o_195qg5dto17o4rbc85q1ge61i84a.pdf

More documents

Recommendations

Info

anarchy 89 In our days ideas have changed, but the means of subsistence are no longer what they were in the Stone Age. Civilized man is not in the position of the savage family who have to choose between two evils: either to eat the aged parents or else all to get insufficient nourishment ... 3 When Kropotkin found examples of statelessness in the body of the state, he took a different position. Here he drew on a romantic view of the peasantry inherited from his pre-anarchist association with the Russian populist movement. He was also inspired by his exploratory work in Eastern Siberia, and the intimate knowledge he had gained as a geographer of the peoples who inhabited this remote region. Kropotkin’s experiences helped to convince him that the organization of village life could serve as the nucleus for postrevolutionary organization and that the peasant commune should be preserved as the basic unit of anarchy. Moreover it strengthened his regard for traditional and indigenous ways of life. Indeed, though his analysis of social evolution suggested that the loss of barbarism was a sign of progress, he was persuaded that modern primitive societies were prototype anarchies. For example, he regarded the Doukhobors, a religious sect of Siberian peasant exiles, ‘natural anarchists’. Driven by his admiration for their rejection of Tsarist authority and their anti-militarism, he worked with Tolstoy to ease their flight from persecution in Russia and to secure for them a new home in Canada. Harold Barclay recasts the relationship between anarchy, statelessness and anthropology. Stepping back from the developmental approach suggested by Kropotkin, he argues that the trend towards the state ‘should not be interpreted as an evolutionary scheme in which cultural history is a one-way street where all “tribal” societies must become state type societies’. Moreover, whereas Kropotkin turned to anthropology to distinguish states from pre-state societies, Barclay classifies stateless societies on a continuum that stretches from anarchy to archy. At one end of the scale, anarchy emphasizes ‘voluntary co-operation’. At the other, archy is characterized by ‘the prevalence of legal sanctions’. Primitive or stateless societies veer towards anarchy but fall into the middle ground, an area consisting of ‘marginal forms of anarchy’ or rudimentary governments. Whilst Barclay criticizes modern anthropologists for failing to treat stateless societies as functioning anarchies, he does not believe that their existence indicates that the abandonment of the state is politically or
90 anarchism: a beginner’s guide culturally feasible. To the contrary, anthropology suggests that statelessness is only sustainable in certain conditions. Barclay outlines the possibilities by pinpointing the factors that explain ‘the descent into the state’. The two most important are the emergence of hierarchy and the ‘ideology of superiority/inferiority’. These stimulate a further six socio-economic factors: ‘population, sedentarism, agriculture, a complex division of labour, a redistribution system and private property’. Anarchic ways of life are possible only where these factors do not arise and/or where they are unimportant in social life. In Barclay’s view, the relevant conditions are ‘most likely to be found in the acephalous societies of pre-colonial Africa’. 4 Murray Bookchin’s work revives some of Kropotkin’s themes. John Clark places him in a tradition that extends to Reclus rather than Kropotkin, but his relationship to the latter is, nonetheless, strong. Indeed, Bookchin develops Kropotkin’s rejection of Social Darwinism and his characterization of nature – in his terms, the ecosystem – by the principle of mutual aid. Like Kropotkin, he associates the ecosystem with ethics. In particular, Bookchin argues that the ecosystem demonstrates the absurdity and meaninglessness of hierarchy and that it operates on a principle of ‘unity in diversity’. Defining this latter principle, Bookchin argues: ‘the more differentiated the life-form and the environment in which it exists the more acute is its overall sensorium, the greater its flexibility, and the more active its participation in its own environment’. 5 The important difference between Kropotkin and Bookchin is that whilst Kropotkin suggested that nature was the foundation for ethics, in Bookchin’s view, it provides only a ‘matrix for an ethics’. The redefinition of terms is reflected in Bookchin’s attitude toward progress and in his treatment of stateless societies. On the first point, Bookchin rejects Kropotkin’s idea that changes in social life can be mapped onto an evolutionary schema of progressive moral development. Indeed, he castigates Kropotkin for adopting an overly optimistic view of progress, even categorizing him as a ‘technological determinist’. On the second point, when Bookchin, very much in the spirit of Kropotkin, draws back to the study of preliterate peoples, he is not so much interested in studying patterns of human behaviour as he is in highlighting the relationships which preliterate peoples establish with their environment. For example, in the Ecology of Freedom Bookchin finds that preliterate peoples do not respect age hierarchies that treat children as lesser personalities than adults, or indeed any hierarchy which gives individuals in the community
Page 2 and 3:
anarchism a beginner’s guide
Page 4 and 5:
anarchism a beginner’s guide ruth
Page 6 and 7:
contents Acknowledgements vii intro
Page 8:
acknowledgements A number of people
Page 11 and 12:
2 anarchism: a beginner’s guide a
Page 13 and 14:
4 anarchism: a beginner’s guide r
Page 15 and 16:
6 anarchism: a beginner’s guide a
Page 17 and 18:
8 anarchism: a beginner’s guide w
Page 19 and 20:
10 anarchism: a beginner’s guide
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48: 38 anarchism: a beginner’s guide
Page 53 and 54: chapter two anarchist rejections of
Page 95 and 96: chapter three anarchy We have alway
Page 97: 88 anarchism: a beginner’s guide
Page 149 and 150:
Page 151 and 152:
Page 153 and 154:
Page 155 and 156:
Page 157 and 158:
Page 159 and 160:
Page 161 and 162:
Page 163 and 164:
Page 165 and 166:
Page 167 and 168:
Page 169 and 170:
Page 171 and 172:
Page 173 and 174:
Page 175 and 176:
Page 177 and 178:
Page 179 and 180:
chapter five concluding remarks Stu
Page 181 and 182:
Page 184 and 185:
index Page numbers in italic denote
Page 186 and 187:
index 177 Farrow, Lynne 119 fascism
Page 188 and 189:
index 179 and state 30, 45-6, 50, 5
show all

o_195qg5dto17o4rbc85q1ge61i84a.pdf

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?