Anarcho-syndicalism stupid. Anarcho-primitivism better.

Who wants to bite?

 

smashing civilization is going to be a lot more difficult than creating self-managed work places, but they could be complimentary processes i guess...organize the workes so that there is no surplus of goods produced and once democratic structures are in placed and the wall between market and community destroyed work to ween ourselvse of the concepts of organized civilization? i agree with many core tennants of anarcho-primitivism but dont think that fucking shit up merely because its technology is as effect as thought out attempts to finnancial hurt corporations.

 

It all depends on how you define anarcho-primitivism, see? It all depends on how civilization is dismantled. One SUV at a time? I doubt it will lead to collapse. Rewilding is something that can happen on a personal level, and a community level, and have a viral effect. Dismantling civilization can begin with dismantling the myths and bullshit that prop the machine up.
My whole point to this thread is that let's say that laws and the economic system is abolished. Who runs the machines, and why? I can see, like in Argentina, workers taking control of factories, but overall, most people are going to walk away from those places and never come back. It presumes that industry has benefited the earth anyway and we'd want it to continue. It's much more of a blight. And how about the resources required to fuel industry. Capitalism or anarchy, the earth still requires raping and the indigenous people resisting this rape on their lands will still need to be put down. So a world where free, anarchist industrial workers control the machinery of death and destruction is not a pretty picture for me.
I distinguish between tool and technology. If I can make it and fix it myself, or someone within my community can, than it is a tool. Technology is something that requires people living far away to slave away in unsafe conditions at the risk of the environment to produce. So we can have tools, we don't need to be stone age, and besides, we're heading into a Waste Age. Much can be fabricated from the trash we have already discarded.

 

organized anarchy has always seemed like an oxymoron to me. anarchy would not be pretty or utopian. People would take what they need and others would take what they want. Those that continue to take more than they need might get dealt with by those who care to protect the land and resources. If there were no laws, there would be plenty of warfare.
It's not as if I can see anarchy happening soon, not in any organized way. Climate change and peak oil might cause upheavel and civilization collapse, but anything is going to be hard to implement. The point of considering such things as differnt forms of anarchy is even though we might never see these things put into practice, it's worth knowing exactly what our root issues are in this world and having a best case scenario. I truly believe that a pre-agricultural world is the best thing for this planet. Just because it is unrealitic that we could ever go back does not stop it from being truth, and it's worth starting from aplace of truth.

 

im gonna quote my buddy here and say 'primitivists are hardcore stupid.'

at least the ones really into it. im a firm believer that there are good ideas in just about every ideolody.

but primitivists are against symbolic communication...aka languages.
they also believe that the agricultural age is the start of hierarchy...

 

i'm a primitivist, and i am not against symbolic communication by any means. what are you talking about?

 

so petty.


don't you see that we can all work together?

Black and Green?

It's us against the Browns and Reds.

They're going to kill us all.

 

You might consider me a primitivist, but I'm not against symbolic thought or communication either. I'm all for some examination of exactly how the ways in which we communicate contribute to oppression, but y'know, we anarchists tend to take some pride in our ability to think independently, so I don't think it's fair to say we're all against language.

 

I really hate the word primitivist, because to me it seems to symbolise that our current society is somehow more 'advanced'. I think a more appropriate word would be 'anti-civilizationist'.
And I don't see why you can't be both anti-civilization and a syndicalist. Whatever works best to fulfill your goals.

 

There are certain (typically arrogant) culturally imposed negative connotations to the word... however, it seems to fit.

privitive, adj. 1.being the first or earliest of the kind or in existence. 2. early in the history of the world or of mankind. 3. characteristic of early ages or an early state of human development. 4. Anthropol. of or pertaining to a race, group, etc., having cultural or physical similarities with their early ancestors. 5. unaffected or little affected by civilizing influences.....
further down the page is simple, crude, etc. but most standard definitions would seem to indicate pre industrial humans in this context.
and then...

Primitivism, n. the beleife that primitive or chronologically early civilizations are qualitatively superior to contemporary civilization.

sounds about right.

This is from the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, which happened to be the closest at hand when I got curious.

By the way, what about 'civilization'? most definitions run along the lines of "an advanced state of human society," etc etc etc.... not too useful. I'm pretty sure it has it's roots in an old latin word for city-state but would like to know more, or even some people's own interpretation. It's really fucking frustrating to discuss this with people when no one can agree on a definition....

 

I think Derrick Jensen's definition for Civilization in Endgame Vol. 1 is the best one I've heard yet.
I would define a civilization much more precisely, and I believe more usefully, as a culture—that is, a complex of stories, institutions, and artifacts— that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities (civilization, see civil: from civis, meaning citizen, from Latin civitatis, meaning city-state), with cities being defined—so as to distinguish them from camps, villages, and so on—as people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life. Thus a Tolowa village five hundred years ago where I live in Tu’nes (meadow long in the Tolowa tongue), now called Crescent City, California, would not have been a city, since the Tolowa ate native salmon, clams, deer, huckleberries, and so on, and had no need to bring in food from outside. Thus, under my definition, the Tolowa, because their way of living was not characterized by the growth of city-states, would not have been civilized. On the other hand, the Aztecs were. Their social structure led inevitably to great city-states like Iztapalapa and Tenochtitlán, the latter of which was, when Europeans first encountered it, far larger than any city in Europe, with a population five times that of London or Seville. Shortly before razing Tenochtitlán and slaughtering or enslaving its inhabitants, the explorer and conquistador Hernando Cortés remarked that it was easily the most beautiful city on earth. Beautiful or not, Tenochtitlán required, as do all cities, the (often forced) importation of food and other resources. The story of any civilization is the story of the rise of city-states, which means it is the story of the funneling of resources toward these centers (in order to sustain them and cause them to grow), which means it is the story of an increasing region of unsustainability surrounded by an increasingly exploited countryside.

 

That's usually my operative definition. But sweet holy motherfuck, to talk to non anarchists about this is nigh impossible. People's personal definitions vary so greatly it's like trying to communicate with space aliens...

 

lol