Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (113 page)

The tendency of modern States is towards authoritarian and centralized rule which happens to be the principal obstacle to social and individual progress. Huxley proposes a move in the opposite direction to what he calls ‘responsible self-government’.
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Indeed, he insists, like all anarchists, that the State should be abolished;

At the same time, Huxley argues that in a complex society there must be some organization responsible for co-ordinating the activities of the various constituent groups. There must also be a body to which is delegated the power of acting in the name of the society as a whole. Huxley goes on: ‘If the word “state” is too unpleasantly associated with ideas of domestic oppression and foreign war, with irresponsible domination and no less irresponsible submission, then by all means let us call the necessary social machinery by some other name.’
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Since there is no general agreement as to what that name should be, Huxley decided to go on using ‘the bad old word’ until some better one be invented. In describing the functions of this form of ‘self-government’, he clearly has in mind a pattern of responsible, communal living in which the government of men has been replaced by the administration of things. As an alternative to State socialism and capitalism, he advocated a form of small-scale, decentralized industrial democracy in which greater economic equality would encourage co-operation amongst its people.

After the Second World War, Huxley showed, in his
Science, Liberty and Peace
(1947), how applied science and technology had helped concentrate power in the hands of a small ruling minority and equipped ‘the political bosses who control the various national states with unprecedentedly efficient instruments of coercion’.
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In place of the all-embracing modern State, with its large-scale production, he urged the progressive decentralization of the population, greater accessibility to land, and the common ownership of the means of production. Science should be used to help form self-governing, co-operative groups working for subsistence and the local market. While international trade should be kept to a minimum in order to lessen nationalist passions, technology should be used to increase self-sufficiency within individual nations.

Despite his readiness to resort to ‘appropriate legislation’ to bring about these reforms, Huxley clearly reveals the influence of Gandhi and Tolstoy in his call for a peaceful return to the land. He reiterates moreover that ‘any government enjoying a monopoly of political and economic power
is exposed to almost irresistible temptations to tyranny’.
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He therefore recommends an increase in personal autonomy, the expansion of voluntary co-operation, and of all ‘de-institutionalized activity’.
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Yet in his eagerness to avoid wars perpetrated by nationalism, Huxley is still willing, as was Bertrand Russell, to contemplate some form of world government. In keeping with his pacifism, he spelled out in the pamphlet
What Are We Going To Do About It
(1936) that the only way to resist belligerent and authoritarian governments is via Gandhian non-violent resistance and direct action. Like Godwin and Tolstoy, Huxley believed that not only is government founded on opinion, but it is possible to change people’s opinions peaceably.

As he grew older, Huxley became increasingly interested in mysticism. In his anthology,
The Perennial Philosophy
(1945), he argues that each person is in their innermost being part of the Ultimate Reality of God and the final purpose is to lose one’s earthly personality and be absorbed in the whole. In the heart of things, there is a divine serenity and goodwill. Huxley now insists that while society is good to the extent that it encourages contemplation, the ultimate goal is a free mind. Huxley experimented with mescaline to achieve mystical insight and encouraged others in
The Doors of Perception
(1954) to use drugs in order to achieve a higher order of consciousness. The work became a key text of the counter-culture.

Throughout Huxley’s mystical writings and fiction, there is a constant undertow of anti-authoritarianism. Huxley is principally concerned with liberation — economic, social, mental and finally spiritual. When he came to sketch his ideal society in his novel
Island
(1962), it transpired that his vision of Utopia comprises a decentralized and co-operative community based on ecological principles. On Pala, his imaginary island of freedom and happiness in South-East Asia, the only religion is Buddhism; the crippling creeds of Christianity, Freudianism and Leninism are absent. Where Lenin claimed electricity plus socialism equals communism, the equation of Palanese civilization is quite different: ‘Electricity minus heavy industry plus birth control equals democracy and plenty.’
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Applied science is only used to solve agricultural problems. The horrors of the nuclear family have been replaced by a Mutual Adoption Club (MAC) which enables each child to feel secure in the company of twenty or more adults without being possessed by them.

In theory, the island of Pala is a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament, but there is neither an established church nor omnipotent politicians nor bureaucrats. In practice, it is a ‘federation of self-governing units, geographical units, professional units, economic units — so there’s plenty of scope for small-scale initiative and democratic leaders, but no place for any kind of dictator at the head of a centralized government’.
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Since they do not fight wars or prepare for them, there is no conscription, military hierarchy, or unified command. Its economy is neither capitalist nor State communist, but rather co-operative socialist. Thanks to preventive medicine and education, few crimes are committed; criminals are dealt with by their own MAC and undergo group therapy.

Bringing his interests in Eastern wisdom and Western science together, Huxley observes that ‘Elementary ecology leads straight to elementary Buddhism.’ Palanese education is therefore founded on a ‘conservation-morality’ in which the children learn that ‘we shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence’.
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The only interference with nature is in the Palanese use of Artificial Insemination and Deep Freeze to improve the race and to control the population. They believe that ‘begetting is merely postponed assassination’.
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The drive to power and domination is sublimated in rock-climbing and other dangerous sports. Not torn between body and spirit, the Palanese experience the joy of sex. They overcome the essential horror of physical disease and death and the sorrow inherent in the human condition by taking
moshka
, the ‘truth and beauty’ drug which brings them into direct contact with God. Clearly such a society would find it difficult to survive in the existing world. The presence of oil on the island brings a ‘liberating invasion’ from a neighbouring military dictator.

Huxley’s vision of a decentralized society in harmony with nature is similar in many respects to Murray Bookchin’s version of social ecology. But Huxley’s ideal society has a uniform religion and morality. Every one is expected to conform on Pala; they are not free to question the underlying values and beliefs of their society. Oscar Wilde, for one, would not feel at home there, unable to develop his individuality and pursue his own artistic quest
Island
is Huxley’s personal Utopia, and like all utopias it has a stationary air about it. Nevertheless, Huxley took it as an act of faith that ‘man is here for the purpose of realizing as much as possible of his desirable potentialities within a stable and yet elastic society’.
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He remained a libertarian in spirit until his dying day.

The Jewish existentialist philosopher Martin Buber comes from a very different intellectual background. He was a close friend of Gustav Landauer and devoted an enthusiastic chapter to him (as well as to Proudhon and Kropotkin) in his influential
Paths in Utopia
(1949). Buber was mainly responsible for bringing Landauer’s work to international attention. They both shared a concern with developing the organic
community within the shell of the existing State and wanted to base social regeneration on a moral and spiritual change. Buber also admired Proudhon’s rejection of systems and readiness to steep himself in contradiction. But while praising his view of the group as an organic association of individuals, Buber felt that Proudhon had overlooked the nature of the federative combination which constitutes the ‘nation’. Again, Buber approved of Kropotkin’s stress on the need for pre-revolutionary structure-making so that the revolution is not so much a creative as a delivering force. But he considered Kropotkin’s stark antithesis between society and the State to be too simple.

Buber made a clear distinction between society and the State, and argued that there is an inverse relationship between the ‘social principle’ and the ‘political principle’ in any society. He also recognized that the State develops a ‘political surplus’ of power to maintain order in any latent crisis. While believing that all social structures have a certain measure of power and authority, Buber wanted to see the decentralization of political power and hoped that the social principle, with its free unfolding of energy and spontaneity, would gradually replace the rigid political principle of the State: ‘Government should, as much as possible, turn into Administration.’
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But while this analysis follows Landauer closely and confirms the traditional anarchist view of the State, Buber ultimately parted company with the anarchists by arguing that the State can in certain circumstances have a legitimate role. In the present condition of humanity, he considered the State necessary to maintain external security and solve internal conflicts between different groups. It should not however act as a machine but as the
communitas communitatum
, as ‘the great nourishing mother who carefully folds her children, the communities, to her bosom’.
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Despite his admiration for the anarchist principles of decentralization and federalism, Buber remained a communitarian socialist rather than an anarchist by accepting the legitimate role of the State as a framework in which to consolidate self-managing communities and associations. He saw the need to rebuild the State as a community of communities, since only ‘a community of communities merits the title of Commonwealth’. He even proposed the formation of a new kind of Supreme Court which would act like Plato’s ‘custodians’ and draw up the boundaries between the degree of centralization of representative government and the degree of local autonomy of the communities.
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Buber’s most positive plea was for the renewal and deepening of the co-operative movement, taking the village commune as a model in which communal living is based on the amalgamation of production and consumption, and agriculture is united organically with industry. He attempted to relate the early collective settlements in Palestine to the anarchist tradition
of Proudhon, Kropotkin and Landauer. He did not want a Jewish State and sought co-operation with the Arabs and as a result his idea of binationalism made him ostracized by orthodox Zionists as an ‘enemy of the people’.
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The subsequent history of Israel has shown the danger of Buber’s view of the State as the ‘mother’ of communities. He should have heeded more carefully Proudhon’s insight that order is the daughter and not the mother of liberty.

Lewis Mumford’s concern with the relationship between society and technology led him to adopt a strongly libertarian position. From his first work
The Story of Utopia
in 1922, he tried to set out the conditions for the rational use of technology for human liberation. His fundamental thesis is that from late neolithic times in the Near East two technologies have recurrently existed side by side: ‘one authoritarian, the other democratic, the first system-centred, immensely powerful but inherently unstable, the other man-centred, relatively weak, but resourceful and durable’.
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The former has become so dominant that Mumford believes we are rapidly approaching a time when our surviving democratic technics will be completely suppressed or supplanted unless we radically alter course and begin to reassert control over our runaway technology.

The problem lies not so much in the nature of the technology itself but in the question of who is to control it. In
The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development
(1967), Mumford found in the contemporary alliance between scientists and the higher agents of government a parallel with the coalition between royal military authority and supernatural authority in ancient Egypt which formed a ‘megamachine’. He warned in
The Pentagon of Power
(1970) that if technology continues to be controlled by the ‘military-industrial-scientific’ elite, the consequences will be devastating.

Technology will be truly beneficial, Mumford insists in all his writings, only when it is used for our ends rather than for the purposes of the ‘megamachine’ and of those who direct it. To prevent authoritarian technics from dominating us, we must redeem it by the democratic process and bring it under the control of ordinary individuals. Only then will the machine be used to release humanity from drudgery and provide enough leisure time for work which is dependent on special skill, knowledge and aesthetic sense.