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Title: Primitivism: Back to Basics? Author: Anonymous Date: 1995 Language: en Topics: primitivist Source: Retrieved on December 11, 2009 from http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/basics.htm Notes: from Green Anarchist #38, Summer 1995
When we say we want green anarchy, a stateless society, free and in
harmony with Nature, people tell us that it’s “a nice dream but it’ll
never happen” as “it’s against human nature”. The point is that is has
happened — green anarchy was how all people lived for a good 90% of
history, how they lived before they were even Homo sapiens, how some
still live better than we do today. When we point this out, people start
pissing and whining about “going back to the caves” and getting
protective about their TVs, cars and other fruits of “Progress”,
particularly Lefties and “anarchists” who don’t know the difference and
who think “Progress” is some inevitable law of Nature and not part and
parcel of State society and the self-serving elites ruling it. We’ll
demolish those myths in a future issue — in this we’re looking at why
people living in green anarchy are more advanced than those in this sort
of society.
A key problem with this society, as any Marxist will tell you, is
alienation. They mean alienation from product — that is, the boss takes
what you make to sell back to you, it’s not yours — but the intense
division of labour that guarantees the commodities that people get so
protective about also means we’re separated from each other and the
Earth. Never mind not affording all those commodities, they’re no
compensation for the lonely crowds, the powerlessness of being pushed
around by bosses, the dependence on specialists who screw us over our
basics of life, the meaninglessness of a life ruled by events beyond our
own control. This isn’t about “capitalism” per se — any mega-machine
society based on intense division of labour’s going to run the same,
whatever rhetoric power / management specialists and co-ordinators use
to mystify their rule.
Marxists look forward to communism, when the material abundance of
capitalism is for all — but turn their back on what they call
“primitive” communism where people were already equal and had all they
wanted in life [1]. We’ve seen why this latter-day “communism” won’t
work already and note that Marxists reject the version that did work as
19^(th) Century racist anthropologist and “Progress” proponent Henry
Lewis Morgan argued Civilised men (sic) more “advanced” than
pre-industrialised people [2].
The Industrial Revolution certainly warped the dreams of the people.
Before it, when people envisaged a better world, it was Eden or its
variants — from the medieval Land of Cockayne to the early-20^(th)
century Big Rock Candy Mountain — where the abundance of arcadia lifted
the yoke of work and duty from their shoulders [3]. Fantasy met reality
in the Age of Discovery, the communism of the North American Indians and
South Sea Islanders being oft-quoted as alternatives to European society
— some even defected. Others attempted to turn their dreams into reality
by establishing communities “like the early Christians” and, ironically,
the push to colonise the New World was as much about returning the poor
to their own little subsistence “Edens” as the rich plundering its
resources. The main current post-Industrial revolution is a faith in
“Progress”, a new world through technology not community.
Fantasies have been projected on stateless society because State society
is so bad. And the substance? That depends on the society — some are
real snakepits — arbitrary rule by tyrants, societies like this one in
minature [4]. If there’s one society that isn’t like that — and there
are many, particularly those based on hunter-gatherer bands free of
shamans — then there’s no reason why everyone shouldn’t live their
better way.
In such societies, community practice goes way beyond that envisaged by
orthodox revolutionaries [5]. As there is no significant division of
labour, specialist tyranny is no threat and there is a strong communal
bond of common experience. Instead of alienation, there is
particularisation, each person, animal and element of the environment
dealt with individually, some societies even lacking collective nouns
[6]. Individual/society, society/Nature and other classic polarities are
dissolved in this particularism and it also ensures specific
consideration of cases rather than appeals to abstract customs (which
later become hierarchically-enforced/imposed laws) and thus a surprising
toleration of diversity given conventional stereotypes of tribal
societies. Attitudes to property also impress — rather than nit-picking
over who should own what as orthodox revolutionaries do, primal people
practice usufruct, something is someone’s while their using it and
everyone else’s to use when not. A lot of shite is talked by precious
artsy types about how Civilisation is culturally superior to the rest of
the world — so show me the machine that can simulate the Baka’s communal
harmonic singing. Culture is not a separated activity for primal people,
so they’re better-developed culturally as well as socially.
We’re not saying future society should be like any pre-existing society,
just that we can learn from the ones that work and pick’n’mix
accordingly. Culture is something we choose to do, to create, not some
biological inheritance or unchangeable given. We should get informed and
make the best of ourselves.
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[1] “The original affluent society” of Marshall Sahlins’ Stone Age
Economics, where people only had to work a leisurely couple of hours a
day to get together the basics of life — a lived just as long as people
do in industrialized societies.
[2] Fredy Perlman’s Against His-Story, Against Leviathan (Black & Red,
Detroit, 1983), pp.13–15.
[3] Power-crazed scum saw Imperial Rome as their model of the ideal
society. Such Classicism culminated in fascism.
[4] Eli Sagan’s At the Dawn of Tyranny (Vintage, 1985), must reading for
pop tribalists who ignorantly assume all things tribal are good, not
that most get beyond facepaint and fashion...
[5] All from Murray Bookchin’s Ecology of Freedom (Cheshire, 1982),
chap. 2. A reformist, he offers “new ethics” instead of following
through the logical, primitivist conclusion of this chapter.
[6] People dismissing John Zerzan’s critique of symbolisation in
Elements of Refusal (Left Bank, 1988), Part 1, as weird should
appreciate such thinking is more familiar to primal people.