Anarcho-Primitivism
A letter from Green Anarchist
Dear Subversion,
Good to see anarcho-primitivism provoked so much debate last issue, although it's a shame to end it now, since so much progress (if you'll forgive the phrase!) is being made. There's more agreement between us than you think. We took it for granted that "social organisation' was pretty much synonymous with class organisation and JM would almost certainly agree with your work I play distinction as it's the same as Bob Black's in Abolition of Work. That's not the same as saying people get to dance round the steel mill after hours, as S from Hastings suggests -- that's leisure, separated from labour and a palliative for it.
From our last letter, you'll know S is wrong to say "a digging stick is technology from an anarcho- primitivist perspective, it's just a tool because it's under the unalienated control of an individual without the mediations of a division of labour. Some apes, beavers, sea otters &C are tool-users. That doesn't make them "technological species" and the fact that our species lived free of technology for the vast majority of its existence shows we re not either As Zerzan argues in The Case Against Ad, technology and culture are intimately interrelated magic being the first technology
We agree with S that communism will make "life ….. richer, more pleasurable, more creative and fulfilling" but the technological means he cites for achieving this show s/he has little idea what communism will be like. We won't "give up recorded music and the cinema", we'll be liberated from them. Even under capitalism, it's possible to participate in creating such artefacts but in future, as now, they basically condemn the majority to being a passive audience separated from the creative process. Taking occasional turns is not the same as full communal participation. This is as much to do with the complex, technical infrastructure involved in such specialist 'creativity' as economic factors in the narrow sense. 'Creativity' will be in the hands of the upper of S's 'two level system of production", the one beyond community control. S knows this is problematic or s/he'd have been upfront enough to include television in this technocultural triumvirate. Although we're arguing over Culture here, the same principles apply across the board to all other 'benefits of Civilisation' usually cited.
What'll really make life richer will be the recreation of unalienated community, Camatte's Gemeinwesen, and that's obviously not the same as reducing humanity to herd animals" or atomised ideology4odder, as in hierarchical society. It's about empathising with others and understanding them as yourself, as part of yourself, not objectifying them as others fit only for domination. It's not a question of "how much people will be individuals and how much they will be social beings" -- there is no distinction in primitive society, the dualism that plagues modern Western minds so doesn't exist for them and didn't exist at the start of human history, and one of the problems we have about it now is our hierarchical mindset and the analytically disabling language derived from it. We should make clear at this point that as it must be reciprocated collectively, this consciousness must be achieved through struggle, not mystical contemplation. Farley Mowat's description of the Ilhumiut's 'law of life' illustrates this doesn't extinguish the individual (little 'i'), in fact it extends this respect to animals and the Earth. Think about primitive attitudes to property. In The Ecology of Freedom, Bookchin has them as usufructary - something belongs to someone when they're using it and to everyone as soon as they're not, and so things go round, usually respectfully, sometimes humorously (the 'theft' South Sea explorers complained so bitterly of, though their selfishness offended the South Sea islanders equally and taking the explorers stuff was their way of expressing their communal disapproval), but always without possessive hoarding, without accumulation. Doesn't this sound like communism to you - of the future as well as the past? Only anoraks totally colonised by Prometheanism could argue gadgets will make life better, freer and more equal than authentic human community! This wholeness and liberation from alienation are what we sacrifice by arguing for 'moderation' and a 'middle way' between communism and technocracy, as S does.
In arguing for this "two level system", S also ignores the extraction of surplus value as the motor of History. S argues mining, building railways and working in steel mills "would only get done if people did find them enjoyable" , but doesn't suggest what would become of the technological infrastructure of this proposed future society if they didn't. The lesson of History is that they would have to be forced to do such unpleasant tasks, leaving those doing the forcing in control of the 'commanding heights of the economy', our technocratic masters. People have to be forced into specialisation because it makes them dependant, Other. Metalworkers were amongst the first specialists -- they were outcasts forced to live separately from 'their' communities, lamed to prevent them fleeing to a more authentic fife elsewhere. The situation is much worse in more recent and complex societies based on an intense division of labour. There, specialist management is necessary to co-ordinate all this, each of us being 'lamed' by lacking all the skills and resources necessary to be self-sufficient at this level of production. We were pleased you agreed there was as dialectical relationship between technology and social organisation because this implies that attacks on technocracy and the mega-machine culture have as much revolutionary potential as more conventionally understood class struggle, and that the class struggle is not revolutionary unless it rejects technology, as S does not.
We were also much encouraged that you agree other forms of power preceded capital and state", that 'different forms and combinations of domination' exist within Civilisation, and that they could have been ended by communism at any point in History. By attacking hierarchical society on any point patriarchy, racism, Prometheanism &C - we must eventually come to attack it at every point if our approach is revolutionary, if it criticises the underlying basis of hierarchy and not just particular 'branches' of that "fatal Tree". This must include anti-capitalist struggle but, by this same argument, it cannot just be anti-capitalist struggle or other forms of domination allied to it will simply assert themselves in post~capitalist society, cheating us of communism. The revolutionary potential of struggles should be judged by their likelihood of achieving Gemeinwesen, which implies a rejection of the principles of moderation, mediation and mass which so handicapped revolutionary politics in the 1980s, and so should encompass (for anti-capitalists) 'peripheral' full-on struggles such as those of militant Greens and animal liberationists as well as work resisters &C. Our struggle should be about actively rejecting Civilisation as a whole, not seeking to seize control of or preserve any part of it in any manner, and it should be about hitting Civilisation where it is weakest now rather than eternally delaying revolutionary action in the hope consciousness will rise where it is strongest through pathetic revolutionary callisthenics' around reformist demands.
A footnote on the 'where would we go?' question. We agree with you that a forager lifestyle is not a majority option given current population densities, even if that's most desirable for achieving Gemeinwesen. Given there's land enough to feed everyone in the world even now, we need rear no 'die off' when Civilisation falls beyond the social dislocation that occurs with any revolution. Then there'll be an end to artificial scarcity, allotment agriculture is more efficient in terms of yield I acre than agree-business (and it's sustainable), and as production will be unalienated, everyone will be doing their bit on the land (which is why cities, that "eat but produce nothing" in Cobalt’s words, will end--don't these people want to be self-determining?!). S is wrong to suggest there should be "trading through barter Systems" - as noted in Green Communism, capitalism, in part, started that way! As anthropologists and colonialists everywhere know, primitives are loath to trade because producing surpluses means more effort and (subject to variables of climate and ecology world-wide) their neighbours will have grown pretty much what they have, for their own use. if you have to trade for something, it means you haven't got it, so the trader can ask whatever they want for it --as Fredy Perlman showed in Against His-Story, empires have been built this way. Given the 'least work' principle discussed above, d/evolution in production would set in, as the more ancient the method of production, the less effort was involved for the same yield (production was intensified by coercion, remember?), so those that could get to a forager lifestyle this way would, as in the celebrated case of the Ranoake settlers (Gone To Croatan, pp.95-98). An anarcho-primitivist revolution is certainly practically achievable -- indeed, we'd argue it's the only one worth achieving.
Of course there is a great deal more to discuss here, particularly on this idea of totality and revolution on the periphery, but the debate can continue in future issues, surely?
Yours, for the destruction of Civilisation,
Oxford GA’s
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