Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (135 page)

Zerzan now sees Western civilization as
Running on Emptiness
(2002). On a cultural level, the ‘catastrophe’ of post-modernism, with its eclecticism, relativism, nihilism and lack of historical imagination, is only one symptom of its vacuity. The increasing trend to use symbolic representation, especially through language, not only cuts us off from each other but prevents a direct experience of the natural world. As a result, we are ‘estranged from our own experiences, dislodged from a natural mode of being’.
⁴⁰
And the experience of time as a linear process rather than as a constant process further prevents us from living in the here and now.

There is no point trying to tinker with modern civilization for it cannot be reformed. As Zerzan makes clear in
Elements of Refusal
(1999), there are ways of resisting its worst aspects, from taking up voluntary unemployment to running feral, but the only long-term remedy is a thoroughgoing dismantling of modern civilization and a return to a simpler way of life. We must transcend the last 8,000 years of civilization and empire and move forward to a
Future Primitive
(1994) in which we live in a world close to nature without technology beyond hand-held tools.

Zerzan’s onslaught on modern civilization is penetrating and his analysis of its ills, made with wit and passion, is persuasive. But he romanticizes and simplifies the life of the hunter-gatherers. He cites the ! Kung San (Bushmen) and Mbuti (pygmies) as examples of people living a non-alienating and non-oppressive life. Having spent time with the nomadic Baka pygmies in the rainforests of Cameroon and travelled widely in Africa, I recognize that they are healthier and have more leisure than town people, but I find it difficult to imagine that they offer the ultimate ideal of human society.
⁴¹
While one can appreciate the wisdom of tribal and aboriginal peoples and their close kinship with the natural world, one should not overlook in many of them the lack of sexual equality, personal autonomy, freedom of thought and tolerance of eccentricity.

Zerzan’s harmonious ‘state of nature’ pre-existing civilization might be different from Hobbes’ war of all against all, Locke’s free but uncertain condition or Rousseau’s life of solitary individuals, but he makes a similar error in imagining a hypothetical state in order to justify the kind of society he would like to see. Indeed, his way of glorifying hunter-gatherers may not be very different from those colonialists who projected their desires and
fears on to tribal societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries although they did it for different ends.

Contrary to Zerzan, I would argue that in Europe at least the initial stage of settled agriculture — the first 3,000 years or so before the Bronze Age — was not a decline but an actual improvement in the well-being of human beings. It was a creative period during which society was co-operative, egalitarian, creative and comparatively free. Graves, for instance, were communal, dwellings similar, and magnificent astronomically aligned buildings were raised in collective surges of energy. It was also a peaceful society: the megalithic monuments were undefended and no signs of battles have been found near them.
⁴²
It was only when warriors with metal weapons arrived in Europe from the East in the Bronze Age that hierarchy, domination, chiefs, private property and war began to appear, and have been with us ever since. In my view, it is this period of Neolithic anarchy rather than the earlier period of hunter-gatherers which can offer an inspiring vision for the future. It cannot be a question of going back, even if it were possible, but we can draw on the insights of our ancient ancestors and distant forebears to create our own values and actions in the here and now. As Rousseau himself observed, the golden age is not behind us but within us, waiting to be renewed.

It is a common phenomenon for the over-sophisticated to celebrate the primitive. It is impossible to escape the inventions of civilization and return to some pristine wilderness. Even Zerzan makes use of the conveniences of modern civilization: he may live in a co-operative in Oregon, but he still uses the phone, borrows a neighbour’s computer and allows trees to be cut down to produce his books. Ironically, anarcho-primitivists are well-organized on the web.
⁴³

In evolutionary terms, human civilization is a very recent development and nature is only temporarily held at bay: grass and trees are forever ready to burst through the paving stones of the streets. But given the present human population, it would be impossible for all of us to abandon cities and re-create the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers. If many tried to return to the little fragile wilderness that remains, there would very rapidly be no more wilderness at all. The only real wilderness left is not on the land — which only makes up about thirty per cent of the Earth’s surface — but at sea or within ourselves. We were born to be wild and free; the great question for the new millennium is how to expand our freedom and preserve the remaining wilderness, faced as we are with the inexorable increase in human population and consumption of the world’s resources.

Zerzan unduly dismisses other anarchists who seek urban and work-based solutions to the exploitation and oppression of Capital and the State. He might inspire some to leave their jobs and try and dwell in the woods, mountains and deserts, to live in a continuous flow of communion with nature rather than counting the hours and minutes at work, but it cannot be a solution for all. Nevertheless, his searching critique of industrialism, capitalism and the megamachine is both trenchant and compelling. He is right to question the alleged benefits of civilization, the notion of linear progress and the limitations of symbolic thought. Zerzan’s vision is Utopian and offers no clear programme for social change, apart from personal resistance, wildcat strikes and public demonstrations, but it powerfully illuminates the disasters of Western civilization and shows the human potential for another, more ancient way of being connected with the Earth. To have encouraged people to recognize themselves as members of the wider community of beings is no mean achievement in itself.

Another polemical American primitivist is Derrick Jensen, who admires Zerzan’s work. In his view civilization is inherently violent and unsustainable and can only be remedied by an end to industrialism and return to a more harmonious way of life. He draws inspiration from indigenous peoples who do not treat the natural world as a metaphor or as a resource to exploit. Jensen has not only explored in
Welcome to the Machine
(2004) the science, surveillance and culture of control, but in the two volumes of
Endgame
(2006) has looked at the problem of civilization and the ways it can be resisted, whether by blowing up dams or paralysing the capitalist system by sabotaging the commercial infrastructure and means of communication. Nevertheless, like Zerzan he offers us no clear way forward.

Many green anarchists, like the primitivists, are radically ‘anti-civilization’. For them it is civilization and not capitalism which is the prime cause of authority and domination. They too trace the downfall of humans to the era when they moved from the carefree nomadic life of the hunter-gatherers who worked a few hours a day to the sedentary and busy ways of the horticulturalists, agriculturalists and pastoralists.

Green anarchists believe in direct action; they are involved in protest and resistance movements against the State and contemporary civilization, including anti-capitalist, anti-colonial and ecological struggles. One of their banners is ‘Destruction of Civilization and Reconnection with Nature’. They wish to replace the present ‘civilized’ lifestyle with more primitive living and to experience nature as far as possible unmediated by symbolic thought and cultural representation.

But not all green anarchists want to return to a deep Palaeolithic era, even if that were possible. Some try to return to the ‘wilderness’ of woods and fields, developing earth and survival skills, practising self-sufficiency and using applied technology. Some live in small communities coexisting with other beings without dominating them. Some develop the art of doing nothing yet leave nothing undone. Some try to simplify their lives while they continue to live in the cities, resisting the authoritarian and alienating elements of modern culture and the destruction of the wider environment. Others go in for ‘Rewilding’, attempting to reclaim our ‘lost knowledge of living with the earth’.
⁴⁴
What unites green anarchists is the belief that the present form of industrial civilization, spreading across the world with global capital and political imperialism, will lead to a social and ecological catastrophe unless there is a major shift in values and a new relationship with the Earth.

Green anarchists particularly stress the importance of local identity, rehabilitation of the land and bioregionalism while keeping a wider perspective. They say that we should act locally and think globally: the principle fits in well with the ecological principle of unity-in-diversity. They recognize that humans are inevitably part of the natural ecosystems in which they live and work. A region, they point out, is not defined by artificial boundaries like a State, but is a product of the imagination as well as of nature. It draws on older historical, cultural and linguistic traditions.

Shoots of green anarchy, like rhizomes of irises, have sprung up in different places. Syndicalists such as Graham Purchase and the Wobbly organizer Judi Bari have tried to develop a form of green syndicalism, in which unions committed to direct action and workers’ self-management take up ecological concerns.
⁴⁵
Anarchists have been involved in the Animal Liberation and Animal Rights movement, extending their concern for freedom from the human to the animal sphere. Many contemporary anarchists, following in the footsteps of Elisée Reclus, are vegetarian or vegan in order to minimize the human exploitation of animals. Wild Greens and members of Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front defend the planet, and its species threatened by humans, with a wide variety of tactics carried out by autonomous groups and individuals, from tree-squatting and road-blocking to monkey-wrenching. One movement to emerge from green anarchy is Freeganism (coined from free-veganism), which advocates voluntary joblessness and tries to escape the economic system based on exploitation. They live off abandoned products of modern industrial society, such as the food thrown away by supermarkets.

Many green anarchists have been inspired by the poet and essayist Gary Snyder, who finds ‘Buddhist anarchism’ to have ‘nation-shaking’ implications.
⁴⁶
Inspired by the closeness of Native Americans to the earth
and their sense of belonging, he has called for a return in ‘Turtle Island’ (the North American continent) to a tribal way of life based on bioregions defined by natural and cultural boundaries. His concern for the
Earth House Hold
(1969) was followed up by calling for
The Practice of the Wild
(1990), a defence of bioregionalism, of truly dwelling in and caring for the land where we live. He reminds us that the most immediate and ordinary can often be the most sacred and wondrous and that wildness is not just wilderness in nature but the wild culture of free peoples and the wild mind and imagination of creators. For Snyder, nature is not a place to visit but home.

Aragorn!, one of the editors of
Anarchy
, who is immersed in the American Indian tradition, has called for a ‘Non-European Anarchism’ which combines ‘decentralization, mutual aid, power, cultural bias, single solutions to political questions, and rejection of authority’. To resolve questions regarding organization and social change, he suggests people should look to their own cultural heritage and traditions and make decisions among themselves through consensus.
⁴⁷

The science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin has continued to have a great influence and introduced many people to anarchism and Taoism, particularly through her Utopian novel
The Dispossessed
(1974). On the moon Annares, she depicts a society without government and coercive institutions. Even its language, Pravic, reflects its anarchist foundations, with no word for ‘my’. The novel also shows the dangers of centralization and bureaucracy developing if they are not constantly challenged. As the hero Shevek makes clear: ‘You cannot take what you have not given, and you must give yourself. You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.’
⁴⁸
In her great work of Utopian fiction
Always Coming Home
(1985) she tells the story of the gentle, joyful, creative and co-operative Kesh, a peaceful valley culture, and the ruthless, aggressive Condor people who live in the mountains. They present vividly aspects of how the world is and how it could be. Le Guin in her other writings has shown that the wild is all around us, even in the most domesticated landscapes. If we can only see it the possibility of Utopia is already in our midst.

At the same time, there has been a growing interest in pagan anarchism which finds reverence for the Earth leading inevitably to anarchist solutions. Starhawk, for example, shows that an appreciation of the Great Goddess does not necessarily involve hierarchy. Her book
The Spiral Dance
(1979), a classic work on Wicca and eco-feminism, argued that the Goddess is not a transcendental deity like the Christian God but an immanent life force to be nurtured and celebrated.

Pagan anarchists wish to protect the Earth, celebrate the cycle of the seasons and honour the Earth Goddess and the Green Man. They combine
earth-based spirituality with libertarian activism, performing rituals to transform the relationships of humans with each other and with nature. Many accept the Wiccan Rede (’Counsel’), which is said to summarize the Wicca religion: ‘An [if] it Harm None; Do as thou wilt.’ The principle recalls St Augustine’s saying: ‘Love, and do what you will.’ Such a position implies ethical reciprocity; that is to say, while satisfying one’s own desires one should actively avoid doing harm to others.