What’s wrong with Anarcho-Primitivism?
Posted 12 July 2011, by Sisyphus, Sisyphus Rises, sisyphusrises.wordpress.com
Anarcho-primitivism is a collection of complementary ideologies which critique the origins and development of civilization from an anarchist perspective. The anarcho-primitivists allege that humanity lived an idyllic lifestyle as hunter-gatherers prior to the development of complex societies. What caused our purported fall from grace is a source of some debate; John Zerzan argues that it was the development of symbolic expression, while Fredy Perlman says that it was the emergence of abstract power relations. However, most of them agree that since the advent of agriculture and the increased population densities that it made possible we have become bound to technological processes that alienate us from our true nature. The only way to create a healthy, sustainable way of living, they claim, is to abolish civilization in its entirety and fundamentally rework society so that these trends cannot redevelop.
“Agriculture has been and remains a ‘catastrophe’ at all levels, the one which underpins the entire material and spiritual culture of alienation now destroying us. Liberation is impossible without its dissolution.” – John Zerzan1
By arguing that agriculture was where our species went wrong, Zerzan implies that we should return to pre-agricultural means of obtaining food — that is, a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Yet agriculture allows us to acquire much greater quantities of food from a given area than hunter-gatherers could secure. Estimates of how many people could live on the Earth as hunter-gatherers based on the amount of food that would be available to them suggest a carrying capacity of around 100 million (Earth’s Carrying Capacity). How the global population would be reduced to this figure has not been adequately explained by any anarcho-primitivist, but I’m not sure that would be possible without starvation and suffering on an unheard of scale. Even if an ecological disaster resulted in the deaths of billions, those that perished would generally not include the economic elite because they have the resources and power to monopolize the remaining supplies. In all likelihood this event would be used by capital to restructure society and ensure that the class divide remains despite the enormous loss of life.
“Life before domestication/agriculture was in fact largely one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual equality, and health.” – John Zerzan2
Zerzan’s understanding of the life of the hunter-gatherer is based on a preconceived ideal that ignores the more difficult aspects of their existence. Besides the dangers involved in dealing with predators without weapons of greater complexity than a spear or a bow and arrow, ailments that are easily treated with pharmaceuticals could become life-threatening illnesses. Forty percent of the world’s population (approximately three billion people) are at risk of contracting malaria and 200 to 300 million already suffer from it (What Is Malaria). Amebiasis affects 10 percent of humanity; it accounts for more than forty million cases of colitis and is estimated to cause 40,000 to 110,000 deaths annually (Amebiasis). 700 million people are at risk of catching schistosomiasis and over 200 million are already infected (Schistosomiasis). These and other afflictions have plagued primitive peoples for millennia and no natural medicines have succeeded in preventing them. Most can be cured by modern medicine with little difficulty. Civilization may bring about an assortment of problems, but surely it must be better than the alternative — which would entail a slow, painful death for countless millions.
“Classical anarchism, for example, want[s] to take over civilization, rework its structures to some degree, and remove its worst abuses and oppressions. However, 99% of life in civilization remains unchanged.” – John Moore3
Moore claims that anarchists would merely rework the basic structure of what he refers to as “mass society.” Like many anarcho-primitivists, he views technology as single, unified whole; the bad parts cannot be separated from the good because they are all part of the same entity. Even so, in his own words “there might be some changes in socio-economic relations, such as worker control of industry and neighbourhood councils in place of the State.” Capitalism is a system that is based on inequalities of wealth and power and it is reasonable to assume that the technologies a capitalist society develops will reflect these inequalities. No technology advances unless there are people who benefit from it and have the means to manufacture and distribute it. Developing renewable energy sources would allow us to free ourselves from our crippling dependency on fossil fuels, but because these technologies conflict with the profits of established capitalists research into these fields is largely neglected. As long as scientific research continues to be dominated by a small elite, technology will be used primarily to exploit and control.
Many of the issues that anarcho-primitivists seek to address are all too real. Climate change is happening, the frequency and intensity of many kinds of extreme weather will increase, and our current culture of consumption truly is unsustainable. Nevertheless, we cannot go back in time to a period when the human population was only a small fraction of what it is today. Neither do we need to follow the road-map that capital and the state have laid out for us. Malatesta wrote over a century ago that we must seek “the destruction of every political institution based on authority, and the constitution of a free and equal society, based upon harmony of interests, and the voluntary contribution of all to the satisfaction of social needs.”4 Only once scientific research and industry have been brought under the control of the masses can the technologies that we use be adjusted to meet human values.
1: Zerzan, John. Elements of Refusal pg. 87.
2: Zerzan, John. “Future Primitive.”
3: Moore, John. “A Primitivist Primer.”
4: Malatesta, Errico. “Anarchy.”
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