Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (136 page)

On the face of it, anarcho-primitivism and green anarchy would seem to have much in common with social ecology for they all combine a deep concern with the environment with a telling critique of modern culture. But Murray Bookchin, one of the key figures in social ecology, has since the 1990s alienated potential recruits to his cause by attacking vituperatively those who do not agree with him. In the name of reason, progress and civilization, he mounted a wildly irrational onslaught on deep ecologists and primitivists as counter-revolutionary mystics.
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He dismissed anarcho-syndicalism, espoused by Chomsky and others, as having too narrow a class base and declared that the workers’ movement was essentially dead. As for Hakim Bey’s post-left anarchy, he saw it as the whimsy of retarded adolescents obsessed with themselves.

The dispute between ‘second wave’ anarchists and Bookchin came to a head in his acrimonious essay
Social Anarchism or Life-Style Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
(1995). Rather than forming bridges, like Malatesta, Emma Goldman and Colin Ward, he tried to create a chasm between what in many ways had been a fruitful exchange between different strands of the anarchist and ecological movements. Like the worst Leninist sectarian, Bookchin mounted a rancorous tirade against what he called ‘alternative café’ radicals, deep ecologists and, ‘Thousands of self-styled anarchists [who] have slowly surrendered the social core of anarchist ideas to the all-pervasive Yuppie and New Age personalism that marks this decadent, bourgeosifiedera.’
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He lumped together in one distasteful bag such diverse people as primitivists, mystics, lumpenproletarians, post-modernists, New Agers, Stirnerites, irrationalists, liberals and fascists. He accused them of abandoning class-consciousness and revolutionary fervour, replacing an egoistic, undisciplined, do-your-own-thing mentality for solidarity and revolutionary commitment. In his drive to ‘demystify the primitive’, he further launched a sustained attack on ‘primitivity’, which he saw as a projection of irrational nostalgia by misguided romantics on allegedly pristine primitive society. Still believing, as he had written in
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
(1971), that maximum consumption with minimum effort could
be attained through modern technology, he derided the primitivists as retreating ‘into the shadowy world of brutishness, when thought was dim and intellectuation was only an evolutionary promise’.
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At this stage, Bookchin still hoped for a social anarchism which is committed to rationality, while opposing the rationalization of experience; to technology, while opposing the ‘megamachine’; to social institutions, while opposing class rule and hierarchy; to a genuine politics based on the confederal coordination of municipalities or communes by the people in direct face-to-face democracy, while opposing parliamentarism and the State.
⁵²

Ensconced in his Institute of Social Ecology in Vermont, Bookchin however was simply out of tune with the direction of the new wave of anarchism. Instead, he advocated what he called ‘libertarian municipalism’, that is a libertarian, participatory and confederal politics based on municipal assemblies, which in his view offered nothing less than a ‘kind of human destiny’. He called the municipality the ‘living cell’ which forms the basic unit of political life.
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To this end, he recommended anarchists to engage in local elections and accept the principle of majority rule. Partly inspired by the Greek
polis
and New England town meetings, he believed that this model could lead eventually to a decentralized society consisting of a ‘Commune of communes’ replacing the centralized State.

Rooted in the old politics of the working-class movement and committed to the rationalist humanism of the Enlightenment, he eventually returned to the socialist sectarianism of his youth. He preferred the word ‘communalism’ to describe his position, by which he meant a libertarian ideology that includes ‘the best of the anarchist tradition as well as the best in Marx’.
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In 2004, he was even prepared to countenance government and laws in an ecological society: ‘There can be no society without institutions, systems of governance and laws. The only issue is whether these structures and guidelines are authoritarian or libertarian, for they constitute the very forms of social existence.’
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Before he died in 2006, Bookchin declared that he was no longer an anarchist. The man who had so effectively revitalized the anarchist tradition by linking it with ecology finally rejected anarchism as no longer relevant to creating a ‘rational’ society.

Social ecology did not the with Bookchin and still has its supporters. The British anthropologist Brian Morris, who is particularly inspired by Kropotkin’s politics of community, sees ‘Socialist Anarchism’ as the ‘only viable political tradition that complements ecology, and offers a genuine response to the social and ecological crisis that we now face’.
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Many anarchists however have found Bookchin’s opposition between ‘life-style’ anarchism and social anarchism both false and misleading. In his carefully argued
Beyond Bookchin
(1996), David Watson (aka George Bradford, who has been long associated with the journal
Fifth Estate
) sees the rational
and technological version of social ecology espoused by Bookchin at an impasse. Although critical of some aspects of deep ecology, he accepts that primitivism offers a ‘legitimate response to real conditions of life under civilization’.
⁵⁷
While social ecology, liberated from Bookchin, can, like the anarchist ideal, serve as a general orientation, he believes we may also learn from our ‘primordial kinship’ with the phenomenal world and the wisdom of archaic civilizations. He has further made his views clear on empire and its enemies in
Against the Megamachine
(1998). In his book
Anarchy after Leftism
(1997) Bob Black dissected the philosophy of ‘Dean Bookchin’ only to conclude that he was not a true anarchist but part of the Old Left which needed to be left behind.

On a more philosophical level, John Clark continues to develop the libertarian potential of social ecology. In the eighties, he worked closely with Bookchin but the two eventually fell out. Having written studies of Godwin and Stirner, he was already arguing in his collected essays in
The Anarchist Moment
(1984) that anarchism offered ‘both a strategy for human liberation and a plan for avoiding global ecological disaster’.
⁵⁸
This already reflected the growing influence of the organic philosophy of Taoism and Buddhism as well as a deep concern for individual autonomy. For him ‘personal growth’ was not just a New Age fad; it takes place ‘only through dialectical interaction within the self and others … the self can be as much as a complex unity-in-diversity as are the community and nature’.
⁵⁹

As an academic philosopher, Clark began developing a form of social ecology which had room for Eastern as well as Western thought within the broader context of the anarchist tradition of social and political engagement. He found the thought of Elisée Reclus particularly inspiring.
⁶⁰
When Bookchin learned that he took an interest in the insights and practices of deep ecology, it seemed an ominous involvement in the mystical. Clark broke away from Bookchin, refusing to be Engels to his Marx, and came to see him as an incoherent thinker who had lost touch with the anarchist tradition.
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To his version of libertarian municipalism, Clark counterposed a form of ‘ecocommunitarian’ politics inspired by ‘a vision of human communities achieving their fulfillment as an integral part of the larger, self-realizing earth community’.
⁶²

But while Clark came to see the inadequacy of Bookchin’s Aristotelian way of thinking, he still continues to work within the tradition of social ecology in order to reinvigorate it and develop it in a more dialectical, spiritual and communal direction. He is also keen to promote a political movement based on small primary communities, including affinity groups, intentional communities and co-operatives, which he sees as playing a potentially significant liberatory role in society. Clearly social ecology
is not the special reserve of Bookchin but a fertile land with open borders.

While educated in the Enlightenment and the Western humanist tradition, Clark’s interest in Taoism, Zen, Surrealism and Situationism has led him to explore the realm of the magical and the imaginary. Delighting in paradox and verbal wit, he has written under the pseudonym of Max Cafard a
Surre(gion)alist Manifesto
(2003), which advocates local identity, rehabilitation of the land and bioregionalism while retaining a global outlook. Clark is deeply rooted in Louisiana and has been directly involved in the renovation work in New Orleans following hurricane Katrina, which wreaked so much devastation but has resulted in so many positive examples of anarchy in action.

I myself, in an earlier edition of this book, gave a positive portrayal of Bookchin’s attempt to bring together the insights of the anarchist tradition and ecology but have since become increasingly exasperated by his vituperative tone and his rejection of any other strand of anarchism which did not fit in with his increasingly narrow version of social ecology. His claim that there was an unbridgeable chasm between so-called ‘life-style’ anarchism and social anarchism seems both muddled and absurd.

I believe that the philosophical anarchism of William Godwin and the visionary anarchism of William Blake are not incompatible. To appreciate the imagination, the unconscious and the magical does not mean abandoning reason but accepting its inadequacy in certain areas of human experience and creativity. I have written about the imaginary and the magical as well as exploring the libertarian potential in Taoism and Buddhism. And I have investigated alternative ways of seeing the world and transforming oneself in the Hermetic tradition. And I have found inspiration for a peaceful and egalitarian society among the Neolithic megalith builders in Europe.

Having explored ecological thinking in
Nature’s Web
(1992) from a libertarian perspective, I developed in
Riding the Wind
(1998) a new philosophy for the new millennium which I call ‘liberation ecology’. It has been called a holistic adventure in love. Based on ancient wisdom and modern insights, it is holistic, deep, social and libertarian and seeks to free all beings from their burdens so that they can realize their full potential. It offers an environmental ethics based on reverence for the Being of beings and anarchistic solutions to work, education, economics and social arrangements. In my view, the golden age is neither behind nor ahead of us but within us and can be renewed at any time. We can transform ourselves and
society here and now as well as work towards a more harmonious relationship with nature and a more egalitarian, free and sustainable future.

There has not only been a new wave of anarchist thinking but a vibrant renewal of the anarchist movement. Indeed, the most creative energy for radical politics is now coming from anarchism with its libertarian spirit, tactic of direct action, decentralized and horizontal methods of organization and traditions of mutual aid and solidarity.
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As we have seen, most contemporary anarchists have given up the hope of large-scale revolution and armed insurrection and think in terms of protest and resistance. They are interested in creating practical experiments of anarchy in action in the present. Only a few still advocate ‘class war’ and ‘bashing the rich’: the Class War Federation in Britain, for instance, has gone into decline after a split in 1997. Alfredo Bonanno might call for armed insurrection and John Zerzan refuse to condemn the ‘counter-terror’ of the Unabomber, but they are distinctly minority voices.
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As an Australian anarchist pamphlet puts it,
You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship.

Propaganda by the deed, guerrilla warfare and insurrection may still be contemplated by those living under dictatorships but seem hardly appropriate in representative democracies. Nevertheless, anarchists reject political representation in favour of direct and participatory democracy and have generally boycotted parliamentary elections. ‘Don’t Vote. It Only Encourages Them!’ they say. ‘What is the point of voting when the same old politicians always get in?’ Bookchin however encouraged people to engage in municipal elections and John Clark has argued that in certain circumstances tactical voting may be beneficial if candidates are trying to educate rather than gain power, especially at local elections.

Propaganda by the word — raising awareness through education and persuasion — continues apace. Following in the tradition of Paul Goodman and Colin Ward, it advocates that anarchy is an existing tendency in society and the task of anarchists is to develop its potential in a web of free associations for the realization of human desires. They do not simply dream and do nothing but work in the realm of everyday life to expand freedom, equality and solidarity.

Contemporary anarchists also are involved in different forms of resistance and protest against globalization, capitalism and war. As the demonstrations at recent international meetings of governments and economic corporations have shown, tactics range from non-violent civil disobedience to direct action, such as squatting, sabotage, monkey-wrenching, urban
climbing, defacing ads, reclaiming the streets, parties and the destruction of business property. Symbolic actions are intended to raise awareness and confidence, often taking the form of bearing witness (such as a vigil) or obstruction (as in marches or sit-downs). ‘Critical mass’ actions by small groups attempt to trigger off a sustained chain reaction among the wider populace. Carnival, festival, theatre and pranks are used to deconstruct the coercive forces of the State. A magical process of
détournement
overturns conventional ideas and misappropriates the images and symbols of the Society of the Spectacle. It helps to release individuals from their ‘mind-forged manacles’ (Blake) and the ‘spooks’ in their head (Stirner) in order to become more truly themselves.