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Title: Green Anarchism Author: Richard Harris Date: February 1992 Language: en Topics: land, The Raven, green anarchism Source: Retrieved on 3 July 2022 from https://libcom.org/article/raven-17-use-land Notes: This article was originally written for The Raven Anarchist Quarterly #17: Use of Land, pp. 82–84. Acronyms were given footnotes for clarity.
Green anarchism starts with the idea that the technological society with
its cities of millions of inhabitants arc not workable. Europe and the
USA rely on third world resources, and to keep this situation
governments sympathetic to the 'Old World Order' are kept in power.
Puppet regimes are supported by aid packages, education, technical and
military assistance, and weapons. The situation is not much better here,
where the colonisation of the third world is mirrored by the creation of
an underclass as a sump for cheap labour and as an incentive to those in
the middle-class to keep on the treadmill while the whole is enforced by
the ideological colonisation of the mind by the media.
Cities enable the system to keep people together for social control.
They provide the appearance of a world of affluence with their shopping
arcades and supermarkets with full shelves. They also produce alienation
on a grand scale. The cities rob the surrounding countryside, and this
robbery also works on a global level. Agricultural workers are forced to
subsidise the cities by producing food for them. In the former USSR we
see the start of the breakdown of this. People working on the land no
longer see why they should produce for others, and are starting to take
back control of their land.
In Russia the problems for the cities have been made worse by years of
bureaucratic incompetence and corruption. The system of distribution is
breaking down. For all the surpluses of the EEC[1], we too are starting
to get problems, for example BSE[2] and nitrate in the soil, caused by
the over intensive exploitation of resources. In the third world,
governments imposed by the west are losing control, and the increasing
hopelessness of the debt crisis will force rural populations to take
back control of their land.
We can expect the west to try to enforce its domination, so it is quite
possible that we will have other Gulf Wars. But Vietnam might be a
better analogy, the more dispersed the opponents of the west are, the
more likely the west is to lose. The system will find itself fighting on
two fronts, for all the resources it wastes on foreign wars the weaker
it will grow domestically.
This trend will come to Britain. As the government loses its grip, no-go
areas will develop in isolated areas. The cities will collapse. Estates
built in the 1960's are already turning into urban wastelands. The rich
will retreat into their areas while the rest of the cities will rot. The
economic crisis will further weaken their position. Public utilities
will collapse. With the structure of the cities breaking up, together
with the loss of resources from the third world the cities will be
unable to feed themselves, and many will leave. (The industrial
revolution in reverse.)
What will come out of this? Well, in the first instance, chaos. The
state will break down, and tribes of scavengers will flood into the
countryside. Warring factions will fight with each other to dominate
areas where there is food. Without the industrial base, technology will
wither. The people who will survive will be the ones who are able to
feed, clothe, shelter and defend themselves. Society will start to
rebuild itself, but it will have to be a radically different sort of
society. Rather than a world based on mass-production for others,
alienation and exploitation, Green Anarchists see the future world as
one which draws from our own resources rather than one which takes from
the resources of others. We must produce the things we need for
ourselves on a small scale without taking more from the earth's
resources than we put back. We want to try to bring about a society
without alienation, guided by mutual respect.
Cities of millions of inhabitants are too large — we need to function at
a much smaller scale. Communities need to be no more than village sized,
less than 500 people. (The highest number of people you can know.) These
people will make and grow everything they need themselves. With this
self-reliance they will not need politicians hundreds or thousands of
miles away, nor will they be dependent on political or social structures
like the DSS[3]. They will not have outsiders telling them what to do or
what to think. Without the domination and control of technology over
them they will be free. With this small scale, the anonymity of the
cities which enables crime to take place will be abolished. In the
cities possessions, and this gap between the rich and poor, are a
motivating factor in crime, as even quite a senior policeman pointed out
only recently. With only the bare minimum of material goods we will be
less likely to steal. The fact that everybody is known, and has
self-respect, and is respected in turn, with a proper function as part
of society will reduce and eliminate this alienation and make crime
unlikely.
With their self-reliance, and the capability of defending themselves,
the small community of the future will be free, and will keep that
freedom.
Green Anarchism is a call to abandon the materialistic and
self-destructive philosophy of capitalism. Green Anarchists are in a
direct line with Winstanley and the Diggers, or the nineteenth century
utopian religious communities. It is a call for 'a free society in
harmony with nature'. Already several communities have been started up,
no doubt others will follow as the strength of the idea is seen. We will
be building the new society out of the ruins of the old. The
continuation of capitalism is not an option — we must abandon
consumption now before it destroys us!
[1] European Economic Community
[2] Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (mad cow disease)
[3] Department of Social Services