Anarchism is normal. It is hierarchy and the exploitation of nature that is odd.
Since losing my faith in progressive politics, I’ve been reading a fair bit of anthropology trying to get to grips with the roots of the current environmental mess. One of the more remarkable things I’ve discovered is that the political ideology widely regarded as the most radical, utopian and frankly dangerous is, in fact, the most tried-and-tested, long-lasting and successful.
Humanity has been organised for the majority of its existence along lines that are best described as a form of deep green, egalitarian anarchism. Based on extensive analysis of the archeological record and what we know of the lifestyles of present-day hunter-gatherer communities, anthropologists are pretty much in consensus that homo sapiens has spent most of its time on this planet living in small self-governing groups with little or no economic stratification based mostly on subsistence foraging with a relatively small impact on the environment.
And when I say ‘most of its time’, I really mean most. The way we live now in profoundly hierarchical societies based very heavily on the generation of vast amounts of surplus goods(i.e. stuff beyond what we need to survive and reproduce) is very recent. The deep green anarchist model existed since modern humans first evolved around 250,000 years ago. By contrast, our current mode emerged gradually before the first recognisably ‘civilised’ settlements appeared around 10,000 years ago and then, for a long period of time, only in select areas.
In short, our current hierarchical, surplus-driven lifestyle has been a significant feature of some human societies for around 5% of our existence as a species and a significant feature of nearly all human society (i.e. since the conquest of the New World) for approximately 0.2%. The more recent intensification of that lifestyle, since the agricultural and industrial revolutions, has been around for just 0.1% of our species’ existence and a genuinely global phenomenon for just 0.02%.
Many may shrug their shoulders at that fact. All it goes to prove is that deep green anarchism is a ‘primitive’ way of life that hung around until humans, with their uniquely superior intelligence, had had enough time to develop something far better. Yes, our current mode of existence is relatively short-lived but it spans a time that has seen the flowering of human civilisation with all its innovation, social complexity and scientific understanding.
There are, however, two big problems with that perspective. Problems that should lead us to question whether deep green, anarchist principles can be dismissed quite as easily as they usually are.
The first problem is that for the great majority of that ‘civilised’ existence, life probably wasn’t better for the bulk of humanity than it was for our foraging ancestors. The osteological evidence is pretty clear that the average agricultural worker had a worse diet, was much more prone to infectious and parasitic disease (a painfully topical finding) and died younger than your average forager.
On top of that, those agricultural workers had to contend with the subjection heaped on them by a ruthless, usually violent, elite who required them to hand over the surplus goods they generated, or their equivalent value, so the elite could fund lives of ostentatious leisure, build monuments to themselves and regularly fight wars against other ruthless elites. An indignity to which subsistence foragers were not subjected — in large part because there was no surplus to hand over. There is also evidence — although less conclusive — that women and children had greater equality and freedom in foraging communities than in agricultural society.
To be clear, I am not suggesting, as some do, that life in foraging communities was some sort of utopia. It wasn’t. But the evidence does suggest that, on the whole, the life of the average forager was decidedly preferable to that of an agricultural slave, serf or peasant.
OK, says our detractor, but since the agricultural and industrial revolutions, things have got way better. The average global income is now ten times higher than it was a couple of hundred years ago — twenty to thirty times higher in the advanced economies. Modern public health and medical practices have massively enhanced longevity and physical well-being. Publicly funded education is widespread and, in a large part of the world, people get to kick out political elites once every four or five years.
But this is where the second problem comes in. Even if we accept that the latest iteration of civilisation is arguably better than the foraging lifestyle, climate change alters the whole comparative calculation. Those improvements on a previously grim agricultural existence have been literally funded by a massive intensification of the generation and consumption of surplus goods resulting from the rise of modern industry. The huge wealth required to lift billions out of poverty and pay for all the expensive development and adoption of innovations in public health, medicine, education etc was simply unavailable until the explosion of economic growth since the mid-eighteenth century. An explosion that has been bought with the extensive use of fossil fuels and a wide range of other intensified exploitations of the natural world that have led to climate change, deforestation, ocean acidification and massive species extinction.
In short, we are destroying our natural environment in an effort to haul ourselves out of an older, grimmer way of life that was significantly inferior to an even older way of life that was not environmentally destructive. And the better way of life we have created for ourselves is, in fact, now very likely to get far worse precisely because of the environmental destruction we have wrought in achieving it. Will we in fifty years time still be able to say with any confidence that our modern civilisation is a clear advance on the far, far more enduring world of the forager?
Where does this leave us? At the very least, it should lead to the acknowledgement that deep green anarchism is not some weird, unsustainable set of ideas and practices. In fact, in historical terms, the weird and, as it turns out, unsustainable set of ideas and practices are the ones we cleave to right now. Egalitarian anarchism is rooted in our deepest history; it is, in that sense, the truest form of conservativism — everything that has emerged since is radical, experimental and increasingly dangerous.
But, and it’s a big but, humanity is self-evidently not about to return to the life of our foraging forebears. We clearly don’t have the will. Even if we had the will, we don’t have the necessary skills. And even if we had the will and skills, we no longer have the natural environment to support a return to such a way of life — certainly not for eight billion people.
In that sense, it is fair to say that deep green anarchism as a universal project is, under the circumstances we have created for ourselves, now impossible. But this is to be lamented not just forgotten as though it were some ideological footnote. Instead, we need to ask ourselves, as we stand on the eve of climate catastrophe, what we are going to do about it.
Should humanity, at least, try to approximate, however imperfectly, the anarchism of our not-so-distant ancestors? If that can’t happen, should we as individuals opt out of our surplus-driven hierarchies and exploitation of nature and embrace, instead, a life closer to that of our ancestors? Or maybe we need to recognise that the moment to make such a shift is not now but when climate catastrophe finally strikes and the civilisation we have built becomes untenable in part or whole?
I will try and address some of these questions in future posts when I’ve had time to think about them. It could be a while!
