Breaking the Social Contract

2008-10-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve abandoned this blog for a long time because I had a busy life. A severe case of post-graduate anomie has driven me back. The beginnings of the newest recession have kept me unemployed and restless, and in my new setting I feel cut off from the aspects of society to which I care to relate. Introversion and cynicism doesn’t help in either regard. The plus side of the situation is now that I’m unsatisfied and bored, I have plenty of issues to rant about and copious amounts of time to review my books. So I might try to revive this dead blog and see if I stay interested long enough to nurse it back to health.

Ward Churchill Speaks, People Cheer

2006-05-18T22:01:00.001-07:00

After every single sentence, in fact. Got annoying. But it was enjoyable to see him speak in person, finally, after having blown two chances to see him in San Francisco last spring. His speech pretty much covered the material that he is known for emphasizing, in the style he's known for using (very gruff and passionate).
The focus of the talk was on state repression (such as the green scare, a topic particularly pertinent in Eugene) and its links to academic repression. No surprise here. He went through some examples of such repression, talked about the denigration of nations and the predominance of states, gave a critique of civilization as an unnatural imposition that is naturally resisted on all levels, and talked about indigenous struggles. He believes we should look to indigenous struggles in our resistance because indigenous peoples know how to most "naturally" resist tyranny. I've come to realize that Churchill's brand of indigenism is almost identical to anarcho-primitivism, which explains the abundance of his books on Green Anarchy's reading list.
Overall, the talk was very rousing and entertaining. I enjoyed myself. Now I'm waiting to see tomorrow how the local newspapers twist the meaning of it and slander Churchill...

I should make another post, probably

2006-05-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been very busy, stuff-happening. Natty and I have been slaving away to put out the next issue of the Student Insurgent, which is especially hard after the whole printing-offensive-cartoons-of-naked-jesus-fiasco; we (Natty and I) have had to deal with a lot of shit and we weren't even responsible for it. It was such a big deal that we were contacted for interviews by CNN, FOX, Bill O'Reilly for his radio show, random right-wing talk radio, and a bunch of local media outlets, as well as getting on the local news. All for a few naked drawings of jesus, drawings which I thought were a little irrelevant and juvenile (and I had no idea people would actually be outraged by them!) The whole thing is mundane. I don't even want to talk about it anymore...but the next issue will rock (by comparison). It will feature lots of (actually intelligent) stuff by my friends and I.

Moving on, I am writing a huge research paper on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 right now for history class, so all I will be reading for the next month are books related to that. I have fourteen of them lined up, I doubt I'll get through them all. I just finished reading A Testament of Revolution, which is an eyewitness account by Bela Liptak, who was a student participant in Budapest. It was a quick, engaging read: I would recommend it. I also read Hungary in the Cold War by Laszlo Borhi, which is a rather dry geopolitical analysis of the time leading up to the revolution. Soon I'll read Hungary '56 by Andy Anderson, which I had to get on loan from the Evergreen library. It is an analysis from a council communist perspective published by Black and Red (so I have wanted to read it for a while now). I'm excited.

Speaking of history class, I just read some of my professor's work in the "critical Marxist journal" Historical Materialism. I found it by accident in the UO library; it was a pleasant surprise. The topic was human nature and materialism. My prof (Fracchia) argues that it is too simplistic to pretend in the existence of a universal human essence or "human nature," and additionally rejects the extreme relativist notion that humanity is completely shaped by historical conditions. (This seems obvious to me, though.) Instead, he believes we should identify constants in human corporeal organization, rid ourselves of "human nature" terminology, and develop a taxonomic historical materialist theory. If one can understand the jargon, this all seems obvious as well- there are certain innate biological characteristics in all humans that change very slowly with time. He also appropriately quotes Marx multiple times saying that humans can change history, but not under conditions of their choosing. I don't really know what was so original about the piece, it all seemed obvious to me (though maybe some of it went over my head. The writing definitely bore the mark of academia). But it was cool getting to read some of his stuff, finally (I want to read his book about Marxism, Karl Korsch, materialism, etc, but it unfortunately is in German).

Um, that's all. Happy cinco de mayo; Karl Marx would be 188 today.

Vijay Prashad's Visit

2006-04-20T17:36:00.000-07:00

I saw Vijay Prashad speak the other day. He basically presented his critique of liberal multiculturalism. He sees the whole emphasis on affirmative action as a debate that doesn't even question the basic framework which we should be critiquing: mainly, the fact that not everyone is priveleged enough to go to college so we must pick candidates by favoring some ethnic groups over others (in order to enhance campus diversity). His deal was that all education needs to be free so that we need not worry about things like affirmative action.

The next morning I went to a "student-activist workshop" with him and he talked about movements on campus and restructuring the unversity. I had to sit next to him and his foul-smelling cologne (well, I enjoyed it, actually). He hinted at self-management of the dorms and other such things, and talked about how active students need to focus their energies on constructive issues while at the same time recognizing that our problems are part of a totality. He also attacked the idea of coalition building as too much of a fragmented approach to activism, and suggested that students who just work to increase campus diversity are wasting their time and doing the administration's reformist job for them. Among other things. It was interesting, and he is a very funny man. I don't know how much I actually learned from him, though.

Good Books on African and Cuban Anarchism

2006-04-01T22:18:00.000-08:00

I'm getting back into the flow of things after having the flu for a week and dealing with college finals, and in the past few days I've read a couple of good books, both put out by See Sharp Press. The first was African Anarchism by Sam Mbah and I.E. Igariwey, and the other was Cuban Anarchism by Frank Fernandez. The two were obviously very similar, given the titles and the fact that they were both put out by See Sharp (with Chaz Bufe editing and providing introductions to both). I enjoyed them, as they each dealt with rather obscure topics of interest to me, especially African Anarchism.

African Anarchism is less a history of the African anarchist movement (as the subtitle claims) than it is an analysis of Africa's colonial past, the failure of its nationalistic state socialism, and an assessment of the prospects for a future African anarchism (which is deemed a necessity). It begins with the obligatory introduction to anarchist ideas and thinkers so as to be more useful to common readers. This just makes it repetitious for radicals who are already well versed in the simple tenets of anarchism. The book then gets into briefly describing anarchistic precedents in communal african societies. The communalism that existed in many tribes was very anarchistic in that formal authority was lacking and everyone had access to the essentials of life. Of course, these societies often were highly religious and oppressed women as well, so they are not to be idealized. Some tribes that are dealt with in some depth are the Igbo, Tellensi, and Ijaws, but many specifics are lacking. It is disappointing, but the book deals briefly with traditional communal societies in Africa; there is only a short chapter on this issue.

The authors then move on to present an analysis of capitalist imperialism and colonialism in Africa, and critique the failures of state socialism, which was the most prominent reaction to the exploitation of global capital. These two chapters are interesting, yet also unoriginal. The critique of the failures of African socialism (especially Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and Julius Nyerere in Tanzania) is good when it focuses on specifics, but it tends to rely alot on a general critique of state structures and is not necessarily specific to Africa. But the point comes across: both state socialism and capitalism have pillaged Africa, and "given these problems, a return to the 'anarchic elements' in African communalism is virtually inevitable" (107). The authors conclude that the

process of anarchist transformation in Africa might prove comparatively easy, given that Africa lacks a strong capitalist foundation, well-developed class formations and relations of production, and a stable, entrenched state system. What is required for now is a long-term program of class consciousness building, relevant education, and increased individual particpation in social struggles. (108)

Cuban Anarchism is a bit different in that it is an actual history of an anarchist movement. It spans over a century of anarchist organization in Cuba, from the late 19th century debate over supporting the nationalistic independence (from Spain) movement, to the current resistance to the Castro regime. It mentions how the anarcho-syndicalists at the turn of the century were the most successful Cuban labor organizers (with around 100,000 union members) but their activity was often countered and/or subordinated to the PCC (Communist Party of Cuba). The anarchists are portrayed as the only consistent opponents of authoritarianism: be it the Machado, Batista, or Castro regime.

One story I found most fascinating was the abandonment of the Cuban anarchists in the 60s by an international anarchist scene that mostly supported the Castro regime and its sly, revolutionary rhetoric. As anarchists were deported, tortured, censored, murdered, and slandered by the government, many anarchists initially fell for the Cuban propaganda and left their comrades to suffer the consequences. The Movimiento Libertario Cubano en el Exilio in particular was slandered by anarchist publications as just another reactionary anti-communist group. These misconceptions abounded until 1976, when Sam Dolgoff published his widely distributed book The Cuban Revolution: A Critical Perspective.

The point is: good books.

In unrelated news, the Quest for Camatte has ended. In a bizarre twist, just when I had given up on the endeavor, Powell's happened to have a copy of the obscure autonomedia book This World We Must Leave waiting on its shelves for me, just in time for my spring break trip home to Portland. Excellent stroke of luck.

No Anarchist Bookfair for Me

2006-03-11T19:09:00.000-08:00

I was really excited for this one, especially since, by travelling with the Student Insurgent, it would basically be an all expenses paid trip to San Fran. But the UO Student Senate rejected our request for funding for the trip. So, unless something crazy happens, no bookfair for me. I went last year with my family and Natty, which was awesome, but I feel like I have a greater sense of the sort of books I want to look for this time. Letdown. I guess my quest for Camatte will just continue indefinitely.

Direct Action Panel

2006-03-05T12:21:00.000-08:00

Wow...uh...this panel was a tad embarassing for me. It featured four speakers, including former ELF spokesperson Craig Rosebraugh, and it was mostly just inflamed rhetoric. Especially what came out of Craig's mouth. I'll start with him. He basically extolled the idea of a self-sacrificing militant, saying that if one has priveledge within this system, they must renounce it and take any risks necessary to make change. He attempted to reject morality by saying we shouldn't be opposed to violence in some situations, which I agree with. But he in fact didn't reject morality, he turned it around on itself and merely created an anti-morality; his argument was that we have an imperative to do what's right, and that means having no regards for self. We have a moral imperative to be self-sacrifical for the greater good, is his view. He doesn't seem to even recognize the need to transcend this gloomy view. (He also had an emotional, inflammatory style, which I will refrain from making fun of.)

The other speakers were milder, and also had some good things to say, though really basic. Elaine Close, a lady concerned with animal rights issues, talked about how reformist solutions cannot help her cause one bit, and therefore all of her group's actions need to be direct, from making their own media (on indymedia) to actually confronting and stopping animal testing. Stu Sugerman, a lawyer who defends radical activists (and is currently defending Craig Rosebraugh,) talked a little about how the law is not meant to be fair, and had some good personal anecdotes. He's a funny guy. And last, Kim Marks from Cascadia Forrest Defense gave her emotional plea to confront logging and support political prisoners. She was filled with lots of rhetoric as well, but was light-hearted and humorous, too, which made up for it. The questions during Q&A all sucked, then I left.

On the way out of the Law school I stopped at the Green Anarchy table to see if Zerzan had brought some Camatte like he said. He wasn't there, and the lady behind the table said they still didn't have anything by the guy. But she also told me that they will have some stuff by him at their table during the Anarchist Bookfair in San Fran, which I will be going to. Will the Quest For Camatte finally end? We'll see in a couple of weeks...

P.S. The GA folk I have talked to, despite popular belief, are not complete assholes. They all seemed very friendly and open to me. But, of course, I only have brief, superficial experience with them. (Just thought I'd throw that out there.)

Yes!

2006-03-04T13:34:00.000-08:00

Just talked to Johnny Zerzan about procurring some Camatte. He said he has the "On Organization" pamphlet and will bring it for me tomorrow. Score. He also said he gave a copy of the autonomedia book "This World We Must Leave" to the UO library, but the database (believe me, I've checked) says otherwise. ?

Environmental Law Conference

2006-03-03T20:50:00.000-08:00

The annual E-LAW conference at the UO is here again. Of course, I just searched out the Green Anarchy table in the law school building (where all the action is centered) in hopes of finding me something by Camatte, but no dice. The dreadlocked primitivists only have shiny new copies of Derrick Jensen books that I could buy at any old corporate bookstore. Disappointing. At least there is always the Anarchist Bookfair in Frisco (which I will be attending again shortly.) I should tell yall about the panel discussions I've gone to, so far...

Yesterday I went to a presentation entitled "The Politics of Peak Oil." The massive audience of 10-15 people included Jan Lundberg, who was in town this week to give his own talk on peak oil (and actually drew a crowd.) I soon found out why the room was basically empty- all three of the presenters were abysmal. The first guy, whose stereotypical hippie-ness gave Paul "the munchies," was from the Eugene Permaculture Guild and obviously hadn't given a public presentation in his life. He made some good points connecting peak oil to the problems of global capital, but was otherwise incoherent.

The second guy, Mark Robinowitz, who you might have actually heard of before, is a conspiracy theorist nut. It was refreshing to hear someone speak in complete sentances after the first person's ramble, but, nonetheless, his trash about 9-11 being planned by George Bush to justify warfare was ludicrous and disturbing. Even if the idea had any credibility, which it doesn't, speculation about conspiracies detracts from the necessary systemic analysis we need to connect the dots between the expansion of capital and environmental problems. Even if we have a few bad apples at the top of the system, the point stands that the entire tree is rotten.

The third guy, who wasn't a guy, and therefore shall be referred to as "she," was a joke as well. She wished to address the emotional problems of peak oil. She didn't say anything other than commanding us audience members to find someone else in the crowd to talk about our feelings and cry with. She said one person should go first, and has 2.5 minutes to talk/cry, and the other person listens, then we must switch roles. Paul and I just looked at each other and burst out laughing. Essentially, the lady's message was "if you cry hard enough you'll feel better, and then you'll be able to passively take what's comin.'" Fucking new age bullshit.

This monstrosity happened yesterday. Today, which is known as friday, I went to a panel on eco-feminism. The first speaker was interactive. She read ideas relating to eco-feminism and had the attendees move along a spectrum set up in the room with locations for "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree." After she had read the idea and the room had positioned itself, we all had the opportunity to explain why we thought what we thought. On the first two ideas, I was in agreement with the majority of the people; I strongly agree with the statement that environmental degradation is connected to systems of domination, and I strongly disagree with the statement that women are closer to nature than men, whatever the hell that means. But on the third and last statement, I found myself alone (actually, with one other) in the "strongly disagree" group. The statement was "environmentalists should also be feminists." Really, the big deal I have with this idea is the "should" part; it is a little too moralistic for me. Also, there are many strains of feminist and environmentalist thought that I don't like, and as far as identity politics go, I probably wouldn't even use either of these words to describe myself....but I digress.

Hey, speaking of identity politics, one of the speakers after this interactive discussion was pretty hilarious in this respect. He was a grad student (in the UO anti-capitalist facebook group, I might add,) and he introduced himself as an anarchist, even before saying his name. I'm thinking, "that's cool." And he gave a good talk about abolishing domination in every aspect of everyday life, which was great. The thing that was hilarious was that everytime he'd answer a question, he would begin "As an anarchist..." Funny stuff. We get the point, you're an anarchist and need others to identify you as such. Okay, okay. We get it.

But seriously, overall, the ecofeminist panel was all over the place, but I am still glad I went. Unlike the peak oil panel, I got something out of this one. Now I just need to go to the panel on direct action on sunday and I'll be happy. Craig Rosebraugh, former ELF spokesperon and such, will be a speaker, and the event has already been billed as "controversial." So I'm down. Expect a post on the direct action panel sunday...

E.P. Thompson

2006-02-28T23:20:00.001-08:00

Despite being a relatively dull peace activist, this guy is great. After reading his essay "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism," I really want to completely read his history of the English working class. In this short piece, he talks about the rise of standardized time and how it related to the imposition of work-discipline and paralleled the rise of industrial capitalism. He demonstrates that there should be no "demarcation between 'work' and 'life,'" and brings up the issue of the "conflict between labour and 'passing the time of the day."(Well, I guess I should say he doesn't make any subjective judgements on these issues, but to me he demonstrates the necessity of abolishing work as an activity separate from and opposed to everyday life and the joys it should entail.) He also notes Henri Lefebvre's distinction between cyclical, or natural, time, and linear time; the former is a part of us to the extent that we are connected to nature, the latter is something we fear the passing of and internalize in order to function according to the demands of the economy. All great points, though I am not quite sure how original they are.

He also specifically attacks the factory system of industrial capitalism. He associates factory work with "monotony, alienation from pleasure in labour, and antagonism of interests [such as competitive economic structures and class conflict]," which isn't too radical a conclusion, and at times it may seem like he sees the problem as being specifically and solely industrial capitalism, as opposed to recognizing inherent downsides of industrial society itself (or in a non-industrial capitalism?) But he actually does recognize the disadvantages of industrial society itself:

Above all, the transition is not to "industrialism" but to industrial capitalism. What we are examining here are not only changes in manufacturing technique which demand greater synchronization of labour and a greater exactitude in time routines in any society; but also these changes as they were lived through in the society of nascent industrial capitalism. We are concerned simultaneously with time-sense in its technological conditioning, and with time-measurement as a means of labour exploitation.

So he merely sees the use of time-measurement as a means of labour exploitation as more detrimental than technological conditioning, though both should ideally be rejected. I more or less agree (considering its a lenient and uneducated paraphrase on my part!) I'll take the rising of the sun over the ticking of a clock any day.

Construction Spelunking Story- Yeah!

2006-02-25T20:46:00.000-08:00

I just spelunked a local, massive construction site, which will remain unamed. I was accompanied by an also-to-be-unnamed person. We had to squeeze between a tall, chain-linked fence and shuffle behind some bushes for a while to enter the site. From there it was about a fifty meter, very well lit walk through an open, highly visible space to get to the building, which was a tad unnerving. Once inside, we couldn't locate the stairs to go up to the top stories or down into the basement, which would have been ridiculously awesome, and eventually realized they were locked behind makeshift doors (which in retrospect we should have just taken off its hinges.) After we wandered around the eerily lit surroundings for a while longer, we broke out the sharpie and left our mark (stupidly.) Right as we were kneeling down to write our names, a car horn honked and carlights flooded the area. We had no idea what this was about, but it freaked us out a little regardless. We decided to calmly exit the premises, and now everything is cool. Hooray for urban spelunking, its a blast.

This is Disappointing

2006-02-10T18:22:00.000-08:00

So this is how Richard Heinberg answered a question from a lady intervieing him for the Eugene Weekly:

How do you respond to people who don't take peak oil seriously?

I think we need to focus primarily on policy-makers, and not try to get all of the folks who are at home watching television, eating pizza and drinking beer to sit up and start talking about peak oil. We need to get city councils, county boards of supervisors, people at the state level, and also prime ministers and presidents to look at this situation seriously, because they're responsible for other people's lives. We could see Hurricane Katrina coming for days and hundreds of miles away. Peak oil is the same thing; we can see it coming. The question is, are we going to do anything about it?

This is not a very radical perspective. Heinberg must be completely consumed with peak oil, because judging from this statement he doesn't seem to have any social perspective. Put peak oil in context, man, it isn't the only issue that will shape societal change!

The Root Grows Deeper than Capitalism- My Goddamn Sociology Essay

2006-02-07T20:01:00.000-08:00

Ecology and capitalism are antithetical. Ecology deals with natural systems dependent on equilibrium, and capitalism is a process driven by the motor of growth and accumulation. These fundamental differences preclude any reconciliation between the two; ecological problems cannot even begin to be seriously addressed within the framework of capital. But the ultimate ecological question has to do with the root causes of environmental problems, and the root grows even deeper than capitalism—possibly as deep as civilization itself. This is why ecological problems are so difficult to effectively address.

This is not to suggest that capitalism is not the greatest obstacle to effective ecological solutions; it surely is. Since it is dependent on growth as its number one priority, it must be argued that capitalism is in fact the most ecologically destructive system realizable. This is because capital expansion recognizes no material limits until it is too late, and limits cannot be imposed on it without extreme economic drawbacks. Institutional forces and economic concerns necessitate capital accumulation, which is an important reason why agreements such as the Kyoto protocol (rejected by the US) are bound to be ineffective[i], and why oil production protocols are not even a serious topic of debate.

When leaders in the seats of power do take environmental concerns seriously, the proposed solutions often are ones that further the interests of capital. The question is rarely how to make society more sustainable, but how to make capitalism sustainable. The interest is in sustaining development as opposed to sustainable development—which basically means that the emphasis lies on development, not sustainability. For example, protecting patches of forestland in the short term leaves more resources to be exploited over the long term; to better manage resources is to more efficiently manage inputs for the treadmill of production. Such foresight cannot be accomplished with market mechanisms alone, but depends upon regulations devised by the collusion between state and industry; state planning smoothes over the cyclical crises of capital, mitigates the falling rate of profit, and leads to more rational capitalist exploitation. But even the rationality of the state capitalism that has prevailed today (assuming it even is more rational than a free market) cannot do any more than hold back impending ecological catastrophe for a while longer. This is because the system is still dependent on growth, even if regulation exists to slow the process down (at the expense of individual firms in order to strengthen the long-term prospects for capital’s overall domination.)

Capitalism can therefore be classified as an inherently decadent system.[ii] Natural limits to growth will eventually be the cause of a final crisis of accumulation and perhaps the downfall of capitalism as we know it, and when this point is reached the environment will have been pillaged and abused beyond human use. The fact is that ecological systems cannot simply reproduce at ever increasing rates to fulfill the needs of capital expansion. As resources grow scarce, the supply of the products created with the resource drops, prices rise accordingly, and therefore more incentive to produce is created. So the crisis of reproduction is worsened by capitalist mechanisms that inflict this vicious cycle whereby, just when society most needs to curb production, the incentive kicks in to increase it and wipe out natural life-support systems even sooner.[iii]

But of course, capitalism is not the sole cause of ecological degradation. The abolition of the capitalist commodity system, whether it is the state capitalist form or the free market, is indeed a prerequisite for the establishment of a more sustainable, livable society, but other issues must also be addressed, issues that extend beyond the impact of capitalism. For instance, most technologies are not neutral. The automobile, for example, is necessarily ecologically destructive in any context. Cars are responsible for two thirds of the carbon emissions in the US, they burn one third of all the energy, and produce fifty percent of the methane and forty percent of the nitrogen oxides. Even assuming a car could be created with zero emissions, it would still pollute at least a third as much as it currently does, because about a third of the environmental impact of automobiles occurs during production. Automobiles also demand complex road systems, which bisect natural corridors and human communities as well as covering 38.4 acres of potential wild space/farmland. These roads must often be salted, too, which contributes to desertification and salinization.[iv] So the automobile is a good example of a technology that is ecologically undesirable in any socio-political context.

Along with technology, domination and hierarchy should be recognized as relating directly to ecological issues as well. Murray Bookchin argues that humankind’s domination of nature arose in parallel with the institutional domination of humans, and the two are therefore fundamentally connected. Indeed, hierarchically ordered societies go hand in hand with ecological destruction because the values of domination cross over between social spheres and natural relations.[v] A conception of a social ecology is consequently necessary to connect environmental and social issues, and Bookchin provides his own view that

What renders social ecology so important in comparing ecosystems to societies is that it decisively challenges the very function of hierarchy as a way of ordering reality, of dealing with differentiation and variation- with "otherness" as such. Social ecology ruptures the association of order with hierarchy. It poses the question of whether we can experience the "other," not hierarchically on a "scale of one to ten" with a continual emphasis on "inferior" and "superior," but ecologically, as variety that enhances the unity of phenomena, enriches wholeness, and more closely resembles a food-web than a pyramid.[vi]

In other words, more horizontally organized societies exist in a more harmonious state with nature. Also, in hierarchic societies, the powerful and privileged can live in exclusive abundance while the less empowered are forced to accept and bear the environmental consequences of the overabundance produced; environmental inequalities are not limited to capitalism, but will arise in any system of power. Only in a society free from domination will it be impossible for groups to trash the environment and force others to bear the burden.

Given the huge ecological downsides of technology and domination, the sustainability of civilization itself must even be questioned. Certainly, the history of civilization has been the history of (resistance to) the state (i.e. hierarchy and domination) and technology, because civilization is the agent of domestication that historically has brought together technology and hierarchy as a means of control. So until examples of libertarian civilizations can be more or less established, there must be a degree of skepticism about the liberatory potentialities of civilization itself. Such an attitude need not lead one to conclude that primitivism is desirable, but just to recognize the possibility that civilization itself may not be sustainable.[vii] Arnold Toynbee may very well be correct when he says that every civilization is bound to collapse from the contradictions it creates. We can therefore speak not only of the decadence of capitalism, but of civilization itself.

So capitalism is not the root of environmental problems today, and this must be conceded so that we may recognize that the abolition of capitalism is not an automatic reprieve from ecological concerns. Domination, technology, and civilization (which is the matrix of domestication which unites the former two principles) must be seen as the root problems and critiqued accordingly. But capitalist mechanisms and institutions together power the motor that pushes civilization’s contradictions with nature to the extreme, and therefore they must be fully transcended before a sustainable society can begin to emerge. The deeper question may be whether civilization is sustainable, and options here must be weighed appropriately, but the anti-ecological drive of capitalism cannot be denied. A revolution against capital is not the end, but the beginning of a push towards an ecological society.

[i] Most of the arguments here relating to the contradictions between the necessity of capitalist growth and the finiteness of natural resources can be found in John Bellamy Foster’s Ecology Against Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review, 2002.

[ii] Numerous economists including Marx have commented upon the decadence of capitalism, but it is usually equated with the strictly economic crisis of over-accumulation. It seems that the real threats to capitalism, which adds new meaning to the slogan Socialism or Barbarism, are the very natural limitations which economists tend to ignore.

[iii] The crisis of reproduction is an idea borrowed from Andre Gorz’s Ecology as Politics. Boston: South End Press, 1980. 20-28.

[iv] All the statistics on the environmental impact of the automobile shown here are taken from Jane Holtz Kay’s Asphalt Nation. University of California Press: Los Angeles, 1997. 80-99.

[v] Murray Bookchin develops his theory of the origins of domination in The Ecology of Freedom. Oakland: AK Press, 2005. He elaborates on themes relating to hierarchy, society, and nature in Post-Scarcity Anarchism. Berkely: Ramparts Press, 1971. and The Modern Crisis. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1986.
[vi] The Modern Crisis. 66-67.
[vii] It certainly is not necessary to adopt the absolutist views of primitivists such as John Zerzan that civilization must be rejected in its entirety. I believe it has yet to be adequately shown that civilization is inherently unsustainable, while capitalism has proven itself so almost by definition. Additionally, primitivism is not desirable to me, and the material preconditions for primitivism do not exist unless 95 percent of the global population dies off.

My Take on Perlman's Primitivist Magnum Opus

2006-02-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

Last week I finally finished reading Against His-story, Against Leviathan months after being interrupted so rudely by winter break. I really liked it, it is a great attempt to capture the spirit of the history of resistance to Leviathan from the earliest known days of humanity (without once citing any dates, because the point is never when, but what, why, and how.) Now, this book is often degraded/hailed as an essential primitivist text, but I think it does not necessarily have to be read that way.

Perlman equates Leviathan with Civilization, but I believe the only reason he needs to do so is because the only civilizations that have ever existed are structured around the state political form. He is not necessarily rejecting civlization, only the fact that all civilization up until this point has been a monstrosity (he uses metaphors of great, out-of-control worms and octopi violently moving across the earth and destroying human community and nature.) He also rejects the historical ladder that worships this destruction as a form of progress and demeans primitive cultures. In this way, the book can be looked at as simply a grand history of resistance to the imposition of the state, and a rejection of the historical meaning of civilization, namely, the state. I get the sense that he would definitely accept liberatory technologies if he could find examples of it, and he doesn't really say that civilization is necessarily a lost cause.

But I also agree with the review in Aufheben (Civilization and its Latest Discontents) which questions Perlman's rejection of materialism. He scoffs at the materialist belief that material scarcity set the preconditions for the rise of the state, but his own view is that perhaps a drought forced the Sumerians to organize in a more authoritarian manner to deal with their emergency water issues, and that from here Leviathan grew out of control. If this is not a complete contradiction, I don't know what is.

In any case, I believe Toynbee was right when he suggested that all civilizations necessarily collapse of their own contradictions in the end. Maybe it is in these dark periods between the rise and fall of civilizations that radical hope lies...

bell hooks' Talk

2006-02-04T02:03:00.001-08:00

Earlier today I found out that bell hooks was speaking, which made me happy. I managed to meet her in the women's center in the student union before her talk(an anti-climatic encounter), then I went on my merry way to the talk, entitled Converstaions with bell hooks. She mostly read writings from her recent, yet-to-be-published work, and there was a long Q&A.

She addressed all the questions she is known for during the talk, using the obligatory new-left jargon about the patriarchal-imperialist-white-supremecist-capitalist-system (unnecessary mouthful, yeah? Well it roles off the tongues of the old-timers!) Some specific points she made that I liked were how Rosa Parks, who certainly wasn't the first black woman to stand up for herself in her time and place, was made into the ideal civil-rights fighter because she was quiet, well-mannered, and generally embodied all of the characteristics of patriarchal society's ideal woman. Plus, fiercer resisters who preceded Parks had much darker complexions. She also brought up the idea of personal agency: of rejecting the role of victim and rejecting the blame game by simply taking matters into your own hands, affirming yourself as active subject and not reproducing your subservient role in society. She of course recognized that social problems are also highly systemic, but the system can only be combatted by active, revolutionary subjects.

Q&A was interesting as well. hooks' personality really came out: she is straightforward and frank. I like it. For example, a white woman made a very general statement that anyone who isn't a Nazi would agree with, and hooks was simply like "Yeah, I think that is overly obvious." She goes straight to the point in order to go deeper. Another interesting question came from an obvious anarcho-primitivist. Her question was about technology and how it might be the root problem. hooks basically just gave a rant about how poor blacks often don't have access to most technologies and therefore it has little affect on many people, but she also mentioned how TV is hurtful to her as a black woman (what is on TV, not the technology itself, I think). She mentioned how we are becoming too dependent on certain technologies as well, which was cool.

The major downside of the talk was how she constantly extolled Buddhism and the Divine Spirit. That creeped me out. But hey, overall it was a great evening.

...but Foster is cool too....

2006-02-03T15:14:00.001-08:00

So my history professor, Joseph Fracchia, previously unbeknownst to me, is a marxist whose academic specialty is basically historical materialism. I talked to him during a mandatory one-on-one conference with him in his office about Das Capital upon noticing his amazing book collection. He apparently has written a few books on Marxist philosophy which look interesting, but one is in German. We get to read Marx's chapter on primitive accumulation from Vol I of you-know-what later on in the class, and we just read Pierre Clastre's essay Society Against the State. Clastre is an anarchist anthropologist whom I was introduced to through Fredy Perlman's Against History, Against Leviathan! So, we have some wonderful readings.

We also just read a piece about how life in the middle ages was more passionate with more violent extremes of good and bad (manic depression I believe is the modern word for such healthy emotions); The Violent Tenor of Everyday Life or something like that. This led into a discussion about how in our society today, people are incredibly regulated and bored. I tried to stay out of the discussion until my points had already been made for me by others(!), then I would butt in to clarify (I hope?) what we had been talking about. Lots of people came independently to the conclusion that technology mediates us from direct experiences so our lives have become increasingly mundane. Thanks to the prof, we also touched upon the fact that work used to be more closely connected with play and socializing and it was more of an autonomous activity in some societies; that work today sucks was the consensus, of course. The theme of alienation was central to the discussion though the word itself was never actually used except by me.

Of course, we were not romanticizing the feudalism of the middle ages, but the critique of the system we have now was very awesome; the extremely radical analyses of the Situationists and even the primitivists are apparently very intuitive, at least to liberal honors college kids. Rock. Anyway, I gotta go see bell hooks speak tonight, so adieu. Expect a post on her talk later today...

Latest Insurgent Meeting

2006-01-23T19:00:00.000-08:00

So I just went to the latest meeting of the Student Insurgent collective, the radical student newspaper on the UO campus. It was by far the most eventful meeting I have attended. An obviously mentally ill lady spoke to us (P, J, D, and I, no Natty) to start off. She ended up speaking for nearly an hour about her life story. It seems that she wished for us to publicize her plight against doctors in control of the pharmaceutical industry who were incompetent to treat her sleep disorder because all they did was prescribe her expensive drugs. She somehow took this to court and lost. She was definitely seriously paranoid (which she denied), and even suggested that someone had been breaking into her old house to mess with her and someone else was responsible for the times she woke up in hotel rooms with needle marks in her arms. She is paranoid and currently homeless, and says she used to be a doctor. She simply thinks her problem is a misdiagnosis of her sleep disorder, and expects us to write about the corruption that is the cause of this misdiagnosis. I felt sympathy for her, and I think she is crazy and that the real story here is that her mental illness has certain social and environmental roots (which her story seemed to suggest). Very very long story short. Anyway, when she left, we discussed the delicacy of the situation (she's gonna come back and we want to write about her but not necessarily from the angle she wants.) It will be challenging, we don't want to cut her off and send her out alone into the world again, but she is very difficult.

Once we got that behind us, we had the most productive critical, internal interaction at a meeting ever. The older guy, D, who has some background in newspaper work and is technically The Editor of the paper, even though it is run by our collective, began to voice some issues he has. He seems to be under lots of stress lately, so it all came out. Apparently, his ideal vision of a radical newspaper is not being fulfilled. No surprise, I don't think any of us can say we agree fully with even most of the paper's content, because we are a relatively open and kinda diverse collective. This is fine. But D seems to be upset that he doesn't have more control. He 1) thinks my articles are too academic, 2) thinks some of the articles are too long and not captivating (like Natty's excellent piece on Israel/Palestine) which again ties into the whole academic thing, 3) thinks there are too many animal liberation articles (I tend to agree, but what are we gonna do, censor? This is a goddamn collective!) and overall 4) wants more straight news devoid of analysis and context. At one point, when we tried to counter him, he wailed about how he is the editor and he is the one who went to editor school (or whatever the hell he was talking about.) He was extremely authoritarian. This triggered some very helpful discussion.

To begin with, we all three strongly put D back in his place. That is, he is not a dictator and does not own our newspaper. It is a student publication run collectively by students. He hopefully understood, no love lost. Moving on to the issues he brought up, we all agreed that we have different focuses but that unity in diversity is a good idea in this case. P defended the animal lib stuff, and she had very good points about supporting local activists. J did as well, and they both agreed with D about Natty and I and our academic style. But the two of them accept it and just said it is kind of hard to understand or even to work up the effort to read. I acknowledged these criticisms, and said that I am not interested in dumbing down anything I wish to say for a larger audience, and would like to focus more on analysis and theory than just news. And we all accepted each other in the end (D did grudgingly.)

D went out and said it and Natty and I have been joking about it together all year: our stuff doesn't belong in a newspaper, it belongs in academic journals.

Camatte: The Most Original Communist I've Read

2006-01-20T16:46:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been trying to get my hands on some of the writings of Jacques Camatte. His stuff is hard to find, but I figure Eugene is the place to be to find it (thank you, Green Anarchy!) But I haven't got a hard copy of any of his work yet, so in the meantime I've been reading through some of his essays online. I think he makes way too many good points to be as obscure as he is, but then again, I understand why he would be obscure because his conclusions are very radical.

The first major point of his that I think distinguishes him from just about every other communist I have read is his belief that as long as revolution means progress, it is not desirable. He says in his essay The Despotism of Capital that "capital, as it constantly overthrows traditional patterns of life, is itself revolution." The whole history of capitalism is one of revolutions instigated or recuperated by capital; in other words, the history of progress. “Every separate revolt now becomes a further stimulus for the movement of capital.” So any steps forward now are only steps forward for capital. We need to step backwards toward traditional forms of community:

Revolution can no longer be taken to mean just the destruction of all that is old and conservative, because capital has accomplished this itself. Rather, it will appear as a return to something (a revolution in the mathematical sense of the term), a return to community, though not in any form which has existed previously. Revolution will make itself felt in the destruction of all that which is most "modern" and "progressive" (because science is capital). Another of its manifestations will involve the reappropriation of all those aspects and qualities of life which have still managed to affirm that which is human. In attempting to grasp what this tendency means, we cannot be aided by any of the old dualistic, manichean categories. (It is the same tendency which in the past had held back the valorization process in its movement towards a situation of complete autonomy.) If the triumph of communism is to bring about the creation of humanity, then it requires that this creation be possible, it must be a desire which has been there all the time, for centuries. (The Despotism of Capital)

As the quote makes clear, he isn’t exactly atavistic. He sees primitive communism as the only effective guide for humanity, not as a model to strictly adhere to. This critique of progress ties in with his critique of science. He makes it clear that “a scientific solution is a capitalist solution, because it eliminates humans and lays open the prospect of a totally controlled society.” (Against Domestication) Basically, rationalization negates what is human and fosters reification.

The other unique argument of his (coming from a communist) is that the identification of a specific group as the most revolutionary subject is a degrading consequence of domestication. He pragmatically remarks that “communist revolution…won't be the activity of one class only, but of humanity rising up against capital.” (The Mythology of the Proletariat) Obviously, certain groups are more exploited by the system, but his emphasis is not on exploitation, but domestication.

This all strikes me as highly original thought for a communist—ideas which were virtually plagiarized by primitivists like Zerzan (not that plagiarism’s a bad thing.) I need to find out more about this guy because I am extremely interested in him. Maybe I’ll drop by Zerzan’z little cabin (I’m not even kidding!) one of these days and ask where I can get me some Camatte.

Murray Bookchin Tickles Me

2006-01-13T15:12:00.000-08:00

Been reading some Bookchin to get into the groove for Foster's class. Some thoughts and quotes:

What renders social ecology so important in comparing ecosystems to societies is that it decisively challenges the very function of hierarchy as a way of ordering reality, of dealing with differentiation and variation- with "otherness" as such. Social ecology ruptures the association of order with hierarchy. It poses the question of whether we can experience the "other," not hierarchically on a "scale of one to ten" with a continual emphasis on "inferior" and "superior," but ecologically, as variety that enhances the unity of phenomena, enriches wholeness, and more closely resembles a food-web than a pyramid. (The Modern Crisis, 66-7)

I think this type of outlook is helpful. Not everyone is the same, but that doesn't mean we all cannot be valued equally. This doesn't mean Bookchin is simply focusing on values, though. If he were simply saying that everyone should be valued equally, we could use this logic and retort, "well, there needn't be hierarchy in capitalism because capitalism is a system in which everyone fulfills a valuable function, like in an ecosystem." But he does come dangerously close to this line of thinking, so thankfully he mentions "functional hierarchy," meaning he isn't just arguing against personal beliefs in certain superiorities, but hierarchy as a social fact. He also brings up a point I've thought alot about before:

In a world that is fairly innocent of greed and hierarchy- a world in which the very word "freedom" is absent from the vocabulary because it is a universal reality of life- only a far-reaching consciousness of the ills that emerge with the first breahces of its libertarian "social compact" can prevent the logic of domination from totally altering a community's fragile sensibility of mutual aid and respect for human beings and the natural world. Naivete bears not only the charm of purity, but also a dangerous vulnerability to manipulation. (118-9)

This is why history always matters, and why I am skeptical of the proposition that, in order to step closer toward (anarcho-)communism, we should expunge from the dictionary all words that harken back to old, abhorent social orders (along with happy words, like freedom, that imply the existence of any other possibilty.) To me, really, revolutionary activity will always be a necessity, because counter-revolution will always exist, even if only as a latent possibility. Which brings us back to Marx:

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the now existing premise. (The German Ideology, 57)

Richard Heinberg's Talk

2006-01-10T21:48:00.000-08:00

Richard Heinberg is one of the few Peak Oil educators who comes from a vaguely radical perspective, and this is why he is very influential to me. So I was happy to have the priviledge of seeing his presentation at the Eugene Hilton tonight entitled "Peak Oil: Challenges and Opportunities at the end of Cheap Petroleum." I was pleasantly surprised to find that a rather large ballroom in the Hilton was filled to capacity with probably over a thousand people who came to see Heinberg. I even believe some people were turned away once the place was filled.

He was introduced by Eugene's mayor ______. Ms. ______ gave a very warm welcome to Heinberg which bordered on ass-kissing, and towards the end seemed to be giving a sales pitch about how great Eugene is. Fortunately, she wasn't long. Heinberg himself came up and warmed up the crowd with a few jokes, including one about how he doesn't know whether people in Eugene are lucky to have such an awesome mayor, or just smart to have elected her. Yuck.

Then came the real part. Heinberg basically just summed up Peak Oil for the crowd, and I learned little, but it was still great. He mentioned the US production peak in 1970; he showed how the supply shocks temporarily reduced demand in the 1970s; he emphasized the fact that no one exactly knows when the global peak will happen but it inevitably will; he talked about the probable consequences of the global peak; and he dismissed the notion that any currently known energy source will in any way replace fossil fuels. His message is "prepare for the worst, just like in any other crises management." It was especially interesting when he mentioned the book that he is currently working on called "The Oil Depletion Protocol" which calls for oil producing nations to agree to restrain production in agreement with consuming nations to restrain demand. I don't see such a proposal being very effective, but if it actually were implemented and agreed to I believe it would have some (slight) positive effects. But the major point is that, locally, we ourselves need to deal with these problems...

...Which brings me to the question I asked in order to take advantage of the Q&A session. I said, "I know you've written for anarchist periodicals in the past, so I was wondering what role you see anarchist philosophy playing in the whole peak oil picture?" His response was that he sees anarchism as the belief that people can come together to make their own decisions, and that this has obvious connections to the type of world we should wish to create after the age of cheap oil. We basically have two options after the crisis, he said: some sort of society loosely constructed around anarchist principles, or fascism. He was very blunt.

I'd also like to add that I was very pleased with the way he dealt with an old hippie asking a stupid question. Some guy with crazy hair wearing tye-dye came up to the mic and said something along the lines of "There are no economic, political, or social solutions to these problems. So could you address the need for spirituality?" (I groaned loudly.) Heinberg told him that we are addressing material problems and it is dangerous to drift away from reality in favor of the spiritual. To be more consoling, he added that in the future there might be opportunites to become closer to nature and that this could have healing effects. I concur.

TAZ and Hakim Bey's Curious Approach

2006-01-08T14:02:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Hakim Bey’s book Temporary Autonomous Zone. Needless to say, it was kind of creepy. I can appreciate Bey’s socially-indifferent hedonism, especially since even he recognizes it isn’t a practical approach but a spiritual mindset (yes, he’s a mystic, which is a bit strange) but he just has to blather on about his attraction to little boys. Perhaps he is a NAMBLA spokesman in all of his books, as his Pirate Utopias (written under his real name, Peter L Wilson), which is overall a great history, is also rife with his little boy fetish. I try hard not to let his advocation of pederasty detract from his better points, but…ew.

But seriously, he does have some very good points. His idea of the TAZ is a reasonable proposal to not try to smash the state all at once, but to tear holes in the spectacle here, there, anywhere and anywhen, as long as the autonomy achieved exists in the present. We shouldn’t wait around for a totalistic revolution. As I understand it, he sees it as wise to avoid spectacular confrontation and instead to quietly engage in radical organizing behind the scenes. Here is a good quote (ignore the postmodern jargon about the “Simulated” state. Baudrillard is a step backwards from Debord):

[The destruction] of the Simulated State will be “spectacular,” but in most cases the best and most radical tactic will be to refuse to engage in spectacular violence, to withdraw from the area of simulation, to disappear. (102)

Also, as I briefly mentioned above, Bey is concerned with the immediate fulfillment of desires. He is realistic and does not reject all mediation, but he is transfixed with immediatism. His critique of anarchism in his essay Post-Anarchism Anarchy reflects this belief. I think some of his points here are worthwhile:

Between tragic Past & impossible Future, anarchism seems to lack a Present—as if afraid to ask itself, here & now, WHAT ARE MY TRUE DESIRES?—& what can I DO before it’s too late?…Yes, imagine yourself confronted by a sorcerer who stares you down balefully & demands, “What is your True Desire?” Do you hem & haw, stammer, take refuge in ideological platitudes? Do you possess both Imagination and Will, can you both dream & dare—or are you the dupe of an impotent fantasy? (61)

His essay on linguistics is an interesting read as well. He argues against both Chomskyan linguistics and anti-linguistics (Zerzan, Rimbaud, etc.) He agrees more with Zerzan’s approach, but like Chomsky wishes to “save” language. His argument is that language should be saved as a completely chaotic element of the human spirit: in language, anything goes. The problem is, the whole essay illustrates a complete disconnect. Zerzan employs a highly abstract philosophical argument against representation and mediation. Chomsky takes a scientific approach to prove that language tools are inherent in the human mind. Bey tries to pit these two tendencies against each other, and comes in with an abstract argument near the same level as Zerzan but still fundamentally different. He does not understand that they all have different approaches (philosophy, science, mysticism.) There is no real disagreement here: both Zerzan and Chomsky would reply to the other “so what?” The disconnect here illuminates Bey’s writing style and thought process: chaotic. While he has many good points scattered throughout this book, it has more literary merit than practical value. (After all, look at the quotes on the back of it: Burroughs, Ginsberg, etc.)

The last thing I wish to comment on is Bey’s obsession with “CHAOS.” Instead of tearing down all of the typical myths of anarchy, he wishes to reinforce them with an emphatic so what! and consistently associates chaos with anarchy. In order to understand such an irrational approach, one must understand that Hakim Bey is an irrational fellow. Again, his argument for chaos is a spiritual one, a sort of praise for the movement of the free spirit; it isn’t grounded in reality. Only, sometimes he could be a little clearer about this. But I have to conclude that this doesn’t matter as long as it is understood that TAZ has more literary merit than practical value. Essentially, TAZ is an enjoyable read written for anarchists to re-inspire themselves and re-learn to actually question everything.

Marx and Consumption

2006-01-04T23:35:00.000-08:00

Marx focuses on production in his economic analyses, which, from an economic standpoint appears one-sided. But in his Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy the reasons for this become clear:

Production is at the same time also consumption...The individual who develops his faculties in production is also expending them, consuming them in the act of production...Consumption is directly also production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and of chemical matter constitutes production of plants. (7)

Marx sees the two related together dialectically as part of the same process, so by focusing on production, he is also directly dealing with consumption. On a semi-related note, Marx also viewed production as a truly emancipatory human action (assuming it is not alienated production, an assumption some primitivists would challenge as an oxymoron.) I would agree with him on this one; too many radicals use the terms production and consumption as pejoratives, when in fact it should be recognized that production and consumption are both materially necessary and can be personally fulfilling. One needs to make a distinction between capitalist and communist production/consumption.

New Songs To New Music

2006-01-04T02:04:00.000-08:00

I recently read Paul Lafargue's The Right to Be Lazy. It was an enjoyable, quick read. Lafargue was Marx's son-in-law, was financially supported for a large part of his life by Engels, and worked against Bakuninist tendencies in the First International, yet he still brought a more libertarian perspective to marxist thought and was sometimes compared to Bakunin. The Right to Be Lazy is his attack on the degrading capitalist work ethic. He believes "revolutionary socialists must...demolish in the heads of the class which they call to action the prejudices sown in them by the ruling class." (18) Of course, he points out how an ascetic work ethic is meant to destroy the desires and reduce the needs of producers in order to mold them into automatons for a system predicated upon production. The piece is also directed against workerist tendencies in the labor movement which call for the right to work and hence merely reproduce the "slaveholder ideology" of capitalism.

But while this is a seminal writing on the problem of work and must be commended as such, it still is highly flawed. For one, Lafargue has quite an awesome sense of humor, which makes me wonder about the seriousness and desiribility of some of his (hopeful) predictions. For example, he happily envisions "a brazen law forbidding any man to work more than three hours a day" (68) being enacted after rational technological automation of production makes the labor market swell. This is either a joke or is a highly unrealistic authoritarian dream.

Even more importantly, his call for the three hour work day contradicts his entire attitude about work. I would think a proponent of leisure so critical of the work ethic would recognize that fundamentally the two should not coexist. Even a mandatory 1 hour work day reduces the producer to...well, a producer. All free time is merely time for recuperation/reproduction of the worker, who still must have at least a tiny bit of that capitalist work ethic Lafargue rails against. So it may be an overly grand proposal, but it would make more sense to demand the abolition of work. Only in a leisure society (communism) can any true leisure be realized and the work ethic destroyed. The only solution to the problem posed by Lafargue is a communist society in which people freely produce however they so desire (and for some reason he doesn't just come out and say this.) After all, leisure is highly productive, a fact that Lafargue points out himself.

Originality

2005-11-26T19:52:00.000-08:00

All ideas are built off of others. I hope to continue in this tradition of semi-plagiarism while keeping a critical mind open to anything and closed to dogma.