key role in the maintenance of such a community, in its relationship to an ethical life. It has already been noted how Bookchin argues that subjectivity is distorted by authoritarian hierarchical social structures, themselves technics in the wider sense. It has also been noted that Bookchins ideal subject is the autonomous citizen, able to fully comprehend fully the workings of the society in which he or she lives. This comprehension implies a social and technical transparency which is the opposite from that found today in advanced, technical societies. In an ecocommunity utilizing ecotechnologies: No longer would people be separated from the means whereby they satisfy their material need by a suprahuman technology with its attendant experts and managers; they would acquire a direct grasp of a comprehensible ecotechnology and regain the power over everyday life in all its aspects which they lost ages ago to ruling hierarchies in the political and economic sphere.48 Bookchin believes in fact that these technologies have a key role to play in the creation of entirely new relationships between man and man. 49 Even within current society he sees a valuable role for technologies that promote empowerment, which express new initiatives by ordinarily passive communities to reclaim control over the material conditions of their lives and act as technical symbols of a resurgent citizenship and call for empowerment by the disenfranchised.50 Ecotechnologies foster feelings of control, a greater sense of selfhood, in fact a new subjectivity. Although Bookchin does not offer a strict definition of ecotechnology, he suggests that it can only be appreciated in the wider social-ethical context outlined above. He describes ecotechnologies as a term which is meant to impart an ecological ethic to conventional notions of technics, while such technologies should be seen more in terms of their ethical function than their operational efficiency.51 Ecotechnology cannot be meaningfully considered in isolation, but only as part of the community into which it is integrated: It must be seen as the very ensemble itself, functionally integrated with human communities as part of a shared biosphere of people and nonhuman life forms. This ensemble has the distinct goal of not only meeting human needs in an ecologically

48 49

"Energy, Ecotechnocracy, and Ecology" in Bookchin 1980, 92-3. Bookchin 1974, 94. 50 "Self-Management and the New Technology" in Bookchin 1980, 130-1. 51 "The Concept of Ecotechnologies and Ecocommunities" in Bookchin 1980, 108; Bookchin 1986b, 96

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sound manner...but of consciously promoting the integrity of the biosphere.52 So, ecotechnology must be seen not only as part of the wider social structure, but must also demonstrate a clear goal; in a neo-Aristotelian sense, ecotechnologies are defined by their aims.

Technology and the Ecological Society

The third and final aspect of Bookchins view of technology I will look at i s its direct relationship to an ecological society. To a degree, this has already been touched on in the section above on society and ethics. But since the relationship between human society and nature is a central element of Bookchins thought, a consideration of the role he gives technology in this is appropriate. Bookchin argues that ecotechnology cannot only transform the relationships within human society, it can also transform the relationship between humans and nature indeed, technology should be used to harmonize humanitys relationship with nature.53 Currently, we are separated from nature by capitalist industry because the processes of production are shrouded in mystery and the products themselves are inorganic: The products of modern industry are literally denatured. They exhibit no association with the natural world from which they derive.54 However, Bookchin is quick to point out that it is not the inherent complexity of the machinery that has brought this about, but the structures of modern society.55 Being separated from nature, we cannot see where the necessities of human life come from; nature is distant and menacing and we feel at its mercy without the mediation of modern industry and capitalist society. 56 Given this separation, it is not surprising that we are unable to act in an ecological manner. To overcome this, to restore our contact with the natural world, ecotechnologies must bring the natural world into our lives. Ecotechnologies have a capacity to restore humanitys contact with the soil, plant and animal life, sun and wind, in short, with fostering a new sensibility toward the biosphere.57 One practical application of this that Bookchin mentions is solar power, the use of which Bookchin contends can be regarded as ecological not only because it is based on a renewable energy resource, but also because is brings the sun, changing climatic conditions, indeed the heavens, as it were, into our everyday lives in a very palpable way.58 Ecotechnology, then, brings nature back into the lives of people. So, he argues that in
52 53

ibid., 109. "The Concept of Ecotechnologies ", in Bookchin 1980, 109 54 Bookchin 1991b, 11. Emphasis in original, 55 ibid. 56 ibid. 57 "Introduction" in Bookchin 1980, 27. 58 Bookchin 1990b, 192-3

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discussing liberatory technology he is trying to show how the new technology can be used ecologically to reawaken mans sense of dependence on the environment; I shall try to show how, by reintroducing the natural world into the human experience, we can contribute to the achievement of human wholeness.59 But even though people would be aware of their dependence on nature, they would not be at its mercy. Consistent with his view that nature can only be seen as stingy in an irrational society, he believes that with an ethically situated technology, we would be able to regain the outlook of previous, more balanced societies where nature abundantly rewarded the food cultivator (or the artisan) who was prepared to function symbiotically in relation to her power of fecundity and her injunctions.60 Ecotechnology would also be an integral practical part of the ethically-based ecocommunities that Bookchin sees as the basis of the ecological society. We need, he argues, smaller cities, decentralized communities that are amenable to, and suggested by, human-scale technologies and regional energy systems. These communities could be sensitively tailored to [their] natural ecosystems.61 In the article Toward an Ecological Society, he again identifies as one of the key features of ecotechnology its compatibility with decentralized communities; such technologies would not only provide nonpolluting materials or wastes that could be easily recycled, but decentralization would make it possible to avoid the concentrated solid waste problems created by our giant cities.62 Bookchin shies away from suggesting that the technology itself is to blame for environmental problems. While he suggests that we need to reconsider[ ] the technological basis of modern society, he follows this by looking at production for profit and property ownership, so that his conclusion is that no-one has a right to design, employ, or impose privately owned technological equipment on society that damages human health and the health of the planet.63 His assertion that at a time of sweeping ecological degradation, we can no longer retain techniques that wantonly damage human beings and planet alike64 appears only to make the point that ecological technologies should be non-polluting. Overall, Bookchins focus is less on the technologies themselves than on their affect on human communities. He believes that with humanly scaled communities and technologies: The splits opened by hierarchical society ages ago would now be healed and transcended. The antagonistic division between the sexes and age-groups, town and country, administration and community, mind and body would be reconciled and
59 60

Bookchin 1974, 114 Bookchin 1991b, 294 61 "The Concept of Ecotechnologies..." in Bookchin 1980, 110 62 Both Bookchin 1980, 69. 63 Bookchin 1990b, 187. 64 ibid.

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harmonized in a more humanistic and ecological synthesis. Out of this transcendence would emerge a new relationship between humanity and the natural world in which society itself would be conceived as an ecosystem based on unity in diversity, spontaneity, and non-hierarchical relationships.65 The re-harmonization with the natural world is conditional on the re-harmonization of human and social relationships. He gives no role to the technologies in themselves; his belief that the domination of nature results from the domination of human by human means that technology need only be able to change social relationships for it to be ecological. Whether this position is sustainable, and whether Bookchin successfully avoids determinism in his analysis of technology I will look at in the next section.

Ambiguities and Problems

I have already noted that there is a degree of ambiguity in Bookchins view of technology. This is particularly true regarding the immanent aspects of technology; that is the degree to which technology can have an impact on humans or other lifeforms which is not entirely dependent on the prevailing social relations or the ethical constitution of society. I will look first at the issue of the importance or otherwise that Bookchin gives to the size of ecotechnologies, and then to the degree that Bookchin assigns to technology any degree of determinism. At this point I will be looking only at ambiguities in Bookchins work, rather than developing an objective critique.

Technology and Institutional Technics

Bookchin does not offer a definition of either technics or technology. This might not be problematic in itself, since an everyday definition could suffice. However, Bookchin does make some ambiguous statements regarding technics and technology which make such an interpretation difficult to maintain. He refers to technology, specifically those skills and devices that we place under the rubric of technics and later to technics, the skills and instruments for humanitys metabolism with nature.66 He could be following Lewis Mumford (himself borrowing from Oswald Spengler), who used technics to differentiate skills and instruments from the study of the subject.67 The phrase metabolism with nature seems to echo Marxs discussion of labour in Capital: Labour is, first of all, a process between man and nature a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature.68 Bookchin suggests that the word technology is meaningless unless it is put into a social context: Indeed, there is no such word as Technology that presides over all social conditions and relations; there are different technologies and attitudes toward technology, some of which are indispensable to restoring the balance [between humanity and nature], others of which have

65 66

"Toward an Ecological Society" in Bookchin 1980, 69. Bookchin 1991b, 289. 67 See Miller 1989, 326. 68 Marx 1976, 283.

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contributed profoundly to its destruction.69 This would seem to imply that the term technology is itself meaningless as an unqualified noun is Bookchin saying here that technology does not itself exist? This can perhaps be clarified when he refers to the Greek term techn which linked craft and art; but the Greeks also linked both with the value system and institutions of its society: From this standpoint, a given body of sensibilities, social relations, and political structures were no less the components of technics that the material intentions of the producer and the material needs of society. In effect, techn was conceived holistically in the sense that we today describe an ecosystem. Skills, devices, and raw materials were interlinked in varying degrees with the rational, ethical, and institutional ensemble that underpins a society; insofar as techn was concerned, all were regarded as an integrated whole.70 This would tie in with Bookchins emphasis on the institutional form of technics; when first referring to an institutional technics he identifies it as the priestly corporation; the slowly emerging bureaucracies that surround it; later the monarchies and the military forces that preemept it; indeed, the very belief systems that validate the entire hierarchical structure and provide the authoritarian core of an authoritarian technics.71 He suggests that Mumfords archaic Megamachine was not the earliest example of the mass organization of labour: The growing religious and secular bureaucracies were even more technically authoritarian. Indeed, they were the earliest machines that eventually made the megamachine possible that mobilized it and directed its energies toward authoritarian ends.72 The bureaucracies achieved the coordination and rationalization of this newly developed human machine, although what was more notable was their role in reducing former animate subjects to inanimate objects.73 Bookchin goes on to argue that political structures can be technical, no less technical than tools and machines and that technics must also include political, managerial, and bureaucratic institutions.74 What resists technics in this form is the social, which absorbs and negates

69 70

Bookchin 1980, 37 Bookchin 1991b, 223 71 ibid., 242 72 ibid. 73 ibid.. It is worth noting that Bookchins is an incomplete reading of Mumford, who in fact made the similar points to those of Bookchin. The workers on the mega-technical works, he notes, had minds of a new order: trained in obedience to the letter, limited in response to the word of command descending from the king through a bureaucratic hierarchy, forfeiting during the period of service any trace of autonomy or initiative; slavishly undeviating in performance (Miller 1989, 318). He also stresses that, to make the machine work two collective devices were essential...: a reliable organization of knowledge: and an elaborate structure for giving and carrying out orders (Ibid, 319). For Mumford these two devices were the priesthood and the bureaucracy. 74 Bookchin 1991b, 243.

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the technical sphere.75 Bookchin seems to be arguing that technologies are located in a social context, and that political and bureaucratic forms are also technics. But it is not clear in what respect the spheres he mentions are technical, or why some spheres are social, rather than technical. In fact, almost everything appears to be technical, but at the same time, nothing is technology. (This also causes problems with the statements quoted at the beginning of this section, where he seems to use partial definitions of technology and technics as skills and artefacts.) Bookchin appears to make some potentially valuable and incisive points about the nature of technology and the relationship between technology and society, but as it is formulated at present his theory of social and technical interaction is underdeveloped and ambiguous.

Technology and Human Scale

Bookchins assertion that technology, however appropriate, offers only a possibility of liberation rather than its condition means that while he in principle supports alternative or appropriate technologies, he is forced to stress that without the correct ethical context they will be neither ecological nor liberating. Small is not necessarily beautiful, since some of the most dehumanizing and centralized social systems were fashioned out of very small technologies.76 Dimensions, he notes are no[ ] substitutes for values.77 If ecotechnologists are seeking a truly human habitat then they should develop a deeply human alternate technology.78 The search for a human habitat, he suggests, began in Hellenic Greece, which viewed the polis as an ethical community: Human, in Greek thought, means scaled to human dimensions, at least as far as social institutions and communities are concerned. He goes on: Small, in Aristotles view, is human because it allows for individual control over the affairs of the community and the exercise of individual human powers in the social realm... Clearly a habitat that is largely incomprehensible to the humans who inhabit it would be regarded as inhuman.79 Now, although Bookchin stresses that a human habitat cannot be reduced simply to dimensions (since it must also be ethical), he still concludes that: A human habitat minimally presupposes human scale, that is to say, a scale that lends itself to public comprehension, individual participation, and face-to-face
75 76

ibid., 244. ibid., 240-1. 77 "The Concept of Ecotechnologies..." in Bookchin 1980, 99-100. In fact, even here Bookchin is ambiguous. He has written Not only is small beautiful...but so is diversity" (Bookchin 1980, 90). This is not something he appears to have repeated, instead concentrating on why small is neither beautiful or ugly [but] merely small (Bookchin 199b1, 240). 78 "Energy, Ecotechnocracy..." in Bookchin 1980, 94-5. 79 ibid., 103;104-5.

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relationships.80 An ecotechnology would have to be scaled to human dimensions.81 Clearly, as regards ecotechnology, this would appear to be an important, if not key, factor; technologies which are not transparent, amenable to public comprehension and individual participation would not qualify. To the extent that they do, ecotechnologies are an integral part of an ecocommunity, and the development of human relationships within that community. So while it is reasonable for Bookchin to argue that small technologies do not in themselves mean a liberatory society, it would appear difficult for him to argue that dimensions have no part to play whatever.

Technological Determinism
In Autonomous Technology Langdon Winner states that the strongest form of technological determinism is based on two hypotheses: (1) that the technical base of a society is the fundamental condition affecting all patterns of social existence and (2) that changes in technology are the single most important source of change in society.82 He continues that few thinkers have been prepared to accept determinism in this strong form; Bookchin, of course, rejects any form of determinism, arguing that technology is not the most significant factor in social structure, and that it cannot be viewed outside of social relations. If there is a problem with technology it is because of deformed social relations, unrelated to the technology itself. For example: Technics does not exist in a vacuum, nor does it have an autonomous life of its own...Today, if such extratechnical aspects like rationality, ethics, and social institutions seem barren and more inorganic by comparison with those of earlier times, it is because technology in the modern sense of the term is more inorganic. And not because modern technics now determines the supratechnical, but rather because society has devolved toward the inorganic in terms of its own social tissue and structural forms.83 Since the most important aspect in the technological matrix is the social relations of the society in which it exists, under contemporary conditions capitalism is the determining factor. Technology has been released from social control, he argues, but does not follow its own dictates but those of private self-interest, profit, accumulation, and the needs of a predatory market economy. 84 It is capitalist relations that blatantly determine how technology will be used.85 Indeed, this technology if properly reworked and rescaled, could finally eliminate scarcity, want, and denial,
80 81

ibid., 105. "Energy, Ecotechnocracy..." in Bookchin 1980, 92-3. 82 Winner 1977, 76. 83 Bookchin 1991, 223. 84 ibid., 254. 85 Bookchin 1995b, 29.

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or... could tear down the planet if used for profit, accumulation and mindless growth.86 Here Bookchins claim that he is addressing the contemporary problem of technology-perceivedneutrally seems questionable it is he, it appears, that is perceiving it in that way. But perhaps the issue here is what is meant by neutral. Bookchin appears to hold an Aristotelian view, that Technological forms derive...their value and meaning from the use to which they are put.87 That is, one of the causes (the final cause) for the existence of a technology is the use to which it is put: It was Aristotles view, and one he shared with Plato, that the natures of things include their goals, the good they fulfil or actualize.88 So for Bookchin, taking into account the end use of a technological artefact is viewing it ethically, and not seeing it as neutral. What Bookchin is concerned with, and criticizes, is the view that technology is morally neutral. This criticism is based on the view that technology is a given, and can only be evaluated on the basis of how efficient it is; it is beyond moral purview. But Bookchins view assumes that use and design can be separated, and it is not clear that this is the case. In an already existing ethical-ecological society, it would be presumed that such a consideration (that is, ethical use) would have been part of the design and creation of the technology. In a capitalist society, either neutrality in the Aristotelian sense is inappropriate, since ethics have not been designed into contemporary technologies; or ethics have been designed in, but they are the wrong (authoritarian and capitalist) ethics. These modern technologies cannot be considered only in terms of their use, and Bookchin admits as much himself: True there are techniques and technological attitudes that are entirely destructive of the balance between humanity and nature. Our responsibilities are to separate the promise of technology its creative potential from the capacity of technology to destroy.89 This does seem to imply that Bookchin thinks there are intrinsic qualities to certain technologies irrelevant of social relations conditioning their use. Regarding nuclear power he is even clearer: Nor are all technologies neutral in their impact on social and ecological well-being ... Clearly some technologies, such as nuclear weapons and power plants, should be banned completely.90 Nuclear power is clearly malignant, while nuclear power plants are described as intrinsically evil.91 This use of the term evil to describe nuclear power plants is unhelpful, and demonstrates no attempt on his part to deal with the issue of the use and design of modern technologies and the
86 87

"Energy, Ecotechnocracy..." in Bookchin 1980, 94-5. Hood 1972, 348. 88 Lloyd 1991, 430. 89 "The Power to Create, The Power to Destroy" in Bookchin 1980, 37. 90 Bookchin 1995a, 156-57. 91 Bookchin 1999, 249; 14n Bookchin 1990, 188.

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difficulties this raises for his analysis. If, however, socio-economic relations dictate how technology will be used, and this is the only significant factor, it is not clear why nuclear technology cannot be used in a libertarian society; conversely if it cannot be used for certain reasons e.g. pollution, that are not resolvable even in a post-scarcity anarchy, it is not clear why these same reasons do not apply to other technologies. In separating use and design in this way, Bookchin implies that advanced technologies could be developed under any and all social conditions, and would have been developed even without the emergence of capitalism and the nation-state. In this case, capitalist technologies can be viewed as essential for a liberatory society without capitalism itself being an historical necessity. Despite Bookchins argument that technology is not deterministic, certain statements suggest this may not be the case in all circumstances, and that the use of particular technologies will promote or even necessitate certain political structures: Indeed, following from the attempt to achieve a variegated energy pattern and an ecotechnology scaled to human dimensions, they would be obliged to decentralize their cities as well as their industrial apparatus into new ecocommunities communities that would be based on direct face-to-face relations and mutual aid.92 Here size would appear to have a clear affect of social and political development. Indeed, as much as he stresses the importance of the internal patterns of social development that render societies more or less authoritarian, he still adds: To be sure, a large-scale technics will foster the development of an oppressively large-scale society.93 Given the above points I would argue that Bookchins case for an entirely non-deterministic technology which, even in its most modern form under capitalism, can be absorbed into an ethical social matrix to allow an ecologically harmonious, libertarian society, is not proven. A final, additional area of ambiguity is in attempting to reconcile Bookchins views on the technological-material basis of this post-scarcity society and its ecological and ethical elements. In seeking to eliminate toil and promote production to bring about a post-scarcity society, he favours computers, cybernetics and automated machinery.94 Bookchin does not clarify, however, how the use of such technology would aid our increased contact with nature; it is difficult to see that computers or mining robots would promote such contact. Whatever the insights of organic or Hellenic societies, they did not have to contain the type of advanced technologies which we have today, and it does not appear certain that a way can be discerned in a computer microchip or even a solar panel in the same way it could in a piece of ivory. It is also difficult to reconcile his demands for human scale and transparency with complex technological ensembles. Further, he does not consider the processes by which such machinery is produced, processes that would appear to require a division of labour and forms of productive activity at odds with his goal of an ecological society. Many of these points are

92 93

"Energy, Ecotechnocracy..." in Bookchin 1980, 92-3 emphasis added. Bookchin 1991b, 240-41. 94 For cybernetics, see Bookchin 1990b, 196.

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part of the Anarchist Primitivist critique of technology, and will be considered in greater depth in that section. Although Bookchin refers to the relationship between material scarcity (and by implication, technology) and revolutionary success, he presents little or no evidence to support his claims. He responds to one critic of his views on material necessities that, if he believes that a luminescent ethical principle can prevent a communism based on scarcity from degenerating into another scramble for privilege and gain, he would do well to review history and see how countless such ethical movements degenerated into new hierarchies and systems of domination.95 However, Bookchin himself offers no evidence that the emergence of these hierarchies and the degeneration of ethical movements is caused, wholly or in part, by material shortages. One example of this is in Bookchins treatment of the anarchists in Barcelona during the Spanish Revolution. He writes that in May 1937, the (anarchist) workers failed to contain the Stalinist counterrevolution because they were forced to leave the barricades after four days to obtain food.96 One reviewer states: In all the material on Spain that Ive studied over the last 17 years, there is no mention of food as an issue leading to the anarchist defeat in Barcelona in 37.97 He comments on Bookchins lack of acknowledgement of, among other crucial factors the calls of the CNT Ministers for anarchists to disarm themselves.98 Yet in his article After Fifty Years: The Spanish Civil War, originally published in 1986, Bookchin himself wrote: The dramatic five days between May 3 and May 8, when CNT workers could have reclaimed their dwindling revolutionary conquests, were days not of defeat but of treacheryno less by the clique that led the CNT than the Communists, who were prepared to create a civil war within the civil war Lacking even a modicum of this resoluteness, the anarchist ministers, Montseny and Garcia Oliver induced the CNT workers to lay down their arms and return to their homes.99 So, Bookchin himself here largely supports the standard view, and does not mention food shortages at all.

Change and Reassessment in Bookchins Views on Technology

I will consider here how Bookchins ideas have changed and how he himself has viewed this change. In the early 1960s, in Toward a Revolutionary Technology, Bookchin suggested, in some detail, how modern technologies could be incorporated into an ecologically harmonious, anarchic society. This vision, although in many respects foreshadowing the appropriate technology movements
95 96

Bookchin 1977/78, 16. Bookchin 1999, 275. 97 Jarach, 2000-2001, 18. 98 ibid. 99 Bookchin 1994b, 6, emphasis added.

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of the 1970s, was particularly favourable toward such technologies as cybernetics, automated mining plants, and controlled thermonuclear reactions. These seem ill at ease with Bookchins focus on human-nature harmony and environmental health. When criticized for an anti-ecological technofetishism later, he replied that this essay cannot be removed from its time...when mechanization, and even controlled thermonuclear reactors, were seen as desirable by me and given its time, I have no regrets whatever for having held this view.100 He then went on to justify this by saying he was from a working class background, mentioned his foundry and auto-part work, and criticized middle-class deep ecologists whose indifference to technology reveals virtually no concern for the hard material facts of everyday life.101 Elsewhere he has argued that Jerry Manders critique of technology is premised on a fairly well-to-do way of life.102 However, Bookchins was not a view that was held universally even at that time Towards a Liberatory Technology was written. A response to the article appeared in the British journal Anarchy in 1967 which criticized Bookchins conclusions that advanced technologies could be decentralized and lead to spiritual, as well as material, liberation.103 Another piece criticizing Towards a Liberatory Technology, by Marcus Graham, appeared in The Match in 1971. Graham noted that he had himself written an anti-technology polemic as long ago as 1925, and concluded the article by arguing that only a rejection of modern technology and a return to handicrafts and simplicity is in accord with the anarchist idea.104 In a highly critical review of Post-scarcity Anarchism which appeared in The Match in 1972, Fred Woodworth referred to Bookchins suggestions for technological refinements in cattle pens as authoritarian and frightening, a disgrace to Anarchist philosophy.105 Ironically, perhaps, while The Match is not renowned as an ecologically oriented paper, this was an area on which Bookchin specifically focused. Bookchin does not appear to have replied to any of these articles, but their existence shows that although Bookchins background may have been a significant factor in motivating him to promote the possibilities of advanced technology, the period he was writing in cannot offer a sole explanation that is, Bookchin cannot argue that his views were the only ones that were acceptable at the time he propounded them. It would perhaps be understandable if Bookchin amended or updated his earlier work to take into account changing views about the possibilities and dangers of advanced technology. This does not, however, appear to be the case; in fact, he has not done this, and has continued to refer readers back to this earlier work to support his current arguments. In his Introduction to the Second Edition of
100 101

Bookchin 1989b, 18, emphasis in original. ibid. 102 Bookchin 1995b, 162. For Manders critique, see Mander 1992. 103 Ellingham, 1967. 104 Graham 1971. 105 Woodworth 1972, 4.

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Post-Scarcity Anarchism Bookchin notes that although he has been asked to revise or update the book, he has refused and would prefer the essays in it to remain as they were first published, as statements of 1960s radical ideology. But although later in the Introduction he mentions some changes he might have made, these do not include fundamentally altering the tone of the essay, nor excising the parts referring to thermonuclear explosions.106 In Self-Management and the New Technology (written in 1979), he notes that he has assessed and inventoried the technical alternatives that are available to existing forms of technology, and references Towards a Liberatory Technology.107 Although he notes that there is much I would add and much I would reject in the technical aspects of my account he gives no details.108 In The Ecology of Freedom (first published in 1982) he writes of an ample literature [that] has already appeared to demonstrate that no one need be denied adequate food, clothing, shelter, and all the amenities of life.109 and references primarily Towards a Liberatory Technology. Finally, in the appendix to Urbanization Without Cities The Meaning of Confederalism he writes that: It is unfortunate that the very considerable inventory of these [technological] possibilities, which I partly assembled and evaluated in my 1965 essay [Toward a Liberatory Technology] suffers from the burden of having been written too long ago to be accessible to the present generation of ecological oriented people.110 Bookchin responds to Watsons criticism of his holding different positions at different times by arguing that politically engaged writers change their opinions, and that he continually had to respond to changing political circumstances, to new issues that arose in movements, and to new movements for that matter.111 The problem, though, is not that Bookchins ideas have changed in the face of new ideas and movements; it is that although his early work is clearly problematic (and was so at the time), he has not only refrained from updating or revising it, but continues to refer to it as if it were, in fact, still pertinent. It would seem that the Anarchist Primitivist perspective has been far more able to respond in the flexible and developmental way Bookchin avers to than he has himself. (It is also noticeable that Bookchin has been willing to amend his earlier views of primitive society, but has refused to do the same for his views of technology.)

ANARCHIST PRIMITIVISTS ON TECHNOLOGY

Although technology is a crucial element of Anarchist Primitivist thought, it has only been approached systematically in the pages of the FE, where David Watson in particular has contributed a number of articles analysing contemporary technology and its relationship to capital. References to
106 107

See Bookchin 1986c. Bookchin 1980, 130. 108 ibid. 109 Bookchin 1991b, 261. 110 Bookchin 1992, 293. 111 Bookchin 1999, 250.

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technology in the work of John Zerzan and Fredy Perlman occur only occasionally, and these will be examined briefly below; but the bulk of this examination of the Primitivist critique of technology will focus on the work of the FE. How do we begin to discuss something as immense as technology?, writes T. Fulano at the beginning of his essay Against the Megamachine.112 The FE have attempted to do just that, but it is a task that has not endeared them to others ostensibly of the same political views who see few problems with modern technology in itself, and who want to abolish the dominant economic and political forms while retaining the technological apparatus.

Three Influences: Marx, Ellul, Camatte

Although they utilize the observations and conclusions of a number of writers, three in particular have contributed to the FE position: Marx, Jacques Camatte, and Jacques Ellul.

MarxCapital and Technology

Many of the FE members were aware of Marxs ideas, and retained some central elements of his outlook while rejecting much that was seen to be irrelevant or incorrect. One aspect that was retained was the significance of social relations in identifying forms of power and oppression, as Marx did with capital. In conventional terminology capital is simply an asset owned by an individual as wealth and could be money, machinery or property. 113 As such it is ahistorical, and could exist in any society at any time; it is capital by virtue of its intrinsic properties. Marx argued instead that capital is not a thing at all, but a social relation which appears in the form of a thing, where social relation - or more specifically, social relation of production refers to the way people organize in order to produce. 114 While this organization could be relatively informal, in the capitalist system the most important relation is the bourgeoisies ownership of the means of production (leaving the proletariat with only its labour to sell). It is this relation that allows capital to produce wealth, and as such is something that is historically specific. For Marx what defined a particular historical epoch was a combination of the forces of productionthat is, the means of production in the form of technology, plus the available labour powerand these social relations, which together constitute the mode of production. Marx focused on production as the key element of human existence, and insisted it was central to determining the consciousness of individuals.115 He argued that the mode of production should not be regarded simply as the reproduction of the physical existence of
112 113

Fulano 1981a, 4. Bottomore 1991, 68. 114 Capital III, ch.48 cited in Bottomore 1991, 68. 115 The mode of production of material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual process of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the other hand, their social being determines their consciousness (Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in Bottomore and Rubel 1963, 67).

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individuals. It is already a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite way of expressing their life, a definite mode of life.116 Since Marx focused on the relations of production, he did not consider that the machinery had to be examined in and of itself, outside of the relations of production. In Wage Labour and Capital he wrote: The cotton-spinning machine is a machine for spinning cotton. Only under certain conditions does it become capital. Torn away from these conditions, it is as little capital as gold by itself is money, or as sugar is the price of sugar.117 Because the central determining factor in society was the social relations, the technology itself could be looked on as effectively neutral. As such, it could be a significant element in the revolutionary process, and in turn vital to any future communist society. Marx saw communist society emerging as a historical necessity out of the contradictions of capitalism. Social revolution, under the schema of historical materialism, occurs when the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production.118 When the social relations become fetters on the development of the productive forces, the conditions for social revolution occur. But beyond this historical movement, modern technology would play a key role, since it had within it the potential to free humans from the problems of scarcity and usher in a realm of freedom: Marx anticipates that technology will play a central and essential role in the communist society. In a highly efficient manner it will provide the level of productivity required so that people can develop as free and creative individuals.119 However, this could not happen under capitalism since the social order was organized for the benefit of the few, not the good of the many. In fact, the forces of production would be held back by the illogicality of capitalism, and could only be freed for the benefit of all humanity by a proletarian revolution. So although technology was crucial for Marxs vision, he saw it ultimately as subservient to economic social relations; a change in these relations would enable the existing technology to be used and developed for the good of humanity.

Jacques EllulThe Autonomy of Technique120

116 117

German Ideology in Bottomore & Rubel 1963, 69. Wage Labour and Capital in Bottomore & Rubel 1963, 155. Emphasis in original. 118 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in McClellan 1982, 235. 119 Fischer 1982, 121. For a critique of this view see Bookchin 1991b, particularly 63-70 and 272. Bookchin opposes the view that scarcity is a natural rather than a social creation, and believes therefore that it can be overcome by social change rather than necessitating the domination of nature. However, he still sees modern technology as a precondition for the creation of an anarchist, post -scarcity society. See Bookchin 1974. For a critique see Watson 1996, particularly chapter 5. 120 For a brief introduction to Ellul see Ferkiss 1993, 167-173. On the significance of Ellul on Anarchist Primitivism, John Zerzan writes there has been a willingness in the Fifth Estate to consider the sense in which present and future technology tend toward a life of their own. Here there has been an effort to critically assess the extent to which Jacque Ellul is correct that technology is becoming itself an independent system dominating

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Ellul has been one of the most important writers on technology over the last half-century. His most well-known work, The Technological Society, has been described as one of the most ambitious and widely read attempts to analyze the relation between technology and modern society, and to try to understand modern technology in terms of that relationship. His work in general has been considered as among the most important in a vast literature on the nature of technological society and the effects of technology on the life of man.121 Ellul was a Marxist at 19, but converted to Christianity at 22. Although he found it impossible to reconcile Marxism and Christianity, with the result of his abandonment of the former, he was aware that the biblical texts were unable to offer a tool for analyzing contemporary society. In attempting to deducepolitical or social consequences valid for our epoch, however, he still found Marxs method superior to all that I had encountered elsewhere.122 But Ellul was unconvinced by Marxs emphasis on economics and production, believing instead that on the sociological plane, technique was by far the most important phenomenon, and that it was necessary to start from there to understand everything else.123 What does Ellul mean by technique? It is an opaque term, and his definitions often conceal as much as they reveal. The most commonly used definition provided by Ellul appears in a Note to the Reader of his book The Technological Society: The term technique, as I use it, does not mean machines, technology, or this or that procedure for attaining an end. In our technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity. Its characteristics are new; the technique of the present has no common measure with that of the past.124 It is important to stress this point, that technique is not synonymous with individual pieces of technology. Technique is radically different from the machine he writes, it is a radical error to think of technique and machine as interchangeable.125 Technique is not something external to but is rather a part of human activity - it is the consciousness of the mechanized world.126 Technique, writes Ellul, integrates the machine into society.127 This emphasis on consciousness both moves the emphasis away from pieces of technology to a way of looking at the world, even a way of being; and it locates it within humans, rather than as

society (Zerzan, 1982, 2). 121 Mitcham & Mackey 1971, 102-3; Lovekin 1977, 251. 122 Ellul 1970, 5. 123 ibid. 124 Ellul 1965, 3. Emphasis in original. This definition was inspired by that of Harold Lasswell technique is the ensemble of practices by which one uses available resources in order to achieve certain valued ends. See ibid. 18. 125 Ellul 1965, 6; 7. 126 ibid., 6. 127 ibid., 5.

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something outside of them.128 When Ellul refers to technique as being autonomous, therefore, he is not referring to an external entity that acts on humans but as something which is part of human society. As Durkheim saw society as a specific reality with its own characteristics, so Ellul also believes in a collective sociological reality, which is independent of the individual.129 Technique, for Ellul, represents one such collective reality; it can be considered, therefore, from a sociological perspective as an autonomous agent, not dependent on the social relations of other spheres. It is also important to stress that Ellul is referring to technique historically, that is in the context of modern society. Technique has always existed but in previous societies it was limited by a variety of factors which prevented it from achieving autonomy.130 Technical actions occurred unconsciously, since they were not separated from the rest of society. But as technique became pursued consciously, it started to break away from the social matrix that had previously contained it, beginning a process that eventually led to todays technological civilization. While technique is similar to Marxs idea of the mode of production, in that it represents a totality that includes consciousness as well as artefacts, the key difference is that Ellul does not believe that economic or productive factors are preeminent: It is self-deception to put economics at the base of the Marxist system. It is technique upon which all the rest depends. ... It is useless to rail against capitalism. Capitalism did not create our world; the machine did.131 In attempting to clarify the relationship between technique, society and the individual, Ellul develops a set of characteristics. The first two of these he refers to as well known, and does not go into them further; they are rationality, and artificiality. There are a further five, however, that Ellul refers to as new and which are the defining characteristics of modern, autonomous technique.132 It is automatic. The one law of technique is the search for efficiency, or what Ellul calls the one best means. This is the only principle for action, and therefore human judgement and spontaneity are irrelevant and unnecessary. It is self-augmenting. Since every invention leads to other inventions, there is a knock-on effect such that technical progress occurs by a geometric rather than an arithmetic progression. This process is unpredictable and outside of human control. It is also irreversible. Technique creates new, technologically-dependent ways of doing things, replacing traditional methods; once certain skills are
128

According to one commentator Ellul contends that technique, which he regards as a unique mode of consciousness, makes the machine possible, and while the machine aids in the perpetuation of that consciousness, it is not the cause of it; rather, it represents the ultimate ideal towards which all technique strives (Lovekin 1977, 254). See also Menninger 1981, 114. 129 Winner 1977, 62; Ellul 1965, xxvi. 130 Ellul suggests that the limitations are that technique had a definite relatively insignificant role in society; that technology was adaptive and means were limited; that techniques were locally situated and evolved very slowly over time; and that it was possible for the individual to escape the constraints of whatever technique there was. See Ellul 1965, 65-77. 131 Ellul 1965, 150; 5. 132 Ellul 1965, Chapter 2. I will outline these both because they are central to Ellul's approach, and because they were referred to in the first major exposition of the Fifth Estate 'anti-tech' position. See Fulano 1981.

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lost, they are rarely replaced. It is unitary or holistic. All the different techniques combine to form a whole. Ellul refers to The Necessary Linking Together of Techniques.133 There can be no distinction made between different techniques, or between techniques and the use to which they are put. It is universal. Technique is a civilization or culture. As such, it must take over and destroy indigenous cultures with which it comes into contact. Everywhere, technique produces the same results, and cannot therefore be assimilated. It is autonomous. Since efficiency is the only criteria for success, technique is autonomous of morality, and of politics and economics, which will change to suit its needs and requirements. Humans, as a potential source of error and inefficiency, must be eliminated from technical systems wherever possible; where humans are still necessary for the functioning of the system they must capitulate to the necessity of technique. Consequently, human freedom is constrained by technique for Ellul, there can be no human autonomy in the face of technical autonomy.134 These five characteristics in effect offer an expanded definition of technique in the current technological society. They have been utilized by the Fifth Estate, as will be seen, but first it is necessary to look as the work of the French ultra-leftist Jacque Camatte.

Jacques CamatteThe Real Domination of Capital135

Camattes ideas were very influential on the Fifth Estate, and on Fredy Perlman, in the 1970s and early 1980s. (See Appendix 3.) What is significant regarding technology and technique is the notion of the Real (or Total) Domination of Capital, wherein Capital is now the totality of contemporary society, not just an economic system.136 As such, both the proletariat and technology are a part of Capital, and neither can be seen as a means of overcoming it. Camatte disagreed that there are restraints (or fetters) on Capital under capitalism that can only be overcome by a revolution. Instead, Capital has escaped its limitations, and is no longer either controlled by human beings or limited by nature.137 Economic processes are out of control; Capital has become autonomous because it has separated itself from the constraints of the social and economic base on which it is built.138 The Marxist project of communism i.e. the development of the productive forces has been achieved by Capital. The proletariat has failed to liberate humanity because it has been domesticated by Capital, and made part of it. No good can come from within (the process of) Capital, liberation can
133 134

Ellul 1965, 111. ibid., 138. 135 Camatte uses capitalized Capital, a convention followed by Perlman and sometimes by the FE. Generally, a lower case c will be used, since in the context in this paper it is clear that it usually refers to the broader context of a civilization and culture rather than the narrower economic one. 136 Camatte has not dealt in depth with technology himself, but mentions it only in a footnote, see Camatte 1995, 67. 137 Camatte 1975, 45. 138 Camatte 1995, 92; ibid., 97.

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only come from outside it. (There does seem to be a similarity between Camattes concept of Capital as a totality and Elluls technique, conceived as the systematic unity of all rationalized means.139) What the Anarchist Primitivists attempted, particularly in the pages of the Fifth Estate, was to link ideas of Marx and Camatte with those of Ellul, and attempt to develop an overall, systematic approach to technology and Capital, and the links between the two.

Anarchist Primitivists on Technology

As Ellul uses the term technique to describe the technological system and outlook, the FE have tended instead to use technology in the same way i.e. as a system rather than as individual tools or machines. Dave Watson has referred to it as an interlocking system of apparatus, rational techniques and organization.140 Elsewhere, writing as George Bradford, Watson has attempted a more formal definition, utilizing the words technique, technics and technology. Here, it is technology that comes closest to Elluls idea of technique:141 Probably, the most workable approach for our purposes would be to suggest a provisional definition of these terms, considering technique to be that procedural instrumentality ... which is shared by all human societies but which is not necessarily identical in it motives or its role in those societies; technics to be technical operations using tools or machines ... ; and technology to be the rationalization or science of techniques (...), the geometric linking together, systematization and universalization of technical instrumentality and applied science within society, which brings to light its emergence as an autonomous power and social body.142 Here we have the essence of Elluls approach; a differentiation between a simple instrumentality and operation and a social body which involves the systematization and universalization of this instrumentality into a form greater than the sum of its parts i.e. a focus on the social relations of technology/technique under specific historical conditions. Unfortunately, this does appear perhaps to complicate the discussion further. The problem, though, is that the terms used can be taken in three ways; they have everyday meanings, then more specialist means, and then again, the radical analytical meanings used here. As George Bradford replied to a Marxist critic who argued that the FEs concept of technology made no sense since it did not conform to the dictionary definition of the term: If [he] were to look up capitalism in his dictionary, he would find nothing about exploitation, alienation, or domination, only a reference to the private ownership of the means of production. Would he therefore conclude that discussion of capitalism as more than private ownership, as a system of domination, is merely a theoretical device?143 A problem also arises regarding Elluls work with the use of the French word technique and its
139 140

Mitcham and Mackey 1971, 105. Watson, 1995, 11. 141 There appears to be no obvious reason for this, other than the fact that technology is a more generally used word in English, and that the debate had centred around 'technology' since it began several years earlier. 142 Bradford 1984a, 11. 143 ibid., 11

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translation as technology. It has been pointed out that for Ellul technique equals a systematic unity of all rationalized means, an idea which is not necessarily implied by the English technology, nor precontained in the French technique. In each case there is an extension of the common sense meaning of the term which must be argued for.144 Technology is used in the FE presumably because that is the term most familiar to English-speaking readers, and because the debate in the FE referred to technology before the introduction of Elluls ideas in the paper in 1981. Like Marx the FE recognize the primacy of social relations in defining an historical epoch, and like Ellul they recognize the importance of technology independent of other social factors. From Camatte comes the recognition of the overarching dominance of the techno-capitalist system and its ability to escape its limitations. However, unlike Marx they do not see technology as being neutral; and unlike Ellul they do not give complete primacy to technology, instead seeing it as integral to a system that is driven by both technology and capital: The capitalist system has been swallowed up by the technological system, writes Ellul. But he misses the point: technology and capital are both surpassing their limitations in runaway fashion, but neither has been swallowed by the other.145 The term the FE use to describe this system is megamachine, a term borrowed from Lewis Mumford. Mumford argued that the first machines were not the mechanical products of the Industrial Revolution, but rather belonged to the civilizations of the ancient world. Megamachines were forms of social organization, organized by elites, with the aim of achieving particular ends that would be beyond the means of small-scale community activity. After the collapse of these early civilizations the megamachine disappeared from history, only to re-emerge in our own time.146 The FE use this term to describe the contemporary interlocking system of the state, corporations, bureaucracies, the military, and technology.

Technology as an Historical Agent

The FEs critique of technology is applicable, like Elluls, only to the current socio-economic form of organization, that is, it is an historical manifestation. Technology is not, therefore, strictly deterministic; that is, technology has not necessarily determined the course of history, since it is only autonomous under certain specific historical conditions.147 In previous, non-technological societies,
144 145

Mitcham & Mackey 1971, 105. Bradford 1992, 19. 146 Mumford argues that both new and old megamachines [are] mass organizations able to perform tasks that lie outside the range of small work collectives and loose tribal or territorial groups...[which] aim to ultimately exert control over the entire community at every point of human existence...[with an underlying ideology that] ignores the needs and purposes of life in order to fortify the power complex and extend its domination (Miller 1995, 345-6). 147 Early FE statements veered more toward determinism, but this has been less evident in later works. See Fifth Estate 1978; Fifth Estate 1979. Here technology is seen as an inherently alienating form of mediation with the

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technology was absorbed within the social matrix and did not occupy a separate sphere (something that was also true of other abstract forms such as production): Technical operations existed (and exist) in societies which are non-technological. The technical phenomenon does not come to define all activity in the society, does not shape the social content. Rather, it is a secondary, sporadic mediation, embedded in culture.148 The clearest example of this is found in primitive societies: The two-fold character of primitive technics its adequacy (or appropriateness) to its environment, and its relative insignificance in terms of the constitution of primitive society point to its fundamental quality: primitive technics is simply a modality of human being.149 Technology was only allowed to emerge as a potentially autonomous entity with the breakdown of the community structures which had held it in place, possibly through the emergence of a system of labour and production.150 Consequently it would be a mistake to accuse the FE of criticizing technology as such, since no such a-historical form exists (in the same way that there can be no capital as such). As the FE responded to some of their critics: You accuse us of advocating destroying all machines, something we have never done... We dont define the nomads shoulder strap or spear as technology. If it is, and everything from rubbing flints to computerized nuclear reactors is defined in the same category, then th[e] word is incoherent. We are talking about advanced, industrial technology, the stuff of civilization.151 The emergence of technology as a separate sphere created the potential for a technological society, although it required a complete breakdown of the old communal forms to permit its rise to domination. This breakdown was brought about by a combination of technology and capitalism, with neither being dominant over-all, but with one or the other having a crucial effect at a particular time and place: Although there has been controversy over whether new technologies and timekeeping spurred early-capitalist mercantilism, or whether the reverse was the case, there is no reason to choose one interpretation over the other. Synergism was here in effect: technical development and capitalism went hand-in-hand, creating in their wake the technological civilization of today.152 Capitalism and industrial technologies emerged together, one reinforcing the other, synergistically, creating a techo-capitalist social order which is still in the process of evolving.
natural world. This perspective has been developed by John Zerzan., see Zerzan 1988 and 1994. 148 Bradford 1984a, 11 149 Brubaker 1981, 19 150 See also Perlman 1984. 151 St. Jacques et al 1980, 14. 152 Fulano 1981a, 5-6. Synergism refers to a combined effect which is greater than the sum of its parts. This is the outcome of two of Elluls characteristics of technique, it being self -augmenting and unitary.

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Necessary Considerations of the Critique of Technology

The FE view of technology was developed over many years, and although it has been treated in some depth it has never been set out systematically. Below I outline the seven elements which the FE identify as crucial to any consideration of the modern technological system.

1. Social Production
The FE maintain that all goods and manufactures can only be meaningfully considered in the context of social production that is, from their genesis on the drawing board to their delivery to their final destination. This should also include any additional elements required for their use, such as fuel for powered goods. The totality of the production process includes its human elements, in particular the division of labour between scientists, engineers and designers, and shop-floor workers, miners, and labourers. It also includes an apparatus of communication and distribution that in itself entails other technologies and productive processes. In addition, somewhere in the process raw materials have to be extracted and petroleum products refined and transported. As T. Fulano notes, technology encompasses the entire social process, the means and the instruments of production of these products, not just the products alone.153 So it is never possible to assess a product simply by looking at it in isolation, outside of the complexities and inter-relationships of the system in which it was produced.

2. Social Use
The principle of the social use of technology is summed up by Langdon Winner in his book Autonomous Technology. He writes: The human encounter with artificial means cannot be summarized solely (or even primarily) as a matter of use. One must notice that certain kinds of regularized service must be rendered to an instrument before it has any utility at all. One must be aware of the patterns of behaviour demanded of the individual or of society in order to accommodate the instrument within the life process.154 For small technologies, integrated in society, this need not be a problem. For example, a cup is designed with a handle which will encourage it being used in a particular way, although picking it up without the handle is quite possible and will not have any great consequences (except possibly burnt fingers). But larger, more complex technologies suggest ever more limited ways in which they may be used efficiently (or indeed, at all) as well as requiring a greater social adaptation to their use; in effect, the human and natural environment is altered to suit the technology. When these technologies assume the scale of telecommunications systems, for example, they demand high levels of conformity of both those who use them and those who operate and maintain them spontaneity is effectively designed out. As humans become increasingly dependent on technology, and as it generates new needs which

153 154

Fulano 1981b, 6. Winner 1977, 194-5.

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can only be satisfied technologically, they are left with no choice but to use the technologies and conform to their requirements. People adapt to the technologies, not the other way around: Technology is not a simple tool which can be used in any way we like. It is a form of social organization, a set of social relations. It has its own laws. If we are to engage in its use, we must accept its authority.155 How these two characteristics combine is illustrated in the quote below. George Bradford gives as an example of the difference between tools and technology the spear and the missile. A spear has inherent limitations, and the damage that can be done with it is limited without a complete reorganization of the society in which it is used (demonstrated by the armies of ancient civilizations). But in the case of the missile the organization of human beings as a machine, as a network of production and destruction, is fundamental to what is produced, and the only limit implied is that which is attained with the ultimate annihilation of the human race by its technology.156

3. Social and Political Organization

For the FE an authoritarian and hierarchical social and political form is implicit in technology, and cannot be separated from it. This is the wider implication of the two previous characteristics given above, that the technological system demands a division of labour and an hierarchical and authoritarian political structure: The enormous size, complex interconnection and stratification of tasks which make up modern technological systems make authoritarian command necessary and independent, individual decision-making impossible...The massified technical structure can only exist through extreme specialization of labor, stratification of tasks, and bureaucratic management techniques.157 The political organization of any society which utilizes this technology is therefore given, and cannot be reorganized along decentralized and community lines as long as such a system is maintained. Furthermore the FE question why anyone in a free society would decide, voluntarily, to work in a factory or a mine. Following Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago they refer to forced labourers as zeks: Every middle-class Marxist Ive ever met has expressed the same desires for a multifaceted life after the revolution. It doesnt sound bad, but Ive never heard one of them say that they wanted to be a coal miner in the morning, a forge operator in the afternoon and a micro chip board assembler after dinner. Tasks like these, done by zeks, are the foundation of industrial capitalism and if we drag the same old shit into
155

Fulano 1981b, 6. Winner refers to this as reverse adaption adjustment of human ends to match the character of the available means (Winner 1977, 229). 156 Bradford 1984b, 11. 157 ibid.

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our new society, they will also be done by zeks.158 The maintenance of a technical-industrial system will require a division of labour that will inevitably result in a worker-class, and it is unlikely this could exist without an authoritarian political structure.

4. Dependency and Expertise

The nature of the technological systems requires a dependency of humans both on the system itself and on the experts who run it. The complexities of this system mean that it is impossible for an individual to understand how anything but a small part of the system works (although this in itself presumes a willingness to immerse oneself in technological know-how). In all other areas it will be necessary to defer to the knowledge of experts in the field. The issue of expertise is problematic because experts may not simply be driven by the profit-motive but by a determination to succeed at the technical task at hand, a determination which may well outweigh any commitment to the wider social good: Even technicians who are not out simply to preserve the privileges and the power which come from their project (...) believe in their system and will change figures, make errors of omission, and argue for solutions which are actually untenable. Those of us who are not there with the expertise and the information (...) will have to take their word for it.159 A society based on high-technology will inevitably operate with a high-degree of opacity regarding technical, and therefore social, issues which will undermine any attempts at transparent directdemocratic participation.

5. Ecology and Technology

Modern technological systems are inherently complex, which suggests four possible areas of potential environmental problems. First, indeterminacy of ends. When the technologies are very large scale and/or dealing with extremely complex systems (such as the human body or natural ecosystems), the possible outcomes of their use are impossible to determine with any degree of accuracy. In fact, such unforeseen outcomes may be extremely damaging, as for example in the cases of DDT and the Thalidomide drug. This epistemological problem is not surmountable, since there is no way to study technology outside of the totality of the Megamachine: Technology cannot be isolated from itself and studied with its own techniques. The laboratory experiment in a given geographical or social area performed by the huge, powerful, bureaucratic hierarchy of technicians and managers is technology and carries its own social implications within it. The results of innovation will necessarily have multiple and unpredictable significance to the different sectors of the
158 159

Maple 1983, 2. Fulano 1981b, 6. In addition, the experts are themselves dependent, not only on other experts in different fields, but also on the approaches and outlooks allowed by technology.

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Megamachine.160 The second problem is that solutions are not inevitable. The focus on the supposed efficacy of technology and applied science generates a belief that, eventually, solutions can be found to any and all problems. Ironically, more technology is often seen as the only solution for problems that have been technologically induced. So chemical waste dumps, seen as a solution to the toxic waste problem, merely legitimize the technological system which created the problem in the first place, and create more potential problems which in turn require more technology to solve.
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The third problem is that, although solutions may not be inevitable, mistakes are. Whatever attempts are made to prevent it, either mechanical or human error is inevitable at some stage. When highly toxic or explosive materials are involved, or with high-capacity forms of travel, such mistakes can have catastrophic consequences. The blame for these mistakes is often laid at the door of corporate greed, the profit motive, or the irrationality of the market, implying that if the system was not run along capitalist lines ecological disasters would not occur. But David Watson disagrees that changing the form of ownership or eliminating the market would solve this problem: Global industrial production might possibly be accomplished without capitalist economic relations, but it cannot avoid honest mistakes...industrialism...makes disasters inevitable.162 The fourth problem is that contamination is an inevitable by-product of large, industrial technologies. After the release of a deadly gas cloud from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India, which killed 3000 people and disabled 20 000 more, George Bradford made a number of points which indicted industrialism: he noted that this was not a one off in the Third World where predominantly Western companies have operational standards below what would be tolerated in the US and Europe; that similar, if smaller, accidents also occur in the US and other developed countries; and that the constant usage of chemicals contaminates the environment to a dangerous level even without the occurrence of such disasters. When a resident in the US living with a risk of hydrogen-cyanide poisoning from factory wastes referred to the use of this gas in Nazi extermination camps, Bradford commented: A powerful image: industrial civilization as one vast, stinking extermination camp. We all live in Bhopal, some closer to the gas chambers and to the mass graves, but all of us close enough to be victims. And Union Carbide is obviously not a flukethe poisons are vented in the air and water, dumped in rivers, ponds and streams, fed to animals going to market, sprayed on lawns and roadways, sprayed on food crops, every day, everywhere. The result may not be as dramatic as Bhopal (...), but it is as deadly.163

160 161

Fulano 1981a, 8. Fulano 1981b, 8. 162 Watson 1997, 137. 163 Bradford 1988, 50.

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Although this currently applies to a system organized under market-capitalist social relations, the FE are clear that these problems are inherent in the technological and industrial system: You cannot have petrochemicals without colonies and sacrifice zones...waste pits, oil spills, refinery row, ruined areas and lives.164 Show me the non-polluting, convivial, democratic, peaceful model in which industrialism and technology could exist after a revolution. I dont think it can be done.165

6. Human Subjectivity
Another aspect of the FE critique is their argument that how humans view their world is determined by the prevalent social relations following Marx, people are how they live.166 When humans are enclosed in a mass technological apparatus, their subjectivity becomes adapted to this i.e. humans change to suit the technological world. In the technological society reference points are no longer natural but technological. Human needs and expectations are conditioned by what is technologically possible: The human being is transformed along with the content of social life...[the means of production are] the daily activities of the people who participate in these systems, and ... require the inevitable characterological internalization of these means in human beings.167 Dogbane Campion refers to Joseph Weizenbaum, who in Computer Power and Human Reason, argues that tools and machines are crucial symbols of human action in the world.168 The human imagination will necessarily see its possibilities for interacting with and changing the world on the basis of the tools available. The tools therefore offer a template for their own replication, which is in effect the externalization of the internal technological consciousness. Furthermore, if it is accepted that this imaginative content also defines how human individuals see themselves, then the technological world also inevitably means the internalization of a technological human being.

7. Computer and Information Systems

One area of modern technology which is often cited as being both of importance to radicals and activists today, and also potentially indispensable to a communist society is information technology. The FE question this assertion, firstly on the basis of the points raised above regarding social production, use and organization How do you expect this sophisticated equipment to be

164 165

Watson 1995, 10. Maple 1993, 7. 166 As individuals express their life, so they are (The German Ideology in Bottomore and Rubel 1963, 69). 167 Bradford 1984a, 11. 168 Campion 1988, 17. The quote appears in Weizenbaum 1984, 18. Elsewhere David Watson argue s Neither tools nor technology are neutral. They are inevitably powerful constituents of our symbolic world. Technology imposes not only form but content wherever it comes into use. (Watson 1995, 11).

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produced? What will be the role of the experts who supervise the production of the machinery was well as the dissemination of information? but also regarding the very nature of the technology itself. 169 For the FE computers and information systems are not simply a way of communicating neutral information. Information, in the way that it is understood today, is itself a development and manifestation of capital. Computers effectively act as filters which only allow certain forms of communication, and these forms themselves are central parts of the social relations of the technocapitalist society: Information is no more neutral than technology. It is a form which capital has taken since the technological revolutions beginning in the middle of this centuryThe kind of information which is transmitted through satellites and computer systems is a form of domination and power, inherently centralized, authoritarian and technocratic.170 Modern communication techniques promote cultural homogeneity through demanding a universalized form of communication based on the requirements of technique. Rather than diversifying human experience it standardizes it, imposing a universal impoverishment and homogenization of human experience.171 Given the above, it is not surprising that the FE do not see cyberspace as an area of contestation: The notion that this information field is a contested terrain is naive, to say the least. The very existence of such a field in reality a web of abstract, instrumentalized social relations in which information reproduces itself through alienated human activity, just as the system of value reproduces itself through the false reciprocity of commodity exchange is itself the essence of domination.172

Technology is Capital
To sum up the FE position as outlined so far, there are seven areas regarding modern technology that need to be considered. 1. Social Production Individual products and technologies cannot be considered in isolation from the productive processes which produced them. 2. Social Use Technology cannot be separated from its use. Technology demands that humans conform to laws implicit in the technology itself. 3. Social and Political Organization Modern technologies require hierarchical and authoritarian forms of social organization in
169 170

St Jacques, et al 1980, 3. ibid.. Note Bookchin What were merely saying is that what we call information is also a commodity, and its assumed exaggerated importance. But information is not merely merchandisable, its used to produce. So, I do not see that weve entered an information age as much as I think we are learning how to accumulate information for all kinds of manipulatory purposes, be they economic, political or psychological ( Kick It Over 1985, 17). 171 Fulano 1981a, 7. 172 Bradford 1984b, 8.

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order to function. 4. Dependency and Expertise Technological systems require a dependence of humans on these systems, and on the experts that develop and run them. 5. Ecology and Technology Industrial technologies are inherently damaging to the environment: outcomes are not foreseeable; there are not solutions to all problems; mistakes are inevitable; contamination is an inevitable part of the industrial system. 6. Human Subjectivity The way humans view the world, their imaginations and perceptions, becomes adapted to the technological world. Humans begin to think and act in terms of the machine. 7. Computerization and I.T. Computers and I.T. do not represent a potentially liberatory technology. As well as being the product of a vast technological structure they channel a limited form of information which is amenable to, and representative of, capital. Obviously, the above characteristics describe a technology which is radically different from that commonly held to be a neutral and potentially beneficial set of tools. This is a view held by many libertarian Marxists and anarchists who still see the primary focus of their political critique as being the state and capitalism. This is, of course, rejected by the FE, for whom, opposing the state while at the same time defending technology or remaining indifferent to it is comparable to opposing the police force while saying nothing about the military. They are part of a unitary whole.173 It was noted earlier on in this chapter that the Marxian view of capital is that it is a social relation not a thing. However, Marx also saw technological things as not being capital that is, the means of production (tool, machines, labour) are separate from the relations of production (how production, and society, is organized). But as George Bradford points out, if modern technology is conceived of with the characteristics noted above, then the idea that means and relations of production (in the Marxian sense) are different makes little sense: When the means of production are in actuality interlocking elements of a dangerously complex, interdependent global system, made up not only of technological apparatus and human operatives as working parts in that apparatus, but of forms of culture and communication and even the landscape itself, it makes no sense to speak of relations of production as a separate sphere.174 Clearly, from this perspective changing the formal ownership of the means of production will be of little consequence if the technological apparatus remains in place:
173 174

Bradford 1981, 10. Bradford 1990, 10.

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It is not a question of evil men but the totality of a system... Naturally, capital is more than just technology, but it is also the technology and the human relations it creates. No such apparatus could appear out of nothing; it presupposes relations of hierarchy and domination irrespective of the formal and juridical property forms.175 Here the FE make their point explicit; the properties of modern technology to act on social life make it a form of social relations, and as such a clear distinction between capital and its technology is impossible. It is not that the FE disagree with Marx when he argues that the problem is not with things but with social relations - but they see technology as social relations, not as things: Technology is capital, the triumph of the inorganic, humanity separated from its tools and universally dependent on the apparatus.176

Possibilities
The FEs critique of the technological society is comprehensive. After the critique, however, the question arises as to what alternative is possible, and how is this to come about.

Alternatives
As with much of the revolutionary left, the FE have avoided blueprints of their alternative society. In part, this is consistent with their determination to avoid a political programme, a programme which would be, in effect, an extension of the society which they criticize: We are proposing nothing less than the radical deconstruction of society, but this cannot come about through a political and technological program with its blueprints and agendas, for that would be more of the same.177 Clearly, though, their alternative is by necessity the small-scale, low-technology, localized community of the anarchist communists, since the implications of large-scale technology and industry are the antithesis of an anarchist society. David Watson refers to a world in which human beings create their own subsistence and culture in their own back yards with convivial tools in which technical matters play only a minuscule and

175

Bradford 1981, 10, emphasis in original. In fact for Marx it was not juridical property but actual control of the means of production that was the essence of the relations of production. (See Bottomore 1991, s.v. forces and relations of production, 204). But the FE argue that this applies to all forms of social organization which would attempt to control technology, including workers councils. These would be swallowed by the necessities of technique and the hypnotism of mass (pseudo) communication (Bradford 1 984a, 11). 176 Fulano 1981a, 5. Here Fulano makes the point that it is technology that opposes tools, since the system of technology makes human-centred tools irrelevant. Elsewhere Bradford refers to capital and technology as being metaphors, partial descriptions which represent the modern organization of life (Bradford 1984a, 11). A rejection of technology need not entail a rejection of science. See for example Elluls discussion of the Greeks, Ellul 1965, 28f. Referring to this, Fulano argues that th e notion that a scientific world view demands a technological outlook is simply not necessarily so. It is pure technological propaganda...The fact that the Greeks could have a scientific outlook without a technological-utilitarian basis proves ... that such a conception of life is possible, and therefore a scientific society without slavery and without technology is also possible (Fulano 1981b, 7). 177 Fulano 1981a, 8. (On politics as technique see Ellul 1965, Chapter 4. Also Camatte and Gianni Collu, On Organization, in Camatte 1995, 19-38)

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sporadic role in their lives and where nature looms large.178 Their aim is not only a society free of the state (or any authoritarian political structures) and capital, but also free of technology. It would not be a society without tools, but one which was not ordered around the technological system. Instead, the social should have priority: Reduced to its most basic elements, discussions about the future sensibly should be predicated on what we desire socially and from that determine what technology is possible.179 Alternative or appropriate technologies are treated with scepticism because a) they could be used to resolve problems within the existing system, since high tech alternative technologies are possible; and b) there should be no technological prerequisites for the desired social form:

Whether or not such communities decide, say, to turn into windmills the automobiles left behind by this civilization, is ultimately a secondary, local and technical problem.180 Another perspective commonly associated with the left, and often argued for by those in favour of post-revolutionary high tech, is the need for planning, that is for a planned society to replace the anarchy, as it is often termed, of the market. However, for the FE this is a false promise, based on the premises of mass technology. Firstly, it assumes that such planning is actually possible i.e. it assumes the manageability of large-scale systems and the reduction of all problems to logical (in effect, technically soluble) components. Secondly, it assumes that these planned systems can operate within a libertarian social structure. The FE disagree, arguing that planning is only possible in smallscale, directly democratic communities: A computerized, planned world will be a dreadful nightmare...We must opt for a nonadministered world...the schemes of the planners will never work.181 For the FE, then, the anarchist alternative involves prioritizing the social organization of society over its technical means, stressing the need for a small-scale, democratic society and rejecting not only advanced technologies but anything except the most locally organized social planning.

Here to There
There is little in the FE to suggest how this state of non-technological society should be reached. Since the FE have broken away from the idea of progress, particularly in its Marxian, dialectical materialist form, they do not see anything specific in the present social environment that is necessary for the transition to communism. The revolutionary change therefore does not emerge from
178 179

Fifth Estate 1983, 4 (written by David Watson; see also Bookchin 1980). Fifth Estate 1979, 6. 180 Fifth Estate 1983, 4. 181 Maple 1983, 2.

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contemporary civilization but rather, as Camatte argues, from outside of it. One obvious option, and one suggested by the FE, is to simply stop: Wed like a moratorium on industrialization starting right now a mass strike for the abolition of industrial civilization.182 There are two aspects to this emphasis: first, it is a conscious break with the current order of progress and production, not a continuation of it; second, it requires, and is within the ability of human beings, to choose a different path: I believe in the possibility of a conscious break with this civilization and its technology... I am not sure how even to begin except to state the existence of such a possibility... a new cultural vision must be forged in the rejection of the technological world view and in the struggle against the power of technology over our lives.183 In this the historical agent is not a particular class but rather humanity as a whole, which ties in with Camattes argument that We are all slaves of capital and that Liberation begins with the refusal to perceive oneself in terms of the categories of capital.184

Technology as Alienation
In one of their earliest pieces on technology, the Fifth Estate wrote that even the simplest technological development has been part of a continuing process of separation from the world which first bore and succored our emerging species to a situation where now we stand at the apex of that separation as strangers on our own planet, divorced completely from the world about us... The links between technology, Civilization and domination appear almost immediately upon examination.185 Here the emphasis is on the process of separation from the natural world which occurs through the mediating process of technology. This is reminiscent of John Zerzans focus on the alienating qualities of all symbolic forms (this piece may have been written in whole or part by Zerzan); part of his alternative definition of technology is Technology is the sum of mediations between us and the natural world and the sum of those separations mediating us from each other.186 In his Anarchist Primer John Moore uses this quote as part of the answer to the question, How does anarcho182 183

Solis 1985, 25-26. Fulano 1981b, 21. Ellul attempts to fend off accusations of pessimism by stating that what he is saying will come about only if man does not pull himself together and assert himself (Ellul 1965, xxix). In other words, this is the course of history as he perceives it at the moment. He suggests that If an increasing number of people become fully aware of the threat the technological world poses to man's personal and spiritual life, and if they determine to assert their freedom by upsetting the course of this evolution, my forecast will be invalidated(ibid., xxviii). On the issue of freedom and choice in libertarian thought and practice, see Bookchin 1990b, 115-126. 184 Camatte 1975, 40. Class struggle is not rejected by the FE, but as George Bradford has pointed out it was unsuccessful even when the industrial proletariat and the labour movement offered a clear opposition to capital; today the proletariat has been swallowed by capital and rarely offers any real opposition. See Bradford 1984a, 11 185 Fifth Estate 1979c. 186 Technology' in Zerzan 1994, 138.

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primitivism view technology?. Referring to it in his critique of Moore, David Watson argues that it seems to me that to regard all mediations as unambiguous separations is to oppose inevitable mediations like language, music, symbolism, cooking, and even the most simple technical implements like the digging stick and the bowl Opposition to all mediations may in fact define the outlook of a certain current of primitivism But mediations may also connect, not just separate.187 Technology is also referred to as an impulse, a thought form, before it has anything to do with tools.188 This is an indictment not of a particular form of technology, but of technology per se. While it is a form of consciousness, as Elluls technique or Heideggers enframing, it cannot be historically located nor can it exist in a non-dominating and alienating form. This is what would be expected from Zerzans critique of all symbolic forms, but is open to the same criticism. Neither Ellul, Heidegger, nor David Watson criticize technology outside of its historical context, and all refer to a period in history when it was contained. For Zerzan this is impossible, since the technological consciousness (and its inherent alienating form) appear with even the desire by humans to change the natural world in any significant way. Zerzans emphasis on technology as being inherently alienating represents, therefore, a different current in anarchist primitivist thought on technology from that suggested by the Fifth Estate.

Industrialism
Occasionally the terms industrialism and industrialization have been used in Anarchist Primitivist writing, but this has not been done systematically, and there is some variation in both usage and meaning. Consequently, it is not clear what the relationship is between industrialism, technology and capital. Perlman has suggested that industrialization represents a meta-phenomenon of which Capital is only an aspect: The transformation of surplus labor into Capital is a specific historical form of a more general process, the process of industrialization, the permanent transformation of mans material environment.189 However, in his novel Letters of Insurgents he equates (through the voices of characters involved in an Eastern European revolutionary uprising) industrialization with capital: Manuel had nothing good to say about what Sabina, following Alberts, calls industrialization. Manuels name for it was Capital, and he called the revolutionary politicians who murdered his comrades capitalists. For Manuel, industrialization was merely another name for humanitys disease, it was a synonym for
187

Watson 1997, 18. Watson does not indicate that the quote Moore uses comes from Zerzan, but this difference regarding the symbolic is a key difference between Zerzan and Watson/FE. See also the Chapter 3 on The Primitive. 188 Zerzan & Carnes, 1988, 11-12. 189 Perlman 1992, 45.

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dehumanization.190 His later use of Capital and Leviathan, rather than industrialization, means that this term cannot be seen as central to an understanding of his position. The more common Primitivist approach is to see industrialism as a co-element in a developing process, although it is unclear whether industrialism is a part of Capital, or whether they are two separate but synergistically connected processes. So, for example, the early stages of Capital can be seen as a hybrid of mercantile industrialism and chattel slavery; but modern industrialism and capitalism emerged in tandem as a unitary phenomenon. Industrialization and capital accumulation have always occurred synergistically.191 The question that arises is whether industrialization and industrialism in fact mean anything significantly different from technology. One point that can immediately be raised is that while industrialization suggests a process, industrialism suggests an outlook or ideology. A writer on Deep Ecology refers to expansionary industrialism, the ideology of nature that undergirds both capitalism and socialism [and] embodies a faith in technology and a technocratic organization of society, as well as apparently insatiable consumerism.192 Industrialization, on the other hand, has been defined as the general process by which economies and societies in which agriculture and the production of handicrafts predominate become transformed into economies and societies where manufacturing and related extractive industries are central.193 However, capitalism is a form of socio-economic organization rather than an ideology as such, so the suffix does not necessarily give rise to a fixed meaning. The use of the either term, without a definition, is problematic since if capitalism is not the motive force for industrialization as a process, then what is? If industrialism is an ideology, it should be defined as such; but if instead this it a process which comes under the rubric of technology/technique, either one of these terms should be used, or the connection between them and industrialism made clear.

Conclusion
The FE have attempted to disentangle capital and technology, and create the basis for an analysis of technology as an autonomous social agent. Basing their theoretical position on Marx, Ellul and Camatte, they have created a theoretical amalgam which explores the crucial role played by technology in the breakdown of community and the ascendancy of capitalism, and the way it links with capital in an over-arching system of domination. They stress the inherently authoritarian
190 191

Nachalo & Vochek 1976, 312. Bradford 1992, 19; Dave Watson 1995, 11. 192 McLaughlin 1993, 13. 193 Jary & Jary 1995, 315. S.v industrialization.

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elements of such technology, and in so doing they warn about the dangers of importing it into any future, anarchist society However, there are obvious problems with the FE critique. It is underdeveloped, and has not been systematically explored. In fact, much of the work has been in reply to critical responses to the paper. It also offers no obvious path to change. And the relationship between capital and technology may be more complex than the FE suggest. Even under the FE criteria, there are some technologies which perhaps occupy a grey area, and which have not been (and cannot be) tested in a noncapitalistic environment. Is any technological change or development possible within a libertarian society? This is a question difficult to answer given the current development of their theory of technology (as well as their theory of history). There is also only a small amount of evidence presented to support their claims, in line with the polemical and propagandist nature of the work. They do, however, refer to several other writers who can be approached to support their arguments.194 Further, this work, like the Anarchist Primitivist critique in general, is located in the 1970s and 1980s, and are based on ideas that formulated in the 1960s and 1970s. They are not therefore involved with some more recent debates regarding technology, but are primarily involved with opposing Marxist and Syndicalist arguments that argue for the neutrality of technology and its continuing relevance to the revolutionary project.195 There are terminological problems and ambiguities, not only relating to Industrialism and Industrialization, as already examined above, but also relating to capital, Technique/Technology, and the relationship between the two. Although the overall link between technology and capital as advocated in the FE is clear enough, the exact relationship between the two is less obvious. One of the problems is that it is not entirely clear what the Anarchist Primitivists mean by capital. Even the Marxian approach does not provide a straightforward definition: Capital is a complex category, not amenable to a simple definition, and the major part of Marxs writings was devoted to exploring its ramifications.196 This being the case, the use of the term by the Anarchist Primitivists, in particular in the FE, is problematic. Clearly, they do not mean exactly what Marx means by the term, that is capital related entirely to the economic order. Rather, they appear to follow Camattes extension of capital to imply a
194 195

In particular Ellul, Winner, Weizenbaum, Camatte, and Marx. Exactly what these groupings and tendencies were is difficult to ascertain from the perspective of the twenty first century. It seems the case that Situationism was influential, and since this was accommodated to modern technology, seeking workers self-management through workers councils, pro -Situationist tendencies were not, generally, in sympathy with the FE. Additionally, mainstream Marxist thought also involves an accommodation with capitalist technology as part of the progress of the potential of production, so any elements emerging from this would also tend to be pro-tech (although the FE itself emerged from these strands and evolved a radically different position). One group which opposed the FE regarding technology was the Union of Concerned Commies, which formed from Situationist and leftist groups at the end of the 1970s. When this group dissolved some members went on to produce the journal, ostensibly for office workers, Processed World. See Black n.d. 91ff. Also see Appendix 6. 196 Bottomore 1991, 68.

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culture or civilization, a material human community. The FE clearly mean to argue that technology, as a system of social relations, represents an independent social body. Since this technology is created under capitalism, it cannot be separated from it, but neither is it identical to capital if this were the case, no separate term would be necessary. Statements such as the reference to the spurious distinction between capital and technology and that technology is capital do not specify the exact identification of capital and technology, but rather stresses that technology cannot be seen as independent of capital, that is as a neutral form. In addition, capital includes other forms of domination, particularly wage-labour, and cannot therefore be reduced simply to technology. It could be argued that technology is in fact a part of capital. However, Bradford rejects Elluls claim that the capitalist system has been swallowed up by technological system by arguing that neither has been swallowed up by the other.197 So, capital and technology both exist separately. The reverse case, that capital is a part of technology can be rejected for the same reason. Hence, capital is more than just technology, but it is also the technology and the human relations it creates.198 Technology, as a social system, has been defined as the linking together, systematiziation and universalization of technical instrumentality and applied science within society.199 This definition clearly differentiates it from capital as a form of economic organization, or even as a form of cultural domination in the form of the Western Spirit. The most accurate option seems to be that technology is separate from, but interacts with, capital. In reality, interaction may not be the most appropriate description, since capital could not progress without technology, and technology could only have developed as it has under with the dissolution of community that accompanies the ascendancy to domination of capital. When Bradford argues that the tendency of modern technology is to free itself from capitalist forms and aim to attain ultimate and unitary rationality, he adds that this cannot succeed because capital is essentially fragmentary and fragmentizing; the image is of two interlinked social forms that tend toward, but cannot achieve, independence. 200 Watson uses the term synergism to describe the interaction, although the relationship may perhaps at times be dialectical, in that contradictions within technology and capital are overcome and realize new forms of TechnoCapitalism. That such ambiguities can exist is indicative of the undertheorized nature of the critique; it does not invalidate the arguments put forward, but does make clarification and verification much more difficult to achieve.

197 198

Bradford 1992, 19. Bradford 1981, 10, emphasis in original. 199 Bradford 1984a, 11. 200 Bradford 1983a, 6.

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CHAPTER 7 OVERVIEW
It is clear that both Social Ecology and Anarchist Primitivism have much in common, and that in their rejection of class-struggle and workers control they are clearly in the current of anarchist communism. Both have also sought an explanation for the current socio-economic organization, as well as the possibilities for change, through an exploration of domination and resistance throughout history. Both have also stressed the need for a radical politics to have as a central pillar the humannature relationship. But for the purposes of this research, what is crucial is that both have focussed on four central areas, which have been examined above, through which significant differences of opinion and outlook have been uncovered. Before seeking to account for these disagreements, I will offer an overview of the areas explored above.

PRIMITIVE
This is a highly contentious area, requiring as it does the political interpretation of anthropological data; as L. Susan Brown notes, almost any interpretation is possible. Both strands aimed (initially at least) to rehabilitate primitive life, and overturn the Hobbesian perspective which saw life in the state of nature and nasty, brutal and short. However, neither has attempted either a definition of the primitive or a thorough exploration of the anthropological literature, instead tending to focus on those areas which support their political perspectives. Bookchins aim has been to show the possibilities for humanity that existed in the past, but he does so in the context of a dialectical historical view that sees the dissolution of primitive society as being both inevitable and necessary. His view of primitive life was never as uncompromisingly idyllic as that of the Anarchist Primitivists, but his later writings go a long way towards overturning his earlier views completely. Whereas Bookchins early writings could be seen as emphasizing the positive in primitive society, his later work emphasizes the negative. This is problematic for two reasons; first, it is not at all clear that, even with the ambiguity of anthropological evidence, this later revisionist position (i.e. on the difficultly and limitation of primitive life) is valid. Some of his statements suggesting that contemporary anthropology almost universally rejects notions of primitive affluence are clearly untrue. Secondly, Bookchin cannot reasonably adopt this position without undermining much of his earlier work. Bookchin here seems confused. Depending on which works are consulted primitive life is either relatively idyllic or completely miserable. His change of opinions seems largely politically motivated, and a more balanced view would be possible. For the Anarchist Primitivists primitive lifeways are not the beginning of a grand historical narrative, but stand on their own and represent a view of the potentiality for an anarchic human community, as the antipode of civilization. While the Primitivists do not seek a return to the Stone

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Age, they see in the primitive possibilities for egalitarian social organization, as well as indications of what may be necessary for such a society to exist in some form again. Zerzan takes the most extreme perspective, positing an original humanity that had unmediated relationships with both themselves and wider nature. Other Primitivists see less of a clear dividing line between a pure primitive and a corrupted civilization, and consider instead that there have been a variety of more-or-less egalitarian, pacific and ecologically harmonious social forms that have existed over time. The Primitivist view is probably too idyllic. There is a lack of criticism of primitive lifeways, and little to suggest how exactly they are valuable for contemporary peoples. There are alternative perspectives and debates in anthropology which, while not necessarily overturning the Primitivist view, might well require it to be critically reevaluated. The decrease in output over the last five to ten years, and the deaths of Fredy Perlman and Bob Brubaker may have contributed to this lack of revision.

HISTORY
Bookchins theory of history is uncompromisingly progressive. Although he suggests that some elements of primitive life were positive, he has increasingly distanced himself from a view of primitive life (which he articulated early on) as being in any way idyllic. What were positive about it were certain elements of its internal relationships (usufruct, equality of unequals, irreducible minimum) but these are offset by parochialism, limited technologies, mistrust of outsiders leading to widespread warfare, reliance on myth and superstition, and a general poor quality of life (endemic illness, low life expectancy). For Bookchin these can only be overcome by a dialectical development toward a more complex philosophy and practice of freedom. This development might and probably would (although Bookchin is ambivalent about whether this is necessary), result in negative as well as positive consequences. So while the city, for example, is a focus for the rise of royal authority, religious and civil bureaucracy, and military organization, it is also the arena for a more expansive idea of the self and its relation to others i.e. the citizen. This process occurs throughout history as increases in hierarchical authority occur along with increases in the idea and practice of freedom. Capitalism has led to a crucial development in technology that can facilitate a post-scarcity society of people historically able to become citizens of an anarchist community. There is also a philosophical dimension, in that Bookchins dialectical naturalism sees an internally driven movement of life forms over time from the simpler to the more complex, and humans are a part of this process. So the movement from simple social forms to more complex ones is a dialectically natural process, that is also a means of nature becoming increasing self-conscious through the self-awareness and developing social forms of humanity. Unfortunately, the dialectical progression of freedom and domination that Bookchin posits does not seem to be either theoretically or empirically supported by his work. He seems unclear

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exactly what the relationship between these two currents is, sometimes stressing the one, then the other. He seems unsure whether civilization is a good thing with a bad side, or a bad thing with a good side, and in different places suggests both. The ambiguity is increased since he fails to define what he means by civilization. Bookchin bases his theory on a number of contentious historical and anthropological claims, but his suggestion that these have been subsequently verified does not appear to be true; he certainly presents no clear evidence of this in his work. There is no generally accepted Anarchist Primitivist theory of history, but there is a consensus around the rejection of the idea of progress, and a questioning of the role and status of civilization. The one clear outline of an anarchist theory of history is found in Perlmans Against His-story. Perlman begins with a characterization of primitive existence as being idyllic. Civilization in the form of technology, the city and the state does not emerge because it is necessary or desirable; that is, it does not occur as a direct response to difficult material conditions and is not an outcome sought by the primitives. Rather, it develops over a long period of time, an historical accident that leads imperceptibly to the creation of power structures which undermine and eventually replace the egalitarian primitive social order. The material conditions contribute to this process, given that they require the building and maintaining of an irrigation system; but this is only the precondition of civilization. Civilization itself takes the form of psychological changes toward mentalities of domination and (self-) repression. Once launched, this power complex becomes material (material surplus, bureaucracies, armies) and spreads to nearby communities. History, as Perlman describes it, is the continuation of this process, the spreading and developing of civilization i.e. domination and repression, over time. History, then, is a profoundly regressive process, ultimately linear but with superimposed cycles of the emergence and dissolution of individual civilizations, and the re-emergence and destruction of communities. Although this approach asks pertinent questions about the nature of civilization, it suffers from being insufficiently developed and ambiguous, with the key term of civilization never being defined. There are various omissions and problems relating to some of the evidence presented, particularly with regard to the rise of the oppression of women and the emergence of protocivilizations elsewhere. There is also no mechanism proposed that would account for the inevitable decline of civilizations which Perlman suggests. How Perlmans pseudo-mythic account is to be taken is crucial; but the more it is considered a largely literary and speculative polemic, the less if offers the Primitivists in the form of a plausible theory of history. (Zerzan also offers a limited historical overview primitive humans fell from an idyllic period of grace with the emergence of symbolism, probably about 35,000 years ago. History has been, since that time, simply an increase in the dominance of the symbolic order, although this process is always accompanied by resistance and rebellion.) Both strands emphasize the resistance to oppression that occurs in each epoch, noting in particular its religious, psychological and cultural forms. Perlman stresses the paradox that this

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resistance frequently leads to the re-generation of the power structures and repression it seeks to oppose. Bookchin sees this resistance as part of the natural process of the dialectical development of greater freedom over time. So for Perlman resistance is an attempt to get back to a primitive existence, breaking free of civilization i.e. it is universal, for Bookchin each form of resistance is historical specific and adds something to the overall legacy of freedom. From the other side, Bookchin is able to see positive elements in developments which increase oppression and domination, whereas for Perlman there is no historical justification for these. Both also reject the idea of economics being a driving factor in history, and instead emphasize cultural and political factors. This is particularly the case regarding the breakdown of primitive society, which is in both cases put down to the emergence of power structures which then facilitated the later emergences of economic inequality and eventually classes. Although Bookchin offers a dialectical explanation of change which (in its Marxian form) Perlman rejects, neither believes that capitalism emerged by necessity out of European feudalism, instead putting its development down to a number of contingent factors. Inevitably, any attempt to expand on human history from prehistoric times to the present, particularly for non-historians, and in a political context, will involve a large degree of speculation, ambiguity, and personal interpretation. But whereas Perlman, in his attempt to avoid conventional academic and literary forms, makes a virtue of this speculation and ambiguity by constructing an essentially mythic account, Bookchin claims that his work represents fact, to the degree that his historical argument underpins the other aspects of his work.

REASON
Both Bookchin and the Anarchist Primitivists are critical of instrumental reason, that is, reason subservient to technological and economic imperatives. Not surprisingly, Bookchin has a singular coherent concept of non-instrumental reason which fits into his overall philosophical system; the disparate elements of Anarchist Primitivism, however, have not developed a unitary position. Bookchins view of reason is complex. For Bookchin reason represents a fundamental ordering principle in the universe, the mechanism by which the more simple becomes, dialectically, the more complex. Our apprehension of this process must also be dialectical, that is not simply mechanistic or instrumental. Bookchin argues that instrumental reason is still necessary for ordinary, everyday tasks, but is not capable of getting to grips with the more complex, dialectically evolving reality of the universe. However, it is not clear how we go about understanding this reason in practice. Although initially Bookchin referred to the possibilities of poetry, metaphor and even animism, he has distanced himself from these perspectives in response to the emergence of a political primitivism. He has, instead, more strongly endorsed modern science for its outlook and ability to offer an understanding of the universe. There appears to be a resulting ambiguity in his work, which suggests a flexible, dynamic reason on the one hand, and a more conservative positivistic scientism on

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the other. The FE stress the need for a quasi-religious spirituality, based on that which is found (they claim) in primitive societies. They argue that this spirituality was a vital part of these societies and to recreate their egalitarianism, and particularly their harmonious relationship to nature, a spiritual approach is a necessity. Against this, other parts of the milieu (e.g. John Zerzan, Jason McQuinn) claim that this view of primitive spirituality is inadequate. They argue it is not clear that all primitives held such views; but regardless of this, such spirituality represents a dualism that is at root a precursor of later, more comprehensive forms of alienation. While a contemporary ecological outlook would perhaps include some of the insights of primitive spirituality, it should aim to transcend this rather than adopting it as a whole. Neither side entirely reject science or a scientific perspective, but are rather opposed to a unitary scientific outlook that claims to explain all of reality. Zerzan takes an even more extreme view, arguing that primitives lived in an unmediated present and calling for the rejection of all forms of symbolism. The question of a post-capitalist form of reason is not settled in Primitivist circles, and it is perhaps the case that this could only be done through practice over a long period of time rather than by pure theoretical deliberation over a decade or so. However, there appears to have been comparatively little work on what is clearly an important subject; neither pro- nor anti-spiritual perspectives have been sufficiently explored. The references to primitive lifeways suffer from the problems of anthropological interpretation, and give no indication of how these are relevant to us today. The question of the nature of symbolism in primitive society and how this differs from contemporary capitalism is also an important area that is not fully investigated. Chernyis Dialectical Phenomenology is perhaps potentially more productive, but again is insufficiently developed. Work on the intriguing relationship between Stirner, Goodman and MerlauPonty, the possibilities of a synthesis of their ideas, and the relevance of the practices of radical groups throughout history, also noted by Chernyi, would be welcomed, but has yet to appear.

TECHNOLOGY
Bookchin sees modern technology as a prerequisite of a post-scarcity anarchist society. Only this technology can provide the necessities of life without the toil that would render post-capitalist life unattractively difficult; indeed, without such technology a post-capitalist anarchy could not come into existence, because the revolution would be co-opted by a political elite while the masses worked to produce the necessities of life. In addition, Bookchins anarchism is based on a concept of human freedom as choice, and advanced technologies offer in principle unlimited goods, which can be rejected on ethical grounds, rather than technical ones i.e. post-scarcity. There is also the historical necessity of post-scarcity; capitalism creates a scarcity mentality, and in order to move into a noncapitalist future this mentality must be transcended, by accepting its existence and seeking to move

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beyond it, rather than simply seeking to ignore or reverse it. Bookchin argues that in the past technology always had a social context, and was never perceived as being a neutral entity. It is the perceived neutrality of technology today, he argues, which makes technology such a problem, since there is no ethical perspective from which to assess whether a technology is right or wrong. Under capitalism all technologies are simply assessed on their instrumentality i.e. how well and efficiently they function, irrespective of the social context of their use and development. When Bookchin refers to neutrality, therefore, it is in this sense of technology being assessed only on the basis of its effectiveness and efficiency; for Bookchin not viewing technology neutrally is to subject it to ethical, rather than instrumental, assessment and analysis. However, he does regard technology as being merely a passive subject of social relations in this respect, technology is neutral, in that it has no power at all to act on these social relations. Technology need only be considered in the context of the social relations under which it is used. Upon close examination, however, it becomes clear that Bookchins view of technology is confused.1 His attempt to argue against the neutrality of technology subverts it entirely to socioeconomic determinants, a position which he finds difficult to maintain, forcing him to retreat into arguing that certain technologies are, in fact, inherently inappropriate. Although he attempts to develop a theory of technology, he does not seem to be aware of the literature on the philosophy of technology available, and does not appear to understand the critique of technology as capital. The Anarchist Primitivists see technology as always having some effect on the societies in which it is used. Technology and society can never be completely separated. In small, communityoriented societies with low-levels of technology, it can be integrated in the society, i.e. effectively subsumed within the social matrix. Technology does not have a life of its own; it is simply another part of the social order. However, modern capitalism has valorized technology, and promoted its development, such that it has been elevated to a point from which it can act independently on society. The breakdown of the traditional community structures by the revolutionary dynamic of capitalism allowed for the emergence of an autonomous technology that was able to fill the vacuum left by the collapsing social matrix. The essence of the Primitivist argument, particularly that put forward by the FE, is developed from the Marxian concept of capital. Marx argued that capital is not things but social relations i.e. it is not money or buildings but how society is organized. But for Marx things included technology. The Anarchist Primitivists argue that this inclusion is not valid, and that the nature of technology its impact on society, how people organize their lives, how it affects their outlooks and expectations make technology developed under capitalism also a part of capital. Modern technology must therefore be regarded as a form of capital; such large scale, complex systems, cannot be separated from the
1

Higgs 1998, 249.

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social organization that produced them. This technology requires a social system that is essentially capitalistic, centralized and authoritarian, and can have no place in an anarchist society. They are sceptical of the value of alternative technologies to the extent that these could also potentially be manifestations of capital. In this they agree with Bookchin that focussing on the technology alone does not detract from the need to change the prevailing social order. However, they go further in arguing that any focus on technical means can undermine the goal of achieving an anarchist society; consequently, they argue that primacy should be given to social organization and only subsequently should attention be paid to technical matters. The Anarchist Primitivist view of technology seems more consistent with their overall premises, and more realistic in the sense that their argument for technology being capital appears supportable. However, their refusal to deal with what is or is not a reasonable technology (technical issues have to be subordinated to social ones) leaves a vacuum. Technologies are an inevitable part of human existence in some form, and non-capitalist technologies are surely possible. Technology is the most thoroughly investigated and presented of the four Anarchist Primitivist areas looked at. However, it is still undertheorized; the assertion that technology is capital is more effective as metaphor than as exact analytical description. The question of what the FE mean by Capital is never addressed, and ambiguity regarding other terms, such as industrialism further obscures this area.

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CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSIONS
The purpose of this research was to account for the differences in the conclusions reached by the two strands examined, Social Ecology and Anarchist Primitivism. In order for this to be a valid project, it was necessary that the two strands would be expected to agree. This has been shown as follows: Both are part of the current of anarchist communism, rejecting class and workerbased theoretical models, and arguing for the liberation of the whole of mankind from all forms of domination and exploitation. Both emerged from earlier perspectives which emphasized the importance of Marxism, rather than from prior anarchist and anarchist communist currents. Both are concerned with the four currents discussed, the primitive, history, reason, and technology, and a considerable amount has been written on these subjects. In line with their communist orientation, both have strongly criticized Marxist and syndicalist organizations and thinkers. They have also both criticized Deep Ecologists who have failed to recognize the importance of socio-economic factors in producing environmental destruction.

In addition, within the four subject areas, there has been a broad consensus, at least initially: the rehabilitation of primitive societies from a Hobbesian critique; the rejection of the preeminence of instrumental forms of reason, and arguments for the expansion of the concept of reason to encompass other, less conventional forms; and a critique of the role and status of technology in the modern world. Only in the area of history, where Bookchin is firmly progressivist, is there a clear difference from the outset. Even here, though, there are similarities in the emphasis that both strands place on the importance of psychological factors in state formation and maintenance, the significance of the state form in history, the role and nature of resistance, the significance of religion, and the rejection of economics as the primary causal factor in historical change in favour of social and cultural factors, and the development of political forms allowing and facilitating the emergence of economic forms, rather than the other way around. (Less significantly, it is also the case that both occasionally use the same material to support their arguments, in particular, Paul Radin, Dorothy Lee, and Norman Cohn.)

It therefore seems reasonable to argue, given these points, that the range and strength of the disagreements in the conclusions reached in the two strands are both significant and unexpected enough to be worthy of investigation. This investigation has been in two parts. The first consists of a thorough examination the texts

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themselves, to ascertain the nature and strength of the claims being made, as well as the nature of the disagreements themselves. However, although this approach does clearly demonstrate what the disagreements are, it does not account for them. It has been argued, following Quentin Skinner, that this can only be achieved by gaining an understanding of the texts which is only possible by acquiring some understanding of what the authors intended in writing the texts in the first place. Further, I have suggested that a key factor in this is the writers overall aims, their intentions, in develop ing their overall projects. Understanding why they disagree requires understanding why they wrote what they did, in the way that they did. (For their backgrounds, aims, approach to debate, and other relevant factors see also Appendix 3 and 6.)

BOOKCHIN AND SOCIAL ECOLOGY

Bookchins commitment is to a metatheory in the Western tradition, which stresses coherence and a humanistic activism. His particular theory emerged out of his libertarian re-orientation which occurred in the 1950s. This was a development of Marxist-Leninism, through first Trotskyism, then a more libertarian Marxism influenced by Josef Weber, to a more clearly articulated anarchism by the early 1960s. But his outlook was clearly located in his earlier perspective hence, the origins of his urban thought in Marx and Engels, and his dialectical outlook from Marx, which he appears to have explored subsequently in Hegel and Aristotle. There is also more than a hint of Marx in his view of a technologically supported post-scarcity society. Looking at the development of his theory, and to his references, it appears that the overall basis of his philosophy was largely in place by the early 1970s at the latest, perhaps earlier; there is some indication that much of his project can be traced back to that initiated by Josef Weber in the 1950s (see Appendix 3). Although in the 1960s and 1970s there is a sense of Bookchin engaging with contemporary concerns, his recent attempts to resurrect an idealized old left or left that was does suggest that his political orientation has never strayed overly from that acquired in his youth. Certainly, his later engagements with contemporary theoretical developments, including radical environmentalism, Deep Ecology, systems theory, and primitivism, have been almost uncompromisingly hostile. This hostility has been particularly damaging both to the wider acceptance of Social Ecology and to its own internal theoretical development. In the 1960s, it seems likely that the influence of the counterculture mitigated Bookchins tendency toward personal authoritarianism. But as far as his project of Social Ecology has been concerned, his approach has been straightforward; take it or leave it. Bookchin has been generally reticent to consciously adapt his views in the light of new theoretical perspectives; in many cases, for example in the case of the philosophy of technology, he appears to not be aware of works which might affect his own. Perhaps this is not surprising since Bookchin aligns his work with that of Aristotle, Hegel and Marx, and attempts to provide a philosophical system which accurately locates humanity within a wider evolutionary continuum,

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whilst offering a revolutionary politics which he argues is the only way that a non-statist, non-market society can be achieved in the contemporary world. Once the foundations of this system have been laid, it is unlikely that any current developments in political or social theory would offer a challenge to it. More significantly, perhaps, he has shown little sign that he is prepared to even consider amending his views in the face of criticism from those who could, perhaps, be seen more as allies than as enemies. His resort to ad hominum and inaccurate attacks has not only alienated many possible supporters, but has also prevented ambiguities and contradictions in his work being fully explored and rectified. Indeed, what is to be made of the numerous ambiguities, sometimes contradictions, which create so many difficulties in Bookchins work? It is a difficult question to answer unequivocally, but some ambiguities arise through his lyrical style, which make various interpretations possible. Another reason is his inability apparently to merge his grand scheme, his One Big Theory, with the details and subsections of which it comprises. There is a feeling that Bookchin wants the outcome, and the details are left to look after themselves. Clearly, sometimes, Bookchin is simply confused, as his work on technology seems to indicate; but what makes this more problematic is that he does not appear to be willing or able to take into account the criticisms made of his views, nor the challenges presented by other views these are simply treated as irrelevant and, in any case, incorrect. Persistent challengers are subjected to increasingly hostile attacks. Bookchin does not seem to take the time to study different viewpoints and integrate them, or even challenge them effectively. Again, with technology, he attempts to construct a comprehensive theory, yet shows no real willingness to investigate the literature relating to the philosophy of technology. He also makes assertions which appear not to be based on referenced facts or evidence. The only significant reassessment that Bookchin has undertaken has been in relation to the status and character of the primitive. Here he has virtually reversed the opinions he proffered in the 1980s regarding primitive peoples and organic society, now suggesting that these were little more than the first rung on the human evolutionary ladder, and an unpleasant and difficult rung at that. (Also noticeably, many of those writers that Bookchin cited early on as being valuable and important, he has subsequently criticized and rejected. Those who may have followed up his earlier suggestions and explored these works for themselves are also open to the same criticism.) Given the all-inclusive nature of Bookchins philosophy, and its purported objective nature, not only are its tenets unchallengeable, but it can be the only correct interpretation of the world, and so offer the only workable solution to current problems. Bookchin therefore becomes frustrated when his ideas are not taken up. His attacks on other groups increasingly seem to be motivated by the belief that unless his ideas are accepted, both the anarchist and green movements specifically, and the wider world generally, face inevitable crisis and collapse. Consequently, there is no room for conciliation or compromise; it is either Bookchins dialectical naturalism and libertarian municipalism, or nothing.

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Faced with the reality that his ideas have not achieved the popularity or widespread acceptance that he hoped for, Bookchins response could have been to produce new texts to expand on and perhaps clarify his ideas. Instead, he has sought to undermine challenges to the hegemony he apparently seeks by making attacks on more popular alternative perspectives that, although sometimes highlighting genuine difficulties, have largely created polarizations within the radical movement that have made links between Bookchin and other groups with different outlooks difficult to either develop or sustain. Perhaps the clearest example of Bookchins all-or-nothing approach to his project is in the case of his views on the primitive. The Ecology of Freedom clearly made a case for a reevaluation of primitive lifeways as suggested initially by Lewis Morgan and Engels, and the more recently by many contemporary anthropologists. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Bookchins arguments were influential in the growing acceptance among anarchists and other radicals of the non-Hobbesian view of the lives of early humans, and those peoples living in contemporary primitive societies. However, when it became clear that this view was being articulated outside of the progressive schema that was a key part of Bookchins outlook, he became increasingly keen to distance himself from his own original assertions. The debates in anthropology about the nature of the primitive that appeared in the 1980s and 1990s offered Bookchin a way of separating his ideas from those with which he disagreed. But rather than simply qualifying his views he has virtually reversed them, now holding a position which is virtually the Hobbesian one of which he was critical twenty years ago. What makes this reversal all the more problematic is that neither argument for the pristine, idyllic primitive living in harmony with nature, or for the superstitious, warlike, primitive battling with the natural world is universally accepted in anthropology; there is, rather, an on-going debate, in which more-or-less convincing evidence and arguments are presented by both sides. Given this, Bookchins decision to reverse his argument rather than simply amend it in some way does seem to be an attempt to undermine his opponents than a change of opinion brought on by becoming aware of new material. Unfortunately, though, given the interdependence of areas of study that is a part of Bookchins project of coherence, radically changing one aspect will inevitably affect others. In consequence, Bookchins original case for organic society has been so undermined by his later revisions and amendments that it is difficult to see how all of the claims he made based on that first view can still be maintained. There are considerable areas of ambiguity in Bookchins work, which occasionally become contradictions, but at the very least suggest significant areas that need re-theorizing. This is particularly true of his views on technology, which appear confused and insufficiently thought out. The nature of his approach an overarching and all-encompassing meta-theory means that it is difficult to challenge individual aspects of his work, since they invariably depend on other areas. This is the case regarding Bookchins ideas of reason and history. His assertion that there is an ordering principle in the universe which tends toward greater complexity and eventually self-consciousness, and is accessible and understandable to humans at a particular point in their historical development,

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underpins his work; but it also links reason and history in a way that makes their separation impossible. If Bookchins ideas on reason and dialectic are not accepted, then neither can his theory of history, and ultimately his whole theoretical approach becomes unstable. Thus, either Social Ecology is accepted in toto, or it is not accepted at all; and in some respects, this is the position that Bookchin has taken, demanding that if people are to be associated with his views they accept most if not all of them. Bookchins approach also suggests that an end to philosophical problems is possible, even that this is achieved through Social Ecology itself. Hence his claims that his works offer a way forward in themselves, rather than in the practical activity of other people, perhaps using his ideas as guidelines. But perhaps this is inevitable given the claims that any such metatheoretical approach is required, by its very nature, to make. Finally, what of Bookchins personality? This is obviously a difficult area of interpretation, but it seems clear that his uncompromising approach is rooted in his early political experiences; it is an approach that appears to be based on winning arguments at whatever cost, and eliminating oppositional (or heretical?) tendencies, something which has tended to characterize the Marxist left (See Appendix 3 and 8). In so far that it is not an approach based on finding common ground, it is not surprising that Bookchin has tended to isolate himself from other tendencies and has attempted to insulate Social Ecology from reinterpretation or any attempts to dilute what he sees as its fundamental and crucial aspects. He is keen to stress his own contribution to the development of radical green and anarchist political theory he has called his early work pioneering and appears frustrated that his contributions have not been sufficiently acknowledged.1 It does not seem to be unreasonable to claim that Bookchin has desired a revolutionary leadership role, to make the most important contribution to a burgeoning revolutionary movement. It is possible that his desire for the reconstitution of an Old Left is to create a forum in which such a role would be viable, in a way that it is not in the more fragmented and anti-systemic lifestyle anarchist underground of which he is so critical. It is difficult not to see a merging of form and content Bookchins philosophy, despite his claims for its dialectical insight, appears to devolve to articulating the human control of nature, although ostensibly in the interests of evolution. In this respect, his focus on the Enlightenment is perhaps apt the basis of his argument is that such is necessary for human freedom. In Bookchins argument this is not domination, since it is going with the flow of nature rather than cutting across it, but this depends on a complete understanding of what this flow it. Given some of Bookchins own suggestions, for example regarding the use of controlled thermonuclear explosions, it is clear that claiming such an understanding without actually having it could lead to catastrophic effects. What status can be given to Bookchins earlier views on lifestyle, spirituality, and the need

Bookchin 1990b, 155.

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for a new poetry of revolution? Overall, it would seem that Bookchins commitment to these area s is secondary to his commitment to dialectical naturalism, libertarian municipalism, coherency, and the rest. Any approach which promotes these aspects but in any way challenges the whole can be dismissed on the terms which Bookchin himself appeared to favour; conversely accepting Bookchins premises allows these aspects to be explored, but only within his overall framework. Where the possible insights of other cultures which have followed a different path to that of the West have received increasing attention over the last thirty years, Bookchin sees only the possibility of quietism and manipulation. For him, increasingly, the Enlightenment and the EuroAmerican tradition of revolution are the only intellectual and historical bases for any contemporary revolutionary movement.2

ANARCHIST PRIMITIVISM
(See Appendix 3 and 6 for supporting information.) Making general statements about the work of a number of people who do not necessarily agree with each other is obviously problematic. However, as I have shown, there are sufficient similarities between them to make such a project neither impossible nor unnecessary. Two elements characterize the Anarchist Primitivist approach; a willingness to question the fundamental premises of Western culture; and the lack of a desire to create an ideology, formal political organization, or political program. This is in many ways a reaction to the 1960s, and the failure of the radical movements of that time to achieve lasting change. Certainly the 1960s radicalism threw up challenges to many areas with which the traditional left did not directly engage the role of technology and instrumental reason; the search for an authentic self in an apparently all-encompassing capitalism; the impact of the media and the cult of consumption. Faced with the apparent omnipresence of capital, its real domination, perhaps it was not surprising that simply focusing on the economy or the state seemed inadequate. In seeking answers further afield, the epistemological bases of Western civilization itself came under scrutiny; the role of reason and science and their relation to technology were open to question, as was the idea of what constituted the revolutionary project. In this respect, Marxism was seen to represent much of the essence of Western culture that was being questioned and often rejected. At the same time, the Anarchist Primitivist approach was not, as mentioned, to create a coherent ideological position. Consequently their published work tended to have two purposes: first, as an expression of their ongoing theoretical development; and second as a direct challenge to other radical currents that were seen as prevalent at that time, initially syndicalist and libertarian Marxist

Bookchins work does appear here to lean towards what has been called the transcendental pretence the universalizing of the European experience to the rest of humanity and through the whole of a unified human history. It has been argued that not only is this view the basis for bourgeois ideology, but it underpins the thought of Marx, in his positing of the proletariat as the class of humanity, as well. See Solomon 1980, xii.

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groups, and later Deep Ecology/Earth First!. They sought not only the elimination of economic exploitation, which offered as a solution workers control of industry but, perhaps inspired by the counterculture, the elimination of all forms of labour that impinged upon the freedom and spontaneity of the individual. Reasoning that free individuals would not choose to work in heavy industry or office blocks, they rejected productivist approaches which foresaw the continued existence of the contemporary industrial structure beyond the revolution. Instead, for the Primitivists, this structure was itself a central part of the system of domination, and its dismantling a necessary part of the revolutionary process. It is questionable whether every example of Anarchist Primitivist work has escaped the ossifying tendencies of ideology; clearly, attempts to explain the entire history of humanity, even if heavily conjectural, can be considered to be some form of manifesto. Equally, Zerzan has a tendency to attempt to make an incontrovertible point through an extensive use of quotations, without answering many of the criticisms levelled at both his style and his conclusions. It is certainly interesting, though, to contrast Perlmans rejection of the term definitive to describe his work with Bookchins demands for a theoretical coherence based largely on his own works. Equally, Watson is keen to disassociate himself from a form of ideological primitivism that develops a canon; Bookchin frequently cites his own work (and only that work) as background for those wishing to inquire further into Social Ecology. It is also the case that the Anarchist Primitivists do not generally claim to have developed an original perspective instead, they see themselves as contemporary reinterpreters of a permanent struggle against power and domination (in fact, civilization) which has occurred throughout history. This outlook tends to permeate their theoretical work humans are simply a part of an extensive and carefully balanced natural system, although with unique characteristics, but an essential humility in the face of the universe is offered as an alternative to the more Promethean orientation of traditional leftist ideologies. (No doubt this outlook has been inspired by an engagement with the environmental crisis, as well as an exploration of Native American and other similar epistemologies.) The fact that Anarchist Primitivism is the work of a number of authors means that not only can a variety of viewpoints be accommodated, but conflicting perspectives can be aired without causing a contradiction. So the FE and Perlmans symbolic approach sits alongside McQuinn and Zerzans anti-symbolism; the selective primitivism of the FE alongside Zerzans maximalist primitivism; and the critical anti-technology of the FE with Zerzans more ontological approach. Equally, where Camatte has been a significant influence for the FE and Perlman, Jason McQuinn has clearly been more influenced by Stirner, Reich and the Situationists. These differing influences and viewpoints have created a healthy debate and plurality of outlooks that have arguably energized the Primitivists theoretical development. It is also the case that their engagement with Deep Ecology, particularly in the case of the FE, has affected the trajectory of their theory, forcing the consideration of issues that would not perhaps have been covered in such depth.

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There is a strong sense of contemporaneity in the Primitivist work, no doubt in part due to the form of publication in newspapers. However, in examining the backgrounds and influences of the main protagonists, it is clear they have derived much inspiration from theoretical works and movements that were contemporaneous with their own work. Their search for answers to the problems of the late twentieth century led them in two directions. First, to look at the current trajectory of capital, viewing it as an all-encompassing unitary body, which reforms social life for its own needs and requirements. Second, to look into the past to examine the development of this system, and to seek examples of free humanity unencumbered by political domination and economic exploitation. To support them in this quest they not only had the romantic and literary inspirations of Rousseau, Montaigne, and Lawrence, but a large and expanding body of anthropological work that articulated a vision of pre-civilized existence that mirrored the kind of anarchy for which the Primitivists were arguing. From here it was a relatively small step to see civilization itself as a system of constraints and repressions which needed to be thrown off in order to recover an essentially human anarchic existence. Has Anarchist Primitivism developed over time? Moreover, has it been open to reassessment and re-evaluation? It is certainly the case that a clear process of development is evident from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, during which period a discernible Anarchist Primitivist strand emerged. Subsequent development and reassessment has been far less significant, although it is likely that the deaths of Fredy Perlman and Bob Brubaker contributed to this. The FEs differences with Deep Ecology/Earth First!, though, were notable in that although there were considerable points of disagreement, their approach tended to be one that sought to present their points without alienating Deep Ecology/Earth First! supporters, nor rubbishing the movement in its entirety. (While the FE tended to respond acerbically to criticism, and did not always deal with all the points that were raised, it is fair to say that they did respond at length to many substantive criticisms of their developing perspective, but the substance of the criticisms themselves often left something to be desired in their content and cogency.) Zerzan has tended not to respond to criticisms, and has simply restated the same case he first made in the early 1980s; but David Watson and Peter Werbe of the FE have retreated somewhat from the youthful certainty of their earlier work. There is certainly no sense that they are claiming to defend a body of work against all later challengers. There are certainly serious theoretical problems in the Anarchist Primitivist work. The polemical and ad hoc nature of the development of their ideas has meant that many important ideas have been insufficiently defined or expanded; possibly were this to be done certain inherent contradictions would arise. Certainly, an anti-civilization and pro-primitive strand which does not define either the term civilization or primitive is difficult to evaluate. However, there also appears to be the possibility of an ongoing reassessment and reinterpretation of ideas, a process that has been suggested by Watson, who has hinted that, for example, an alternative idea of progress might be possible.

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The attempt to find a radically different stylistic approach, found in Perlmans work, is perhaps the most problematic area in Anarchist Primitivism. The questions of, what does it mean? and, how is it to be taken?, can, perhaps, overwhelm the anti-progressivist point that Perlman is trying to make. But there are genuine problems with a work that clearly aspires to make objectively correct points while being presented as a pseudo-myth. Perhaps one of the difficulties when examining Anarchist Primitivism is its relatively undeveloped nature and the shortage of extended, even definitive texts Perlman was the only Anarchist Primitivist theorist who committed himself to writing extended works, and however he wished them to be taken the absence of other works of equal length and scope means an over-reliance on difficult and ambiguous texts.

ACCOUNTING FOR DISAGREEMENT

Both Anarchist Primitivism and Social Ecology represent the re-emergence in the late twentieth century of an anarchist communist idea that flowered, albeit briefly, nearly a hundred years previously. Committed to the widest possible expression of human freedom, anarchist communism sought the abolition of the political state, private property, all forms of market exchange, and the division of labour. In decline as a theoretical force by the 1930s, the communist idea was reconstituted in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s into new forms which reached a degree of theoretical sophistication only occasionally attained by their antecedents. Realizing the necessity of a critique of reason and technology, and attempting to ground their ideas in human history utilizing anthropological evidence, both sought to engage the communist idea with the realities of the late twentieth century. But despite their common heritage and focus, the conclusions they have drawn have proved to be so different so as to be, in many cases, diametrically opposite. To what can this divergence be attributed? There is little, if anything, in their theories in the abstract that would account for these disagreements. Were one, for example, a Marxist or syndicalist, then such disagreements would be expected. This was not the case. Although their influences were different, both strands emerged into an anarchist communist perspective from a Marxist one. They both examined as central to their ideas the same themes. In some cases they utilized the same texts in developing their work. The differences can only be accounted for by examining the aims and objectives, and approach of the proponents what they intended to do, as well as how well they actually did it. Bookchins political persona developed in the heated atmosphere of interwar, street-level Marxist-Leninism. Crucial here was the certainty of an unchallengeable metatheory, an encyclopaedic knowledge of relevant texts, and a confrontational and uncompromising attitude. It is clear that Bookchin carried much of this on into his later political life. Bookchins aim was always to develop a coherent, systematic Leftist platform, a theoretical and political edifice that would replace Marxism as

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the cornerstone of modern radicalism. While he rejected much of the content of Marxism, in particular class-based, statist, and economistic arguments, and sought to replace them with more anarchistic and ecological alternatives, he still sought the rigidity of an overarching metatheory. He also carried with him into his developing theory certain premises, perhaps presuppositions, which inevitably coloured his conclusions. These included the belief that the goal of human freedom is inextricably linked to material concerns, and therefore to technological sophistication; that history is fundamentally progressive; and that human reason and knowledge offer the solutions to all social problems. He also privileges Western European political and social forms over those of other cultures. Bookchin is therefore faced with an enormous problem how to create a watertight political and philosophical system, based on communist ideas of freedom and spontaneity and the ecological ideas of diversity and complexity, relying on these premises? A difficult task for anyone, perhaps. But Bookchin suffers particularly because his style and approach do not seem suited to such a task. He tends toward brevity when expansion and even repetition would seem to be required in his discussion of the limitations of Kants theories, for example. He puts forward conjecture as if it were fact. He appears to be uninterested in the work of others unless they directly support his own. Consequently, he relies on only a small number of sources, disregarding significant areas of relevant work by others, notably the entire field of the philosophy of technology. His main references regarding Social Ecology are his own work; indeed, he seems to be offering these works as a form of canon. He also refers to his own (unacknowledged) significance in the development of radical thought. He has refused to allow others to develop his work in any direction with which he does not approve, and has attempted to discredit those with whom he does not agree with extensive attacks and diatribes which are frequently both ad hominum and inaccurate. It appears that for Bookchin the theoretical system he is trying to build requires a single, unitary authority who can decide what is or is not acceptable; Bookchin himself. Consequently, any benefits that might be accrued through debate and engagement with the ideas of others are lost because Bookchin is not interested in this type of dialogue. Whereas Bookchin seemed to be attempting to adjust 1930s radicalism to the realities of the post-War era, the Anarchist Primitivists sought to move pre- and post-war politics beyond the 1960s, to develop a new framework rather than merely adjusting the old one. While Bookchin and other Marxists in the thirties had to come to terms with the failures of the Soviet Union, for this later generation of radicals it was the failure of 1968 and its aftermath that coloured their political lives. Anarchist Primitivism emerged from a congruence of the New Lefts participatory political activism and European post-1968 theoretical re-evaluations. It was fuelled in many cases by the political dynamism that the 1960s released, whether that be the Red Army Fraction in Europe or Native American struggles nearer to home. Distrustful of mass society and its technology, and the instrumental reason that underpinned it, the activists and writers that together developed the

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Primitivist sensibility rejected all ideologies, systems, canons, and programmes, which they saw as simply being a part of the structures they were opposing. As such, their aims were never to create a systematic theory, nor a following. Largely, they have succeeded in this aim, despite the more ideological leanings of Zerzans later work, and the attempt at a form of Anarchist Primitivist codification that has occurred in Britain. Despite ostensibly offering a critique of the entire edifice of civilization, in practice the Primitivists have tended to be focused and limited. Since they have not attempted to create a system, there is no system they need to defend. As the work of a number of theorists, there is room for a diversity of opinions, which while leading to sometimes irreconcilable differences, do not undermine their argument. If anything, this strengthens it, as it is not necessary to abandon the entire Primitivist critique because of the problematic nature of one part of it. The possibility of development and refining always remains. They have also been flexible in utilizing numerous and diverse sources, seeking inspiration from other cultures as well as from more indigenous perspectives. Although being unconvinced by Bookchins overall scheme, his work does appear to have been influential early on in raising the possibilities of an anarchist approach and the significance of ecology. The disagreements with Deep Ecology and Earth First! Have, for the FE at least, involved attempting to find common ground while engaging in levelled criticism. The contrast, then, seems to be between a number of people engaged in relatively small task, and one person involved in a very large task. The result is that, given the aim of creating a postMarxist, libertarian politics, with the possible sources of evidence and theoretical works available, the Anarchist Primitivists have been more successful than Bookchin. Their arguments are generally far more internally consistent, even between writers, than Bookchins. The disagreements in the conclusions arrived at, then, occur because Bookchins aim of creating an overarching, allencompassing philosophical and political system is too great for him, and is probably too great for anyone. His refusal (or inability) to engage in mutually productive debates simply leads him to greater isolation and increases the pressure on his own work to provide definitive answers. In the end, his arguments collapse under the weight of his own expectations. Having shown that these two strands can be identified as part of the current of Anarchist Communism, I have sought to utilize Skinners method in order to account for the differences in their conclusions. I have shown that the debate is sufficiently closed at the time of writing for this approach to be valid, and that enough information is available in order that these intentions may be recovered. This study has shown what the disagreements and divergences between Social Ecology and Anarchist Primitivism are, through an examination of relevant texts. But to account for those disagreements and divergences it has gone further, examining the backgrounds, stated aims, approaches, and other factors, which indicate the broader intentions of the writers in producing the work that they have. Following this, it has been shown that the primary reason for the level of disagreement in the conclusions reached is Bookchins intention to create a closed and unchallengeable philosophical

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system, compared to the intentions of the Primitivist writers to simply make a contribution to an ongoing debate. In consequence, Bookchins aim and approach, and his hostility to other radical currents means that, whether one agrees with the Primitivist arguments or not, Social Ecology appears to offer little to the further development of Anarchist Communist theory in the twenty first century.

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APPENDIX 1 GREEN ANARCHIST

In Britain the paper and organization Green Anarchist is viewed as articulating an Anarchist Primitivist perspective; it does not, however, appear as part of this research, for reasons which will be explained below. Green Anarchist was first published in 1983-84, primarily as a left-Green publication. Between 1986 and 1988, it was edited by Richard Hunt, whose radical ideas and green anarchism had developed in the 1970s; his first pamphlet, The Natural Society, was published in 1976. In certain respects, such as arguing for a deindustrialized society of small federated communities, Hunts views were similar to those articulated by another British publication at that time, The Ecologist. However, he was also influenced by anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins and argued that in primitive society surplus was refused even when possible, so challenging generally accepted notions of progress and the necessity of technological developments. (Sahlins work was also crucial in the development of U.S. Primitivist theory.) While this approach and GAs position was radical for its time, Hunts increasingly questionable views (for example, favouring military intervention during the Gulf War, and seeing women as biologically inferior to men) limited GAs role and led to increasing tensions among the editorial staff, the other members of which wished the paper to move more clearly to the left. Hunt eventually left in 1990, leaving the remaining members of the collective free to re-orient the paper. However, they did not build on Hunts work directly, nor did they find anything in existing British anarchism or the Green movement that would underpin a new direction. Instead, they turned to the work already being done in the U.S.: Green and anarchist ideas in Britain were not integrated GAs editorial group had to turn to the birthplace of the modern green movement, North America, in their search for authentic green traditions in the form of deep ecology, social ecology and primitivism.1 While Hunts early work was perhaps an important development in green anarchism in Britain, it is not possible to argue that this work in itself has had any lasting legacy. Instead, the orientation of GA since 1990 has been one that has sought inspiration from the American strands, two of which are the subject of this research. As such, GA is not seen as being in itself significant in the development of these ideas and it is therefore not considered as part of this research.

Green Anarchist 1992, 20.

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APPENDIX 2 DEEP ECOLOGY AND ANARCHISM

Deep Ecology is a perspective and movement which emerged in the 1970s, although it did not achieve popularity until the 1980s. It is broadly based on the work of the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, although it was popularized by Devall and Sessions in their 1985 book Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered. This popularity occurred in two areas: in academia, where Deep Ecology has inspired numerous books and hundreds of articles; and as a philosophical basis for eco-resistance, primarily through the organization Earth First!. Although there is not a single Deep Ecology outlook, Deep Ecologists can be said to support the platform of deep ecology, formulated by Naess and Sessions in 1984 (although this includes a note encouraging readers to elaborate their own versions of deep ecology, clarify key concepts and think through the consequences of acting from these principles).1 Overall, its orientation is eco- or biocentric, where the primary locus of value is not the human individual but the ecosphere as a whole.2 Deep Ecology holds that only a fundamental cultural/ ideological re-orientation can begin to solve the current environmental crisis. This re-orientation must be against anthropocentrism (that is, it must be biocentric) and favours ritual, spiritual and/or intuitive approaches to connecting with Nature as well as practical political action. Deep Ecologists oppose industrialism, rather than specifically capitalism, although they do not explicitly support the latter either. Industrialism involves viewing nature as a source of resources for humans, and this is something which is central to both capitalism and socialism, which are seen as at root two extremes of the same, anthropocentric spectrum. Their ecotopian vision is broadly decentralist and envisages a communion of humans and nature that has only previously been found in small-scale communities. Deep Ecology has placed relatively little emphasis on social issues and has not yet developed an adequate political theory.3 This lack, along with a central tenet of Deep Ecology being the view that the earth is overpopulated, allowed the emergence of a strongly anti-humanist, essentially reactionary strand that called for strong anti-immigration policies for the U.S. and saw AIDS as a natural and useful response to over-population.4 However, this was not a generally accepted position, and should not be seen as characterizing Deep Ecology as a whole. Nevertheless, Deep Ecology cannot be seen, so far at least, as having an anarchist or even eco-socialist orientation, as the following quotes show: Our first principle is to encourage agencies, legislators, property owners and

1 2

Devall & Sessions 1984, 70 Vincent 1992, 217. 3 McLaughlin 1993, 211 4 Discussed in Bradford 1989c and Bookchin et al. 1991.

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managers to consider flowing with rather than forcing natural process.5 In the future, there will be no shallow environmental movement if deep policies are increasingly adopted by governments, and thus no need for a special deep ecological social movement.6 Naess has also argued that although he in principle favours decentralization, ecological realities will also favour political centralization, where the policies of local communities... must be controlled by regional and national political authorities.7 In much of Deep Ecology although there is a call for direct action, there is also an implicit acceptance of the existing socio-economic system e.g. property ownership, as well as the need to participate in existing political structures i.e. acceptance of some form of state. It may be that as a social and political theory is developed, Deep Ecology may move to a more explicit anarchist or anarcho-communist position. However, at present its acceptance of political agencies and public policy reforms certainly excludes it from that description.

5 6

Sessions & Devall, 145, emphasis added. Naess, 1995a, 74 emphasis added. 7 Naess 1995c, 450.

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APPENDIX 3 BACKGROUNDS
BOOKCHINS BACKGROUND
Early Marxism
Bookchin was born in New York City in 1921 to Russian immigrant parents. His grandparents, although of Jewish descent, were consciously secular and actively involved in the Narodniki or Russian populists. When his grandfather died his grandmother, mother and brother emigrated to the United States, and joined the immigrant labour movement. Bookchins early life was permeated by politics, and he describes his grandmothers and mothers populistic-anarchistic socialism.1 The Russian Revolution was of key significance at that time Bookchin describes being brought up in a radicalized neighbourhood with a sense of class solidarity and class struggle. In 1930, at the age of nine, he joined the Communist Partys Young Pioneers, and in 1934 the Young Communist League. In searching for a revolutionary perspective, any attraction he may have had for anarchism was overwhelmed by the presence of the socialist movement and the availability of large amounts of its literature.2 The Soviet Union loomed large, as the authentic world-historical vanguard of socialism and authoritarian tendencies were put down to the need to defend the revolution from encircling bourgeois enemies.3 Bookchins life was based around politics, including meetings, intense and extended discussions, demonstrations and, occasionally, street fighting. At this time, Bookchin developed his deep knowledge of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, and his confrontational style: You had to be prepared, in those days, to answer very difficult questions as fully as possible, or you would simply be laughed off the platform by ruthless audiences as theoretically incompetent... Some opponents might accurately recite passages from Capital or Lenins State and Revolution by memory, and I had to have quotations of my own available to countervail their arguments. If a Trotskyist asked me, Did Lenin believe that socialism in one country was possible? I had to be ready to give the exact quotation I needed, as well as the page number of the text in which it appeared.4 Bookchins connection to the Communist party continued until 1935, when the Comintern brought to an end the ultra-leftist policy of non-cooperation and confrontation known as the Third Period, and inaugurated the Popular Front support of social democracy. Bookchin became disillusioned, seeing in the Popular Front a betrayal of Marxism-Leninism, of socialism, and of the

1 2

Bookchin 1997, 17. According to Heider, Bookchins mother was active in the IWW. Heider 1994, 56. Bookchin 1999, 24, 25, 26. 3 ibid., 28. 4 ibid., 35.

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class struggle.5 This disillusionment was increased by the Moscow show trials of 1936, which encouraged Bookchin to reread Trotsky and distance himself from the official Communist Party. He was also influenced by the Spanish Revolution, and although little information about it was available in the U.S., Bookchin was able to find some information on the Spanish labour movement, and discovered its syndicalist orientation. But although Spain suddenly became a focal point for all the convictions I had nourished over most of my young life,6 he turned not to syndicalism or anarchism but to Trotsky. For Bookchin, as for many others, Trotsky became a focus for anti-Stalinist Marxism. While the Communist Party's anti-fascist stance encouraged him to rejoin, he was unable to toe the party-line and was expelled in 1939 for Trotskyist-anarchist deviations.7 In the late 1930s Bookchin became a steel worker, and later an autoworker, and was actively involved in the United Auto Workers union. He also spent some time in the army, although it is unclear in what capacity or if he saw active service. He remained a shop-floor worker and active in labour unions for 10 years, although becoming increasingly disillusioned by the growing middle-class orientation of the workers. In the 1950s he attended college to study electronic engineering.8

Libertarian Marxism to Anarchism

Bookchin sees WWII as a watershed for capitalism. Before the war, capitalism was still simply an economic system, and outside it working people still had lives that were in many ways derived from pre-capitalist social forms. The accepted communist view of the war was that it would usher in another period of workers insurrections and proletarian revolution. Trotsky had argued that if capitalism came out of the war intact, Marxists would have to reevaluate all their theories, and Bookchin and his comrades took this very much to heart. We had to decide what was valid and what was not valid in Marxism, which for Bookchin meant try[ing] to form a coherent point of view that could lead to fundamental social change without producing bureaucracies... and without relying on the industrial working class alone, which was dwindling numerically anyway. 9 Bookchin saw on one side a decline in class-consciousness, and a rise of the middle-class worker, and on the other an expansion of capitalism into previously untouched areas, not only of social life, but also of the natural world. Bookchins emerging perspective, initially stimulated by his opposition to nuclear power, revolved around criticizing this development of capitalism, which he perceived as creating new, ecological problems. 10 Bookchin moved to a more libertarian socialism and was involved with the Contemporary Issues group, based around the exiled German Trotskyist Josef Weber.11 It was in their eponymous
5 6

ibid., 39. ibid., 41. 7 Heider 1994, 58; Biography of Murray Bookchin, 1. 8 Vanek 2001 9 Bookchin 1999, 49; 50. 10 ibid., 48. 11 Bookchin 1997, 2.

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journal that Bookchin published his first major piece, The Problem of Chemicals in Food, in 1952.12 Contemporary Issues ran from 1948 to 1970, although Weber, its most significant contributor, died in the later 1950s. Contemporary Issuess position was similar to that of other post-war far-left groups in identifying the Stalinist Soviet Union as state-capitalist and rejecting the idea of a vanguard party. One significant difference, however, was their rejection of the class struggle in favour of a transclass majority revolution, which would entail the immediate refusal of all class labels in the struggle for a genuinely participatory democracy (a democracy of content).13 This suggests Bookchins later promotion of a transclass citizenship, and other ideas central to Contemporary Issues also appear in his later works. In The Great Utopia, published in 1950 and the groups initial basis for discussion, Weber notes how humanity has always sought a return to an Edenic paradise, but was denied this by the inability to produce sufficient goods for the general satisfaction of needs. This decisive difficulty was only overcome by the Industrial Revolution, which provided the material prerequisites to the solution of the social problem. In a socialist economy, mass production could be extended to overcome all material shortages, while the elimination of waste and dangerous industries would rationalize the productive processes for the benefit of humans and the natural world. But Weber was aware of the possibilities for ecological disaster inherent in the development of new technologies under capitalism. The notion of the material preconditions for utopia meant that what was necessary was a new consciousness of the practicability of the old Utopias of reason, not developing the means of production but increasing awareness of their current potential: The task therefore is to stimulate consciousness into making an inventory of resources and into showing how and by what means the proposed aim is to be achieved.14 This is arguably what Bookchin did in his article Towards A Liberatory Technology.15 Knabb notes the cultural conservatism of Contemporary Issues, seeing avant-garde tendencies as signs of bourgeois decay rather than as a new revolutionary aesthetic, and consequently favouring Enlightenment humanist classics.16 Weber was particularly keen on Rabelais and on Diderot, writing a fifty-page article on his Jacques the Fatalist. (Bookchin refers to Rabelais in several of his works, and although it is DAlemberts Dream that offers Diderots contribution to his theory of dialectical naturalism, he also quotes from Jacques the Fatalist.17) Perhaps Webers influence should not be surprising; in the introduction to Post-Scarcity Anarchism Bookchin credited him with formulating

12

This piece was also translated into German and published in Germany in 1955, possibly in Contemporary Issues sister journal Dinge der Zeit (Cologne). 13 See Knabb 2001. 14 Weber 2001. 15 Bookchin 1974, 83-140. 16 Knabb 2001. 17 Bookchin 1990a, 39.

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more than twenty years ago the outlines of the utopian project developed in this book.18 Bookchin first book, Our Synthetic Environment, was published in 1962. In it, Bookchin more fully explored the issue of the changes in the human and natural environments brought about by capitalist food production methods and mass-urbanization. This book can be seen as a precursor to Bookchins later overtly anarchist ideas, particularly in his stress on the importance of decentralization and the potential of modern technology. According to Bookchin, his conversion to anarchism began in the mid-1950s, and was confirmed by the early 1960s (his last piece in Contemporary Issues was published in edition 10/39 Aug-Sept 1960).19 He describes forming a study circle called the Lower East Side Anarchists, subsequently East Side Anarchists, which opened a bookstore in 1965.20 In 1967 he was working with the Anarchos collective which believed that the New Left and the counterculture could become a unified radical movement directed against all forms of hierarchy and domination and develop a libertarian program, a responsible organization, and a vision that was utopian yet comprehensible to ordinary Americans.21 The group published a magazine which carried several of Bookchins essays, including Ecology and Revolutionary Thought, Towards a Liberatory Technology and Post Scarcity Anarchism. In 1969 Anarchos attended the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) conference, at the time when the organization was riven by internal conflicts and prey to Marxist insurgents, particularly Progressive Labor. Bookchin wrote Listen, Marxist! for this event, and 2000 copies were distributed as pamphlets. Witness to the disintegration of SDS, Bookchin decided that the libertarian alternative, the Radical Decentralist Project, would have to organize an alternative student movement. However, attempts to do this at a conference in September 1969 also failed. But while the New Left and counterculture were in decline the 1970s also saw the rise of what became know as the New Social Movements, particularly feminism, and later the green and anti-nuclear movements. (During this period Bookchin also had some contact with the counter-culture, since in the introduction to PSA he mentions his debt to Allan Hoffman, from whom he acquired a broader sense of the totality sought by the counterculture and youth revolt. He apparently met with SI members in 1967 and joined, then left, the Libertarian League (the date of this is uncertain, probably around 1965).22

18 19

Bookchin 1974, 30. Bookchin 1997, 5. On the extent of the influence of anarchist theory on Bookchins work, see section on Heritage and Influence. 20 ibid., 73. According to Bookchins bibliography his 1965 piece The Legacy of Domination was the draft of an introduction to statement of New York Federation of Anarchists, although the group is not referred to elsewhere (Social Ecology Project 1994, 6). 21 Bookchin 1999, 85. 22 Knabb 2001; Dolgoff 1986, 83-85.

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Green Politics
Bookchin moved from New York to Burlington, Vermont and while continuing his philosophical and literary studies began working on the book that was eventually published in 1982 as The Ecology of Freedom.23 He began teaching at Ramapo College in New Jersey in 1974 (until retiring in 1983), and in the same year co-founded the Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield, Vermont. Bookchin claims to have been involved with the German Greens when they began to organize as far back as the late 1970s and early 1980s and was the keynote speaker at the first Greens gathering in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1987.24 In 1969 he also wrote the manifesto for Ecology Action East, a coalition of radical activists.25 He wrote extensively on ecology, technology and urban planning in the 1970s, and composed two strident critiques of neo-Marxism. Many of these were subsequently published in Toward an Ecological Society.26 In the 1980s he continued to write about and be actively involved with ecological politics, particularly the Vermont Greens, although he at one point cooperated with and supported the socialist mayor of Burlington, Bernard Sanders.27 In 1982 Bookchins comprehensive overview of his ideas of social ecology, and his most well-known book, The Ecology of Freedom was published. He also began to outline more clearly his philosophy of Dialectical Naturalism, beginning with Toward a Philosophy of Nature, originally published in a collection entitled Deep Ecology, later republished in The Philosophy of Social Ecology. 28 Although initially Bookchin was seen as being part of a wider green movement which included Deep Ecology (shown by the inclusion of his essay in the book noted above) in 1987 he made clear his opposition to Deep Ecology in his paper Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement, which was published in a number of journals and translated into Italian, Dutch and Norwegian. Focussing in particular on misanthropic and racist comments from members of Earth First!, Bookchin was also critical of their Malthusian views on population which failed to adequately deal with the social and economic causes of population growth. For Bookchin, Deep Ecology was at best reformist, at worst the precursor to eco-fascism. This criticism of Deep Ecology continued into the 1990s, and was expanded into his critique of Lifestyle Anarchism. A similar line of attack, although against a broader range of targets, came with his 1995 book ReEnchanting Humanity, subtitled A defense of the human spirit against anti-humanism, misanthropy, mysticism and primitivism. Bookchins main work in the 1990s has been his three-volume history of popular revolutionary movements, The Third Revolution, the first volume of which was published in 1996. He

23 24

Heider 1994, 60. Bookchin 1999, 344. 25 Dominick 1988, 9. 26 Bookchin 1980. 27 Heider 1994, 60. 28 Tobias 1985.

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has also published a collection of essays and interviews taken from the 1990s; of particular interest are three interviews under the general heading Marxism to Anarchism: a Life on the Left which offer a short oral biography of Bookchins political life up to the end of the 1960s.

Janet Biehl (1953- )

Janet Biehl has been Bookchins companion and collaborator for many years, writing articles on Social Ecology, editing The Bookchin Reader, and composing the synopsis of Bookchins ideas on libertarian municipalism, The Politics of Social Ecology. Born in 1953 she did not take part in the social and political activism of the late-1960s or 1970s, but was sufficiently inspired by avant-garde theatre groups to take a degree in theatre studies. There followed a growing interest in radical politics in the 1980s, while she studied for an MA in liberal arts. It was while pursuing this MA that she became aware of Bookchins work and attended the Institute for Social Ecology in 1986. She currently makes her living through freelance copyediting, and as well as giving lectures on history and social issues at the Institute of Social Ecology.

BACKGROUNDS OF ANARCHIST PRIMITIVISTS WRITERS & PUBLICATIONS

Fredy Perlman (1934-1985)
Perlmans is the best documented life of the individual contributors to Anarchist Primitivism, because of the posthumous biography written by his wife, Having Little, Being Much. Fredy Perlman was born in Czechoslovakia in 1934. His parents emigrated to South America, in 1939, finally arriving in the United States in 1945. He studied at U.C.L.A and at the University of Kentucky, where he received his B.A. He also studied as a graduate student at Columbia University from 1957 to 1959. He was apparently initially driven by a Faustian urge to acquire knowledge from the widest possible areas, but his initial political orientation was liberal-humanist, focussing on the rationality of the individual. His outlook was in no way anarchist, and he was not opposed to the idea of a world government.29 His wide reading led him to study political philosophy, history, literature (including European authors such as Mann, Goethe, and Camus and Sartre through whom he was introduced to Existentialism), as well as science and mathematics. An early influence was C. Wright Mills, who taught Perlman at Columbia. He also read Erich Fromm and Lewis Mumford, and was introduced to Marx, taking courses in Marxist economics. Certainly over the next 10 years Marx was a significant influence on Perlman, although his strong individualism prevented his identifying as a Marxist. In 1963, as a reaction against the swing to the right inspired by the Cuban Missile Crisis Fredy and Lorraine Perlman travelled to Yugoslavia where Fredy enrolled in the University of

29

Perlman 1989, 14; 83.

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Belgrade. He eventually gained both an MA and a PhD in economics.30 Returning to the US in 1966, Perlman took up an academic position at Western Michigan University, and at this time further extended his knowledge in a number of areas including reading all of Marxs works.31 He also cotranslated I.I. Rubins Essays on Marxs Theory of Value from Russian, and wrote an introduction, Essay on Commodity Fetishism. This was eventually published in 1972.32 Disillusioned with academia, Perlman stopped teaching in the US in 1967. He did lecture (in French) in Italy in 1968 and 1969, and found himself in Paris during the student and worker uprisings of May 1968, where he took part in a loosely-organized group of intellectuals, students and young workers who held discussions at the Censier classroom complex.33 This was the basis for a booklet he co-authored, Worker-Student Action Committees, France May 68.34 While in France Perlman also became aware of ideas and histories which influenced him in the decade which followed: texts of the Situationist International, anarchism and the Spanish Revolution, the council communists.35 Returning to the US Perlman became involved in the Black & Red printing project and wrote his most widely read work, The Reproduction of Daily Life. He also wrote an essay critical of C. Wright Mills, The Incoherence of the Intellectual, C. Wright Mills Struggle to Unite Knowledge and Action, later published by Black & Red.36 After another trip to Europe, the Perlmans settled in Detroit, which was to become to centre for the emerging radical perspective that eventually crystallized into Anarchist Primitivism. At this time, Perlman made contact with the Fifth Estate and was introduced to the printing shop adjacent to the FE offices. In late 1969, the emerging collective was able to buy a complete print-shop, and inaugurated a Printing Co-Op. This was used by a variety of militant organizations in the 1970s, as well as printing the publications of Black & Red. Early works published by Black & Red included Perlmans essay on C. Wright Mills; a reprint of The Reproduction of Daily Life; Rubins Essays on Marxs Theory of Value; a translation of Arshinovs History of the Makhnovist Movement; Volines The Unknown Revolution; Barrot and Martins Eclipse and Reemergence of the Communist Movement. 37 A 70-page excerpt from Vaneigems The Revolution of Daily Life was also printed at the co-op. 38 Most of the texts published were translations, as Lorraine Perlman notes:

30

The Perlmans do not appear to have associated with anyone who would go on to found the humanist -Marxist Praxis group in 1967. 31 Perlman 1989, 43. 32 Perlmans essay has also been published separately. Perlman 1970; Rubin 1972. 33 Perlman 1989, 47. 34 Gregoire & Perlman 1969. 35 Perlman 1989, 48. 36 Perlman 1969, 1972; Perlman 1970. 37 Works published have been noted because they illustrate the interests and orientation of the Black & Red group, of which Perlman was key member (and translator). Since this was not a profit-making organization and also given the physical and intellectual work involved in production, texts would be published only if they were considered sufficiently relevant and important. 38 This was not published by Black & Red, but is mentioned to indicate that Situationist ideas were available at this time.

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Of the five [Black & Red] publications completed in 1974, only one was originally written in English... Wildcat! Dodge Truck, June 1974 [with] photos and text prepared by strike participants and supporters.39 A significant shift in emphasis occurred over this time, with the publication of works which were either explicitly anarchist or ultra-left, and a concomitant deemphasizing of Marxist analyses.40 Apparently, Solzhenitsyns Gulag books oriented Perlman to see political issues in terms of the individual vs. the state, and at this time he also read many accounts of the Spanish Revol ution.41 However, despite the increasingly anarchistic orientation, Perlman never accepted the title himself: In spite of Fredys interest in and sympathy toward the anarchist tradition, at no time did he answer to the designation anarchist; he insisted that any label reduces the individual it is applied to. Earlier he had refused to answer to Marxist or Situationist.42 In 1975 Black & Red continued to publish European ultra-left works, Lip and the Self-Managed Counter-Revolution from the French journal Negation and Jacques Camattes The Wandering of Humanity; they also published Unions Against Revolution by G. Munis and John Zerzan and Maurice Brintons Reich-inspired The Irrational in Politics. Another shift that occurred was in Perlmans views on cities and industrialism. In Having Little, Lorraine Perlman refers to a trip to Alaska, and the impression made by the city of Fairbanks, a blight which was devouring its surroundings: The trip to Alaska marked a change in Fredys view of the society he lived in. He began by asking whether human intervention was ever benign. He had a new perception of cities and urban activities, and looked at Progress with a more critical eye.43 She also notes that his changing view of Progress was clarified by later reading Camatte, who attributes the loss of human community to domestication by Capital... It would be five years before Fredy started preparing himself for a systematic critique of Progress, but his antagonism to giant industrial processes was growing more explicit.44 Lorraine Perlman notes of the Fifth Estate circle, of which she and Fredy were a part: These men and women were in no way adherents of a party or platform, but we did hold similar views about the indignities of wage labor, the pernicious effects of racism in the U.S. and the unhealthy nature of a consumer society. Most people in the group had jobs, but not professions. We identified with drop-outs and scorned
39 40

Perlman 1989, 82. ibid., 83. 41 ibid. 42 ibid. 43 ibid..,78 44 ibid.

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mainstream tastes and activities.45 At this point Perlman began working on longer personal projects, beginning with Letters of Insurgents, a novel written in the form of a series of letters written by the nominal authors, Nachala and Vochek. With the decline of the overt radical politics of the 1960s, Perlman wanted to remember the rebel, the individual who resisted the limitations imposed by his or her society, and he had personally experienced many of the examples of rebellion recorded. One underlying theme is the search for an appropriate agency for social change, a search which was to remain part of the radical milieu to the present. 46 A further change occurred in Perlmans goal of the self-realization of the individual, a change which led to him rejecting the Faustian urge, which he now saw as a fetter on self-realization since, at least in the twentieth century, it had served exclusively non-human ends.47 This break was aided by the analyses of the Frankfurt School, which also led to Perlmans questioning of many Enlightenment dogmas.48 By 1977, Perlman had developed an all-inclusive critique of machines and of modern agriculture and although still retaining elements of Marx, rejected all forms of industrial regimentation and thus the objects and commodities produced as part of this process.49 He saw calls for full employment, the right to a job or even the autonomist wages for housework merely the demand that everyone be a wage worker and agreed with Camatte this was conclusive evidence that this is the epoch of the real domination of Capital.50 In 1977 Perlman began writing an attempt to understand and record in a narrative the conquests of the European Invaders [of America] as well as the resistance they encountered.51 This would eventually become the two volume The Strait, although only the first volume has been published. Perlmans criticism of contemporary society encouraged his appreciation of earlier cultures, and in 1976 he began a systematic study of world history.52 This study not only encompassed standard texts such as the Cambridge Ancient History, but also works by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, who helped Fredy see the gulf between Rootkin and Invader.53 (Rootkin refers to the native Americans, Invader to European colonists.) He studied anthropology, being particularly influenced by Sahlins and Clastres, and also read and enjoyed the works of Mircea Eliade: Fredys primitivist arguments became more trenchant. His extensive reading about
45 46

ibid., 86. ibid., 91; 92. 47 ibid., 92. 48 ibid. 49 ibid., 108. 50 ibid.. For more on Camatte and the Real Domination of Capital, see section on the the FE in Backgrounds above. 51 ibid., 111. 52 ibid., 109. 53 ibid., 114.

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beliefs and practices of North American indigenous peoples gave him many examples of non-hierarchical, non-sexist ways of organizing society. He cited them often in discussions.54 Deterioration of the print shop building, combined with decreasing interest in the project from others, led to its closure in 1980. From that time, Back & Red books were published in a commercial print shop, although typesetting and layout were still done by Black & Red staff.55 From this point on Perlman did not participate in collective political projects, since his vision of a better society did not provide him with a program for collaboration with others.56 Perlman did, though, publish work in the FE; he and Lorraine had been part of the loose collection of radicals and dissidents grouped around the paper since soon after they moved to Detroit. Ten Theses on the Proliferation of Egocrats appeared in 1977, Progress and Nuclear Power in 1979, Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom in 1982, and The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism in 1982 (also published as a pamphlet). Perlmans work on The Strait was interrupted by Against His-story, Against Leviathan!, published by Black & Red in 1983, although the first two chapters were published in the FE Winter 1982-3 edition. (Turners Beyond Geography is noted, but more as being similar to Perlmans ideas, rather than as an influence.) The Strait was the work he had been preparing to write since he left Columbia University in 1959 and was his attempt to answer the questions: How did human society become the way it is? How can it be changed?.57 The Strait was written in a non-linear form, avoiding European dating systems. He used individual characters to demonstrate different forms of resistance to Capital, and used disparate resources to construct his characters; Lorraine Perlman notes that the books referenced for one character include Joyces Ulysses, Nietzsches Thus Spake Zarathustra and Henri Bergsons The Two Sources of Morality and Religion.58 The Strait was intended to appear in two volumes, but only one has been published, the manuscript to this having been largely completed on his death. Fredy Perlman died after heart surgery on July 26, 1985.

John Zerzan
Zerzan initially studied Political Science at Stanford University, and gained a Masters in History from San Francisco State. He spent three years on a PhD at the University of Southern California, but did not complete it. He subsequently worked as a labour activist in San Francisco, as part of a group organized along libertarian lines that sought to offer an alternative to trade unions.59 He also began to write political articles, many of which dealt with labour issues and were published in the FE. He eventually decided that it was dishonest to help people because it fitted with his personal
54 55

ibid., 118; 114. ibid., 116. 56 ibid., 118. 57 ibid., 128; 138. 58 ibid., 138. 59 Noble 1995.

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political perspective, and withdrew from political organizing and union work.60 While in San Fransisco in the 1970s he initially collaborated with his wife Paula on Upshot. Their outlook was post-Situationist, but not entirely pro-Situationist, rejecting in particular the necessity of workers councils.61 After separating from his wife, he moved to Oregon and co-produced posters and flyers under the name of Anti-Authoritarians Anonymous. Much of his (and Paulas) early work was published in the FE, and can best be described as 'iconoclastic'. The Zerzans wrote revisionist history, focussing on revolt and anti-authoritarianism.62 Their perspective also encompassed viewing revolt, rebellion and refusal as being more significant than revolutionary organizations (see also Organization below). They saw crises within modern society forms of social breakdown from rioting to worker absenteeism to drug abuse as indicative of the failure of capitalist society to cohere, evidence of its inherent instability and impending collapse. In an article published in the FE in January 1976 (the following passage appearing on a front cover devoted to this article) they wrote that: Feelings of cynicism, powerlessness and desperate boredom no longer allow easy distraction; we know that an upside-down world forces us to remain onlookers in our own lives, and the social fact of this realization is fast sending the prevailing values to ashes. The magnitude of alienation is arriving at a critical point, threatening to swamp the foundations of our own pacification.63 Their radical historicism suggested a rejection of progress and particularly that associated with increasing means of production. At some point in the late seventies or early eighties the Zerzans separated, and John continued to publish alone. In the early 1980s he began to extend his radical historicism and critique of all elements of modern life into the distant past, to ground his critique in anthropology and archaeology. The result was a series of articles, his origins pieces, which sought to discover the origins of human alienation, and focused on Language, Time, Number, Agriculture and Art. These appeared in the FE between 1983 and 1988, although FE members were generally critical of Zerzans methodology and conclusions. Because of his maximalist primitivist position, and his disagreements with the FE (particularly with David Watson; see Primitive chapter), Zerzans later work has been published in Anarchy: JODA, of which he is a contributing editor, rather than in the FE. He does not hold a professional post and currently makes his living through casual work.

The Fifth Estate newspaper and publishing co-operative The Fifth Estate 1965-1975
The Fifth Estate was begun in November 1965 as a counterculture paper, and became a focus
60 61

Young 2000, 9. See Zerzan 1976, 2. 62 E.g. Medieval Revolts Against Church and State (FE 274 July 1976, 11), but also highly critical of the role of unions in the development of capitalism (Unions and the Nazi Labor Front FE 277 Oct 76, 10 -11; Unionization in America FE 275 August 1976, 4 -7, 12; Multinational Unions FE 282 April 77, 6 -7, 14) 63 Zerzan, 1976, 1.

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for Detroits burgeoning radical and countercultural milieu: As the anti-war, civil rights, hippie, New Left and alternative culture movements grew in Detroit, so did the paper. Our pages became the forum for the new and rebellious ideas that characterized the era...The early papers content was mix of articles about psychedelic drugs, the anti-war movement, rock and roll, the alternative culture, and anything that was anti-authority.64 The fortunes of the paper mirrored those of the New Left and counterculture generally; an energetic optimism and belief in not only the possibility but immanence of radical change, slipping into a sense of grim struggle (when the cover of the paper frequently showed armed Black Panthers or Viet Cong guerrillas), then to disillusionment and exhaustion.65 Whereas the Movement itself the collective name for the myriad struggles of that period made increasingly radical calls, the public at large seemed to retreating into a new era of conservatism, illustrated by the election of Nixon in 1972. With the abolition of the draft, the main motivation for many essentially un-radical people to be involved evaporated. The total commitment given by Movement activists frequently led to burnout, and this was also the case at the FE which was at one point publishing weekly, but had moved back to a twice-monthly schedule.66 Many people left the FE, which was on the verge of collapsing, but was reoriented initially along militant socialist/labour lines, then as a bi-weekly alternative arts and political publication. However, by 1975 the FE was in debt to printers and suppliers; personality clashes had led to many staff leaving, and the paper was now dependent on revenue from commercial advertising. Faced with impending collapse, the remaining staff members put an ad in the paper stating that without new members the paper would close:

A number of us, including several other former staffers and friends, who were influenced by the writings of Fredy Perlman, Jacques Camatte, Jean Baudrillard, council and left communists, and the Situationists, answered the call. Eleven of us had constituted ourselves as the Eat the Rich Gang and undertook a number of projects in 1974-75, including publishing Wildcat!, and The Irrational in Politics at the Detroit Print Coop, producing a number of Fifth Estate inserts, setting up study groups, as well as some sabotage activity and radical pranks.67 These eleven new members effectively carried out a coup which involved a dramatic series of changes in the running of the paper, and led to the resignation of the three existing staff members. These changes included the FE becoming monthly, no longer accepting advertising, and stopping paying salaries (the new members arguing We will no longer relate to people in this way).68 This
64

Werbe 1996, 1. The FE also opened up a book shop, which was still active in one form or another into the 1990s. 65 Werbe 1996, 6. 66 Ibid, 6. 67 Ibid, 9. 68 Hippler 1993, 35.

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group had no common political platform but we were enthusiastic about the ideas we had discovered and were happy to discard Marx, Lenin, political parties, unions and all of the rest of what the left held dear.69 Although the papers orientation was de facto anarchist, this was not a conscious decision by the members, who were not aware that any anarchists were still alive, and did not identify themselves as such. However, they were contacted by former members of 1920s and 1930s anarchist movements with whom we established cordial and rewarding relationships.70 The new FE politics was based on the ultra-left perspectives gleaned from our readings of Camatte, Jean Baudrillard, the Situationists, Wilhelm Reich and others.71 These others also included Socialism ou Barbarie, particularly the early work of Cornelius Castoriadis, whose critiques of bureaucratic Marxism were published by London Solidarity, and later the dissident and Green theorist Rudoph Bahro.72 Discussions with the Perlmans also offered inspiration, as did the publications of Black & Red. The initial elusive FE position solidified gradually through the late-1970s: By 1980, we decided the dictum All isms are was-isms, was correct and began extending the anti-authoritarian critique beyond the obvious oppression of capitalism and the state to uncover deeper roots of the repression of the human spirit and the biosphere. This led us to the positions often characterized as anti-technology and anticivilization which this paper is best known for advocating. 73

The Fifth Estate 1975-1980

Early issues of the post-1975 FE carried various articles exploring politics from a libertarian communist/ultra-left perspective. Although there was no open adherence to Marx or Marxism, the approach was within this orbit, with an emphasis on the machinery of capitalism, for example an insert What is Capital in FE 266 September 1975.74 Another article in the same issue shows the influence of the French ultra-left, with Black & Red publications Camattes Wandering of Humanity and Lip and the Self-Managed Counter Revolution being quoted to support the view that Capital represents more than formal ownership by a ruling capitalist elite, and has instead escaped to integrate all aspects of human behaviour within itself.75

69

Werbe 1996, 9. Elsewhere it has been written that at this time it was decided that the politics of the paper would reflect a libertarian communist viewpoint (Fifth Estate 1979, 15). 70 Werbe 1996, 9. For example Pete Puchio See Obituary of Peter Puccio, FE 1986 Winter/Spring 1986, 18 71 Werbe 1996, 9. 72 See Watson 1998a, 13. 73 Werbe 1996, 9. 74 Fifth Estate 1975, 6. 75 A.R., Capital, Stage Two Confronts Workers, FE 266, Sept 75, 8-9. As the quote from Peter Werbe suggests, B & R books were very influential in the early years of the reorganized FE - as well as the works above, see also a critical review of Boggs & Hockers But What About the Workers? pamphlet (B. Durrutti Unions & the Nature of Work, FE 267 Oct 31 - Nov 30, 1975, 4-5, 14) which lists as read and considered five books, all Black & Red.

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At this time, the prevailing currents in the U.S. radical left were either straightforward Partyoriented Marxism, or syndicalism with elements of Council Communism. Much of what was written in the FE therefore had two functions. On one side, it was a reflection of the developing perspectives of the FE members, their own views on the nature of oppression and domination in the late-twentieth century, and the possibilities for change. On the other, it was an engagement with, and to a degree a reaction against, prevailing currents in the radical milieu. These two strands were intertwined and not easily separated. It seems that the two elements that were most significant in this milieu to which the FE reacted were: 1. Organizations (clearly parties, but also unions, whether reformist or revolutionary syndicalist, and councils). 2. Progress (as well as the concept of progress, its concrete manifestation in productivism and support for modern technology. Overall, the view that a revolution could and should entail the taking over of the current industrial system). One other element of the FE which has been consistent throughout its publishing history is the attempt to develop an authentic praxis, not only attempting to link practices to already formulated theories, but by adapting theories to fit revolutionary practice. This has occurred both in the context of their personal lives and how they run the paper, and in their attempts to report on and analyze relevant events in the US and elsewhere.

The Real Domination of Capital

Although the FE were never overtly Marxist, they were clearly influenced by Marx, and by others who were also similarly influenced. One concept which was important to the FE, as well as Perlman, was the idea of the real (or total) domination of capital. Although this typology was originally suggested by Marx, it was developed by the French ultra-leftist Jacques Camatte. In order to understand the early FE position, some understanding of Camatte and the European ultra-left generally is necessary. The historical key to this strand is the Italian Marxist, and active member of the PSI (Italian Socialist Party), Amadeo Bordiga.76 Bordiga developed his own views on a number of key political and economic issues, but largely he stuck closely to the communist programme as laid down by Marx and Engels in 1848.77 He stressed that socialism was a non-market, propertyless and moneyless social form, and it was this that inspired many pro-communist groups, particularly in France, in the 1960s and 1970s, groups that can be classed under the rubric neo-Bordigists. Goldner
76

A translators note to Camatte and Collu On Organization outlines Bordigas relevance and context. Amadeo Bordiga and the theoreticians close to him were known as the Italian communist left. More precisely, the Italian left refers to the Italian left -communist tradition: the left opposition in the Italian Socialist Party (1910/12, 1921), the direction of the Communist Party of Italy (1921-24), the left opposition in the Communist Party of Italy (1924-26), the left-communist faction in Belgium and France (1926-43), the reconstruction of Italian left-communism (1944-52) and the International Communist Party (1952-70); Bordiga died in 1970 (Camatte 1995, 28-29n). See also International Communist Current, The Italian Communist Left 1926-45. London: ICC 1992. 77 Buick 1987, 131

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describes these as French currents influenced by Bordiga, but not slavishly; the best of them attempted to synthesize Bordiga, who was oblivious to the historical significance of soviets, workers councils, and workers democracy, and who placed everything in the party, with the German and Dutch ultra-left who glorified workers councils and explained everything that had gone wrong after 1917 in terms of Leninism.78 What is significant theoretically is that All the French currents put at centre stage... the so-called Unpublished Sixth Chapter of Volume I of Capital.79 A central element of the Sixth Chapter is Marxs identification of two periodizations of capital, the formal domination of capital and the real domination of capital (also known as the formal and real subsumption of labour under capital). The formal domination of capital involves pre-capitalist forms of production being maintained under capitalism; the relationships of production have changed (i.e. become worker-capitalist) but the nature of the production process remains the same. However, under real domination an entirely new mode of production comes into existence, with new technologies and forms of social organization promoted by and beneficial to capitalism. What Camatte extrapolates from this is that as the process of revolutionizing production continues under the conditions of real domination, it gradually permeates all aspects of society: In Camattes version, capital moved on from real domination over the economy and politics (bourgeois society) to real domination over humans in their biological being (material community of capital).80 Rather than being riven with, and eventually destroyed by, contradictions, capital is able to absorb them and utilize them to its advantage. The proletariat is not, under the conditions of real domination, an opposition to capital, but part of it. Capital becomes representation, which is represented in the minds and bodies of human beings. It becomes anthropomorphized and therefore escapes the previous limitations that held it in check, including natural barriers which cannot be regarded as insurmountable. For Camatte, capital has run away (...), it has escaped.81 The separation of the forces of production from humans (since these are controlled by capital) and the absorption of the proletariat mean that the growth of productive forces is no longer a means to the formation of community (Gemeinwesen): Communism is not a new mode of production; it is the affirmation of a new community...Until now men and women have been alienated by this production. They will not gain mastery over production, but will create new relations among
78 79

Goldner 1999. ibid.. This was the originally planned Part Seven of Volume I of Capital (Marx intended the present Part One to be an introduction, hence it was originally Chapter Six.) It is entitled Results of the Immediate Process of Production, and was first published in Russian and German in Moscow in 1933. It did not attract attention in Western Europe until republished in German and other Western languages in late sixties. Its first English publication was in 1976 as an appendix to the Penguin edition of Capital I (Marx 1976). 80 Trotter, 1995, 13. 81 Camatte 1975, 13.

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themselves which will determine an entirely different activity.82 Camatte uses the term domestication to describe the condition of humans who have internalized the rationality of capital.83 For Camatte, historical materialism represents only a glorification of the wandering in which humanity has been engaged for more than a century: growth of productive forces as the condition sine-qua-non for liberation.84 The development of productive forces is carried out by capitalism, and there is no clear way in which to differentiate capitalism from communism.85 As such, there are no negating forces within capitalism and these can only arise outside of it. The only way to overcome domestication is to reject the entire product of the development of class societies.86 So autonomous capital is no longer capital controlled by the ruling class, it is a material community which is all-encompassing and does not hold its contradictory nemesis i.e. the proletariat within it. The revolution will therefore be a human revolution to abandon capital, not a proletarian one to claim it for its own. Works such as Camattes stimulated the break which the FE explicitly made with Marx in an article published anonymously in 1977. (The two works mentioned as having been read and considered in producing this article were Camattes Wandering of Humanity and Baudrillards Mirror of Production.) In Marx: Good-by To All That, which appeared in September 1977, Marx is characterized as defining humans as producers. This characterization is a product of capitalism, and was unknown until its emergence. Marx, therefore, makes no break with a fundamental aspect of capitalism i.e. the view of production as the essence of humanity. Because of this, the Marxian vision of a non-capitalist future in fact merely projects the current organizational form to after the revolution: As a vision of the future, Marxism offers only more of what capitalism has already presented us with a continuation of the development of the means of production.87 Utilizing Camattes assertion that contemporary society represents the real domination of Capital, the FE argue that the means of production cannot be separated from Capital itself: Every material aspect of our lives is a thing of capital, a thing that was created only for the needs of capital and never for those of humans.88 Prefiguring their later critique of technology they go on to argue that the means of production are capital and their further development will only mean our further enslavement and capitals continued

82 83

Ibid, 36. See Camatte 1975, 35n. 84 ibid., 23. 85 ibid., 61. 86 ibid., 64. 87 Fifth Estate 1977, 7. 88 ibid.

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domination.89

Organization
In accepting Camattes argument about real domination, the FE went on to reject all formal political organizations. In a review of a pamphlet by Camatte and Collu, On Organization, E.B. Maple summarizes their position and reiterates their belief that the current epoch represents capitals total domination. The proletariat no longer represents an opposition to capital; unions and parties are not in any way genuinely revolutionary, and are merely gangs or rackets fighting over the spoils of capital. What is significant, as Maple points out, is that not only unions and political parties but any form of formal organization is indicted in this analysis, and this includes anarchist and far-leftist organizations, including workers councils. Maple asserts that this claim by Camatte and Collu, that formal organizations at best mirror, at worst increase, the hierarchies present in the rest of society, has [probably] been the experience of all of us who have participated in organized political activity (including SDS) over the last 15 years.90 To the question posed by the writers of responses to the above, arguing that if Camatte and Collu are correct then even the FE must represent a gang activity, Maple replies: One answer that often strikes me at very cynical points in my life is, very possibly yes. As to the charge that if we accept the [Camatte & Collu] contention, all political activity becomes gang activity; again, very possibly yes.91

The Primitive
The first sign of a primitivist re-orientation of the paper occurred in 1977 with a review of Gary Snyders The Politics of Ethnopoetics from his book The Old Ways.92 The review notes that almost all radical thought from Marxism through to Bookchin take as a pre-condition for revolutionary change the continuing development of our productive capacity, and view any reversal of the process as reactionary.93 However, the FE refuse to follow a path simply because it has been well worn by those who have gone before. Instead, they note that: The value... of the book... is that Snyder calls into question the basic assumptions of modern society and very directly indicts the whole edifice of civilization as the culprit in the predicament humans have gotten themselves into.94 This involves a confrontation with and eventual rejection of the idea of progress.

Another significant book of critical anthropology, Clastres Society Against the State, was reviewed in FE 291, April 30 1978. The first overt primitivist statement came in June 1979 with the
89 90

ibid., 7, emphasis in original. Maple & Clark 1976, 7. 91 ibid., 14. 92 Fifth Estate 1977, 4. 93 ibid. Emphasis in original. 94 ibid.

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publication of an abridged version of Sahlins Original Affluent Society and a FE introduction.95 (Sahlins assertion in Stone Age Economics that People in the Upper Paleolithic era worked only about 15 hours a week is referred to in the Snyder review, from the original article (page 34). Strangely, given the obvious impact of Snyders article, Sahlins work was not used again until nearly two years after this review.)

Critical Technology
The critical view of technology was presaged in the article on Marx and the review of Snyder mentioned above, where the links between technology and political structures are made clear. This is examined in greater detail in the chapter on Technology, but here the identification of technology with capital is already made, as is the need to focus on the primacy of the social form, rather than the technological apparatus.96 The first clear statement of their developing position was in Technology and the State (March 1978), a short introduction to two articles on technology. 97 However, this piece, although outlining a form of technological determinism and a bleak Manichaeism suggesting a necessary link between electricity and the hydrogen bomb does not appear to have sparked a considerable debate among the FE readership. This did, however, occur with the publication of John Zerzans Refusal of Technology in Oct 1980. Zerzans short piece criticizes leftist approaches that glorify modern, advanced technology. A number of critical replies led to an FE & Readers Debate Technology section in the December issue.98 This in turn led to the crystalizing of the anti-tech position in T.Fulanos Against the Megamachine in July 1981.

The Fifth Estate and Ecology

The FE, coming as it did from a libertarian-Marxist, libertarian-communist direction, with an emphasis on labour issues early on, not surprisingly did not focus on the environmental crisis as a central part of its platform early on. In 1977, in an article highlighting the plight of whales, one writer noted that: For issue upon issue over the past year weve bombarded the readership of the Fifth Estate with article after article dealing with humanitys indirect efforts to wipe humankind off the face of the earth In noting and discussing these dangers to our existence, weve continually neglected the fact that were by no means the only living organisms on this plant poisoned by the stratagems of capitalism.It should be glaringly obvious to us all that everything that lives and breathes is directly affected by economic growth.99

95 96

Fifth Estate June 1979. Fifth Estate March 1977a, 7: Fifth Estate Sept 1977, 4. 97 Fifth Estate, 1978a. 98 Fifth Estate, Dec 31 1980. 99 Nirkind 1977, 11.

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Interestingly, this article was prefaced by a lengthy quotation from Bookchins Ecology and Revolutionary Thought. Whether this was inspirational or simply used to illustrate a point is impossible to ascertain. However, the argument, which focuses purely on the relevance of economics to ecological problems, is less sophisticated than either Bookchins or that put forward by the FE later. Despite the point being made that insufficient emphasis has been put on the ecological problems of global capital, this was not a subject returned to in the pages of the FE during the next few years.

The Fifth Estate 1980-Present

The attack on modern, capitalist technology and the supposedly radical ideologies that support it, particularly variants of Marxism and anarchism, continued in the early 1980s, when the FE position (as far as there was a unitary position) was refined and clarified. The July 1981 edition contained a collection of articles developing these themes. All but one were written by David Watson, the largest pieces he had written in the FE up to that point. The FE maintained this position through the 1980s, subsequent issues including John Zerzans Origins essays, and critical responses from FE staffers and others. The ecologically-oriented anarchism of the FE suggested an affinity with other similar radical green strands also coming to prominence at this time, particularly Bookchins Social Ecology. However, their opposition to industrialism and their willingness to learn from the lifeways of precapitalist societies also suggested a commonality with Deep Ecology. But although such a commonality did exist, it was far from being an uncontested relationship. Problematic areas within Deep Ecology philosophy, particularly relating to radical practice and analyses of population issues, were forced onto the agenda by controversial comments made by members of Earth First!. Because of the affinity with elements of Deep Ecology, and with Earth First! and other Deep Ecology-inspired activists, the FE felt a challenge to these comments was necessary. The response was George Bradfords (David Watson) How Deep is Deep Ecology?, originally published as a special issue of the FE (Fall 1987) and later reprinted in booklet form. This was the beginning of a lively exchange with Deep Ecology theorists and Earth First!-ers in subsequent issues, which helped not only to illuminate problems with Deep Ecology but also clarified further the FE position. Subsequently into the 1990s most of the longer FE pieces were written by David Watson, expanding on the relationship between capital and technology, the significance of primitive societies, and the ecological devastation that is an inevitable part of industrialism. At the end of the 1990s the FE has appeared more erratically and has promoted its position less forcibly. Several articles have dealt with disputes with Murray Bookchin, and more recently one dealing largely with the emergence of Anarchist-Primitivism as a concept in the U.K. Recently there is a sense that the youthful urgency and uncompromising attitude that characterized the FE even into the early 1990s is fading: The last few years have been sobering. A certain humility has crept into our thinking

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and way of life. It doesnt look like much of what we advocate is on the agenda.100

Other Relevant Publications Anarchy: Journal of Desire Armed

First appearing in January 1980, as an irregular publication of the Columbia anarchist league (from note carried inside early issues of the paper), Anarchy: JODA has subsequently evolved into the largest circulation anarchist periodical in North America. Its editorial line is broadly in sympathy with the stream of critical anarchism that encompasses Primitivism, although it publishes work from outside contributors rather than having an internally generated political line. As the editor Jason McQuinn (a.k.a. Lev Chernyi) notes, there are many articles published with which he does not agree. McQuinn describes himself as a Stirnerite, who has been heavily influenced by Situationists seen from a Stirnerite perspective.101 His own contributions to the paper consequently tend to be concerned with the rejection of ideology and morality. John Zerzan and Michael William (see Demolition Derby below) are currently contributing editors. It is worth noting one significant difference between Anarchy and the FE. Whereas Anarchy has a general direction, but no strict editorial line, the FE has a definite perspective, which arises from it being a collective as well as a newspaper. Replies to letters, and sometimes introductions to articles, often appear collectively, as by The FE or Staff. The idea of a FE perspective is most clear in the piece Renew the Earthly Paradise; but it would not be correct to assert that there is a party line which has to be followed; Lynne Clive writes that There is much difference of opinion among all of us who work on and contribute to the paper.102

Demolition Derby
A short-lived Canadian paper published by Michael William, only two issues appeared; the dates are uncertain but are probably 1989-1990. William describes it as a specifically anticivilization journal.103 William has subsequently published articles in Anarchy, of which he is a contributing editor.

100 101

Peter Werbe, from an interview, Bonhert n.d., 39. Both refs. Bonhert n.d., 59. 102 Clive 1986, 4. 103 William n.d.[b], 2.

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APPENDIX 4 A NOTE ON SIXTIES RADICALISM

Although the radicalism of the 1960s, manifested in the New Left and the counterculture, did not consist of a homogenous set of beliefs, there were certain trends which characterized the Movement, as the radical current was known at the time. There was a convergence of politics and lifestyle, such that for the NL, living ones beliefs became essential.1 There was a suspicion, even a rejection, of ideology, particularly relating to the Old Left, which was perceived as being a part of the problem of contemporary politics and society. For the 1960s radicals, what was important was not a politics of ideology but a politics of experience. As a primarily grassroots movement, building from below to challenge the powers of government and big business, what soon became the keystones of its politics were mutual aid, participatory democracy, and decentralization (as Marshall notes, traditional anarchist principles).2 Although there was no single theoretical position, among the general ideas which were current at the time was a suspicion of technology (based on its destructive potential, concentration of power, and dehumanisation of people), and of instrumental reason which seemed arrogantly to have forgotten mere man in its sublime quest for pure knowledge.3 In the counterculture there was a widespread desire to see a return to a simple life closer to nature.4 Initially the New Left had little to do with Old Left. But at the end of the sixties SDS (Students for a Democratic Society, central to the student anti-war protests), under pressure from organized Marxist groups, and desperate for a firm ideological platform from which to both defend itself and to further its analysis of American society, moved to a more explicit political Marxism, representing a trend in the New Left as a whole.5 In the end, though, this showed less the success of Marxist entryism than the collapse of a movement whose strengths lay in its heterogeneity and democratic organization: None of the much-vaunted Marxist-Leninist vanguards survived... radical activists... who had not become attached to the ephemeral Marxist-Leninist sects in 1968 or 1969 often moved away towards philosophical and political anarchism, or into various extensions of the counter-culture.6 This does describe, to a degree, the trajectory of the FE into the 1970s.

1 2

Young 1977, 40. Marshall 1992, 541. 3 Barbour 1975, 383f; Oglesby 1969, 8. 4 Marshall, 544. 5 Sale 1974, 390ff. 6 Young 1977, 322-23

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APPENDIX 5 - HEGEL AND HISTORY

In his philosophy of history Hegel reintroduces Aristotelian final cause but also attempts to retain the radical subjectivity introduced by Kant. Hegel's aim is to avoid 'givens' and the unknowable, but still to anchor humanity in a meaningful universe. Hegel's Geist, therefore, is not an external object but an embodied subject contained within humanity.

Hegel posits a fundamental existing essence in the universe, the Idea. The Idea becomes manifested in Nature, but is trapped since Nature is mindless, lacking self-consciousness. The dialectical (see below) resolution of this dilemma is the synthesis of Idea and Nature, Geist. The Idea returns to itself as free spirit. The universe exists in order that Geist should come to rational selfawareness. 1 Geist is not abstract, it is embodied i.e. it has a concrete manifestation. Its conscious manifestation in the universe is humanity, and it is through the self-awareness and self-consciousness of humanity that Geist achieves its own self-awareness. Humans are vehicles for Geist, and it is through humanity that Geist comes to self-consciousness.2 But this does not simply occur; humanity does not come into the world self-aware. Rather there is a long and arduous process through which humanity must realise its nature and destiny. Since Geist is embodied, it can only be realized in particular (i.e. really existing) forms. What this means for humans is that the recognition of their true role can only come about over time and through cultural and social development - that is, through history. History is the rational movement towards the self-realization of Spirit, rational in the sense of following an internal logical process. The process through which this occurs is the dialectic. The internal nature of things (in this case, Spirit) produces conflicts, obstacles and eventually contradictions. These are assimilated through a change in the original state leading to a more developed state which both supercedes and contains the original, but now also 'contains' the contradiction. (Dialect is not a method "but the intrinsic structure and development of the subjectmatter itself".3) This process is rational in that it follows internal 'laws', and proceeds by necessity (since the beginning is set and the dialectical process must unfold in a particular i.e. logical way). Hence the dialectic of history is to be understood as reflecting the conceptually necessary stages in the self-unfolding of the Idea.4 It is important to stress that this is always an internal and not an external process, although the
1 2

Stace, 1955:32ff Taylor, 1975:91 3 Inwood, 1992 s.v. "Dialectic":83 4 Taylor, 1975:391.

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outcome is implicit in the particular historical conditions at any time. That is, the Spirit is always striving for self-consciousness and thus creates the conditions for its own resolution in history.

Part of the process of this resolution is the creation of a social sphere. In order to understand its nature humanity must move beyond the particular into a recognition of the universal and this is achieved through social organization i.e. the state. However this will not occur in simply any state but in a rational state, and there will be many lesser, inadequate examples through history before such a state is created.5 The perfectly rational state will demonstrate Sittlichkeit, that is the realization of the ethical good (reason) in the community.6 In this case the institutions of the state will perfectly express the ideas of the citizens, ideas which derive from their awareness of Geist.7 For Hegel, the last time a close approximation of this existed was with the Greek polis. As noted above the ultimate goal of history is freedom, the awareness by humanity of what it is in essence i.e. Spirit. This realization is also the realization of its own nature by Geist. (This is because Spirit is not dependent, it is 'Being-within-itself', which is Freedom.8) Hegel sees this historical process as empirically demonstrated in particular peoples or nations, which embody greater degrees of freedom: the Chinese, Indians and Persians; the Greeks and Romans; and Christianity. This represents an expansion of freedom from that of the individual (monarch, ruler) through the GrecoRoman form of citizenship (although still accepting slavery) to the Christian principle of the worth of all men (under God).9 (Another way of looking at this is that these societies show a greater or lesser awareness that humanity, as Geist, is by nature free, and have social forms that accommodate this.) It is important to note that this process applies only to human history. Nature, although having an internal principle of change, is cyclical and repetitive and therefore not progressive i.e. it does not have a history. Natural change is not a dialectical process and merely reproduces the universal.10

5 6

ibid., 367. ibid., 377;438. 7 ibid., 388. 8 Hegel, 1953:69. 9 See Walsh, 1958:143-4; Dray, 1964:70-1 10 O'Brien, 1975: 51ff; Hegel, 1975:68f.

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APPENDIX 6 CONTEXT AND CONSIDERATIONS

This section covers some areas which may illuminate reasons for the disagreement between the two strands. Rather than the content of the work itself, this considers possible influences on the writers, and what may be demonstrated by how their work is presented. This broadly ties into the attempt to ascertain the intentions of the writers outlined in Chapter 2 above. Areas covered are: Backgrounds Aims Approach to debate Engagement and disagreement Format Heritage and influences Period References Style

BACKGROUNDS
Although both strands gained their early political inspiration and experience in a time of political and social upheaval, the emphasis of each period was different. For Bookchin in the 1920s to the 1940s the shadow of the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik success coloured all aspects of his political life. His commitment to an orthodox Marxist orientation remained even with his disillusionment with the Soviet Union, and he was involved with dissident Trotskyites until the early 1960s. He specifically refers to the influence of his past himself, presaging his later emphasis on the need for an organized left: Perhaps my problem, if such it can be called, is generational. I still cherish a time that sought to illuminate the course of events, to interpret them, to make them meaningful. Coherence is my favorite word; it resolutely guides everything I write and say.1 His early political experience involved a strong discipline and commitment to coherence but one ordered around Marxism-Leninism, and bolstered by quotes from Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. The necessity of defending ones views in public forums clearly required, according to Bookchins own account, an uncompromising sense of certainty as well as a degree of belligerence, and this does appear to have characterized Bookchins subsequent relations with other political positions: Bookchins personal political history, as he is the first to admit, is the source of his unique approach to debates in political ecology.2 Bookchins political background, then, has had a clear effect on his approach to his political theory, as

1 2

Bookchin 1991b, 14. Light 1998, 4.

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will be explored below. But it also seems clear that Bookchins employment in heavy industry conditioned his views on the necessity of advanced technologies, in particular such developments as cybernated production plant, to reduce or eliminate the toil of industrial labour. For the Primitivists, as far as a general observation can be made, their political commitment was developed in the 1960s, a time when radical politics developed a more explicitly libertarian approach which emphasized the moral responsibility of the individual. At the same time the theoretical political current, even that still under the rubric of Marxism, was attempting to throw off the limitations, imposed at least by association, of the Soviet bureaucratic state and redevelop a relevant, revolutionary theory. Fredy Perlman, born in 1934 and so already in his thirties during the upheavals of the 1960s, was something of an exception to this but the Russian Revolution had already been clearly overwhelmed by the dynamics of the Soviet state by the time he took up his studies and developed his political outlook in the 1950s. Although he briefly leaned toward the idea of the desirability of a world government, this was not something that long survived his expanding critique of contemporary power relations. His early influences were less those of Marx (who he did not read fully until the late-1960s) than the American liberal intellectuals (particularly C. Wright Mills) and French Existentialists (hence the title of Perlmans 1968 essay, Anything Can Happen, also the title of a 1992 collection of his essays). By the time Perlman was orienting himself along Marxist lines, in terms of a socio-economic analysis, he was already aware of the works of the Situationists and Council Communists, and soon attempted to move to a post-Marxist perspective. As well as the personalistic and libertarian currents that ran through the New Left, there was also a strong Marxist element, which came from outside through the influence of political parties such as the Socialist Workers Party, but was also arose internally in the turn to Marx in search of a New Left ideology (see Appendix 4). Some members of the early FE were Marxists (Bookchin describes David Watson as a former Trotskyist), so inevitably Marxism and socialism generally were significant factors in the political orientation of the paper. 3 The early FE had a strong Blue Collar orientation, with coverage of labour struggles and articles on labour history (which, Hippler argues, probably made the paper unique among its contemporary alternative publications).4 In fact, the first signs of the split and re-orientation of the FE occurred during the 1974 Dodge Truck dispute, during which some FE writers criticized union and party-oriented Marxist activity, and argued for the self-organization of the workers. (The pamphlet Wildcat! Dodge Truck, June 1974 was published by Black & Red.) This approach gave the paper a practical link to the labour movement, both encouraging a Marxist analysis but at the same time suggesting attempts to transcend it. Zerzan was also influenced by the New Left and Counter-culture, particularly after moving to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco:
3 4

Bookchin 1999: 202. See also Hippler 1993. Hippler 1993, 22.

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Perhaps the 60s helped shaped my own optimism I got into some interesting situations just because I was in the right place at the right time you could get a glimpse, a sense of possibility, a sense of hope, that if things kept going, there was a chance of us finding a different path.5 This optimism is perhaps evident in his work he has criticized the FE for what he sees as a pessimistic emphasis in their more recent output. He also became briefly enamoured with Marxism, even being a Maoist for a short period, and associated with a Situationist group. Notably, though, it appears that there was little direct influence on the major protagonists of works from the 1960s and early-1970s that one might expect to have been significant, particularly given their later orientation; for example, Theodore Roszak and Gary Snyder6. Snyders The Old Ways was obviously very influential on the FE group when it was reviewed in 1977; it seems likely that before their primitivist reorientation, they were more focused on labour issues and economic analyses and were less receptive to that side of the counterculture. One specific point regarding background is made by Bookchin himself; that is that his own views of technology are in part a product of the technological optimism that characterized the first third of the century, as well as of his own experiences of working in heavy industry. 7 Against this he argues that the anti-technological perspective does not take into account the realities of this sort of work, and is articulated by those who have only experienced the affluence of the post-war industrialized countries. There is obviously some truth to this, since chronological realities alone mean that an anti-technology position formulated in the 1970s would tend to be by younger theorists who were largely products of the affluent society. To argue, though, that this affluence in itself was the driving force behind their argument, rather than their own analysis of technology, capitalism and the state at that period, is a different matter altogether, and tends to reduce their argument to merely a structural-functionalist reaction. There is a degree, though, to which Bookchin himself seems to argue from the same perspective that his view is a direct product of that time and his background, rather than those being simply relevant factors, from which a number of positions would be possible. When recounting his past and discussing the development of his ideas, he seems to suggest that whatever position he held at the time was, by and large, the only one that was possible. This view is not tenable, however; he could have moved to a more libertarian, even anarchist perspective much earlier, particularly since he was aware of the anarchist orientation of the Spanish Revolution. And, as is made clear by Marcus Graham (see Chapter 6), an anarchist position sceptical of modern technology was articulated even in the 1930s. Bookchins approach seems to be another way of insulating him from criticism, or from any requirement that he critically reassess his past and

5 6

Jensen 2000, 42. For example Roszaks The Making of a Counter Culture (1969) and Where the Wasteland Ends (1972); and Snyders Earth House Hold (1969) and Turtle Island (1974). 7 Bookchin 1991b, 218

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earlier opinions.

AIMS
Bookchin has focused on what could be described as the One Big Theory, that is an attempt to create an overarching political and philosophical system, very much in the Western philosophical tradition. This is perhaps not surprising given that Bookchin clearly sees himself as part of a lineage that includes Aristotle, Hegel and Marx. Bookchins aim is to create a coherent theoretical structure linking philosophy, ecology, technology and politics. In a quote already used above he states that Coherence is my favorite word; it resolutely guides everything I write and say.8 He goes further to argue that not only is this his personal vision, but is also a necessity of radical politics today: More than ever, we desperately need coherence. I do not mean dogma. Rather, I mean a real structure of ideas that places philosophy, anthropology, history, ethics, a new rationality, and utopian visions in the service of freedom... This is the structure which we shall have to build in the pages that follow.9 As David Watson points out, the claim that such coherence, even if possible, is to be found not in human collective experience but in the two hundred-odd pages of Remaking Society is somewhat grandiose.10 By coherence Bookchin appears to mean a way in which most, if not all, aspects of human life, as well as of the rest of nature, are explainable within one framework. The basis for this coherence, as we have seen, is Bookchins dialectical naturalism, a scientific and philosophical outlook that not only explains the working of evolution but also offers the basis for an objective ethics. He has also sought an active political expression for his theoretical perspective, from Anarchos in the 1960s to, more recently, the Left Green Network: Above all I have tried to create an ecological politics that is activist in its political and social outlook, one that could underpin a revolutionary, libertarian, anticapitalist movement that could take up the struggle to form a rational ecological society in which people may fulfill their potential for freedom and self-consciousness.11 Jason McQuinn argues that his dream has always been to lead a coherent left-wing ecological anarchist grouping into a serious contest with the powers that be.12 Certainly in his later work he has stressed the need to reconstitute what he sees as the The Left That Was that is, of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an idealistic, often theoretically coherent Left that militantly emphasized its internationalism, its rationality in its treatment of reality, its democratic spirit, and its
8 9

ibid., 14. Bookchin 1990b, 18. 10 Watson 1996, 244. Similarly he has written that The Ecology of Freedom was written to satisfy the need for a consistently radical social ecology: an ecology of freedom (Bookchin 1991, 1). 11 Whither Anarchism in Bookchin 1999, 213. Emphasis in original. 12 McQuinn 1997, 66.

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vigorous revolutionary aspirations.13 From Bookchins perspective, what was crucial was that generally, the Left That Was boldly laid claim to the rationalist heritage of the Enlightenment and the French Revolutionalmost every attemptwas made to place mechanistic, organic, and emotive approaches to reality in a rational frameworknotably, to achieve a coherent approach to social analysis and change.14 As already noted, for Bookchin this perspective was not simply a commitment to an ethical community that is, the form of the Left but also to its content: for internationalism, democracy, antimilitarism, revolution, secularism and rationalism; and against pacifism.15 The reconstitution of this Left is, for Bookchin, not only desirable but also necessary, a point he makes by using the dichotomous approach he favours (see Approach section below): If we dont oppose capitalist society with a leftist movement and theory that are based on reason, history, civilization, and progress, that maintain the great traditions of the past, elaborate them, discard what is lifeless in them, that maintain coherence, rationality, and hope, then we will be destroyed as individuals.16 Here Bookchins aim is clearly to reform an identifiable, organized political Left, presumably based around his own Social Ecological approach.17 Because of the way that Anarchist Primitivism has developed, that is over time and by a number of authors, it would not be expected to be an ordered, coherent body of work, in the sense of achieving a philosophical completeness. However, it is also the case that not only has there been no attempt to create such a body, this approach has been specifically rejected. Responding to Bookchins call for coherence, Watson replied by criticizing his whole Faustian project: I do not any longer believe in the kind of coherence, theoretical or otherwise, that Bookchin claims to represent and fails to achieve. Watson argues that although a genuine, individual, partial coherence is possible, Bookchins political manoeuvrings and system-building have undermined even this. (Presumably, this form of individual, partial coherence is also a possibility for Primitivist writers.18) In line with their all isms are was-isms critique, the Anarchist Primitivists have criticized all ideologies and have not sought to replace what they consider antiquated and redundant political programs with their own
13

Bookchin 1995a, 66. This quote is taken from an essay appended to Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism entitled The Left That Was: a Personal Reflection. 14 Bookchin 1995a, 76. 15 Bookchin 1986c, 35; Bookchin 1995a, 86. Quite whether this is a realistic account of a Left which arguably included Tolstoyan anarchism and Ghandian civil resistance as well as Social Democracy and Bolshevism, is a question that will not be answered here. 16 Bookchin 1999, 311. Emphasis in original. 17 He has written that his ideas are integrally embedded in the tradition of [the revolutionary] Left (Bookchin 1999, 318). 18 Watson 1996, 244, emphasis in original. Although Perlman had been enamoured of the Faustian project in the 1950s, he had rejected this by the 1970s.

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alternatives. The aims of the Anarchist Primitivist writers have been twofold. First, to challenge the current orientation of leftist thought, by criticizing potentially authoritarian forms of political organization and representation from political parties to revolutionary cadres to all formal groupings and attacking the ideological bases of the left, particularly the idea of progress. Second, to make the case for an alternative approach that does not share the failings of the left.19 Responding to a criticism of the John Zerzan article Who Killed Ned Ludd?, Morgan Feralchilde noted that it originally appeared in 1976 when both the FE and John were fighting the crass syndicalist tendencies within the anarchist movement at that time. These essays were meant to challenge the assumptions which the ideologies of anarchism and libertarian Marxism are founded upon.20 Thus, Anarchist Primitivism was clearly of its time in that its evolution was dependent upon the targets it found in the fields of political debate in the U.S. at that time. (And this would also be the case later with there engagement with Deep Ecology. See also Period, below.) The Anarchist Primitivist writers did not claim to have discovered anything original (outside of the application of pre-existing ideas in a contemporary context); nor did they suggest they had the privilege of being able to provide solutions to contemporary problems. For example, regarding technology, T. Fulano argues that a critical response to technology will occur whenever it invade s a culture. How this response manifests itself depends on the conditions social, cultural, economic at that time: We are saying what many have said, such as Rousseau, to be sure. But we are also saying what has been said by Chinese hermits, mystics, farmers, Luddites, anarchists, and indigenous people throughout history.21 (Watson also notes that he probably quotes too much, since other writers have said it better. See below.) When challenged to provide more concrete answers regarding, in particular, which technologies would be appropriate or how can civilization be overcome, the FE writers are generally not willing to provide these: Rather than asking us questions, why dont the two of you tell us what you affirm and how you think we might get from here to there or even what you think there is were a group of friends putting out this paper, not a political group or organizing center, or voice of anyone other than ourselves and dont want to be.22 John Zerzans work began with a critique of political representation (in the form of unions
19

Arguably, making the case for such an approach is not the same as articulating the approach itself. It is also, in challenging the overly programmatic and factional orientation of the left, not a call for, or attempt to create, a new programme. 20 Feralchilde 1989, 30. 21 Fulano 1981b, 5. 22 Maple 1983, 2.

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and councils) and has expanded to become a critique of all forms of representation and mediation. He believes it is possible to reveal the origins of domination in human society, which he explores in his essays on time, number, language, agriculture and art. Ultimately Zerzan indicts the entire symbolic order; but despite the range of his attack (and the ubiquity of symbolism in society), he still believes that a transcendence of this order, and a return to the unmediated existence that he argues existed prior to civilization, is possible. As such, his origins work is a necessary theoretical pre cursor to any attempt at such transcendence.23 He is also the only Anarchist Primitivist writer to offer any suggestions as to how some form of revolutionary change in society could occur, although as well as practical alternatives such as permaculture, in-city cultivation, and emigration out of cities and to warmer climes, he inevitably (due to the nature of his critique) argues for the immediate tearing up of the concrete and the rejection of industrial civilization.24 Despite the nihilism that seems to underlie Zerzans critique, he argues that: The possibility of liberation lives at every moment; there is always a potential for happiness before us, even though the odds against its realization may vary. 25 The sense of a critique floating in a practical vacuum has been noted by others; the early essays by Zerzan and others lack a sense of historicismbecause they are not set in, or given context within contemporary social movements. That is why when one reads one of John Zerzans or George Bradfords pieces you have the feeling Yeah, but so what?26

APPROACH TO DEBATE
Bookchins Approach
Bookchins approach tends to be confrontational rather than conciliatory. He clearly believes in the need for a revolutionary alternative to the current system, since he has articulated it in some form or other for most of his life. However, he also appears to believe that only his approach the search for a coherent, overarching philosophical system will offer any solution to the present crisis; and moreover, that he has succeeded in developing the basis for just such a system. Any alternative perspective or philosophy is seen not as simply that, an alternative, but as part of the problem itself it is a case of if you are not part of the solution (as defined by Bookchin), you are part of the problem. Bookchin tends to react to challenges as if the existence of those alternatives themselves threatens to undermine the entire radical milieu. For example, the offensive statements of some deep ecologists resulted in an attack by Bookchin that dismissed Deep Ecology in its entirety and suggested
23

He has criticized the FE for what he sees as an unnecessarily pessimistic and defeatist approach in the paper. See e.g. Zerzan 1981, 2. 24 Zerzan 1992. 25 Zerzan 1989, 31. 26 Feralchilde 1989, 30.

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that unless Deep Ecology disappeared completely the ecology movement itself would be ruined forever: Unless... North American Greens and the ecology movement shift their focus towards a social ecology and let deep ecology sink into the pit that it has created for us, the ecology movement will become another ugly wart on the skin of society.27 As David Watson writes of the attack on Deep Ecology, Bookchin commenced a bipolar battle..., a kind of Cold War in which everyone was compelled to take sides or be killed in the crossfire.28 This bipolar, either/or approach is one that Bookchin has used over many years. In Listen, Marxist!, written in 1969, Bookchin concludes his attack on Marxist political groups by arguing that, Either we will shed the past... or there will simply be no future to win.29 In his Open Letter to the Ecology Movement, written in 1980, criticizing the more mainstream and populist environmentalism that was emerging at that time, he wrote: It is necessary, I believe, for everyone in the ecology movement to make a crucial decision: will the eighties retain the visionary concept of an ecological future based on a libertarian commitment to decentralization, alternative technology, and a libertarian practice based on affinity groups, direct democracy, and direct action? Or will the decade be marked by a dismal retreat into ideological obscurantism and a mainstream politics that acquires power and effectiveness by following the very stream it should seek to divert?... These two directions cannot be reconciled.30 More recently, in his attack on Lifestyle Anarchism he begins with the statement that anarchism stands at a turning point in its long and turbulent history and continues that the revolutionary social goals of anarchism are being eroded, potentially for good. 31 To call oneself an anarchist today, according to Bookchin, one must add the term social: Minimally, social anarchism is radically at odds with anarchism focussed on lifestyle... Between a committed revolutionary body of ideas and practice, on the one hand, and a vagrant yearning for privatistic ecstasy and self-realization on the other, there can be no commonality.32 (This criticism is not intended to suggest that the arguments included therein are either incorrect or correct; it is related only to the form of the argument, not to the content. For more on Bookchins critique of Lifestyle Anarchism, see below.) John Clark has suggested that Bookchins approach has limited the potential of social ecology as a philosophy, through his dogmatic and non-dialectical attempts at system building, through an increasingly
27 28

Bookchin 1987, 249. Emphasis in original. Watson 1996, 18. 29 Bookchin 1974, 220. 30 Bookchin 1980, 83, emphasis added. 31 Bookchin 1995b, 1. 32 ibid., 61.

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sectarian politics, and through intemperate and divisive attacks on competing ecophilosophies and on diverse expressions of his own tradition.33 Looking at Bookchins approach to differing political strands, it does appear that Clarks point is valid. In 1996, Bookchin (as well as Janet Biehl) resigned from the International Advisory Board of the journal Democracy and Nature citing fundamental theoretical differences with the journal and the contributions published therein. Criticizing in particular editor Takis Fotopoulos views on libertarian municipalism, Bookchin wrote that, I did not propound this theory of politics to see it mutate into Bernsteinian evolutionary social democracy.34 Andrew Light argues that this statement suggests that Bookchin not only disagrees with the content of interpretations of his work, but actually with the act of interpretation itself. As Light notes: In a concrete sense, Bookchin seems to own the ideas of social ecology in such a way that this school of thought sometimes appears to be solely coextensive with his own thought and no one elses. If Bookchin disagrees with the assertion of a challenge to social ecology, then it can apparently be deemed off-base by authority.35 What the above demonstrates is an inflexibility in Bookchins approach, one that is perhaps an inevitable part of any attempt to create a grand theory. He starts with the philosophical prerequisites, moves through a theory of history, a strategy and agent for change, and ends with the organization and outlook of a future society. Since this has all been decided, there is little if any room for dissent or alternatives. What is notable when the corpus of Bookchins work is studied is that he is prepared to amend his own views when they lead others to draw conclusions that he is uncomfortable with, views which challenge his overall project. In other words, rather than the whole being the sum of its parts, the parts are of importance only insofar as they contribute to the whole. This is the case regarding his view of the primitive, and his ideas regarding reason and spirituality.

Fifth Estate Approach

The FE have tended, in responding to letters, to be acerbic (this is also true of Zerzan when he has written replies). This was particularly true in their earlier years; for example, when Ted Lopez called the ongoing discussion on council communism protracted, tedious and rather sterile, the FE response concluded with the statement: Were sorry, incidentally, that you had to sit through the protracted, tedious and rather sterile controversy, but on the other hand, imagine how we felt having to read your letter.36 Watson comments that in the early 1980s we were a lot harsher and a little less fair, I suspect, toward
33 34

Clark, cited in Light 1998, 10. Bookchin 1997, 200. 35 Light 1998, 10. Light experienced Bookchins intolerance of interpretation himself. See Light 1998, 1 -2. 36 Fifth Estate 1977b, 3.

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those with whom we disagreed.37 It is also the case that the FEs responses are sometimes selective. After E.B. Maple had criticized a correspondent for using an unsupported quote from Marx as part of their argument, another correspondent (in a subsequent issue) made the point that the FE use Marxinspired ideas and arguments themselves, so should not be too critical when their readers use them; he also argued that all political quotes are unsupported, in the sense that: Social theory is not an empirical science and there is no support for an argument in it beyond the reasoning of those engaged.38 Although this is a legitimate point, the FE did not respond it to, although extensive responses were included to other points made. However, although there has been a tendency to acerbic and selective responses, it is not clear that this has (within the limitations of the newspaper format) contributed to a weakening of the FE position. That is, the explanations offered by the FE have largely covered the central points of the correspondence to which they have responded. It is certainly the case that they have not avoided engaging with criticism, often in the form of lengthy reexaminations of their original assertions. What does appear to have frustrated the development of these perspectives is the failure of most of the correspondents to engage constructively with what the FE have said. After another letter had raised familiar objections to their critique of technology, a slightly exasperated George Bradford responded by posing the question: Is it too much to ask that our critics take the time to read at least some of the voluminous material on the technology question rather than simply repeating the well-worn platitudes familiar to us all?39 No attempt at a systematic refutation or even engagement with the FE or general Anarchist Primitivist approach has been attempted by its critics. This applies also to the sources of the FE critique, such as Jacques Ellul. Instead, criticisms either restate conventional wisdom regarding, for example, the Hobbesian view of the primitive and the neutrality of technology, or resort to ad hominum and iniquitous attacks. An example of a particularly extended debate is that between the FE and two writers associated with the anarchist paper The Match!, Chaz Bufe and Fred Woodworth. A review of Perlmans Against His-story by Bufe carried in the paper in 1983 was scathing of the book, describing it as a long-winded diatribe and a piece of tripe.40 (In a review of one of Perlmans articles, the editor Fred Woodworth refers to Against His-story as barely readable. 41) Bufe had also attacked Primitivist ideas in two pieces he published elsewhere. What is significant here is not the act but the

37 38

Watson, 1988b, 29. Vega 1984, 10. 39 Bradford 1984b, 11. 40 Bufe 1983-84, 8. 41 Woodworth 1983-84, 9.

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quality of the criticism. Bufes Primitive Thought appeared in the paper Ideas and Action (Issue 10, Fall 1988). In a critical review of anti-Primitivism and anarcho-syndicalism, Michael William notes that in the article: We anti-authoritarian primitivists are blind (repeated 3 times) and our blind rejection of technology is idiotic. Were dogmatic (repeated 5 times) and prone to scummy behaviour. Nowhere is there a presentation or analysis of the Fifth Estates ideas or are the sources of these ideas mentioned ( these influences have never been hidden and Fifth Estates movement to an anti-tech position was set out in rich and at times very personal detail in the many articles that appeared in the late seventies and early eighties).42 In his pamphlet Listen, Anarchist!, another critique of the Anarchist Primitivist milieu, Bufe criticizes not only the anti-technology position, but also the language used to put forward the arguments, claiming it is unnecessarily obscure. He chooses an example from Fulanos Against the Megamachine: Technology is capital, the triumph of the inorganic, humanity separated from its tools and universally dependent on the apparatus. He then writes, I showed this statement to several of my co-workers and none of them could make head or tail of it. Several thought it was typical academic blather; and not one thought it had anything to do with day-to-day life.43 This proves little, since out of the context of the rest of the article it would not be surprising if it appeared opaque, particularly to those without an insight into what is meant by capital in this context. Further, Bufe again goes on to call the rejection of science, rationality and technology blind. As a critique of this pamphlet notes, whatever the extent of Fifth Estates rejection of technology it could hardly be said to be blind considering the lengths to which Fifth Estate editors have gone to describe the systemic (anti) nature of many forms of technology in their writings and the ways in which these degrade humanity.44 Given this type and quality of criticism, then, the FEs approach would not seem to unduly affect the form of their work. (On the debate between Bookchin and the Anarchist Primitivists, see below.)

ENGAGEMENT & DISAGREEMENT

One way in which there may have been some narrowing of the disagreements between the two strands would be if there had been a constructive debate and engagement with each others ideas. However, by and large this has not been the case. There has either been no direct engagement at all, or

42 43

William n.d. [a], 18. Bufe 1992, 16. 44 Quoted in Demolition Derby 1 William n.d.[a], 1; not referenced, but seems to refer to Kane and Jarachs Hold Your Tongue, Demagogue, Turning a Deaf Ear to Pure Bufe -oonery, to which no detailed references are given.

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instead a somewhat bitter and unforgiving confrontation. In Bookchins case, he has not only adopted a confrontational approach but his aggressive language has combined with what are often little more than caricatures of his opponents and their positions to produce unsympathetic and often inaccurate criticism. His initial critical attacks, from the 1960s to the early 1990s, were primarily focused on Marxists, environmentalists, and Deep Ecologists. However, in the early 1990s he turned his attention to those anarchists he felt were undermining the anarchist movement (as far as there was one) and preventing it becoming a genuine force for radical change into the twenty-first century. He grouped these opponents together under the rubric lifestyle anarchists, who promote lifestyle anarchism. In his polemical tract, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: an unbridgeable chasm he identifies four proponents of lifestyle anarchism: L. Susan Brown; Hakim Bey; David Watson; and John Zerzan. Given that this research is not concerned with Brown or Bey, I will not expand on Bookchins general criticism at length. It is worth noting, though, that (as David Watson has pointed out) these four have very little in common; Brown in a lecturer in politics who appears to be essentially a communist-oriented anarchist; Bey is an avant garde writer and cultural critic, most well-know for his Temporary Autonomous Zone, who often writes favourably of modern technology. It is certainly debatable whether the first two belong to any identifiable anarchist subcurrent, much less to the same one. Bookchins argument is, broadly, that there have always been two conflicting strands in anarchist thought, the individualistic and the socialistic, a division manifested in calls for individual autonomy on the one hand, and social freedom on the other. While individualistic anarchism has been content to advance the claims of the ego, focusing on personal and lifestyle change, social anarchism has always, while not denying the importance of the individual, focused on the need to attack material inequality and wider cultural forms of domination, and as such has been primarily committed to political organization and activism. But Bookchin is not simply arguing that there are two different strands here; this new (or latest manifestation of ) individualistically-oriented anarchism is, in fact, barely a form of anarchism at all, and simply represents another example of capitalisms permeation of revolutionary movements: Today, what passes for anarchism in America and increasingly Europe is little more than an introspective personalism that denigrates responsible social commitment; an encounter group variously renamed a collective or an affinity group; a state of mind that arrogantly derides structure, organization, and public involvement; and a playground for juvenile antics.45 What defines lifestyle anarchism, a latter-day anarcho-individualism, is

45

Bookchin 1995b, 10. It is unclear exactly what Bookchin is criticizing in use of the term affinity group, since he argued for the creation of these in the 1960s he is possibly suggesting they are not proper affinity groups, although is criterion for deciding this (and indeed the target for his attack) is uncertain.

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ad hoc adventurism, personal bravura, an aversion to theory oddly akin to the antirational biases of postmodernism, celebrations of theoretical incoherence (pluralism), a basically apolitical and anti-organizational commitment to imagination, desire, and ecstasy, and an intensely self-oriented enchantment of everyday life.46 It is narcissistic and socially innocuous, often merely a safety valve for discontent toward the prevailing social order.47 Rather than representing a serious opposition, lifestyle anarchism is safe, privatistic, hedonistic, and even cozy, and well on its way to becoming just [a] kind of rebellious chic, in which jaded Americans rakishly adorn themselves with the symbols and idioms of personal resistance, all the more to accommodate themselves to the status quo.48 The insidious effects of lifestyle-ism are such that anarchism itself is being undermined; it has been repackaged by Hakim Bey, Bob Black, David Watson, and Jason McQuinn into a merchandisable boutique ideology that panders to petty-bourgeois tastes for naughtiness and eccentricity.49 This would certainly be a devastating critique if Bookchins claims could be supported. But Bookchins evidence is not strong, and he frequently resorts to questionable tactics in order to make his case. One of Bookchins approaches is to attempt to link a lifestyle anarchist or their ideas to a questionable theoretical antecedent or influence. So, regarding George Bradford, he argues that: Bradford imparts to machines and mass technics a mystical autonomy that, like the Stalinist hypostasization of technology, has served extremely reactionary ends. The idea that technology has a life of its own is deeply rooted in the conservative German romanticism of the last century and in the writings of Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Georg Junger, which fed into National Socialist ideology, however much the Nazis honored their antitechnological ideology in the breach.50 But in reading Bradfords critiques of technology, and those of Ellul and Winner, it is difficult to argue that the autonomy referred to is in any way mystical, rather than being an attempt at constructing an analysis of contemporary technological systems and the social relations they engender. Further, there is no evidence that Bradford has been influenced by Heidegger, as Bookchin himself admits: There is no evidence that Bradford is familiar with Heidegger or Junger; rather, he seems to draw his inspiration from Langdon Winner and Jacques Ellul.51 Given this admission, it is difficult to see why Bookchin, rather than deal with Bradfords (or Elluls, or Winners) arguments, attempts to imply guilt by association with not only Heidegger but also
46 47

Bookchin 1995b, 9. ibid., 25. 48 Bookchin 1995b, 27; Bookchin 1999, 164. 49 Bookchin 1995c, 3. 50 Bookchin 1995a, 29. 51 ibid., 30.

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Stalinism and Nazism. Bookchin also associates lifestyle anarchism with the work of Michel Foucault, but notes that Foucaults idea of personal insurrection may not be articulated by lifestyle anarchists consciously that is, these anarchists may not in fact be influenced by Foucault in any way.52 As has been outlined in previous chapters, the Primitivists share a disdain for formal political organization, which for Bookchin suggests an affinity with Max Stirners egoism. Bookchin is certainly highly critical of Stirner; but despite spending nearly two pages of Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism dismissing him, Bookchin makes no serious claim that Zerzan or Bradford, or any other Primitivists are in fact Stirnerites, merely calling Demolition Derby Stirnerite and comparing lifestyle anarchism to the petty bourgeois Stirnerite ego.53 As Bob Black points out, nobody [Bookchin] denounces as a Stirnerite is a Stirnerist if this implies that he affirms amoral egoism and is indifferent to or entirely agnostic about social and economic formations.54 Black goes on to suggest that attempts to engage critically with Stirner and Nietzsche among todays theorists indicates an appreciation of the epistemic break in bourgeois thought that their work indicated.55 Ironically, Bookchin himself made a similar point in the 1960s: A sense of incompleteness haunts Western philosophy after Hegels death and explains much of the work of Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Stirner, Nietzsche, the surrealists and the contemporary existentialists. For the Marxians merely to dismiss this post-Hegelian development as bourgeois ideology is to dismiss the problem itself.56 Clearly, by the late-1990s Bookchins opinion of this matter had changed dramatically. (Other reassessments of his 1960s views will be looked at below.) Today, Bookchin associates any interest in the ego as being merely reactionary and in the mainstream of capitalist ideology: The ego, identified almost fetishistically as the locus of emancipation, turns out to be identical to the sovereign individual of laissez-faire individualism. Indeed, far from being free, the ego in its sovereign selfhood is bound hand and foot to the seemingly anonymous laws of the marketplacewhich render the myth of individual freedom into another fetish concealing the implacable laws of capital accumulation. Lifestyle anarchism, in effect, turns out to be an additional mystifying bourgeois deception.57 Here, Bookchin makes two questionable points. First, he claims that any focus on individual desire as
52

ibid., 10. There is, in fact, no evidence that Foucault or other postmodernist thinkers have influenced anarchist primitivism Discipline and Punish was favourably reviewed in the FE (298 June 19 1979, 13-14) but this does not appear to have led to a significant assessment of his ideas. But for an extensive critique of postmodern ideas, not mentioned by Bookchin, see Zerzan The Catastrophe of Postmodernism in Zerzan (1994) 101 -134. 53 Bookchin 1995a, 51. 54 Black 1997, 36. 55 ibid. 56 Bookchin 1974, 276n. 57 Bookchin 1995b, 52.

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having a liberatory potential is identical to laissez-faire individualism. Second, and leading from this, those who advocate this are unable to see that this connection exists and are therefore involved in mystifying capitalist social relations, since it is not possible to be a free individual in and under these relations. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine what Bookchin has read in order to be able to develop such an opinion. The journal that most stresses individual desire Anarchy: JODA regularly deals with complex issues related to capitalism and its opposition, and McQuinns own views emphasize social and psychological alienation in spectacular, society. Similarly, Bookchin writes that: Ironically, the anti-civilizational anarchists who denounce civilization today are among those who enjoy its cultural fruits and make expansive, highly individualistic professions of liberty, with no sense of the painstaking developments in European history that made them possible.58 Again, Perlman, Zerzan and Watson have all written on European and American history, although their emphases are different from Bookchins. He also writes that David Watsons denunciations of civilization are no substitute for an analysis of capitalist social relations, despite the fact that much of Watsons work, in particular his essays on technology, constitute just such an analysis.59 Has Bookchins work suffered a similar assault from the Primitivists? Largely, before the attacks noted above, they have not engaged with his work to any great extent. An excerpt of Listen Marxist! was published in the FE in 1976. His Theses on Libertarian Municipalism was published in Anarchy 13 (Fall/Winter 1986) and in the Summer 1987 edition Chernyi raises the issue of anarchist strategies, lauding Bookchins ideas as at least constituting a genuine attempt to address the question of how we can attempt to move from here-and-now to a more anarchistic society.60 Even one of Bookchins staunchest critics, David Watson, has written that: Municipal politics, green cities and bioregionalism are all important, nascent forms of a new politics, some strategies for social transformation among many that deserve careful and sympathetic attention.61 The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship (later Urbanization Without Cities) was reviewed critically by Zerzan in the Winter 1988 edition.62 He somewhat unfairly claims that the Athenian polis is Bookchins model (rather than being a flawed but notable historical example of a citizen-oriented counter tradition), but interestingly in the light of Bookchins later comments regarding the absence of a critique of capitalism in lifestyle anarchism, also argues that nowhere does he find fault with the most fundamental dimension of modern living, that of wage-labor and the

58 59

ibid., 35. Whither Anarchism in Bookchin 1999, 244-5. 60 Chernyi 1987, 25. 61 Watson 1996, 170. Whether Bookchins work would have received even this degree of support in the more belligerent format of the FE, particularly in the 1970s or 1980s, is open to question. 62 Zerzan 1988, 8.

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commodity. (Bookchins anti-Malthusian The Population Myth (part 1) was also reproduced in Anarchy 23 (Jan-Feb 1990)). The sustained attacks on Bookchin in both the FE and Anarchy, and in the books by Watson and Black, have only appeared subsequent to Bookchins own attacks on lifestyle anarchism. Where some of these, such as John Clarks have bordered on the ad hominum, others have highlighted genuine problems in Bookchins work, in particular the confused nature of his analysis of technology and his ambivalence regarding the primitive.63 Although some of the criticisms levelled at Bookchin and his work are overstated and some are based on inaccurate readings of certain passages, overall they constitute a more considered and thorough response to, and engagement with, Bookchins work than his own corresponding approach to Anarchist Primitivism. (John Zerzan has not responded to Bookchins attacks.) In fact, it seem clear that Bookchin has had a significant influence on the development of Anarchist Primitivist theory. David Watson refers to Bookchin as a unique figure in twentieth century American radicalismone of a small handful of individuals to raise the black flag of anarchy in the 1960s to a generation of dissidents looking for pathways to a new politics, and describes his work as frequently rich and always problematic.64 In fact, he credits Bookchins early work, along with Chomskys Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship, with introducing him to anarchist ideas and a radical critique of leninism.65 Bob Black writes that most of us [heterodox anarchists] have read some of Bookchins books and many of us, myself included, have learned from them. 66 As has been noted above, Bookchin has tended recently to idealize the Old Left or Left that was, and compares this new anarchism unfavourably to it however, he has himself criticized this Left which foundered on [the] myths [of the internal contradictions of capitalism] and now lies in debris: The success of the revolutionary project must now rest on the emergence of a general human interest that cuts across the particularistic interests of class, nationality, ethnicity, and gender. The New Leftthawed out the economistic grip of Marxism and returned the sixties, for a time, to the ethical, indeed sensuous, radicalism of the pre-Marxist era.67 Any sympathy for such a current that Bookchin may have had in the 1960s appears to have been abandoned; now any sense of sensuous radicalism is dismissed as petty bourgeois. It is difficult not to conclude that Bookchin wishes to be at least a significant and influential figure in any new movement, to be in control of the direction that the radicalism is taking; if he is not, he seeks to undermine it. It is certainly the case that although the essence of Bookchins argument has remained

63 64

Cafard 1987. Watson 1996, 7. 65 ibid., 10n1. Lower case l in original. 66 Black 1997, 12. 67 Bookchin 1990b, 169.

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the same since the sixties, his approach has hardened somewhat. Perhaps inspired by the spirit of the counterculture, he adopted a more flexible and open attitude that mirrored the movement of which he was, at that time, a part. It is interesting to compare some of Bookchins statements from the 1960s with those of his anti-lifestyle approach today. He argued at the time that the struggles of that period were as much spiritual as material; criticizing the attempts of some commentators to subsume the youth revolt in Marxist categories, he argued that: Words like class struggle fail to encompass the cultural and spiritual revolt that is taking place along with the economic struggle The class struggle does not center around material exploitation alone but also around spiritual exploitation.68 He was particularly in favour of the lifestyle experiments which were a key part of the youth rebellion against the bureaucracy and technocracy. The practical ways of living, everyday life, were not only of concern from a theoretical perspective, as something that had to be changed as part of a political program, but were the active arena of social revolution, where the counterculture were challenging the status quo and seeking not only their own non-hierarchic organizations, but concomitant changes in their individual personalities: The revolutionary movement is profoundly concerned with lifestyle. It must try to live the revolution in all its totality, not only participate in it. It must be deeply concerned with the way the revolutionist lives, his relations with the surrounding environment, and his degree of self-emancipation. In seeking to change society, the revolutionist cannot avoid changes in himself that demand the reconquest of his own being.69 For Bookchin this was nothing less than experimentation with liberatory post-scarcity forms of social relations.70 The youthful revolutionaries of the 1960s could, and did, seek inspiration from the past, but also from the potentiality of the future (as Bookchins dialectic of liberation would have it). The revolutionary not only raises the need for social revolution but also tries to live in a revolutionary manner to the degree that this is possible in the existing society. He not only attacks the forms created by the legacy of domination, but also improvises new forms of liberation which take their poetry from the future.71 A key part of this was the necessity of liberating the Eros-impulse, or desire, which Bookchin described as the sensuous apprehension of possibility; the young articulate the life impulses in humanitys nature the urgings of desire, sensuousness, and the lure of the marvellous.72
68

Bookchin 1974, 230; 229-30. This can be compared to David Watsons claim that capitalism is a disorder of the spirit. (Chapter 5, n133 above) 69 ibid., 45. Bookchin also refers to This revolutionary lifestyle (ibid., 190n). 70 ibid., 191. 71 ibid., 190-1. 72 ibid., 38-9; 280.

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Although the social conditions of the lifestyle experiments and explorations of sensuousness and desire are different in the 1990s than in the 1960s, Bookchins current approach suggests that even this arena of personal change and underground self-organization is irrelevant and a distraction from the real work of libertarian municipal activism; todays Bookchin has no time for the liberation of desire, unless it is perhaps strictly within a context he defines.

FORMAT
Bookchins work has been in the form of pamphlets, articles (though rarely in academic journals) and books; many of his pamphlets and articles have been published as collections in book form. Although Bookchin has had considerable space in which to develop his ideas, it is still questionable whether he has done so fully. The main statement of his politics and philosophy, The Ecology of Freedom, contains only 366 pages of text. His other primary statement of his views on the historical and political significance of the city (Urbanization Without Cities) only adds a further 309 pages (including appendix). Excluding his later books which are primarily criticisms of other writers; Remaking Society, which is an overview of the ideas set out in the books mentioned above; and The Limits of the City, a book which emerged from his earlier more Marx-oriented period; all of Bookchins other books are collections of articles Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Toward an Ecological Society, The Modern Crisis, Which Way For the Ecology Movement?, The Philosophy of Social Ecology. The latter book is significant in assessing Bookchins work he claims that the essays included in it seek...to establish [Social Ecologys] philosophical foundations and modes of thought.73 However, the book in question consists of only four essays, three of which were originally published elsewhere and were, as Bookchin himself notes, written as polemics, directed against various tendencies that surfaced in the American ecology movement in the 1980s.74 This book, however, is the philosophical underpinning of Bookchins work, in which he attempts to reorient Western philosophy away from Kant to a more dialectical (Hegelian) approach based on an objective ontology. Clearly, however necessary this task, and whatever the basis of Bookchins argument, it could never be fully explored in so slender a volume. It might be considered that the 600-odd pages of Bookchins two major works, as noted above, are not unreasonably short. However, given the depth and breadth of study that Bookchin attempts accounting for the evolution of humanity from its emergence to the present, offering a mechanism for its historical development, formulating a theory of technology, reassessing the claims of reason and rationality, developing a new political programme this does seem overly long compared to, for example, Marxs three volumes of Capital (themselves only part of a proposed longer work).
73 74

Bookchin 1996, x. ibid., vii. The second edition, published in 1996, contains an additional essay, History, Civilization, and Progress, also published in Green Perspectives 29, March 1994.

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The structure of the Anarchist Primitivist work has tended to be in the form of newspaper/journal articles, rather than books or academic articles (cf. Social Ecology and Deep Ecology). The only books written have been by Fredy Perlman Letters of Insurgents, Against HisStory, and The Strait; and two rejoinders to Bookchin, David Watsons Beyond Bookchin and Bob Blacks Anarchy Beyond Leftism. This work has also been to a degree reactive, in particular regarding replies to letters to the FE for example, many of the pieces on technology and the primitive, and (in the case of Deep Ecology) Return of the Son of Deep Ecology and Delving Deeper into Deep Ecology 75. This has two effects: the work is not developed to the degree it would be in book form, and writing tends, stylistically, towards the polemical and confrontational. There is also the problem of arguments and positions being spread over several issues, perhaps even over several years. For example, Ron Hayley begins a letter to the FE in 1983 by saying: I am aware of your sweeping anti-technological views, though I do not entirely agree with them. I was not a reader of the FE at the time, so I am not aware of all the thinking that went into their formation.76 The Zerzan collection Elements of Refusal, containing many of his key FE essays, did not appear until 1988, and the David Watson anthology Against the Megamachine was not published until the later 1990s. A proposed FE anthology has yet to appear (although FE back issues are available). In addition, the nature of newspapers is that they are less substantial than books or pamphlets, and more easily disposed of unless the reader specifically decides to collect them. They also have no index or contents. It seems likely, then, that unless a commitment is made to obtain and keep relevant issues of the paper, the full extent and perhaps subtlety of the FE approach, particularly regarding technology, will not be appreciated. (Although the books that the FE articles refer to are also available, this still requires some effort on the part of the reader, to obtain a number of books and study them in order to ascertain the exact meaning of the FE argument.) In should be noted, though, that neither area has been published in an academic format, for example in political theory or philosophy journals, in the way that primary articles on Deep Ecology and Ecofeminism have. It is also notable that although Bookchin has not had any formal academic training, he has come closest to writing in a straightforward academic fashion, in terms of conventional books and articles (alongside his teaching role); for the Primitivists, however, Perlman and Zerzan were educated at postgraduate level, yet both have deliberately avoided that form of discourse. It becomes apparent when studying the work of the Primitivists that they have tended not to
75 76

Bradford 1989a and Fifth Estate 1988. Hayley 1983, 2.

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approach their theorizing systematically. This is in part due to the nature of their publications, and in part due to their lack of interest in creating a coherent political position. However, the problem with the lack of a systematic approach is that subjects are only discussed occasionally and then often in insufficient depth. The only subject area which has fairly systematically and consistently been discussed is technology, due both to the centrality of this theme to the Primitivist critique, and the responses presented to the FE. However, this is in a way a self-generating process; a lengthy article will more likely generate greater response, thus leading to more articles, and so on. For example, Zerzans piece on The Refusal of Technology led to responses tackled in Against the Megamachine and Marxism, Anarchism and the Roots of the New Totalitarianism; and the responses to these pieces generated another long article, Uncovering a Corpse. Similarly, George Bradfords extended essay How Deep is Deep Ecology generated such a large response that it was followed by two extended sections of debate, and another extended essay from Bradford, Return of the Son of Deep Ecology, itself partly a response to a letter in support of Deep Ecology. Clearly the areas that are developed depend in part on the responses received in the cases of technology and Deep Ecology the interest was sufficient to generate responses and so replies that expanded on the initial positions. It also depends on the willingness of the writers to engage in debate; for example, after Dogbane Campion replied initially to Lev Chernyi regarding the issue of the spiritual he indicated that he no longer wished to continue the debate in the FE.77 Chernyi subsequently wrote a further response in Anarchy: JODA, but it remains, as he notes, an obviously unfinished discussion.78 In the same way that much of Bookchins work is in the form of critiques and engagements with other political strands, much of the Anarchist Primitivist work is also in the form of responses and critiques. Some of the longest work yet published by David Watson, work which does expand on and clarify certain positions, are critiques/responses Beyond Bookchin and Swamp Fever. Uncovering a Corpse: a reply to the defenders of technology and A System of Domination: Technology were both in response to critical letters to the FE. Return of the Son of Deep Ecology was also in part a response to a letter to the FE. More on the periphery of Anarchist Primitivism, a large part of the first issue of Demolition Derby is given over to Michael Williams response to Chaz Bufes critical pamphlet (see above) and a critique of Anarcho-syndicalism, while Bob Blacks only complete book (rather than collections of articles) is another critique of Bookchin, Anarchy Against Leftism.

HERITAGE & INFLUENCES

A number of Bookchins influences have been mentioned; the most important are
77 78

Chernyi 1990a, 18. ibid.. As already noted, Chernyi himself has left large areas of his own position under-developed, particularly his views on rationality and the counter-traditions.

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undoubtedly Marx, Hegel and Aristotle, along with Josef Weber, but also including E. A. Gutkind, and Lewis Mumford. There are some others, however, that should be mentioned. Bookchin has always been attracted to and has articulated a utopian vision. Fourier, in particular, appears frequently Bookchin refers to him as the most libertarian, the most original, and certainly the most relevant utopian thinker of his day, if not of the entire tradition.79 There are also a number of references to William Morris he refers to Morris as my favourite utopian and to Robert Owen. 80 In the utopians Bookchin is seeking (and finds) three elements: a vision of an harmonious and ecological society; the importance of the imagination and of human choice (that is, the active subject) as opposed to an economistic and scientific socialist outlook (with the emphasis on objective historical conditions); from these two points above, the ability of humans to rationally create such a society. This stress on choice and imagination is also what Bookchin ascribes to the Classical anarchists, as heirs to the utopians that came before.81 Another importance influence was the Frankfurt School, although Bookchin has recently distanced himself from their work. In an article written in 1976 he refers to Horkheimer and Adornos Dialectic of Enlightenment as masterful in its profundity and they are also referred to on several occasions elsewhere. 82 Their most direct influence would appear to be in their critique of instrumental reason, although Bookchin accepts this only with reservations.83 The change in opinion is evident in the reprint of The Philosophy of Social Ecology. The 1990 edition of contained articles in which Adorno and Horkheimer were favourably referred to, but by 1996 Bookchin had amended his opinion, writing in the Preface to the 2nd edition of Philosophy of Social Ecology that he had removed references to the Frankfurt School and specifically to Adorno since I have come to regard much of Adornos work as intellectually irresponsible, wayward, and poorly theorized.84 Regardless of this, however, the Frankfurt School were clearly an early influence on Bookchins thought, whatever his later misgivings. One problem arises regarding the influence of anarchism on Bookchins thought, although what this problem indicates is perhaps unclear. Bookchins intellectual and political heritage was Marxist. As has been noted (in Appendix 3), although he was stimulated by his early contact with anarchism, it did not seriously affect his political outlook. His first ecological article, The Problems of Chemicals in Food was written, as he acknowledges, when he was a neo-Marxist. The works of Kropotkin, with whom Bookchin is often associated, were not readily available in the U.S. in the 1950s. Bookchin claims not to have read Fields, Factories, and Workshops until the late-1960s, although he says that he read the portion of Mutual Aid dealing with the Medieval city in the mid-

79 80

Bookchin 1991b, 328. ibid., Acknowledgements. 81 See Bookchin 1990b, 115-126. 82 Bookchin 1980, 112n. See also Bookchin 1986a, 1986b, 1990a, 1991b. 83 Bookchin 1991b, 270; 283n. 84 Bookchin 1996, ix.

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1960s; even then these books did not appreciably affect my views; rather, they confirmed them and reinforced my commitment to anarchism.85 Regarding his ecological and political ideas he claims that anarchism was not a significant influence. His early work on the city was strongly influenced by Capital, and his idea of post-scarcity also owed much to Marx. As he points out, rather than anarchism my basic ideas on an ecological society really came from my decades-long studies of the Athenian polis, Hegel, and even Marx. Specifically, my thinking on ecology was instigated not by the works of any anarchist thinker but by Marx and Engelss remarks on the need to reconcile town and country.86 Bookchin claims that the libertarian influences on his early work included Herbert Read, whose Philosophy of Anarchism (which he refers to in Ecology and Revolutionary Thought), I found most useful for rooting the views that I slowly developed over the fifties and well into the sixties in a libertarian pedigree.87 Also significant was Woodcocks Anarchism (first published in 1962) and, ironically, Marx and Engelss critiques of anarchism. However, in a section of Ecology and Revolutionary Thought, written in 1964, entitled Observations on Classical Anarchism and Modern Ecology Bookchin writes: We can get some idea of what such a society would be like by reading William Morriss News from Nowhere and the writings of Peter Kropotkin.88 He also quotes Bakunin and refers to Proudhon and various anarcho-syndicalists.89 Reading this section gives the impression of someone well acquainted with many elements of anarchist history and theory, and it is unclear how this relates to his statements above. Bookchin was clearly aware of anarchism and syndicalism, and its significance in Spain, from the 1930s. He was also, through the works mentioned above, aware of the potential theoretical significance of the doctrine. In addition to Woodcocks history, there had been other important works published, including G.D.H. Coles series on Socialist Thought, and Maximoffs selected works of Bakunin. Although there may have been no reprints of the original works available, it would be surprising if someone with the evident research abilities of Bookchin could not locate these books, for example in the New York Public Library. So overall Bookchins statements suggesting a sound knowledge of anarchism and the anarchist movement seems more plausible than his later suggestions that he had little of no knowledge of it until much later. Bookchin is clearly part of a Euro-American tradition that stresses a (positive) continuity from the Renaissance, through the Enlightenment, and eventually to the present day. Since
85 86

Bookchin 1993, 55. ibid., 57. His work on the city and urbanism was also influenced Lewis Mumford. See in particular Mumford 1966. 87 For Ecology and Revolutionary Thought see Bookchin 1974, 77; Bookchin 1993, 54. 88 Bookchin 1966, 334. This section was omitted from the reprint in Post-Scarcity Anarchism 89 ibid., 336; 338.

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Bookchins progressive historicism is based on the emerging ascendancy of reason, it is not surprising that he sees the Enlightenment as a crucial cultural and intellectual development.90 According to Bookchin, this Enlightenment rationalism generated a humanism that allocated to people a central active role in the world, a role that suggested the functionality of social and political institutions, and the possibility and desirability of utilizing nature for human benefit. Humanity was no longer to be subject to the whims of religious deities, arbitrary royal rule, or the uncontrollable forces of nature. Social improvement and freedom thus became philosophical and technological desiderata.91 Moreover, egalitarian and libertarian movements, whose ideas and activities Bookchin has documented in various works, could now operate minus any religious and quasi-religious patina.92 Revolutionary change was not only desired, but a real possibility within the secular realm. The high ideals of the Enlightenment were its goals of a rational society, its belief in progress, its high hopes for education, its demands for the human use of technology and science, its commitment to reason, and its ethical belief in humanitys power to attain a materially and culturally viable world.93 It is certainly the case, as has been noted, that Bookchins historical overview is Eurocentric; the fatalistic religion of the East is not on a level comparable to revolutionary Puritanism, nor are Taoism and Buddhism comparable to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and socialism in its various forms, let alone such great social eruptions as the English, American, and French Revolutions.94 Notwithstanding that it makes little sense to attempt to compare religions, philosophical systems, cultural movements, and revolutions, Bookchins point is clear; meaningful radicalism is a product of Europe and the United States, and this is not only something that is historically true, that occurred in the past, but is the indicator of the necessary direction of current and future revolutionary movements. (See also Bookchin on Eurocentrism, in History Chapter 4.) A noticeable absence amongst Bookchins influences is that of any philosophers or theorists of technology; in fact, he carries on an extensive discussion of technology without any notable reference to the philosophy of technology itself. As one critic has noted, this subject has been established as an identified sub-field in professional philosophy in North America at least since the
90

There are enormous problems with Bookchins promotion of an ap parently unitary Enlightenment, problems which I do not intend to explore in this work. It is clear, though, that Bookchins approach is overly simplistic, and does not take into account Enlightenment historiography and the possibility of different and changing interpretations of what the Enlightenment actually was. It also does not fully engage with Adorno and Horkheimers critique of the Enlightenment as beginning the disenchantment of the world which was a root cause of the current environmental crisis. His argument that the ambiguity of reason is resolved through a genuine dialectic does not seem sufficiently explored to refute Adorno and Horkheimers argument. See Bookchin 1991b, 270-273. On Enlightenment historiography see Outram 1995, esp. ch. 1. 91 See Bookchin 1995b, 148-9. 92 ibid., 250. 93 Bookchin 1990b, 165. According to Biehl, this Enlightenment humanism was early absorbed from Marxian socialism. Bookchin 1997, 14; also 197. 94 Bookchin 1995b, 257 11n.

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early 1970s, yet Bookchin proceeds with little regard for contemporary philosophers and theorists of technology.95

The Primitivists have been far more willing to absorb ideas and philosophies from disparate cultures. One direction in Anarchist Primitivism, particularly noticeable in the FE, has been an attempt at reevaluating what it means to be American a reassessment of the Western European culture, the colonial experience, and the history of Native Americans. They have not been alone in this; certainly, from the 1960s onwards such an exploration has been a part of American culture in general. A variety of books were published which indicate this process, including Roderick Nashs Wilderness and the American Mind in 1967 (revised in 1973); Francis Jennings The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest in 1976; Richard Drinnons Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building in 1980; and Frederick Turners Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness also in 1980. The outlook of the Native Americans was explored in, among others, Vine Deloria Jnr.s God is Red: A Native View of Religion in 1972; The Hau De No Sau Nees Basic Call to Consciousness in 1978; and Jameke Highwaters Primal Mind in 1981. Not only do these works indicate a general process of cultural exploration, all have been quoted or referenced by Anarchist Primitivist writers. There were, in addition, increasing struggles between Native Americans and the U.S. authorities over civil rights and other issues, demonstrated by the formation of the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) in 1968, and their 71-day land occupation and battle with U.S. armed forces at Wounded Knee in 1973. The struggle against relocation at Big Mountain was covered in a number of pieces in the FE (Big mountain: Native people resist forced relocation and assault on old ways, FE Summer 1984, 316, 12-15; Deadline nears for Big Mountain, Summer 1986 323, 17; Big Mountain Update, 326 Summer 1987, 9). An awareness of Indian radical theory is shown in the reprinting of Indian activist Russell Means On The Future of the Earth (See Reason chapter 5).96

Something which has characterized the Anarchist Primitivists has been their extensive and eclectic influences (note Perlmans extensive reading, referred to in Appendix 3 above, and David Watson has also read widely he seems to have read everybody comments Richard Drinnon in the introduction to his collected essays), influences that have included Castoriadis, Bahro, Mumford, among many others. 97 Zerzans extensive references have already been mentioned (see also References, below), although his tend often to offer empirical support rather than suggesting new areas for theoretical exploration. Bookchin seems to see this eclecticism as pointless and divisive,
95 96

Higgs 1998, 259n12; 244. On the history of the US as colonialism and imperialism see David Watsons 1442 -1992: The Fall of the 500-Year Reich (Watson 1992). Perlman in particular has explored the process of the colonization of North America; see Against His-story page 266f, and particularly The Strait (Perlman 1984 and 1988). 97 Watson n.d., 2.

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rather than as an indicator of a healthy pluralism he has referred instead to celebrations of theoretical incoherence.98 David Watson (writing as Dogbane Campion) argues that anarchists must view their own history through a critical reading of the literature of the classic proletarian revolutionary movements, of both marxist and anarchist material, but also other works in a variety of areas that help to explain the modern world and the processes of power and domination therein.99 The anarchist vision, he maintains, if it is to remain true to its own spirit, must evolve and grow.100 Bookchin also argues that it is necessary to discard what is lifeless in the ideas of the past.101 Whether he is sympathetic to contemporary ideas is, as has been suggested, open to question; when recently asked about his proposal for radical study groups and what books they might read, Bookchin commented that if they are Marxists, they might pick up Capital, a work I would recommend for any revolutionary group, or if they are social anarchists, they might pick up Kropotkins Factories, Fields, and Workshops, or his history of the French Revolution.102 Of course, Bookchin is not saying here that these are what they should read, or that these are the only books they read; it is, however, noticeable, that he chooses to mention only nineteenth-century books. Perhaps on its own, this is not significant, but it does support his focus on older texts, particularly relating to the Old Left. One other point of note is that both strands see themselves as part of a historical libertarian current. However, where the Anarchist Primitivists suggest that this means that they are simply custodians of a trans-historical message, Bookchin seems to argue instead that current social ecological views of freedom (i.e. his own) are in themselves the history of these ideas (that is, their current totality and fulfilled potentiality), and as such should be privileged over previous ideas. The Primitivists would tend to see place their ideas, perhaps, on a line indicating their chronological position, but Bookchin would put his at the apex of a triangle.

PERIOD
This section attempts to assess (albeit briefly) what affect the period the writers were working in could have had, outside of their own backgrounds. The concern is therefore with contemporary intellectual developments as well as social and political movements. Rachel Carsons Silent Spring is often considered as the beginning of the modern environmental movement, and Bookchins Our Synthetic Environment predated this work. It has already been noted that anarchist ideas were largely dormant until the 1960s. So his early ecologically and increasingly decentralist, quasi-anarchist work was developed in isolation, and largely emerged
98 99

Bookchin 1995b, 9. Campion 1988, 16. Lower case m in original. 100 ibid., 16. 101 Bookchin 1999, 311. 102 ibid., 335. The actual title of Kropotkins book is Fields, Factories, and Workshops Tomorrow.

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from his Marxist background rather than from an engagement with similar theoretical perspectives (his awareness or otherwise of Classical Anarchism notwithstanding). Such an engagement did not occur until the 1970s and 1980s, when Bookchin not only engaged with but strongly criticized many different writers and ideas, most notably E. F. Schumacher; environmentalism; Andre Gorz; Deep Ecology; Systems Theory.103 For the Primitivists the emergence and development of their ideas came at a different time. As noted in Background above, the gestation of Primitivist ideas occurred in the 1960s, a time of great social and political upheaval. Not only were the personal outlooks of those activists and theorists who were to develop Anarchist Primitivism moulded by the events of that time, but the radical currents that emerged gave rise to a challenging and fluid political scene. By the mid-1970s not only was there an awareness of Situationism, Councilism and anarchism but also of various developments in the European ultra-left. In addition, other ideas had emerged (or re-emerged) in the 1960s, such as those of Wilhelm Reich, and the Eastern philosophical orientations popularized by Alan Watts and Gary Snyder (although there is no evidence that these were an influence early on). There were also at this time practical developments (or developments in praxis), such as revolution in Portugal; left-wing urban guerrilla campaigns; and the crisis in Poland. Anarchist Primitivism also developed at a time of green and anti-nuclear movements.104 New works were published which were clearly influential on the Anarchist Primitivists, in anthropology and the philosophy of technology. However, the effect of the events of 1968 cannot be underestimated on the left as a whole, and it is clear that the events of that period affected the Primitivists profoundly. In part, this was due to the direct connection with the events that Fredy Perlman was able to provide, but also due to the re-evaluations of Marxism carried out by Baudrillard and Camatte that proved extremely influential to the Detroit milieu. Finally, the spiritual orientation of the FE, the critique of industrialism, and the re-evaluation of primitive societies were all part of the radical green movement, in particular Deep Ecology. Deep Ecology offered not only a supportive current for the Primitivists, but also a challenge regarding some of its positions. It is notable that some of the longest and most developed arguments to appear in the FE are in response to issues raised by supporters of Deep Ecology. It should be noted, however, that Bookchin was also actively writing at this time, and his views and approach to these movements and ideas were often different from those of the Primitivists. Whether Bookchin would have approached his own work and that of, for example, Deep Ecology had
103

The Concept of Ecotechnologies and Ecocommunities written in 1975 (reprinted in Bookchin 1980, 97 112); Open Letter to the Ecology Movement in Bookchin 1980, 73 -84; Andre Gorz Rides Again or Politics as Environmentalism in Bookchin 198 0, 287-314 1980; Toward a Philosophy of Nature in Bookchin 1990a 51-98 (1982), Freedom and Necessity in Nature in Bookchin 1990a, 99 -136 (1986); Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement (Bookchin 1987). 104 Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Portugal FE 266 September 1975 6, 12; State-Fetishism: some remarks concerning the Red Army Faction FE 296, Jan 29 1979 7, 10-11; The Collapse in Poland, FE 309 June 19, 1982 11-12; e.g. FE supplement Nuclear Madness Must End! FE 297 April 1979.

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these ideas emerged earlier is impossible to say, but it does appear, given his overall approach, unlikely.

REFERENCES
Bookchins work often lacks adequate references, which are scarce to the point where many of the points he makes seem to be assertions, for lack of indications as to where supporting evidence might be found. Outside of those works specifically dealing with contemporary politics and philosophy such as Re-Enchanting Humanity Bookchins references are frequently quite old. This is particularly true of those books he has referred to in the development of his own views. In the Ecology of Freedom, which most comprehensively sets out his philosophical and political perspective, of those references of the twentieth century (that is, excluding the nineteenth century and before even if published later - this therefore includes Marx, Hegel and Aristotle) of which there are 71, 25 are from the 1960s, 9 from the 1950s, and 12 from before the 1950s. Although 25 are from the 1970s, 21 of these are from the first half of the decade. This trend is also noticeable in another of his books, Urbanization Without Cities, which outlines his view of the role of the city in history. Of 33 twentieth-century references, 3 are from before the 1950s, 4 from the 1950s, 14 from the 1960s, and 7 from the 1970s (4 of those prior to 1975). Only 5 are from the 1980s, although the book was first published in 1987. His book Remaking Society, which is a concise overview of his ideas of freedom, history, and the city, published in 1990, lists few references. These include Marx, Rousseau and Kropotkin, and others from 1931, 1951, 1959, 1960, 1970 and 1979. Two books from 1978 and 1985 are mentioned only to be strongly criticized. The feeling one gets from looking at Bookchins references is that much of his outlook is based on books which are from the early 1970s at the latest, and often much earlier. Given that parts of this books were written many years before their publication (the beginning of The Limits of the City in the late 1950s; the first four chapters of The Ecology of Freedom in 1972) it seems highly likely that many of these books were read in the 1950s and 1960s. It should also be stressed that Bookchin refers to Aristotle, Hegel and Marx many times; but as will have been made clear in the previous chapters, Bookchins entire philosophical edifice rests on these three thinkers. The Anarchist Primitivists vary in how many references they use, but where they are given, they are generally recent. For example, in John Zerzans work, looking at the essays Beginning of Time, End of Time (1983), Language (1984) and Axis Point of American Industrialism(1986), a quarter are from the 1960s, nearly a third from the 1970s, and just under a quarter from the 1980s. Notably, John Zerzans articles essentially consist of large amounts of evidence culled from other books and put to the service of his ideas on the primitive and the origins of domination. For example, the article on Time has 110 references; on Language 61; and on Number 117. Zerzans approach is essentially a conventional one, of presenting a case based on references (i.e. evidence) taken largely from academic sources. These references fall into one of three categories: empirical; assertive; and

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illustrative. Empirical references are most often anthropological and archaeological and although disputable have the form of a verifiable fact; assertive references refer to claims made by others which are more ambiguous and personal for example, E.H. Sturtevants claim that language was invented for lying or Frazers interpretation of the totem in primitive society; illustrative references make or stress points, and are frequently literary.105 Problems in this approach regarding the veracity of the evidence presented will be covered in Style, below. But there is another problem; Zerzan has a political point to make, and making such a point does not necessarily require the number of references that he uses. In many instances, for each quote which apparently supports his position, another could be found which undermines it. At best, it would appear that these references render his arguments plausible, although ironically only within the terms of the civilizational discourse of which he is so critical.

STYLE
Bookchin Style
Not having been formally trained in academia, Bookchin has developed an idiosyncratic style which sometimes makes his work hard to follow, and arguably creates ambiguities which are never adequately dealt with. Some of these have already appeared in the main body of this research. Other problems are the excessive use of quotation marks which appear around single words on the majority of pages of The Ecology of Freedom, for example and a literary turn of phrase that obscures more than explains. David Watson gives one example, of which there are many: In one place, he writes, Marx was entirely correct to emphasize that the revolution required by our time must draw its poetry not from the past but from the future. Elsewhere he argues that the tradition of all the dead generations which Marx, in his effluvium of nineteenth-century progressivism, hoped to exorcise with the poetry of the future has yet to be recovered and explored in the light of the dead-end that confronts us. The future as we know it todayhas no poetry to inspire us. Watson continues: But the mind craves clarity, not wayward logic capable of declaring effluvium to be entirely correct. What, indeed, does Bookchin mean by the future as we know it? There are many possible futures as we know them, as we will them, and as we can only imagine them to be. Typically, Bookchin bends the meaning of such passages to make whatever point he wants to at the time, but it undermines his work..106 It is true that Bookchins use of language undermines his work, not only in making it difficult to understand, but also in allowing him to change the meaning of what he has written if he later seeks a different perspective, without necessarily admitting that he was wrong, or that a change which might affect other parts of the work has occurred. There is also a related question of whether Bookchins
105 106

For example, Zerzan 1988, 27; 10; 19-20. Watson 1996, 20-21.

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style, and the ambiguities therein, have insulated him from criticism, insofar as his longer works which set out his case in most detail are largely inaccessible to the wider reading public. After reading Biehls overview of Bookchins libertarian municipal politics, The Politics of Social Ecology, one reviewer commented since it is so easy to read and so clearly laid out, it calls into question once and for all whether common folk like me havent understood Bookchins ideas because they were too inaccessible and arcanely written, or because they never made much sense in the first place. After 5 years of studying Bookchins work, Im starting to think Im not such a dummy after all.107 It seems likely that a more straightforward stylistic approach, with clearly stated premises and conclusions, would allow for less ambiguity or even confusion in Bookchins work. Other issues that arise are those of excessive brevity and lack of supporting evidence. Although The Ecology of Freedom attempts to outline the essence of organic society, describe the emergence of hierarchy and its development through history to the present, chart the parallel development of expanded ideas and movements of freedom, and sketch the outlines of an ecological society, it is not an overly long book. Additional analysis of the emergence and role of the city can be found in Urbanization Without Cities, but this is also not an exceptionally long book. The result is that enormous leaps through time occur in a chapter, sometimes in only a few pages. Bookchin also makes claims that are not sufficiently supported, since he generally only mentions sources when he uses quotes. The feel of the book is of an extension of Bookchins ideas that he has developed over many years and put down on paper intermittently; he holds the whole picture in his head and the reader only gets an expressionist outline. For the Anarchist Primitivists, the crucial stylistic element is the format, the necessary structure and style of text produced in a limited space for the purpose of propaganda. This has certainly forced the writers to get to the point. Certainly more space would allow for a greater depth and expansion of key ideas, but this may not always be an advantage; both Watson and Zerzan use a large number of quotes in their work, and Watsons verbosity sometimes tends to overpower his argument. However, it is difficult to argue that this has created any fundamental stylistic barriers to understanding.

Perlman Style
Despite his academic training, Perlman tended to approach political writing from an unconventional, often literary perspective and with a highly personalistic style. Some of his early essays, such as The Reproduction of Daily Life (1969), were essentially conventional political polemics, although there were also some in a political-literary-artistic form, such as his spoof Manual for Revolutionary Leaders (1972) and Situationist-inspired We Called A Strike and No One Came

107

Dominick 2001.

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(1973). As concrete political activity declined in the early 1970s, Perlman moved away from seeing himself as an activist, to identifying himself as a rememberer: Fredy particularly wanted to remember the rebel, the individual who resisted the limitations imposed by his or her society.108 His first major work, Letters of Insurgents, was written in the form of an imaginary correspondence between Sophia Nachalo and Yarostan Vochek (who appeared as the authors of the book). Both characters are from an Eastern European country, but Nachalo currently lives in the U.S.. Perlman uses the letters written by the characters to explore various political perspectives he had encountered into contact with, both in the U.S. and in Yugoslavia: 109 He recorded various forms of rebellion; he was acquainted with many of them firsthand. He also recorded the dead ends, the co-optation and the thwarting of rebellious projects.110 It is an autobiographical projection and follows fairly closely Fredys physical and intellectual journeys, reporting the upheavals which had affected him, his family and his comrades in the middle third of the twentieth century.111 The life of one of the leading characters, Sophia Nachalo, is based on Perlmans own. Another character, a printer called Ted Nasibu, was also a fragment of Perlman.112 Nasibu also appears in Perlmans last book, The Strait, a fictional work examining the European invasion of North America from the perspective of the native inhabitants. The work was not completed, and only the first volume appeared posthumously. Perlman intended to present the book as tales passed down over the years to Ted Nasibu, who was to have worked with Perlman in the print co-op.113 The Strait was the clearest example of Perlmans attempt to avoid conventional literary styles: To avoid His-storys clutches, Fredy turned to a non-linear approach interpretation of human events.114 He aimed instead to write a simulated oral narrative His goal was to emerge with a song.115 However, it is not The Strait but an earlier work of Perlmans, Against His-story, that is most significant to the development of Anarchist Primitivism. 116 Against His-story is a pseudo-mythic
108 109

Perlman 1989, 91. Nacholo and Vochek, 1976. 110 Perlman 1989, 91. 111 ibid. 112 See Perlman 1989, 94. 113 See A Note to the Reader, Perlman 1988, v. 114 Perlman 1989, 128. 115 ibid. 116 The reasons for this are because the book is uncompleted; it is a novel with its political message less explicit

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account of the history of civilization, utilizing psychological insights and speculative interpretation, and eschewing dates, [h]e addresses the reader as one individual speaking to another and makes no claim to follow scholarly rules.117 However, Perlman does obviously use the work of conventional historians and anthropologists to support his arguments, even if he disagrees with their conclusions. A clear example of this is Norman Cohn, who Perlman refers to as document[ing] a millennium of resistance, maligning every episode of it.118 Many of Perlmans claims are assertions, and different interpretations are possible. Of his tale of the organization of pre-civilization Sumer and the first tentative cracks in primitive communal solidarity, he notes There is no positive evidence for any of this.119 There are no references or footnotes, just an occasional mention of a writer. Overall, perhaps the best interpretation of the book is as a plausible re-orientation, to show how a different interpretation of history (or His-story) is possible which stresses the elements of human resistance against an artificial anti-human and anti-natural construct of civilization. Certainly, Perlmans approach operates on two levels the literary and the political. His works clearly contain a political perspective, even a political theory, although it is generally implicit rather than explicitly stated. Whereas Letters is an autobiographical and personal text (based on Perlmans own experiences), Against His-story does purport to say something more objective. The question of whether this works subjectively depends on the reader unlike a more conventional work, the style cannot be separated from the content.120 Perlmans claim to simply be telling a story, though, is problematic. As well as the story itself, political explanatory notes are inserted for example, his rejection of a Marxist theory of history and progress, and his use of the Reichian idea of armour to explain the psychology of civilization.121 This clear attempt at a political statement sits ill at ease with the claim that Against His-story is simply a story, as one reviewer has pointed out. Identifying an emerging anticivilizational current in the early-1970s, he suggests that Against His-story was the closest thing to a manifesto of the emerging revolutionary perspective. By this I mean that it attempts to explain the whole of human history and pre-history: But Perlman doesnt claim to be defending a manifesto or theory. Its a vision, or a story Like it or not, Against His-story tells the whole story of the human race under a unifying perspective, just as The Communist Manifesto does. But the latters authors were open about the grandeur of their scheme. Perlmans attempt to sound like a humble storyteller is a convenient way of trying to avoid responsibility. Like all anarchists, he wants to say this is whats wrong, and this is what to do about it
than Perlmans earlier works; and it relates primarily to the psychological construction of conquest, imperialism and resistance. Against His-storys remit is much broader, and its political point more explicit. 117 Perlman 1989, 123. 118 Perlman 1984, 183. 119 ibid., 19. 120 On the claim that Against His-story represents an example of subversive literature see Moore 1997. 121 Perlman 1984, 13-18; 17.

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without actually saying so: that would be authoritarian.122 From this perspective, Perlmans attempt to make Against His-story into an anti-manifesto is not only impossible but also dishonest. However, it could be that this demonstrates a contradiction that arises inevitably within Anarchist Primitivist discourse when it attempts to articulate a non-civilizational critique through civilizational means. As the FE have pointed out, responding to criticism from Perlman of an introduction they wrote for a section of Against His-story published in the FE: You engage in a process of describing, though speculativelyyou define aspects of reality in this way for you readers. You, like us, use the methodology and language of the academy; we are not storytellers and it is Leviathans ways writing itself, linear thought, etc.which destroys the validity of tales and visions. Even describing storytellers and telling of their destruction does not eliminate our role in the process.123 In this respect, the content suggests the form Primitivist anti-ideology implies a lyrical, mythic narrative but there is also an implicit and necessary literary form within the text (even such basics as the use of words, writing left-to-right, down the page, and on consecutive pages); additionally, there is the requirement that the text fulfil a political, propagandist purpose. It may be, then, that from the perspective of political theory, there is something lacking in the a-systematic approach of Against Hisstory as the reviewer also noted, a coherent Anarchist Primitivist perspective could perhaps be developed; but Against His-story is not it. From a political theory perspective, then, the literary form of Against His-story creates ambiguities that make it a difficult document to interpret and critique. It is the case, though, that the language used in the FE is complex, perhaps unusually complex for a newspaper that also engages in political propaganda. This clearly reflects the backgrounds of the writers certainly all of those whose backgrounds are known in any detail have been university educated. As well as the criticisms made by Bufe, there have also been comments made by those more sympathetic to the paper.124 While this may affect how a wider audience understands the ideas of the paper, the use of this language allows the paper to be able to convey more complex ideas.125 Perhaps, though, to many readers the juxtaposition of complex language and ideas with cartoons and counterpropaganda seems incongruous. Nevertheless, although the responses have not always been of the highest quality, there have been sufficient responses (given their low circulation) to suggest that the FE was being reasonably widely read, at least in the underground. It is also notable that Bradfords How Deep Is Deep Ecology? was reprinted by an independent publisher, and is frequently referenced in green literature, while an abridged version of his sequel to this piece, Return of the Son of Deep Ecology appeared in Zimmermans Environmental Philosophy along with pieces by (among others) Bookchin, Biehl, Naess, Merchant, Salleh and Rolston. This suggests that this work is
122 123

Tate 1999. Fifth Estate 1983b, 11. 124 For example a letter from London Greenpeace Academic Fifth Estate 326 Summer 1987, 26. 125 Responding to the letter mentioned above, E.B. Maple argues that Everyday languagecommunicates only everyday ideas (Maple 1987, 27).

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relevant when put in a different, more academic format.

Zerzan Style
Zerzans work has been critiqued in the pages of the FE, where his assertions have been challenged in terms of their both their factual probability and practical ubiquity. These essays appeared between the summer of 1983 (time) and the summer of 1988 (agriculture). Among other essays that have appeared subsequently are Time and Its Discontents and Running On Emptiness: the failure of symbolic thought.126 Neither these nor others that Zerzan has written have added significantly to the arguments presented in the five origins essays. It is reasonable to assert that Zerzan has not successfully challenged many of the criticisms made against his arguments, what responses he wrote to the FE being very brief. Initially Zerzan appeared to be quite open about the limitations of his essays; in a reply to criticisms of his article on Time, Zerzan replied that his Conjecture/dream/hypothesis is certainly in no way definitive, while in a response to a critique of his essay on Agriculture he wrote I dont feel that my essay should be accepted as etched in stone.127 However, without significantly adding to his initial arguments Zerzan has remained critical of those who do not, in his view, consider them adequately. George Bradford has argued that Zerzan doesnt take any time to answer serious objections and just continues to repeat assumptions.128 Although his argument is fundamentally dreamy conjecture Zerzan has: laid claim to an absolute idea and dismisses even the slightest doubt that symbolic activity, language, and culture are unmitigated virulences as reformist, conservative, etc.129 It does appear to be case that there has been a lack of an adequate critical engagement around an area, i.e. the origins of domination, that is of fundamental importance. This absence has meant that different areas of Primitivist thought have remained unreconciled, and that Zerzans own arguments have remained largely undeveloped.

126 127

Anarchy: JODA 39 Winter 1994, 42+; Anarchy: JODA 43 Spring/Summer 1997, 29+. Zerzan 1983, 8; Zerzan 1988-89, 20. 128 Bradford 1991, 21. 129 ibid., 21;22.

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