A Dialog on Primitivism
Lawrence Jarach interviews John Zerzan

There are many prejudiced caricatures and objections concerning primitivism; for example that its proponents want to go "back to the Stone Age," or that any move away from industrial capitalism would result in an immediate mass die-off of thousands-if not millions-of humans. These dismissals showcase a lack of seriousness on the part of anti-primitivists, and their refusal to engage in any kind of substantial dialog around the issues of the origins of capitalism and the various mechanisms of social control and domination. While understandable coming from non-anarchists (who are engaged in promoting one or another form of domination and exploitation), such a knee-jerk reaction from anarchists and antiauthoritarians is cause for concern. Can it really be the case that the issues of industrialization, urbanism, centralized technologies, and the furthering of hierarchical power relations that arise from these phenomena are off-limits to anarchist discourse?

As far as I can tell, most primitivists only want to go back as far as the Iron Age. As for the supposed mass die-off, this devastation wouldn't touch the majority of people in the non- and semi-industrial areas of Asia, Africa, and South America, who are already experiencing mass starvation and death. People in these places are suffering and dying at the hands of the current regimes of austerity imposed by the International Monetary Fund, and occasionally backed up by US/UN military force. Then there's the overproduction and exporting of cash crops (with its disruption of traditionally sustainable land use and agriculture, and the reliance on petro-chemical fertilizers and genetically engineered seed) to offset government debts. The idea that these areas need to become even more industrialized in order to "save" their populations from starvation and mass death is the self-serving position of the brains behind the World Bank, IMF, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, etc. It is appalling that many anarchists seem to believe the assumptions and conclusions of these technocrats, bankers, and capitalists.

In order to clarify some of the misunderstandings about primitivism, I initiated this dialog with John Zerzan, considered by many to be the main theoretician and spokesperson of anarcho-primitivism, one of the newest trends within antiauthoritarianism.

Lawrence Jarach: There are many ecologically minded anarchists these days, from Social Ecologists to Green Anarchists, to Earth Firsters, to primitivists. It seems that there are many areas of overlapping concerns and analyses, but also differences in terms of strategies for promoting these visions of a better future. Green anarchists for example, seem to take their strategic cue from the direct action wing of Earth First!, while not necessarily espousing the EF! ideas of neo-Malthusianism. Primitivism, on the other hand, seems to be a more theoretical perspective, celebrating (critically, of course) the pre-civilization 99% of human existence when there was no state or any other institutionalized forms of political power. Social Ecology, as articulated by Murray Bookchin, seems to emphasize the rational ability of humans to intervene ethically and wisely in the natural world, while leaving much of the industrial base of modern capitalism untouched aside from some sort of federated quasi-syndicalist self-management. Social Ecologists take the existence of urban industrialism for granted, while primitivist discourse rejects the inevitability of it. Social Ecologists build on the assumptions of leftism (which has social control as one of its foundational principles) and their analyses and strategies for social change come from it. My sense is that primitivism is a critical and analytical framework, while green anarchists engage in actions that make sense from that framework. Would it be correct to say that while all social ecologists are leftists, not all green anarchists are primitivists? What are the differences as you understand them?

John Zerzan: Yes, all social ecologists seem to embrace not only mass production and highly developed technology, but also the division of labor and domestication that undergird them and drive them forward to new levels of standardization and estrangement. Social ecology is perhaps the last refuge of the left, as "green" awareness necessarily spreads. But it is also true that green anarchists may actually hold onto some of the same basic institutions. I'm referring to those who explicitly reject the "primitivist" point of view. To me primitivism (and I use the term reluctantly, as shorthand, hoping it does not harden into an ideology or dogma) means questioning and rejecting such basic institutions as division of labor and domestication. Green Anarchist (U.K.) is very clearly primitivist, rejecting civilization and its basis, agriculture (domestication). The founding editor of Green Anarchy (U.S.), on the other hand, is a green anarchist but not a primitivist. He has no problem with domestication.

What I fear, as the new movement develops, is the age-old enemy, co-optation or recuperation. Green anarchism sounds good, it's the coming thing, but it may be too vague or flabby. What does it really mean? How far do green anarchists want to go, see the need to go? What institutions does Green Anarchism place off-limits to critique, that are not part of the deepening crisis?

LJ: The first and seemingly main objection thrown at a primitivist outlook is that "millions will die immediately" whether through starvation or genocide, if the state and industrial civilization were dismantled. How do you respond to this accusation?

JZ: Civilization has always told people that they can't survive without its comforts and protections. Outside the city walls lie danger, chaos, death. We've always been held hostage to civilization, which is not to forget that billions of people now inhabit the planet. Perhaps the key word in your question is "immediately." In other words, if the whole prevailing apparatus vanished instantly somehow, millions probably would die. (Many have died and continue to die untimely deaths under the present system, by the way.)

The key is in how a changeover would come about. Perhaps the only way it could happen is when most people decide that change needs to happen, and thus become involved in making it happen. When/if this occurs, a transition would be creatively undertaken in the interests of those involved. Not in an instant, but as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

Briefly, one specific example is a new paradigm for food. The work of Mollison and, even more, Fukuoka, for instance, show that a great deal of vegetables can be grown in very small areas. This method not only avoids the great energy waste of global transportation, storage, etc., but can move in anti-domestication directions. Fukuoka's "no-work" approach reminds me of the Johnny Appleseed story, which certainly also had anti-private property implications.

LJ: The line that civilizers throw at the rest of us concerning survival reminds me of the same line that technocrats throw at the rest of us about so-called labor-saving devices freeing up our time so that it can be used for more interesting and fun things. In fact, all these devices have made it possible for the workers operating them to increase their productive output for the same wage as before the introduction of the device. The "labor-saving" is on the boss's side: he can save on the wage-labor he has to expend, thereby increasing his profits. It's the typical authoritarian lie: "this is for your own good." Do you think it would be possible to invent a device that actually would be time-saving and still be acceptable for technophobes or primitivists?

JZ: I recall someone with Fifth Estate asserting, about 20 years ago, that there simply is no "labor-saving device." Basically meaning that when any machine or device is deconstructed, it can be seen to contain more congealed or required labor than is actually "saved" by its use. This would include all kinds of hidden inputs, such as storage, transportation, marketing, etc. I've never heard this assertion refuted.

For me, however, it is not so much whether or not there is a saving, work-wise, as whether or not division of labor is involved. If division of labor destroys wholeness, autonomy, non-hierarchy, that is more important. In fact, it may be that only non-division-of-labor devices (like a lever or incline) are actually labor-saving.

LJ: The critique of civilization and technology leads to some interesting ideas from a philosophical and even epistemological perspective. For example the conclusion that you have drawn concerning the process of symbolic thought (language, music, numbers, art): that it results in domestication, and that it is domestication of plants and animals that then leads to civilization, which in turn would be impossible without institutionalized hierarchies and political power. Yet clearly we cannot reject the use of language or music or other forms of symbolic thought today. Does a critique necessitate a rejection? I don't like automobiles or computers, but I have one of each. Because I have a critique of their manufacture and use within the parameters of 21st century American industrial capitalism, does that mean that I can't use them? If I didn't have the critique, would I be "off the hook" in terms of my responsibility for the continuation of their hegemony?

JZ: As for how to dismantle symbolic culture itself, all I can say is that first the topic needs to be addressed. It hasn't been yet, so let's start there. But a critique does mean a rejection, otherwise it's just talk, just more accommodation to what is. In the same vein, people may deny that a problem exists; but this may turn out later to have been an unforgivable failure of moral imagination. History has judged, over and over, that for subsequent generations, ignorance and denial do not excuse the complicity inherent in doing nothing. Acquiescence to slavery, Nazi ascendancy, and Stalinist terror are only three of many recent examples. A lot of contemporary authors present a near-complete indictment, only to cop out at the very end. Any number of books say, in effect, "Naturally, I don't advocate actually dismantling the present society. I just mean that we have to think about it differently." Or some similar inconsequential nonsense. That's how people get published.

LJ: I see your point about the relation of critique to rejection. And I have no problem with the idea that should the industrial infrastructure become unusable, I'd have to turn to alternate modes of transportation and communication. In the meantime, does it make sense to use the technologies that exist in order to spread these critiques? I'm thinking about the new website primitivism.com which, upon first hearing the term, sounds totally absurd. Yet the site contains the best essays on the topic I've seen in one place, plus there's a discussion board where the assumptions of primitivism are challenged and refined. You and I have had already had discussions about using radio and television. Where, if at all, do we draw the line of not using what we might consider to be the most destructive technologies? Is it up to each of is to decide? And wouldn't this drawing of the line create a moral hierarchy in terms of ranking the worst technologies?

JZ: We are all complicit in the reproduction of society. We all live in it, not on some other planet or in a gatherer-hunter mode. So I am generally wary about feeling able to establish priorities about the use of technologies.

But I'm not sure a "moral hierarchy" is involved in trying to avoid being completely arbitrary about it, on the other hand. In other words, various technologies have different characteristics which make some more estranging than others. Some are more mediated, artificial, and remote. Radio is less colonizing than TV, I would say. Non-commercial cable-access TV does not have all the negatives that network television does. There are some obvious distinctions, even if one could argue that at times other factors might override them. Perhaps, for example, an urgent need to communicate with a lot of people in a given situation.

I guess this tends to get into the knotty question of media, related but somewhat different. If we conclude that we need to use certain technologies so as not to be at a severe disadvantage, we should remember what they consist of and not forget to make such analysis clear. Who else tries to discuss the nature of technology and its consequences?

LJ: There are things about modern civilization that are indispensable for the continuation of urban existence-sewage treatment for example. Is a primitivist vision at all compatible with urban life? Does it necessitate the abandonment of cities? What about people who want to live in cities, and who could (hypothetically) be able to develop an anarchic method of controlling and maintaining urbanism without the more unsavory aspects of it? (I'm thinking here of the anarcho-syndicalist tradition specifically.) Would green anarchists denounce and/or oppose this hypothetical anti-hierarchical, antiauthoritarian urbanism as incompatible with a truer anarchic vision? And if so, how would that not be an ideological objection? I guess what I'm getting at here is that there seems to be in primitivism (as a theory) and green anarchism (as its practice) just as much danger of ideological rigidity and dogmatism as in any other theory. Are there any possibilities for transitional stages between urbanism and primitivism? If not, doesn't that make primitivism maximalist, with all the inherent moralism of a maximalist program?

JZ: I want to live in a city at present, for various reasons. Language, art, etc. are also interesting, even indispensable given the present conditions. But in a disalienated world would these compensations or consolations be necessary or interesting? "The Case Against Art," for instance, does not really bash art; it is mainly an exploration of how art arrived, along with alienation. The corollary question, again, is whether art's role will always be needed.

Getting back to the city, think of all the negative developments that bring cities into existence. What are they for? Commerce, rule, taxation, specialization, etc., etc. Take those away and where's the city? The things that sustain a city are still part of the problem. Maybe in its place we'll see fluid sites of festival, reunion, play. Who knows?

The challenge of an anti-civilization transition is a very real, serious one. It won't be effected by snapping our fingers or making absolutist judgments about what must be.

There is also the danger of temporizing, of half-measures, of being co-opted. An old line says that those who make half a revolution only dig their own graves, only strengthen the hold of the old society. The change needs to be qualitative, decisive, pursued with all possible speed and resolve. There is a danger of merely re-forming the basic system by changing only some of it, and thus not breaking its hold over life.

LJ: I met a guy at the North American Anarchist Conference who's diabetic. As he was testing his blood-sugar level with a computerized monitor, someone snidely asserted to me that this guy would be dead if it weren't for "technology." Aside from the totally uncritical acceptance of the insulated and arrogant ideology and healing modality of allopathic medicine as represented by the American Medical Association, this does bring up a pertinent question. Are there any good things that have come out of civilization? Advances in medicine for example? Without the advances in fiberoptics, my father probably would have died from his heart attack, like my grandfather. That particular medical application derived from the seemingly unrelated technology of communications, which probably wouldn't have advanced to that point if it weren't for its military applications. Outside of the necessity for self-preservation and self-replication of institutions of power and knowledge, have there been any tangible benefits for humans? Longer life-expectancy, sanitation (clean water being the best example of that), the ability to communicate with more people...it would seem that none of these things would be available in such so-called abundance (if we can afford to buy them) if not for the existence of civilization. On the other hand, whatever technological so-called benefits have accrued to people outside the institutions that create them have been either incidental or accidental.

JZ: I suppose most everyone is hopeful about such things as "advances in medicine." Fredy Perlman no doubt hoped that he would survive his last heart surgery in 1985.

On the other hand, we can also see that the technological system always promises solutions to problems it has created. "Just a little more technological advance and all will be fine." What a lie that is, and has been from the beginning.

Stress, toxins, isolation, the sheer magnitude of alienation bring such a multiplicity of dis-ease. Epidemic cancer, tens of millions on anti-depressants just to get through the day, alarming rates of health-threatening obesity, new "mystery" illnesses all the time (such as fibromyalgia, with no known cause), millions of kids under five drugged into compliance with this empty world. The list could go on and on.

We have always been held captive by civilization, in various ways. At some point the captivity may not seem worth it to most people, as life, health, freedom, authenticity continue to dwindle away.

LJ: When you were in LA, and on the tour you had of parts of Europe and the East Coast, were there any questions that people asked you that made you think about some of the assumptions that you took for granted? Did any experiences prod you to think about the distinguishing characteristics of primitivism/green anarchy? What was the worst experience on your travels? The best? JZ: I frankly don't remember being challenged all that much, maybe because primitivist theses are a novelty to so many people. The main opposition came from anarcho-leftists, often desperate in their defense of the old anarchism, the failed, superficial, workerist, productionist model. I didn't hear anything new in their protestations, except, in their defensiveness, evidence that they are losing and know it.

The turnouts were good, the range of questions good, and I sensed a receptiveness to new ideas. In fact, the main hit I got overall was the awareness that something new is needed. I didn't have any negative experiences, really.

LJ: What are the main objections (and their shortcomings) to primitivism that derive from "old anarchism"? How are they different from the non-anarchist protestations? You told me about a Social Ecologist at the talk you gave at Yale, where she stood up, denounced primitivism and you, then stormed out of the room-effectively shutting down any possibility of discussion, heated or otherwise. Is condemnation like that typical of the interactions you have with anarcho-leftists?

JZ: Classical anarchism is a fixed body of ideas that is not fully informed by the conditions of contemporary society. The plight of both outer nature and inner nature has worsened hugely, in my opinion, since the 19th century. Thus we are led to question what used to be givens, question and indict some basic institutions that seem to be at the root of our present extremity.

Anarchism, insofar as it wants to remain part of the left, does not appear to want such questioning. It may be that non-anarchists are more open to new perspectives than dogmatic "old anarchists." Hope I'm wrong, but Social Ecologists, [and] various leftist anarchists seem quite closed to examining basics like division of labor, domestication, technology, civilization.

Taken from issue 51 of Anarchy AJDA

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