Green anarchism

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Green anarchism, also known as ecological anarchism or eco-anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that focuses on ecology and environmental issues. [1] It is an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian form of radical environmentalism, which emphasises social organization, freedom and self-fulfillment. [2]

Contents

A green anarchist theory is normally one that extends anarchism beyond a critique of human interactions and includes a critique of the interactions between humans and non-humans as well. [3] Beyond human liberation, green anarchist praxis can extend to some form of non-human, total liberation, and environmentally sustainable anarchist society.

The main tendencies of green anarchism are: social ecology, which argues that environmental issues stem directly from social issues; deep ecology, which critiques anthropocentrism and advocates instead for biocentrism; and anarcho-primitivism, which advocates for the abolition of technology and civilization. [4]

History

Background

Before the Industrial Revolution, the only occurrences of ecological crisis were small-scale, localised to areas affected by natural disasters, overproduction or war. But as the enclosure of common land increasingly forced dispossessed workers into factories, more wide-reaching ecological damage began to be noticed by radicals of the period. [5]

During the late 19th century, as capitalism and colonialism were reaching their height, political philosophers first began to develop critiques of industrialised society, which had caused a rise in pollution and environmental degradation. In response, these early environmentalists developed a concern for nature and wildlife conservation, soil erosion, deforestation, and natural resource management. [6] Early political approaches to environmentalism were supplemented by the literary naturalism of writers such as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir and Ernest Thompson Seton, whose best-selling works helped to alter the popular perception of nature by rejecting the dualistic "man against nature" conflict. [7]

Ecology in its modern form was developed by Charles Darwin, whose work on evolutionary biology provided a scientific rejection of Christian and Cartesian anthropocentrism, instead emphasising the role of probability and individual agency in the process of evolution. [8]

Roots

The ecological roots of anarchism go back to the classical anarchists, such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin, who both conceived of human nature as the basis for anarchism. [1] Drawing from Charles Darwin's work, Bakunin considered people to be an intrinsic part of their environment. [9] Bakunin rejected Cartesian dualism, denying its anthropocentric and mechanistic separation of humanity from nature. [10] Bakunin's naturalism was developed into an ecological philosophy by the geographers Peter Kropotkin and Éliseé Reclus, who conceived the relationship between human society and nature as a dialectic. Their environmental ethics, which combined social justice with environmental protection, anticipated the green anarchist philosophies of social ecology and bioregionalism. [6]

Peter Kropotkin, an early environmentalist figure and a predecessor of the green anarchist tendency Peter Kropotkin circa 1900.jpg
Peter Kropotkin, an early environmentalist figure and a predecessor of the green anarchist tendency

Kropotkin was among the first environmentalist thinkers to note the connections between industrialisation, environmental degradataion and workers' alienation. In contrast to Marxists, who called for an increase in industrialisation, Kropotkin argued for the localisation of the economy, which he felt would increase people's connection with the land and halt environmental damage. [5] In Fields, Factories and Workshops , Kropotkin advocated for the satisfaction of human needs through horticulture, and the decentralisation and degrowth of industry. [11] He also criticised the division of labour, both between mental and manual labourers, and between the rural peasantry and urban proletariat. [12] In Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution , he elaborated on the natural basis for communism. [1]

Reclus himself argued that environmental degradation caused by industrialisation, exemplified to him by mass deforestation in the Pacific Northwest, was characteristic of the "barbarity" of modern civilisation, which he felt subordinated both workers and the environment to the goal of capital accumulation. [12] Reclus was also one of the earliest figures to develop the idea of "total liberation", directly comparing the exploitation of labour with cruelty to animals and thus advocating for both human and animal rights. [13]

Kropotkin and Reclus' synthesis of environmental and social justice formed the foundation for eco-socialism, chiefly associated with libertarian socialists who advocated for a "return to nature", such as Robert Blatchford, William Morris and Henry Salt. [14] They also directly lay the foundations for the development of green anarchism in the 1960s, when it was first taken up by figures within the New Left. [15]

Development

Green anarchism first emerged after the dawn of the Atomic Age, as increasingly centralized governments brought with them a new host of environmental and social issues. [16] By the 1960s, as the threats presented by environmental degradation, industrial agriculture and pollution were becoming more urgent, the first green anarchists turned to decentralisation and diversity as solutions for socio-ecological systems. [17]

Murray Bookchin, a founding figure of green anarchism and the chief proponent of social ecology Murray Bookchin.jpg
Murray Bookchin, a founding figure of green anarchism and the chief proponent of social ecology

Green anarchism as a tendency was pioneered by Murray Bookchin, whose theory of social ecology presented an analysis for the relationship between society and nature. [17] He presented human society as both the cause of and solution to environmental degradation, envisioning the creation of a rational and ecological society through a process of sociocultural evolution. [18] Bookchin saw society itself as a natural product of evolution, which intrinsically tended toward ever-increasing complexity and diversity. [19] While he saw human society as having the potential to become "nature rendered self-conscious", in The Ecology of Freedom , he elaborated that the emergence of hierarchy had given way to an "aberrant" form of society that was both ecologically and socially destructive. [20]

Bookchin considered that the human desire to dominate other humans had preceded the human desire to dominate nature, which itself caused a vicious circle of increasing socio-ecological devastation. [21] As he considered social hierarchy to go against the natural evolutionary principles of complexity and diversity, he resolved that it would have to be abolished in order to resolve ecological crisis. [22] Bookchin thus proposed a decentralised system of direct democracy, centred locally in the municipality, where people themselves could participate in decision making. [23] He envisioned a self-organized system of popular assemblies to replace the state and re-educate individuals into socially and ecologically minded citizens. [24]

During the 1970s, another tendency of green anarchism emerged that stood in contrast to social ecology. Developed by Arne Næss, the theory of deep ecology posited the rejection of anthropocentrism in favour of biocentrism, which recognized the intrinsic value of all life, regardless of its utility to humankind. [25] Unlike Bookchin, theorists of deep ecology considered human society to be incapable of reversing environmental degradation and, as a result, proposed a drastic reduction in world population. [26] The solutions to human overpopulation proposed by deep ecologists included bioregionalism, which advocated the replacement of the nation state with bioregions, as well as a widespread return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. [27] The deep ecological approach was taken up by Earth First!, a group which advocated for direct action against environmentally destructive projects, such as deforestation, and welcomed the mass death caused by disease and famine as a form of population control. [28]

Following deep ecology, the main development in green anarchism was John Zerzan's conception of anarcho-primitivism, which criticised the emergence of technology, agriculture and civilization as the source of all social problems. According to Zerzan, it was the division of labour in agricultural societies that had first given way to the social inequality and alienation which became characteristic of modernity. As such, Zerzan proposed the abolition of technology and science, in order for society to be broken down and humans to return to a hunter-gather lifestyle. [29]

Contemporary developments

Contemporary writers such as Murray Bookchin and Alan Carter have claimed anarchism to be the only political ideology capable of addressing climate change. [30]

Direct action

Some green anarchists engage in direct action (not to be confused with ecoterrorism). Organizing themselves through groups like Earth First!, Root Force, or more drastically the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), Earth Liberation Army (ELA) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF), they may take direct action against what they see as systems of oppression, such as the logging industry, the meat and dairy industries, animal testing laboratories, genetic engineering facilities and, more rarely, government institutions.

Eco-anarchist actions have included violent attacks, such as those carried out by cells of the Informal Anarchist Federation (IAF) and Individualists Tending to the Wild (ITS) against nuclear scientists and nanotechnology researchers respectively. [31]

See also

Related Research Articles

Anarchist communism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that advocates communism. It calls for the abolition of private property but retention of personal property and collectively-owned items, goods, and services. It supports social ownership of property and the distribution of resources "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Kropotkin</span> Russian anarchist (1842–1921)

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian anarchist and geographer known as a proponent of anarchist communism.

Radical environmentalism is a grass-roots branch of the larger environmental movement that emerged from an ecocentrism-based frustration with the co-option of mainstream environmentalism.

Anarcho-primitivism, also known as anti-civilization anarchism, is an anarchist critique of civilization that advocates a return to non-civilized ways of life through deindustrialization, abolition of the division of labor or specialization, abandonment of large-scale organization and all technology other than prehistoric technology and the dissolution of agriculture. Anarcho-primitivists critique the origins and alleged progress of the Industrial Revolution and industrial society. According to anarcho-primitivists, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence during the Neolithic Revolution gave rise to coercion, social alienation, and social stratification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Zerzan</span> American anarchist and primitivist philosopher

John Edward Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocates drawing upon the ways of life of hunter-gatherers as an inspiration for what a free society should look like. Subjects of his criticism include domestication and symbolic thought.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murray Bookchin</span> American social theorist (1921–2006)

Murray Bookchin was an American social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. A pioneer in the environmental movement, Bookchin formulated and developed the theory of social ecology and urban planning within anarchist, libertarian socialist, and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books covering topics in politics, philosophy, history, urban affairs, and social ecology. Among the most important were Our Synthetic Environment (1962), Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), The Ecology of Freedom (1982), and Urbanization Without Cities (1987). In the late 1990s, he became disenchanted with what he saw as an increasingly apolitical "lifestylism" of the contemporary anarchist movement, stopped referring to himself as an anarchist, and founded his own libertarian socialist ideology called "communalism", which seeks to reconcile and expand Marxist, syndicalist, and anarchist thought.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bioregionalism</span> Ecological philosophy

Bioregionalism is a philosophy that suggests that political, cultural, and economic systems are more sustainable and just if they are organized around naturally defined areas called bioregions, similar to ecoregions. Bioregions are defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics. Bioregionalism stresses that the determination of a bioregion is also a cultural phenomenon, and emphasizes local populations, knowledge, and solutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Élisée Reclus</span> French geographer, writer and anarchist

Jacques Élisée Reclus was a French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork, La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes, over a period of nearly 20 years (1875–1894). In 1892 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Paris Geographical Society for this work, despite having been banished from France because of his political activism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Grave</span> French anarchist writer (1854–1939)

Jean Grave was an important activist in the French anarchist and the international anarchist communism movements. He was the editor of three major anarchist periodicals, Le Révolté, La Révolte and Les Temps Nouveaux, and wrote dozens of pamphlets and a number of important anarchist books.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to anarchism:

<i>From Bakunin to Lacan</i> Book by Saul Newman

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deep ecology</span> Ecological and environmental philosophy

Deep ecology is an environmental philosophy that promotes the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, and the restructuring of modern human societies in accordance with such ideas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Total liberation</span> Political movement

Total liberation, also referred to as total liberation ecology or veganarchism, is a political philosophy and movement that combines anarchism with a commitment to animal and earth liberation. Whilst more traditional approaches to anarchism have often focused primarily on opposing the state and capitalism, total liberation is additionally concerned with opposing all additional forms of human oppression as well as the oppression of other animals and ecosystems. Proponents of total liberation typically espouse a holistic and intersectional approach aimed at using direct action to dismantle all forms of domination and hierarchy, common examples of which include the state, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, heterosexism, cissexism, disablism, ageism, speciesism and ecological domination.

Anarcho-naturism, also referred to as anarchist naturism and naturist anarchism, appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. In many of the alternative communities established in Britain in the early 1900s, "nudism, anarchism, vegetarianism and free love were accepted as part of a politically radical way of life". In the 1920s, the inhabitants of the anarchist community at Whiteway, near Stroud in Gloucestershire, "shocked the conservative residents of the area with their shameless nudity". Mainly, it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal and Cuba.

Anarchy is a form of society without rulers. It is primarily advocated by anarchists who propose replacing the state with a stateless society based on voluntary free association. These institutions or free associations are generally modeled to represent concepts such as community and economic self-reliance, interdependence, or individualism. In simple terms anarchy means 'without rulers' or 'without authority'. As such, under anarchy there is no coercive rule by a single group or individual, rather instead by an individual upon themselves or by the people entirely.

Social anarchism, also known as left-wing anarchism or socialist anarchism, is the branch of anarchism that sees liberty and social equality as interrelated.

Eco-socialism is an ideology merging aspects of socialism with that of green politics, ecology and alter-globalization or anti-globalization. Eco-socialists generally believe that the expansion of the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion, poverty, war and environmental degradation through globalization and imperialism, under the supervision of repressive states and transnational structures.

<i>The Ecology of Freedom</i> 1982 book by Murray Bookchin

The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy is a 1982 book by the American libertarian socialist and ecologist Murray Bookchin, in which the author describes his concept of social ecology, the idea that human social problems cause ecological problems and can be solved only by reorganizing society along ecological and ethical lines. The book is considered Bookchin's magnum opus, but it has also been criticized as utopian.

Collectivist anarchism, also called anarchist collectivism and anarcho-collectivism, is an anarchist school of thought that advocates the abolition of both the state and private ownership of the means of production. In their place, it envisions both the collective ownership of the means of production and the entitlement of workers to the fruits of their own labour, which would be ensured by a societal pact between individuals and collectives. Collectivists considered trade unions to be the means through which to bring about collectivism through a social revolution, where they would form the nucleus for a post-capitalist society.

This is a list of works by Murray Bookchin (1921–2006). For a more complete list, please see the Bookchin bibliography compiled by Janet Biehl.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Price 2019, p. 281.
  2. Aaltola 2010, p. 161.
  3. Harrison, Ella (29 August 2014). "Green Anarchism: Towards the Abolition of Hierarchy". Freedom News. Retrieved 16 January 2024.
  4. Price 2019, pp. 281–291.
  5. 1 2 Parson 2018, p. 220.
  6. 1 2 Morris 2017, p. 371.
  7. Morris 2017, p. 373.
  8. Morris 2017, pp. 373–374.
  9. Morris 2017, p. 370.
  10. Morris 2017, pp. 370–371.
  11. Ward 2004, p. 90.
  12. 1 2 Parson 2018, pp. 222–223.
  13. Parson 2018, pp. 220–221.
  14. Morris 2017, pp. 372–373.
  15. Morris 2017, p. 374; Parson 2018, pp. 220–223.
  16. Price 2019, pp. 281–282.
  17. 1 2 Price 2019, p. 282.
  18. Price 2019, pp. 282–283.
  19. Price 2019, pp. 283–284.
  20. Price 2019, p. 284.
  21. Price 2019, pp. 284–285.
  22. Price 2019, p. 285.
  23. Price 2019, pp. 285–286.
  24. Price 2019, p. 286.
  25. Price 2019, p. 287.
  26. Price 2019, pp. 287–288.
  27. Price 2019, p. 288.
  28. Price 2019, pp. 288–289.
  29. Price 2019, p. 289.
  30. Ward 2004, p. 98.
  31. Phillips, Leigh (28 May 2012). "Anarchists attack science". Nature. 485 (7400): 561. Bibcode:2012Natur.485..561P. doi: 10.1038/485561a . PMID   22660296.

Bibliography

Further reading