💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › various-authors-deep-ecology-anarchism.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 14:31:12. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Deep Ecology & Anarchism
Author: Various Authors
Date: 1993
Language: en
Topics: deep ecology, food, green syndicalist, permaculture, social ecology, syndicalism
Notes: First Published by Freedom Press 84b Whitechapel High Street London E1 7QX

Various Authors

Deep Ecology & Anarchism

Publisher’s Note

This Freedom Press title has grown out of The Raven 17 issue on The Use

of Land. Rodney Aitchtey’s, and Brian Morris’s contributions were

submitted for inclusion in that issue as was Graham Purchase’s. Since we

already had more material to fill an issue of The Raven (in fact that

Raven ended up being 112 pages long) it seemed to us that we had

material for a Freedom Press title on Ecology, but only if we could

persuade our comrade Murray Bookchin to add his comments to these three

contributions, which he has done, and we are sure that the discussion

will continue in the pages of The Raven and of Freedom.

This volume opens with a challenging contribution ‘Can Life Survive?’

which arrived after The Raven 17 had gone to press, but surely timely

when in Europe and North America millions of acres of productive land

are being ‘set aside’ (that is taken out of production and farmers paid

to do so) while a large section of humanity is starving or threatened

with starvation, and ends with a fascinating history of the Apple in

which one can discern the evil influences of the capitalist system,

concerned only with production for profit. The same story could be told

in agriculture and horticulture of quantity versus quality.

Can Life Survive? by Robert Hart

Only the indomitable will to survive of ordinary people, coupled with

their instinct for mutual aid at times of crisis, can save life on earth

at this most crucial period of world history.

It is useless to put any trust in the powers-that-be. Blinded by their

incessant search for short-term profits and petty authority, they will

never be induced to take the drastic steps that are essential.

Throughout history, visionaries and prophets, who have cared

passionately about the future of the human race, have sought guidance,

not from the rich and powerful, but from oppressed and despised

minorities.

Only under wellnigh intolerable ‘marginal conditions’, does human nature

plumb its full potentialities of inner strength and practical wisdom,

that can enable it to pull through against seemingly insuperable odds.

As a young man, Kropotkin infuriated his aristocratic father by

rejecting a life of luxury and ease at the court of St. Petersburg in

favour of a posting to a military unit in Siberia.

In the then largely unexplored eastern fastnesses of the Russian empire,

he sought and found proof of the thesis that mutual aid, rather than

conflict and competition, is the crucial factor in evolution.

Similarly, I suggest that Gandhi, Kagawa and Baba Amte sought out the

‘lowest of the low’, not only out of compassion for their plight, but

because they found in them inspiration and encouragement for the

colossal regenerative tasks which they were undertaking.

They were establishing new poles, by which the dynamics of human

development could be regulated.

At the present time similar poles of achievement are being set by the

women of Africa and the Himalayas who, out of selfless dedication to

their families, undertake ever-lengthening and ever more exhausting

journeys on foot in search of wood and water.

In both the developmental and environmental spheres, the pendulum swings

continually between ‘North’ and ‘South’, the rich world and the poor.

‘Northern’ statesmen, administrators and industrialists see the problems

only in the light of charity and population control: how little money

they can decently spend on ‘relief while putting most of the blame on

the ‘South’ for their economic and ecological problems and for not

checking the ‘population explosion’.

Such attitudes betray gross ignorance of the true facts. Environmental

degradation is overwhelmingly the responsibility of the ‘North’: its

prodigious emissions of polluting gases and other chemicals, with its

wholesale destruction of trees and chemical contamination of soils,

combined with its ruthless economic and political exploitation of the

‘South’. The ‘North’s’ first duty is not to lecture the ‘South’ and

administer meagre charity, but to get off its back.

If the South were allowed to work out its own salvation, freed from

domination, not only by the North, but also by its own North-sponsored

dictators and ‘elites’, there is ample evidence that it would find

solutions to its economic and ecological problems from which the North

could learn valuable lessons.

Despite all the encroachments and invasions of Northern political and

economic imperialisms, a characteristic feature of many Southern

societies is still the largely self-governing and self-sufficient local

community. Such a community provides comprehensive answers to economic,

ecological and even population problems. Bound together by ties of

mutual aid, the members have the wisdom and sense of responsibility not

to burden their successors with multitudes of mouths that will be unable

to be fed. At the same time, the co-operative labour of farming, growing

and craftsmanship, often involving music and other cultural activities,

together with the natural beauty of the environment, satisfies the

inhabitants’ emotional and creative urges in ways unimagined by

soul-starved Northern city dwellers.

Such communities often exist in remote or difficult areas, rejected by

the North as offering sparse or risky financial returns on investment.

It is the hardships of life in such areas that strengthen the

inhabitants’ cohesiveness. The day may well come when many people in the

North will be glad to study their survival techniques. Already life in

many Northern inner cities is becoming so intolerable that many people

are being drawn to adopt ‘Southern’ ways of life. A prospectus for a

summer camp in the Shropshire countryside issued by Whose World?, a

group with headquarters in Manchester, asks:

Do you believe in the need for a radical transformation of society? Do

you long for a world that’s truly equal and just; where we all live

sustainably and non-exploitatively; where everyone’s needs are met now

and always?

It then states the aims of the camp:

To provide all of us who come with an experience of what simple,

non-materialistic, communal living — consensus decision-making, trying

to look after each other emotionally etc. — could be like and have fun

while doing so.

To provide support and encouragement for all of us working towards a

vision of a just, sustainable, non-violent way of life.

To build a network of people and communities who want to promote

active non-violent resistance and simple, anti-materialist ways of

living.

As regards the economic advantages of Third World village communities,

many of them satisfy their basic needs, and some even have surpluses for

sale, from agroforestry systems that provide an intensity of land-use

unknown in the North. Villages in Java, one of the most densely

populated rural areas in the world, are surrounded by dense green

screens of forest gardens, or pekarangan, in which many of the 500

different species of food plant which the people consume are grown.

These forest gardens provide the best comprehensive, constructive answer

to one of today’s predominant environmental preoccupations: what to do

with the rainforest. Well-meaning Northern environmentalists get very

hot under the collar when rainforests are mentioned, asserting

forcefully that, at all costs, they must be preserved in toto. But the

forests are far too valuable resources to be kept in glass cases. The

tribal peoples who make them their homes have an encyclopaedic knowledge

of all the right answers. They know almost every plant and what its uses

are. At the same time they use the wild plants to provide shade and

shelter for economic crops such as bananas, pineapples and coffee. More

than half Tanzania’s coffee output is derived from the famous Chagga

gardens on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. The forest garden is the

world’s most advanced system for supplying basic needs, not only food,

but fuel, timber, textiles, energy and many other necessities.

Agroforestry, in fact, provides the only safe, non-polluting,

sustainable answer to the Northern industrialism that is causing such

appalling damage to the world’s environment, and which is rapidly

disintegrating.

In fact, the only comprehensive, constructive answer to both the world’s

economic and ecological crises is a post-industrial order, which

far-sighted Greens have already been advocating for a number of years.

The colossal dangers to all life represented by greenhouse gases,

radioactive wastes, CFCs, halons and deforestation will never be

overcome by the small-scale piecemeal tinkering measures put forward by

statesmen at the Rio conference. Nor will the colossal and

ever-increasing suffering caused by poverty, hunger, homelessness,

unemployment, violence and avoidable disease be overcome by ‘market

forces’, bank loans and IMF-sponsored hydro-electric schemes.

In a world order of which the basic unit would be the small

self-sufficient community, meeting most of its essential needs by means

of agroforestry, small workshops, and small-scale alternative technology

devices, there would be little or no need for road, rail or air

transport using polluting fuels. Energy needs would be met by

environmentally friendly, non-polluting wind, water, tidal, geothermal,

solar and biogas systems. All wastes would be recycled.

Above all, there should be a total ban on the barbarous practice of war,

which causes unspeakable damage to the environment as well as untold

human suffering. Civilised methods of solving disputes based on reason,

mutual respect and psychology, as advocated by religious leaders

throughout history, should be developed.

All life on earth could be annihilated by nuclear war as well as by

environmental degradation.

War never brings lasting solutions to any problem, because it does not

eradicate the deep-seated psychological and moral causes of conflict.

Imperialistic drives, if suppressed by military action, reappear in

economic, political and cultural forms, which do just as much harm to

human bodies and minds — in more subtle ways — as does armed conquest.

The Second World War has led to a period of environmental destruction,

homelessness, human misery, disease, torture, violence, crime and

corruption unprecedented in history.

Paul Harrison’s latest book on the worldwide ecological-economic crisis

is called The Third Revolution. The three revolutions which he considers

crucial to human history are the Neolithic, the Industrial, and the

present Environmental Revolution.

The Neolithic Revolution took place when Stone Age man, having developed

axes almost as sharp as steel, began his onslaught on his forest home,

which has continued with increasing ferocity ever since. Rejecting his

hunter-gatherer lifestyle, Neolithic man tried to gain control over his

environment by domesticating wild animals and wild crops and thus

establishing agriculture. At the same time he developed the crafts of

spinning, weaving, pottery and carpentry, and built the first towns.

A little later, war appeared for the first time on the human scene, as

did the erosion of upland areas caused by deforestation. Both these

trends were greatly intensified by the discovery of metals.

The Industrial Revolution, which began at the beginning of the 18^(th)

century, has had infinitely more drastic effects on both human life and

the environment. While it has brought great and undeniable benefits in

lessening toil, facilitating travel and, above all, in greatly extending

the dissemination of information, its wholesale pollution of the

environment and use of weapons of mass destruction are totally

unacceptable. If human life is to survive beyond the middle of the next

century in any tolerable form — or at all — both these features of

industrialism must be superseded.

Thus the Environmental Revolution, if it is to succeed, must be as

drastic and far-reaching in positive ways, as have the two previous

world revolutions in negative ways. It must involve equally radical

transformations of life-styles; these cannot be imposed from ‘above’ but

must be voluntarily adopted by the people most deeply affected. The

motive- power for the Environmental Revolution can only be a worldwide

eruption of constructive, non-violent People’s Power, comparable to the

Gandhian ‘satya-grahas’ in India in the 1920s and 1930s and the

overthrow of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989.

Already there are many indications in many countries that such a

movement is building up.

Above all, there is increasing worldwide awareness of the fundamental

importance of trees for healing the environment, assuring water

supplies, ameliorating the climate, purifying the atmosphere, absorbing

C02, exhaling oxygen, regenerating degraded soils, stopping erosion —

and supplying basic human needs of food, fuel, building materials,

textiles, oils and plastics.

A pioneer campaign for the preservation of trees involving People’s

Power — mainly Women’s Power — was launched in the early 1970s in an

appallingly degraded sector of the Himalayas. Called the Chipko movement

(Chipko means ‘embrace’), it began spontaneously when a group of women

embraced trees to prevent them from being felled. From that dramatic

start the movement has spread to other parts of India; it has led to a

number of official bans on tree-felling and has generated pressure for a

more environmentally friendly natural resource policy.

A tree-planting campaign, also largely involving women, is the Green

Belt Movement in Kenya, which has spread rapidly and which its founder,

Professor Wangari Maathai, is seeking to extend to twelve other African

countries.

There are similar campaigns in many other countries. In the Highlands of

Scotland, one of the world’s many environmental black spots, a campaign

is afoot to restore the Great Wood of Caledon, which once covered almost

the entire area, and build up a prosperous forest economy, which might

absorb many unemployed city-dwellers.

Similar wilderness areas throughout the world — almost all the result of

human misuse of the land — could be restored by tree-planting campaigns

which could lead to the provision of homes and vital, constructive work

for countless millions of homeless, deprived people.

Certain countries, above all, perhaps China and Israel, have

demonstrated that even the most arid of deserts can be transformed by

trees into areas of fertility, prosperity and beauty. Restoration

techniques have been scientifically worked out, involving the planting

of drought-resistant trees and shrubs, which provide ‘nurse conditions’

for more delicate trees and other plants supplying fruit and many other

economic products and supporting large populations.

The main cause of the ecological crisis is not the ‘population

explosion’, as many Northern analysts claim, but gross under-use of the

world’s land resources.

Apart from totally unproductive deserts, which cover one-third of the

earth’s land surface, there are vast areas of grassland, much of very

poor quality, which is used for grazing cattle and sheep. The average

food production of such areas is about half a hundredweight per acre per

year. In the Highlands of Scotland it is reckoned that it takes five

acres of grassland and moorland to support one sheep. Much of the rest

of the world’s agricultural land is used for the monocropping of

cereals, with an average production of two to four tons per acre per

year. But under agroforestry systems annual production exceeding a

hundred tons per acre per year is possible. Moreover, under such

systems, a wide diversity of food and other useful plants is produced,

supplying well balanced diets, as well as fuel, building materials and

other necessities.

The food plants produced by an agroforestry system supply the most

important factors in human nutrition, in which most diets, in the poor

and rich worlds alike, are gravely deficient. These are fruit, whose

natural sugars feed the brain and energise the body, and green plants,

whose chlorophyll — the basic constituent of all physical life — has a

special affinity for the blood. A diet designed for optimum positive

health should comprise seventy percent of fruit and green vegetables,

preferably consumed fresh and raw.

A disaster afflicting today’s world, which is at least as serious as any

actual or potential environmental disaster, is the colossal toll of

disease caused by bad or inadequate food. The malnutrition of poverty in

the Third World is no more drastic in its effects than the malnutrition

of affluence in the rich sector — the malnutrition caused by excess of

fatty, clogging, over-flavoured and chemically processed foods causes

the ‘diseases of civilisation’ which are no less lethal than the

diseases caused by destitution and dirt.

Before there can be an Environmental Revolution there must be a

Humanistic Revolution. The reason why ever-growing stretches of the

earth’s surface are hells for human beings, whether they are squalid

shanty-towns, polluted and violent inner-city ghettos, squatters’ camps,

concentration camps or treeless wildernesses, is that the powers who run

the world regard people as things, as objects of exploitation or

domination. A word coined by Karl Marx in his critique of the capitalist

system was verdinglichung — ‘thing-making’, though Communist commissars

have proved as guilty in this respect as capitalist entrepreneurs. Both

groups regard human beings as mere pawns to be used for the furtherance

of their personal power and wealth. Similarly, their only interest in a

stretch of beautiful countryside is, not how its beauty can be preserved

and enhanced, but how most effectively it can be ‘developed’; whether it

can be made to generate more wealth as the site of a building estate, an

industrial complex, a factory farm, an airfield, a hydro-electric dam, a

nuclear power station, a motorway, or a ‘theme park’.

The attitude of the powers-that-be towards Life in its infinite

complexity, whether in the form of a human being or a tropical

rainforest, is one of gross over-simplification. The human being is only

of interest as ‘consumer’, ‘investor’, ‘labour’, ‘voter’, ‘soldier’ or

‘taxpayer’. The forest, with its vast diversity of species, is only of

interest as a purveyor of timber, or, burnt to the ground and converted

into pasture, as a brief purveyor of hamburgers. The only standard is

short-term profit; no regard is paid to longer and wider prospects, to

the needs and survival of living beings.

It is among ordinary human beings, not industrial chiefs, bankers,

bureaucrats and politicians, that humanistic feelings are found in their

greatest intensity. Among our tortured world’s supreme needs is the

divine commonsense and compassion of the conscientious mother and

housewife. This is a manifestation of the power of Gaia, the grassroots

dynamic which must supply much of the motive-force of the Environmental

Revolution.

Unlike previous revolutions, this must be overwhelmingly non-violent and

constructive. It will comprise an ever-increasing profusion of small

growing-points, like the new plants that irresistibly spring forth in an

area devastated by volcanic eruption.

Already it is possible to detect a multitude of such growing-points in

almost every country. A report critical of industrialism was entitled

Limits to Growth, but no limits should be placed on the growth of new

village communities, family farms, organic market-gardens, conservation

groups, Green organisations, and co-operative enterprises of all kinds.

Even now, the people involved in these must number many millions. If

only their efforts could be integrated and co-ordinated into a worldwide

New Life Network, they could give rise to an NGO — a Non-Governmental

Organisation — which could speak with real authority in the United

Nations.

As the primary impulse for all activity comes from the human psyche, the

first essential, if mankind is to survive the colossal challenges of the

present and future, must be a Moral Revolution. Mutual Aid, rather than

money, power, status and self-indulgence, must be accepted as the basic

Law of Life. Modern communication technology has forcibly brought home

the fact that it is One World. Disasters involving human suffering are

shown on television screens with equal immediacy, whether they occur in

distant countries or the next street. No longer can people shrug off

responsibility for the tribulations of their distant cousins. In fact

those tribulations are generally caused by negative or positive factors

in the worldwide system and ethos which govern the way the majority of

the world’s citizens live and work — a system and ethos based on blind

selfishness and materialism.

Gandhi said, ‘There is enough in the world to satisfy everyone’s need

but not everyone’s greed’. In fact, the technological know-how exists to

give every human being adequate food, water, shelter, clothing, energy

and opportunity for self-fulfilment. A worldwide campaign of resource

development for need could be a ‘moral equivalent of war’, which would

bring deep psychological as well as physical satisfaction to countless

millions, not least among those who at present are seeking the

soul-destroying ‘satisfaction’ of exploiting, dominating or otherwise

hurting their fellow human beings.

Such a campaign, wholly constructive and transcending environmental

problems as well as human barriers and rivalries — and involving the

planting of trillions of trees — could usher in a period of positive

peace and creative activity such as mankind has never known throughout

history.

The alternatives face each one of us: a series of ever deepening

environmental and economic disasters and conflicts or a world of

unprecedented beauty, diversity and abundance.

A Polemic on Deep Ecology

Deep Ecology: Not Man Apart by Rodney Aitchtey

It is the intent of the following essay to shine deep ecology’s light

onto the question of land itself. Land from which everything emanates.

Arne Naess launched the long range international deep ecology movement

in Norway in 1972, which attracted the attention of environmental

academics worldwide. Awareness grew of just how deep is the deep water

in which we are habituated to wallow.

Naess has compared our position to being at the bottom of a well, with

our will-power succumbing to the lingering deadly fumes, which would

explain the prevalent inertia. Fumes being, apart from insidious vehicle

exhausts and airborne pollution, television and advertising.

P.D. Ouspensky’s prognosis is useful. ‘All the absurdities and all the

contradictions of people, and of human life in general, become explained

when we realise that people live in sleep, do everything in sleep, and

do not know that they are asleepV Each is a bundle of memories of

experiences with some ‘reserve energy’. It is this ‘reserve energy’

which deep ecology taps, and brings to the surface, waking us up.

Deep ecology has become an emotive term and does carry

multi-connotations which are like sparks flying from a live terminal,

which is as Arne Naess intended. No two people are the same. Deep

ecology’s philosophy is not rigid, although it does not deviate from

Naess’ original intention which is to question preconceptions and

assumptions until the answer reaches the level of intuition. Something

made the American philosopher John Rodman say, in 1978, ‘It is probably

a safe maxim that there will be no revolution in ethics without a

revolution in perception.’

Naess has said that his vision of deep ecology was awakened by reading a

book by Rachel Carson which was published in America in 1962. Her title,

Man Against the Earth, was changed to Silent Spring. She dedicated the

book to Albert Schweitzer in his words: ‘Man has lost the capacity to

foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.’

When she had finished writing she sent the manuscript to William Shawn,

editor of the New Yorker. His enthusiasm buoyed her into noting, ‘I knew

from his reaction that my message would get across’. While listening to

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, ‘suddenly the tension of four years was

broken and I let the tears come... The thoughts of all the birds and

other creatures and all the loveliness that is in nature came to me with

such a surge of deep happiness, that now I had done what I could — I had

been able to complete it’. Her book struck home, at people’s

preconceptions and assumptions, and attempts were made to suppress it.

She recalled John Muir (see later) when she said at the end of the book,

The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the

Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that

nature exists for the convenience of man.

Arne Naess said of Silent Spring, ‘Rachel Carson went deep and

questioned the premisses of her society’. In 1964, Rachel Carson died.

In 1969, Naess resigned as professor in philosophy at the University of

Oslo after being there thirty years, so that he could ‘live rather than

function’. During his time at the University he had established a name

for his work on the philosophies of Spinoza and Gandhi which he put into

practice in direct action in Norway. One of his actions was to pin

himself high up to one side of a threatened Norwegian fjord; he refused

to descend until plans to build a dam there were dropped, which they

were!

He was in tune with the lines from this poem by the American poet,

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962):

The Answer

A severed hand

Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his

history ...for contemplation or in fact ...

Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest

beauty is

Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty

of the universe. Love that, not man

Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions, or

drown in despair when his days darken.

Naess also emphasises ‘the responsibility of an integrated person to

work out his or her reaction to contemporary environmental problems on

the basis of a total view’.

It is now almost thirty years since Silent Spring said ‘What we have to

face is not an occasional dose of poison which has accidentally got into

some particle of food, but a persistent and continuous poisoning of the

whole human environment’. And it was not a new phenomenon then. It has

taken centuries to virtually strip the planet of its natural covering.

Five hundred years ago, in 1492, an Italian, Christobal Colón (Columbus)

blazed the trail for extermination and environmental destruction up to

the present time. He discovered and ravished, where he could, the

islands of the West Indies. In 1498, on his third voyage, when he landed

on what became Venezuela he took it for another island, until afterwards

when natives disabused him. Under the impression he had come upon

islands off India he named the natives Indians, which misnomer has stuck

onto all the natives of South and North America and Canada. A fellow

Italian, Amerigo Vespucci landed up in North America and his first name

became attached to the whole continent. There is a statue of him in New

York.

In 1993, a statue of Columbus is projected for London, although no

likeness of the man exists. At school I was given the impression he was

English. But 1993 is when we are to be Europeanised with its

centralised, humanist, materialist values, and Columbus would therefore

be seen as a good European to admire.

In the 1780s accounts of the exploits of Columbus and his successors

varied so much on the Continent that the learned Abbé Guillaume Raynal

decided to assemble the different accounts to find a common thread. It

was that they had ‘harassed the globe and stained it with blood’. And

the situation has not changed. In Sarawak now a quite horrific

extermination process is in force with the destruction of the

rainforest. One of the indigenous people recently said, ‘We are now like

fish in the pool of a drying out riverbed’. Such distress and death to

enable the Japanese to make their fax paper is diabolical.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) in his essay, ‘Nature’, says, ‘Man is

fallen; nature is erect, and serves as a differential thermometer,

detecting the presence or absence of the divine sentiment in man’. He

inspired both Henry Thoreau and John Muir; each in their differing ways

put his philosophy into practice. Thoreau, Emerson said, had developed

his own thoughts a step further.

Thoreau (1817–1862) urged viewing nature free of preconceptions. Nature

became his ‘society’. In his essay ‘Walking’, he said, ’...from the

forests and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind’.

He believed that there would be no regeneration of society without

self-reform of the individual. He went to prison in 1848 rather than pay

a poll tax because of its going toward the Mexican war effort. In his

hut by Waiden pond he put into practice his growing convictions.

John Muir (1838–1914) felt that ‘One day’s exposure to mountains is

better than cartloads of books’, and he believed that lack of immersion

in the natural world was what flawed Emerson’s writings. However, he

said of Emerson, ‘He was as sincere as the trees, his eyes sincere as

the sun’. Muir was aware of himself going deeper into Nature’s secrets

than Thoreau had been. In 1870 an experience shook him, and he wrote in

a letter joyfully, ‘I’m in the woods woods woods, and they are in me!’.

He knew that there was no creature higher or lower than another; each

had equal right to live and blossom in its own way and own time.

Muir chose to spend most of his life in the mountains, finding comfort

among them. Walking was not a word he used for himself; instead,

sauntering, with its original sense of musing. Here are words addressed

to the boy King Edward VI which show it in use before deep ecological

consideration was made to give way to shallowness, losing a sense of

rootedness, by the Reformation: ’...do not yourselfe sitt saunteringe

alone: as wone that weare in studye most deepe’.

Muir’s encounters with Indians were reciprocal in admiration. He was

given the name Ancoutahan by a band of the Tlingit tribe. A translation

might be: revered/learned writer, writing in his notebook; and of them

he wrote, ‘To the Indian mind all nature was instinct with deity. A

spirit was embodied in every mountain, stream, and waterfall.’

Muir’s published studies of natural forces brought him to the notice of

the scientific establishment, and he realised that the concern of

science was not with the essential oneness of all things, but with

breaking down and classification. What frustration he suffered: ‘When we

try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else

in the universe’.

In San Francisco Muir attended some Sunday night sessions with Henry

George who was having an influence on early conservation thinking. In

Progress and Poverty (1879) he suggested that as people had equal rights

to breathe the air, so they should to enjoy the earth. He reasoned that

whatever man makes or grows is his to do with it as he will. But, he

asks, who made the earth? As it is a ‘temporary dwelling place’ it is

not ours to buy or sell, (or despoil). Morally, no man should have more

land than that with which he can cope, without exploiting others, and he

advocated a Single Tax on undeserved and unearned appreciating income.

Marx’s wrestle with capital did not go deep enough to touch the earth.

He overlooked land, and actually encouraged its exploitation and

despoliation. Muir agreed with George that ‘what has destroyed all

previous civilisations has been the conditions produced by the growth of

civilisation itself. Henry George was described by President Roosevelt

as one of the century’s ‘really great thinkers’.

Muir was driven into immediate, frenzied action by a notice signed by

three men claiming a valley for themselves to raise livestock. His

letter appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin in August 1875. It marked

the beginning of the concentration of his energies toward defending

wilderness from man. Eventually he came up against the commercial

conservationists: a deep versus shallow dichotomy. In May 1892, Muir,

with sympathetic friends, launched the redoubtable Sierra Club to

campaign to preserve the forests and wild features. Muir was elected

president and remained so until he died. The National Parks of America

owe their existence to Muir’s energy. In 1876 he had said, ‘My life-work

is all over the world’; and indeed, the John Muir Trust in Scotland was

founded in 1983 with the object of keeping wilderness wild; it is

affiliated to the Sierra Club in San Francisco.

And how the Sierra Club for more than three years had to fight the

determined attempts of lumbermen and stockmen to cut down nearly half of

the Yosemite National Park; they flouted the law, and their 500,000

sheep stripped the earth of meadows and forest.

In 1894, Muir’s first book, The Mountains of California, roused America

to the need for determination to preserve the forests. Serious

opposition came from the influential General Land Office. When Muir

joined the Forest Commission on a fact-searching inspection, wherever

they stopped they found forests cut down and burned, largely by

fraudulent means. Muir wrote home, ‘Wherever the white man goes, the

groves vanish’.

Roosevelt camped with Muir and told him in a letter afterwards that he

had ‘always begrudged Emerson’s not having gone into camp’ with him. And

after a later visit to California he pronounced on the importance of its

water supply: ‘the water supply cannot be preserved unless the forests

are preserved’.

In May 1913, Muir was made Doctor of Laws by the President of the

University of California who said of him: ‘John Muir, born in Scotland,

reared in the University of Wisconsin, by final choice a Californian,

Widely travelled Observer of the world we dwell in, Man of Science and

of Letters, Friend and Protector of Nature, Uniquely gifted to Interpret

unto others Her mind and ways’. In 1914 he died. He had said, ‘A little

pure wildness is the one great present want’ for people to realise that

‘Everything is so immeasurably united’. Time Magazine announced in 1965:

‘The real father of conservation is considered to be John Muir, a

Californian naturalist’.

Emerson had absorbed Indian teachings into his writing, Thoreau absorbed

Emerson with reservations, Muir likewise and deepened on Thoreau’s

understanding; then came Aldo Leopold who had absorbed Muir’s writings

which he had had corroborated by P.D. Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum, and

his contemporary, Robinson Jeffers, whose influences appear to have been

Heraclitus, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.

Aldo Leopold (1886–1948) said, ‘We abuse land because we regard it as a

commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we

belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect’. His Land Ethic is

much quoted and appears in Part III, The Upshot, of A Sand County

Almanac. It was a distillation of nearly half a century of his lifetime

spent in forestry and wild life conservation: ‘The land ethic simply

enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters,

plants, and animals, or collectively: the land’.

P.D. Ouspensky was a contemporary also. Leopold accepted his assurance

that there was nothing dead or mechanical in nature; there was life and

feeling in everything: a mountain, a tree, a river, the fish in the

river, drops of water, rain, a plant, fire — each separately must

possess a mind of its own. A section in Sand County Almanac is titled

‘Thinking like a mountain’, as is a recent book about deep ecology.

It was also Robinson Jeffers’ conviction that the devaluation of

human-centered illusions, the turning outward from man to what is

boundlessly greater, is the next step in human development; and an

essential condition of freedom and of spiritual (i.e. moral and vital)

sanity:

Mourning the broken balance, the hopeless prostration of the earth under

men’s hands and their minds...

He believed human life to be so easy, spent, as it is, thoughtlessly.

His poetry delineates ‘conflict and charity, love, jealousy, hatred,

competition, government, vanity and cruelty, and that puerile passion

the will to power’.

At the fall of an age men must make sacrifice to renew beauty, to

restore strength.

He has been called the poet of inhumanism. Certainly deep ecology is

‘not man apart’ from the earth, taking one beyond that relative thought

which separates and competes.

The beauty of things —

Is in the beholder’s brain — the human mind’s translation of their

transhuman

Intrinsic value.

In 1945 John Muir’s integral approach was repersonified by David Brower

who not only brought Muir to people’s minds, but it was found that he

had an added attribute: a gift for leadership. An idea of the man is

suggested by these words: “It is still a challenge to emulate the freely

translated Indian motto, ‘Where I go I leave no sign’”. He became the

Sierra Club’s first executive director in 1952, and claimed that he

looked towards England for her example of National Trust protection of

areas of beauty.

Under Brower’s leadership the New York Times said of the Sierra Club

that it had become the ‘gangbusters of the conservation movement’. In

1969 Brower’s intransigence removed him from the Sierra Club. He said,

‘We cannot go on fiddling while the earth’s wild places burn in the

fires of our undisciplined technology’, and he founded Friends of the

Earth as well as the John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies.

Honorary deep ecologists such as Thoreau, Muir, Leopold, Carson,

Schweitzer, Jeffers and Brower all discovered the shortcomings of the

prescribed Christianity, and found space in Eastern philosophy. The

Chinese distilled deep Indian thought, and nowhere so aphoristically as

in the deep ecological Tao Te Ching. Eastern philosophies aided and aid

comprehension and deepen understanding. Otherwise, for Muir, his

empathic communion with Nature would have found no verbal expression,

elliptical in parts as it is!

With so great a history of destruction of the environment as in America

it is perhaps not surprising why a consciousness of deep ecology should

have infiltrated there as it has. What we know of deep ecology has come

through American books, at least until 1989, when Arne Naess’ seminal

work on deep ecology was published here, thirteen years after it had

appeared in Norway: Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: An Outline of an

Ecosophy. (Eco for earth household and sophy for wisdom). Ecosophical

thinking may not be new but Arne Naess has given it a name which has

been striking a very deep note, touching the philosophical nerve of the

planet in distress.

At this point Edward Carpenter’s tombstone can be heard creaking...

Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure was published a century ago, also.’ Can

it be time?’...when ‘Man will once more feel his unity with his fellows,

he will feel his unity with the animals, with the mountains and the

streams, with the earth itself and the slow pulse of constellations, not

as an abstract dogma of Science or Theology, but as a living and ever

present fact’.

Naess says, ‘The essence of deep ecology is to ask deeper questions’, to

get at the root of truth, not merely the branches and leaves. ‘We

question our society’s underlying assumptions. For instance, we can see

that instead of an energy crisis we have a crisis of consumption.’

Naess’ absorption of the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu corroborated his

understanding of Spinoza. He was accustomed to regularly retreat to his

hut high in the Norwegian mountains, where increasingly he found

‘contraries indistinguishably blended’ (Chuang Tzu). He was getting to

the bottom of John Muir’s ‘no mystery but the mystery of harmony’.

Chuang Tzu’s blending of contraries was nothing other, in the Western

mind-frame, than God. The truth dawned as when the first rays of the

rising sun embrace the earth. By getting to know nature those glimpses

of God, and feeling of being a part of God, grow and deepen. The

ultimate, speechless joy can be likened to success after painstaking

months, even years, to master a ‘difficult’ musical instrument, and

suddenly the purest notes are heard; and there is left only wonder why

it eluded one for so long, so simple it has become.

A somersault of the mind, once achieved it is there to stay. For a deep

ecologist it is an emotional attachment or expansion of consciousness

which underlies being and interrelation with nature. Naess calls it

Self-realisation when one’s self is widened and deepened. Protection of

nature becomes second nature, it becomes naturally protection of one’s

very own self! Distinctions are overcome: one’s self and other cease to

be considered as separate. Thus, one identifies with the threatened

forest, and acts accordingly.

Without land we would not exist. Without domesticated animals there

would be no deserts. The erosion of man’s just nature brought with it

the erosion of the land. With greed unbounded it is no wonder that we

are where we are. The word recession is now bandied about, but not

understood for what it is. Material growth is said to be round the

corner.

Man did not intend to change the weather, but now that that fact is

being acknowledged nothing very much is being done. Profit, like a

necklace, must not be tightened, but Capital’s self-imposed recession

expects everyone to tighten their belts. Reforms are announced which

give the impression that something is happening, when nothing is at all.

When Arne Naess led the Norwegian Himalaya Expedition in 1949, he said,

‘One of the principal objects of the expedition will be to discover at

what height the ordinary burner conks out, and how the second functions

at greater heights’. I would suggest that the ordinary burner, man’s

suiciding the planet, is conking out, and deep ecology is the second

burner.

It is necessary to practise deep ecology with its ‘total view’; to be

self-reliant, rooted in place and nature, simple in means, rich in ends.

(Gandhi).

Social Ecology, Anarchism and Trades Unionism by Graham Purchase

This essay is a revision of three book reviews published in Rebel Worker

between 1989 and 1991.

Part I: Bookchin: The Anarchist-Ecologist of the late 60s and 70s

Bookchin has deservedly emerged as a major thinker and writer of the

late Twentieth Century. His ideas on the relationship between social

ecology, anarchism, and trade-unionism, although controversial and

sometimes straightforwardly wrong or dishonest, are nonetheless worthy

of our close and considered attention.

Although Bookchin has recently become openly hostile towards

trade-unionism and anarcho-syndicalism, in fact to any class analysis at

all, this has not always been the case. Some of his earlier thinking on

these subjects, although deeply critical of syndicalism, were insightful

comments upon the value of traditional revolutionary theory and

practice, unlike his recent quite unnecessary attacks on anarchism. His

essay Self-management and the New Technology, written in 1979 is perhaps

most important in this respect. In this essay Bookchin argues that the

syndicalist conception of the ‘factory’ or the ‘workplace’ as being of

overriding importance as a focus for political and social activity in a

future anarchist society is an overly optimistic view of the liberatory

potential of large- scale industrial activity. Bookchin claims the

factory has destroyed the craftsman and the artisan and degraded the

nature of work and labour through relying on a system of mass-industrial

production that reduces human beings to mere engine parts:

Of the technical changes that separate our own era from the past ones no

single device was more important than that of the least mechanical of

all — the factory. Neither Watt’s steam engine nor Bessemer’s furnace

was more significant than the simple process of rationalising labour

into an industrial engine for the production of commodities. Machinery,

in the conventional sense of the term, heightened this process vastly —

but the systemic rationalisation of labour to serve in ever specialised

tasks demolished the technical structure of self-managed societies and

ultimately of workmanship — the ‘selfhood’ of the economic realm ....

True craftsmanship is loving work, not onerous toil. It arouses the

senses, not dulls them. It adds dignity to humanity, not demeans it. It

gives free range to the spirit, not aborts it. Within the technical

sphere it is the expression of selfhood par excellence — of

individuation, consciousness, and freedom. These words dance throughout

every account of well-crafted objects and artistic works.

The factory worker lives merely on the memory of such traits. The din of

the factory drowns out every thought, not to speak of any song; the

division of labour denies the worker any relationship to the community;

the rationalisation of labour dulls his or her senses and exhausts his

or her body. There is no room whatever for any of the artisan’s modes of

expression — from artistry to spirituality — other than an interaction

with objects that reduce the worker to a mere object.... Marxism and

syndicalism alike, by virtue of their commitment to the factory as a

revolutionary social arena, must recast self-management to mean the

industrial management of the self.... Both ideologies share the notion

that the factory is the ‘school’ of revolution and in the case of

syndicalism, of social reconstruction, rather than its undoing. Most

share a common commitment to the factory’s structural role as a source

of social mobilisation.... The factory not only serves to mobilise and

train the proletariat but to dehumanise it. Freedom is to be found not

within the factory but outside it.

(Towards an Ecological Society , Black Rose Books, 1980, pp 123–6

passim)

Bookchin concludes that the factory system upon which industrial

syndicalism rests, is intrinsically authoritarian and dehumanising. The

syndicalists have confused the factory, the ‘realm of economic

necessity’, with the ‘realm of social freedom’, which is nature,

wilderness, community and the liberated city. Contrary to the

syndicalist vision, the factory could not on any account ever be

regarded as the primary locus of political action and freedom. Only the

re-emergence of a freely communicating, non-hierarchical and

economically-integrated social existence would be genuinely capable of

guaranteeing liberty and prosperity. Besides, Bookchin later argues, the

coal-steel-oil technology upon which the factory system was based is

economically redundant, through resource depletion. Solar and wind

energies etc., although capable of being used in large scale industrial

manufacturing processes, are much more efficiently applied on a local or

small scale basis. An economic infrastructure consisting of a large

number of much smaller workshops producing individually crafted tools

from local non-polluting power sources, within the context of an

ecologically integrated community, not only represented a truly

ecological vision of human social destiny, but one that also saw no need

for the vast and intrinsically dehumanising industrial manufacturing

plants and factories of a past era. The factory no longer represented

even the realm of necessity — environmental determinants having rendered

the factory system of industrial production ecologically and vis a vis

economically redundant.

Bookchin in this penetrating essay makes fair comment. The pictures that

have until recently adorned our anarcho-syndicalist journals — of

thousands of workers, heads held high and anarchist banners in hand,

marching out of rows of factories triumphantly belching out black smoke

in unison — exhibit a singular inability to appreciate the scope and

challenge of the ecological revolution that threatens to engulf both

anarchisms alike. The reasons for this are historical and practical and

are not due to any theoretical shortcomings. At the end of the 19^(th)

century, which witnessed rapid industrial development (a peasantry, an

urban proletariat, and a Marxist and socialist opposition that regarded

the ecological and anarchist ideal of eco-regional self-sufficiency and

town/ country balance as too Utopian, or as indicative of a backward

looking, pre-industrial ideology), anarchism and anarchists as an

organised political force saw fit, and with good reasons, to devote a

substantial amount of its efforts towards industrial and trades-unions

activity and down play the more ecological aspects of the anarchist

vision. This was an eminently practical response to the organisational

problems of the day and anarcho-syndicalists through no fault of their

own have tended to focus upon industrial democracy within the factory or

yard and have to some extent ignored other, wider ecological aspects of

the anarchist tradition. Anarchism however, unlike Marxism has always

taken a profound interest in the proper relationship of industry to

ecology (most famously exhibited in Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories &

Workshops) and Bookchin has in response to our current ecological

concerns been quite correct in stressing the importance of the

ecological region, green technology and ecologically integrated cities

and communities within anarchist theory and thereby restore a proper

sense of balance to the anarchist and ecological debate.

This essay was however written over a decade ago and with the other

essays in Towards an Ecological Society in which it is anthologised

forms a bridge between the two phases of his writing and thinking:

Bookchin the Anarchist-Ecologist of the 1960s and 70s and Bookchin the

Social Ecologist of the 1980s and 90s. Bookchin the Social Ecologist is

far less kind on anarchism and trades unionism than he might otherwise

be. Bookchin has without doubt been one of the most prominent

anti-statist thinkers of recent decades. His two pamphlets Ecology and

Revolutionary Thought and Towards a Liberatory Technology (both written

in 1965 and reprinted in an anthology of his writings from the period

entitled Post Scarcity Anarchism) are clear, succinct, and easily

understandable statements of the ecological-anarchist viewpoint

displaying all the most admirable aspects of anarchist pamphleteering

and collectively representing some of the best and most important

radical writings of the 1960s. Bookchin in these early pamphlets as well

as his two later books; The Limits of the City (1974) and Toward an

Ecological Society (1980) brought up to date and enlarged upon many of

the social-ecological insights and ideas to be found in the works of

past anarchist thinkers (Fourier, Peter Kropotkin & Elisee Reclus)

clearly, logically and convincingly showing that anarchism with its

non-centralist and non-hierarchical philosophy envisioning a harmonious

stateless order composed of federation of self-governing cities

ecologically integrated with their surrounding bio-regions is the only

social philosophy capable of ensuring the long-term survival of both our

species and our planet. Most of the above mentioned works were however

written nearly two decades ago and since the end of the 1970s Bookchin

has spent his time expounding his ‘self-styled’ ecological philosophy —

Social Ecology — publishing many books on the subject; The Ecology of

Freedom (1982), The Modern Crisis (1986), Remaking Society (1989) and

The Philosophy of Social Ecology (1990).

Part II: Bookchin, the Social Ecologist of the 80s and 90s

Although none of the basic tenets of Bookchin’s theory of social Ecology

are in anyway incompatible with social-anarchism and although not

denying the importance of anarchism, in his more recent works he rarely

mentions the word, and then only in passing. His explicit rejection of

‘working class organisation’ and ‘trade unions’ shows a widening

emotional and philosophical gap between his theory of Social Ecology

with the traditions of anarchism.

None the less, many things that Bookchin has to say about a range of

issues are relevant to anarchism and anarchists. This is especially true

of his extended discussions on the role of patriarchy in creating a

hierarchical, exploitative and anti-ecological social system which are

valuable and explore issues, somewhat underplayed by Kropotkin and Emma

Goldman in their analysis of the evolution and maintenance of

authoritarian structures in human society. (Reclus however in the way he

uses gender ascription, he & she, about nature is more interesting in

this respect than otherwise supposed.)

It is in his rejection of class analysis, however, that Bookchin really

seeks to form a cleavage between Anarchism and his favoured theory of

Social Ecology. In the most accessible of his recent works, The Modern

Crisis, his attacks on Anarchism, the IWW and Trades-unionism are simply

outrageous.

Anarchism, claims Bookchin, because of its insistence upon class

analysis and a belief in the overriding revolutionary importance of the

industrial proletariat, represents with Marxism just another tired old

socialist philosophy which is no longer relevant to the present day:

‘The politics we must pursue is grassroots, fertilised by the

ecological, feminist, communitarian and anti-war movements that have

patently displaced the traditional workers’ movement of half a century

ago. Here the so called revolutionary ideologies of our era — socialism

and anarchism — fall upon hard times. Besides, their ‘constituency’ is

literally being ‘phased out’. The factory in its traditional form is

gradually becoming an archaism. Robots will soon replace the assembly

line as the agents of mass industrial production. Hence future

generation of industrial proletarian may be a marginal stratum marking

the end of American industrial society.

The new ‘classless class’ we now deduce is united more by cultural ties

than economic ones: ethnics, women, countercultural people,

environmentalists, the aged, unemployables or unemployed, the ‘ghetto’

people, etc. It is this ‘counterculture’ in the broadest sense of the

term with its battery of alternative organisations, technologies,

periodicals, food co-operatives, health and women’s centres that seems

to offer common resistance to Caesarism and corporatism. The

re-emergence of ‘the people’ in contrast to the steady decline of ‘the

proletariat’ verifies the ascendancy of community over factory, of town

and neighbourhood over assembly line. The hand fits the glove perfectly

— and clenched it makes the real fist of our time. (The Modern Crisis,

Ch.4, passim)

Exactly what sense are we to make of such sweeping dismissals of several

centuries of sustained resistance to the encroachments of capital and

state by ordinary working people is quite unclear. Anarchism and

Anarcho-syndicalism have to my knowledge always emphasised the need to

foster community and has never made the absurd claim that society could

be ‘organised from the factory floor’. The primary unit of Anarchist

society has always been the free, ecologically integrated city or town —

how else could one hope to organise social life in the absence of the

nation-state?? Besides, in the absence of state-supported industrial

capitalism trades unions and workers’ co-operatives — be they bakers,

grocers, coach builders, postal workers or tram drivers would seem to be

a quite natural, indeed logical and rational way of enabling ordinary

working people to co-ordinate the economic and industrial life of their

city, for the benefit of themselves rather than for the state or a

handful of capitalist barons and it is simply dishonest of Bookchin to

claim that anarchism has emphasised the historical destiny of the

industrial proletariat at the expense of community and free city life.

Beyond this, trade unions are composed of people — feminists, peace

activists and ecologists included and are simply a means by which people

can come to organise their trade or industry in a spirit of equality,

peace and co-operation.

Although thankfully, tens of millions of people are no longer forced to

claw at rock with crude picks in the bowels of the earth I fail to see

why Bookchin is confident that the ‘worker’ is an obsoletion. How is one

to travel or phone another city in Bookchin’s ideal world of liberated,

self- sufficient city-communes unless we have to repair the roads,

railway or telephone cables? People will always wish to direct objects

through organised space and hence a postal service will always be

necessary (if we ever come to colonise other planets even more

necessary). Economic and industrial life is unfortunately global in

nature and the idea that one could organise an inter-continental railway

network from the individual town or city is as absurd as the proposition

that one could organise social life from the factory floor — an idea

that he mistakenly credits to industrial-syndicalism.

The industrial proletariat, although it may certainly never represent

the force of numbers that it did a century ago is hardly likely to

disappear and Anarchism simply states that in the absence of capitalism

and the nation state the workers in each industry must organise their

affairs for the good of themselves, their city, their ecological region

and the whole of humanity. Anarchism is not a worker’s party — it is an

idea that embraces all manifestations of human social life — the free

city, the agricultural collective, the hobby group and trades-unions in

so far as they are useful to our species and operate freely of

government in a non hierarchical manner.

Bookchin is more constructive when he points to the ‘green-network’ as

providing a new and significant springboard to revolutionary

transformation.

Over the past 30 years, individuals and groups of people connected by

nothing else than a love of the Earth have set about putting their

philosophies into action upon a local basis. Local groups of

horticulturalists growing native trees for free distribution, organic

food co-operatives, forest action groups and a plethora of specialised

ecological journals and zines, etc., bringing people together from all

backgrounds, races and classes. The local, popular decentralised nature

of this green networking representing a powerful and non-centralised

force in the direction of social and ecological change. At the more

radical end of the green-network there are people who care deeply about

the environment but have become disillusioned about the ability of the

state/capitalist order to solve the urgent ecological problems of the

day and have set out in the name of common-sense and humanity to save

the planet by any reasonable means — legal or otherwise. These people

have flung themselves in front of bulldozers and rainforest timber

ships. Their antics and exploits have undoubtedly captured the popular

imagination and these people have thankfully had comparative success in

saving significant portions of wilderness from destruction. Due however

to the lack of a significant working class power base their efforts have

resulted in them having won few battles at the price of rapidly losing

the ecological war. They didn’t get their message across to their

potentially most powerful and effective ally — trades-unions and the

organised working classes. Capitalism and the state which have

undoubtedly been the cause of untold environmental destruction has been

fought for centuries by working class organisations inspired by a vision

of more equal, just and equitable society. The fact that capitalism and

state are not only unjust and authoritarian but also extremely

environmentally destructive only seeks to confirm the inherent

correctness of centuries of radical working class organisation and

trades-union opposition to the encroachment of capitalism and the

military state upon the social and ecological fabric of human society.

The heroic and consistent effort of working class organisation to resist

state-sponsored capitalist exploitation is a long and bloody history

involving the useless murder, ruthless torture of millions upon millions

of ordinary people whose only crime was to attempt to protect their

communities and their natural resources from being sacrificed for the

short-term benefit of the rich and powerful.

Eco-activists are relative newcomers to the art of organised resistance

to the capitalist and military state and have yet to digest the hard

historical fact that the institution of state-sponsored multi-national

exploitation cannot be defeated without the commitment of large sections

of the organised working classes to the green cause. It is the working

classes who transform raw nature (trees, minerals, etc.) into the

industrial products we consume — and regardless of the wishes of

government, or their capitalist masters, are ultimately capable of

initiating change.

The tragic lack of communication between eco-activist groups and trades

unions has meant that the ecology movement has suffered from a

significant lessening of its practical power-base and has led to the

absurd situation in Australia of green activists fighting with

rank-and-file members of logging-unions, whose members, history has

shown us, have little to gain from large scale exploitation of primary

forest land. The attempted assassination of IWW/Earth First organisers

recently in the USA should serve as a lesson for both the greenies and

the workers alike — that the real enemy are the institutions of capital

and state and not one another. Both the greenies and the working class

would be better served by joining together and working towards a

grass-roots, revitalised and ecologically informed trades-union movement

which if not capable (for the time being) of overthrowing the

state-military forces of the rich and powerful is at least able to

resist the worst excesses of the present profoundly destructive

state-capitalist order. That the welfare of the worker is intimately

dependent upon a healthy environment is an unquestionable fact, and both

eco-activists and trade-unionists must choose the path of strength and

victory by striving to achieve ever greater levels of co-operation and

common purpose within and between their respective organisations.

I have encountered thousands of people who on a local and co-operative

basis are constructively working towards a greener future — there are

however many intellectually degenerate and philosophically idiotic

concepts contained within the ‘green ideology’ that holds many of these

people together — Earthworshipping, rituals, astrology and eco-

mysticism, etc. which tend to make for a less than coherent green

movement. The bourgeois or middle class element has further weakened the

practical worth of many of the more successful ‘green’ ventures of

recent years (e.g. The Body Shop). Expensive health food shops and

trendy bookshops selling a wealth of over-priced environmental

paraphernalia reveal more a love of profit — an ability to ‘catch on’ to

a new idea rather than a genuine and unimpeded love of nature. Lacking

in class consciousness the green movement has all too easily let itself

be integrated with the capitalist system and is therefore caught in an

intellectual and tactical contradiction. Its members, predominantly

coming from bourgeois background, are unable to be truly critical of the

inherently destructive and anti-ecological aspects of the capitalist and

class system of which they uncritically form a part.

Large sections of the ‘green movement’ take a simplistic and

anti-technological stance. Industrialism as such and not industrial

being seen as a curse of humanity and nature. Other sections of the

anarchist and green movement take a more sophisticated position about

technology and insist upon the fact that there has been a second

industrial revolution — the communications, computer and technological

revolution which has a life of its own that may have superseded its

origins in capitalism and which threatens to wreak ever-greater levels

of social and ecological disintegration. Whether the technological

revolution will yield predominantly libertarian or authoritarian results

is of course a matter of speculation — and only time will tell. But

Bookchin in advocating both craftsmanship and large industrial plants

run by robots seems confused on the issue! Bookchin has never to my

knowledge ever endorsed any kind of anti-technological viewpoint — that

makes his anti-union stance all the more puzzling! How is one to design,

implement, manufacture and recycle in a non-authoritarian and

co-operative manner the environmentally friendly eco-technologies to

which he so frequently refers unless he is willing to enter dialogue

with the industrial proletariat who form the backbone of the profoundly

destructive oil-steel-coal culture of the present day, but whose force

of strength and brute labour could turn ammunitions factories into wind

generator manufacturing plants and our forests into gardens, undreamt of

by the prophets of all ages? The need to move away from large-scale

industrial activity is obvious to the ecologist — but our present

factories must begin to design, manufacture and distribute the new

technologies of tomorrow. A successful end to this period of transition

and technological scale readjustment towards the decentralised

application of agro-industrial production cannot be achieved without the

co-operation of the industrial proletariat.

Undeterred, Bookchin goes on to insult American anarchists and

trade-unionists of the past. ‘These immigrant socialists and anarchists

(presumably referring to such people as Emma Goldman or Alexander

Berkman) were largely unionists rather than revolutionary Utopians’ who

had little understanding of American democratic traditions. Had the

American people ignored the ‘narrow’ and ‘class based’ ideologies of

these anarchist and socialist foreigners and upheld the individualistic

values of the American Constitution — concretely enshrined in the small

town meetings of the pioneers — an authentic American radicalism could

have taken a firmer root and the confederal and decentralised vision of

a free-American republic could well have become a reality:

Irish direct action, German Marxism, Italian anarchism and Jewish

socialism have always been confined to the ghettos of American social

life. Combatants of a pre-capitalist world, these militant European

immigrants stood at odds with an ever-changing Anglo-Saxon society ...

whose constitution had been wrought from the struggle for Englishmen’s

Rights, not against feudal satraps. Admittedly these ‘rights’ were meant

for white men rather than people of colour. But rights they were in any

case — universal, ‘inalienable rights’ that could have expressed higher

ethical and political aspirations than the myths of a ‘workers’ party’

or the day dream of ‘One Big Union’ to cite the illusions of socialists

and syndicalists alike. Had the Congregationalist town-meeting

conception of democracy been fostered ... and the middle classes been

joined to the working classes by a genuine people’s movement instead of

being fractured into sharply delineated class movements it would be

difficult to predict the innovative direction American social life might

have followed. Yet never did American radicals, foreign born or native,

ask why socialist ideas never took root outside the confines of the

ghettos, in this, the most industrialised country in the world.

(‘The Modern Crisis , Ch 4 passim)

Again what sense is one to make of such comments? Bookchin accuses

American radicals of the past of having a ghetto outlook — yet it is

precisely this group of people, ‘ethnics, unemployables and the ghetto

people’ whom Bookchin underlined in the previously quoted passage as

representing the new revolutionary ‘classless class’ of people who will

somehow organise the co-operative suburban communities of the future

social ecological order. Interestingly the ‘ethnic, unemployable and

ghetto people’ of the 19^(th) century of whom he speaks so disparagingly

found the best way to overcome their difficulties was to form themselves

into unions on the basis of location, culture, trade and interest and

collectively fight in One Big Union of ordinary people for a more just

and equitable world.

Besides the specific organisation to which he refers, the IWW was not

unappealing to ‘native’ Americans as Bookchin suggests — rather they

were systematically smashed in a most brutal fashion by the combined

forces of federal military might, and the black plantation workers of

America’s deep south who were organised at great risk to life by IWW

representatives had little stake in the comfortable middle-class vision

of small town life of which Bookchin speaks. Moreover the IWW who

counted both lesbians and Red Indian organisers amongst its ranks was

the first union to call for equal pay and conditions for women and

actively sought to set up unions for prostitutes — and in doing so

achieved far more for the feminist cause than any amount of theorising

about the evolution of patriarchy could ever hope to have done.

Finally anarchism in embracing trades-unionism did not, as Bookchin

claims, have some naive or mythical faith in the ability of working

class culture to save the world. Anarchism did not look towards the

Marxist vision of a worker’s paradise; it merely said that working

people if they wanted to create a more balanced and equitable world they

must join together and organise for themselves. Trades Unionists which

were then, as now, capable of bringing millions of workers together in

the general strike was not an end in itself but rather a vehicle for

putting ideas into action and produce movement capable of resisting the

military might and economic imperialism of the state-capitalist power

monopoly.

Groups of peace protesters or environmentalists singing songs outside

nuclear bases, although not irrelevant or unproductive, do not by

themselves represent an organisational basis for sustained resistance to

the state-capitalist system on a country-wide basis, as Bookchin claims.

Unless the telephones, railways, and other vital industrial systems

continue to function from the moment the state-capitalist order begins

to crumble, then all Bookchin’s ideas concerning an ecologically

integrated and decentralised republic in the absence of the state (i.e.

anarchism) will remain nothing but a pipe-dream.

The overly aggressive industrial culture which has led our planet to the

brink of catastrophe must certainly undergo radical changes, but this in

no way implies that industrial unionism should disappear. On the

contrary, an ecologically informed and regenerated trade union movement

could do much to initiate the necessary changes. The boycotting of

environmentally damaging substances and industrial practices; the

insistence on doing healthy work in an environmentally sustainable

manner; of producing socially necessary products based on need rather

than profit; etc., are real issues, capable of being forced home by

traditional means. Strikes, walk-outs, and sabotage would undoubtedly

bring about the changes in our industrial infrastructure quicker than

environmental legislation and any number of health food stores. For

instance, the Green Bans. In fact the tragic failure of the green

movement to get their message across to ordinary workers and union

members, has resulted in a significant lack of power for both parties.

Bookchin’s comments are at best unconstructive and at worst positively

harmful.

Further evidence of Bookchin’s attempt to distance himself and his

theory of Social Ecology from Anarchism can be seen in his latest book,

The Philosophy of Social Ecology (1990) in which he attempts to provide

an abstract philosophical basis for his social-ecological theories.

Depressingly, the rich ecological content contained in anarchist

life-philosophy is largely unacknowledged — and although Bookchin

regards an anti-hierarchical, non-centrist, self-determining and freely

evolving concept of nature and society as both rational and desirable —

Anarchism a rich intellectual source of many of these ideas in terms of

both its theory and practice is dealt with in a few paragraphs in a

token, shallow and unconvincing manner. Instead Bookchin presents us

with an intellectual history of the development of social-ecological

thought which sees fit to devote pages upon pages to Diderot’s

‘sensibilities’ and Hegel’s ‘Concept of Spirit’ at the expense of

Kropotkin’s ethical naturalism, Reclus’ bioregionalism or Fourier’s

ecological-utopianism — all of which (as Bookchin well knows) contain

important truths and insights and have made a significant contribution

to the development of his own social- ecological thinking. Instead, the

book, which is subtitled Essays on Dialectical Naturalism, informs those

readers who wish to find out more about the philosophical basis of

Social Ecology and Ecological Ethics to study the notoriously cloudy

pages of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.

What has led to Bookchin’s disillusionment with the organised anarchist

movement is of course a matter of speculation. A generous explanation of

his objectives is that he wishes to produce an ecological ethics and

philosophy that does not scare people off through using the emotionally

loaded and popularly misunderstood term ‘Anarchy’ whilst integrating the

more anarchistic ideas and elements floating around in the peace,

environmentalist and feminist movements within a broadly anti-statist

framework. If this is indeed his intention then he has, in my opinion

been quite successful. His theory of social ecology is presented in a

rational, scientific and secular format that can enter dialogue in a

meaningful way with other bodies of thought in the western philosophical

tradition.

The misrepresentations of anarchist theory and practice do however

perhaps require a less generous assessment of Bookchin’s motives,

unconscious or not, that goes beyond the not-uncommon fault of having an

insatiable appetite for controversy. Bookchin is a gifted and talented

writer and thinker, the value and intellectual credibility of his work

may however be coming increasingly undermined by an unhealthy desire to

be the intellectual leader and founder of a ‘new’ ecological movement.

The sole modern orginator of the bundle of ideas he had chosen to call

Social Ecology.

Although to be fair Bookchin does acknowledge the influence of the great

anarchist theoretician and bio-geographer in all the above mentioned

works, he does so only in passing and certainly exhibits no real desire

to deal with Kropotkin’s thought in the detail and at the length it

deserves. There are of course no real developments in social and

political theory. The battles between nature and society, freedom and

tyranny, liberty and authority etc., have been with us since the

beginning of human-time and Kropotkin no more than Bookchin can claim to

have originated the libertarian and anarchist debate. Nonetheless, with

the possible exception of his analysis of the development of patriarchy

(and Reclus’ concepts of the organic, complementary nature of the

man-woman-nature relationship are in many ways similar to Bookchin’s)

all of the basic components of Bookchin’s social-ecological vision —

diversity, decentralisation, complementarity, alternative technology,

municipal-socialism, self-sufficiency, direct-democracy — were fully

elaborated in the works of the great anarchist thinkers of the past —

Charles Fourier, Elisee Reclus and Peter Kropotkin — all of whom

advocate a global federation of autonomous and ecologically integrated

cities and towns — and Bookchin has done little more than update these

ideas and present them in a modern form. A task I might say that is no

small achievement and one that he has performed admirably.

To be sure anarchism in common with most other movements and practices

has much to gain from incorporating the insights of feminist analysis of

the development of authority and hierarchy into its vision of a social

and ecologically harmonious society — and Bookchin in attempting to

integrate a broadly socialist-feminist perspective with anarchist

principles has done much valuable work in recent years. Many view-points

contained in the socialist-feminist analysis of history and society,

have however, always existed (though latently) within the anarchist

movement, and anarchism is considerably less guilty of having ignored

women’s issues than most other social protest movements of the recent

past. To use socialist-feminist ideas on hierarchy, authority and the

state and blend them with concepts within the broader anarchist

tradition, as Bookchin has done, although necessary, is not a

particularly exacting intellectual task. Literally to filch all the

major ecological insights of anarchist theory and practice,

superficially dress them up in a socialist-feminist cum neo-hegelian

garb and go on to more or less claim them as his own is reprehensible.

To actively misrepresent the movement from where these ideas originally

came is to exhibit an intellectual schizophrenia and commit an

intellectual outrage.

Like Gresham’s Law, not only does bad money drive out good, but

futuristic ‘scenarios’ will destroy the Utopian dimension of the

revolutionary project. Never in the past has it been so necessary to

retain the utmost clarity, coherence, and purposefulness that is

required of our era. In a society that has made survival, adaptation,

and co-existence a mode of domination and annihilation, there can be no

compromises with contradictions — only their total resolution in a new

ecological society or the inevitability of hopeless surrender.

Murray Bookchin

Toward an Ecological Society

Reflections on ‘Deep Ecology’ by Brian Morris

A couple of years ago George Bradford wrote a lucid and trenchant

critique of ‘deep ecology’ in a pamphlet entitled How Deep is Deep

Ecology. [1] It was specifically aimed at the deep ecology espoused by

writers like Bill Devall, George Sessions and Dave Foreman, and it

echoed many of the criticisms earlier voiced by Murray Bookchin. [2]

Both Bradford and Bookchin essentially challenge the biocentric approach

of the deep ecologists — which entails the notion of ‘biospecies

equality’ This in essence was the deep ecologists’ answer to the

anthropocentrism so dominant in Western culture, anthropocentrism being

the idea that humans are separate from, and superior to the rest of

nature, and that this therefore justified using nature simply as a

resource. What Bradford and Bookchin suggest is that the deep ecologists

simply replicate (and inverse) the opposition between humans and nature.

But whereas the advocates of the Promethean ethic imply the control and

domination of nature by humans, contemporary deep ecologists, many of

them acolytes of ‘natural law’ theory, have an insidious image of a

humanity that is ‘dominated by nature’. Such ‘anti-humanism’ Bookchin

and Bradford feel is perverse, unecological, and at extremes leads to

misanthropy. The idea that humans should ‘obey’ the ‘laws of nature’ is

an idea that they both seriously challenge. And they go on to suggest

that by focusing entirely on the category ‘humanity’ the deep ecologists

ignore, or completely obscure, the social origins of ecological

problems. The notion that African children should be left to starve

because they are over-populating the continent, that disease is a

natural check on humans and helps to maintain the ‘balance of nature’,

that ‘immigrants’ to the United States should be kept out because they

threaten ‘our’ resources — all advocated by deep ecology enthusiasts in

a rather Malthusian fashion — are all discussed and refuted by Bookchin

and Bradford. Such biocentrism and anti-humanism, they argue, is both

reactionary and authoritarian in its implications, and substitutes a

naive understanding of ‘nature’ for a critical study of real social

issues and concerns. Bradford sums it up by suggesting that the deep

ecologists “have no really ‘deep’ critique of the state, empire,

technology and capital, reducing the complex web of human relations to a

simplistic, abstract, scientistic caricature” (p. 10). Bookchin of

course argues that the ecological crisis is not caused by an

undifferentiated ‘humanity’ but by the capitalist system, which has

reduced human beings to mere commodities, destroyed the cultural

integrity of many ‘Third World’ communities, and, via corporate

interests, has caused devastation and deterioration of the natural world

— through deforestation, monoculture, and pollution.

In response to the criticisms of the social ecologists several deep

ecologists, like Warwick Fox and Judi Bari, have suggested that Bookchin

still retains an ‘anthropocentric’ outlook, and that the ‘left’ have no

vision of an ecological society — a suggestion that indicates either a

woeful ignorance or, alternatively, a slanderous misinterpretation of

what Bookchin has been advocating for over three decades.

The polemical exchanges between the deep and social ecologists have been

very much a part of the radical ecology scene in the United States over

the past decade — in contrast to the ecology scene in Britain where the

likes of Jonathon Porritt, a genteel reformer, seem to get the media

prominence. But this debate took an important twist in May 1989 when

Dave Foreman was arrested by the FBI. An ecological activist who

advocates non-violent direct action to protect wilderness areas and

rainforests, Foreman had been one of the founders of the ‘Earth First!’

group. Over the years this group had been infiltrated by US government

informers and agent provocateurs seeking to entrap the ecological

activists into illegal activities. Foreman was dragged out of his bed by

armed FBI men one dawn and charged with conspiracy to damage government

property. Six months later Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman came

together for a public debate, to discuss their differences, and to

defend the integrity of the radical ecology movement. What came out of

this debate is that whereas Foreman had largely taken to heart the

criticisms of deep ecology — and had become a staunch ‘anti-capitalist’

and had withdrawn many of his more extreme anti-humanist statements —

Bookchin continued to reiterate with stridency the kind of social

ecology that he had been advocating and developing over the years — and

thus came to argue for a ‘new politics’, the need for a social movement

that can effectively resist and ultimately replace both the nation-state

and corporate capitalism. He admitted that he had no pat formulas for

making such a revolution, but questioned the feasibility of a reformist

strategy, one that merely sets its sights on ‘improving’ the current

system of power and inequality. [3]

What is of interest about these various debates is that the figure of

Arne Naess, who is alleged to be the founder and the ‘inspiration’

behind the ‘deep ecology’ movement tends to hover only in the

background. Naess is discussed by writers like Devall, [4] but though

deep ecology itself has had media prominence, its founder is very much a

marginal scholar. A couple of years ago I scoured the bookshops in

London looking for something on, or by, Arne Naess and drew a complete

blank. Happily his important study Ecology, Community and Lifestyle [5]

has now been translated from the Norwegian, and this gives us an

opportunity to assess the thoughts of a philosopher the deep ecologists

pay homage to, but whose own ideas remain largely unknown outside his

own country and a narrow circle of deep ecology enthusiasts. Now

approaching his eightieth year, Arne Naess is a Norwegian philosopher

and mountaineer who has spent most of his life teaching philosophy in

academia. His particular interests were semantics and the philosophy of

science, and in the 1930s he appears to have been associated with the

logical positivists — whose philosophy stands in stark contrast to

Naess’ present views. Naess has published important studies of Gandhi

and Spinoza, and the influence of these two contrasting figures is

clearly apparent in his work. His whole mode of presentation — abstract,

normative and geometric — as well as his philosophy — in seeing

self-realisation as involving ‘identification’ with nature — has

affinities with that of Spinoza. Indeed he summarises his own philosophy

on one page (209), with an abstract schema of numbered boxes all neatly

and logically linked by a series of lines, hanging together like a

frozen mobile. Anything less organic it would be hard to imagine, but it

reminds one of the gentle Spinoza.

Naess calls his own philosophy of deep ecology ‘Philosophy T’ — the

suggestion being that what he presents in the book is his own unique

philosophy, named after a mountain hut in Norway, Tvergastein. (Without

Naess is a ghost writer who would have thought otherwise?) The

implication of this, however, is his insistence that everyone should

work out their own philosophy and develop, through reflection and

action, their own system of thought. Like many contemporary writers —

and in this Naess is offering little that is original — Naess stresses

the gravity of the present ecological situation — the environmental

deterioration and devastation that is taking place on an ever-increasing

scale due to the present system of production and consumption, and to

the lack of any adequate policies regarding human population increase.

This ecological crisis Naess suggests can only be countered by a ‘new

renaissance’, by a ‘new path’ with new criteria for ‘progress,

efficiency and rational action’ — Naess strangely retaining some of the

key terms of the market economists and of capitalist ideology. This

leads Naess to make a clear distinction between ‘deep’ and ‘shallow’

ecology — which he first introduced in an article in 1973 — the latter

being a reformist attitude to the present ecological crisis, one that

still retains a utilitarian, anthropocentric approach to nature, and

does not suggest any fundamental change to the present economic system.

This distinction is similar to that long ago made by Bookchin who

contrasted ‘environmentalism’ with a radical social ecology. For

Bookchin ‘environmentalism’ was merely environmental engineering based

on a technocratic rationality that only suggested tinkering with

existing social institutions, technologies and values. But Bookchin’s

alternative to ‘environmentalism’ (or ‘shallow’ ecology) seems to me to

carry far more intellectual and political substance than the ‘deep

ecology’ suggested by Naess.

The basic principles of deep ecology Naess outlines as follows:

That the richness and diversity of life forms have an intrinsic value

in themselves and that they contribute to the flourishing of humans and

non-humans alike, and that we should in no way reduce this diversity

except to satisfy vital needs. At present humans are interfering in

non-human life forms in an unnecessarily destructive and excessive way

and this needs to be understood and curbed.

That the world is overpopulated with humans and that this is causing

serious problems to life on earth — ‘life’ for Naess being used in a

comprehensive sense to cover not only living forms but rivers,

landscapes, cultures, ecosystems, and the living earth itself.

That fundamental changes are necessary in basic economic,

technological and ideological structures, and in individual life styles

— Naess clearly addressing himself to those in Europe and North America

who enjoy ‘high standards of living’.

Naess suggests that ‘economic growth’ is completely incompatible with

these basic principles, but it is of interest that nowhere in the book

does Naess directly address himself to social problems — poverty,

inequality, racism, state repression, neo-colonialism, exploitation —

all of which are directly linked to environmental issues — even though

his’ normative’ premises indicate his opposition to these. In fact,

given his emphasis on ideological transformations, on self-realisation,

and on individual life styles, Naess offers little in the way of

exploring the underlying causes of the present ecological crisis, other

than to offer a general indictment of the present economic ‘system’.

In outlining his philosophical worldview and in his advocacy of an

‘ecological consciousness’ Naess has many interesting and important

things to say — on the need for a ‘gestalt’ or relational way of

thinking; on the need to reflect on, and explicitly articulate the basic

norms of an alternative ontology, and to avoid as far as possible purely

instrumental norms; and on the problems of making ecology itself into an

all-encompassing ‘ism’, as if it were a universal science. But Naess’

discussion is marred, and its flow continually disrupted, by

philosophical scholasticism and at times jargon. As with the positivists

the dichotomy between facts (hypotheses) and values (norms) runs like a

silver thread throughout the text, although being a moral philosopher in

the tradition of Spinoza, Naess, far from dismissing values, stresses

their priority and importance. Yet although the idea that basic norms

are not logically derived from factual hypotheses may be true, Naess’

suggestion that they are therefore in some degree arbitrary verges on

sophistry. Food, shelter and freedom are basic to human life, and norms

related to these hypotheses are not arbitrary. Certainly humans do not

live by bread alone, but only someone who does not have to worry about

food and shelter, and has some degree of autonomy, could define well

being in terms of such high level ‘ultimate goals’ as pleasure,

happiness and perfection.

But quite apart from the normative level on which much of Naess’

discussion moves, there is also his insatiable tendency to lapse into

almost impenetrable philosophical jargon. For example, while in essence

properly questioning the classical Cartesian distinction between the

epistemological subject and the objective world — a distinction which

Hegel and many generations of philosophers and social scientists have

long made redundant with their stress on the social nature of humans —

Naess asks the ‘somewhat academic question’ as to whether qualities such

as hot or red or sombre adhere to the subject or to the objective world.

And then to clarify this abstruse question, he writes:

a tree’s sombreness S is represented by the relation symbol S

(A,B,C,D,...) where A could be a location on a map, B location of

observer, C emotional status of person, D linguistic competence of the

describer ... (p.65)

Even if one is interested in such epistemological problems as the

relationship between subjectivism and objectivism — which presupposes

the classical epistemology — one gets lost in such abstractions. But

this is to make a philosophical point — one long ago made by the

pragmatists, Hegelian-Marxists, and existentialists. What about his

equation of what constitutes well-being?

[]

Where W = well-being, G = glow (passion), P_(b) = bodily pains and P_(m)

= mental pains (p.81). This is quantitative mysticism, expressing what

to most people is fairly obvious. Even better — and even more

obfuscating — is his discussion of needs.

Let A represent a living being in a time-dimensional space having four

vital needs to satisfy... The quadruple a 1/1 to a 1/4 symbolises the

four sources of need satisfaction... If the sources are a 2/1, a 2/3, a

2/5, a 2/7, and separated from A by interposed, qualitatively different

parts a 1/1 to a 1/4 of the environment, the organism is vitally and

normally dependent upon the control of these parts and also of a 2/2, a

2/4, a 2/8, the parts adjacent to the sources with another set of

qualitatively different properties, (p.205)

[]

This convoluted discussion is simply — it seems — to illustrate the

evident truism that ‘the requirement of control increases with the

remoteness of sources of satisfaction of needs’.

This abstract theorising does not cease when Naess in later chapters

discusses technology and lifestyle, economics and ecopolitics. This is a

pity given the interesting things he has to say. He stresses in Gandhian

fashion the importance of linking changes in personal life style with

political action, and the importance of non-violent direct action.

Drawing a distinction between action, campaigns and social movements,

Naess pleads for the continuation of struggles even if specific actions

and campaigns appear to have been unsuccessful. But when he comes to

discuss the state and the present economic system — Naess never brings

himself to describe it as capitalism — Naess expresses very ambivalent

attitudes. He continually emphasises, often in strident terms, that the

present economic system must be fundamentally transformed. The goal of

the deep ecology movement, he writes, cannot be achieved without a ‘deep

change’ of present industrial societies. Seeing contemporary

environmental problems as being overcome solely by technical means

reflects a ‘shallow’ ecological approach — what is needed are

fundamental changes in consciousness and the economic system. Yet he

follows — and quotes approvingly — Erik Dammann’s suggestion that it is

far too simple to claim that capitalists, industrial magnates,

bureaucrats and politicians alone have the power to preserve the system,

implying that people in democratic countries (so-called) are free to

make the changes if they desire. But then the disclaimer completely

obscures the real causes of the environmental problems we now face —

which are intrinsically related to an economic system, namely

capitalism, which for centuries has been one of tyranny and

exploitation, and which is based on the endless pursuit of profit. And

to think that power lies in parliaments reflects a very limited

conception of power under monopoly capitalism.

Drawing up a political triangle of red, blue and green, Naess sees

‘green’ as transcending the opposition between blue (capitalism) and red

(socialism). He can only do this by making some very dubious equations.

The greens (deep ecology) have affinity, he suggests, with the blues in

valuing personal enterprise and in opposing bureaucracies. But, of

course, supporters of capitalism when they talk about freedom and

personal enterprise and initiative are not really concerned with the

freedom of the individual but only with the needs of private ‘capital’.

When the latter is challenged freedom goes by the board, and capitalist

enterprises are highly bureaucratic. And when Naess distances himself

from the reds (socialism) — which he sees as bureaucratic and as

supporting industrialism and ‘big industry’ — what he does is to equate

socialism with the state capitalism of the Soviet Union, as do most

apologists for capitalism. Yet when Naess writes that the aims and

values of the society cannot change unless the way of production is

altered, when he speaks out for decentral isation and for the importance

of social justice, and when he writes that ‘The Utopians of green

societies point towards a kind of direct democracy with local control of

the means of production as the best means of achieving the goals’ (p.

158), all he does of course is to suggest socialist ideas that communist

anarchists and libertarian socialists have been propagating for a

century or more. Like many in the ecology movement Naess seems quite

oblivious to the libertarian socialist tradition and so offers

suggestions for a ‘new renaissance’ that are anything but new or

original. He makes no reference at all to Bookchin, let alone any of the

earlier anarchists.

Yet paradoxically this advocate of direct democracy and critic of

contemporary capitalism makes two glaring admissions. The first is to

suggest that there is hardly any capitalistic political ideology (p.

156). What on earth is liberalism, fascism, Thatcherism, and the

so-called ‘enterprise culture’ — not to mention intellectual fashions

like socio- biology? Capitalist ideology — with its emphasis on

competition, on efficiency, on management, on monitoring, on

privatisation, and on so- called free enterprise — permeates current

social and political thought, and libertarian and real socialist thought

hardly gets a hearing in any of the major institutions and cultural

arenas. Democracy ends as soon as you enter the office or factory gate.

Naess’ own book is infused with terms and ideas implicitly drawn from

the capitalist paradigm — even when he is arguing against its

tendencies. Naess makes, for instance, a very cogent critique of the

‘quantification’ (and the attempts to put a price tag on nature) that is

so dominant in shaping the policies and attitudes of contemporary

societies — but it is all done very much in the language of the market

economists.

Secondly, although advocating decentralisation, Naess suggests that in

order to counter the increasing population pressure and war ‘some fairly

strong central political institutions’ (p. 157) are necessary, and to

keep transnational corporations in check we may in the future have to

envision global institutions with some power ‘not only to criticise

certain states and companies but also to implement certain measures

against the states which violate the rules’ (p. 139). This is virtually

the advocacy of a global state, the totalitarian implications of which

are too ghastly to behold — but it is paradoxically suggested by Naess

in order to safeguard ‘green communities’ from the forces of disruption

and violence.

Although Naess argues for a biocentric approach towards nature, and

stresses that all life forms should be seen as having intrinsic value —

the principle of ‘biospherical egalitarianism’ — he is aware of the

limitations of this principle and never lapses like other deep

ecologists into misanthropy. Taken literally or seriously ‘biocentric

equality’ would of course lead to the quick demise of the human species.

What however Naess suggests is that we use this principle or norm as a

‘guideline’ — that we do not inflict unnecessary suffering upon other

living beings, and that we treat all aspects of nature as having

intrinsic value. He is aware that human praxis and the human condition

necessarily involves a transgression of this norm, and that some killing

and exploitation of non-human life forms is unavoidable. But his point

is that this instrumentality should be kept to a minimum, and only serve

vital human needs — for sustenance and shelter. Unlike many other

ecologists — and many vegetarians — he is aware that among many tribal

communities a sense of kinship or identification with nature coexists

with a hunting culture. Unlike other ecologists too, Naess doesn’t deny

the importance of humans, or treat humankind as if it were a blot upon

the landscape. Like Bookchin he recognises that there is a certain

uniqueness about humans on earth — but he strongly argues that this

uniqueness must not be used as a premise for the domination of nature,

and for treating other life-forms simply as a means to human

satisfaction. But rather it must be used as a premise for a universal

care that other species can neither understand nor afford (p. 171). And

this concern extends to humans, for social justice is an important

component of his philosophy — ‘no exploitation’, ‘no subjection’ and ‘no

class societies’ are constituent norms of his rather abstract normative

schema.

The most fundamental norm for Naess and the logical starting point of

his whole philosophy is the idea of Self-realisation — the self having a

capital S. All other norms are derived from this key idea. But he is

ambivalent about what this Self stands for. He writes that this Self is

known throughout the history of philosophy under such names as ‘the

Universal Self, ‘the Absolute’, ‘the atman’. But in the religious

traditions from which these terms derive Self does not imply an

identification with nature but rather has spiritual connotations, and

the discovery of the Self means the identification with god, the

absolute or Brahman. For example, atman means that spiritual aspect of

the person (soul) which is distinct from the mind, sense organs and the

physical body, and self realisation (moksha, or salvation) entails the

realisation that this soul is in fact Brahman — the supreme Self or

world spirit. In this Vedanta tradition the natural world is an illusion

(maya). In other religious traditions, as Naess himself writes, the

spirit (soul) was considered radically distinct from the body, and the

body and the material world were seen as a positive hindrance to

self-realisation. In the gnostic tradition the body is seen as a

temporary ‘prison’ or ‘tomb’ of the soul (self) and, as Hans Jonas has

perceptively written, this radical religious dualism — exemplified in

the European tradition by Platonism, gnosticism and Judeo-Christianity —

is an essential precursor of mechanistic philosophy and

anthropocentrism. [6] This form of religious Self realisation is

profoundly anti-ecological — for as Naess suggests in writing about

Plotinus, it involves a ‘depreciation of physical reality’. As he writes

‘A search for supernatural being can easily become an endeavour hostile

to man and environment’ (p. 190) — but of course this is precisely what

most mystical traditions entail — the detachment of self from organic

life. What Naess seems to be suggesting however is something quite

different: for the ‘oneness’ he suggests is not the identification of

the self with god, the absolute or world spirit (Brahman), but rather

the identification of the person with the natural world (in his case,

especially with mountains). And in this, of course, he follows Spinoza

and such nature mystics as Richard Jefferies. Although he seems to

suggest that Spinoza was influenced by the idea of an ‘immanent God’

(p.201), Spinoza’s philosophy was in fact something quite different, for

he equated god with nature, and advocated a religious atheism or a

profane mysticism. He advocated a salvation ethic in which god is

neither a transcendental nor immanent spirit but nature itself. Naess

seems to suggest a similar ethic — a ‘philosophy of oneness’ — in which

a deep identification with the natural world is felt or experienced. It

is an ‘ecological consciousness’, or the development of an ‘ecological

self that goes beyond the narrow ego and the ordinary self (with a small

S). Naess thus seems to play down the ‘spiritual’ interpretation — God

is hardly mentioned — and is sceptical of a mystical oneness. What we

have to do, he writes, is to walk a difficult ridge: ‘To the left we

have the ocean of organic and mystic views, to the right the abyss of

atomic individualism’ (p. 165).

Naess writes as a philosopher rather than as a social theorist, and

although he stresses the importance of community, autonomy, local

self-sufficiency and co-operation, and decentralisation, the discussion

of these always tends to be rather abstract — ‘normative’. There is

therefore very little in the book about bioregionalism, about feminism,

about neighbourhood associations, or about the communitarian movements

and anarchist collectives that have been erupting throughout history to

challenge capitalist exploitation and hierarchy. And the stress he puts

on changing one’s life style and on ‘self-realisation’ while perhaps

important to the white affluent middle classes of Europe and North

America, can all too easily lead to a politics of ‘survivalism’.

Following Gandhi, Naess stresses the importance of political action, but

such action as he envisages tends to focus on ‘symptoms’ — on

environmental issues — rather than directly challenging the primary

social institutions of the capitalist system — the multinational

corporations and state structures that support them. Indeed in the

future ecological society that he postulates after the radical

transformation of the present system, he seems to envisage the continued

existence of both these capitalist firms and the nation state — so one

wonders how radical or ‘deep’ is the transformation that Naess

envisages?

Deep Ecology, Anarchosyndicalism, and the Future of Anarchist

Thought by Murray Bookchin

There is very little I can add to the outstanding criticism Brian Morris

levels at deep ecology. Indeed, Morris’s contribution to the debate

around eco-mysticism generally has been insightful as well as incisive,

and I have found his writings an educational experience that hopefully

will reach a very wide audience in the United States in addition to

Britain.

I should hope that his review of Arne Naess’s Ecology, Community and

Lifestyle has revealed the intellectual poverty of the ‘father of deep

ecology’ and the silliness of the entire deep ecology ‘movement’. Rodney

Aitchtey’s rather airy, often inaccurate, and mystical Deep Ecology: Not

Man Apart, it would seem to me, is perhaps the best argument against

deep ecology that I have seen in quite a while. But after dealing with

deep ecologists in North America for quite a few years, I have

reluctantly come to the conclusion that the acolytes of Naess et al

operate on faith and are motivated in their allegiances by theological

rather than rational impulses. There is no reasoned argument, I suspect,

that will shake a belief-system of this kind — hence I will leave

discussion of the issues involved to others who still have the energy to

deal with mindless dogmas.

I would add — or possibly reinforce — only one observation to the

incisive ones that Morris makes. One wonders whether deep ecology’s

biocentric maxim that all living beings can be equatable with one

another in terms of their ‘intrinsic worth’ would have had any meaning

during the long eras of organic evolution before human beings emerged.

The entire conceptual framework of deep ecology is entirely a product of

human agency — a fact that imparts to the human species a unique status

in the natural world. All ethical systems (including those that can be

grounded in biotic evolution) are formulated by human beings in

distinctly cultural situations. Remove human agency from the scene, and

there is not the least evidence that animals exhibit behaviour that can

be regarded as discursive, meaningful, or moral. When Elisee Reclus, the

anarchist geographer, tells us that pussycats are (as cited by George

Woodcock in his introduction to the Marie Fleming biography of Reclus)

‘natural anarchists’, or worse, that ‘there is not a human sentiment

which on occasion they [i.e. cats] do not understand or share, not an

idea which they do not divine [sic!], not a desire but what they

forestall it’, Reclus is writing ethological and ecological nonsense.

That anarchist writers celebrate the author of such an anthropomorphic

absurdity as ‘ecological’ is regrettable to say the least. To the extent

that ‘intrinsic worth’ is something more than merely an agreeable

intuition in modern ecological thought, it is an ‘attribute’ that human

beings formulate in their minds and a ‘right’ that they may decide to

confer on animals and other creatures. It does not exist apart from the

operations of the human mind or humanity’s social values.

To turn from the silliness of deep ecology to the preposterous

elucidation of anarchosyndicalism that Graham Purchase advances is a

thankless task that I would ignore were it not scheduled to be published

in book form. Purchase’s piece, ‘Social Ecology, Anarchism and Trade

Unionism’, is a malicious essay that begins by accusing me of writing

belligerently and ‘insult(ing) American anarchists and trade unionists’,

then goes on to heap upon me some of the most vituperative and ad

hominem attacks that I’ve encountered in a long time. Not only am I ‘at

best unconstructive and at worst positively harmful’, Purchase warns his

readers, but worse, I am consumed by ‘an insatiable appetite for

controversy’. Having advanced this no doubt balanced, unprovocative, and

objective evaluation of my role in the anarchist movement, Purchase

displays his psychoanalytic acumen by alleging that I suffer from ‘an

unhealthy desire to be the intellectual leader and founder of a ‘new’

ecological movement’, that I exhibit evidence of ‘intellectual

schizophrenia’, and finally that I ‘filch all the major ecological

insights of anarchist theory and practice [and] dress them up in a

socialist-feminist [!] cum neo-hegelian garb and go on to more or less

claim them as [my] own’. As if this level of vituperation were not

enough — no doubt it is intended to subdue my own ‘insatiable appetite

for controversy’! — Purchase goes on to characterize the body of views

that I have advanced over a dozen or so books and scores of articles as

‘an intellectual outrage’.

To correct Purchase’s often convoluted account of the evolution of my

views — presumably I was an ‘anarchist-ecologist’ in the late 1960s and

1970s, only to mutate into an ‘outrageous’ anti-syndicalist and hence

anti-anarchist ‘social ecologist’ in the 1980s and 1990s — would be as

tedious as it would be futile. I shall leave it to serious readers of my

work to sort out the absurdities of his account. Suffice it here to make

a few points. No one, least of all I, believes that we can radically

alter society without the support of the proletariat and working people

of all kinds. But to assume that industrial workers will play the

‘hegemonic’ role that Marxists traditionally assigned to them — and that

the anarchosyndicalists merely echoed — is to smother radical thought

and practice with a vengeance. My criticism of theories that assign a

hegemonic role to the proletariat in the struggle for an anarchist

society — generically denoted by labour historians as ‘proletarian

socialism’ — is simply that they are obsolete. The reasons for the

passage of the era of proletarian socialism into history have been

explored not only by myself but by serious radical theorists of all

kinds — including anarchists. From decades of experience in my own life,

I learned that industrial workers can more easily be reached as men and

women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters,

indeed, as neighbours and citizens. They are often more concerned about

community problems, pollution, public education, democracy, morality,

and the quality of their lives than about whether they ‘control’ the

factories in which they are ruthlessly exploited. Indeed, the majority

of workers and trade-union members with whom I worked for years in

foundries and auto plants were more eager to get out of their factories

after working hours were over than to ponder production schedules and

vocational assignments.

Is it inconceivable that we have misread the historical nature of the

proletariat (more a Marxian failing, I may add, than a traditional

anarchist one) as a revolutionary hegemonic class? Is it inconceivable

that the factory system, far from organizing and radicalizing the

proletariat, has steadily assimilated it to industrial systems of

command and obedience? Have capitalism and the working class stood still

since the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or have they both

undergone profound changes that pose major challenges to — and

significantly vitiate the claims of — anarchosyndicalists as well as

traditional Marxists? With remarkable prescience, Bakunin himself

expressed his fears about the possible ‘embourgeoisement’ of the working

class and, more generally, that the ‘masses have allowed themselves to

become deeply demoralized, apathetic, not to say castrated by the

pernicious influence of our corrupt, centralized, statist civilization’.

Bakunin’s fears were not merely an expression of a strategic view that

applies only to his own time, but a historic judgment that still

requires explication, not equivocation. Today, so-called ‘progressive’

capitalist enterprises have succeeded quite admirably by giving workers

an appreciable share in hiring, firing and setting production quotas,

bringing the proletariat into complicity with its own exploitation.

Purchase not only ignores these momentous developments and the analyses

that I and others have advanced; he grossly misinterprets and

demagogically redefines any criticism of syndicalism, indeed,

trade-unionism, as an expression of hostility toward anarchism as such.

Assuming that Purchase knows very much about the history of anarchism

and syndicalism, this line of argument is manipulative and an outright

distortion; but to be generous, I will say that it reveals a degree of

ignorance and intolerance that deserves vigorous reproval. In fact, in

the late nineteenth century, when syndicalism emerged as an issue among

anarchists, it was furiously debated. The outstanding luminaries of the

anarchist movement at the the turn of the century — such as Errico

Malatesta, Elisee Reclus, Emma Goldman, Sebastian Faure, and others —

initially opposed syndicalism for a variety of reasons, many of which

show a great deal of prescience on their part. And in time, when they

came to accept it, many of them did so in a highly prudent manner.

Malatesta, in his fundamental criticism of syndicalism, argued that the

generation of a revolutionary spirit ‘cannot be the normal, natural

definition of the Trade Union’s function’. Although he eventually

accepted anarchosyndicalism with apparent reluctance, he continued to

call for a far more expansive form of anarchist organization and

practice than many syndicalists were prepared to accept.

In practice, anarchist groups often came into outright conflict with

anarchosyndicalist organizations — not to speak of syndicalist

organizations, many of which eschewed anarchism. Early in the century,

the Spanish anarchocommunists, influenced primarily by Juan Baron and

Francisco Cardinal, the editors of Tierra y Libertad, furiously

denounced the anarchosyndicalists who were later to form the CNT as

‘deserters’ and ‘reformists’. Similar conflicts developed in Italy,

France, and the United States, and perhaps not without reason. The

record of the anarchosyndicalist movement has been one of the most

abysmal in the history of anarchism generally. In the Mexican

Revolution, for example, the anarchosyndicalist leaders of the Casa del

Obrero Mundial shamefully placed their proletarian ‘Red Battalions’ at

the service of Carranza, one of the revolution’s most bloodthirsty

thugs, to fight the truly revolutionary militia of Zapata — all to gain

a few paltry reforms, which Carranza withdrew once the Zapatista

challenge had been broken with their collaboration. The great Mexican

anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon justly denounced their behaviour as a

betrayal.

Nor can much be said in defence of the leaders of the CNT in Spain. They

swallowed their libertarian principles by becoming ‘ministers’ in the

Madrid government late in 1936, not without the support of many of their

followers, I should add, and in May 1937 they used their prestige to

disarm the Barcelona proletariat when it tried to resist the Stalinist

counterrevolution in the Catalan capital. In the United States, lest

present-day anarchosyndicalists get carried away by legendary movements

like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), they should be advised

that this syndicalist movement, like others elsewhere, was by no means

committed to anarchism. ‘Big Bill’ Haywood, its most renowned leader,

was never an anarchist. Still other IWW leaders, many of whom tilted

toward an anarchist outlook, not only became Communists in the 1920s but

became ardent Stalinists in the 1930s and later. It is worth noting that

serious Spanish anarchists, even those who joined the CNT, regarded the

influence of the CNT’s trade-unionist mentality on the FAI (Iberian

Anarchist Federation) as deleterious and ultimately disastrous. Toward

the end of the civil war, it was questionable whether the FAI controlled

the CNT or, more likely, whether the CNT, with its strong trade-union

mentality, had essentially diluted the FAI’s anarchist principles. As

Malatesta had so perceptively declared, even as he cautiously accepted

the amalgamation of anarchist with syndicalist principles under the

pressure of a growing syndicalist movement in Europe, ‘trade unions are,

by their nature, reformist and never revolutionary’ (emphasis added).

For an oaf like Graham Purchase to bombastically equate syndicalism with

anarchism — an act of arrogance that is as fatuous as it is ignorant —

and then to go on and essentially equate trade unionism with syndicalism

deserves only disdain.

The authentic locus of anarchists in the past was the commune or

municipality, not the factory, which was generally conceived as only

part of a broader communal structure, not its decisive component.

Syndicalism, to the extent that it narrowed this broader outlook by

singling out the proletariat and its industrial environment as its

locus, also crucially narrowed the more sweeping social and moral

landscape that traditional anarchism had created. In large part, this

ideological retreat reflected the rise of the factory system in the

closing years of the last century in France and Spain, but it also

echoed the ascendancy of a particularly vulgar form of economistic

Marxism (Marx, to his credit, did not place much stock in trade

unionism), to which many naive anarchists and nonpolitical trade

unionists succumbed. After the Revolution by Abad de Santillan, one of

the movers and shakers of Spanish anarchosyndicalism, reflects this

shift toward a pragmatic economism in such a way that makes his views

almost indistinguishable from those of the Spanish socialists — and, of

course, that brought him into collusion with the Catalan government,

literally one of the grave-diggers of Spanish anarchism. Syndicalism —

be it anarchosyndicalism or its less libertarian variants — has probably

done more to denature the ethical content of anarchism than any other

single factor in the history of the movement, apart from anarchism’s

largely marginal and ineffectual individualist tendencies. Indeed, until

anarchism shakes off this syndicalist heritage and expands its

communalistic and communistic heritage, it will be little more than a

rhetorical and mindless echo of vulgar Marxism and the ghost of an era

that has long passed into history.

But as the Germans say,genug! I’ve had it with Purchase and his kind.

Let them explore more thoroughly the historical and textual bases of

anarchist theory and practice before they leap into print with inanities

that reveal their appalling ignorance of the intellectual and practical

trajectories of their own beliefs. And they should also take some pains

to read what I have written on the history and failings of the workers’

movement before they undertake to criticize my own views. What I

strongly resent, however, is the fatuous implication — one that even

more sensible anarchists sometimes imply — that I ‘filch’ my ecological

views from’ anarchist theory and practice’. In fact, I have been overly

eager to cite anarchist antecedents for social ecology (as I call my

eco-anarchist views), and I have done so wherever I could. The Ecology

of Freedom, written in 1982 — that is, during the period when, according

to Purchase, I abandoned my anarchist views for social ecology — opens

with an epigraph from Kropotkin’s Ethics. In the Acknowledgments section

of that book, I observed that ‘Peter Kropotkin’s writings on mutual aid

and anarchism remain an abiding tradition to which I am committed’. For

reasons that I shall explain, this is a bit of an overstatement so far

as Kropotkin is concerned, but the text contains no less than nine

favourable, often laudatory references to him, including an extensive

quotation from Mutual Aid with which I expressed my warm approval. If I

have not mentioned Elisee Reclus, it was because I knew nothing about

his work and views until I read Marie Fleming’s 1988 biography of him

for the first time only a few weeks ago. And in retrospect, I doubt that

I would have quoted or cited him in any case.

Try as I have to cite my affinity with anarchist writers of the past,

guardians of the anarchist ossuary often miss a very crucial point.

Social ecology is a fairly integrated and coherent viewpoint that

encompasses a philosophy of natural evolution and of humanity’s place in

that evolutionary process; a reformulation of dialectics along

ecological lines; an account of the emergence of hierarchy; a historical

examination of the dialectic between legacies and epistemologies of

domination and freedom; an evaluation of technology from an historical,

ethical, and philosophical standpoint; a wide-ranging critique of

Marxism, the Frankfurt School, justice, rationalism, scientism, and

instrumentalism; and finally, an eduction of a vision of a Utopian,

decentralized, confederal, and aesthetically grounded future society

based on an objective ethics of complementarity. I do not present these

ideas as a mere inventory of subjects but as a highly coherent

viewpoint. The Ecology of Freedom, moreover, must be supplemented by the

later Urbanization Without Cities, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, and

Remaking Society, not to speak of quite a few important essays published

mainly in Green Perspectives, if one is to recognize that social ecology

is more than the sum of its parts.

Whether adequately or not, the holistic body of ideas in these works

endeavours to place ‘eco-anarchism’, a term that to the best of my

knowledge has come into existence entirely as a result of my writings,

on a theoretical and intellectual par with the best systematic works in

radical social theory. To pick this corpus apart by citing an

antecedent, in the writings of some prominent nineteenth-century

anarchists, for an idea that I developed in this whole, and thereby deal

with only part of what I have tried to integrate into a meaningful and

relevant whole for our times, is simply fatuous. One could similarly

reduce systematic accounts of any body of social or even scientific

theory by citing historical antecedents for various constituent

fragments. If there is any ‘filching’ going on, it may well be by the

guardians of the anarchist ossuary who have turned the rather smug boast

‘We said it long ago’ into a veritable industry, while themselves

benefiting from whatever prestige anarchism has gained over the past

decades by virtue of its association with social ecology.

I would not make such an assertion, had I not been provoked by the

arrogance and dogmatism of these guardians in my encounters with them.

To set the record straight: The fact is that Kropotkin had no influence

on my turn from Marxism to anarchism — nor, for that matter, did Bakunin

or Proudhon. It was Herbert Read’s “The Philosophy of Anarchism” that I

found most useful for rooting the views that I slowly developed over the

fifties and well into the sixties in a libertarian pedigree; hence the

considerable attention he received in my 1964 essay, ‘Ecology and

Revolutionary Thought’. Odd as it may seem, it was my reaction against

Marx and Engels’s critiques of anarchism, my readings into the Athenian

polis, George Woodcock’s informative history of anarchism, my own

avocation as a biologist, and my studies in technology that gave rise to

the views in my early essays — not any extensive readings into the works

of early anarchists. Had I been ‘born into’ the anarchist tradition, as

some of our more self-righteous anarchists claim to have been, I might

well have taken umbrage at Proudhon’s exchange-oriented contractualism,

and after my long experience in the workers’ movement, I would have felt

smothered by the rubbish about syndicalism advanced by Graham Purchase

and his kind.

Purchase’s fatuous attempt to distinguish my post-1980 writings on

social ecology from my presumably ‘true-blue’ anarchist writings before

that date leaves a number of facts about the development of social

ecology unexplained. I wrote my earliest, almost book-length work on the

ecological dislocations produced by capitalism, ‘The Problems of

Chemicals in Food’, in 1952, while I was a neo-Marxist and had in no way

been influenced by anarchist thinkers. Many of Marx’s views heavily

contributed to my notion of post-scarcity, very much a ‘pre-1980’

outlook to which I still adhere. (Certain Spanish anarchists, I may add,

held similar views in the 1930s, as I discovered decades later when I

wrote The Spanish Anarchists.) I say all of this without being in the

least concerned that my anarchist views may be ‘adulterated’ by some of

Marx’s concepts. With Bakunin, I share the view that Marx made

invaluable contributions to radical theory, contributions one can easily

value without accepting his authoritarian politics or perspectives. For

anarchists to foolishly demonize Marx — or even Hegel, for that matter —

is to abandon a rich legacy of ideas that should be brought to the

service of libertarian thought, just as the fascinating work of many

biologists should be brought to the service of ecological thought. Which

does not mean that we have to accept Marx’s gross errors about

centralism, his commitment to a ‘worker’s party’, his support of the

nation-state, and the like, any more than learning from Hegel’s

dialectic means that we must necessarily accept the existence of an

‘Absolute’, a strict teleological system, a hybridized

corporate-parliamentary monarchy, or what he broadly called ‘absolute

idealism’.

By the same token, we will be deceiving nobody but ourselves if we

celebrate the insights of traditional anarchism without dealing

forthrightly with its shortcomings. Due honour should certainly be given

to Proudhon for developing federalistic notions of social organization

against the nation-state and defending the rights of craftspeople and

peasants who were under the assault of industrial capitalism — a system

that Marx dogmatically celebrated in so many of his writings. But it

would be sheer myopia to ignore Proudhon’s commitment to a contractual

form of economic relationships, as distinguished from the communistic

maxim ‘From each according to his or her abilities, to each according to

his or her needs’. His contractualism permeated his federalistic

concepts and can scarcely be distinguished from bourgeois conceptions of

‘right’. I say this despite some attempts that have been made to cast

his proclivity for contractual exchanges into a quasi-philosophical

notion of ‘social contract’. Even if Proudhonism really were a social

contract theory, this would be quite unsatisfactory, in my eyes. Nor can

we ignore Richard Vernon’s observation in his introduction to Proudhon’s

The Principle of Federalism that Proudhon viewed federalism as an

abridgment of his earlier, largely personalistic anarchism. If thought

out carefully, Proudhon’s views seem to be premised on the existence of

free-floating, seemingly ‘sovereign’ individuals, craftspersons, or even

collectives structured around contractual, exchangelike relationships

and property ownership rather than on a communistic system of

‘ownership’ and distribution of goods.

Bakunin, in turn, was an avowed collectivist, not a communist, and his

views on organization in particular were often at odds with themselves.

(I might remind Purchase, here, that Fourier was in no sense a

socialist, anarchist or even a revolutionary, despite his many rich

insights.) Maximoff’s later assemblage of small portions of Bakunin’s

many writings under the rubric of ‘scientific anarchism’ would probably

have astonished Bakunin, just as many of Bakunin’s insights would shock

orthodox anarchists today. I, for one, would generally agree with

Bakunin, for example, that ‘municipal elections always best reflect the

real attitude and will of the people’, although I would want to restate

his formulation to mean that municipal elections can more accurately

reflect the popular will than parliamentary ones. But how many orthodox

anarchists would agree with Bakunin’s view — or even my qualified one?

The extreme resistance I have encountered from anarchist traditionalists

and ‘purists’ on this issue has virtually foreclosed any possibility of

developing a libertarian, participatory, municipalist, and confederal

politics today as part of the anarchist tradition.

Given his time and place, Kropotkin was perhaps one of the most

far-seeing of the theorists I encountered in the libertarian tradition.

It was not until the late sixties, when reprints of his works began to

appear in American bookshops, that I became familiar with his Fields,

Factories, and Workshops (and at a later time, Colin Ward’s excellent

abridgment of this book), and it was not until the mid-sixties that I

read portions of Mutual Aid — that is, the centre portion that deals

with medieval cities. To be quite frank, these books did not appreciably

affect my views; rather, they confirmed them and reinforced my

commitment to anarchism. In much the same way, my 1974 book The Limits

of the City, structured around a very large essay I wrote in 1958,

unknowingly paralleled some of Marx’s observations on the relationship

between town and country that he expressed in the Grundrisse, which was

not available to me in English translation until the 1960s. Indeed, it

was mainly my study of urban development over the course of history that

nourished The Limits of the City, a work strongly influenced by Marx’s

Capital. My book mentions Kropotkin only incidentally as figuring in the

history of city planning in the later-appended pages. I cite this

background to note how nonsensical Purchase’s distinction between my

pre-1980 and my post-1980 development really is, and to point out how

little Purchase seems to know about my writings, much less their

‘pedigree’ and the diversity of ideological, philosophical, and

historical sources that have nourished my writings.

Far from pillaging from Kropotkin and other anarchist writers, I have

tended in the past, let me repeat, to overstate my obligation to them. I

never agreed with free-booting notions of anarchism that rest as much on

ordinary professional and scientific associations as they do on the

broader notion of a commune based on civic unity and popular assemblies.

Moreover, a revolutionism that is primarily rooted in a ‘revolutionary

instinct’ (Bakunin) and a mutualism that is primarily rooted in a

‘social instinct’ (Kropotkin) are little more than vague substitutes for

serious explanations. Instinct theory has to be dealt with very

cautiously, lest it devolve into outright sociobiology. Kropotkin’s

rather loose attribution of ‘social instinct’ to animals generally in

order to validate mutualism is particularly troubling, in my view, not

only because it is based on a highly selective study of animals — he

tends to ignore a host of solitary animals, including highly advanced

mammals. Even more troubling is that he tends to confuse animal troops,

herds, packs, and transient communities with societies: that is to say,

with highly mutable institutions, alterable as they are by virtue of the

distinctly human ability to form, develop, subvert, and overthrow them

according to their interests and will.

Elisee Reclus, for his part, carried certain elements of Kropotkin’s

outlook to the point of absurdity. I am at a loss to understand how cats

‘understand or share’ or ‘forestall’ our ‘sentiments’, ‘desires’, and

‘ideas’, as Reclus asserted they do in the quotation I cited near the

beginning of this article. I am certain that my doubts about so saintly

and gentle an anarchist as Reclus will place me in the bad graces of cat

owners, but I find such anthropomorphism naive. His view that ‘secret

harmony exists between the earth and people’, one that ‘imprudent

societies’ will always regret if they violate it, is far too vague, at

times even mystical, to be regarded as more than a generous sentiment.

One may surely respect such sentiments, but countless writers (including

some very reactionary nature romantics) have reiterated them more

emphatically to regard them as eco-anarchist in nature. Deep ecology,

eco-theology, and air-headed spiritualists have found more ‘secret

harmonies’ between humanity and nonhuman nature than I know what to do

with. I would certainly praise Reclus as an anarchist and a resolute

revolutionary, but I would be disquieted if his particular views on the

natural world were identified, apart from their good intentions, with

eco-anarchism.

Yes, let us give Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus, Malatesta, and

other leading anarchist thinkers due honour and respect for what they

did in their time and what they have to offer to ours. But cannot

anarchism go further than the terrain they charted out a century ago? If

some of us try to do so, must we live under the tyranny of ossuary

guardians like Graham Purchase, who can be expected to lift a bony

finger from out of the crypt and reprove us for ignoring

nineteenth-century anarchists’ passages on ecologically oriented social

relationships and humanity’s relationship to nature — a hint here, an

antecedent fragment there, even a sizable passage — whose formulations

are inadequate today and were often quite erroneous to begin with? We

can certainly build on views advanced by the great anarchist thinkers of

the past. But must we ignore the need for more sophisticated notions of

confederalism, anti-statism, decentralism, definitions of freedom, and

sensitivity to the natural world, than those that they advanced? There

are many notions that were central to their views that we are obliged to

discard. Such advances, hopefully, and the coherence they provide are

part of the history of cultural development as a whole. Is anarchism to

be immunized from further developments and revisions by the guardians of

its ossuary? I would hope not, especially since anarchism — almost by

definition — is the exercise of freedom not only in the social realm but

also in the realm of thought. To lock anarchism into a crypt and condemn

any innovative body of libertarian ideas as booty ‘filched’ from a

sacred precinct is an affront to the libertarian spirit and all that the

libertarian tradition stands for.

Times do change. The proletariat and, more marginally, the peasantry to

which anarchosyndicalism turned as a ‘historical subject’, or agents for

revolution, are numerically diminishing at best or are being integrated

into the existing system at worst. The most crucial contradictions of

capitalism are not those within the system but between the system and

the natural world. Today, a broad consensus is growing among all

oppressed people — by no means strictly industrial workers — that

ecological dislocation has produced monumental problems, problems that

may well bring the biosphere as we know it to an end. With the emergence

of a general human interest, largely the need to maintain and restore a

viable biosphere, an interest around which people of highly disparate

backgrounds and social strata may yet unite, anarchosyndicalism is

simply archaic, both as a movement and as a body of ideas. If anarchist

theory and practice cannot keep pace with — let alone go beyond —

historic changes that have altered the entire social, cultural, and

moral landscape and effaced a good part of the world in which

traditional anarchism was developed, the entire movement will indeed

become what Theodor Adorno called it — ‘a ghost’. If every attempt to

provide a coherent, contemporary interpretation of the anarchist

tradition is fragmented, shattered, and parcelled out to antecedents

whose views were often more appropriate to their times than they are to

ours, the libertarian tradition will fade back into history as surely as

the anarchic Anabaptists have disappeared. Then capitalism and the Right

will indeed have society completely under their control, and self-styled

libertarian ideas may well become relics in an ideological museum that

will be as remote to the coming century as Jacobinism is to our own.

July 11,1992

The Apple Falls from Grace by Chris Wilbert

The History and Changing Meaning of the Apple as a Cultivated Fruit;

Changing Attitudes towards Nature from Ancient Societies to the Present

Day

1. Introduction

The Apple perhaps more than any other fruit has been intimately bound up

with humans. Thoreau called the Apple tree ‘the most civilised of all

trees’ being longer cultivated than any other and so more humanised. [7]

This relationship has been shown in many ways. In Ancient cultures, such

as the Greeks, Romans, and Celts, the Apple was the source of much

folklore, magic and symbolism, which reflected the values and worldview

of the cultures themselves.

As human society has changed, so too has the relationship between humans

and nature, in this sense historical and cultural change leads to

ecological and social change, [8] and these changes can be seen in the

way that fruits and other crops are grown. In this way the Apple is used

here partly as a metaphor for nature as a whole.

The changes of the fourteenth century onwards, the rise of capitalism,

the scientific revolution and the fusion of science and capitalism has

taken the Apple from a fruit imbued with spiritual and symbolic meaning

— the fruit of health and immortality — to a fruit given only a single

function, that of production of profit and a fruit feared because of the

chemicals that are applied to it. Now genetic engineering promises to

make the Apple almost unrecognisable as a Tree, in the drive to increase

production, standardisation and remove labour costs.

The old symbolism has not completely gone however, instead it too has

been commodified and now adorns the ‘industries of the new age’, Apple

Computers being but one example.

In these ways capitalism has separated us from the source and knowledge

of production of essentials such as food, we are encouraged to trust the

experts who are motivated mainly by profits [9] and we are learning that

we should not. Without such knowledge of production for food, no moral

responsibility for social and environmental consequences of one’s

decisions of what to buy seems possible. [10]

Alternatives do exist, and ways of breaking out of this impersonal,

morally irresponsible system, to bring the knowledge and meaning of food

production and nature back into our lives, can and must be found. These

cannot be separated from wider political realities however, nor should

it be seen that to go back to some mythical golden age is the answer.

But we can learn from the past by seeing what has been and what has gone

wrong and look to a future to see what can be.

2. Fruit Cultivation: Myth, Magic and Folksymbols

In the essential prose

of things, the Apple Tree

stands up, emphatic

among the accidents of the afternoon, solvent

not to be denied. [11]

Wild fruits have probably always been collected by humans and still are,

the Apple was particularly valued for its nutritional and storable

qualities, and because it can be dried and kept over winter. [12]

Cultivation of the Apple probably dates back to the Stone Age [13] and

most likely began in the area of the Caucasus and Northern India where

forests of wild Apples are found. [14] The Apple was cultivated in Egypt

in the twelfth century BC and the Greeks and Romans were also adept at

grafting and propagation of Apple trees. The Roman Palladius wrote of

thirty-seven varieties in the fourth century BC.

It is not known whether the Apple was cultivated in Britain before the

Romans invaded, though the crab apple (Malus sylvestris) is native and

was highly valued by the Celts. The Romans did introduce their own form

of fruit cultivation but after they left little is known of fruit

growing in Britain until the Norman invasion apart from a few scattered

references to orchards in Monasteries. [15] There is only one reference

to an orchard in the Domesday book; however it is thought that this

reflects the commonplace nature of fruit growing on an individual basis

rather than as a co-operative pursuit. [16]

Trees have played an important part in the spiritual history of most

cultures and trees bearing life-foods were always sacred. [17] It is

probable that humans in an early stage of civilisation, living a hard

life close to nature, constructed no definite philosophy of life that

could explain all the phenomena or workings of nature with which they

came into contact. Their ‘rude’ science thus explained itself largely in

satisfying their simple wants and needs in warding off dangers and

appeasing the wrath of evil powers. [18] In such communities the natural

world was viewed in anthropomorphic terms, spirits permeated matter,

such that the earth was seen as animate, [19] a living organism and

nurturing mother, and this view served as a cultural constraint

restricting the exploitative action of humans. [20] Within such a

cosmology, nothing was seen as isolated and apart, but in its relation

to the whole of life, of which each object formed an integral part. [21]

Thus, everyday things were invested with a deep symbolism or

cosmological significance. [22] This paganism or animism was to some

extent incorporated within Christianity when it arrived in Europe and

Britain, but a marked shift did occur with nature being seen as man’s

(sic) dominion and thus separate from nature.

One of the most widely known mentions of the Apple in myth is the

Christian story of the Garden of Eden in which Adam and Eve partake of

the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is most

commonly seen as the Apple, [23] and are then cast out of the Garden of

Innocence by God into the world of experience. Russell has interpreted

this myth, along with similar other ones from other cultures along with

anthropological studies of societies in Papua New Guinea, as being

connected with Kinship. She arrives at some significant conclusions in

connection with fruit trees:

From evidence about modern societies that practice simple farming, I was

able to show that the Fruit tree is the oldest form of property fixed to

a place, and the theft of fruit the oldest form of crime in farming

societies (the original sin). Moreover, since Fruit trees may last more

than a generation, the fruit tree is the oldest form of heritable fixed

property. Since it is important that fruit trees be cared for, it

becomes important to control and certify kinship succession. Hence the

fruit tree gives rise to the family tree. At this stage of cultural

evolution, to ensure regular kinship succession, mating regulations

begin to be connected with property. [24]

Thus, in Eden mating regulations are broken, the Tree of Life may be

said to represent stable succession of inheritance (immortality), which

ensures a kind of eternal life and renewal for the trees and those who

succeed in tending them. The story of Eden may therefore be telling of

the expulsion of groups who infringed the rules of mating. [25]

As the classical symbol of youth and renewal the Apple naturally rated

high in Greek mythology. The Apple was a bridal symbol and offering,

sacred to Venus as love and desire. [26] The Apple being round in shape,

like many fruits, represents totality and unity and is sacred to Apollo

the Sun god [27] (Ibid), while the Temple of Artemis was within an

orchard. [28]

In Celtic mythology, the Apple was one of the central life trees of the

Gaelic elysium, [29] seen as the Silver Bough, it has magic and cthonic

powers, it is the emblem of security, [30] immortality and the fruit of

the other world:

The Apple was the talisman which led him into the world of the immortals

and fed him with the fruit of life and everlasting happiness. [31]

The Druids planted Apple trees in sacred places for their fruit and as

harbours for mistletoe which was also sacred to them. [32] Hallowe’en is

the Celtic Apple festival which marks the celebration of the beginning

of winter and death of the old year — on the eve of November 1^(st).

This was also the eve of New Year’s Day in Anglo-Saxon times and this

date was also dedicated to the spirit which presides over fruit and

seeds. [33]

On Twelfth night, which has absorbed many early hallowe’en customs many

folkrites were also carried out by people in orchards. One such is Apple

Wassailing which took place in Cornwall, Devon and Somerset. On this

night parishioners walk in procession visiting the main orchards in the

parish. In each orchard one tree is selected and saluted with an

incantation, the tree is then sprinkled with cider to ensure it bears

plentifully the ensuing year. Implements are then banged to drive out

evil spirits and arouse the tree spirits. ‘Hail to thee, good Apple

tree, pocket-fulls, hat-fulls, peck-fulls, bushel-bag fulls’ goes one

version of this Wassailing chorus. Afterwards vast quantities of cider

are consumed. [34] The Apple was also associated in many cultures with

health and healing; King Arthur’s grievous wound was treated in the Vale

of Avalon, the Apple Vale of Celtic myth. [35] Fruit Trees were also

planted in many places upon the birth of a new child and the health of

the tree was thought to reflect that of the child. [36]

Another famous myth has it that one day while sitting in an orchard an

apple fell and hit Isaac Newton (the ‘father’ of modern physics) upon

the head and that this gave him the inspiration for his Law of Gravity.

The irony of this story is that Newton was one of the most important

formulators of the mechanistic view of nature. In conjunction with, and

to some extent as a result of, the increased exploitation of the earth

under early capitalism, this new paradigm of scientific thought eroded

the view of nature as being in a generalised sense female, alive and

responsive to human action and acting as a normative restraint on human

exploitation. The new Mechanistic Theories and Capitalism, morally

underpinned by Contemporary Christian Theology, replaced this with a

view of nature as an inanimate, dead, physical system over which ‘man’

(sic) had dominion. This, as we shall see, had far reaching effects in

the way humans exploit nature.

3. The Apple and the Rising Market System

The transformation from Feudalism to Capitalism set in motion a number

of changes which eventually affected every form of life in western

societies. When we look at these historical changes in human impact on

the system as a whole, we can see that historical change becomes

ecological change due to the ‘...dynamic interactions of the natural and

cultural subsystems’. [37]

The main factor in the transformation of the early modern period was the

growth in the market system for food production and other goods, such as

wool, based on property rights and exchanges in land and money. This,

along with population increases and urbanisation, advances in

agricultural improvement and the growth of rural industry, gradually

broke down communal farming practices that were part of the feudal

system. [38] People’s experiences of an increasingly manipulated nature

also undermined the organic worldview and made way for the mechanistic

model which reinforced and accelerated the exploitation of nature and

human beings as resources. [39] While the spreading use of money

facilitated open-ended accumulation of capital as opposed to the

somewhat more limited feudal aim of production for consumption

(including conspicuous consumption). [40] In these ways (and others)

production for subsistence was replaced by rationally maximising modes

of economic organisation for the market.

The tendency towards growth, expansion and accumulation in Capitalism

led to continued displacement of subsistence farmers, [41] the growth of

waged labour and the bringing into cultivation of new lands by

improvement and reclamation as well as by enclosure of common lands.

[42] This process was aided by new books in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries on agricultural improvements (in a scientific

sense) and in the case of fruit, instructions on ordering, grafting and

propagation. [43]

These early changes were essentially focussed around London being the

largest urban market and in this it is worth remembering the words of

Hughes:

It is significant that the first urban societies were also the first

societies to abandon a religious attitude of oneness with nature and to

adopt one of separation. [44]

4. Transformations in Fruit Cultivation

Norman London, according to a contemporary account, was full of citizens

gardens and orchards. All the main monasteries, encouraged to be

self-sufficient since the time of St Benedict, [45] at Whitefriars,

Blackfriars, Charterhouse and Holborn had their own gardens in which

fruit was grown. [46] In the thirteenth century fruit was extensively

grown in the Royal Gardens at Tower Hill and Westminster. [47] But fruit

growing was not confined to the rich and monastic orders, though few

records survive of peasant cultivation, Langland in Piers Ploughman of

1362 mentions that the poor ate baked apples and cherries. [48]

Surplus fruits from the monasteries and Royal gardens, and from the

Manor farming systems were sold at the ‘Market Cross’ at this time and

this sale of fruit and other crops became so profitable that the system

of renting gardens and orchards to grow especially for market became

established. [49] This market gardening first developed in and around

London in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. [50]

Cantor states that because this was a small-scale affair it was well

suited to peasants with plenty of family labour, producing vegetables in

beds separated by fruit trees and supplemented by produce from communal

fields. By 1650 however, a class of wealthy market gardeners emerged who

acquired larger holdings and whose soil they improved with fertilisers

and employed wage earners of displaced peasants to work them. [51]

Specialised fruit production was already well established in Kent by the

end of the fifteenth century also supplying the markets of London.

Jordan states that this required very heavy and certainly very

profitable capital outlay. [52]

Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Somerset and Devon were also becoming

main fruit growing areas, tending to focus more on cider production due

to poorer transport and smaller markets. [53] Each of these areas had

their own local varieties such as Cornish Aromatic, Hereford Pearmain,

Flower of Kent and Devonshire Quarrenden, as well as growing more

widespread varieties such as Golden Pippin.

Until the sixteenth century fruit growing in Britain had changed little

from how it was undertaken in Greek or Roman times, apart from becoming

somewhat more intensive. However, at this time new developments came

about which signalled the move towards increasing economic

rationalisation.

The first of these was the introduction of dwarfing rootstocks from

France, called ‘Paradise’. These enabled more trees to be planted in an

area than before. Legendre, in his book The Manner of Ordering Fruit

Trees (translated in 1660) suggested these should be spaced 6–9 feet

apart, instead of the 18–24 feet for trees on seedlings. [54] This

practice of dwarfing trees prevented the undercropping of other plants

beneath the trees which had previously been widespread and marks the

beginning of the transformation of the Apple tree to fit economic

‘needs’ of humans.

The developing mechanistic worldview, which saw nature as disorder and

cultivation as the imposition of human order was distinguished by

increasingly regular planting forms and monocultures, and an increasing

admiration of it. None was more admired than the Quincunx, the old Roman

way of setting out an orchard. [55] Thus, in the time of Henry VIII,

Richard Harris planted over 100 acres of fruit trees at Teynham, Kent:

‘So beautifully as they not only stand in most right lines, but seem to

be of one sort, shape and fashion’. [56]

Increased planting of orchards continued in the eighteenth century,

supplied by many new nurseries especially around London. However, the

increased acreage of orchards and the monocultural system began to have

adverse side-effects by the late eighteenth century, with large-scale

devastation by pests and diseases, as a result of the disruption of

ecosystem balances. Canker and Woolly Aphid — introduced on dwarfing

rootstocks — became rife, fruit quality and yields became very poor.

[57] These problems led to more attention being given to possible

remedies by the likes of the newly-formed Royal Horticultural Society,

rather than any basic questioning of their causes.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, English agriculture was well on

the way to becoming a fully commercial activity, organised and

administered according to the needs of the market, [58] and dominated by

the triple divisions into landlords, tenant farmers and hired labourers.

[59]

In the nineteenth century few new developments came about in fruit

cultivation. However, fruit growing continued to intensify under the

influence of rapid population growth and urbanisation, increasing per

capita incomes, cheaper transport costs and more integrated markets. At

the same time French imports of Apples and high sugar prices caused

periodic contractions in cultivation. [60] At this time many Apple

varieties grown today were introduced, these often having arisen as

chance seedlings, Bramleys Seedling, Cox’s Orange Pippin, and Worcester

Pearmain being examples. [61] The next set of new developments in fruit

cultivation did not come about until the early twentieth century with

the integration of science into commercial fruit production.

5. The Apple as a Machine

Most developments and improvements in fruit cultivation before the

twentieth century came from individual growers and gardeners, amateur

‘Scientists’ and particularly in the nineteenth century from commercial

nurseries such as Laxtons of Bedford. [62] By the early twentieth

century however, research into new varieties by nurseries was largely

given up as the new scientific research stations, financed by growers

and government took a leading role [63] and a more scientific management

of commercial orchards came into being.

The setting up of Fruit Research stations, principally those at Long

Ashton, Bristol in 1903 (initially as the Cider Institute) and East

Mailing, Kent in 1913, can be seen as part of the more general

‘scientific-technical revolution’, in which science became directly

organised and dominated by capitalist institutions and was placed at the

centre of production. [64] This process of integration is described by

Braverman:

Science is the last — and after labour the most important — social

property to be turned into an adjunct of capital... At first science

costs the capitalist nothing, since he merely exploits the accumulated

knowledge of the physical sciences, but later the capitalist

systematically organises and harnesses science, paying for scientific

education, research, laboratories etc, out of the huge surplus social

product which either belongs directly to him or which the capitalist

class as a whole controls in the form of tax revenues. A formerly

relatively free-floating social endeavour is integrated into production

and the market. [65]

The mechanistic philosophy and reductionist method of science harmonised

well with the expanding capitalist system into a rationalised system of

scientific management, in which the most efficient, scientifically and

logically based means are sought to achieve pre-determined capitalist

ends. [66] Thus, in the scientific-technical revolution, scientific

management sets itself the problem of grasping the process of production

as a whole and controlling every element of it, without exception. As

H.L. Gantt wrote:

Improving the system of management means the elimination of elements of

chance or accident and the accomplishment of all the ends desired in

accordance with knowledge derived from a scientific investigation of

everything down to the smallest details of labour. [67]

The result of this approach is that commercial fruit production has been

revolutionised and has followed the precepts of rationalisation apparent

in other industries and agricultural sectors. Fruit growers have become

ever more specialised, landholdings have become bigger, more capital

intensive and more incorporated into sectors of the chemical,

engineering and food processing industries. [68]

These developments have been made possible by the scientific

investigations of the fruit research stations, much of it sponsored by

companies such as ICI, Monsanto, Ciba-Geigy Agrochemicals, J Sainsbury

Pic, Hoechst, and of course The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and

Food (MAFF) who are the main sponsors. [69] MAFF grants are not given

unless it can be shown that the research is of ‘practical’ importance

and the current government’s policy is emphasising this by cutting

financial support for East Mailing and other research stations, so that

a higher proportion of funding comes from the private sector and is thus

more market orientated. [70]

Currently, control of Apple production is mainly focussed on chemicals

and hybridisation, though this is shifting towards what is seen as the

‘ultimate’ control of the Apple, through genetic engineering. Up to

twelve chemicals and hormones can be applied to apples in a single

season, [71] rich pickings indeed for the chemical companies. These are

applied to Apples at almost every stage of growth from beginning to end.

They are used to control pests and diseases (of which there are an

increasing number due to further disruption of predator-prey

relationships), to thin fruit out on the tree, to control growth, to

‘stick’ apples to the tree and prevent windblow losses, to prevent

rotting in storage and to lengthen shelf life. This is a potent cocktail

synergistically speaking, yet what inadequate testing does take place is

only to define lethal doses, not how chemicals may work together or

effects of long term low level exposures.

Already several fungicides used regularly in the fruit industry, such as

Mancozeb, Captan, and Folpet, are known carcinogens. [72] But most

menacing are the growth regulators such as Alar (daminozide), which are

used to slow the growth of leaves and branches on trees, and thus force

an increase in budding and fruit production. These regulators and some

herbicides dramatically alter growth rates at the level of the

individual cell. [73] Alar sales were stopped in the USA because of

links with cancer in young children and caused storms of protest from

farmers and industry with the decision being roundly condemned by the

Wall Street Journal as: ‘...false or superficial science prevailing over

the real thing’. [74] A similar controversy erupted in Britain over the

American decision, but after a brief review, the government decided in

December 1989 that all daminozide based products (Alar and Dazide) were

safe. [75]

Developments in plant breeding have also led to more intensive planting

systems with even more dwarfing trees. These can be as little as 1 metre

in height, while some bush trees need to be permanently staked and their

branches strung up because they cannot support themselves. These

developments allow labour ‘maintenance and picking’ costs to be reduced.

Attempts to mechanise harvesting altogether are at present limited to

fruit for cider or juice due to damage to the fruit. [76] Though fully

automated chemical sprayers have recently been developed. [77]

Recent research has turned to genetic control of Apple characteristics.

Here, by mapping genes responsible for control of tree habit, pest and

disease resistance, and fruit characteristics, genes will be selected

and transferred to give the right requirements for high yields, pest

resistance and early cropping, this ‘...will allow the normally slow

process of conventional breeding to be accelerated’. [78]

So far this has resulted in the new columnar varieties, compact,

branchless ‘trees’ which have taken thirty years to develop. They

require no pruning, crop early, need very little space and are thus

being marketed under the legend: ‘Now even the smallest garden can have

an orchard’. [79] These mutations however, bear little relation to a

tree at all, having been stripped down to a purely functional level.

Like the dwarf varieties of commercial orchards, they have no meaning

beyond a straight economic one.

The effects of increasing economic rationalisation have also been

evident in the numbers of varieties grown commercially and available in

shops. Over 6000 varieties of Apple are known, yet modern commercial

orchards are dominated by only nine varieties. [80] English orchards are

dominated by Cox’s Orange Pippin and its coloured forms, making up 63%

of dessert apple production in 1986, while Bramleys Seedlings made up

90% of culinary apples. [81] Only another six or seven dessert apples

are widely available; most of these being imported often from as far

away as Canada or New Zealand.

This increasing specialisation in only a few varieties is a relatively

recent trend of the twentieth century. In 1917, Prothero could boast

that as many as 200 varieties of Apple were collected in a single

orchard, [82] now he would be lucky to find more than two or three

varieties in most orchards. This loss of local varieties of Apples that

were often intimately related to their area can be seen as yet another

factor in the loss of distinctiveness and identification of regions that

has followed from the application of scientific management to

agriculture. [83]

The work of the orchard labourer has also been transformed, with

developments to reduce ‘maintenance’ and harvesting labour costs

becoming increasingly deskilled and seasonally intense. Little

information about these changes is available however, with only brief

references in works such as Ronald Blythe’s Akenfield. The older orchard

workers spoken to in connection with this research all bemoaned the lack

of activity of most of the year and the much more intense and fast

harvesting season in comparison to earlier days when the job was more

varied, skilled and spread more evenly throughout the year. [84]

The sorting of fruit is now carried out on factory production line

systems in on-farm refrigerated stores which are usually run on a

co-operative basis between local farmers. Here the fruit is sorted into

its various classes under EC quality standards and the Agricultural

Development and Advisory Services Fruit Group provides advice to

employers on how to run these lines on strict ‘time and motion’ systems

to get the best results from the mainly female, part-time and low-paid

workforce.

6. The Commodification of Apple Symbolism

As society has changed, the old symbols of ancient and pre-modern

cultures have to a great extent lost their meaning [85] and have been

replaced by new symbols that reflect the surroundings of contemporary,

materialistic culture. Yet as Cooper states, a large body of symbolism

has become traditional over the ages and this constitutes an

international language transcending the normal limits of communication.

[86]

It may be that this traditional form of symbolism (which is most often

nature symbolism and includes the Apple) is selectively commodified by

capitalism, in that it is used to imbue or associate technologies, goods

and services with symbolic qualities of other phenomena, to make

products more attractive to buyers. For example the Apple is used by

Apple Macintosh Computers and for Midland Bank’s orchard account,

amongst others. This can be seen as a marketing or advertising ploy to

associate these products with the traditional symbolic qualities of the

Apple, of health, wisdom and fertility, as well as the naturalism and

simplicity of the Apple to make these products and services more

appealing and more saleable.

This use can also be seen in the gardens of the early twentieth century

suburban estates of London and other cities. Here Apple, Pear and Plum

trees were often planted by builders, possibly to accentuate the rustic

feeling of these areas. For as Jackson notes, a major attraction of

suburban life had always been the opportunity it seemed to offer of

enjoying the pleasanter aspects of rural life whilst remaining in touch

with the amenities of urban civilisation. [87] Some of these estates, as

they spread further out into the countryside, were actually built on old

orchards and some trees were left in place as at Broadlands estate,

Ponders End in North London. [88]

Though it is easy to mock or denigrate this using of fruit trees in the

suburbs, as Ward states, English gardens often remain a haven for the

older fruit varieties no longer grown commercially. [89] For example,

Hampstead Garden Society boasts over eighty Apple varieties in its

members’ gardens.

7. Futures

As we have seen, it is the nature of our current economic and social

system which reduces the Apple to a commodity with a single function.

This has led to the transformation of the Apple tree to meet the needs

of capitalist production, a process which has mainly taken place in the

Horticultural Research Stations. It is clear that big business —

particularly chemical companies — do well out of this research, yet what

does the customer, the buyer of Apples receive in return for the huge

amount of public investment? Cheaper Apples perhaps, but we also get a

smaller choice of Apple varieties; ‘most’ people seem to think we get

Apples that no longer taste much at all, and we get Apples that are

sprayed with innumerable hazardous chemicals. Such developments are

leading to a greater questioning of how far we can trust food producers,

chemical companies etc, when their motive is profits.

Yet things do not have to be this way. The Apple need not be confined to

massive orchards, as staked up, chemically soaked bush trees. In

Switzerland for example, as I was informed by a research scientist from

East Mailing, there seems to be a move to take a broader view of fruit

cultivation. Instead of following a policy of transforming the Apple

tree to fit economic needs, fruit cultivation was being seen as part of

the workings and aesthetics of the wider landscape and this was leading

to a more ‘traditional’ form of cultivation.

Nor should we rely on private gardens in Britain, as a refuge for

varieties not commercially available. As Alexander states:

Fruit trees on common land add much more to the neighbourhood and the

community than the same trees in private backyards: privately grown, the

trees tend to produce more fruit than one household can consume. On

public land, the trees concentrate the feeling of mutual benefit and

responsibility. And because they require yearly care, pruning and

harvesting the fruit trees naturally involve people in their common

land. [90]

The idea of community orchards, like the aim of growing one’s own food

(or at least a portion of it), aiming at buying fewer environmentally

and socially destructive products, and insisting on organic foods, can

be seen as an attempt to achieve some form of moral responsibility for

one’s economic decisions in the market.

As Tisdell has noted, the market system operates in a way that minimises

the amount of knowledge needed to make an economic decision. As the

divided responsibility of production has led to divided responsibility

for its social and environmental impacts, so the overall lack of

knowledge arising out of the market system has further diminished the

moral responsibility for these impacts. For example, when one buys

Apples one need only know the price and quality of Apples. No knowledge

is required of the producer, the production process or its social and

environmental impacts (both of production and consumption). Yet without

such knowledge, says Tisdell, no moral responsibility for environmental

consequences of one’s decisions seems possible. Even if knowledge is

available, the remoteness of production may reduce any feeling of

responsibility for social and environmental effects. [91]

It is this moral void which lies at the heart of capitalist society. As

Jones states, in his discussion of Weber, this is a function of the

fragmentation of reason, whereby reason is constrained to seek the most

efficient, scientifically and logically based means to achieve

pre-determined ends. This formal rationality therefore does not extend

our vision or grasp of meaning in the world:

On the contrary, the myth, legend, folklore, poetry and magic, necessary

for the creation of ultimate meanings in human societies and the

emergence of a holistic worldview are rejected. [92]

Seen in this way it is evident that capitalism and its scientifically

backed formal rationality, cannot solve the current, and growing, social

and environmental problems. The problems emanate from the system itself.

Nor can going back to a cosmological view be an answer, such

philosophies were long ago destroyed by Mechanistic science. Only with

an Ecological way of thinking and acting which posits humanity as

inseparable from nature can these problems be properly addressed. If

this is fully understood ‘...it will no longer be possible for us to

injure nature wantonly, as this would mean injuring an integral part of

ourselves’. [93]

Such a move may seem far off today. Yet much can and is being done to

educate people, and to encourage awareness of the more manifold meanings

of nature, especially in urban areas which remain so alienated from

nature and alienating for people.

There is no reason for example, why we should not have ‘real’ Apple

trees and other fruits growing all over our cities. As Alexander states:

The presence of orchards adds an experience that has all but vanished

from our cities — the experience of growth, harvest, local sources of

fresh food; walking down a city street pulling an apple out of a tree

and biting into it. [94]

Appleyard quotes the example of Chandigarh, the capital of India’s

Punjab, where the main roads of the city are lined with peaches and plum

trees. [95] In Nanking in China, one sixth of trees planted in the city

are fruit bearing, including lychees and mangoes. [96] There are

problems of course in the amount of pollution from cars etc, in cities,

but fruit growing can help draw more attention to this pollution.

The main tree identified with London is the London Plane (Platanus x

acerifolia), a tree of uncertain origin, large, unusual, but purely a

decorative tree. The Plane tree is also symbolic of moral superiority.

[97] How much better to have the Apple tree, in its many forms, growing

all over London again. Symbolic of health, immortality, love and

fertility — these are qualities our towns and cities should seek to

emulate.

Appendix

The original interest in this subject has come from the ‘Save Old

Orchards’ campaign run by the environmental arts group Common Ground. In

1988 a short project was carried out by myself at Thames Polytechnic

into attitudes to, and uses of, fruit grown in people’s gardens. This

research threw up many more questions than it answered, but the

background knowledge gained then, has added much to this research.

Part one of this paper dealing with mythology and symbolism was

researched mainly at the Folklore Library, University College and relies

extensively on the 1928 work by Eleanor Hull, who truly seems to have

loved the symbolism surrounding apples. Much more remains to be

discovered on this subject however.

The history of fruit cultivation is well covered by F.A. Roach, but

coming from an ex-director of East Mailing research station, reflects a

very pro-scientific view regarding developments. In reviewing the

history I have followed Carolyn Merchant’s method that historical change

becomes ecological change, emphasising human impact on the system as a

whole, whilst using the Apple as an example. As she rightly points out,

Natural and Cultural subsystems are in dynamic interaction and cannot be

separated.

The modern developments in fruit cultivation are by no means dealt with

exhaustively, there being so many. It has also been hard to find works

to explain adequately the mind-boggling nature of some of the work

undertaken by these researchers in controlling the characteristics and

life cycle of the Apple tree. Some of it appears to show the worst

aspects of modern science, in its violent, reductionist methods and its

tendency to reshape nature to fit capitalist societies’ needs. The fact

that the Apple tree can be transformed from a beautiful 20–30 foot tree,

to an eight foot stick with no branches, stuck in a pot, was finally too

outrageous for it to be allowed to pass without comment.

The gaps that have appeared are in the section on Commodification of

Symbolism, in which no texts could be found. Also on the work of the

orchard worker, who seems to be totally ignored along with the many

other horticultural workers. Even Howard Newby who is one of the few

writers to broach the subject of agricultural workers’ conditions has

neglected horticultural workers and this remains something that should

be rectified.

Bibliography

AFRC Institute of Horticultural Research — (1988) East Mailing 1913–88

75^(th) anniversary brochure.

AFRC Institute of Horticultural Research — (1988) Annual Report 1988

Berry, Wendell — (1966) The Broken Ground Cape.

Bianchini, F et al — (1975) The Complete Book of Fruits and Vegetables

New York, Crown. Blythe, R — (1968) Akenfield Penguin.

Braverman, H. (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital Monthly Review Press.

Cantor, L. (1987) The Changing English Countryside 1400–1700 Routledge

and Kegan

Clutterbuck, C. and Lang, T. (1982) More Than We Can Chew Pluto Press

Cooper, J.C. (1978) An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols

Thames and Hudson.

Courtney, M.A. (1973) Cornish Feasts and Folklore EP Publishing.

Douglas, J.D. (Editor) (1962) The New Bible Dictionary Intervarsity

Press.

Flaherty, Ann (1989) Uniroyal Pushed into Suspending Alar Sales in US

Grower 15.6.1989 p4.

Flaherty, Ann (1989) Alar Cleared of Health Risk by the Governments ACP

Grower 21.12.1989 p4.

Fräser, J.G. (1949) The Golden Bough MacMillan.

Graves, R. (1952) The White Goddess Third Edition, Faber and Faber.

Greenoak, F. (1983) Forgotten Fruit Andre Deutsch.

Harman, C. (1989) From Feudalism to Capitalism International Socialism

45 Winter 1989 pp35-88.

Harvey, David (1973) Fruit Growing in Kent in the Nineteenth Century in:

Roake, M. and Whyman, J. Essays in Kentish History Frank Cass.

Herrsher, Pascal (1988) Death of the European Landscape? Environmental

Conservation Vol 15 (1) Spring 1988 pp63-4.

Hill, L.D. (1974) Grow Your Own Fruit and Vegetables Faber and Faber.

Hobsbawm, E.J. and Rude, G. (1968) Captain Swing Norton and Co.

Horticultural Product News (1989) Compact Apple Trees May 1989 p24.

Hughes, J.D. (1975) Ecology in Ancient Civilisations University of New

Mexico. Hull, Eleanor (1928) Folklore of the British Isles Methuen.

Jackson, A.A. (1973) Semi-Detached London Allen and Unwin.

Jones, Alwyn (1983) Beyond Industrial Society: Towards Balance and

Harmony The Ecologist Vol 13 (4) ppl4I-147.

Jordan, W.K. (1973) Social Institutions in Kent 1480–1660: A Study of

Social Aspirations

in: Roake, M. and Whyman Essays in Kentish History Frank Cass.

Lawson, G. (1989) Automated Spraying Grower 23.11.1989 p26.

Luckwill, L.C. (1984) Some Factors in Successful Cropping 5 Apple Span

27 (2) p66.

Mabey, R. and Greenoak, F. (1983) Back to the Roots Arena.

McCully, P. and Hildyard (1989) Intolerable Risks: Pesticides in

Children’s Food The Ecologist Vol 19(3) p97.

Merchant, Carolyn (1982) The Death of Nature Wildwood House. Morris, B.

(1981) Changing Views of Nature The Ecologist Vol 11(3) ppl31-8. Newby,

Howard (1979) Green and Pleasant Land Wildwood House. Newby, Howard

(1987) Country Life Cardinal.

Prothero, R.E. (1917) English Farming Past and Present Second Edition,

Longmans, Green and Co.

Roach, F.A. (1985) Cultivated Fruits of Britain Blackwell.

Robinson, G.M. (1988) Agricultural Change North British Publishers.

Rothenberg, D. (Editor) and Naess, A. (1989) Ecology, Community and

Lifestyle C.U.P.

Russell, Claire (1981) The Life Tree and the Death Tree Folklore Vol

92(1) pp56-62.

Sinden, Neil (1989) Orchards and Places in: Orchards a Guide to Local

Conservation Common Ground.

Snell, Peter (1989) Pesticide Residues: The Scandal Continues The

Ecologist Vol 19(3) pp94-97.

Talbot White, J. (1984) Country London Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Thomas, Keith (1983) Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in

England 1500–1800 Allen Cane.

Tisdell, C.A. (1989) Environmental Conservation: Economics, Ecology and

Ethics Environ-mental Conservation Vol 16(2) ppl07-12.

Walters, A.H. (1973) Ecology, Food and Civilisation: an Ecological

History of Human Society Knight.

Ward, R. (1988) A Harvest of Apples Penguin.

Weldon-Finn, R. (1973) The Domesday Book: A Guide Phillimore and Co.

Wicks, J.H. (1972) Trees of the British Isles in History and Legend

Anchor Press.

[1] George Bradford 1989 How Deep is Deep Ecology, Hadley, Mass. Times

Change Press.

[2] Murray Bookchin 1989 Remaking Society, Montreal, Black Rose Books.

1990 The Philosophy of Social Ecology Montreal, Black Rose Books.

[3] David Levine 1991 Ed. Defending the Earth, A Dialogue between Murray

Bookchin and Dave Foreman.

[4] Bill Devall 1988 Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: Practicing Deep

Ecology Salt Lake City, Peregrine Smith.

[5] Arne Naess 1989 Ecology, Community and Lifestyle Cambridge Univ.

Press.

[6] Hans Jonas 1966 The Phenomenon of Life Univ. Chicago Press.

[7] Sinden, Neil — ‘Orchards and Places’ in Orchards: A Guide to Local

Conservation Common Ground 1989 p1O.

[8] Merchant, Carolyn — The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the

Scientific Revolution London Wildwood House 1982 p43.

[9] Clutterbuck, C and Lang, T — More Than We Can Chew: The Crazy World

of Food and Farming Pluto Press 1982 p66.

[10] Tisdell, C A — Environmental Conservation: Economics, Ecology and

Ethics, Environmental Conservation Vol 16 No 2 Summer 1989 p107.

[11] Berry Wendell — The Broken Ground Cape 1966 p31.

[12] Hills L D — Grow Your Own Fruit and Vegetables Faber and Faber 1974

p203.

[13] Bianchini F et al — The Complete Book of Fruits and Vegetables New

York Crown 1975 pi 26.

[14] Walters AH — Ecology, Food and Civilisation: An Ecological History

of Human Society London Knight 1973 p20.

[15] Greenoak F — Forgotten Fruit Andre Deutsch 1983 p3.

[16] Weldon — Finn, R — The Domesday Book: A Guide Sussex Phillimore and

Co 1973 p59.

[17] Cooper J C — An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols

Thames and Hudson 1978 p176.

[18] Hull, Eleanor — Folklore of the British Isles London Methuen 1928

p22.

[19] Morris, B — Changing View of Nature The Ecologist Vol 11(3) 1981

p131.

[20] Merchant, C — Op Cit p3.

[21] Hull, Eleanor — Op Cit p240.

[22] Morris, B — Op Cit p131.

[23] Douglas J D (Editor) — The New Bible Dictionary Intervarsity Press

1962 p50.

[24] Russell, Claire — The Life Tree and the Death Tree Folklore Vol

92(i) 1981 p56.

[25] Ibid p56-7.

[26] Cooper, J C — Op Cit p14.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Fräser, J G — The Golden Bough Abridged Edition MacMillan 1949

[29] Hull, E — Op Cit p22.

[30] Graves, Robert — The White Goddess 3^(rd) edition Faber and Faber

1952 p42.

[31] Hull, E — Op Cit p240.

[32] Roach, F A — Cultivated Fruits of Britain Blackwell 1985 p1OO.

[33] Hull, E — Op Cit p227 and p240.

[34] Wicks, J H — Trees of the British Isle in History and Legend Essex

Anchor Press 1972 pi 22.

Courtney, M A — Cornish Feasts and Folklore Yorkshire E P Publishing

1973 p9.

[35] Wicks, J H — Op Cit p122.

[36] Fräser, J G — Op Cit p682.

[37] Merchant, C — Op Cit p43.

[38] Ibid p78.

[39] Ibid p43.

[40] Harman, C — From Feudalism to Capitalism International Socialism 45

Winter 1989 (p35-88) p37.

[41] Merchant, C — Op Cit p52.

[42] Thomas, Keith — Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in

England 1500–1800 Allen Lane 1983 p253.

[43] Roach, F A — Op Cit p34.

[44] Hughes, J Donald — Ecology in Ancient Civilisations Univ of New

Mexico USA p29.

[45] Greenoak, F — Op Cit p3.

[46] Talbot-White, J — Country London Routledge and Kegan Paul 1984 p2I.

[47] Roach, F A — Op Cit p22.

[48] Ibid p22.

[49] Ibid p24.

[50] Robinson, G M — Agricultural Change Edinburgh North British Pub.

1988 p96.

[51] Cantor, Leonard — The Changing English Countryside 1400–1700

Routledge and Kegan Paul 1987 p56.

[52] Jordan, W K — Social Institutions in Kent 1480–1660: A Study of the

Changing Patterns of Social Aspirations in Roake, M and Whyman, J

(editors) — Essays in Kentish History London Frank Cass 1973 p85.

[53] Roach, F A — Op Cit p48.

[54] Ibid p91.

[55] Thomas, Keith — Op Cit p256.

[56] Ibid p256

[57] Roach, F A — Op Cit p59

[58] Newby, Howard — Country Life: A Social History of Rural England

Cardinal 1987 p6.

[59] Hobsbawm, E J & Rude, G — Captain Swing Norton and Co 1968 p 27.

[60] Harvey, David — Fruit Growing in Kent in the Nineteenth Century in

Essays in Kentish History Op Cit p214-6.

[61] Roach, F A — Op Cit p95.

[62] Ibid p65.

[63] Ibid p69-72.

[64] Braverman, Harry — Labor and Monopoly Capital London Monthly Review

Press 1964 pi 56.

[65] Ibid p256.

[66] Jones, Alwyn — Beyond Industrial Society: Towards Balance and

Harmony, The Ecologist Vol 13(4) 1983 pi42.

[67] Braverman, Harry — Op Cit p171.

[68] Newby, Howard — Green and Pleasant Land? Wildwood House 1979 p75.

[69] AFRC Institute of Horticultural Research — East Mailing 1913–88

1988 p13.

[70] Ibid p3.

[71] This is based on reviews of horticultural product magazines and on

personal communications with East Mailing and Fruit Growers. There is a

move towards integrated pest control but this is developing only slowly.

[72] McCully, P and Hildyard, N — Intolerable Risks: Pesticides in

Children’s Food The Ecologist Vol 19(3) 1989 p97.

[73] Snell, Peter — Pesticide Residues: The Scandal Continues The

Ecologist Vol 19(3) 1989 p94.

[74] Flaherty, Ann — Uniroyal Pushed into Suspending Alar Sales in US

Grower 15.6.1989 p4.

[75] Flaherty, Ann — Alar Cleared of Health Risk by the Governments ACP

Grower 21.12.1989 p4.

[76] Luckwill, L C — Some Factors in Successful Cropping 5 Apples Span

27(2) 1984 p66.

[77] Lawson, G — Automated Spraying Grower 23.11.1989 p26.

[78] East Mailing 1913–88 Op Cit p15.

AFRC Institute of Horticultural Research — Annual Report 1988 p32.

[79] Compact Apple Trees — Horticultural Product News May 1989 p24.

[80] Mabey, R and Greenoak, F — Back to the Roots Arena 1983 p85.

[81] Sinden, Neil — ‘Orchards and Places’ Op Cit p8-9.

[82] Prothero, R E — English Farming Past and Present second edition,

London, Longmans, Green and Co 1917.

[83] Herrscher, Pascall — Death of the European Landscape? ENV

Conservation Vol 15(1) Spring 1988 p63-4.

[84] Blythe, Ronald — Akenfield Penguin 1969 Chapter 12. This

information is based on several interviews undertaken in 1988–89 in

large commercial orchards in North Kent and so cannot be taken as

representative of all orchard works.

[85] Cooper, J C — Op Cit p7.

[86] Jackson, A A — Semi-Detached London Allen and Unwin 1973 pi49.

[87] Ibid pi50.

[88] Ward, R — A Harvest of Apples Penguin 1988 p16.

[89] Personal correspondence with Neil Sinden from Common Ground.

[90] Alexander, C et al — A Pattern Language, Towns, Buildings,

Construction O.U.P. 1977 p795.

[91] Tisdell, C A — Op Cit p107.

[92] Jones, Alwyn — Op Cit p142.

[93] Rothenberg, D (Editor) in: Naess, A — Ecology, Community and

Lifestyle O.U.P. 1989 p2.

[94] Alexander, C — Op Cit p795.

[95] Appleyard, D — Urban Trees, Urban Forest: What Do They Mean? in:

Hopkins, G (Editor) Proc. of the National Urban Forestry Conference I

Nov. 13–16 1978. Washington DC Suny College of Env. Science and Forestry

Syracuse NY (pp 138–155) p144.

[96] Sinden, N — ‘Conserving Fruit Trees — Op Cit p40.

[97] Cooper, J C — Op Cit p 132.