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Title: Primal Anarchy: Lifestyle or Reality? Date: November 29, 2021 Language: en
Let me start off by saying that the term “Anarcho-Primitivism” has
become a rejected term among many writers of the primal anarchistic
choice. Many see it as a blatant intent to attribute the ideals of
primal anarchy to being savage or primitive. This is not the case.
Primal Anarchy is a term denoting the style which puts forth a primal
way of life among said anarchists. This way of life is one of a distrust
of modern technology (in the way it’s produced and why it’s produced),
focusing on autonomy and determinism, ecological resilience and
self-sustaining organization, and sometimes a freer spiritual
preference. It is a way of life that allows for the maximum freedom one
can attain.
Does this make the Primal option a lifestyle anarchist choice? Of course
not. Lifestyle-ism denotes an ignorance to the fact of class struggle
and an end to oppressive regimes and systems. Primal Anarchists
understand the class struggle, like any other anarchist, but they also
understand the path that most of the Marxist orientation has become is a
centralized, imperialist, oppressive, and ecologically destructive one.
This also applies to those who seek industrial anarchism, like the
Kropotkinites and the so-called mutualists. The problem will not get
better because you slap an anarchist label on it and hold free
committees within a society. No, the issue will only become lessened for
those anthropocentric peoples who care not for the living mass of soil
they currently rest upon. As John Zerzan beautifully puts it;
“Culture has led us to betray our own aboriginal spirit and wholeness,
into an ever-worsening realm of synthetic, isolating, impoverishing
estrangement. Which is not to say that there are no more everyday
pleasures, without which we would lose our humanness. But as our plight
deepens, we glimpse how much must be erased for our redemption.”
We must, as humans on a planet within a habitable zone, care for the
Earth. The Earth is no less a community than a group of communists
holding a rent strike or a close family or a group of friends. It is a
living breathing community that sustains us for our entire lives. This
anthropocentric sentiment is driven either by money or a struggle for
power. The “holier-than-thou” currency of the world means nothing, and
it will never mean anything. Resource based economies, or even gift
based economies, have shown themselves to be successful. We look back
through our anthropology textbooks at a time of less war, famine, and
oppression. This period before the Agricultural Revolution was a Human
Golden Age, a time of freedom and happiness. They led shorter, happier,
less controlling lives as a community. We do not seek this way of life
because of romantic views of the indigeounous communities that exist
throughout the world, or a “Great Pagan Society '', and so forth. No, we
seek this way of life for its self-determinism, economic freedom,
community, unique culture, and the freedom from processed goods and
ideas that gave rise through the Enlightenment and the Industrial
Revolution. The ideas of industrialism being a “natural science”,
according to Marx, are one of complacency to an ecological leech. Many
indigenous peoples live well and peacefully without the maw of
Industrialism or Colonialism clasping them. A harder way of life, sure,
but a freer one. Civilization, and especially Capitalist Civilization,
is bound to collapse upon itself when resources become scarce, living
wages become abhorrent, and ideologies run every aspect of life. Primal
Anarchy is the antithesis to the Industrial ideals and a struggle,
revolutionary or not, is necessary to rebel against the power-hungry
clouds of smoke choking us out.