Eco-anarchism
Alberto Fernández García
Eco-anarchism, like other currents of anarchist thought, does not constitute a defined and coherent theoretical corpus. There is no eco-anarchist school of thought organized around theoretical assumptions and lines of research, nor is there even a consensus among those authors who identify themselves as such.
However, the ecological roots of anarchism could be found in two authors. First, Pyotr Kropotkin defended mutualism in opposition to the prevailing Darwinism of his time (Kropotkin, 2020). A geographer by profession, Kropotkin conducted research on Natural Sciences and throughout his life contributed to numerous scientific debates, such as climate change (Davis, 2017). Secondly, we find the work of Élisée Reclus. Also a geographer and close collaborator of Kropotkin, he was another pioneer in many debates of his time. For this author, there existed a close harmony between humanity and nature:progress lies in the human being’s self-awareness as part of the world they inhabit and, therefore, must find a balance with the natural environment around them (Reclus, 2014). Both authors developed a strong criticism against Darwinian evolutionism —and its social extrapolation regarding the competition between individuals and between States— proposing instead mutual aid and interspecies cooperation with the natural environment (see Social Darwinism).
Later, Murray Bookchin would continue the path started by these authors. Considered the foremost exponent of green anarchism, he rejects the Darwinian theory of evolution as an external agency of selective forces, defending, like Kropotkin and Reclus, symbiosis and cooperation. Bookchin is known as the father of “social ecology”, a line of research that posits the high interdependence between ecological affairs and human affairs. As he states at the beginning of Social Ecology, “what literally defines social ecology as ‘social’ is the recognition of the often-ignored fact that nearly all our ecological problems arise from our deeply rooted social problems” (Bookchin, 2015, p. 31).
Bookchin criticizes the Nature/Society binomial (see Naturalism). Evolution, from the non-organic to the organic, from simple unicellular life to multicellular complexity, is an unceasing process of development based on increasing subjectivity, flexibility, and differentiation, which generates more adaptable and self-aware organisms. Human beings are situated within this organic evolution and are not distinct from nature. This is the distinction Bookchin makes between “first nature”—biological—and “second nature”—human or cultural. But this conceptualization does not imply a dualism, but rather a dialectical relationship between the two: it is a matter of looking back through our evolutionary history and recognizing ourselves in its traces, as part of the same process.
In his most famous work, The Ecology of Freedom (1999), he attempts to trace the history of human domination. In prehistory, there were no hierarchies or social distinctions; there was a sense of equality and harmony among humans. In these “organic” societies, nature was an integral part of the universal and cosmic order. With the emergence of cities in the Neolithic period, arose the first “advanced civilizations” or empires of Antiquity. According to Bookchin, this brought about the emergence of social stratification and bureaucratic-state power. The result was a rupture with the organicity of nature, which became an object of domination and exploitation.
The author’s journey leads us to Western modernity—or capitalist society—bringing this history of domination to its culmination. Progress in the modern worldview was seen as the technical capacity to place nature at the service of the market and selfish interest (see Technique). Here, the social world is already completely dissociated from a natural world that has become just another instrument for the objectives of domination. In opposition to individualism and the bourgeois law, Bookchin advocates the ethics of organic societies, instilled with mutualism, care, and freedom, characteristic of a primordial relationship with nature.
Therefore, for Bookchin, it is necessary to break with capitalist modernity, while carrying forward the legacy of reason and freedom that we inherited from it. The author’s proposal involves what he calls an “ecological society”. This differs from organic societies, since, according to him, it is not a matter of returning to the past, but rather of reframing “human nature” — living alongside our fellow creatures, caring for them — aiming to restore our harmonious relationship with nature, always looking toward the future. A free society that places the emphasis on modern “individual autonomy” without losing the communal ties so distinctive of organic societies. The political form of this ecological society would be libertarian municipalism, based on “the anti-hierarchical ethical principle of unity in diversity, self-formation and self-management, complementarity, and mutual aid” (Bookchin, 1984, p. 9). Organization would take place around municipalities and cities, governed by popular assemblies that could form a democracy at the federal level, but without losing its decentralized character.
The main criticisms of Bookchin centre on the fact that, while he acknowledges that it is not possible to go back, he constantly romanticizes the prehistoric past, pointing to the myth of a Golden Age. Nonetheless, the concept of origin is always problematic; in this case, a pristine, primal nature that is waiting to be recovered. But we do not know if there truly was a continuity between non-hierarchical social relations and harmony with nature. Other aspects that could be criticized include the essentialist link he draws between the feminine and care, or the differentiation between biological evolution and social evolution.
Another remarkable contribution to eco-anarchism is the work of James C. Scott. He conducts extensive research on the resistance of different communities to state power and the centralization of power throughout history. Strongly influenced by anthropology and the ethnographic method, his work is nourished by the collective experiences of those “peoples without history,” of those voices subjected and dominated by the power of states. It is a history told “from below,” from the margins of any universal narrative. By giving voice to subaltern subjects, Scott seeks to dismantle the narrative of progress and civilization, showcasing practical examples of deliberate resistance and political struggle by these peoples against bureaucracies and the centralization of power. His critique involves a radically different perspective on history: great civilizations did not always bring progress with them.
Political ecology plays a fundamental role in his critique of state domination. Scott argues that States carry out strategies of manipulation, simplification, and adaptation of natural environments to serve their own objectives. In his work Seeing Like a State (1998), he argues that it is fundamental for the State to carry out tasks of “legibility” that allow it to exercise effective control over its population and nature, such as maps, censuses, or measurements. The result is a standardization of social reality with the aim of controlling resources and collecting taxes. This logic of standardization is based on what Scott calls High Modernism, a worldview characteristic of modern society that places blind faith in techno-scientific progress, which justifies the rational domination of nature and the social order.
Later on, he attempts to establish a historical continuum between these forms of rationalization and the emergence of agriculture and the first sedentary civilizations of the Neolithic. In his book Against the Grain (2017), Scott argues that cereals such as wheat, barley, and corn were the foundation upon which the first states were organized and emerged. Cereals were divisible and storable, which made them easier to control and confiscate through taxation. He locates the origins of large-scale environmental manipulation and alteration here, in what he understood as the domus, or multi-species ecological complexes that included agricultural resources, humans, and domestic animals.
Scott shows how overcrowding in these domus did not bring progress, but rather, many of these states collapsed rapidly due to deforestation, soil salinization, and zoonotic diseases that caused frequent epidemics, making these societies highly fragile. Thus, far from the narrative of progress, the agriculture and sedentarism of early civilizations did not represent any advancement. In many cases, it was more desirable to live in simpler societies, such as hunter-gatherer communities, which enjoyed more varied diets, better health, and greater freedom compared to the inhabitants of the domus. Many of these peoples were resistant to being absorbed, so they relied on “terrain friction”: the state cannot exercise its military and administrative power due to their geographical position in mountains, marshes, or impenetrable jungles. In addition, these populations practiced “escape agriculture” (Scott, 2009), characterized by diversity and dispersion—shifting crops that make them difficult to measure and tax. This is the case with cassava, yams, and sweet potatoes, root and tuber crops that are much harder for the state to appropriate.
Geography serves these peoples as a refuge from the state, a deliberate form of resistance against centralization, a way of becoming “illegible”. Scott thus contrasts the concept of metis, that is, the local, practical, and traditional knowledge of these cultures of resistance, against the concept of episteme, understood as the state’s instrumental scientific knowledge. Faced with the failure of High Modernism and the drive to control nature through science and power, Scott proposes a model of society based on the adaptability and diversity of metis, of those local knowledges that have been accumulated over centuries and generations by societies that lived in a greater organic connection with nature. Only in this way can we put an end to the state’s technocratic planning of nature, which has led to the ecocide of our times.
Scott’s critics point out certain weaknesses in his work, especially regarding his concept of the State: it functions as a transhistorical concept—that is, one that is common and present throughout all of history—without analyzing its specificity as a product of modernity. Establishing a continuity between the earliest bureaucratic civilizations of antiquity and the state apparatus of the modern era is deeply problematic. The emergence of small bureaucracies—which were often related to ritualism and ceremonialism rather than to extractive despotism—is not enough to affirm the existence of states in those early phases of history. For this reason, the main criticisms of Scott focus on his exaggeration of the reach and effective power these bureaucracies possessed (Lieberman, 2010). Indeed, many of them cooperated with the peoples on the “margins” and maintained a certain relationship of interdependence, such that there was not always constant tension between these bureaucracies and these groups.
Bibliography:
Bookchin, M. (1984). Seis Tesis sobre Municipalismo Libertario. Titivillus.
Bookchin, M. (1999). La Ecología de la Libertad. El surgimiento y la disolución de la jerarquía. Nossa y Jara Editores.
Bookchin, M. (2015). Ecología social. Apuntes desde un anarquismo verde. Editorial Novena Ola.
Davis, M. (2017). El desierto que viene. La ecología de Kropotkin. Virus Ed.
Kropotkin, P. (2020). El apoyo mutuo. Pepitas de Calabaza.
Lieberman, V. (2010). A zone of refuge in Southeast Asia? Reconceptualizing interior spaces. Journal of Global History, 5, 333-346.
Reclus, E. (2014). Evolución, revolución y anarquía. Marcial Pons.
Scott, James. (1998). Seeing like a State. Yale University Press.
Scott, James. (2009). The art of not being governed. An anarchist history of Upland Southest Asia. Yale University Press.
Scott, James. (2017). Against the Grain. A deep history of the early States. Yale University Press.