Anarcho-Primitivism - Questions and Debate

I have no problem with the study of 'primitive' cultures and tribal societies to inform us of alternative ways of organising, nihilista (though you seem to presume "success" on their part, when it often may have been little more than survival - it depends how you define success I suppose). In fact I think it is probably a very useful exercise. If Primitivism means that them all power to it. It's when Primitivists start talking in favour of "the destruction of civillisation" and against technology that they depart from anarchism as I understand it. Anarchism does not just opposse the current form of society, but it builds alternatives in the here and now, pointing out and encouraging already existing forms of non-heirarchical organisation.

blackcladmessenger: the Primitivst article that led me to my current understanding that it has nothing, or at least very little, to do with anarchism was the first "Green and Black Bulletin" in the current issue of Freedom (which can also be viewed here). Perhaps it is just a deficiency of the article itself, but it puts forward no alternatives to civilisation, technology or language. Anarchism as I understand it puts forward, in general terms, serious alternatives to the current hierarchical forms of organisation.

Then there is the whole "Primitivists using computers" critisism. If they are serious in their anti-technology views then even using printing presses or pens is self contradictaory. The counter argument I have read to this (from John Zezeran) is that it is no different from anarchists who try to use the mainstream media to get their views across, or who wear anything but fair-trade shoes etc. This seems like a rediculous argument to me, as in an anarchist society there will still be shoes and the media, but organised and produced in a non-exploititive and non-heirarchical way. The Primitivist analogy would be to make sure there were no shoes or media (which they may actually aim for, I don't know).

I don't intend any of this to insult you. My knowledge of Primitivism is limited. If I have missunderstood Primitivism or your argument then please tell me how. I am genuinely intreaged.

I think in terms of 'current'(relatively speaking) anarchist writers only Zerzan and Ward have brought new and, for me, exciting ideas into view. I dont agree with either 100% but i think they are two of the most valuable anarchist writers of present.

As for taking Chomsky's view of language over Zerzan's... I do disagree with Zerzan, although i also recognise that language has been used to dominate. But at the same time I have read some of Chomsky's linguistic work and found no real/strong political current within it, and therefore i find Zerzan's work on it more politically valuable even if I disagree with much of it.

As for Primitivism not having a set blueprint about the future, I think that is a vital part of primitivist thought(i could be heavily wrong). As the struggle develops we will be able to see what is forming, and as anarchists we will fight the struggle with anarchist values. But for anyone to have an absolute 'plan' of how the future will be formed i find ridiculous.

O.K, at the risk of sounding like a total ignoramus...I havent read much primitivist literature in depth, so my idea of it is based on the critiques and reviews I've read in anarchist and left wing publications, and also I suppose I studied Roussea (is that how you spell it?) briefly at uni though I reckon that was something different.....but.....

I reckon I don't beleive in primitivism because I genuinely need technology in order to be happy. Example....I love listening to music. I like to get the best sound quality etc and that takes technology. Half the music I listen to is made with sophisticated technological machines. The clubs and bars I go to rely on technology. Technology maked the clothes I like to wear and the food I like to eat, my favourite sofas, pretty much all of my favourite films would have been impossible to make without huge technology budgets.

I mean, do these people honestly go out into the streets and try to convince people to give up absolutely everything?Doesn't it seem a bit harsh?Can you imagine having to physically go and catch your dinner every day?work your ass off in a feild without even some tunes on or any nice cold bottles of beer for when youve finished?

It seems like a mad cultist idea to me, but I suppose perhaps I just havent understood their standpoint properly.

anarcho-primitive / anarcho-civ stuff attempts to critique the totality - the state, work, hierarchy etc did not just happen spontaneously. If we do not understand the roots of hierarchy how the hell can we stop it reoccurring. There is nothing to believe in - it is not ideology, there are no catchy slogans - it is a critique, an attempt to challenge our socialization, everything we take for granted as a natural given. And yes a handy starting point for this is the fact that other societies have different assumptions, that does not mean we can / should become them, we are not them.

Time is a good example of an assumption, the division of time into a linear progression of units - time for working, time for consuming, time for family etc. Schooled to be as responsive as Pavlovs dogs. Could not this division be something to do with hierarchy? Shouldn't we investigate and critique it? As for technology, it is not a thing, but a system. A system that needs 'resources' - human, animal, vegetable, mineral. The system needs us all to feed it. It is not neutral. It cannot exist without hierarchy - I would be interested to know how this problem can be overcome, in a society of freedom & anarchy. A society where happiness must come from meeting your authentic desires, not a pseudo contentment induced by the palliatives currently sold to us.

Societies had/have alcohol and music and something to sit on without 'technology' - whats more they appear to have had fun. Within civilization (not just ours but any civilization - they've only been around for 8,000 years, but theres been a few, and they've all collapsed), people fought tooth and nail to not be enclosed by it, once in they work much more than they do outside of it, their time is no longer there own, their desires are directed to that of the civilization. (read fredy perlman 'against his-story, against leviathan')

Just a couple of questions - how is simply getting rid of the state gonna create an anarchist society? Everything will be run by us? So as well as having to work in a shitty factory, a human cog in the technological syetem, I'm gonna have to go to meetings about work? about health? about sewarage? about pollution? about transport? about housing? about community? Thats a free society? that won't create an oligarchy of people that like meetings? And if we still have mass society, what do we do with the people that don't want to be the same as us - throw them in prison? execute them?

Without at least laying out a bare outline of the type of society you want it reads more like rebellion for rebellions sake than a well thought out critique.

Funnily enough this is something I was thinking about today (while I was stuck in work watching my life tick away). Yes we live in a hierarchical society but wasn't society still structured hierarchically before capitalism? Feudalism was hierarchical, Church rule was hierarchical. So I can see your point about hierarchy.

But what was different was the concept and use of 'time'. People woke and went about their thing during daylight then slept during darkness. The seasons dictated the availability of food. Okay maybe a slightly romanticised view but you get the picture.

With capitalism that changed. Specifically with the introduction of time management and the 'time and motion' studies originating from Taylorism and perfected by the production lines of Fordism. Now it's reached the point where our time is broken down into shorter and shorter segments and we're left feeling that we don't have enough time in the day to do what we need to, or what we're told we need to. No wonder there's road rage, air rage and a lot of generalised rage against other people. We're being pushed to work faster, to consume faster and to increase our pace of life beyond our internal evolutionary 'clock'.

I think this explains a lot of the frustration, anger, neurosis and general confusion of modern day life, but I don't think it's necessarily a direct consequence of hierarchy. I think it can be traced directly to the greed and exploitation inherent in capitalism.

Surely technology is just human innovation. The problem is that under capitalism human innovation is ruthlessly exploited by the minority for their profit rather than for the good of us all. After all dyeing a piece of cotton with a colourant from plants or flowers is a form of technology.

I really am sympathetic to most of what you're saying. I think you're right about the need to challenge our socialisationbut I think you're directing your analysis at the wrong target. IMO it's not civilisation that's to blame, it's a particular form of economic organisation - capitalism, and a particular form of political organisation - statism or representative democracy combined with a particular form of social organisation - hierarchy. To simply use a blanket term like civilisation ignores the intricacies of how we're oppressed, and so how we can free ourselves.

Which brings us back to my first point. What form of society do you want? How do you think we can create a society which can meet our needs as individuals and as social beings?

This should be obvious for all except those that want to find people/ideologies etc to follow. The construct of Zerzan as some kind of AP icon is part his making through his use of the mainstream media etc, but also the fault of detractors from AP including 'leftist' anarchists. Their wish seems to be to make anti-civ ideas into a crass characature in the hope this will stop people wanting to find out about anti-civ ideas.

As for 'either GA', well clearly Booths GA has nothing whatsoever to do with a critique of civilization. Booth has never been an AP'ist, and has indeed writen at critique of AP (link available on the Insurgent Desire website), 'The Destruction of Civilization' GA has a policy of printing what it receives and let the readers make up there own minds (see latest issues editorial #70) - so not everything in it will necessarily be 'primitivist' - Hence the confusion between Booths Irrationalists stuff and AP.

Interestingly some (addmitedly not many) seem to be happy to support Booths GA despite him being the author of the Irrationalists stuff, making it look like it was the anti-civ stuff they objected to and the Irrationalists piece was just a handy thing to latch onto.

As for reading more than GA and Zerzan, well certainly - there is David Watsons stuff esp 'Against the Megamachine', John Moore, Green Anarchy (U.S zine that many here find more palatable than GA - although equally controversial in the states eg AKUSA refuse to distro it coz it 'not anarchist'), 'Anarchy - AJDA' is a good zine, Species Traitor, Disorderly Conduct and some Spanish, Italian and Turkish language zines as well.

Unfortunately a lot of english language AP stuff is still american (well US!). Maybe the new 'Green and Black' bulletin in Freedom will be a good development for UK anti-civ/AP discussion.

As for the Unabomber - well both the Brighton ABC and Earth Liberation Prisoners websites list Ted K as a POW. As do Green Anarchy and Green Anarchist. Both publications have also published articles critiqueing the Unabomber and 'Industrial Society and It's Future'.

Anarchism has always opposed the factory system and the break down of work into alienated labour. It seems to me that much 'primitivist' thought is a continuation of that.

We also have to ask -- how will more technology help us break down the division of labour and help us replace it with a fully democratic production process?

Some thech might be useful -- e.g. if you want to make your own clothes then a sewing machine is essential! Other tech is simply there for the benefit of 'efficiency', and only contributes to alienation.

The key for me is that any tech that we use should only be introduced if it's actually going to empower us.

I'm against blind faith in techonological 'progress' but I also don't want to sign up to a blanket ban on all tech.

Could i just say that anyone -- primmie or anti-primmie -- who talks about 'taking us backwars' is talking non-sense. WQe can't go backwards, because any society we create is affected by the years of history that preceded it. We can only go forwards, but we can choose where we go, and some of the places we want to go might look like some og the good times out ancestors had

I'm coming late into the discussion, but I've got to say I support technology for it's capacity to fight what I see as unnecessary suffering such as illness and diseases, as well as relieving us of labour which could be done faster and more efficiently, freeing time for us to interact. I am (of course) against the capitalist expression of this technology which is about technology-owning-bosses turning the workers into a profit factory, which is where I see the problem.

I just don't understand the connection between technology and the division of time as this seems to be entirely based on the fact that they both increased around the industrial revolution (and ever after), which is quite a long way from nearing a conclusive proof of theory.

Phoebe

Does organic necessarily mean giving no thought to the future? I'd say the opposite. For example organic forms of producing vegetables and organic animal rearing most definitely have one eye on the future at all times. I can see the point you're making about vanguards leading, and heading, the march to the 'brighter future'. But I don't believe in that kind of leadership or indeed the march any more than you do. That's one of the things that defines us as anarchists. But if I was to deny I sometimes picture another way of living, living as opposed to existing, then I'd be lying. Not an ideology, or a hard and fast prescription for a better way of living, just some ideas based on my life experience. I think we should be encouraging everyone to have and share their ideas of a different society to what we have now.

The use of technology isn't neutral, it's carefully regulated, controlled and used by those in positions of authority and power to ensure their dominance. But technology, human innovation, isn't a system, and how can it be a tool unless we allow it to be?

That's unfair. I didn't mention capitalism in a vacuum. Capitalism, parliamentary politics and the state, and relations based on hierarchy. For me the problem with using terms like civilisation is that you lose lots of people along the way. It's too broad a term, it's like telling people they're life isn't worth living. I think it's negative and dangerous politics.

Yep burn all the blueprints From the individual outwards ---->

asa said:

Well there has been heaps of research done into sedentry lifestyles and the rise of agriculture and domesticated animals and the diceases that came from adopting that way of life. If i get a chance i'll look a few of them up. Maybe Paul Sheperd's stuff but can't be sure. Certainly industrialism has created a whole host of cancers etc. Zerzan has done a lot on mental ailings of civilization eg 'The Mass Psychology of Misery'

This was said in the Fifth Estate:

Although the role and prominence of technology within an anti-civ critique is part of the ongoing development of these strains of theory/praxis the above maybe useful for the purpose of this discussion.

tulley-fae-glesga said:

asa if the quote from the 'Primitivist Primer ' is simple minded then the quote from tulley-fae-glesga's post shows at least an equally simple minded technophillic love affair with the pursuit of technological progress.

This techno-determinism definitley doesnt seem to fit with the FE's ideas of using what we desire if it isn't at the expense of humanity (and the planet?). 'The Primitivist Primer' is just that a 'primer' is is intended as a simple introduction to AP ideas, as such it may well appear simplistic in parts, but only in the same way as all intro's to Anarchism tend to.

As for the huge range of 'stuff' then we could discuss specific manifestations of technology but i fear that would lead us to the 'but i want a fridge in my house' conversation I have had many times. A question to those that are PRO tech (rather than those who see the critiques of tech but are not 'anti' tech) What level of impact on our environment etc would you be happy to accept to have a certain type/level of technology?

If you read my post I definately did not insist that "a complex technological system reliant on high levels of division of labour and specialisation would be needed." ;in order to create clothes etc.I said nothing of the sort. what I said was .."making clothes doesn't need to be shitty, as long as the workers making them are properly involved with the process and not just treated like machines".

By this I meant that high levels of division of labour are capitalist inventions, making clothes is only shitty work because the labour is repetative and alienated, but it could be organised differently, without heirachy. You seem to think that humans are incapable of this non-heirachical organisation so they shouldn't try to produce things in large numbers.

As for wanting the highest quality equiptment to listen to my music, you make it sound like this is somehow selfish of me! Are you saying that only unjust societies are capable of producing decent stereos?

Too right I include sofas in the list of things that make me happy...They are perfectly capable of existing without IKEA however...

No of course I don't know how to make all that stuff. Thats what I was talking about earlier when I said

"The point is that if we all work together we can have the good things in life without us all having to literally make everything ourselves."

If you are reliant on yourself to make everything then surely you will create a new heirachy; i.e a heirachy based on who has the best skills and is capable of most work. Fair enough if you can make your own beer and grow your own food, but many can't for many reasons. What about people in wheelchairs etc?....technology has given these people a chance to live independant lives, but you would deny them this.

I am not suggesting that we develop technology for it's own sake forever at the expense of the environment, obviously we would need to sensibly balance waste and production. The point you are missing is that it is capitalism which produces endless surplus, capitalism that perpetuates wasteful practises and ruins the environment, not technology. We are free to use technology however we want, and it is only this wastefull system which makes it seem like like a seperate entity, divorced from the human beings who control it. Capitalists would like us to see technology as an independant and unstopable force because it gets them off the hook, it draws attention away from the fact that it is they who are deliberately steering technology in this destructive direction.

Would these technologies run in an anti-capitalist way be better?

I think the answer is definately yes. There wouldn't be the demand for useless items of consumerism because there would be no powerful advertising apperatus in place to convince people that they want things for a start. Technology in a non-heirachical society would not be what sells as it is now, but rather it's production would hinge on how well it does it's job, how economically it can be made and how much waste it causes. People could make balanced and informed choices about the technology in their area because they will be involved in the process at a basic level.

We wouldn't have the object fetishism prevelant in society, and we wouldn't have 'status' items being manufactured to make the elite feel good about themselves. We wouldn't create vast excesses of products. We wouldn't be in direct competition with each other to create technology, in fact we would be helping each other- meaning that things would be made quicker and more efficiently.

Of course, I can't describe exactly how people should use technology in a future stateless society as I don't have a time machine or a brain capable of calculating all the pros and cons of every technological advance, but I'm pretty certain they're gonna do something with it. The possibilities will be explored by those people at that time, but I just don't see a reason to be so pessimistic as to believe that it will inevitably lead to disaster. One thing's for certain, they're highly unlikely to be up for chucking it all on a bonfire and turning into a nation of home-brew drinking farm-labourers.

If all domination originated with capitalism how does that explain patriarchy, religion and the domination of nature?

Maybe this is less about technology/anti-tech, and more about how we see anarchy? For me anarchy is more than about a stateless society...

John Moore says in his 'Prophets of the New World':

from http://www.tao.ca/~lemming/johnmoore/prophets.htm

For me anarchy is about finding the roots of power and domination so that we can find out how to destroy them. This will of course include destroying the state and capitalism. But i'm sure that it will also include much more.

tulley-fae-glesga says:

But what I call a pointless consumer item others may think is essential to there happiness. You have already noted quality hi-fi equipment and sofas as the things that make you happy - but i think of them as pretty insubsequential to my life compared to a fullfilling unmediated more authentic existance. There may not be the surpluses there is at present - but industrial agriculture is industrial agriculture, etc etc.

So much posted so far has been about 'people' or rather people from the global north - what about others? What about the ecology of the planet and all life on it? What about the few primitive people left? What about the indigenous people that are being forced from the land that is there home so that is can be mined etc?

phoebe says:

No i don't shit actually im very analy retented! Blatantly i wasn't talking about compostable human waste when i talk of pollution. Nor breathing. I mentioned mining natural 'resources', plastics etc.

Appologies for not replying to your comment re health - im glad you brought it up - but it was only day before yestreday and i havent had time to post more than quick replies to other points. I have a day off work so i'll think about it.

How the fuck can huge windfarms not be any different from wild nature? They also kill a lot of bird life.

The connection wasn't just with technology but with 'civilisation' - ie some people here thought we'd live a life in anarchy if we just got rid of capitalism. i was trying to open the discussion out from just technology. Which as i said is only one part of any AP critique. You show a very sophisticated understanding of primitive societies. As for domestication! Fuck me civilisation has been the one to domesticate! Plants, animals, the land and many people to a certain extent too.

Do you plan to run a technological society on human shit and windfarms? Do you intend to re-wild any areas currently ecologically devastated or just fill them with turbines? Do you expect other anarchists not to sabotage these wind farms?

tulley-fae-glesga you made some snide remark about sitting back drinking homebrew and being a farm labourser. You obviously missed the jist of anti-civilisation -ie sedentry agriculture haveing quite a lot to do with the rise of civ, and of authoritrian power structures, domestication and diceases associated with living a sedentry life.

Phoebe you mentioned isolated survivalist hunter-gatherers - if a component for some important medcine could only be made with something that had to displace/destroy the habitat of a tribe living an isolated existance either through going there and taking civilisaed disceases or through taking it from the environment or whatever. Would you be up for still taking it or not? Addmitedly that is a rather randon hyperthetical situation, but id be interested.