Recently I worked my way through Fredy Perlman's novel Letters of Insurgents, I had previously read it in pieces before, but this time I read it cover to cover and made use of Audio Anarchy's massive audiobook.
Apologies if you're in a online chat group or forum with me and had to put up with me plugging the book on and of for the past month.
Here's some thoughts on, I typed this up for Goodreads.
Letters of Insurgents is difficult to describe, appropriate given how one of its main themes is the difficult of communicating with other human beings, and the dangers miscommunication can cause.
I've been aware of this book for some time, everyone I've known whose read this book has been glowing in its praise, one even said it drove them to tears. But I was intimidated by the books length, thankfully there's a free audio version that's not hard to find to help.
The format, a series of correspondence between two revolutionaries in different countries can make keeping track of events and people somewhat difficult as the narrative jumps between them and in time, but this does give an excellent demonstration of complexity as events and people keep having layers added to them throughout.
The content is largely concerning humanity, what it means to be free and revolution in its purest sense and all the ways many fall short. Its very critical, but everything it criticises has its chance to have its say and its rare for a character or strategy to have no positive features and attractions.
Political parties, Unions, Communes, underground armies, and urban guerrillas are all scrutinised and appraised from the point of view of human happiness and freedom.
There's a few things I'd like to add, while the structure of the book is just a very long conversation between two old friends trying to catch up and then later reach out to each other, its not just a long book about people talking to and at each other. Much of the analysis and criticism is woven into the actual events, so we see the effects and achievements of local militia's and "Popular" armies. We see how different groups of the New Left react to the growing militancy and social upheaval of the 1960s. I saw one of the few dissenting reviews I've come across of this book complain that it is one encounter with a strawman after another, and I couldn't disagree more. Its true its easy to see where Perlman's sympathies lie, but the characters who come closest to that are by no means perfect, and characters on the other side who aren't total reactionaries do have redeeming features. Ultimately I think what Perlman was getting at is that people are complicated and no one is perfect, and correct politics if such a thing exists does not make for correct behaviour. Personally I found it very interesting when a character who turned to primitivism showed up. Perlman earned a lot of respect for his early writings but nowadays he's something of an embarrassment because in later life he turned to Camatte's primitivism. So it was a bit of a surprise to see his primitivist stand in get so much criticism. Thought the book does have a strongly pro edgrowth vibe with the desirability of abolition work and mass industrial consumption. In short I highly enjoyed my time with Letters of Insurgents, I can see why its both almost universally praised by readers and never managed to break out into mass readership despite the praise and the abundance of cheap and free versions available. In addition to its length its really, really hard to summarise accurately. Here's just a few screen caps of bits that stood out to me while reading.
Letters of Insurgents is one of those novels that never made it big but virtually all the people who have read it declare it to be important and amazing. Looking for information I've come across a dozen or so reviews and positive comments, all positive.
It's obscurity was partly a result of it being out of print for many years but small booksellers have started republishing it, here's Left Bank Books notice
Left Bank Books is republishing Fredy Perlman's classic novel
Letters of Insurgents. Originally published by Black and Red in 1976,
and out of print for several years, this epistolary novel tells the
story of two individuals living on distant continents resume contact
through correspondence. They describe meaningful events and
relationships in their lives during the twenty years since their
youthful liaison, comparing the choices each took. Yarostan lives in a
"workers' republic"; Sophia in a "Western democracy." They both make
efforts to lead meaningful lives. Along the way, they encounter
bureaucrats, idealists, racists, flaunters of social convention, labor
militants, professors, jailors, hucksters and more. In important
respects, Sophia's biography parallels that of Fredy Perlman.
Left Bank Books is a not-for-profit project owned and operated by its workers, founded in 1973.
Copies can be pre-ordered from https://leftbankbooks.bigcartel.com/
That was from 2014 so you can no longer pre-order it, but you can still order a copy from their site.
Another champion of the novel was Audio Anarchy whom undertook the task of creating an Audio book version of it in 2006.
Freddy Perlman's Letters Of Insurgents is a thoroughly brilliant
story about anarchist ideas. It takes the form of fictional letters between
two eastern european workers who were separated after a failed
revolution; one spent twelve years in statist jails, the other
escaped to the west. After twenty-five years without contact, they
begin to write each-other about their experiences, their lives, their
hopes, and their memories of the past. The characters that emerge from
these narratives tell a story that is both incredibly subtle and
infinitely complex. Nothing is taken for granted, no assumptions are
left unchallenged, and the reader is left with a set of questions that
only a story about relationships could present.
Being a particularly long book, each letter will be presented here
a week at a time until the entire recording is finished. And everyone
who
listens to the entire book will receive a Letters Of Insurgents Merit
Badge.
In total the book was over 31 hours. It also appears to have finished off the group as sadly their recording of Letters of Insurgents appears to have been the last project of the group.
"In the eighteen-nineties and for years thereafter, America reverberated with the name of the 'notorious Anarchist,' feminist, revolutionist and agitator, Emma Goldman. A Russian Jewish immigrant at the age of 17, she moved by her own efforts from seamstress in a clothing factory to internationally known radical lecturer, writer, editor and friend of the oppressed. ...a collection of her remarkably penetrating essays, far in advance of their time, originally published by the Mother Earth press which she founded."
"Submission to domination is enforced not solely, nor even most significantly, through blatant repression, but rather through subtle manipulations worked into the fabric of everyday social relationships. These manipulations — ingrained in the social fabric not because domination is everywhere and nowhere, but because the institutions of domination create rules, laws, mores and customs that enforce such manipulations — create a logic of submission, an often unconscious tendency to justify resignation and subservience in one's everyday relations in the world. For this reason, it is necessary for those who are serious about developing an anarchist insurrectional project to confront this tendency wherever it appears — in their lives, their relationships and the ideas and practices of the struggles in which they participate. Such a confrontation is not a matter of therapy, which itself partakes of the logic of submission, but of defiant refusal."
Hello, this is Audio Anarchy Radio, we’re starting off with
a series that introduces a few different concepts from anarchist perspectives.
And today we’re going to be talking about technology. The idea isn’t to give
you a line about what is right and what is wrong, but to explore some of the
aspects and critiques of technology that might not be regularly discussed. We
have Javier here, who is going to talk over some of the things that he has been
thinking about.
So, Javier, let me start by asking how you define
technology. “Well a dictionary definition of technology is the general term for
processes that which human beings fashion tools and machines to increase their
control and understanding of the material environment. The term comes from the
Greek words techne which refers to an
art or craft and lochia meaning an
area of study. So it means the study or science of crafting. For me I use it to
refer to all the tools and machines that humans use to shape, modify, or
understand their environment.”
And do you make a
distinction between certain types of technologies, or consider technology to be
socially neutral?
“Well I think each technology, each tool, or each machine
should be considered separately. I think each individual technology has
different social consequences, that I definitely don’t think they should be
considered neutral for society. But I also don’t make too many distinctions or
aggrupation’s in like, oh good technology, bad technology or things like that.
I just think that we should take into consideration each technology
individually, notice what characteristics it has, and how it shapes the social
institutions and deal with those questions. “
And what do you think some of the most prevalent popular or
interesting analyses of technology have been throughout history?
“yeah well, the one that comes to mind first of all is Marx.
He uses the term `means of production` vaguely to what I would refer to as
technology. And it’s a very central concern for him, however his analysis of
the way in which technology affects social institutions is limited to who
controls the technologies, or the means of production. And he does a class analysis
based on this where the bourgeoisie control the technologyor means of production then you have a class
society. If the Proletariat controls the means of productions there will be a
classless society. Stuff like that, I think that Marxists -most Marxists-
follow this analysis, I also think a lot of other people do.
Anarcho-syndicalists are very influenced by this kind of thought, but others
have been a lot more sceptical about this kind of simplistic view of
technology. There’s been for example the appropriate technology movement, and
more drastically the anarcho-primitivists, definitely think that there’s a lot
more to technologies than just who controls it.”
And what do you think
are popular perceptions or critiques of technology today?
“Ok, well I think today, some environmentalists do have
certain critiques of technology which is you know they question technologies
themselves and who controls it. Their critique or analysis is based purely on
environmental aspects and not social that much and those I think in general
today people take technology kind of for granted. And they refuse to question
it because they think it’s kind of like a natural thing for humans to have.
Theirs I think a couple of myths that really kind of inhibit our analysis of technology.
For example I would say the myth of progress is a very basic myth, well it
basically states that humans have never lived in a better situation than today.
And that throughout history continually progressing towards a better state,
things are pretty much getting better. It also demonstrates that progress is
inevitable and we can never go back because of where we try to do something
like that and we will eventually advance again, back to the way we are now.
This myth is really annoying to me because it kind of served the purpose of
justifying our current institutions and makes it kind of impossible to
criticise technology or a lot of other things that are considered progressive.
I can’t say there isn’t some truth to that, but whether progress has made
things better or not is just a matter of personal preference. I think of an
important thing to point out though is that humanity did not get to its present
state of technological or social development by a process of you know continual
progress. It was not a process of like consensus, democracy or any other kind
of libertarian philosophy or any you know practice that really respected
individual freedom. I mean a great amount of cultures were forced to accept
specific kinds of agriculture. You know through imperialism they were forced to
for example massively harvest coffee or other products for Europeans. And even
some cultures were forced to take on agriculture when they were
hunter-gatherers. Other than in the Industrial revolution people were taken off
their lands and in a lot of cases chained to machines in order to have the
industrial revolution really work. So these things that are usually seen as
advancements were not so much a product of human ingenuity but in a lot of ways
a product of tyranny and oppression. To say that humans naturally developed
industrialism and that we can never, that we would always inevitably develop it
again if we go back, if we abolish industrialism is to say that authoritarian
institutions are a part of our nature, I think.
Another myth that a lot of people take it as truth is that
progress and technological progress has a consequence that we have more
leisure. Most anthropologists agree that almost every society that has less
advanced technology has more leisure time. So even hunting and gathering
provides for more leisure time than farming. However its easy to see why some
people think that more or more advanced technology leads to more leisure. I
mean a superficial analysis would conclude that you know pushing a button is
easier than doing manual labour. The problem with this analysis is that it
doesn’t take two things into consideration; what goes into building the machine
that allows for you to just push the button so the machine does the work for
you. For example its less intensive, less labour intensive to drive a car than
to walk, but if you take into consideration the labour involved in
manufacturing the car from extracting the raw materials, extracting the oil for
it to run, to run the factories that build it, extracting the metals to build
the car, rubber to build the tires etc, you know that’s a lot more labour
intensive than just walking. The thing is that traditionally I think the
distribution of leisure and labour has you know favoured the ruling classes. It
hasn’t really been distributed equally. Some people have to do a lot of labour
and pretty much finance the leisure of the ruling class. That’s why some people
have to work really hard and don’t have any cars and some people just go to an
office building and have the most luxurious cars. So you know that way you can
see that it doesn’t provide for more leisure to have more technology, at least
not necessarily.”
And so, what are some
of your thoughts about technology and how it affects the environment today?
“Well definitely I
think this is perhaps the most, or these are the most obvious consequences and
people you know talk about it continually how cars pollute and stuff like that.
I think its useful however to try to find some general characteristics of technologies
that tend to intensify the environmental impact. I’ll try to mention a few that
I think are not as commonly discussed. One of them, one of these general
observations, I would say that technologies that are labour intensive are
usually more or have a bigger impact on the environment. This is because
changing the environment is something that requires labour, so the greater
impact usually is because there’s more labour involved and required to do it.
Also centralisation is something that generally increases environmental impact,
and this is because it concentrates the impact in a small area, making it
harder for natural mechanisms to repair the damage. I mean most
environmentalists are aware of this. The environment can modify itself to make
impact not as damaging if its done in a scattered way and not concentrated in
one place. Also technologies that require homogeneous persistent human activity
increases the impact because they make it harder for nature to slowly adapt, so
I mean for example assembly lines come to mind where you know what is done is
continually done it’s like massively done, and this doesn’t allow for the
environment to adapt to allow to small changes.
So, an important thing to notice about all these
implications is that these kinds of activities and technologies are almost
exclusively found in authoritarian societies. You know the observations that I
made that recognises that are labour intensive, centralised and homogenised
human activity. You know people when they are free from many authoritarian
institutions they tend to preform tasks that involve the least amount of labour
to achieve, they make decisions in a pretty sporadic manner, and decentralise
and also they like usually to engage in a variety of diverse activities.
There’s only one coherens where people engage in dangerous and unpleasant
labour intensive activities like mining, these activities are the ones that
have such a great environmental impact. So I think realising this, leads to a
very different approach to a problem of environmental destruction than the one
I think most people argue for right now. I think most people now argue for more
centralised control, you know the government regulating factories, regulating
emissions, you know more rules or you know everything that we do because we
can’t seem to manage ourselves without causing environmental problems. But this
analysis actually states kind of to the contrary; it states that humans when
free of authoritarian institutions produced the least amount of environmental impact.
So I think, I mean as an Anarchist I think this is the
analysis that you know that’s more useful, from my perspective. Yeah, another
useful thing to notice is that advanced technologies tend to have a high
environmental impact. What I mean by this is that when I use the term advanced
technology I mean that technology that depends on previous technologies to
function, so therefore its total impact becomes not only the impact that the
specific technology has but the added impact of all the technologies that are
required for the specific technology. You know like the examples are I think
pretty easy to see like you know electrical appliances need energy supply or
power supply and so the power supply has I mean you know like maybe a little
electrical appliance doesn’t have that much environmental impact but the whole
electrical infrastructure that is needed to power it does. And you know
different technologies like that, I think what this analysis leads to is that
it doesn’t make much sense to make more advanced technology that is supposedly
going to be more environmentally friendly.”
So, what are some of
your thoughts about the social implications about technology throughout history
and today?
“Okay, and this I think is something that is not usually
talked about, so I think its important to consider. Okay, so technology claims
to provide society with the tools to achieve its goals. Society however is not
like a monolithic entity formed of homogeneous individuals with identical
goals. Different individuals in society have different goals and the
technologies used will inevitably provide society with the tools to achieve the
goals of some and not all members. And it also, I mean also technologies not
spread like equally amongst all members of society. It will provide some
members of society something while maybe refusing something else to others. So,
taking this in mind that considers some of the implications of technology in
society. First of all, organisation, different technologies require for their
application different social settings, in terms of centralisation or spreading
social activity, technologies can have several implications. If a technology
requires for its use many individuals, social activity is centralised around
the technology. If the technology allows for only one or a small number of
individuals it promotes decentralisation. So centralisation implies that a form
of decision making where a single consensus has to be reached by the group, not
allowing for individuals to reach different decisions and be autonomous. In big
groups this phenomenon usually leads to representation or other forms of
mediation for the individual to make his or her decisions. So there are you
know an individuals ability to make their decision is taken further and further
away from them. To put an example, a factory can be well it can be owned by a
single boss that has authority over many individuals who work there, or it can
be cooperatively owned by the workers. In any case each individual will have to
adapt his or her schedule to the factories, they will have to preform the job
that the factory assigns and they will have to receive from their work what the
factory decides. They will have to produce what the factory decides when it
decides and how it decides. Obviously cooperative ownership offers the
individual worker more of a say in the decisions of the factory than the owner
model, but the individuals will never be able to reach a decision that’s
different from the one assigned by the factory. The individual is alienated
from the decision-making process, in the case of the capitalist process the
alienation is pretty complete, like you don’t have absolutely any input into
the decision making; in the case of the worker run factory this alienation is
mediated by a process that can be you know in different ways it can range from
consensus to some kind of representative democracy. Or you know the level of
let’s say authoritarianism that you can have is can vary, but autonomous
decision making is pretty impossible in the context of a factory. Whereas other
technologies allow for individuals to make their own decisions.
Okay another interesting aspect is the distribution of
technology. Proportionately to the energy and labour required for its
production technology becomes a scarcity. The more labour is used to produce a
machine the less the number of machines society can produce. In class societies
this usually implies that the members of the ruling class have access to the
technology and the others don’t. This causes a widening in the power gap
between the classes, the ruling classes are provided with more tools to control
their environment and society and the rest loses control in the same measure.
Another aspect is the shaping of human resources. It’s
obvious that technology has a profound impact on the educational system of a
society, you know whether the goal of the educational system is to modify the
individual so that he can better serve society. Or just to provide him and her
with the knowledge and skills needed to preform the social roles, to provide
for themselves, it would always take into consideration that society uses. If
the technology is very complex and complicated the educational process will be
long. If the technology requires monotonous centrally organised work, skills
like discipline and obedience will be encouraged in the educational process. A
point may be reached where the society needs for its survival to produce a
certain kind of individual, this will very likely tend to make its educational
institutions coercive rather than voluntary.
Another point is specialisation. Certain technologies demand
that the division of labour in society that tend to produce specialisations.
This means that certain individuals are required preform a socioeconomic role
and others are obliged to preform these tasks through this class of specialised
individuals. So individuals cannot perform or individuals that are not
specialists cannot preform these tasks by themselves. Our current society has
many examples; individuals need lawyers to legally defend themselves, cops to
physically protect themselves, media to be aware of things that influence our
lives, architects to build houses etc. It is important to know how
specialisation is not simply an individual having an extraordinary ability, it
is the assigning of an individual or individuals to perform a social role and
excluding others from performing it. To put an example of a specialist which is
I think a useful example and perhaps the oldest example is the priest. In
certain societies it is assumed that the only person or class of persons that
can communicate with the deities is a priest. Other individuals are forced to
perform only through the priests. In this way the class of priests effectively
control the spiritual aspect of the society, and often this is used to also
control other aspects like the moral standards and other taboos and customs of
the society. So that obviously has like enormous power of consequences on the
power relationships of the society. There’s different ways in which specialised
roles are imposed or assigned for some you know to perform certain things you
need a diploma, a certificate or some kind of authorisation from an appropriate
authority to perform it. Technology works in a different way to assign these roles
increasing in complexity, technologies become impossible to be wholly
understood by an individual and individuals have to specialise in a particular
aspect of the technology and depend on others to specialise in the rest and you
know when this happens everybody loses their autonomy and their ability to
perform jobs by themselves.
Another important consequence- social consequence of
technology is the creation of environments. Every technology as we have said
before is essentially a modification of the environment, from an environmental
point of view the implications you know have obvious consequences, but its also
very relevant from a social point of view. Some relevant questions are you know
who gets to modify the environment for others or whose environment do they
modify? And how do these modifications impact the lives of the individuals who
live there? To me the issue of empowering versus disempowering environments is
noteworthy. Certain environments provide each individual with the means for his
or her subsistence in a quite egalitarian way. If each individual is able to
access the resources they need to survive in an autonomous way then this is an
empowering environment. But other environments do quite the opposite, for
example modern urban environments pretty much eliminate all of the resources
from our environment and the ability to access the resources that we need to
survive is pretty much denied. So you know the modern urban environment pretty
much puts the resources in the hands of the few people and then all the rest of
the people has to acquire these resources through monetary exchanges. The
individual is forced to participate in socioeconomic and political institutions
set before her to be able to have access to the resources needed to survive.
With the impossibility of directly accessing resources one has to acquire money
which is the modern socially imposed means to access resources in order to
survive. And then those who control the money; have most of it, effectively
control both resources and the individuals who want access to those resources.
In Ivanovitch’s words “modernised poverty deprives those affected by it of
their freedom and power to act autonomously, to live creatively. It confines
them to a survival through being plugged into market relations, the opportunity
to experience political and social satisfaction outside the market is thus
destroyed. I am poor for instance, when the use value of my feet is lost
because I live in Los Angeles or live in the 35th floor .”
Mediation and autonomy. Direct action is a commonly used
word in radical circles, it is usually considered an anarchist value. The
reasoning goes that if to achieve our goals we must go through others then
we’re not in direct control of our lives, we’re not in direct control of the
consequences of our actions. And so mediated action is the opposite of direct
action, autonomy increases as mediation decreases. Technology is always a
medium through which we interact with our environment, a medium through which
we accomplish our goals and access our resources. So the same reasoning applies
here, to increase autonomy we must decrease mediation. This is especially true
when technology also implies a social mediation, when the technologies we use
and the technology we needto preform
our activities are controlled by others. Then our actions are not only mediated
by material objects but they’re also mediated by social institutions, which we
might not like and which in effect can become quite controlling of our actions.
So as a conclusion I would say that the implications of
technology has, goes well beyond its stated purposes. By this I mean that you
know like if a technology says that it will just transport people like cars for
example, well yes the consequences are that it transports cars but also that we
need streets, that it also implies that not everybody’s going to have access to
cars because they are very labour intensive and so therefore a class of people
can own cars will exist and one that doesn’t have access to cars is etc. an
important thing to note is that all the implications that I found are inherent
in the technology itself and do not depend on who controls or uses the
technology. Only by being aware of all the implications the technologies have
will we be able to make those decisions that will help us to achieve the
society we desire".
That’s it for todays
introduction to a critique of technology. Check out Audio Anarchy on the web
audioanarchy.org
This piece explores some historical thoughts on the origin and nature of private property. By examining the texts of John Locke, PJ Proudhon, and Peter Kropotkin, we encounter questions of where private property came from, how it became an accepted standard, and what its philosophical justifications are. All of these historical thoughts echo loudly into the world of today.
I made a transcript of the video to help preserve the work of Audio Anarchy.
(Transcript)
Hello this is Audio Anarchy Radio, continuing with our
series that introduces various concepts from anarchist perspectives. Today we
are going to be talking about property.When speaking of property a good place to begin is with John Locke the
17th century English philosopher.
John Locke
Locke was one of the first political philosophers to think
about the nature of property. He struggled with the concept of private
property, given that he believed God gave the earth to mankind, not certain
individuals. In his words quote
“God gave the world to man in common but since
he gave it to them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniences of life
they were capable to draw from it. It cannot be supposed he meant it should
always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious
and rational and labour was to be his title to it, not to the fancyor covetousness of the quarrelsome andcontentious he that had his good left for his
improvement as was already taken up needed not complain, ought not to meddle
with what was already improved by another’s labour. If he did, it is plain he
desired the benefit of another’s pains which he had no right to. And not the
ground which God had given him in common with others to labour on and whereof
there was as good left as that already possessed and more than he know what to
do with or his industry could reach to”,
end quote.
So it is not the land that God has given us than an
individual as laying claim to, but rather the product of an individual’s
labour. By claiming property we are claiming individual entitlement to the
product of the work that we do, not the common gift of God. By his logic a
ploughed field has value because of the labour that one invested in ploughing
it and that is why one would claim it as his or her own.
Locke makes it clear that this is based on the assumption
that there is always quote “good left” in his words quote
“nor was this
appropriation of any parcel of land by improving it any prejudice to any other
man since there was still enough and as good left and more than the yet
unprovided could use, so that in effect there was nevertheless left for others
because of his enclosure for himself. For he that leaves as much as another can
make use of does as good as take nothing at all. Nobody could think himself
injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draw, who had a
whole river of the same water left to quench his thirst. And the case of land
and water where there is enough is perfectly the same.”
End quote.
He continues to add that the process of enclosure actually
helps to preserve the state of abundance. He claims that a man can live on ten
acres of cultivated land where he most likely require a hundred acres of
uncultivated land in order to maintain the same level of sustenance. Hence when
one encloses ten acres of common land, one is not taking ten acres but giving
ninety. Of course at this point we’re only talking about the means that one
uses to sustain oneself. In his words quote,
“Before the appropriation of land
he gathered as much of the wild fruit, killed, caught or tamed as many of the
beasts as he could. He that so employed his pains about any of a spontaneous
products of nature as any way to alter them from the state which nature put
them in by placing any of his labour on them did they thereby acquire a
propriety in them. But if they perished in his possession without their new
use, if the fruits rotted, or the venison putrefied before he could spend it,
he offended against the common law of nature. And was liable to be punished. He
invaded his neighbours share for he had no right farther than his use called for
any of them. And they might serve to afford him convivences of life. The same
measures covered the possession of land too. Whatsoever he tilde and reaped,
laid up and made use of before it spoiled, that was his peculiar right.
Whatsoever he enclosed and could feed and make use of; the cattle and product
was also his. But if either the grass of his enclosure rotted on the ground or
the fruit of his planting perished without gathering and laying up; this part
of the earth not standing his enclosure was still to be looked on as waste, and
might be the possession of any other.”
End quote.
So did you hear that? This bourgeois thinker who influenced
the very foundations of the United States and all subsequent property law,
asserts that all those companies who are filling their dumpsters with unsold
produce every night, as well as the United States government itself which
subsidizes agriculture by buying up surplus grain and letting it rot away in
silo’s is stealing from us. Even from Locke’s bourgeois perspective he’s
calling us to the barricades right now.
Locke admits that the introduction of money into society
changed the shape of property. Using money it becomes possible for one to
freeze one’s labour into a durable form represented by precious metals or in the
case of today currency. Once this possibility was introduced the potential size
of an individual’s enclosure is no longer limited by fruits, vegetables or
livestock will rot away in time. Whereas before if I used a thousand acres to
grow fruit that would rot away before I could eat it all, I was stealing from
the common gift of God. If on the other hand I trade all my surplus fruit for
precious metals which are durable and will not rot away I have wasted nothing.
Locke imagines a large island where there is an incredible abundance of
resources, but nothing that is so scarce or durable that it could be used as a
form of money. On this island Locke realises; there would never be any
incentive for an individual to use more land than one would require for one’s
personal needs. Because there would be no way to crystalize any extra labour
preformed into a more durable format. So here Locke is admitting that the
emergence of money and trade threw a crimp into his logic on property. But he
continues to rationalise his justifications by claiming that since gold and
silver have no inherent value beyond what we’ve bestowed on them; all of us
have voluntarily consented to this expansion of property by agreeing to accept
the value of currency.
In his words quote
“but since gold and silver being little
useful to the life of men in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage has its
value only from the consent of men. Where labour yet makes the great part the
measure it is plain that men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal
possession of the earth, they having by a tacit and voluntary consent found out
a way how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the
product of; by receiving in exchange for the over plus gold and silver which
may be hoarded up without injury to anyone. These metals not spoiling or
decaying in the hands of the possessor.”
End quote.
So, this is about as far as Locke can take us.
Pierre Joseph-
Proudhon
Pierre Joseph Proudhon, was a nineteenth century thinker who
questioned the bourgeois foundations of property. He was the first person to
call himself an Anarchist, claiming that anarchy is order. He was referring to
what he called the natural order of true unity from below, rather than a false
unity brought about by constraint. The phrase Anarchy is order is thought to be
the origin of the circle A. He is well know for exclaiming that “property is
theft!” and starts his book What is
Property? By saying
“If I were asked to answer the following question `what
is slavery?` and I should answer it in one word `it is murder` my meaning would
be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the
power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality is a power of
life and death. And that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why then to this
other question `what is property?` may I not likewise answer it is robbery,
without the certainty of being misunderstood? The second proposition being no
more than a transformation of the first.”
End quote.
Proudhon’s thoughts on property depend on a distinction
between property and possession. For him property is ownership by a landowner
or a capitalist that is derived from conquest or exploitation and is maintained
through the state property laws and an army. On the other hand possession, is
ownership of a home, land to cultivate, our tools of a trade that excludes
control over the lands and lives of others. In his words quote
“There are
different kinds of property, first property pure and simple; the dominant and
senioral power over a thing, or as they term it naked property. Second,
possession, the tenant, the farmer, the usufructuary, or possessors. The owner
who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the
death of an usufructuary or proprietors. If I may venture a comparison, a lover
is a possessor, a husband a proprietor. This double definition of property
domain and possession is of the highest importance and it must be clearly
understood in order to comprehend what is to follow.”
End quote.
Proudhon wonders how property became an accepted natural
right when categorised along with natural rights like life and liberty;
property doesn’t seem to fit in. Or he sees things like life and liberty as
inherent immutable components of humanity, he sees something like property as a
specific creation of proprietors. He investigates the basis for property as a
natural right, starting with Locke’s justification on the basis of labour. To
this he asks, quote
“why is not this principal universal? Why is the benefit of
this pretended law confined to a few and denied to the mass of labourers? Why
does the tenant no longer acquire through his labour the land which was
formerly acquired by the labour of the proprietor? I prove that those that do
not possess today are proprietors by the same title as those that do possess.
But instead of inferring their form that property should be shared by all, I
demand its entire abolition.”
End quote.
In response to a justification of property such as quote
“some labourers are employed in draining marshes and cutting down trees and
brushwood in a word and cleaning up the soil they increase the value, they make
the amount of property larger, they are paid for the value which they add in
the form of food and daily wages. It then becomes the property of the
capitalist.”
End quote.
Proudhon responds, quote
“the price is not sufficient, the
labour of the workers has created a value, now this value is their property.
But they have neither sold nor exchanged it, and you capitalists, you have not
earned it.That you should have a
partial right to the whole in return for the materials that you have furnished
and the provisions that you have supplied is perfectly just. You contribute to
the production, you ought to share in the enjoyment; but your right does not
annihilate that of the labourers, who in spite of you have been your colleagues
in the work of production. Why do you talk of wages? The money with which you
pay the wages of the labourers remunerates them for only a few years of the perpetual
possession which they have abandoned to you. Wages is the cost of the daily
maintenance and refreshment of the labourer, you are wrong in calling it the
price of a sale. The working man has sold nothing, he knows neither his right
nor the extent of the concession which he has made to you. Nor the meaning of
the contract which you pretend to have made with him.On his side utter ignorance, on yours error
and surprise, not to say deceit and fraud. In this century of bourgeois
morality, in which I have had the honour to be born; the moral sense is so
debased that I should not be surprised if I were asked by many a worthy
proprietor what I see in this that is unjust and illegitimate. Debased
creature, galvanised corpse, how can I expect to convince you if you cannot
tell robbery when I show it to you? Under the pretext that he has paid his
labourers that he owes them nothing more, that he has nothing to gain by
putting himself at the service of others while his own occupations claim his
attention he refuses to acknowledge his own justification for property. And
when in the impotence of their isolation, these poor labourers are compelled to
sell their birth right, he this ungrateful proprietor, this knavish upstart
stands ready to put the finishing touch to their deprivation and their ruin.
And you think that just? Take care.”
End quote.
Finally in response to Locke’s justifications Proudhon
exclaims
“God gave the earth to the human race, why then have I received none?
He has put all thins under my feet and I have not were to lay my head.
Multiplied he tells us that is as easy as to do as to say. But you must give
moss to the bird for its nest.”
End quote.
Proudhon goes on to examine the justifications of property,
based on the concept of original occupancy. At this he exclaims “Property was
the first of rights, just as submission to authority was the most holy of
duties”.When a contemporary of Proudhon
attempted to justify property through original occupancy, by claiming quote
“my
liberty needs for its objective action material to work upon. In other words,
property or a thing, this thing or property naturally participates then in
volubility of my person. For instance I take possession of an object that has
become necessary and useful in the outward manifestation of my liberty. I say
this object is mine since it belongs to no one else, consequently I possess it
legitimately. So the legitimacy of possession rests on two conditions; first, I
possess only as a free being. Supress free activity, you destroy my power to
labour. Now it is only by labour that I can use this property or thing and it
is only by using it that I possess. Free activity is then the principle of the
right of property but that alone does not legitimate possession. All men are free,
all men can use property by labour, does that mean that all men have a right to
all property? Not at all. To possess legitimately I must not only labour and
produce in my capacity of a free being but I must also be the first to occupy
the property, in short if labour and production are the principle of the right
of property the fact of first occupancy is its indispensable condition.”
End
quote.
To this Proudhon responds
“Well is it not true from this
point of view that if the liberty of man is sacred, it is equally sacred in all
individuals that if it needs property for its objective action, that is for its
life, the appropriation of materials is equally necessary for all. That if I
wish to be respected in my right of appropriation I must respect others and
theirs, and consequently that though in the sphere of the infinite a person’s
power of appropriation is limited only by himself, in the sphere of the finite
the same power is limited by the mathematical relation between the numbers of
persons and a space which the occupy. Does it not follow that if one individual
cannot prevent another, his fellow man from appropriating an amount of material
equal to his own no more can he prevent individuals yet to come. Because while
individuality passes away universality persists and the eternal laws cannot be
determined by a partial view of their manifestations. Must we not conclude
therefore that whenever a person is born the others must crowd closer together
and by reciprocity of their obligation that if the newcomer is afterwards to
become an heir the right of succession does not give him the right of
accumulation but only the right of choice. If the right of life is equal the
right of labour is equal and so is the right of occupancy. Would it not be
criminal were some islanders to repulse in the name of property the unfortunate
victims of shipwreck struggling to reach the shore. The very idea of such
cruelty sickens the imagination, the proprietor like Robinson Crusoe on his
island wards off with pike and musket the proletariat washed overboard by the
waves of civilisation and seeking to gain a foothold on the rocks of property.
`Give me work!` cries he with all his might to proprietor, `don’t drive me
away, I will work for you at any price.` `I do not need your services` replies
the proprietor showing the end of his pike or the barrel of his gun. `Lower my
rent at least, I need my income to live upon. How can I pay you when I can get
no work?` `That is your business` then the unfortunate proletariat abandons
himself to the waves or if he attempts to land upon the shore of property the
proprietor takes aim and kills him. The right of property provided it can have
a cause can have but one. I can possess by several titles, I can become
proprietor only by one, the field which I have cleared, which I cultivate, on
which I built my house, which supports myself, my family and my livestock, I
can possess. First as the original occupant, second as a labourer, third by
virtue of the social contract which assigns it to me as my share. But none of
these titles confer upon me the right of property, for if I attempt to base it
upon occupancy society can reply `I am the original occupant.` If I appeal to
my labour it will say `it is only on that condition that you possess.` If I
speak of agreements it will respond `these agreements establish only your right
of use.` Such however are the only titles which proprietors advance, they never
have been able to discover any others. Indeed every supposes a producing cause
and the person who enjoys it. But in man who lives and dies in the sun of earth
who passes away like a shadow there exists with respect to external things only
titles of possession, not one title of property. Why then has society
recognised a right injurious to itself? Where there is no producing cause. Why
in according possession it has also conceded property? Why has the law
sanctioned this abuse of power?”
end quote.
There is of course a major distinction between what Proudhon
was advocating and the likes of the state socialists, as he said “instead of
inferring therefrom that property should be shared by all I demand its entire
abolition.” Proudhon considered the state socialists of the time to be the
worst proprietors, seeing state ownership is the most degenerative case of capitalist
exploitation. In his words quote
“I see in it a barrier to liberty, the free
disposition of the soil taken away from him who cultivates it and this precious
sovereignty forbidden to the citizen and reserved for that fictitious being
without intelligence, without passion, without morality that we call the state.
By this arrangement the occupant has less to do with the soil than before. The
clod of earth seems to stand up and say to him `you are only a slave of the
taxes, I do not know you`.
End quote.
Proudhon was also opposed to libertarian notions of
collectivism, he only favoured association where association was necessary, as
the organic combination of forces. Operations that required specialisation and
many different workers preforming their individual tasks to complete a unified
product required association. This is because the workers would inherently be
dependent on each other and without association the workers are related as
subordinate and superior, master and wage slave. Proudhon considered this to be
free association and did not favour what he called the cult of association
which would require everyone to collectivise for the sake of collectivisation.
He felt that operations which could be preformed by an individual such as the
artisan or peasant without the help of specialised workers did not require
association.This is the origin of his
saying that “property is freedom” where here he is referring to property as
possession.
Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin was one of the first proponents of anarchist
communism. He looked at the world of individual autonomy and personal
possession that Proudhon had imagined and further questioned its basis. He
noted that all of society’s labour was intimately tied together in a myriad of
ways and that even apparently isolated groups were not functioning as
autonomously as they seemed. He pointed out that even the peasant farmer or
isolated artisan was dependent on roads and the bridges made in common. The
swamps drained in common toil and the communal pastures enclosed by hedges
which were kept and repaired by each and all. If the looms for weaving or the
dyes for colouring fabrics were improved all profited. So even in those days a
peasant family could not live alone, but was dependent in a thousand ways on
the village or the commune.
He continued that in the industrialising world these
connections are even more complicated and tightknit. Kropotkin felt that this
demonstrated the instruments of labour to be a common inheritance. And that
this was in direct contradiction to wages or even collectivist remuneration. He
felt that the common instruments of labour must necessarily bring with it the
enjoyment in common of the fruits of common labour. He saw enough for everyone
and proposed that those currently in control of property were resting on a
centuries old foundation of appropriated common labour. He thought that the
amount of work necessary to track people’s ongoing labour was less efficient
than just having a fully communitarian society where everything was freely
available to everyone.
So contrary to Proudhon, Kropotkin did not feel that one was
entitled to the product of one’s labour, but rather to whatever one’s needs may
be. Kropotkin advocated a gift economy where everything would be available to
anyone. He often pointed out that in situations of crisis people regularly
banded together to help each other and lend services without thought of
remuneration. Often with amazing and beautiful results. He imagined a world
where everyone was always united by such a common cause.
In conclusion, there’s a long history of anarchist thought
on the nature of property and possession. Proudhon has interesting ideas about
property existing both as an act of theft and a liberating force. Kropotkin has
interesting ideas about the interconnectedness of it all and of the potentials
for a beautiful communitarian world. To me even the writings of Locke are
interesting, because at least this bourgeois philosopher was even thinking
about the origins and rights of private property. This is a far cry from
today’s world where large social questions are no longer discussed. There are
no more promises, no more ideas, people are not continuing to work because they
have been promised the hope of an eventual better life by and large those
living in America today have accepted the conditions and parameters of their
lives, and are operating within that framework. The politicians don’t even have
to lie about promises of alternatives, the questions they do ask are
meaningless because the method is false. If asked for a justification of
private property those of the established order would not speak of a basis in
equality, liberty or justice, they would simply reply that private property is
necessary for capitalism, and that would be sufficient.
A series of Audio essays by the group Audio Anarchy. The audio used for the videos can be downloaded here.
"Why do we work? From necessity or love? If the former, then our world
is failing us, we are being exploited, being made slaves for the benefit
of others. The ethic that work is a 'good thing' is a throwback to a
Victorian mentality of puritanical pain and denial of our humanity, an
ethic that is so far removed from the reality of our human nature as to
be pathological."
A collection of essays written from the anti-work perspective.
These essays investigate concepts of freedom, compulsory labor, the
'work ethic', the wages system, employment, and 'occupations.'
An introduction to the concept of anti work, as despite the popularity of hating work the concept of abolition it all together often strikes a person as absurd on first hearing of it.
The Decline and Fall of Work
An excerpt from chapter 5 of the Revolution of everyday life by Raoul Vaneigem
A number of years ago when I was finishing up University I got curious about the many strands of left wing politics and the multitude of `isms. So I started exploring, buying cheap books on the history of revolts, essays and political texts. For anarchism an early source of information was a website called Audio Anarchy. Sadly Audio Anarchy has recently gone offline, the domain has expired and the links to the site and the downloads section now no longer work. Its not really surprising I have Audio Anarchy on my podcast apps and the last update was in 2006, so the people behind it gave it a lot of support. Maybe it'll be restored but I don't hold out hope. Fortunately though I was able to download all the recorded audio files via the wayback machine.
Audio Anarchy is a project for transcribing anarchist books into audio format.
Hopefully, this can help make anarchist texts and ideas more accessable. Beyond the obvious appeal for people who don't like to read (or don't have time to read in this busy on-the-go world), hearing a book read aloud can also be enjoyable.
The Audio Anarchy project is organized in a distributed way. Instead of having a single person or group of people read an entire book, different people read separate chapters to distribute the work load. Ideally, this site will do more to help facilitate that kind of organization in the future.
The group made seven albums, a selection of essays by Emma Goldman, a collection of short speeches called the Anarchist tension by Alfredo Bonanno, Against the Logic of Submission by Wolfi Landstreicher, Thoughts on Society of the Spectacle -which isn't a direct reading its a reading of a selection of passages from Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle with the readers explaining what they read and giving some practical examples- Days of War, Nights of Love a publication by the American anarchist group Crimethinc. A selection of Anti work essays from several authors including George Woodcock, and the groups last production was Fredy Perlman's novel Letters of Insurgents.
They also developed a side project called Radio Anarchy, which was four original recordings by the group on several subjects, the history of the concept of property, a biographical recounting of Hitchhiking through the USA, a critique of democracy and technology.
Quite an impressive list to be honest, and quite useful. I made several of them into videos for YouTube and kept meaning to get around to the rest of them, its a good thing I did because it meant I kept checking on the site every once in a while.
The site lasted from 2002 until the winter of 2018, in its sixteen years of existence it had over a million overall downloads, but that number doesn't account for downloads via the torrents, Days of War Nights of Love was still active when I checked and I was able to kickstart several others with the audio files I downloaded, unfortunately some of the torrents used different version so unless another seed logs on they won't work. The group also sold CD's of their recordings so their reach extended even further.
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