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Parecon and Anarchism
April 22, 2008
By Michael Albert
This essays is excerpted from the Zed Press book, Realizing Hope
Like most social movements, anarchism is diverse. Most broadly, an
anarchist seeks out and identifies structures of authority, hierarchy,
and domination throughout life, and tries to challenge them, as
conditions and the pursuit of justice permit. Paraphrasing the famous
and pivotal Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin wielding authority makes
people unjust and arbitrary. Suc***bing to authority makes people
subservient, and servile. Authority corrupts its holder and debases its
victim.
Anarchists work to eliminate domination and subordination. They focus on
political power, economic power, power relations among men and women,
power between parents and children, power among cultural communities,
and power over future generations through effects on the environment.
Anarchists challenge the state and the cor****ate rulers of the domestic
and international economy, but they also challenge every other instance
and manifestation of illegitimate authority. As geographer, humanist,
and anarchist Peter Kropotkin puts it, capturing the antiauthoritarian
sentiment, but also, perhaps, foreshadowing complications to come: "We
already foresee a state of society where the liberty of the individual
will be limited by no laws, no bonds by nothing else but his own social
habits, and the necessity which everyone feels, of finding cooperation,
sup****t, and sympathy among his neighbors."
The Two Faces of Anarchism
So why wouldn't everyone concerned that people ought to have appropriate
control over their lives admire anarchism?
Problems arise because from being opponents of illegitimate authority
one can grow movements of incomparable majesty, on the one hand, and
movements that are majestically unimpressive, on the other hand.
If anarchism means mostly the former, good people will admire and
gravitate toward anarchism. But if anarchism means mostly the latter,
then good people will have reservations or even be hostile to it.
So what's the not so admirable, or even counter productive, version of
anarchism that turns off potential advocates? And what is the admirable
and worthy version of anarchism that is now increasing its sup****t
around the world? And do the admirable strands incor****ate sufficient
insight to be successful?
Counter Productive Anarchism
Counter productive anarchism is the brand that dismisses political forms
per se, or institutions, or even plain old technology, or that dismisses
fighting for reforms - as if all political structures, institutional
arrangements, or even technological innovations intrinsically impose
illegitimate authority, or as if relating to existing social structures
to win immediate limited gains is an automatic sign of system-sup****t or
hypocrisy.
Anarchists holding these counterproductive views see that the
contem****ary state uses force to subjugate the many, but wrongly deduce
that this is an outgrowth of trying to adjudicate, or legislate, or
implement shared aims, or even just of trying to cooperate on a large
scale per se, rather than seeing that it is instead an outgrowth of
doing these things in particular ways to serve narrow elites. Following
from this thinking is the idea that we need to fulfill the functions
more positively. We don't need no polity, we need a good polity, an
anarchist polity, which is by no means a contradiction in terms.
Similarly, anarchists with counterproductive views correctly see that
many, and even most, of our institutions, while delivering to people
food, trans****t, homes, services, etc., also restrict what people can do
in ways that subvert human aspirations and dignity. These anarchists
wrongly deduce that all institutions must be oppressive, so that instead
of lasting institutions, we should favor only voluntary spontaneous
interactions in which at all times all aspects are fluidly generated and
dissolved.
The contrary truth is, of course, that without stable and lasting
institutions that have well-conceived and lasting norms and roles,
advanced relations among disparate populations and even among
individuals are quite impossible. While institutional roles that compel
people to deny their humanity or the humanity of others are abominable,
institutional roles that permit people to express their humanity more
fully and freely are not abominable at all, but are part and parcel of a
just and life-enhancing social order. We don't need no institutions, we
need good, liberating institutions, which is by no means a contradiction
in terms.
The situation with technology is similar. The anarchist with counter
productive views looks at assembly lines, weapons, and energy use that
despoil our world, and says there is something about pursuing
technological mastery that intrinsically breeds these horrible outcomes
so we'd be better off without technology.
Of course, this misses the point that pencils are technology, clothes
are technology, and indeed all human artifacts are technology, and that
life would be short and brutish, at best, without technology. So, the
issue again isn't to decry and escape technology, but to create and
retain only technologies that serve humane aims and potentials. We don't
need no technology, we need good technology, humane technology, which is
by no means a contradiction in terms.
And finally, regarding reforms, counter productive anarchism rightly
notices that with many reforms the gains we win are fleeting, and elites
even manage to use the granting of these gains to reinforce their
legitimacy and extend their domain of control by first granting, but
then domesticating, and later even eliminating the advances. But again,
the missing additional observation is that these problems don't result
from change or reform per se, but from change that is conceived, sought,
and implemented in ways that presuppose rather than challenge system
maintenance.
What's needed isn't to have no reforms, which would simply capitulate
the playing field to elites, but to fight for reforms that are
non-reformist; that is, to fight for reforms that activists conceive,
seek, and implement in ways that lead activists to then seek still more
gains, in a trajectory of change leading ultimately to new institutions.
It shouldn't be necessary to even discuss the above addressed "bad
trajectory" of anarchism and its anti-political, anti-institutional,
anti-technological, and anti-reform confusions. It is perfectly natural
and understandable for folks, when first becoming sensitized to the ills
of political structure, contem****ary institutions, current technologies,
or the problems of reform struggles, to momentarily go awry and blame
each entire category for the ills that the worst instances embody. But
if this confusion were to thereafter be addressed naturally, it would
quickly become clear that without political structures, institutions,
and technology, not to mention without progressive reforms, humanity
would barely survive, much less prosper and fulfill its many capacities.
But this prediction of the easy transcendence of worthy views over
counter productive ones neglects the fact that media and elites will
****tray negative aspects of anarchism as representing the whole of it,
highlighting confused and unworthy ideas and ignoring more valuable
ideas to thereby discredit the whole undertaking. In this way,
unsustainable and objectionable approaches gain far more visibility than
would be warranted by their numbers, much less by their logic or values,
and, thereafter, also a certain tenacity. Interest in anarchism as a
whole is thereby reduced.
Desirable Anarchism
What about the type of anarchism that is more positive yet less visible
in the media? This is the widely awakening impetus to fight on the side
of the oppressed in every domain of life, from family, culture, state,
economy, and the now very visible international arena of "cor****ate
globalization," and to do so in creative and courageous ways that win
immediate improvements in people's lives, even while simultaneously
leading toward new future institutions.
The good anarchism transcends narrow forms that have often been taken to
characterize the approach in the past. Instead of arising from a
conceptual orientation that is mostly politically antiauthoritarian but
not as focused on other facets of life, nowadays anarchism more and more
implies having a gender, cultural, and an economic, as well as a
politically or power-rooted orientation, with each aspect taken on a par
with, and also informing, the rest.
This is in many respects new, at least in my experience of anarchism,
and it is useful to recall that many anarchists as little as a decade
back, and perhaps even more recently, would have said that anarchism
addresses everything, yes, but primarily by means of an
anti-authoritarian focus prioritizing power, rather than by
simultaneously elevating concepts owing to other dimensions of life in
their own right.
Such past anarchists thought, whether implicitly or explicitly, that
analysis from an overwhelmingly antiauthoritarian angle rooted in
understanding power could explain the nuclear family better than an
analysis rooted as well in kin****p concepts, and could explain race or
religion better than an analysis rooted as well in cultural concepts,
and could explain production, consumption, and allocation better than an
analysis rooted as well in economic concepts. Those who suc***bed to
this narrowness, whether advocating it or just falling into it, were
wrong and it is a great advance that many modern anarchists know this
and are broadening their intellectual approach so that anarchism now
highlights not only the state and power, even in all its manifestations,
but also gender relations in their specificity, and highlights not only
the economy but also cultural relations and ecology, and indeed freedom
in every form it can be sought. Most im****tantly, anarchism now
highlights each of these not solely or even just primarily through the
prism of authority and power relations, but through the equal inclusion
of richer and more diverse concepts rooted in other practices.
This desirable anarchism not only doesn't reject technology, it becomes
familiar with, and employs, diverse types of technology as appropriate.
It not only doesn't reject institutions, or political forms, it tries to
devise new institutions and new political forms for activism and for a
new society, including new ways of meeting, making decisions,
implementing programs, and so on - most recently revitalizing the idea
of closely based and trusting affinity groups and the more original
spokes structures by which they combine into larger assemblies.
And this good anarchism not only doesn't reject reforms, it struggles to
define and win non-reformist reforms, attentive to people's immediate
needs and bettering people's lives now, as well as moving toward further
transformative gains.
So why doesn't the good anarchism visibly trump the not so good or
counter productive anarchism out of visibility, so to speak, leaving the
way clear for most everyone on the left to gravitate toward anarchism's
best side?
Part of the answer, already noted, is that elites and mainstream media
highlight the not-so-good viewpoints, giving them far more weight and
tenacity than they would otherwise amass, and thereby turning away
people who might otherwise gravitate toward anarchism. But part of the
answer is also that the good side of contem****ary anarchism is in
various respects too vague to rise above the rest. What's the problem? I
think it's at least in considerable part that the good anarchism doesn't
posit clear and compelling goals.
Anarchist Vision?
Anarchism has historically focused on power which is certainly evident
in and an outgrowth of the political dimensions of life, arriving at
shared norms and decisions about program, adjudication, etc. But even
there, the emerging anarchism of today's movements doesn't clarify for
us what an anarchist polity could be, instead often dismissing the idea
of vision, much less of providing a new political vision, as irrelevant
or worse. But given that societies need to fulfill adjudicative,
legislative, and implementation functions in the political realm of
life, and that societies need to do this through institutions made up of
citizens, it is more than reasonable to wonder about what those
institutions should be. Anarchists who say only that they don't want a
government, or don't want a state, are not usefully answering this
question.
If the counter productive trend is to say that we favor no political
institutions, but only spontaneous face-to-face interaction of free
individuals, each doing as they choose with no constraints on them, then
what is the good trend's better viewpoint that fulfills the same guiding
aspirations of delivering freedom, but doesn't sacrifice collectivity
and continuity?
What kind of structures, with what kinds of recurring social roles and
norms, will accomplish political functions while also propelling freedom
and participation that we sup****t?
It is perhaps premature to expect the newly re-emerging anarchism to
produce from within a compelling vision of future religion, ethnic
identification, or cultural community, or a future vision of kin****p,
***uality, procreation, or socialization relations, or even a future
vision of production, consumption, or allocation relations. But it seems
to me that anarchism ought to be where the visionary action is when it
comes to attaining, implementing, and protecting against the abuse of
shared political agendas, adjudicating disputes, and creating and
enforcing norms of collective interaction.
Has there been any serious anarchist attempt to explain how legal
disputes should be resolved? How legal adjudication should occur? How
laws and political coordination should be attained? How violations and
disruptions should be handled? How shared programs should be positively
implemented?
In other words, what is the anarchist's full set of positive
institutional alternatives to contem****ary legislatures, courts, police,
and diverse executive agencies? What institutions do anarchists seek
that would advance solidarity, equity, justice, participatory
self-management, diversity, and whatever other life-affirming values
anarchists sup****t, while also accompli****ng needed political functions?
Up to the present even the best of anarchism has often been only a
rejection of oppression, and sometimes even only of a few dimensions of
oppression, and not, in any case, a vision of liberation. Alexander
Berkman writes: "In all times and in all places, whatever be the name
that the government takes, whatever has been its origin or its
organization, its essential function is always that of oppressing and
exploiting the m*****, and of defending the exploiters and oppressors.
Its principle characteristic and indispensable instruments are the
policeman and the tax collector, the soldier and the prison." Okay, how
then can one organize political functions in accord with anarchist
values? What is the positive political agenda?
Errico Maletesta tells us more broadly that what anarchists want "is the
complete destruction of the domination and exploitation of person by
person; we want people united ... by a conscious and desired solidarity,
all cooperating voluntarily for the well being of all; we want society
to be constituted for the purpose of supplying everybody with the means
for achieving the maximum well being, the maximum possible moral and
spiritual development; we want bread, freedom, love, and science - for
everybody." Yes, yes, but how?
Huge numbers of citizens of developed societies are not going to risk
what they have, however little it may be in some cases, to pursue a goal
about which they have no clarity. How often do people have to ask
anarchists what they are for before anarchists give people some serious,
sufficiently extensive, carefully thought through, and compelling answers?
Offering a political vision that encomp***** key structures for
legislation, implementation, adjudication, and enforcement, and that
shows how each would be effectively accomplished in a nonauthoritarian
way that promotes positive outcomes, would not only provide contem****ary
activism much-needed hope, it would also inform immediate responses to
today's electoral, law-making, law enforcement, and court system, and
thus help orient many strategic choices.
So shouldn't today's anarchist community be generating such political
vision? I think it should - after all, where else should it come from to
have hopes of dealing with issues of power desirably? Indeed, I suspect
that until there is a widespread component of anarchism that puts forth
positive political goals, the counter productive tendency of anarchism
that rejects all political structures and even all institutions will
remain highly visible and will greatly reduce potential allegiance to
anarchism.
Some will say in reply that anarchism has more than enough vision
already, or that its commitment to people controlling their own lives
not only in polity, but in economy and other dimensions too, is enough
vision. Too much vision will constrain ingenuity and innovation, they
say. I respond that this is the same type of mistake as dumping all
political structures, or dumping all institutions, or dumping all
technology, or dumping all reforms. The problem isn't vision in itself;
it is vision that is held and owned only by elites and that serves only
elites. Public, accessible descriptions of viable and worthy
institutions which serve the whole populace, political and otherwise, is
precisely what we need.
21st Century Anarchism
So what about good anarchism's potentials? I guess I would say that if
anarchism truly meets the need for culture-based, economy, gender, and
polity-based concepts and practice, and if anarchism can sup****t vision
originating in other movements about nongovernmental social dimensions,
while itself providing at least compelling political vision, and if the
anarchist community can avoid strange confusions over technology,
political structures, institutions, and seeking to win non-reformist
reforms - then I think anarchism has a whole lot going for it. It could
well become a main 21st-century source of movement inspiration and
wisdom in the effort to make our world a much better place.
As to parecon and anarchism, I think parecon is consistent with the
impetus I describe above as characterizing the worthy and desirable
anarchism and that parecon even constitutes, at least with that usage of
the label anarchist, an anarchist economic vision that minimizes class
and other economy-related hierarchy and that would be consistent with
and even propel other anarchist aspirations as well. Parecon is, in
these senses, anarchist economics as well as solidarity economics,
diversity economics, equitable economics, self-managed economics, and
sustainable economics.
Addendum 1: Primitivism
Above I suggested that anarchism focuses on identifying structures of
authority, hierarchy, and domination throughout life and challenging
them as conditions and the pursuit of justice permit. Anarchism seeks to
eliminate subordination based on political and economic power, power
relations among men and women and between parents and children, power
among cultural communities, power over future generations, and much else
as well. I suggested that emerging from this were different strands of
activism. One, I argued, went on to reject technology, institutions, and
reforms outright. Without further evidence that this negative type of
anarchism exists, some may wonder if I am fabricating an unreal
position. I therefore offer the following comments to address such
skepticism head on and, I admit, to more aggressively critique the
counter productive views that I think harm anarchism.
The most visible advocate and exemplar of what I called "not so
desirable anarchism" has of late been John Zerzan. Of course other folks
are also in this camp, but sticking to Zerzan's work should amply
display the most touted arguments behind the positions I labeled
counterproductive to efforts to build anarchist movements.
Zerzan starts out by reasonably rejecting all authoritarian constraints
on human well being and development. This is admirable, of course, but
where does he wind up?
Zerzan rejects technology per se. He rejects all institutions that
distinguish different tasks, which is all institutions. He contributes
to rejecting reforms outright because in his view no institution is
worthy of improvements, so no improvements are worthy of our time.
Beyond even these three themes, Zerzan also rejects language, math, and
even the idea of counting things or registering the passage of time. I
think all these rejections repeat the same error that other opponents of
technology, institutions, and reforms also make, though Zerzan does it
most relentlessly. Let's see.
Zerzan tells us "that technology has never been neutral, like some
discreet tool detachable from its context. It always partakes of and
expresses the basic values of the social system in which it is embedded.
Technology is the language, the texture, the embodiment of the social
arrangements it holds together."
This is unobjectionable as far as it goes, but it neglects another point
that Zerzan never returns to. Yes, technologies bear the mark of the
society they are born and used in. How could it be otherwise? However,
technologies not only reflect their society's attributes, including
sometimes their worst attributes, but also often meet real needs and
expand real potentials. So you get electric chairs to kill people and
assembly lines to constrain them, but you also get warm clothes for
people to wear, and penicillin to enhance people's longevity.
Zerzan says technologies are contextual, and of course he is right that
they are. They arise in some social setting. They don't spring
spontaneously from nothing, with no lineage and imprint. Nor are
technologies utilized in social vacuums. Zerzan is thus correct that
each technology, whether a pencil or a shoelace, much less a guided
missile or an assembly line, bears a social inscription carrying the
imprints of the motives of its conception, production, and utilization -
some of which generally reflect the defense of social elites, but others
of which often reflect the need to accomplish certain functions.
We should, therefore, expect technologies conceived, produced, and
utilized in feudal times to be different than those in prehistoric
times, or than those in capitalist times. This is elementary, and true.
Zerzan moves on, however. He says, "the idea that [technology] is
neutral, that it is separable from society, is one of the biggest lies
available. It is obvious why those who defend the high-tech death trap
want us to believe that technology is somehow neutral." This is
disingenuous hand-waving, I think, or else evidences an immense confusion.
When someone says that technology per se is neutral, they mean that
technology does not, by its internal logic, have to serve only
dominating elites. Technology can serve any constituency, including
broad populations. Technology can arise in any social setting and
system, and can accomplish diverse tasks that can be beneficial or
horrendous, humane or cruel, liberating or stultifying.
Technology isn't necessarily prehistoric, or feudal, or capitalist, or
anything else other than always a product of human design and labors.
Having a human origin imposes on technology no particular social
direction, no universal social stamp.
Zerzan rightly notices that our contem****ary technologies encapsulate
forces at play in our contem****ary societies. He wrongly concludes,
however, that all technology must forever and always be as our
technology is now. It is therefore not true that if we don't like
specific instances of our technology now, to get rid of them we must
dispense with all technology forever.
The most obvious way to discern the unwarranted leap in Zerzan's claim
is to note that without technology humans would have no clothes, no
source of power outside their own muscles, and not even agriculture to
renew their muscles. Life would be brutish, isolated, and short. Disease
would be rampant. Communication, mobility, knowledge, music, art, play,
and pretty much everything else would be harshly limited.
This alone ought to close the case, of course, by showing that
eliminating technology per se is not the way to avoid the ills of
harmful technologies. But,since for many anarchists who take this line,
this does not suffice as rebuttal, another way to see the problem rests
on examining Zerzan's logic.
Suppose I were to say that all human thought, all human expression,
emotion, and even locomotion, manifests an imprint of the society in
which it occurs. This is certainly equally as true as saying that all
technology bears such a societal imprint. Is it sensible that I next
follow Zerzan to deduce that because all human thought, expression,
emotion, and even locomotion - like technology - are socially imprinted,
they must always embody oppressive attributes, and I must reject them in
the same way that Zerzan says we should reject technology? Or should I
instead assert that in desirable social settings (and to a degree even
in undesirable ones) human thought, expression, emotion, and even
locomotion also have wonderful and essential attributes that we
certainly don't want to reject, and that in good environments the
defining features can become overwhelmingly positive, making the idea of
rejecting them utterly ridiculous?
I prefer the latter logic, both for human attributes and for
technologies. Zerzan consistently prefers the former logic. Zerzan's
mistake is to rightly notice various horrible technologies, but then
wrongly attribute the problems they pose not to mutable social
structures and institutions which impose the bad features on the
technologies and the bad technologies on us, but to technology itself.
A consistent manifestation of this leap from disliking instances of some
category to rejecting the whole category would lead to rejecting pretty
much everything that is social or otherwise a product of human exchange
and thought, but which frequently turns up with horrible aspects in
contem****ary societies. It would thus imply a desire for people to
revert to a kind of pre-human state. Amazingly, Zerzan follows exactly
that line of reasoning.
Thus, Zerzan offers that "my working hypothesis is that division of
labor draws the line [between a desirable prehistory and everything
since], with dire consequences that unfold in an accelerating or
***ulative way. Specialization divides and narrows the individual,
brings in hierarchy, creates dependency and works against autonomy." And
he continues by deducing that "tools or roles that involve division of
labor engender divided people and divided society."
That is, again, Zerzan drags partial truths to outrageous conclusions.
Of course, typical cor****ate divisions of labor diminish and even
destroy individual and social potentials. Zerzan points out, for
example, that "the first `breakthrough' for me was in terms of the
Industrial Revolution in England. Namely, it became clear that the
factory system was introduced in large part as a means of social
control. The dispersed craftsmen were deprived of their autonomy and
brought together in factories to be de-skilled and disciplined. This
shows that technology was not at all ‘neutral'."
I may be that Zerzan first encountered the brilliant expression of such
ideas a quarter century ago in the same places I first encountered such
ideas, for example, in the wonderful essay by Steven Marglin, "What do
bosses do?" or in Harry Braverman's Monthly Review work. But if so,
Zerzan missed the key insight that the imposed division of labor served
specific social relations and elites, and that the problem posed for
suffering humanity wasn't that different people were doing different
tasks per se, but was the particular limited combinations of tasks that
most of the people were compelled to do, as well as the pittance they
received for it.
Zerzan is certainly right that (cor****ate and ***ist and racist)
divisions of labor have buttressed hierarchy, imposed dependency, and
impeded autonomy. And he is also right that many institutions
incor****ate these damaging divisions of labor and therefore deserve
rejection. But beyond this, he fails to note that virtually all
institutions involve roles that diversify people's tasks and
responsibilities. To jump from the correct and familiar insight that
some divisions of labor are so horrible that institutions embodying them
are unworthy, to more comprehensively claiming that no division of labor
at all can be abided and therefore all institutions are unworthy, says
that each individual must, in essence, do everything for him or herself
or, at any rate, without lasting institutional coordination with others.
It rejects roles per se and leads to an anti-institutional, antisocial,
and, I think, ultimately, even antihuman stance.
So rather than solely rejecting imposed divisions of labor that are
contrary to our aspirations, which would be quite sensible, Zerzan
slip-slides all the way to the extreme claim that all divisions of labor
of any kind have to go.
Should we reject divisions of labor that relegate many to obedience and
to rote boredom, while privileging an elite few with empowering and
engaging endeavors? Of course we should. About this Zerzan and I
presumably agree. But the way to do this isn't to have everyone do
everything, with no differentiation of different people's
responsibilities. And the way to do this is not to ignore that people
have diverse tastes and inclinations and that they wish to express these
in their actions. And it is not to forego the worthy gains that can
accrue from taking advantage of skills and training.
Why throw out the baby of productivity and individuality as well as
diversity with the bathwater of alienation and hierarchy? Why not divide
tasks into jobs that are balanced for empowerment and quality of life
implications (to eliminate hierarchy), and that are self-managed (to
eliminate alienation and authoritarianism), even as they also respect
each individual's personal tastes (to further diversity and to benefit
from creativity)?
Get rid of the hierarchy-inducing (bathwater) aspects, of course. But
keep the fulfilling and beneficial attention to different people's
preferences and the utilization of diversity to increase the breadth of
our collective experiences and to also increase output and diminish
required labor.
So why does Zerzan pose the problem as no division of labor versus a bad
division of labor (and similarly as no technology versus bad
technology), rather than as a bad division of labor versus a good
division of labor (or as bad technology versus good technology)?
One possible line of thought leading someone to propose such limiting
polarities would be to notice something that all divisions of labor (and
all technologies) have in common, which is their being a human and
social creation, and deciding that this commonality somehow inevitably
infects them with harmful aspects. I am not sure Zerzan believes this,
nor sure if it matters much what he believes, because in any event,
whether intended or not, this is the practical and intellectual
implication of his stance.
Thus, Zerzan says, "it seems evident that industrialization and the
factories could not be gotten rid of instantly, but equally clear that
their liquidation must be pursued with all the vigor behind the rush of
break-out. Such enslavement of people and nature must disappear forever,
so that words like production and economy will have no meaning."
In other words, we not only have to eliminate bad economic activity that
divides us into unequal cl*****, that exploits us, that despoils us, or
that degrades us, all of which I certainly agree with, but we have to
eliminate economic activity completely. Human artifacts must go, it
seems. As with technology and the division of labor, so with the economy
as a whole: we must opt for all or nothing.
No more production for Zerzan. No more workplaces. And what do we put in
their place? Foraging, it seems, because that bears no mark of
specifically human invention. So Zerzan rejects tools and roles,
technologies and institutions, and even production and economy.
Amazingly, though, he doesn't stop there.
Zerzan takes this line of thought all the way to its ultimate
destinations, and in doing so reveals the illogic and other flaws of
"counter productive anarchism" most graphically, which is why I am
spending so long on Zerzan.
Zerzan rejects even language. He tells us that in "the process of
transforming all direct experience into the supreme symbolic expression,
language, monopolizes life. Like ideology, language conceals and
justifies, compelling us to suspend our doubts about its claim to
validity. It is at the root of civilization, the dynamic code of
civilization's alienated nature. As the paradigm of ideology, language
stands behind all of the massive legitimation necessary to hold
civilization together. It remains for us to clarify what forms of
nascent domination engendered this justification, made language
necessary as a basic means of repression."
The problem is now civilization. Zerzan rejects humans entwined in
social arrangements of their own creation, conceived to allow each to
pursue their lives as they will without having to operate atomistically
or in opposition to all others. Since words are a big part of the glue
of such arrangements, says Zerzan, let's dispense with them too, rather
than try to fulfill their potential.
"Words bespeak a sadness; they are used to soak up the emptiness of
unbridled time. We have all had that desire to go further, deeper than
words, the feeling of wanting only to be done with all the talk, knowing
that being allowed to live coherently erases the need to formulate
coherence," says Zerzan.
And of course Zerzan is correct that we don't want to live by words
alone, or bread alone, or technology alone, or anything else alone. But
what Zerzan misses, is that noticing that fact does not justify wanting
to entirely dispense with each.
Of course we express sadness in words, but also in deeds and feelings.
Should we reject not only words, but also deeds and feelings?
Consciousness is surely often a bulwark of existing oppressions.
Consciousness sometimes manifests sadness and is often used in
authoritative ways. Should we lobotomize ourselves, too? For that
matter, why not notice that ***ual intercourse has very often been
fraught with painful ramifications, outright violations, and virtually
universally to date with asymmetries of power? Why not saltpeter?
Shortly after Zerzan has his way there will be no more humans, and,
Zerzan is correct, there will also be no more human suffering.
Terminating just short of this species suicide, Zerzan's agenda, or
hope, seems to me to be that we should end divisions of labor, reject
technology, discard institutions, silence language, eliminate numbers,
reject time, and perhaps dispense consciousness - though not
reproduction - returning to prehistoric relations. And the mainstream
media tells everyone that Zerzan is an exemplar of anarchism. And
anarchism has trouble finding recruits.
If you think I exaggerate all this, judge for yourself. Zerzan says, "my
tentative position is that only a rejection of symbolic culture [that
is, language] provides a deep enough challenge to what stems from that
culture." Thus: reject language. Or "only a politics that undoes
language and time and is thus visionary to the point of voluptuousness
has any meaning." Not just language, but time too.
Wordplay is all well and good for provocative or aesthetic exercises or
for entertainment. But Zerzan claims to be challenging the realities
that delimit people's lives. Being revolutionary on behalf of liberty
carries a responsibility, it seems to me, to attend to reality.
Zerzan rejects numbers too. To explain why, he tells us that "Euclid
developed geometry - literally, `land measuring' - to measure fields for
purposes of owner****p, taxation, and the assignment of slave labor."
And: "When members of a large family sit down to dinner, they know
immediately, without counting, whether someone is missing. Counting
becomes necessary only when things become homogenized." Can this be
serious? Apparently so. The thought pattern is by now familiar, after
all. And I am writing about it, at brutal length, in hopes that such
thinking will no longer distract good people from worthy issues.
Zerzan rightly notes that numbers can be used in harmful or alienating
ways and to service authority and power. Anyone would conclude that in
some pursuits we are better off without numbers. We shouldn't try to
quantify love or dignity. Fair enough. But Zerzan wrongly extrapolates
that we'd be best off without numbers at all. Goodbye to language,
goodbye to numbers and time, goodbye to technology and
institutions...why not goodbye to *** too? I guess Zerzan thinks that
would be an unpopular stance. The fact that the rest is popular in some
quarters is what is perhaps most astounding of all.
In the early part of this chapter I commented on im****tant confusions
about technology, institutions, and reforms that I think are dimini****ng
the affectivity of a particular strand of "counterproductive anarchism."
I also discussed the more positive insights into breadth of focus, new
vision, and non-reformist reforms that give another strand of anarchism
the potential to become central to successful activism in years ahead.
Zerzan's thinking as it is examined here may or may not typify why some
folks hold the counterproductive views they do about technology,
institutions, and reforms. I have no way of knowing that for sure. But
the views are prevalent and Zerzan is most forthright in their defense.
The Zerzan quotations I used are from various of his essays and
interviews available on the internet. Hopefully his stance will
disappear in time.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
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