Black Lists

Over the next few months i will be shifting the focus of this site. Since i started it i intended it as a source of information about practical actions anarchists can take to make our world at least a little less fucked up. I made some attempts to comment on current events, but my editorial interests lie more in long-term ideas and movements than specific breaking events and personalities and more in practice than philosophizing. I’ve toyed around with the blog format a bit, but i’ve come to feel that it is more suited to some forms of expression than others. I will continue to update it sporadically, but with a narrower focus.

The core of this site will become static pages that list resources for action, with some theoretical commentary. These will look something like the permaculture page, covering different topics from rewilding to hacking to education to sex. The updates to these pages will not appear on AnarchistNews.org, so if you are interested in the future of this project you’ll have check back without being prompted by RSS.

Edit – December 13: The beginning of the prison list is up. Please leave a comment if you know about anything else that should go on there.

Edit – December 18: The site redesign is progressing. There is now an Occupy/Decolonize list that i hope will be a helpful resource for people. The links sidebar will be on hiatus for at least a while longer. As i overhaul the site some of those links will be transferred to individual list pages. I’m not sure whether i will bring that menu back, because as this site is (will be) mostly pages of links, a sidebar of links seems to unnecessarily clutter things up. As always, feedback is appreciated.

The recent Kaczynski-style attacks aimed at Mexican nano-technology researchers has lead to another wave of anti-primitivist rhetoric on the internet. Condemning targeted bombings of scientists is one thing, but insulting a wide range of people holding techno-skeptical views is quite another. I’ll leave off the relevant distinctions between anarcho-primitivism and the Individuals Tending Toward Savagery for another time, because right now I want to focus on something of larger scope.

Some claim that primitivism and anarchism are mutually exclusive tendencies. The primitivist fixation on searching out the origins of hierarchy, oppression and alienation easily belie this claim. There is at least a strong overlap between the two, but where do they part ways? “Primitivism” implies a conservative ethos, a harkening back to the good ol’ days. Though primtivists rarely speak of “returning to the caves” as the anti-primitivists claim, they do tend to maintain an Edenic mythological worldview.

If anarchism is conceived as a Left movement, then it must be construed as a champion of the novel, of progress. Indeed, much of historical anarchism has positioned itself in such a manner. Anarchists have echoed the progressive rhetoric of Leftism in describing various liberatory trajectories. But the mythology of progress is not merely the domain of Leftists. Imperialists, Fascists, and Capitalists all speak of progress when advancing their programs. The vaunted rhetoric of technological progress is susceptible to appropriation by any of these political tendencies.

I look askance at all myths of a purported Golden Age, whether that age is located in the past or the future. The positions of uncritical pro- and anti-technologists are alike simplistic and facile. Some older forms of society, culture, technology, or what-have-you are worth preserving or resurrecting, while others deserve to be abolished. Likewise some new forms are emancipatory and others are not. We do ourselves a disservice by maintaining such myopic views. We should form our own mythologies of liberation, rather than relying on the detritus of Christianity and the Enlightenment.

Leadership is a concept that anarchists shy away from, and rightly so. Most phenomena that fall under the term run counter to our principles. From the Left, no less than from the Right, leaders (usually self-appointed) have risen up to mold their groups to conform to their own agendas. History is replete with examples of individuals stifled and crushed in the name of the Leader.

Yet, I hesitate to totally discard the concept of leadership. I have witnessed social phenomena in the anti-authoritarian milieu that could be described by that word. I refer here not to the official and unofficial heads of various anarchist sects. Rather, I mean that certain individuals manifest a non-coercive influence upon others, a capacity to inspire their fellow anarchists to achieve. In a milieu based more on small, independent groups than large organizations this looks like individuals and small groups taking the initiative to build up various projects. They may then encourage others to help them in their projects, or inspire them to start up projects of their own devising.

This style of “leadership” (if we wish to use the term) is based on informal and spontaneous social relations, not predetermined social roles. Colin Ward in his Anarchism as a Theory of Organization quotes John Comerford’s description of this process happening in an experimental health facility:

Because they [leaders] were not consciously appointed, neither (when they had fulfilled their purpose) were they consciously overthrown. [...] They followed his [sic] guidance just as long as his guidance was helpful and what they wanted. They melted away from him without regrets when some widening of experience beckoned them on to some fresh adventure, which would in turn throw up its spontaneous leader, or when their self-confidence was such that any form of constrained leadership would have been a restraint to them. A society, therefore, if left to itself in suitable circumstances to express itself spontaneously works out its own salvation and achieves a harmony of action which superimposed leadership cannot emulate.

Authoritarian leadership is not restrained just to official positions of power. As both Cathy Levine and Jason McQuinn have asserted in responding to Jo Freeman’s The Tyranny of Structurelessness, oppressive social behavior can occur in both informal and formal groups. The difference is that in formal organizations the power dynamics favor entrenched leadership. Self-appointed leaders can crop up in informal groups, but in these cases there is no structural obligation to let them remain in leadership positions. In either case, the social dynamics of any group should be critically attended to.

As Chris Crass notes, denying the presence of informal leaders can actually play into inequitable power relations. His experience was situated in the particulars of a group lead by white, middle class males that denied their own actual, though informal, leadership to the detriment of group cohesion. I once belonged to a consensus-based group spearheaded by mostly white, middle-class females. Due to our unwillingness to acknowledge our leadership roles, we unwittingly allowed a dissident male parliamentarian to sabotage our consensus process, which contributed to the dissolution of our group.

Building up non-authoritarian leadership practices seems like a Sisyphean task. In actuality, as the example cited by Ward seems to suggest, the natural inclination against authority, even among those unaware of anarchist theory, can provide the impetus.

Within the greater anti-civilization milieu, two major factions have been vocally distinguishing their approaches from one another: the anarcho-primitivists and the Deep Green Resistance movement. Occasionally this effort towards differentiation has been based on honest disagreement about theory and practice. More commonly, it has been a tit-for-tat based mostly on personality conflict. During the brief period of its existence the Internet has often proved to be a safe haven for mean-spirited personal attacks. Insofar as concerns are raised about the actions of certain public persons in a critical spirit, they can contribute to a critical discourse. This is my intention, not to sling mud simply for cursory amusement.

Anarchists have voiced a number of legitimate criticisms of the Deep Green Resistance crowd. Among these are the cult of personality and careerist methods of Derrick Jensen and the anti-trans prejudice and cop-calling of Lierre Keith. Other potentially problematic aspects of Deep Green Resistance are not necessarily so obvious and are in need of careful critical inspection. For their part the DGR have called into question several aspects of anarchist thought and practice. But how salient are these criticisms? Are they based in honest disagreements on theoretical and tactical differences?

One of the main theoretical points of contention is authority. John Zerzan and Kevin Tucker have accused DGR of having authoritarian aspects. While the quotes they draw from can certainly be interpreted as authoritarian, notably Lierre’s injunction for anti-civ folks to “think like field generals”. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMRXT4Rg1p0), it makes for spare evidence of authoritarianism. For my part as skeptical, anti-civilization anarchist i will not come to a conclusion about DGR as a whole until i have seen what they have to say in their tome of a manualfesto. Nonetheless the topic of authority is of utmost urgency to discuss.

To at least get a point of reference we must ask ourselves what is meant by “authority”. Mikhail Bakunin described authority as “the eminently theological, metaphysical and political idea that the masses, always [...] must submit at all times to the benevolent yoke of a wisdom and a justice [...] imposed on them from above.” (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Michail_Bakunin__Marxism__Freedom_and_the_State.html#toc5) In this conception authority is a way of thinking that leads to hierarchy and oppression. Bakunin seems to imply that authority is derived from religious institutions. And “hierarchy” is etymologically derived from ancient Christian social structure (literally “rule by priests”). Hierarchy and authority are much more ancient, however. While complex hierarchy is only conceivable in a civilized context, there are plenty of examples of oppression and authoritarian behaviour in non-civilized societies. Bakunin differentiated between the non-coercive “natural influence” individuals can have on one another, versus the authoritarian “artificial, privileged, lawful, and official influence” (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Michail_Bakunin__Writings.html#toc2). This is a key distinction underlying anarchist theory of authority.

Derrick Jensen began to distinguish his differences with anarchism on the question of authority:

“indigenous peoples have an entirely different relationship with authority. It doesn’t mean that there is no authority. It’s different because there aren’t what we consider bosses. I don’t want to speak for all indigenous peoples, because there are as many kinds of authority relationships as there are indigenous peoples. Some of which are pretty nasty.”

Here, Derrick seems to be attempting the same distinction between legitimate and illegitimate influence as already attempted by Bakunin and other anarchists. In this quotation there is no clear difference between his position and that of anarchists, but later in the same interview Derrick states,

“I got in a big disagreement with some young anarchists not very long ago, who said they couldn’t see the need for a larger, more hierarchical organization system than the leaderless cell. I disagreed. Part of the problem with our notion of authority in this culture is the assumption that all authority is oppressive. That’s a toxic mimic of real authority. You can have authority and leadership that are fluid and based on effectiveness. You can do small-scale actions with leaderless cells, but you can’t do a large-scale one. You can’t do actions spread out all over the country and the world with leaderless cells. You have to have people who are making decisions like those.” (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Various_Authors__The_A_Word.html#toc37)

Here we begin to see some clear disagreement between anarchism and Deep Green Resistance, tho Derrick seems still to be using the term “authority” to refer, in some instances, to “natural influence”. The more salient point is the advocacy of hierarchy and centralized power. Anti-authoritarian analysis contends that hierarchies can never be trusted, and the history of resistance movements tends to justify this analysis. As Alfredo Bonanno succinctly put it, “The superior aims of the revolution no longer exist when it is betrayed by the authoritarians.” (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Alfredo_M._Bonanno__Revolution__Violence__Anti-authoritarianism___A_few_notes.html#toc5)

It may be the case that for some people anti-authoritarianism is a dogma (as some DGR folks contend: http://fightciv.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/a-critique-of-anarchism-and-its-effectiveness-as-a-strategy-to-bring-down-oppressive-power-systems/), but for many – probably most – anarchists the rejection of authority (or “unnatural influence”) is based on the lessons that history has taught us the hard way. Authority always acts against the liberatory impulses of humanity.

I get the impression that the folks in the DGR movement are sincere about wanting to end the destruction of human and non-human life caused by civilization. It disheartening that they are so quick to dismiss anarchist theory and practice as ineffective. Is a resistance movement effective when it reproduces the same fucked up social relations that it (allegedly) seeks to abolish? Admittedly much of the anarchist movement remains mired in authoritarianism. No anarchist could honestly deny the significant disjunction that remains between theory and practice. DGR seems unwilling to even contend with the critique of authoritarianism.

The major difference i see is that whereas anarchists do not shy away critiquing their own movement, and even listening to criticism from outside their movement, thus far the leadership of DGR, Derrick Jensen especially, have been loathe to listen to anyone that raises concerns about DGR. Critics are consistently shut out of the conversation. Probably any concerns i raise will be ignored by the DGR leadership, but hopefully the rank-and-file of the movement will remain open to the words of those in other resistance movements. Otherwise DGR risks becoming just another insular ideology, maladapted to the constantly shifting terrain of struggle. The same also applies to anarchists that seek to prematurely dismiss DGR.

When i was a teenager i identified as a democratic socialist. I was decidedly anti-capitalist in outlook, and harbored suspicions of the functioning of the state, but was not yet critical of the state itself. My “socialism” was not really a positive identification with any sort of Leftist tradition so much as a negative response to the prevailing political trends in the overdeveloped countries as well as the dictatorial orientation of former communist states. Though i identified this way for many years, i continued to search out alternative political viewpoints. I flirted briefly with pro-labor anarchism and even “libertarianism,” but found them both ultimately deficient in some way i could not quite put my finger on. It was not until i encountered the anti-civilization writings that i truly found a political orientation i could embrace. I recognized immediately what i now perceive to be glaring deficiencies in Leftist ideology. No Leftist theory coherently contextualizes the oppression of women or the ecospheric holocaust or the perpetuation of cultural antagonisms to the degree that anti-civilization theories do. At best, Leftisms can only clumsily address the oppressions that have existed before 1700 C.E., excepting a few devastating attacks on Christianity. They can’t even acknowledge the simple, nearly universally-recognized perception that work sucks.

Over the period of a few months i voraciously read every anti-civilization text i could find. My mind opened to previously unconceivable new vistas of insight and possible struggles for liberation. And then, being a reflexive skeptic, i sought out every criticism of these theories i could find. I was swiftly disappointed. Naturally, i started out with Murray Bookchin’s idiotic diatribes, and only after months of research did i find those texts worthy of being called “critiques”. Even then, the criticism offered insights that nuanced my perspective, but did not offer any challenge to the thesis that civilization itself is one of, if not the, main structure of oppression of humans and non-humans. Coupled with my own insights, I find myself at a significant enough divergence to not identify as primitivist. The primary reasons include:

Mediation

Though I find the critiques of mediation present in the writings of John Zerzan, David Abrams, and others to be insightful, and a beneficial contribution to the anti-civilization discourse, it seems a greatly overemphasized point compared to the more blatant anti-life features of civilization. When compared to hierarchy, imposition of labor, patriarchy, and wanton destruction of the ecosphere, mediation doesn’t seem all that bad. This has had polemical consequences as red anarchists have dismissed primitivism out of hand as irrelevant to workers and other oppressed classes. Moreover, i remain unconvinced that, as Abrams seems to contend, alphabetic literacy and being able to “read” the landscape are necessarily antagonistic, as well as Zerzan’s contention that “symbolic culture” is a relatively recent innovation. Do the various vocalizations of birds or the sophisticated dances of honeybees count as symbolic systems?

Technology

I have yet to thoroughly investigate the issue of technology as discussed by primitivists and their theoretical forebears. Perhaps owing to my unfamiliarity with the thought of Lewis Mumford and Jacques Ellul, the distinction between “technology,” “tools,” and “technics” seems contrived and arbitrary. Regardless, I find it easy to judge the desirability of technologies based merely on their effects upon humans and non-human nature. Anyone not beholden to so-called “conservative” prejudices will admit that fossil fuel technologies are almost certainly devastating the world, from climate change to the crude oil, bits of plastic and “dead zones” in the oceans. Rarer is the realization that “green” technologies like solar panels necessitate mining, which always poisons the land and water and forces the loss of habitat of humans and other animals. Or more fundamentally, the realization that agriculture, from its very inception in Mesopotamia, has degraded the land upon which it is based. Though “sustainability” is given much lip service, it as yet very far from being realized.

“Ideology”

Some of the best critics of primitivism have been the folks at Anarchy: a Journal of Desire Armed. Informed by Theodor Adorno’s theory on and use of the term, they oppose “ideological” thinking and have critiqued primitivism on this basis. Unfortunately much of the anti-civilization has already ossified into dogma (or “ideology” if you prefer), but i find this is more true of the movement around Derrick Jensen than the anarchist primitivists. For all of my life i have identified as a skeptic, and therefore opposed to dogma. Skepsis in ancient Greek means “searching,” or “inquiring,” thus the school of philosophers that originally took on the name Skeptikoi found themselves to never be permanently settled upon any particular notion. Thus, though i find anti-civilization theory to be the best for explaining the world around me. I am open to new insights and may even one day reformulate my entire basis for thinking about civilization. I long for a day when more truly critical inquiries into primitivist thought are advanced, and the dogmatic Leftist invective is abandoned.

Primitive Societies

If one opposes civilization it seems only natural to valorize non-civilized cultures. Primitivists have gone so far as to name their philosophy after the catch-all term for these peoples. Anti-primitivists often accuse them of wanting to go “back to the caves.” It is actually unclear in the works of most primitivists what their goals are, but to call oneself a “primitivist” invites such assumptions. Though i agree with primitivists that respect should be given to non-civilized and indigenous peoples, i find that their approach is problematic in some ways. Other critics have thoroughly discussed the pitfalls of romanticizing primitive cultures, so i will not repeat this problem here. Besides this point, there is the sheer diversity and great span of (pre-)historical development among such societies across the world. Something that most anti-primitivists and some primitivists do not realize is that non-civilized peoples have developed a multiplicity of approaches to all aspects of life, especially as concerns the specifics of the local ecologies in which they are/ were situated. This begs questions such as: How applicable are the lifeways of the !Kung of to the current residents of the Pacific Northwest? Further complicating the issue is the curious lack of critical questioning of the reports of civilized anthropologists about non-civilized societies. The issue of epistemology, specifically as regards knowledge about the lifeways of primitive peoples, is in need of much elaboration in the anti-civilization movement. What does seem clear is that in contrast to non-civilized societies, civilized societies are incredibly similar. All have been been hierarchical, imperial, patriarchal, dependent on coerced (slave and/ or wage) labor and destructive to non-human nature. Some primitive societies are alleged (by archaeologists) to have caused extinction of other species, some primitive societies are alleged (by anthropologists) to have practiced slavery, and so forth, but these tendencies are by no means universal.

The old adage holds that “you can’t go home again.” Many primitivists contend that we can, indeed, return to primitive lifeways. I find this highly doubtful. World ecosystems have been so thoroughly destroyed, human conscious has been so universally degraded, that it seems unlikely that humanity will ever return to the same sort of societies that existed before civilization. I do not think that humanity will “go back” to the “good old days” (assuming such ever existed). Rather, I am confident, given the current evidence, that the next major human epoch will be more similar to the pre-civilized than the civilized.

Much of French theory flies right over my head. I find the Situationists insightful, the post-structuralists interesting and Sartre and Beauvoir relevant, but when I read Tiqqun and the Invisible Committee I pass page after page without absorbing any information. There is a rather different theoretical paradigm that shows promise for addressing the situations we find ourselves in.

The discourse of décroissance (“de-growth”) has steadily been gaining traction in Franophone countries, but little has yet to be translated into English. The existent Anglophone discourse of degrowth seems more colloquial and upstaged by related, but more constrained concepts such as voluntarily simplicity, neo-Luddism, Slow Food, social ecology, DIY, permaculture, new communitarianism and primitivism. Perhaps décroissance could provide a unified arena of discourse for these atomized ecological movements. As in North America, the French degrowth movement seems to appeal to a lot of liberals with vague and disparate ideas about consumerism, but not necessarily capitalism itself. Alternative Libertaire has begun a dialog between radicalism and the décroissance movement, by pointing out that “A non-class-based vision of décroissance is nothing but a new ideological flavor of the month, and libertarian communists can’t subscribe to it. It would lead, in the worst case, to a policy of rationing for the working class or, at best, to various individual solutions of ‘voluntary simplicity’ with no global impact.” Though I find much of Alternative Libertaire’s position to be contingent on productivist and industrial assumptions, the concept of degrowth has opened up a bridge for discourse, and maybe even for cooperative action.

Many within the French décroissance movement have taken to living in yurts, thereby eschewing the environmental and financial impacts of typical housing. “Protest will erupt this month as yurt dwellers try to block a law they say will put them in the same sack as Romanian and Bulgarian travellers singled out by President Nicolas Sarkozy as a public menace.” The collapse of the capitalist economy has seen a rise in the utilization of alternative housing methods. As an increasingly larger world populace is squeezed out of the real estate market, this trend will increase. Though some will unthinkingly belittle this as merely lifestylism, the disenfranchised will do what they have always done; survive as best they can. They will be joined by those “privileged” people that perceive the insanity of ideologies of economic growth and want to do something outside of the ivory towers. Radical theory and degrowth theory have a lot to offer one another in terms of clear analysis of the present ecological and social crises. Let us begin this conversation.

I have recently been wondering about local sources of (free) clay. So I googled it.

One recommendation was to go out to construction or street work sites to find exposed clay. Another said that clay can be found two feet below the surface in most places in the world.

My ultimate goal is an earthen oven, so I was glad to find these tips:

We have found that clay of some sort can be found almost anywhere. However, finding clay that will meet stove construction requirements is demanding. Ideally, it should be easy to dig and to separate from other unwanted materials, e.g., sand, gravel, roots, leaves, and the like. An ideal clay would be quite plastic when moist, would dry and fire with a minimum shrinkage, would fire successfully to high temperatures and should retain its strength and integrity when subjected to repeated severe thermal shock. That’s a lot to ask and even in the finest commercially available clays, the combination of these traits is a compromise.

We have found that the most promising places to find clay are in exposed ditches, the banks and bottoms of
ponds, road cuts, excavated foundations, exposed roots of blown down trees, and the subsoil of marshy, poorly drained areas.

A spade, pick ax, and a small soil auger are useful in securing samples that can be tested. While it is satisfying to find your own clay, you can save a lot of time and effort by making friends with local potters. They can tell you where to dig or to buy the clay they use. Ceramic supply outlets are also very helpful in sharing information on the clays they sell.

I find that clay deposits can vary wildly in the space of mere feet. Being familiar with local geology is also helpful, but that usually requires staying in one place long enough to know the land.