o_195qg5dto17o4rbc85q1ge61i84a.pdf

96
anarchism: a beginner’s guide
‘If we know what’s good for us, we do.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we know Michael the Archangel is always right.’ 16
The issue of technology has also occupied anarchists for some
time, but the emergence of primitivism has altered the terms of
anarchist debate. Kropotkin’s approach to the issue was to find ways
of using technology that would facilitate the expression of mutual
aid. The solution he offered in Fields, Factories and Workshops was to
reorganize production on a local level, integrating agriculture and
industry so that each area could produce for its own needs. 17 It
required the imaginative application of advanced technology –
particularly electric power – and the introduction of intensive
farming methods. Bookchin has different priorities – social ecology,
not mutual aid. Yet his model of anarchy anticipates a similar
restructuring of the economy and the application of technology. In
social ecology, production is driven by needs rather than consumer
wants. The present impetus ‘to mass-produce goods in highly mechanized
installations will be vastly diminished by the communities’
overwhelming emphasis on quality and permanence’. But communes
recycle their organic waste, ‘integrate solar, wind, hydraulic,
and methane-producing installations’.
Zerzan’s and Perlman’s solution is to abandon civilization, culture
and technology altogether. Though both writers deny that
primitivism demands the abolition of tools, both also – particularly
Zerzan – tap into the study of stateless societies to highlight the
advantages that the abandonment of technology will bring. As John
Fliss suggests, primitivist arguments are designed to provide ‘a
counterweight to technology. Primitivism as a whole is the position
of a counter-force to technological progress’. 18 This conclusion
marks a radical departure from other forms of anarchist thought.
For example, when Tolstoy looked forward to anarchy, he argued
that ‘culture, useful culture will not be destroyed. It will certainly not
be necessary for people to revert to tillage of the land with sticks, or
to lighting-up with torches’. 19 More recently, a correspondent to
Black Flag suggests: the aim of anarcho-syndicalist struggle is to turn
technology into ‘a universal resource’. Its destruction in the name of
anarchy ‘would be ... disastrous’. Quoting Bakunin the writer concludes,
such an act would ‘condemn all humanity – which is infinitely
too numerous today to exist ... on the simple gifts of nature ... to
... death by starvation’. 20 Even Thoreau distinguished himself from