Robert C. Elliott died in 1981 in the very noon of his scholarship, just after completing his book The Literary Persona. He was the truest of teachers, the kindest of friends. This paper was prepared to be read as the first in a series of lectures at his college of the University of California, San Diego, honoring his memory.
We use the French word lecture, “reading,” to mean reading and speaking aloud, a performance; the French call such a performance not a lecture but a conference. The distinction is interesting. Reading is a silent collaboration of reader and writer, apart; lecturing, a noisy collaboration of lecturer and audience, together. The peculiar patchwork form of this paper is my attempt to make it a “conference,” a performable work, a piece for voices. The time and place, a warm April night in La Jolla in 1982, are past, and the warm and noisy audience must be replaced by the gentle reader; but the first voice is still that of Bob Elliott.
The following is a response to an article written some time back by Andrew Flood (hereafter often referred to as “the author”). The article is in circulation again on one of the social networking/bookmarking/link-sharing sites (reddit.com) which I peruse. Although this response is somewhat late, I feel it's still relevant and will remain so. I should also point out that I do not primarily identify myself as a Primitivist, but I do see much worth in the ideas of anarcho-primitivism. My response starts and continues by taking on quoted statements made in the original work by Andrew Flood: Is primitivism realistic? An anarchist reply to John Zerzan and others.
Since when was the “basic purpose” of anarchism “the creation of a free mass society?” And if that was the simplified basic purpose, why does it have to remain so? Maybe these are word games the author is playing, but a free society doesn't necessarily have to be a “mass” society and I personally could see complications arising in a mass society that was too large. This would be especially true if the mass society was constantly encroaching on bioregions and cultures that could not survive the intrusion. What does freedom really mean if your version of mass industrialism imposes itself as far and as densely populated as possible? More to do with “faith than reality” indeed.
We all have basic assumptions about the world, human nature, and the relationship between the two. We are taught certain perspectives as children, and this recieved wisdom forms the common ground for communication. Ultimately, when we see the whole picture, our major disagreements are squabbles over details. Should gays be allowed to marry? We assume here a common understanding of what “marriage” means. Should we raise or lower taxes? We assume the legitimacy of government, and of taxes at all!
What happens when the disagreement occurs at an even more basic level? Like, whether or not our civilization is even a good thing?
The case is complex, but in truth no more complex than our “common ground” of unexamined, recieved wisdom. In many cases, it is much less complex. But it is different. Since forming these ideas, I have faced an increasing obstacle in communication. Unspoken, differing assumptions force me routinely to return to the same arguments again and again. So I resolved some time ago to crystalize my philosophy into a single, comprehensive work, which could from a base for further communication.
We present this publication attempting to answer the questions that first arise around anti-technology and also with the aim of raising awareness of the subject.
We recommend you read these texts in the woods, where the fanzine and we belong.
Make as many copies as you want, send it to anyone to whom it may interest.
Anti-technology is a non-profit publication, the price, if any, can’t exceed printing costs.
Warning! We didn't find any “native” speaker to proofread the english version.
A rabid dog doesn’t stop being dangerous simply because you change its collar, you can’t educate, tame or cure the dog’s rabies. We can look back and remember when the dog was good and friendly, but that does not solve the problem, we can look ahead and imagine how nice it will be when the dog stops having rabies. But if instead of being distracted by the past or the future we look to the crude present then the best decision is to kill the dog as soon as possible.
A new version of the Library on .torrent (what's this?) has been released.
Download TheAnarchistLibrary-2010-02-24.torrent (magnet link)
Thanks to http://mynetblog.com/ for seeding and tracking
The size of the archive, which is a full mirror of the site (executable excluded), is about 1.1 Gb.
Please be patient during the download and don't forget to seed (sensible ratio should be 1:1)
Of course the site will continue to be updated. Stay tuned!
Listen to the edifying story of a pretty little white ass, candidate in the capital. It isn’t a Mother Goose rhyme, or a story from Le Petit Journal. It’s a true story for the old kiddies who still vote:
A burro, son of the country of LaFontaine and Rabelais, an ass so white that M. Vervoort gluttonously ate it, aspired — in the electoral game — to a place as legislator. The day of the elections having arrived this burro, the very type of a candidate, answering to the name of Worthless, pulled off a last minute maneuver.
On this hot Sunday morning in May, when the people rushed to the polling places, the white ass, the candidate Worthless, perched on a triumphal wagon and, pulled along by voters, traversed Paris, his good city.
Upright on his hoofs, ears to the wind, proudly emerging from his vehicle gaudily painted with electoral posters — a vehicle in the shape of an urn — the head high between the water glass and the presidential bell, he passed through the anger, the bravos and the gibes.
Democracy reposes upon a neutralization of antagonisms relatively weak and free; it excludes all explosive condensation. . . the only free society full of life and force, the sole free society is the bi or polycephal society that gives to the fundamental antagonisms of life a constant explosive outlet, but limited to the richest forms. The duality or the multiplicity of heads tends to realize in the same movement the acephalous character of existence, for the principle even of the head is reduction to unity, reduction of the world to God.
— Acephale, January 1937
I consider all the acts of the “avant-gardes” in their supposed succession. They all come out with an injunction, with a commandment: a commandment regarding how to understand them. The “avant-gardes” demand to be treated in a certain fashion; I do not believe that they ever were anything else, all told, than this demand, and the submission to this demand.
A new wave of radicalization is spreading around the world. Federations of anarchists are being organized in the U.S and Canada, and in other countries. The ‘platformist’ current within international anarchism, with its emphasis on the need for anarchists to organize themselves, is having worldwide effects. In these conditions, it is not surprising that there should be an interest in the last major attempt to build an anarchist federation in North America: the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (L&R). Founded in 1989, it lasted to 1998, almost ten years, with branches in Mexico (Amor y Rabia) and in English-speaking Canada.
It came out of a very amorphous anarchist movement, whose main continental organization had been almost yearly ‘gatherings’. In various cities around the U.S. and Canada, anarchists would get together, attend workshops, talk with each other, eat vegetarian food, play together, engage in ‘pagan rites’, and then go home. Decisions were not made and lasting structures were not set up.
In the days before man had completely established his domination over the animal world, the poultry of a certain country, unnamed in any record, met in solemn conference in the largest hall they could hire for their money: the period was serious, for it was drawing near Christmas, and the question in debate partook of the gravity of the times; for, in short, various resolutions, the wording of which has not come down to us were to be moved on the all important subject, ‘with what sauce shall we be eaten?’ (William Morris, Justice, 19 January 1884)
The cascading set of economic maladies colloquially referred to as “the credit crunch” reveals with all too painful clarity the absurdity of both the dominant capitalist society and the lives we live within it. That global production and distribution should come to depend on reckless debt and the trading of such debt starkly demonstrates yet again how the capitalist economy exists outside the control and good sense of the individuals whose labour, creativity and desires it appropriates. That we did nothing of substance to challenge the absurdities of the autonomous economy, or even went so far as to pursue its delusive promises with relish, is one more reminder, for those who need it, of the timidity and nullity of the way we pretend to live.
Submission to domination is enforced not solely, nor even most significantly, through blatant repression, but rather through subtle manipulations worked into the fabric of everyday social relationships. These manipulations — ingrained in the social fabric not because domination is everywhere and nowhere, but because the institutions of domination create rules, laws, mores and customs that enforce such manipulations — create a logic of submission, an often unconscious tendency to justify resignation and subservience in one’s everyday relations in the world. For this reason, it is necessary for those who are serious about developing an anarchist insurrectional project to confront this tendency wherever it appears — in their lives, their relationships and the ideas and practices of the struggles in which they participate. Such a confrontation is not a matter of therapy, which itself partakes of the logic of submission, but of defiant refusal. It requires a subversion of the existent, a development of different ways of relating to ourselves, each other, the world and our struggles, ways that clear reflect our determination to refuse all domination and to reappropriate our lives here and now. I am talking here of a real revolution of everyday life as the necessary basis for a social revolution against this civilization founded on domination and exploitation. The following essays appeared in Willful Disobedience as the series “Against the Logic of Submission”. By no means do they exhaust the question, but I think they provide a basis for discussion as to how we can create ourselves, our relationships and our struggle as our own in defiance of all domination.
the empire strikes back...
It was only a matter of time; protest at the contemporary University, and pretty soon the entire state apparatus comes crashing down upon you. At first, it seems absurd — the federal government of the most powerful nation in the world, and the worlds’ largest police force, against a bunch of students. Yet after some thought, this attack begins to make sense. In totalitarianism, there is complete, unmediated control by the totality, by the state and commodity forms. In our society, this complete control still exists, only it is channeled through a complex system of institutions, mediated and obscured by what we might call an interface. In our society, we might call this interface liberalism. The importance of liberal institutions, of the New School, Berkley and Santa Cruz, arguably the most progressively liberal academies in the United States, becomes increasingly apparent.
Author's Note: The war between Israel and Hezballah is temporarily over. The left has taken a range of positions on the Israeli-Lebanese war. Anarchists have opposed the U.S.-Israeli aggression, pointing out the reactionary nature of both sides in the war. However, many have tended to equate the two sides, to treat them as equally bad, and to call for opposing the war on both sides. While there is a good deal of confusion on this issue among anarchists, it is my impression that most have failed to support the oppressed against the oppressor in this war.
* * * * *
The war between Israel (with full backing by the U.S.) and Hezballah (and the rest of Lebanon) is over — temporarily. “Temporarily” because no major issue has been settled, particularly Israel’s colonialist role in the Middle East. Meanwhile the war between the U.S. and Iraq has intensified, while the Iraqi sectarian civil war also increases. The U.S.-Afghanistan war continues. And there is good evidence that the Bush administration intends to attack Iran. Peace is not at hand.
In all unsuccessful social upheavals there are two terrors: the Red — that is, the people, the mob; the White — that is, the reprisal.
When a year ago to-day the lightning of the White Terror shot out of that netherest blackness of Social Depth, the Spanish Torture House, and laid in the ditch of Montjuich a human being who but a moment before had been the personification of manhood, in the flower of life, in the strength and pride of a balanced intellect, full of the purpose of a great and growing undertaking, — that of the Modern Schools, — humanity at large received a blow in the face which it could not understand.
Stunned, bewildered, shocked, it recoiled and stood gaping with astonishment. How to explain it? The average individual — certainly the average individual in America — could not believe it possible that any group of persons calling themselves a government, let it be of the worst and most despotic, could slay a man for being a teacher, a teacher of modern sciences, a builder of hygienic schools, a publisher of text-books. No: they could not believe it. Their minds staggered back and shook refusal. It was not so; it could not be so. The man was shot, — that was sure. He was dead, and there was no raising him out of the ditch to question him. The Spanish government had certainly proceeded in an unjustifiable manner in court-martialing him and sentencing him without giving him a chance at defense. But surely he had been guilty of something; surely he must have rioted, or instigated riot, or done some desperate act of rebellion; for never could it be that in the twentieth century a country of Europe could kill a peaceful man whose aim in life was to educate children in geography, arithmetic, geology, physics, chemistry, singing, and languages.
Independently of the reactions towards the right [which took place in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917] there also occurred, during and after the same period, a series of movements in the opposite direction. These were revolutionary movements, which fought the Bolshevik power in the name of true liberty and of the principles of the Social Revolution which that power had scoffed at and trampled underfoot.
Indeed, even within the ranks of the government and of the Communist Party itself, movements of opposition and revolt were provoked by the stifling statism and centralism, the terrifying tendency towards bureaucracy, the flagrant social impotence and the shameless violence of the Bolsheviks.
It was thus that, in the summer of 1918, the Left Social-Revolutionaries, who until then had participated in the government, left it, broke with the Bolsheviks, and declared against them. They soon succumbed under the blows of repression.
Alienation is a concept frequently talked about in anarchist circles. Clearly, domination and exploitation can only develop in conjunction with alienation, so such discussion is important. But it is necessary to focus this discussion in order to make it useful to the anarchist project of destroying the present order and creating new ways of living.
I have always said that the revolt against the present order of things originates in the individual desire to create one's life as one sees fit. This does not contradict the necessity for class struggle or the desire for communism, but rather provides a basis for clarifying the methods for carrying out this revolutionary project. In terms of the present matter, it provides a basis for understanding alienation and it s relationship to domination and exploitation.
Standing up on this hill, as the sun filters through the trees you occasionally catch the reflection of solar panels on the roofs of the houses beyond the wind farm. The gentle swishing of turbine blades is inaudible here, but the hum of a tractor is just perceptible as is sows next year’s bio fuel crop in the fields below...
Though the reality of alternative technology providing a “green” and sustainable life for us all in the 21st century may seem a long way off, may seem an almost impossible task of enormous proportions, it is becoming more widely accepted as a necessary step in the progress of our industrial society. It is, however, rarely seen for the sham it is.
For decades the Irish State and many Irish people have been consistently racist in their treatment of the Traveller population. This has led to a situation where the infant mortality rate among Travellers is three times higher than that of the settled community, 70 — 80% of all adult Travellers are illiterate and over 1,000 families live on unserviced sites without access to such basics as running water, electricity, refuse collection or fire protection. Travellers are treated by State services, and by many people, as Ireland's `untouchables'; and anti-Traveller protests have been an all too frequent occurrence over the past number of years.
Since the end of June almost 1,000 people whose journeys originated in Britain or in the North have been refused leave to enter the 26-County State. (RTE 9p.m. News, Sat. 11 October) This is an average of over 8 people a day being turned away from our “cead mile failte” shores. The Sunday Tribune of September 7th reports that a 20-year old black English tourist, who has been visiting relatives on both sides of the border since he was a child, has recently received a letter from a garda immigration officer informing him that he was prevented from entering the Republic.
The origin of modern science in the 16th and 17th centuries corresponds with the origins of modern capitalism and the industrial system. From the beginning, the worldview and methods of science have fit in perfectly with the need of the capitalist social system to dominate nature and the vast majority of human beings. Francis Bacon made it clear that science was not an attempt to understand nature as it is, but to dominate it in order to twist it to the ends of humanity — in this case meaning the current rulers of the social order. In this light, science must necessarily be subjected to social analysis by anyone claiming to call the present social reality into question.
Science is not simply a matter of observing the world, experimenting with its elements and drawing reasonable conclusions. Otherwise, we would have to recognize children, so-called primitives and a good many animals as excellent scientists. But the practical experiments carried out by all of us every day lack a few necessary factors, the first and most important of which is the concept of the universe as a single entity operating under universal, rational, knowable laws. Without this foundation, science cannot operate as such.
Central to anarchism is the belief that people can organize themselves to efficiently meet their needs, without top-down hierarchies, coercion, or rewards and punishments. People will make mistakes, because we are imperfect, but we can learn from our mistakes and improve over time. This is the belief in freedom. Anarchism is usually presented as the most extreme form of a belief in freedom. It has often been said that anarchism is a synthesis of classical liberalism — carried to its extreme — and socialism. Another historical name for anarchism (and antistatist Marxism) is “libertarian socialism.”
Yet there is a certain amount of ambiguity among anarchists about freedom. There are topics on which some — many — anarchists reject the pro-freedom, libertarian, position.
By imperialism we mean a situation of external domination where the ruling class of one country dominates the people and territory of another country. The key imperialist powers are the Western States (USA, West Europe, Japan) and their ruling classes, and the dominant States of the former Soviet bloc (Russia and China).
Imperialism has been a central part of capitalism and the modern State since these structures of oppression emerged 500 years ago. Two factors account for this. Firstly, the imperialist ruling classes wanted to obtain cheap labour and raw materials and new markets for manufactured goods in the Third World (Africa, South Asia, Latin America, Middle East, East Europe). Secondly, the Western States and their ruling classes competed with one another for territory and strategic advantage (such as keeping rival ruling classes away from cheap minerals).
“In South Africa normal national or ruling-class behaviour is rendered uniquely controversial by the colour dimension.”
— Peregrine Worsthorne, right-wing assistant editor of the Sunday Telegraph, May 13, 1984
Quoted on the cover of a radical pamphlet in 1984, this seems particularly apt now that the “colour dimension” has been ‘virtually’ eradicated from South African politics. The normal national ruling-class behaviour of the ANC is, predictably, now every bit as horrific as its white predecessors.
However, clearly this was not predictable for some — which is indicative of some of the weaknesses of the period from 1976 to the early 90s. The global ruling class, with the help of a section of the South African white rulers, having been faced with an increasingly united and violent opposition threatening its divide and rule tactics based on race, decided that race need no longer be its central method of divide and rule, and used the relative absence of critique of black parties, leaders and umbrella organisations (for organisations’ sake) — one of the movements weaknesses — as an opportunity to stop the revolution.
The world is facing a very serious environmental crisis. Key environmental problems include air pollution, the destruction of the ozone layer, vast quantities of toxic waste, massive levels of soil erosion, the possible exhaustion of key natural resources such as oil and coal, and the extinction of plants and animals on a scale not seen since the death of the dinosaurs 60 million years ago. We think that this crisis is likely to have catastrophic effects in the future. Even today, the negative effects of the crisis are evident in the form of growing deserts, increased rates of cancer, and the loss of plant species which could hold out cures for diseases for diseases such as AIDS etc.
We disagree with those environmentalists who blame the crisis on modern machine production. Many dangerous, environmentally destructive technologies and substances (for example, coal power stations, non-degradable plastics which do not rot in the ground) can be replaced with safer and sustainable industrial technologies (for example, solar technology, starch-based plastics). We think that modern forms of production have many potential advantages over small-scale craft production. Such as greatly increasing the number of essential products like bricks produced, and freeing people from unpleasant toil. We also disagree with the argument that says that workers and peasants cause the crisis by consuming “too many” resources. Most goods consumed in the world are consumed by the middle class and ruling class.
Our principal task herein is to examine and establish, to the extent of our ability, what is unknown or little known about the Russian Revolution.
We begin by emphasizing a fact which, without being ignored, is considered only superficially in the western world. This: In October, 1917, this revolution entered upon wholly new terrain — that of the great Social Revolution. Thus it advanced on a very special route which was totally unexplored.
It follows that the subsequent development of the Revolution assumed an equally new and original character. Therefore, our account will not resemble any of the existing histories of that revolt. Its general appearance, the factors it comprised, its very language, will change, taking on an unaccustomed and singular aspect.
Contemporary anarchists’ practical attitudes toward technology seem highly ambivalent, even contradictory. Our proverbial antiauthoritarian could pull up genetically modified crops before dawn, report on the action through e-mail lists and websites in the morning, fix her or his community’s wind-powered generator in the afternoon, and work part-time as a programmer after supper. Thus, on the one hand, we find anarchists involved in numerous campaigns and direct actions where the introduction of new technologies is explicitly resisted, from bio- and nanotechnology to technologies of surveillance and warfare. On the other hand, anarchists have been actively using and developing information and communication technologies (ICTs), as well as engaging in practical sustainability initiatives that involve their own forms of technological innovation.
“The heritage of revolutionary movements
can no longer form a tradition to safeguard...
or a program to realize,
but must become an arsenal to plunder
for the ongoing use of new revolutionaries.”
The history of revolt is probably as long as the history of domination and exploitation. There have always been those who will not submit, who will defy god and master even against the greatest odds. And this history of revolt includes significant social struggles, uprisings of the multitudes of the exploited to throw off their chains in social revolution. Over the past few hundred years, these social upheaval have helped to create a revolutionary awareness that has manifested particularly in anarchist and communist theory, social analysis and practice.
Although we argue that only the working class, working peasants and the poor can make the revolution, we do support the struggle of the students to transform the institutions of higher learning (the universities and technikons) despite the fact that such institutions typically train people for middle class jobs. We do so because we believe that the student struggle is progressive, because we are anti-racist, because working class and poor students are the main victims of the problems that exist in higher education, because we stand for the principle of free, democratic and open education for all, and because we want to recruit student militants to Anarcho-Syndicalist politics.
Historically, the universities and technikons have been characterised by massive racist inequalities. First, in the form of open segregation up until 1991 between “historically white” and “historically black” institutions. Secondly, in the form of racial discrimination within specific institutions: a lack of funding for Black students which perpetuates the inequalities of the past by financially excluding needy students; racism by some staff; inadequate academic support programmes top attack the legacy of “Bantu Education”; predominantly White administrative councils inherited from the past; racist violence by reactionary White students etc. These inequalities are the direct result of Apartheid-capitalism.
“What do we mean by respect for humanity? We mean the recognition of human right and human dignity in every man, of whatever race [or] colour ...”
Mikhail Bakunin, 1867, Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism, reprinted in S. Dolgoff (ed) Bakunin on Anarchism, 1971, Allen and Unwin, p147
“...Equal rights for all without distinction of sex or race...”
From the Pittsburg Manifesto, 1883, founding charter of the International Working Peoples Association, historic mass U.S. anarcho-syndicalist organisation. quoted in P. Avrich, 1984, The Haymarket Tragedy. Princeton University Press. Princteton, N.J. p. 75.
“Your revolutionary duty is to stifle all nationalist persecution by dealing ruthless with the instogators of anti-Semitic pogroms [racist attacks]...”
Freethought in America was an anti-clerical, anti-Christian movement which sought to separate the church and state in order to leave religious matters to the conscience and reasoning ability of the individual involved. Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912) was prominent both as a feminist and as a freethinker. The following article, reprinted from Benjamin Tucker's periodical Liberty, was originally delivered by de Cleyre as a lecture before the Boston Secular Society. It is an excellent example of the interrelationship between the individualist-feminist view of the church and of the state. In her essay “Sex Slavery,” de Cleyre reiterated this two-pronged attack. She wrote: “Let every woman ask herself, `Why am I the Slave of Man?' . . . There are two reasons why, and these are ultimately reducible to a single principle — the authoritarian supreme power GOD-idea, and its two instruments: the Church — that is, the priests — and the State — that is, the legislators.”
In recent years, the ideal of democracy has achieved global dominance. Organizations from the U.S. government to the EZLN to the Unite Nations call for more democracy on both the local and the global scale, and many revolutionaries let themselves be drawn into this chorus of bleating sheep and calling shepherds. A mythology develops in which the goddess Democracy is flanked on the one side by Liberty and on the other by Justice and together, it is said they will bring peace and prosperity to the world.
Reality, of course, never lives up to the myths by which it justifies itself. The ideas, perspectives and social systems promoted by the rulers of the present society are those that serve to maintain and expand their power. In this light, those who seek the destruction of the social order would do well to look at democracy with a cruel and penetrating eye in order to examine its real nature. I think we'd find this “goddess” to be, in fact, a shabby deceiver, wooing us into our enslavement, wed to the masters of power.
This book is dedicated to:
Edward Abbey 1927-1989
John Zaelit (Mr. Goodwrench) 1954-1986
Bill Turk (The Mad Engineer) 1953-1992
Wilderness needs no defense, only more defenders
Ecodefense is a historical artifact. It be argued that it is the most controversial environmental book ever published; more importantly, though, it is a key exhibit in the legal history of freedom of the press in the United States. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1791. It reads in part, “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” That enshrined freedom of the press and speech sets the United States of America apart from all other nations. No other country so jealously defends the right of its citizens to speak and publish controversial ideas.
