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Title: Anthropology and Anarchism
Author: Brian Morris
Date: 1998
Language: en
Topics: AJODA, AJODA #45, John Zerzan, Pëtr Kropotkin, Murray Bookchin, Taoism, agriculture, anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-primitivism, anthropology, capitalism, democracy, gatherer-hunters, green anarchism, nature, religion, the state
Source: Retrieved on 1st November 2018 from https://archive.org/details/AnarchyAJournalOfDesireArmedNoOne/page/n11
Notes: From Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #45, Spring/Summer 1998, Vol. 16, No. 1, held in Spirit of Revolt Archive, Glasgow.

Brian Morris

Anthropology and Anarchism

There is, in many ways an “elective affinity” between anthropology and

anarchism. Although anthropology’s subject matter has been diverse, and

its conspectus rather broad—as a study of human culture, historically it

has always had a rather specific focus—on the study of pre-state

societies. But it is quite misleading to portray the anthropology of the

past as being simply the study of so-called “primitive” people or the

“exotic” other, and thus largely engaged in a kind of “salvage”

operation of “disappearing” cultures. This is a rather biased and

inaccurate portrait of anthropology, for the discipline has a long

tradition of “anthropology at home,” and many important anthropological

studies have their location in India, China and Japan. It is thus

noteworthy that James Clifford and George Marcus (1986) in what many

have regarded as the founding text of literary or post-modern

anthropology, are not only rather dismissive of feminist anthropology,

but ignore entirely the ethnographic studies of non-”Western”

scholars—Srinivas, Kenyatta, Fei and Aiyappan. But in an important sense

anthropology is the social science discipline that has put a focal

emphasis on those kinds of societies that have been seen as exemplars of

anarchy, a society without a state. Indeed, Evans- Pritchard, in his

classic study of The Nuer (1940), described their political system as

“ordered anarchy.” Harold Barclay’s useful and perceptive little book

People without government (1992) is significantly subtitled “The

Anthropology of Anarchism,” and Barclay makes the familiar distinction

between anarchy, which is an ordered society without government, and

anarchism, which is a political movement and tradition that became

articulated during the 19^(th) century.

Anthropologists & anarchism: Reclus, Bougle, Mauss, Radcliffe-Brown

Many anthropologists have had affinities with anarchism. One of the

earliest ethnographic texts was a book by Elie Reclus called Primitive

Folk. It was published in 1903, and carries the sub-title “Studies in

Corporative Ethnology.” It is based on information derived from the

writings of travellers and missionaries, and it has the evolutionary

flavour of books written at the end of the 19^(th) century, but it

contains lucid and sympathetic accounts of such people as the Apaches,

Nayars, Todas and Inuits. Reclus declares the moral and intellectual

equality of these cultures with that of “so-called civilised states”,

and it is of interest that Reclus used the now familiar term Inuit,

which means “people,” rather than the French term Eskimo. Elie Reclus

was the elder brother, and lifetime associate, of Elisée, the more

famous anarchist geographer.

Another French anthropologist with anarchist sympathies was Celestin

Bougle, who wrote not only a classical study of the Indian caste system

(1908)—which had a profound influence on Louis Dumont—but also an

important study of Proudhon. Bougle was one of the first to affirm, then

(1911) controversially, that Proudhon was a sociological thinker of

standing. There was in fact a close relationship between the French

sociological tradition, focussed around Durkheim, and both socialism and

anarchism, even though Durkheim himself was antagonistic to the

anarchist stress on the individual. Durkheim was a kind of guild

socialist, but his nephew Marcel Mauss wrote a classical study on The

Gift (1925) which focussed on reciprocal or gift exchange among

pre-litcrate cultures. This small text is not only in some ways an

anarchist tract, but it is one of the foundation texts of anthropology,

one read by every budding anthropologist. British anthropologists have

less connection with anarchism, but it is worth noting that one of the

so-called “fathers” of British anthropology, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown was an

anarchist in his early years.

Alfred Brown was a lad from Birmingham. He managed, with the help of his

brother, to get to Oxford University. There two influences were

important to him. One was the process philosopher Alfred Whitehead,

whose organismic theory had a deep influence on Radcliffe-Brown. The

other was Kropotkin, whose writings he imbibed. In his student days at

Oxford Radcliffe-Brown was known as “Anarchy Brown.” Alas! Oxford got to

him. He later became something of an intellectual aristocrat, and

changed his name to the hyphenated “A.R. Radcliffe-Brown.” But, as Tim

Ingold has written (1986), Radcliffe-Brown’s writings are permeated with

a sense that social life is a process, although like most Durkheimian

functionalists he tended to play down issues relating to conflict, power

and history.

Although anarchism has had a minimal influence on anthropology—though

many influential anthropologists can be described as radical liberals

and socialists (like Boas, Radin, and Diamond), anarchist writers have

drawn extensively on the work of anthropologists. Indeed there is a real

contrast between anarchists and Marxists with respect to anthropology,

for while anarchists have critically engaged themselves with

ethnographic studies, Marxist attitudes to anthropology have usually

been dismissive. In this respect Marxists have abandoned the broad

historical and ethnographic interests of Marx and Engels. The famous

study of Engels on The origin of the Family, Private Property and the

State (1884) is, of course, based almost entirely on Lewis Morgan’s

anthropological study of Ancient Society (1877). If one examines the

writings of all the classical Marxists—Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci,

Lukacs—they are distinguished by a wholly Eurocentric perspective, and a

complete disregard for anthropology. The entry under “Anthropology” in A

Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Bottomore, 1983), significantly has

nothing to report between Marx and Engels in the 19^(th) century, and

the arrival on the scene of French Marxist anthropologists in the 1970s

(Godelier, Meillassoux). Equally amazing is that one Marxist text,

specifically on Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production (Hindness and Hirst,

1975), not only suggested that the “objects” of theoretical discourses

did not exist—and so rejected history as a worthwhile subject of study,

but completely bypassed anthropological knowledge. This is matched of

course by the dismissive attitude towards anarchism by Marxist

scholars—Perry Anderson, Wallerstein and E.P. Thompson are examples.

Anarchists & Anthropology: Kropotkin, Bookchin, Clastres, Zerzan

Kropotkin is well known. But being a geographer as well as an anarchist,

and having travelled widely in Asia, Kropotkin had wide ethnographic

interests. This is most clearly expressed in his classic text Mutual Aid

published in 1903. In this book Kropotkin attempted to show that both

organic and social life was not an arena where laissez-faire competition

and conflict and the “survival of the fittest” was the only norm, but

rather these domains were characterized by “mutuality” and “symbiosis.”

It was the ecological dimension of Darwin’s thought, expressed in the

last chapter of On the Origin ofSpecies, that was crucial for Kropotkin;

co-operation not struggle was the important factor in the evolutionary

process. This is exemplified by the ubiquitous lichen, one of the most

basic forms of life and found practically everywhere. Kropotkin’s book

gives lengthy accounts of mutual aid not only among hunter-gatherers and

such people as the Buryat and Kabyle (now well-known through Bourdieu’s

writings), but also in the medieval city and in contemporary European

societies. In a A.S.A. monograph on socialism (edited by Chris Hann,

1993) two articles specifically examine anarchy among contemporary

people. Alan Barnard looks at the issues of “primitive communism” and

“mutual aid” among the Kalahari hunter-gatherers, while Joanna Overing

discusses “anarchy and collectivism” among the horticultural Piaroa of

Venezuela. Barnard’s essay has the sub-title “Kropotkin visits the

Bushmen,” indicating that anarchism is still a live issue among some

anthropologists.

Kropotkin was concerned to examine the “creative genius” of people

living at what he described as the “clan period” of human histoiy, and

the development of institutions of mutual aid. But this did not entail

the repudiation of individual self-assertion, and, unlike many

contemporary anthropologists, Kropotkin made a distinction between

individuality and self-affirmation, and individualism.

Murray Bookchin is a controversial figure. His advocacy of citizen’s

councils and municipal self management, his emphasis on the city as a

potential ecological community, and his strident critiques of the

misanthropy and eco-mysticism of the deep ecologists are perhaps well

known, and the centre of many debates—much of it acrimonious. But

Bookchin’s process-oriented dialectical approach and his sense of

history—alive to the achievements of the human spirit—inevitably led

Bookchin to draw on anthropological studies. The main influences on his

work were Paul Radin and Dorothy Lee, both sensitive scholars of native

American culture. In his The Ecology of Freedom (1982), Bookchin devotes

a chapter to what he describes as “organic society,” emphasizing the

important features of early human tribal-society: a primordial equality

and the absence of coercive and domineering values, a feeling of unity

between the individual and the kin community, a sense of communal

property and an emphasis on mutual aid and usufruct rights, and a

relationship with the natural world which is one of reciprocal harmony

rather than of domination. But Bookchin is concerned that we draw

lessons from the past, and learn from the culture of pre-literate

people, rather than romanticising the life of hunter-gatherers. Still

less, that we should try to emulate them.

Pierre Clastres was both an anarchist and an anthropologist. His minor

classic, on the Indian communities of South America—specifically the

forest Guayaki (Ache)—is significantly titled Society Against the State

(1977). Like Tom Paine and the early anarchists, Clastres makes a clear

distinction between society, as a pattern of social relations, and the

state, and argues that the essence of what he describes as “archaic”

societies—whether hunter-gatherers or horticultural (neolithic)

peoples—is that effective means are institutionalized to prevent power

being separated from social life. He bewails the fact that western

political philosophy is unable to see power except in terms of

“hierarchized and authoritarian relations of command and obedience,”

(p.9) and thus equates power with coercive power. Reviewing the

ethnographic literature of the people of South America—apart from the

Inca State—Clastres argues that they were distinguished by their “sense

of democracy and taste for equality,” and that even local chiefs lacked

coercive power. What constituted the basic fabric of archaic society,

according to Clastres, was exchange, coercive power, in essence, being a

negation of reciprocity. He contends that the aggressiveness of tribal

communities has been grossly exaggerated, and that a subsistence economy

did not imply an endless struggle against starvation, for in normal

circumstances there was an abundance and variety of things to eat. Such

communities were essentially egalitarian, and people had a high degree

of control over their own lives and work activities. But the decisive

“break” for Clastres, between “archaic” and “historical” societies was

not the neolithic revolution and the advent of agriculture, but the

“political revolution” involving the intensification of agriculture and

the emergence of the state.

The key points of Clastres’ analysis have recently been affirmed by John

Gledhill (1994, pp.13–15). It provides a valuable critique of western

political theory which identifies power with coercive authority; and it

suggests looking at history less in terms of typologies than as a

process in which human activities have maintained their own autonomy and

resisted the centralizing intrusions and exploitation inherent in the

state.

While for Clastres and Bookchin political domination and hierarchy begin

with the intensification of agriculture, and the rise of the state, for

John Zerzan the domestication of plants and animals heralds the demise

of an era when humans lived an authentic, free life. Agriculture, per

se, is a form of alienation; it implies a loss of contact with the world

of nature and a controlling mentality. The advent of agriculture thus

entails the “end of innocence” and the demise of the “golden age” as

humans left the “Garden of Eden,” though Eden is identified not with a

garden but with hunter-gathering existence. Given this advocacy of

“primitivism,” it is hardly surprising that Zerzan (1988, 1994) draws on

anthropological data to validate his claims, and to portray

hunter-gatherers as egalitarian, authentic, and as the “most successful

and enduring adaptation ever achieved by humankind” (1988, p.66). Even

symbolic culture and the shamanism associated with hunter-gatherers is

seen by Zerzan as implying an orientation to manipulate and control

nature or other humans. Zerzan presents an apocalyptic, even a gnostic

vision. Our hunter-gatherer past is described as an idyllic era of

virtue and authentic living. The last eight thousand years or so of

human history—after the fall (agriculture)—is seen as one of tyranny,

hierarchical control, mechanized routine devoid of any spontaneity, and

as involving the anesthetization of the senses. All those products of

the human creative imagination—farming, art, philosophy, technology,

science, urban living, symbolic culture—are viewed negatively by

Zerzan—in a monolithic sense. The future we are told is “primitive.” How

this is to be achieved in a world that presently sustains almost six

billion people (for evidence suggests that the hunter-gather lifestyle

is only able to support 1 or 2 people per sq. mile), or whether the

“future primitive” actually entails, in gnostic fashion, a return not to

the godhead, but to hunter-gathering subsistence, Zerzan does not tell

us. While radical ecologists glorify the golden age of peasant

agriculture, Zerzan follows the likes of Van Der Post in extolling

hunter-gatherer existence—with a selective culling of the

anthropological literature. Whether such “illusory images of Green

primitivism” are, in themselves, symptomatic of the estrangement of

affluent urban dwellers and intellectuals, from the natural (and human)

world—as both Bookchin (1995) and Ray Ellen (1986) suggest—I will leave

others to judge.

Reflections on anarchism

The term anarchy comes from the Greek, and essentially means “no ruler.”

Anarchists are people who reject all forms of government or coercive

authority, all forms of hierarchy and domination. They are therefore

opposed to what the Mexican anarchist Flores Magon called the “sombre

trinity”—state, capital and the church. Anarchists are thus opposed to

both capitalism and to the state, as well as to all forms of religious

authority. But anarchists also seek to establish or bring about by

varying means, a condition of anarchy, that is, a decentralized society

without coercive institutions, a society organized through a federation

of voluntary associations. Contemporary right-wing “libertarians,” like

Milton Friedman, Rothbard and Ayn Rand, who are often described as

“anarcho-capitalists,” and who fervently defend capitalism, are not in

any real sense anarchists.

In an important sense anarchists support the rallying cry of the French

revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity—and strongly believe that

these values are inter-dependent. As Bakunin remarked: “Freedom without

socialism is privilege and injustice; and socialism without freedom is

slavery and brutality.” Needless to say anarchists have always been

critical of soviet communism, and the most powerful and penetrating

critiques of Marx, Marxist-Leninism, and the Soviet regime have come

from anarchists: people like Berkmanl Goldman, and Maximoff. The

latter’s work was significantly entitled: The Guillotine at Work (1940).

Maximoff saw the politics of Lenin and Trotsky as similar to that of the

Jacobins in the French revolution, and equally reactionary.

With the collapse of the Soviet regime, Marxists are now in a state of

intellectual disarray, and are floundering around looking for a safe

political anchorage. They seem to gravitate either towards Hayek or

towards Keynes; whichever way their socialism gets lost in the process.

Conservative writers like Roger Scruton take great pleasure in berating

Marxists for having closed their eyes to the realities of the Soviet

regime: they themselves, however, have a myopia when it comes to

capitalism. The poverty, famine, sickening social inequalities,

political repression and ecological degradation that is generated under

capitalism is always underplayed by apologists like Scruton and

Fukuyama. They see these as simply “problems” that need to be

overcome—not as intrinsically related to capitalism itself.

Anarchism can be looked at in two ways.

On the one hand it can be seen as a kind of “river,” as Peter Marshall

describes it in his excellent history of anarchism. It can thus be seen

as a “libertarian impulse” or as an “anarchist sensibility” that has

existed throughout human history: an impulse that has expressed itself

in various ways—in the writings of Lao Tzu and the Taoists, in classical

Greek thought, in the mutuality of kin-based societies, in the ethos of

various religious sects, in such agrarian movements as the Diggers in

England and the Zapatistas of Mexico, in the collectives that sprang up

during the Spanish civil war, and currently—in the ideas expressed in

the ecology and feminist movements. Anarchist tendencies seem to have

expressed themselves in all religious movements, even in Islam. One

Islamic sect, the Najadat, believed that “power belongs only to god.”

They therefore felt that they did not really need an imam or caliph, but

could organize themselves mutually to ensure justice. Many years ago I

wrote an article on Lao Tzu, suggesting that the famous Tao Te Ching

(“The Way and its Power,” as Waley translates it) should not be seen as

a mystical religious tract (as it is normally understood), but rather as

a political treatise. It is, in fact, the first anarchist tract. For the

underlying philosophy of the Tao Te Ching is fundamentally anarchist, as

Rudolf Rocker long ago noted. On the other hand anarchism may be seen as

a historical movement and political theory that had its beginnings at

the end of the 18^(th) century. It was expressed in the writings of

William Godwin, who wrote the classic anarchist text An Enquiry

Concerning Political Justice (1798), as well as in the actions of the

sans-culottes and the enrages during the French revolution, and by

radicals like Thomas Spence and William Blake in Britain. The term

“anarchist” was first used during the French revolution as a term of

abuse in describing the sans-culottes—“without breeches”—the working

people of France who during the revolution advocated the abolition of

government.

Anarchism, as a social movement, developed during the 19^(th) century.

Its basic social philosophy was formulated by the Russian revolutionary

Michael Bakunin. It was the outcome of his clashes with Karl Marx and

his followers—who advocated a statist road to socialism—during meetings

of the International Working Men’s Association in the 1860s. In its

classical form, therefore, as it was expressed by Kropotkin, Goldman,

Reclus and Malatesta, anarchism was a significant part of the socialist

movement in the years before the first World War, but its socialism was

libertarian not Marxist. The tendency of writers like David Pepper

(1996) to create a dichotomy between socialism and anarchism is, I

think, both conceptually and historically misleading.

Misconceptions of anarchism

Of all political philosophies anarchism has had perhaps the worst press.

It has been ignored, maligned, ridiculed, abused, misunderstood, and

misrepresented by writers from all sides of the political

spectrum—Marxists, liberals, democrats and conservatives. Theodore

Roosevelt, the American president, described anarchism as a “crime

against the whole human race”—and it has been variously judged as

destructive, violent and nihilistic. A number of criticisms have been

lodged against anarchism, and I will deal briefly with eight.

It is said that anarchists are too innocent, too naive, and have too

rosy a picture of human nature. It is said that, like Rousseau, they

have a romantic view of human nature which they see as essentially good

and peace-loving. But of course real humans are not like this; they are

cruel and aggressive and selfish, and so anarchy is just a pipe dream.

It is an unrealistic vision of a past golden age that never really

existed. This being so, some form of coercive authority is always

necessary. The truth is that anarchists do not follow Rousseau. In fact,

Bakunin was scathing in his criticisms of the 18^(th) century

philosopher. Most anarchists tend to think humans have both good and bad

tendencies. If they did think humans all goodness and light, would they

mind being ruled? It is because they have a realistic rather than a

romantic view of human nature, that they oppose all forms of coercive

authority. In essence, anarchists oppose all power which the French

describe as “puissance”—“power over” (rather than “pouvoir,” the power

to do something), and believe—like Lord Acton—that power corrupts, and

absolute power corrupts absolutely. As Paul Goodman wrote: “...the issue

is not whether people are ‘good enough’ for a particular type of

society; rather it is a matter of developing the kind of social

institutions that are most conducive to expanding the potentialities we

have for intelligence, grace, sociability and freedom.”

Anarchy, it is believed, is a synonym for chaos and disorder. This is,

in fact, how people often use the term. But anarchy, as understood by

most anarchists, means the exact opposite of this. It means a society

based on order. Anarchy means not chaos, or a lack of organisation, but

a society based on the autonomy of the individual, on co-operation, one

without rulers or coercive authority. As Proudhon put it: liberty is the

mother of order. But equally anarchists do not denounce chaos, for they

see chaos and disorder as having inherent potentiality—as Bakunin put

it: to destroy is a creative act.

Another equation made is that between anarchism and violence.

Anarchism, it is said, is all about terrorist bombs and violence. And

there is a book currently in the bookshops entitled The Anarchists’

Cookbook all about how to make bombs and dynamite. But as Alexander

Berkman wrote: the resort to violence against oppression or to obtain

certain political objectives has been practiced throughout human

history. Acts of violence have been committed by the followers of every

political and religious creed: nationalists, liberals, socialists,

feminists, republicans, monarchists, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians,

democrats, conservatives, fascists...and every government is based on

organized violence. Anarchists who have resorted to violence are no

worse than anybody else. But most anarchists have been against violence

and terrorism, and there has always been a strong link between anarchism

and pacifism. Yet anarchists go one step further: they challenge the

violence that most people do not recognize and which is often of the

worst possible kind; this is lawful violence.

Anarchists have been accused, especially by Marxists, of being

theoretical blockheads, of being anti-intellectual, or of making a cult

of mindless action. But as a perusal of the anarchist movement will

indicate, many anarchists or people with anarchist sympathies have been

among the finest intellects of their generations, truly creative people.

Moreover, anarchists have produced many seminal texts outlining their

own philosophy and their own social doctrines. These are generally free

of the jargon and the pretension that passes as scholarship amongst many

liberal scholars, Marxists and post-modernists.

Another criticism is the opposite of this: it ridicules anarchism for

being apolitical, and a doctrine of inaction. Anarchists, according to

the ex-doyen of the Green Party in Britain, Jonathan Porritt, do nothing

but contemplate their navels. Because they do not engage in party

politics, he even suggests that anarchists do not live in the “real

world.” All the essential themes of the Green Party manifesto—the call

for a society that is decentralized, equitable, ecological,

co-operative, with flexible institutions—are of course simply an

unacknowledged appropriation of what anarchists like Kropotkin had long

ago advocated—but with Porritt this vision is simply hitched to party

politics. As a media figure Porritt completely misunderstands what

anarchism—and a decentralized society—is all about. Anarchism is not

non-political. Nor does it advocate a retreat into prayer,

self-indulgence or meditation, whether or not one contemplates one’s

navel or chants mantras. It is simply hostile to parliamentary or party

politics. The only democracy it thinks valid, is participatory

democracy, and considers putting an X on a piece of paper every four or

five years is a sham. It serves only to give ideological justification

to power holders in a society that is fundamentally hierarchical and

undemocratic. Anarchists are of many kinds. They have therefore

suggested various ways of challenging and transforming the present

system of violence and inequality—through communes, passive resistance,

syndicalism, municipal democracy, insurrection, direct action and

education. One of the reasons why some anarchists have put a lot of

emphasis on publishing propaganda and education, is that they have

always eschewed party organization as well as violence. Anarchists have

always been critical of the notion of a vanguard party, seeing it as

inevitably leading to some form of despotism. And with regard to both

the French and Russian revolutions history has proved their premonitions

correct.

A consistent critique of anarchism offered by Marxists is that it is

utopian and romantic, a peasant or petty-bourgeois ideology, or an

expression of millennial dreams. Concrete historical studies by John

Hart on anarchism and the Mexican working class (1978) and by Jerome

Mintz on the anarchists of Casas Viejas in Spain (1982) have more than

adequately refuted some of the distortions about anarchism. The

anarchist movement has not been confined to peasants: it has flourished

among urban workers where anarcho- syndicalism developed. Nor is it

utopian or millennial. Anarchists have established real collectives, and

have always been critical of religion. Nobody among the early anarchists

expected some immediate or cataclysmic change to occur through

“propaganda by deed” or the “general strike”—as the writings of Reclus

and Berkman attest. They realised it would be a long haul.

Another criticism of anarchism is that it has a narrow view of

politics: that it sees the state as the fount of all evil, ignoring

other aspects of social and economic life. This is a misrepresentation

of anarchism. It partly derives from the way anarchism has been defined,

and partly because Marxist historians have tried to exclude anarchism

from the broader socialist movement. But when one examines the writings

of classical anarchists like Kropotkin, Goldman, Malatesta and Tolstoy,

as well as the character of anarchist movements in such places as Italy,

Mexico, Spain and France, it is clearly evident that it has never had

this limited vision. It has always challenged all forms of authority and

exploitation, and has been equally critical of capitalism and religion

as it has of the state. Most anarchists were feminists, and many spoke

out against racism, as well as defending the freedom of children. A

cultural and ecological critique of capitalism has always been an

important dimension of anarchist writings. This is why the writings of

Tolstoy, Reclus and Kropotkin still have contemporary relevance.

A final criticism of anarchism is that it is unrealistic; anarchy will

never work. The market socialist David Miller expresses this view very

well in his book on Anarchism (1984). His attitude to anarchism is one

of heads I win, tails you lose. He admits that communities based on

anarcho-communist principles have existed, and “given a chance” have had

some degree of “unexpected success.” But due to lack of popular support

and state intervention and repression they have, he writes, always been

“failures.” On the other hand he also argues that societies could not

exist anyway without some form of centralized government. Miller seems

oblivious to the fact that what Stanley Diamond called “kin-communities”

have long existed within and often in opposition to state systems, and

that trading networks have existed throughout history, even among

hunter-gatherers, without any state control. The state, in any case, is

a recent historical phenomena, and in its modern nation-state form has

only existed for a few hundred years. Human communities have long

existed without central or coercive authority. Whether a complex

technological society is possible without centralized authority is not a

question easily answered; neither is it one that can be lightly

dismissed. Many anarchists believe that such a society is possible,

though technology will have to be on a “human scale.” Complex systems

exist in nature without there being any controlling mechanism. Indeed,

many global theorists nowadays are beginning to contemplate libertarian

social vistas that become possible in an age of computer technology.

Needless to say, if Miller had applied the same criteria by which he so

adversely adjudges anarchism—distributive justice and social

well-being—to capitalism and state “communism” then perhaps he would

have declared both these systems unpractical and unrealistic too? But at

least Miller wants to rescue anarchism from the dustbin of history—to

help us to curb abuses of power, and to keep alive the possibilities of

free social relationships.

Society, we are told, by such authorities as Friedrich Hayek, Margaret

Thatcher, and Marilyn Strathern, either does not exist, or it is a

“confused category” that ought to be excised from theoretical discourse.

The word derives, of course, from the Latin, Societas, which in turn

derives from Socius, meaning a companion, a friend, a relationship

between people, a shared activity. Anarchists have thus always drawn a

clear distinction between society, in this sense, and the state: between

what the Jewish existentialist scholar Martin Buber called the

“political” and the “social” principles. Buber was a close friend of the

anarchist Gustav Landauer, and what Landauer basically argued—long

before Foucault—was that the state could not be destroyed by revolution:

it could only be undermined—by developing other kinds of relationships,

by actualizing social patterns and forms of organization that involved

mutuality and free co-operation. Such a social domain is always in a

sense present, imminent in contemporary society, co-existing with the

state. For Landauer, as for Colin Ward, anarchy, therefore, is not

something that only existed long ago before the rise of the state, or

exists now only among people like the Nharo or Piaroa living at the

margins of capitalism. Nor is it simply a speculative vision of some

future society: but rather, anarchy is a form of social life which

organizes itself without the resort to coercive authority. It is always

in existence—albeit often buried and unrecognized beneath the weight of

capitalism and the state. It is like “a seed beneath the snow,” as Colin

Ward (1973) graphically puts it. Anarchy, then, is simply the idea, to

stay with the same writer, “that it is possible and desirable for

society to organize itself without government.”

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