Anarchism, Libertarianism and Environmentalism: Anti-Authoritarian Thought and the Search for...

8/3/2019 Anarchism, Libertarianism and Environmentalism: Anti-Authoritarian Thought and the Search for Self-Organizing Soci

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3Anarchism, Libertarianismand Environmentalism:

Anti-Authoritarian Thought

and the Search forSelf-Organizing Societies

D a m i a n F i n b a r W h i t e a n d G i d e o n K o s s o f f

INTRODUCTION

Few intellectual currents have played as influen-tial a role in the development and shaping of mod-ern environmentalism as the anarchist andlibertarian tradition of social and political thought.Generalizations about common ideological rootsto a politics as diverse and internally divided asenvironmentalism are of course hazardous. Yet,when we consider some of the currents that runthrough much of the radical green worldview:philosophical naturalism, advocacy of economic,political and technological decentralization orthe desire to ground a sustainable society in par-ticipatory institutions, the spirit of the classicanarchists clearly looms over much of this conver-sation. Indeed, it could be noted that at one time oranother in the last two centuries many of theorganizing ideas of the more radical currents ofcontemporary ecological politics have been initi-ated and developed by people who would havecalled themselves anarchists or libertarians.

In this chapter we seek to trace the diverse con-nections that can be found between anarchism, thebroader libertarian tradition, environmentalismand scientific ecology. We begin by establishing

the historical context of anti-authoritarian thought.Since the Enlightenment, anarchists and libertari-ans from Godwin to Proudhon have advancedthe idea that social order is generated through thevoluntary association of human beings. As such,this tradition stands in sharp contrast to the main-stream of social and political theory which hasmaintained that social order is generated by theexternal imposition of authority. Indeed, anar-chists have maintained that it is the very coerciveideologies, practices and institutions of modernitythat are the source of the disorder and social chaosthey are designed to prevent. We elaborate on thisworldview in the first section of this chapter andargue that the resistance that many contemporaryforms of ecological politics demonstrate forconventional leadership structures, industrialismand the advanced division of labour has a longpedigree.

In the second part of this chapter, we focusmore specifically on the impact that social anar-chist, left libertarian and more recent ecologicalanarchist currents have had on the development ofthinking about societynature relations. The dom-inant figures here are Peter Kropotkin and MurrayBookchin. In these thinkers we can find a range of


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ANARCHISM, LIBERTARIANISM AND ENVIRONMENTALISM 51

important contributions being made to eco-philosophy and environmental ethics, fromattempts to cultivate a metaphysics of nature anddevelop naturalistic ethics, to reflections on scien-

tific ecology and evolutionary biology.In the third part of this chapter, we go on to

consider the broader impact that anarchist andlibertarian thinkers have had on debates about thebuilt environment. Anarchist thought has oftenbeen presented by its critics as simply advocatinga pastoral vision of the future. Such readingsthough ignore the extent to which as Peter Hallhas observed the anarchist fathers had a mag-nificent vision of the possibilities of urban civili-sation (Hall, 2002). In the work of Geddes andHoward, Bookchin and Ward, a stream of thoughtcan be recovered which moves from advocacy ofgarden cities and city gardens to championing

the virtues of allotments, participatory planning,ecological technology and urban direct democ-racy. This urban ecological strand of anarchistand libertarian thought is doubly important. Notonly does it suggest that the lived practice ofmuch green social movement activity couldindeed be viewed as anarchism in action but alsothe claim of anarchist urbanists, that the optimalhuman environment would be the self-organizedhuman-scaled city that is carefully integrated intothe region and the broader natural environment,potentially make important contributions tocontemporary discussions of the importance ofsustainable cities.

Finally, we conclude by considering criticalevaluations of anarchist and libertarian social andpolitical theory and the future relationshipbetween anarchism, libertarian thought, environ-mentalism and ecology. Serious intellectual chal-lenges have been posed to the coherence of thistradition as social and political theory and as pro-viding a basis for green social and political theory.However, we argue that libertarian and anarchistthemes continue to work their way into the envi-ronmental debate from a surprising range of areasand many materializations of politics going underthe loose term of ecology continue to find insocial anarchism and left libertarianism an invalu-able source of ideas and inspiration.

APPROACHES TO ANARCHISM

The word anarchism is derived from two ancientGreek words an and arkh. It literarily means theabsence of authority (Gurin, 1970, p. 11) or thecondition of being without a ruler (Marshall, 1992,p. x). As Peter Marshall notes, from the beginningthe term has been associated with both the nega-tive sense of unruliness which leads to disorderand chaos, and the positive sense of a free society

in which rule is no longer necessary (Marshall,1992a, p. 3). Refining the central commitments ofthe anarchist and libertarian tradition further,though, is not an easy task. Gurin, for example,

has claimed anarchists reject society as a whole(1970, p. 13). Many anarchist rhetorics give theimpression that they reject government. At thesame time though, many self-identified anarchistsand libertarians have championed society andbeen enthusiastic supporters of radically demo-cratic and communal governing structures.1

Further complexities emerge from the mannerin which anarchist and libertarian discoursescan originate from both radically individualistand radically collectivist social philosophies.Furthermore, the terms libertarianism and anar-chism are sometimes used interchangeably in theliterature and sometimes given different mean-

ings. Some clarification of definitions is thereforenecessary.In this chapter, we suggest that anarchism and

libertarianism are best treated as a common anti-authoritarian tradition. By definition, this familyof social and political thought can be identified byits central unifying desire to criticize the view thatauthority should be the organizing principle ofsocial life. Yet, this critique has invariably beenexpanded to oppose all institutional and psycho-logical forms of domination, hierarchy andauthoritarianism. Much anarchist and libertarianadvocacy, then, takes the form of social philoso-phies that explain how such a constellation of

repressive forces and structures came into being.It offers political philosophies which argue for thetranscendence of such structures and suggestalternative social, political, economic and techno-logical forms that would maximize the realm offreedom, autonomy and self-management.

There are, however, tensions and differenceswithin the anti-authoritarian tradition. Tensionsexist between communitarians and individualists;between those that view social solidarity as aprecondition for the free society (social anar-chists) and those who argue that primacy shouldbe given to individual sovereignty and privatejudgement (anarcho-individualists). The traditionis also marked by notable tensions between scien-tific rationalists and romantics; between thosethat see capitalism as antithetical to a free societyand those who view markets as the most efficientcoordinating mechanism for decentralized soci-eties. Additional differences emerge from the factthat anti-authoritarians who self-identify asanarchists tend to hold to the view that the freesociety must necessarily be stateless. In contrast,self-identified libertarians are more likely totolerate minimal state forms for the foreseeablefuture or pragmatically aspiring, like Buber, tosubstitute society for the State to the greatest

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52 HANDBOOK OF ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY

degree possible (Buber, 1947, p. 80). Nevertheless,despite these differences it is a shared hostilitytowards the specific form of government whichemerged in post-renaissance Europe (Miller,

1984, p. 5), that is, the modern state, that bringstogether libertarians and anarchists of assortedpersuasions.

ANARCHISM, SOCIAL ORDERAND FREEDOM

The words law and order are often paired asif they were indissolubly united. According to themodern mind there is no order without law,where law is understood as a body of rulesdevised and imposed from without. This law isenforced by the authority of the courts, the police,

the army and ultimately, the government. Socialorder, according to this worldview, emanates fromthe institutions of the modern state. This view wascentral to Thomas Hobbes justification of themodern state and was developed by a range ofsocial-contract theorists in the 17th and 18th cen-tury. William Godwin (17561836) was the firstof a long line of thinkers, who we now look uponas the classic anarchists, including, for example,Michael Bakunin (18141876), Pierre-JosephProudhon (18091865) and Peter Kropotkin(18421921) who resisted such arguments and thespread of state centralization more generally.

Synthesizing and developing currents of French

18th century liberal thought with indigenous tradi-tions of English dissenting radicalism (Woodcock,1986) Godwin is frequently referred to as thefather of the libertarian tradition. In his EnquiryConcerning Political Justice (1793), a text whichimmediately followed the French RevolutionGodwin argued that the power of one man overanother is only achieved by conquest or coercion.By nature, he maintained, we are all equal. In theinfancy of society men associate for mutual assis-tance. It is the errors and perverseness of the fewthat leads to calls for restraint in the form of gov-ernment (Marshall, 1992a, p. 19). Government,then, is initially intended to suppress injustice.However, turning to consider government in theform of the modern state, Godwin argued that it isincreasingly clear that government only perpetu-ates injustice. It has dangerously concentrated theforce of the community and aggregated the powerof inequality (Marshall, 1992a, p. 19).

From Godwin onwards many anarchists andlibertarians have made a distinction betweengovernment and society, the former being seen asan artificial social form, the latter a naturalform. It is maintained that authentic social order,or social harmony, cannot be imposed fromoutside a community by an external authority.

Government is therefore seen to be an impositionon society, and the order generated by state poweris seen to be inauthentic. An authentic socialorder, on the other hand, is created through the

interpersonal relationships of those who livewithin the ambit of a community.

Social order is, therefore, seen to come aboutspontaneously through the daily interactions ofpeople living in proximity to one another, in theirwork, in their families, in their friendships and inthe economy and culture. Out of the personalizedrelationships of everyday life, it is argued, com-munities develop the ability to manage their ownneeds and affairs. In other words, human societieshave the capacity to become self-governing. Thedefence and cultivation of social spontaneity,which is the barometer of societal health, revealsthe typical anarchist view of human nature that

we are fundamentally social beings.It needs to be noted here that whilst the classicanarchists identified the authority principle asbeing at the source of social disorder, they arereferring to externally imposed, controllingauthority: authority per se is not usually rejected.Typical, for example, is Godwins distinctionbetween three kinds of authority: the authority ofreason, the authority given to a person worthy ofreverence and esteem, and authority which isbuttressed by sanction and therefore dependent onforce. It is the latter which is the species ofauthority that properly connects itself with theidea of government (Godwin, 1986, p. 104) and is

therefore to be rejected.Anarchists following Godwin have argued thatstate power is inseparable from domination. It ismaintained that those in power (whether the gov-ernment is representative or despotic) are the priv-ileged minority of the age (be it, to paraphraseBakunin, priestly, aristocratic, bourgeois orbureaucratic) who profess to understand the inter-ests of the majority better than the majority canitself, and therefore does the thinking and direct-ing for all as Godwin said. Even a representativegovernment was separated by a huge gulf from themajority of the population who were expected, asGodwin maintained to take the conclusions oftheir superiors on trust in leading strings. Thestate could thus reduce oppression to a system,the operations of which were made unnecessarilycomplicated in order to disguise any conflicts ofinterest. All this was secured by force, when theneed arose, rather than by the judgement of indi-viduals or the community.

Much classic anarchist advocacy has sought tosubstantiate the above claims by turning to historyand anthropology to consider the social, culturaland political arrangements that are to be found inpre-modern societies and contemporary peopleliving in small-scale societies.


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MUTUAL AID AND THEUNNATURALNESS OF THE STATE

Peter Kropotkins Mutual Aid(1902) constitutesone of the most serious attempts in social andpolitical theory to undermine the notion that themodern states legitimacy is based on a socialcontract or that social life can be explained in thecompetitive and aggressive terms of socialDarwinism. Kropotkin asked why people in thestate of nature should have consented to be ruledif, in the absence of government, their communi-ties were already cohesive? Directly repudiatingHobbessLeviathan, Kropotkin argues

It is utterly false to represent primitive man as a

disorderly agglomeration of individuals, who only

obey their individual passions, and take advantageof their personal force and cunningness against all

other representatives of the species. Unbridled

individualism is a modern growth, but it is not a

characteristic of primitive mankind (Kropotkin,

1987, p. 82).

He goes on to suggest that if we view the histor-ical and anthropological record in all its breadth,we can gain a much more diverse sense of thesocial institutions that human beings have createdacross time.

In Mutual Aidit is reasoned that if humanityhad been mutually antagonistic we would not have

been able to create enduring human communitiesand would, as relatively slow and weak creatures,have passed from the evolutionary scene aeonsago. Reflecting on the historical record as well asdrawing from ethnographies of tribal peoples suchas the Buryat and Kabyle, Kropotkin argues thatmutual aid, not competition, is the norm of socialorganization and that, therefore, mutually benefi-cial collaborative and cooperative networks havebeen a persistent feature of human society.

Whilst by no means seeking to undermine thegains of civilization, Kropotkin suggests we haveto recognize the creative genius of early humans(Kropotkin, 1987). It is argued early human clansocieties shared food and other necessities, heldproperty in common, developed communal carefor children, and assisted the weak. This practiceof mutual aid was extended, Kropotkin argues,as village communities emerged. Thus, Kropotkinargues we can see the emergence of village cul-tures that held and worked land in common andcollectively cleared marshes, drained forestsand built roads, bridges and defences. Suchcommunities also developed systems of custom-ary law backed not by coercion but by the moralauthority of the folkmote (an ancient assembly ofthe people gathered to discuss matters of the

common wealth). What these examples demon-strate, Kropotkin reasons, is that the principle ofvoluntary and direct association between peoplehas historically provided the basis of a robust and

creative social fabric.Kropotkin maintains that mutual aid did not

simply pass from the scene with the rise of feudal-ism. Whilst we can find an authoritarian traditionconsolidating itself around the monarchy and thebarons, equally from the 12th century, for severalhundred years, Europe saw an important counter-trend in terms of a communalist revolution.From the 12th century onwards one can point to theslow rise of hundreds of cities seeking to emanci-pate themselves from their feudal lords to becomeself-governing entities. These free cities not onlyexperimented with a highly decentralized form ofneighbourhood organization, but also developed

a new form of mutual aid, the guilds, whichprovided fraternal and egalitarian associations foreach of the trades, arts and crafts.

According to Kropotkin the free cities liberatedhuge intellectual and creative forces across Europe.Because of this, within three or four hundred yearsEurope was covered with beautiful sumptuousbuildings, expressing the genius of freed unions offree men (Kropotkin, 1987). This demonstrates,he says, that authority simply hinders men fromgiving free expression to their inherent socialtendencies (Kropotkin, 1987, p. 8).

How can we explain the triumph of the author-ity principle? Kropotkin admitted that alongside

mutual aid, one can find an instinct of self-assertion which could take the form of a will todominate and exploit others (Miller, 1984, p. 73).Authoritarian institutions can appeal to such aspirit. This is what happened to the free citiesfrom the end of the 15th century when the risingcentralized State took advantage of divisions thathad arisen both within the cities and between themand the countryside, and proceeded to rip themapart. It was the state that

weeded out all institutions in which the mutual

aid tendency had formerly found expression .

Folkmotes courts and independent administra-

tion . lands were confiscated guilds spoliated

of their possessions. Cities divested of their sov-

ereignty the elected justices and administration,

the sovereign parish and parish guild . were anni-

hilated; the States functionary took possession

of every link of what formerly was an organic

whole [absorbing] all its social functions [it

saw] in the communal lands a means for gratify-

ing its supporters . They [the States] have broken

all bonds between men (Kropotkin, 1987, p. 11).

The 19th century anarchistscase against the state,with its edifice of bureaucratic, legal, militaristic,


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educational and religious structures, was summedup by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (180965):

To be governed is to be at every operation, at

every transaction, watched over, inspected, spiedon, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed,

indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed,

weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who

have neither the right nor the knowledge nor the

virtue. To be governed is to be, on the pretext of

the general interest, taxed, drilled, held to ransom,

exploited, monopolised, extorted, squeezed,

hoaxed, robbed, then at the least resistance, at the

first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined,

abused, annoyed, followed, bullied, beaten, dis-

armed, garrotted, imprisoned, machine gunned,

judged, condemned, deported, flayed, sold,

betrayed, and finally mocked, ridiculed, insulted,

dishonoured. Thats government, thats its justice,thats its morality (Proudhon, in Miller, 1984, p. 6).

ALTERNATIVES? FIELDS, FACTORIESAND WORKSHOPS

What, then, was the alternative to the modernstate? The classic anarchists generally concurredthat it was necessary to defend and expand theinstances of mutual aid, voluntary association andself-organization that survived and lingered incapitalist societies. But, in addition to salvaging

these practices, it was held that credible politicalresistance to the authoritarian principle involveddeveloping political projects and movements thatwould seek to locate power at the administrativeunit that is closest to the people. Thus, attentionwas focused on the commune or the municipality.Anarchists also, however, became some of theprinciple advocates of confederalism. As such, itwas envisaged that confederated networks ofcommunes or municipalities, free cities and freeregions could eventually replace the State.Kropotkin in Fields, Factories and Workshops,for example, envisaged the state being substitutedby an interwoven network, composed of aninfinite variety of groups and federations of allsizes and degree, local regional national andinternational temporary or more or less perma-nent (Kropotkin, 1993, p. 7).

Yet, what to do with the economy? From itsinception, the classic anarchists stood alongsideemerging socialist and Marxist currents in theirprotests against industrial capitalism, which hadbecome the prevalent form of economic organiza-tion in Europe, and the structure of propertyownership.

Arguing that labour is the source of economicvalue, not capital, currency or land Godwin

maintained that the faculty of disposing of theproduce of another mans industry (Marshall,1992a, p. 211) was unacceptable. Similarly,Kropotkin argued in The Conquest of Breadthat,

since the heritage of humanity is a collective onein which it is impossible to measure the individualcontribution of any one person, this heritage mustbe enjoyed collectively (Woodcock, 1986, p. 169).In contrast, however, to their Marxist contempo-raries, anarchists maintained that the fundamentalproblem with capitalist industrialism and agricul-ture was not simply the social relations whichunderpinned these, but their gigantic scale, theircentralization and their reliance on an increasinglyadvanced division of labour. Unlike manyMarxists then, who welcomed centralizing institu-tions as marking a further progressive rationali-zation of the mode of production (aiming merely,

according to Bakunin, at turning society into abarrack where regimented working men andwomen will sleep, wake, work and live to the beatof a drum (Miller, 1984, p. 11), the classic anar-chists viewed many elements of capitalist ration-alization as socially and culturally regressive,leading to the expansion of the authority principleof uniformity and homogenization in social life,and to the undermining of autonomy, skill, craftand self-organizing tendencies in the work place.

Kropotkin, in his Fields, Factories andWorkshops, took this line of thought further thanhad other anarchists, arguing that industry couldand should be decentralized and integrated with

agriculture not simply for the reasons statedabove but because of the opportunities it openedfor a more balanced and healthy life:

The scattering of industry over the country so as

to bring the factory amidst the fields, to make

agriculture derive all those profits which it always

finds in being combined with industry and to pro-

duce a combination of agricultural with industrial

work is surely the next step to be taken This

step is imposed by the necessity for each healthy

man and woman to spend a part of their lives in

manual work in the free air; and it will be rendered

the more necessary when the great social move-

ments, which have now become unavoidable,

come to disturb the present international trade

and compel each nation to revert to her own

resources for her own maintenance.

Significant differences emerge, however, as towhat follows from this. Kropotkin, for example,advocated an anarcho-communist and market-freevision of the future significantly influenced by thesocialist and communist movements of the time(albeit free of the state). In contrast, Proudhonmay well have declared at one point all propertyis theft but along with Benjamin Tucker, he also


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argued that limited property ownership was neces-sary to secure and protect individual liberty.As such, Proudhon advocated a more marketfriendly system of mutualism. Proudhons mutual-

ism consisted of a pluralist and confederal mixedeconomy organized around market exchangebetween producers, production being carried outby self-employed artisans and farmers, small pro-ducers cooperatives, consumers cooperatives andworker-controlled enterprises. He argued that allthis should be underpinned by a currency con-trolled by a democratically elected peoples bank.

While Proudhon presented his mutualism asstriking a balance between extreme collectivismand extreme individualism, it is certainly the casethat the role that markets private judgement andindividualism should play in any libertarian futurehas become a key point of division as the anarchist

tradition has developed across the 20th century. Inthe post-war period in particular one can see anincreasingly sharp division between self-styledanarcho-capitalists such as Murray Rothbards orlibertarians such as Ayn Rand, who, followingthe disaster of State Socialism, concluded that anyform of collectivist economics is incompatiblewith an anti-authoritarian politics. In contrast,left libertarians have continued to argue that cor-porate capitalism is the central issue that needs tobe addressed.

Over the last two decades, anarcho-capitalistsand individualist libertarians have argued that thefree market and the minimal state provides the

political and economic form which optimizesdecentralization, individual autonomy and private judgement. Their argument has unquestionablymade major gains in academic and political circles,particularly in the USA. Establishing themselves asthe radical wing of the US conservative movement,such figures have frequently directly impacted onUS policy discussions and have virtually annexedthe term libertarian so that it is almost solely asso-ciated with free-market radicalism.

Such manifestations of the individualist tradi-tions of anarchism, however, have had very littleto say in relation to environmental concerns andlittle impact on environmental movements. Incontrast, it is social anarchists, left libertarians andassorted other utopian fellow travellers that havehad the most sympathy with environmental issuesin general and radical ecology in particular. We goon to explore their influences in the next section.

SOCIAL ANARCHISM ANDSOCIETYNATURE RELATIONS

The relationship between social anarchism, leftlibertarianism and societynature relations iscomplex. It may well be the case that Henry David

Thoreau (18171862) retreated to the woods ofMassachusetts to be on more intimate terms withthe natural world, and Proudhon demonstrateddeep sympathies with the peasant farmer and

lamented the commodification of the land(Marshall, 1992a, p. 237). On the other hand,the social anarchists of the 19th century wereindeed very much products of the enlightenment.And as such they firmly sought to contest formsof naturalistic reductionism present in suchthinkers as Malthus and in social Darwinism.Godwin, Kropotkin and Reclus firmly rejectedMalthus claim that natural limits reachedthrough overpopulation would provide a naturalcheck on any progressive project. Godwinsaw distinct gains in the technologies of the indus-trial revolution, and saw no virtue in unpleasanttoil (Marshall, 1992a, p. 215). Kropotkin, advo-

cating the Conquest of Nature, believed thatthe stock of energy in nature was potentiallyinfinite and that as population became moredense, means of food cultivation would improve,which would circumvent population pressures(see Marshall, 1992a, p. 331). Reclus similarlybelieved that advanced technology would helpincrease production and improve life for all(Marshall, 1992a, p. 342). It would therefore bequite incorrect to read the classic social anarchistsas proto-radical ecologists. Indeed, many of theclassic social anarchists would have looked inhorror at the technophobic pronouncements ofcontemporary neo-Malthusians and primitivists

(e.g: Zerzan, 1994).Nevertheless, the enormous debt that much late20th century environmentalism and ecologismowes to the social philosophy of 19th centurysocial anarchism has been much commented onin the literature on green politics (ORiordan,1981; Dobson, 1990; Eckersley, 1992; Pepper,1993) and the lines of connection should alreadybe apparent. For example, Kropotkins utopianvisions, his sympathetic reading of the historiesof pre-modern and small-scale societies andhis advocacy of decentralization have clearlyinfluenced much green utopian thinking in the20th century. The social anarchist critique ofthe state and authoritarianism clearly informsthe preference for loosely knit network formsof organization and loose social movementsstructures that can be found amongst many radicalenvironmental and ecological groups andattempts by various Green Parties in the 1980s toexperiment with various anti-party, party struc-tures. The differences between Kropotkin andProudhon on economic organization mirror ongo-ing debates in environmentalism and radicalecology concerning the role that markets shouldplay in the development of decentralized sustain-able societies.


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We can identify three further and overlappingareas where social anarchists such as Kropotkinand more contemporary thinkers such as MurrayBookchin have contributed to debates about

society-nature relations. First, from Kropotkinonwards, social anarchists have been drawn toethical naturalism and social organicist modes ofthinking, that is, the desire to look to nature in thelarge to provide guidelines for the organization ofa liberated society. Second, social anarchists havemade direct interventions in scientific debates inbiology, evolutionary theory and latterly ecology.Third, more recent social anarchists and libertari-ans have broken with Kropotkins commitment tothe conquest of nature, raising concerns aboutthe Enlightenment traditions commitment to theidea of the domination of nature.

ETHICAL NATURALISM AND THECLASSIC SOCIAL ANARCHISTS

The classic social anarchist tradition, as PeterMarshall (1992a) has observed, is deeply infusedby a kind of cosmic optimism a sense that anar-chism is somehow an expression of the naturalway of things. A deep-seated ethical naturalismwhich views order, reason, creativity and, ulti-mately, meaning as woven in some way into thefabric of the natural world, pervades much 19thcentury anarchism. Godwin, for example, arguedthat the rational, deterministic order of the uni-

verse could potentially be translated into therational and benign order of society. The implicitmessage was that social systems based on power,authority and control somehow go against thegrain of both human and non-human nature.

Many social anarchist and libertarian currentsafter Godwin have been attracted to organismic asopposed to mechanistic metaphors. CharlesFourier (17721837), for example, took thismetaphor to its extreme in his suggestion that theuniverse was not a Newtonian machine but a vastliving organism that pulsated with life: everythingit contained was governed by the principle of pas-sionate attraction. Fourier believed that givenappropriate social forms, this force of passionateattraction could be released in social life. Onceagain, though, of the 19th century thinkers it isKropotkin who emerges as the key figure in devel-oping the naturalistic side of anarchist advocacy.

One of the more interesting and controversialaspects of Kropotkins thinking is his critique ofthe notion that somehow the principle of authoritylurks in nature. As a practising naturalist, geogra-pher and indeed evolutionary theorist, field workhe conducted in Siberia as a young man led him tobelieve that mutual aid was at work in the naturalworld as well as in society at large. His position

was in stark contrast to many contemporary 19thcentury social theorists such as T.H. Huxley andHerbert Spencer, who appropriated Darwinstheory of evolution to buttress the ideology of

laissez-faire economics.Kropotkin recounts how whilst he was doing

field research in Siberia, under the fresh impres-sion of Origin [he and his colleague] vainlylooked for the keen competition between animalsof the same species which the reading of Darwinsworks had led us to expect (Kropotkin, 1989).He did not deny in Mutual Aidthat there wasstruggle in nature, and particularly strugglesbetween species, but proposed that the fittest inthis struggle were those given to cooperationwithin their own species. Who are the fittest:those who are continually at war with each other,or those who support one another? We at once see

that those animals which acquire habits of mutualaid are undoubtedly the fittest (Kropotkin, 1987,p. 24) Competition in a harsh natural world is seenas a waste of energy and resources: cooperation,on the other hand enables animals to secure food,to protect themselves from predators, and to reartheir offspring. Thus mutual aid, not mutual antag-onism, association not competition, becamethe most significant agent of natural evolution,or, as Kropotkin says the most efficaciousweapon in the struggle for existence (Kropotkin,1992, p. 45). This applied especially to theweakest, the slowest, and therefore the most phys-ically vulnerable animals, amongst whom were

human beings.Kropotkin cites many examples of this phenom-enon, including insects, land-crabs, bees, birds ofprey, migratory and nesting birds, and nearly allmammals: the higher up the scale of evolutionthe more conscious such association becomes,until in human beings, it becomes a reasonedprocess. Indeed it is this process, he says, whichtakes animals up the evolutionary scale, and hasbeen responsible for the development of theirlongevity and intelligence. In human and non-human nature, life in societies, he concludes, isthe most powerful weapon in the struggle for life(Kropotkin, 1989).

Kropotkin concurred with Darwin in theDescent of Man, that sociality helped animals sur-vive and in the higher animals, such as humans, itengendered mutual sympathy, compassion andultimately love, and also gave birth to notions ofequity and justice. Thus, both the source of ethicalbehaviour, the rudiments of moral relations andthe basis for anarchism could be found in the nat-ural world, specifically in the sociality that hadpre-human origins but had been most highlydeveloped in humans: Kropotkin contended thatNature has to be recognized as the first ethicalteacher of man. The social instinct is the origin


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of all ethical conceptions and all the subsequentdevelopment of morality the moral feelings ofman are further developments of the feelings ofsociality which existed amongst his remotest

pre-human ancestors (1992, p. 45).This naturalistic argument challenged theolo-

gians and philosophers who assigned ethics asupernatural or metaphysical origin (that is, themajority of those in the West who, prior tothe Enlightenment, had considered the problem):the triumph of the moral principle [had been]thus regarded as a triumph of man over nature,which he may hope to achieve only with an aidfrom without coming as a reward for his goodintentions (Kropotkin, 1992, p. 45). It also chal-lenged those who held that ethics must beengrafted by an external force: Herbert Spencer, aSocial Darwinist, was, he said, astounded at the

lack of causality in the realm of the moral andThomas Huxley thought cosmic evolution isincompetent to furnish any better reason whywhat we call good is preferable to what we callevil and that social progress required that we sub-stitute an ethical process for this cosmic process.

Perhaps the most important libertarian thinkerto take up Kropotkins ontological and ethicallegacy in the 20th century has been MurrayBookchin (19222006).

BOOKCHINS SOCIAL ECOLOGY

Since his 1965 essay Ecology and RevolutionaryThought, Bookchin has sought to integrate ecol-ogy and the libertarian tradition into a grand syn-thesis he has termed social ecology. Bookchinswork diverges from Kropotkins in rejecting theidea that the domination of nature is a necessaryand inevitable feature of the human condition.

Early societies, Bookchin says, lacked conceptsof domination and therefore could not develop theconcept of the domination of nature. But thehierarchical sensibility that later emerged andwhich conceptually equipped humanity to trans-fer its social antagonisms to the natural world(Bookchin, 1982, p. 82) was projected on tonature and the idea of dominating nature wasborn: nature became a taskmaster either to becontrolled or obeyed (Bookchin, 1989, p. 33).Thus, the very idea that humanity must dominatenature is intimately related to the rise of hierarchyin human societies, and the ecological crisis,therefore, has social roots: since it arises out of thedomination of human by human it will only beresolved not simply by dismantling state institu-tions but, more generally, all hierarchical socialforms and ideologies.

Bookchins argument reverses the position,held since Classical times, that the domination of

human by human, the cruel treatment andexploitation of one economic class by another, hasalways been justified by the myth of a blind,mute, cruel, stingy and competitive nature

(Bookchin, 1995, p. 39), one that perforce must bedominated or it will dominate us. This ideologyholds that wealth can only be created through thetreatment of nature as a resource, and the need toforce wealth from such a stingy nature became anapologetic for the stingy behaviour of rulingelites and providing the utilitarian underpinningfor modern ideologies such as liberalism andMarxism.

Whilst acknowledging the existence of scarcity,Bookchin argues that ruling elites have oftenexaggerated natures stinginess, and indeed haveoften artificially induced scarcity (Bookchin,1995, p. 99). The dominant classes have main-

tained that authoritarian institutions are needed toprotect people from the struggle that would ensueas a result of scarcity in the natural world. Or, asKroptkin earlier put it, the belief that withoutauthority men would eat one another (1992,p. 49). All this has led to the instrumental treat-ment of the natural world as a collection ofresources, a set of raw materials.

Like Kropotkin, Bookchin turns to moderndevelopments in scientific ecology and evolution-ary theory. However, Bookchin attempts to inte-grate such insights with what are viewed ascomplementary broader insights about nature thatcan be found in the Western tradition of process

philosophy and dialectic thought: from Aristotleand Schelling to Fichte and Hegel. Arguably, thismakes his naturalism more nuanced, complex andmore far-reaching than Kropotkins.

Seeking to dispel the marketplace image ofnature Bookchin (1982) has suggested that thepost-war science of ecology and evolutionarytheory provides us with a very different vision ofnature from that of Malthus, Marx or AdamSmith. Far from being competitive, Bookchinsays, scientific ecology reveals nature as charac-terized by interactive and participatory relation-ships; far from being stingy it is fecund; far frombeing blind it is creative and directive; and farfrom being necessitarian it provides the groundingfor an ethics of freedom.

Bookchins dialectical naturalism (1990,p. 16) as he calls it, suggests that the most appro-priate way to understand socio-ecological rela-tions is not to focus on the development ofindividual species in isolation from other species(he argues the tendency to do so is a reflectionof our cultures entrepreneurial bias) but to focuson their interdependent development withinthe context of ever changing ecocommunities.Ecocommunities are best viewed as interactiveand integrated (but also evolving and unfinished)


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wholes which, he argues, are at the foreground ofevolution. They can be characterized by the prin-ciple of dynamic unity in diversity (1982, p. 24)providing the context for the differentiation, or

evolution, of species and individuals.The thrust of evolution, Bookchin maintains

is toward the increasing diversification of speciesand their interlocking into highly complex, basi-cally mutualistic relationships (1995, p. 41). Thediversity within an ecocommunity is not only thesource of its stability, as many ecologists suggest,but is also responsible for its evolution, its increas-ing differentiation, and this becomes a sourceof nascent freedom. According to Bookchin,diversity, as it develops in the course of evolutionprovides varying degrees of choice, self-direc-tiveness, and participation by life-forms in theirown developmentthe increase in diversity in the

biosphere opens new evolutionary pathways,indeed, alternative evolutionary directions, inwhich species play an active role in their own sur-vival and change. He further contends that thisdim choice emergent subjectivity, and capacityto select its own environment, increases as speciesbecome structurally, physiologically, and aboveall neurologically more complex (1995, p. 44). Inother words, as a species becomes more advancedit participates to an ever greater extent in its ownevolution.

As ecocommunities become more complex intheir diversity in the course of evolution, new evo-lutionary pathways open up and new kinds of

interactions become possible and the avenues forthis participatory process become more various.Evolution has, therefore, not only a mutualistic butalso a participatory dimension. This view of life asbeing actively, relationally and creatively engagedin its own evolutionary development is of course atvariance with the conventional view that in theirown evolution species are but passive objects ofexogenous forces (1995, p. 44). This, Bookchinargues, is simply a modern expression of the ideaof nature as necessitarian, or deterministic.

Thus, not only human society, as Kropotkinargued, but human will, subjectivity, choice,intentionality, reason and therefore freedom allexist as latent potentialities within the naturalworld, which have unfolded, or graded, in thecourse of evolution. These capacities haveemerged out of nature, not in spite of nature asWestern Civilization has usually held, thereforenature can no longer be seen as a blind, uncreativeobject. The desire to formulate a rational, libertar-ian ethics, then, need no longer be haunted by thefear of relativism or be premised on a sharp dual-ism between society and nature, for we can see:

Mutualism, freedom and subjectivity are not

strictly human values and concerns. They appear,

however germinally, in larger cosmic and organic

processes that requires no Aristotelian God to

motivate them, no Hegelian spirit to vitalise them

(Bookchin, 1982, p. 365).

According to Bookchin, dialectical naturalismgives rise to an active ecological humanism.Human beings emerge from first nature (the nat-ural world) to construct second nature (society).Yet, we need to view ourselves as an expression ofan inherent striving towards consciousness presentin first nature: We have been constituted to inter-vene actively, consciously and purposely into firstnature with unparelled effectiveness and alter it ona planetary scale (Bookchin, 1990, p. 42). Therelevant question for Bookchin is whether we areincreasing or diminishing social and ecologicaldiversity and complexity?

SOCIAL ANARCHISM, NATURE ANDTHE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: FROMGARDEN CITIES TO ECOLOGICALURBANISM?

What might be the social forms that facilitate thedevelopment of social and ecological complexityand diversity? At various points over the last two-hundred years, beginning with Fouriers ruralphalanstries, many groups influenced by anar-chism and libertarianism have maintained thatcooperative and self-sufficient rural communes

embedded in local ecologies, mixing small-scaleagriculture and craft production, could provide adesirable alternative to industrial capitalism. Suchcurrents have clearly played a major influence onthe diverse forms of eco-monasticism and greencommunitarianism that have ebbed and flowedover the last forty years (see Eckersley, 1992).More extreme still, over more recent times hasbeen the rise of various forms of anarcho-primitivism. Premised on an apocalyptic visionof ecological crisis coupled with a romanticizedview of the ecological virtues of hunter-gatherersand a desire to recover wildness, such currentshave argued a sustainable or ecological societymust involve a wholesale rejection of modernity,urbanism, cities and indeed, civilization (e.g.Zerzan, 1994). Such currents have clearly influ-enced many of the more regressive and backwardlooking manifestations of contemporary greenpolitics. Yet, the assumption that this is the onlycontribution that the anarchist and libertariantradition has made to the contemporary environ-mental debate is problematic in the least.

As Graham Purchase has noted, many of theclassic 19th anarchists indeed firmly rejected theidea that a return to a pre-industrial world consti-tuted any kind of viable solution. The anarchist


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geographer Elisee Reclus for example firmlyrejected the notion that small scale experimentalcommunities provided anything approachingan adequate solution to the problem of human

co-existence and instead championed theautonomous and eco-regionally integrated city(Purchase, 1997, p. 16). Kropotkin equally envis-aged urban communes which would be largeautonomous and self sustaining agro-industrialagglomerates the largest of which might be thesize of Paris (Purchase, 1997, p. 20) and ruralworlds supported by the spread of advancedtechnologies.

Amongst 20th century libertarians and anar-chists such as Patrick Geddes and EbenezerHoward, Martin Buber, Murray Bookchin andColin Ward, it is the idea of the human scaledcity which time and again emerges as the object

of fascination and study and is posited as the siteof potential liberation for society and nature. Onecan find in all these thinkers the view that thesource of the socio-ecological dilemmas of con-temporary societies is not urbanism (or indeedtechnology) per se but the development of formsof urbanism that are inherently poor in structureand that undermine the potential of the classiccity. Martin Buber, for example, maintained that arich social structure is one made up of dense andoverlapping forms of community association, andthat it was the tendency of industrial-capitalism todestroy such forms of association (Buber, 1949).Twentieth-century anarchist urbanists, then, have

generally argued that the social and ecologicalcontradictions of the age will only be resolvedthrough rebuilding complex ecological and urbansocial structures. Recovering the urban has oftenbeen viewed as the first step in reorganizing socialand ecological life more generally. This wouldentail combining existing currents of mutual aidwith a project to create consciously designed,living environments that rework civic, democratic,communal, technological and ecological materialsto facilitate the rise of self-organized societies.

For example, Ebenezer Howard (18501928)and Patrick Geddes (18541932), in their desire todesign healthy and democratic urban spaces, werehugely influenced by Kropotkin. Yet both takeKropotkins thinking much further. Reactingto the unplanned mess of Victorian slums,Howard advocated radical changes in private andpublic land ownership to develop carefullyplanned and aesthetically designed cities thatwould at once maximize freedom of choice andcommunity and enable people to live in a moreharmonious relationship with nature (deGeus,1999). Recognizing that neither the contemporarycity nor the countryside allowed for a full humanlife, Howard proposed garden cities, human-scaled cities that could combine the best of town

and country: beautiful gardens and rich culturalinstitutions, spacious boulevards and public parks,advanced workplaces and public transport sys-tems, clean production centres and good sanita-

tion. It was envisaged such cities would strike abalance between society and nature, culture andecology. They would be rationally planned and,surrounded by dense green belts that would allownature to flourish. Indeed, they would be close toworks of art. As Howard states:

it is essential, as we have said, that there should

be unity of design and purpose that the town

should be planned as a whole, and not left to

grow up in a chaotic manner as has been the case

with all English towns, and more or less so with

the towns of all countries. A town like a flower or

a tree, or an animal, should at each stage of its

growth, possess unity, symmetry completeness,and the effort of growth should never be to

destroy that unity, but to give it greater purpose,

not to mar that symmetry, but to make it more

symmetrical; while the completeness of the early

structure should be merged in the yet greater

completeness of the later development (Howard,

Garden Cities of Tomorrow, cited in deGeus,

1999, p. 121).

Moving beyond bureaucratic collectivism andVictorian capitalism Howard envisaged that suchgarden cites would create a decentralized butrationally planned, confederated and cooperative

commonwealth, within which there would be acombination of private and municipally ownedproperty.

Geddes, in City Development and Cities inEvolution, advocated reshaping the environmentsof the town, the city and the countryside so as toallow their inhabitants to become engaged in apopular activity of civic planning. As ColinWard has observed The direct expression ofordinary citizens aspirations in the reshaping ofthe town or city is the message that comes from somany of Geddes environmental perceptions(Ward, 1991, p. 110). A central theme of Geddeswork is:

the idea that the average citizen has something

positive to contribute towards the improvement

of his environment. Geddes was convinced that

each generation has the right to build their own

aspirations into the fabric of their town (Ward,

1991, p. 110).

Geddes believed that in order to achieve this, abasic level of civic understanding had to becreated through education. As such, he canvassedschools, societies and associations and attemptedto draw them into making surveys and plans of


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their locality; creating play spaces, planting treesand painting buildings. He seized on any vehicleto expose people to situations in which they had tomake judgents (Ward, 1991, p. 110).

Moreover, Geddes is of central importance forarguing that cities should be imagined in moreorganic and holistic terms, for his sensuous appre-ciation of their broader environments and for rec-ognizing that cities belong to regions. LikeHoward and the anarchists before him, Geddesbelieved that such human-scale urban communi-ties should be not only be exquisitely tailored tothe ecologies they find themselves in but alsoform confederations of autonomous regions thatwould replace nation states with a more benigncollective commonwealth.

Both Geddes and Howard played a central rolein developing the progressive traditions of town

planning in the UK in the pre-war period. Two ofthe central post-war figures that have sought tokeep the vision of a libertarian and ecologicalurbanism alive have been Murray Bookchin andColin Ward.

Bookchins vision of the ecological future issignificantly informed by an urbanist sensibility.His vision of the restoration of the city is informedby classical notions of human scale, citizenshipand direct democracy. This, Bookchin argues, willpermit the re-establishment of the balancebetween town and country that is central toestablishing the ecological society.

Bookchins first full-length publications Our

Synthetic Environment (1962) and Crisis in OurCities (1965) are concerned with the notion of anunfolding urban crisis. Suggesting that life in themodern post-war American megalopolis isbreaking down, attention is paid to the demo-graphic shifts occurring from the cities into thesuburbs. And while he notes that much energy hasbeen spent by critics ridiculing this exodus,Bookchin argues in these texts that the impulse toescape from the bloated, sprawl of the post-warurbanization is perfectly rational. In an attempt toescape the reification at the heart of modern life,the average American is seen as making anattempt however confusedly, to reduce his envi-ronment to a human scale. He is trying to re-createa world that he can cope with as an individual.At root, this reflects a need to function withinan intelligible, manipulable, and individuallycreative sphere of human activity (Bookchin,1962, p. 238).

Bookchin argues in these texts that there is aneed to recover the normal, balanced, andmanageable rhythms of human life that is anenvironment which meets our requirements asindividual and biological beings (Bookchin,1962, p. 240). While present trends towards thedevelopment of formless urban agglomerates are

seen as profoundly undesirable, equally as prob-lematic is the notion that we can return to somepre-industrial rural past. Rejecting any kind ofarcadian or primitivist alternative (the use of farm

machinery after all does not necessarily conflictwith sound agricultural practices, nor is industryand agriculture incompatible with a more naturalenvironment) Bookchin argues that we need anew type of human community, a communitywhich constitutes neither a complete return to thepast nor a suburban accomodation to the present(Bookchin, 1962, p. 242).

The ecological project should not, therefore,reject urbanism but should reconsider the city inall its historical diversity (Bookchin, 1962, 1965).Inspired in part by Kropotkin, Geddes, Howardand others, Bookchin argues that there is a need tointegrate some of the virtues of modernity with

those of the urban forms which provided the wellsprings of Western civilization, such as theAthenian polis, the early Roman Republic and thefree cities of the Renaissance:

It is no longer fanciful to think of mans future

environment in terms of a decentralised, moderate

sized city that combines industry with agriculture,

not only in the same civic entity but in the occupa-

tional activities of the same person (Bookchin,

1962, p. 242).

Bookchin maintains that the problem that envi-ronmentalists and ecologists should recognize is

not that of urban life per se. Rather, the problem isurbanization under capitalism, or the way inwhich capitalism generates urbanization withoutcities. Capitalist forms of urbanization, he argues,undermine and hollow out any real sense of civiclife and commitment, community or activecitizenship. They impose ecologically irrationalburdens on the surrounding environment andcreate grossly unbalanced(1965, p. 173) soci-eties populated by nervous excitable individuals.What is needed, then, is that we develop our envi-ronment more selectively, more subtly, andmore rationally to bring forth a new synthesis ofman and nature, nation and region, town andcountry (1962, p. 244).

Bookchins vision of an ecological urbanism isinteresting not simply because of its championingof the moderate-sized city as potentially the sitefor an ecological politics, but for its attempt tointegrate this urban environmental project with apolitics of ecological technology and a politics ofparticipation and citizenship.

In Bookchins 1965 essay Towards a LiberatoryTechnology, he notes that, with the advent ofStalinism and the cold war, the case for a simpleand direct correlation between technologicaladvance and social progress has been shattered.


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Modern attitudes have become schizoid, dividedinto a gnawing fear of nuclear extinction on theone hand and a yearning for material abundance,leisure and security on the other (1986, p. 107)

However, tendencies to resolve these tensions bypresenting technology as imbued with a sinisterlife of its own, resulting in its blanket rejection,are seen as simplistic as the optimism thatprevailed in earlier decades. If we are not to beparalysed by this new form of social fatalism, afatalism attributed to social theorists of technol-ogy such as Jacques Elul and Friedrich Juenger, itis argued that a balance must be struck (1986,p. 108). Concerning where exactly the balanceshould lie, much of Bookchins earliest writingsargue that we need to recover a sense of theliberatory possibilites of new technology.

Bookchin argues that a radically decentralized

society is not only compatible with many aspectsof the modern technological world but is poten-tiallyfacilitatedby new developments. For exam-ple, he argues that technological innovations mayhave actually made the need for huge concentra-tions of people in a few urban areas less importantas the expansion of mass communications andtransportation have ensured that the obstaclescreated by space and time are essentially gone(1986, p. 241). Concerning the viability of indus-trial decentralization, it is suggested that newdevelopments in miniaturization, computing andengineering have ensured that small-scale alterna-tives to many of the giant facilities that dominated

industrial societies are now increasingly viable.Bookchin speculates that the sheer scale oflabour-saving possibilities created by automationmakes a toilless future imaginable, perhaps for thefirst time in history. He argues that virtually all theutopias and revolutionary programmes of the early19th century faced problems of work and want.Indeed, much socialist thinking was so effected bysuch imagery, lasting well into the 20th century,that there emerged on the left a virtually puritani-cal work ethic, a fetishization of toil and a view ofsocialism as the industrious society of fullemployment. The technological developments inthe post-war era, Bookchin argues, hold the poten-tial for replacing this realm of necessity with arealm of freedom. The critical issue, however, isnot whether technology can liberate humanityfrom want but the extent to which it can con-tribute to humanizing society and humannaturerelations.

A future society should, therefore, be based onecological technologies which are both restora-tive of the environment and perhaps, more signif-icantly, of personal and communal autonomy(Bookchin, 1980, p. 130). Eco-technology shouldnot only reawaken mans sense of dependenceon the environment (1986, p. 136) but restore

selfhood and competence to a client citizenry(1980, p. 130). There may well be logistical ortechnical reasons why small is beautiful, but forBookchin attention to the human scale is impor-

tant since it renders society comprehensible and,hence, controllable by all. What is needed

is not a wholesale discarding of advanced

technologies then, but indeed a shifting, indeed a

further development of technology along ecologi-

cal principles (1982, p. 37).

Bookchin has an Aristotelean preference forbalanced communities, for the well rounded indi-vidual and for politics as a domain of ethics andparticipation. He argues that direct democracy,rather than representative democracy, would becentral to the functioning of an ecological society.

Such a society would see every individual as capa-ble of participating directly in the formulation ofsocial policy which would instantly invalidatesocial hierarchy and social domination (1982,p. 340), This political culture, Bookchin argues,would create the conditions for decisively under-cutting the idea that humanity needs to dominatenature and invite the widest possible participa-tion, permitting the recovery of human beings notas taxpayers, constituents or consumers butas citizens.

An ecological society needs, therefore, to bepopulated by libertarian political institutions, thatis, institutions structured around direct, face-to-

face relationships and based on participation,involvement, and a sense of citizenship thatstresses activity, not based on the delegation ofpower and spectatorial politics (Bookchin, 1982,p. 336). It would be committed to the cardinalprinciple that all mature individuals can beexpected to manage social affairs directly just aswe expect them to manage their private affairs(1982, p. 336).

The British anarchist, environmentalist andurbanist Colin Ward is another notable successorof Kropotkin and Buber. Wards hugely underesti-mated intellectual project over the last 50 yearscould be described as the excavation of the endur-ing forms of mutual aid that persist even in themost capitalist of cities. In contrast to much anar-chist advocacy, Wards central message has beenthat anarchism is not simply some far off rational-ist utopia but a persistent social practice. Heargues that an anarchist society, a society whichorganizes itself without authority, is always inexistence, like a seed beneath the snow (Ward,1988, p. 14). Today, it can be found whereverthere is communal voluntary action and bottom-up self-organization: from allotments to freeschools, self-build housing to city gardens andcommunity-supported agriculture.


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Ward argues that we should not see the anti-authoritarian tradition as an ideology demandingtotal social transformation. Rather, it is more use-fully viewed as advocating certain types of social

practice: The choice between libertarian andauthoritarian solutions is not a once-and-for- allcataclysmic struggle, it is a series of runningengagements (Ward, 1988, p. 136).

SCEPTICS AND CRITICS: THE LIMITS OFANARCHISM AND ECO-ANARCHISM

At many points over the last two centuries anar-chists and libertarians have been subject to severecriticism. They have been dismissed as holding toeither a hopelessly nave, nostalgic or romanticview of the past and/or proposing a utopian,

unworkable or indeed dangerous view of thefuture. Critics have argued that the anti-authoritariantradition is premised on inordinately optimisticassumptions about human nature and humanbenevolence. Leninists, for example, have dis-missed the anarchist and libertarian critique of thestate, authority and centralization as symptomaticof an infantile disorder (Lenin, 1985). ManyMarxists more generally have maintained thatanarchist advocacy demonstrates a persistenttendency to idealize pre-capitalist social relationsand persistently fails to grasp the progressivedimensions of the capitalist rationalizationprocess. Liberals have argued that a society with-

out the rule of law would look more like Hobbessstate of nature than Kropotkins utopia, andemphasized that the rights of individuals and thedemocratic community will frequently come intoconflict. Social democrats have maintained thatthe absence of the state as a political andeconomic coordinating mechanism could lead tothe re-emergence of significant regional, nationaland international inequalities. Recently, post-structuralists have argued that organic communi-ties are parochial and stifling places, frequentlyintolerant of difference, multiculturalism andindividuality.

With the re-emergence of anarchist and libertar-ian tendencies in the environmental debate suchdiscussions have been restaged. As such, recentcurrents in green political theory and environmen-tal sociology have argued that some of the great-est weaknesses of modern environmentalism(particularly its radical wing) stem from itspredilection for anarchist intellectual assumptionsand political strategies (Barry, 1998). Doubts havebeen raised at the extent to which transnationalenvironmental problems can be credibly dealtwith by radical decentralist solutions. Ecologicalmodernizers have argued that ecological anar-chisms informed by counter productivity positions

in particular fail to grasp the electoral unpop-ularity of such strategies and underestimate theextent to which liberal democracies have beenopen to certain degrees of ecological reforms or

the importance that centralized bodies (whetherstates or super-state forms) currently play inbrokering and enforcing environmental agree-ments (Mol, 2003). More recent defenders of thegreen state have severely critiqued the anarchistambivalence to the state that pervades manygreen movements (Eckersley, 1992; Barry, 1998;Monbiot, 2003). Indeed, some commentators haveargued that in an age of neo-liberal globalization,where unaccountable private institutions wieldextraordinary power, we should be building globalstate-like institutions as a bulwark against globalcapitalism, rather than be undermining the state(Monbiot, 2003).

In response to such claims, modern eco-anarchists have been keen to point out that it wasthe anarchist tradition, more than any other bodyof ideas, that anticipated the last great attempt toforce people to be free via deploying all thepower of vanguards, the centralized state andthe disciplined party cadre. And as such, given thedisaster of the party state constructed byMarxismLeninism, it has been argued that con-temporary ecologists and environmentalists woulddo well to reflect more extensively on the prosand cons of weilding of state power to resolveenvironmental problems (Bookchin, 1971). Eco-anarchists have continued to argue that the capital-

ist rationalization process is clearly beset withnumerous irrationalities, not least of which areenvironmental problems, affluenza and ennuie inthe north and a lack of the basic means of life inthe south. They have noted how the modern liberaldemocratic state continues to expand its capacitiesfor surveillance and control, and how capitalismcontinues to discipline its subject albeit nowmore by work and spend ideologies and regi-mented leisure cultures than direct coercion.Figures such as Bookchin have continued to insistdoggedly that confederal arrangements couldindeed provide communities with perfectly viablecoordinating mechanisms to deal with environ-mental and other social problems (1987, 1989).Moreover, on the feasibility of anarchist and liber-tarian utopias, perhaps it is worth citing the nearforgotten figure of Paul Goodman, who onceresponded to such a criticism in the followingfashion:

the issue is not whether people are good enough

for a particular type of society; rather it is a matter

of developing the kind of social institutions that

are most conducive to expanding the potentialities

we have for intelligence, grace, sociability and

freedom (Goodman, 1964).


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ANARCHISM, LIBERTARIANISMAND ENVIRONMENTALISM:ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN THOUGHT ANDTHE SEARCH FOR SELF-ORGANIZINGSUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES

How then can we think about green anarchism,green libertarian currents and the search for plau-sible sustainable futures? Many environmentalistsand radical ecologists will argue that however faroff the project may be, it is the anarchist solutionto the environmental problematic, the vision thatruns through the work of Kropotkin, Geddes,Howard and Ward, Buber and Bookchin, that ulti-mately underwrites the imaginative and ethicalhorizons of green politics.

For sceptics, perhaps a set of different responseis necessary. At a bare minimum, it could be

argued that the anti-authoritarian tradition associal philosophy is perennially important inposing a set of important challenges to any seriousbody of transformative thought (ecological orotherwise). How should a project for social trans-formation balance the desire for human equalitywith the reality of human diversity? Is there adanger that centralized institutional power struc-tures, however democratic, rarely appreciatetheir own limits? Does human emancipation pre-suppose the ideology of the domination ofnature and the subordination of all other speciesto industrial modes of production? Is the continualdevelopment of an advanced division of labour

and the search for ever more complex and region-ally specific economies of scale compatible with ahumane, diverse and ecological mode of produc-tion? Indeed, is the regimented workplace (capi-talist, socialist or other) or the disciplined politicalparty the best place for developing a characterstructure and social sensibility that nurtures andvalues self-organization, autonomy and activeengagement? How is the aspiration to an ecologi-cal society to be made compatible with a societywhich still values spontaneity, playfulness, hedo-nism and craft? How can societies so committedto standardization and efficiency allow the quali-tative features of the human condition to flourish?

The anarchist and libertarian traditions are ofimportance to the environmental debate because,minimally, no other tradition of social and politi-cal theory poses these questions in such a directfashion. Yet, more generally still and despite itsmarginality in the academy, it would also have tobe recognized that as a social philosophy of self-organization, anarchist and libertarian advocacyhas had an extraordinary capacity to continue toinfluence a diverse range of debates in the envi-ronmental social sciences.

For example, if we return to the built envi-ronment, since the late 1960s anarchist and

libertarian sensibilities have played a significantrole in inspiring debates in urban sociology andurban studies. Anarchism has influenced experi-ments in participatory urbanism, urban design,

neighbourhood governance, popular planning andso on. Even now, some of the more progressivecontemporary discussions of sustainable andgreen cities echo much of the thinking ofKropotkin and Geddes, Howard, Ward, Bookchinand others who stand in this tradition (see Wheelerand Beatley, 2003).

Over the last two decades, organizational the-ory has challenged the merits of the centralized,hierarchically managed firm and championed thevirtues of regional economies, decentralized flex-ible production systems and flexible networks(Piore and Sabel, 1984; Hirst, 1994; Castells,1996). Of course, the primary motivation for

much managerial experimentation is the desireto reduce costs. Yet, as Paul Hirst has argued in hisadvocacy of associational democracy (directlyinspired by Proudhon at times) or Robin Murrayin his investigations of decentralized craft basedpost fordist production, such developments neednot be taken in this fashion but, used imagina-tively, have the potential to open up new horizonsfor social and ecological reorganization.

Even anarchistic naturalism continues to influ-ence debates in the environmental sciences andtechnology. Many features of Kropotkin andBookchins advocacy have entered into the main-stream of debate about scientific, technological

and agricultural innovation. For example, theincreasingly serious attempts to envisage thecontours of a low-carbon, zero-waste economy,drawing from developments in modern industrialecology, clean production, ecological architectureand design and renewable energy, can be under-stood as attempts to realize Bookchins infrastruc-tural vision. Likewise, the notion that industrialagriculture should decentralize and become morepluralistic has many articulate modern champions(Pretty, 2002). Indeed, where Kropotkin andBookchin looked to participation, self-organizationand emergent subjectivity to ground their radicalecological ethic, it is interesting to note the extentto which recent developments in complexity sci-ence seem to reiterate such themes. Complexitytheory increasingly argues that self-organization, atheme at the heart of much anarchist theory, is amore or less ubiquitous feature of the naturalworld (Capra, 1996). Thus, out of the internaldynamics of organizationally closed physical,chemical and biological systems, it is suggestedthat pattern, order and form emerge sponta-neously. Indeed, self-organization operates atevery level of biological systems from the cell,through to ecosystems and even, in Gaia theory, tothe planet as a whole (Lovelock, 1987).


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Such influences suggest that while the death ofanarchism and libertarian thought has long beenproclaimed, the search for self-organizing sustain-able societies will continue to return to anarchist

and libertarian social philosophy for inspiration.

NOTES

1 As Marshall (1992a) and Miller (1984) have

noted part of the problem here is that there has been

a certain looseness of terminology between `the

state and `government in anarchist writings. Some

anarchists have spoken of the state and government

as synonymousnotably Godwin and various anar-

cho-individualists. Others, such as Bookchin, make a

clear distinction between states and governing insti-

tutions. Proudhon, as Marshall observes, reflects such

inconsistencies when he argues that `government ofman by man is servitude yet he goes on to define

anarchy as the absence of a sovereign or ruler as

being a `form of government (1992a, p. 19). It has

to be recognized, though, that extreme anarcho-

individualists such as Max Stirner would indeed view

anarchism as defined by a rejection of both govern-

ment and society.

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