Primitivism

[Anarchist Freedom]

What are your thoughts on Primitivism?

--I already started a thread on this the day before the server went down for a while.

[redstar2000]

Civilisation, Primitivism and anarchism

by Andrew Flood

Over the last decade a generalized critique of civilization has been made by a number of authors, mostly based in the USA. Some of these have chosen to identify as anarchists although the more general self-identification is primitivist. There overall argument is that 'civilisation' itself is the problem that results in our failure to live rewarding lives. The struggle for change is thus a struggle against civilization and for an earth where technology has been eliminated.

Full Text (http://struggle.ws/andrew/primitivism.html)


This is a somewhat lengthy but extraordinarily well-argued polemic against primitivism written from an anarchist viewpoint.

I highly recommend it!

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[nochastitybelt]

There are also in-between levels of primitivism.. that being Green Anarchism (John Zerzan variety, although he is getting a cult following much akin to Avakian out there in Eugene, OR), Deep Ecology (Bookchin) and neo-Luddites.. (Kirkpatrick Sale/Schumacher) I think Kirkpatrick Sale has a lot to say and some of it a pretty valid and strong argument. He maintains that no technology is ever neutral.... it's many faceted and the dynamics effect every strata of society, past, present and future..... that not all technology is beneficial technology -- the non beneficial technology has created on the one hand, massive unemployment and worker displacement, and on the other hand has really implemented what we know today as expoitative capitalism or skyrocketing capitalism, and then of course he states the environmental degradation that will thrust it's head for years to come. He does concede that not all technology is bad however, but that there must be a middleground and some important things to think about:

What purpose does this machine serve?
What problem has become so great that it needs this solution?
Is this invention nothing but, as Thoreau put it, an improved means to an unimproved end?
Who are the winners?
Who are the losers?
Will this invention concentrate or disperse power, encourage or discourage self worth?
Can society at large afford it?
Can the biosphere?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Primitivism is a bunch of bullshit. It would have us abandon life-saving medical technology. It is also reactionary because it requires billions of people to die in order for it to work.

[nochastitybelt]

I just skimmed through the article. I am not surprised that they mention Zerzan in the first couple of paragraphs. I've read everything of Zerzan that's online.... and I gotta say.... he has a fascinating perspective of things.. and very broad range of references.. however, he doesn't live the primitivist lifestyle that he proposes. He lives in a commune with some faithful followers of his and is more anti-technology rather than hard-core primitivist.

anyway... a few years ago I use to hang out at this anarchist/Primitivist board. it had some great, intellectual discussions about insurrectionary anarchism by Sasha K, of Killing King Abicus/Willful Disobedience and ASAN--Against Sleep and Nightmare.... great, great discussions

http://p216.ezboard.com/ftheanarchyboardprimitivism

And there were a few primitivists-"in-training" there who would leave for a few weeks or months and go on these wilderness camp excursions that would teach people how to survive off the land and their wits, supposedly.. But, apparently, there was also some main commissary area, not too far away from "wilderness" and pretty damned close to civilization where they could --- yup..you guessed it--- buy their supplies ....ropes, sticks, matches, food, what have you--- Ha!!!!! ---AND have access to a computer!!! where they would report back to the forum their every feral adventure!!! so, it was more like boyscouts on a guided overnight expedition rather than anything remotely primitivist.

I don't think THEY even want to do it seriously!!!! Just a latent dream my friends. Nothing that is ever going to register on the radar as an alternative to societys ills.

[nochastitybelt]

The link to the anarchy board for anyone who wants to read. both boards closed in 2001.

http://p216.ezboard.com/ftheanarchyboardanarchy

[shadows]

Zerzan has roots in Situationism, that left communist current that was central to the 1968 events in France and that criticized traditional Marxism from the left at a time when but a few ventured into that theoretical territory. His embrace of an anti-left anarchism and primitivism leave me rather cold, but some of his insights into the role of technology, despite the selective use of anthropology, seem of value. Still, his critique of time, of number, as symbolism and thus alienating, seem distant from real life as most persons experience and perceive it. Bob Black, a co-thinker of Zerzan up to a point, is highly entertaining to read yet like many of these anti-left anarchists is more Stirner than Marx, more egoist than communist, in the worst anarchist tradition (at least in the US).

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2005, 08:14 AM
Zerzan has roots in Situationism
Indeed he does!
And the "ISM" ought to give it away right then and there that he's not worth the time. :lol:

[nochastitybelt]

Yeah, Bob Black's "Abolition of Work" is a hoot. it like some 5th graders creative writing report.

Zerzan's roots are all over the place. In one small article, "Time and it's Discontent" he cites Greek myth Kronos, along with Newton, Derrida, Poe, Joyce, Gallileo, Meister Eckhart, Marcuse, Freud, Johnathan Swift and the Lilliputins, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzche, St. Agustine, Monet.... Everybody's in there!!! excluding the Una-bomber, who's in all his other articles. His Green Anarchy magazine claims to have a circulation of 8-9,000 quarterly. And though they carry primitivist/anti-civilization articles they also cover, they say, "indepth analysis" of anti-capitalist and anarchist resistance movements and blurbs of global direct action reports. Maybe to snatch-in unsuspecting anarcho-commies.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2005, 12:32 AM
It is also reactionary because it requires billions of people to die in order for it to work.
Yeah, like that. And the survivors of the great starve-off get to live in dirt, ignorance, xenophobia...slaves to nature even if not to each other.

Also: what happens when one group of people gives up technology and another doesn't?

The less technologically advanced group gets stomped. That's happened so many times its boring. It's the most predictable thing in human history and prehistory. Look up what the Maori did to the Chatham Islanders. (It's in Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond among other places.)

So the only way this can work is if a global nuclear war or something knocks everybody back to the Stone Age at once. Really, anybody who actually wants to bring about this "antitechnology" or "anticivilization" stuff should join the Project for a New American Century.

[encephalon]

So the only way this can work is if a global nuclear war or something knocks everybody back to the Stone Age at once. Really, anybody who actually wants to bring about this "antitechnology" or "anticivilization" stuff should join the Project for a New American Century.

all it takes is one large nuke for pax americana.

[shadows]

It's not for nothing that 'anarcho-primitivism' looks to the distant, unrecorded past as a paradigm for the future, and seeks some sort of validity in its polemic against progress in selected anthropological accounts of so-called modern day 'primitive' or relatively non-agricultural peoples. While for now the primitivists, even in their critique of the 'left' recall their origin in leftism, are associated with the anarchist tradition, there might be an underlying affinity with fascism, say in nature worship or in survivalism, misanthropy, etc. Janet Biehl has co-authored a short text on the danger of fascism within the anarchist movement, mainly a historical analysis and a polemic against the German youth movement prior to Hitlerism, which the authors see as parallel in some ways with today's 'back-to-nature' anarchism. (See her book, Ecofascism:Lessons from the German Experience, co-author Peter Staudenmaier, published by AK, in 1996)

[VukBZ2005]

Originally posted by Virgin Molotov Cocktail+Mar 23 2005, 08:45 AM--> (Virgin Molotov Cocktail @ Mar 23 2005, 08:45 AM)
[email protected] 23 2005, 08:14 AM
Zerzan has roots in Situationism
Indeed he does!
And the "ISM" ought to give it away right then and there that he's not worth the time. :lol: [/b]
And just to remind everyone - there is no such thing as "Situationism" - but there
is such a thing as a Situationist and Situationist Theory. Please remember that!

[Anarchist Freedom]

I Find Primitivism to be well extremely idiotic.


Destroy all that The Brain of man created. It seems like something like this would only happen in post apoclyptic world.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by shadows
Bob Black, a co-thinker of Zerzan up to a point, is highly entertaining to read yet like many of these anti-left anarchists is more Stirner than Marx, more egoist than communist, in the worst anarchist tradition (at least in the US).

There was an article in an issue of Harper's Magazine some time ago about a guy who was into growing poppies and making his own opium; he directly accused Bob Black of being the guy who narced him out.

And I was informed back in the early 1980s that Black actually threatened to kill the new-born baby of a left political adversary.

Bob Black, if you ever happen to run into him, is very bad news...stay away!

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[nochastitybelt]

I recall hearing that about Bob Black, too.

Anarchism against Primitivism
From the Anarchist FAQ Jan 2005

http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secA3.html#seca39


and more critiques,

Ken Knabb: The Poverty of Primitivism
http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/primitivism.htm


Brian Oliver Shepard: Anarchism vs. Primitivism
http://www.davidgrenier.com/000284.html

[shadows]

'Situationism' is a no-no, yes. That's because Debord claimed that Situationist thought could avoid ideological mystification. Full of insight, Debord's theory (or theories) never quite claimed coherence into an ideology or into an overarching weltanschauung, though likely it was. The SI purged and purged until only one or two members remained. Yet, it is seen as having influenced the Angry Brigades in England (see Tom Vague's Televisionaries for obscure references). Debord's books have been re-issued in expensive editions by Verso.

[shadows]

Bob Black claims to have once been in the American SWP (how long? when?) and to have shed any Marxism he may once have had. He has a website, and some of his writings are listed on anarchist sites. Anyway, he is still listed as a regular contributor to Anarchy mag. I believe his profession, according to his scribblings, is 'lawyer'. The situationist label is probably inaccurate, I think I should have written 'post-situ'. This would apply to Zerzan, who along with Black is very much against (and has written a relatively vicious diatribe attacking) Murray Bookchin. Full of personal venom, Black goes after Bookchin for being a leftist, for being 'old', and for not being a lifestylist. Hm.

[DEPAVER]

Nice to see someone on the list familiar with Kirkpatrick Sale! Sale is first and foremost a bioregionalist, and I wholeheartedly support his views.

I believe the verifiable, historical records shows that bioregional organization of human societies is the only type of social organization that is successful.

I just wrote a short piece on this in another thread:


http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php...ndpost&p=517184 (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=34039&view=findpost&p=517184)

We'll never go back to primitivism, but then again, that's not necessary. What is necessary is that we find a suitable middle ground between technology and the natural world and relearn how to live sufficiently and in harmony with all living things.

If we don't, our ultimate outcome is very much in question.

[nochastitybelt]

Yes, Likewise, it's good to see someone here familiar with Kirkpatrick Sale and in support of bioregionalism. Zerzen is a little extreme, for my taste, but Sale has got it right. and Yes, you are right, he is first and foremost a bioregionalist.

good post! I wrote some similar posts about bioregionalism here http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php...pic=34042&st=20 (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=34042&st=20)

I see that introducing these "new" ideas have to be done very delicately or they will be rejected off the bat. I'm surprised these ideas aren't being disseminated here regularly, especially among anarchists, as it's elemental of decentralization. Though, I think in time all communists are going to come to the pragmatic conclusion of adopting a cooperative bio-regional decentralized worker-community-managed approach :lol: (a lot there!) if they want a humanist communism without disparities. Ironic as it may sound, Centralized economies would only work well if the earth were populated at 4.9 billion or so less, where the task and scope of production and distribution is not so overwhelming. Dealing on large scale of millions/billions, the opposite principle, i.e., bio-regional decentralization, is true.

Keep posting!

[DEPAVER]

Agreed.
Thank goodness you're here. I was beginning to feel very alone and had basically stopped posting on this site.

Cheers,

[nochastitybelt]

Yess! I know that feeling. That's what happens when you step aside from the dogmatic party line and overturn every aspect of communsim in your head and start thinking for yourself. Unfortunetely bioregionalism has that negative connotation of "sitting in a redwood tree." But for those who are privy to the 3rd mechanic of "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction' than they recognize that they can't exploit the environment with industrialization without taking the necessary steps to preserve it. Plus bioregionalism is the best way to distribute things. Bioregionalism needs to be added to the lefts ideology as much as direct action has been.
So, don't stop posting... your line of reasoning is very needed here.

[bolshevik butcher]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2005, 06:32 AM
Primitivism is a bunch of bullshit. It would have us abandon life-saving medical technology. It is also reactionary because it requires billions of people to die in order for it to work.
i agree, I mean it would be giving up the very computers we are using, what would it achieve?

[shadows]

Here's a website that has Bob Black (The Abolition of Work), Kirkpatrick Sale (The Imposition of Technology, and two other essays), along with quite an assortment of stuff. Really a potpourri of ideas, tied together by a critique of civilization. Included is an article by someone named Turner, titled The Yin and Yang of HIV, recounting Peter Duesberg's heretical theory of HIV, very critical of chemotherapy for AIDS patients. Hm. Doesn't sound too left or progressive to me. Still, one needn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, and I'm sure that 'civilization' is a distortion of nature, but 'primitivism' as the latest anarchoid genre seems reactionary. What ever happened to Engels? Marshall Berman's Everything Solid Melts into Air might be a good antidote to the primitivist yearning for an (imaginary?) distant past. http://www.primitivism.com/author-index.htm

[nochastitybelt]

nut-cases aside, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

The funny thing about Zerzan and the pleisto-centric primitivists is that you have to wondee when the last time they've been outside? Where is this wilderness they talk about? All I see is miles and miles of highways, strip malls and tall corporate skyscrapers. So, even if everybody wanted to do that it would be nearly impossible. After demolishing all the building structures, where to put all the debris? A wilderness of concrete and debris would be left. So, in actuality, these guys haven't thought this out too well. They might just be stay-at-home hermits with no inkling of what's going on in the world around them. ha! But, an interesting thing I heard once, though, was that when the US was still colonies; the Eastern US was so dense with forest, that a squirrel could travel from Pennsylvania to Virgina from tree to tree without ever touching the ground.

Bioregionlism, the theory that Sale promotes, is a different story, however. It goes hand and hand with anarchist decentralization. How best to use the environment within supporting humanity's needs. Anarchists practice it right now with community gardens, cooperatives, squatting, Food not Bombs. Bioregionalism also takes a big chunk out of Capitalism by avoiding corporate consumerism and a chunk away from the ruling classes grip by living self-sustainingly, which I was told in another thread was a most reactionary program. However, the way I see it, if you don't use the ruling classes products, or conform to the ruling classes way, they eventually become obsolete. So, I think there are some merits there to be had. Just need to find the balance of technology and industrialization in a more eco-human way. But, Everyone can rest assure however, that technology will never take a backward step. It never has as far as technological progress is concerned.

[shadows]

I'm no anarchist but the left communist mag, which Bob Black once worked for but now attacks, Processed World, seems a shade Situ while avoiding those primitivist rants like Zerzan spews. Anyway, always lots of fun and critical in the best way:

http://www.ProcessedWorld.com/Rants/anti_economy.htm