When I Say Anti-Civilization

[theblackmask]

From Destroy Everything



When I say anti-civilization, I am using a term which carries many negative connotations within the anarchist milieu. The reaction to the term is usually a kneejerk one, with the same objections rehashed over and over again. Perhaps opponents of anti-civ thought are opposed to it because it outs their own ideas as hierarchical. Perhaps these opponents simply don’t understand the points behind it. Either way, I’d like to clarify…
When I say anti-civilization, I am not talking about primitivism. There is a commonly accepted dichotomy that puts “civilized” and “primitive” at opposite ends of a spectrum. While socialists/syndicalists cling to one end, primitivism clings to the other. Anti-civilization ideas seek to destroy this spectrum. It looks neither backward to past societies, nor forward to the falsely infinite march of progress. Just as anarchism should not be placed on a left/right spectrum, anti-civ thought should not be forced into one of primitive/civilized. Primitivism is just another ideology, another “ism” that seeks to provide a blueprint for a future society…just as socialists on the other side of the spectrum try to do. I am not interested in blueprints. I am interested in the dismantling of control.


When I say anti-civilization, I am not advocating for mass death, as its opponents claim. Anti-civ detractors point out the fact that many will die without the the “benefits” of industrial society. They cry about people with cancer or diabetes that would die without medical technology (all the while not questioning just how much of these diseases are caused by civilization). They cry about the people that would starve if they couldn’t pick up food at the grocery store. These lines of thinking are not only selfish and privileged, but also counterintuitive to people’s freedom. The people that make these arguments are blind to anyone unlike themselves. They would rather see the people kept docile and complacent under civilization than face harsh reality on their own terms. They are blind to the hundreds of millions of addicts enslaved to substances produced and distributed by the industrial system. They are blind to those in the thirds world that would put down their tools, walk out of the mines, and return to their lives if they were not literally enslaved. Yes, without civilization, people will die…the very people who are NOT dying right now. The very people who are benefitting of the deaths of others. Those who are dying right now will be free to return to their existences before their enslavement, or even create their own existences. They will no longer have to sacrifice themselves for their masters in the developed world. It is clear…The selfishness and fear of those in the first world lead them to oppose anti-civ ideas.


If it is not selfishness and fear, then it is sheer hubris, and possibly even a self-denied racism. It is prideful to say that a general socialist/syndicalist programme will be accepted by those who have seen nothing but the sole of production’s boot. It is racist to advocate for any global industrial system, no matter how democratic, when there are people all over the world that want nothing to do with industry. The socialist/syndicalist ignores the self-preservation and racism in which their opposition to anti-civ thought is draped. The opposition to anti-civ thought essentially always boils down to some like “I oppose anti-civ ideas, because if they came to fruition, I would be in danger of dying.” The opposition supports civilization out of sheer terror. They are afraid to think of what a world would be like without the global superiority of their production.
Hearing this, the socialist/syndicalist will say. “But it is capitalism that has created this system! It is capitalism that exploits the third world! Under our blueprints, things would be different!” To them, I have some questions…What if people don’t want to work?How are production and technology expected to solve the problems they have created? At what point do things like mining and manufacturing become safe and environmentally viable? When we can develop robots and automate jobs, perhaps? How much unsafe and environmentally damaging production must be done to make production safe? Can the planet support us to that point? Is it not a giant and dangerous leap of faith to think that it can? Is this line of thinking not close to millenarian faith, or even the utopian socialism that scientific socialists so often decry? Why attempt to reorganize production when it clearly must be demolished?


When I say anti-civilization, I am not talking about something involving faith, or any sort of future plan. I do not know that production on or near the current technological scale can continue indefinitely. I do not know that industry will ever be able to provide solutions to the ecological tailspin we have entered. I do not know that technology, even as early as primitive tools, has usually been damaging to people and the planet. I do know that people have always found a way to survive in the midst of civilization’s collapse.


When I say anti-civilization, I am not under any rosy illusions. I am concentrated only on the desperate present. I am not looking to a falsely glorified past. I am not looking to an imaginary utopian future. We live in the present, and today the world is falling apart because of civilization. The immediate enemy is breathing down our necks and the situation worsens each day…yet many people insist on ignoring it, or attempting to tame it. Civilization cannot be tamed or controlled. It must be destroyed. Any other other activity, throughout history, has only served to strengthen the system’s resilience. From Christianity, a cult that once militantly advocated for equal distribution of wealth…to the unions that once tried to take control of civilization. Any ideas that do not oppose civilization at its roots will only end up strengthening the system at worst, and end up as a mere running in place at best.


When I say anti-civilization, I am offering a truly free and non-hierarchical path to resistance. I am offering the freedom for people to decide how to resist on the terms that they see fit, without having to abide by any specific blueprint or programme. The immediate goal is the destruction of civilization, and everything else will be decided by those who exist in the moments after that goal is completed. The worlds of the future will be created by those that live in it, not by the armchair revolutionaries of today.


When I say anti-civilization, I am not being purely negative. Anti-civ thought seeks a positive relationship with nature, and for people to create their own lives without the crutch of civilization. It seeks a world where humanity can actually live, instead of just being kept alive. At its roots, anti-civilization looks to a positive core of humanity…a core that most of us have buried deep inside and forgotten about, or never even knew existed. A core that has demonstrated that it is more than capable of living on this planet without destroying it. While not looking back to any specific model, anti-civ thought does recognize a lost part of humanity, and seeks to restore it by eliminating its oppressor.

[MethodMania]

What if people don’t want to work?

Then they'll die. Everything that eats, works.

The goal is to eliminate jobs.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Work in this case would mean just that; jobs, careers, any sort of labor performed without the active consent of the one performing the labor. which is to say these people oppose anything short of self-directed activity. It's not a hard concept, but I imagine we'll spend the rest of the thread arguing about it like every other thread like this.

[theblackmask]

I would classify work as any sort of alienated labor. People definitely don't need that to live. Try again.

If you'd like to argue with my definition of work, I suggest you consider that in many languages, the root word for work comes from the word for torture.

[G4b3n]

Your brand of anarchism doesn't transcend ideaology or political categorization. But more importantly it also doesn't offer any real means of liberation, only opposition to all human institutions as far as I can see.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

*ostensibly human institutions

Transcendence of ideology is pure non-sense, it's not possible under capitalism. All we can do is struggle against it where we can articulate it. I don't see where they are claiming to have achieved any transcendence..

[o well this is ok I guess]

I remember this shit

The opposition to anti-civ thought essentially always boils down to some like “I oppose anti-civ ideas, because if they came to fruition, I would be in danger of dying.” The opposition supports civilization out of sheer terror. They are afraid to think of what a world would be like without the global superiority of their production. and I remember here being where it lost me
sry but not dying n stuff is a legit concern

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

pfft direct living is the only kind of living, you're already dead you see. Insert crass lyrics here

[theblackmask]

sry but not dying n stuff is a legit concern

"Not dying" is different than "not dying at the expense of others". Go ahead and cling to this thing you call living, but at its hypocritical to do so while claiming to be someone that opposes authority and exploitation.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I mean yeah sure it is hypocritical, but that stance would seem to defy basic psychology not to mention probable biological impulses. At some point you have to question what the point of dismantling something like civilization would be if not for the sake of the people living in it. The subjective factor has to be taken into account otherwise you end up with the marxists.

In it's attempt to reject ritual and inflexibility, this piece comes to embody it almost totally.

[#FF0000]

"Not dying" is different than "not dying at the expense of others". Go ahead and cling to this thing you call living, but at its hypocritical to do so while claiming to be someone that opposes authority and exploitation.

The cool thing about this is how it's nearly 1:1 with fascistic rhetoric about the people who would suffer the most if civilization were to collapse -- people who are able to survive now because of modern medicine, the abundance civilization allows, and not least, because of the service of others. It's very easy to tell someone you assume is able-bodied and healthy that they are living at the expense of others. Would it be as easy for you to say it to someone who relies on others, relies on civilization to live a full, healthy life?

[MethodMania]

I would classify work as any sort of alienated labor.

And this is what I meant by "jobs."

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

great clarification :rolleyes:

[MethodMania]

great clarification :rolleyes:

What's the problem? Our silly friend wrung his hands about people who don't want to work, but didn't tell us what he meant. I pointed out that work is necessary to life but that jobs (i.e., alienated work) aren't. You and he tried to play "gotcha." I clarified by pointing out what seems obvious: work is doing necessary stuff; jobs are something else.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Dude I don't need to play 'gotchya' with you I don't know who you are, you have 17 posts. This is addressed in literally every anti-civ thread we've had in the last 3 years. To the point that it became the only content of those threads, which will happen in this one

[o well this is ok I guess]

"Not dying" is different than "not dying at the expense of others". Go ahead and cling to this thing you call living, but at its hypocritical to do so while claiming to be someone that opposes authority and exploitation. idk apart from the whole capitalism thing this sort of life I live is ok i guess
living in a situation where i actually cant survive would pretty shitty though
that's what you want
that's kinda shitty

[theblackmask]

Would it be as easy for you to say it to someone who relies on others, relies on civilization to live a full, healthy life?

Yes, just as easy. I would probably not be alive it weren't for modern medical technology. This does not prevent me from acknowledging that my life comes at the cost of many others. I am not so blinded and coddled by civilization that I cannot oppose its wrongs...even when those wrongs benefit me.


idk apart from the whole capitalism thing this sort of life I live is ok i guess

Says the person sitting behind a computer with at least enough free time to argue on the internet! There are plenty of people living today that life is not ok for. These people's existence is the reason that life is "ok" for you.

[o well this is ok I guess]

Says the person sitting behind a computer with at least enough free time to argue on the internet! There are plenty of people living today that life is not ok for. These people's existence is the reason that life is "ok" for you. and i thank my lucky stars for all the moments i have to shitpost on the internet
and for real when was the last time you were actually in the third world

[Sinister Intents]

Anti civ people are so great they'd deny me HRT and they'd also ensure that the disabled would suffer cuz rewild or die survival of the fittest bullshit. Your anarchism went out the door when you went full blown reactionary shill that seeks to destroy all that working peoples have created

[Sharia Lawn]

Dude I don't need to play 'gotchya' with you I don't know who you are, you have 17 posts. This is addressed in literally every anti-civ thread we've had in the last 3 years. To the point that it became the only content of those threads, which will happen in this one

I'll take a poster with 17 solid posts over a poster who has 1,988 mediocre ones.

[Sinister Intents]

I'll take a poster with 17 solid posts over a poster who has 1,988 mediocre ones.

This adds nothing to the discussion and seems like flaming

Maybe you could actually argue against EG rather than shitposting

[Sharia Lawn]

This adds nothing to the discussion and seems like flaming

Maybe you could actually argue against EG rather than shitposting

Your post adds what?

[Sinister Intents]

Your post adds what?

Same as yours. A derailment from the subject at hand which you initially detracted from to focus on another user rather than what they say. Maybe you could try to show me how anti civ positions aren't reactionary

[Sharia Lawn]

Same as yours. A derailment from the subject at hand which you initially detracted from to focus on another user rather than what they say. Maybe you could try to show me how anti civ positions aren't reactionary

Not at all. My post pointed out that it was diversionary to try to discredit an argument on the basis of how many posts a user had. Your post? Well, it's on par with the quality of most of your others.

[Sinister Intents]

Not at all. My post pointed out that it was diversionary to try to discredit an argument on the basis of how many posts a user had. Your post? Well, it's on par with the quality of most of your others.

Gotcha, I dont even try anymore so whatever

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Everyone should read "The Technological Society" by Jacques Ellul.

[#FF0000]

Yes, just as easy. I would probably not be alive it weren't for modern medical technology. This does not prevent me from acknowledging that my life comes at the cost of many others. I am not so blinded and coddled by civilization that I cannot oppose its wrongs...even when those wrongs benefit me.

The irony is that what your idealized return to a pre-civ society would necessarily mean a mass die-off of human beings. Your life in the woods would come at the cost of billions.


Says the person sitting behind a computer with at least enough free time to argue on the internet! There are plenty of people living today that life is not ok for. These people's existence is the reason that life is "ok" for you.

The cool thing about civilization is that I can play videogames one day and go camping the next, which is pretty neat.

None of this is to say that there's no criticism of civilization, mind you, but the idea that we can just turn back the clock and go back is asinine. And even if we get there, what are you going to do? Stop people from ever setting down roots and developing agriculture all over again?

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Not at all. My post pointed out that it was diversionary to try to discredit an argument on the basis of how many posts a user had. Your post? Well, it's on par with the quality of most of your others.

The user has no argument, only a lack of familiarity with the terms common to the kind of politics they're trying to critique. Theirs is the diversion. My comment on their post count was in reply to their assertion that blackmask and I tried to play "gotcha" with them, which is nonsensical because it implies either of us know enough about them or their politics to try to trap them into an argument, not to mention it assumes I'm interested in engaging them in the first place. The super-relevant quote about trotskyists and stalinists in their signature assures me that I'm not.

What are you on about now? Shitposts? That's ironic.

[#FF0000]

Not at all. My post pointed out that it was diversionary to try to discredit an argument on the basis of how many posts a user had. Your post? Well, it's on par with the quality of most of your others.

remember that thread where we argued about whether or not furries were oppressed and you called people bourgeois moralists for laughing about them

[Quail]

Can you all stay on topic please? Next person to post off topic stuff (including personal attacks and backseat modding) will get an infraction.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

The irony is that what your idealized return to a pre-civ society would necessarily mean a mass die-off of human beings. Your life in the woods would come at the cost of billions.



The cool thing about civilization is that I can play videogames one day and go camping the next, which is pretty neat.

None of this is to say that there's no criticism of civilization, mind you, but the idea that we can just turn back the clock and go back is asinine. And even if we get there, what are you going to do? Stop people from ever setting down roots and developing agriculture all over again?

Well, certainly there are anti-civilization individuals who want to "turn back the clock," like Zerzan and his idea of "revolution" against symbolic thought (which, while interesting, is just utterly stupid since we aren't going to stop counting and talking) but I think most anti-civilization people don't exactly subscribe to that. I think Fredy Perlman's idea in Against His Story, Against Leviathan that civilization begins with impersonal institutions, and then basing a radical critique on that, is in a sense a want to "move forward" (as ironic as that sounds, considering anti-civ is anti-progress in the sense of viewing progress as an empty term to perpetuate current social relations of domination). I take an anti-civ stance, yet I think the idea of letting 6 billion people loose into the woods to hunt and gather is probably the most idiotic position a person could take as a solution to capitalist civilization.

So, basically, I don't think anyone who seriously and intellectually takes an anti-civ stance is about turning back the clock as you suggest, but for realizing that we can relate to each other and to the earth in a multiplicity of ways and not just the pre-packaged roles established by spectacular society. Also, this mass die off of human beings will happen/ is happening within the slow collapse of this current civilization and that should be very clearly recognized. We are in what is called the "Sixth Extinction" and the way of life based on cities needing constant resource importation leading to depletion should, in my (humble) opinion, be central to understanding the current situation.

I also think it is important to understand technology and what it has done to our world. Here, i'll just suggest, again, that everyone READ THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY BY JACQUES ELLUL

[Brosa Luxemburg]

[insert personal attack and backseat modding here]

[Armchair Partisan]

Okay, if I'm an oppressor for appreciating the benefits of civilization, and not just wanting to throw them all away just for the sake of moralism about how we could be "one with nature" and how everyone could do anything they want... then I'll gladly embrace my oppressive role.

You know, if people don't work, they will die. If people don't want to die, they will have to work, and at that point their 100% perfect freedom to do literally anything unfettered by the constraints of civilization is tarnished. (Even if they aren't told by a boss exactly what to do, they will have to collectively decide to get everything done that needs to be done.) And you know what? That's fine with me. Unless we manage to unlock "debug mode" or some kind of "god cheat" for our planet, we will not have a perfect world - and I don't think communism really pretends to be able to bring one either.

Plus the one big problem I see: class societies were created as an indirect consequence of elemental natural scarcity, weren't they? This "anti-civ vision" seems to perfectly recreate the conditions that brought about class society in the first place. Indeed, it is possible to create a post-capitalist society based on anti-civ theory that, for all its noble principles, actually manages to be worse than capitalism for most of the working class as well.


They cry about people with cancer or diabetes that would die without medical technology (all the while not questioning just how much of these diseases are caused by civilization).

[...]Anti-civ thought seeks a positive relationship with nature, and for people to create their own lives without the crutch of civilization.

Fuck this vile load of nonsense. People with cancer or diabetes are a given, they and many others already need the "crutch of civilization" to survive. No way are they gonna sacrifice unknown magnitudes of people for this lunacy! The writer says that all these diseases are caused by civilization. So what about smallpox, rubeola, mumps, child paralysis etc.? These were not caused by civilization - they were eradicated by it. Yet the writer pretends that civilization only solves the problems it creates itself.

I'm not sure if anyone else agrees with me on this, but I don't want a positive relationship with nature. I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean, but nature is not a rational agent, nor an entity capable of any kind of thought. It's just an abstract concept. What do I care about what it would think about me if it had the faculties to do so? (Well, maybe I would care if it actually could think, if only because I wouldn't want it to go all "Day of the Triffids" on me.) The matter of fact is, the only reason I even care about animal welfare, ecological sustainability etc. is because it's better for human society in the long term than just slash-and-burn looting the assets of this planet.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Any ideas that do not oppose civilization at its roots will only end up strengthening the system at worst, and end up as a mere running in place at best.
Someone will have to clarify some things for me here because when I read 'civilisation' I read "society in its contemporary form/the class system" and the 'roots' of the class system, of capitalism as it is in this era, is private property and pretty much every revolutionary leftist movement going opposes the system of private property.

Also, on another level, the whole repetition of 'when I say anti-civilisation...' is an annoying style of writing, particularly if each paragraph doesn't have much impact or reveal any unique ideas.

[BIXX]

The irony is that what your idealized return to a pre-civ society would necessarily mean a mass die-off of human beings.

OK, having just popped in the thread, say that this were true (which it very well could be- I honestly don't really give much of a shit)- what would it matter if the result was an autonomous world? Civilization can only be understood, IMO, as the antithesis of autonony- from a completely anoral perspective idk that sounds pretty good.

Regarding SI's shitty argument about HRT, how, in a world without gender/sex, would hrt even matter anymore?

I might answer more later idk.

BTW welcome theblackmask been a while since we talked

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Okay, if I'm an oppressor for appreciating the benefits of civilization, and not just wanting to throw them all away just for the sake of moralism about how we could be "one with nature" and how everyone could do anything they want... then I'll gladly embrace my oppressive role.

You know, if people don't work, they will die. If people don't want to die, they will have to work, and at that point their 100% perfect freedom to do literally anything unfettered by the constraints of civilization is tarnished. (Even if they aren't told by a boss exactly what to do, they will have to collectively decide to get everything done that needs to be done.) And you know what? That's fine with me. Unless we manage to unlock "debug mode" or some kind of "god cheat" for our planet, we will not have a perfect world - and I don't think communism really pretends to be able to bring one either.

Plus the one big problem I see: class societies were created as an indirect consequence of elemental natural scarcity, weren't they? This "anti-civ vision" seems to perfectly recreate the conditions that brought about class society in the first place. Indeed, it is possible to create a post-capitalist society based on anti-civ theory that, for all its noble principles, actually manages to be worse than capitalism for most of the working class as well.



Fuck this vile load of nonsense. People with cancer or diabetes are a given, they and many others already need the "crutch of civilization" to survive. No way are they gonna sacrifice unknown magnitudes of people for this lunacy! The writer says that all these diseases are caused by civilization. So what about smallpox, rubeola, mumps, child paralysis etc.? These were not caused by civilization - they were eradicated by it. Yet the writer pretends that civilization only solves the problems it creates itself.

I'm not sure if anyone else agrees with me on this, but I don't want a positive relationship with nature. I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean, but nature is not a rational agent, nor an entity capable of any kind of thought. It's just an abstract concept. What do I care about what it would think about me if it had the faculties to do so? (Well, maybe I would care if it actually could think, if only because I wouldn't want it to go all "Day of the Triffids" on me.) The matter of fact is, the only reason I even care about animal welfare, ecological sustainability etc. is because it's better for human society in the long term than just slash-and-burn looting the assets of this planet.

I don't think there is anything to suggest that civilization as we know it is somehow hardwired into human DNA or something. Starting from scratch again would not imply ending up exactly where we are, that view of humanity is too deterministic. This preconceived and mechanistic notion of how humanity develops is pretty much the heart of anti-civ thought. Not to mention that material conditions in a new hypothetical zero point would be drastically different from those encountered by our ancestors. For one thing most of the easy to get to resources have been used up at this point, the remaining deposits require advanced machinery to reach. This is kind of irrelevant as the user above you pointed out, only a few dupes think the clock could be rolled back like you are suggesting, it's not a very common belief.

This article is not written very well, and if anything is just a regurgitation of common anti-civ positions. It reads like a poorly drafted book report. http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fredy-perlman-against-his-story-against-leviathan would be a better piece to engage with

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think the rate at which people get cancer does grow with technical progress. Unfortunately enough, humans grow old and the probability of cells going cancerous (?) increases with age. But what of it? I come from a family that is highly predisposed to cancer (literally the only deceased member of my family that didn't die of cancer was blown up by a landmine), but I'll take dying of lung cancer in my sixties if that means I haven't died of dysentery etc. in my twenties.

Also the primmos are so cute with their tough guy posturing. But here's the thing: if any of you weirdoes tried to enforce your vision in a socialist society, what do you think would happen?


Well, certainly there are anti-civilization individuals who want to "turn back the clock," like Zerzan and his idea of "revolution" against symbolic thought (which, while interesting, is just utterly stupid since we aren't going to stop counting and talking) but I think most anti-civilization people don't exactly subscribe to that. I think Fredy Perlman's idea in Against His Story, Against Leviathan that civilization begins with impersonal institutions, and then basing a radical critique on that, is in a sense a want to "move forward" (as ironic as that sounds, considering anti-civ is anti-progress in the sense of viewing progress as an empty term to perpetuate current social relations of domination). I take an anti-civ stance, yet I think the idea of letting 6 billion people loose into the woods to hunt and gather is probably the most idiotic position a person could take as a solution to capitalist civilization.

Here's an honest question, have you ever seen a community dominated by personal relations? I have. It was awful, to put it mildly. Civilisation and class society are not incompatible with personal relations; in a very real sense the latter depends on them. But personal relations are not exactly good, for most people. Someone being denied a house in a neighbourhood because the local busybodies have decided she's a "trashy slut" - this is something I heard about recently - is also an example of personal relations overriding the impersonal relations of the cash nexus. I don't think I really have to spell out how, in this case, the impersonal cash nexus would be preferable. The socialist solution - scientific planning for human need, "even if" that need is the need of a "trashy slut" - would be preferable to both. But what do you think would happen in a "re-wilded" society? Where constant material scarcity would reproduce reactionary attitudes daily? (As you said, we can't go back to the primitive classless society.)


So, basically, I don't think anyone who seriously and intellectually takes an anti-civ stance is about turning back the clock as you suggest, but for realizing that we can relate to each other and to the earth in a multiplicity of ways and not just the pre-packaged roles established by spectacular society.

What does "relating to the earth" even mean? It's pseudo-poetry of the worst sort. The earth is not a person, it is not some kind of nature spirit, it does not have interests or a social role, it's a big dumb object that we happen to be living on.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Why are you responding to him as if he endorsed "re-wilding" , when he specifically said it was a dumb idea in the text you quoted?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Why are you responding to him as if he endorsed "re-wilding" , when he specifically said it was a dumb idea in the text you quoted?

He said letting six billion people loose in the woods would be a bad idea. Literally everyone who has ever called themselves a primitivist would agree with that. "Re-wilding" doesn't really count on six billion people - remember, there is the mythical civilisation collapse first, which is to save us from our sins and our alienation from Mother Earth.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

So you've inferred a position on your own and now you've atrributed it to him? Sounds like were in for a fruitful discussion.

[Cliff Paul]

When I say anti-civilization, I am not talking about primitivism. There is a commonly accepted dichotomy that puts “civilized” and “primitive” at opposite ends of a spectrum.

Don't let that stop all of ya'll from declaring that anti-civilization = primitivism.

Anyways, while Xhar-Xhar makes a good point about how there's nothing really idyllic about a community that is dominated by personal relations, I think that it's likely superior to a society dominated by impersonal relations.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

So you've inferred a position on your own and now you've atrributed it to him? Sounds like were in for a fruitful discussion.

Because of course, Brosa never identified as anti-civ, no wait, I'm lying, they did. I did infer some things - for example that Brosa was obviously not talking about the standard Marxist opposition to work, or the union of the city and the countryside. The most you can charge me with is perhaps unknowingly using some part of primmo jargon incorrectly, which to be honest upsets me as much as it would upset me if I used some part of Austrian jargon incorrectly.

Meanwhile your contribution to the thread seems to be complaining about how the discussion is not going to be fruitful, without a hint of irony.

[Cliff Paul]

Because of course, Brosa never identified as anti-civ, no wait, I'm lying, they did. I did infer some things - for example that Brosa was obviously not talking about the standard Marxist opposition to work, or the union of the city and the countryside. The most you can charge me with is perhaps unknowingly using some part of primmo jargon incorrectly, which to be honest upsets me as much as it would upset me if I used some part of Austrian jargon incorrectly.

Meanwhile your contribution to the thread seems to be complaining about how the discussion is not going to be fruitful, without a hint of irony.

So what I've gathered from the post is that you are going to continue to assume anti-civ = everyone should be hunter-gatherers (despite people repeatedly telling you otherwise), and that you have no desire to actually understand where anti-civ people are coming from because they aren't standard Marxists.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Because of course, Brosa never identified as anti-civ, no wait, I'm lying, they did. I did infer some things - for example that Brosa was obviously not talking about the standard Marxist opposition to work, or the union of the city and the countryside. The most you can charge me with is perhaps unknowingly using some part of primmo jargon incorrectly, which to be honest upsets me as much as it would upset me if I used some part of Austrian jargon incorrectly.

Meanwhile your contribution to the thread seems to be complaining about how the discussion is not going to be fruitful, without a hint of irony.

What is the fucking point? These threads play out identically each time with the same group of idealogues shitting it up with constant misrepresentations so they can take turns fighting windmills in front of each other.

I mean I expect most people here to be a little anti-social, but is this how you always behave in a discussions?

"I love french fries"

"Oh and I bet you just love the horrible working conditions of the migrants who picked those potatoes, you monster!"

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

So what I've gathered from the post is that you are going to continue to assume anti-civ = everyone should be hunter-gatherers (despite people repeatedly telling you otherwise), and that you have no desire to actually understand where anti-civ people are coming from because they aren't standard Marxists.

Except I never said Brosa's ideology stipulated that people ought to be hunter-gatherers. My criticism, which probably wasn't presented in the best way but you can't seriously say this was an excellent thread before my post, was focused on the rejection of modern technology. In fact the situation is arguably worse than what you say, as even palaeolithic hunter-gatherers extracted resources from distant locales. The only thing I might have done wrong is use the term "rewilding". But from the Marxist standpoint, much like Barney Sanders and Hillary Clintoln are the same, primitivism, anti-civ, deep ecology etc. are the same, since we are not so much interested in the detailed differences between these ideologies but rejecting the basic backward-looking perspective.

I did also write two other paragraphs, but EG latched onto one term I used a bit sloppily, and yes, that pissed me off, because I'm well acquainted with this sort of defensive-but-with-plausible deniability behaviour and it's tiresome. I don't have anything against EG, mind, whose politics are not something I wouldn't support but are at least a million times better than the "let's have a work camp trading on the market and call it socialism" politics of many posters.

Also good grief, the opening post was another instance of blog spam, with ridiculous macho rhetoric about how people suffering from cancer are selfish and baaawing about people in the "Third World". I mean, how is that any different from MTWism, which generally isn't tolerated here or is at least met by jokes making fun of the pretentious self-importance of latter-day Lin Biaoists?

[ckaihatsu]

Sorry, but it just doesn't make for a good chant:


- When I say 'anti-civilization', you say 'Yeah!' -- 'Anti-civilization'

- 'Yeah!'

- 'Anti-civilization'

- 'Yeah!'


= D


Also:


Civilization - Humanity Framework

http://s6.postimg.org/637e2v3ld/140612_Civilization_Humanity_Framework_aoi_35_ti.j pg (http://postimg.org/image/pxtfozist/full/)

[ckaihatsu]

When I say anti-civilization, I am not being purely negative. Anti-civ thought seeks a positive relationship with nature, and for people to create their own lives without the crutch of civilization. It seeks a world where humanity can actually live, instead of just being kept alive. At its roots, anti-civilization looks to a positive core of humanity…a core that most of us have buried deep inside and forgotten about, or never even knew existed. A core that has demonstrated that it is more than capable of living on this planet without destroying it. While not looking back to any specific model, anti-civ thought does recognize a lost part of humanity, and seeks to restore it by eliminating its oppressor.


I'll note for the record that although the author claims to *not* be purely negative, that's *exactly* what it is -- it's a *negation* of the current, capitalist model, which is a *good* thing.

[ckaihatsu]

Everyone should read "The Technological Society" by Jacques Ellul.





What almost everyone fails to grasp is the pernicious effect of technique (and its offspring, technology) on modern man.
Technique can loosely be defined as the entire mass of organization and technology that has maximum efficiency as its goal. Ellul shows that technique possesses an impetus all its own and exerts similar effects on human society no matter what the official ideology of the society in question is. Technique, with its never-ending quest for maximum efficiency, tends to slowly drown out human concerns as it progresses towards its ultimate goal.




http://www.amazon.com/The-Technological-Society-Jacques-Ellul/product-reviews/0394703901/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_summary?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=byRankDescending


I didn't know about this book / thesis until now, but I would say that I *acknowledge* the point -- I recently created a schematic illustration that addresses the topic:


G.U.T.S.U.C., Individualism - Tribalism



http://s6.postimg.org/izeyfeh9t/150403_2_Individualism_Tribalism_aoi_36_tiff_x.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/680s8w7hp/full/)

[Ele'ill]

Then they'll die. Everything that eats, works.

that would be enforced by laws, courts, police, and prisons, all to support a concept (work, jobs, employment, citizenship, civic duty) based on civilization and specifically a society that has been structured to/by capital.


The goal is to eliminate jobs.


You can change its name to imply some massive shift but there isn't one.

[Alet]

Work in this case would mean just that; jobs, careers, any sort of labor performed without the active consent of the one performing the labor.

You need to help me on that. It seems this passage meant any kind of work. "To them," the socialists, "I have some questions…" Why would he ask socialists if people do not want to have jobs, considering that they oppose the exact same thing? And if he really meant jobs, I would ask him the same question: "What if people do not want to work?" What if I do not want to do work I had to do in a non-civilized world? In fact, only socialism, only a society which produces with machines, where many people work together, where you have a division of labor, which leads to a high productivity, only such a society allows people to exist, who sometimes do not feel like working. Or am I misunderstanding something?

[ckaihatsu]

[I]n fact, only socialism, only a society which produces with machines, where many people work together, where you have a division of labor


Technical point: There would be *no* 'division of labor' in a society that 'produces with machines' -- no one could privately benefit from the productivity of machines so there'd be no division of labor, or 'class'.

[Rafiq]

There is nothing especially unique about "anti-civ" thought that warrants specific attention. "Anti-civ" thought is nothing more than the honest expression of the infinitely negative character of the Left, which knows very well it has no program, no direction of action, no horizon of tomorrow. This is why, often times those who prattle of anti-civilization thought, while often times guilty of regurgitating reactionary ecology-fetishism, are sometimes mistaken for being essentially primitivist. This is not the case: To call "anti-civs" primitives is to bestow them too much credit, rather, "anti-civ" thought embodies a pretense to the negation of of the symbolic order as such, taken to its end as the only possible one.

But as Marxists with a keen eye should know, this is nothing short of a perversion, and a creative expression of ruling ideology as its temporal negation, against "the past" and "the future", but - in their own words, for the here and the now. Anti-civ thought therefore, in all its desperation, presupposes an unconditional framework of the human soul that is regularly coordinated, regulated and "used" by civilization. What they fail to understand is that ruling ideology does not function so simplistically - ideology does NOT leave room for such an "unconditional" human soul, it appropriates it. What those who ascribe to "anti-civ" thought fail to understand is that there can be no refuge in timeless abstractions as humanity, the Earth or nature, and attempting to substitute these for an affirmative prerogative, the horizon of Communism, is not to escape from the antagonisms inherent to civilization, but subordinate oneself to those in power.

The point of Communism is simple: How one approximates the appropriation of man by the vehicles of tomorrow, can ONLY be conceived as unjust, CONDITIONAL and non-inevitable is through contradictions inherent to the process itself, as its presupposition. That is to say, capitalism itself is what generates the ethical, and ideological standards which it itself cannot account for, by merit of social antagonism. Those who ascribe to 'anti-civ' thought fail to understand what Marx means by Communism as the real movement derived from the present state of things, disillusioned by their already false conception of Communism as magically promising a better tomorrow through which all worldly action is subordinate to fulfilling. The horizon of Communism, is IMPLICIT in the worldly action of today in a manner that is sufficient unto-itself.

Anti-civilization thought is inherently petite-bourgeois in that, its entire edifice is defined by identifying those "structures" which in the IMMEDIATE sense appropriate, integrate and damage the human soul, but there is nothing fundamentally different about this than the ever-changing character of the petite-bourgeoisie, of whom - having no creative, or destructive power themselves, resent the neon-lit promise of tomorrow, and are reactionaries insofar as they crystallize existing society into a definite ideal that which they will struggle for even after it is long destroyed... The proletariat, conversely, identifies that which perpetuates its own slavery, and in doings so constitutes its own program of emancipation, pre-supposing the achievements of civilization (and this is NOT simply meant to be a cheap platitude - I mean such achievements not only in 'technology', but SPIRITUAL achievements, the fall into reality itself). The new symbolic order of Communism, self-sacrifice, discipline, solidarity, austere dedication to the spiritual collective in its negation of the old world, and through this its constitution of a new one, ONLY THIS can allow us to consistently OPPOSE the present order. In other words, Communism DOES "fill" a void left behind by capitalism, one that demands from people work, but this leaves no basis of equivalency, for to conceive your anti-capitalism as an eternal existential problem is no different than those philistines who prattle of the "horrors" of war, all the while acknowledging its inevitability because "human nature". The pretense to the negation is preicsely part of the cycle itself. The infinite cycle of self-victimization, the logic of despair, though appearing to provide space for retreat against this rotten world, can only perpetuate it.

[Alet]

Technical point: There would be *no* 'division of labor' in a society that 'produces with machines' -- no one could privately benefit from the productivity of machines so there'd be no division of labor, or 'class'.

Yes, okay, I failed there at finding a proper formulation. I mean that people would still work in factories and therefore suboperation still exists, even if people are not bound to a specific task.

[MethodMania]

The user has no argument, only a lack of familiarity with the terms common to the kind of politics they're trying to critique.

You have no basis from which to derive this.

The author asked, "What if people don’t want to work?"

I pointed out that work (i.e., activity necessary to life) is inescapable but that jobs (i.e., alienated work) aren't. But I didn't spell out the parentheticals. I naively assumed that the distinction was self-evidently contained within my succinct reply. My bad.


Theirs is the diversion.

A direct response isn't a diversion.


My comment on their post count was in reply to their assertion that blackmask and I tried to play "gotcha" with them, which is nonsensical because it implies either of us know enough about them or their politics to try to trap them into an argument

The "gotcha" part was where you and he reiterated more verbosely that which I'd already said and which I (naively) assumed I'd demonstrated an understanding of: that there's labor (work) and then there's alienated labor (jobs). Both of your comments carried the condescending tone of someone who thinks they've caught a noob in a mistake and are taking him to school (e.g., "it's not a hard concept," and "try again").

For the record I'm quite familiar with the concept of alienation. I've also read numerous works on opposition to work from a range of authors from leftist to bourgeois (e.g., Lafargue, Black, Russell) and I sympathize with them. I still see no reason to use "work" to mean both alienated and nonalienated labor and then have to engage in endless discussion, which you rightly bemoan, to distinguish what exactly we're talking about when we use the word in a given instance. Rather, I find it handy (and less mind numbing) to succinctly use "jobs" and "work," respectively. And so I did.


not to mention it assumes I'm interested in engaging them in the first place.

Then why did you? Or, better question, why wouldn't you want to? Have I offended you in some way?


The super-relevant quote about trotskyists and stalinists in their signature assures me that I'm not.

It's a play on Diderot. I thought it was clever. :(

[ckaihatsu]

Yes, okay, I failed there at finding a proper formulation. I mean that people would still work in factories and therefore suboperation still exists, even if people are not bound to a specific task.


I find it interesting that you're using the prefix 'sub-' to refer to people's activity in regards to machinery -- this usage definitely denotes a *hierarchy* of sorts, that workers would somehow be *subjugated* to the tools that they collectively overthrew class society for.

I'll share that I prefer to conceptualize the human-tool relation as becoming more archetypically like a hand pulling a lever, than anything else -- meaning, of course, that humanity has the realistic potential of *controlling* machinery and energy in a hierarchical configuration that has *humanity* on top.

[Alet]

I find it interesting that you're using the prefix 'sub-' to refer to people's activity in regards to machinery -- this usage definitely denotes a *hierarchy* of sorts, that workers would somehow be *subjugated* to the tools that they collectively overthrew class society for.

I'm not a native English speaker, to be honest I've just used my dictionary and it seems to give me the wrong words.

[theblackmask]

Anti civ people are so great they'd deny me HRT and they'd also ensure that the disabled would suffer cuz rewild or die survival of the fittest bullshit. If your HRT comes at the cost of others, as it currently does, then yes I have a problem with that. I have absolutely no problem with medicine, I have a problem with how it is made. I am not advocating for any sort of caveman-like "survival of the fittest bullshit." I think it is very feasible that in a post-civ world, people would still have medicine, and I'm not just talking about rubbing plants on yourself. Are you really going to say that it's completely impossible that some people in a post-civ world might figure out a new and cheap way to synthesize estrogen out of horse piss, and spread the recipe across the world? My anti-civ ideas are not against technology, but for a non-authoritarian use of them. I support HRT for anyone who wants it, not just those who can afford it, and I think civilization is stopping that from happening. The difference between your HRT (which you claim I want to deny), and an anti-civ HRT is that I realize that people will have to put in some labor to get what they want. You, on the other hand, expect to go to a drug store or doctor and be handed what you want, at the expense of everyone below you in the supply chain. But yeah, I'm the reactionary.
Everyone should read "The Technological Society" by Jacques Ellul. Agreed.
This article is not written very well, and if anything is just a regurgitation of common anti-civ positions. It reads like a poorly drafted book report. My goal was to bring to light some of the basic arguments that anti-civilization gets stuck every time that it's brought up. To that point, I think I've done alright. I'm sorry that my writing does not appease you, but I am ok with it. I'm not trying to write an epic like Perlman. I am trying to write things that anyone, even those unfamiliar with my ideas and radical literature in general, can read. In general, people can read a fifth grade book report. The same cannot be said for Perlman, Ellul, Marx, or the vast majority of pro-revolutionary writers, as the writing is usually inaccessible to anyone outside of the milieu. Writing is a technology, just like medicine. I am not against the use of writing, but I am opposed to the authoritarian use of it. When you are writing something that the majority of the planet just won't understand, or when your writing requires the reader to have in encyclopedia in their other hand, I'm not exactly sure there isn't some sort of hierarchy involved there. But yes, Against His-story, Against Leviathan is pretty much the best thing every written, and I encourage everyone to read it.
The irony is that what your idealized return to a pre-civ society would necessarily mean a mass die-off of human beings. Your life in the woods would come at the cost of billions... ...The cool thing about civilization is that I can play videogames one day and go camping the next, which is pretty neat. Did you even read the article? I'm pretty sure I specifically argued against the idolization of pre-civ societies, and not once did I advocate for a life in the woods. As a video game developer, I have no interest in changing the fact that you can play videogames one day, and then go camping the next. I would actually argue that videogames developed without civilization would be much better...but that's a whole different topic.
Here's an honest question, have you ever seen a community dominated by personal relations? I have. It was awful, to put it mildly. I don't disagree that a community dominated by personal relations is awful, but was the community you saw a subject of personal relations alone? It is very hard for any community to be so self-reliant that it is not subject to the forces of the outside world. Civilization is layers upon layers of personal and impersonal relations. If I lived in a world where all I had to deal with was personal relations, I'd consider that a step up.
Okay, if I'm an oppressor for appreciating the benefits of civilization, and not just wanting to throw them all away just for the sake of moralism about how we could be "one with nature" and how everyone could do anything they want... then I'll gladly embrace my oppressive role.... ...I don't want a positive relationship with nature... So what about smallpox, rubeola, mumps, child paralysis etc.? These were not caused by civilization - they were eradicated by it. I like how you use quotations to imply I said something, when I definitely didn't. I don't know where you got this whole "one with nature" thing, but you are obviously coming into this with some heavy preconceived notions. A "positive relationship with nature" is simply one in which we are not fucking killing it. Obviously your brand of socialism/communism/whatever includes using the planet for all it's worth and then leaving it? You are obviously not a doctor. Diseases like smallpox and mumps are absolutely caused by civilization! The proximity of people in early cities, mixed with the large amount of animal and human waste were breeding grounds for diseases that either did not exist yet, or did not have the capability to expand through more spread out societies. The first cases of smallpox arise alongside civilization in India and China. The bubonic plague could have never existed without vast cities for plague rats to infest. Yes, civilization has eradicated these diseases, but that's the least it could do after propagating them! Let's not mention the deaths caused by urban air pollution, estimated by the WHO to be over a million a year.
Don't let that stop all of ya'll from declaring that anti-civilization = primitivism. I'd be interested in hearing why you insist on equating the two. Just because you put a "=" in between the two words does not make it true.
I mean, how is that any different from MTWism Because I am not interested in the third world becoming just as, or more powerful than the first. I am not interested in poorer countries competing on the same terms. I am interested in destroying power and terms, so that regional hierarchies are demolished, not just reorganized.
Civilization - Humanity Framework Just because you drew a nice little picture does not make it true.
Technical point: There would be *no* 'division of labor' in a society that 'produces with machines' What about those who maintain the machines? To those that are still hung up on what work is. Again, I invite you to consider the word itself...which in many languages is derived from the word for torture. I would like to separate the word "work" from the tasks that we need to do in order to survive. I oppose work, while still admitting that there are tasks we must complete to live. That does not make them work...it makes them living. I have written further on work here: http://destroy.svbtle.com/the-problem-of-production

[Cliff Paul]

You are obviously not a doctor. Diseases like smallpox and mumps are absolutely caused by civilization! The proximity of people in early cities, mixed with the large amount of animal and human waste were breeding grounds for diseases that either did not exist yet, or did not have the capability to expand through more spread out societies. The first cases of smallpox arise alongside civilization in India and China.

The bubonic plague could have never existed without vast cities for plague rats to infest. Yes, civilization has eradicated these diseases, but that's the least it could do after propagating them!

The earliest cases of small pox likely occurred during the neolithic era so kinda pre-cities and stuff. And I don't think we really have a clue when the earliest cases of Mumps were so we can't really tell if it developed pre or post "civilization".

Also, it's debatable whether or not the plague that struck during the middle ages was carried by rats. We're almost 100% sure what caused the plagues during the middle ages was indeed "the plague" but we have no idea how it was spread. It spread way too quickly for it to be carried by rats - and we don't know how else a bubonic plague could be spread so quickly - which is why some historians nowadays assert that the plague was mosly pneumonic. The problem with that is that modern cases of the pneumonic plague are very rare and surprisingly difficult to spread so that seems similarly unlikely. Also the bubonic plague still exists - there's been a pretty notable outbreak in Madagascar recently.

checkmate doctor

[theblackmask]

Checkmate isn't a word I would use. Even if rats didn't spread the plague, and even if smallpox existed before civilization...there is no doubt that the more people that are physically grouped together, the more easily diseases spread. Would you like to argue with that?

[Cliff Paul]

Checkmate isn't a word I would use. Even if rats didn't spread the plague, and even if smallpox existed before civilization...there is no doubt that the more people that are physically grouped together, the more easily diseases spread. Would you like to argue with that?

No I just wanted to be nitpicky about diseases because they are cool

[Sinister Intents]

No I just wanted to be nitpicky about diseases because they are cool

You could also argue that borders coups also be used to prevent disease from spreading. In an advanced socialist society disease certainly will exist but will be treated with people in mind rather than profit to the benefit to the whole of the collective

[BIXX]

You could also argue that borders coups also be used to prevent disease from spreading. In an advanced socialist society disease certainly will exist but will be treated with people in mind rather than profit to the benefit to the whole of the collective

You could also say that capitalist social relations would necessitate the bourgeoisie taking perfect care of proletarians so they can be at maximum productive capacity

The thing is you can always argue damn near anything. Doesn't make it true.

[Cliff Paul]

To be honest who wants to live that long anyways? I mean, life's not really that great.

[Sinister Intents]

You could also say that capitalist social relations would necessitate the bourgeoisie taking perfect care of proletarians so they can be at maximum productive capacity

The thing is you can always argue damn near anything. Doesn't make it true.

Yeah, but we both know workers are given the rind while the fruit is taken.

[BIXX]

Yeah, but we both know workers are given the rind while the fruit is taken.

That's my point. Arguing that your system is better is stupid and useless because realistically, your system still involves coercion and the absolute societal attack on autonomy.

[Sinister Intents]

That's my point. Arguing that your system is better is stupid and useless because realistically, your system still involves coercion and the absolute societal attack on autonomy.

Who seeks to impose a system? It'd be better to destroy the existing bourgeois order so to create the foundations of the next epoch in human history. You and I only disagree on methods really

[ckaihatsu]

Civilization - Humanity Framework





Just because you drew a nice little picture does not make it true.


It doesn't make it *untrue*, either -- are you *saying* that it's 'untrue' or otherwise inaccurate -- ?

If you find it to be less-than-accurate you may want to specify exactly *how* you find it to be lacking.

Also I'll note that it's a *framework* so it's meant to be more of a 'sketch' than a 'thesis'.





Technical point: There would be *no* 'division of labor' in a society that 'produces with machines' -- no one could privately benefit from the productivity of machines so there'd be no division of labor, or 'class'.





What about those who maintain the machines?


Okay -- what about them?





To those that are still hung up on what work is. Again, I invite you to consider the word itself...which in many languages is derived from the word for torture. I would like to separate the word "work" from the tasks that we need to do in order to survive. I oppose work, while still admitting that there are tasks we must complete to live. That does not make them work...it makes them living. I have written further on work here: http://destroy.svbtle.com/the-problem-of-production

[A Revolutionary Tool]

After reading the OP over and over it is still so vague. I mean I don't even understand what they mean by civilization. OP talks about how if those under the rule of the 1st world in the 3rd world didn't have those rulers they could go back to not being enslaved! Really? As if the 3rd world countries had no civilizations before Western colonialism/imperialism! As if those people weren't enslaved to this or that caste in their own nations. Do these people not have a history? It's things like this which make it look like it's just primitism and looking to a far gone past. If only those Asian sweatshop workers didn't have to deal with Walmart, they could go back to living under the lash of a landowner where they could be free!

I'm so surprised nobody has shown how illogical it is to say a coordinated global system of any kind is racist because you can find detractors from all across the globe. Many of those detractors come from the capitalist ideologues I'm sure you know, many of whom can't stand to see workers come from the third world to live in our standard of living. Those who are racists are trying to build walls at our borders, not trying to tear them down.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

If your HRT comes at the cost of others, as it currently does, then yes I have a problem with that. I have absolutely no problem with medicine, I have a problem with how it is made. I am not advocating for any sort of caveman-like "survival of the fittest bullshit." I think it is very feasible that in a post-civ world, people would still have medicine, and I'm not just talking about rubbing plants on yourself. Are you really going to say that it's completely impossible that some people in a post-civ world might figure out a new and cheap way to synthesize estrogen out of horse piss, and spread the recipe across the world? My anti-civ ideas are not against technology, but for a non-authoritarian use of them. I support HRT for anyone who wants it, not just those who can afford it, and I think civilization is stopping that from happening. The difference between your HRT (which you claim I want to deny), and an anti-civ HRT is that I realize that people will have to put in some labor to get what they want. You, on the other hand, expect to go to a drug store or doctor and be handed what you want, at the expense of everyone below you in the supply chain. But yeah, I'm the reactionary.

Among other things. And horribly confused as well. Synthesising hormones takes an industrial infrastructure, as does any serious chemical synthesis. Even if it was a matter of mixing two liquids together (also note that keeping horses also requires quite a lot of infrastructure, particularly if you want the horses to have some kind of quality of life), do you think everyone who needs HRT would know how to do it?

And what about things like condoms and abortion, how would an "anti-civ" abortion work? Poisonous plants? Sharp sticks? While an "anti-civ" life would obviously be quite nasty and potentially quite short, it would be doubly so for women.


I don't disagree that a community dominated by personal relations is awful, but was the community you saw a subject of personal relations alone?

Obviously it wasn't. That is why I said that it was dominated by personal relations. But so what? What was problematic in the scenario were not impersonal relations, but personal ones. An impersonal relation like the cash nexus would obviously have been better for the woman derided as a "trashy slut".


It is very hard for any community to be so self-reliant that it is not subject to the forces of the outside world.

Yes, thank the nonexistent gods.


Civilization is layers upon layers of personal and impersonal relations. If I lived in a world where all I had to deal with was personal relations, I'd consider that a step up.

Why?

If I had to deal with personal relations, I would receive e.g. bread because the baker likes me. This might sound nice at first, but it carries the corollary: if the baker doesn't like me, I don't get bread. It seems fairly evident to me that going into the bakery and receiving bread no matter what the baker thinks of you is preferable to trying to please dozens of people you barely know.

Or perhaps you do know them, in which case this is equivalent to a small town where everyone knows everyone, in which case excuse me while I make myself taller.


A "positive relationship with nature" is simply one in which we are not fucking killing it.

Then we have a positive relationship with nature already. What a relief.


Because I am not interested in the third world becoming just as, or more powerful than the first. I am not interested in poorer countries competing on the same terms. I am interested in destroying power and terms, so that regional hierarchies are demolished, not just reorganized.

The point was that the tough-guy macho rhetoric was the same as the rhetoric MTWists use. As is the idealisation of the Third World and deriding anyone who isn't oppressed "enough".


What about those who maintain the machines? To those that are still hung up on what work is. Again, I invite you to consider the word itself...which in many languages is derived from the word for torture.

And in Albanian, the word for "entertain, please" comes from the same PIE root as the English word "work". Etymological arguments are shit, as they always have been.

Now this paragraph demonstrates, not just that you rely on arguments most people in kindergarten would find implausible (kindergarden, obviously, being a form of agriculture as it is derived from the German term for a garden), but that you have no idea what Marxists (and most anarchists, I would imagine) propose - which is not one person being forced to maintain machines for the rest of their life but producers, freed from the constraints of class society, choosing to preform certain tasks, without any of them becoming a job.

Oddly enough, you should have paid more attention to the primitive classless society and the way in which e.g. pottery production was organised (pottery also being a technology producing products that are not consumed at the point of production, so undoubtedly according to you the early pottery users procured pottery "at the expanse of everyone below them on the supply chain"). This has nothing to do with socialism; it's the very distillation of the sort of paranoid petit-bourgeois politics that constantly worries that others are "stealing" their labour (argh, I'm writing like Rafiq now).


I would like to separate the word "work" from the tasks that we need to do in order to survive. I oppose work, while still admitting that there are tasks we must complete to live. That does not make them work...it makes them living. I have written further on work here: http://destroy.svbtle.com/the-problem-of-production

And without modern, industrial technology, everyone would be forced to labour far more than would be necessary in a socialist society. So yeah.

[Rudolf]

This thread confuses me tbh.

Seems to be either hating on tech or settlements and formal social organisation.

So... what is civilisation?


What can be gleamed from this thread is that civilisation "blinds" us, "coddles" us and that civilisation is a "crutch". It sounds like some rugged individualist trite...


seriously, what's this with hating on the consumption of use-values because they were produced at a cost to others? Errrr... thus is life! We are all indebted to the physical and mental labour of the past and the present. We're not born fully formed with language, ideas and skills. We rely on others as others rely on us.

Take this:


The difference between your HRT (which you claim I want to deny), and an anti-civ HRT is that I realize that people will have to put in some labor to get what they want. You, on the other hand, expect to go to a drug store or doctor and be handed what you want, at the expense of everyone below you in the supply chain. But yeah, I'm the reactionary. Agreed.


Yeah you are the reactionary because you conceive of and advocate a production that wasn't even really the case under fucking feudal relations. You conceive of and advocate a production that is fundamentally individualistic so much so that you flat out claim that someone in order to get the utility of their meds they themselves must produce them.

I'm gonna call it.... you're ableist. You're implying that the sick, the disabled etc should not only be experts in whatever ails them, not only know what treatments could work and how to produce them but also they must be physically capable of producing them themselves!

[Thirsty Crow]

I'll try and keep this short.

Anti-civ...something, if based on the idea of abolishing industrial production, along with the cultural complexes connected to it (for instance, language, workplace micro-culture) other than what is commonly rejected as reactionary, is either a 1) unwitting mass murder fantasy (with a whole lot of unimaginably horrid suffering for people caught in a transition period to our Earth-loving and liberating utopa), or 2) a pessimistic account of the inevitability of global collapse.


The latter isn't political. The former, well it might be. But the former simply needs to account for said transition period - something that many pro-civ (:confused:) anarchists and Marxist also need to do. And I think it's an obvious fact that the industrial infrastructure is that which underpins both the prospects for directly humane and efficient healthcare, and much more than that as well. I think it's also clear that a massive collapse would much more likely see a return to brutal survivalism with the band as the most prominent unit of social organization (which means people should dispense with the Robinson Crusoe in their heads, with all the fantasies of isolated and individual labor and by contrast the mean, oppressive social organization of work).

So the choice is quite simple. I'll retain my verbal thinking skills and language, thank you very much; I'll also retain the productive-technological base for me not dying in horrible pain; also would prefer a world human community as opposed to small scare war by bands of survivors.

[Rafiq]

Writing is a technology, just like medicine. I am not against the use of writing, but I am opposed to the authoritarian use of it. When you are writing something that the majority of the planet just won't understand, or when your writing requires the reader to have in encyclopedia in their other hand, I'm not exactly sure there isn't some sort of hierarchy involved there.

Oh, that's very cute of you - you oppose the "authoritarian use of writing" not because you're so intellectually bankrupt that you know very well such "authoritarian" uses of writing would absolutely decimate your assertions, but because you have "the majority of the planet"'s reading skills in mind. The fact of the matter is that the reason the "majority of the planet" is incapable of understanding such writing has nothing to do with an inherent inability, but the reality that they are deprived from having the privilege too. For this reason, the majority of the planet is also unable to conceive processes which they amply rely on for their survival, which would be vital for their emancipation - but in your mind, that we do not lower ourselves amounts to the "authoritarian use of writing". Why pick and choose, however? Two hundred years ago, would theblackmask abstain from writing all together, in consideration of the fact that most of the world's population was illiterate? No one needs direct evidence that you fantasize about murdering billions of people, because the reality is that we already know you're a reactionary solely because of your disgusting righteous philistinism.

As any bourgeois ideologue, contra to his desire to appear as one of the enlightened leftists, "hierarchy" here is not conceived as far as direct relationships of power go, but privilege. Even if this was the case, however, is it not paradoxical that he claims - apparently - the depriving of billions of the capacity to think for such matters is PART of their oppression, and that the solution is that we lower ourselves to it? That is tantamount to saying that appreciating the readily available presence of clean, fresh water is part of a "hierarchy" because perhaps most are deprived of this. Hegel's point remains: we should hope the masses rise to us, but not that we should lower ourselves to them. And the working class knows this very well, the working masses do not want these stupid games of intellectuals condescendingly "getting on their level", they want them to fight the good fight in domains that are inaccessible to them, which directly effect them.

Time and time again, you prattle of being against the "authoritarian" use of this or that. But that is a meaningless abstraction, which is used whimsically by merit of its ambiguity. What constitutes the 'authoritarian' use of technology? If the reference point is violating, or affecting people's choices, then you assume that choice itself exists in a vacuum and that the spontaneous choices of men and women, somehow, constitute freedom. But this is not freedom, for the "spontaneous choices" of men and women are dictated to their relationship to survival, and it is precisely this pre-civilized "freedom" that led to class society itself. Freedom is not free, and Engels remains all the more correct: There is NOTHING more authoritarian than a revolution, NOTHING more authoritarian than the domination of the class enemies by the proletarian dictatorship, NOTHING more authoritarian than the desire to destroy the old world. Practically, to prattle of the 'authoritarian' amply means nothing, and at best, regurgitates the logic of consumerism and our faux post-counterculture ideology. Real freedom is freedom to choose necessity, and nothing more.


A "positive relationship with nature" is simply one in which we are not fucking killing it.

"Oh, now I understand! That's reasonable enough - come on guys, do we actually want to fucking kill nature"?

What you still fail to understand is you dodge the fundamental question: If it could be controlled, why not "kill nature"? Nature, referring to autonomous processes that exist independently of man - why should we even take such abstractions INTO CONSIDERATION, for bourgeois intellectuals before us have long discredited such religious notions. You can try to be 'reasonable' all you want, but effectively, you are attributing nature divine, and metaphysical characteristics if you conceive it anymore than the dumping ground of catastrophes and meaningless processes. I have said it before, and I will say it again: Nature fetishism encapsulates not only a reactionary kind of anti-capitalist logic, but also serves as the projection screen for the more intimate danger, namely, SOCIAL transformation. Like the ecological, we project our own views on social relations onto this autonomous background of "nature", from the market to class relations, and this is first and foremost why "nature" stands to reason - nature occupies the same role that god did in bourgeois society decades ago.

Do you think you're special with your cute little demands? What is this, if not every fucking regurgitated platitude? Look around you, do you think that our society is fundamentally antagonistic to the idea of nature? Today, the organic the better, today, the more "natural" the more attractive. You cannot tel me this is because "civilizaiton is usin human desires against us" because these weren't human desires decades ago when canned food was marveled by our grandparents. What processes "in nature" are beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, EXACTLY for what they are? You hinge upon nothing more than a broken bourgeois sentimentality, and it is for that reason no one here takes your pretenses to solving all problems of the left seriously, because at the end of the day, you remain a toady of ruling ideology.


I oppose work, while still admitting that there are tasks we must complete to live. That does not make them work...it makes them living.

Lo and behold, anything that constitutes the romantic equivalence of running around in the fucking woods is "living" but administering machines is "work". There are 7 billion people on the planet. Their sustenance is contingent upon the productive capacities of our present epoch. To curb this, in any way, shape or form, does condemn most of them to death.


After reading the OP over and over it is still so vague.

It's meant to be. The OP, and those who think like he does, aren't concerned with giving us a direction of action, but expressing a pathology in words as best as they can. That's why there's unspoken sacred cows like "nature" that we're all just supposed to assume we give a shit about.

[BIXX]

While I haven't read what TBM wrote, I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say no one has a fucking clue what civilization is (possibly including TBM). I think the fundamental issue here isn't even that people are too dogmatic or whatever (not that some people aren't) but that most people here lack any sort of real or honest exposure to anti-civ ideas (which vary so widely as to be difficult to sum up them in their entirety, just like anticapitalism). Most people have exposure from some parady of the actual ideas, and from that point on they've closed themselves off to them. I'm not trying to say that with proper exposure everyone will be anti civ but that the arguments would be a lot better, and perhaps discussion could move forward. Another user said something along the lines of wishing that the forum would have a sort of split, not from but within the forum, just like marxist vs anarchists there would be civvers and anti-civvers. Idk. Will respond to actual points later maybe.

[BIXX]

industrial infrastructure is that which underpins both the prospects for directly humane and efficient healthcare

What about the completely abusive relationships civilization entails? To what extent are the health issues you're worried about caused by civilization?

Not really interested in the rest of your post

[ckaihatsu]

While I haven't read what TBM wrote, I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say no one has a fucking clue what civilization is (possibly including TBM). I think the fundamental issue here isn't even that people are too dogmatic or whatever (not that some people aren't) but that most people here lack any sort of real or honest exposure to anti-civ ideas (which vary so widely as to be difficult to sum up them in their entirety, just like anticapitalism). Most people have exposure from some parady of the actual ideas, and from that point on they've closed themselves off to them. I'm not trying to say that with proper exposure everyone will be anti civ but that the arguments would be a lot better, and perhaps discussion could move forward.




Another user said something along the lines of wishing that the forum would have a sort of split, not from but within the forum, just like marxist vs anarchists there would be civvers and anti-civvers. Idk. Will respond to actual points later maybe.


That's rather astute, actually -- I tend to think of the Marxists-vs.-anarchists thing as being about *scale* (centralization vs. decentralization / localism), and the pro-civ-vs.-anti-civ thing would be about *progress*, or the dimension of *time* (timelines for the future).

At this point, though, there's so much froth that it may be good for everyone to just lay their own *definitions* of 'civilization' on the table, to get some starting-points to begin with.

[Thirsty Crow]

What about the completely abusive relationships civilization entails? To what extent are the health issues you're worried about caused by civilization?

Not really interested in the rest of your post

Well you'll have to specify what exactly you mean by that, apart from health issues associated with industrial production (which are a matter for common people to decide on in the future, as far as I'm concerned). I mean, obviously there are health disasters stemming from the current way of producing our life; and that should be rectified. But are there other completely abusive relationships you have in mind that directly stem from industrial production, and not capitalist social relations?

[G4b3n]

That's rather astute, actually -- I tend to think of the Marxists-vs.-anarchists thing as being about *scale* (centralization vs. decentralization / localism), and the pro-civ-vs.-anti-civ thing would be about *progress*, or the dimension of *time* (timelines for the future).

At this point, though, there's so much froth that it may be good for everyone to just lay their own *definitions* of 'civilization' on the table, to get some starting-points to begin with.

There seriously aren't many modes of thought that I find unworthy of study or consideration but if a list were to be made, this one would be up there.
I would sooner embrace liberalism than this ableist, transphobic, hippy-dippy nonsense.
And I have made these points to anti-civers on more than one occasion and the best I get is "no its not, your theoretical system is the one that is really truly exclusionary.. and authoritarian"

[ckaihatsu]

There seriously aren't many modes of thought that I find unworthy of study or consideration but if a list were to be made, this one would be up there.
I would sooner embrace liberalism than this ableist, transphobic, hippy-dippy nonsense.
And I have made these points to anti-civers on more than one occasion and the best I get is "no its not, your theoretical system is the one that is really truly exclusionary.. and authoritarian"


---





this ableist, transphobic, hippy-dippy nonsense.




"no its not, your theoretical system is the one that is really truly exclusionary.. and authoritarian"


Based on this, maybe this political terrain here is serving as a kind of 'outer-fringe' area for exchanges within the revolutionary 'psyche' -- it's *so* ill-defined that people are just *projecting* their most-personal political lines *onto* it, like a revealing of one's subconscious.

[Ele'ill]

Who seeks to impose a system? It'd be better to destroy the existing bourgeois order

yes, the position would be that you seek supplantation of society and the destruction of only their order of it.


You and I only disagree on methods really

we haven't even gotten onto the discussion of methods because the end goals or conclusions of these theoretical positions being discussed are pretty contrasted

[Sinister Intents]

yes, the position would be that you seek supplantation of society and the destruction of only their order of it.



we haven't even gotten onto the discussion of methods because the end goals or conclusions of these theoretical positions being discussed are pretty contrasted

I have to look up what supplantation means and honestly I think this discussion is pointless here, so wanna start a new thread for exactly this bit? I'm not to big into debating anymore

[Ele'ill]

I honestly don't see why we'd need another thread to talk about civilization

[Sinister Intents]

I honestly don't see why we'd need another thread to talk about civilization

I was thinking about discussing methods for overthrowing civilization as we know it. I'm not too knowledgeable on anti civ positions other than some of the Facebook reactionaries I've debated.

As per supplantation: What's so wrong with what I can say I think I agree with based on my limited knowledge and so on?

[Ele'ill]

I was thinking about discussing methods for overthrowing civilization as we know it. I'm not too knowledgeable on anti civ positions other than some of the Facebook reactionaries I've debated.

I think you're familiar enough with the difference in methods between our tendencies that you could arrive at a very general albeit adequate conclusion.



As per supplantation: What's so wrong with what I can say I think I agree with based on my limited knowledge and so on?

I don't know what this is in reference to but I don't think there's anything wrong with saying what you think you agree with regardless of your knowledge because this is a forum for discussion. I do have criticisms of what you believe though which is what I posted regarding the presupposition and supplantation of society and civilization.

[BIXX]

I was thinking about discussing methods for overthrowing civilization as we know it. I'm not too knowledgeable on anti civ positions other than some of the Facebook reactionaries I've debated.

As per supplantation: What's so wrong with what I can say I think I agree with based on my limited knowledge and so on?

I think you use lack of knowledge as a defense when really your problem is dogmatism. We've had many conversations, either here or on Facebook or on TAB regarding anti-civ positions. 100% of the time you shut your ears. You just ramble on with either edgey authoritarian garbage or liberal anarcho crab.

[G4b3n]

---







Based on this, maybe this political terrain here is serving as a kind of 'outer-fringe' area for exchanges within the revolutionary 'psyche' -- it's *so* ill-defined that people are just *projecting* their most-personal political lines *onto* it, like a revealing of one's subconscious.

Damn, Ckai, that shit is deep, man.

[ckaihatsu]

Damn, Ckai, that shit is deep, man.


Thanks -- that's the kind of observation I've been looking to contribute / know that I can contribute, using the discussion-board format.

Offhand we might also consider this whole topic and impasse as being 'ultraleft', in a word (again, at the 'outer-reaches' of a political consensus).

And, finally, pictorially, we could conceive it as being just-outside the bounds of the 'spinning' expanse of the political spectrum:


Ideologies & Operations -- Left Centrifugalism



http://s6.postimg.org/3si9so4xd/110211_Ideologies_Operations_Left_Centrifug.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/zc8b2rb3h/full/)

[G4b3n]

Thanks -- that's the kind of observation I've been looking to contribute / know that I can contribute, using the discussion-board format.

Offhand we might also consider this whole topic and impasse as being 'ultraleft', in a word (again, at the 'outer-reaches' of a political consensus).

And, finally, pictorially, we could conceive it as being just-outside the bounds of the 'spinning' expanse of the political spectrum:


Ideologies & Operations -- Left Centrifugalism



http://s6.postimg.org/3si9so4xd/110211_Ideologies_Operations_Left_Centrifug.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/zc8b2rb3h/full/)


But I don't think an ideological adherence to any sort of "ultra leftism" necessitates being at the outer reaches of a political consensus. Anarchists, the vast majority, want to see a society of freely associated producers existing in an advanced industrial context, which in my view makes possible a consensus with other leftists (even with the issues of localism vs centralization and so forth). But it becomes a difference of night and day when the fringes on the left of the anarchists want to abolish "civilization", as this certainly has nothing to do with socialism. Which I am sure in their view entails workers' liberation in the absence of socialism but is certainly contrary to what Marxists and most anarchists have found to be true of workers' liberation. So do you believe that we cannot assume this to be true until we have an in depth discussion of what constitutes "civilization" (which would define opposition to it)? And if you assume this position to be true, then why should socialists pretend to be allies with anti-civers in the struggle against capitalism?

And if by ultra left you mean those exclusively at the outer reaches of a left political consensus, then these (along with primitivists and the like, who were not really relevant in the discourse the term was born out of) would have to be the only actual ultra leftists.

[ckaihatsu]

But I don't think an ideological adherence to any sort of "ultra leftism" necessitates being at the outer reaches of a political consensus.


Yes, by definition, it would.

I like to use the example of 'The revolution should happen tomorrow' -- anyone who bases their *entire politics* on this line, literally, would be 'ultraleft', because it's simply too unrealistic of a position / demand for the sake of politicizing and organizing around.

*Worse still* would be an 'ideological adherence' to ultraleftism, because it would be so unrealistic, so consistently, that it would barely register as 'politics' within a reasonable mind -- it would seem more as *posturing*, for the sake of shock-value, fashion, or anything else similarly frivolous.





Anarchists, the vast majority,


(Hmmmm....)





want to see a society of freely associated producers existing in an advanced industrial context, which in my view makes possible a consensus with other leftists (even with the issues of localism vs centralization and so forth).


Agreed.





But it becomes a difference of night and day when the fringes on the left of the anarchists want to abolish "civilization",


I myself interpret this position to be simply that of 'anti-capitalism', as I mentioned at post #47:





I'll note for the record that although the author claims to *not* be purely negative, that's *exactly* what it is -- it's a *negation* of the current, capitalist model, which is a *good* thing.


---





as this certainly has nothing to do with socialism. Which I am sure in their view entails workers' liberation


Socialism and workers' liberation are synonymous.





in the absence of socialism but is certainly contrary to what Marxists


You're positing a false dichotomy since socialism / workers' liberation would *not* be the 'absence of socialism' -- so it would not be contrary to Marxism, either.





and most anarchists have found to be true of workers' liberation.


(Ditto.)





So do you believe that we cannot assume this to be true until we have an in depth discussion of what constitutes "civilization" (which would define opposition to it)? And if you assume this position to be true, then why should socialists pretend to be allies with anti-civers in the struggle against capitalism?


I'll refer you back to my 'deep shit' about this:





[T]his political terrain here is serving as a kind of 'outer-fringe' area for exchanges within the revolutionary 'psyche' -- it's *so* ill-defined that people are just *projecting* their most-personal political lines *onto* it, like a revealing of one's subconscious.


Again, I take the generic 'anti-civ' position to be one of 'anti-capitalism'.





And if by ultra left you mean those exclusively at the outer reaches of a left political consensus, then these (along with primitivists and the like, who were not really relevant in the discourse the term was born out of) would have to be the only actual ultra leftists.


No, I don't consider the generic 'anti-civ' position to be ultraleft, I consider it to be 'anti-capitalism' at its base.

There are obviously *variations* on it, which would have to be specified and addressed one at a time.

[ckaihatsu]

Sorry -- I think I was misinterpreting your actual meanings there.

Here's 'Take Two':





But it becomes a difference of night and day when the fringes on the left of the anarchists want to abolish "civilization", as this certainly has nothing to do with socialism.


I understand, and I think that, yes, we do need to have some solid definitions first.

But, that said, if we go by a normal understanding of 'civilization' -- leaving it undefined, to gut-instinct -- then, yes, calling for abolishing civilization would be contrary to a regular definition of socialism.





Which I am sure in their view entails workers' liberation in the absence of socialism but is certainly contrary to what Marxists and most anarchists have found to be true of workers' liberation.


Yes, understood, agreed.





So do you believe that we cannot assume this to be true until we have an in depth discussion of what constitutes "civilization" (which would define opposition to it)?


I would say that 'civilization' is 'cooperative, possibly large-scale, projects for science or art that establish formal roles for individuals in relation to the larger goals'.

So the point is -- as others have indicated -- that one's own inclinations are no longer necessarily *organic* and out of immediate necessity (even if cooperatively), but are formally socialized, regularized, and for decidedly *discretionary* (non-essential) social objectives.

That said, one could argue that art and science *are* 'essential', but the question would then be if these pursuits are being done out of *direct personal necessity*, or not.

Socialism, of course, would have no problem with planned, large-scale endeavors that would be out-of-scale to the individual, and at some degree of speculation and experimentation as to social and technical outcomes.





And if you assume this position to be true, then why should socialists pretend to be allies with anti-civers in the struggle against capitalism?


I'd have no problem with any anti-capitalist united front with all anti-capitalists.

[Black Panther]

Anti-globalism, anti-capitalism, not anti-civilization!

I know what people mean by anti-civilization but I think it's the wrong term anyway. Civilization is the process that made us civilized.

[BIXX]

I know what people mean by anti-civilization

I truly doubt that.

[Quail]

Whenever anti-civilisation threads come up, there always seems to be this exchange where anti-civ people claim that nobody else knows what civilisation means. Could someone humour me and explain it, or link to some kind of introductory text?

What would a post-civilisation world look like? What's the end goal? I know that a lot of people say "we can't make blueprints of the future" but in a lot of ways I think that's a cop-out. While it's true that we can't know for sure what a post-revolutionary society would look like, I think with our end goals in mind (i.e. no classes, no state, no currency) we can have some idea... Maybe if you talked about how social relations might change, then people would understand where you're coming from more.

[Ele'ill]

Whenever anti-civilisation threads come up, there always seems to be this exchange where anti-civ people claim that nobody else knows what civilisation means. Could someone humour me and explain it, or link to some kind of introductory text?

I think that through discussion the anti-civ position has been clarified a few thousand times with varying takes on your questions below including what I've posted so far in this thread. It is always a majority of people who don't know and don't really care what an anti-civ position is, talking at people who are interested in the anti-civ line of criticisms, about things like 'banging rocks together' and 'hunter gatherer societies'. I have posted 2 pretty clear criticisms in this thread and neither have been addressed. This is how it appears to me anyways in 100% of threads on the topic since about 2005 when I joined. This is the same as the topics of work, as an example.


What would a post-civilisation world look like? What's the end goal? I know that a lot of people say "we can't make blueprints of the future" but in a lot of ways I think that's a cop-out. While it's true that we can't know for sure what a post-revolutionary society would look like, I think with our end goals in mind (i.e. no classes, no state, no currency) we can have some idea... Maybe if you talked about how social relations might change, then people would understand where you're coming from more.

These are valid questions but I think the error is in viewing anti-civ as a political position or program and it isn't, it is a series of criticisms. I could only share conclusions from following its path as a critique and this weaves in and out of other tendencies that seem to make sense (to me) in conjunction with it. Not all theory has the purpose of offering up a solution or a vision at all and I don't see a problem with that. I think that it is possible to go online and find articles with anti-civ as a buzzword where primitivism is the topic, or bad ideas not yet attributed to primitivism (which would be a good new username) as the topic. I also know that there are a few different takes on anti-civ, but instead of asking users on here to defend those positions in order to engage civilization as an idea I think users should just read what we're actually posting.

[Alet]

I think that through discussion the anti-civ position has been clarified a few thousand times with varying takes on your questions below including what I've posted so far in this thread. It is always a majority of people who don't know and don't really care what an anti-civ position is, talking at people who are interested in the anti-civ line of criticisms, about things like 'banging rocks together' and 'hunter gatherer societies'. I have posted 2 pretty clear criticisms in this thread and neither have been addressed. This is how it appears to me anyways in 100% of threads on the topic since about 2005 when I joined. This is the same as the topics of work, as an example.



These are valid questions but I think the error is in viewing anti-civ as a political position or program and it isn't, it is a series of criticisms. I could only share conclusions from following its path as a critique and this weaves in and out of other tendencies that seem to make sense (to me) in conjunction with it. Not all theory has the purpose of offering up a solution or a vision at all and I don't see a problem with that. I think that it is possible to go online and find articles with anti-civ as a buzzword where primitivism is the topic, or bad ideas not yet attributed to primitivism (which would be a good new username) as the topic. I also know that there are a few different takes on anti-civ, but instead of asking users on here to defend those positions in order to engage civilization as an idea I think users should just read what we're actually posting.

I still don't get it. So you cannot describe what a post-civilized society would look like, but you can reject that it is similar to hunter gatherer tribes? How are we even able to criticize it, when nobody knows what we are talking about? And if it is not possible to offer a solution, how are we even supposed to oppose these "problems"? It seems like we have to live with that shit, so what is the point in criticizing?

[Ele'ill]

But I don't think an ideological adherence to any sort of "ultra leftism" necessitates being at the outer reaches of a political consensus. Anarchists, the vast majority, want to see a society of freely associated producers existing in an advanced industrial context, which in my view makes possible a consensus with other leftists (even with the issues of localism vs centralization and so forth). But it becomes a difference of night and day when the fringes on the left of the anarchists want to abolish "civilization", as this certainly has nothing to do with socialism.



Which I am sure in their view entails workers' liberation in the absence of socialism but is certainly contrary to what Marxists and most anarchists have found to be true of workers' liberation.

So you're going to enable autonomy and worker's liberation through a revolution that creates an environment where people are born into the coercive social body that is society, that still requires work to obtain currency, still having jobs, employment for that matter, which will be enforced by cops, courts, and prisons? This does not sound like liberation to me it sounds like supplantation to destroy the order within and over civilization in order to remanage and keep the entirey of it as being inherent to humans.


So do you believe that we cannot assume this to be true until we have an in depth discussion of what constitutes "civilization" (which would define opposition to it)? And if you assume this position to be true, then why should socialists pretend to be allies with anti-civers in the struggle against capitalism?

I don't know that 'socialists'/communists/anarchists would inherently be allies but I could guess some would be mainly because the questions posed above are imo okay or maybe even good questions/criticisms coming from communist/anarchist tendencies

[Ele'ill]

I still don't get it. So you cannot describe what a post-civilized society would look like, but you can reject that it is similar to hunter gatherer tribes?

No I can't imagine global insurrection and communist measures with our current sprawl and technology leading to hunter gatherer tribes the way they are described in these threads. What I can see changing is how people view autonomy regarding the presupposition of society and civilization (and institutions, organizations, roles) as being inherent to humans or human's future.



How are we even able to criticize it, when nobody knows what we are talking about? And if it is not possible to offer a solution, how are we even supposed to oppose these "problems"? It seems like we have to live with that shit, so what is the point in criticizing?

It is pretty clear what is being talked about when someone presents criticisms, questions, or what they feel are lapses/oversights in other tendencies or ideas often ones that they generally agree with. The problems are in the tendencies that anti-civ as a critique would point out.

[Quail]

One thing I don't quite understand is when people say, "Well what if I don't want to work?"

There are a certain number of tasks that need to be done to keep each person alive (whether or not we call it work), so unless by not wanting to work you mean you want to starve to death in piles of your own rubbish, then you are going to have to do some of those tasks. It makes sense to me to have a way of sharing the work between more people, but if everyone takes the attitude "fuck doing anything I don't want to do" then I don't really see humans getting very far. Shouldn't the goal be to create a world where we minimise the amount of boring shit we have to do so that we can do more interesting and fulfilling things with our time? I don't know how that can be achieved without some form of organisation, cooperation and willingness to do things for other people and our communities.

[Alet]

No I can't imagine global insurrection and communist measures with our current sprawl and technology leading to hunter gatherer tribes the way they are described in these threads.

Well, this is the problem I have with anti-civ so far. I cannot imagine this will lead to any post-civilized world. You mentioned technology, most of our technologies are dependent on civilization. How do you expect people to reject these? I don't know how this could happen, neither as a process nor as a revolution. I don't know why people would suddenly relinquish civilization. This is like criticizing death, it might be justified, but you cannot prevent it.

[MethodMania]

Anti-civ thought is what happens when people spend too much time sitting around smoking weed and playing "what if" games with their stoner friends who all agree that it sounds profound, maaaaaaan. That's all well and good, the problem is when they decide it's a good idea to post about it online.

[Ele'ill]

One thing I don't quite understand is when people say, "Well what if I don't want to work?"

There are a certain number of tasks that need to be done to keep each person alive (whether or not we call it work), so unless by not wanting to work you mean you want to starve to death in piles of your own rubbish, then you are going to have to do some of those tasks.

People don't say 'I dont' want to function ever again' or 'I don't want to have fun'. The focus of criticism is primarily on work, jobs, and their enforcement.



It makes sense to me to have a way of sharing the work between more people, but if everyone takes the attitude "fuck doing anything I don't want to do" then I don't really see humans getting very far.

Right but the criticism still stands that the amount of things that need to be done are not instances of simple daily functions on a personal level they are inherently societal in that they have to be done for an entirely non-emergent preconfiguration, society and for civilization



Shouldn't the goal be to create a world where we minimise the amount of boring shit we have to do so that we can do more interesting and fulfilling things with our time? I don't know how that can be achieved without some form of organisation, cooperation and willingness to do things for other people and our communities.

It wouldn't be willingness if organisation and cooperation are preconfigured and enforced. Without preconfiguration and enforcement it becomes emergent and I am more interested in these emergergent ideas whether anarchist or communist. So to ask again, how will work, jobs, employment, whatever, be enforced? What happens when nobody wants to do tasks?

[Ele'ill]

Well, this is the problem I have with anti-civ so far. I cannot imagine this will lead to any post-civilized world. You mentioned technology, most of our technologies are dependent on civilization. How do you expect people to reject these? I don't know how this could happen, neither as a process nor as a revolution. I don't know why people would suddenly relinquish civilization. This is like criticizing death, it might be justified, but you cannot prevent it.

What do you mean when you say tech being dependent on civilization?







Anti-civ thought is what happens when people spend too much time sitting around smoking weed and playing "what if" games with their stoner friends who all agree that it sounds profound, maaaaaaan. That's all well and good, the problem is when they decide it's a good idea to post about it online.

oh shit the sacred online has been soiled by a thread somewhere

[Quail]

People don't say 'I dont' want to function ever again' or 'I don't want to have fun'. The focus of criticism is primarily on work, jobs, and their enforcement.

Right but the criticism still stands that the amount of things that need to be done are not instances of simple daily functions on a personal level they are inherently societal in that they have to be done for an entirely non-emergent preconfiguration, society and for civilization

It wouldn't be willingness if organisation and cooperation are preconfigured and enforced. Without preconfiguration and enforcement it becomes emergent and I am more interested in these emergergent ideas whether anarchist or communist. So to ask again, how will work, jobs, employment, whatever, be enforced? What happens when nobody wants to do tasks?

If nobody wants to do anything then shit doesn't get done? In that respect I don't think you'd need any form of enforcement, because working has its own incentives/rewards... i.e. working improves the quality of life for you and those around you. So really I don't think that people not wanting to do stuff would be a major issue. If everybody refuses to do anything, then everything goes to shit and our lives will be kind of miserable.

I'm certainly not saying this from a perspective where I think people should be forced to work to eat, and I don't think many people would argue for that kind of system in a post-revolutionary society. Compulsory, futile toil is a big thing that anarchists generally oppose and for good reason.

I'm not sure I quite understand the second paragraph. It's late and I'm tired, so I apologise if I'm misunderstanding. What is the problem with doing things for a community rather then purely for yourself as an individual? What about something like sewage/waste disposal? Wouldn't it make sense to coordinate with other people so that you can all make sure you're not pissing in each other's drinking water (for example)? Doesn't it make sense for a group of people to share the responsibility of growing some vegetables so that they can all eat, instead of doing it individually? A community of people who feel a collective responsibility to look after one another are probably far more likely to be able to live happily and healthily than a group of people who only care about themselves as individuals.

[Quail]

But also, out of curiosity, what do you think happens when people don't want to do the tasks necessary for survival?

[Ele'ill]

But also, out of curiosity, what do you think happens when people don't want to do the tasks necessary for survival?


I think human interactions change, communities change but not as communities that we are aware of as they exist now, how and what we have come to understand as human changes. There is an insurrectional break with what we've taken as intrinsic to us because it isn't.


I have 11% battery and I ran out of weed and stoner friends to say things like 'maaan' before posting about it online. In short I think things change in an emergent manner. Will be back later.

[ckaihatsu]

One thing I don't quite understand is when people say, "Well what if I don't want to work?"

There are a certain number of tasks that need to be done to keep each person alive (whether or not we call it work), so unless by not wanting to work you mean you want to starve to death in piles of your own rubbish, then you are going to have to do some of those tasks. It makes sense to me to have a way of sharing the work between more people, but if everyone takes the attitude "fuck doing anything I don't want to do" then I don't really see humans getting very far. Shouldn't the goal be to create a world where we minimise the amount of boring shit we have to do so that we can do more interesting and fulfilling things with our time? I don't know how that can be achieved without some form of organisation, cooperation and willingness to do things for other people and our communities.





It wouldn't be willingness if organisation and cooperation are preconfigured and enforced. Without preconfiguration and enforcement it becomes emergent and I am more interested in these emergergent ideas whether anarchist or communist. So to ask again, how will work, jobs, employment, whatever, be enforced? What happens when nobody wants to do tasks?


I'm getting the sense that both of your mindsets tend to the 'community' configuration of society -- which also seems to be that of the 'anti-civ' mindset, as well.

I'll suggest that society has already well-surpassed the simplistic 'community' scale of organization, and that larger-scale kinds of organization would probably be the norm, post-capitalism.

Certainly this very notion will cause many to recoil in anxiety, since it evokes a sense of 'cookie-cutter faceless job roles', but I think this kind of political reservation is misplaced.

More to the point, I would say, is to have a broad-based social cooperation that includes regularized work roles, on a grand overall scale, but that are sheerly voluntary and non-mandatory.

The *benefit* of large-scale organization can't be ignored, because even if only a *fraction* of the population decides to participate in industrial-type production, the *productivity* that would result would be *phenomenal* (especially without the subtraction of labor value for bribes / profits), and effectively *many communities* would be the recipients of such mass-produced free-access and direct-distribution.

The knee-jerk instinct here, of course, is to think of regularized roles as being dehumanizing and pure drudgery, but in the hands of workers' organization, they could very well be broadly dynamic and quickly yield a transformation to a 'Jetsons' kind of future where labor effort is no longer really effort but rather is merely the expression of *intention* on the part of the consumer.

Any further implementations of (technological) transformations might just be left to 'the IT guys' -- those who would remain so-interested in that kind of thing, out of individual inclination, while the bulk of society just gets their coffee with the push of a button, receives their news from a flat monitor, and hops into vehicles that go anywhere instantly by voice command.

[BIXX]

I'm getting the sense that both of your mindsets tend to the 'community' configuration of society -- which also seems to be that of the 'anti-civ' mindset, as well.


While I can't speak for Mari3L I feel I can pretty safely say you're wrong about that. I would argue that community itself is coercion (; believe something Mari3L said in the past.

[Quail]

Anti-civ thought is what happens when people spend too much time sitting around smoking weed and playing "what if" games with their stoner friends who all agree that it sounds profound, maaaaaaan. That's all well and good, the problem is when they decide it's a good idea to post about it online.

If you don't have any actual criticisms, don't bother making posts. I'll let you off with a warning this time, but all posts like this do is derail the thread.

[Ele'ill]

I'm getting the sense that both of your mindsets tend to the 'community' configuration of society -- which also seems to be that of the 'anti-civ' mindset, as well.

@ckaihatsu and PC, you both are right, I think we could criticise community or human social behavior but only because of and through the criticism of civilization. I am interested in what community and social groupings would look like after, which is what I meant when I mentioned an insurrectional break with what we have come to see as intrinsic or inherent to us as a species.



I'll suggest that society has already well-surpassed the simplistic 'community' scale of organization, and that larger-scale kinds of organization would probably be the norm, post-capitalism.

What exactly are you comparing the larger-scale 'modern' organization forms to when you say simplistic?


Certainly this very notion will cause many to recoil in anxiety, since it evokes a sense of 'cookie-cutter faceless job roles', but I think this kind of political reservation is misplaced.



More to the point, I would say, is to have a broad-based social cooperation that includes regularized work roles, on a grand overall scale, but that are sheerly voluntary and non-mandatory.

The *benefit* of large-scale organization can't be ignored, because even if only a *fraction* of the population decides to participate in industrial-type production, the *productivity* that would result would be *phenomenal* (especially without the subtraction of labor value for bribes / profits), and effectively *many communities* would be the recipients of such mass-produced free-access and direct-distribution.

The knee-jerk instinct here, of course, is to think of regularized roles as being dehumanizing and pure drudgery, but in the hands of workers' organization, they could very well be broadly dynamic and quickly yield a transformation to a 'Jetsons' kind of future where labor effort is no longer really effort but rather is merely the expression of *intention* on the part of the consumer.

Any further implementations of (technological) transformations might just be left to 'the IT guys' -- those who would remain so-interested in that kind of thing, out of individual inclination, while the bulk of society just gets their coffee with the push of a button, receives their news from a flat monitor, and hops into vehicles that go anywhere instantly by voice command.

Just to add to the last paragraph of your post about IT fields I think the same would be the case for folks from paramedics up to more advanced surgeons. I don't know if its true but I read somewhere that most doctors die relatively young and die in debt from their medical schooling. Regardless, I think most people in those fields genuinely are interested in it.

Regarding production, if everyone has the ability to have things, even eliminating duplication of products in exchange for the literally nicest things ever, I can see problems regarding resource extraction and production methods, in regards to tech not catching up in time. I'm not suggesting that tech is sluggish by any means and I can think of some sci fi stuff like racing around outside the eerily sterile global technate bubbles on a grav-cycle in the otherwise completely rewilded earth, all in a relative perfect balance with humans having the capacity to handle serious issues when they arise. You are not born into society you are simply born. People and groups of people move around, I dont see this as being much different from what is alluded to in a lot of tendencies or theories, insurrectionary communism. My issue is that we will never arrive at such a wonderful future if we are crippled by the ritual of compromising autonomy by trying to recreate civilization that we have come to see as human. Do you know what I mean when I don't consider the above cliche technate/rewilded balanced existence as civilization?

tbh the issues I have regarding this topic has nothing to do with sectarianism and I feel like a lot of people react like it is. The issues have everything to do with how most people/forum users can't even engage with the ideas being presented because they have completely overlooked or ignored the criticisms and generally don't know what to do with new ideas.

[ckaihatsu]

@ckaihatsu and PC, you both are right, I think we could criticise community or human social behavior but only because of and through the criticism of civilization. I am interested in what community and social groupings would look like after, which is what I meant when I mentioned an insurrectional break with what we have come to see as intrinsic or inherent to us as a species.




What exactly are you comparing the larger-scale 'modern' organization forms to when you say simplistic?


I'm saying that 'community' forms of organization, for production -- think 'pastoralism' here -- are nowhere *near* the scale of social organization that's used for modern society and industrial production, for everyday consumer products.





Social organization

There is not an explicit form of social organization associated with pastoralism. Pastoral societies are often organized in tribes, with the ‘household,' often incorporating the extended family, as a basic unit for organization of labor and expenses[1] Lineages are often the root for property rights. Mobility allows groups of pastoralists to leave and regroup as resources permit, or as sought after with changes in social relations.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastoral_society


---





Just to add to the last paragraph of your post about IT fields I think the same would be the case for folks from paramedics up to more advanced surgeons. I don't know if its true but I read somewhere that most doctors die relatively young and die in debt from their medical schooling. Regardless, I think most people in those fields genuinely are interested in it.


Okay, so the specific *field* isn't important, but rather it's the *chosen specialization* that matters -- I imagine that, while a communist-type society would have a collective interest in *not*-encouraging specialization (contrary to today's norm of privatization-orientation), nonetheless people's own *inclinations* for work activity might not bring everybody up to become total *generalists*.

In other words people's *tastes* for work would be what they are, and not just anyone would necessarily *want* to work with computer languages or emergency medicine, respectively.

As long as society had *enough* people in the appropriate fields for a total productive output of *whatever* (that society wants), then supply would match-up to demand, and it would be a 'success'.





Regarding production, if everyone has the ability to have things, even eliminating duplication of products in exchange for the literally nicest things ever, I can see problems regarding resource extraction and production methods, in regards to tech not catching up in time. I'm not suggesting that tech is sluggish by any means


You're *contradicting* yourself here, and being unclear as a result -- it sounds like you're starting to say that a collectivist *centralization* could be possible, but that, for some reason, there would be 'problems' with resource extraction and 'production methods', due to the technology used for the same.

You may want to specify or elaborate here.





and I can think of some sci fi stuff like racing around outside the eerily sterile global technate bubbles on a grav-cycle in the otherwise completely rewilded earth, all in a relative perfect balance with humans having the capacity to handle serious issues when they arise.


This part sounds like the humanity-vs.-civilization issue being addressed by having humanity *off the planet* altogether. (!)





You are not born into society you are simply born.


Sorry, but we all *are* social beings, and not autonomous, free-floating individual units:





It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.




https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm


---





People and groups of people move around, I dont see this as being much different from what is alluded to in a lot of tendencies or theories, insurrectionary communism.


I don't understand how 'people and groups of people move around' is related to insurrectionary communism.





My issue is that we will never arrive at such a wonderful future if we are crippled by the ritual of compromising autonomy by trying to recreate civilization that we have come to see as human. Do you know what I mean when I don't consider the above cliche technate/rewilded balanced existence as civilization?


I guess I don't *quite* follow -- that sci-fi paradigm would be some sort of attempt to have a high-tech civilization while also not-imposing on earth's natural world in the least, is what I'm getting.

You're *critiquing* this 'glistening commons' as requiring too much of a price, in terms of people having to collectively *build* that structure in the first place, for it to exist as 'civilization'.





tbh the issues I have regarding this topic has nothing to do with sectarianism and I feel like a lot of people react like it is. The issues have everything to do with how most people/forum users can't even engage with the ideas being presented because they have completely overlooked or ignored the criticisms and generally don't know what to do with new ideas.


I'm certainly *open* to any detailed discussion on this topic -- I'm gathering that you're getting at the societal philosophical issue of autonomy-vs.-collectivism/civilization.

[MethodMania]

oh shit the sacred online has been soiled by a thread somewhere

It's no skin off my nose, it's just embarrassing for you.


I would argue that community itself is coercion

Oh shit the sacred autonomy has been soiled by the coercive community!

One gets the sense that if these anti-civ folks were zebras they'd complain about running with the herd, forgetting that in doing so they become part of the massive blur of stripes that helps protect each individual from being singled out by predators. But never mind all that! I want to run free! Freeeeeee!

Good luck, Crusoe. While you're off on your own, dying somewhere, the rest of us will survive -- under the oppressive yoke of community.


If you don't have any actual criticisms, don't bother making posts. I'll let you off with a warning this time, but all posts like this do is derail the thread.

Sure thing boss. This post contains actual criticism. You might not like the mocking tone but that's the best I can muster for anti-civ. Please inform if you'd prefer that I address sociopaths with hat in hand.

[BIXX]

It's no skin off my nose, it's just embarrassing for you.



Oh shit the sacred autonomy has been soiled by the coercive community!

One gets the sense that if these anti-civ folks were zebras they'd complain about running with the herd, forgetting that in doing so they become part of the massive blur of stripes that helps protect each individual from being singled out by predators.

Except that there are major differences between us and zebras. We are not a intrinsically communal species, not or we intrinsically loners. The point of autonomy is the choice- free association. A zebra is not forced to run tmwith the heard if it desires to do something else- of course it may be killed, but at least it died autonomously.

I suspect that a Zebra would not only be more likely to understand what I'm saying, but also completely oppose not having the ability to make decisions based on its own will rather than that of others. But of course you wouldn't understand that, you're Leviathan's sycophant.

You have no idea what community is, and in fact always has been. I'm not interested in forming newer more healthy communities because I think that's ignoring the violence intrinsic to community, but rather seeing the ways in which humans would relate to each other granted total autonomy.

The rest of your post sounded like Elmo and so that's where I cut your quote.

[Quail]

My kneejerk reaction to the idea of acting on one's own will rather than taking into account the needs and wants of other people (e.g. family, friends, neighbours) is that it sounds immature, like something a teenager would say, and selfish.

When I make decisions, even in some ideal world, I need to take into account the needs of my son (or any children I might be responsible for), the needs and wants of my partner, my friends, and so on. It would be wrong of me to (for example) decide to go on a week-long bender, because I have a responsibility to be sober to my kid and my partner, because they need me to look after them, share in the housework (and in this society, earn money). I don't see those kinds of responsibilities (except the earning money part, obviously) disappearing in a post-revolutionary society. Doing whatever you want without caring about other people's needs and desires is not a recipe for a happy life, unless you have no responsibilities or relationships to speak of, in which case I guess it doesn't matter.

I guess the point is, as soon as people have friendships or relationships, decide to cooperate to make a certain task easier, give birth to children... If you want to maintain your relationships, stay on good terms with the people who you're cooperating with, or not neglect the children, you then have to consider the needs and the will of other people as well as your own. You could choose not to, but for want of a better expression, that would be a massive dick move, and yeah, the people around you would probably try to "coerce" you into not being a dick. But is social pressure to not be a dick really such a bad thing?

[BIXX]

My kneejerk reaction to the idea of acting on one's own will rather than taking into account the needs and wants of other people (e.g. family, friends, neighbours) is that it sounds immature, like something a teenager would say, and selfish.

I don't really think being selfish is a bad thing.

However I do think that the problem is that communities have proven themselves 100% of the time in my life to be completely fucking poisonous with shit people in them having the most social capital and anyone who is interesting or not terrible gets slowly pushed out.


When I make decisions, even in some ideal world, I need to take into account the needs of my son (or any children I might be responsible for), the needs and wants of my partner, my friends, and so on. It would be wrong of me to (for example) decide to go on a week-long bender, because I have a responsibility to be sober to my kid and my partner, because they need me to look after them, share in the housework (and in this society, earn money). I don't see those kinds of responsibilities (except the earning money part, obviously) disappearing in a post-revolutionary society.
I don't think that there will be a post-revolution society for two reasons: the revolution will never happen, and even if a revolution did happen it'd (judging by what almost all of the users on this site think, say, and want) be exactly like capitalism.
But to realistically respond to your criticism: do you want to take care of your child? Your partner? Friends? I know you do. So do it. That's your decision to make. But I don't really think that it's your responsibility.



Doing whatever you want without caring about other people's needs and desires is not a recipe for a happy life, unless you have no responsibilities or relationships to speak of, in which case I guess it doesn't matter.
That's not what we advocate though- we advocate autonomy. Why, as an autonomous person, would you do something that makes you unhappy?


I guess the point is, as soon as people have friendships or relationships, decide to cooperate to make a certain task easier, give birth to children... If you want to maintain your relationships, stay on good terms with the people who you're cooperating with, or not neglect the children, you then have to consider the needs and the will of other people as well as your own. You could choose not to, but for want of a better expression, that would be a massive dick move, and yeah, the people around you would probably try to "coerce" you into not being a dick. But is social pressure to not be a dick really such a bad thing?

I think that most people would choose to take care of their families and their friends. But I also don't think they should have to. Yeah it's be a dick move, but I'm also into revenge.

[ckaihatsu]

Clientelism.

'Nuff said.

[Quail]

I don't really think being selfish is a bad thing.

However I do think that the problem is that communities have proven themselves 100% of the time in my life to be completely fucking poisonous with shit people in them having the most social capital and anyone who is interesting or not terrible gets slowly pushed out.

Being selfish sometimes is necessary, but being selfish all the time just makes someone intolerable and unpleasant to be around.

I agree that communities can be poisonous. Often I think that is due to fucked up power dynamics because even "anarchist" communities end up replicating the oppressive social structures in wider society. But your bad experience of "communities" doesn't make them inherently a bad thing. Groups of people can (and do) also support and look after each other.

What is your alternative to "communities," though? Is there a viable alternative? As soon as a group of people start working and living together, it becomes a "community," so unless everyone lives by themselves, totally isolated from the rest of humanity, I'm not sure how we avoid living in communities.


I don't think that there will be a post-revolution society for two reasons: the revolution will never happen, and even if a revolution did happen it'd (judging by what almost all of the users on this site think, say, and want) be exactly like capitalism.
But to realistically respond to your criticism: do you want to take care of your child? Your partner? Friends? I know you do. So do it. That's your decision to make. But I don't really think that it's your responsibility.

Of course I want to do these things overall. But sometimes, I despair of how difficult it is being a parent, and it's hard, and I don't want to spend an hour every evening waiting for my son to slowly mess around and play with his tea. I don't always enjoy parenting. But it kind of has to be done, doesn't it? I guess it's the same when a friend/partner needs you. You probably aren't going to be hugely enthusiastic about waiting with them in A&E or dropping your other plans to lend them a shoulder to cry on, but it's something you do because you'd be a terrible friend/partner if you didn't. I think when you have a relationship with someone, whether you're their parent, partner or friend, that relationship does come with some obligations... How much can you really care about someone if you're not willing to include their needs in your decision-making?


[QUOTE=Quail;2844191]Doing whatever you want without caring about other people's needs and desires is not a recipe for a happy life, unless you have no responsibilities or relationships to speak of, in which case I guess it doesn't matter.[/QUAIL]
That's not what we advocate though- we advocate autonomy. Why, as an autonomous person, would you do something that makes you unhappy?

Because I don't think the world is as simple as "things that make you happy" and "things that make you unhappy." Sometimes you have to do things that make you briefly unhappy for a larger goal of future happiness. Sure, if something makes you miserable and only makes you miserable, then don't do it. But I think it's very naive to think that a life where you literally never have to do anything that makes you unhappy can exist.


I think that most people would choose to take care of their families and their friends. But I also don't think they should have to. Yeah it's be a dick move, but I'm also into revenge.
I don't know if I understand the idea of "family" and "friends" who you aren't willing to take care of. Most people who I consider friends are friends precisely because we take care of each other in some way. If you aren't able to take care of someone, then fair enough, but if you are able and you choose not to then you're not really being a friend.

[Ele'ill]

I'm saying that 'community' forms of organization, for production -- think 'pastoralism' here -- are nowhere *near* the scale of social organization that's used for modern society and industrial production, for everyday consumer products.

Regarding the scale the comment, I don't care if some people want to do the pastoralism, community or city garden/orchard thing, but I agree with what you're saying and again would be interested to see how tech, biotech, like the intelligent use of gmo as an example, plays a part in that future we're talking about. I think you might still be viewing my posts through a primitivist lens and I am not a primitivist, what we're talking about in this thread isn't enough to be anywhere close to a tendency.
















Okay, so the specific *field* isn't important, but rather it's the *chosen specialization* that matters -- I imagine that, while a communist-type society would have a collective interest in *not*-encouraging specialization (contrary to today's norm of privatization-orientation), nonetheless people's own *inclinations* for work activity might not bring everybody up to become total *generalists*.

In other words people's *tastes* for work would be what they are, and not just anyone would necessarily *want* to work with computer languages or emergency medicine, respectively.

As long as society had *enough* people in the appropriate fields for a total productive output of *whatever* (that society wants), then supply would match-up to demand, and it would be a 'success'.

Yeah I largely agree with what you're saying here (I think), however I can't see much of that being preconfigured and I wouldn't want it to be mandatory to any extent at all.






You're *contradicting* yourself here, and being unclear as a result -- it sounds like you're starting to say that a collectivist *centralization* could be possible, but that, for some reason, there would be 'problems' with resource extraction and 'production methods', due to the technology used for the same.

You may want to specify or elaborate here.

I'm just saying that I don't think the tech exists to offer clean resource extraction or waste management and with a possibly increased demand it would have to be dealt with, I am offering a criticism but am expecting and open to theoretical solutions to it although perhaps a separate discussion.






This part sounds like the humanity-vs.-civilization issue being addressed by having humanity *off the planet* altogether. (!)

I am saying that unless we address our current impact on the biosphere, unless we are already completely fucked, we will be completely fucked outside of scenarios that are too far in the future to see without sci-fi being involved like moving to another planet or solar system. The above was just an example. I think that is the opposite of humans off the planet all together, I want humans to abolish civilization and flourish but again I am not using the word civilization to represent our physical being on the planet, it is the manner in which we exist here and the manner in which we interact with one another.






Sorry, but we all *are* social beings, and not autonomous, free-floating individual units:

I don't think we are inherently social to the point that coercion into social systems is just not a thing at all. I don't mind helping people I mind being forced to help people as an existence in exchange for my life. Hence this not being a tendency discussion and being a critical question asked towards topics like work and 'family' etc..




I don't understand how 'people and groups of people move around' is related to insurrectionary communism.

The current constraints on physical mobility revolves around adherence to civilization and society (currency, jobs, savings) when there's an insurrectionary break with this, with immediate communist measures, I don't see people remaining as inanimated as they currently are in the sense I'm talking about. I don't see industry doing that either whether that might mean changing or vanishing and popping up somehwere else over time. This is also what I mean when I say the future we're talking about (and the process there) should or will be more emergent rather than preconfigured although I don't see everything suddenly being fluid.






I guess I don't *quite* follow -- that sci-fi paradigm would be some sort of attempt to have a high-tech civilization while also not-imposing on earth's natural world in the least, is what I'm getting.

I am not down with the humans need to not leave a footprint bullshit because all animals leave traces of their existence, that's called living. I don't know what that has to do with what I said though.


You're *critiquing* this 'glistening commons' as requiring too much of a price, in terms of people having to collectively *build* that structure in the first place, for it to exist as 'civilization'.

the criticism isn't that it has too much of a price imo it's that it isn't an actual break from what civilization is and imo civilization is coercion






I'm certainly *open* to any detailed discussion on this topic -- I'm gathering that you're getting at the societal philosophical issue of autonomy-vs.-collectivism/civilization.

Yes! I would actually like to talk more about this since it is a criticism and not a tendency. I'm approaching this from a tendency position pretty close to insurrectionary communism.

[Art Vandelay]

if a revolution did happen it'd (judging by what almost all of the users on this site think, say, and want) be exactly like capitalism.

What the vast majority of users on this site advocate, is a stateless classless society of free producers - ranging from folks who could be accurately described as revolutionary leftists, to those who are merely ostensibly so. How on earth would that be 'exactly like capitalism'?

I swear some of the things you say on this site - like the above, or that there has 'never been a revolutionary movement' - are either the product of a tendency to redefine words as if they didn't have specific meanings, or an absolutely breathtaking level of ignorance.

[Ele'ill]

My kneejerk reaction to the idea of acting on one's own will rather than taking into account the needs and wants of other people (e.g. family, friends, neighbours) is that it sounds immature, like something a teenager would say, and selfish.

A system that forces people to interact with others and in a certain way is coercive as the criticisms of the nuclear family, school, religion and other such civilized things points towards it is no surprise that there are so many broken and rebellious youth.



When I make decisions, even in some ideal world, I need to take into account the needs of my son (or any children I might be responsible for), the needs and wants of my partner, my friends, and so on. It would be wrong of me to (for example) decide to go on a week-long bender, because I have a responsibility to be sober to my kid and my partner, because they need me to look after them, share in the housework (and in this society, earn money). I don't see those kinds of responsibilities (except the earning money part, obviously) disappearing in a post-revolutionary society.

Can you see the social relationships between parents and their kids changing at all to offer more opportunities to go on benders if you desire that more than spending time with your kid?



Doing whatever you want without caring about other people's needs and desires is not a recipe for a happy life, unless you have no responsibilities or relationships to speak of, in which case I guess it doesn't matter.

but it is what you want to do, you don't want to go on a bender more because you have a responsiblity that you want more, if people want to work 9-5 in a factory I am okay with it whatever but yeah I mean regarding pre-civ interactions there are examples of groupings of people who interacted in a more autonomous manner than is allowed now and when we turn a blind eye to how civilization has pretty much destroyed that I feel like the options towards progress will never even be options.




I guess the point is, as soon as people have friendships or relationships, decide to cooperate to make a certain task easier, give birth to children... If you want to maintain your relationships, stay on good terms with the people who you're cooperating with, or not neglect the children, you then have to consider the needs and the will of other people as well as your own.

but within the current of civilization the societies have no concern of individual's well being to begin with because they are a thing that just continues on and keeps people suspended in a non-life existence going through ritualized interactions with one another perhaps even in ways that are cooperative towards society but leave everyone very broken as people at the end of it

[Ele'ill]

It's no skin off my nose, it's just embarrassing for you.

If brinigng up criticisms and asking questions of civilization and society to other communists on a communist and anarchist internet forum is embarrassing I think maybe you should leave your insular-ghetto of author-name-dropping and memes and contribute something other than the really bad zebra post below lol




Oh shit the sacred autonomy has been soiled by the coercive community!

One gets the sense that if these anti-civ folks were zebras they'd complain about running with the herd, forgetting that in doing so they become part of the massive blur of stripes that helps protect each individual from being singled out by predators. But never mind all that! I want to run free! Freeeeeee!

A lot of animals when forced by human civilization to share space with others, even of the same species, will stop moving and eating, kill themselves (dolphins) or each other.


What the vast majority of users on this site advocate, is a stateless classless society of free producers - ranging from folks who could be accurately described as revolutionary leftists, to those who are merely ostensibly so. How on earth would that be 'exactly like capitalism'?

This is a fair post but I think where this thread has gone or the point of the certain series of criticisms that come up frequently on this forum and are misunderstood, is that it isn't simply enough or that a revolution or insurrectionary break and overthrow of capital isn't enough of a critical view, that perhaps it shouldn't stop there or perhaps it shouldn't be gone about in a certain way. It is not anti-communist or anti-anarchist because it is simply a series of observations made by anarchists and communists and turned into criticisms. I could play devil's advocate with a lot of what I've posted here, I could probably write out a back and forth fake conversation with myself, but I want to engage ideas with other people. I am okay with and it is the goal for the ideas in this thread to get discussed, I personally am not trying to lay out a program or anything.

[Quail]

A system that forces people to interact with others and in a certain way is coercive as the criticisms of the nuclear family, school, religion and other such civilized things points towards it is no surprise that there are so many broken and rebellious youth.

I don't know if there would need to be a "system" to coerce people into taking the needs of others into account though. I don't think coercion is really necessary, because the alternative is pretty unappealing. If you don't care about other people and work with other people to improve your conditions, then everyone suffers, especially you. Nobody is going to force you to be part of a community, but perhaps the difficulty of living without the aid and support of other people would.



Can you see the social relationships between parents and their kids changing at all to offer more opportunities to go on benders if you desire that more than spending time with your kid?

Yeah, I think a positive change in the way that we look after children would be to do it more communally - not primarily to enable parents to go off and get totally wasted if they wanted to, but because parenting is hard work and I don't think the isolated way that we do it nowadays is good for parents (but especially poor women). But that does require being responsible, accountable and reliable. If you say you're going to look after a group of kids one day, you can't just go awol and leave everyone else to deal with the mess you left behind (well, nobody's going to stop you, but they're probably not going to want to put up with you for very long).



but it is what you want to do, you don't want to go on a bender more because you have a responsiblity that you want more, if people want to work 9-5 in a factory I am okay with it whatever but yeah I mean regarding pre-civ interactions there are examples of groupings of people who interacted in a more autonomous manner than is allowed now and when we turn a blind eye to how civilization has pretty much destroyed that I feel like the options towards progress will never even be options.

Don't all anarchists/communists want people to be able to act more autonomously than we can now? I see mutual aid as a way of achieving a freer, more autonomous society, but it does require doing things for other people (maybe sometimes things you don't want to do). Using children as an example again, something like a childcare coop would be so beneficial to many poor parents, especially lone parents, because it would free up more of their time to focus on themselves instead of being trapped in the house, a slave to domestic drudgery. But in return for that extra freedom, they would have to spend some time looking after extra kids. Having some obligations towards other people is therefore not a bad thing because it benefits everyone including you. I guess if it was harmful, then you'd just choose not to do it, so there's no coercion, but material conditions make doing stuff communally better.




but within the current of civilization the societies have no concern of individual's well being to begin with because they are a thing that just continues on and keeps people suspended in a non-life existence going through ritualized interactions with one another perhaps even in ways that are cooperative towards society but leave everyone very broken as people at the end of it
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this, but it doesn't really sound like something anyone is arguing for.

Sorry if I've misunderstood, it's late and I'm tired. I will do some reading and come back tomorrow.

[BIXX]

Being selfish sometimes is necessary, but being selfish all the time just makes someone intolerable and unpleasant to be around.
And so don't be around them.


I agree that communities can be poisonous. Often I think that is due to fucked up power dynamics because even "anarchist" communities end up replicating the oppressive social structures in wider society. But your bad experience of "communities" doesn't make them inherently a bad thing. Groups of people can (and do) also support and look after each other.
No, its not just the fucked up power dynamics but the forcing of certain attitudes and expressions of oneself that really are expressions of the community and the mechanical acceptance and rejection of beings rather than fluid relations.

I would also say that not all groups/associations of people are communities.


What is your alternative to "communities," though? Is there a viable alternative? As soon as a group of people start working and living together, it becomes a "community," so unless everyone lives by themselves, totally isolated from the rest of humanity, I'm not sure how we avoid living in communities.
I only offer a criticism but I agai. Will say that not all groups are communities so that may be a good direction for human relations to move in.


Of course I want to do these things overall. But sometimes, I despair of how difficult it is being a parent, and it's hard, and I don't want to spend an hour every evening waiting for my son to slowly mess around and play with his tea. I don't always enjoy parenting. But it kind of has to be done, doesn't it?
Why?


I guess it's the same when a friend/partner needs you. You probably aren't going to be hugely enthusiastic about waiting with them in A&E or dropping your other plans to lend them a shoulder to cry on, but it's something you do because you'd be a terrible friend/partner if you didn't. I think when you have a relationship with someone, whether you're their parent, partner or friend, that relationship does come with some obligations... How much can you really care about someone if you're not willing to include their needs in your decision-making?
Then you're not a very good friend/partner/parent and eventually everyone abandons you. Why, if you have no obligation to them, would they have an obligation to you?

An no, I'm not terribly enthusiastic about a lot of things I do for others. And maybe even a lot of them I would abandon if I had the choice. But I still probably would do them because it makes me happy when my partners are happy. It makes me happy when my friends are happy.

Another thing: why are you so obsessed with people being nice, good people? By what moral standards ought they to be judged for goodness and badness?



Because I don't think the world is as simple as "things that make you happy" and "things that make you unhappy." Sometimes you have to do things that make you briefly unhappy for a larger goal of future happiness. Sure, if something makes you miserable and only makes you miserable, then don't do it. But I think it's very naive to think that a life where you literally never have to do anything that makes you unhappy can exist.
Well you can choose to not do it and accept the negative consequences. But really- the world can be as simple as basing your actions, all of them, around your desire.


I don't know if I understand the idea of "family" and "friends" who you aren't willing to take care of. Most people who I consider friends are friends precisely because we take care of each other in some way. If you aren't able to take care of someone, then fair enough, but if you are able and you choose not to then you're not really being a friend.
Well, you might not be a very fun or helpful or likeable friend and maybe everyone you know realizes that and decides to leave you. Why would they stick around? Sure they might but you definitely made the gamble on that and I guess the dice rolled in fmyour favour. But also a lot of the time it won't. Either way it may suck but we can have no moral judgment on that, only a personal feeling of what we should and shouldn't do.

[BIXX]

What the vast majority of users on this site advocate, is a stateless classless society of free producers -
Many of whom advocate dying if you don't work, enfoced by a community militia (which is realistically a state), which has delegates (or some other work for managers), partakes in political election for said managers, etc...

I mean at that point why bother for revolution?


ranging from folks who could be accurately described as revolutionary leftists, to those who are merely ostensibly so.
I don't really care what they could be described as.


How on earth would that be 'exactly like capitalism'?
Exactly because my life wouldn't change one bit, along with the vast majority of people here.


I swear some of the things you say on this site - like the above, or that there has 'never been a revolutionary movement' - are either the product of a tendency to redefine words as if they didn't have specific meanings, or an absolutely breathtaking level of ignorance.
I dare you to tell me about a movement that was revolutionary. You can't.

I think your interpretation of my posts as ignorance are far more likely to be you refusal to actually engage with my posts.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Civilization is important because it represents human society's members' greater ability to sustain themselves. That greater ability means that there is less stress on the social relationships, less structural impetus toward greed and what Marx called all the old shit.

What people seem to be debating now is not just the concept of civilization, which is human society at a particular advanced stage of development, but of the need for society at all. Yes, humans are social animals. They need one another. There are intrinsic predispositions of humans to be around one another, to learn from one another. The singularly remarkable human capacity for empathy is the evolutionary reflection of this reality. If you reject it, you aren't just rejecting civilization, you are rejecting the essential basis for your own life, and what makes living any kind of human life a possibility. If you are going to base your politics on denying basic human qualities, you might as well be engaging in other fantasy political pursuits, like calculating the number of spears needed in your ideal hunter-gatherer loner hovel. I'm sure you'll find an equally miniscule audience for your nihilistic nonsense.

Also, dolphins are very much social creatures, too.

[BIXX]

Civilization is important because it represents human society's members' greater ability to sustain themselves. That greater ability means that there is less stress on the social relationships, less structural impetus toward greed and what Marx called all the old shit.

Then why the hell,as civilization has continued to exist, the quality of life between those who have the best and those who have the worst only widened?

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Then why the hell,as civilization has continued to exist, the quality of life between those who have the best and those who have the worst only widened?

Because a greater surplus allows for a greater taking of the surplus by those at the top from those at the bottom, while allowing those at the bottom to continue to barely get by. The consequence is a greater disparity. The way to resolve this problem isn't to forsake the surplus, and set back the clock on survival-driven antagonism. It is to put the surplus under democratically and rationally planned social control precisely because there is enough we produce collectively to insulate us from a survival-driven mentality.

After hundreds of thousands of years of innovations, we've finally reached a stage of development where the preconditions exist for us to treat other people like people rather than means to the end of our own survival. I think a starting point for people who want to eliminate racial, sexual, and class antagonisms is to harness that precondition, not destroy it.

[Sinister Intents]

Then why the hell,as civilization has continued to exist, the quality of life between those who have the best and those who have the worst only widened?

I think you should read Engels' Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State

Hell go read Kropotkin's The State: It's Historic Role

[BIXX]

Because a greater surplus allows for a greater taking of the surplus by those at the top from those at the bottom, while allowing those at the bottom to continue to barely get by. The consequence is a greater disparity. The way to resolve this problem isn't to forsake the surplus, and set back the clock on survival-driven antagonism. It is to put the surplus under democratically and rationally planned social control precisely because there is enough we produce collectively to insulate us from a survival-driven mentality.
So what you're saying is that communities with set plans on what to do with surplus and how to produce surplus? And what, exactly, will make me keep in line with this plan that is so democratically chosen (which, btw, give me a look at the logistics of creating that plan)?

After hundreds of thousands of years of innovations, we've finally reached a stage of development where the preconditions exist for us to treat other people like people rather than means to the end of our own survival. I think a starting point for people who want to eliminate racial, sexual, and class antagonisms is to harness that precondition, not destroy it.[/QUOTE]

Really that's strange because pre-civ existence has a greater tendency to have no issues with racism sexism homophobia etc... Not to say it doesn't happen a lot but they still have a much larger tendency.


I think you should read Engels' Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State

Hell go read Kropotkin's The State: It's Historic Role

I will read both of them but if you wouldn't mind explaining what it is that they say that answers the question then please do so.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

So what you're saying is that communities with set plans on what to do with surplus and how to produce surplus? And what, exactly, will make me keep in line with this plan that is so democratically chosen (which, btw, give me a look at the logistics of creating that plan)?

If you think that human nature, not material scarcity, is the reason we have global wars, racism, and sexism, then fine. I just see no reason for posting on a forum that treats these issues as historically transient political matter that can be eliminated through struggle.


Really that's strange because pre-civ existence has a greater tendency to have no issues with racism sexism homophobia etc... Not to say it doesn't happen a lot but they still have a much larger tendency.That's not strange at all. It's difficult to have racism when your existence consists of fifty people in the same village, and maybe a thousand other people in neighboring villages in a hundred mile area. It's difficult to have sexism as structural oppression when men and women are equally subjected to the violence of nature's whim.

That's not the kind of equality people on this forum are interested in, although judging by your posts it does seem to be the kind you are interested in. An equality of misery.

[BIXX]

If you think that human nature, not material scarcity, is the reason we have global wars, racism, and sexism, then fine. I just see no reason for posting on a forum that treats these issues as historically transient political matter that can be eliminated through struggle.
Did you even read what I said? I never said any of that shit is inherent to humans. Answer the question.


That's not strange at all. It's difficult to have racism when your existence consists of fifty people in the same village, and maybe a thousand other people in neighboring villages in a hundred mile area. It's difficult to have sexism as structural oppression when men and women are equally subjected to the violence of nature's whim.
So you believe violence is a zero sum game? Even though again, historically violence has only gotten more extreme throughout time?

Also what makes you think everyone before civilization was so miserable? We can't really know their emotions.


That's not the kind of equality people on this forum are interested in, although judging by your posts it does seem to be the kind you are interested in. An equality of misery.
I mean sure I'd be willing to make a lot of people miserable but I don't think it'd go as far as trying to make everyone equally miserable. But I think that what you'd find is that is exactly what leftist communism is: equality of misery.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Did you even read what I said? I never said any of that shit is inherent to humans. Answer the question.

You're right. You didn't say it explicitly. I was responding to the implication of what you said. If you don't think that class society creates these ills. What do you think creates them? "Civilization"? I hate to break this to you, but warfare was around well before any civilization. The other -isms you mention can only exist in a society with a certain level of development, so attributing those to civilization is mistaking correlation with causation.



So you believe violence is a zero sum game? Even though again, historically violence has only gotten more extreme throughout time?Speaking of not reading what others have said, I never mentioned violence as being a game of any kind, certainly not a zero-sum one. I mentioned that you can't have racism when your perspective is so localized that people who you have regular daily contact do not have differences that can be construed in racial terms. It's a simple answer to your challenge, but honestly, the challenge was silly.

The point you make about violence becoming "extreme" is just a restatement of your earlier complaint about inequality becoming more extreme. Yeah, we have technological prowess now to create things to blow up life on the planet. I guess the logical conclusion to draw from this is to disavow technology in general, although technology can help us provide a comfortable life for every person on the planet ... if it were brought under rational and collective democratic control. Which it can be ... unless you think that humans by nature aren't capable of doing it. Therein lies the implication of what you earlier stated.

It turns out that the only way to arrive at your dreamworld of a return to mud huts, pointy sticks, and animal skin loin cloths would be to use those highly advanced weapons, because people, even the worst off ones, in present society aren't about to give up their electronic medical equipment and refrigerators. I wonder why? This should clue you into the reality that proposals for eliminating civilization are basically just the backwash of leftism, a sad parody of a real political program.


Also what makes you think everyone before civilization was so miserable? We can't really know their emotions.Here's an idea. If you think their life is so glorious, and technology so terrible, throw your computer away and stop wasting people's time proposing silly and reactionary thought experiments in threads on a leftist forum.

Sound fair?


I mean sure I'd be willing to make a lot of people miserable but I don't think it'd go as far as trying to make everyone equally miserable. But I think that what you'd find is that is exactly what leftist communism is: equality of misery.Leftist communism, as opposed to rightist communism?

[Cliff Paul]

Also what makes you think everyone before civilization was so miserable? We can't really know their emotions.

Benjamin Franklin: 'No European who has tasted savage life can afterwards bear to live in our societies.'


Here's an idea. If you think their life is so glorious, and technology so terrible, throw your computer away and stop wasting people's time proposing silly and reactionary thought experiments in threads on a leftist forum.

Is that the best you can do?

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Is that the best you can do?

No, the best I could do was in the other 99% of the content of my posts. You edited it out and focus on the 1%. I wonder why.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Whenever anti-civilisation threads come up, there always seems to be this exchange where anti-civ people claim that nobody else knows what civilisation means. Could someone humour me and explain it, or link to some kind of introductory text?

What would a post-civilisation world look like? What's the end goal? I know that a lot of people say "we can't make blueprints of the future" but in a lot of ways I think that's a cop-out. While it's true that we can't know for sure what a post-revolutionary society would look like, I think with our end goals in mind (i.e. no classes, no state, no currency) we can have some idea... Maybe if you talked about how social relations might change, then people would understand where you're coming from more.

This isn't directly relevant to "anti-civ thought", but one of the major problems with RevLeft is that many of its members are opposed to any sort of clarity on the sort of society we want, dismissing discussion on the subject as "blueprint making", "utopian" etc. The Marxists among us commonly cite that one paragraph from the German Ideology - you know the one, "Communism is for us not a state of affairs...", out of context, and ignoring that mere paragraphs above that, Marx talks about the communist society "where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic", that is, he is doing the same thing that is routinely dismissed as "utopian" on this site.

And clarity on this issue is important. Socialism, after all, is only a word. It has been used by liberals and by open reactionaries (as state "socialism", Katheder-"sozialismus", Prussian "socialism" etc.), and even if a given group proclaims itself to be leftist, and socialism, and so on, it might very well be that their ideals are completely incompatible with our ideas. I am reminded of a minor British group I found about recently, the Common Wealth Party (Olaf Stapledon, one of my favourite SF authors, had been a supporter). They proclaimed themselves to be socialists alright but - reading their statements, one finds among other things the notion that Hitler had the right idea about what needs to be done with people they considered lazy. Can that be called socialism? I don't think it can, and certainly, I would never consider working with such a group, as I don't want to fight for my "right" to end up in a death camp.

That said, I think several notions of what a post-civilisation society might be like have been advanced in this thread, explicitly or implicitly, from a "revolution" against symbolic thought, to an end to extraction of resources from distant places (tough sell - even in the Paleolithic the human species extracted resources from places besides those they chose to inhabit, and there was in fact a circulation of certain kinds of goods, particularly obsidian), to production exclusively for immediate consumption by the direct producer (and the associated notion that the ill, the disabled and so on can either prepare their own medicine or fuck off - a notion that has little to do with primitive societies, but which might be called a caveman notion). The problem, of course, is that all of them are blatantly reactionary and grossly unappealing. So it is in the interest of the proponents of these schemes to be unclear, and then complain that no one understands them.

At their very best (!) these ideas are unclear pseudo-poetry about imagined Leviathans and so on. At worst, they're driven by the mentality of a spoiled child - one that grew up in the bourgeois society at least.


One thing I don't quite understand is when people say, "Well what if I don't want to work?"

Well, on one hand, I do understand why the question is asked from time to time, as some members of this site are proponents of, perhaps not death camps for "lazy" people a la the CWP, but of coercion to work, of incentives etc. Likewise we have an inordinate amount of people who seem to be completely sold on the idea that some sort of police is necessary. I used to make jokes about the Socialist Police whenever someone would ask a question that implied the continued existence of political coercion in socialism, but I've mostly stopped doing that because many people don't seem to realise it is a joke.

What I don't understand is why this question is asked in "anti-civ" threads, as if Marxists and anarchists (from which I exclude "anarcho"-primitivists just as I would "anarcho"-capitalists etc.) generally advocate coerced labour or the existence of some kind of police in communism. In fact the only Marxists and anarchists who do so are either kids on RevLeft or people trying to kiss up to the radlib milieu. Even my tendency, which is hardly crazily radical (Devrim once called us right-wing Trotskyists, I believe, which is undoubtedly true from his perspective), is against such things.

And of course, if someone wants to do nothing in socialism, fine. They can knock themselves out. But they can do so precisely because of modern technology, which means that the chief determinant of material productivity is not living labour but dead labour. The destruction of modern technology - which is the common thread linking all these "anti-civ" proposals despite fantasies about everyone being able to synthesise hormones out of horse piss by themselves - would mean that most people would be forced to spend most of their lives in the bare struggle for survival. Women more so than anyone, as they would be denied things like effective and safe contraception, abortion etc.



I agree that communities can be poisonous. Often I think that is due to fucked up power dynamics because even "anarchist" communities end up replicating the oppressive social structures in wider society. But your bad experience of "communities" doesn't make them inherently a bad thing. Groups of people can (and do) also support and look after each other.

What is your alternative to "communities," though? Is there a viable alternative? As soon as a group of people start working and living together, it becomes a "community," so unless everyone lives by themselves, totally isolated from the rest of humanity, I'm not sure how we avoid living in communities.

Huh, I've just realised this has become a reply to Quail... even though I don't really disagree with her on this subject. Go figure.

I think the way in which many people, mostly anarchists (I'm not trying to turn this into a polemic against anarchism, by the way; it's an odd tendency, anarchism, in that it doesn't do a lot of middle ground, anarchists being either fairly right-minded if tactically wrong, or screwing the pooch so hard they make the various Trotskoid sects look like a radical alternative), talk about "communities" is problematic. People today are mobile and move in various places and milieus; to talk about each individual having "their own" community seems to presuppose an almost pre-industrial level of social stability and immobility.

There is also the fact that communities are generally thought of as face-to-face, and most people seem to take it for granted that personal relations will predominate in them. But, as per my previous post, human development is better served by impersonal relations of solidarity. I don't think any society where I have to be on friendly terms with the baker in order to get bread is a good one.

So what's the alternative? Well our alternative is society - human society itself, above all putative "communities" and local groups - controlling the productive forces, what Bordiga calls the "social Man". Of course this is anathema to those who uphold "anti-civ" positions as it is only modern communications and the modern objective socialisation of industrial production that allow this social Man to emerge on the scene of history as an organic unity.

[BIXX]

WORDS

STUPID IMPOTENT WORDS

I accidentally deleted the rest of my post so I will rewrite it but I will srespond in an admittedly unsatisfactory way.

Regarding all of your points regarding me opposing technology: I do oppose it, but only inasmuch as it requires coercion to maintian and make. I am not a primitivist.

Regarding your points about how racism sexism etc... Cant exist when there is too much nature-caused misery: there is documentation that shows pre-civ societies can have sexist and homophobic tendencies so it can happen. But it obviously happens way fucking more when civilization is in place.

And you are still deflecting from my earlier questions which you refuse to answer. Probably because you have no satisfactory one- but if you do please share because I am perfectly willing to listen.

[BIXX]

That said, I think several notions of what a post-civilisation society might be like have been advanced in this thread, explicitly or implicitly, from a "revolution" against symbolic thought, to an end to extraction of resources from distant places (tough sell - even in the Paleolithic the human species extracted resources from places besides those they chose to inhabit, and there was in fact a circulation of certain kinds of goods, particularly obsidian), to production exclusively for immediate consumption by the direct producer (and the associated notion that the ill, the disabled and so on can either prepare their own medicine or fuck off - a notion that has little to do with primitive societies, but which might be called a caveman notion). The problem, of course, is that all of them are blatantly reactionary and grossly unappealing. So it is in the interest of the proponents of these schemes to be unclear, and then complain that no one understands them.


See the thing is I don't believe anyone in this thread is advocating that at all. The thing is that a legitimate critique doesn't need an alternative. Would you think Marx was less right if he didn't take up the alternative of communism?

Not really interested in the rest of the post.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

And you are still deflecting from my earlier questions which you refuse to answer. Probably because you have no satisfactory one- but if you do please share because I am perfectly willing to listen.

Which question am I refusing to answer?

[ckaihatsu]

Regarding the scale the comment, I don't care if some people want to do the pastoralism, community or city garden/orchard thing, but I agree with what you're saying and again would be interested to see how tech, biotech, like the intelligent use of gmo as an example, plays a part in that future we're talking about.


As far as I can see from the present moment, the next incremental step would be *indoors*, 'vertical farming' (as in hydroponics), for efficiencies of land, space, and resources. GMO, in non-corporate hands, could definitely be beneficial, since genetic techniques have been around and used for millenia anyway.

Perhaps the aspect of 'scale' (of production, as for agriculture) should be explicitly and concretely addressed as its own issue since it gets to the matter of *how many* people (what percentage of the population) should be involved with farming-type activities, as a philosophical outlook.

In other words, what would be more 'civilized' here for society -- more local, pastoralist-type small-scale production, but requiring more people overall to be doing such work, or more *centralization* over such social tasks so that more production may be 'cookie-cutter' / standardized but overall requiring far fewer people to have to devote their energies to *farming*-type activities -- ?





I think you might still be viewing my posts through a primitivist lens and I am not a primitivist, what we're talking about in this thread isn't enough to be anywhere close to a tendency.


Okay, so *you're* not a primitivist and *I'm* not a primitivist -- so, uhhhhhh, what just happened here -- ? (grin)


---





[P]eople's *tastes* for work would be what they are, and not just anyone would necessarily *want* to work with computer languages or emergency medicine, respectively.

As long as society had *enough* people in the appropriate fields for a total productive output of *whatever* (that society wants), then supply would match-up to demand, and it would be a 'success'.





Yeah I largely agree with what you're saying here (I think), however I can't see much of that being preconfigured and I wouldn't want it to be mandatory to any extent at all.


That's a very good term to use -- 'preconfigured'.

This is the concern / anxiety that's often expressed by anarchist / anarchist-type people, in terms of not wanting to see any directions that would tend toward any kind of overarching, overbearing, top-down autocratic-type *control* over global production and people's labor and lives -- 'preconfigured'.

I'll note that 'mandatory' necessarily implies 'class' or 'caste', so if there's no class division then liberated-labor would always be able to vote with their feet, while not forfeiting anything life-essential to their well being. For any given existing initiative if people really didn't want to do it then it wouldn't get done, and that would result in the society being what it is.





I'm just saying that I don't think the tech exists to offer clean resource extraction or waste management and with a possibly increased demand it would have to be dealt with, I am offering a criticism but am expecting and open to theoretical solutions to it although perhaps a separate discussion.


Off the top of my head I'll say 'wind and solar power' here for energy sourcing (among others), and for waste management I'll say 'plasma arc gasification'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/plasma-arc-recycling.html





I am saying that unless we address our current impact on the biosphere, unless we are already completely fucked, we will be completely fucked outside of scenarios that are too far in the future to see without sci-fi being involved like moving to another planet or solar system. The above was just an example. I think that is the opposite of humans off the planet all together,




I want humans to abolish civilization and flourish but again I am not using the word civilization to represent our physical being on the planet, it is the manner in which we exist here and the manner in which we interact with one another.


A possible 'abolishing of civilization' is the whole *crux* of this thread, so you *may* want to describe exactly what you mean here in using that term ('civilization').

I've noted previously that *I* see it in terms of *scale* (in that 'abolishing civilization' would be synonymous with localist, small-scale production, like that of pastoralism.)





I don't think we are inherently social to the point that coercion into social systems is just not a thing at all. I don't mind helping people I mind being forced to help people as an existence in exchange for my life.


Understandable, but the reader (me) would also want to know where this 'obligation' or 'coercion' is coming from, exactly -- what would prevent that person (you) from just not-helping people and walking away to do something else -- ?





Hence this not being a tendency discussion and being a critical question asked towards topics like work and 'family' etc..


Certainly -- you may want to get the ball rolling and yourself address 'work' and 'family' within the context(s) of both 'civilization' and 'coercion'.





The current constraints on physical mobility revolves around adherence to civilization and society (currency, jobs, savings) when there's an insurrectionary break with this, with immediate communist measures, I don't see people remaining as inanimated as they currently are in the sense I'm talking about. I don't see industry doing that either whether that might mean changing or vanishing and popping up somehwere else over time. This is also what I mean when I say the future we're talking about (and the process there) should or will be more emergent rather than preconfigured although I don't see everything suddenly being fluid.


Okay.

I would tend to agree since the activity of living would become far easier -- with a collapse of maintenance of exchange-values -- so geographic location would become near-perfectly *arbitrary*, for anyone, for any given moment.





I am not down with the humans need to not leave a footprint bullshit because all animals leave traces of their existence, that's called living. I don't know what that has to do with what I said though.


Okay, so, again, you're not a primitivist.


---





You're *critiquing* this 'glistening commons' as requiring too much of a price, in terms of people having to collectively *build* that structure in the first place, for it to exist as 'civilization'.





the criticism isn't that it has too much of a price imo it's that it isn't an actual break from what civilization is and imo civilization is coercion


Hmmmm, you're *equating* coercion to civilization, and I guess I just see 'civilization' as being much *larger* and more-complex than only the historical role of *coercion* that has been a part of it.

So you see the two as being *inseparable*, so that civilization would *always* necessitate coercion to some degree -- ?

I wouldn't be able to agree, if that's the case.


---





I'm certainly *open* to any detailed discussion on this topic -- I'm gathering that you're getting at the societal philosophical issue of autonomy-vs.-collectivism/civilization.





Yes! I would actually like to talk more about this since it is a criticism and not a tendency. I'm approaching this from a tendency position pretty close to insurrectionary communism.


Certainly.

[Cliff Paul]

But to realistically respond to your criticism: do you want to take care of your child? Your partner? Friends? I know you do. So do it. That's your decision to make. But I don't really think that it's your responsibility.

Fuck babies if they can't take care of themselves why should I have to take care of them?

[Alet]

The thing is that a legitimate critique doesn't need an alternative. Would you think Marx was less right if he didn't take up the alternative of communism?

Marx' critique was never separated from an alternative. He didn't just pick communism, because it accidentally fit into his ideas, but rather his ideas of communism were always inherent in his critique.

[Ele'ill]

Civilization is important because it represents human society's members' greater ability to sustain themselves.

No, it actually marked an abrupt disruption in the ability to sustain, specifically, and showed no signs of wanting to sustain and has pretty much maintained the course. Currently the standing armies might not be starving to death however our resource extraction and production methods used to support the war engines and the extent that we have become numb to just how domesticated we are specifically because of previous exploits and manipulation, coercion, being civilization's lineage, may have pushed us past a point of return in regards to the biosphere at least.



That greater ability means that there is less stress on the social relationships, less structural impetus toward greed and what Marx called all the old shit.

if we're still trying to manage the same machine nothing has changed, you can call it human progress if you want but it isn't, I think civ is a process that has had a very linear purpose and has someone mentioned a bit ago the critique is more expansive


What people seem to be debating now is not just the concept of civilization, which is human society at a particular advanced stage of development,

I think there's a pretty big question about this.



but of the need for society at all. Yes, humans are social animals. They need one another. There are intrinsic predispositions of humans to be around one another, to learn from one another. The singularly remarkable human capacity for empathy is the evolutionary reflection of this reality. If you reject it, you aren't just rejecting civilization, you are rejecting the essential basis for your own life, and what makes living any kind of human life a possibility. If you are going to base your politics on denying basic human qualities, you might as well be engaging in other fantasy political pursuits, like calculating the number of spears needed in your ideal hunter-gatherer loner hovel. I'm sure you'll find an equally miniscule audience for your nihilistic nonsense.

Also, dolphins are very much social creatures, too.

Dolphins when in very specific living situations, called captivity, regardless of social relationships being present or other "life-like" states of existences, will commit suicide, other animals become depressed and stop eating or become animated in an aggressive way.

You can look at humans as having been in the captivity of civilization. Those people who look at civilization and think of humans working together and progress have a very bad understanding of history especially since, iirc, within the context of arguments in this conversation hunter-gatherers would fall into a pre-civ category and according to some texts lived with progress and sustenance in comparison to their lives via civilization process. This of course is not a call to go back to living in the wild but maybe to discuss what civilization is, the role it has played, what we want to keep and what we could or should probably break from. Throwing words like hunter-gatherer and nihilist around as slurs makes you look like you have no idea what you're talking about outside of a very tiny bubble.

As for my audience I don't really care that much but I hope you're not trying to actually use a 'mass opinion=best' argument here because that would be a bit ridiculous

[Spectre of Spartacism]

No, it actually marked an abrupt disruption in the ability to sustain

If advances in labor productivity marked a disruption in the ability for humans to sustain themselves, why did humans ever develop labor-saving tools? Why aren't we all still living in bands of fifty people roaming around our hunting grounds in animal skins, in a far more liberated and human-nurturing Garden of Eden? Is Satan behind this? Or perhaps Nietzsche's will to power?

Your model of civilization marking the onset of misery makes for a romantic petty-bourgeois picture of critical critics tending flocks in a green pasture. But if it can't actually explain why humans have behaved as they have for, let's say, the past half a million years, this should probably clue you in to the idea that your romantic flights of fancy are just that. As far as political program is concerned, it's going nowhere, because your ideas of where we should go are not based on an assessment of things as they actually are and how they got to be this way.


if we're still trying to manage the same machine nothing has changed, you can call it human progress if you want but it isn't, I think civ is a process that has had a very linear purpose and has someone mentioned a bit ago the critique is more expansiveWhat do you mean by "same machine"? Every communist I know wants to rip technology away from the capitalist system and put it to constructive ends under planned social control.


Dolphins when in very specific living situations, called captivity, regardless of social relationships being present or other "life-like" states of existences, will commit suicide, other animals become depressed and stop eating or become animated in an aggressive way.Pointing to how animals behave in captivity as an example of animals not being social makes about as much sense as pointing to how humans behave in a prison as evidence that humans are not social creatures.


As for my audience I don't really care that much but I hope you're not trying to actually use a 'mass opinion=best' argument here because that would be a bit ridiculousNot at all. A lot of things that are now commonly accepted as true were once highly unpopular. I do think, though, that if there's never a realistic chance of your ideas ever catching on because they deny basic truths about who humans are and how they function, it's probably time to reassess to why you're posting on a political forum.

[Quail]

No, its not just the fucked up power dynamics but the forcing of certain attitudes and expressions of oneself that really are expressions of the community and the mechanical acceptance and rejection of beings rather than fluid relations.
I don't know what you mean here. It reads like word soup to me so if you could clarify that would be great.


I would also say that not all groups/associations of people are communities.

What would you define them as instead?


Why?
"Why does childcare have to be done?" Because otherwise children will suffer and die? I don't know why that question even needs to be asked. No sentient being should be made to suffer for no reason, and that includes babies!


Then you're not a very good friend/partner/parent and eventually everyone abandons you. Why, if you have no obligation to them, would they have an obligation to you?

An no, I'm not terribly enthusiastic about a lot of things I do for others. And maybe even a lot of them I would abandon if I had the choice. But I still probably would do them because it makes me happy when my partners are happy. It makes me happy when my friends are happy.
Don't you think you have a pretty sad view of relationships, if you don't think people should have any kind of responsibility towards one another? Besides, a parent/child relationship is different from friendship or romantic relationships in that young children depend on adults for their survival and basic needs.


Another thing: why are you so obsessed with people being nice, good people? By what moral standards ought they to be judged for goodness and badness?
I don't like being a dick. I don't like it when other people are dicks to me. I assume most people feel similarly? Or maybe they don't, I don't know, but ideally I'd like to live in a world where people don't shit on each other at every opportunity.


Well you can choose to not do it and accept the negative consequences. But really- the world can be as simple as basing your actions, all of them, around your desire.
The thing is though, those negative consequences inform people's decisions to the point where, really, there isn't much of a choice. People don't generally deliberately choose to do obnoxious and hurtful things that are going to drive everyone away from them. I guess what I've been trying to articulate is that the negative consequences of being a selfish dick to everyone around you isn't a "coercive system" but a material reality that isn't going to change regardless of the economic system in place. Even in a hypothetical utopia, being a shitty person has shitty consequences.


Well, you might not be a very fun or helpful or likeable friend and maybe everyone you know realizes that and decides to leave you. Why would they stick around? Sure they might but you definitely made the gamble on that and I guess the dice rolled in fmyour favour. But also a lot of the time it won't. Either way it may suck but we can have no moral judgment on that, only a personal feeling of what we should and shouldn't do.
Isn't not wanting to be around and associate with people who consistently shit on you already making some kind of moral judgement?

[CyM]

What absolute reactionary garbage. The left needs to drive the Khmer Rouge out of the movement and bury Pol Pot once and for all.

[BIXX]

If advances in labor productivity marked a disruption in the ability for humans to sustain themselves, why did humans ever develop labor-saving tools? Why aren't we all still living in bands of fifty people roaming around our hunting grounds in animal skins, in a far more liberated and human-nurturing Garden of Eden? Is Satan behind this? Or perhaps Nietzsche's will to power?
None of this actually relates to what Mari3L said.


Your model of civilization marking the onset of misery makes for a romantic petty-bourgeois picture of critical critics tending flocks in a green pasture. But if it can't actually explain why humans have behaved as they have for, let's say, the past half a million years, this should probably clue you in to the idea that your romantic flights of fancy are just that.
This doesn't make any sense without giving a context for what it is you think humans have done for the past half a million years. I'm sure your narrative is absolutely ridiculous though.


As far as political program is concerned, it's going nowhere, because your ideas of where we should go are not based on an assessment of things as they actually are and how they got to be this way.
I know I don't have a program, and I doubt Mari3L does either. I think I've said this before yet you continuously ignore it.


What do you mean by "same machine"? Every communist I know wants to rip technology away from the capitalist system and put it to constructive ends under planned social control.
I believe it was a reference to war machines.


Pointing to how animals behave in captivity as an example of animals not being social makes about as much sense as pointing to how humans behave in a prison as evidence that humans are not social creatures.
You misunderstood the argument. It wasn't that humans aren't social creatures, its that there is no inherency to then being social. And even further, forced socialization (which is civilization) is what causes these things like school shootings and dolphins committing suicide.


Not at all. A lot of things that are now commonly accepted as true were once highly unpopular. I do think, though, that if there's never a realistic chance of your ideas ever catching on because they deny basic truths about who humans are and how they function, it's probably time to reassess to why you're posting on a political forum.

We aren't trying to make our "ideas catch on". We a presenting a set of critiques, and waiting for adequate responses.

BTW, here are the questions you refused to answer. I'm adding clarifying words to make it easier.


So what you're saying is that communities with set plans on what to do with surplus and how to produce surplus ? And what, exactly, will make me keep in line with this or that plan that is so democratically chosen (which, btw, give me a look at the logistics of creating that plan)?

I want to add to that question: do you really think that democratically chosen plans will eliminate alienation?


I don't know what you mean here. It reads like word soup to me so if you could clarify that would be great.
Basically the community is a machine that requires conforming to this or that bland standard, which then either goes through the violent rejection of members it finds incompatible, or the other violent inclusion of people, trying to remove them from themselves and their actual desires.


What would you define them as instead?
I mean, its pretty much just that they are a group of people. I don't really see how outside definition is necessary.


"Why does childcare [I]have to be done?" Because otherwise children will suffer and die? I don't know why that question even needs to be asked. No sentient being should be made to suffer for no reason, and that includes babies!
What happened to your imagination? Can you not possibly entertain the notion that perhaps childcare could be taken in such a different direction that it wouldn't be taking the form of responsibility? Do you believe that most people would just abandon their child?
Furthermore, say someone does- yeah I'm not really a fan of it but the only judgment to be cast is personal. And again- I am not opposed to individual revenge.


Don't you think you have a pretty sad view of relationships, if you don't think people should have any kind of responsibility towards one another? Besides, a parent/child relationship is different from friendship or romantic relationships in that young children depend on adults for their survival and basic needs.
Do you think your view of humans themselves is sad, that you believe every interaction has to be steeped in social violence to make sure that they don't shit down each others necks?


I don't like being a dick. I don't like it when other people are dicks to me. I assume most people feel similarly? Or maybe they don't, I don't know, but ideally I'd like to live in a world where people don't shit on each other at every opportunity.
But that's not what I'm saying should happen.


The thing is though, those negative consequences inform people's decisions to the point where, really, there isn't much of a choice. People don't generally deliberately choose to do obnoxious and hurtful things that are going to drive everyone away from them. I guess what I've been trying to articulate is that the negative consequences of being a selfish dick to everyone around you isn't a "coercive system" but a material reality that isn't going to change regardless of the economic system in place. Even in a hypothetical utopia, being a shitty person has shitty consequences.
I don't disagree, but I do disagree the means by which the shit consequences happen.

Furthermore the issue gets even deeper when civilization is 100% of the time coercion of beings into the social body thats only goal is blind expansion, even if that leads to extinction.


Isn't not wanting to be around and associate with people who consistently shit on you already making some kind of moral judgement?

Is liking chocolate chip better than cinnamon cookies a moral judgement?


What absolute reactionary garbage. The left needs to drive the Khmer Rouge out of the movement and bury Pol Pot once and for all.

But that's not what antu-civ is at all, dukbass. You should read the thread before speaking.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

None of this actually relates to what Mari3L said.

It relates very clearly to what Mariel said. She claimed that technological advances ushering in civilization represented a disruption in people's ability to sustain themselves. That raises the question of who pursued these advancements, and why they would do it if it meant the disruption of people's (including their own) ability to sustain themselves. It's a serious question and one I hope either you or Mariel answers.


This doesn't make any sense without giving a context for what it is you think humans have done for the past half a million years. I'm sure your narrative is absolutely ridiculous though.It's not a difficult narrative to comprehend, and it is confirmed by findings in disciplines like anthropology and history. For hundreds of thousands of years, people lived in small bands with little technology and no real surplus. Around 10,000 years ago humans in various parts of the world began to make the shift to settled agriculture, and develop tools to enable their agricultural yields to produce a surplus above and beyond what each person needed to survive. The freeing up of some people so that they didn't have to spend all their time farming along with everybody else, the increasing complexity of the division of labor, enabled by settled agriculture and technological advancements, is what we call civilization.

Initially those freed from direct agricultural labor performed other necessary functions like overseeing large-scale irrigation projects in accordance with the expressed wishes of members of those societies. In time, though, they began to use their control over the process and their immediate access to surplus to break free from any meaningful collective control. They became what Marxists call a ruling class. Why would people accept this? Because in conditions of scarcity, increasing the division of labor and employing technology was a benefit that everybody had an interest in pursuing. The greater ability to extract sustenance from nature was a positive, but it came at a cost of subsequent intra-communal splintering and class formation.

Technology wasn't the problem. The conditions of scarcity in which that technology was initially employed were.


I know I don't have a program, and I doubt Mari3L does either. I think I've said this before yet you continuously ignore it.So you say. People can read what you're writing. The program implicit in what you're saying in this thread is clear.


You misunderstood the argument. It wasn't that humans aren't social creatures, its that there is no inherency to then being social. And even further, forced socialization (which is civilization) is what causes these things like school shootings and dolphins committing suicide.Yes, your argument makes no sense. You admit humans are naturally or inherently social creatures, but then dispute the "inherency" to them being social. What causes social ills isn't the mere existence of society. What causes it is society being configured in a certain way that socializes people to value certain negative things and perform certain negative actions that would not happen if society was configured differently.

But the question of not having a society? That's fantasy land. For as long as there have been humans, they have lived in societies even if those societies were small by today's standard.


We aren't trying to make our "ideas catch on". We a presenting a set of critiques, and waiting for adequate responses.If you aren't trying to persuade people of a particular set of ideas or critiques, why post? Mental masturbation? Trolling?


BTW, here are the questions you refused to answer. I'm adding clarifying words to make it easier.I answered that question. What makes you keep in line now? (Class) society. What will make you keep in line under a democratically and rationally planned economy? (Communist) society. The difference is that capitalist society coerces you into doing it. Socialist society will generate a desire by people to contribute to it what is needed.

If you disagree with the latter possibility, you must necessarily fall back onto the trite bourgeois argument about people inherently not wanting to make social contributions because of their selfishness, selfishness which correspondingly will perpetuate all those other social ills like warfare, racism, sexism and all the rest. That's why I answered your question in the way I did. I was hoping to save myself and you time by cutting corners, since we both knew where it was going and it was obvious what your assumptions in the premise of what I knew you would say in response to my answer would be.

[Quail]

Basically the community is a machine that requires conforming to this or that bland standard, which then either goes through the violent rejection of members it finds incompatible, or the other violent inclusion of people, trying to remove them from themselves and their actual desires.
If people choose to associate with others for whatever reason, I don't see how there is any kind of coercion involved? If you choose to be a member of a community, where for example you take on childcare duties a couple of days a week and people decide collectively how to run the childcare, how is any coercion involved? In the example of a childcare coop type thing, if someone fucks up and neglects all the children or abuses them in some other way then obviously they deserve to be rejected from that coop to keep the children safe. If the purpose of a group of people is to help each other out, keep each other safe, or do whatever thing that is mutually beneficial, then someone who fucks everything up should probably quite rightly be rejected. I don't know what you mean by "violent inclusion" because if someone doesn't want to associate with a certain group of people then they don't have to. I don't see the coercion, sorry.


What happened to your imagination? Can you not possibly entertain the notion that perhaps childcare could be taken in such a different direction that it wouldn't be taking the form of responsibility? Do you believe that most people would just abandon their child?
Furthermore, say someone does- yeah I'm not really a fan of it but the only judgment to be cast is personal. And again- I am not opposed to individual revenge.

How would childcare not involve being responsible for children in some way? Enlighten me, if you can.

No, I don't believe that most people would just abandon their child, but the purpose of using it as an example is that sometimes you do stuff that doesn't make you happy for other people, just as you might do stuff that doesn't make you happy so that you can live in a community or a technologically advanced society. I'm guessing my life experiences as a young, sometimes single, parent have made me more used to making sacrifices for someone else than most people my age. I don't think that life should purely consist of making sacrifices for others, but caring about the people around you and being willing to do some stuff that you don't necessarily enjoy for a greater good is kind of necessary for communism to work...

Which brings me to a big point here - I don't think we're ever going to agree on this stuff. I think we have a responsibility to other humans and animals not to do them harm and clearly you don't share this belief. I also think revenge is for the most part pointless and just perpetuates a culture of violence, but that's a whole other debate.


Do you think your view of humans themselves is sad, that you believe every interaction has to be steeped in social violence to make sure that they don't shit down each others necks?
The thing is, I have a very optimistic view of humanity, so I don't know where you're getting this from. I don't think "communities" are coercive, because I think under the right conditions, people won't need any form of coercion whatsoever to treat each other well and cooperate to make a decent world.


Furthermore the issue gets even deeper when civilization is 100% of the time coercion of beings into the social body thats only goal is blind expansion, even if that leads to extinction.

I don't think anyone is even arguing for "blind expansion, even if that leads to extinction." It's pretty clear that humans absolutely must change their relationship to the planet and the environment if we actually want to survive to see the end of capitalism... Though I am increasingly pessimistic that saving our planet and ourselves as a species is even possible now.


Is liking chocolate chip better than cinnamon cookies a moral judgement?

I don't know, I think there is a big difference between liking different flavours of cookies and holding the ethical belief that we should try not to hurt or harm other people (and therefore not wanting to associate with people who do so).

[Ele'ill]

If advances in labor productivity

the destruction of communities and slavery where labor productivity was autonomous and working fine, with an increase in tech as it was needed



marked a disruption in the ability for humans to sustain themselves, why did humans ever develop labor-saving tools?

civilization process isn't developing tools




Why aren't we all still living in bands of fifty people roaming around our hunting grounds in animal skins, in a far more liberated and human-nurturing Garden of Eden? Is Satan behind this? Or perhaps Nietzsche's will to power?


because those groups of varying sizes, some larger than '50' for sure, were destroyed or assimilated by civilization, which is a specific form



Your model of civilization marking the onset of misery makes for a romantic petty-bourgeois picture of critical critics tending flocks in a green pasture. But if it can't actually explain why humans have behaved as they have for, let's say, the past half a million years, this should probably clue you in to the idea that your romantic flights of fancy are just that. As far as political program is concerned, it's going nowhere, because your ideas of where we should go are not based on an assessment of things as they actually are and how they got to be this way.

I don't know what this post is in reference to but I think my assessments of things past and present are fairly accurate. At times, at least enough to ask questions and take positions.



What do you mean by "same machine"? Every communist I know wants to rip technology away from the capitalist system and put it to constructive ends under planned social control.

i was referring to the criticism of the left thinking that it is changing more than it really is


I mean didn't I start off asking a pretty simple question as to who/what institution is going to manage and enforce work, who is going to actually make sure that I starve if I do not work and I think that's a fair question (that was dodged around quite a bit by about everybody)


Pointing to how animals behave in captivity as an example of animals not being social makes about as much sense as pointing to how humans behave in a prison as evidence that humans are not social creatures.

the animals are in a community in a life-like existence, captivity, and they ended their own life, my point was pretty clear




Not at all. A lot of things that are now commonly accepted as true were once highly unpopular. I do think, though, that if there's never a realistic chance of your ideas ever catching on because they deny basic truths about who humans are and how they function, it's probably time to reassess to why you're posting on a political forum.

These aren't really 'my' ideas. These are ideas spread across a number of texts and I've elaborated on some of it. I am interested in it so I make posts about it and the responses are usually grossly inadequate or strawmen.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

If advances in labor productivity marked a disruption in the ability for humans to sustain themselves, why did humans ever develop labor-saving tools? Why aren't we all still living in bands of fifty people roaming around our hunting grounds in animal skins, in a far more liberated and human-nurturing Garden of Eden? Is Satan behind this? Or perhaps Nietzsche's will to power?


because those groups of varying sizes, some larger than '50' for sure, were destroyed or assimilated by civilization, which is a specific form

So I ask you a question about the origins of civilization, and what I get in response is ... civilization happened because of civilization.

Yes, I think this circular response speaks to the depth at which you have thought carefully about these issues.

[Ele'ill]

As far as I can see from the present moment, the next incremental step would be *indoors*, 'vertical farming' (as in hydroponics), for efficiencies of land, space, and resources. GMO, in non-corporate hands, could definitely be beneficial, since genetic techniques have been around and used for millenia anyway. Perhaps the aspect of 'scale' (of production, as for agriculture) should be explicitly and concretely addressed as its own issue since it gets to the matter of *how many* people (what percentage of the population) should be involved with farming-type activities, as a philosophical outlook.

Yeah this is what I mean and is what interests me. This is what I meant regarding mobility and our physical existence changing drastically (or staying completely the same in some areas).






In other words, what would be more 'civilized' here for society -- more local, pastoralist-type small-scale production, but requiring more people overall to be doing such work, or more *centralization* over such social tasks so that more production may be 'cookie-cutter' / standardized but overall requiring far fewer people to have to devote their energies to *farming*-type activities -- ?

Most of it aside from the ideas of huge hydro gardens and stuff would be dependent on geography so it would be in a specific place






Okay, so *you're* not a primitivist and *I'm* not a primitivist -- so, uhhhhhh, what just happened here -- ? (grin)

?




This is the concern / anxiety that's often expressed by anarchist / anarchist-type people, in terms of not wanting to see any directions that would tend toward any kind of overarching, overbearing, top-down autocratic-type *control* over global production and people's labor and lives -- 'preconfigured'.

the criticsm extends to leftist anarchists too as I'm sure you're aware


I'll note that 'mandatory' necessarily implies 'class' or 'caste', so if there's no class division then liberated-labor would always be able to vote with their feet, while not forfeiting anything life-essential to their well being. For any given existing initiative if people really didn't want to do it then it wouldn't get done, and that would result in the society being what it is.

I guess that works




Off the top of my head I'll say 'wind and solar power' here for energy sourcing (among others), and for waste management I'll say 'plasma arc gasification'.

Do we know they'll work well enough to fix the problem, is the problem fixable?


A possible 'abolishing of civilization' is the whole *crux* of this thread, so you *may* want to describe exactly what you mean here in using that term ('civilization').

I've noted previously that *I* see it in terms of *scale* (in that 'abolishing civilization' would be synonymous with localist, small-scale production, like that of pastoralism.)

I think the criticisms that I brought up use civilization to refer to the emergence of institutions and the ritualization of behavior within society through coercion to engage in and reproduce social domination so it ends up looking like a very specific form of living that our species has been through with pre-civ being primitive however the point being that there was a noted lack of social domination, at least to some extent worth noting, their capabilities and achievements always being denied and written away out of civilied history, as are the lived experiences of many different groups of people of varying sizes throughout history.

Civilization isn't scale it's probably better described as depth or duration. As for the size of industry I think it would greatly depend on what people wanted to do at the time.






Understandable, but the reader (me) would also want to know where this 'obligation' or 'coercion' is coming from, exactly -- what would prevent that person (you) from just not-helping people and walking away to do something else -- ?

I think when people say if you don't work you'll starve, and then defend it with the types of arguments in this thread about selfishness or immaturity, they are saying that you cannot walk away from society. The criticsm is who or what is going to enforce that and that it is a preconfiguration that resembles our current world because while it broke with 'the state' it still exists within a form of living that maintains a state none the less.






Certainly -- you may want to get the ball rolling and yourself address 'work' and 'family' within the context(s) of both 'civilization' and 'coercion'.

I think the ball is rolling fast enough with the 5 posts from 4 different users that I still have to respond to



Okay, so, again, you're not a primitivist.

the common accusation on here has always been that if you criticise the left you are something in that category


Hmmmm, you're *equating* coercion to civilization, and I guess I just see 'civilization' as being much *larger* and more-complex than only the historical role of *coercion* that has been a part of it.

I guess it depends on how you're viewing history


So you see the two as being *inseparable*, so that civilization would *always* necessitate coercion to some degree -- ?

This is also asking what civ is being reffered to as in the critique and I think I answered that above.

[Ele'ill]

So I ask you a question about the origins of civilization, and what I get in response is ... civilization happened because of civilization.

Yes, I think this circular response speaks to the depth at which you have thought carefully about these issues.

So did you just accidentally leave out half of my reply to this or is that another part of having an intelligent discussion that you consider yourself having transcended? Do you think that missing entire halves of replies/general reading comprehension could have something to do with your depth perception? These are actual questions.

This was my reply:

If advances in labor productivity

the destruction of communities and slavery where labor productivity was autonomous and working fine, with an increase in tech as it was needed



marked a disruption in the ability for humans to sustain themselves, why did humans ever develop labor-saving tools?

civilization process isn't developing tools




Why aren't we all still living in bands of fifty people roaming around our hunting grounds in animal skins, in a far more liberated and human-nurturing Garden of Eden? Is Satan behind this? Or perhaps Nietzsche's will to power?


because those groups of varying sizes, some larger than '50' for sure, were destroyed or assimilated by civilization, which is a specific form


(*the specific form was absent pre-civ)

[Spectre of Spartacism]

So did you just accidentally leave out half of my reply to this or is that another part of having an intelligent discussion that you consider yourself having transcended? Do you think that missing entire halves of replies/general reading comprehension could have something to do with your depth perception? These are actual questions.

This was my reply:


the destruction of communities and slavery where labor productivity was autonomous and working fine, with an increase in tech as it was needed




civilization process isn't developing tools






because those groups of varying sizes, some larger than '50' for sure, were destroyed or assimilated by civilization, which is a specific form


(*the specific form was absent pre-civ)

I left out half of your reply because it was responding to sentence fragments in a deliberate attempt to avoid the actual ideas I was expressing. Your response didn't answer the main question, either, which you continue to dodge. Why did people develop new technologies if those new technologies disrupted, sooner or later, the Eden-like community you believe existed before "civilization"? Notice the question doesn't ask you to define "civlization" or "civilization process." It merely asks that you accept the uncontroversial premise that civilization could only develop on the basis of a greater technology than what existed in hunter-gatherer bands, which presupposes a technological development that you can't explain and won't explain. It then asks you to explain why that technology development occurred if it is so inimical to human well being.

[Ele'ill]

This isn't directly relevant to "anti-civ thought", but one of the major problems with RevLeft is that many of its members are opposed to any sort of clarity on the sort of society we want, dismissing discussion on the subject as "blueprint making", "utopian" etc.

I think a big problem is that user's expectations are that people should have a blue print or preconfiguration, program, etc, *when someone is presenting a criticism, whether specific or directed at the idea of preconfiguration or programs.











That said, I think several notions of what a post-civilisation society might be like have been advanced in this thread, explicitly or implicitly, from a "revolution" against symbolic thought, to an end to extraction of resources from distant places (tough sell - even in the Paleolithic the human species extracted resources from places besides those they chose to inhabit, and there was in fact a circulation of certain kinds of goods, particularly obsidian), to production exclusively for immediate consumption by the direct producer (and the associated notion that the ill, the disabled and so on can either prepare their own medicine or fuck off - a notion that has little to do with primitive societies, but which might be called a caveman notion). The problem, of course, is that all of them are blatantly reactionary and grossly unappealing. So it is in the interest of the proponents of these schemes to be unclear, and then complain that no one understands them.

I don't think I saw anybody making those claims in this thread though if you read through quickly or simply saw the title of the thread I suggest for clarity of the criticisms presented, which were several seperate and slightly differing ones, that you go back and reread the posts.



At their very best (!) these ideas are unclear pseudo-poetry about imagined Leviathans and so on.

Do you have links to peer reviewed documents showing that the inland and coastal mountain ranges around the world were not created by giant worms and octopus monstrosities? Because that's what it's going to take to convince me.

[Ele'ill]

I left out half of your reply because it was responding to sentence fragments in a deliberate attempt to avoid the actual ideas I was expressing.

No actually I did that as a slightly above beginner level literary exercise to show you how each of the things you said are actually viewed through the criticisms I presented or i.e. how you were misinterpreting what I am saying. This was done so that it would be easier for you to know that as an example, the 'advancement in labor productivity' that you define as civilization, was actually productive for a coercive form of living, not for people experiencing advances or stasis at varying times in other forms of living who were assimilated (often as slaves) or killed. They didn't exist just in groups of 50 and the groups often interacted which is kind of important to note and the criticism is that a very specific form of living called civilization destroyed all of this.




Your response didn't answer the main question, either, which you continue to dodge. Why did people develop new technologies if those new technologies disrupted, sooner or later, the Eden-like community you believe existed before "civilization"?

the technologies didn't disrupt anything can you even read



Notice the question doesn't ask you to define "civlization" or "civilization process." It merely asks that you accept the uncontroversial premise that civilization could only develop on the basis of a greater technology than what existed in hunter-gatherer bands, which presupposes a technological development that you can't explain and won't explain. It then asks you to explain why that technology develop occurred if it is so inimical to human well being.

Historically what we're calling tech came from or was developed from pre civ communities and would have continued to (and did in some places expansively outside of civilization's growth). Upon contact through the expansion the former ways of living were destroyed or altered to simply better reproduce civilization.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

No actually I did that as a slightly above beginner level literary exercise to show you how each of the things you said are actually viewed through the criticisms I presented or i.e. how you were misinterpreting what I am saying. This was done so that it would be easier for you to know that as an example, the 'advancement in labor productivity' that you define as civilization, was actually productive for a coercive form of living, not for people experiencing advances or stasis at varying times in other forms of living who were assimilated (often as slaves) or killed. They didn't exist just in groups of 50 and the groups often interacted which is kind of important to note and the criticism is that a very specific form of living called civilization destroyed all of this.





the technologies didn't disrupt anything can you even read




Historically what we're calling tech came from or was developed from pre civ communities and would have continued to (and did in some places expansively outside of civilization's growth). Upon contact through the expansion the former ways of living were destroyed or altered to simply better reproduce civilization.

So when you say "anti-civilization," you don't think this implies an opposition to the technology that civilization is premised on? I'm not illiterate. I'm reading closely. It's just that you refuse to answer simple questions and are playing games to squirm around straight-forward and fair questions.

The only substantive thing you've really said behind a cloud of semantics and meta-discussion is the circular point that civilization emerged when civilization "altered" pre-civ communities. You seem almost blissfully unaware that this doesn't address the actual issue of how civilization developed within the supposedly "destructive" groups that used their already existing civilization to infiltrate the pre-civ groups. That you don't see the transparently circular nature of what you're saying here is troubling.

[ckaihatsu]

As far as I can see from the present moment, the next incremental step would be *indoors*, 'vertical farming' (as in hydroponics), for efficiencies of land, space, and resources. GMO, in non-corporate hands, could definitely be beneficial, since genetic techniques have been around and used for millenia anyway.

Perhaps the aspect of 'scale' (of production, as for agriculture) should be explicitly and concretely addressed as its own issue since it gets to the matter of *how many* people (what percentage of the population) should be involved with farming-type activities, as a philosophical outlook.





Yeah this is what I mean and is what interests me. This is what I meant regarding mobility and our physical existence changing drastically (or staying completely the same in some areas).


We might consider what keeps people more-or-less *static* in one location over time -- we know that people roamed about in groups before the advent of agriculture, and these days it's modern domestication (real estate, jobs, family, etc.) that tends to make people 'settle down', I would say.

Post-capitalism it would be tough to say, because jobs and family then might *still* tend to domesticate people, but not necessarily, if the abolition of private property and the general stewardship by workers themselves would tend to counter the factors that encourage domestic living. Perhaps all jobs would eventually be perfectly accessible, so that people could step up to some tasks, anywhere, wherever they happened to be, and could put in some work time so as to contribute some social participation.

Also the family might not necessarily survive post-capitalism if children are allowed to become far more independent (and safe, of course) at much younger ages. Without any real threats to anyone's well-being, regardless of age, society might find ways to socially *generalize* whatever tasks are considered to be necessary for getting people from the time of their birth to being relatively autonomous within the larger world society. This would effectively be a solution to the problem / burden of child-raising, for those who feel imposed-upon by it, and especially since the nuclear family as an institution would no longer be required in the absence of having to pass-along property to one's descendants, through marriages and inheritance.

You haven't suggested anything yourself -- regarding the scale(s) of food production, I myself would tend to like to see a centralized, standardized global 'guarantee' of food production, for all populations at all locations on the globe. This would be readily doable with the seizing of existing corporate-scale types of agriculture, so that the best technologies would be used collectively to confer the greatest of productivities, for all, without condition.

With that in place there might still be more-localized types of agriculture, as well -- it wouldn't have to be an 'either-or' kind of situation, but at least anyone who *didn't* farm would not incur any risk to their well-being as a result of their own life-choices one way or the other.


---





In other words, what would be more 'civilized' here for society -- more local, pastoralist-type small-scale production, but requiring more people overall to be doing such work, or more *centralization* over such social tasks so that more production may be 'cookie-cutter' / standardized but overall requiring far fewer people to have to devote their energies to *farming*-type activities -- ?





Most of it aside from the ideas of huge hydro gardens and stuff would be dependent on geography so it would be in a specific place


Okay.


---





Off the top of my head I'll say 'wind and solar power' here for energy sourcing (among others), and for waste management I'll say 'plasma arc gasification'.





Do we know they'll work well enough to fix the problem, is the problem fixable?


I can only speak as a layman, but, on the basis of back-of-the-napkin-type calculations, I certainly don't see why not -- at very least it would be a very good start, to make a dent in the social ills that we see as a result of conventional approaches to the same.





I think the criticisms that I brought up use civilization to refer to the emergence of institutions and the ritualization of behavior within society through coercion to engage in and reproduce social domination


Okay, so you're looking very much at the *class* aspect of civilization. Understandable.

(I tend to see the outgrowths and benefits of civilization in more glass-half-full terms, but without ignoring the negative aspects, either.)





so it ends up looking like a very specific form of living that our species has been through with pre-civ being primitive however the point being that there was a noted lack of social domination, at least to some extent worth noting, their capabilities and achievements always being denied and written away out of civilied history, as are the lived experiences of many different groups of people of varying sizes throughout history.


Certainly.





Civilization isn't scale it's probably better described as depth or duration.


Okay.





As for the size of industry I think it would greatly depend on what people wanted to do at the time.


Sure.





I think when people say if you don't work you'll starve,


I think this is meant to be taken in very *general*, *societal* terms -- would a sample group of 100 people who all walked out of their homes and lives at the same time all *starve* to death by 120 days later (in North America, for example) -- ?

What it means is that people's labor is commodified under capitalism, and so is everything else including food -- everyone is obligated to self-commodify their labor-potential, so as to participate in the money economy, for anything resembling a regular kind of life. This can be validly rhetorically boiled-down to 'If you don't work you'll starve.'





and then defend it with the types of arguments in this thread about selfishness or immaturity, they are saying that you cannot walk away from society. The criticsm is who or what is going to enforce that and that it is a preconfiguration that resembles our current world because while it broke with 'the state' it still exists within a form of living that maintains a state none the less.


I think you're extrapolating too much here -- if we take it as a given that one cannot simply be *escapist* ('walk away') from society as it is, then the next step would be that society needs to be changed so that one does not 'starve' if one 'walks away', because obviously the world is able to produce more than enough for everyone whether they work or not.

You're going on to say that revolutionaries are mandating that *no one* 'walk away' from society when it becomes post-capitalist, and I think that's extrapolating too much, in the direction of a misinterpretation.

No revolutionary has an interest in 'enforcing a preconfiguration' (of mandated labor contribution), through anything that's state-like. You're seeing something that isn't there.

[Ele'ill]

So when you say "anti-civilization," you don't think this implies an opposition to the technology that civilization is premised on? I'm not illiterate. I'm reading closely. It's just that you refuse to answer simple questions and are playing games to squirm around straight-forward and fair questions.

I'm not playing games. I think that your view of civilization as = technology is common, knee jerk, and too simplistic and honestly the posts I've made in this thread so far are more than adequate at illustrating this. I don't blame you though I know that there are a lot of other websites where anti-civ titled things are pretty bad primitivist positions.




The only substantive thing you've really said behind a cloud of semantics and meta-discussion is the circular point that civilization emerged when civilization "altered" pre-civ communities.

okay i guess we're at least here together



You seem almost blissfully unaware that this doesn't address the actual issue of how civilization developed within the supposedly "destructive" groups that used their already existing civilization to infiltrate the pre-civ groups. That you don't see the transparently circular nature of what you're saying here is troubling.

I am not unaware of it at all I just didn't see it as being immediately relevant to the topics brought up in this thread. I also don't think it would be 'their' civilization, it would just be 'civilization'.

[Sentinel]

But that's not what antu-civ is at all, dukbass. You should read the thread before speaking.


You don't think most of us have been through this a few times during the years here, probably also the member with the earliest join date still posting regularly (CyM)? Long, exhausting discussions not least in the administrative parts of the forum but also on the general boards.

I have concluded long ago that the reason there was never any clear, short and satisfying answer from the apologists to the question on how it differs for primitivism, for the simple reason that 'Anti-civ' is basically a synonym for the former - probably a more convenient term to use as we still formally restrict overt primmies*. Personally I am done with debating this, as luckily the times have changed.

If people think that the left is still weak today (which it is), a decade or 15 years ago it was still so pathetically so due to the fall of the USSR being still so strongly in peoples minds, that ideas such as 'anti-civ' and 'primitivism' were such a considerable force within it that they posed a challenge to a proper class war approach, in the west at least.

Luckily those times seem to be over, and thus we for example only have a thread like this maybe once or twice a year instead of every single week. Good.


* Not to say all sympathisers are outright primmies, however.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

I'm not playing games. I think that your view of civilization as = technology is common, knee jerk, and too simplistic and honestly the posts I've made in this thread so far are more than adequate at illustrating this. I don't blame you though I know that there are a lot of other websites where anti-civ titled things are pretty bad primitivist positions.

Ok, my views on the link between technology and civilization are "too simplistic" for you. What is your definition of civilization and how does it relate to technology? Let's hear your un-simplistic view, instead of seeing you dissimulate and try to deconstruct my own.

I think it's telling that I and others have asked a lot of direct questions of you and others who are ostensibly sympathetic to the anti-civ position, yet all we see in response are dodges. I think Xhar-Xhar is right. There seems to be a fear by you folk of stating explicitly what everybody viewing the thread knows to be your actual positions, so instead of stating them, you fall back on adding provisos to the objections to the qualifiers of a response from six posts ago. Or you'll claim that nobody in the thread ever understands what you're saying, as if you're writing in Linear A, so that nobody can actually peg you down on a position. Nobody is falling for it.


I am not unaware of it at all I just didn't see it as being immediately relevant to the topics brought up in this thread. I also don't think it would be 'their' civilization, it would just be 'civilization'.Let me know when you decide you want to answer the question about why people would choose to develop civilization when civilization is harmful to them. I'm sure I am not the only one who would like to hear an answer to this.

[bcbm]

why people would choose to develop civilization when civilization is harmful to them.

this isn't a particularly controversial assertion, it is well documented that the rise of civilization lead to more warfare, social stratification, shortened life span, increased disease, and a decline in the position of women to name a few of its negative consequences. these were probably not 'intended' so i don't think its right to talk of 'choosing' to develop civilization. it likely happened in response to increased pressure on food resources and once you had a warlord backed up by well armed thugs telling you to get back in the fields there probably wasn't a whole lot to be done.

[Armchair Partisan]

The way I see it, this whole anti-civ vision is just a paralell of Luddism, with the same role inevitably consigned to it. Just like the rise of the industrial working class, so does civilization itself bring about new problems that we wouldn't have without it. Yet the answer to that is not to throw it all away and reduce our living standards dramatically for nice-sounding principles of autonomy or whatnot, just like yearning for the idyllic days of peasants working their backs off in the countryside for their living instead of in a smoke-filled city is not exactly a sound political idea and is best left to Tolkien.

Ultimately, even if this civilization-free world somehow manages to not quite regress to hunter-gatherer society, that doesn't mean it wouldn't be more of a pain to live in than perhaps even a social democratic welfare state. Most of all, if we discard civilization, that just breeds natural scarcity, it just creates the conditions that allow for the rise of another class society. If I were to be charitable, I would say that the world is simply not ready for this civilization-less life (just like it was not ready for communism during the rule of slave-societies or in the early feudal period), because we do not have the technology to lead a fulfilling life autonomously, one on par with what we could get via a civilized society. I'm not sure it ever will be, but hey, maybe 1000 years after the victory of the socialist world revolution, my position will be explicitly reactionary. For now, I think it makes perfect sense.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

See the thing is I don't believe anyone in this thread is advocating that at all. The thing is that a legitimate critique doesn't need an alternative. Would you think Marx was less right if he didn't take up the alternative of communism?

I don't think he would have been less right. I think his work would have been pointless, and would have been forgotten within a few years. The point of Marx's work was that he presented the alternative of the socialist society, and showed that certain processes operating in the capitalist society made socialism a real material possibility. Without this, his work would have been reduced to the observation that capitalism harms workers - which the workers already knew. You don't need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows.

And there is nothing further from socialism than this abstract and reactionary anti-capitalism. If we allow that, then to be honest there is no good reason why we shouldn't allow Khomeiniists as long as they claim to be against capitalism (because it produces immorality, irreligion and men doing each other up the arse).


I think a big problem is that user's expectations are that people should have a blue print or preconfiguration, program, etc, *when someone is presenting a criticism, whether specific or directed at the idea of preconfiguration or programs.

Because, as per the above, criticism without programme is pointless. Of course, "anti-civ" has its own programme, or rather programmes.

Prefiguration, by the way, has a specific meaning, trying to build "socialist" structures within the capitalist society. Obviously no one here thinks that's a good idea. (I think. Perhaps there are some people here who think Woland was the bee's knees, who knows.)


I don't think I saw anybody making those claims in this thread

Then you think wrong.

"Revolution against symbolic thought":


Well, certainly there are anti-civilization individuals who want to "turn back the clock," like Zerzan and his idea of "revolution" against symbolic thought

I can immediately add another one, the dominance of personal relationships:


I think Fredy Perlman's idea in Against His Story, Against Leviathan that civilization begins with impersonal institutions, and then basing a radical critique on that

An end to resource extraction from distant places:


We are in what is called the "Sixth Extinction" and the way of life based on cities needing constant resource importation leading to depletion should, in my (humble) opinion, be central to understanding the current situation.

Production for immediate consumption by the direct producer:


If your HRT comes at the cost of others, as it currently does, then yes I have a problem with that. I have absolutely no problem with medicine, I have a problem with how it is made. I am not advocating for any sort of caveman-like "survival of the fittest bullshit." I think it is very feasible that in a post-civ world, people would still have medicine, and I'm not just talking about rubbing plants on yourself. Are you really going to say that it's completely impossible that some people in a post-civ world might figure out a new and cheap way to synthesize estrogen out of horse piss, and spread the recipe across the world? My anti-civ ideas are not against technology, but for a non-authoritarian use of them. I support HRT for anyone who wants it, not just those who can afford it, and I think civilization is stopping that from happening. The difference between your HRT (which you claim I want to deny), and an anti-civ HRT is that I realize that people will have to put in some labor to get what they want. You, on the other hand, expect to go to a drug store or doctor and be handed what you want, at the expense of everyone below you in the supply chain. But yeah, I'm the reactionary.


Do you have links to peer reviewed documents showing that the inland and coastal mountain ranges around the world were not created by giant worms and octopus monstrosities? Because that's what it's going to take to convince me.

I have several, but they're all in Yithian.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

this isn't a particularly controversial assertion, it is well documented that the rise of civilization lead to more warfare, social stratification, shortened life span, increased disease, and a decline in the position of women to name a few of its negative consequences. these were probably not 'intended' so i don't think its right to talk of 'choosing' to develop civilization. it likely happened in response to increased pressure on food resources and once you had a warlord backed up by well armed thugs telling you to get back in the fields there probably wasn't a whole lot to be done.

If you accept human civilization was the result of human choices, and not the result of divine intervention, then the lot falls on you to explain why would people would make choices that would result, intentionally or not, in their greater oppression. Were they tricked? Were they blind to their own long-term interests?

I have given my answer, which is that conditions of scarcity and the growing division of labor resulted in the turning of technological advancements that had been deliberately and consciously sought into a weapon used against the people who collectively developed them.

My account suggests that it was the context of scarcity and not technology or civilization in themselves that was the problem. I'm still waiting for an alternative explanation that does lay blame specifically on those things, while being able to account for why humans would consciously develop them either direct or indirectly.

[bcbm]

If you accept human civilization was the result of human choices, and not the result of divine intervention, then the lot falls on you to explain why would people would make choices that would result, intentionally or not, in their greater oppression. Were they tricked? Were they blind to their own long-term interests?

um


it likely happened in response to increased pressure on food resources and once you had a warlord backed up by well armed thugs telling you to get back in the fields there probably wasn't a whole lot to be done.

[BIXX]

um

Idk if you've read Against His-Story, Against Leviathan, but he largely agrees with you. The response to food scarcity, being civ, is the issue at hand here.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

it likely happened in response to increased pressure on food resources and once you had a warlord backed up by well armed thugs telling you to get back in the fields there probably wasn't a whole lot to be done.

Now there are some theories about the origins of civilization that do involve warfare, but none that resemble this bizarre speculation you've shared with us that civilization began as a military order by conquerors. Perhaps if the conquerors already had settled agriculture to which they could put the conquered people to work as slaves. But then you're back to Mariel's circle: you're not actually explaining the origins of civilization with that account, you're explaining its expansion.

Probably the reason you invented this narrative out of the blue is that if you conceded that civilization represented a way for all members of a community to cope with problems relating to food scarcity and warfare from others, you'd have to concede that civilization and its technological improvements were a progressive development for those people, enabling them to sustain themselves more effectively.

[Ele'ill]

Ok, my views on the link between technology and civilization are "too simplistic" for you. What is your definition of civilization and how does it relate to technology? Let's hear your un-simplistic view, instead of seeing you dissimulate and try to deconstruct my own.

I have already defined it in several previous posts. This is the last time. People for all intents and purposes made tech pre-civ, it is a thing that will probably always happen, it isn't inherently 'bad'. There are groups of people, some 50, some tens of thousands, living in communities, some inter-related in relatively cooperative manners, with beneficial forms of living and social arrangements, but we wouldn't call that civilization because civilization according to this line of criticism would be the lineage of a specific way of living that has not entirely or at all been broken from with critical left theory.


I think it's telling that I and others have asked a lot of direct questions of you and others who are ostensibly sympathetic to the anti-civ position, yet all we see in response are dodges. I think Xhar-Xhar is right. There seems to be a fear by you folk of stating explicitly what everybody viewing the thread knows to be your actual positions, so instead of stating them, you fall back on adding provisos to the objections to the qualifiers of a response from six posts ago. Or you'll claim that nobody in the thread ever understands what you're saying, as if you're writing in Linear A, so that nobody can actually peg you down on a position. Nobody is falling for it.

This is a bunch of words and not a reply to what we were talking about. I've answered plenty of questions and to be realistic I was responding to 3 or 4 people's multiple posts to me (and still am). In order to save time I suggest you reread the thread and find the posts where I have defined what civilization is, a form of living, because I'm not going to carry on addressing redundant questions or reading empty proclamations about how 'its telling'. Had you actually cared about these questions, instead of righting the above bullshit you could have posted the questions and said 'this is what I'm interested in'.


Let me know when you decide you want to answer the question about why people would choose to develop civilization when civilization is harmful to them. I'm sure I am not the only one who would like to hear an answer to this.

I've already mentioned slavery, I've mentioned the destruction of former or other ways of life, or the assimilation and reworking of them to continue or reproduce civilization, where civilization is that specific form of living that was marked by an increase in war, the systematic destruction of all other ways of living because they were viewed as a threat, institutions, religion, etc..

[Ele'ill]

Because, as per the above, criticism without programme is pointless.

No it isn't because people can spot holes in it while being completely apathetic or uninterested in it.



Of course, "anti-civ" has its own programme, or rather programmes.

Right but I've already stated several times that I'm not following an anti-civ or any other program. I am looking at a line of criticism from a few texts and prestenting them on a discussion forum.


Prefiguration, by the way, has a specific meaning, trying to build "socialist" structures within the capitalist society. Obviously no one here thinks that's a good idea. (I think. Perhaps there are some people here who think Woland was the bee's knees, who knows.)

I think I posted using preconfiguration but the line of criticism isn't just about building socialist structures withing capitalist society, the reproduction of that former society still exists in the preconfiguration, it never breaks from it.




Then you think wrong.

"Revolution against symbolic thought":



I can immediately add another one, the dominance of personal relationships:



An end to resource extraction from distant places:



Production for immediate consumption by the direct producer:

sorry I had completely forgotten that those users had posted in the thread. I think I was imagining the beginning of this thread as a different one

[Spectre of Spartacism]

I have already defined it in several previous posts. This is the last time. People for all intents and purposes made tech pre-civ, it is a thing that will probably always happen, it isn't inherently 'bad'. There are groups of people, some 50, some tens of thousands, living in communities, some inter-related in relatively cooperative manners, with beneficial forms of living and social arrangements, but we wouldn't call that civilization because civilization according to this line of criticism would be the lineage of a specific way of living that has not entirely or at all been broken from with critical left theory.

I've read this paragraph three times, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. It doesn't define civilization. It talks about how technology and technological advancements predate civilization. It talks about what civilization isn't. It doesn't give a definition beyond "the lineage of a specific way of living that is not entirely or at all been broken from with critical left theory." What does this even mean? If it's an honest attempt at definition, it's a poor one, and leaves no question as to why a person would repeat their request for a definition. If it wasn't an honest attempt, then we're left to conclude that your participation in this thread is just to play language games with people who are more into politics than into scrabble.


This is a bunch of words and not a reply to what we were talking about. I've answered plenty of questions and to be realistic I was responding to 3 or 4 people's multiple posts to me (and still am). In order to save time I suggest you reread the thread and find the posts where I have defined what civilization is, a form of living, because I'm not going to carry on addressing redundant questions or reading empty proclamations about how 'its telling'. Had you actually cared about these questions, instead of righting the above bullshit you could have posted the questions and said 'this is what I'm interested in'.I never accused you of not answering any questions. I have accused you of dancing around my main question: if civilization is a step back for humanity, why did humanity develop it? You can complain I am being redundant by asking it again and again, but you could solve this problem right now by actually answering the question for the first time. I don't think that's an unfair expectation. Do you?


I've already mentioned slavery, I've mentioned the destruction of former or other ways of life, or the assimilation and reworking of them to continue or reproduce civilization, where civilization is that specific form of living that was marked by an increase in war, the systematic destruction of all other ways of living because they were viewed as a threat, institutions, religion, etc..Yes, you've mentioned various topics in a disconnected sort of buzz-wordy way. What you're not doing is explaining anything. Civilization has bad things, yes. The topic of the thread isn't whether civilization has bad things, or developed in coincidence with bad things. I think and hope everybody here would agree with both of those assertions. At issue is whether civilization necessarily in all contexts requires these bad things. To address the issue, you need to dig deeper than context-specific surface correlations and actually address the fundamental relations. What makes civilization civilization, and not something else? Mentioning its symptoms or what developed out of it in a time-bound context doesn't clarify the internal essence of the thing.

[Ele'ill]

I've read this paragraph three times, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. It doesn't define civilization. It talks about how technology and technological advancements predate civilization. It talks about what civilization isn't. It doesn't give a definition beyond "the lineage of a specific way of living that is not entirely or at all been broken from with critical left theory." What does this even mean? If it's an honest attempt at definition, it's a poor one, and leaves no question as to why a person would repeat their request for a definition. If it wasn't an honest attempt, then we're left to conclude that your participation in this thread is just to play word games with people who are more into politics than into scrabble.


I never accused you of not answering any questions.

I have accused you of dancing around my main question: if civilization is a step back for humanity, why did humanity develop it? You can complain I am being redundant by asking it again and again, but you could solve this problem right now by actually answering the question for the first time. I don't think that's an unfair expectation. Do you?

"I'm going to spend the first half of my post pretending you didn't define a word even though I then respond to your definition and explanation at the end"


Civilization has bad things, yes.

I mean the line or argument is that civilization was the mode of living, form of living, etc.. that destroyed and destroys other forms of living, I believe the element of work was what kicked off this conversation. Not like any of that has been posted about 100 times already.




The topic of the thread isn't whether civilization has bad things, or developed in coincidence with bad things.

so what




I think and hope everybody here would agree with both of those assertions. At issue is whether civilization necessarily in all contexts requires these bad things.

The criticism is suggesting that civilization is those bad things and nothing else.



To address the issue, you need to dig deeper than context-specific surface correlations and actually address the fundamental relations.

oh come on neither of us knows what this means


What makes civilization civilization, and not something else?Mentioning its symptoms or what developed out of it doesn't clarify the internal causal definition.

of course mentioning the symptoms and other related things clarifies it although I have no idea what you mean by 'what developed out of it'

[Ele'ill]

Now there are some theories about the origins of civilization that do involve warfare, but none that resemble this bizarre speculation you've shared with us that civilization began as a military order by conquerors.

it did



Perhaps if the conquerors already had settled agriculture to which they could put the conquered people to work as slaves.

No, initially the people already had land and were basically slaves, slaves from elsewhere did a variety of tasks for those societies operating as civ.


But then you're back to Mariel's circle: you're not actually explaining the origins of civilization with that account, you're explaining its expansion.

No, pretty sure the origins of civ are where we're at right now.




Probably the reason you invented this narrative out of the blue is that if you conceded that civilization represented a way for all members of a community to cope with problems relating to food scarcity and warfare from others,

civilization created worse food related issues and as was already mentioned, increased warfare, there was actually quite a difference between pre-civ existence of human communities and those societies within civilization.



you'd have to concede that civilization and its technological improvements were a progressive development for those people, enabling them to sustain themselves more effectively.

the line of criticism would point towards tech already being developed pre-civ, and spreading pre-civ. It doesn't pose any doubt that it also spread with civilization. But defending civilization, as the specific thing we've mentioned now about 100 times, on the basis that through assimilation into slavery and destruction of millions of people and better ways of life it also spread tech, is pretty bad imo

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Mariel, I can only assume your attempt to break up every response of mine into thirty different sentence fragments is an effort to make the discussion unreadable for people who might be interested in following. Why?

I asked you to define civilization, to which you responded by defining it as "the lineage of a specific way of living that is not entirely or at all been broken from with critical left theory." I noted that I had no idea what this meant, while doubting whether anybody else understood you either. You have offered no clarification. Will you clarify what you mean by this, or are you looking for an escape hatch out of our back and forth?

I stated that no anthropologist, archaeologist, or prehistorian I have ever heard of has asserted that civilization began when one hunter-gatherer band without settled agriculture conquered another band militarily and then forced that conquered band to begin transitioning to settled agriculture for them. You responded by saying, "it did." First of all, WHAT did? Second of all, are you suggesting that some specialists in the field have made this argument? Who? If you're arguing that a group with settled agriculture conquered a nearby nomadic band, forcing them into agricultural labor (eg the helots), then you're not explaining origins at all. You're explaining the transmission of a way of life that had already developed and was expanded through military conquest.

You then repeat your claim:


civilization created worse food related issues and as was already mentioned, increased warfare, there was actually quite a difference between pre-civ existence of human communities and those societies within civilization.We have no idea what "civilization" means according to you apart from an absurd "definition" already noted. So your first step is to clarify this definition. Otherwise we have no clue what you're talking about when you talk about civilization in any context.

Finally I'd like a source for evidence regarding your claim about civilization "creating worse food relations." I don't believe it, and frankly I think you're making up the claim because it suits your pre-arranged line of argument, which is already a tangled mess of evasions and opaque definitions.

[bcbm]

Now there are some theories about the origins of civilization that do involve warfare, but none that resemble this bizarre speculation you've shared with us that civilization began as a military order by conquerors. Perhaps if the conquerors already had settled agriculture to which they could put the conquered people to work as slaves. But then you're back to Mariel's circle: you're not actually explaining the origins of civilization with that account, you're explaining its expansion.

let's try again: its origins probably lie in pressure on food resources, which lead to more advanced agricultural which eventually generated a surplus allowing some members of the community to pursue tasks outside of food production which lead to increased social stratification, eventually giving birth to the warlords in question who maintained armed thugs to defend their stake of the world as well as maintain order among the farmers and slaves. i'm not talking about conquest.


Probably the reason you invented this narrative out of the blue is that if you conceded that civilization represented a way for all members of a community to cope with problems relating to food scarcity and warfare from others, you'd have to concede that civilization and its technological improvements were a progressive development for those people, enabling them to sustain themselves more effectively.i'm not anti-civ, but i don't think the argument that civilization had a negative impact in the form of more disease, poorer health, social stratification and a decline in the position of women is a bizarre one.


Finally I'd like a source for evidence regarding your claim about civilization "creating worse food relations."mariel said 'worse food related issues,' which i would imagine refers to the increased disease, harder work, and less varied and less nutritious diet of early civilized peoples.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

let's try again: its origins probably lie in pressure on food resources, which lead to more advanced agricultural which eventually generated a surplus allowing some members of the community to pursue tasks outside of food production which lead to increased social stratification, eventually giving birth to the warlords in question who maintained armed thugs to defend their stake of the world as well as maintain order among the farmers and slaves. i'm not talking about conquest.

This account is exactly the one I've been giving, and it is one in which the development of settled agriculture was a progressive development enabling entire communities to cope better with rising food pressure (that archaeologists speculate arose from greater population density, among other things).


i'm not anti-civ, but i don't think the argument that civilization had a negative impact in the form of more disease, poorer health, social stratification and a decline in the position of women is a bizarre one.Of course the transition to sedentary agriculture and civilization had some negative consequences. Nothing in the history of humanity is ever an unqualified good. The position that a few posters (not you) here are implying is that on balance civilization was a step backward for humanity and should be rolled back.


mariel said 'worse food related issues,' which i would imagine refers to the increased disease, harder work, and less varied and less nutritious diet of early civilized peoples.You might imagine that's what Mariel means. Mariel might mean something completely different. It's difficult to tell because of how Mariel uses opaque phrases and ambiguous language. If Mariel's point was that people ended up working harder for a less varied diet (and I'm not sure that is what Mariel's point was), then that's fine. But then why would people's choose to do that? This is where important point comes in about settled agriculture allowing for increasing the energy yield and productivity that can be extracted from the game and plants of a given location. It also provides for a greater predictability in food supply, particularly when greater population meant some crowding out of hunting grounds. Here is the calculation performed by scholars:

http://s29.postimg.org/eqlalpfmv/stat.jpg


Another interesting thing to note is that in Mariel's posting history you will find consistent defense of vegetarianism/veganism. Good luck locating any pre-civilization people who had the option of vegan or even vegetarian diets. That kind of lifestyle is possibly only because of the level of technology and agricultural yield we've been able to develop through that terrible thing called civilization.

It takes a group whose problems can't be solved by the development of more technology, but only by the overthrow of existing relations, to be to dismissive toward technological advancements that civilization has overseen the past ten thousands years.

[Cliff Paul]

Probably the reason you invented this narrative out of the blue is that if you conceded that civilization represented a way for all members of a community to cope with problems relating to food scarcity and warfare from others, you'd have to concede that civilization and its technological improvements were a progressive development for those people, enabling them to sustain themselves more effectively.

Did it help them to support larger populations? Definitely. Did it enhance their quality of life? Probably not.

I don't know much about anti-civilization or the origins of civilization, but I think it would be a mistake to argue that agriculture was a conscious decision by humans to enhance their livelihood. I agree with you that its development was likely in response to conditions of food scarcity, but I don't think that humans have the foresight or the consciousness you ascribe to them. I doubt that the earliest farmers understood that their actions were laying the foundations for a highly stratified class-based society, where people would be able to live off of the surplus from others. Which is why "people would make choices that would result, intentionally or not, in their greater oppression".

Now I don't oppose technology - returning to primitive hunter gatherer societies is neither ideal nor possible, but I think we should approach technologies with skepticism. The development of technologies is obviously affected by the mode of production within society (which is why current technologies tend to work towards de-skilling workers to the point where they are mere cogs in a machine), but I don't think technology is something we can have mastery over.

Things we embrace out of convenience or efficiency - or even technologies that we think could allow for greater expression and autonomy may very well end up doing the opposite. Things like automobiles allow for individual transit across great distances (I certainly enjoy the freedom to travel by myself with great ease), but they've also restricted our freedom in other respects. In both rural and suburban America for instance, it's pretty much impossible to live without a car. Think of the other unintended negative impacts of cars - road rage, traffic jams, etc. Now there are probably better examples of what I'm trying to explain but I'm a bit distracted right now. In any case, many leftists will probably dismiss my example because under socialism there will be more public transit. But, many of the problems with automobiles can also apply to buses or trains, etc. and more importantly, it fails to address my main point, which is that even under socialism there is still likely to be the development of technologies which have the potential to harm human autonomy, quality of life, yadda yadda. *An interesting side note on the effeciency of automobiles http://ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html (courtesy of methodmania)

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Did it help them to support larger populations? Definitely. Did it enhance their quality of life? Probably not.

I don't know much about anti-civilization or the origins of civilization, but I think it would be a mistake to argue that agriculture was a conscious decision by humans to enhance their livelihood. I agree with you that its development was likely in response to conditions of food scarcity, but I don't think that humans have the foresight or the consciousness you ascribe to them. I doubt that the earliest farmers understood that their actions were laying the foundations for a highly stratified class-based society, where people would be able to live off of the surplus from others. Which is why "people would make choices that would result, intentionally or not, in their greater oppression".

Now I don't oppose technology - returning to primitive hunter gatherer societies is neither ideal nor possible, but I think we should approach technologies with skepticism. The development of technologies is obviously affected by the mode of production within society (which is why current technologies tend to work towards de-skilling workers to the point where they are mere cogs in a machine), but I don't think technology is something we can have mastery over.

Things we embrace out of convenience or efficiency - or even technologies that we think could allow for greater expression and autonomy may very well end up doing the opposite. Things like automobiles allow for individual transit across great distances (I certainly enjoy the freedom to travel by myself with great ease), but they've also restricted our freedom in other respects. In both rural and suburban America for instance, it's pretty much impossible to live without a car. Think of the other unintended negative impacts of cars - road rage, traffic jams, etc. Now there are probably better examples of what I'm trying to explain but I'm a bit distracted right now. In any case, many leftists will probably dismiss my example because under socialism there will be more public transit. But, many of the problems with automobiles can also apply to buses or trains, etc. and more importantly, it fails to address my main point, which is that even under socialism there is still likely to be the development of technologies which have the potential to harm human autonomy, quality of life, yadda yadda. *An interesting side note on the effeciency of automobiles http://ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html (courtesy of methodmania)


I think you misunderstand me. I am not imputing to technology an unqualified triumph, nor to humans an omniscient foresight. There were unintended consequences to its development and the development of civilization. One of them is still with us, class society.

What I am trying to do is to get the people flirting with anti-civ precepts to acknowledge that humans are somewhat rational, and that technology and civilization developed because at some point people looked at their options and chose the one that immediately solved a specific problem they were facing. The emergence of later problems created by the initial solution is what Marx in the German Ideology called the "first historical act."

If you think those later problems, the problems of present class society, are unsolvable without recreating the initial problem of subjecting yourself fully to the whims of nature, you are subscribing to the view that humans are so naturally and pervasively selfish that the only way to have them get along is to have nature step in as an overbearing and immediate governor of human relations.

I don't share that view. I think that the solution to the first problem was progressive because it related to a more basic issue of human existence and permitted humans to use that progress as a springboard for overcoming the later problems of civilization.

[Ele'ill]

Mariel, I can only assume your attempt to break up every response of mine into thirty different sentence fragments is an effort to make the discussion unreadable for people who might be interested in following. Why?

About 3-4 because if I tried to reply to your sentences or paragraphs that each have 3-4 different misrepresentations in them I would be responding to things that I never said. An example in this post is when you use the word 'militarily' or another example is when you use words like community, society, as being interchangeable with civilization, etc..


I asked you to define civilization, to which you responded by defining it as "the lineage of a specific way of living that is not entirely or at all been broken from with critical left theory." I noted that I had no idea what this meant, while doubting whether anybody else understood you either. You have offered no clarification. Will you clarify what you mean by this, or are you looking for an escape hatch out of our back and forth?

I actually highlighted another point in that part of my post that you are quoting, as simple elaboration on the topic, because I saw that you asked a similar question again later in that same post, at the end. My response was:


Let me know when you decide you want to answer the question about why people would choose to develop civilization when civilization is harmful to them. I'm sure I am not the only one who would like to hear an answer to this.


I've already mentioned slavery, I've mentioned the destruction of former or other ways of life, or the assimilation and reworking of them to continue or reproduce civilization, where civilization is that specific form of living that was marked by an increase in war, the systematic destruction of all other ways of living because they were viewed as a threat, institutions, religion, etc..

This is a fairly adequate definition of what we're talking about imo. As you can note the emphasis on how civilization swallowed all other forms of living and destroyed the memories of it, where concepts such as our role as a worker for mass society, are accepted as being intrinsic to us as a species. I think at this point it's pretty obviously a 'you' problem. Also another example of you claiming that I did not define it but then below you are responding to a definition of it.


I stated that no anthropologist, archaeologist, or prehistorian I have ever heard of has asserted that civilization began when one hunter-gatherer band without settled agriculture conquered another band militarily and then forced that conquered band to begin transitioning to settled agriculture for them.

That's not really what was said and using words like 'militarily' can mean different things, in the context of this conversation it would mean something very different than a casual definition of armed conflict. And yes iirc shared labor of tasks regarding agriculture turned into a specific hierarchy involving other communities and armed conflict which turned into the use of slaves and larger military (standing armies) conquests. iirc a theory is that it had to do with the specific geography creating problems for some people in regards to food


I think this text as an example has been brought up in this thread: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fredy-perlman-against-his-story-against-leviathan


You responded by saying, "it did." First of all, WHAT did?

well since it was in response to the below quote that I have reposted for you to see, what that means is that it's referring to what was posted by you


Now there are some theories about the origins of civilization that do involve warfare, but none that resemble this bizarre speculation you've shared with us that civilization began as a military order by conquerors.

So "it did" would mean that the criticism we are talking about suggest civilization began when, and this is the 4th or 5th time that I've posted this, specifically in regards to the text above an area of human communities shifted from a form of life that was for all intents and purposes sustainable and flourishing and turned into a war engine.




Second of all, are you suggesting that some specialists in the field have made this argument? Who? If you're arguing that a group with settled agriculture conquered a nearby nomadic band, forcing them into agricultural labor (eg the helots), then you're not explaining origins at all. You're explaining the transmission of a way of life that had already developed and was expanded through military conquest.

I addressed this above when you're talking about anthropologists and stuff


You then repeat your claim:

We have no idea what "civilization" means according to you apart from an absurd "definition" already noted. So your first step is to clarify this definition. Otherwise we have no clue what you're talking about when you talk about civilization in any context.

It's funny that this is the entire basis of your argument that the 100 definitions given to you haven't been given to you especially when you say that and then your next post is replying in relative detail to a definition given.



Finally I'd like a source for evidence regarding your claim about civilization "creating worse food relations." I don't believe it, and frankly I think you're making up the claim because it suits your pre-arranged line of argument, which is already a tangled mess of evasions and opaque definitions.

The text I provided above gets into some detail. I think maybe A People's History Of The United States kind of touches on it as well although I've not really approached the line of criticism from there. I think it does a good job as a continuation representing scale and destroying the myth that you used regarding 'bands of 50 people'.

[Ele'ill]

I think you misunderstand me. I am not imputing to technology an unqualified triumph, nor to humans an omniscient foresight. There were unintended consequences to its development and the development of civilization. One of them is still with us, class society.

What I am trying to do is to get the people flirting with anti-civ precepts to acknowledge that humans are somewhat rational, and that technology and civilization developed because at some point people looked at their options and chose the one that immediately solved a specific problem they were facing. The emergence of later problems created by the initial solution is what Marx in the German Ideology called the "first historical act."

If you think those later problems, the problems of present class society, are unsolvable without recreating the initial problem of subjecting yourself fully to the whims of nature, you are subscribing to the view that humans are so naturally and pervasively selfish that the only way to have them get along is to have nature step in as an overbearing and immediate governor of human relations.

I don't share that view. I think that the solution to the first problem was progressive because it related to a more basic issue of human existence and permitted humans to use that progress as a springboard for overcoming the later problems of civilization.


I've not seen anybody here say that the program to resolve the issue is to go back to 'living in the woods'. Those forms of pre-civ living were more pleasant than when civilization began but obviously not compared to what we could have now. The argument I think is that the form of life that I guess some leftist positions cling to are still heavily rooted in or influenced by civilization: religion, civic duty, mass society, the role of worker. etc.. This does not mean that those critical of it want anything short of insurrection and communism. As for human nature I think the argument that humans are inherently 'good' or 'bad' is pretty flawed as is the attempt to homogenize humans in theoretical exercises.

[BIXX]

I kinda want to reply to every point made since my last post but that post would be like 4 pages long so I'm just gonna make a small one.

Even though we consistently post definitions of civilization that may look a little different but all point to the same thing (the antithesis of autonomy, or the coercion of beings into specific modes of living and punishing deviation) that really has nothing to do with agriculture (though I will say civilization could never have existed without agriculture or technology) everyone starts freaking out, saying that we want to take away tech and agriculture. We are critiquing those things, yes, but only inasmuch as they require coercion to exist. We are much more interested in the ways humans will interact with technology when they are autonomous. I truly doubt itd be recognizable to us at all. Furthermore I think that our infrastructure would crumble and humans when given a taste of autonomy will reject that specific formation of human movement and connection which reflect the control of our society. Kinda began to ramble but whatever.

Quail, the discussion with you seems to be going in a different direction- how will humans interact specifically, irrespective of whether we have tech or agriculture. Particularly how people could function without community. The fact is that the weapinized aspects of community are what make them a community. People, without that, are closer to a union of egoists or some such.

Also when you choose not to be around people because they make you feel bad that isn't a moral judgement I don't understand how you could possibly think it is.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

I've not seen anybody here say that the program to resolve the issue is to go back to 'living in the woods'. Those forms of pre-civ living were more pleasant than when civilization began but obviously not compared to what we could have now. The argument I think is that the form of life that I guess some leftist positions cling to are still heavily rooted in or influenced by civilization: religion, civic duty, mass society, the role of worker. etc.. This does not mean that those critical of it want anything short of insurrection and communism. As for human nature I think the argument that humans are inherently 'good' or 'bad' is pretty flawed as is the attempt to homogenize humans in theoretical exercises.

Mariel, I think it's obvious based on my previous attempts that I am not going to get a clear definition of civilization out of you or a clear answer to my question about why people would choose to set the wheels in motion to developing civilization. It's unfortunate, because I don't think my questions were asked in bad faith. Bcbm answered them in one try. You'd like to dodge, and that's fine. I'm sure we both have better things to do with our time than spend days in this thread, with me asking questions and you angrily affirming you've answered them. If you think "the lineage of a specific way of living that is not entirely or at all been broken from with critical left theory" is an adequately clear definition of civilization, it's clear to me that there is little hope of taking that part of the conversation beyond where it has gone. Our record in this thread is public, and I think it's best to leave it that.

I do think your latest reply, quoted above, is another symptom of what I think the issue is with your posts in this thread. You load a lot of buzz words into your posts, use them ambiguously, then when others in this online society have the audacity to infer meanings in them, you get offended while offering "clarifying" definitions that are as opaque as mud. I don't think that's the best way to go about having a good online conversation.

You say you find problems with "civic duty" and "mass society," and I again I am compelled to wonder what you mean by these terms. "Civic duty" could refer to the contribution expected of each member of a socialist society in which hierarchy has been eliminated in social planning. Is that obligation bad? Why? "Mass society" could mean a society with a lot of people. Is that what you mean? If not, what do you mean? How many people is too many in a society, and who determines the answer to that question? You? Society?

[theblackmask]

I'm glad that my piece has started some discussion! I'm really just kind of lost in this thread (been out of town), and I think I've replied to everyone that didn't call me a reactionary...but if anyone has any questions or comments that aren't just threatening to put me up against the wall, I'd love to converse.

[BIXX]

Mariel, I think it's obvious based on my previous attempts that I am not going to get a clear definition of civilization out of you or a clear answer to my question about why people would choose to set the wheels in motion to developing civilization. It's unfortunate, because I don't think my questions were asked in bad faith. Bcbm answered them in one try. You'd like to dodge, and that's fine. I'm sure we both have better things to do with our time than spend days in this thread, with me asking questions and you angrily affirming you've answered them. If you think "the lineage of a specific way of living that is not entirely or at all been broken from with critical left theory" is an adequately clear definition of civilization, it's clear to me that there is little hope of taking that part of the conversation beyond where it has gone. Our record in this thread is public, and I think it's best to leave it that.

I do think your latest reply, quoted above, is another symptom of what I think the issue is with your posts in this thread. You load a lot of buzz words into your posts, use them ambiguously, then when others in this online society have the audacity to infer meanings in them, you get offended while offering "clarifying" definitions that are as opaque as mud. I don't think that's the best way to go about having a good online conversation.

You say you find problems with "civic duty" and "mass society," and I again I am compelled to wonder what you mean by these terms. "Civic duty" could refer to the contribution expected of each member of a socialist society in which hierarchy has been eliminated in social planning. Is that obligation bad? Why? "Mass society" could mean a society with a lot of people. Is that what you mean? If not, what do you mean? How many people is too many in a society, and who determines the answer to that question? You? Society?

Would you like a definition in macaroni letters? Tattooed in your eye lids? Maybe that way you'd see it cause we've posted a definition over and over again that you consistently ignored it claiming one was never posted.

Civ is the coercion of beings into a single, linear mode of existence.

The process was a warring group to control another to force then to tend to their agricultural affairs. Not the agriculture or the tech, but the actual violence that is civilization.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

The problem with this discussion is the whole thing comes down to civilization=force. I mean we might as well say civilization=the state and boom, here's every anarchist vs. Marxist thread in existence, they'll just use different terms.

Placenta Cream again shows what a special little snowflake he is, the courage it must take to ideologically break with society in such a way as to say people shouldn't take care of their kids and should go on benders if that's really what they want to do. Responsibility to anyone around you? Horse shit, if it makes you unhappy why would you do it?! Okay maybe you don't want to take care of your kids so maybe the community should help out. Nope, fuck the community! Unless of course they're a union of egoists, then it's different because everybody there realizes how full of hot air the other egoists head is full of.

The problem is you keep saying how important it is for the individual to have complete autonomy over themselves, how they can leave at any time they want, anybody can do whatever, can use their labor however they want in a way but the second the tables are turned there is a problem. Okay you can leave the community, no problem, but what would you say if the community decided to kick you out? You abandoned people's children and one of them fell in a pool and died because you didn't feel like you were happy at the moment. You would cry about exclusion and coercion by the community but why should anyone be forced to live with you?

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Would you like a definition in macaroni letters? Tattooed in your eye lids? Maybe that way you'd see it cause we've posted a definition over and over again that you consistently ignored it claiming one was never posted.

You haven't posted it since I asked, and I couldn't see it in the thread before then.


Civ is the coercion of beings into a single, linear mode of existence.

The process was a warring group to control another to force then to tend to their agricultural affairs. Not the agriculture or the tech, but the actual violence that is civilization.We have here another definition that is as clear as mud. A linear mode of existence is bad, but a multi-linear one is okay? What, out of curiosity is a multi-linear mode of existence? What about a multi-planar mode? Defining a word in a way that requires even more definitions to clarify what the definition means isn't helpful. At all. It's an exercise in evasion, and I think you know that.

The example you give doesn't clarify matters at all. I am guessing that nobody on the left thinks warfare by one society to coerce another society is desirable. Only a couple of people here would describe themselves as sympathetic to anti-civ views. There's a gap somewhere here, and it's between what the anti-civ people are willing to say explicitly in defining their position, and the views they are implicitly defending in their disagreements on specific points with other posters.

[oneday]

The problem with this discussion is the whole thing comes down to civilization=force. I mean we might as well say civilization=the state and boom, here's every anarchist vs. Marxist thread in existence, they'll just use different terms.

I was thinking they might as well just be saying civilization = class society. There doesn't seem to be much difference between their criticism and a regular communist or anarchist criticism, depending on how they are articulating the definition of civilization (at least from some users in this thread,). I'm not really sure why they want to be set apart from those traditions, other than perhaps tactics.

Perhaps it would be helpful for an anti-civ to explain the difference between the Marxist or anarchist criticism and an anti-civ perspective?

[BIXX]

You haven't posted it since I asked, and I couldn't see it in the thread before then.


civilization is that specific form of living that was marked by an increase in war, the systematic destruction of all other ways of living because they were viewed as a threat, institutions, religion, etc..


civilization was the mode of living, form of living, etc.. that destroyed and destroys other forms of living


(the antithesis of autonomy, or the coercion of beings into specific modes of living and punishing deviation)

It isn't our fault you can't read.


We have here another definition that is as clear as mud. A linear mode of existence is bad, but a multi-linear one is okay? What, out of curiosity is a multi-linear mode of existence? What about a multi-planar mode? Defining a word in a way that requires even more definitions to clarify what the definition means isn't helpful. At all. It's an exercise in evasion, and I think you know that.
Are you legitimately stupid or just pretending to be? The fact that folks like you exist would make me a primitivist in hopes that you'd starve.

It's pretty fucking obvious what that definition meant and if you can't understand it then you must have been lobotomized. "single, linear" is what you're responding to in this post I assume. That was an attempt to clarify what I mean when I am talking about a linear mode of existence- the fact that civ was the process of creating that single way to live life, and enforcing it as the only option.


The example you give doesn't clarify matters at all. I am guessing that nobody on the left thinks warfare by one society to coerce another society is desirable. Only a couple of people here would describe themselves as sympathetic to anti-civ views. There's a gap somewhere here, and it's between what the anti-civ people are willing to say explicitly in defining their position, and the views they are implicitly defending in their disagreements on specific points with other posters.
You know it's still not our fault that you are imagining that our positions and critiques mean different things than they really do.


The problem is you keep saying how important it is for the individual to have complete autonomy over themselves, how they can leave at any time they want, anybody can do whatever, can use their labor however they want in a way but the second the tables are turned there is a problem. Okay you can leave the community, no problem, but what would you say if the community decided to kick you out? You abandoned people's children and one of them fell in a pool and died because you didn't feel like you were happy at the moment. You would cry about exclusion and coercion by the community but why should anyone be forced to live with you?
I think people should be able to abandon the kids, sure, fuck 'em, I'm not a moralist. However the same person will have to deal with the fact that many angry parents will probably want to kill them. I don't have a problem with that. I have a problem with the idea of enforcement tat the left is so keen on.

On another note I just wanna add that the deliberate attempts of people here to avoid actual responses to our points, constantly ignoring what we've said to contradict the general users' statement because it suits their ideological narrative is pretty fuckin' stupid.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Uh oh the special snowflake got called out and is now insulting people.

[Cliff Paul]

Placenta Cream's ideal society

NVZdnmHa6Oc

Go ahead and infract me you moralists!

[Ele'ill]

Mariel, I think it's obvious based on my previous attempts that I am not going to get a clear definition of civilization out of you or a clear answer to my question about why people would choose to set the wheels in motion to developing civilization. It's unfortunate, because I don't think my questions were asked in bad faith. Bcbm answered them in one try. You'd like to dodge, and that's fine. I'm sure we both have better things to do with our time than spend days in this thread, with me asking questions and you angrily affirming you've answered them. If you think "the lineage of a specific way of living that is not entirely or at all been broken from with critical left theory" is an adequately clear definition of civilization, it's clear to me that there is little hope of taking that part of the conversation beyond where it has gone. Our record in this thread is public, and I think it's best to leave it that.

I do think your latest reply, quoted above, is another symptom of what I think the issue is with your posts in this thread. You load a lot of buzz words into your posts, use them ambiguously, then when others in this online society have the audacity to infer meanings in them, you get offended while offering "clarifying" definitions that are as opaque as mud. I don't think that's the best way to go about having a good online conversation.

*yawn*


I've already mentioned slavery, I've mentioned the destruction of former or other ways of life, or the assimilation and reworking of them to continue or reproduce civilization, where civilization is that specific form of living that was marked by an increase in war, the systematic destruction of all other ways of living because they were viewed as a threat, institutions, religion, etc..





You say you find problems with "civic duty" and "mass society," and I again I am compelled to wonder what you mean by these terms.

these are pretty basic terms that you should probably be familiar with, and as far as discussion goes you shouldn't expect to be spoon-fed definitions to words and concepts that you are becoming hysterical over, that is telling



"Civic duty" could refer to the contribution expected of each member of a socialist society in which hierarchy has been eliminated in social planning. Is that obligation bad. "Mass society" could mean a society with a lot of people. Is that what you mean? If not, what do you mean? How many people is too many in a society, and who determines the answer to that question? You? Society?

Yes, so back to my original point about work, allegedly absent of this hierarchy as you mention, what group is going to enforce this expected contribution to society? What group is going to hold communities within mass society in a singular state of existence? What is going to keep communities from forming and interacting with the new terrain of the world or force them to do so in a particular manner i.e. who is going to enforce mass society? If you're viewing preconfiguration through a critical lense and are in favor of a more emergent and diffuse insurgency than the answer to how many people is answered with nothing short of the global population in a diffuse and emergent manner. Should a single person or society determine such human movement? Through this critical lense the answer is no.

Keep in mind, my response in these threads is usually to a comment like 'if you don't work you starve' and then upon being unasnwered the following apologia surfaces that by 'work' folks simply meant things like brushing your teeth and wanting to hang out with your kids which is pretty dishonest imo.

[Ele'ill]

Uh oh the special snowflake got called out and is now insulting people.

pot meet kettle




I was thinking they might as well just be saying civilization = class society. There doesn't seem to be much difference between their criticism and a regular communist or anarchist criticism, depending on how they are articulating the definition of civilization (at least from some users in this thread,). I'm not really sure why they want to be set apart from those traditions, other than perhaps tactics.

Perhaps it would be helpful for an anti-civ to explain the difference between the Marxist or anarchist criticism and an anti-civ perspective?

I don't fall under anti-civ as a singular tendency and I agree with you that the positions taken by some people in this thread who are following an anti-civ criticism (of work as an example) appear more influenced by other tendencies because they are (i am). I think some would say that civilization as a form of living is the force that will basically maintain the neccessity of a state because it acts as a preconfigured limitation to autonomy and 'free association' in regards to emergent forms of living.

[oneday]

I think some would say that civilization as a form of living is the force that will basically maintain the neccessity of a state because it acts as a preconfigured limitation to autonomy and 'free association' in regards to emergent forms of living.

But what is the difference if you substitute "class society" for civilization there? Does civilization mean anything more?

Regarding the discussions about work, I just don't understand the anti-civ's ultimate aim, at least through Placenta Cream's lens. Paraphrasing from the "from each.. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/each-according-his-t192558/index4.html)" thread:


Person A: We will need police and incentives to ensure people continue to produce.
PC: That's just like capitalism. It's work. I don't want to work.
Communist: How about we transform productive activity from work into something that is enjoyable to people, and people voluntarily contribute?
PC: I don't like to produce things, and I never will. So HA, it won't work. I got your number communists, it's just like capitalism.

I mean if anti-civ people really feel like this then what is the point of criticism? Life requires transforming nature into use-values, there is no other option. If there is no possibility of doing so without coercion (which seems to be PC's view), we will have to accept the institution of work.

[Armchair Partisan]

I think people should be able to abandon the kids, sure, fuck 'em, I'm not a moralist. However the same person will have to deal with the fact that many angry parents will probably want to kill them. I don't have a problem with that. I have a problem with the idea of enforcement tat the left is so keen on.

So... your ideal society is some sort of wild west, with lynch mobs? Remind me how that's better than even a social democratic welfare state, let alone the socialist society most of us here envision? I mean, I want to get rid of law enforcement, incentives, the state etc. too, but not just because those are nice principles, but because I think it would help build a better society. If it turns out that material conditions, at some point, require that incentives to work be kept around for a while, so be it. If not, then great! What exactly is your goal?

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Yes, so back to my original point about work, allegedly absent of this hierarchy as you mention, what group is going to enforce this expected contribution to society? What group is going to hold communities within mass society in a singular state of existence? What is going to keep communities from forming and interacting with the new terrain of the world or force them to do so in a particular manner i.e. who is going to enforce mass society?

Here we see your underlying pessimistic view of human nature emerging from beneath the web of prevarications and evasions you've spent the thread weaving. You've denied it repeatedly, but it's staring us all right in the face in the very language you use and questions you ask.

The Marxist view is that humans presently need to be coerced into work because work in class society is alienated, exploitative, oppressive. Once these features of work are removed, the nature of the activities that we presently call work will assume a different nature as contributions that we want to make to a society that we feel connected to and a respected and valued member of, including and especially economically as planners. The view of freedom in this vision is a social one.

For this reason, when you ask what group is going to enforce an expected contribution, you're still assuming that the Marxist understanding of human nature and freedom is wrong. The alternative vision youre working with is understands freedom as an individual enjoyment, as being left alone. This vision presupposes the individualistic neoclassical economic understanding of humanity that depicts humans as inherently greedy little jerks who want to maximize their own individual enjoyment without taking society into account. If this resembles humans under capitalism, it's not a mistake. When confronted with people like me who talk about uncoerced social contributions under communism, people who harbor this vision of freedom give off blank stares and ask questions like the one you just asked.

Your critique of capitalism still operates within the parameters of capitalism, smuggling in a pivotal assumption that leaves your vision of social transformation nothing more than the bearing of moral witness without practical applicability.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

I think people should be able to abandon the kids, sure, fuck 'em, I'm not a moralist. However the same person will have to deal with the fact that many angry parents will probably want to kill them. I don't have a problem with that. I have a problem with the idea of enforcement tat the left is so keen on.You're not a moralist until someone asks you to do something for them, then comes the moral outrage! We can sit here and say we advocate freely associated labor, completely voluntary labor, and your only response to that is "but I never want to do any work." Then you go around acting like because you yourself can't get over yourself everybody else here isn't willing (without force) to sacrifice some of their time and energy and lives to fight for and work in a communist society and just for better communities in general. You say you're not a moralist yet you seem to suggest that you think any attachment to anybody but yourself will lead to immoral things because then it leads to responsibilities that could leave you momentarily unhappy.

But giving babies the support they need to survive if you don't want to? Why would someone do that? And what community would the baby have to fall back on? I would much rather live in a human society where we take care of our own people, can feed eachother, can give people help when we are sick. You know I grew up in a family where my father went on way too many "benders" with drugs and alcohol, was in jail or prison a good chunk of my life, he was abusive, etc, etc, but I never think about "revenge", what kind of talk is that, why is it about revenge?

Where is the moral outrage of starving people in the world? Fuck em. No wait don't fuck em because they're a victim of civilization, if you're anti-civ it makes sense. But to suggest it's moralistic to say it's wrong if a parent abandoned their kid to die in a post-civilization world just doesn't make your position look good. Who wants to live in that world? I know I don't.

[Cliff Paul]

If you think those later problems, the problems of present class society, are unsolvable without recreating the initial problem of subjecting yourself fully to the whims of nature, you are subscribing to the view that humans are so naturally and pervasively selfish that the only way to have them get along is to have nature step in as an overbearing and immediate governor of human relations.

Yep didn't say any of that but whatever. Anyways, you remind me of the Dominicans who were responsible for 'repudiating' the Cathar heretics. See, the Dominicans would start from the assumption that there are various heresies - and Catharism was an outgrowth of one of them. They read Cathar texts, interrogated suspected believers, etc. but it was all superficial. We don't really know exactly what the Cathars believed since only a handful of their texts survived, but according to the Catholic Church it was basically Manichaeism (like half of all the major heresies during the middle ages were described as being Manichaeistic). How accurate that description was is certainly debatable since the Catholic Church tended to just write off any dualist theology as Manichaiesm.

What the fuck does this have to do with you? Well you, like many of your Dominican leftists, know that you are right. You don't have to read or understand what any of us heretics have written in the thread. You can pick out a few buzzwords (technology, civilization, progress, etc.) and dismiss us all as primmies without having to actually think about it. That's why you've been able to lop Placenta Cream's, theblackmask's, and I's ideas as primitivism (not entirely convinced the blackmask isn't a primmie) despite them being only superficially similar.


I don't share that view. I think that the solution to the first problem was progressive because it related to a more basic issue of human existence and permitted humans to use that progress as a springboard for overcoming the later problems of civilization.

And here we get the typical, "socialism is going to make everything better" response, which fails to address any of the critiques I made in my post.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Yep didn't say any of that but whatever. Anyways, you remind me of the Dominicans who were responsible for 'repudiating' the Cathar heretics. See, the Dominicans would start from the assumption that there are various heresies - and Catharism was an outgrowth of one of them. They read Cathar texts, interrogated suspected believers, etc. but it was all superficial. We don't really know exactly what the Cathars believed since only a handful of their texts survived, but according to the Catholic Church it was basically Manichaeism (like half of all the major heresies during the middle ages were described as being Manichaeistic). How accurate that description was is certainly debatable since the Catholic Church tended to just write off any dualist theology as Manichaiesm.

What the fuck does this have to do with you? Well you, like many of your Dominican leftists, know that you are right. You don't have to read or understand what any of us heretics have written in the thread. You can pick out a few buzzwords (technology, civilization, progress, etc.) and dismiss us all as primmies without having to actually think about it. That's why you've been able to lop Placenta Cream's, theblackmask's, and I's ideas as primitivism (not entirely convinced the blackmask isn't a primmie) despite them being only superficially similar.



And here we get the typical, "socialism is going to make everything better" response, which fails to address any of the critiques I made in my post.

I don't know where any of this venom is coming from, as I think I addressed only a single one of your posts. I do believe the response was respectful and directly addressed what you said.

[Ele'ill]

But what is the difference if you substitute "class society" for civilization there? Does civilization mean anything more? Regarding the discussions about work, I just don't understand the anti-civ's ultimate aim, at least through Placenta Cream's lens. Paraphrasing from the "from each.. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/each-according-his-t192558/index4.html)" thread:



I mean if anti-civ people really feel like this then what is the point of criticism? Life requires transforming nature into use-values, there is no other option. If there is no possibility of doing so without coercion (which seems to be PC's view), we will have to accept the institution of work.

This is mainly a reply to your question to me but I think it applies to the rest of the post. If a classless society is based around 'work or starve', then I think the anti-civ criticism is pretty valid. You are born to serve society and civilization where communities are almost predefined or limited to being within that parameter, that is not autonomy. What institutions would enforce 'work or starve'?

[Ele'ill]

Here we see your underlying pessimistic view of human nature emerging from beneath the web of prevarications and evasions you've spent the thread weaving. You've denied it repeatedly, but it's staring us all right in the face in the very language you use and questions you ask.


The Marxist view is that humans presently need to be coerced into work because work in class society is alienated, exploitative, oppressive. Once these features of work are removed, the nature of the activities that we presently call work will assume a different nature as contributions that we want to make to a society that we feel connected to and a respected and valued member of, including and especially economically as planners. The view of freedom in this vision is a social one.

This works for you, ideologically, to benefit the idea of preconfiguration. What I said earlier is that the attempt to homogenize humans into a category of being inherently social to the point that they are willing to serve society (your society in this theoretical exercise) is not accurate and actually demonstrates the coercion that the line of criticism against civilization points out. It demonstrates that ideologically you cannot have autonomy splitting the human species in the directions of the individual's or group's needs and desires. All of that must serve the ideological society of your preconfiguration or the previous society(ies), which, since it hasn't been answered at this point, regarding work or starve, would require cops, courts, prison, i.e. a state, forever.




For this reason, when you ask what group is going to enforce an expected contribution, you're still assuming that the Marxist understanding of human nature and freedom is wrong. The alternative vision youre working with is understands freedom as an individual enjoyment, as being left alone. This vision presupposes the individualistic neoclassical economic understanding of humanity that depicts humans as inherently greedy little jerks who want to maximize their own individual enjoyment without taking society into account.

I don't think humans are good or bad or greedy or altruistic as I stated a few posts ago and the line of criticism isn't based on any single one of those things. Humans being able to be social and form communities doesn't really equate to humans being able and willing to serve a singular form of existence to which the work or starve mantra is definitely.



If this resembles humans under capitalism, it's not a mistake. When confronted with people like me who talk about uncoerced social contributions under communism, people who harbor this vision of freedom give off blank stares and ask questions like the one you just asked.

Those uncoerced social contributions that will be mandatory for the purpose of mass society?




Your critique of capitalism still operates within the parameters of capitalism, smuggling in a pivotal assumption that leaves your vision of social transformation nothing more than the bearing of moral witness without practical applicability.

tbh i just don't think you understand the criticisms because its the first time you've been exposed to them

[Spectre of Spartacism]

This works for you, ideologically, to benefit the idea of preconfiguration. What I said earlier is that the attempt to homogenize humans into a category of being inherently social to the point that they are willing to serve society (your society in this theoretical exercise) is not accurate and actually demonstrates the coercion that the line of criticism against civilization points out. It demonstrates that ideologically you cannot have autonomy splitting the human species in the directions of the individual's or group's needs and desires. All of that must serve the ideological society of your preconfiguration or the previous society(ies), which, since it hasn't been answered at this point, regarding work or starve, would require cops, courts, prison, i.e. a state, forever.

Thank you for repeating this. You think it's hogwash to talk about humans voluntarily wanting to making contributions society needs in a context of abundance and where all humans have input into what is produced and how it is produced.

You can claim


I don't think humans are good or bad or greedy or altruistic as I stated a few posts ago and the line of criticism isn't based on any single one of those things.until you're blue in the face. If you do not attribute the endemic greed, warfare, racism and other institutionalized social ills to the way human self-interest expresses itself only in a society whose relations evolved in a context of material scarcity, then you are attributing those ills to a tranhistorical and quite overwhelmingly nasty human nature.

This is why you're still hung up on asking
Those uncoerced social contributions that will be mandatory for the purpose of mass society?If contributions are uncoerced, it makes no sense of talk about them as "mandatory." A mandate is something that is an authoritative order. When people voluntarily perform a task, it doesn't need to be authoritatively ordered. This is obviously difficult for you to wrap your mind around, since your view of human nature is so dark. It honestly makes me feel sorry for you, to be driven by personal experiences to have such a pessimistic and hateful view of who humans are at their very core.

The materialists among us who want a program and party to revolutionize society, who have an interest in more than bearing moral witness to all the terrible things people presently endure, understand that material abundance has provided the possibility for a transformation in social relations in which human self-interest does not need to take the form of drone-striking wedding parties or opening fire on unarmed black people.


tbh i just don't think you understand the criticisms because its the first time you've been exposed to themOr maybe it's because what little you've said in your criticisms is either contradictory or unelaborated dropping of buzz words?

[Ele'ill]

Thank you for repeating this. You think it's hogwash to talk about humans voluntarily wanting to making contributions society needs in a context of abundance and where all humans have input into what is produced and how it is produced.

You can claim

"work or starve" isn't voluntary and your post presupposes a 'human nature' as being in symbiosis with civilization as a singular form of living where groups of people and individuals only have 'input' in so far as it directly applies to a specific form of living that they never agreed to that we know as your ideological preconfiguration




until you're blue in the face. If you do not attribute the endemic greed, warfare, racism and other institutionalized social ills to the way human self-interest expresses itself only in a society whose relations evolved in a context of material scarcity, then you are attributing those ills to a tranhistorical and quite overwhelmingly nasty human nature.

This is why you're still hung up on asking

If something is uncoerced, it makes no sense of talk about them as "mandatory." A mandate is something that is an authoritative order. When people voluntarily perform a task, it doesn't need to be authoritatively ordered. This is obviously difficult for you to wrap your mind around, since your view of human nature is so dark.

How is 'work or starve' not a mandate requiring enforcement and a strict adherence to a single form of living? My view isn't of a 'human nature' as I mentioned a few posts ago.




The materialists among us who want a program and party to revolutionize society, who have an interest in more than bearing moral witness to all the terrible things people presently endure, understand that material abundance has provided the possibility for a transformation in social relations in which human self-interest does not need to take the form of drone-striking wedding parties or opening fire on unarmed black people. Or maybe it's because what little you've said in your criticisms are either contradictory or unelaborated dropping of buzz words?

oh right, human self-interest of course being the 'human nature' defined by your party's ideology, that requires civilization in order to exist

[Spectre of Spartacism]

"work or starve" isn't voluntary and your post presupposes a 'human nature' as being in symbiosis with civilization as a singular form of living where groups of people and individuals only have 'input' in so far as it directly applies to a specific form of living that they never agreed to that we know as your ideological preconfiguration

Have I said "work or starve"? For somebody who comes hammer-and-tong at anybody who doesn't read your mind well enough to extract precise meanings from your buzz words, you sure don't seem to be putting a lot of effort into understanding what I have been saying.

I can't say whether my understanding of human nature places it in potential harmony with what you call civilization, because as I have told you, I do not understand what you mean when you say civilization and you refuse to offer clarifications. I can say that human nature is compatible with a social existence free of institutionalized and fixed hierarchies, racism, sexism. All that is required is a sufficient level of technology that you might be conflating with civilization (you refuse to clarify exactly what the relationship between the two is), and a revolutionizing of the social institutions that developed in response to conditions of material scarcity.


How is 'work or starve' not a mandate requiring enforcement and a strict adherence to a single form of living? My view isn't of a 'human nature' as I mentioned a few posts ago.Once again you are arguing against a "work or starve" mandate. I have explained that my understanding of communism does not suppose this mandate, as my understanding of human nature does not coincide with capitalist-driven manifestations of human egotism and selfishness that require this mandate under contemporary class society.


oh right, human self-interest of course being the 'human nature' defined by your party's ideology, that requires civilization in order to existHow have you arrived at this conclusion? On the most generous reading, it is baseless speculation. On a more sinister reading, it's deliberate provocation bordering on flaming.

[Ele'ill]

Have I said "work or starve"? For somebody who comes hammer-and-tong at anybody who doesn't read your mind well enough to extract precise meanings from your buzz words, you sure don't seem to be putting a lot of effort into understanding what I have been saying.

the entire conversation has been based on original posts in this thread where 'work or starve' was used and then defended, and then taken further by defining a society of free producers only free so far as in they are free to produce within current society for society or else die




I can't say whether my understanding of human nature places it in potential harmony with what you call civilization, because as I have told you, I do not understand what you mean when you say civilization and you refuse to offer clarifications.

it must be really great to simply be able to say 'i dont' understand' to really basic concepts that have been spoon-fed to you a hundred times in order to preserve your ideology, i mean another user requoted like 3 or 4 posts defining the concept and you simply ignored it, whatever





I can say that human nature is compatible with a social existence free of institutionalized and fixed hierarchies, racism, sexism.

Oh really, what is human nature? How is a mass society of producers existing for that mass society as a form of living not institutionalization? At what point is a hierarchy and further institutions required to stop an emergent and diffuse forming of human communities to make up a society of free producers that is actually autonomous and based on desires?



All that is required is a sufficient level of technology that you might be conflating with civilization (you refuse to clarify exactly what the relationship between the two is), and a revolutionizing of the social institutions that developed in response to conditions of material scarcity.

yeah except i said the opposite but it's not like anyone at this point is expecting you to actually read posts, you already know everything there is to know


Once again you are arguing against a "work or starve" mandate. I have explained that my understanding of communism does not suppose this mandate, as my understanding of human nature does not coincide with capitalist-driven manifestations of human egotism and selfishness that require this mandate under contemporary class society.

Who is going to force me to work, if I do not work, do I still have access to needs? Who is going to determine this and how is it going to be enforced?


How have you arrived at this conclusion? On the most generous reading, it is baseless speculation. On a more sinister reading, it's deliberate provocation bordering on flaming.



The materialists among us who want a program and party to revolutionize society, who have an interest in more than bearing moral witness to all the terrible things people presently endure, understand that material abundance has provided the possibility for a transformation in social relations in which human self-interest does not need to take the form of drone-striking wedding parties or opening fire on unarmed black people. Or maybe it's because what little you've said in your criticisms are either contradictory or unelaborated dropping of buzz words?

[Spectre of Spartacism]

the entire conversation has been based on original posts in this thread where 'work or starve' was used and then defended, and then taken further by defining a society of free producers only free so far as in they are free to produce within current society for society or else die

Is it a rule that people who enter a conversation because they want to contribute their own views on the topics being discussed must take responsibility for what previous posters have said?


it must be really great to simply be able to say 'i dont' understand' to really basic concepts that have been spoon-fed to you a hundred times in order to preserve your ideology, i mean another user requoted like 3 or 4 posts defining the concept and you simply ignored it, whateverIt's not great to ask for a definition of civilization, be told in response only that it means "the lineage of a specific way of living that is not entirely or at all been broken from with critical left theory," then to be told in so many words that you are a whiny and inattentive brat when you confess that you have no idea what that definition actually means.

Not only is it not great. It's offensively arrogant and disrespectful to the basic ground rules of how to have a ... civilized discussion.


Oh really, what is human nature? How is a mass society of producers existing for that mass society as a form of living not institutionalization? At what point is a hierarchy and further institutions required to stop an emergent and diffuse forming of human communities to make up a society of free producers that is actually autonomous and based on desires?We see you run headlong again into a gross misreading of what was said. I mention how human nature is compatible with an existence free of "institutionalized and fixed hierarchies," and you somehow manage to interpret that as saying that I am claiming that "mass society" isn't institutionalized. It might come as a surprise to you, but I have nothing to say about your use of the term "mass society" because I still have no idea what you mean by it. If I ask, I am sure you'll ridicule me for needing to be spoonfed, so I'll spare onlookers the sad spectacle.

You keep mentioning "mass society," I assume, because you suspect a tension between the bigness of modern society and the creation of hierarchies. Yes, there is a link. Where you fail is in not examining the link and chalking the correlation up to a cause-effect relationship. Bigness of social relations does not cause hierarchy. Human self-interest in conditions of scarcity, layered with a sufficient division of labor to allow some people to escape labor or at least play a more powerful role in distribution of resources, is what creates hierarchy. That is a materialist understanding of hierarchy borne out by the historical record. I think it goes a lot further than Aesopian precepts.


yeah except i said the opposite but it's not like anyone at this point is expecting you to actually read posts, you already know everything there is to knowI am reading your posts and responding to them as best I can. Why do you think I am not?


Who is going to force me to work, if I do not work, do I still have access to needs? Who is going to determine this and how is it going to be enforced?I have answered this same question three times by pointing out it assumes something will need to happen that I don't agree will need to happen. Yet you complain that I don't read your posts? Strange. I will repeat myself, because I think that's how discussions should develop when somebody might have accidentally missed an answer to a question.

Under communism, nobody will be forced to work because people will voluntarily want to contribute what hasn't already been provided for society. When you ask "who is going to force me to work," you might as well be asking me, "Who is going to be pay me a monetary wage based on the gold standard to work?" Nobody is, because that phenomenon isn't going to exist in communism. Neither is coerced labor.

[Ele'ill]

I am reading your posts and responding to them as best I can. Why do you think I am not?

I'm going back and replying to some of the other users who I was posting with since some of what they were posting went in different directions that I think would be more interesting than our discussion as it is now.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

This is mainly a reply to your question to me but I think it applies to the rest of the post. If a classless society is based around 'work or starve', then I think the anti-civ criticism is pretty valid. You are born to serve society and civilization where communities are almost predefined or limited to being within that parameter, that is not autonomy. What institutions would enforce 'work or starve'?
You're just using a strawman here. They said people have to create use-values or they'll starve. This is just obvious and we've discussed this before in other threads. Marx called this an economic law of nature, nobody is ever going to escape it, it doesn't matter what type of society you live in until you automate all labor. I presuppose in post-civilization that people will eat right? Then some people will have to work (or whatever word you want to use because work is a bad bad word) if they want to eat. To pretend like this isn't the case is to be stupendously ignorant of reality and I don't think you're that stupid.

And I see the constant complaint that communities are preconfigured but how else are things supposed to work? We're born into a "preconfigured" society called capitalism which I find to be terrible and needs to change and I'm willing to fight it. But why would I fight it unless I'm trying to put in different parameters to live within, communist parameters? Why also would you not see that as "emergent"? And when what emerges out of that becomes the parameters within which people live now what is ideologically wrong with that, it seems like that'd be the whole point. People are always born into something, I'd rather my children are born into communist society, not this post-civilization society where people don't even have basic rights to healthcare or food.

[Cliff Paul]

yeah except i said the opposite but it's not like anyone at this point is expecting you to actually read posts, you already know everything there is to know

Silence heretic! We all know you speak the words of Mani.

[Ele'ill]

You're just using a strawman here. They said people have to create use-values or they'll starve.

I'm talking about page 1. SoS went through about 12 pages of this thread arguing against criticisms brought up against positions in someone else's posts that were now apparently very much drastically different than their own. Perhaps what you're saying here is right, I didn't see it, but in the past as I'm sure you're aware users have taken the don't work you starve thing pretty literally.




This is just obvious and we've discussed this before in other threads. Marx called this an economic law of nature, nobody is ever going to escape it, it doesn't matter what type of society you live in until you automate all labor. I presuppose in post-civilization that people will eat right? Then some people will have to work (or whatever word you want to use because work is a bad bad word) if they want to eat. To pretend like this isn't the case is to be stupendously ignorant of reality and I don't think you're that stupid.

thanks for having faith in me :grin:

I think the main point of the criticism against work is not to suggest that people won't or shouldn't do things but that the manner in which work will be carried out will mirror our current world, in that the autonomy to recreate the world if and where that's desired by humans cannot happen, i.e. work based around the autonomy of human communities not human communities based around work for mass society. I don't know that you want anything different than this and I'm not saying such.



And I see the constant complaint that communities are preconfigured but how else are things supposed to work? We're born into a "preconfigured" society called capitalism which I find to be terrible and needs to change and I'm willing to fight it. But why would I fight it unless I'm trying to put in different parameters to live within, communist parameters? Why also would you not see that as "emergent"?

the changes desired don't go far enough because preconfiguration seeks to fit a mold, and that 'society' will still operate within that mold, civilization, the destruction of the biosphere, adherence to the concept of work, serving mass society, etc..




And when what emerges out of that becomes the parameters within which people live now what is ideologically wrong with that, it seems like that'd be the whole point. People are always born into something, I'd rather my children are born into communist society, not this post-civilization society where people don't even have basic rights to healthcare or food.

So it pretty much matters what they're born into. I'd say that insurrectionary communism is inherently anti-civ in process where as other less emergent state oriented flavors are probably heavily rooted in civ. Which another user noted earlier, the 'debate' ends up looking a lot like anarchist/communist discussion and I agree that it does. As for healthcare/food I don't remember posting anything about that aside from (I think it was in this thread) those things seeming easier to think about than some other topics.

[Troika]

Then they'll die. Everything that eats, works.

The goal is to eliminate jobs.

I don't know about that. The destruction of the nuclear family would allow for people to not work and survive. Disabled people would need some kind of care anyway.