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Prophets of the New World:
Noam Chomsky, Murray Bookchin,
and Fredy Perlman
John Moore
(this piece originally appeared in Social
Anarchism)
How well they flew together
side by side
the Stars and Stripes my red and white and blue
and my Black Flag the sovereignty of no
man or law!
--Paul Goodman
[1]
Any approach to contemporary anarchism
initially encounters the two major problems of definition and terminology.
In "Notes on Anarchism," Noam Chomsky avers: "There have
been many styles of thought and action that have been referred to as
'anarchist.' It would be hopeless to try to encompass all of these
conflicting tendencies in some general theory or ideology. And even if we
proceed to extract from the history of libertarian thought a living,
evolving tradition..it remains difficult to formulate its doctrines as a
specific and determinate theory of society, pertinent to the American
context, especially given the diversification characteristic of the
contemporary period." But if Chomsky denies the possibility of
formulating a comprehensive anarchist theory or tradition, he elsewhere
offers a definition which clearly implies why such a formulation remains
inconceivable. Anarchism, he asserts, "does not limit its aims to
democratic control by producers over production, but seeks to abolish all
forms of domination and hierarchy in every aspect of social and personal
life, an unending struggle, since progress in achieving a more just
society will lead to new insight and understanding of forms of oppression
that may be concealed in traditional practice and consciousness." [2]
The unceasing process of exponential discovery prevents a stable and
definitive formulation. But it is precisely this process which constitutes
the uniqueness of anarchism. Regardless of the content of its praxis
during any period, the distinctive character of anarchism remains its
continual capacity to redefine and reconfigure itself. Rather than being
determined by a set of fixed theoretical and organizational concepts,
anarchism develops within an ideological framework susceptible to dynamic
and extensive transformations. Hence, while certain conceptual tendencies
and continuities are perceptible, these are rarely permitted to ossify
into dogmatic or proscriptive determinism. This open, transformative
capacity, apart from precluding a static definition, differentiates
anarchism from all other ideologies, particularly Marxism. This is not a
fortuitous comparison. The contemporary American theorists who form the
focus of this essay, despite their divergent trajectories, all broadly
share a common ideological departure point in the most seminal strand of
anarchism: anarchocommunism, which Kropotkin identified as left-wing
socialism. And one of the most productive ways of patterning the
historical development of American anarchocommunism is to trace its
changing responses to Marxism. Such a comparison reveals three broad
phases within American anarchist thought. [3]
In the first phase, from 1858 (when the first indigenous anarchocommunist
publication appeared) until the mid-1920s, Marxism was largely regarded as
a competitor. The most representative figures of this phase are
immigrants, such as Johann Most, Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, all
of whom actively participated in the mass industrial movements of the
time. Marxism, or authoritarian socialism, competed with anarchism, or
libertarian socialism, for the allegiance of the masses within the shared
terrain of the Left. This occasionally acrimonious competition assumed a
far more serious complexion during the second phase, which lasted roughly
from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s. The experience of Bolshevism--Marxism
in practice--in the Russian and Spanish revolutions catapulted anarchists
into an adversarial position. And this, given the prestige accorded the
Soviet system by the American Left, transformed them into a very
unfashionable and unpopular group. For this reason, and others, including
some fiercely repressive anti-anarchist legislative measures, the movement
declined and virtually disappeared in the United States. But this forced
abandonment of the traditional civil arena had many beneficial effects in
the long term. In particular, it allowed anarchism to broaden enormously
the scope of its interests, and "politicize" an entire range of
issues and practices that remained outside the purview of Marxism. The
representative figure of this transitional phase must be Paul Goodman,
with his incredibly ecumenical concerns. The significance of this
reparative, "convalescent" period cannot be overestimated. For,
with the onset of the Second World War, the era of mass proletarian
movements effectively ended in the West. The workers were no longer the
central revolutionary force. Marxism, with its inflexible dogmas and its
involvement in labor movements, did not possess sufficient distance to
apprehend this development for several decades. But American anarchists,
in particular, because of their apparent marginality and the
transformative capacity inherent in their ideology, were able to make the
necessary shifts to remain equal to the challenge of historical trends.
Consequently, this phase came to an end during the mid-1960s with a fresh
wave of insurgency and a renewed sense of anarchism's relevance. And one
of the most striking aspects of this resurgence remains the emphasis with
which it asserts anarchism's absolute difference from Marxism. It is not
accidental that the three contemporary thinkers considered in this essay
have all in their distinctive ways denounced the Marxist legacy: Noam
Chomsky in his pungent "The Soviet Union versus Socialism,"
Murray Bookchin in many essays including his notorious "Listen,
Marxist!," and Fredy Perlman in his wickedly mordant Manual for
Revolutionary Leaders. Perhaps more importantly, however, many
contemporary anarchists have rejected not only Marxist ideology, but all
forms of ideology--including anarchism. In a position paper, the group
focused around the Detroit publication Fifth Estate have
indicated: "We are not anarchists per se, but pro-anarchy, which is
for us a living integral experience incommensurate with Power and refusing
all ideology."[4] These
individuals no longer consider themselves on the Left. Rather, pointing to
"an emerging synthesis of post-modern anarchy and the primitive (in
the sense of original), Earth-based ecstatic vision, " they align
themselves with the forces of life and nature against the entire
megamachine of Western civilization. [5]
The Fifth Estate formulation allows the development of American
anarchism to be placed in perspective. In the three phases of its
development, anarchism has related to Marxism as a competitor, an
adversary, and as a negation. While Marxist communism retains many
ideological values in common with the capitalist order (for example,
agreement on the progressive historic role of industrialization, and on
the necessity of hierarchical order and labor), anarchism has gradually
broadened its critique, and so has severed these connections. Inevitably,
as its trajectory diverges further and further from current ideological
norms, Marxism and capitalism will be seen to share common features and
indeed become almost structurally indistinguishable, until the point at
which Fredy Perlman can characterize the former as a method of capital
accumulation in those Third World nations overlooked by the latter.
Nothing could be more incorrect than to characterize anarchism as merely
an antistatist ideology. Certainly, this repudiation remains one of its
bases. But its subsequent trajectory is far more complex. The tripartite
developmental trajectory adumbrated above could be regarded from a
different perspective. Successive phases can be identified as gradations
in an incremental critique of all forms of authority. In the first phase,
anarchism remained nonpolitical because it advocated abstention from, and
opposition to, electoral and State processes. In the second phase, it
focused on issues that were apolitical in the sense that they remained
outside the traditional civil sphere. But in the third phase, it becomes
antipolitical by shifting toward a total critique of a civilization
structured around governance.
The remainder of this essay seeks to examine the nature of this
contemporary shift. But in addition to terminological problems, this task
contains many difficulties. The scope of the shift, combined with
anarchism's transformative capacity, ensures that the resulting
theoretical constructs are exceedingly diverse, even contradictory. (As a
term, coherence often acquires pejorative connotations in anarchist
discourse.) In order to limit this diversity for present purposes,
attention will be focused upon only three theorists. The trio have been
selected partly because they illustrate the variety of positions available
within the contemporary spectrum, and partly because of the cogency and
comprehensiveness of their thought. But even this delimitation involves
additional obstacles. Given anarchism's radical egalitarianism, certain
individuals within the North American movement have indicated the
incongruity of reconstructing its history around great individuals. [6]
While acknowledging the pertinence of this point, it can be said in
partial mitigation that this essay merely constitutes an analytical survey
of certain contemporary tendencies, and maintains no pretense to anything
else. It does not, for example, attempt to appraise the significance of
contemporary activism, nor assess the importance of anarchafeminism. But,
given these provisos, it can perhaps serve to delineate some of the
primary patterns in contemporary American anarchist thought.
Given the contemporary obsolescence--particularly in the present context--
of political designations such as "right" and "left,"
it remains necessary to discover alternative ways of classifying the
thought of the three theorists under consideration. One way of situating
each within an appropriate spectrum consists of determining the degree of
their traditionalism in terms of anarchist doctrine itself. This form of
categorization--which designates Noam Chomsky as the most traditional on a
sliding scale through Murray Bookchin to Fredy Perlman--remains the most
convenient; although, as will become apparent, it paradoxically results in
the characterization of the thinker with the most time-honored emphases as
the most innovative of the trio. Nevertheless, there is a perverse
pertinence in attributing this circular (indeed cyclical) structure to
contemporary anarchism, which is simultaneously an ultra-revolutionary and
an ultra-conservative movement. For it is this apparent contradiction--the
propensity to integrate a rejuvenated anarchy, an ancient social form, in
a postmodern context: that is, simultaneously to return to the far past
and proceed to an advanced future--which provides anarchism with its
unique dynamics.
Noam Chomsky is undoubtedly the most traditional of the three
theoreticians, a fact which may be partly due to the fact that he has
refused the theorist designation, suggesting in an interview: "Let me
just say I don't really regard myself as an anarchist thinker. I'm a
derivative fellow traveller, let's say." [7]
This may seem to disqualify him from consideration in the present context,
but his inclusion remains significant basically because in a sense he
represents the public face of anarchism in America. Due to his eminence in
the field of linguistics and his exposures of the ideological and academic
apologists for American imperialism, he probably constitutes the
individual most readily identified as an anarchist thinker. It is thus
ironic to discover that his brand of anarchism is extremely traditional,
and in fact harks back to previous phases in the doctrine's development.
Perhaps the most sustained critique of Chomsky's anarchism, and
particularly of his introduction to Daniel Guerin's Anarchism,
has been undertaken by George Woodcock . The latter bluntly states:
"I am doing neither Chomsky nor Guerin an injustice in stating that
neither is an anarchist by any known criterion; they are both left-wing
Marxists." [8] He
substantiates his contentions by showing that the components of Chomsky's
ideas are derived from only one strand of anarchism: anarchosyndicalism,
the strand which most closely approximates to Marxism. Woodcock's
criticisms provide a useful departure point for an examination of
Chomsky's libertarianism, but they in turn are written from a rather
orthodox anarchocommunist position. The extent of Chomsky's traditionalism
only really becomes apparent through a comparison of his ideas with those
of his peers. And although the full connotations of their perspectives
will not become available until the close of the essay, this contrast
provides a context in which they are more readily apprehensible.
In an interview editorially entitled "The Relevance of Anarcho-Syndicalism,"
Chomsky expounds his theory of anarchism at some length. The principal
omission concerns the methods through which anarchy could be achieved, but
these remain implicit in his statements. When he distinguishes between two
strands in anarchist praxis, the accuracy of Woodcock's critique becomes
evident. On the one hand, he characterizes anarchocommunism--with its
emphasis on decentralization, nonindustrialization and direct,
neighborhood democracy--as relevant only to pre-industrial contexts. But,
"on the other hand there's another anarchist tradition that develops
into anarcho-syndicalism which simply regarded anarchist ideas as the
proper mode of organization for a highly complex advanced industrial
society. And that tendency in anarchism merges, or at least inter-relates
very closely with a variety of left-wing Marxism." [9]
Rhetorically enquiring which strand remains relevant, he continues:
Well, I myself believe the latter, that is, I think that industrialization
and the advance of technology raise possibilities for self-management over
a broad scale that simply didn't exist in an earlier period. And that in
fact this is precisely the rational mode for an advanced and complex
industrial society, one in which workers will become masters of their own
immediate affairs, that is in direction and control of the shop, but also
can be in a position to make the major substantive decisions concerning
the structure of the economy, concerning social institutions, concerning
planning regionally and beyond .. A good deal could be automated. Much of
the necessary work that is required to keep a decent level of social life
going can be consigned to machines--at least in principle--which means
humans can be free to undertake the kind of creative work which may not
have been possible, objectively, in the early stages of the industrial
revolution. [10]
In order to establish the viability of these ideas, he cites the example
of the Spanish anarchists during the late 1930s, suggesting that their
"large-scale anarchist revolution" was temporarily
"successful": "That is, production continued effectively;
workers in farms and factories proved quite capable of managing their
affairs without coercion from above" [11].
In the present context, these traditional formulations are significant
because between them Bookchin and Perlman controvert practically every
point Chomsky makes. But more importantly, in various unexpected ways they
transcend and enrich his rather limited conception of anarchy. And it is
in their theoretical developments that a major source of the vigorousness
of American anarchist praxis should be sought. Hence, rather than merely
examine their critiques of anarchosyndicalism, this essay will explore
their perspectives in ways which clearly highlight the divergent emphases
of all three thinkers.
Despite that fact that they stand on opposite sides of the bifurcation
between anarchosyndicalism and anarchocommunism, Chomsky and Bookchin
initially appear to share certain emphases. Both, for example, appeal to a
common heritage derived from the Enlightenment, and in particular to
American libertarianism as represented by individuals such as Paine and
Jefferson (Bookchin refers to "the universal ideas of the Reformation
and the Enlightenment" [12]).
Similarly, Chomsky's praise for the Spanish anarchists finds a complement
in Bookchin's sympathetic book-length study of the Iberian movement. But
the uses made of these shared emphases are completely dissimilar. For
where Chomsky discerns continuity, Bookchin perceives dislocation and
rupture. Both agree that modern technology contains the potentials for
liberation, but whereas Chomsky regards collective worker control as a
sufficient basis for anarchy, Bookchin requires a more thorough
transformation. For the latter, contemporary technics reveal the prospect
of a post-scarcity society of abundance. This vista remained unavailable
to most pre-war radicals (including anarchists): hence the asceticism and
narrowness in their notions of a libertarian future. But if modern
technology contains the promise of liberation, its immense capacity for
domination also indicates its uses as a weapon of totalitarianism. And as
it is widely constituted, it remains an instrument not only for widespread
human oppression, but for ecological devastation which increasingly
threatens the entire biosphere, and potentially for global destruction.
Hence, rather than the workers appropriating the industrial apparatus and
converting it to their own uses, Bookchin envisions a comprehensive
technological transformation. Giant industrial technologies are to be
replaced by ecotechnologies, small-scale technics (including limited
automation) which enhance rather than harm the ecosphere and remain
amenable to local control due to their size. Such technologies could be
operated by direct, face-to-face village or urban neighborhood assemblies.
These ensembles constitute the basic structural units in Bookchin's vision
of anarchy. But his projections of a post-scarcity society promoted
further investigation of the notion of scarcity. According to Marxist and
much classical anarchist theory, scarcity remains an inevitable fact. A
hostile, competitive and stingy nature instigates a cruel and relentless
struggle between humans and between species for scarce resources. The
necessity to dominate nature through developing technologies results in
the creation of mutually antagonistic socioeconomic forces, which remain
locked in internecine struggle until productive forces have attained the
requisite level of development, at which time the oppressed class
possesses sufficient resources to dispense with their superannuated
oppressors. The domination of humanity is thus historically justified by,
and based in, the need to subjugate nature. But Bookchin's examination of
the history of scarcity in The Ecology of Freedom totally refutes
this account.
Following Kropotkin, Bookchin demonstrates that nature is neither
parsimonious nor competitive, and hence that scarcity is not inherent. On
the contrary, nature is frequently superabundant, and many communities
have lived amidst conditions of plenty with only minimal labor. Scarcity
is not innate in nature; rather, there exists a social organization of
scarcity, which entered human experience with the creation of the first
hierarchy. The latter, based on the male subjugation of the female (and
ultimately on the gerontocracy's subjugation of the young), has developed
and proliferated enormously throughout human history until the present
day. Hierarchy predates capitalism, the class structure and the state, and
can easily survive their demise. This occurs because it infiltrates every
recess of human life, and fosters a hierarchical sensibility, a propensity
to regard everything in terms of domination and submission. But this
sensibility remains grounded in a basic misconception, a specific
(mis)interpretation of the relationship between humanity and nature. For
Bookchin, the human domination of nature provides an elementary paradigm
for all other hierarchical relations. All the deleterious divisions within
human history and the fatal dualisms of Western philosophy derive from the
fundamental separation between humanity and nature, the social and the
natural.
In order to heal these divisions, Bookchin proposes the praxis of social
ecology. To counteract the pathology of domination, the latter seeks to
nourish an ecological sensibility--a sensitivity to the interactions
between the social and the natural which allows a re-creation of
"existing sensibilities, technics, and communities along ecological
lines." [13] Changing
humanity's vision of the natural world comprises an essential preliminary
phase in developing this sensibility:
Social ecology is, first of all, a
sensibility that includes not only a critique of hierarchy and
domination but a reconstructive outlook that advances a participatory
concept of 'otherness' and a new appreciation of differentiation as a
social and biological desideratum. Formalized into certain basic
principles, it is also guided by an ethics that emphasizes variety
without structuring differences into a hierarchical order. If I were
obliged to single out the precepts for such an ethics, I would be
obliged to use two words that give it meaning: participation and
differentiation. [14]
Participation here remains synonymous with symbiosis, in the widest sense
of the term--a mutualistic interaction between vital elements within the
natural world, humans in the social world, and between the two worlds
themselves. In the process, divisions are healed without recourse to
reductivism: rather than two irreconcilable antagonists, the social world
becomes a mediated gradation of the natural world. Symbiosis as a central
principal replaces the Darwinian, marketplace notion of a cutthroat
nature. Similarly, differentiation remains synonymous with increasing
complexity, a crucial factor in opening evolutionary pathways and allowing
a life-form more active participation in its own evolution. And this
nascent freedom, the potential for choice and self-determination, provides
an objective basis for incremental participation in conjunction with the
ongoing realization of evolutionary possibilities. Such aspirations,
achievable only within the enriching context of an ecocommunity, are of
course incompatible with the limitations imposed by hierarchy.
Social ecology "provides the patterning forms to compare and alter
the ensembles of hierarchy and domination that afflict us." [15]
It challenges the notion that hierarchy exists between species, and hence
implies that such relations are not natural and should not appertain
between humans. But what could motivate individuals to replace the
ingrained habits of the hierarchical sensibility with the liberatory
elements of its ecological counterpart? Given that hierarchy transcends
and permeates class--itself a hierarchical form--Marxist categories are
clearly no longer relevant. Any contemporary social project "must
also be a project that rehabilitates the prevailing image of human
motivation." [16] But this
task cannot be undertaken unless it jettisons the tendency to anchor all
relations in self-interest and economic motivation--a tendency found in
classical liberalism, anarchism and Marxism. These ideologies, by
appealing to such motivations, reveal the depth of their rootedness in the
mentality of the market economy. Through their excessive preoccupation
with exploitation, they miss the more important issue of domination, with
its multiple ramifications and insidious forms:
This again raises the need to go beyond
the traditional 'isms' structured around self-interest and economic
motivations into the deepest recesses of the self: its formation in a
cauldron of competition and conflicting interests whereby
individuality is identified with domination, self-development with a
mentality formed by rivalry, maturity with adaptation to things as
they exist, success with acquisition and the sanctity of the bargain. [17]
As a consequence, Bookchin demands that ethical considerations are
reinserted into the social agenda: "the reinstatement of an ethical
stance becomes central to the recovery of a meaningful society and a sense
of selfhood." [18] The
contemporary anarchist self can be defined and motivated only through a
rethought and reconstituted set of ethical principles derived from the
praxis of social ecology. But the crisis in human subjectivity can only be
ultimately overcome through reconstructive activity of an appropriate
type.
This activity Bookchin designates as libertarian municipalism. Brushing
aside traditional anarchist antipathies to accommodatory electoralism, he
asserts:
The anarchic ideal of decentralized,
stateless, collectively managed, and directly democratic
communities--of confederated municipalities or 'communes'-- speaks
almost intuitively, and in the best works of Proudhon and Kropotkin,
consciously, to the transforming role of libertarian municipalism as
the framework of a liberatory society, rooted in the nonhierarchical
ethics of a unity of diversity, self-formation and self-management,
complementarity, and mutual aid. [19]
To justify his elaboration of this strand in the anarchist tradition,
Bookchin focuses on Periclean Athens in order to distinguish three levels
for political intervention in a hierarchical society. At the apex there
was the State. Its proponents practiced statecraft, which in modern times
has been erroneously identified with politics. At the base there was the
social arena, the site of everyday activity. But Bookchin proceeds to
discern an intermediate, political space, a public or municipal sphere
"characterized by the agora, or civic center." [20]
This institutional sphere, the polis, was the place where citizens
undertook informal discussions in preparation for the weekly meetings of
the popular assembly. Bookchin suggests that this crucial site of
political intervention has been continually reconstituted during and
immediately after periods of revolutionary insurgency, and insists that
contemporary anarchist activity should occur in this reconstructed sphere.
Of all the cited precedents of the sphere's reappearance, perhaps the most
important is the New England town meeting. Libertarian municipalism
remains particularly relevant to American conditions because of "our
traditional emphasis on local government and our uniquely libertarian
revolution." [21] Due to
its propinquity to American traditions--he even sketches a scenario which
indicates how easily the United States could have been propelled toward
anarchy in the immediate post-revolutionary years--he suggests that in
America there exist the potentials to create at least exemplary forms of
public assembly whose moral authority slowly can be turned into political
authority at the base of society. It may not be given that such a sequence
of steps is practical in every region of America. But where it is
practical or even remotely possible, it must become the most important
endeavor of a new radical populism--a new libertarian populism. [22]
From this initial phase, Bookchin projects a confederation of popular
assemblies, a nationwide Green network, until the point at which America
becomes a dual-power nation, with some kind of inevitable conflict (which
he does not care to prophesy) between the federation of decentralized
municipalities and the centralized State. In the process, a democratic,
ethical and ecologically aware public will be created: individuals will be
reempowered, the social environment will be brought within the purview of
the individual, decision-making will be decentralized, and an active
citizenry will be educated through participation in a face-to-face
democracy.
The beneficiaries of this process will be a rejuvenated people, a
collectivity united by compatible ideological emphases rather than
socioeconomic class: "the old social pool called the 'people' is
being restored in the tension between past and future, a classless 'class'
like the sans culottes composed of economically, culturally and
technologically displaced persons." [23]
In one sense, Chomsky and Bookchin are mirror images. While the former
emphasizes the workplace as a site for social change at the expense of the
community, stressing the economic sphere rather than the political,
Bookchin does the exact opposite. The socialization of the economy remains
curiously "hidden in the mists of a logic that can only be
established concretely" through the development of confederated
popular assemblies [24].
Instead, he emphasizes the power of ideology to work in a socially
progressive direction--notably ecological, feminist, ethnic, moral, and
countercultural ideologies within which one encounters pacifist and
utopistic anarchist components that await integration into a coherent
outlook. In any case, new social movements are developing around us which
cross traditional class lines. From this ferment, a general interest may
yet be formed which is larger in its scope, novelty, and creativity than
the economically oriented particular interests of the past. And it is from
the ferment that a 'people' can emerge and sort itself out into assemblies
and like forms, a 'people' that transcends particularistic interests and
gives a heightened relevance to a libertarian municipal orientation. [25]
However, despite the references to populism and a declassé;
people who can "sort itself out," this new movement is not
conceived as arising spontaneously, nor as developing its own forms and
types of autonomously directed activity. Recommending the formation of
activist affinity groups and study circles, Bookchin insists that
It would be naive to believe that forms
like neighborhood, town, and popular communal assemblies could rise to
the level of a libertarian public life or give rise to a libertarian
body politic without a highly conscious, well-organized, and
programmatically coherent libertarian movement. It would be equally
naive to believe that a libertarian movement could emerge without that
indispensable radical intelligentsia whose medium is its own intensely
vibrant community life.. Unless anarchists develop this waning stratum
of thinkers who live a vital public life in a searching communication
with their social environment, they will be faced with the very real
danger of turning ideas into dogmas and becoming the self- righteous
surrogates of once-living movements and people who belong to another
historical era. [26]
Among many others, this vanguardism remains one of the central contentions
Fredy Perlman forcefully disputes.
Whatever their differences and similarities, Chomsky and Bookchin are
clearly linked through their common participation in the terrain of
political discourse. The same cannot be said of Perlman. Both Chomsky's
traditional formulations and Bookchin's innovations are expressed in
standard forms and styles which are readily recognizable as types of
political discourse. In contrast, Perlman--particularly in his later
works--employs a range of textual strategies to convey his anarchic
vision. His 1972 volume, Manual for Revolutionary Leaders,
published under the wickedly allusive pseudonym Michael Velli, combines a
variety of discursive formations. The entire text is written as a devil's
advocacy of revolutionary authoritarianism. But interspersed among pages
of closely written polemical argument can be found material organized in
discrete epigrammatic paragraphs, narratives designed to illustrate
ideological points, and vivid graphics. A footnote in the second, 1974
edition explains that "M. Velli's thought is a synthesis of the ideas
of the major revolutionary leaders of the age .. Velli has taken all of
these ideas out of the context in which they first appeared and placed
them into the single Thought of which each of these ideas is a mere
fragment." [27] This
edition also lists the source of each idea quoted. But the first edition
lacks both the explanatory note and the list of sources, thus rendering
the text's intention even more equivocal and its effect even more
disorientating.
Letters of Insurgents, a huge epistolary novel published in 1976
under the pseudonyms Sophia Nachalo and Yarostan Vochek, imaginatively
explores the evolution of radical praxis in the West and the Eastern bloc
from the second World War. Purporting to comprise a series of authentic
letters between actual correspondents, it allows Perlman to develop and
illustrate his vision of contemporary anarchic praxis in the form of
fictional discourse. Similarly, his magnum opus, Against His-story,
Against Leviathan!, published in 1983, "with Illustrations
borrowed from William Blake," develops a poetic style appropriate to
his visionary account of human life from prehistory to the present day.
And, finally, his huge epic novel, The Strait, unfinished at the
time of his death in 1985, provides a panoramic view of Amerindian
resistance to invasion and genocide from mythical times to the present
day. [28]
Perlman's radical diversity in form and style finds a complement in the
equally innovative content of his work. His central concerns can be
illuminated by focusing on two key issues: the problem of representation,
and the problem of alienation, or why the oppressed daily reproduce their
own domination. The ways in which Perlman deals with these problems reveal
the contours of his intellectual evolution from New Left Marxism to
becoming, along with John Zerzan, one of the founders and leading
theorists of antitechnological anarchoprimitivism.
As indicated above, Bookchin believes that anarchism can only develop
through an organized libertarian movement, which in turn remains dependent
upon the emergence of a radical intelligentsia, whose function is
presumably to lead and coordinate activities, or at least to "try to
speak for dominated people as a whole." [29]
The issue of the intellectual as an agency for social change was raised,
and dismissed, by Perlman in his critique of C. Wright Mills, The
Incoherence of the Intellectual (1970). And the associated issue of
the intellectual as a revolutionary leader was mordantly savaged in
Velli's Manual. But his most comprehensive formulations in this area
appear in Letters of Insurgents. In the latter, leadership,
organization and the entire ideological baggage which accompanies a
movement for social change are characterized as repressive because they
set priorities which serve the interests of the impersonal sodality,
rather than the diverse desires of its individual constituents. Because
ideology claims to represent the interests of many, it does not truly
represent any single individual. And when it is able to persuade
individuals of its representative legitimacy, it enforces a submission
which remains indistinguishable from the routine coercions of everyday
life. Representation constitutes an insidious form of repression, and each
time ideological factors become operative in the novel, individuals are
obliged to resist or renounce their desires. The text's "heroes"
and "heroines" are not the "politically aware"--they
are part of the problem. Rather, the positive characters are either
instinctive rebels without a formulated political ideology, but who
maintain the capacity to respond and develop in emancipatory situations,
or former ideologists who manage to expel their political impedimenta.
Such people evolve their own projects without the direction of
intellectuals and organizations. The narrative's dynamic derives from the
way in which the two correspondents reinterpret their past and present
experiences in the light of each other's insights. This provokes them to
root out the repressive elements which have lodged in various facets of
their lives, from their daily "political" praxes through to the
deepest recesses of their psyches. This in turn promotes the realization
that liberation begins when individuals open themselves to every
conceivable experience and begin to do what they please.
From this basis, Perlman's conception of freedom becomes more expansive
and anarchic than those of his peers, and conditions his perspective on
issues like technology and the social patterns of a functioning anarchy.
Chomsky's proud declaration that during the Spanish Revolution
"production continued effectively" becomes a profound
indictment, and an indication that liberation has not been achieved. In an
authentic anarchy, factories would be closed or totally reconstituted,
technological production would be abandoned or radically transformed. What
truly liberated worker would consent to return to the factory and resume
the same routine as before the revolution, even if the premises are now
under "workers' control"? Perlman's penetrating vision cuts
across and reveals the essential orderliness and limitedness of his peers'
conceptions of anarchy. By inscribing individual desire, particularly
sexual desire, and the notion that all is possible at the center of his
praxis, he makes other visions of anarchy seem pale by comparison.
But his repudiation of representation remains only half the story.
Letters of Insurgents examines the way in which individuals are
induced to renounce their desires, which then turn against them to cause
self-repression and the perverse urge to repress others. But it does not
satisfactorily account for the phenomenon of complicity in continued daily
repression. Despite the depth of the cleansing operation undertaken by the
novel's putative authors, it does not reach deep enough to extirpate the
most profound layers of allegiance to repression. The repudiation is not
thorough enough. Hence, the composition of Against His-story, Against
Leviathan!, which goes "beyond Marxist theory and anarchist
historiography, beyond technology, beyond modernity to a rediscovery of
the primitive and of primitive community, and to the understanding that
capital is not the inevitable outcome of some "material"
historical development, but a monstrous aberration." [30]
The text recounts human history from the state of nature --an organic
autarky for Bookchin, an ecstatic earthly paradise for Perlman--through
the centuries of domination and revolt, and projects a renewed anarchic
future. The villain of the narrative is Leviathan, the monster of power
and domination, the megamachine of Western civilization. The State, the
ruling class, capitalism, technology--these are all attributes of the
Earth's central antagonist, not the enemy itself. Leviathans are giant
machines--sometimes metaphorically, sometimes liter- ally--which convert
free communities of individuals into zeks, forced laborers who form the
cogs and wheels that make the Behemoth operate. Such people are wrenched
out of mythic or cyclical time into the linearity of history, or His (that
is, Leviathan's) story.
But this process is not accepted passively. The human side of His-story
remains a tale of endless revolt, of repeated attempts to destroy or
abandon Leviathan in order to reconstitute or return to primal anarchy, a
period of total immersion in beatific dreams, visions and vocations. The
"heroes" and "heroines" of this narrative are again of
two types. They are either the Possessed--in contrast to the zeks, the
dispossessed--who have never left the state of nature, or the renegades,
those who rebel against Leviathan from within, or withdraw from its
entrails to create their own utopias or live among extant communities of
the Possessed. These individuals and communities do not possess
ideologies, intellectuals or organizations. Where any of the latter
elements intrude, they spell the end of a community or the cooptation of
revolt.
Although the experiential loss caused by the eradication of free
communities remains inestimable, and their numinous lifeways could not in
any case be conveyed in written form, Perlman attempts to imitate the
cyclical motion of mythic experience even while recounting the linear
His-story of Leviathan. Certain events continually recur throughout the
narrative, notably the way in which the Behemoth's organized opponents
repeatedly develop Leviathanic traits until they become indistinguishable
from their adversary.
As with Bookchin, America remains the terminus of Perlman's narrative, but
there the similarity ends. The colonization of the New World destroys the
last free communities on Earth. The Enlightenment and the American
revolution, with its libertarian tradition, are a cruel and gigantic hoax,
mere rhetoric which conceals and justifies genocide aimed at communities
of the Possessed, unprecedented ecological denudation and wholesale
plunder which converts the entire planet into a huge forced labor camp.
The text, however, ends on a note of hope. Leviathans are in a continual
state of decomposition. They can only survive by constantly consuming
other societies, whether free or Leviathanized. But now, for the first
time in His-story, a single Leviathan embraces the whole world. And with
no external sources of nutrition, it is beginning to consume itself.
Perlman points to the appearance of "the new outsiders" who,
like Bookchin's People, are displaced and superannuated by automation:
"the new outsiders are not radicals. They are people who happened to
animate springs and gears which can now be automated, namely
artificialized." [31] As
with Bookchin, class composition remains irrelevant: Perlman looks to
these "displaced zeks," not a class-conscious proletariat, for
manifestations of the "inner light, namely an ability to reconstitute
lost rhythms, to recover music, to regenerate human culture." [32]
But unlike Bookchin, he deliberately fails to formulate any
recommendations, and certainly does not advocate the formation of an
organized anarchist movement. Nevertheless, he does sense the American
millennium's increasing imminence. But its forms and contents can only be
spontaneously determined and generated by individuals and collectivities
in the process of liberating themselves. The closing passage of the text
announces:
In ancient Anatolia people danced on the
earth-covered ruins of the Hittite Leviathan and built their lodges
with stones which contained the records of the vanished empire's great
deeds.
The cycle has come round again. America is where Anatolia was. It is a
place where human beings, just to stay alive, have to jump, to dance,
and by dancing revive the rhythms, recover cyclical time. Anarchic and
pantheistic dancers no longer sense the artifice and its linear
His-story as All, but as merely one cycle, one long night, a stormy
night that left Earth wounded, but a night that ends, as all nights
end, when the sun rises. [33]
NOTES
1. Noam Chomsky, For Reasons of State
(London: Fontana, 1973), p.151.
2. Idem, "The Soviet Union versus
Socialism," in The Radical Papers, ed. Dimitros I.
Roussopoulos (Montreal: Black Rose, 1987), p. 60.
3. This broad tripartite schema can be readily deduced
from the best detailed account of American anarchist history: William O.
Reichert, Partisans of Freedom: A Study in American Anarchism (Bowling
Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1976). For the sake
of convenience, subsequent references in the text to "anarchism"
should be taken to denote anarchocommunism, unless otherwise specified.
4. Anon, "Renew the Earthly Paradise," Fifth
Estate, Winter/Spring 1986, p.10.
5. Ibid. On the emerging difference between
contemporary anarchism and the Left, see E.B. Maple, "Anarchy and the
Left," Fifth Estate, Spring 1987, pp. 4-5, 19, and Paul Buhle, Marxism
in the United States: Remapping the History of the American Left
(London: Verso, 1987), pp. 258-261.
6. See, for example, Kandace Kerr, review of Emma
Goldman: An Intimate Life by Alice Wexler, in Open Road,
Spring 1986, pp. 8-9. As in this case, however, focusing on individuals
can reveal otherwise neglected features. The three theorists profiled in
this essay all share a common Jewish ethnicity and this may not be a
coincidental factor. Rightly or wrongly, contemporary anarchism (unlike
its Marxist counterpart) tends to deemphasize--some would say neglect--the
issue of ethnicity. And interestingly enough, this omission is also
apparent in the political theory of the three Jewish-American anarchists
examined here. (The partial exception is Perlman, who in
"Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom" (1983) and "The
Continuing Appeal of Nationalism" (1984) sketched the beginnings of
an anarchist theory of race.
The reasons for Jewish involvement in radical politics (if not anarchism
in particular) have been widely documented and analyzed, but there is no
room in the present context to rehearse them. See, for example, Thorstein
Veblen, "The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews in Modern Europe"
in The Portable Veblen ed. Max Lerner (New York: Viking, 1970);
Hannah Arendt, "The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition" in The
Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, ed.,
Ron H. Feldman (New York: Grove Press, 1978); Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite
and Jew, trans., George J. Becker (New York: Schocken, 1970); Percy
S. Cohen, Jewish Radicals and Radical Jews (London: Academic
Press, 1980); Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, Roots of
Radicalism: Jews, Christians and the New Left (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1982).
7. Noam Chomsky, Radical Priorities, ed.,
Carlos P. Otero (Montreal: Black Rose, 1981), p. 247. Interview conducted
1976.
8. George Woodcock, "Chomsky's Anarchism," Freedom,
16 November 1974, p. 4.
9. Chomsky, Radical Priorities, p. 248.
10. Ibid., pp. 248-9.
11. Ibid., pp. 246, 247.
12. Murray Bookchin, The Modern Crisis
(Montreal: Black Rose, 1987), p. 129.
13. Idem, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence
and Dissolution of Hierarchy (Palo Alto: Cheshire Books, 1982), p.
277.
14. Idem, The Modern Crisis, p. 25.
15. Ibid., p. 23.
16. Ibid., p.4.
17. Ibid., p. 23.
18. Ibid., p. 7.
19. Idem, "Theses on Libertarian
Municipalism," in The Anarchist Papers, ed. Dimitros I.
Roussopoulos (Montreal: Black Rose, 1986), p. 10.
20. Idem, The Modern Crisis, p. 156.
21. Ibid., p. 146.
22. Ibid. "Slowly" might be the key term in
this passage. Bookchin refers to this process of social change as
"the revolutionary project," yet leaves himself open to charges
of gradualism and reformism. "The move from 'here to there' will not
be a sudden explosion of change without a long period of intellectual and
ethical preparation"--despite the perceived urgency of the ecological
situation. "Power must be steadily shifted [not eroded or abolished]
to neighborhoods and municipalities in the form of community centers,
cooperatives, occupational centres, and ultimately, citizens'
assemblies" (Idem, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future
(Boston: South End Press, 1990), pp. 197, 189, 190). The best critique of
libertarian municipalism occurs in John Zerzan, review of The Rise of
Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship by Murray Bookchin, in Demolition
Derby , No. 1, p. 16.
23. Idem., The Modern Crisis, p. 190.
24. Ibid., p. 153. Perhaps socialization remains
unemphasized because, unlike political libertarianism, economic
collectivization does not constitute part of the American tradition, as
Bookchin defines it.
25. Idem, "Theses on Libertarian
Municipalism," p. 18.
26. Ibid., p. 16. On affinity and study groups, see
Idem, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, 2nd ed. (Montreal: Black Rose,
1986). p. 41.
27. Michael Velli, Manual for Revolutionary
Leaders, comp. and ed. Lorraine and Fredy Perlman, 2nd ed. (Detroit:
Black and Red, 1974), p. 263.
28. The complexity of the textual strategies employed
in this as yet only partly published novel unfortunately render it
impossible to deal with this work in the present context. The Strait
merits sustained critical attention, not the bare overview that could
be provided here. For further information, see Lorraine Perlman, review of
The Strait in Fifth Estate, Fall 1986, p. 8; Allen
Foster, review of The Strait in Fifth Estate, Summer 1990, pp.
10-11; John Moore, review of The Strait in Bulletin of
Anarchist Research 17 (May 1989), pp.22-23; Lorraine Perlman, Having
Little, Being Much: A Chronicle of Fredy Perlman's Fifty Years
(Detroit: Black and Red, 1989, pp. 128-138).
29. Bookchin, The Modern Crisis, p. 155.
This view of the intellectual's role also remains implicit in Chomsky's
anarchosyndicalist formulations.
30. Anon, "Fredy Perlman: An Appreciation,"
Fifth Estate, Summer 1985, p. 14. Perlman's rejection of
technology and the ideology of progress can be usefully contrasted with
Bookchin's position on these issues. Bookchin insists that "The
course of human development has no more moved in clearly defined and
necessarily 'progressive' stages than has the history of human
ideas." Nevertheless, progressivist notions inform his ideas, for
example in his assertion that "Every social evolution.. is virtually
an extension of natural evolution into a distinctly human realm." As
a result, although claiming to provide a critique of hierarchy, Bookchin's
synthesis of (Western-centered) secular humanism and a modified Darwinist
schema permits a reactivation of hierarchical categories. This becomes
particularly evident in Bookchin's notion of human guardianship or
stewardship of the natural world--"Humanity, in effect, becomes the
potential voice of a nature rendered self-conscious and
self-formative" --a notion which implies that humanity (or at least
Euro-Americans?) constitute the apex of evolution, and ignores the
problematic issue of representation (Bookchin, Remaking Society,
pp. 116, 25, 201). This ideational framework remains worryingly close to
the Marxist anthropology of higher stages critiqued by Perlman in Against
His-story, Against Leviathan! (Detroit: Black and Red, 1983), pp.
14-15.
In contrast to Perlman's rejection of technology as an alienating and
dominating force, Bookchin foresees the necessity for
"ecotechnologies" in his vision of an ecoanarchist future.
Referring to the use of "industrial installations, based on small,
multipurpose machines, the latest innovations in humanly scaled
technologies, the production of quality goods, and a minimal expenditure
of energy," he categorically iterates "Let me state flatly that
a high premium would be placed on labor-saving devices--be they computers
or authentic machinery." Bookchin, unlike Perlman and other figures
on the contemporary American anarchist scene, such as Bob Black, clearly
does not plump for the zero-work option: "Politics and concrete
decisions that deal with agriculture and industrial production would be
made by citizens in face-to-face assemblies--as citizens, not simply as
workers, farmers, or professionals who, in any case would themselves be
involved in rotating productive activities, irrespective of their
professional expertise" (Ibid., pp. 189, 196, 194).
A comparison of the ideas of Perlman and Bookchin makes one realize how
relatively little things would in fact change in a future structured by
social ecology. The main changes, focused on political structure and
technology, would render such a society immediately recognizable to a
citizen of a Western capitalist democracy. Bookchin's envisaged future
lacks the radical otherness characteristic of anarchoprimitivist visions
of a transformed world.
31. Perlman, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!,
p. 301.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., pp. 301-2
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