Another approach is to consider social organisation, wether capitalism or syndialism or whatever, as the root of the problem and find solutions based on individual cooperation, direct contacts. This is why we should never organise or try to avoid it as much as possible. Organization is the base of centralisation, power, manipulation, representation.
This is also why syndicalism is not anarchy, it is alienating and based on the same social alienation scheme as industrialism.
From what i hear in a conference online, he says clearly that there is no easy roadmap and way back, and he has personaly no answer to how to stop this suicidal drive. He cannot alone have anything to say and he is plainly conscious of it. He is just a critics.
Then personnaly i do not believe in your syndicalism scheme. Mass production and mass decision making is the essence of the problem. it foster irresponsiblity, discourage, disempower individuals
However fantasy in Zerzan primitivist dream there could be, you see clearly that no one can neglect his critcism. And he does not seem to ne nut and fundamentalist. He just try to ask some deep questions long overlooked. On can question is honesty in some citations and analysis, like i read on some french sites. Could be true that he is sometimes sloppy. But some of his stuff are really of interest, including his way of defining a roadmap, far from the "naive genocidal" black out.
From what i found in archeology articles, civilization rather appear to be a sudden consequence of a long trend of environemental exhaustion probably triggered by an episode of climate change. Previous episodes did not require such extreme labour intense survival technique as long as large game was not depleted, people could move on... but there are signs that the game pool had been slowly exhausted. Such things happened in the americas: man came and rapidely killed all large slow species.
The beginning of the critic is interesting. I also tried to understand wether Zerzan is correct. I do not either believe that symbolism is the only explanation because there are signs that this is in fact what defines human from early on. Off course, with such a tool, added to other like fire, human add more chance to become a farmer than a chimp..
The union is a bunch of people that, instead of breaking the plant and reclaiming freedom collaborate with the boss and keep working for him. Their opposition is purely rethorical and their collaboration factual.
May be "they have no choice", but at least they can skip their syndicalism delusion.
Syndicalism will not change the roadmap of capitalism. It has failed for 200 years and will continue to do so.
Don't you all get it? You all talk in parralells, in some quasi-intellectual fashion. Fuck being smart. Some people are just plain retarded and they wont listen to your ideas. As JZ says, "who wants to run the world?" Go throw some bombs, I wanna see something blow up. And then you all can justify it here on the forums, though youd never do it yourself. Ohhhh but thats not productive. Nature isnt sustainable its transient. So are we, go out now and burn down your house. lol.
I, personally, advocate a detournment of symbolic thought. Using symbolic thought to ironically reveal its own flaws and alienating effects. This, in my opinion, is what was done by the Abstract Expressionists and Primitivist artists as well as Zerzan himself when he writes his books.
Contradiction. Earlier you said: "That's great, but we don't have that time on our hands" in response to how I proposed to reduce the world's population by syndicalism.
I support many propositions that go against the status quo.Whether i believe they are likely to bring about the change i wish to see is a different matter.
Just as i support independent media,guerrilla advertising or culture jamming, but don't think they are very effective.
Also, on what grounds are you saying that hunter-gatherer lifestyle is "better" than civilized lifestyle? You could make the "alienation" argument, and that's fine, it's just a little hard to measure. You can, however, measure things like work hours; a study of the !Kung in the 1960's showed that they work, on average, about 17 hours a week! However, their infant mortality rate was also shown to be much much higher than modern industrialized society.
So there are a whole lot of factors to consider in judging societies in comparison with each other, particularly when their cultural and economic systems differ so greatly. I am somewhat worried of self-destructive tendencies within Anarchism that might take away the focus from EDUCATION and ORGANIZATION, and I include primitivism in this category of self-destructive tendencies.
how so? there were many primitivists at the wto protests in seattle, just watch "breaking the spell". they do anti-corporate activism the same as anyone else. did you know zerzan used to be a union organizer? crimethinc, whom david graeber has called "the greatest propagandists of contemporary american anarchism", have a prominent a-p streak as well
I wasn't suggesting that primitivists are incapable of useful action. But let's take the example of Derrick Jensen, a far more respectable primitivist than Zerzan, imo. One of his biggest dilemmas throughout his writing is "should I write, or should I blow up a dam?" He's very eschatological, and the concept of building up a movement based on popular participation has almost no role in his conceptual universe, since such endeavors are probably ultimately futile.
We can also discuss the issue of violence. Zerzan, Jensen, and Ward Churchill all say pretty much same thing on this issue: we need more violence. But such a blanket statement is entirely useless; the issue should be "what are the long-term results of our actions?" If doing something results in the government entirely liquidating your organization, was it really worth it? But for these guys, the long-term is already fixed: "we're fucked." In this view, long-term effects need no consideration.
Oh, and by "violence" I mean "political violence," the kind that a social movement may utilize. Obviously the elephant in the room is the state, the so-called "legitimate" violence.
i don't like churchill at all - he's been caught in lies several times, and promoting someone like that jeopardizes one's credibility. i've never heard jensen advocate violence against someone who didn't initiate it. i guess defense is different for everyone. and zerzan, in surplus, says he only supported property destruction, not violence
well, it's hard to read about peak oil and not feel eschatological with industrial agriculture being so oil dependent: fertilizers, pesticides, transport, processing. in some cases they might be futile, but, as he's fond of pointing out, there are countless dams which were erected illegally in the first place, and others that are supposed to have been removed anyway, but haven't been. if someone were to remove those, it would be easy to rally legal support and hopefully educate that way
Yes, but the issue here is one of consideration. When Jensen talks about dams, he quite clearly states that it'd only take a handful of people to take out a dam. However, he ought to have consideration for creating a popular movement, which he admittedly does not have ("our culture cannot voluntarily become sustainable"). If one thinks this, then once the sky falls (presuming that it is indeed falling), people will be extremely confused and chaotic, having no social framework to handle it.
i think what he means by it not becoming voluntarily sustainable is that most people simply won't do anything to affect change if they don't feel their comfy lifestyle shaken. people didn't reform labor laws in the 30's because they were comfortable - they did it because they were uncomfortable. there won't be a critical mass of activists until people feel how bad things are, through high oil prices or whatever. they won't become sustainable just for fun
This is a true statement; whether or not that's what Jensen means, I'm not sure. If so, then I really don't think that's a good justification for causing civilization to collapse (in the argument that the sooner it collapses, the better), because then the people will HATE the primitivists. We can't let a revolution become hated by the people; Kropotkin talks about this as being the failure of the French revolution, people began to hate it because it failed to "conquer bread."
So yeah, the French Revolution shook things up alright, but simply shaking things up isn't enough. It didn't offer the people a solution, so the people began to despise it. I feel like this has similarities to primitivism, which consciously avoids the realm of solutions, thus I call primitivism self-destructive.
well, i just see it as taking inspiration from the egalitarian social structures of h-g peoples and the really amazing connection they seem to have with their environment, if i can be so fuckin corny-sounding. not that there aren't exceptions- the maori apparently caused great deforestation
See, that's a respectable thing to learn, but it's not primitivism as far as I can tell. That's what David Graeber, who is not a primitivist, says about learning from what we call "indigenous" cultures. But there's a difference between learning from them, and trying to become them.
the word "primitivism" was coined as a joke- i don't think i've ever heard anyone describe their own ideas as such with a straight face - and there are quite a few of them on youtube. a lot of them say they don't like the word and just prefer "post-civ" or something like that. i don't think any of them, no matter how extreme, honestly want to give up things like modern medicine, etc.
Yes, I've noticed that. With that in mind, then, very few people are actually primitivists (maybe Zerzan is, but Jensen probably isn't). "Post-civ" really depends on what we mean by "civ," then. I think a simple and straightforward definition is needed: civilization is city-building.
i know graeber's work, i just avoid the word "indigenous" because that could equally denote the mayan/incan/aztec civilizations, who fucked up their environments beyond belief and practiced all sorts of barbarity, despite their other impressive achievements
Does graeber say anything about how indigenous people relate to their physical environment? we could learn alot from then on that aspect.
The way we treat the land is more important than the way we treat each other because without land, there is simply no us.I think this is what the pro-indutrialists choose to ignore.
Well you may be talking about me, then. But I guess that depends on what you mean by "industrial." We've only seen capitalist industrialism, and a kind of "socialist" Soviet industrialism, and not much besides those two. If you mean the "industrial infrastructure" as it currently exists, I doubt that any of these people "preach[ing]" solidarity support that.
But if you mean ANY kind of system of production that is efficient and suitably high-tech (preferably with technologies developed towards humane interests, of course), well, that kind of system is the only kind there can be for a large population of humans. So if you oppose that, then the more honest way to state it would be to say "there are too many people."
And so the so-called "pro-industrial" Anarchists, people like me, are essentially asking for the following: we want a system that pursues humane interests and social justice, not one that wantonly destroys human and non-human life for the sake of profit or power; at the same time, we don't want to cause massive genocide on a global scale, and so we want to keep efficiency and technology insofar as those things improve the human condition.
I mean the commodification of the physical environment in order to sustain the technological functions of an industrial society.
(regardless of organizational nature e.g. "soviet" or "capitalist".)
Differences in what "kind" of industrialism are only relevant to people, not to the land(i.e.A co-operative or "anarchistic" mining operation would not be less harmful than a capitalist one.)
If the anarchistic and capitalist mining operations had to extract the same amount of resources, their "character" is irrelevant because the same amount of land would be plundered.
No but that's the point. The character determines how much you take out. A society in which unlimited gain is valued is basically guaranteed to be more destructive to the environment than one in which human needs are valued first.
The sheer numbers of our population (which i assume you support)and our rate of growth makes it impossible for there to be sustainable resource extraction.
Even if everybody minimized their energy usage we'd still be fucked.
When i say "we" i mean the entire planetary community not just humans.I'm not going to list all the ways in which the natural world is being fucked due to anthropogenic activity because those things are obvious and even more obvious if you've read jensen.
"different levels of "fucked."
Good point, i think that's a factor in our disagreement.I think that you're willing to accept higher levels of "fucked"(degradation of wildlife)than i can.
Not particularly. That's basically a definition from history, and so an "industrial Anarchist" society doesn't make any sense with this. But I'm thinking that this term just has to do with mass production, which is more a thing of scale rather than any specific defining quality. So again, the more honest thing to say would be "there are too many people."
But let's accept that we need to reduce the human population on the earth. How do we do that? We could kill a bunch of people, or somehow cause their deaths, that's one way. Or we can look at what makes the population growth in the first place. What kind of people tend to have more kids? Those who need to sell their labor, since having kids supplies more labor for the family. Well, if we eliminate the need to sell labor, then the population won't grow explosively, and it might even shrink.
That's great, but we don't have that time on our hands.By that time,IF your scenario pans out the natural world would be gone, industrialism needs to be eliminated if there is to be any hope for wildlife.
Industry is destroying the environment,thereby destroying the planets ability to harbor life(including human life, you know, the only one that really matters.)
Basically, i support a transitional period of gradual decommission of industry that would minimize deaths of the current generation with the purpose of preserving the landbase for future generations of human and non-human inhabitants.
Sure, but I don't see the point of all these "anti-civ" or "primitivism" or whatever labels, if your point is simply "there are too many people." You can say we can "minimize deaths" all you like, but that's actually beside the point, that's just easing something that you say is necessary; since you're saying we don't have a lot of time, and there are too many people on the planet, the conclusion should be that people need to die. A "transition," if possible, is basically just to ease the pain.
"I don't see the point of all these "anti-civ" or "primitivism" or whatever"
Neither do i, show me where i referred to myself a "primitivist".... and NO that's not simply my point.
"there are too many people"
Yes, but that wouldn't such a problem if we didn't have industrialism killing the planet. don't know how long it would take to reach sustainability, but we need to go in that direction if there is to be a future.I'm simply saying that Industry under ANY ideology is unsustainable.
You seem to reject anarchosyndicalism, which constitutes the only possible transitional period. Your intended genocide of 90% of the world's population (roughly 6 billion) is worse than anything industrialism has done and probably will ever do. You want a minority "elite" to enjoy the benefits of a better society by eliminating 6 billion human beings. It is true that that would probably benefit other life forms more than even anarchosyndicalism but then you want to put other species above humans
"Your intended genocide of 90% of the world's population (roughly 6 billion) is worse than anything industrialism has done and probably will ever do."
LOL,you are insane.First of all, i'm NOT a primitivist and what don't you understand about "transitional period".I am for syndicalism as a transitional period but that would not be enough.
"You want a minority "elite" to enjoy the benefits of a better society by eliminating 6 billion human beings."
I realize that this comment is fairly old, but Vaerify's response seemed entirely inadequate. Too often syndicalists, primarily Chomsky, equate primitivism with genocide. With the rejection of mass society, specifically of cities and settlements, I believe it would be less advantageous to continue breeding at the rate that humanity is. The proposed decline is meant to be a slow one, not some monumental genocide.
As many have said, however, primitivism is a broad field. It generally digs at the roots of our current problems, leaving solutions somewhat ambiguous. As such, as least in the short term, a society rooted in anarcho-syndicalism is not out of the question. However, if it is to be accepted over the long term, it must address industrialism's destructive elements.
@EsotericPsychedelic thats right. Our current mass-reliance on techno-industrial civilization can be compared to a person who is addicted to heroin. You don't say about the heroin addict "well, we have to keep feeding him heroin because otherwise he will go into withdrawal and possibly die." no, no, no. you ween them off of the drug in a slow, calculated and careful manner.
btw, have you read endgame yet? i heard quinn talking about how you were gonna read it some months back. i'm not sure how i would've reacted to these crazy ideas if i hadn't first seen him in the stimulator's episode:)
thanks for these. i'm not exactly an a-p, but i've read a lot of their work and enjoyed it. not all of them espouse this critique of the symbolic, though- jensen actually criticizes him for it. and even someone as extreme as zerzan acknowledges the need for a great transitional period. most of them support permaculture, instead of the ridiculous idea of all 6.6 billion of us going straight back to h-g. have you ever read jared diamond's essay "the worst mistake in the history of the human race"?
I think symbolism has always been a manipulative tool,but only in light of the current sensory overload is this perspective specially appealing.
At this point, i don't see how the status quo can lose the propaganda war.Their symbolic arsenal is far too pervasive.I support guerrilla advertising but i won't deceive myself into thinking it can pose a substantial threat.
Don't think the syndicalists want to decommission industry,they seem to embrace the productionist rhetoric.
well, u talk about "productionism" but without production, you'd get the worst genocide in history, much worse than anything nazism, stalinism, colonialism or capitalism have done. The anarcosyndicalist argument is that in a self-managed industrial system, humans would eliminate current capitalist and statist destructive practices, & the more positive features of human nature would come to the fore, because most evil & lack of solidarity in the world happen due to hierarchy, not "industrialism"
Unlike all of the productionist genocides you mentioned,the current genocide imposed on the biosphere will lead to an irreversible genocide as a result of environmental collapse.
Talk of solidarity means nothing if you can't breathe the air or drink the water.Future generations who'll find themselves on a depleted landbase as a result of industrialism will get to experience that absurdity.
Another approach is to consider social organisation, wether capitalism or syndialism or whatever, as the root of the problem and find solutions based on individual cooperation, direct contacts. This is why we should never organise or try to avoid it as much as possible. Organization is the base of centralisation, power, manipulation, representation.
This is also why syndicalism is not anarchy, it is alienating and based on the same social alienation scheme as industrialism.
Disorganize !
kervennic 2 months ago
From what i hear in a conference online, he says clearly that there is no easy roadmap and way back, and he has personaly no answer to how to stop this suicidal drive. He cannot alone have anything to say and he is plainly conscious of it. He is just a critics.
Then personnaly i do not believe in your syndicalism scheme. Mass production and mass decision making is the essence of the problem. it foster irresponsiblity, discourage, disempower individuals
kervennic 2 months ago
However fantasy in Zerzan primitivist dream there could be, you see clearly that no one can neglect his critcism. And he does not seem to ne nut and fundamentalist. He just try to ask some deep questions long overlooked. On can question is honesty in some citations and analysis, like i read on some french sites. Could be true that he is sometimes sloppy. But some of his stuff are really of interest, including his way of defining a roadmap, far from the "naive genocidal" black out.
kervennic 2 months ago
From what i found in archeology articles, civilization rather appear to be a sudden consequence of a long trend of environemental exhaustion probably triggered by an episode of climate change. Previous episodes did not require such extreme labour intense survival technique as long as large game was not depleted, people could move on... but there are signs that the game pool had been slowly exhausted. Such things happened in the americas: man came and rapidely killed all large slow species.
kervennic 2 months ago
The beginning of the critic is interesting. I also tried to understand wether Zerzan is correct. I do not either believe that symbolism is the only explanation because there are signs that this is in fact what defines human from early on. Off course, with such a tool, added to other like fire, human add more chance to become a farmer than a chimp..
kervennic 2 months ago
How can anarchism be syndicalism ?
The union is a bunch of people that, instead of breaking the plant and reclaiming freedom collaborate with the boss and keep working for him. Their opposition is purely rethorical and their collaboration factual.
May be "they have no choice", but at least they can skip their syndicalism delusion.
Syndicalism will not change the roadmap of capitalism. It has failed for 200 years and will continue to do so.
kervennic 2 months ago
podrías traducir esto al español!! ;)
lunesymiercoles 2 years ago
Don't you all get it? You all talk in parralells, in some quasi-intellectual fashion. Fuck being smart. Some people are just plain retarded and they wont listen to your ideas. As JZ says, "who wants to run the world?" Go throw some bombs, I wanna see something blow up. And then you all can justify it here on the forums, though youd never do it yourself. Ohhhh but thats not productive. Nature isnt sustainable its transient. So are we, go out now and burn down your house. lol.
newmoongathering 2 years ago
I, personally, advocate a detournment of symbolic thought. Using symbolic thought to ironically reveal its own flaws and alienating effects. This, in my opinion, is what was done by the Abstract Expressionists and Primitivist artists as well as Zerzan himself when he writes his books.
WeWillWinAnarchy 3 years ago
I reject syndicalism as an end , not as a means.
Vaerify 3 years ago 3
Contradiction. Earlier you said: "That's great, but we don't have that time on our hands" in response to how I proposed to reduce the world's population by syndicalism.
Irtidad 3 years ago
I support many propositions that go against the status quo.Whether i believe they are likely to bring about the change i wish to see is a different matter.
Just as i support independent media,guerrilla advertising or culture jamming, but don't think they are very effective.
Vaerify 3 years ago
Why always refer to hunter-gatherers in the past tense? There are still some around!
Irtidad 3 years ago
Also, on what grounds are you saying that hunter-gatherer lifestyle is "better" than civilized lifestyle? You could make the "alienation" argument, and that's fine, it's just a little hard to measure. You can, however, measure things like work hours; a study of the !Kung in the 1960's showed that they work, on average, about 17 hours a week! However, their infant mortality rate was also shown to be much much higher than modern industrialized society.
Irtidad 3 years ago
So there are a whole lot of factors to consider in judging societies in comparison with each other, particularly when their cultural and economic systems differ so greatly. I am somewhat worried of self-destructive tendencies within Anarchism that might take away the focus from EDUCATION and ORGANIZATION, and I include primitivism in this category of self-destructive tendencies.
Irtidad 3 years ago
how so? there were many primitivists at the wto protests in seattle, just watch "breaking the spell". they do anti-corporate activism the same as anyone else. did you know zerzan used to be a union organizer? crimethinc, whom david graeber has called "the greatest propagandists of contemporary american anarchism", have a prominent a-p streak as well
toesandumbrellas 3 years ago
I wasn't suggesting that primitivists are incapable of useful action. But let's take the example of Derrick Jensen, a far more respectable primitivist than Zerzan, imo. One of his biggest dilemmas throughout his writing is "should I write, or should I blow up a dam?" He's very eschatological, and the concept of building up a movement based on popular participation has almost no role in his conceptual universe, since such endeavors are probably ultimately futile.
Irtidad 3 years ago
We can also discuss the issue of violence. Zerzan, Jensen, and Ward Churchill all say pretty much same thing on this issue: we need more violence. But such a blanket statement is entirely useless; the issue should be "what are the long-term results of our actions?" If doing something results in the government entirely liquidating your organization, was it really worth it? But for these guys, the long-term is already fixed: "we're fucked." In this view, long-term effects need no consideration.
Irtidad 3 years ago
Oh, and by "violence" I mean "political violence," the kind that a social movement may utilize. Obviously the elephant in the room is the state, the so-called "legitimate" violence.
Irtidad 3 years ago
i don't like churchill at all - he's been caught in lies several times, and promoting someone like that jeopardizes one's credibility. i've never heard jensen advocate violence against someone who didn't initiate it. i guess defense is different for everyone. and zerzan, in surplus, says he only supported property destruction, not violence
toesandumbrellas 3 years ago
Jensen wrote the preface to Churchill's "Pacifism as Pathology."
Irtidad 3 years ago
well, that book is clean of lies, i've heard, haha. i know which books he lied in, and that's not one of them apparently
toesandumbrellas 3 years ago
well, it's hard to read about peak oil and not feel eschatological with industrial agriculture being so oil dependent: fertilizers, pesticides, transport, processing. in some cases they might be futile, but, as he's fond of pointing out, there are countless dams which were erected illegally in the first place, and others that are supposed to have been removed anyway, but haven't been. if someone were to remove those, it would be easy to rally legal support and hopefully educate that way
toesandumbrellas 3 years ago
Yes, but the issue here is one of consideration. When Jensen talks about dams, he quite clearly states that it'd only take a handful of people to take out a dam. However, he ought to have consideration for creating a popular movement, which he admittedly does not have ("our culture cannot voluntarily become sustainable"). If one thinks this, then once the sky falls (presuming that it is indeed falling), people will be extremely confused and chaotic, having no social framework to handle it.
Irtidad 3 years ago
i think what he means by it not becoming voluntarily sustainable is that most people simply won't do anything to affect change if they don't feel their comfy lifestyle shaken. people didn't reform labor laws in the 30's because they were comfortable - they did it because they were uncomfortable. there won't be a critical mass of activists until people feel how bad things are, through high oil prices or whatever. they won't become sustainable just for fun
toesandumbrellas 3 years ago
This is a true statement; whether or not that's what Jensen means, I'm not sure. If so, then I really don't think that's a good justification for causing civilization to collapse (in the argument that the sooner it collapses, the better), because then the people will HATE the primitivists. We can't let a revolution become hated by the people; Kropotkin talks about this as being the failure of the French revolution, people began to hate it because it failed to "conquer bread."
Irtidad 3 years ago
So yeah, the French Revolution shook things up alright, but simply shaking things up isn't enough. It didn't offer the people a solution, so the people began to despise it. I feel like this has similarities to primitivism, which consciously avoids the realm of solutions, thus I call primitivism self-destructive.
Irtidad 3 years ago
well, i just see it as taking inspiration from the egalitarian social structures of h-g peoples and the really amazing connection they seem to have with their environment, if i can be so fuckin corny-sounding. not that there aren't exceptions- the maori apparently caused great deforestation
toesandumbrellas 3 years ago
See, that's a respectable thing to learn, but it's not primitivism as far as I can tell. That's what David Graeber, who is not a primitivist, says about learning from what we call "indigenous" cultures. But there's a difference between learning from them, and trying to become them.
Irtidad 3 years ago
the word "primitivism" was coined as a joke- i don't think i've ever heard anyone describe their own ideas as such with a straight face - and there are quite a few of them on youtube. a lot of them say they don't like the word and just prefer "post-civ" or something like that. i don't think any of them, no matter how extreme, honestly want to give up things like modern medicine, etc.
toesandumbrellas 3 years ago
Yes, I've noticed that. With that in mind, then, very few people are actually primitivists (maybe Zerzan is, but Jensen probably isn't). "Post-civ" really depends on what we mean by "civ," then. I think a simple and straightforward definition is needed: civilization is city-building.
Irtidad 3 years ago
pennilesscripple did a vid explaining the definition they use - it's also in the stimulator episode 10
toesandumbrellas 3 years ago
i know graeber's work, i just avoid the word "indigenous" because that could equally denote the mayan/incan/aztec civilizations, who fucked up their environments beyond belief and practiced all sorts of barbarity, despite their other impressive achievements
toesandumbrellas 3 years ago
Does graeber say anything about how indigenous people relate to their physical environment? we could learn alot from then on that aspect.
The way we treat the land is more important than the way we treat each other because without land, there is simply no us.I think this is what the pro-indutrialists choose to ignore.
Vaerify 3 years ago
"The way we treat the land is more important than the way we treat each other."
The two are obviously related...
Irtidad 3 years ago
I agree,i'm taking about the people who preach about co-operation and solidarity while simultaneously supporting the industrial infrastructure.
Vaerify 3 years ago
Well you may be talking about me, then. But I guess that depends on what you mean by "industrial." We've only seen capitalist industrialism, and a kind of "socialist" Soviet industrialism, and not much besides those two. If you mean the "industrial infrastructure" as it currently exists, I doubt that any of these people "preach[ing]" solidarity support that.
Irtidad 3 years ago
But if you mean ANY kind of system of production that is efficient and suitably high-tech (preferably with technologies developed towards humane interests, of course), well, that kind of system is the only kind there can be for a large population of humans. So if you oppose that, then the more honest way to state it would be to say "there are too many people."
Irtidad 3 years ago
And so the so-called "pro-industrial" Anarchists, people like me, are essentially asking for the following: we want a system that pursues humane interests and social justice, not one that wantonly destroys human and non-human life for the sake of profit or power; at the same time, we don't want to cause massive genocide on a global scale, and so we want to keep efficiency and technology insofar as those things improve the human condition.
Irtidad 3 years ago
I mean the commodification of the physical environment in order to sustain the technological functions of an industrial society.
(regardless of organizational nature e.g. "soviet" or "capitalist".)
Differences in what "kind" of industrialism are only relevant to people, not to the land(i.e.A co-operative or "anarchistic" mining operation would not be less harmful than a capitalist one.)
Vaerify 3 years ago
"A co-operative or 'anarchistic' mining operation would not be less harmful than a capitalist one."
I'm not so sure about that. The way a society is organized has a lot to do with its social character.
Irtidad 3 years ago
If the anarchistic and capitalist mining operations had to extract the same amount of resources, their "character" is irrelevant because the same amount of land would be plundered.
Vaerify 3 years ago
No but that's the point. The character determines how much you take out. A society in which unlimited gain is valued is basically guaranteed to be more destructive to the environment than one in which human needs are valued first.
Irtidad 3 years ago
The sheer numbers of our population (which i assume you support)and our rate of growth makes it impossible for there to be sustainable resource extraction.
Even if everybody minimized their energy usage we'd still be fucked.
Vaerify 3 years ago
"Even if everybody minimized their energy usage we'd still be fucked."
Are you really so wise as to presume to know this? Also keep in mind that there are different levels of "fucked."
Irtidad 3 years ago
"which I assume you support"
I've already given you my answer on this. Don't straw-man me.
Irtidad 3 years ago
When i say "we" i mean the entire planetary community not just humans.I'm not going to list all the ways in which the natural world is being fucked due to anthropogenic activity because those things are obvious and even more obvious if you've read jensen.
"different levels of "fucked."
Good point, i think that's a factor in our disagreement.I think that you're willing to accept higher levels of "fucked"(degradation of wildlife)than i can.
Vaerify 3 years ago 2
And your definition of "industrial" contained the word "industrial" within it... I still don't know what you mean.
Irtidad 3 years ago
Industrial : The sector of an economy made up of manufacturing enterprises. Specifically since the industrial revolution.
is that better?
Vaerify 3 years ago
Not particularly. That's basically a definition from history, and so an "industrial Anarchist" society doesn't make any sense with this. But I'm thinking that this term just has to do with mass production, which is more a thing of scale rather than any specific defining quality. So again, the more honest thing to say would be "there are too many people."
Irtidad 3 years ago
But let's accept that we need to reduce the human population on the earth. How do we do that? We could kill a bunch of people, or somehow cause their deaths, that's one way. Or we can look at what makes the population growth in the first place. What kind of people tend to have more kids? Those who need to sell their labor, since having kids supplies more labor for the family. Well, if we eliminate the need to sell labor, then the population won't grow explosively, and it might even shrink.
Irtidad 3 years ago
That's great, but we don't have that time on our hands.By that time,IF your scenario pans out the natural world would be gone, industrialism needs to be eliminated if there is to be any hope for wildlife.
Industry is destroying the environment,thereby destroying the planets ability to harbor life(including human life, you know, the only one that really matters.)
Vaerify 3 years ago
Basically, i support a transitional period of gradual decommission of industry that would minimize deaths of the current generation with the purpose of preserving the landbase for future generations of human and non-human inhabitants.
Vaerify 3 years ago
Sure, but I don't see the point of all these "anti-civ" or "primitivism" or whatever labels, if your point is simply "there are too many people." You can say we can "minimize deaths" all you like, but that's actually beside the point, that's just easing something that you say is necessary; since you're saying we don't have a lot of time, and there are too many people on the planet, the conclusion should be that people need to die. A "transition," if possible, is basically just to ease the pain.
Irtidad 3 years ago
"I don't see the point of all these "anti-civ" or "primitivism" or whatever"
Neither do i, show me where i referred to myself a "primitivist".... and NO that's not simply my point.
"there are too many people"
Yes, but that wouldn't such a problem if we didn't have industrialism killing the planet. don't know how long it would take to reach sustainability, but we need to go in that direction if there is to be a future.I'm simply saying that Industry under ANY ideology is unsustainable.
Vaerify 3 years ago
You seem to reject anarchosyndicalism, which constitutes the only possible transitional period. Your intended genocide of 90% of the world's population (roughly 6 billion) is worse than anything industrialism has done and probably will ever do. You want a minority "elite" to enjoy the benefits of a better society by eliminating 6 billion human beings. It is true that that would probably benefit other life forms more than even anarchosyndicalism but then you want to put other species above humans
mr1001nights 3 years ago
"Your intended genocide of 90% of the world's population (roughly 6 billion) is worse than anything industrialism has done and probably will ever do."
LOL,you are insane.First of all, i'm NOT a primitivist and what don't you understand about "transitional period".I am for syndicalism as a transitional period but that would not be enough.
"You want a minority "elite" to enjoy the benefits of a better society by eliminating 6 billion human beings."
are you joking...? wow ,i'm speechless.
Vaerify 3 years ago
I realize that this comment is fairly old, but Vaerify's response seemed entirely inadequate. Too often syndicalists, primarily Chomsky, equate primitivism with genocide. With the rejection of mass society, specifically of cities and settlements, I believe it would be less advantageous to continue breeding at the rate that humanity is. The proposed decline is meant to be a slow one, not some monumental genocide.
EsotericPsychedelic 3 years ago
As many have said, however, primitivism is a broad field. It generally digs at the roots of our current problems, leaving solutions somewhat ambiguous. As such, as least in the short term, a society rooted in anarcho-syndicalism is not out of the question. However, if it is to be accepted over the long term, it must address industrialism's destructive elements.
EsotericPsychedelic 3 years ago
@EsotericPsychedelic thats right. Our current mass-reliance on techno-industrial civilization can be compared to a person who is addicted to heroin. You don't say about the heroin addict "well, we have to keep feeding him heroin because otherwise he will go into withdrawal and possibly die." no, no, no. you ween them off of the drug in a slow, calculated and careful manner.
gracer99 9 months ago
btw, have you read endgame yet? i heard quinn talking about how you were gonna read it some months back. i'm not sure how i would've reacted to these crazy ideas if i hadn't first seen him in the stimulator's episode:)
toesandumbrellas 3 years ago
I'm reading "A Language Older Than Words" currently. I don't plan to read any more Jensen after this.
Irtidad 3 years ago
thanks for these. i'm not exactly an a-p, but i've read a lot of their work and enjoyed it. not all of them espouse this critique of the symbolic, though- jensen actually criticizes him for it. and even someone as extreme as zerzan acknowledges the need for a great transitional period. most of them support permaculture, instead of the ridiculous idea of all 6.6 billion of us going straight back to h-g. have you ever read jared diamond's essay "the worst mistake in the history of the human race"?
toesandumbrellas 3 years ago
Exactly, thank you for saying that.H-g is not in the cards, but there are other alternatives to the current destruction.
It's not about utopia, it's about taking the steps towards real sustainability.
Vaerify 3 years ago
I think symbolism has always been a manipulative tool,but only in light of the current sensory overload is this perspective specially appealing.
At this point, i don't see how the status quo can lose the propaganda war.Their symbolic arsenal is far too pervasive.I support guerrilla advertising but i won't deceive myself into thinking it can pose a substantial threat.
Don't think the syndicalists want to decommission industry,they seem to embrace the productionist rhetoric.
Vaerify 3 years ago
Are they ignorant or indifferent with regards to the grave damage production and specially industrial production inflict on wildlife?
Vaerify 3 years ago
well, u talk about "productionism" but without production, you'd get the worst genocide in history, much worse than anything nazism, stalinism, colonialism or capitalism have done. The anarcosyndicalist argument is that in a self-managed industrial system, humans would eliminate current capitalist and statist destructive practices, & the more positive features of human nature would come to the fore, because most evil & lack of solidarity in the world happen due to hierarchy, not "industrialism"
mr1001nights 3 years ago
Unlike all of the productionist genocides you mentioned,the current genocide imposed on the biosphere will lead to an irreversible genocide as a result of environmental collapse.
Talk of solidarity means nothing if you can't breathe the air or drink the water.Future generations who'll find themselves on a depleted landbase as a result of industrialism will get to experience that absurdity.
Vaerify 3 years ago 3