5 20 90 https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/25d2a53b15afcd5de40afc43ffff2826.pdf f4ec86397788c8e5164df2c4e3b701db PDF Text Text ---'--A-— ori exrif(paring- mm : / A ' ■ ?./. 2073 WAR AND PEACE IV: TAO AND DEEP-GREEN flAClF/Stf Taoism and deep-green environmental theory, although closely aligned on very many issues, diverge over war. For Taoism, by contrast for instance with Buddhism, is not a pacific doctrine, but is committed to skilful defensive militarism. While it does not espouse a fortress mentality, Taoism certainly condones limited defensive military operations for specific purposes, a sort of guerilla warfare. By contrast, deep-green theory, while acknowledging the role of organised social defence, stands opposed to professional militarism, and thereby to military defence, and is committed to a principled pacifism. Conveniently a route through Taoism, philosophically fascinating in its own right, will lead us to problems of pacifism and towards deep-green theory. 1. Features of a Taoist critique of war and militarism. War did not receive a favourable press in ancient Chinese philosophy. Generally aggression and war were to be avoided. Even Confucius imposed very demanding conditions: for example, ‘when good men have instructed the people [in morals, agriculture, military tactics] for seven years, they may be allowed to bear arms,’ ‘If a ruler ... does not set himself right, even his commands will not be obeyed’ (SB p.41, italics added). Mo Tzu went much further than Confucius, roundly condemning war - on utilitarian grounds, that war yields no net benefit at any level (SB p.227). What is more, he backed his heavy condemnation practically (unlike some conspicuous contemporary theoretical utilitarians); ‘he did not hesitate to walk for ten days and ten nights in an effort to dissuade a ruler from making war’ (SB p.212). But none, it is said, went as far, in a detailed and sophisticated criticism of war, as Lao Tzu; ‘none has condemned war more strongly than Lao Tzu’. ‘[T]he opposition of Taoism to the use of force is well-known, and the most bitter attack on militarism if found in the Lao Tzu' (Chan, p.154, p.17.) But, after that splendid build-up, the text is slightly disappointing. Lao Tzu does not assert outright that war is an abomination, or even roundly condemn it. His critique of war, militarism, and military technology, is subtle and oblique, and, on the surface, far distanced from pacifism. For he does not recommend an end to war - in that genuine Taoists, those who possess Tao, will never participate in them - but expects wars to continue as unavoidable evils. Worse, he even goes so far as to outline proper attitudes to war and conduct in war, and indeed to suggest military techniques and strategies, some of which look decidedly devious. Among the classical works of Taoism, we focus on the Lao Tzu because, by contrast with other works, a remarkable component of that book is devoted to war and militarism. The apparent deviousness of the tactics Lao Tzu allocates serves to highlight what has been seen as ‘the most troublesome element’ in his philosophy (Chan p.17) - not so much however because they concern military operations, but because they are taken to apply much �2 dispensation? Why should what is not tolerated more generally be exonerated there? But given that Taoism has here the virtue of consistency (i.e. uniformity on principles) and of universalizability, that simply leaves more explaining to be done. • Puzzles for Taoism, and wars as unavoidable evils There are two puzzles here in Taoism rather than one. There is the military-practices paradox, and, varying and generalising on that, there are life-practices paradoxes. The special paradox is generated by the following incompatible elements: on the one side, ‘the most bitter attack on militarism’, the well-known opposition of Taoism to the use of force (p. 17) and to the possession and use of smart military weapons and technology - implying that war is far from all right - and on the other, advocacy of certain (devious) military tactics, outlines of (deceitful) conduct in war, and so on - implying that war is all right after all. A straightforward generalisation of this paradox would look at other morally-sensitive parts of life, where some practice was strongly condemned yet engaged in (for many examples, see the dilemmas assembled in MD). But the variation of concern to Chan and the neo-Confucians concerns the conjunction of upright with devious practices in life, in particular in the life of the sage. For a Taoist sage is presumed to lead an upright straightforward life, yet appears to engage in devious and even deceitful practices incompatible with such a life-style. Call this the Taoist-lifestyle paradox. Evidently a good deal of explaining is required, as to how Taoism can coherently take the positions it appears to presume, both on war and peace, and on life more generally. A desirable preliminary would seem to be a little investigation of what position A taken, especially on war and militarism. One key pasage runs: Fine weapons are instruments of evil They are hated by creatures Therefore those who possess the Tao turn away from them.... Weapons are instruments of evil, not the instruments of a good ruler. When he uses them unavoidably, he regards calm restraint as the best principle Even when he is victorious, he does not regard it as praiseworthy, For to praise victory is to delight in the slaughter of men. He who delights in the slaughter of men will not succeed in the empire. ... For a victory, let us observe the occasion with funeral-ceremonies (LT p.154). Wars, which involve the use of weapons, instruments of evil, are accordingly themselves evil. They are also evil because they involve the slaughter of men. But they are also sometimes unavoidable (also p. 152). Therefore such wars are unavoidable evils. Such discourse, obtained by almost immediate inference from the passage, is within the standard orbit of dilemma talk. But Taoism lacks, through deliberately eschewing deontic talk, the discourse which enables direct expression of such dilemmas, or even direct condemnation of wars or of clever weapons. Instead the points are made by circumlocution, what the possesser of Tao does, how the good ruler conducts himself, or by analogy, of victory in war with death. �3 Unavoidable evils are the very stuff of deontic dilemmas (though many theories, underpinned by shonky logic, lack the resources for representing this stuff properly). Where something is unavoidably evil, it is both bad, because evil, and also not bad, doing it is excusable, because it is unavoidable. So, given such an argument (which has its weaknesses), an unavoidable evil is a genuinely dilemmatic object with inconsistent features. Certain wars have looked, since ancient times, like such dilemmatic objects. Revealingly, Chan tries to explain that ‘most troublesome element’ in Taoism, the military-practice paradox, through the following exercise in lateral thinking: It can ... be argued that Lao Tzu uses warfare to illustrate his principles of taking no action and weakness because warfare is among the most dynamic and critical of human experiences, just as the Indian classic, the Bhagavadgita chooses fighting as the theme on which to discuss the terrible dilemma whether one should fulfil his duty, as in the case of a soldier, and kill, or should fail in his duty and refrain from killing (p. 17). ‘Just as’? The Indian classic prevents a classic moral dilemma, a dilemma represented in contemporary philosophy (following its rediscovery by Sartre), where there are incompatible duties: the duty to kill, because of one's role as a soldier, and the duty not to kill, because of one's human condition, and the supervenient dilemma of failing in and fulfilling one's duties. These dilemmas for an individual (male, as it then was) are replicated in dilemmas regarding war for group institutions: at bottom, the obligation to engage in war (for one set of compelling reasons) as contraposed with the obligation not to engage in war (for another, perhaps overlapping, set of reasons). A theory of moral dilemmas (as worked out for example in MD) is crucial for an adequate treatment of major issues in war and peace, especially (as will become evident) for a viable strong pacifism. But Taoism, eschewing deontic discourse, lacks the apparatus to state or develop moral dilemmas. Hence it is logically excluded from giving a full or adequate account of what is going on conceptually. One of the philosophically fascinating feature of Taoism is the fashion in which it manages to avoid deontic discourse, and to substitute for direct deontic discourse or improvise circumlocutions when deontic discourse would otherwise appear inevitable (cf. UT for examples). But there are costs. One is inability to display the mechanism of deontic dilemmas, or to show what reasons and argument lie behind Taoist prounouncements and conclusions (the shortage of Taoism on argument is another philosophically conspicious feature, also observed in UT). As conceptual apparatus for analysizing moral dilemmas is missing, most of the machinery involved has to be passed over. Only the outcomes, as Taoism sees them, are presented, as if from a black box. Taoism blacks out the story on deontic dilemmas that deep-green theory can tell, as the following diagram tries to show: Diagrams . Charting the processing of deontic dilemmas that are "resolved”. �4 Deep-green chart: dilemma input Arguments to incompatible prescriptions -> Processing of dilemma, directive situational procedures output Corresponding Taoist chart: Black directive Box output input It is evident that Taoism can be extended', information can be put into the Black Box rendering it less opaque. That extension can be made so as to conform to deep-green theory, i.e. so that the extended Taoist chart, a neo-Daoist chart, looks like the deep-green one. That is indeed essentially how neo-Daoism get characterised, in terms of conformity of the extension to deep ecological theory (see UT). We are now placed to explain how to dissolve, or at least neutralize, the paradoxes deriving from repudiation of militarism, an awkwardly qualified repudiation in the case of Taoism. In a significant sense there is no resolving of genuine deontic dilemmas. The principles delineating the fix may stand, incompatible, signalling the persisting suboptimality (or better, sublimenality) of the dilemmatic situation. Where there is a dilemma, involved parties should try to do well enough in the sublimenal circumstances (for a much fuller account, see MD). Thus where there is a war, itself a non-Taoist process, engaged or caught up Taoists will not abandon Taoism. Taoist methods will be applied, Taoist strategies pursued. So much for theoretical representation and (non-)resolution of life-practices and other dilemmas, details of which are readily elaborated in deep-green extensions of Taoism. A prior substantive issue is whether dilemmas always are generated: not whether wars are evil (typically they are, an issue we shall come to), but whether wars are unavoidable. Analysis of wars does not bear that familiar claim out decisively. Many wars could have been avoided, through conciliation, negotiation, restraint, etc., and no worse results apparently obtained, through sanctions, exchange, trade, etc. Through a typology of wars (coming up) that conjecture can be given some substance. Consider, for instance, what would be walk-overs. Then there is little point in making a military response. So war can be avoided. Certainly an occupation, to be met in a different way, may still occur. And so on, perhaps, for various other types of war. But, more generally, try this:Every war involves an aggressor, who makes an aggressive move. Such an aggressor could always avoid that move, taking a different (or a do-nothing) course of action. Therefore, �5 every war can be avoided. No war is entirely unavoidable. Setting aside determinism (which renders all actual wars along with all other events unavoidable), it could be argued that a war sometimes simply boils up, without an aggressor, an intensification of a conflagatory situation. There are grounds for scepticism regarding such examples; for such intensification can only occur if provocative military moves are made, for instance troops are stationed in provocative or risky positions. The presumption that certain wars are unavoidable typically derives from a one-sided perspective on war, a defender's perspective. A defender has no option, so it is routinely averred, but to respond to a determined aggressor. Even if that should be so sometimes, when there is no running away or going underground, it does not establish that such a war is unavoidable; for it neglects the role of the aggressor. By a smarter formulation, relevant features of unavoidability can be captured. Although wars may not be unavoidable, defensive action in wars that have been initiated may be unavoidable. At least such action may be unavoidable if unacceptably high costs (death, enslavement, etc.) are not to be avoided. Thereupon another highly relevant feature emerges: the linkage of avoidability to costs. For whether an action is unavoidable then depends upon what costs a party is prepared to incur before and when insisting on action: but this appears entirely unacceptable. How can what is “unavoidable” cease to be so when some further costs are absorbed? However with basics like survival, a certain liberty, and so on, we do reach such bounds. An important type of unavoidability. We also reach scenarios, unavailable to Lao Tzu but kindly brought within range by modem technology, which may appear to justify aggressive strikes. State Z, while not an aggressor, is carrying out practices which will impose unacceptably high costs upon peoples of other states and implacably refuses to desist. It could, for example, be poisoning air or water flowing to other states. But ,to make the case vivid, let us suppose that state Z is constructing, for reasons Zeders find convincing (they are committed to a faith which depicts all humans as incorrigible sinners and unworthy of life), an effective doomsday machine. Would an (aggressive) preemptory strike designed to disable or destroy the machine be unavoidable?1 In a sense, No; in another Yes. For different modalities can operate. Physically outsiders need to do nothing, but watch Zeders go about their zealous work. But deontically they are under heavy moral pressure, because of the costs of standing by idly: if the human race is worth anything very substantial, then they are obliged to act, action is deontically unavoidable. Here is a situation where a proposed reduction of deontic logic proves illuminating. Obligation is explicated through not implying, or necessitating, the sanction, i.e. 1 Whether it would be justifiable, or just, are separate issues. But it is evident enought that such scenarios further damage the obsolescent idea of just war. For, according to received doctrine, a just war is defensive. (How such a war can be fought at all is another matter; coherence requires relativization to ‘just war for party d’.) �6 excessive ethical costs such as extermination. Let us explain deontic unavoidability analogously: an action is so unavoidable if not undertaking it would result in excessive ethical costs. Then if it can be established that there is no other way than a military strike, an act of war, to ensure that the Zeders desist (and certainly we can envisage scenarios like that), then that is deontically unavoidable. It is also dilemmatic for those committed to, or inclined towards pacifism; and it is, for them at least, but paradoxically justifiable, as the negation is also justifiable, on pacific grounds. Scenarios like that sketched, that appear to render certain wars deontically unavoidable require but little or no elaboration to render them evil. Evil indeed is such a standard feature of standard wars that at least its great presence call for little supporting evidence. But it has taken to vast stretch of human history to reach this general point of recognition. The manifold evils of war Lao Tzu very early recognised and emphasized: Wherever armies are stationed, briars and thorns grow. Great wars are always followed by famines (p.152). And nowadays followed by great tides of refugees. This passage includes not only recognition of the widely-observed socio-environmental consequences of war, but, more striking, very early recognition of the severe environmental impact of military forces. That critique is not however developed in Taoism.2 Only recently has it been pushed substantially further. And only recently could a new, most significant twist occur, the merging of resource security, long a military objective, with environmental security. The appalling idea has recently been floated that the military, in need of new work and roles with the apparent warming of West-East relations and cooling of the Cold War, should exchange usual military idleness for meddling in environmental matters: regulation and policing of environmental resources, ensurance of environmental security of powerful states, and similar. This is a bit like reassigning those imprisoned for child abuse to managing kindergartens; for consider the impressive military record of environmental vandalism. What the military is alleged to offer is a structure appropriate and available for handling such matters. But, to the contrary, it is precisely the sort of hierarchical, authoritarian expensive structure that should be wound down and up as soon as the opportunity appears, as (briefly) now, rather than being retained and shockingly reoriented (as a state-serving “Greenwar”). 2. On the divergence of deep-green from Taoism. Having arrived, by better or worse arguments, at the conclusion that wars, though 2 But a bridge to deep-green theory can be made through neo-Daoism, an updating of Taoism in confirmity with deep ecology (which however is somewhat thin and threadbare on war; for what there is so far, see Naess p. 160). On neo-Daoism, sec UT. �7 generally evil, may be sometimes unavoidable, it is evidently important to say something about how they - those of the theoretical residue - are to be conducted. By appropriate conduct the damage they do may be reduced; also the conduct should be appropriate to the funereal nature of wars (to exceed Taoist resources for stating this sort of point). It is at this stage that deep­ green theory begins to diverge from Taoism. In further explaining the Taoist and deep-green critiques of war, and diverting objections to them, a rough and preliminary typology of wars is important. It is also of passing interest in its own philosophical right. War, according to English Dictionaries, is a ‘contest carried on by force of arms, typically between nations or states’. More exactly, war is a game - in the generous technical sense of game-theory, with players, rules, goals, strategies, and so on carried on in significant part by military means, normally between states or substates. Call the contestants, (warring) parties. They typically represent of course larger populations. The set­ up between parties resembles the arrangements of players in game theory. There are several analogical extensions of the term war to cover games where one of the parties is an object, construed as hostile (an enemy of the state), such as Crime, Drugs, Poverty or Nature. These we can set aside as analogical wars. Of course wars form only a part of military activities. Military interests and objectives have always stretched significantly further than war, to include surveillence and security, easily extended to resource security, environmental security and life­ style security, and beyond that to political stability and other political matters. Evidently military ambitions have far over-extended themselves in bagging such democratic concerns. An anarchist solution to the whole problem of war, which some have seen Taoism as reaching towards, is immediate: eliminate the source of war, states. Unfortunately it is not quite that simple (and that's not simple). For wars can also occur between nations, cultures, races or tribes (which are not such artifices as states, and not always so readily or desirably abolished), between inhabited regions, and between factions within states (thus civil wars) or, perhaps by extension, between factions within other social structures (thus, for instance, gang wars). But undoubtedly eliminating states and aspiring states would abolish most wars and virtually all the worst wars. While “nonviolent wars” are excluded by definition, by virtue of ‘force of arms’, token wars, limited wars, and so on, are not: for instance, wars fought by small armed teams representing competing sides (cf. medieval and science fiction war games). As wars are hemmed in by conventions and agreed rules, there is no reason in principle why they should not be reduced to two person contests, fought under strict rules like boxing or gladiatorial contests. But in modern times wars have never taken such sensible forms, but have been much larger affairs, making heavy (though fortunately restricted) use of latest technology. Let us distinguish such wars as techno-powered, wars. They have, directly or indirectly (for the technology may be bought or bartered), a heavy research and development support structure (indeed the bulk of contemporary science is devoted - misdirected - in one way or another to �8 this effort). Among wars, an important distinction is that between offensive and defensive wars. An offensive war is one which ventures off a given party's territory or recognised pad, “invading” that of another party or parties; correlatively defensive parties, if they have not also invaded. Force projection typifies offensive practice. Plainly, offensiveness and defensiveness are not strictly features of a war, but of parties to a war. In a two-party war, while both parties can easily act offensively, the possibility of both parties proceeding defensively is excluded, unless they share territory. (Even then issues may arise as to which party, if any, was the aggressor, which started it, was responsible for starting it, and so on.) Thus mutually defensive wars between contemporary states are impossible (but would be possible if states shared territory, e.g. if Eire and Britain shared the territory of Northern Ireland). Tao-accredited wars were defensive wars, never wars aiming at domination: last-resort wars, in which no pride was taken (LTp.152).3 The pretence that offensive wars are defensive is widespread, and reflected in the subterfuge that departments or ministries of war are those of defence, security or whatever. (If they really were what they purport to be, we should be well on the way to an end to war.) Offensive practices are rendered defensive ones by shabby redefinitional strategems, such as redefining ‘defensive’ to include defence of ideals like democracy or liberty, infringed (or allegedly infringed) on territories abroad, or to include “defence” of a third party or place (whence every offensive war is “defensive”). In the present war in which part of Arabia is engulfed (February 1991), one party claims to be defending what really was (or should be) part of its territory, namely Kuwait, another party to be defending (what Kuwait did not enjoy) democracy. It is a doubly offensive war presented in this guise as jointly defensive. Aggressive wars are waged for a variety of reasons, but usually for resources or access to resources or markets, a matter often disguised by appeal to ideology (thus a war for oil is represented as a war of liberation). But there are other reasons than narrowly economic ones, such as religion (as with crusades), power and aggrandisement (as in building an empire), and so on. Nor are those reasons necessarily far separated; ideologies like Marxism and market capitalism, for example, exhibit many of the features of religion. The economic reasons for war appear to have become much more complex with the 3 There is one line in LT that may suggest that attack was sometimes justifiable, namely ‘For deep love helps one to win in the case of attack’ (p.219). But how can compassion be appropriate unless this attack is within a defensive setting, a larger context of unavoidability or such like. A passage shortly below confirms this interpretation: I dare not take the offensive but I take the defensive: I dare not advance an inch but I retreat a foot (p.222). These are advances and attacks within a defensive setting. �9 advent of an integrated world economy. At the same time many of the independent reasons for economic wars are now obsolete. For to powerful states accrue the advantages of war without war. At least most of the former economic advantages of war can be obtained without expensive wars, through trade, institution of economic dependence, etc. Small medieval wars were sometimes instituted for the collection of neighbouring riches and booty, a kind of piracy meeting conditions of war. “Small” contemporary wars can be waged for a remarkable mix of political-economy ends: to establish a regime favourable to economic penetration and profit repatriation, to subjugate markets and to remove competition, to boost a sagging weapons economy by using up old stocks and also testing new equipment, to restart a depressed economy, and so on. Such wars, along with the economic aims which motivate them, are in effect heavily castigated by Lao Tzu: When Tao prevails in the world, galloping horses are turned back to fertilize (the fields ...). When Tao does not prevail in the world, war horses thrive in the suburbs. There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. (LT p. 181). But it does exceed evidential warrant to claim that Tao is not only sufficient, but necessary, for cessation of such practices. The practice of regularly stimulating complex military-saturated economies through war is reminiscent of older, much ridiculed practices in simpler societies. They now ridicule the Tsembaga, who proceeded to destroy much of their surplus product by going to war every 5-15 years (cf Rapaport). But they do not similarly ridicule the most powerful nation on the Earth, the USA, which proceeds to write off a colossal amount of surplus in war every 10-20 years (the Gulf war liquidated some $1.7 billion per day). Taoists would. For ridicule was a favoured method, an important rhetorical strategem, and war and its idiocy were favourite targets. Some classification of defensive wars is also important, for various reasons: reducing and abolishing wars, their costs and damage, restructuring societies away from war and military practices, and, not least, for appreciating Taoism. A main distinction is between • conventional defence, maintained by armies of armed soldiers, many of them professionals, and • social defence, where there are no such armies or but fragments of them, and defence is carried out through social networks of a significant part of society.4 It is here that Taoism and deep-green theory part company. Under Taoism, the state will have a standing army, but a defensive army operating by strange, surprise tactics (p.201). No 4 Details of social defence are presented in Sharp and in Martin. �10 doubt defensive wars are to remain last resort action. Nonetheless the state will operate in secrecy, in a way incompatible with decentralised social defence; people will be kept in the dark about smart weapons of the state; and they too will be surprised, along with presumed enemies of the state. By contrast, under deep-green theory, there should be no hidden smart weapons of state; information would flow more freely and not be hidden from the people (who should retain influence in informed decision making). Under deep-green, standing armies, and more generally military organisation, will be wound down altogether. Taoism should have pushed its searching criticism further. For military objectives, easily acquired by standing armies with time on their hands, are frequently incompatible with Taoism. For example, Taoism is opposed to domination (LT p.152), whereas military operations frequently seek or involve domination; and military structure is invariably hierarchical and authoritarian. Taoism aims for self-regulation, wherever feasible (cf. p.201); so does deep­ green theory, which is one reasons why it aims to dispose of standing armies, as an important preliminary to the withering away of states themselves (military forces being major props of state control and power, and often maintained primarily for internal state security). Taoism has no project for ending the era of wars; deep-green theory does. That project involves an elimination of standing armies, too often poised for fighting or political interference. A recommended route to end war consists in progressive scaling down: reduction of the means and manpower. The initial stages are well-known, and include • elimination of nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry, and • force reduction. It can hardly be pretended that the Earth's states have managed to proceed very far on even this complex of stages. The next stage consists in • contraction to defensive capacities only, and the final stage consists in • elimination of remaining military defensive forces, and adoption, so far as required, of social defence practices. The complete route thus involves complete demilitarisation. Reasons why deep-green aims to proceed the full distance are readily grasped by considering the environmental shallowness of an otherwise cogent traditional case for the sharp curtailment of wars and militarism. The traditional Western case against wars has been primarily along two dimensions: social and moral. Wars are highly disruptive of the social fabric; wars may be unjust. From these joint features, it was argued that wars should be a matter of last resort, to be fought to ensure peace. It was argued further that only just wars should be fought. Just wars were rare objects. But as there was little evidence of the decline and fall of wars, much effort was expended, more practically and unsuccessfully, upon endeavouring to improve the calibre of wars, and more theoretically, upon trying to characterize just war satisfactorily, or rather to bend the notion in an effort to approximate the gory unjust facts. Progress was long hindered, furthermore, because there was always a rival positive perspective on wars, which encouraged the exaltation of wars and military feats. It also �facilitated the transfer of the favourable image of war to other problem areas, whence the long and apparently successful war against Nature (but the short-term successes are turning into long-term problems), the short and unsuccessful war against Poverty, and so on. Behind all this is the complex idea of war as rejuvenating, even cleansing, like fire; of war as heroic, and glorious, of war as the supreme testing ground of men. These pictures of war - finally shattered by the first World War (where even the poets began to tell of horrors and atrocities) and subsequent technological wars - though no longer in ascendency, have by no means vanished. The notion of war as rejuvenating a flagging economy persists, along with the practice of keeping capitalism running smoothly by integrating substantial military components into the industrial engine. With the development of highly technological wars — the celebrated development of the dirty industrial age is substantially military - the traditional negative case has grown in strength. Wars have become much more damaging, with the potential for much more that is significantly worse, and the possibility of a just war has correspondingly contracted, virtually to zero. The opposition to war has likewise grown, but more than correspondingly with the rise of women in social and political influence. Wars have almost always and everywhere been Men's affairs; likewise conquest. Deep-green theory accepts much of the traditional negative case, but would further strengthen it. For example, the stricture against unjust wars, as out and out immoral, can be strengthened, through the following syllogism: All wars should be fully just wars. Modem wars cannot be fully just wars. Therefore, there should be no modern wars. A fully just war is not merely a just war, but a war those just character can be reliably forecast in advance. A modern war is of course a war that deploys modern technology, at least that available this century. The evidential basis for the second premiss derives from much information that collateral damage, damage to innocent bystanders and involved citizens is always likely and cannot be excluded. Such wars are always liable to violate uncontroversial requirements for a just war, even if they are purely “conventional” wars, not throwing radiation or chemical or biological weapons around. From a contemporary viewpoint the traditional doctrine of a just war, really of a just defensive v/ax, is seriously out of date. The reasons for this reach wider than the new features introduced by modem technological wars and the character of modem civilization, with its giant cities littered with dangerous and vulnerable military targets. They have also to do with the chauvinism of the justice proposed, which is shallow human justice, not natural or environmental justice. There is no consideration of justice to other creatures or to the Earth (cf Naess p.160). Two troubles are really intertwined here: conceptual difficulties with too narrow a notion of justice, and ideological difficulties with too narrow a vision of what is an object of �12 value, of what counts. The deep-green case against war adds to the traditional case a further dimension, neglected until very recently: the environmental dimension. It has suddenly been seen that wars are typically environmental atrocities. Earlier, of course, “environments” were simply backgrounds, backdrops in paintings and plays, to the real drama. Contemporary technological wars tend to be not merely social tragedies but environmental ones as well. There is a doctrine of just war, but it is a human chauvinistic affair. There is no similarly developed doctrine of an ecologically sound war, a deep ecological war. Unless any such war were literally different from modern wars, that is from contemporary technological wars, it would overstep permitted bounds. For such wars are characteristically ecological disasters. Hardened military people, desensitized by a rigorous unethical training, feel even less compunction about degrading or destroying environments or members of other species than they do of maiming or killing civilians through “collateral” activity. Matching the no-just-war syllogism is a no-sound-war syllogism: All wars should be environmentally sound wars. Modern wars cannot be environmentally sound. Therefore, there should be no modern wars. The argument for the second premiss has of course to be different. It looks to the information accumulating on what wars do to natural and built environments. The Vietnam and Gulf wars both inflicted immense damage on natural environments or what was left of them. The environmental effects of war are not confined to direct and collateral damage. There are indirect effects also. Thus, for instance, war also supplied the mechanism of, and the technology for, modern environmental destruction: explosives, bulldozers from tanks, etc. As well, training for war and engagement in war have much fostered, along with attitudes that make for social callousness or ruthlessness, those that contribute to environmental insensitivity and cruelty. 3. Puzzles about Taoist strategy and its critiques of technology and violence ‘It is surprising how much of the Lao Tzu is devoted to military strategy’. Which strategies? Surprise, above all. But why such strategies? ‘Do they not contradict the Taoists’ strong opposition to the use of force’ (Chan p.222), the implied commitment to quietism? Briefly, Taoism is not committed to quietism, and while certainly antagonistic to violence, does not oppose certain uses of force (only really z7/-forcing, as will be explained). Even so, the emphasis on military strategy remains puzzling. The strategies, many of them relevant to social defence, include • seriousness, not ‘making light of the enemy’ (p.222) • surprise, and nonvisibility (p.201). The defensive strategy involves guerilla tactics: marching without formation, holding weapons without seeming to have them, confronting �13 enemies without seeming to meet them (p.222). But even in times of peace, ‘smart weapons of the state should not be displayed to the people’ (p.164). Such recommendations helped to fuel the charge of deviousness lodged against Lao Tzu. But look at part of the reason for concealing smart weapons: ‘The more smart weapons the people have, the more troubled the state will be’ (p.201). Smart weapons are carried in corrupt states, where the rich engage in conspicuous consumption and the people are suppressed, not where Tao is practiced (LT p.194). • advance from weakness, flexibility but firmness. Weakness is the principle of life and will overcome strength (LT p.164, p.233). • coolness and non-competition (LT p.233, p.164). Like these, most of the general strategies are standard Taoist practices simply applied to military conduct. For these standard practices the charge of deviousness looks feeble. The response applies more generally to other allegedly devious political strategies. For the strategies are but application of Taoist principles and techniques to warfare, politics and elsewhere. Nothing excludes application of these techniques to what are accounted, in general, unnecessary evils (which must sometimes, on other Taoist grounds, be countered). Nor, to meet the main criticism, need any deceit or deviousness be involved; nor is it. In particular, the legalist tactic, Tn order to grasp, it is necessary first to give’ (LT p.164), is cited as involving ‘an element of deceit’ ‘undeniably’, and ‘worse’ it is ‘morally questionable’ (Chan p.17). But in order for me to grasp your hand in a normal handshake, it is necessary first for me to give my hand. There is no deceit here, nothing morally questionable. All the tactics permit of benign construals, of a Taoist kind. Consider, for instance, Tn order to contract, it is necessary first to expand’ (LT p.164). In order to bend a copper pipe to the intended angle, it is better to bend it first a little further than required. The transformation of water to ice (both favoured natural items for symbolic purposes: natural processes which may look devious!) neatly illustrates the Taoist principle (which is however hardly necessary), and shows softness and weakness turned hardness and strength. The Taoist critique of militarism is as much a critique of technology as of war. Sharp weapons, ‘smart weapons’ as we might now say, come in for much critical attention, as we have already noticed. Only in corrupt and degenerate states are they displayed or flaunted (p.194, p.164); in deep-green regions smart weapons of state’ would not be retained unexhibited. The people will not have them for they mean trouble (p.201); for similar reasons deep-green regions will be free of them. So, it seems, will ideal Taoist regions: ‘Even if there are arrows and weapons, none will display them’ (LT p.238). Much technology, military and other, is excluded under the Taoist edict against violence (a further facet of the military-practices paradox).5 5 Under contemporary technology and technological arrangements, such as the storage of quantities of oil and nuclear and chemical materials in great cities, wars have assumed new and �14 The powerful critique of militarism in the Tao-te Ching is coupled with strong opposition to violence. Some of the linkage is evident enough. Militarism as practised represents an ultimate form of state (or party) violence. A basic theme is that violent practices will come to an unnatural end, and accordingly to a non-Taoist end (generalising LT p.176). While force may occur in spectacular, but satisfactory, natural forms, force is duly distinguished from violence. To force the growth of life means ill omen. For the mind to employ the vital force without restraint means violence (LT p. 197). One who follows Tao does not apply dominating force, which usually has had results bringing requital (p.152). Dominating force, like power, is in general castigated, under doctrine of wuwei, no forced actions, no violence. To force natural growth is deviant, destroying harmony. To stop natural growth is deviant. But there is a significant difference between force and violence. To intentionally employ destructive force is to do violence. To so force things is condemned. To remain in harmony with things one does not so force things or practice violence. There is a non-interference principle at work, which also indicates types of non­ interference that are excluded. However Taoism does not always get the distinction between force and violence quite right. ‘Vital force without restraint’, intentionally excessive force, is only part of what counts as violence, which is more generally force which violates, i.e. transgresses, descrecrates, very destructive dimensions, to the point of being utterly irresponsible. A different approach to technology, as to war, is now mandatory. These are no longer things that can in principle be nicely confined and need not touch parties outside the fray. An important part of ending wars, “winning the war against wars”, is removing the technology of war, above all from irresponsible state power. As for which technology to try to jettison and which to try to retain or improve, it is not so difficult to indicate, provided evaluative terminology is not outlawed. What is wanted is technology that is good in its place, what should be excluded is technology that is indifferent or bad or potentially so. Technology to be justified has to do something worthwhile, it has to address identifiable respectable needs. That is why merely indifferent technology is out; there is no virtue in technology for technology's sake, as it is a mere means technique. It is because of the crucial evaluative component in choice of technology that appropriateness, itself evaluative, comes closer to encapsulating the criterion than other recent efforts. Size, such as smallness, or intermediateness, are not what matter, though modest and not excessive technologies are likely to fare better in satisfying appropriateness. In simpler societies, small technology is of course more appropriate; for that is what is good there. From known criteria for what is good these other features for locally appropriate technology can be read off: reliability, esp. in maintenance, functioning well and safely under the expected range of operating conditions (which may be difficult), ease of repair, capital cheapness and repair inexpensiveness, environmental benignness, and meeting sound social needs. �15 profanes, injures, outrages, etc. It is thus a negatively connoted force, an evil force in some specified intentional respect. There is a tendency for Taoist commentators, not Taoists, to regard Taoism as condemning all uses, or even occurrences, of force, but this is not so. Rather intentional ill-forcing is what is castigated, what is deviant. Thus Taoism does not exclude a range of defensive practices, which make satisfactory use of natural forces, like letting the machines of war industry stop. Those who would abolish war and its machinery, substituting for it nonwarlike and ideally nonviolent methods, technology, and strategies, have been confronted not merely with much sub-rational abuse but with plenty of criticism and even some paradoxes. Here is a recent paradox concerning war and nonviolence: • War must be abolished. One reason is simply economic. We can no longer afford it, and the opportunity costs are enormous. Along with other extraordinarily wasteful activities, it is an anachronism. • Doing so cannot be accomplished without violence, i.e. in effect, given the types of violence involved, without what amounts to war. According to a fuller version of this premiss, the process of abolishing a war would only be achieved through a revolution so profound that it could not succeed without extensive and extreme violence, amounting to (civil) war. But then war cannot be abolished without war. Therefore, war which must be abolished cannot be abolished.6 This “paradox” has been compared with the Liar paradox, but the parallel does not persist far. For this paradox does not involve self-referential features, and is easily broken, as follows. Let the “last war” be not the last standard war but the revolution abolishing war. Then, given that the revolution is successful, war will be abolished therewith, i.e. with that last war. There need be no regress, given again a successful outcome. All the premisses stand intact, but the conclusion, following the ‘therefore’ is a nonsequitur. However, while the dissolution of the argument is accordingly logically fine, the route is repugnant. Standard pacifism challenges the second premiss. 4. Standard and moral pacifism. 6 Brian Medlin, who forcefully propounded this puzzle, set other analogous puzzles alongside it - designed to reveal deep difficulties in contemporary political, and especially alternative, thought. Another puzzle, concerning liberty and repression in the context of capitalism, revolved around the following inconsistent triad: • capitalism must be removed, but liberty retained. • capitalism cannot be removed without repression. • repression is antithetical to liberty. The puzzle is resolved as with the analogous puzzle of abolishing. Let the “last capitalist” action before the days of liberty be the repressive but liberating revolution overthrowing capitalism. �16 Although Taoism is strongly opposed to war, and much in favour of peace - and accordingly by prevailing standards a substantially pacific position - it is not (nowhere in the central texts) committed to pacifism in usual senses, for two different reasons:• It is not, by contrast with pacifism, opposed to all types of warfare, for example smart defensive wars. • It eschews deontology in terms of which moral pacifism is commonly stated, for instance through the watershed thesis P2. It is morally wrong to use violence. By contrast with Taoism, deep environmentalism does not avoid deontic claims, and is committed in principle to nonviolent technologies and ways and to pacifistic principles. Moreover, certain forms of deep environmentalism are completely committed to pacifism, notably European forms. Is deep green? There is heavy contemporary opposition to pacifism, as there also was to Taoism in the warring times when Taoism was first being promulgated. Many of the central institutions of contemporary life are intricated in coercion, violence and war. The most prominent contemporary institutions, states, are premissed on these elements of damaging force; they claim entitlement to use them widely, and even claim a certain territorial monopoly on their use. As a result they are having constantly to engage in them in attempt to maintain that monopoly. They are certainly the main perpetrators of wars, and of violence. They are indeed inured to wars, are in constant preparation for wars, yet propound dialectial (and normally dishonest and cynical) doctrines of peace through war (for a recent example see the appendix). Unremarkably then, the extensive propagandistic machinery of state has invested heavily in “justificatory” exercises in favour of controlled use, its own use, of destructive force, and continues to inveigh against pacifism. Because a routine trick in this sophistical repetoire consists in conflating pacifism with extreme, naive and inplausible, forms, an inevitable and important early task commits in unscrambling senses of ‘pacifism’. Semantical skulduggery can be thwarted in this way. Pacifism, as explained by English dictionaries, invariably concerns wars and warfare, and contains two components, negative and, elaborating on that, positive:- The negative component is, in Amauld's word, anti-War-ism, opposition (in ways to be further specified) to all forms of warfare (see OED). The positive component supplies alternative ways of settling disputes (what it is supposed that wars with some semblance of justification involve), such as negotiation, arbitration,... - and, adding to too narrow dictionary accounts - sanctions, substitutions (e.g. of sporting events, operatic contests, cooperative ventures),... . In brief standard pacifism is opposition to all warfare and resolution of potential wars by other nonmilitary means. Plainly the opposition to warfare, like the sanctions and so on, cannot itself be military (using soldiers and other devices of war), on pain of some incoherence. But otherwise the ways of opposition can be many and various: they can certainly be active, as with nonviolent �17 demonstrations, resistance movements, and so forth, and they may also be devious (e.g. turning the forces of war upon themselves so they are neutralised). It quickly becomes evident, then, that some of the dictionaries offer but loaded definitions which, by restricting the negative components, reduce the initial appeal and plausibility of pacifism. Consider the Concise English definition of the negative component: ‘the doctrine of non-resistance to hostilities and of total non-co-operation with any form of warfare’. Thereby excluded are forms of pacifism which offer active and plausible alternatives to warfare such as social defence. The Concise English tends to force pacifism into what the Oxford English Dictionary lists as its final item: ‘often, with depreciatory implication, the advocacy of peace at any price’, ‘in any circumstance’. Pacifism can easily resist being forced into these sorts of circumstances: it has many resources, as an extensive series of texts on alternatives to war, such as negotiation, non­ violent action and social defence, from Taoism to contemporary environmentalism attest. Academic philosophers have much advanced the semantical strategy of some dictionaries, of rendering pacifism more difficult from the very outset by narrow and biassed definitions. They have stretched the term from its restricted setting of warfare, confined to state and organised gang violence, to cover all forms of violence, from state and interstate to, what is very different, personal and interpersonal violence. Call the resulting considerably stretched notion of pacifism, according to which it is morally wrong to use violence, according to which P2 holds, stretched pacifism.'1 While stretched pacifism certainly includes standard pacifism (unless the notions of war and warfare are tampered with), the converse is very far from being the case. A pacifist is in no way committed to stretched pacifism, which is a much more problematic and difficult position than standard pacifism. There are several, substantially different reasons for this, which will be picked up seriatim. Stretched pacifism, also misleadingly called moral pacifism, has looked a very easy critical target to moral philosophers. Many the effusive philosopher who, upon sighting such a target, has charged, whooping such rhetoric as “incoherent”, “inconsistent”, “insensitive”, “fanatical”. However, with improved logical technology now available for accommodating and treating moral dilemmas, it is no great feat to resist such attacks, in the fashion of previous investigations (see esp. Al, also MD). A main aim was to demonstrate that stretched pacifism was not so stupid as it was made out to be or appeared to be to these inured to present dominant violent ways. So far from being stupid, it is viable. In future gentler times stretched pacifism could even be realised for whole communities of creatures (as some genuinely Christian sects envisaged); whence it will finally be seen to be feasible not merely for sages and supermen, and many ordinary women, but much more extensively. 7 In Al this notion was contrasted with standard pacifism as comprehensive pacifism: overcomprehensive might have been better. �18 The method of philosophical accommodation was through moral dilemmas. The sort of moral dilemma that stretched pacifism can induce derives as follows. On the one side stands the theme P2, Wv, in convenient symbols, for Wrong V-ing, violencing. Now this implies to WB, where B presents a case of of violence. On the other side, particular circumstances develop which lead to W ~B, because ~B would produce in the circumstances considerable wrong, for instance extensive violence, mass murder, etc. One stock example from the literature concerns calling off the firing squad about to shoot several captives if the pacifist shoots one of them (it is elaborated in Al p.13). Interestingly, another stock example from the literature concerns standard pacifism (it can also be presented in terms of patriotism; for details of both see MD p.10). Resolution of intractable moral dilemmas is, where it is required, situational. The agent decides in the situation, within the fix, what to do. There are many ways in which such decision making can proceed, less rational, such as those applying chance or involving bad faith, or more rational, such as those applying consequentialist decision theory (for details see MD, pp.32-9). A decision theory taking account of all that should be included will not however be purely consequential. It would also take account of relevant motivation. This defence and rehabilitation of moral pacifism has been challenged, in particular by Smith (hereafter JWS). JWS claims the defence offered is a ‘failure because it trivializes pacifism’ (p. 153 twice). The rehabilitation trivializes pacifism because it entails that pacifism doesn't substantially differ from a form of activism which holds that while violence is always wrong one is sometimes justified on consequentialist grounds for preferring violent acts, if these acts are lesser evils than any other real alternatives. This is the commonsense position which most people hold - yet - pacifism after all was supposed to be radical moral doctrine - (p.153 rearranged).8 Part of the criticism is, then, not so much that pacifism is trivialized - JWS “activism” is hardly trivial - as that pacifism is popularised, deflated from a radical position to the commonsense position most people hold (p.154 also). Yet not a shred of evidence is adduced that JWS activism is such a populist position. Available evidence, for example from peace movements and oppositional opinion polls, suggests the very opposite: that, for instance, most people support state-justified conventional wars with the military violence they incur, and accordingly do not hold that violence is always wrong. From such a commonsense angle, pacifism with its condemnation of conventional wars and the violence they involve remains a radical doctrine. As regards wars and other violence-incurring social authorities, contemporary pacificism 8 JWS now informs me that he has changed his position. Whether the move effects his criticism, I don't know. �19 is, as previous explained (e.g. Al p.3), a form of activism. Pacifism does not imply utter pacifity, but may actively involve social defence, resistance and so on. However a certain level of misrepresentation enters into the JWS challenge in the details of what forms of activism pacifism may include. That misrepresentation begins in the second clause concerning what is said to be sometimes justified. For the situational procedure where dilemmas arise will not generally be consequential applying a principle of lesser evil. In dilemmatic situations such principles are suspended, and such a principle is in any case unacceptable to moral pacifists. A small amount of violence may be less bad in its consequences than verbal offence, but a principled pacifist will choose the slightly greater evil where other obligations do not exclude it. A more serious distortion occurs in JWS's effort to force procedures in dilemma situations into purely consequentialist form. In fact consequential decision theory was deployed as a model only for how to proceed rationally in a situational setting where deontic procedures were suspended (see MD p.38). What was said, still misleadingly retrospective vision reveals, was this: ‘what is done is a very consequentialist thing’ (Al p.13), not ‘one acts in a consequentialist fashion to do the sufficiently good thing in the circumstances’ (JWS p.152). Situationally other procedures than those resembling orthodox rational decision making (modified from maximizing to satisizing objectives) may be adopted (MD p.38). Further the orthodox consequentialist theory is inadequate because it leaves out, or tries to reduce to consequences, nonconsequential elements, notably motives. It is not difficult, in principle (in advance of attempted consequentialization of motives), to design situations where motives, such as integrity or maintaining faith, enter to yield outcomes upsetting consequential calculations. More elaborate decision making procedures than those of consequentialism, sometimes at variance with consequentialism, are thus presupposed. A further part of JWS's criticism accordingly goes by the board, the alleged appeal ‘to “second best” consequentialist considerations,... already explicitly condemned’ (p.154). What was condemned was stock universal consequentialism, ‘that only consequentialist considerations carry argumentative weight’ (quoted on p. 152), so undercutting other deontic principles, such as those of pacifism. It was not claimed, what is utterly different, that consequentialist considerations can nowhere enter into deliberation and decision making. The conclusion JWS arrives at is therefore substantially astray. After criticising modern moral philosophy for its reliance upon consequentialist modes of thought, it is surprising, and inconsistent, to find ... [reliance] upon such modes of thought to escape logical difficulties raised by moral dilemmas facing ... pacifis[m] (p. 152) There is no inconsistency. JWS has confused universal with particular. As well he has wrongly contracted all situational decision making to consequentialist modes. There is a third part to the criticism, that the defence is too easy; the ‘strategy will allow too much violence to be (perpetrated and) justified to suit the tastes of any real pacifist’ (p. 153). This another part of the so-called trivialization, this time however dilution rather than �20 popularization, weakening the moral stand against violence. This third contention is premissed on a mistake: that one can ‘justify on consequentialist grounds any number of violent acts, providing that such acts are lesser evils than other real alternatives facing social agents’ (p.153). Moral pacifism offers no such licence; allowing such consequentialism to take over was never part of the position. The slide to such consequentialism is made on the strength of a similarly erroneous example. The potential victim of an aspiring rapist ‘is supposed to flee or wriggle free if possible. But it is easy to consequentially justify the use of violence by the woman to prevent herself from being raped’ (p.153 italics added). In the example so far described there is no dilemma, and no such easy resort to consequentially ‘justified’ violence. What allows too much violence is the lesser evil JWS assumes is easily consequentially justified; for example that the woman is entitled to inflict, and escalate, violence so long as it remains ‘a lesser evil than the violence of attempted rape’ (p. 153). Since she may thereby inflict quite unreasonable damage (esp. if she is a Kung Fu expert), the result is inconsistent with ‘the basic principle of self-defence’ which JWS earlier adduced according to which what is ‘appropriate, in response is only that level of force necessary to defend oneself against the threat’ (p.150). There is evidence in JWS's work of some enthusiasm for levels of violence which exceed his ‘basic principle’, his appeal to ‘lesser evil’ generates some instances. The ‘basic principle’, itself fraught with difficulties (cf. the contorted discussion of what weapons are appropriate in response to what attacks, p. 150), still exceeds what stretched pacifism would enjoin; for instance, it may not be appropriate to respond with force. But in a technical sense stretched pacifism is compatible with the ‘basic principle’, since it only imposes the upper bound on level of force. As for easiness, moral pacifism is not an easy position to live by, or to justify. Removing objections to pacifism is one thing; solidifying a positive case for it is quite another, and so far hardly conclusive (as Al tried to explain, pp 29-31). Stretched pacifism was advanced, hypothesized to put it more precisely, as a still viable option. It was not presented as a morally compulsory position, or, for that matter, as one that this defender adhered to or affirmed. To reiterate, while a cumulative case can be made for stetched pacifism as principled non­ violence, that case was not conclusive, and is hard to improve. For, further, some serious difficulties standing in the way of stretched pacifism were assembled, the most important of which derives from the extent of violence apparent in transactions within the natural world. Simply consider the practices of carnivores, essential to their natural way of life. In order to meet their life needs for sustenance, these creatures do, and are often obliged to, engage routinely in violent activity. While it can no doubt be argued, as some vegetarians may do, that the natural order is an immoral order, and that remaining carnivores should be converted to vegetarianism as rapidly as proves possible (in the way domestic dogs are converted to dog biscuits), the difficulties with such proposals are immense. The task envisaged is gigantic, and beyond human capacities - even if it were desirable. For there are millions of species to be �21 somehow converted to proper vegetarianism. Then there are millions of other species to be converted to proper and well regulated contraceptive practices, else their numbers will get out of hand (uncontrollably) with predation removed. Given humans lack of success in limiting their own excessive numbers, such regulation appears entirely remote. Aside however from the practical difficulties, is such a fully vegetarian order, with evolution further derailed, a desirable improvement on the natural order? Is it morally obligatory? It is certainly not obligatory, as alternative systems of morality in harmony with the prevailing natural order are feasible. Nor is it desirable, for (to appeal to such alternative value systems) the natural order is more or less in order as it is. Full vegetarianization would only reduce its value, vastly. More generally, a defensible ethical framework should not, it would be rightly contended, be right out of step with the natural order of other creatures, decently depicted. Decent depiction is important, for some features of the natural order, such as competition, combat and predation, so far from escaping attention, have been grossly exaggerated and exploited. Thus, for instance, the ludicrous picture of nature red in truth and claw, so beloved of descendents of orthodox Victorians and of orthodox economists. However, even under decent depiction, the “natural order” is often not benign. That appears to be enough to induce a supervenient moral dilemma for any stretched pacifism which is coupled to a deep ethic (e.g. which does not separate humans out from the natural order) and which eschews the desperate vegetarian route: The natural order is not an immoral order The natural order contains (regular) instances of violence. Therefore, instances of violence are not immoral in apparent defiance of P2 Moreover, there are too many instances of violence, too regularly occurring, for them all to be plausibly shunted into the moral dilemma category (and predatory carnivores face no dilemmas). Raptors that practice violence every week are not immoral (neither are they clearly moral; the category of morality only significantly extends so far). The main trouble lies however with P2 (which needs some finer adjustment, as was alrady indicated in Al). While P2 is alright in context, within a particular, perfectly viable, ethical framework, designed for the usual human round, the conventional setting for ethical theories, it stands in need of modification outside that setting. It is time to suggest the sort of modification envisaged. Evidently P2 was addressed to moral agents. Which agents? Not to carnivores that supply their own livelihood, nor really to morally degenerate humans, but to peace-sensitive agents. With that semi-technical form, yet to be characterised, a suitably P2 MP2. It is morally wrong, for a peace-sensitive agent, to use violence.9 modified 9 results: The generalization of P2, suggested in Al, to cover also the parallel situation of environmental vandalism, can be similarly modified. The anti-vandolence principle becomes MP2°. It is morally wrong, for a peace- and environmentally-sensitive agent, to use �22 To recover what amounts, in the previous discussive context, to P2, it suffices to add the proposition that every human agent ought to be peace-sensitive. Much as that proposition has to recommend it, it appears too ethically advanced for many modern humans; it sets too high a moral standard to be taken as a serious guide to practice. It seems wise to settle presently for something less demanding, such as that every advanced moral agent ought to be peace sensitive. To put essentially the same proposition alternatively: Stretched pacifism (as modified) is supererogatory. While it is perhaps too late to hope for much moral progress in humans, it is pleasant to contemplate alternative futures where what is supererogatory became obligatory, and widely practiced. Richard Sylvan* Appendix I began drafting this essay at the time (January 17, midday Australian time) of the American attacks upon Iraq. The optly named Prime Minister Hawke of Australia had just made a statement to the nation-state, announcing (the) war. In this statement there was much talk of peace. There was even - in what was effectively a declaration of war - reiteration of the modem quest for ‘a new world order of peace’. Peace through war; so it rings out again and again, through the centuries. ‘War must be for the sake of peace’ (Aristotle p.220). More than two thousand years later, we have fought those wars to end all wars. But it is no use, Hawke solemely pronounced, just talking about peace, and thinking about peace; we must work for peace, fight for it - through war. Impeccable logic? President Bush, supreme commander, convinced us with similar logic, speaking too with many tongues. Of how he ‘preferred to think of peace, not war’. But now ‘only force will prevail’, as ‘all reasonable efforts to reach a peaceful solution are exhausted’. ‘What must be done’ must be done, or will be anyway. With God on side with the US offensive (as well as on the other side), it will go well. As it was said to have, though it achieved comparatively little that other efforts may not have yielded more satisfactorily, and thought it may now have to followed with another invasion. Nor have we ever managed to glimpse much of what is now supposed, when we are no longer engaged, to come ‘out of the horror of war’: a ‘new world order ... which governs the conflict of nations’; a ‘rule of law’, not war. How the one, enforcable law, is achieved, unless backed by the the other, is not explained (Medlin's paradox hits back). Similarly what we now hear from many militarists, as they rush to war, is that vandolence. Thank to David Bennett for joint contributions (from UT) and to JWS for opposition (in JWS) �23 ‘peace is a great good, war a great evil’. But, for the most part, only the rhetoric has shifted; practice has scarcely changed at all. REFERENCES W.-T. Chan, A Source Book on Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963; referred to as ST. W.-T. Chan (ed.), The Way of Lao Tzu (Tao-te Ching), Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1963; referred to as LT. B. Martin, Uprooting War, Freedom Press, London, 1984. A. Naess, Ecology, community and lifestyle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 1989. R.A. Rapaport, Pigs for the Ancestors : ritual in the ecology of a New Guinea People, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1967. R. Routley, ‘War and Peace II. On the alleged inconsistency, moral insensitivity and fanaticism of pacifism’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #9, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University, 1983 (also in. Inquiry ); referred to as AL R. Routley and V. Plumwood, ‘Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #6, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University, 1984 (also in Paraconsistent Logic)-, referred to as MD. R. Routley, ‘War and Peace I. On the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and nuclear-deterrence and the political fall-out’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy, #5, Research School Of Social Science, Australian National University, 1984. G. Sharp, Social Power and Political Freedom, Porter Sargent, Boston, 1980. J.W. Smith, The Worms at the Heart of Things , Public Relations Unit, Flinders University, 1989. R. Sylvan, ‘War and Peace III, Australia's defence philosophy’, Social Philosophy, for Nuclear Conference, University of Queensland, 1985. R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, ‘Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #19, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UT. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document ---'--A-— ori exrif(paring- mm : / A ' ■ ?./. 2073 WAR AND PEACE IV: TAO AND DEEP-GREEN flAClF/Stf Taoism and deep-green environmental theory, although closely aligned on very many issues, diverge over war. For Taoism, by contrast for instance with Buddhism, is not a pacific doctrine, but is committed to skilful defensive militarism. While it does not espouse a fortress mentality, Taoism certainly condones limited defensive military operations for specific purposes, a sort of guerilla warfare. By contrast, deep-green theory, while acknowledging the role of organised social defence, stands opposed to professional militarism, and thereby to military defence, and is committed to a principled pacifism. Conveniently a route through Taoism, philosophically fascinating in its own right, will lead us to problems of pacifism and towards deep-green theory. 1. Features of a Taoist critique of war and militarism. War did not receive a favourable press in ancient Chinese philosophy. Generally aggression and war were to be avoided. Even Confucius imposed very demanding conditions: for example, ‘when good men have instructed the people [in morals, agriculture, military tactics] for seven years, they may be allowed to bear arms,’ ‘If a ruler ... does not set himself right, even his commands will not be obeyed’ (SB p.41, italics added). Mo Tzu went much further than Confucius, roundly condemning war - on utilitarian grounds, that war yields no net benefit at any level (SB p.227). What is more, he backed his heavy condemnation practically (unlike some conspicuous contemporary theoretical utilitarians); ‘he did not hesitate to walk for ten days and ten nights in an effort to dissuade a ruler from making war’ (SB p.212). But none, it is said, went as far, in a detailed and sophisticated criticism of war, as Lao Tzu; ‘none has condemned war more strongly than Lao Tzu’. ‘[T]he opposition of Taoism to the use of force is well-known, and the most bitter attack on militarism if found in the Lao Tzu' (Chan, p.154, p.17.) But, after that splendid build-up, the text is slightly disappointing. Lao Tzu does not assert outright that war is an abomination, or even roundly condemn it. His critique of war, militarism, and military technology, is subtle and oblique, and, on the surface, far distanced from pacifism. For he does not recommend an end to war - in that genuine Taoists, those who possess Tao, will never participate in them - but expects wars to continue as unavoidable evils. Worse, he even goes so far as to outline proper attitudes to war and conduct in war, and indeed to suggest military techniques and strategies, some of which look decidedly devious. Among the classical works of Taoism, we focus on the Lao Tzu because, by contrast with other works, a remarkable component of that book is devoted to war and militarism. The apparent deviousness of the tactics Lao Tzu allocates serves to highlight what has been seen as ‘the most troublesome element’ in his philosophy (Chan p.17) - not so much however because they concern military operations, but because they are taken to apply much 2 dispensation? Why should what is not tolerated more generally be exonerated there? But given that Taoism has here the virtue of consistency (i.e. uniformity on principles) and of universalizability, that simply leaves more explaining to be done. • Puzzles for Taoism, and wars as unavoidable evils There are two puzzles here in Taoism rather than one. There is the military-practices paradox, and, varying and generalising on that, there are life-practices paradoxes. The special paradox is generated by the following incompatible elements: on the one side, ‘the most bitter attack on militarism’, the well-known opposition of Taoism to the use of force (p. 17) and to the possession and use of smart military weapons and technology - implying that war is far from all right - and on the other, advocacy of certain (devious) military tactics, outlines of (deceitful) conduct in war, and so on - implying that war is all right after all. A straightforward generalisation of this paradox would look at other morally-sensitive parts of life, where some practice was strongly condemned yet engaged in (for many examples, see the dilemmas assembled in MD). But the variation of concern to Chan and the neo-Confucians concerns the conjunction of upright with devious practices in life, in particular in the life of the sage. For a Taoist sage is presumed to lead an upright straightforward life, yet appears to engage in devious and even deceitful practices incompatible with such a life-style. Call this the Taoist-lifestyle paradox. Evidently a good deal of explaining is required, as to how Taoism can coherently take the positions it appears to presume, both on war and peace, and on life more generally. A desirable preliminary would seem to be a little investigation of what position A taken, especially on war and militarism. One key pasage runs: Fine weapons are instruments of evil They are hated by creatures Therefore those who possess the Tao turn away from them.... Weapons are instruments of evil, not the instruments of a good ruler. When he uses them unavoidably, he regards calm restraint as the best principle Even when he is victorious, he does not regard it as praiseworthy, For to praise victory is to delight in the slaughter of men. He who delights in the slaughter of men will not succeed in the empire. ... For a victory, let us observe the occasion with funeral-ceremonies (LT p.154). Wars, which involve the use of weapons, instruments of evil, are accordingly themselves evil. They are also evil because they involve the slaughter of men. But they are also sometimes unavoidable (also p. 152). Therefore such wars are unavoidable evils. Such discourse, obtained by almost immediate inference from the passage, is within the standard orbit of dilemma talk. But Taoism lacks, through deliberately eschewing deontic talk, the discourse which enables direct expression of such dilemmas, or even direct condemnation of wars or of clever weapons. Instead the points are made by circumlocution, what the possesser of Tao does, how the good ruler conducts himself, or by analogy, of victory in war with death. 3 Unavoidable evils are the very stuff of deontic dilemmas (though many theories, underpinned by shonky logic, lack the resources for representing this stuff properly). Where something is unavoidably evil, it is both bad, because evil, and also not bad, doing it is excusable, because it is unavoidable. So, given such an argument (which has its weaknesses), an unavoidable evil is a genuinely dilemmatic object with inconsistent features. Certain wars have looked, since ancient times, like such dilemmatic objects. Revealingly, Chan tries to explain that ‘most troublesome element’ in Taoism, the military-practice paradox, through the following exercise in lateral thinking: It can ... be argued that Lao Tzu uses warfare to illustrate his principles of taking no action and weakness because warfare is among the most dynamic and critical of human experiences, just as the Indian classic, the Bhagavadgita chooses fighting as the theme on which to discuss the terrible dilemma whether one should fulfil his duty, as in the case of a soldier, and kill, or should fail in his duty and refrain from killing (p. 17). ‘Just as’? The Indian classic prevents a classic moral dilemma, a dilemma represented in contemporary philosophy (following its rediscovery by Sartre), where there are incompatible duties: the duty to kill, because of one's role as a soldier, and the duty not to kill, because of one's human condition, and the supervenient dilemma of failing in and fulfilling one's duties. These dilemmas for an individual (male, as it then was) are replicated in dilemmas regarding war for group institutions: at bottom, the obligation to engage in war (for one set of compelling reasons) as contraposed with the obligation not to engage in war (for another, perhaps overlapping, set of reasons). A theory of moral dilemmas (as worked out for example in MD) is crucial for an adequate treatment of major issues in war and peace, especially (as will become evident) for a viable strong pacifism. But Taoism, eschewing deontic discourse, lacks the apparatus to state or develop moral dilemmas. Hence it is logically excluded from giving a full or adequate account of what is going on conceptually. One of the philosophically fascinating feature of Taoism is the fashion in which it manages to avoid deontic discourse, and to substitute for direct deontic discourse or improvise circumlocutions when deontic discourse would otherwise appear inevitable (cf. UT for examples). But there are costs. One is inability to display the mechanism of deontic dilemmas, or to show what reasons and argument lie behind Taoist prounouncements and conclusions (the shortage of Taoism on argument is another philosophically conspicious feature, also observed in UT). As conceptual apparatus for analysizing moral dilemmas is missing, most of the machinery involved has to be passed over. Only the outcomes, as Taoism sees them, are presented, as if from a black box. Taoism blacks out the story on deontic dilemmas that deep-green theory can tell, as the following diagram tries to show: Diagrams . Charting the processing of deontic dilemmas that are "resolved”. 4 Deep-green chart: dilemma input Arguments to incompatible prescriptions -> Processing of dilemma, directive situational procedures output Corresponding Taoist chart: Black directive Box output input It is evident that Taoism can be extended', information can be put into the Black Box rendering it less opaque. That extension can be made so as to conform to deep-green theory, i.e. so that the extended Taoist chart, a neo-Daoist chart, looks like the deep-green one. That is indeed essentially how neo-Daoism get characterised, in terms of conformity of the extension to deep ecological theory (see UT). We are now placed to explain how to dissolve, or at least neutralize, the paradoxes deriving from repudiation of militarism, an awkwardly qualified repudiation in the case of Taoism. In a significant sense there is no resolving of genuine deontic dilemmas. The principles delineating the fix may stand, incompatible, signalling the persisting suboptimality (or better, sublimenality) of the dilemmatic situation. Where there is a dilemma, involved parties should try to do well enough in the sublimenal circumstances (for a much fuller account, see MD). Thus where there is a war, itself a non-Taoist process, engaged or caught up Taoists will not abandon Taoism. Taoist methods will be applied, Taoist strategies pursued. So much for theoretical representation and (non-)resolution of life-practices and other dilemmas, details of which are readily elaborated in deep-green extensions of Taoism. A prior substantive issue is whether dilemmas always are generated: not whether wars are evil (typically they are, an issue we shall come to), but whether wars are unavoidable. Analysis of wars does not bear that familiar claim out decisively. Many wars could have been avoided, through conciliation, negotiation, restraint, etc., and no worse results apparently obtained, through sanctions, exchange, trade, etc. Through a typology of wars (coming up) that conjecture can be given some substance. Consider, for instance, what would be walk-overs. Then there is little point in making a military response. So war can be avoided. Certainly an occupation, to be met in a different way, may still occur. And so on, perhaps, for various other types of war. But, more generally, try this:Every war involves an aggressor, who makes an aggressive move. Such an aggressor could always avoid that move, taking a different (or a do-nothing) course of action. Therefore, 5 every war can be avoided. No war is entirely unavoidable. Setting aside determinism (which renders all actual wars along with all other events unavoidable), it could be argued that a war sometimes simply boils up, without an aggressor, an intensification of a conflagatory situation. There are grounds for scepticism regarding such examples; for such intensification can only occur if provocative military moves are made, for instance troops are stationed in provocative or risky positions. The presumption that certain wars are unavoidable typically derives from a one-sided perspective on war, a defender's perspective. A defender has no option, so it is routinely averred, but to respond to a determined aggressor. Even if that should be so sometimes, when there is no running away or going underground, it does not establish that such a war is unavoidable; for it neglects the role of the aggressor. By a smarter formulation, relevant features of unavoidability can be captured. Although wars may not be unavoidable, defensive action in wars that have been initiated may be unavoidable. At least such action may be unavoidable if unacceptably high costs (death, enslavement, etc.) are not to be avoided. Thereupon another highly relevant feature emerges: the linkage of avoidability to costs. For whether an action is unavoidable then depends upon what costs a party is prepared to incur before and when insisting on action: but this appears entirely unacceptable. How can what is “unavoidable” cease to be so when some further costs are absorbed? However with basics like survival, a certain liberty, and so on, we do reach such bounds. An important type of unavoidability. We also reach scenarios, unavailable to Lao Tzu but kindly brought within range by modem technology, which may appear to justify aggressive strikes. State Z, while not an aggressor, is carrying out practices which will impose unacceptably high costs upon peoples of other states and implacably refuses to desist. It could, for example, be poisoning air or water flowing to other states. But ,to make the case vivid, let us suppose that state Z is constructing, for reasons Zeders find convincing (they are committed to a faith which depicts all humans as incorrigible sinners and unworthy of life), an effective doomsday machine. Would an (aggressive) preemptory strike designed to disable or destroy the machine be unavoidable?1 In a sense, No; in another Yes. For different modalities can operate. Physically outsiders need to do nothing, but watch Zeders go about their zealous work. But deontically they are under heavy moral pressure, because of the costs of standing by idly: if the human race is worth anything very substantial, then they are obliged to act, action is deontically unavoidable. Here is a situation where a proposed reduction of deontic logic proves illuminating. Obligation is explicated through not implying, or necessitating, the sanction, i.e. 1 Whether it would be justifiable, or just, are separate issues. But it is evident enought that such scenarios further damage the obsolescent idea of just war. For, according to received doctrine, a just war is defensive. (How such a war can be fought at all is another matter; coherence requires relativization to ‘just war for party d’.) 6 excessive ethical costs such as extermination. Let us explain deontic unavoidability analogously: an action is so unavoidable if not undertaking it would result in excessive ethical costs. Then if it can be established that there is no other way than a military strike, an act of war, to ensure that the Zeders desist (and certainly we can envisage scenarios like that), then that is deontically unavoidable. It is also dilemmatic for those committed to, or inclined towards pacifism; and it is, for them at least, but paradoxically justifiable, as the negation is also justifiable, on pacific grounds. Scenarios like that sketched, that appear to render certain wars deontically unavoidable require but little or no elaboration to render them evil. Evil indeed is such a standard feature of standard wars that at least its great presence call for little supporting evidence. But it has taken to vast stretch of human history to reach this general point of recognition. The manifold evils of war Lao Tzu very early recognised and emphasized: Wherever armies are stationed, briars and thorns grow. Great wars are always followed by famines (p.152). And nowadays followed by great tides of refugees. This passage includes not only recognition of the widely-observed socio-environmental consequences of war, but, more striking, very early recognition of the severe environmental impact of military forces. That critique is not however developed in Taoism.2 Only recently has it been pushed substantially further. And only recently could a new, most significant twist occur, the merging of resource security, long a military objective, with environmental security. The appalling idea has recently been floated that the military, in need of new work and roles with the apparent warming of West-East relations and cooling of the Cold War, should exchange usual military idleness for meddling in environmental matters: regulation and policing of environmental resources, ensurance of environmental security of powerful states, and similar. This is a bit like reassigning those imprisoned for child abuse to managing kindergartens; for consider the impressive military record of environmental vandalism. What the military is alleged to offer is a structure appropriate and available for handling such matters. But, to the contrary, it is precisely the sort of hierarchical, authoritarian expensive structure that should be wound down and up as soon as the opportunity appears, as (briefly) now, rather than being retained and shockingly reoriented (as a state-serving “Greenwar”). 2. On the divergence of deep-green from Taoism. Having arrived, by better or worse arguments, at the conclusion that wars, though 2 But a bridge to deep-green theory can be made through neo-Daoism, an updating of Taoism in confirmity with deep ecology (which however is somewhat thin and threadbare on war; for what there is so far, see Naess p. 160). On neo-Daoism, sec UT. 7 generally evil, may be sometimes unavoidable, it is evidently important to say something about how they - those of the theoretical residue - are to be conducted. By appropriate conduct the damage they do may be reduced; also the conduct should be appropriate to the funereal nature of wars (to exceed Taoist resources for stating this sort of point). It is at this stage that deep­ green theory begins to diverge from Taoism. In further explaining the Taoist and deep-green critiques of war, and diverting objections to them, a rough and preliminary typology of wars is important. It is also of passing interest in its own philosophical right. War, according to English Dictionaries, is a ‘contest carried on by force of arms, typically between nations or states’. More exactly, war is a game - in the generous technical sense of game-theory, with players, rules, goals, strategies, and so on carried on in significant part by military means, normally between states or substates. Call the contestants, (warring) parties. They typically represent of course larger populations. The set­ up between parties resembles the arrangements of players in game theory. There are several analogical extensions of the term war to cover games where one of the parties is an object, construed as hostile (an enemy of the state), such as Crime, Drugs, Poverty or Nature. These we can set aside as analogical wars. Of course wars form only a part of military activities. Military interests and objectives have always stretched significantly further than war, to include surveillence and security, easily extended to resource security, environmental security and life­ style security, and beyond that to political stability and other political matters. Evidently military ambitions have far over-extended themselves in bagging such democratic concerns. An anarchist solution to the whole problem of war, which some have seen Taoism as reaching towards, is immediate: eliminate the source of war, states. Unfortunately it is not quite that simple (and that's not simple). For wars can also occur between nations, cultures, races or tribes (which are not such artifices as states, and not always so readily or desirably abolished), between inhabited regions, and between factions within states (thus civil wars) or, perhaps by extension, between factions within other social structures (thus, for instance, gang wars). But undoubtedly eliminating states and aspiring states would abolish most wars and virtually all the worst wars. While “nonviolent wars” are excluded by definition, by virtue of ‘force of arms’, token wars, limited wars, and so on, are not: for instance, wars fought by small armed teams representing competing sides (cf. medieval and science fiction war games). As wars are hemmed in by conventions and agreed rules, there is no reason in principle why they should not be reduced to two person contests, fought under strict rules like boxing or gladiatorial contests. But in modern times wars have never taken such sensible forms, but have been much larger affairs, making heavy (though fortunately restricted) use of latest technology. Let us distinguish such wars as techno-powered, wars. They have, directly or indirectly (for the technology may be bought or bartered), a heavy research and development support structure (indeed the bulk of contemporary science is devoted - misdirected - in one way or another to 8 this effort). Among wars, an important distinction is that between offensive and defensive wars. An offensive war is one which ventures off a given party's territory or recognised pad, “invading” that of another party or parties; correlatively defensive parties, if they have not also invaded. Force projection typifies offensive practice. Plainly, offensiveness and defensiveness are not strictly features of a war, but of parties to a war. In a two-party war, while both parties can easily act offensively, the possibility of both parties proceeding defensively is excluded, unless they share territory. (Even then issues may arise as to which party, if any, was the aggressor, which started it, was responsible for starting it, and so on.) Thus mutually defensive wars between contemporary states are impossible (but would be possible if states shared territory, e.g. if Eire and Britain shared the territory of Northern Ireland). Tao-accredited wars were defensive wars, never wars aiming at domination: last-resort wars, in which no pride was taken (LTp.152).3 The pretence that offensive wars are defensive is widespread, and reflected in the subterfuge that departments or ministries of war are those of defence, security or whatever. (If they really were what they purport to be, we should be well on the way to an end to war.) Offensive practices are rendered defensive ones by shabby redefinitional strategems, such as redefining ‘defensive’ to include defence of ideals like democracy or liberty, infringed (or allegedly infringed) on territories abroad, or to include “defence” of a third party or place (whence every offensive war is “defensive”). In the present war in which part of Arabia is engulfed (February 1991), one party claims to be defending what really was (or should be) part of its territory, namely Kuwait, another party to be defending (what Kuwait did not enjoy) democracy. It is a doubly offensive war presented in this guise as jointly defensive. Aggressive wars are waged for a variety of reasons, but usually for resources or access to resources or markets, a matter often disguised by appeal to ideology (thus a war for oil is represented as a war of liberation). But there are other reasons than narrowly economic ones, such as religion (as with crusades), power and aggrandisement (as in building an empire), and so on. Nor are those reasons necessarily far separated; ideologies like Marxism and market capitalism, for example, exhibit many of the features of religion. The economic reasons for war appear to have become much more complex with the 3 There is one line in LT that may suggest that attack was sometimes justifiable, namely ‘For deep love helps one to win in the case of attack’ (p.219). But how can compassion be appropriate unless this attack is within a defensive setting, a larger context of unavoidability or such like. A passage shortly below confirms this interpretation: I dare not take the offensive but I take the defensive: I dare not advance an inch but I retreat a foot (p.222). These are advances and attacks within a defensive setting. 9 advent of an integrated world economy. At the same time many of the independent reasons for economic wars are now obsolete. For to powerful states accrue the advantages of war without war. At least most of the former economic advantages of war can be obtained without expensive wars, through trade, institution of economic dependence, etc. Small medieval wars were sometimes instituted for the collection of neighbouring riches and booty, a kind of piracy meeting conditions of war. “Small” contemporary wars can be waged for a remarkable mix of political-economy ends: to establish a regime favourable to economic penetration and profit repatriation, to subjugate markets and to remove competition, to boost a sagging weapons economy by using up old stocks and also testing new equipment, to restart a depressed economy, and so on. Such wars, along with the economic aims which motivate them, are in effect heavily castigated by Lao Tzu: When Tao prevails in the world, galloping horses are turned back to fertilize (the fields ...). When Tao does not prevail in the world, war horses thrive in the suburbs. There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. (LT p. 181). But it does exceed evidential warrant to claim that Tao is not only sufficient, but necessary, for cessation of such practices. The practice of regularly stimulating complex military-saturated economies through war is reminiscent of older, much ridiculed practices in simpler societies. They now ridicule the Tsembaga, who proceeded to destroy much of their surplus product by going to war every 5-15 years (cf Rapaport). But they do not similarly ridicule the most powerful nation on the Earth, the USA, which proceeds to write off a colossal amount of surplus in war every 10-20 years (the Gulf war liquidated some $1.7 billion per day). Taoists would. For ridicule was a favoured method, an important rhetorical strategem, and war and its idiocy were favourite targets. Some classification of defensive wars is also important, for various reasons: reducing and abolishing wars, their costs and damage, restructuring societies away from war and military practices, and, not least, for appreciating Taoism. A main distinction is between • conventional defence, maintained by armies of armed soldiers, many of them professionals, and • social defence, where there are no such armies or but fragments of them, and defence is carried out through social networks of a significant part of society.4 It is here that Taoism and deep-green theory part company. Under Taoism, the state will have a standing army, but a defensive army operating by strange, surprise tactics (p.201). No 4 Details of social defence are presented in Sharp and in Martin. 10 doubt defensive wars are to remain last resort action. Nonetheless the state will operate in secrecy, in a way incompatible with decentralised social defence; people will be kept in the dark about smart weapons of the state; and they too will be surprised, along with presumed enemies of the state. By contrast, under deep-green theory, there should be no hidden smart weapons of state; information would flow more freely and not be hidden from the people (who should retain influence in informed decision making). Under deep-green, standing armies, and more generally military organisation, will be wound down altogether. Taoism should have pushed its searching criticism further. For military objectives, easily acquired by standing armies with time on their hands, are frequently incompatible with Taoism. For example, Taoism is opposed to domination (LT p.152), whereas military operations frequently seek or involve domination; and military structure is invariably hierarchical and authoritarian. Taoism aims for self-regulation, wherever feasible (cf. p.201); so does deep­ green theory, which is one reasons why it aims to dispose of standing armies, as an important preliminary to the withering away of states themselves (military forces being major props of state control and power, and often maintained primarily for internal state security). Taoism has no project for ending the era of wars; deep-green theory does. That project involves an elimination of standing armies, too often poised for fighting or political interference. A recommended route to end war consists in progressive scaling down: reduction of the means and manpower. The initial stages are well-known, and include • elimination of nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry, and • force reduction. It can hardly be pretended that the Earth's states have managed to proceed very far on even this complex of stages. The next stage consists in • contraction to defensive capacities only, and the final stage consists in • elimination of remaining military defensive forces, and adoption, so far as required, of social defence practices. The complete route thus involves complete demilitarisation. Reasons why deep-green aims to proceed the full distance are readily grasped by considering the environmental shallowness of an otherwise cogent traditional case for the sharp curtailment of wars and militarism. The traditional Western case against wars has been primarily along two dimensions: social and moral. Wars are highly disruptive of the social fabric; wars may be unjust. From these joint features, it was argued that wars should be a matter of last resort, to be fought to ensure peace. It was argued further that only just wars should be fought. Just wars were rare objects. But as there was little evidence of the decline and fall of wars, much effort was expended, more practically and unsuccessfully, upon endeavouring to improve the calibre of wars, and more theoretically, upon trying to characterize just war satisfactorily, or rather to bend the notion in an effort to approximate the gory unjust facts. Progress was long hindered, furthermore, because there was always a rival positive perspective on wars, which encouraged the exaltation of wars and military feats. It also facilitated the transfer of the favourable image of war to other problem areas, whence the long and apparently successful war against Nature (but the short-term successes are turning into long-term problems), the short and unsuccessful war against Poverty, and so on. Behind all this is the complex idea of war as rejuvenating, even cleansing, like fire; of war as heroic, and glorious, of war as the supreme testing ground of men. These pictures of war - finally shattered by the first World War (where even the poets began to tell of horrors and atrocities) and subsequent technological wars - though no longer in ascendency, have by no means vanished. The notion of war as rejuvenating a flagging economy persists, along with the practice of keeping capitalism running smoothly by integrating substantial military components into the industrial engine. With the development of highly technological wars — the celebrated development of the dirty industrial age is substantially military - the traditional negative case has grown in strength. Wars have become much more damaging, with the potential for much more that is significantly worse, and the possibility of a just war has correspondingly contracted, virtually to zero. The opposition to war has likewise grown, but more than correspondingly with the rise of women in social and political influence. Wars have almost always and everywhere been Men's affairs; likewise conquest. Deep-green theory accepts much of the traditional negative case, but would further strengthen it. For example, the stricture against unjust wars, as out and out immoral, can be strengthened, through the following syllogism: All wars should be fully just wars. Modem wars cannot be fully just wars. Therefore, there should be no modern wars. A fully just war is not merely a just war, but a war those just character can be reliably forecast in advance. A modern war is of course a war that deploys modern technology, at least that available this century. The evidential basis for the second premiss derives from much information that collateral damage, damage to innocent bystanders and involved citizens is always likely and cannot be excluded. Such wars are always liable to violate uncontroversial requirements for a just war, even if they are purely “conventional” wars, not throwing radiation or chemical or biological weapons around. From a contemporary viewpoint the traditional doctrine of a just war, really of a just defensive v/ax, is seriously out of date. The reasons for this reach wider than the new features introduced by modem technological wars and the character of modem civilization, with its giant cities littered with dangerous and vulnerable military targets. They have also to do with the chauvinism of the justice proposed, which is shallow human justice, not natural or environmental justice. There is no consideration of justice to other creatures or to the Earth (cf Naess p.160). Two troubles are really intertwined here: conceptual difficulties with too narrow a notion of justice, and ideological difficulties with too narrow a vision of what is an object of 12 value, of what counts. The deep-green case against war adds to the traditional case a further dimension, neglected until very recently: the environmental dimension. It has suddenly been seen that wars are typically environmental atrocities. Earlier, of course, “environments” were simply backgrounds, backdrops in paintings and plays, to the real drama. Contemporary technological wars tend to be not merely social tragedies but environmental ones as well. There is a doctrine of just war, but it is a human chauvinistic affair. There is no similarly developed doctrine of an ecologically sound war, a deep ecological war. Unless any such war were literally different from modern wars, that is from contemporary technological wars, it would overstep permitted bounds. For such wars are characteristically ecological disasters. Hardened military people, desensitized by a rigorous unethical training, feel even less compunction about degrading or destroying environments or members of other species than they do of maiming or killing civilians through “collateral” activity. Matching the no-just-war syllogism is a no-sound-war syllogism: All wars should be environmentally sound wars. Modern wars cannot be environmentally sound. Therefore, there should be no modern wars. The argument for the second premiss has of course to be different. It looks to the information accumulating on what wars do to natural and built environments. The Vietnam and Gulf wars both inflicted immense damage on natural environments or what was left of them. The environmental effects of war are not confined to direct and collateral damage. There are indirect effects also. Thus, for instance, war also supplied the mechanism of, and the technology for, modern environmental destruction: explosives, bulldozers from tanks, etc. As well, training for war and engagement in war have much fostered, along with attitudes that make for social callousness or ruthlessness, those that contribute to environmental insensitivity and cruelty. 3. Puzzles about Taoist strategy and its critiques of technology and violence ‘It is surprising how much of the Lao Tzu is devoted to military strategy’. Which strategies? Surprise, above all. But why such strategies? ‘Do they not contradict the Taoists’ strong opposition to the use of force’ (Chan p.222), the implied commitment to quietism? Briefly, Taoism is not committed to quietism, and while certainly antagonistic to violence, does not oppose certain uses of force (only really z7/-forcing, as will be explained). Even so, the emphasis on military strategy remains puzzling. The strategies, many of them relevant to social defence, include • seriousness, not ‘making light of the enemy’ (p.222) • surprise, and nonvisibility (p.201). The defensive strategy involves guerilla tactics: marching without formation, holding weapons without seeming to have them, confronting 13 enemies without seeming to meet them (p.222). But even in times of peace, ‘smart weapons of the state should not be displayed to the people’ (p.164). Such recommendations helped to fuel the charge of deviousness lodged against Lao Tzu. But look at part of the reason for concealing smart weapons: ‘The more smart weapons the people have, the more troubled the state will be’ (p.201). Smart weapons are carried in corrupt states, where the rich engage in conspicuous consumption and the people are suppressed, not where Tao is practiced (LT p.194). • advance from weakness, flexibility but firmness. Weakness is the principle of life and will overcome strength (LT p.164, p.233). • coolness and non-competition (LT p.233, p.164). Like these, most of the general strategies are standard Taoist practices simply applied to military conduct. For these standard practices the charge of deviousness looks feeble. The response applies more generally to other allegedly devious political strategies. For the strategies are but application of Taoist principles and techniques to warfare, politics and elsewhere. Nothing excludes application of these techniques to what are accounted, in general, unnecessary evils (which must sometimes, on other Taoist grounds, be countered). Nor, to meet the main criticism, need any deceit or deviousness be involved; nor is it. In particular, the legalist tactic, Tn order to grasp, it is necessary first to give’ (LT p.164), is cited as involving ‘an element of deceit’ ‘undeniably’, and ‘worse’ it is ‘morally questionable’ (Chan p.17). But in order for me to grasp your hand in a normal handshake, it is necessary first for me to give my hand. There is no deceit here, nothing morally questionable. All the tactics permit of benign construals, of a Taoist kind. Consider, for instance, Tn order to contract, it is necessary first to expand’ (LT p.164). In order to bend a copper pipe to the intended angle, it is better to bend it first a little further than required. The transformation of water to ice (both favoured natural items for symbolic purposes: natural processes which may look devious!) neatly illustrates the Taoist principle (which is however hardly necessary), and shows softness and weakness turned hardness and strength. The Taoist critique of militarism is as much a critique of technology as of war. Sharp weapons, ‘smart weapons’ as we might now say, come in for much critical attention, as we have already noticed. Only in corrupt and degenerate states are they displayed or flaunted (p.194, p.164); in deep-green regions smart weapons of state’ would not be retained unexhibited. The people will not have them for they mean trouble (p.201); for similar reasons deep-green regions will be free of them. So, it seems, will ideal Taoist regions: ‘Even if there are arrows and weapons, none will display them’ (LT p.238). Much technology, military and other, is excluded under the Taoist edict against violence (a further facet of the military-practices paradox).5 5 Under contemporary technology and technological arrangements, such as the storage of quantities of oil and nuclear and chemical materials in great cities, wars have assumed new and 14 The powerful critique of militarism in the Tao-te Ching is coupled with strong opposition to violence. Some of the linkage is evident enough. Militarism as practised represents an ultimate form of state (or party) violence. A basic theme is that violent practices will come to an unnatural end, and accordingly to a non-Taoist end (generalising LT p.176). While force may occur in spectacular, but satisfactory, natural forms, force is duly distinguished from violence. To force the growth of life means ill omen. For the mind to employ the vital force without restraint means violence (LT p. 197). One who follows Tao does not apply dominating force, which usually has had results bringing requital (p.152). Dominating force, like power, is in general castigated, under doctrine of wuwei, no forced actions, no violence. To force natural growth is deviant, destroying harmony. To stop natural growth is deviant. But there is a significant difference between force and violence. To intentionally employ destructive force is to do violence. To so force things is condemned. To remain in harmony with things one does not so force things or practice violence. There is a non-interference principle at work, which also indicates types of non­ interference that are excluded. However Taoism does not always get the distinction between force and violence quite right. ‘Vital force without restraint’, intentionally excessive force, is only part of what counts as violence, which is more generally force which violates, i.e. transgresses, descrecrates, very destructive dimensions, to the point of being utterly irresponsible. A different approach to technology, as to war, is now mandatory. These are no longer things that can in principle be nicely confined and need not touch parties outside the fray. An important part of ending wars, “winning the war against wars”, is removing the technology of war, above all from irresponsible state power. As for which technology to try to jettison and which to try to retain or improve, it is not so difficult to indicate, provided evaluative terminology is not outlawed. What is wanted is technology that is good in its place, what should be excluded is technology that is indifferent or bad or potentially so. Technology to be justified has to do something worthwhile, it has to address identifiable respectable needs. That is why merely indifferent technology is out; there is no virtue in technology for technology's sake, as it is a mere means technique. It is because of the crucial evaluative component in choice of technology that appropriateness, itself evaluative, comes closer to encapsulating the criterion than other recent efforts. Size, such as smallness, or intermediateness, are not what matter, though modest and not excessive technologies are likely to fare better in satisfying appropriateness. In simpler societies, small technology is of course more appropriate; for that is what is good there. From known criteria for what is good these other features for locally appropriate technology can be read off: reliability, esp. in maintenance, functioning well and safely under the expected range of operating conditions (which may be difficult), ease of repair, capital cheapness and repair inexpensiveness, environmental benignness, and meeting sound social needs. 15 profanes, injures, outrages, etc. It is thus a negatively connoted force, an evil force in some specified intentional respect. There is a tendency for Taoist commentators, not Taoists, to regard Taoism as condemning all uses, or even occurrences, of force, but this is not so. Rather intentional ill-forcing is what is castigated, what is deviant. Thus Taoism does not exclude a range of defensive practices, which make satisfactory use of natural forces, like letting the machines of war industry stop. Those who would abolish war and its machinery, substituting for it nonwarlike and ideally nonviolent methods, technology, and strategies, have been confronted not merely with much sub-rational abuse but with plenty of criticism and even some paradoxes. Here is a recent paradox concerning war and nonviolence: • War must be abolished. One reason is simply economic. We can no longer afford it, and the opportunity costs are enormous. Along with other extraordinarily wasteful activities, it is an anachronism. • Doing so cannot be accomplished without violence, i.e. in effect, given the types of violence involved, without what amounts to war. According to a fuller version of this premiss, the process of abolishing a war would only be achieved through a revolution so profound that it could not succeed without extensive and extreme violence, amounting to (civil) war. But then war cannot be abolished without war. Therefore, war which must be abolished cannot be abolished.6 This “paradox” has been compared with the Liar paradox, but the parallel does not persist far. For this paradox does not involve self-referential features, and is easily broken, as follows. Let the “last war” be not the last standard war but the revolution abolishing war. Then, given that the revolution is successful, war will be abolished therewith, i.e. with that last war. There need be no regress, given again a successful outcome. All the premisses stand intact, but the conclusion, following the ‘therefore’ is a nonsequitur. However, while the dissolution of the argument is accordingly logically fine, the route is repugnant. Standard pacifism challenges the second premiss. 4. Standard and moral pacifism. 6 Brian Medlin, who forcefully propounded this puzzle, set other analogous puzzles alongside it - designed to reveal deep difficulties in contemporary political, and especially alternative, thought. Another puzzle, concerning liberty and repression in the context of capitalism, revolved around the following inconsistent triad: • capitalism must be removed, but liberty retained. • capitalism cannot be removed without repression. • repression is antithetical to liberty. The puzzle is resolved as with the analogous puzzle of abolishing. Let the “last capitalist” action before the days of liberty be the repressive but liberating revolution overthrowing capitalism. 16 Although Taoism is strongly opposed to war, and much in favour of peace - and accordingly by prevailing standards a substantially pacific position - it is not (nowhere in the central texts) committed to pacifism in usual senses, for two different reasons:• It is not, by contrast with pacifism, opposed to all types of warfare, for example smart defensive wars. • It eschews deontology in terms of which moral pacifism is commonly stated, for instance through the watershed thesis P2. It is morally wrong to use violence. By contrast with Taoism, deep environmentalism does not avoid deontic claims, and is committed in principle to nonviolent technologies and ways and to pacifistic principles. Moreover, certain forms of deep environmentalism are completely committed to pacifism, notably European forms. Is deep green? There is heavy contemporary opposition to pacifism, as there also was to Taoism in the warring times when Taoism was first being promulgated. Many of the central institutions of contemporary life are intricated in coercion, violence and war. The most prominent contemporary institutions, states, are premissed on these elements of damaging force; they claim entitlement to use them widely, and even claim a certain territorial monopoly on their use. As a result they are having constantly to engage in them in attempt to maintain that monopoly. They are certainly the main perpetrators of wars, and of violence. They are indeed inured to wars, are in constant preparation for wars, yet propound dialectial (and normally dishonest and cynical) doctrines of peace through war (for a recent example see the appendix). Unremarkably then, the extensive propagandistic machinery of state has invested heavily in “justificatory” exercises in favour of controlled use, its own use, of destructive force, and continues to inveigh against pacifism. Because a routine trick in this sophistical repetoire consists in conflating pacifism with extreme, naive and inplausible, forms, an inevitable and important early task commits in unscrambling senses of ‘pacifism’. Semantical skulduggery can be thwarted in this way. Pacifism, as explained by English dictionaries, invariably concerns wars and warfare, and contains two components, negative and, elaborating on that, positive:- The negative component is, in Amauld's word, anti-War-ism, opposition (in ways to be further specified) to all forms of warfare (see OED). The positive component supplies alternative ways of settling disputes (what it is supposed that wars with some semblance of justification involve), such as negotiation, arbitration,... - and, adding to too narrow dictionary accounts - sanctions, substitutions (e.g. of sporting events, operatic contests, cooperative ventures),... . In brief standard pacifism is opposition to all warfare and resolution of potential wars by other nonmilitary means. Plainly the opposition to warfare, like the sanctions and so on, cannot itself be military (using soldiers and other devices of war), on pain of some incoherence. But otherwise the ways of opposition can be many and various: they can certainly be active, as with nonviolent 17 demonstrations, resistance movements, and so forth, and they may also be devious (e.g. turning the forces of war upon themselves so they are neutralised). It quickly becomes evident, then, that some of the dictionaries offer but loaded definitions which, by restricting the negative components, reduce the initial appeal and plausibility of pacifism. Consider the Concise English definition of the negative component: ‘the doctrine of non-resistance to hostilities and of total non-co-operation with any form of warfare’. Thereby excluded are forms of pacifism which offer active and plausible alternatives to warfare such as social defence. The Concise English tends to force pacifism into what the Oxford English Dictionary lists as its final item: ‘often, with depreciatory implication, the advocacy of peace at any price’, ‘in any circumstance’. Pacifism can easily resist being forced into these sorts of circumstances: it has many resources, as an extensive series of texts on alternatives to war, such as negotiation, non­ violent action and social defence, from Taoism to contemporary environmentalism attest. Academic philosophers have much advanced the semantical strategy of some dictionaries, of rendering pacifism more difficult from the very outset by narrow and biassed definitions. They have stretched the term from its restricted setting of warfare, confined to state and organised gang violence, to cover all forms of violence, from state and interstate to, what is very different, personal and interpersonal violence. Call the resulting considerably stretched notion of pacifism, according to which it is morally wrong to use violence, according to which P2 holds, stretched pacifism.'1 While stretched pacifism certainly includes standard pacifism (unless the notions of war and warfare are tampered with), the converse is very far from being the case. A pacifist is in no way committed to stretched pacifism, which is a much more problematic and difficult position than standard pacifism. There are several, substantially different reasons for this, which will be picked up seriatim. Stretched pacifism, also misleadingly called moral pacifism, has looked a very easy critical target to moral philosophers. Many the effusive philosopher who, upon sighting such a target, has charged, whooping such rhetoric as “incoherent”, “inconsistent”, “insensitive”, “fanatical”. However, with improved logical technology now available for accommodating and treating moral dilemmas, it is no great feat to resist such attacks, in the fashion of previous investigations (see esp. Al, also MD). A main aim was to demonstrate that stretched pacifism was not so stupid as it was made out to be or appeared to be to these inured to present dominant violent ways. So far from being stupid, it is viable. In future gentler times stretched pacifism could even be realised for whole communities of creatures (as some genuinely Christian sects envisaged); whence it will finally be seen to be feasible not merely for sages and supermen, and many ordinary women, but much more extensively. 7 In Al this notion was contrasted with standard pacifism as comprehensive pacifism: overcomprehensive might have been better. 18 The method of philosophical accommodation was through moral dilemmas. The sort of moral dilemma that stretched pacifism can induce derives as follows. On the one side stands the theme P2, Wv, in convenient symbols, for Wrong V-ing, violencing. Now this implies to WB, where B presents a case of of violence. On the other side, particular circumstances develop which lead to W ~B, because ~B would produce in the circumstances considerable wrong, for instance extensive violence, mass murder, etc. One stock example from the literature concerns calling off the firing squad about to shoot several captives if the pacifist shoots one of them (it is elaborated in Al p.13). Interestingly, another stock example from the literature concerns standard pacifism (it can also be presented in terms of patriotism; for details of both see MD p.10). Resolution of intractable moral dilemmas is, where it is required, situational. The agent decides in the situation, within the fix, what to do. There are many ways in which such decision making can proceed, less rational, such as those applying chance or involving bad faith, or more rational, such as those applying consequentialist decision theory (for details see MD, pp.32-9). A decision theory taking account of all that should be included will not however be purely consequential. It would also take account of relevant motivation. This defence and rehabilitation of moral pacifism has been challenged, in particular by Smith (hereafter JWS). JWS claims the defence offered is a ‘failure because it trivializes pacifism’ (p. 153 twice). The rehabilitation trivializes pacifism because it entails that pacifism doesn't substantially differ from a form of activism which holds that while violence is always wrong one is sometimes justified on consequentialist grounds for preferring violent acts, if these acts are lesser evils than any other real alternatives. This is the commonsense position which most people hold - yet - pacifism after all was supposed to be radical moral doctrine - (p.153 rearranged).8 Part of the criticism is, then, not so much that pacifism is trivialized - JWS “activism” is hardly trivial - as that pacifism is popularised, deflated from a radical position to the commonsense position most people hold (p.154 also). Yet not a shred of evidence is adduced that JWS activism is such a populist position. Available evidence, for example from peace movements and oppositional opinion polls, suggests the very opposite: that, for instance, most people support state-justified conventional wars with the military violence they incur, and accordingly do not hold that violence is always wrong. From such a commonsense angle, pacifism with its condemnation of conventional wars and the violence they involve remains a radical doctrine. As regards wars and other violence-incurring social authorities, contemporary pacificism 8 JWS now informs me that he has changed his position. Whether the move effects his criticism, I don't know. 19 is, as previous explained (e.g. Al p.3), a form of activism. Pacifism does not imply utter pacifity, but may actively involve social defence, resistance and so on. However a certain level of misrepresentation enters into the JWS challenge in the details of what forms of activism pacifism may include. That misrepresentation begins in the second clause concerning what is said to be sometimes justified. For the situational procedure where dilemmas arise will not generally be consequential applying a principle of lesser evil. In dilemmatic situations such principles are suspended, and such a principle is in any case unacceptable to moral pacifists. A small amount of violence may be less bad in its consequences than verbal offence, but a principled pacifist will choose the slightly greater evil where other obligations do not exclude it. A more serious distortion occurs in JWS's effort to force procedures in dilemma situations into purely consequentialist form. In fact consequential decision theory was deployed as a model only for how to proceed rationally in a situational setting where deontic procedures were suspended (see MD p.38). What was said, still misleadingly retrospective vision reveals, was this: ‘what is done is a very consequentialist thing’ (Al p.13), not ‘one acts in a consequentialist fashion to do the sufficiently good thing in the circumstances’ (JWS p.152). Situationally other procedures than those resembling orthodox rational decision making (modified from maximizing to satisizing objectives) may be adopted (MD p.38). Further the orthodox consequentialist theory is inadequate because it leaves out, or tries to reduce to consequences, nonconsequential elements, notably motives. It is not difficult, in principle (in advance of attempted consequentialization of motives), to design situations where motives, such as integrity or maintaining faith, enter to yield outcomes upsetting consequential calculations. More elaborate decision making procedures than those of consequentialism, sometimes at variance with consequentialism, are thus presupposed. A further part of JWS's criticism accordingly goes by the board, the alleged appeal ‘to “second best” consequentialist considerations,... already explicitly condemned’ (p.154). What was condemned was stock universal consequentialism, ‘that only consequentialist considerations carry argumentative weight’ (quoted on p. 152), so undercutting other deontic principles, such as those of pacifism. It was not claimed, what is utterly different, that consequentialist considerations can nowhere enter into deliberation and decision making. The conclusion JWS arrives at is therefore substantially astray. After criticising modern moral philosophy for its reliance upon consequentialist modes of thought, it is surprising, and inconsistent, to find ... [reliance] upon such modes of thought to escape logical difficulties raised by moral dilemmas facing ... pacifis[m] (p. 152) There is no inconsistency. JWS has confused universal with particular. As well he has wrongly contracted all situational decision making to consequentialist modes. There is a third part to the criticism, that the defence is too easy; the ‘strategy will allow too much violence to be (perpetrated and) justified to suit the tastes of any real pacifist’ (p. 153). This another part of the so-called trivialization, this time however dilution rather than 20 popularization, weakening the moral stand against violence. This third contention is premissed on a mistake: that one can ‘justify on consequentialist grounds any number of violent acts, providing that such acts are lesser evils than other real alternatives facing social agents’ (p.153). Moral pacifism offers no such licence; allowing such consequentialism to take over was never part of the position. The slide to such consequentialism is made on the strength of a similarly erroneous example. The potential victim of an aspiring rapist ‘is supposed to flee or wriggle free if possible. But it is easy to consequentially justify the use of violence by the woman to prevent herself from being raped’ (p.153 italics added). In the example so far described there is no dilemma, and no such easy resort to consequentially ‘justified’ violence. What allows too much violence is the lesser evil JWS assumes is easily consequentially justified; for example that the woman is entitled to inflict, and escalate, violence so long as it remains ‘a lesser evil than the violence of attempted rape’ (p. 153). Since she may thereby inflict quite unreasonable damage (esp. if she is a Kung Fu expert), the result is inconsistent with ‘the basic principle of self-defence’ which JWS earlier adduced according to which what is ‘appropriate, in response is only that level of force necessary to defend oneself against the threat’ (p.150). There is evidence in JWS's work of some enthusiasm for levels of violence which exceed his ‘basic principle’, his appeal to ‘lesser evil’ generates some instances. The ‘basic principle’, itself fraught with difficulties (cf. the contorted discussion of what weapons are appropriate in response to what attacks, p. 150), still exceeds what stretched pacifism would enjoin; for instance, it may not be appropriate to respond with force. But in a technical sense stretched pacifism is compatible with the ‘basic principle’, since it only imposes the upper bound on level of force. As for easiness, moral pacifism is not an easy position to live by, or to justify. Removing objections to pacifism is one thing; solidifying a positive case for it is quite another, and so far hardly conclusive (as Al tried to explain, pp 29-31). Stretched pacifism was advanced, hypothesized to put it more precisely, as a still viable option. It was not presented as a morally compulsory position, or, for that matter, as one that this defender adhered to or affirmed. To reiterate, while a cumulative case can be made for stetched pacifism as principled non­ violence, that case was not conclusive, and is hard to improve. For, further, some serious difficulties standing in the way of stretched pacifism were assembled, the most important of which derives from the extent of violence apparent in transactions within the natural world. Simply consider the practices of carnivores, essential to their natural way of life. In order to meet their life needs for sustenance, these creatures do, and are often obliged to, engage routinely in violent activity. While it can no doubt be argued, as some vegetarians may do, that the natural order is an immoral order, and that remaining carnivores should be converted to vegetarianism as rapidly as proves possible (in the way domestic dogs are converted to dog biscuits), the difficulties with such proposals are immense. The task envisaged is gigantic, and beyond human capacities - even if it were desirable. For there are millions of species to be 21 somehow converted to proper vegetarianism. Then there are millions of other species to be converted to proper and well regulated contraceptive practices, else their numbers will get out of hand (uncontrollably) with predation removed. Given humans lack of success in limiting their own excessive numbers, such regulation appears entirely remote. Aside however from the practical difficulties, is such a fully vegetarian order, with evolution further derailed, a desirable improvement on the natural order? Is it morally obligatory? It is certainly not obligatory, as alternative systems of morality in harmony with the prevailing natural order are feasible. Nor is it desirable, for (to appeal to such alternative value systems) the natural order is more or less in order as it is. Full vegetarianization would only reduce its value, vastly. More generally, a defensible ethical framework should not, it would be rightly contended, be right out of step with the natural order of other creatures, decently depicted. Decent depiction is important, for some features of the natural order, such as competition, combat and predation, so far from escaping attention, have been grossly exaggerated and exploited. Thus, for instance, the ludicrous picture of nature red in truth and claw, so beloved of descendents of orthodox Victorians and of orthodox economists. However, even under decent depiction, the “natural order” is often not benign. That appears to be enough to induce a supervenient moral dilemma for any stretched pacifism which is coupled to a deep ethic (e.g. which does not separate humans out from the natural order) and which eschews the desperate vegetarian route: The natural order is not an immoral order The natural order contains (regular) instances of violence. Therefore, instances of violence are not immoral in apparent defiance of P2 Moreover, there are too many instances of violence, too regularly occurring, for them all to be plausibly shunted into the moral dilemma category (and predatory carnivores face no dilemmas). Raptors that practice violence every week are not immoral (neither are they clearly moral; the category of morality only significantly extends so far). The main trouble lies however with P2 (which needs some finer adjustment, as was alrady indicated in Al). While P2 is alright in context, within a particular, perfectly viable, ethical framework, designed for the usual human round, the conventional setting for ethical theories, it stands in need of modification outside that setting. It is time to suggest the sort of modification envisaged. Evidently P2 was addressed to moral agents. Which agents? Not to carnivores that supply their own livelihood, nor really to morally degenerate humans, but to peace-sensitive agents. With that semi-technical form, yet to be characterised, a suitably P2 MP2. It is morally wrong, for a peace-sensitive agent, to use violence.9 modified 9 results: The generalization of P2, suggested in Al, to cover also the parallel situation of environmental vandalism, can be similarly modified. The anti-vandolence principle becomes MP2°. It is morally wrong, for a peace- and environmentally-sensitive agent, to use 22 To recover what amounts, in the previous discussive context, to P2, it suffices to add the proposition that every human agent ought to be peace-sensitive. Much as that proposition has to recommend it, it appears too ethically advanced for many modern humans; it sets too high a moral standard to be taken as a serious guide to practice. It seems wise to settle presently for something less demanding, such as that every advanced moral agent ought to be peace sensitive. To put essentially the same proposition alternatively: Stretched pacifism (as modified) is supererogatory. While it is perhaps too late to hope for much moral progress in humans, it is pleasant to contemplate alternative futures where what is supererogatory became obligatory, and widely practiced. Richard Sylvan* Appendix I began drafting this essay at the time (January 17, midday Australian time) of the American attacks upon Iraq. The optly named Prime Minister Hawke of Australia had just made a statement to the nation-state, announcing (the) war. In this statement there was much talk of peace. There was even - in what was effectively a declaration of war - reiteration of the modem quest for ‘a new world order of peace’. Peace through war; so it rings out again and again, through the centuries. ‘War must be for the sake of peace’ (Aristotle p.220). More than two thousand years later, we have fought those wars to end all wars. But it is no use, Hawke solemely pronounced, just talking about peace, and thinking about peace; we must work for peace, fight for it - through war. Impeccable logic? President Bush, supreme commander, convinced us with similar logic, speaking too with many tongues. Of how he ‘preferred to think of peace, not war’. But now ‘only force will prevail’, as ‘all reasonable efforts to reach a peaceful solution are exhausted’. ‘What must be done’ must be done, or will be anyway. With God on side with the US offensive (as well as on the other side), it will go well. As it was said to have, though it achieved comparatively little that other efforts may not have yielded more satisfactorily, and thought it may now have to followed with another invasion. Nor have we ever managed to glimpse much of what is now supposed, when we are no longer engaged, to come ‘out of the horror of war’: a ‘new world order ... which governs the conflict of nations’; a ‘rule of law’, not war. How the one, enforcable law, is achieved, unless backed by the the other, is not explained (Medlin's paradox hits back). Similarly what we now hear from many militarists, as they rush to war, is that vandolence. Thank to David Bennett for joint contributions (from UT) and to JWS for opposition (in JWS) 23 ‘peace is a great good, war a great evil’. But, for the most part, only the rhetoric has shifted; practice has scarcely changed at all. REFERENCES W.-T. Chan, A Source Book on Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963; referred to as ST. W.-T. Chan (ed.), The Way of Lao Tzu (Tao-te Ching), Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1963; referred to as LT. B. Martin, Uprooting War, Freedom Press, London, 1984. A. Naess, Ecology, community and lifestyle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 1989. R.A. Rapaport, Pigs for the Ancestors : ritual in the ecology of a New Guinea People, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1967. R. Routley, ‘War and Peace II. On the alleged inconsistency, moral insensitivity and fanaticism of pacifism’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #9, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University, 1983 (also in. Inquiry ); referred to as AL R. Routley and V. Plumwood, ‘Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #6, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University, 1984 (also in Paraconsistent Logic)-, referred to as MD. R. Routley, ‘War and Peace I. On the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and nuclear-deterrence and the political fall-out’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy, #5, Research School Of Social Science, Australian National University, 1984. G. Sharp, Social Power and Political Freedom, Porter Sargent, Boston, 1980. J.W. Smith, The Worms at the Heart of Things , Public Relations Unit, Flinders University, 1989. R. Sylvan, ‘War and Peace III, Australia's defence philosophy’, Social Philosophy, for Nuclear Conference, University of Queensland, 1985. R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, ‘Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #19, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UT.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. 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Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Australian National University - Miscellaneous Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Miscellaneous Box 14: Green Projects in Progress https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/e8f40bdcc644ad46c5a77df4b8940142.pdf 2b370a7c388f901ab1a9176c90205ab4 PDF Text Text Richapd'Sylvan /> << Ji 197d p. I WHAT IS WRONG WITH APPLIED ETHICS Richard Sylvan There is much that is wrong with and in applied ethics. Specifically, there are three comprehensive counts where things are wrong with the commodity concerned, applied ethics, that is with applied ethics so economically viewed.1 Namely on the following three counts: • extraneous, with the supply, delivery, consumption, and the like of applied ethics, AE. The category prominently includes the delivery of applied ethics: what is done, taught and learnt, by whom, and how qualified (e.g. whether taught by professionals, professional ethicists or philosophers in particular). That has tended to presume that the commodity itself is more or less in order, though the presumption lacks good pedigree, delivery of defective goods being almost as ubiquitous as business enterprise. The present focus is not however upon the delivery, or other features of the production and consumption, packaging and marketing of the goods, but on features of the commodity itself, applied ethics itself. Thus • intraneous counts, concerning the commodity itself, where a further two things are wrong: •• the applied idea, and ••• what the application is presumed to be made to, established - or, should it be, establishment - ethics. Because an implicit premiss in organising the Philosophy and Applied Ethics Re-examined1 Conference seems to have been that the issues to be addressed are predominantly extraneous, and because most of the papers actually relevant to the Conference topic appear to focus on extraneous issues, the present exercise, by contrast, concentrates upon intraneous problems, especially the third: radical deficiencies in what is supposed to be applied, prevailing ethics, and some extensive repairs thereto. 1. The applied count To begin with, there is something decidedly3 odd, not to say radically unsatisfactory, about the very idea of applied ethics. To bring out the oddness, the conceptual inadequacy, it helps to consider the dictionary senses and established usage of applied. The term in the only relevant sense (the other obsolete sense is that offolded) means: ‘put to practical use; practical as distinguished from abstract or theoretical' (OED, similarly Concise English). Relevant examples cited are: ‘the applied sciences’ (from Babbage 1832), ‘applied logic (as distinguished from pure)’ (from Thomson 1806).4 It may appear then, that "applied ethics" amounts to pleonasm, a popular tautology (and "pure ethics" correspondingly to an oxymoron), because ethics itself is already practical, for instance much or all of it being concerned with practical action and its qualities (such is Maclver s assumption: moral philosophy is practical - in a way in which other branches of philosophy are not’, p.206). In this respect "applied ethics", even more "applied morals", is rather like "applied motoring", "applied nursing" or "applied housekeeping". Conceptual confusion would be considerably reduced by removing the modifier ‘applied .5 Such a charge of confusion can however be mitigated by properly I7 �18 What is wrong with applied ethics distinguishing ethics, which includes philosophy and theory of morality, from morals, thereby revealing, perhaps, elements of some theory apt for application. No doubt something like this is the presupposition of those who preach or profit from practical ethics (similarly practical economics, but doubtfully practical housekeeping): that standing in contrast is a suitably established theoretical ethics (could it perchance be utilitarianism?) which can rather uncontroversiarbe used to guide practice. But is there such a theory, apt for application, for translation into practice? To appreciate what is required for adequacy, consider successful applied subjects. Let us compare "applied ethics" with^long established applied discipline, namely applied mathematics, which often boasts a separate department in universities (a discipline I was obliged to study as an undergraduate in order to proceed further in pure mathematics). In the first place, applied mathematics contrasts with pure mathematics, applied logic with pure. Where, a naive outsider may ask, is pure ethics that similarly stands in contrast with applied ethics? Could there decently be separate departments of pure and of applied ethics? For the most part, applied mathematics applies to practice, in some wide sense, a body of pure mathematics that is more or less correct, at least within the assumption framework and contextual settings where it is applied. (The qualified formulation is given for pluralistic reasons; given the dominant paradigm, the pure mathematics that is applied is correct without further qualification, correct period.) A body of substantially correct theory ready for application is then the first of several pertinent features of that relational object, applied mathematics, the first of several dubiously matchable by "applied ethics". The proviso ‘for the most part’ (introducing the paragraph) signals another discrepancy. There is a, presumably derivative, part of applied mathematics that investigates, in essentially the manner of pure mathematics, theories, algebras, spaces and similar, selected through postulates, principles or equational sets drawn from standard applied mathematics (thus e.g. Newtonian theories where classical force laws are satisfied, Hilbert and phase spaces, and so on).6 Such derivative applied mathematics need not compromise at all normal methodological requirements (such as they are) of pure mathematics, for rigour, exactness, and similar. Ordinary applied mathematics, in its quest, even haste, for practical results, does compromise, or violate, pure mathematical methodology. For example, shortcuts are taken, simplifications made, information shed, figures rounded, approximations adopted, and so. Science veers towards art. From a pure perspective, dreadful things are often done to data or mathematical transformations of data. Skilled practitioners tend to appreciate what they can get away with in this sort of regard. Again, none of this, neither the body of information nor the kinds of skills, is really matched in ethics, in putting ethical theory to practical work. Next, the mathematics that is applied, a body of pure mathematics, is not thoroughly contested. Ethics however is. There is nothing in ethics like arithmetic or elementary mechanics; the nearest thing ethics can offer is some controversial development along axiomatic geometric lines. Mathematics has its critics, both inside (e.g. intuitionists) and out (e.g., cultural relativists), but none (hard core sceptics excepted) suggest changing all of it or tampering with most of what is applied. By contrast, in ethics, there continues to be an array of competing theories, none of which has managed to win broad allegiance. What pure theory is there to apply, to do dreadful things to? It might be said in response: whichever of them is adopted! Even that, a hollow compromise will not stand up for long. For deeper environmental ethics challenge a broad range of pure theory that is alleged to be applied! What challenges a whole subject, that would change it, can hardly be an application of it. The rise of such environmental ethics is one reason why the modifier applied is a misnomer. For deeper environmental ethics is not any sort of / �Richard Sylvan 19 application of ethics; it instead challenges prevailing ethics. Nor is it, like stock "applied ethics", an adaptation of ethics within an environmental context. The label applied is substantially, if not entirely, a misnomer. Adjectives in modifier or attributive roles, in the combination adjective-noun phrase, often enough do not signify application. The assumption that all modification is application invokes a dubious, presumably false, theory of adjectival attribution. Consider a few examples involving a relevant adjective, ‘medical’. Combinations such as ‘medical student’, ‘medical book’, ‘medical trial’ do not signify applications. A medical s is not normally an application of s to medical matters (of books or students in this fashion); normally it is a type (an m type) of s.7 There are occasional exceptions, in which case compounds are liable to be recorded in dictionaries, as with medical jurisprudence which is not a type of jurisprudence, but ‘the legal knowledge required of a doctor’. There is good reason to think that ethics induces no exception, that medical ethics, and similarly business ethics, follow the normal pattern. Thus business ethics is a type of ethics, namely ethics within a specifically business setting, and accordingly adapted thereto. Observe that such a preliminary account incorporates automatically (what gives the applied presumption some problemsj^sce-^ppendix T) allowance for variations in standards, that business corporations for example should not be expected to measure up to standards set up for ordinary persons (any more than they should iw»t be expected to pay the same levels of taxes)! Given the manifold inadequacies of the label applied, amendment of terminology appears warranted. Amendment, not abandonment. After all, what ‘applied ethics’ is supposed to comprehend, such as medical ethics, business ethics, even environmental ethics, are not themselves in court, but presently taken as viable fields. A superior label is field, for field-defined or field-restricted; another is type, for type-delimited, another domain. Where others speak of "applied ethics", let us discourse about field ethics. Investment ethics, for instance, is a field ethic, with field investment. An "institute for applied ethics concentrating upon applications to business" is an institute for field ethics with main field business. The "applied ethics" movement becomes effectively a field ethics movement. Observe that professional ethics are field ethics, with the field in each case the profession concerned. But professional ethics in sum form a quite proper subclass of field ethics; bio-ethics and ecological ethics are plainly not professional ethics. Less obviously, more importantly, field ethics differs from practical ethics (as usually poorly defined), with which "applied ethics" is regularly conflated. For, on the one side, ordinary living and daily life, central to practical ethics, are not fields. On the other, field ethics are not confined to practice, but may involve considerable theoretical material, particularly from the fields concerned. 2. The ethics count Not only is the applied operation in trouble, ethics also is in deep trouble. Indeed, in a way, the main problem lies here. There is not a fit, properly satisfactory subject, for some significant applications. For some "applications" have to change and develop the subject! But, the problems do not vanish when the amendment to field ethics is made. Satisfactory fieldwork, satisfactory outcomes in field ethics are seriously hampered by long-standing troubles in ethics. For as field ethics involve ethics, whatever is wrong with ethics affects field ethics. To glimpse these troubles, consider recent ambivalence towards ethics. Is ethics even a good good. There is a most curious contrast in later 20th century attitudes towards ethics. On the one side, there are great expectations, for instance for what ethics can contribute, to social and professional lite �20 What is -wrong with applied ethics especially; but on the other there is serious disquiet, occasionally verging upon despair and into nihilism, as to ethics, and its role. Virtually the whole spectrum from great expectations through no expectations to substantial forebodings is selectively represented. A few examples: • Great expectations for ethics, beginning to re-emerge these days, tend to come from outside professional philosophical ranks, from scientists and social scientists.8 Ethics is seen as taking up again its grand legitimization and critical roles. It can indeed be used in this respect as regards to a wide variety of practices, such as in business, economics, government, scientific experimentation, and so on. Of course it cannot always succeed, because one ethics can be pitted against another, and each and all challenged. ( p-— These expectations, a bit surprising after the drab days of analytic moral philosophy (where I philosophy could express no interesting moral opinions), contrast sharply with ' /•—• heavy disquiet or worse as to present ethics. A recent example is afforded by z MacIntyre’s disturbing introduction to After Virtue', that ‘we have - very largely, if not entirely - lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical of morality’ (p.2). Some, like MacIntyre, promise a happy, even a great, outcome, should we return to proper paths, to a virtue ethic in the tradition of Aristotle. Others are not so sanguine; , there is 1 • no hope for ethics. There are divergent routes here. Either it can play no relevant , role any longer, or it can play only a negative or damaging role (thus e.g. Hinckfuss). Though both these routes lead badly astray, present (merely classificatory) objectives do not include showing as much.9 There is, furthermore, reason for at least serious disquiet. Should we care to look closely at, and try to assess, the total ethical heritage, then what we find is not very promising. • What is on offer is mostly extremely sketchy and very piecemeal, much of it a hotchpotch. There are extraordinarily few well-worked out and detailed ethics. Spinoza’s Ethics is perhaps one rare example. • Most of what is on offer is seriously biassed or prejudiced, indeed from a deep environmental perspective even unethical. Prime examples include • religious bias, heavily constraining or distorting creatures’ lives, and putting them to work to serve imagined religious objectives. • spiritualistic distortion. Even where an explicit religion does not feature, as in Platonism and neo-Platonism and in edified Buddhism, the whole of life may be distorted through promise of an after-life or successor life or extra-material life, where furthermore some system of rewards or punishments may be dished out for previous performance. No doubt such biasses help in conferring upon ethics authority, unwarranted authority (fulfil duties or be dammed, etc.). • humanistic distortion, summed up as human chauvinism. It is upon this prejudice, critical for environmental ethics, that we concentrate. A main matter that is wrong with ethics, and ipso facto its practice and its belated appearance in many professional settings (when it$ should have been in evidence long ago), is its anthropic bias, its considerable prejudice in favour of (present) humans.10 The matter is highly material in several fields, most obviously in environmental ethics, but also in medical ethics, bio-ethics, agricultural and vefinarian ethics, and similar. It is widely assumed, however, that ethics is inevitably human biassed, that it has to be anthropocentric. That is not so. Ethics can be repaired. So much is the substance of ethics without humans. Both morals and ethics can be characterised, in substantially reportive ways, so as to free �Richard Sylvan 21 them of anthropocentrism and the like.11 Furthermore, the whole superstructural theory can be developed in a fashion that makes no essential reference to humans or any other biological species.12 These repairs represent, however, only the beginning of adjustment and change - of many changes if a satisfactory deep-green ethics is to be reached. When repairing goods, there often comes a stage, increasingly rapidly encountered those days, when it becomes a more attractive proposition to acquire new items than to persist with repairs. So it may be, it is now suggested, with ethics. So increasingly it has been suggested this century, with demands for new ethics, new moral philosophies. Those making such proposals include Schweitzer, Maclver, Leopold, along with many others.13 Suppose we should arrive, through addressing different or new fields, at what amounts to a new ethics, as many think we do (thus Maclver, p. 179 and many ecocentric philosophers). Then what emerges is no "application" of a standard ethics, but something different, not an applied standard ethics at all. Now something similar may appear to occur for normal applied subjects. A newly encountered group of physical phenomena, for instance, leads not to the elevation of some dusty mathematical theory buried in archives, what is mostly the case, but to elaboration of a new mathematical theory. Normally in this event, the main body of pure mathematics would remain untouched; a new annex or suburb would simply be added to it.14 With ethics, however, things are different. There are grounds for contending that the green (environmental) revolution has shaken ethics to its (dubious) foundations and core, and, as coupled with associated non domination themes (as emphasised especially in ecofeminism), has left comparatively little untouched. The standard city of ethics is not left alone, unscathed. Much the same sort of points can be presented in the form of a dilemma, for standard ethics and a proposed field, such as environmental issues. Either standard ethics will not cover the field (or cannot be extended to do so because it (or its extension) does not apply, or through being forced upon the field it twists or damages the data, for instance leaves an indelible anthropic bias. A homely carpentry analogy may help: there is some cabinet work where delicate hammering would be appropriate, but the only tool we have is a sledgehammer.15 Likewise, a standard chauvinistic ethic is the wrong tool to try to use or extend for deeper environmental work. Unremarkably, the three options emerging, namely (inappropriate) application, extension or adjustment, and fashioning of something new or different, correspond more or less to the now familiar threefold division of environmental positions, into shallow, intermediate and deep.16 As before, deep ethics are not "applications", but near ethics. 3. Extraneous issues Among the many extraneous issues concerning field ethics, those that have come to exercise philosophers do look distinctly partisan:17 namely, the role of philosophers, especially professionals; the place of philosophy in field ethics; and the poor practice of these ethics, particularly from a professional philosophical perspective. Here the main thesis to be advanced inclines towards these professionally unsympathetic lines: insofar as these matters, philosophical extranalities, are of negatixe impact for philosophy, philosophers have largely themselves to blame, for they are largely of their own making (or, to sheet some of the responsibility more accurately, of the controlling power elite of the profession}.18 Let us investigate some of the extraneous issues seriatim. Because a field ethics concerns the field as well as (relevant parts of) ethics, its investigation, practice and teaching, requires an intersection of capacities and skills, drawn from both ethics and the field. �n What is wrong with applied ethics This simple observation enables an immediate response to such questions as: if not philosophers, then who is to investigate, and teach, field ethics? That response is: those from one area or the other who have acquired requisite knowledge and technique in the other, or less promising, those from outside (but with some appropriate informational background) who acquire these prerequisites in both. In medical ethics, where there is perhaps a larger pool of information concerning the field than there is regarding ethics, a moral philosopher untrained in medicine may have more to learn than a medical doctor unversed in ethics and lacking philosophical skills. (Really, neither should be let loose on students before they are duly prepared in the intersection.) It is evident, then, that philosophy enjoys no natural monopoly in field ethics. The place of philosophy is less exalted, and certainly is not dominant - still less given recent proposed (but hardly well justified) decoupling of ethics from philosophy.19 There are corollaries regarding the roles of philosophers on committees relating to field ethics, in decision-making and so on on these topics. Philosophers do not have an automatic place. Unless they are well-informed as to ethics (many philosophers are not) and as to the field, they do not deserve a place at all (of course they still may gain a role for want of any better placed). Ousting of under-informed or unenergetic philosophers is not always such a bad thing. While the informational situation is now significantly better than in 1945 when Maclver was agonising over the predicament of moral philosophy, it is still true that ‘academic moral philosophers are not using ‘every opportunity to make themselves acquainted, so far as possible, with the real difficulties of those [not merely present humans] who need the help of moral philosophy most... I ... confess that I myself lack the factual knowledge which would be required to do this work well. I suspect that many ethic philosophers are in the same position ...20 One of the reasons why philosophy has lost prestige in recent years is that it has not kept pace’ (pp.204-205). One example Maclver incisively develops concerns ‘discoveries associated with the name of Freud. The behaviour of philosophers in this connection is particularly hard to excuse. At first they flatly denied the reality of the alleged discoveries - maintained that the notion of "unconscious mind" was self contradictory, and so forth. But all this has now been given up. ... Philosophers no longer dispute ... details of the Freudian system - but disregard them. If they mention them at all, they talk as if they somehow concerned none but medical men - as if the same propositions could be sene in medicine and false outside it. In the light of the recognition of unconscious motives the whole traditional theory of moral responsibility needs overhauling, but no moral philosopher undertakes this’ (p.205). The reason why the corresponding philosophical debate (about whether unconscious desires are sometimes evil, whether relevant moral predicates are restricted to conscious motives, and so forth) had not "by 1945, after 40 years of exposure to Freudian issues, Maclver attributed to the mass of psychological literature which philosophers have not read and would have to read, reading that is obligatory if moral philosophy is to be made ‘the subject which it ought to be’ (p.206). There has been disappointment among some professional philosophers, those with expansionist . instin^tions, that field ethics has not turned out to be quite the bonanza anticipated, that the expected / boom in new opportunities and positions began to dissipate as field practitioners started to supply their own "field ethicists".21 None of this should have been surprising, for broad inductive reasons. Philosophy had long shed subjects and fields of overlap; and those professionals who have hung in have become something different (economists instead of social philosophers, computer scientists instead of logicians22) Nor have philosophers, especially those who have not changed or reskilled, all the virtues assumed by professionals; e.g. they have little or no theory, they are too fuzzy, they are indecisive, or vacillate, etc. (remember the sophists; these provide some of the reasons too why philosophers are often not welcome on committees). ( �Richard Sylvan 23 Some outside inputs into ethics, such as field studies or field workers may supply, would not go astray. For there is theoretically little that is new or interesting on the standard ethics scene. Much of it is 19th century revival, refinement of utilitarianism or Kantianism, and ornate additions (with bells and whistles). One of the few "new" offerings is the revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics! Nothing, however, stops outside inputs. Anyone is free to attempt philosophy. Professionals have no exclusive rights over philosophy, still less over ethics; nor should they. There is a case for widening practice of philosophy, and encouraging paraphilosophers. For critical problems emerging are not so much those of philosophy itself (which could be very different from the way it is practised and professionalised), but of philosophy as professionalised and as conducted. The immediate future does not bode well for change in the latter, for several reasons; the prevailing materialistic technological ethos (which dev^lyes pure intellectual activity), the consequent marginalisation of subjects like philosophy and continuing narrowness of dominant philosophical activity. Nor, moreover, have philosophers proceeded well, particularly in the Antipodes, in training and "^pp^ing students who can readily adapt to become field ethicists. Philosophy has never been strongly employment-market driven (but has tended to rely on a version of Say’s flawed law); indeed there are features intrinsic to philosophy, such as its contemplative character, that renders it antithetical to the veiy idea of responding to markets at all. There are other regional features that compound this sort of problem: the conservative, and class, bias of philosophy (inherited from similar British arrangements), which has meant that Australian philosophy has not been innovative in adapting its topics and emphases to changing circumstances;23 and the heavy concentration, as in British empiricism (still dominant in Australia), upon epistemology, with ethics and what went into moral sciences and social philosophy still regarded as second class arenas and not what philosophy was really about or what first class chaps would mainly concern themselves. These are major reasons why philosophy lost out, and Reserved to lose. It is for those latter sorts of reasons in particular, that environmental ethics and environmental philosophy have been unable to gain more than occasional marginal status in philosophy curricula in Australian universities. Fuller accounts of the predicament of environmental philosophy have been given elsewhere.24 Its predicament tends to illustrate a general problem for field ethics, with bioethics (with its own institutional settings) the only partial exception. Now that field ethics is being lost to the fields in many cases, there are complaints about the calibre of what is done and taught, the quality of the investigators and teachers, and so on. No doubt much of this criticism is warranted; some similar criticism of ethics within philosophy would also be warranted. Among the justified criticisms are these: • that field ethics as done from the field is divorced from ethical theory (from what theory has so far been developed). Too much comprises mere case studies, as with business MBAs. • that the field practitioners are not trained in ethical theory, and are often ill-informed ethically and lacking in analytic and critical skills crucial for satisfactory philosophy. A different complaint, of importance, concerns the poor ethical practice, even the unethical practice in some of the fields, despite the development of field ethics. Such a problem is particularly conspicuous in the field of business.25 But this has been a long-standing problem for ethics itself; how to get people to behave as they ought? Teaching agents ethics can certainly enable, and encourage, them to be moral: but it cannot make them moral. Nor would it be proper for it to do so. The field ethics movement, successor to the late AE movement, is both important and timely, especially as regards getting ethics and axiology back into many fields that hard tried, erroneously it now appears, to eliminate them. The movement will have to be carefully orchestrated however to \ I 1 �24 What is wrong with applied ethics avoid capture by the very power structures and disciplinary paradigms that it should transform. These are certainly grounds for some cynicism about such movements: that they are easy targets for co-option, that they can bemused to cover up abuses by power structures, and to authorise dubious procedures, or worse,^with a rubber stamp of ethical approval from appropriate ethics’ committees and inquiries. Such grounds for cynicism can be reasoned, however, and new hope inaugurated, given more adequate formulation and development of relevant field ethics (exercises including considerable theoretical work), along with independent and impartial administration of emerging codes and decision methods, and with appropriate openness of the formerly abused procedures they are intended to regulate fairly. REFERENCES Callicott, J.B., In Defense of the Land Ethic, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1989. Edwards, J.C., Ethics without Philosophy, University Presses of Florida, Tampa, 1982. Engel, J.R., Ethics of Environment and Development, Belhaven Press, 1990. Hinkfuss, I., The Moral Society: Its Structure and Effects, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy, no. 16, The Australian National University, 1987. Leopold, A., A Sand Country Almanac, Oxford University Press, New York, 1949. MacIntyre, A., After Virtue, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1981. Maclver, A.M., "Towards anew moral philosophy", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, no. 46 (1945-6): 179-206. Sylvan, R. "Prospects for regional philosophy in Australasia", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 1986. Sylvan, R., From Wisdom to Wowserism, typescript, 1991. Sylvan, R., Deep-Green Ethics, typescript, 1993. i Sylvan, R. and Bennett, H., The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 199^. Wilson, E.O. (ed.), Biodiversity, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1988. NOTES 1. For such a treatment of items like ethics, as economic goods, see further Greening of Ethics. 2. The Conference, organised by the University of Newcastle in August 1993, where this paper was presented. 3. Ethical theory has tended to borrow classifications from elsewhere, from apparently more successful enterprises. Thus, for instance, the (normative) ethics/meta-ethics distinction lifted, none too adeptly, �25 Richard Sylvan from logical theory. Thus too the present pure/applied distinction, also purloined. By no means everything that intelligent agents dream up and promote is entirely in order. Rather uncontroversially colourless green ideas is one such combination, more controversially human nature, deep ecology and post-modernism are such. Applied ethics appears to belong to this not-in-satisfactory-order or out-of-order bunch. 4. ‘Applied. Practical, put to practical use. Applied science. Science of which the abstract principles are put to practical use in the arts’ (Concise English'). ‘2. Put to practical use; practical as distinguished from abstract or theoretical’ (OED). Though we persevere with these dictionary explications, there are grounds for complaint; there are neglected nuances. For example, the practical/theoretical contrast (just one of the muddy contrasts with practical) differs from an applied/pure contrast. A theory can in principle be applied (a plying to, i.e., a mapping) in a non practical, or impractical, field. Different again is that concrete/abstract contrast. And what exactly is practical? 5. The advance notices for the Conference (which look pretty confused, even mumbo jumbo), well they add insult to injury by invoking talk of a theory of applied ethics. There is said to ‘appear to be a significant gap between the theory of applied ethics and its practice’; this is said to be why ‘disillusionment has set in’ now. While there may be a theory of applications, talk of a "theory of applied ethics" heaps confusion (‘theory of) upon confusion (‘applied ethics’). As for gaps (really, between the theory and practice of ethics), there are two, as we shall see; there is an ambiguity in ‘gap’As for mumbo jumbo, try the following sentence: ‘The teaching and practice of applied ethics has grown rapidly and in an unruly manner across many disciplines, with many practitioners now not possessing any depth of philosophical knowledge and expertise and, because of difficulties experienced with the theory and practice given, in some cases deciding that same is relevant.’ Its sequel is easily unscrambled: ‘We wish to hold a conference to explore this issue for the Australian community and its practical consequences.’ 6. Thus, too, there is a two way process. Application feeds back to inform theory and to enrich the pure subject. With ethics, as we shall see, something similar or more dramatic happens. Field developments not merely may inform and enlarge the ethical theory; some may alter it irrevocably. 7. Of course not all adjectives function in this way. butTor. instance without types of responded s. Thus, e.g. possible, probable, alleged, putative,etc. I 8. Examples include Wilson in Biodiversity, Engel. 9. We try to show as much elsewherey-Routley and HTIF. 10. This is by no means all that is wrong with standard ethics. Another, important for field ethics, is the lack of an adequate theory of ethical dilemmas, confronting which is a main engine of progress in ethics. 11. See Greening of Ethics', also ‘Ethics without humans. Philosophy without humans', Observe that ^repairs are not unique. <y : » 12. As to how this is accomplished, see the annular theory, reiterated in Greening'. X �26 What is wrong with applied ethics 13. Maclver suggests ‘that all the old codes are out of date and a satisfactory new one has still to be discovered. A lost moral code cannot be recovered, and a new one obtained, simply for the asking’ (p.201). 14. Nothing, no paradigm shift as revolution has effected the whole citadel of mathematics; none is likely to (even dialethism, more threatening than much else, because central areas can be protected by /w roj due qualification). 15. A different example: an isolated person has an extensive weeding tool in a weed invaded forest, with the only techniques availabe a broad-acre chemical defoliant. 16. For a classification of environmental positions along the lines of the three options, see Callicott Introduction, where attention is also drawn to shortcomings in the applied idea. 17. On extraneous issues in ethics, including especially field ethics such as environmental ethics, see for a detailed treatment Greening of Ethics, part II/. JJ 18. Among other things, philosophers did not act, did not respond to incipient demand, fast enough in organising appropriate structures for delivery of field ethics. <5? 19. See esp. Edwards, plhieswilhourPhilosophy^ 20. Maclver continues ‘and for this reason this conception of the task of moral philosophy is unlikely to be popular in the profession.’ There are two troubles with the tack: firstly, field ethics do not should not - exhaust ethics; secondly, field ethics are enjoying some popularity. 21. The proposition, from the circulated Conference announcement, that field ethics might rejuvenate a flagging philosophy, that they had ‘given philosophy a rebirth’ can hardly be taken seriously (for all that they may have given jaded philosophy departments a fillip). Concrete working examples and dilemmas might stimulate ethical investigation, but would only exceptionally impact an ethical theory, and moreover ethics itself has but rarely been a source of growth and development in philosophy. Field practitioners, who often have their own expansionist and imperialist ambitions and programs, are unlikely to let a service subject be supplied from elsewhere unless they cannot yet manage the subject themselves and then only so long as times are good so they do not need the jobs and can avoid chores involved. 22. Interestingly there has been no similar fuss from professionals regarding the attrition of logicians within philosophy (for which some of them have responsibility), or the on-going loss of logic to computing science and mathematics. 23. It is for this sort of reason that philosophy in Australia, unlike that in parts of USA^,missed the field van. 24. See Sylvan 1986, The Greening of Ethics, From Wisdom to Wowserism. iSrn- 25. A problem in fact exacerbated under prominent ethical positions, e.g., crude utilitarian fostering "greed is good" notions, most social Darwinism encouraging cut-throat competition. I' � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Richapd'Sylvan /> << Ji 197d p. I WHAT IS WRONG WITH APPLIED ETHICS Richard Sylvan There is much that is wrong with and in applied ethics. Specifically, there are three comprehensive counts where things are wrong with the commodity concerned, applied ethics, that is with applied ethics so economically viewed.1 Namely on the following three counts: • extraneous, with the supply, delivery, consumption, and the like of applied ethics, AE. The category prominently includes the delivery of applied ethics: what is done, taught and learnt, by whom, and how qualified (e.g. whether taught by professionals, professional ethicists or philosophers in particular). That has tended to presume that the commodity itself is more or less in order, though the presumption lacks good pedigree, delivery of defective goods being almost as ubiquitous as business enterprise. The present focus is not however upon the delivery, or other features of the production and consumption, packaging and marketing of the goods, but on features of the commodity itself, applied ethics itself. Thus • intraneous counts, concerning the commodity itself, where a further two things are wrong: •• the applied idea, and ••• what the application is presumed to be made to, established - or, should it be, establishment - ethics. Because an implicit premiss in organising the Philosophy and Applied Ethics Re-examined1 Conference seems to have been that the issues to be addressed are predominantly extraneous, and because most of the papers actually relevant to the Conference topic appear to focus on extraneous issues, the present exercise, by contrast, concentrates upon intraneous problems, especially the third: radical deficiencies in what is supposed to be applied, prevailing ethics, and some extensive repairs thereto. 1. The applied count To begin with, there is something decidedly3 odd, not to say radically unsatisfactory, about the very idea of applied ethics. To bring out the oddness, the conceptual inadequacy, it helps to consider the dictionary senses and established usage of applied. The term in the only relevant sense (the other obsolete sense is that offolded) means: ‘put to practical use; practical as distinguished from abstract or theoretical' (OED, similarly Concise English). Relevant examples cited are: ‘the applied sciences’ (from Babbage 1832), ‘applied logic (as distinguished from pure)’ (from Thomson 1806).4 It may appear then, that "applied ethics" amounts to pleonasm, a popular tautology (and "pure ethics" correspondingly to an oxymoron), because ethics itself is already practical, for instance much or all of it being concerned with practical action and its qualities (such is Maclver s assumption: moral philosophy is practical - in a way in which other branches of philosophy are not’, p.206). In this respect "applied ethics", even more "applied morals", is rather like "applied motoring", "applied nursing" or "applied housekeeping". Conceptual confusion would be considerably reduced by removing the modifier ‘applied .5 Such a charge of confusion can however be mitigated by properly I7 18 What is wrong with applied ethics distinguishing ethics, which includes philosophy and theory of morality, from morals, thereby revealing, perhaps, elements of some theory apt for application. No doubt something like this is the presupposition of those who preach or profit from practical ethics (similarly practical economics, but doubtfully practical housekeeping): that standing in contrast is a suitably established theoretical ethics (could it perchance be utilitarianism?) which can rather uncontroversiarbe used to guide practice. But is there such a theory, apt for application, for translation into practice? To appreciate what is required for adequacy, consider successful applied subjects. Let us compare "applied ethics" with^long established applied discipline, namely applied mathematics, which often boasts a separate department in universities (a discipline I was obliged to study as an undergraduate in order to proceed further in pure mathematics). In the first place, applied mathematics contrasts with pure mathematics, applied logic with pure. Where, a naive outsider may ask, is pure ethics that similarly stands in contrast with applied ethics? Could there decently be separate departments of pure and of applied ethics? For the most part, applied mathematics applies to practice, in some wide sense, a body of pure mathematics that is more or less correct, at least within the assumption framework and contextual settings where it is applied. (The qualified formulation is given for pluralistic reasons; given the dominant paradigm, the pure mathematics that is applied is correct without further qualification, correct period.) A body of substantially correct theory ready for application is then the first of several pertinent features of that relational object, applied mathematics, the first of several dubiously matchable by "applied ethics". The proviso ‘for the most part’ (introducing the paragraph) signals another discrepancy. There is a, presumably derivative, part of applied mathematics that investigates, in essentially the manner of pure mathematics, theories, algebras, spaces and similar, selected through postulates, principles or equational sets drawn from standard applied mathematics (thus e.g. Newtonian theories where classical force laws are satisfied, Hilbert and phase spaces, and so on).6 Such derivative applied mathematics need not compromise at all normal methodological requirements (such as they are) of pure mathematics, for rigour, exactness, and similar. Ordinary applied mathematics, in its quest, even haste, for practical results, does compromise, or violate, pure mathematical methodology. For example, shortcuts are taken, simplifications made, information shed, figures rounded, approximations adopted, and so. Science veers towards art. From a pure perspective, dreadful things are often done to data or mathematical transformations of data. Skilled practitioners tend to appreciate what they can get away with in this sort of regard. Again, none of this, neither the body of information nor the kinds of skills, is really matched in ethics, in putting ethical theory to practical work. Next, the mathematics that is applied, a body of pure mathematics, is not thoroughly contested. Ethics however is. There is nothing in ethics like arithmetic or elementary mechanics; the nearest thing ethics can offer is some controversial development along axiomatic geometric lines. Mathematics has its critics, both inside (e.g. intuitionists) and out (e.g., cultural relativists), but none (hard core sceptics excepted) suggest changing all of it or tampering with most of what is applied. By contrast, in ethics, there continues to be an array of competing theories, none of which has managed to win broad allegiance. What pure theory is there to apply, to do dreadful things to? It might be said in response: whichever of them is adopted! Even that, a hollow compromise will not stand up for long. For deeper environmental ethics challenge a broad range of pure theory that is alleged to be applied! What challenges a whole subject, that would change it, can hardly be an application of it. The rise of such environmental ethics is one reason why the modifier applied is a misnomer. For deeper environmental ethics is not any sort of / Richard Sylvan 19 application of ethics; it instead challenges prevailing ethics. Nor is it, like stock "applied ethics", an adaptation of ethics within an environmental context. The label applied is substantially, if not entirely, a misnomer. Adjectives in modifier or attributive roles, in the combination adjective-noun phrase, often enough do not signify application. The assumption that all modification is application invokes a dubious, presumably false, theory of adjectival attribution. Consider a few examples involving a relevant adjective, ‘medical’. Combinations such as ‘medical student’, ‘medical book’, ‘medical trial’ do not signify applications. A medical s is not normally an application of s to medical matters (of books or students in this fashion); normally it is a type (an m type) of s.7 There are occasional exceptions, in which case compounds are liable to be recorded in dictionaries, as with medical jurisprudence which is not a type of jurisprudence, but ‘the legal knowledge required of a doctor’. There is good reason to think that ethics induces no exception, that medical ethics, and similarly business ethics, follow the normal pattern. Thus business ethics is a type of ethics, namely ethics within a specifically business setting, and accordingly adapted thereto. Observe that such a preliminary account incorporates automatically (what gives the applied presumption some problemsj^sce-^ppendix T) allowance for variations in standards, that business corporations for example should not be expected to measure up to standards set up for ordinary persons (any more than they should iw»t be expected to pay the same levels of taxes)! Given the manifold inadequacies of the label applied, amendment of terminology appears warranted. Amendment, not abandonment. After all, what ‘applied ethics’ is supposed to comprehend, such as medical ethics, business ethics, even environmental ethics, are not themselves in court, but presently taken as viable fields. A superior label is field, for field-defined or field-restricted; another is type, for type-delimited, another domain. Where others speak of "applied ethics", let us discourse about field ethics. Investment ethics, for instance, is a field ethic, with field investment. An "institute for applied ethics concentrating upon applications to business" is an institute for field ethics with main field business. The "applied ethics" movement becomes effectively a field ethics movement. Observe that professional ethics are field ethics, with the field in each case the profession concerned. But professional ethics in sum form a quite proper subclass of field ethics; bio-ethics and ecological ethics are plainly not professional ethics. Less obviously, more importantly, field ethics differs from practical ethics (as usually poorly defined), with which "applied ethics" is regularly conflated. For, on the one side, ordinary living and daily life, central to practical ethics, are not fields. On the other, field ethics are not confined to practice, but may involve considerable theoretical material, particularly from the fields concerned. 2. The ethics count Not only is the applied operation in trouble, ethics also is in deep trouble. Indeed, in a way, the main problem lies here. There is not a fit, properly satisfactory subject, for some significant applications. For some "applications" have to change and develop the subject! But, the problems do not vanish when the amendment to field ethics is made. Satisfactory fieldwork, satisfactory outcomes in field ethics are seriously hampered by long-standing troubles in ethics. For as field ethics involve ethics, whatever is wrong with ethics affects field ethics. To glimpse these troubles, consider recent ambivalence towards ethics. Is ethics even a good good. There is a most curious contrast in later 20th century attitudes towards ethics. On the one side, there are great expectations, for instance for what ethics can contribute, to social and professional lite 20 What is -wrong with applied ethics especially; but on the other there is serious disquiet, occasionally verging upon despair and into nihilism, as to ethics, and its role. Virtually the whole spectrum from great expectations through no expectations to substantial forebodings is selectively represented. A few examples: • Great expectations for ethics, beginning to re-emerge these days, tend to come from outside professional philosophical ranks, from scientists and social scientists.8 Ethics is seen as taking up again its grand legitimization and critical roles. It can indeed be used in this respect as regards to a wide variety of practices, such as in business, economics, government, scientific experimentation, and so on. Of course it cannot always succeed, because one ethics can be pitted against another, and each and all challenged. ( p-— These expectations, a bit surprising after the drab days of analytic moral philosophy (where I philosophy could express no interesting moral opinions), contrast sharply with ' /•—• heavy disquiet or worse as to present ethics. A recent example is afforded by z MacIntyre’s disturbing introduction to After Virtue', that ‘we have - very largely, if not entirely - lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical of morality’ (p.2). Some, like MacIntyre, promise a happy, even a great, outcome, should we return to proper paths, to a virtue ethic in the tradition of Aristotle. Others are not so sanguine; , there is 1 • no hope for ethics. There are divergent routes here. Either it can play no relevant , role any longer, or it can play only a negative or damaging role (thus e.g. Hinckfuss). Though both these routes lead badly astray, present (merely classificatory) objectives do not include showing as much.9 There is, furthermore, reason for at least serious disquiet. Should we care to look closely at, and try to assess, the total ethical heritage, then what we find is not very promising. • What is on offer is mostly extremely sketchy and very piecemeal, much of it a hotchpotch. There are extraordinarily few well-worked out and detailed ethics. Spinoza’s Ethics is perhaps one rare example. • Most of what is on offer is seriously biassed or prejudiced, indeed from a deep environmental perspective even unethical. Prime examples include • religious bias, heavily constraining or distorting creatures’ lives, and putting them to work to serve imagined religious objectives. • spiritualistic distortion. Even where an explicit religion does not feature, as in Platonism and neo-Platonism and in edified Buddhism, the whole of life may be distorted through promise of an after-life or successor life or extra-material life, where furthermore some system of rewards or punishments may be dished out for previous performance. No doubt such biasses help in conferring upon ethics authority, unwarranted authority (fulfil duties or be dammed, etc.). • humanistic distortion, summed up as human chauvinism. It is upon this prejudice, critical for environmental ethics, that we concentrate. A main matter that is wrong with ethics, and ipso facto its practice and its belated appearance in many professional settings (when it$ should have been in evidence long ago), is its anthropic bias, its considerable prejudice in favour of (present) humans.10 The matter is highly material in several fields, most obviously in environmental ethics, but also in medical ethics, bio-ethics, agricultural and vefinarian ethics, and similar. It is widely assumed, however, that ethics is inevitably human biassed, that it has to be anthropocentric. That is not so. Ethics can be repaired. So much is the substance of ethics without humans. Both morals and ethics can be characterised, in substantially reportive ways, so as to free Richard Sylvan 21 them of anthropocentrism and the like.11 Furthermore, the whole superstructural theory can be developed in a fashion that makes no essential reference to humans or any other biological species.12 These repairs represent, however, only the beginning of adjustment and change - of many changes if a satisfactory deep-green ethics is to be reached. When repairing goods, there often comes a stage, increasingly rapidly encountered those days, when it becomes a more attractive proposition to acquire new items than to persist with repairs. So it may be, it is now suggested, with ethics. So increasingly it has been suggested this century, with demands for new ethics, new moral philosophies. Those making such proposals include Schweitzer, Maclver, Leopold, along with many others.13 Suppose we should arrive, through addressing different or new fields, at what amounts to a new ethics, as many think we do (thus Maclver, p. 179 and many ecocentric philosophers). Then what emerges is no "application" of a standard ethics, but something different, not an applied standard ethics at all. Now something similar may appear to occur for normal applied subjects. A newly encountered group of physical phenomena, for instance, leads not to the elevation of some dusty mathematical theory buried in archives, what is mostly the case, but to elaboration of a new mathematical theory. Normally in this event, the main body of pure mathematics would remain untouched; a new annex or suburb would simply be added to it.14 With ethics, however, things are different. There are grounds for contending that the green (environmental) revolution has shaken ethics to its (dubious) foundations and core, and, as coupled with associated non domination themes (as emphasised especially in ecofeminism), has left comparatively little untouched. The standard city of ethics is not left alone, unscathed. Much the same sort of points can be presented in the form of a dilemma, for standard ethics and a proposed field, such as environmental issues. Either standard ethics will not cover the field (or cannot be extended to do so because it (or its extension) does not apply, or through being forced upon the field it twists or damages the data, for instance leaves an indelible anthropic bias. A homely carpentry analogy may help: there is some cabinet work where delicate hammering would be appropriate, but the only tool we have is a sledgehammer.15 Likewise, a standard chauvinistic ethic is the wrong tool to try to use or extend for deeper environmental work. Unremarkably, the three options emerging, namely (inappropriate) application, extension or adjustment, and fashioning of something new or different, correspond more or less to the now familiar threefold division of environmental positions, into shallow, intermediate and deep.16 As before, deep ethics are not "applications", but near ethics. 3. Extraneous issues Among the many extraneous issues concerning field ethics, those that have come to exercise philosophers do look distinctly partisan:17 namely, the role of philosophers, especially professionals; the place of philosophy in field ethics; and the poor practice of these ethics, particularly from a professional philosophical perspective. Here the main thesis to be advanced inclines towards these professionally unsympathetic lines: insofar as these matters, philosophical extranalities, are of negatixe impact for philosophy, philosophers have largely themselves to blame, for they are largely of their own making (or, to sheet some of the responsibility more accurately, of the controlling power elite of the profession}.18 Let us investigate some of the extraneous issues seriatim. Because a field ethics concerns the field as well as (relevant parts of) ethics, its investigation, practice and teaching, requires an intersection of capacities and skills, drawn from both ethics and the field. n What is wrong with applied ethics This simple observation enables an immediate response to such questions as: if not philosophers, then who is to investigate, and teach, field ethics? That response is: those from one area or the other who have acquired requisite knowledge and technique in the other, or less promising, those from outside (but with some appropriate informational background) who acquire these prerequisites in both. In medical ethics, where there is perhaps a larger pool of information concerning the field than there is regarding ethics, a moral philosopher untrained in medicine may have more to learn than a medical doctor unversed in ethics and lacking philosophical skills. (Really, neither should be let loose on students before they are duly prepared in the intersection.) It is evident, then, that philosophy enjoys no natural monopoly in field ethics. The place of philosophy is less exalted, and certainly is not dominant - still less given recent proposed (but hardly well justified) decoupling of ethics from philosophy.19 There are corollaries regarding the roles of philosophers on committees relating to field ethics, in decision-making and so on on these topics. Philosophers do not have an automatic place. Unless they are well-informed as to ethics (many philosophers are not) and as to the field, they do not deserve a place at all (of course they still may gain a role for want of any better placed). Ousting of under-informed or unenergetic philosophers is not always such a bad thing. While the informational situation is now significantly better than in 1945 when Maclver was agonising over the predicament of moral philosophy, it is still true that ‘academic moral philosophers are not using ‘every opportunity to make themselves acquainted, so far as possible, with the real difficulties of those [not merely present humans] who need the help of moral philosophy most... I ... confess that I myself lack the factual knowledge which would be required to do this work well. I suspect that many ethic philosophers are in the same position ...20 One of the reasons why philosophy has lost prestige in recent years is that it has not kept pace’ (pp.204-205). One example Maclver incisively develops concerns ‘discoveries associated with the name of Freud. The behaviour of philosophers in this connection is particularly hard to excuse. At first they flatly denied the reality of the alleged discoveries - maintained that the notion of "unconscious mind" was self contradictory, and so forth. But all this has now been given up. ... Philosophers no longer dispute ... details of the Freudian system - but disregard them. If they mention them at all, they talk as if they somehow concerned none but medical men - as if the same propositions could be sene in medicine and false outside it. In the light of the recognition of unconscious motives the whole traditional theory of moral responsibility needs overhauling, but no moral philosopher undertakes this’ (p.205). The reason why the corresponding philosophical debate (about whether unconscious desires are sometimes evil, whether relevant moral predicates are restricted to conscious motives, and so forth) had not "by 1945, after 40 years of exposure to Freudian issues, Maclver attributed to the mass of psychological literature which philosophers have not read and would have to read, reading that is obligatory if moral philosophy is to be made ‘the subject which it ought to be’ (p.206). There has been disappointment among some professional philosophers, those with expansionist . instin^tions, that field ethics has not turned out to be quite the bonanza anticipated, that the expected / boom in new opportunities and positions began to dissipate as field practitioners started to supply their own "field ethicists".21 None of this should have been surprising, for broad inductive reasons. Philosophy had long shed subjects and fields of overlap; and those professionals who have hung in have become something different (economists instead of social philosophers, computer scientists instead of logicians22) Nor have philosophers, especially those who have not changed or reskilled, all the virtues assumed by professionals; e.g. they have little or no theory, they are too fuzzy, they are indecisive, or vacillate, etc. (remember the sophists; these provide some of the reasons too why philosophers are often not welcome on committees). ( Richard Sylvan 23 Some outside inputs into ethics, such as field studies or field workers may supply, would not go astray. For there is theoretically little that is new or interesting on the standard ethics scene. Much of it is 19th century revival, refinement of utilitarianism or Kantianism, and ornate additions (with bells and whistles). One of the few "new" offerings is the revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics! Nothing, however, stops outside inputs. Anyone is free to attempt philosophy. Professionals have no exclusive rights over philosophy, still less over ethics; nor should they. There is a case for widening practice of philosophy, and encouraging paraphilosophers. For critical problems emerging are not so much those of philosophy itself (which could be very different from the way it is practised and professionalised), but of philosophy as professionalised and as conducted. The immediate future does not bode well for change in the latter, for several reasons; the prevailing materialistic technological ethos (which dev^lyes pure intellectual activity), the consequent marginalisation of subjects like philosophy and continuing narrowness of dominant philosophical activity. Nor, moreover, have philosophers proceeded well, particularly in the Antipodes, in training and "^pp^ing students who can readily adapt to become field ethicists. Philosophy has never been strongly employment-market driven (but has tended to rely on a version of Say’s flawed law); indeed there are features intrinsic to philosophy, such as its contemplative character, that renders it antithetical to the veiy idea of responding to markets at all. There are other regional features that compound this sort of problem: the conservative, and class, bias of philosophy (inherited from similar British arrangements), which has meant that Australian philosophy has not been innovative in adapting its topics and emphases to changing circumstances;23 and the heavy concentration, as in British empiricism (still dominant in Australia), upon epistemology, with ethics and what went into moral sciences and social philosophy still regarded as second class arenas and not what philosophy was really about or what first class chaps would mainly concern themselves. These are major reasons why philosophy lost out, and Reserved to lose. It is for those latter sorts of reasons in particular, that environmental ethics and environmental philosophy have been unable to gain more than occasional marginal status in philosophy curricula in Australian universities. Fuller accounts of the predicament of environmental philosophy have been given elsewhere.24 Its predicament tends to illustrate a general problem for field ethics, with bioethics (with its own institutional settings) the only partial exception. Now that field ethics is being lost to the fields in many cases, there are complaints about the calibre of what is done and taught, the quality of the investigators and teachers, and so on. No doubt much of this criticism is warranted; some similar criticism of ethics within philosophy would also be warranted. Among the justified criticisms are these: • that field ethics as done from the field is divorced from ethical theory (from what theory has so far been developed). Too much comprises mere case studies, as with business MBAs. • that the field practitioners are not trained in ethical theory, and are often ill-informed ethically and lacking in analytic and critical skills crucial for satisfactory philosophy. A different complaint, of importance, concerns the poor ethical practice, even the unethical practice in some of the fields, despite the development of field ethics. Such a problem is particularly conspicuous in the field of business.25 But this has been a long-standing problem for ethics itself; how to get people to behave as they ought? Teaching agents ethics can certainly enable, and encourage, them to be moral: but it cannot make them moral. Nor would it be proper for it to do so. The field ethics movement, successor to the late AE movement, is both important and timely, especially as regards getting ethics and axiology back into many fields that hard tried, erroneously it now appears, to eliminate them. The movement will have to be carefully orchestrated however to \ I 1 24 What is wrong with applied ethics avoid capture by the very power structures and disciplinary paradigms that it should transform. These are certainly grounds for some cynicism about such movements: that they are easy targets for co-option, that they can bemused to cover up abuses by power structures, and to authorise dubious procedures, or worse,^with a rubber stamp of ethical approval from appropriate ethics’ committees and inquiries. Such grounds for cynicism can be reasoned, however, and new hope inaugurated, given more adequate formulation and development of relevant field ethics (exercises including considerable theoretical work), along with independent and impartial administration of emerging codes and decision methods, and with appropriate openness of the formerly abused procedures they are intended to regulate fairly. REFERENCES Callicott, J.B., In Defense of the Land Ethic, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1989. Edwards, J.C., Ethics without Philosophy, University Presses of Florida, Tampa, 1982. Engel, J.R., Ethics of Environment and Development, Belhaven Press, 1990. Hinkfuss, I., The Moral Society: Its Structure and Effects, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy, no. 16, The Australian National University, 1987. Leopold, A., A Sand Country Almanac, Oxford University Press, New York, 1949. MacIntyre, A., After Virtue, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1981. Maclver, A.M., "Towards anew moral philosophy", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, no. 46 (1945-6): 179-206. Sylvan, R. "Prospects for regional philosophy in Australasia", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 1986. Sylvan, R., From Wisdom to Wowserism, typescript, 1991. Sylvan, R., Deep-Green Ethics, typescript, 1993. i Sylvan, R. and Bennett, H., The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 199^. Wilson, E.O. (ed.), Biodiversity, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1988. NOTES 1. For such a treatment of items like ethics, as economic goods, see further Greening of Ethics. 2. The Conference, organised by the University of Newcastle in August 1993, where this paper was presented. 3. Ethical theory has tended to borrow classifications from elsewhere, from apparently more successful enterprises. Thus, for instance, the (normative) ethics/meta-ethics distinction lifted, none too adeptly, 25 Richard Sylvan from logical theory. Thus too the present pure/applied distinction, also purloined. By no means everything that intelligent agents dream up and promote is entirely in order. Rather uncontroversially colourless green ideas is one such combination, more controversially human nature, deep ecology and post-modernism are such. Applied ethics appears to belong to this not-in-satisfactory-order or out-of-order bunch. 4. ‘Applied. Practical, put to practical use. Applied science. Science of which the abstract principles are put to practical use in the arts’ (Concise English'). ‘2. Put to practical use; practical as distinguished from abstract or theoretical’ (OED). Though we persevere with these dictionary explications, there are grounds for complaint; there are neglected nuances. For example, the practical/theoretical contrast (just one of the muddy contrasts with practical) differs from an applied/pure contrast. A theory can in principle be applied (a plying to, i.e., a mapping) in a non practical, or impractical, field. Different again is that concrete/abstract contrast. And what exactly is practical? 5. The advance notices for the Conference (which look pretty confused, even mumbo jumbo), well they add insult to injury by invoking talk of a theory of applied ethics. There is said to ‘appear to be a significant gap between the theory of applied ethics and its practice’; this is said to be why ‘disillusionment has set in’ now. While there may be a theory of applications, talk of a "theory of applied ethics" heaps confusion (‘theory of) upon confusion (‘applied ethics’). As for gaps (really, between the theory and practice of ethics), there are two, as we shall see; there is an ambiguity in ‘gap’As for mumbo jumbo, try the following sentence: ‘The teaching and practice of applied ethics has grown rapidly and in an unruly manner across many disciplines, with many practitioners now not possessing any depth of philosophical knowledge and expertise and, because of difficulties experienced with the theory and practice given, in some cases deciding that same is relevant.’ Its sequel is easily unscrambled: ‘We wish to hold a conference to explore this issue for the Australian community and its practical consequences.’ 6. Thus, too, there is a two way process. Application feeds back to inform theory and to enrich the pure subject. With ethics, as we shall see, something similar or more dramatic happens. Field developments not merely may inform and enlarge the ethical theory; some may alter it irrevocably. 7. Of course not all adjectives function in this way. butTor. instance without types of responded s. Thus, e.g. possible, probable, alleged, putative,etc. I 8. Examples include Wilson in Biodiversity, Engel. 9. We try to show as much elsewherey-Routley and HTIF. 10. This is by no means all that is wrong with standard ethics. Another, important for field ethics, is the lack of an adequate theory of ethical dilemmas, confronting which is a main engine of progress in ethics. 11. See Greening of Ethics', also ‘Ethics without humans. Philosophy without humans', Observe that ^repairs are not unique. <y : » 12. As to how this is accomplished, see the annular theory, reiterated in Greening'. X 26 What is wrong with applied ethics 13. Maclver suggests ‘that all the old codes are out of date and a satisfactory new one has still to be discovered. A lost moral code cannot be recovered, and a new one obtained, simply for the asking’ (p.201). 14. Nothing, no paradigm shift as revolution has effected the whole citadel of mathematics; none is likely to (even dialethism, more threatening than much else, because central areas can be protected by /w roj due qualification). 15. A different example: an isolated person has an extensive weeding tool in a weed invaded forest, with the only techniques availabe a broad-acre chemical defoliant. 16. For a classification of environmental positions along the lines of the three options, see Callicott Introduction, where attention is also drawn to shortcomings in the applied idea. 17. On extraneous issues in ethics, including especially field ethics such as environmental ethics, see for a detailed treatment Greening of Ethics, part II/. JJ 18. Among other things, philosophers did not act, did not respond to incipient demand, fast enough in organising appropriate structures for delivery of field ethics. <5? 19. See esp. Edwards, plhieswilhourPhilosophy^ 20. Maclver continues ‘and for this reason this conception of the task of moral philosophy is unlikely to be popular in the profession.’ There are two troubles with the tack: firstly, field ethics do not should not - exhaust ethics; secondly, field ethics are enjoying some popularity. 21. The proposition, from the circulated Conference announcement, that field ethics might rejuvenate a flagging philosophy, that they had ‘given philosophy a rebirth’ can hardly be taken seriously (for all that they may have given jaded philosophy departments a fillip). Concrete working examples and dilemmas might stimulate ethical investigation, but would only exceptionally impact an ethical theory, and moreover ethics itself has but rarely been a source of growth and development in philosophy. Field practitioners, who often have their own expansionist and imperialist ambitions and programs, are unlikely to let a service subject be supplied from elsewhere unless they cannot yet manage the subject themselves and then only so long as times are good so they do not need the jobs and can avoid chores involved. 22. Interestingly there has been no similar fuss from professionals regarding the attrition of logicians within philosophy (for which some of them have responsibility), or the on-going loss of logic to computing science and mathematics. 23. It is for this sort of reason that philosophy in Australia, unlike that in parts of USA^,missed the field van. 24. See Sylvan 1986, The Greening of Ethics, From Wisdom to Wowserism. iSrn- 25. A problem in fact exacerbated under prominent ethical positions, e.g., crude utilitarian fostering "greed is good" notions, most social Darwinism encouraging cut-throat competition. 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Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span><span>,</span> Box 14, item 1978 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:5bcffeb">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:5bcffeb</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [10] leaves. 8.49 MB. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Australian National University - [Unlisted in Error Likely 2nd Drawer] Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > [Unlisted in Error Likely 2nd Drawer] Box 14: Green Projects in Progress https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/4495525491cdad380d51db6c4168e929.pdf 411c2a0db2f12cd20bea776c91ffe49d PDF Text Text CASE DISSOLVED: critique of argumentsto and for the State Over the centuries that humans have been stuck with states, many different attempts to justify them, as in some way necessary or desirable (as more than an unfortunate accident of history), have been attempted. None pf these arguments succeed (as much would perhaps be quite widely conceded^). / / There are various wayjs of showing that the arguments fail. One powerful way deploys, indicates or develops, counterexamples; for instance modelling social arrangements without states. Another more pedestrian but essential way consists in direct examination of the arguments, not merely some of them or various classes of them, but, for completeness, each and every one of them. Ultimately that calls for, what is attempted first in a first attempt fashion, an exhaustive classification of the arguments „ A preliminary classification of these arguments can take the following form: 1. //i-yfonc or <?Ma,s7-/H,s'f(9rzc. These arguments divide in tum into two principal subclasses: 1.1 Daycrzpnve.* /b/Zacy o/TAo quo. A first group of arguments^justification of the state, try to take advantage of the descriptive features that states are entrenched almost everywhere as the dominant feature of the political landscape. Helpful as it may be having states in avoiding hypothetical in injecting a heavy element of realism oLesdisn, nonetheless fact is not per se justification: what is often X ought not to be. Bank robbers and robber barons are justified by their mere existence There are similar problems<dth the argument from tradition. If some principle, practice or theory stood for a good while it had something going for it. Some such consideration lies at the basis of precedence in law; the idea of tradition as encapsulating past wisdom - or past folly. Among the problems are that with authoritarian institutions come their antitheses, with the state the anti-state. Many practices like barbarism and racism have stood for a very long tirne,^ many organisations like mafia have been airound for a long time, so they have something going for them? Such troubles, the evident gap between descriptive and normative, are among those that plague In s^prt without utterly questionable connecting assumptions, such as that what is is necessary (a modal fallacy) or that what is is right (a deontic fallacyi), such arguments fail to afford justification. There are some important JMbtypes of descriptive (or quasi-descriptive) arguments, namely * 1 arguments. The state is not only established, it works. Immediate difficulties This fallacy, heavily utilized by Hegel, is critically examined in NNL. X �0 V-v L^ /]/ t 4^c AA-<s A ^^7*. JA^? (^A t ACA C.^y1k Av �2.2- 1 t.. z^ z^pr p^r- *-y^2^— ��2 with such arguments are obvious. The Mafia too/is well-established. It too works, often in opposition the the State (as a sort of negative opposite, like the Devil to God). What sort of standards of is working intended to meet? All sorts of awful political arrangements have "worked", at least in persisting for as long as statist arrangements: despotisms, dictatorships, tyrannies, ... . Still as pragmatic arguments enjoy considerable popularity, especially in North America, they will have to be considered in more detail (than they deserve). * arguments. The state has evolved through a long sequence of political forms. It is tried and tested, and now selected, selected as best available. Such arguments afford scientific clothing for the appalling Hegelian "what is is right". For what has evolved is selected thereby as best, and what is selected as best is no doubt right (by a familiar utilitarian deontic reduction). Slather evidently such arguments prove too much. Any form that in fact emerges, no matter how achieved, though what dusta^dly Machievellian deeds, no matter how awful, is thereby justified: empires and dictatorships of the worst sort, fa^ist and totalitarian states, one and all, are justified, provided only they are established.^ this only for climax states, where some sort of evolutionary plutoniums have been achieved have been achieved (otherwise bad means to select evolutionary ends may temporarily prevail). But where is the evidence that the State is not another transitional stage, like feudalism before it? As an evolutionary form it is very recent, and fortunately not yet established in evolutionary time. 1.2 AfoK-J&pcripf/ve. Difficulties with descriptive arguments, including prescriptive fallacies (deriving presciptive or evaluative conclusions from purely descriptive premisses), are evaded/idealisation arguments, which include These are genetic in justificatory character, relating the mythological "historical" development of the State from an imaginary pre-state situation.^ These arguments are not sharply^p^rated from * fdea/ /n,yfory arguments. * MMagmary and ideal reconjfrMcrfoK arguments. For the transactions, such as an originating social contract, may be presented in a quasi-historic form. This important class of arguments is broader than contractual arrangements, including all the following sorts of imaginary transactions: negotiating, bargaining, experimenting, etc., in given (idealised) conditions, perhaps issuing in an arrangement, agreement, contract, etc. One preliminary That contemporary exponents and practitioniers of state craft are inclined to accept these^orts of considerations, and to recognise any region that has gained (short-term) control over a territory and its administration, does nothing for the considerations^ What it reveals rather is the moral sickness of contemporary real-politics. They include (as opposed to relocation arguments, where a group ("voting with its feet ) relocates and forms a state (except of course these gorups, when there was room for them, tended to aim for new societies, not states). These arguments form a bridge between descriptive and ntunative. While voluntary contract arguments are descripively implausible, voluntary relocation has, or did have, a little descriptive �3 classification of these arguments divides them into natural quasi-theological, legalistic invisible hand evolutionary consensual or equivalent. artificial, The most notorious of these reconstructions, or political thought-experiments, are the social contract theories whereby individual members of a society fictitiously enter into an enforceable contract, inescapable for themselves and all their descendants, setting up the state, primarily as a security arrangement. In later versions which may involve other legalistic forms than contracts, such as pa^cts, trusts, etc., there is much negotiating and bargaining in contrived situations, where humans lose many of their distinctive features and accoutrements (in a effort to ensure some initial fairness). A variant on contract theories, which justify some sort of state arrangements Z/* they arose in an ideal way, is retrojustification of the state as naturally arising, as a sort of super­ insurance agency, from pre-state arrangements. For example, the minimal state evolves from a competing set of state-like security agencies one of which somehow gains a monopoly, and is retrojustified through insurance arguments (concerning risk and compensation). Such arguments are sometimes presented as replacing overall contractual arrangements (through minor arrangements undoubtedly enter) with invisible hand mechanisms. Whereas contractual arguments take the general segmented shape: INITIAL STATE: INPUT INTERMEDIATE STATES prestate negotiation followed by situation: draft contrad, assessment "state of nature" FINAL STATE: OUTPUT state established situation followed by contract adoption ^in invisible hand arguments the intermediate steps, on route to the state, consist in formation of organisations and their progressive amalgatiation to provide finally a state. For example, in Nozick these organisations are taken to comprise protective agencies (though that is only one statist function), and to ensure legitimacy for the final object, it is contended that each intermediate state derives from the proceeding in a morally permissible way, namely preserves % selected rights. Such arguments fail for two main classes of reasons: inadequacy in the derivations of late and final stages from earlier ones, and unsatisfactoriness over the initial state (in particular, what is assumed in it, such as proprietorial rights, and what is excluded, i$ the way of more satisfactory alternatives). In these forms the State arises through voZimfary actions and transactions. Whereas anarchists and many socialists see anarchism as a post-state state, these transaction arguments often assume anarchism, in very motly forms, as pre-state states. People voluntarily elect to escape those pre-state form, "rushing" into the jaws of the State. But there are, as well, versions, where the State is established through legalistic or religious means, natural religion or the like. For example, the details of State organisation, or a recipe or �4 commandments therefore, are received by or given to some powerful religious personage, who implements the organisation under religious authority. The legalistic equivalent came about through implementation, not of religious dictates, but what may be very similar in practical affect and detail, natural law. Normally this law will be "seen", for, by some powerful personages, who are in a position to convey, and have put into effect, their illumination. With the decline of religion these sorts of arguments have lost much of their general appeal (they should never have enjoyed much credibility). But many relics of these shattered arguments remain, to be removed. A critical point is that such arguments should not gain independent standing. Most law is mfra-state, state manufactured and state serving. What is independent of states has to answer to standards, moral standards especially, that are independently justified. Similarly for religious commandments. As a result, these arguments collapse back to arguments for the State. Now modern states did not arise in any such "natural" or contractual way. Often they were imposed by conquest or through colonialisation, and with a few exceptions, using military means rather than offering much sweetness and light and choice. There are a notable discrepancies between typical justifications of the state (in which much is sweetness and light, though it is far from a pareto-optimal object) and common explanations of the role of the state (in which much is obviousness and intrigue). Nor do the ideal constructions or histories offer much justification for these resulting state power configurations. For the states so delivered are very different from those most people presently toil under. In any case, the arguments involved do not succeed. They are extraordinarily gappy by contemporary logical standards. They depend upon some utterly implausible assumptions, for example as to how vile conditions are^n extra^state situations. These changes are easily illustrated, and will be.) small immediate)^eana&14 example. Underlying several of the imaginary transaction arguments to the state, are various c/zofcg arguments of a thought-experiment cast. Commonly such arguments ambitiously aim to show that * the state is necessary, and that * the state is superior to its absence. But such arguments.like those embedcTin confracf arguments .are little better than con jobs.as are presented depend upon a false choice. For only two options are considered: H, a horrible Hobbesian "state of nature" and S, a well-ordered (contructually-reached) Hobbesian state. The argument, appealing to the vices of H and the virtues of S, has little trouble in concluding * * S is better than H (or similarly, rational agents would select S over H, etc.) other options, such as anarchist ones. Why should anarchists want to line up with S? They can agree with proposition * *. They might also want The choice conveniently leaves to assert that anarchistic arrangements Z are superior to S. Whereupon it is evident that neither * nor * follows. For necessity all accessible alternatives have to be considered (by the �semantics of That has not been done. For superiority, the superiority of S to Z and other alternatives has to be taken into account. That has not been done. — , ----------------------- alternative i^\Carter^^(?c^ry^which produces The kind of individuals who have strongly internalized values and can live cooperatively and freely without the threat of force ...\ i^)(p.25).4 6V1C- No doubt some of the gaps in the arguments could be plugged by further, further contestable, assumptions, but such analytic work remains to be attempted and assessed, after two millennia of such arguments. In fact it was long ago realised that such arguments exhibit unlikely and even paradoxical features. For example, in consenting to a state for security purposes, participants to the state contract proceed to establish an institution which is far more dangerous to them than the power of others taken distributively. It would seem that those smart enough to enter into a social contract for a state would be smart enough to foresee the problems of hiring a monster, and to avoid the state and steer along without it. In establishing a state, inhabitants set up an institution that is far more powerful and dangerous to them than the power of other inhabitants taken singly or in groups. This is to think that Men are so fulish that they tak care to avoid what Mischiefs may be done then by PoZe-caM, or but are contra^ f^ay think it Safety, to be devoured by AZo/asA These arguments, like others to follow, even if somehow repaired, would not establish an institution with anything approaching the power and complexity of the modern state. Arguments to the state typically establish, at best, only a rather minimal state, with certain protective and regulatory powers. Such minimal states would not deliver many of the goods economists, still less socialists, have come to expect of the state. The arguments certainly do not establish anything like the oppressive paternal state with a panoply of powers that many citizens are forceably subject to, power states have accumulated by their own unjustified predatory activity. In this respect too, arguments to the state resemble arguments to God. Deistic arguments characteristically establish (insofar as they establish anything) only a quite minimal rAar w/zZc/t, a first cause, some existent, a most perfect object, a universal designer, clockmaker or the like. They do nothing to establish many of the powers or properties asciibed to God. There is yet another resemblance a surplus of attributes are regularly ascribed to Gock so much power, knowledge, andj^^like^that paradoxes of omnipotence, omniscience, and jimilar, are quickly engendereb^aradoxes that a lesser God that merely satisized on virtue (and could tolerate some production of evil) could easily escape)^ So too a surplus of power is conceded to the State. The state carries ^far more power than is required for collective organisation, a large "political surphis" which should be relinquished. /4 ^ reversmg Hobbes' argument,pottom halfl really a cranking. $ Locke p.372. ——^Lesser Gods encounter ^other difficulties: their plurality, the fact that they can be exceeded by other greater Gods, and their upstaging by ontological arguments. �6 2(-l*) S*y^7?zayic. These arguments divide again into two principal subclasses, namely 2.1 Ana/yac and 2.2 M?K#K(2/y%c. Further both subclasses may be subdivided in tum into individualistic and holistic subclasses, for instance 2.1 into 2.1.1 Indiviualistic and 2.1.2 Non-individualistic. Most recent investigation has been concentrated within subdivision 2.1.^1, upon game-theoretic justifications of the State. Indeed, given prevailing methodological individualism, which almost invariably takes analytic form, all acceptable justification reuced to this subdivision? Certainly other systematic ways of endeavouring to justify the state tent z to have fallen by the wayside or been abandoned. However it is worth listing two further forms, one of which remains significant: * Holistic/brz/t considerations. The State is presented as the form, or even spirit, of Society, much as the mind is the form of the corresponding body. Insofar as there is an argument, it is analogical, from an increasingly dubious basis. Contemporary up-dating of the torm'ideas would no doubt have the State as - what is even less plausible - the program, or the software, of a corresponding Society. * Mora/ considerations. But there is little good reason to embrace individualism, methodological or other, because many sorts of wholes, beginning with ^bstra&i, do not come down to individuals; it is poor methodology to try to proceed as if they do. More on individualism elsewhere. See aM JB �3VHATEVER3 2. Arguments in a game theory setting: Prrhners' Diiemma games and supergames. What is widely regarded as the most persuasive justification of the state [is] "the argument that, without the state, people would not voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves with certain public goods... ". This argument, which is quite popular with contemporary academics, suggests that, without the state, people would not be able to "act so as to realise their interests."* . So far, hewexEr, we have not encountered^an argument, but simply a very large claim. The argument itself^is remarkably circuitous, circuiting through a range of examples drawn from game theory, and, so it will emerge, as yet quite indecisive. Obtaining a view, a clear view, of the whole argument, or rather the spectrum of potential arguments, matters for anarchism. For that will help considerably in dispelling the myth that here, partly hidden, is a powerful P3p*x argument against A The argument takes the form of a modal syllogism: * The state is necessary for the optimal, or adequate, provision of collective (i.e. public) goody (zzm/or premiss), of* ' * Collective goods are necessary for a satisfactory social life, (J%7M% premiss) . the state is necessary for a satisfactory social life./Moreover, given that the latter, a satisfactory social life (in a given region), is a certain desiderata, the state is to that extent necessary (a necessity is (^bolutized). While the big argument takes thatybrm, it is subject to variation. Furthermore, some variation is essential, else it, and one of the chief forms incorporated, is invalid. For the argument displayed has a different, and an ambiguous, middle term. For requisite uniformity, and validity, the middle term has to be either a) adequate provision of colective goods, or o) optimal provision of collective goods. While little supporting argument get lavished on the minor premiss, it being assumed obvious, that obviousness selected. For a satisfactory social life may result when when term o) is than optimal provisioning of collective goods occurs. Adequate lives only require adequate goods, perhaps even a modest supply of goods for less consumptive societies, not optimal or maximal levels. There is/a significant skating about, of justificatory relevance, in the "most persuasive justification of the state", as normally slackly presented^between (as in o), nomally explicated in terms of maximization; erms of satisization); of provisioning: opPma/ (as in a), have construed int (unspecified, as in the quote above, or perhaps specified as in Hobbes, e.g. defence and security of property). Unfortunately for the argument, all that the game-theoretic arguments for the major 1 2 Grofman 80, p.108, quoting Taylor. For another similar statement, qualified to members of a large public, see Taylor 82, p.53. Thus, basic collective goods for a basic social life, as for instance in subsistence lifestyles. ��' ' ' ' / premiss typically establish at best is failure of optima^ or certain large prov^pning, without the state. They do not show failure to provision at all without the state, or failure to achieve "basic" provision, or even adequate provisioning. Now anarchism can^granF that certain large provisioning is improbable without the state; for example^ntercoiynental nuclear missiles, or large output nuclear power plants. 3 But i^hardly matters! f&r such state-posessed goods are? arguably antithetical to satisfactory social life. Nor need anarchism accede Rr optimality requirements, thereby destroying usual game-theoretic arguments. For these arguments usually show that more would be obtained under certain counter-individualistic cooperative strategies than would otherwise be obtained, not that some or basic levels would not be achieved. To put it bluntly, satisizing anarchists can throw out the challenge: what does it matter if a few state prisoners defect (i.e. there are some not fully-paid-up rider^so long as enough goods are still delivered? That challenge has not been met, even implicitly, as will appear. 5? It is unreasonable, in any case, to demand optimal levels from non-statist societies, because no extant stat^ measure up to such excessive requirements. Indeed most staites do ... ........................................... , . bd not even meet utterly basic demands. Henceforth we shall be looking for leads, which %?.yo /hero cover basic demands. The argument for the critical major premiss takes the following sort of route, involving these components: 1. Assimilation of the problem of provision of collective goods (in the light of the minor premiss it can be cast as a problem) to paradigmatic problems in game theory, initially the Prisoners' Dilemma (PD for short). No doubt efforts at provision of public goods commonly result in arrangements that can be represented formally as Prisoners' Dilemmas. But it is sometimes claimed, what will be repudiated subsequently, that all such efforts result in PD situations, that is that there is a universal linkage. Two connections are regularly assumed: a universal representation of problems in game theory, and a more plausible less ambitious connection with PD games. That is: * all provisioning problems can be represented within game theory. ** these problems^requently)takePD form. . The first assumption, of game theory representation, is^severe. Each problem is transformed into a game, with n independent players, normally individuals or individual units (such as an "individual" family or firm in economics^)/ These players characteristically possess but limited information, and almost invariably are allowed only extraordinarily narrow motivations and objectives, am) as maximizing their own interests or pay-offs, in a rigid setting with fixed predetermined moves.$ According to the more plausible, less ambitious collections, 3 4 5 So much is argued elsewhere (nuclear wo^k). While in many politically relevant applications, such as the "tragedy of the common^' game,the players may bedndividuals, in other applications the players may be communities, societies, or even states, e.g\mtemational traaR and war games. It is this sort of rigidity and limitation that/make^ parts of game-theory automatically tractable. <?; �3 * provisioning of public goods frequently yields prisoners' dilemma situations, Ahat is the problem involved can be transformed into a typical PD game, comprising a perhaps interated games among a public of n individuals. 2. Sometimes these games yield unfavourable results, that is not enough individuals cooperate but instead defect, so the good in question will not be delivered. 3. On/y by intervention pf the state can cooperation be obtained, by coercion of individuals? other devices, such a; of the market, will notsucceed. �4 3. THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE buttress the State status quc^are based on variants of the prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are imporran? cases where individuals will not agree^ or co-operate to provide them­ selves with (or to maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as on/y the State can furnish? In such 'dilemma' situations each individual will hope to gain advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others' contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from others' restraint). The claim is that only the State with its backing of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed. In short,'certain individual choice cannot replace state-covered choice. important cases, coo< There are (as the bracketed clauses indicate) two main types of case, those where people do not conrri&M&.to themselves with, or with optimum quantities of, a "collective good", and those where people do not themselves to or maintain optimum quantities of, some already available "collective good". The first type of case is taken to include such traditional and modern concerns of the state and its subsidiary institutions as order, security, defence, and perhaps private property, as well as sewerage schemes, water supplies, waste services, public health, social security, etc. The second case is supposed to include, as well as village commons, newer enviromental concerns such as clean air, unpolluted streams and beaches, parks, rainforests, wilderness, whales, etc. But there is no sharp division between the cases (security or parks could be of either type depending on the status quo), and The case broken-backed right here: because if we don't ^o this^not going to agree to social contract — which allegedly implies these things — either. Similarly, jocia/ contract theory &ro&cn-&ac%cJ. The Tragedy of the Commons is set up so as to assume no collective methods have been developed or can be developed without coercion. (Roberts). The point of coercion is to retain the privatised individual. For the factor of coercion makes it in intrests of private individual. So coercion makes the effect of relations to be got without exceeding provatised individual picture. Coercion substitutes for relations in the context of privatised individuals. Privatised individuals are, of course, products, in large part, of the operation (and enforcement and entrenchment) of a particular social theory, or ra/Zzcr jar/ ofsocial theory. Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest case that can be made for the desirability of the State* (M. Taylor, Anarc/ty anJ Coap^raZiaa, Wiley, London, 1976, p.9). To cover all arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants of and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations, 'Prisoner's Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single nperson Prisoners' Dilemma games, but, for example, games where the payoffs are not merely egoistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such games are iterated. As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate, there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both the jawt^ Zagica/ /oral — those where people do not to themselves with, or with 'optimum' quantities of, a 'collective good' (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where people do not refrain themselves to wainfam, or maintain 'optimum' quantities of, some alrca< available 'collective good' (e.g. commons, unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness). That received arguments of all these types involves Prisoners? Dilemma situations (in the wide sense) is argued in effect, in Taylor, op.cif. and elsewhere. An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter of R. Abrams, FoaaJan'aaj o/Po/aica/ Aaa/y^, Columbia University press, New York, 1980. Z y �5 as arguments for state institution both have the same logical form, that of a Prisoners' Dilemma or some finite sequence of Prisoners' Dilemma games (what are called Prisoners' Dilemma &%?^rgames). The arguments are not mere exercises in game theory since it is through arguments of this type that political theorists such as Hobbes and Hume have attempted to demonstrate the necessity of the State, so it is sometimes claimed (e.g. by Taylor). Furthermore, it is with arguments of the same^form, the "Tragedy of the Commons", that Hardin and others have tried to show that extensive, indeed draconian, state powers are required to resolve environmental problems; without such powers no exploiter or polluter will exercise restraint, ra c . Consider the single Prisoners' Dilemma game where each player, or prisoner, is assumed, as is usual in these things, to be egoistic (sometime equated with "being rational"), to seek just maximisation of his own private payoff, in the special case where there are just two players. (The special case illustrates all the main points except one, the c/size in making a case for the state.) < . A basic ingredient^a.considerable variety of argumentfof this type, including Hobbes' andlTragedy of the Commons' argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to secure collective goods, i^/tne single prisoners' Dilemma game with just two players.s Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have been separately imprisoned. A State representative makes the following offers separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while the accomplice gets 8 years. 3t so happens that if both prisoners remain silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence. But if both confess they would each receive 4 years. The 'game' can be summarised in the following 'payoff' matrix: Prisoner 1 Strategies S(ilence) C(onfess) S -1,-1 -8,0 C 0, -8 -4, -4 '— Prisoner 2 The game is not intended to present a moral ^ilemma, that each can only go free at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma: It is in each prisoner's private interest to An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance of populations size in the arguments for the State. But size is not decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided (or relocated) by organisation into smaller communities. The figures given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Tayor, p.5. �6 choose strategy C no matter what the other does: strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' 'dominant' strategy (and also in fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for example, remains silent, the%l goes free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain an outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously called 'co-operating', by confessing. their both remaining silent. 3.1 FOILING THE PRISONERS' DILEMMA ARGUMENT. It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to show the necessity of the State — which is supposed to intervene, forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners 'co-operate' to obtain an optimal outcome — should be set up by the State's own operative.^ The case looks like an inside job; and it M, though neither the operative, nor for that matter the prisoners on their own, continue to play an essential role. The prisoners, in any finite number, can be members of a community and payoffs quantities of some collective good. The claim is, that without intervention (by the State), the community will only chase a subotimal quantity of the good if any. Some features of the prisoners' relations are assumed to transfer however. Of course the State's presence in arranging (of accentuating) such dilemmas is inessential, as is much else from the example. But some features of the Prisoner's relations are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate or r^aZZy co-operate. Similarly, in the more general argument a privatisation assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests are opposed. The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly seriously limited, io A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the segregation of the priisoners makes no real difference. It is claimed that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to co-operate, that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of the other (Abrams, p.193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement' (Taylor, p.5). Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is very often no so — and in a more co-operative social setting than currently encouraged privatisation of life, the extent of co-operation and trust would undoubtedly be much higher n The argument has to depend crucially then on substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation, when the State rv (as on many theories) the result of reflection of social cooperation. This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, &?cmZ 77^or^.y, S^Zf aztrZ Envirownf/tfaZ Pro&Zewty in Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian national University, 1980. As a result of G. Hardin's Tragedy CoHWHonj, historical evidence has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's 'Commons' diverges from historic commons; see, inparticular, A. Roberts, 77^ S^Zf-Managing Allison & Busby, London, 1979, chapter 10, but also Routley, op.cir., p.285 and ppp.329-332. Similar points apply as regards many other Dilemma situations. Tn the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'. Abrams, op.ciz., p.308. �7 in various settings, e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people were Jia? unreliable and devious, many State arrangements involved in providing public goods would not succeed either). That such assumptions are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g. to bring out the first, suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g. they are friends or they are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical scepticism involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the other security against default, and so on. The question of the character of human interests and preferences %/iJ the extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is/MKJcwtcnhJ to the whole question of social economic arrangements, and also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities. A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count is an mJcpcnJcnr parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings of other nor on the social context in which that human operates. Wh8ile the individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural pressure on consumers to conform (through advertising, education, popular media), vc/y many Jo /io? cozi/briH, and the extent of cultural pressure towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence. And having sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a small community (which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social influence, to avoid or resolve by co-operation the types of Prisoners' Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State. 3.2 Why the dilemma arguments cannot succeed. What the Dilemma-based case for the State has to show — what never has been shown — is that there are outstanding Dilemma situations which are relevant, important, and also damaging if unresolved, and that they are resolvable by State intervention, and only so (optimally) resolvable. Finally it has to be shown that in the course of so resolving these Dilemma situations, worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced. These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if they can be satisfied at all, in a way that is not question begging. For several of the conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is important, damaging, optimal, worse) and involve considerations about which resonable parties can differ. The selection of Dilemmas itself provides an example of value dependence: after all there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of over-exploitation, of family violence or fueds) which are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not worthy of State attention. There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be satisfied at all. For 12 Cf. the disucssion in Taylor, op.ci/., p.93. �8 many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' for instance, turn out when to consist not just of a single game but of a sequence of such games, to be more adequately represented by what is called a But in many such sequential Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational 'co-operation' can occur, even assuming separated players with purely egoistic interests. 13 For what sequential games permit that isolated games exclude, is that players' actions may be dependent upon past performance of other players. This dependence effectively removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from past social interaction. In such sueprgames then, no intervention is required. Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by 'intervention', e.g. by allowing the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that they can really co-operate. Euqally important, and equally independent of the State, is the matter of breaking down the adverary, or game, situation so the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to co­ operate.^ Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has a good record of adhering to agreement, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. Nor is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal strategies: a range of other inducements and incentives is known (shuld they be required in recalcitrant cases), and is used even by the State, e.g. gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc. But at no stage is the State required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they are not already catered for. And in fact communal and co-operative organisation did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in the case of the Commons. In sum, here also replacement works. There are no important Dilemma situations, it seems, where the State is essential. The State has been thought to be essential because of certain influential flase dichotomies; for example, that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon, and 'irrational'), that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets — which tend to deal abysmally with collective goods — is through State control.^ But it is quite evident that there are methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by co-operatives, clubs). Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve 13 14 15 Dilemma situations has very extensive This important result is established in Taylor, op. ctf., for a number of critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p.32 but especially chapter 5. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including cases where the State is one of the 'adversaries'. Both the false dichotomies cited are common-place, not to say rife, in modem economic and political theorising. Both are to be found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first (with an attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition) in Taylor. For a further criticism of such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit., pp.250./ff �9 effects, *6 many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations, appear to be substantially outweighted by the costs involved. For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State to put in the balance. As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and morre important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as in the case of the prisoners, or differently with the State as a further player (since the State may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.). These points lead also to further arguments against the State. Suppose, to see the impact of the first reason for the failure of independence, the prisoners are friends and their common interest is to be together. Then, if they are given the opportunity to co-operate, and independence is not enforced by separation, they will, quite rationally, choose a joint optimal strategy, and there is no dilemma. Since the same considerations will not apply where large numbers of strangers are involved, the question arises as the extent and severity of Dilemma situations. The question is complicated by the second double-edged reason for the failure of independence, namely that statist political arrangements undoubtedly accentuate the extent and severity of Dilemma situations by discouraging (providing negative incentives) for genuinely co-operative behaviour and mutual aid. This is another respect in which statist arrangements (like some subclimax biological communities) tend to be self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. Accordingly, what arguments for the State on such bases as Prisoners' Dilemma situations have to show is not merely 1) that state coercion does suffice to resolve (sufficiently) many such (damaging) Dilemmas, but also 2) that such coercion is the on/y way of doing so, and 3) that in doing so worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced. These things have never been shown: nor can they be shown definitively, since firstly there are various nonstatist arrangements for resolving wehat are taken to be damaging Dilemmas, and secondly the overall assessment of what Dilemmas are and what costs are worf/t incurring in resolving them are ultimately evaluative and go back to rival, and presumably coherent, value systems. Hence, when all this is spelled out, the irrefutability of anarchism. To get some feel for the complexity of the issue and for the extent to which evaluative matters do enter, several points relevant to 1) - 3) should be introduced. Firstly, there are many Dilemma situations into which the State puts little or no effort and many others which are, or were, considered as beyond the sphere of influence of the State or as not worthy of State attention, for instance, cases of environmental degradation, overexploitation of a "resource", personal or family fueds, etc., several of them aggravated by State arrangments such as To take one lesser example, State intrusion often induces a certain social escapism: one escapes one's social roles and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze. Or so it may appear: for in reality anyone who works, works long and often alientated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity. �10 excessive privatisation of resources (e.g. enclosure of the commons). (7/* such Dilemmas can be downgraded in importance to suit the Statist case so can other Dilemmas apparently favouring State intervention.) Many of these cases would not be helped at all by the entry of the State or its representatives with their authority duly showing (thugh they might be assisted by sensitive mediation, which does not call for a State, only rudiments of a society). Secondly, introduction of the State to resolve Prisoners' Dilemma situations is not without wide-ranging effects, many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations have to be weighed against costs involved in achieving these gains. Among the costs are new Dilemmas, such as the very example considered in illustrating prisoner Dilemma games which was initiated by State activity. Differently, new Dilemmas will result with the state as a further player (since the State may have access to the commons, engage in whaling, etc.). Some of these situations are interesting in theat they may lead to litigation and decision-making outside of or largely independent of the State, the results of which the State is supposed to enforce though it may be against its interests. But what ensures that if sticks to the findings. Nothing does: it is simply assumed that the State will adhere to its role. But if that assumption is valid with respect to the State (not known for its reliability) then it is good also for various other parties. In short, agreement or decisions can be reached and adhered to without need for State enforcement. So coercion is not always required. Are there important Dilemmas where use the authority of the State is the (?H/y way? Often behind the claim that is is, is a false (but very influential) dichotomy, that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets which may deal abysmally with collective goods, is through state control. But it is quite evident that there are other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, based on costs involved) and social (e.g. club, co­ operatives). [And a mixture of these methods can be applied to resolve any Prisoners' Dilemma that matters, i.e. here too replacement works. An important initial move is, as was seen, to put the prisoners in touch, so that they could cooperate: equally important is breaking down the ...] Such organisations would not have nearly so much to do as statists would like us to believe, especially once co-operative ways of doing things and mutual aid had become established ways in contrast to competitive and privatised ways. For the extent of simple Prisoners' Dilemma situations calling for intervention (of some sort) has been exaggerated and many, probably, very many, of those that have been thought to require intervention do not because the players (are prepared to) "cooperate" anyway. There are importantly different reasons why the latter can happen:- Firstly, enough players operate with motives which are not purely privatised for a sufficiently optimal outcome to result. This does not imply that these players have altruistic motives: their interests may depend on those of other players in a range of nonaltruistic ways. Secondly, many cases presented as if they were simple Prisoner's Dilemma games turn out when properly analysed, in particular when time is duly taken account of, to be Prisoners' Dilemma super-games. Such, for instance, is the positions with the �11 arguments of Hobbes, Hume and Hardin. But in such supergames rational "cooperation" often occurs even assuming the players have the worst of privatised motives. In short, where the correct analysis of a Prisoner's Dilemma game is as a supergame, statists are often beaten at their own game. [Detail Taylor's partial results, anJ their problems.] �/AfJ^ Ji) /7!_^ A/^ ./ <. / "tv 7^-*^-^ �/ z7 /$CV^/^<^ /'J /^! ^7 </*<9 ^7^7" /^c / r 4& /d-^&V' f o j <. t/7^, c t_ , ^7 J* .X 6. <?^) /y . /^xv Jct/^^ JL �3. <%y4r-/^ ,X^7< .,;^;X 3 <X X?X" X)c. X /T^.X^ 4X3X*/- /X. y/^4. . / X X^X yXX s/ ^,/X-,^X^ Xy ^r y7^ Xox^Levc =-, <^- /, ^ / ^T^ — X? X" ^7^ ^X xx x^/^ <y A^rXXi/^ 6co /^4. /c<_ ^ / /X^cu— <^-^-^- ^4/ /*7^jC *- X^T Xt^/ / < ^Cv ^C A -C �<22^ 7^4 y dVf! ^-r- <^ -^* r^CL A-?f-? yj /K-*- ) ^-*^-^/7 Ar^- ^c/ 4-A A /7^^?7"J^ ^^^tr-t^c'-^/j; y>V w t^L y ^). /%4?/ e / J—, /7 ^^7< Z *- ^rt^ *— " Z^? C- /^L ^-7 -^7 ZL- < Z*^/ c-y 7 <^* z Ay /, ?/ y*^ <9 ' �J �w to be accomplices in a crime, have been separately imprisoned. A State represen­ tative makes the following offers separately to each: if the prisoner con­ fesses and becomes a State's witness while his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while the accomplice gets 8 years. It so happens that if both prisoners remain silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence. But if both confess they would each receive 4 years. The 'game' can be summarised in the following 'payoff' matrix: Prisoner 1 Strategies S(ilence) C(onfess) S -1, -1 -8, 0 C 0, -8 -4, -4 Prisoner 2 3. T7/E C/1SE z1G.4/MSE AEFL.4 CEA^E^T ERCW ER/5CWERS' D/EEA7AE1 tS77X/?177CW5 E/7E E/AE. I he main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are /wporftm/cases where individuals will not agree^-or co-operate to provide them­ selves with (or to maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as cw/y the State can furnish/ In such 'dilemma' situations each individual will hope to gain advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others' contri­ butions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from others' restraint). The claim is that only the State with its backing of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed^ A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type, in­ cluding Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the 'Tragedy of the Com­ mons' argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two players/ Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken The game^ is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma: It is in each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other docs: strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' 'dominant' strategy (and also in fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for ex­ ample, remains silent, then 1 goes free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by confess­ ing. if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain an m/er/or outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously called 'co-operating', by their both remaining silent. ?./ It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to show the necessity of the State — which is supposed to intervene, forcibly if re­ quired, to ensure that the prisoners 'co­ operate' to obtain an optimal outcome — should bg set up by the State's own operative.^Of course the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) such dilemmas is inessential, as is much else from the example. But some features of the prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate or rec/Zy co-operate. Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests are opposed. The applicability of the dilem- A 7 �ma to the human condition is accordingly seriously limited/ A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference. It is claimed that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to co-operate, that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of the other (Abrams, p.193), 'neither has an incen­ tive to keep the agreement' (Taylor, p.5). Experimental and historical evidence in­ dicates that this is very often not so — and in a more co-operative social setting than the currently encouraged privatisa­ tion of life, the extent of co-operation and trust would undoubtedly be much higher/ The argument has to depend crucially then on substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings, e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large measure of scep­ ticism about the reliability of other peo­ ple (but if people were /Ar?/ unreliable and devious, many State arrangements involved in providing public goods would not succeed either). That such assumptionsareoperating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g. to bring out the first, suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g. they are friends or they are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neigh­ bours and face a future in the same com­ munity; to bring out the philosophical scepticism involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the other security against default, and so on. The question of the character of human interests and preferences the extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is /MnrArznrvna/ to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities. A major assumption underlying prevail­ ing (non-Marxist) economics and associated political theory, is that the in­ terests and preferences, as summed up in a preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count is an mc/e/zenr/enf parameter, which depends neither on the preference rank­ ings of others nor on the social context in which that human operates. While the individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural pressure on consumers to con­ form (through advertising, education, popular media), wany <7o /?oz ccw/bfTn, and the extent of cultural pressure towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this indepen- sequential games permit that isolated games exclude, is that players' actions may be dependent upon past perfor­ mance of other players. This dependence effectively removes one extremely ....a major functmn of the state is unrealistic self-containment assumption to maintain and pohee inequitable from Dilemma situations, that in­ dividuals act in totally isolated ways, not distribution. learning from past social interaction. In such supergames then, no intervention is required. Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are Z/gtZ-f resolved by 'intervention', e.g. by allow­ dence. And having sufficiently many/ ing the prisoners to get in touch so that interest-interdependent people in a smali they find they are neighbours or that community (which is not thoroughly im­ they can really co-operate. Equally im­ poverished) is normally enough, given portant, and equally independent of the State, is the matter of breaking down the their social influence, to avoid or resolve adversary, or game, situation so the by co-operation the types of Prisoners' prisoners do not act as competitors but Dilemma situations that appear to count are prepared to co-operate/' Informa­ in favour of the State/ tional input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has a good ff /yy 77/E /VLEA7A/.1 record of adhering to agreement, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. Nor is force or threat of force required SC/CC777) as an incentive to guarantee optimal What the Dilemma-based case for the strategies: a range of other inducements State has to show — what never has been and incentives is known (should they be shown — is that there are outstanding required in recalcitrant cases), and is Dilemma situations which are relevant, used even by the State, e.g. gifts, important, and also damaging if deprivation, social pressure, etc. But at unresolved, and that they are resolvable no stage is the State required to make by State intervention, and only so (op­ these arrangements: much as some real timally) resolvable. Finally it has to be Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved by shown that in the course of so resolving work of Amnesty International, so these Dilemma situations, worse situa­ voluntary organisations can be formed tions than those that are resolved are not to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilem­ thereby induced. These complex condi­ ma situations where they are not already tions cannot be satisfied, if they can be catered for. And in fact communal and satisfied at all, in a way that is not ques­ co-operative organisation did resolve tion begging. For several of the condi­ Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations tions are value dependent (e.g. what is historically, for example in the case of important, damaging, optional, worse) the Commons. In sum, here also replacement works. and involve considerations about which reasonable parties can differ. The selec­ There are no important Dilemma situa­ tion of Dilemmas itself provides an ex­ tions, it seems, where the State is essen­ ample of value dependence: after all tial. The State has been thought to be there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to essential because of certain influential environmental degradation, of over­ false dichotomies; for example, that all exploitation, of family fcuds/or^violencQ) behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic which are considered beyond the sphere (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon, of the State or not worthy of State atten­ and 'irrational'), that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profittion. There are now grounds for concluding directed markets — which tend to deal that the conditions cannot be satisfied at abysmally with collective goods — is all. For many of the arguments using through State control.'^ But it is quite Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' evident that there are o/Aer methods of and Hume's arguments for the State and allocation, both economic (e.g. ex­ Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' for change, through traditional markets, instance, turn out when projver/y /or- based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by to consist not just of a single co-operatives, clubs). Lastly, introduction of the State to game but of a sequence of such games, to be more adequately represented by resolve so/ne Dilemma situations has what is called a But in many very extensive effects/ many of them such sequential Prisoners' Dilemma negative, so that the gains made, if any, games, rational 'co-operation' can oc­ in so resolving Dilemma situations, ap­ cur, even assuming separated players pear to be substantially outweighed by with purely egoistic interests.'" For what the costs involved. For there are the SOCIAL ALTERNA ! tVES Vet. 2 No. 3. )982 25 �many evi! aspects of the typicai State to put in the baiance. As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more im­ portant, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as in the case of the prisoners, or differently with the State as a further player (since the State may engage in whaling, have access to a com­ mons, etc.). These points lead also to further arguments against the State. available 'collective good' (e.g. commons, un polluted streams, whales, wilderness). That received arguments of ail these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op.cit. and etsewhere. An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also surveys other Important literature, is given in the final chapter of R Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University Press, New York, 1980. 5. An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance of popula­ tion size in the arguments for the State. But size is not decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided (or relocated) by organisation into smaller communities. The figures given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p.5. 6. It is similarly bizarre that there should be out­ comes that the State alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation, when the State zs (as on many theories) the result or reflection of social cooperation. 7. This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, Soc/af Theories, Se// Management, and T'n wronwm'a/ ProAferru in Environmental Philosophy (edited D Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. 9. 10. 11. 12. 4. Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest case that can be made for the desirability of the State' (M. Taylor, Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976. p.9). To cover all arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants of' and disputes as to whether cer­ tain arguments such as those of Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Diiernnta situations, Prisoner's Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are not merely egoistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such games are iterated. As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate, there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of the same /ogtcaZ/orm — those where people do not rwr/A/wfe to sup/r/y themselves with, or with 'optimum' quantities of, a 'collective good' (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where people do not re.s/ram themselves to mam/am, or maintain 'optimum" quantities of, some already 13. As a result of G. Hardin's Tragerh' o/ rhe Commons, historical evidence has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's 'Commons' diverges from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, 7'he Se/fManagmg TTiwonmenr, Allison & Busby. London, 1979, chapter 10, but also Routley, op.cit. p.285 and pp. 329-332. Similar points apply as regards many other Dilemma situa­ tions. 'In the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game approxtmately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'. Abrams. op.cit., p.3O8. ' Cf. the discussion in Taylor, op.cit.. p.93. This important result is established in Taylor, op.cit, for a number of critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p.32 but especially chapter 5. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including cases where the State is one of the 'adver­ saries'. Both the false dichotomies cited are common­ place, not to say rife, in modern economic and political theorising. Both are to be found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first (with an attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition) in Taylor. For a further criticism of such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit., pp.25O ff. To take one lesser example. State intrusion often induces a certain social escapism: one escapes one's social roles and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze. Or so it may appear: for in reality anyone who works, works long and often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover the high costs of frequently inade­ quate State activity. �of course. ] 5^ The case if broken-backed right here: to agree because if we don't to this not goint/ to social contract - which allegedly implies these things - either. Similarly, the social contract theory is broken-backed. G5; . Alternative longer at this point in §3:- In shof^* in certain important cases, cooperative individual choice cannot replace state-covered choice. There are (as the bracketed clauses indicate) two main types of case, those where people do not contribute to supply themselves with, or with optimum quant­ ities of, a "collective good", and those where people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain optimum quantities of, some already available "collective good". The first type of case is taken to include such traditional and modern concerns of the state and its subsidiary institutions as order, security, defence, and perhaps private property, as well as sewerage schemes, water supplies^.waste services, public health, social security, etc. The second case is supposed to include, as well as village commons, newer environmental concerns such as clean air, unpolluted streams and beaches, parks, rainforests, wilderness, wha les, etc. But there is no sharp division between the cases (security or parks could be of either type depending on the status quo), and as arguments for state institution both have the same logical form, that of a Prisoners' Dilemma or some finite sequence of Pri soners' Dilemma games (what are called Prisoners' Dilemma The arguments are not mere exercises in game theory since it is through arguments of this type that political theorists such as Hobbes and Hume have �5. attempted to demonstrate the necessity of the Stato4^ Furthermore, it is with arguments of the same form, the "Tragedy of the Commons", that Hardia and others have tried to show that extensive, indeed draconian, state powers are required to resolve environmental problems; without such powers no exploiter or polluter will exercise restraint. Consider the gj^le Prisoners' Dilemma game where each player, or prisoner, is assuined, as is usual in these things, to be egoistic (sometime equated with "being rational"), to seek just&axijnisation of his own private payoff, in the special case where there are just two players. (The special case illustrates all the main points except one, the importance of size in making a case for the state.) [Joins text again at fn.5 point.] /* 4. In §3:- The Trac^ec[y of the Commons is set up so as to assume no collective methods had [Teen developed or can be developed without coercion. (Roberts). The point of coercian is to ret^n the privatised individual. $ For the factor of coercion makes it in interests of private individualize coercion makes the effect of relations to be got without exceeding privatised individual picture. Coercion substitutes for relations in the context of privatised individuals. Privatised individuals are, of course, products, in large part, of the operation (and enforcement and entrenchment) of a particular social theory, or rather sort of social theory. ^5^ In §4:- The case looks like an inside job; and it is, though neither the operative, nor for that matter the prisoners ^n their own, essential role. play an The prisoners, in any finite number, can be members of a community and payoffs quantities of some collective good . The claim is, that without intervention (by thecate), the community will only corpse a subeyy^mo/ quantity of the good if any. Some features of the prisoners' relations are assumed to transfer however. Suppose, to see the impact of the first reason for the failure of independence, the prisoners are friends and their common interest is to �6. be together. Then, if they are given the opportunity to cooperate, and independ­ ence is not enforced by separation, they will, quite rationally, choose a joint optimal strategy,and there is no dilemma. Since the same considerations will not apply where large numbers of strangers are involved, the question arises as the extent and severity of Dilemma situations. The question is complicated by the second double-edged reason for the failure of independence, namely that statist political arrangements undoubtedly accentuate the extent and severity of Dilemma situations by discouraging (providing negative incentives) for genuinely cooper­ ative behaviour and nmttAcd aid. This is another respect in which statist arrangments (like some subclimax biological communities) tend to be self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. [Transfer some experimental material to here?] Accordingly, what arguments for the State on such b ases as Prisoners' Dilemma situations have to show is not merely 1) that state coercion does suffice to resolve (sufficiently^ many such (damaging) Dilemmas, but also 2) that such coercion is the only way of doing so, and 3) that in doing so worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced. These things have never been shown: nor can they be shown definitely, since firstly 4 there are various nonstatist arrangements for resolving what are taken to be damaging Dilemmas, and secondly the overall assessment of what Dilemmas are damaging and what costs are worth incurring in resolving them are ultimately evaluative and go back to rival, and presumably coherent, value systems. Hence, when all this is spelled out, the irrefutability of anarchism. To get some feel for the complexity of the issue and for the extent to evolutive matters do enter, several points relevant to l)-3) should be introduced. Firstly, there are many Dilemma situations into which the State puts little or no effort and many others which are, or were, considered as beyond the sphere of influence of the State or as not worthy of State attention, for instance, cases of �7. environmental degradation, overexploitation of a "resource", personal or family feuds, etc., several of them aggravated by State arrangements such as excessive privatisation of resources (e.g. enclosure of the commons). (If such Dilemmas can be downgraded in importance to suit the Statist case so can other Dilemmas appar­ ently favouring State intervention.) Many of these cases would not be helped at all by the entry of the State or its representatives with their authority duly showing (though they might be assisted by sensitive mediation, which does not call for a State, only rudiments Secondly, introduction of the State tof&yolve some Prisoners' of a society). Dilemma situations is not without wide-ranging effects, many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations have to be weighed against costs involved in achieving these gains. Among the costs are new Dilemmas, such as the very example considered in illustrating Prisoner Dilemma games which was initiated by State activity. Differently, new Dilemmas will result with the state as a further player (since the State may have access to the commons, engage in whaling, etc.). Some of these situations are interesting in that they may lead to litigation and decision-making outside of or independ­ ent of the State, the resultgof which the State is supposed to enforce though it may be against its d Nothing does: interests. But what ensures that rt sticks to the findings. it is simply assumed that the State will adhere to its role. But if that assumption is valid with respect to the State (not known for its reliability) then it is good also for various other parties. In short,agreement or decision!* can be reached and adhered to without need for State enforcement. So coercion is not always required. Are there important Dilemmas where use the authority of the State is the only way? Often behind the claim that is is, is a false (but very influential) dichotomy, that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets which may deal abysmally with collective goods, is through state control^' �8. But it is quite evident that there are other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, based on costs involved) and social (e.g. clubs, cooper­ [And a mixture of these methods can be applied to resolve any Prinsoners' atives). Dilemma that matters, i.e. here too replacement works. An important initial move is, as was seen, to put the prisoners in touch, so that they could cooperate: equally important is breaking down the ...] [Joins top of p.7] Such organisations would not have nearly so much to do as statists would like us to believe, especially once cooperative ways of doing things and mutual aid had become established ways in contrast to competitive and privatised ways. For the extent of simple Prisoners' Dilemma situations calling for intervention (o^ some sort) has been exaggerated and many, probably, very many, of those that have been thought to require intervention do not because the players (are prepared to) "cooperate" anyway. happen:- There are importantly different reasons why the latter can Firstly, enough players operate with motives which are not purely priv­ atised for a sufficiently optimal outcome to result. these players have altruistic motives: This does not imply that their interests may depend on those of other players in a range of nonaltruistic ways. Secondly, many cases presented as if they were simple Prisoner's Dilemma games turn out when properly analysed, in particular when time is duly taken account of, to be Prisoners' Dilemma supergames. Such, for instance, is the position with the arguments of Hobbes, Hume and Hardin. But in such supergames rational "cooperation" often occurs, even assuming the players have the worst of privatised correct analysis of a Prisoner's Dil&wima often beaten at their own game. problems.] motives. In short, where the game is as a supergame, statists are [Detail Taylor's partial results, and their �Chapter 3 Con,v7i^c%y^ /) CRITIQUE OF THE STATE 1. ARGUMENTS The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state. For therewith arguments against state-like institutions are also advanced. However further ado is no doubt required to remove all other (unexplified) alternatives to anarchism. A Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes: * States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification. * Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes. * Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of social and environmental bungles or evils in their train. In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils. The anarchist critique does not end there, but typically includes, such further themes as : * States have excessive power, linkages to state power. * Societies are not inductably saddled with states. States can be displaced or even decay (though they are unlikely to just wither away). (9 �1 Chapter 3 : CRITIQUE OF THE STATE 1. ARGUMENTS The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state. For therewith arguments against state-like institutions are also advanced. However further ado is no doubt required to remove all other (unexplified) alternatives to anarchism. / Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes: * States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification. e Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes. Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of social and environmental bungles or evils in their train. In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils. The anarchist critique does not end there, but typically includes, such further themes as : * States have excessive power. * States are devices for channelling privilege and wealth to certain minorities with inside linkages to state power. * Societies are not ineluctably saddled with states. States can be displaced or even decay (though they are unlikely to just wither away). 1. The state is an undesirable, or even downright evii, institution, for the following range of reasons:- * States entrench inequities, domination and exploitation. States are devices for the protection of wealth, property and privilege, and usually for the redistribution upwards, and often concentration, of wealth and privilege. A minor but popular illustration is offered by the expensive conferences and other junkets that state employees or party officials organise for themselves and manage to bill to state revenue, in turn sucked up from inequitable taxation. Certainly a main historical outcome of the state has been domination of exploitation of certain segments of society by others, and some see its main, and barely concealed, purpose as just that: domination and exploitation. * States are typically corrupt. For example, there are enquiries presently in train, or with follow-through activities yet to be duly completed, in many states in Australia, enquires which have revealed considerable corruption, and there are prima facie cases for similar enquiries in most of the remainder. Nor is this a new phenomenon: these revelations often resemble older or on-going scandals. * States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources, and accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden, but �2 a main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over­ remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that many state operations are far from lean and efficient, but incorporate many duplications, drag factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms, of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens, weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organisation would be very significantly reduced. * The state is an incubus. States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive and demanding. Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous denouncement of state government: To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first world of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality (quoted in M p.6). As a result, there are constant demands for the reduction of the cancerous state, for removing parts of it through deregulation, selling off state enterprises and so on. There are two troubles with such demands from anarchist standpoints: they never go far enough, to the complete reduction of the state to zero, but characteristically retain parts supportive of or favourable to bigger business, and they proceed in the wrong way, stripping away social safety nets rather than ripping off business support nets (such as limited liability, strike limitation legislation, etc.). * States, for all that they have been promoted as delivering public goods, are mostly dismal news for environmental protection and health and for social justice. Furthermore they are liable to impose substantial hazards or risks upon subservient populations not merely through military and like activities but, more insidious, through support and promotion of dangerous industries, such as nuclear and giant chemical industries. * States usually exert a heavy pressure to uniformity, they tend to eliminate plurality and cultural differences. These pressures are exercised by a state in the alleged interests of national unity, and against its enemies, external and internal. Even the most liberal of states tend to give minorities more difficult lives in times of stress, such as war. They are always espousing national values, state interests, and commonly assimilation and adoption of state values (thus for example Canada, formerly and briefly a state toying with multiculturalism, now insistent upon "Canadian values"). Such exercises are conspicuous, not only in citizen ceremonies and other state rituals, such as national sporting and religious events, but more important are virtually ubiquitous in elementary education (down to deference to the flag, and �3 similar). * States are a major source of wars, and the major source of major wars, undoubted evils (however supposedly inevitable). They are major sources and suppliers of military technology and weapons, the means of war. Roughly, the more powerful and "advanced" a state, the further it is engaged in weapon production and export. Without states it is doubtful that there would be any nuclear weapons, and accordingly there would be no prospect of nuclear wars as there would be no weapons with which to fight them. * States are a serious drag on a more satisfactory international order. That there are not more, and more satisfactory, international regulatory organisations "is mainly a matter of the reluctance of nation states to surrender their powers and the dangers of their being dominated by very powerful states. If only nation states would be dissolved into specialized [departments] there is every reason to believe that most world problems could be handled by appropriate specialized [organisations]' (Bumheimp.221). * States have excessive power, and are even accumulating or trying to accumulate more, for instance through more centralization, further controls, additional licences, etc., etc. The excessive power of the state is exhibited not only in the treatment of its citizens and foreigners within its territory; it is exemplified also in its practices its territory, through such features as military pressures, including invasion, trade pressures, including sanitions, and in treatment of its citizens everywhere.! Obvious responses to excessive power are regionalization of powers, separation of powers, achieved by decoupling and some fragmentation, limitation of powers, and so on. * Present monolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which they are not competent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as impartial referees by their business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and control foo much, as a consequence it does very much unsatisfactorily. Improved arrangements would separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power. States thus appear far from a good bargain on a preliminary consideration of costs, and very far from maximal or optimal. Especially bad states, the run of states, which engage in politically-motivated inclination or torture of their citizens, and so on. Where are the The issue tends to be avoided; it is contended that, contrary to appearances, we cannot get along without state cossetting: states are necessary. But, given that we can get along without them, would we really be significantly worse off without them? cfr . <r ,,^ven m thd better cases (not allowing for alternative nonstatist arrangements which states have precluded or systems they have usurped)? But arguments for states are not usually so directly utilitarian in character. Such arguments would make it look as if we might well opt out of state organisation, and often be better off doing so. 1 A recent shocking example concerns the attempt of Eire to prevent an Irish women having an abortion in England. �4 These considerations divide into two groups: features that are on normal, normally bad, operations of states, and features that are normic on institution and operation of states. The first group of criticisms are eliminated under good to ideal operation of states, what officiandos of states characteristically unwarr^ntedly make. For the evidence seems to be that in practice states will tend away from the ideal. There are arguments from low efficiencies of complex mechanical structures that can be adopted to lend support to what evidence reveals. Features that are normic, and perhaps inevitable upon institution of states do however yield arguments against states that do not depend on ym*e contingencies of most states, their and so on. / 2. Ways of demonstrating that the State is not Required: as for God and the Church, so for the State. There is a theological component in the presumption and theory of the State; that theological component and therewith of the argMmenfa/ foundations for the State should be fully exposed. By contrast, anarchism, ^ approached from an argument perspective, enjoys nn considerable strength requiring no leaps of faith. The State is like God: the anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of what is commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed. The awn by Bakunin, has as well as considerable strength certain weaknesses. While the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe that there are no states: on the contrary, there are all too many, though none are legitimate.^The important parallel is as to argM/n^n^. The agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed, and so adopts a 'neutral' stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence-sitting position. Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not only faulting the argumentybr, but taking it for granted that there are arguments, or at least solid considerations, <2g(?in.yL So it is with soundly based anarchism; it both faults arguments for the State, showing none are generally viable, and de ps an incisive case against the State. A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again emphasised by Bakunin,2 is that of State and Church. 'Of course Knever should have eventuated; several bad political turnings were taken in the modern period following the Renaissance, t In several respects the comparison is better than that of the State and God, since both belong to the same category, institutions. Thus too both have looked to some philosophers as human inventions or artifices, both have looked to others (reductionists) as objects that could be reduced to features of the individuals involved in their organisation (but it is hard to see why such fictions or logical constructions shuld be assigned the power and deference they are 2 Bakunin on Anap^hy-(gdited S. Dolgolff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973, especially p.139. �5 accorded). This institutional comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised; for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly on organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually answerable to its police, and thence to its officers and military; how it is of the same category as business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church used to, it has nominal support of most of its 'subjects', though many of them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but as a necessary evil. It is easy now, in retrospect, to see how from being a compulsory feature of social life in many places, the Church has become a voluntary, and fragmented one; such a parallel desirable transformation of the State would eliminate it. Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is so it will be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove that God exists. That is, much as there are several ways of arguing to the existence of God, assembled by Aquinas into the famous (but not exhaustive, and invariably invalid) Five Ways, as well as various less famous but also important arguments against the existence of God, so in a parallel fashion there are various arguments that the State is required, as well as, what comes later that is especially relevant for anarchism, several ways of arguing against the necessity and desirability of the State. Since the State is unnecessary, as well as costly and typically at least evil in many of its practices and in other respects, it should be superseded. And it can be succeeded, by alternative social arrangements. It can be superseded or replaced as the Churches to a .9*1 large extent been supeyuated or replaced in many places. Just as the power of the ChurchAas declined until it has lost its authority over parishioners, so authority of the State can be undermined, and it can lose recognition and its claim to sovereignty over those in its territory,/A But there is a crucial difference between State and Church: under those conditions the State vanishes; for authority backed by coercive power is essential to the State but not (any longer) to the Church. And where the State differs crucially from Society anarchistically organised is as to the matter of coercion and of authority back^by force, such a Society relying basically on voluntary cooperation where the State relies on authority backed by force. Furthermore, the Church is justified through a religious theory, and is backed up ultimately by appeal to God's authority. The modern secular State by contrast annexes itself authority (or has simply inherited it) and, though it may claim to be justified by some political theory which confers upon it legitimacy, makes no appeal back to a justifying or authorizing agent. So what justifies it? Briefly, nothing does. * The First Way of Showing that the State is not Required: t&e Argument. / �6 The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State activity being dispensed with. The argument is not a straight substitution argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements. There is much the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, for instance, sponsorship of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIP's; and a great deal of typical State activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, for instance, graft, corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land and other resources, and encouragement; of protection^ of polluting or qvironmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forest-destructive pine planting and woodchip projects). The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind. This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism. The argument, implicit in the works of the classical anarchists, goesjike this: The functions of the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions, and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the powerful groups the State tends to serve). But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions which are in the collecdve interest, no coercion is required. For why should people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their collective interest? Such functions can be performed, and performed better, without the coercion which is the hallmark of the State, and without the accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it 'serves'. The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case-by-case form considering each function in turn.3 In each case the function is carried out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary co-operation by the people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements. Consider, for example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services, or community access communications (e.g. radio), most of which are presently either starved of infrastucture or hindered by the State. Such beneficial services would in general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally held, and That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of generally beneficial state activity - there is only a (relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it can be replaced in one way or another. Replacement is not of course uniquely determined. Lines such replacements can take are indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature, consider especially, but no, uncritically, P. Kropootkin, MMfMai Aid, New York University Press 1972, and also his Fi^/dy, Faci<?rie.y and WorLyAo/w, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and 77te Con<?Me.yf o/Brgad. Chapman and Hall, London, 1913. �7 those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals and powerful agencies. Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private individuals. As for the second type of functions, those which are no? in the collective interest, coercion will normally be required for the performance of functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation. But those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective interest. In this way, while the good part of the state's operation is retained and improved upon, the bad part — especially the evils of brutality, corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus - is detached. State services that are concerned with orr/gr, in the general sense, may be similarly removed or replaced. These services, which include reduction of violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services, security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it. They do not. Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by communities themselves without intervention by the State. Secondly, a great many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence of which the State is the main purveyor and which is often the outcome of the State's propping up of gross inequalitiesA A community which seriously limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for many "welfare services and the basis for a great many offences involving violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and many of those involving personal violence. Such a left-leaning anarchism is also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the State, such as those based on the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth allegedly achieved by State enforcement of redistribution. As all too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and police inequitable distribution. This then is the main classical argument for anarchism. The argument has however been challenged, both by historical and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot act in their collective interest without coercion. On these points see, e.g. 7?6wZMZz'a/zary Pawp/z/^tj (edited S. Baldwin), Kover Publications, New York, 1970, p.206ff.; also P.J. Proudhon, Cazz/e^jza/M' a/* a R^va/azza/zary. For recent discussion of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law court procedures (Zzaz for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone, Sawg <?H arhZzrazZag oar way ra anarcAy, Anarchism (reprint of Nomos XIX) New York University Press, 1978, pp.213- s �8 It is from the simulation argument, in particular, that the corollary of the q/ will follow? For, to overstate the case, anything the State can do that does reflect sought collective interests,, cooperation and other techniques can also achieve in the longer run, and mostly better. * The Second Way: The argument from problem recurrence. The solution by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more dangerous form the very real problems introduction of the State was designed to solve, including new Dilemmas. Suppose, for instance, the secular State really introduced in order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas, then the array of States so resulting generates new Prisoners' Dilemmas (with States as 'prisoners'), which there is no Super-State to resolve by coercion. In fact, as opposed to State-justifying mythology, the modem secular State was not introduced (just as the original states were not initiated) for any such apparently intellectually reputable reasons, but was largely inherited from the religious State (and the Church) and maintained to prop up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests. Or suppose, as the myth also has it, that the State really were introduced, or contracted, in the interest of order and stability and to curb violence; then the array of States resulting more than negates these advantages, with instability, disorder and violence (e.g. between States) on a grander scale than before the emergence of modern secular States? * The Third Way: The overshoot argument, from the inadequacy of institutional controls on state power. Having ceded a monopoly of power of the State in order to resolve some dilemmas, some of them arising from an inequitable distribution of power, what controls or balances the power of the State? A Super-State. And its power? There is a vicious infinite regress if the reply to the question 'What controls the controller?' is 'a further controller'? The only promising way of avoiding this problem — other routes lead (even more) directly to totalitarianism — is by having the first of these controllers, the State, answer back to those in whose interests it is allegedly established, those of the society or group of communities it controls. This implies democratic methods of some kind. Others go further: 'democracy [is] the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which we can try to The title of a joint paper upon which several of these sections draw^. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op cif, chapter 7. A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining regions. Several historical examples of this phenomenon are alluded to in M. Harris, and Ajngj, Collins, London. 1978, where it is also revealed how little the actual origin and rise of the State had to do with Dilemma situations, e.g. escaping a Hobbesian state of nature. Indeed, it was (j^th the advent and development of the State that life became for many what it had not apparently been in pre-State neolithic times, 'nasty, brutish and short'. The question is in effect Plato's question and the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man argument. �9 protect ourselves against the misuse of political power'.R In this event, control has mostly failed. Democracy is extremely attentuated, even in those states that claim to practice it. The exercise of power in modem 'democratic' states is often channelled through 'non-elected authority' and 'is not democratic in the traditional meaning of the term'.9 Moreover, the much increased power in the modern State, which reaches deep into people's lives, has passed, with no increase in legitimacy, to certain managerial elites who present the power as directed at the attainment of 'generally accepted' objectives such as economic growth (but through, e.g., increased military expenditure) or material 'progress' (but through, e.g., increased military expenditure) or material 'progress' (but through, e.g. subsidization of environmentally destructive enterprises of off-shore companies), though the acceptability of such particular objectives is never democratically tested. In any case, indirect democratic and other institutional checks are in as much as they depend ultimately on the toleration of those who have direct control of the forces of the State. Experience seems to show that such toleration will only be shown so long as democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are broadly in accord iwth what those who control the coercive power are prepared to accept. (Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation). But institutional checks which operate only insofar as a system acceptable to the powerholders is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration of those 'checked', are not really checks at all. The problem of controlling the power of the State and preventing the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its mandate, is only solved by not ceding power to the State in the first place. The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation. * The Fourth Way: The argument from freedom and autonomy. A person is responsible for actions deliberately undertaken. This premise can be derived, if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent. Taking responsibility for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about what to do on each such occasion oneself; not acting on direction from outside, but determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision over to someone or something else. It implies, that is, moral autonomy. Autonomy in turn implies what responsibility requires, freedom. For the autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is K.R. Popper, 77ie (?/?<?/i 5*<9c;'<?ry and Vol. II. Fourth edition (revised), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p.129 and p.127. The (overshoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the dangerous accumulation of power represented in teh State' 'upon which' Marxists never had 'any wellconsidered view' (p.129). V. Lauber, Eco/ogy, po/ZzZcj and Zz&emZ ^efwocracy, Government and Opposition, 13 (1978), 199-217: seep.209 and p.211. �10 not subject to the will of another. Even if it does what another directs, it is not another so directs. In being free, nof of constraints (both physical and self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous being is morally free. A necessary feature of the State is (XMf/ionry over those in its territory (under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will uon them. Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and with freedom. An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State. In sum, being a person, as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on personhood implies, if the argument is sound, anarchism, io It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated 'State', one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy. But such a 'State', with no independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism. On the contrary, such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic organisation. * The Fifth Way: The argument from anarchistic experience. The replacement argument enables construction of a model of a society functioning without the State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State is not necessary. But it can always be - even if the claim can seldom or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable. The gap may be closed by appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various times and places anarchism has been tested and has rworked. Examples of such Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have not been omitted. There are many examples of non-industrialised societies which were, or are, anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,n and there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic arrangements within the State structure. 12 The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated, but in a very individualistic and Kantian fashion, in R.P. Wolff, 7% of A/iarc/H-sw, Harper & Row, New York, 1970. No argument is without assumptions, which are open to dispute. Wolffs argument, from which the argument in the text is adapted, has its pitfalls, and is, for example, disputed by G. Wall, P/uZo-yop/wcaZ revi\yg<7, Anarchism, op.cit. p.273ff. Documented in 77ze 1974. Co/Zecfiv&y (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions New York As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of self-management and alternative lifestyles �11 The state is far from necessary and iacks adequate justification. The state is not a self-justifying object. But none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A familiar theme, conceding that the state is a problematic object, is that the state is a necessary evil. 13 But, to the contrary, states, though generally evil, are hardly necessary. It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak any necessity claimed has to be. For it is becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical modellings and computer simulations of other worlds, virtual states and the like, to envisage accessible worlds organised without modern states. As such worlds, inhabited by humans or human-like creatures are possible, states are not necessary. No doubt then, the necessity has to be of some more andpr^m^Jc sort, a "social human necessity" for example appealing to emergent features of humans, kinks of human nature, obtruding in unfavourable situations of high concentrations and extensive scarcity (situations that states themselves have, like many survival systems, helped contrive). Further the necessity has to be relative to certain organisational objectives, such as a particular state delivery of collective goods and services. Remarkably, none of the extant arguments to the state make it plain that such a weak pragmatic relative "necessity" is indicated, though they would hardly establish more, and though they Jo make strong (implausible) assumptions about the brutal situation outside states, in states-of-nature and so on, and about human motivation and practice, its utterly selfish, self-interested and acquisitive, and frequently debased character (i.e. what appears encouraged under economic rationalism, and pretty much what many have come to expect under conditions of advanced capitalism). Mostly no effort is made any longer, outside a few abstruse texts, to justify the state. Within contemporary institutional arrangement it is simply taken for granted (like Big Science), as axiomatic, as God was under medieval arrangements. But unlike God, who was good personified and therefore had a large problem with the extent of evil in the world, the state is acknowledged as problematic and far from unimplicated in the evil of the world (but directly engaged therein when the councils of the many Machievellis are heeded). Such a problematic object cannot stand up as merely postulated. Nor is there a corresponding ontological argument for the state, as that organisational structure than which nothing more are many and significant. And these alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of evidence and experience to support their superiority over the present way society operates. The obstacles to self-management and alternative lifestyles are powerful vested interests and institutional resistance to change', C/zanging f/x? C<%f, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979. p.6. 13 The theme, enunciated for instance by Popper, that * state power must always remain a dangerous though necessary evil' (II, p.30) is a commonplace one. �12 perfect can exist. Outside the flawed imagination of German idealists there is no such Super State; all actual states are manifestly highly imperfect, all humanly realisable ones are likely similar. As a result of the institutionalisation of the state itself, as a received and indeed central part of modern political arrangements, the onus of proof has become curiously inverted. Efforts to justify the state have become fairly ideal and academic, no longer a serious issue, and onus transferred to anarchists to demonstrate that human social life could proceed well and smoothly (as it now does, of course) without states. While anarchists are not absolved from offering some account of operations of good social lives without states (for, except in fairy tales, it does not all just emerge, unplanned, in the new stateless setting), neither are archists absolved from justification of de facto statist arrangements, beginning with the state itself. �4 a ARCrpM&^S-. The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state, therewithal state-like institutions a/t? %/ro /j /< 7 ) c /A—Zb n X! ct A<$ Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes: * States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification. * Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes. * Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of social and environmental bungles or evils in their train. In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils The anarchist critique does not end there, but typically includes.'further themes/ such as : w States are devices for channelling privilege and wealth to certain minorities with inside , �The state is an undesirable, or even downright evii, institution, for the following range of reasons:- * States entrench inequities, domination and exploitation. States are devices for the protection of wealth, property and privilege, and usually for the redistribution upwards, and often concentration, of wealth and privilege. A minor but popular illustration is offered by the expensive conferences and other junkets that state employees or party officials organise for themselves and manage to bill to state revenue, in turn sucked up from inequitable taxation. Certainly a main historical outcome of the state has been domination of exploitation of certain segments of society by others, and some see its main, and barely concealed, purpose as just that: domination and exploitation. ) * States are typically corrupt. For example, there are enquiries presently in train, or with follow-through activities yet to be duly completed, in many states in Australia, enquires which have revealed considerable corruption, and there are prima facie cases for similar enquiries in most of the remainder. Nor is this a new phenomenon: these revelations often resemble older or on-going scandals. * States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources, and accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden, but a main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over­ remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that many state operations are far from lean and efficient, but incorporate many duplications, drag factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms, of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens, weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organisation would be very significantly reduced. * States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive and demanding^. As a Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous denouncement of state government: ^1/7^ To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first world of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality (quoted in M p.6). �result, there are constant demands for the reduction of the cancerous state, for removing parts of it through deregulation, selling off state enterprises and so on. There are two troubles with such demands from anarchist standpoints: they never go far enough, to the complete reduction of the state to zero, but characteristically retain parts supportive of or favourable to bigger business, and they proceed in the wrong way, stripping away social safety nets rather than ripping off business support nets (such as limited liability, strike limitation legislation, etc.). * States, for all that they have been promoted as delivering public goods, are mostly dismal news for environmental protection and health and for social justice. Furthermore they are liable to impose substantial hazards or risks upon subservient populations not merely through military and like activities but, more insidious, through support and promotion of dangerous industries, such as nuclear and giant chemical industries. * Statetusually exert a heavy pressure to uniformity, they tend to eliminate plurality and cultural differences. These pressures are exercised by a state in the alleged interests of national unity, and against its enemies, external and internal. Even the most liberal of states tend to give minorities more difficult lives in times of stress, such as war. They are always espousing national values, state interests, and commonly assimilation and adoption of state values (thus for example Canada, formerly and briefly a state toying with multiculturalism, now insistent upon "Canadian values"). Such exercises are conspicuous, not only in citizen ceremonies and other state rituals, such as national sporting and religious events, but more important are virtually ubiquitous in elementary education (down to deference to the f la , and similar). * States are a major source of wars, and the major source of major wars, undoubted evils (however supposedly inevitable). They are major sources and suppliers of military technology and weapons, the means of war. Roughly, the more powerful and "advanced" a state, the further it is engaged in weapon production and export. Without states it is doubtful that there would be any nuclear weapons, and accordingly there would be no prospect of nuclear wars as there would be no weapons with which to fight them. * States are a serious drag on a more satisfactory international order. That there are not more, and more satisfactory, international regulatory organisations 'is mainly a matter of the reluctance of nation states to surrender their powers and the dangers of their being dominated by very powerful states. If only nation states would be dissolved into specialized [departments] there is every reason to believe that most world problems could be handled by appropriate specialized �[organisations]' (Burnheimp.221). * States have excessive power, and are even accumulating or trying to accumulate more, for (hT) instance through more centralization, further controls, additional licences, etc., etc. Obvious responses to excessive power are separation of powers, achieved by decoupling and some fragmentation, limitation of powers, and so on. States thus appear farTrom a good bargain on a preliminary consideration of costs, Especially bad states, the run of states, which engage in politically-motivated incun-ation or t.ifure of their citizens, and so on. Where are the compensating benefits?' yven that we can get along without them, would we really be significantly worse off without them? Even in the better cases (not allowing for alternative nonstatist arrangements which states have precluded or systems they have usurped)? But arguments for states are not usually so directly utilitarian in character. Such arguments would make it look as if we might well opt out of state organisation, and often be better off doing so. Mat it is contended that, contrary to appearances, we cannot get along without state cossetting: states are necessary. , *?: - Present monolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which they are not competent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as impartial referees by their business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and control top much, as a consequence it does very much unsatisfactorily. Improved arrangements would separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power. wcef- �/%^2^ /\^^ 1 C 4 Z Z^-^7 �W GW, //?(? C/7//A /7, jWr f/7(? 3/(7/d The State is like God: the anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of what is commonly assumed, mostlv as a matter of faith, to be needed. T)ie pafatlel, BakummTtlibjat^weaknessessas well as Rs strengt%^.''^Vhiie the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe that there are no states: on the contrary, there are all too many, though none are legitimate. The impor­ tant parallel is as to arguments. The agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God suc­ ceed, and so adopts a 'neutral' stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence­ sitting position. Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not only faulting the argumentsybr, but takingdt for granted that there are arguments, or at least solid considerations, rzgm/ry/. So it is with soundly based anarchism; <t both fault) arguments for the r" 3tatuce- a case against the State. A more obvious comparison, ap­ preciated from Reformation on and again emphasised bvBakunin,' is that of State and Church^ This institutional comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised; for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly on organised violence, all other internal security arrangernggt^)eing eventually answerable to its pdhee and military^; how it is of the same category as business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church used to, it has nominal support of most of its 'subjects', though many of them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have come to see the State as in many This does not upset the replacement respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but argument for anarchism. The argument, as a necessary evil.^) implicit in the works of the classical Whether the State is inevitably evil or anarchists, goes like this: The functions not, it is M/mecas-wry, so it will be of the State can be divided into two argued, in a wav parallelling the famous types, those that are in the collective in­ jVquinas designed to prove terest and generally beneficial such as that God exi^&^Since the State is un­ community welfare and organisational necessary, as welt as costly and typically functions, and those that are not (but at leas! evil in many of its practices and are, presumably, in the interests of some undesirable in other respects, it should of the powerful groups the State tends to be superseded. And it can be succeeded, serve). by alternative social arrangements, But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions gg 77^ /7r.v/ IWj Q/ SbotWg which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required. For why should /r7t?/ //?C S/t//^ Ay ,76)/ 7?^T//7W.' people have to be coerced into carrying //!f /?e/)GcT/77^?7/ WRM/W7/. out functions which are in their collec­ tive interest? Such functions can be per­ The core of the argument is simple formed, and performed better, without and persuasive: everything in the collec- the coercion which is the hallmark of the tive interest accomplished by the State State, and without the accompanying can equally be accomplished by alterna­ tendency of the State to pervert such tive arrangements such as voluntary co­ functions to the maintenance of privilege operation, the remainder of State activi­ and inequality of power, and to remove ty being dispensed with. The argument is power from those it 'serves'. The detail­ not a straight substitution argument, for ed argument that such functions can be it is not as if a rational person would performed takes a case by case form, want to have everything accomplished considering each function in turn7 In by the State replicated by alternative each case the function is carried out arrangements. There is much the State through alternative arrangements, such does or supports that is at best rather in­ different, ^"'sponsorship of pomp and as voluntary co-operation by the people directly concerned, which replace State ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a arrangements. Consider, for example, great deal of typical State activity is the operation of mutual aid or self help positively evil and not in the collective medical services or building programs, interest,'e^. gral^t, corruption, brutality, or self managed welfare, housing or en­ maintenance of inequitable distribution vironment services, or community access of wealth, land and other resources, and communications (e.g. radio), most of encouragement of protection of polluting or environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forest­ destructive pine planting and woodchip projects). The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind. �which are presently either starved of infrastructure or hindered by the State. Such beneficia! services would in genera! be reorganised so that ah the relevant infrastructure became communaHy heid, and those wishing to arrange or use the service wou!d manage the operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professional and powerful agencies. Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal types of anarcnism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than individual labour) are already held by the com­ munity, sdthereis no need to apply coer­ cion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are privatis­ ed and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private in­ dividuals. As for the second type of functions, those which are /tor in the collective in­ terest, coercion will normally be required for the performance of //tew functions, and is thus an essentia! part of the State's operation. But those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the coHective interest. !n this way, while the good part of the State's operation is re­ tained and improved upon, the bad part — especially the evils of brutality, corruption and other abuses invariabty associated with the coercive apparatus — is detached. State services that are concerned with orjpr, in the genera! sense, may be similarly removed or replaced. These services, which include reduction of violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services, security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it. They do not. Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by communities themselves without intervention by the State. Secondly, a great many of these pro­ blems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence of which the State is the main purveyor and which is often the outcome of the State's propping up of gross inequalities? A community which seriously limits (or dispenses with) the in­ stitution of private property and removes gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for many 'welfare' services and the basis for a great many offences in­ volving violence: virtually ail those in­ volving violence to private property and many of those involving personal violence. Such a left-leaning anarchism is also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the State, such as those based on the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth allegedly achieved by State en­ forcement of redistribution. As all too many people are aware, a major func­ tion of the State is to maintain and police inequitable distribution. This then is the main classical argu­ ment for anarchism. The argument has however been challenged, both by historical and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot act in their collective interest without coercion. �7./ NOTES 14. [5. 16. oK !. Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgofl), Allen & LJnwin, London, (973, especially p.139. Much else in this paper, eg. the distinction between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin. 2. That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of generally beneficial state activity — there is only a (relatively small) finite number to consider — and shows how it can be replaced in one way or another. Replacement is not of course uniquely deter­ mined. Lines such replacements can take are indicated in much anarchist (and self management) literature, consider especially, but no/ uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, New York University Press, 1972, and also his Fields. Factories and Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and the Conquest of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913. 3. On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin's Revolu­ tionary Pamphlets (edited S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York, 1970, p.206 ff.; also P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolu­ tionary. For recent discussion of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law court procedures (6td for right-leaning anarchism), see C D. Stone, Some re/?ec//on.s on o/Tn/rohng our way /o anarc/ty * Anarchism (reprint of Nomos XIX) New York University Press, 1978, pp.213^4. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a littic in Taylor, op.cit., chapter 7. A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way in which emergence of the State com promises and even closes off nonstate solu­ tions to problems of social organisation in ad­ joining regions. Several historical examples of this phenomenon are alluded to in M. Harris, Cannibals and Kings, Collins, London. 1978. where it is also revealed how little the actual origin and rise of the State had to do with Dilemma situations, e.g. escaping a Hobbesian state of nature. Indeed, it was with the advent and development of the State that life became for many what it had not apparently been in prc-State neolithic times, 'nasty, brutish and short'. The question is m effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man argument. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies. Yol.iL Fourth edition (revised), Routledge and Kegan Paul. London. 1962, p.129 and p.127. The (overshoot) problem ts. according to Popper 'the most fundamental problem of all politics: the control of the con­ troller. of the dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State' 'upon which' Marxists never had view' (p. 129). 'any well-considered 17. V. Lauber. /co/o^y, po/t/tes an<7 hbera/ r/emocracv. Government and Opposition. 13 (1978), 199-217: see p.2O9 and p.211. 18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated, but tn a very individualistic and Kantian fashion, tn R.P. Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York. 1970. No argument is without assumptions, which are open to dispute. Wolff's argument, from which the argument in the text is adapted, has its pitfalls, and is, for example, disputed by G. Wall. P/b/o.sop/hca/ awc/n.sw re row/, Anarchism, op.cit. p.273ff. 19. Documented in The Anarchist Cotiectives (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions, New York. 1974. 20. As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of self-management and alternative lifestyles are many and significant. And these alter­ natives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of evidence and experience to support their superiority over the present way society operates. The obstacles to self-management and alternative lifestyles are powerful vested interests and institutional resistance to change', ( hanging the Cogs, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979, p.6. �ANARCHISM - ENLARGED j ____________ foundations* There is a theological component in the theory of the ^tate;.the weakness af^whieh should be brought out. A A By contrast, anarchism ^.s approached from an argument pe^p^ctive, of considerable streng strength^ Since the &tate is an imposed structure that induces considerable costs, the onus of proof is moreover on the State side. (The State versus states: r instantiate the universal.) 2. they Circled numbers hereafter refer to insert places in elder working version. In §1:- (^ In several respects the comparison is better than that of the State and God, since both belong to the same category, institutions. /cc Thus both have looked to some philosophers as human inventions or artifices, both have looked to others (reductionists) as objects that could be reduced to features of the individuals involved in their organisation (but it is hard to see why such fictions or logical constructions should be assigned the power and deference they are accorded). 0 It can be superseded, or replaced^ as the Church has to a large, ^in many places. extent been Just as the power of the Church has declined until it has lost its authority over parishioners, so authority of the State can be undermined, and it can lose recognition and its claim to jAu&h^rit^ over those in its territory. But there is a crucial difference between State and Church: under those condit­ ions the State vanishes, for authority backs!by coercive power is essential to the State but not (any longer) to the Church. from Society anarchistically organised And where the State differs crucially is as to the matter of coercion and of authority backed by force, such a society relying basically on voluntary cooper­ ation where the State relies on authority backed by force. Furthermore, the Church is justified through a religious theory, and is backed up ultimately by appeal to God's authority. The modern secular State by contrast annexes itself J �A 2. itself authority (or has simply inherited it) and, though it may claim to be justified by some political th(o^ry which confers upon it legitimacy, makes no appeal back to a justifying or authorizing <3<^e.nt. So what justifies it? 2^.^ These sorts of considerations prompt two connected complaints of the anarch- ist, which have never been satisfactorily met, the agnostic's complaint that the State has no adequate justification - the arguments for its imposition or certain action fail - and the stronger complaint that the State is not necessary at all. These complaints are backed by arguments and further arguments, namely an assess) ment of arguments. These arguments are important, not, or not merely, because they will show, if unsuccessful, that anarchism j^s irrefutable, but because they convey muqh information, e.g. as to the weak (to the point of vacuity) sense in which the State is "necessary", because they do much to determine the general 0^ logical shape of the anarchism that results, and because they indicate routes to anarchism, not merely why but, to some extent, how the State can be superseded by a Society anarchistically organised. t pfuch as there are several ways of arguing to the existence of God, assembled by Aquinas into the famous (but not exhaustive, and invariably invalid) Five Ways, and various less famous but also important arguments against the existence of God, apcni&Igs , (jAtb so there are various arguments that the State is required, and^ especially —-2 relevant for anarchism^, several ways of arguing against the necessity of the State. is from the simulation argument, in particular, that the irrefutibj.lity of Ai) anarchism will follow^ anything the State can do that does reflect the collective interests A/. A74 cooperation.can also do in the long-run, and mostly better. [Over- i ��g T7/E SECOAD X 777E /1RGGA7EATFROM PROEEEM RECGRREyVCE. The solution by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more dangerous form the very real problems introduction of the State was designed to solve, inciuding new Diiemmas. Suppose, for instance, the secular State realty were introduced in order to soive Prisoners' Dilemmas, then the array of States so resulting generates new Prisoners' Ditemmas (with States as 'prisoners'), which there is no Super-State to resotve by coercion. In fact, as opposed to State-justifying mythology, the modern secutar State was not introduced (just as the originat States were not initiated) for any such apparentty intellectually reputable reasons, but was targety inherited from che religious State (and the Church) and Jiaintained to prop up privitege and foster objectives that are not in its com­ munities' interests. Or suppose, as the myth atso has it, that the State reaity were introduced, or contracted, in the interest of order and stability and to curb violence; then the array of States resuming more than negates these advan­ tages, with instability, disorder and viotence (e.g. between States) on a grander scale than before the emergence of modern secutar States."* S 77/E 77//RD HA1 Y. RHE (9 YERSEOGE /IRGt/MEAE FROM EE/E /A/(/9E()G^CY GE /AF77EG77GA74E CGA7RGES GA A7MEE PG^ER Having ceded a monopoty of power J) the State in order to resotve some diiemmas, some of them arising from an inequitable distribution of power, what controts or batances the power of the State? A Super-State. And its power? There is a vicious infinite regress if the repty to the question 'What controts the controtter?' is 'a further controller'A The onty promising way of avoiding this problem — other routes tead (even 1 more) directty to totaiitarianism — is by having the first of these controllers, the State, answer back to those in whose in­ terests it is aitegediy estabtished, those of the society or group of communities it controts. This implies democratic methods of some kind. Others go fur­ ther: 'democracy (is] the onty known means to achieve this control, the onty known device by which we can try to protect oursetves against the misuse of pohtica! power'.'* In this event, control has mostty failed. Democracy is ex­ tremely attenuated, even in those states that claim to practice it. The exercise of power in modern 'democratic' states is often channelled through 'non-elected authority' and 'is not democratic in the traditional meaning of the term'E Moreover, the much increased power in the modern State, which reaches deep in­ to people's lives, has passed, with no in­ crease in legitimacy, to certain managerial elites who present the power as directed at the attainment of 'general­ ly accepted' objectives such as economic growth (but through, e.g.', increased military expenditure) or materia! 'pro­ gress' (but through, e.g. subsidization of environmentally destructive enterprises of off-shore companies), though the ac­ ceptability of such particular objectives is never democratically tested. In any case, indirect democratic and other institutional checks are /em/OMS in as much as they depend uttimately on the toleration of those who have direct con­ trol of the forces of the State. Experience seems to show that such toleration wit! only be shown so long as democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are broadly in ac­ cord with what those who control the coercive power are prepared to accept. (Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to those who hold power, especially the cover of legitima­ tion). But institutional checks which operate only insofar as a system accep­ table to the powerholders is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration of those 'checked', 39 EE/E FGGR 777 Y. EE/E ARGGMEA?^ FRGA7 EREEDGA7 ^lAD^l GEGAGAf Y. A person is responsible for actions deliberately undertaken. This premise can be derived, if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent. Taking responsiblity for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about what to do on each such occasion oneself; not acting on direction from outside, but determin­ ing how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision over to someone or something else. It implies, that is, moral autonomy. Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility re­ quires, freedom. For the autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is not subject to the will of another. Even if it does what another directs, it is not /yeemzse another so directs. In being free, no/ of constraints (both physical and self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous being is morally free. A necesary feature of the State is <7H//io,7/y over those in its territory (under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon them. Such authority backed by force is incom­ patible with moral autonomy and with freedom. An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some im­ peratives of the State, those it in­ dependently endorses, is bound to reject such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State. In sum, being a per­ son, as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on per­ sonhood implies, if the argument is sound, anarchism.'* It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated 'State', one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy. But such a 'State', with no independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism. On the contrary, such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic organisation. W E/7E E7E777 HA1Y. 777E are not really checks at ali. ^RGGMEAEFRGM The problem of controlling the power of the State and preventing the State M A91 RCA75&EAVER7EACE. once established from usurping further The replacement argument enables power and exceeding its mandate, is only construction of a model of a society w/cyAc/orr/y solved by not ceding power functioning without the State, of a prac­ to the State in the first place. The best tically possible Stateless world; which way of avoiding the evils of accumulated shows that the State is not necessary. But power is the anarchist way, of blocking it can always be c/c/wer/ — even if the its accumulation. claim can seldom or ever be made good — that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of real world circum­ stances, rendering it inapplicable. The gap may be closed by appeal to the inde­ pendently valuable argument from ex­ perience, that at various times and places anarchism has been tested and has work­ ed. Examples of such Stateless organisa­ tion suffice to show that crucial real world features have not been omitted. ^Yiere are many examples of nontndustrialised socieities which were, or are, anarchistic, there is the rich experi­ ence of the Spanish collectives,'" and there is much localised experience of seif-management and small-scale anar chistic arrangements within the State structure?" �z e The state tacks adequate justification. The state is not a self-justifying object. But none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A familiar theme, conceding that the Al state is a problematic object, is that the state is a necessary evil. But, to the contrary, states, though generally evil, are hardly necessary^ It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak necessity claimed has to be. For it is becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical!^ modellings and computer simulations of other worlds, virtual states and the like, to envisage accessible worlds organised without modern states. No doubt then, the necessity has to be of some more pragmatic sort, a "social human necessity" for example appealing to emergent features of humans, kinks of human nature, obtruding in unfavourable situations of high concentrations and extensive scarcity (situations that states themselves have, like many survival systems, helped contrive).Remarkably, none of the extant arguments to the state make it plain that such a weak pragmatic "necessity" is intricated, though they would hardly establish more, and though they make strong (implausible) assumptions about the brutal situation outside states, in states-of-nature and so on, and about human motivation and practice, its utterly selfish, self-interested and acquisitive, and frequently debased character (i.e. what appears encouraged under economic rationalism, and pretty much what many have come to expect under conditions of advanced capitalism). Mostly no effort is made any longer, outside a few abstruse texts, to justify the state. Within contemporary institutional arrangement it is simply taken for granted (like Big Science), as axiomatic, as God was under medieval arrangements. But unlike God, who was good personified and therefore had a large problem with the extent of evil in the world, the state is acknowledged as problematic and far from unimplicated in the evil of the world (but directly engaged therein when the councils of the many Machievellis are heeded). Such a problematic Popper^s view that 'state power must always remain a dangerous though necess­ ary evil' (II, p.30) is a commonplace one. �object cannot stand up as merely postulated. Nor is there a corresponding ontological argument for the state, as that organisational structure than which nothing more perfect can exist. Outside the flawed imagination of German idealists there is no such Super State; all actual states are manifestly highly imperfect, all humanly realisable ones are likely similar. As a result of the institutionalisation of the state itself, as a received and indeed central part of modem political arrangements, the onus of proof has become curiously inverted. Efforts to justify the state have become fairly ideal and academic, no longer a serious issue, and onus transferred to anarchists to demonstrate that human social life could proceed well and smoothly (as it now does, of course) without states. While anarchists are not absolved from offering some account of operations of good social lives without states (for, except in fairy tales, it does not all just emerge, unplanned, in the new stateless setting), neither are statists absolved from justification of de facto statist arrangements, beginning with the state itself. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document CASE DISSOLVED: critique of argumentsto and for the State Over the centuries that humans have been stuck with states, many different attempts to justify them, as in some way necessary or desirable (as more than an unfortunate accident of history), have been attempted. None pf these arguments succeed (as much would perhaps be quite widely conceded^). / / There are various wayjs of showing that the arguments fail. One powerful way deploys, indicates or develops, counterexamples; for instance modelling social arrangements without states. Another more pedestrian but essential way consists in direct examination of the arguments, not merely some of them or various classes of them, but, for completeness, each and every one of them. Ultimately that calls for, what is attempted first in a first attempt fashion, an exhaustive classification of the arguments „ A preliminary classification of these arguments can take the following form: 1. //i-yfonc or <?Ma,s7-/H,s'f(9rzc. These arguments divide in tum into two principal subclasses: 1.1 Daycrzpnve.* /b/Zacy o/TAo quo. A first group of arguments^justification of the state, try to take advantage of the descriptive features that states are entrenched almost everywhere as the dominant feature of the political landscape. Helpful as it may be having states in avoiding hypothetical in injecting a heavy element of realism oLesdisn, nonetheless fact is not per se justification: what is often X ought not to be. Bank robbers and robber barons are justified by their mere existence There are similar problems<dth the argument from tradition. If some principle, practice or theory stood for a good while it had something going for it. Some such consideration lies at the basis of precedence in law; the idea of tradition as encapsulating past wisdom - or past folly. Among the problems are that with authoritarian institutions come their antitheses, with the state the anti-state. Many practices like barbarism and racism have stood for a very long tirne,^ many organisations like mafia have been airound for a long time, so they have something going for them? Such troubles, the evident gap between descriptive and normative, are among those that plague In s^prt without utterly questionable connecting assumptions, such as that what is is necessary (a modal fallacy) or that what is is right (a deontic fallacyi), such arguments fail to afford justification. There are some important JMbtypes of descriptive (or quasi-descriptive) arguments, namely * 1 arguments. The state is not only established, it works. Immediate difficulties This fallacy, heavily utilized by Hegel, is critically examined in NNL. X 0 V-v L^ /]/ t 4^c AA-<s A ^^7*. JA^? (^A t ACA C.^y1k Av 2.2- 1 t.. z^ z^pr p^r- *-y^2^— 2 with such arguments are obvious. The Mafia too/is well-established. It too works, often in opposition the the State (as a sort of negative opposite, like the Devil to God). What sort of standards of is working intended to meet? All sorts of awful political arrangements have "worked", at least in persisting for as long as statist arrangements: despotisms, dictatorships, tyrannies, ... . Still as pragmatic arguments enjoy considerable popularity, especially in North America, they will have to be considered in more detail (than they deserve). * arguments. The state has evolved through a long sequence of political forms. It is tried and tested, and now selected, selected as best available. Such arguments afford scientific clothing for the appalling Hegelian "what is is right". For what has evolved is selected thereby as best, and what is selected as best is no doubt right (by a familiar utilitarian deontic reduction). Slather evidently such arguments prove too much. Any form that in fact emerges, no matter how achieved, though what dusta^dly Machievellian deeds, no matter how awful, is thereby justified: empires and dictatorships of the worst sort, fa^ist and totalitarian states, one and all, are justified, provided only they are established.^ this only for climax states, where some sort of evolutionary plutoniums have been achieved have been achieved (otherwise bad means to select evolutionary ends may temporarily prevail). But where is the evidence that the State is not another transitional stage, like feudalism before it? As an evolutionary form it is very recent, and fortunately not yet established in evolutionary time. 1.2 AfoK-J&pcripf/ve. Difficulties with descriptive arguments, including prescriptive fallacies (deriving presciptive or evaluative conclusions from purely descriptive premisses), are evaded/idealisation arguments, which include These are genetic in justificatory character, relating the mythological "historical" development of the State from an imaginary pre-state situation.^ These arguments are not sharply^p^rated from * fdea/ /n,yfory arguments. * MMagmary and ideal reconjfrMcrfoK arguments. For the transactions, such as an originating social contract, may be presented in a quasi-historic form. This important class of arguments is broader than contractual arrangements, including all the following sorts of imaginary transactions: negotiating, bargaining, experimenting, etc., in given (idealised) conditions, perhaps issuing in an arrangement, agreement, contract, etc. One preliminary That contemporary exponents and practitioniers of state craft are inclined to accept these^orts of considerations, and to recognise any region that has gained (short-term) control over a territory and its administration, does nothing for the considerations^ What it reveals rather is the moral sickness of contemporary real-politics. They include (as opposed to relocation arguments, where a group ("voting with its feet ) relocates and forms a state (except of course these gorups, when there was room for them, tended to aim for new societies, not states). These arguments form a bridge between descriptive and ntunative. While voluntary contract arguments are descripively implausible, voluntary relocation has, or did have, a little descriptive 3 classification of these arguments divides them into natural quasi-theological, legalistic invisible hand evolutionary consensual or equivalent. artificial, The most notorious of these reconstructions, or political thought-experiments, are the social contract theories whereby individual members of a society fictitiously enter into an enforceable contract, inescapable for themselves and all their descendants, setting up the state, primarily as a security arrangement. In later versions which may involve other legalistic forms than contracts, such as pa^cts, trusts, etc., there is much negotiating and bargaining in contrived situations, where humans lose many of their distinctive features and accoutrements (in a effort to ensure some initial fairness). A variant on contract theories, which justify some sort of state arrangements Z/* they arose in an ideal way, is retrojustification of the state as naturally arising, as a sort of super­ insurance agency, from pre-state arrangements. For example, the minimal state evolves from a competing set of state-like security agencies one of which somehow gains a monopoly, and is retrojustified through insurance arguments (concerning risk and compensation). Such arguments are sometimes presented as replacing overall contractual arrangements (through minor arrangements undoubtedly enter) with invisible hand mechanisms. Whereas contractual arguments take the general segmented shape: INITIAL STATE: INPUT INTERMEDIATE STATES prestate negotiation followed by situation: draft contrad, assessment "state of nature" FINAL STATE: OUTPUT state established situation followed by contract adoption ^in invisible hand arguments the intermediate steps, on route to the state, consist in formation of organisations and their progressive amalgatiation to provide finally a state. For example, in Nozick these organisations are taken to comprise protective agencies (though that is only one statist function), and to ensure legitimacy for the final object, it is contended that each intermediate state derives from the proceeding in a morally permissible way, namely preserves % selected rights. Such arguments fail for two main classes of reasons: inadequacy in the derivations of late and final stages from earlier ones, and unsatisfactoriness over the initial state (in particular, what is assumed in it, such as proprietorial rights, and what is excluded, i$ the way of more satisfactory alternatives). In these forms the State arises through voZimfary actions and transactions. Whereas anarchists and many socialists see anarchism as a post-state state, these transaction arguments often assume anarchism, in very motly forms, as pre-state states. People voluntarily elect to escape those pre-state form, "rushing" into the jaws of the State. But there are, as well, versions, where the State is established through legalistic or religious means, natural religion or the like. For example, the details of State organisation, or a recipe or 4 commandments therefore, are received by or given to some powerful religious personage, who implements the organisation under religious authority. The legalistic equivalent came about through implementation, not of religious dictates, but what may be very similar in practical affect and detail, natural law. Normally this law will be "seen", for, by some powerful personages, who are in a position to convey, and have put into effect, their illumination. With the decline of religion these sorts of arguments have lost much of their general appeal (they should never have enjoyed much credibility). But many relics of these shattered arguments remain, to be removed. A critical point is that such arguments should not gain independent standing. Most law is mfra-state, state manufactured and state serving. What is independent of states has to answer to standards, moral standards especially, that are independently justified. Similarly for religious commandments. As a result, these arguments collapse back to arguments for the State. Now modern states did not arise in any such "natural" or contractual way. Often they were imposed by conquest or through colonialisation, and with a few exceptions, using military means rather than offering much sweetness and light and choice. There are a notable discrepancies between typical justifications of the state (in which much is sweetness and light, though it is far from a pareto-optimal object) and common explanations of the role of the state (in which much is obviousness and intrigue). Nor do the ideal constructions or histories offer much justification for these resulting state power configurations. For the states so delivered are very different from those most people presently toil under. In any case, the arguments involved do not succeed. They are extraordinarily gappy by contemporary logical standards. They depend upon some utterly implausible assumptions, for example as to how vile conditions are^n extra^state situations. These changes are easily illustrated, and will be.) small immediate)^eana&14 example. Underlying several of the imaginary transaction arguments to the state, are various c/zofcg arguments of a thought-experiment cast. Commonly such arguments ambitiously aim to show that * the state is necessary, and that * the state is superior to its absence. But such arguments.like those embedcTin confracf arguments .are little better than con jobs.as are presented depend upon a false choice. For only two options are considered: H, a horrible Hobbesian "state of nature" and S, a well-ordered (contructually-reached) Hobbesian state. The argument, appealing to the vices of H and the virtues of S, has little trouble in concluding * * S is better than H (or similarly, rational agents would select S over H, etc.) other options, such as anarchist ones. Why should anarchists want to line up with S? They can agree with proposition * *. They might also want The choice conveniently leaves to assert that anarchistic arrangements Z are superior to S. Whereupon it is evident that neither * nor * follows. For necessity all accessible alternatives have to be considered (by the semantics of That has not been done. For superiority, the superiority of S to Z and other alternatives has to be taken into account. That has not been done. — , ----------------------- alternative i^\Carter^^(?c^ry^which produces The kind of individuals who have strongly internalized values and can live cooperatively and freely without the threat of force ...\ i^)(p.25).4 6V1C- No doubt some of the gaps in the arguments could be plugged by further, further contestable, assumptions, but such analytic work remains to be attempted and assessed, after two millennia of such arguments. In fact it was long ago realised that such arguments exhibit unlikely and even paradoxical features. For example, in consenting to a state for security purposes, participants to the state contract proceed to establish an institution which is far more dangerous to them than the power of others taken distributively. It would seem that those smart enough to enter into a social contract for a state would be smart enough to foresee the problems of hiring a monster, and to avoid the state and steer along without it. In establishing a state, inhabitants set up an institution that is far more powerful and dangerous to them than the power of other inhabitants taken singly or in groups. This is to think that Men are so fulish that they tak care to avoid what Mischiefs may be done then by PoZe-caM, or but are contra^ f^ay think it Safety, to be devoured by AZo/asA These arguments, like others to follow, even if somehow repaired, would not establish an institution with anything approaching the power and complexity of the modern state. Arguments to the state typically establish, at best, only a rather minimal state, with certain protective and regulatory powers. Such minimal states would not deliver many of the goods economists, still less socialists, have come to expect of the state. The arguments certainly do not establish anything like the oppressive paternal state with a panoply of powers that many citizens are forceably subject to, power states have accumulated by their own unjustified predatory activity. In this respect too, arguments to the state resemble arguments to God. Deistic arguments characteristically establish (insofar as they establish anything) only a quite minimal rAar w/zZc/t, a first cause, some existent, a most perfect object, a universal designer, clockmaker or the like. They do nothing to establish many of the powers or properties asciibed to God. There is yet another resemblance a surplus of attributes are regularly ascribed to Gock so much power, knowledge, andj^^like^that paradoxes of omnipotence, omniscience, and jimilar, are quickly engendereb^aradoxes that a lesser God that merely satisized on virtue (and could tolerate some production of evil) could easily escape)^ So too a surplus of power is conceded to the State. The state carries ^far more power than is required for collective organisation, a large "political surphis" which should be relinquished. /4 ^ reversmg Hobbes' argument,pottom halfl really a cranking. $ Locke p.372. ——^Lesser Gods encounter ^other difficulties: their plurality, the fact that they can be exceeded by other greater Gods, and their upstaging by ontological arguments. 6 2(-l*) S*y^7?zayic. These arguments divide again into two principal subclasses, namely 2.1 Ana/yac and 2.2 M?K#K(2/y%c. Further both subclasses may be subdivided in tum into individualistic and holistic subclasses, for instance 2.1 into 2.1.1 Indiviualistic and 2.1.2 Non-individualistic. Most recent investigation has been concentrated within subdivision 2.1.^1, upon game-theoretic justifications of the State. Indeed, given prevailing methodological individualism, which almost invariably takes analytic form, all acceptable justification reuced to this subdivision? Certainly other systematic ways of endeavouring to justify the state tent z to have fallen by the wayside or been abandoned. However it is worth listing two further forms, one of which remains significant: * Holistic/brz/t considerations. The State is presented as the form, or even spirit, of Society, much as the mind is the form of the corresponding body. Insofar as there is an argument, it is analogical, from an increasingly dubious basis. Contemporary up-dating of the torm'ideas would no doubt have the State as - what is even less plausible - the program, or the software, of a corresponding Society. * Mora/ considerations. But there is little good reason to embrace individualism, methodological or other, because many sorts of wholes, beginning with ^bstra&i, do not come down to individuals; it is poor methodology to try to proceed as if they do. More on individualism elsewhere. See aM JB 3VHATEVER3 2. Arguments in a game theory setting: Prrhners' Diiemma games and supergames. What is widely regarded as the most persuasive justification of the state [is] "the argument that, without the state, people would not voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves with certain public goods... ". This argument, which is quite popular with contemporary academics, suggests that, without the state, people would not be able to "act so as to realise their interests."* . So far, hewexEr, we have not encountered^an argument, but simply a very large claim. The argument itself^is remarkably circuitous, circuiting through a range of examples drawn from game theory, and, so it will emerge, as yet quite indecisive. Obtaining a view, a clear view, of the whole argument, or rather the spectrum of potential arguments, matters for anarchism. For that will help considerably in dispelling the myth that here, partly hidden, is a powerful P3p*x argument against A The argument takes the form of a modal syllogism: * The state is necessary for the optimal, or adequate, provision of collective (i.e. public) goody (zzm/or premiss), of* ' * Collective goods are necessary for a satisfactory social life, (J%7M% premiss) . the state is necessary for a satisfactory social life./Moreover, given that the latter, a satisfactory social life (in a given region), is a certain desiderata, the state is to that extent necessary (a necessity is (^bolutized). While the big argument takes thatybrm, it is subject to variation. Furthermore, some variation is essential, else it, and one of the chief forms incorporated, is invalid. For the argument displayed has a different, and an ambiguous, middle term. For requisite uniformity, and validity, the middle term has to be either a) adequate provision of colective goods, or o) optimal provision of collective goods. While little supporting argument get lavished on the minor premiss, it being assumed obvious, that obviousness selected. For a satisfactory social life may result when when term o) is than optimal provisioning of collective goods occurs. Adequate lives only require adequate goods, perhaps even a modest supply of goods for less consumptive societies, not optimal or maximal levels. There is/a significant skating about, of justificatory relevance, in the "most persuasive justification of the state", as normally slackly presented^between (as in o), nomally explicated in terms of maximization; erms of satisization); of provisioning: opPma/ (as in a), have construed int (unspecified, as in the quote above, or perhaps specified as in Hobbes, e.g. defence and security of property). Unfortunately for the argument, all that the game-theoretic arguments for the major 1 2 Grofman 80, p.108, quoting Taylor. For another similar statement, qualified to members of a large public, see Taylor 82, p.53. Thus, basic collective goods for a basic social life, as for instance in subsistence lifestyles. ' ' ' ' / premiss typically establish at best is failure of optima^ or certain large prov^pning, without the state. They do not show failure to provision at all without the state, or failure to achieve "basic" provision, or even adequate provisioning. Now anarchism can^granF that certain large provisioning is improbable without the state; for example^ntercoiynental nuclear missiles, or large output nuclear power plants. 3 But i^hardly matters! f&r such state-posessed goods are? arguably antithetical to satisfactory social life. Nor need anarchism accede Rr optimality requirements, thereby destroying usual game-theoretic arguments. For these arguments usually show that more would be obtained under certain counter-individualistic cooperative strategies than would otherwise be obtained, not that some or basic levels would not be achieved. To put it bluntly, satisizing anarchists can throw out the challenge: what does it matter if a few state prisoners defect (i.e. there are some not fully-paid-up rider^so long as enough goods are still delivered? That challenge has not been met, even implicitly, as will appear. 5? It is unreasonable, in any case, to demand optimal levels from non-statist societies, because no extant stat^ measure up to such excessive requirements. Indeed most staites do ... ........................................... , . bd not even meet utterly basic demands. Henceforth we shall be looking for leads, which %?.yo /hero cover basic demands. The argument for the critical major premiss takes the following sort of route, involving these components: 1. Assimilation of the problem of provision of collective goods (in the light of the minor premiss it can be cast as a problem) to paradigmatic problems in game theory, initially the Prisoners' Dilemma (PD for short). No doubt efforts at provision of public goods commonly result in arrangements that can be represented formally as Prisoners' Dilemmas. But it is sometimes claimed, what will be repudiated subsequently, that all such efforts result in PD situations, that is that there is a universal linkage. Two connections are regularly assumed: a universal representation of problems in game theory, and a more plausible less ambitious connection with PD games. That is: * all provisioning problems can be represented within game theory. ** these problems^requently)takePD form. . The first assumption, of game theory representation, is^severe. Each problem is transformed into a game, with n independent players, normally individuals or individual units (such as an "individual" family or firm in economics^)/ These players characteristically possess but limited information, and almost invariably are allowed only extraordinarily narrow motivations and objectives, am) as maximizing their own interests or pay-offs, in a rigid setting with fixed predetermined moves.$ According to the more plausible, less ambitious collections, 3 4 5 So much is argued elsewhere (nuclear wo^k). While in many politically relevant applications, such as the "tragedy of the common^' game,the players may bedndividuals, in other applications the players may be communities, societies, or even states, e.g\mtemational traaR and war games. It is this sort of rigidity and limitation that/make^ parts of game-theory automatically tractable. <?; 3 * provisioning of public goods frequently yields prisoners' dilemma situations, Ahat is the problem involved can be transformed into a typical PD game, comprising a perhaps interated games among a public of n individuals. 2. Sometimes these games yield unfavourable results, that is not enough individuals cooperate but instead defect, so the good in question will not be delivered. 3. On/y by intervention pf the state can cooperation be obtained, by coercion of individuals? other devices, such a; of the market, will notsucceed. 4 3. THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE buttress the State status quc^are based on variants of the prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are imporran? cases where individuals will not agree^ or co-operate to provide them­ selves with (or to maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as on/y the State can furnish? In such 'dilemma' situations each individual will hope to gain advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others' contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from others' restraint). The claim is that only the State with its backing of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed. In short,'certain individual choice cannot replace state-covered choice. important cases, coo< There are (as the bracketed clauses indicate) two main types of case, those where people do not conrri&M&.to themselves with, or with optimum quantities of, a "collective good", and those where people do not themselves to or maintain optimum quantities of, some already available "collective good". The first type of case is taken to include such traditional and modern concerns of the state and its subsidiary institutions as order, security, defence, and perhaps private property, as well as sewerage schemes, water supplies, waste services, public health, social security, etc. The second case is supposed to include, as well as village commons, newer enviromental concerns such as clean air, unpolluted streams and beaches, parks, rainforests, wilderness, whales, etc. But there is no sharp division between the cases (security or parks could be of either type depending on the status quo), and The case broken-backed right here: because if we don't ^o this^not going to agree to social contract — which allegedly implies these things — either. Similarly, jocia/ contract theory &ro&cn-&ac%cJ. The Tragedy of the Commons is set up so as to assume no collective methods have been developed or can be developed without coercion. (Roberts). The point of coercion is to retain the privatised individual. For the factor of coercion makes it in intrests of private individual. So coercion makes the effect of relations to be got without exceeding provatised individual picture. Coercion substitutes for relations in the context of privatised individuals. Privatised individuals are, of course, products, in large part, of the operation (and enforcement and entrenchment) of a particular social theory, or ra/Zzcr jar/ ofsocial theory. Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest case that can be made for the desirability of the State* (M. Taylor, Anarc/ty anJ Coap^raZiaa, Wiley, London, 1976, p.9). To cover all arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants of and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations, 'Prisoner's Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single nperson Prisoners' Dilemma games, but, for example, games where the payoffs are not merely egoistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such games are iterated. As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate, there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both the jawt^ Zagica/ /oral — those where people do not to themselves with, or with 'optimum' quantities of, a 'collective good' (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where people do not refrain themselves to wainfam, or maintain 'optimum' quantities of, some alrca< available 'collective good' (e.g. commons, unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness). That received arguments of all these types involves Prisoners? Dilemma situations (in the wide sense) is argued in effect, in Taylor, op.cif. and elsewhere. An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter of R. Abrams, FoaaJan'aaj o/Po/aica/ Aaa/y^, Columbia University press, New York, 1980. Z y 5 as arguments for state institution both have the same logical form, that of a Prisoners' Dilemma or some finite sequence of Prisoners' Dilemma games (what are called Prisoners' Dilemma &%?^rgames). The arguments are not mere exercises in game theory since it is through arguments of this type that political theorists such as Hobbes and Hume have attempted to demonstrate the necessity of the State, so it is sometimes claimed (e.g. by Taylor). Furthermore, it is with arguments of the same^form, the "Tragedy of the Commons", that Hardin and others have tried to show that extensive, indeed draconian, state powers are required to resolve environmental problems; without such powers no exploiter or polluter will exercise restraint, ra c . Consider the single Prisoners' Dilemma game where each player, or prisoner, is assumed, as is usual in these things, to be egoistic (sometime equated with "being rational"), to seek just maximisation of his own private payoff, in the special case where there are just two players. (The special case illustrates all the main points except one, the c/size in making a case for the state.) < . A basic ingredient^a.considerable variety of argumentfof this type, including Hobbes' andlTragedy of the Commons' argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to secure collective goods, i^/tne single prisoners' Dilemma game with just two players.s Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have been separately imprisoned. A State representative makes the following offers separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while the accomplice gets 8 years. 3t so happens that if both prisoners remain silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence. But if both confess they would each receive 4 years. The 'game' can be summarised in the following 'payoff' matrix: Prisoner 1 Strategies S(ilence) C(onfess) S -1,-1 -8,0 C 0, -8 -4, -4 '— Prisoner 2 The game is not intended to present a moral ^ilemma, that each can only go free at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma: It is in each prisoner's private interest to An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance of populations size in the arguments for the State. But size is not decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided (or relocated) by organisation into smaller communities. The figures given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Tayor, p.5. 6 choose strategy C no matter what the other does: strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' 'dominant' strategy (and also in fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for example, remains silent, the%l goes free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain an outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously called 'co-operating', by confessing. their both remaining silent. 3.1 FOILING THE PRISONERS' DILEMMA ARGUMENT. It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to show the necessity of the State — which is supposed to intervene, forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners 'co-operate' to obtain an optimal outcome — should be set up by the State's own operative.^ The case looks like an inside job; and it M, though neither the operative, nor for that matter the prisoners on their own, continue to play an essential role. The prisoners, in any finite number, can be members of a community and payoffs quantities of some collective good. The claim is, that without intervention (by the State), the community will only chase a subotimal quantity of the good if any. Some features of the prisoners' relations are assumed to transfer however. Of course the State's presence in arranging (of accentuating) such dilemmas is inessential, as is much else from the example. But some features of the Prisoner's relations are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate or r^aZZy co-operate. Similarly, in the more general argument a privatisation assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests are opposed. The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly seriously limited, io A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the segregation of the priisoners makes no real difference. It is claimed that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to co-operate, that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of the other (Abrams, p.193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement' (Taylor, p.5). Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is very often no so — and in a more co-operative social setting than currently encouraged privatisation of life, the extent of co-operation and trust would undoubtedly be much higher n The argument has to depend crucially then on substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation, when the State rv (as on many theories) the result of reflection of social cooperation. This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, &?cmZ 77^or^.y, S^Zf aztrZ Envirownf/tfaZ Pro&Zewty in Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian national University, 1980. As a result of G. Hardin's Tragedy CoHWHonj, historical evidence has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's 'Commons' diverges from historic commons; see, inparticular, A. Roberts, 77^ S^Zf-Managing Allison & Busby, London, 1979, chapter 10, but also Routley, op.cir., p.285 and ppp.329-332. Similar points apply as regards many other Dilemma situations. Tn the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'. Abrams, op.ciz., p.308. 7 in various settings, e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people were Jia? unreliable and devious, many State arrangements involved in providing public goods would not succeed either). That such assumptions are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g. to bring out the first, suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g. they are friends or they are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical scepticism involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the other security against default, and so on. The question of the character of human interests and preferences %/iJ the extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is/MKJcwtcnhJ to the whole question of social economic arrangements, and also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities. A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count is an mJcpcnJcnr parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings of other nor on the social context in which that human operates. Wh8ile the individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural pressure on consumers to conform (through advertising, education, popular media), vc/y many Jo /io? cozi/briH, and the extent of cultural pressure towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence. And having sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a small community (which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social influence, to avoid or resolve by co-operation the types of Prisoners' Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State. 3.2 Why the dilemma arguments cannot succeed. What the Dilemma-based case for the State has to show — what never has been shown — is that there are outstanding Dilemma situations which are relevant, important, and also damaging if unresolved, and that they are resolvable by State intervention, and only so (optimally) resolvable. Finally it has to be shown that in the course of so resolving these Dilemma situations, worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced. These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if they can be satisfied at all, in a way that is not question begging. For several of the conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is important, damaging, optimal, worse) and involve considerations about which resonable parties can differ. The selection of Dilemmas itself provides an example of value dependence: after all there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of over-exploitation, of family violence or fueds) which are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not worthy of State attention. There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be satisfied at all. For 12 Cf. the disucssion in Taylor, op.ci/., p.93. 8 many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' for instance, turn out when to consist not just of a single game but of a sequence of such games, to be more adequately represented by what is called a But in many such sequential Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational 'co-operation' can occur, even assuming separated players with purely egoistic interests. 13 For what sequential games permit that isolated games exclude, is that players' actions may be dependent upon past performance of other players. This dependence effectively removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from past social interaction. In such sueprgames then, no intervention is required. Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by 'intervention', e.g. by allowing the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that they can really co-operate. Euqally important, and equally independent of the State, is the matter of breaking down the adverary, or game, situation so the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to co­ operate.^ Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has a good record of adhering to agreement, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. Nor is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal strategies: a range of other inducements and incentives is known (shuld they be required in recalcitrant cases), and is used even by the State, e.g. gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc. But at no stage is the State required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they are not already catered for. And in fact communal and co-operative organisation did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in the case of the Commons. In sum, here also replacement works. There are no important Dilemma situations, it seems, where the State is essential. The State has been thought to be essential because of certain influential flase dichotomies; for example, that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon, and 'irrational'), that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets — which tend to deal abysmally with collective goods — is through State control.^ But it is quite evident that there are methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by co-operatives, clubs). Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve 13 14 15 Dilemma situations has very extensive This important result is established in Taylor, op. ctf., for a number of critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p.32 but especially chapter 5. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including cases where the State is one of the 'adversaries'. Both the false dichotomies cited are common-place, not to say rife, in modem economic and political theorising. Both are to be found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first (with an attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition) in Taylor. For a further criticism of such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit., pp.250./ff 9 effects, *6 many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations, appear to be substantially outweighted by the costs involved. For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State to put in the balance. As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and morre important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as in the case of the prisoners, or differently with the State as a further player (since the State may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.). These points lead also to further arguments against the State. Suppose, to see the impact of the first reason for the failure of independence, the prisoners are friends and their common interest is to be together. Then, if they are given the opportunity to co-operate, and independence is not enforced by separation, they will, quite rationally, choose a joint optimal strategy, and there is no dilemma. Since the same considerations will not apply where large numbers of strangers are involved, the question arises as the extent and severity of Dilemma situations. The question is complicated by the second double-edged reason for the failure of independence, namely that statist political arrangements undoubtedly accentuate the extent and severity of Dilemma situations by discouraging (providing negative incentives) for genuinely co-operative behaviour and mutual aid. This is another respect in which statist arrangements (like some subclimax biological communities) tend to be self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. Accordingly, what arguments for the State on such bases as Prisoners' Dilemma situations have to show is not merely 1) that state coercion does suffice to resolve (sufficiently) many such (damaging) Dilemmas, but also 2) that such coercion is the on/y way of doing so, and 3) that in doing so worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced. These things have never been shown: nor can they be shown definitively, since firstly there are various nonstatist arrangements for resolving wehat are taken to be damaging Dilemmas, and secondly the overall assessment of what Dilemmas are and what costs are worf/t incurring in resolving them are ultimately evaluative and go back to rival, and presumably coherent, value systems. Hence, when all this is spelled out, the irrefutability of anarchism. To get some feel for the complexity of the issue and for the extent to which evaluative matters do enter, several points relevant to 1) - 3) should be introduced. Firstly, there are many Dilemma situations into which the State puts little or no effort and many others which are, or were, considered as beyond the sphere of influence of the State or as not worthy of State attention, for instance, cases of environmental degradation, overexploitation of a "resource", personal or family fueds, etc., several of them aggravated by State arrangments such as To take one lesser example, State intrusion often induces a certain social escapism: one escapes one's social roles and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze. Or so it may appear: for in reality anyone who works, works long and often alientated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity. 10 excessive privatisation of resources (e.g. enclosure of the commons). (7/* such Dilemmas can be downgraded in importance to suit the Statist case so can other Dilemmas apparently favouring State intervention.) Many of these cases would not be helped at all by the entry of the State or its representatives with their authority duly showing (thugh they might be assisted by sensitive mediation, which does not call for a State, only rudiments of a society). Secondly, introduction of the State to resolve Prisoners' Dilemma situations is not without wide-ranging effects, many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations have to be weighed against costs involved in achieving these gains. Among the costs are new Dilemmas, such as the very example considered in illustrating prisoner Dilemma games which was initiated by State activity. Differently, new Dilemmas will result with the state as a further player (since the State may have access to the commons, engage in whaling, etc.). Some of these situations are interesting in theat they may lead to litigation and decision-making outside of or largely independent of the State, the results of which the State is supposed to enforce though it may be against its interests. But what ensures that if sticks to the findings. Nothing does: it is simply assumed that the State will adhere to its role. But if that assumption is valid with respect to the State (not known for its reliability) then it is good also for various other parties. In short, agreement or decisions can be reached and adhered to without need for State enforcement. So coercion is not always required. Are there important Dilemmas where use the authority of the State is the (?H/y way? Often behind the claim that is is, is a false (but very influential) dichotomy, that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets which may deal abysmally with collective goods, is through state control. But it is quite evident that there are other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, based on costs involved) and social (e.g. club, co­ operatives). [And a mixture of these methods can be applied to resolve any Prisoners' Dilemma that matters, i.e. here too replacement works. An important initial move is, as was seen, to put the prisoners in touch, so that they could cooperate: equally important is breaking down the ...] Such organisations would not have nearly so much to do as statists would like us to believe, especially once co-operative ways of doing things and mutual aid had become established ways in contrast to competitive and privatised ways. For the extent of simple Prisoners' Dilemma situations calling for intervention (of some sort) has been exaggerated and many, probably, very many, of those that have been thought to require intervention do not because the players (are prepared to) "cooperate" anyway. There are importantly different reasons why the latter can happen:- Firstly, enough players operate with motives which are not purely privatised for a sufficiently optimal outcome to result. This does not imply that these players have altruistic motives: their interests may depend on those of other players in a range of nonaltruistic ways. Secondly, many cases presented as if they were simple Prisoner's Dilemma games turn out when properly analysed, in particular when time is duly taken account of, to be Prisoners' Dilemma super-games. Such, for instance, is the positions with the 11 arguments of Hobbes, Hume and Hardin. But in such supergames rational "cooperation" often occurs even assuming the players have the worst of privatised motives. In short, where the correct analysis of a Prisoner's Dilemma game is as a supergame, statists are often beaten at their own game. [Detail Taylor's partial results, anJ their problems.] /AfJ^ Ji) /7!_^ A/^ ./ <. / "tv 7^-*^-^ / z7 /$CV^/^<^ /'J /^! ^7 </*<9 ^7^7" /^c / r 4& /d-^&V' f o j <. t/7^, c t_ , ^7 J* .X 6. <?^) /y . /^xv Jct/^^ JL 3. <%y4r-/^ ,X^7< .,;^;X 3 <X X?X" X)c. X /T^.X^ 4X3X*/- /X. y/^4. . / X X^X yXX s/ ^,/X-,^X^ Xy ^r y7^ Xox^Levc =-, <^- /, ^ / ^T^ — X? X" ^7^ ^X xx x^/^ <y A^rXXi/^ 6co /^4. /c<_ ^ / /X^cu— <^-^-^- ^4/ /*7^jC *- X^T Xt^/ / < ^Cv ^C A -C <22^ 7^4 y dVf! ^-r- <^ -^* r^CL A-?f-? yj /K-*- ) ^-*^-^/7 Ar^- ^c/ 4-A A /7^^?7"J^ ^^^tr-t^c'-^/j; y>V w t^L y ^). /%4?/ e / J—, /7 ^^7< Z *- ^rt^ *— " Z^? C- /^L ^-7 -^7 ZL- < Z*^/ c-y 7 <^* z Ay /, ?/ y*^ <9 ' J w to be accomplices in a crime, have been separately imprisoned. A State represen­ tative makes the following offers separately to each: if the prisoner con­ fesses and becomes a State's witness while his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while the accomplice gets 8 years. It so happens that if both prisoners remain silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence. But if both confess they would each receive 4 years. The 'game' can be summarised in the following 'payoff' matrix: Prisoner 1 Strategies S(ilence) C(onfess) S -1, -1 -8, 0 C 0, -8 -4, -4 Prisoner 2 3. T7/E C/1SE z1G.4/MSE AEFL.4 CEA^E^T ERCW ER/5CWERS' D/EEA7AE1 tS77X/?177CW5 E/7E E/AE. I he main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are /wporftm/cases where individuals will not agree^-or co-operate to provide them­ selves with (or to maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as cw/y the State can furnish/ In such 'dilemma' situations each individual will hope to gain advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others' contri­ butions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from others' restraint). The claim is that only the State with its backing of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed^ A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type, in­ cluding Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the 'Tragedy of the Com­ mons' argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two players/ Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken The game^ is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma: It is in each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other docs: strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' 'dominant' strategy (and also in fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for ex­ ample, remains silent, then 1 goes free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by confess­ ing. if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain an m/er/or outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously called 'co-operating', by their both remaining silent. ?./ It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to show the necessity of the State — which is supposed to intervene, forcibly if re­ quired, to ensure that the prisoners 'co­ operate' to obtain an optimal outcome — should bg set up by the State's own operative.^Of course the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) such dilemmas is inessential, as is much else from the example. But some features of the prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate or rec/Zy co-operate. Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests are opposed. The applicability of the dilem- A 7 ma to the human condition is accordingly seriously limited/ A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference. It is claimed that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to co-operate, that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of the other (Abrams, p.193), 'neither has an incen­ tive to keep the agreement' (Taylor, p.5). Experimental and historical evidence in­ dicates that this is very often not so — and in a more co-operative social setting than the currently encouraged privatisa­ tion of life, the extent of co-operation and trust would undoubtedly be much higher/ The argument has to depend crucially then on substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings, e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large measure of scep­ ticism about the reliability of other peo­ ple (but if people were /Ar?/ unreliable and devious, many State arrangements involved in providing public goods would not succeed either). That such assumptionsareoperating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g. to bring out the first, suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g. they are friends or they are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neigh­ bours and face a future in the same com­ munity; to bring out the philosophical scepticism involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the other security against default, and so on. The question of the character of human interests and preferences the extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is /MnrArznrvna/ to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities. A major assumption underlying prevail­ ing (non-Marxist) economics and associated political theory, is that the in­ terests and preferences, as summed up in a preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count is an mc/e/zenr/enf parameter, which depends neither on the preference rank­ ings of others nor on the social context in which that human operates. While the individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural pressure on consumers to con­ form (through advertising, education, popular media), wany <7o /?oz ccw/bfTn, and the extent of cultural pressure towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this indepen- sequential games permit that isolated games exclude, is that players' actions may be dependent upon past perfor­ mance of other players. This dependence effectively removes one extremely ....a major functmn of the state is unrealistic self-containment assumption to maintain and pohee inequitable from Dilemma situations, that in­ dividuals act in totally isolated ways, not distribution. learning from past social interaction. In such supergames then, no intervention is required. Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are Z/gtZ-f resolved by 'intervention', e.g. by allow­ dence. And having sufficiently many/ ing the prisoners to get in touch so that interest-interdependent people in a smali they find they are neighbours or that community (which is not thoroughly im­ they can really co-operate. Equally im­ poverished) is normally enough, given portant, and equally independent of the State, is the matter of breaking down the their social influence, to avoid or resolve adversary, or game, situation so the by co-operation the types of Prisoners' prisoners do not act as competitors but Dilemma situations that appear to count are prepared to co-operate/' Informa­ in favour of the State/ tional input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has a good ff /yy 77/E /VLEA7A/.1 record of adhering to agreement, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. Nor is force or threat of force required SC/CC777) as an incentive to guarantee optimal What the Dilemma-based case for the strategies: a range of other inducements State has to show — what never has been and incentives is known (should they be shown — is that there are outstanding required in recalcitrant cases), and is Dilemma situations which are relevant, used even by the State, e.g. gifts, important, and also damaging if deprivation, social pressure, etc. But at unresolved, and that they are resolvable no stage is the State required to make by State intervention, and only so (op­ these arrangements: much as some real timally) resolvable. Finally it has to be Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved by shown that in the course of so resolving work of Amnesty International, so these Dilemma situations, worse situa­ voluntary organisations can be formed tions than those that are resolved are not to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilem­ thereby induced. These complex condi­ ma situations where they are not already tions cannot be satisfied, if they can be catered for. And in fact communal and satisfied at all, in a way that is not ques­ co-operative organisation did resolve tion begging. For several of the condi­ Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations tions are value dependent (e.g. what is historically, for example in the case of important, damaging, optional, worse) the Commons. In sum, here also replacement works. and involve considerations about which reasonable parties can differ. The selec­ There are no important Dilemma situa­ tion of Dilemmas itself provides an ex­ tions, it seems, where the State is essen­ ample of value dependence: after all tial. The State has been thought to be there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to essential because of certain influential environmental degradation, of over­ false dichotomies; for example, that all exploitation, of family fcuds/or^violencQ) behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic which are considered beyond the sphere (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon, of the State or not worthy of State atten­ and 'irrational'), that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profittion. There are now grounds for concluding directed markets — which tend to deal that the conditions cannot be satisfied at abysmally with collective goods — is all. For many of the arguments using through State control.'^ But it is quite Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' evident that there are o/Aer methods of and Hume's arguments for the State and allocation, both economic (e.g. ex­ Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' for change, through traditional markets, instance, turn out when projver/y /or- based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by to consist not just of a single co-operatives, clubs). Lastly, introduction of the State to game but of a sequence of such games, to be more adequately represented by resolve so/ne Dilemma situations has what is called a But in many very extensive effects/ many of them such sequential Prisoners' Dilemma negative, so that the gains made, if any, games, rational 'co-operation' can oc­ in so resolving Dilemma situations, ap­ cur, even assuming separated players pear to be substantially outweighed by with purely egoistic interests.'" For what the costs involved. For there are the SOCIAL ALTERNA ! tVES Vet. 2 No. 3. )982 25 many evi! aspects of the typicai State to put in the baiance. As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more im­ portant, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as in the case of the prisoners, or differently with the State as a further player (since the State may engage in whaling, have access to a com­ mons, etc.). These points lead also to further arguments against the State. available 'collective good' (e.g. commons, un polluted streams, whales, wilderness). That received arguments of ail these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op.cit. and etsewhere. An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also surveys other Important literature, is given in the final chapter of R Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University Press, New York, 1980. 5. An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance of popula­ tion size in the arguments for the State. But size is not decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided (or relocated) by organisation into smaller communities. The figures given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p.5. 6. It is similarly bizarre that there should be out­ comes that the State alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation, when the State zs (as on many theories) the result or reflection of social cooperation. 7. This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, Soc/af Theories, Se// Management, and T'n wronwm'a/ ProAferru in Environmental Philosophy (edited D Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. 9. 10. 11. 12. 4. Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest case that can be made for the desirability of the State' (M. Taylor, Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976. p.9). To cover all arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants of' and disputes as to whether cer­ tain arguments such as those of Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Diiernnta situations, Prisoner's Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are not merely egoistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such games are iterated. As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate, there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of the same /ogtcaZ/orm — those where people do not rwr/A/wfe to sup/r/y themselves with, or with 'optimum' quantities of, a 'collective good' (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where people do not re.s/ram themselves to mam/am, or maintain 'optimum" quantities of, some already 13. As a result of G. Hardin's Tragerh' o/ rhe Commons, historical evidence has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's 'Commons' diverges from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, 7'he Se/fManagmg TTiwonmenr, Allison & Busby. London, 1979, chapter 10, but also Routley, op.cit. p.285 and pp. 329-332. Similar points apply as regards many other Dilemma situa­ tions. 'In the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game approxtmately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'. Abrams. op.cit., p.3O8. ' Cf. the discussion in Taylor, op.cit.. p.93. This important result is established in Taylor, op.cit, for a number of critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p.32 but especially chapter 5. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including cases where the State is one of the 'adver­ saries'. Both the false dichotomies cited are common­ place, not to say rife, in modern economic and political theorising. Both are to be found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first (with an attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition) in Taylor. For a further criticism of such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit., pp.25O ff. To take one lesser example. State intrusion often induces a certain social escapism: one escapes one's social roles and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze. Or so it may appear: for in reality anyone who works, works long and often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover the high costs of frequently inade­ quate State activity. of course. ] 5^ The case if broken-backed right here: to agree because if we don't to this not goint/ to social contract - which allegedly implies these things - either. Similarly, the social contract theory is broken-backed. G5; . Alternative longer at this point in §3:- In shof^* in certain important cases, cooperative individual choice cannot replace state-covered choice. There are (as the bracketed clauses indicate) two main types of case, those where people do not contribute to supply themselves with, or with optimum quant­ ities of, a "collective good", and those where people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain optimum quantities of, some already available "collective good". The first type of case is taken to include such traditional and modern concerns of the state and its subsidiary institutions as order, security, defence, and perhaps private property, as well as sewerage schemes, water supplies^.waste services, public health, social security, etc. The second case is supposed to include, as well as village commons, newer environmental concerns such as clean air, unpolluted streams and beaches, parks, rainforests, wilderness, wha les, etc. But there is no sharp division between the cases (security or parks could be of either type depending on the status quo), and as arguments for state institution both have the same logical form, that of a Prisoners' Dilemma or some finite sequence of Pri soners' Dilemma games (what are called Prisoners' Dilemma The arguments are not mere exercises in game theory since it is through arguments of this type that political theorists such as Hobbes and Hume have 5. attempted to demonstrate the necessity of the Stato4^ Furthermore, it is with arguments of the same form, the "Tragedy of the Commons", that Hardia and others have tried to show that extensive, indeed draconian, state powers are required to resolve environmental problems; without such powers no exploiter or polluter will exercise restraint. Consider the gj^le Prisoners' Dilemma game where each player, or prisoner, is assuined, as is usual in these things, to be egoistic (sometime equated with "being rational"), to seek just&axijnisation of his own private payoff, in the special case where there are just two players. (The special case illustrates all the main points except one, the importance of size in making a case for the state.) [Joins text again at fn.5 point.] /* 4. In §3:- The Trac^ec[y of the Commons is set up so as to assume no collective methods had [Teen developed or can be developed without coercion. (Roberts). The point of coercian is to ret^n the privatised individual. $ For the factor of coercion makes it in interests of private individualize coercion makes the effect of relations to be got without exceeding privatised individual picture. Coercion substitutes for relations in the context of privatised individuals. Privatised individuals are, of course, products, in large part, of the operation (and enforcement and entrenchment) of a particular social theory, or rather sort of social theory. ^5^ In §4:- The case looks like an inside job; and it is, though neither the operative, nor for that matter the prisoners ^n their own, essential role. play an The prisoners, in any finite number, can be members of a community and payoffs quantities of some collective good . The claim is, that without intervention (by thecate), the community will only corpse a subeyy^mo/ quantity of the good if any. Some features of the prisoners' relations are assumed to transfer however. Suppose, to see the impact of the first reason for the failure of independence, the prisoners are friends and their common interest is to 6. be together. Then, if they are given the opportunity to cooperate, and independ­ ence is not enforced by separation, they will, quite rationally, choose a joint optimal strategy,and there is no dilemma. Since the same considerations will not apply where large numbers of strangers are involved, the question arises as the extent and severity of Dilemma situations. The question is complicated by the second double-edged reason for the failure of independence, namely that statist political arrangements undoubtedly accentuate the extent and severity of Dilemma situations by discouraging (providing negative incentives) for genuinely cooper­ ative behaviour and nmttAcd aid. This is another respect in which statist arrangments (like some subclimax biological communities) tend to be self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. [Transfer some experimental material to here?] Accordingly, what arguments for the State on such b ases as Prisoners' Dilemma situations have to show is not merely 1) that state coercion does suffice to resolve (sufficiently^ many such (damaging) Dilemmas, but also 2) that such coercion is the only way of doing so, and 3) that in doing so worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced. These things have never been shown: nor can they be shown definitely, since firstly 4 there are various nonstatist arrangements for resolving what are taken to be damaging Dilemmas, and secondly the overall assessment of what Dilemmas are damaging and what costs are worth incurring in resolving them are ultimately evaluative and go back to rival, and presumably coherent, value systems. Hence, when all this is spelled out, the irrefutability of anarchism. To get some feel for the complexity of the issue and for the extent to evolutive matters do enter, several points relevant to l)-3) should be introduced. Firstly, there are many Dilemma situations into which the State puts little or no effort and many others which are, or were, considered as beyond the sphere of influence of the State or as not worthy of State attention, for instance, cases of 7. environmental degradation, overexploitation of a "resource", personal or family feuds, etc., several of them aggravated by State arrangements such as excessive privatisation of resources (e.g. enclosure of the commons). (If such Dilemmas can be downgraded in importance to suit the Statist case so can other Dilemmas appar­ ently favouring State intervention.) Many of these cases would not be helped at all by the entry of the State or its representatives with their authority duly showing (though they might be assisted by sensitive mediation, which does not call for a State, only rudiments Secondly, introduction of the State tof&yolve some Prisoners' of a society). Dilemma situations is not without wide-ranging effects, many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations have to be weighed against costs involved in achieving these gains. Among the costs are new Dilemmas, such as the very example considered in illustrating Prisoner Dilemma games which was initiated by State activity. Differently, new Dilemmas will result with the state as a further player (since the State may have access to the commons, engage in whaling, etc.). Some of these situations are interesting in that they may lead to litigation and decision-making outside of or independ­ ent of the State, the resultgof which the State is supposed to enforce though it may be against its d Nothing does: interests. But what ensures that rt sticks to the findings. it is simply assumed that the State will adhere to its role. But if that assumption is valid with respect to the State (not known for its reliability) then it is good also for various other parties. In short,agreement or decision!* can be reached and adhered to without need for State enforcement. So coercion is not always required. Are there important Dilemmas where use the authority of the State is the only way? Often behind the claim that is is, is a false (but very influential) dichotomy, that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets which may deal abysmally with collective goods, is through state control^' 8. But it is quite evident that there are other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, based on costs involved) and social (e.g. clubs, cooper­ [And a mixture of these methods can be applied to resolve any Prinsoners' atives). Dilemma that matters, i.e. here too replacement works. An important initial move is, as was seen, to put the prisoners in touch, so that they could cooperate: equally important is breaking down the ...] [Joins top of p.7] Such organisations would not have nearly so much to do as statists would like us to believe, especially once cooperative ways of doing things and mutual aid had become established ways in contrast to competitive and privatised ways. For the extent of simple Prisoners' Dilemma situations calling for intervention (o^ some sort) has been exaggerated and many, probably, very many, of those that have been thought to require intervention do not because the players (are prepared to) "cooperate" anyway. happen:- There are importantly different reasons why the latter can Firstly, enough players operate with motives which are not purely priv­ atised for a sufficiently optimal outcome to result. these players have altruistic motives: This does not imply that their interests may depend on those of other players in a range of nonaltruistic ways. Secondly, many cases presented as if they were simple Prisoner's Dilemma games turn out when properly analysed, in particular when time is duly taken account of, to be Prisoners' Dilemma supergames. Such, for instance, is the position with the arguments of Hobbes, Hume and Hardin. But in such supergames rational "cooperation" often occurs, even assuming the players have the worst of privatised correct analysis of a Prisoner's Dil&wima often beaten at their own game. problems.] motives. In short, where the game is as a supergame, statists are [Detail Taylor's partial results, and their Chapter 3 Con,v7i^c%y^ /) CRITIQUE OF THE STATE 1. ARGUMENTS The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state. For therewith arguments against state-like institutions are also advanced. However further ado is no doubt required to remove all other (unexplified) alternatives to anarchism. A Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes: * States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification. * Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes. * Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of social and environmental bungles or evils in their train. In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils. The anarchist critique does not end there, but typically includes, such further themes as : * States have excessive power, linkages to state power. * Societies are not inductably saddled with states. States can be displaced or even decay (though they are unlikely to just wither away). (9 1 Chapter 3 : CRITIQUE OF THE STATE 1. ARGUMENTS The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state. For therewith arguments against state-like institutions are also advanced. However further ado is no doubt required to remove all other (unexplified) alternatives to anarchism. / Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes: * States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification. e Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes. Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of social and environmental bungles or evils in their train. In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils. The anarchist critique does not end there, but typically includes, such further themes as : * States have excessive power. * States are devices for channelling privilege and wealth to certain minorities with inside linkages to state power. * Societies are not ineluctably saddled with states. States can be displaced or even decay (though they are unlikely to just wither away). 1. The state is an undesirable, or even downright evii, institution, for the following range of reasons:- * States entrench inequities, domination and exploitation. States are devices for the protection of wealth, property and privilege, and usually for the redistribution upwards, and often concentration, of wealth and privilege. A minor but popular illustration is offered by the expensive conferences and other junkets that state employees or party officials organise for themselves and manage to bill to state revenue, in turn sucked up from inequitable taxation. Certainly a main historical outcome of the state has been domination of exploitation of certain segments of society by others, and some see its main, and barely concealed, purpose as just that: domination and exploitation. * States are typically corrupt. For example, there are enquiries presently in train, or with follow-through activities yet to be duly completed, in many states in Australia, enquires which have revealed considerable corruption, and there are prima facie cases for similar enquiries in most of the remainder. Nor is this a new phenomenon: these revelations often resemble older or on-going scandals. * States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources, and accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden, but 2 a main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over­ remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that many state operations are far from lean and efficient, but incorporate many duplications, drag factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms, of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens, weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organisation would be very significantly reduced. * The state is an incubus. States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive and demanding. Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous denouncement of state government: To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first world of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality (quoted in M p.6). As a result, there are constant demands for the reduction of the cancerous state, for removing parts of it through deregulation, selling off state enterprises and so on. There are two troubles with such demands from anarchist standpoints: they never go far enough, to the complete reduction of the state to zero, but characteristically retain parts supportive of or favourable to bigger business, and they proceed in the wrong way, stripping away social safety nets rather than ripping off business support nets (such as limited liability, strike limitation legislation, etc.). * States, for all that they have been promoted as delivering public goods, are mostly dismal news for environmental protection and health and for social justice. Furthermore they are liable to impose substantial hazards or risks upon subservient populations not merely through military and like activities but, more insidious, through support and promotion of dangerous industries, such as nuclear and giant chemical industries. * States usually exert a heavy pressure to uniformity, they tend to eliminate plurality and cultural differences. These pressures are exercised by a state in the alleged interests of national unity, and against its enemies, external and internal. Even the most liberal of states tend to give minorities more difficult lives in times of stress, such as war. They are always espousing national values, state interests, and commonly assimilation and adoption of state values (thus for example Canada, formerly and briefly a state toying with multiculturalism, now insistent upon "Canadian values"). Such exercises are conspicuous, not only in citizen ceremonies and other state rituals, such as national sporting and religious events, but more important are virtually ubiquitous in elementary education (down to deference to the flag, and 3 similar). * States are a major source of wars, and the major source of major wars, undoubted evils (however supposedly inevitable). They are major sources and suppliers of military technology and weapons, the means of war. Roughly, the more powerful and "advanced" a state, the further it is engaged in weapon production and export. Without states it is doubtful that there would be any nuclear weapons, and accordingly there would be no prospect of nuclear wars as there would be no weapons with which to fight them. * States are a serious drag on a more satisfactory international order. That there are not more, and more satisfactory, international regulatory organisations "is mainly a matter of the reluctance of nation states to surrender their powers and the dangers of their being dominated by very powerful states. If only nation states would be dissolved into specialized [departments] there is every reason to believe that most world problems could be handled by appropriate specialized [organisations]' (Bumheimp.221). * States have excessive power, and are even accumulating or trying to accumulate more, for instance through more centralization, further controls, additional licences, etc., etc. The excessive power of the state is exhibited not only in the treatment of its citizens and foreigners within its territory; it is exemplified also in its practices its territory, through such features as military pressures, including invasion, trade pressures, including sanitions, and in treatment of its citizens everywhere.! Obvious responses to excessive power are regionalization of powers, separation of powers, achieved by decoupling and some fragmentation, limitation of powers, and so on. * Present monolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which they are not competent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as impartial referees by their business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and control foo much, as a consequence it does very much unsatisfactorily. Improved arrangements would separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power. States thus appear far from a good bargain on a preliminary consideration of costs, and very far from maximal or optimal. Especially bad states, the run of states, which engage in politically-motivated inclination or torture of their citizens, and so on. Where are the The issue tends to be avoided; it is contended that, contrary to appearances, we cannot get along without state cossetting: states are necessary. But, given that we can get along without them, would we really be significantly worse off without them? cfr . <r ,,^ven m thd better cases (not allowing for alternative nonstatist arrangements which states have precluded or systems they have usurped)? But arguments for states are not usually so directly utilitarian in character. Such arguments would make it look as if we might well opt out of state organisation, and often be better off doing so. 1 A recent shocking example concerns the attempt of Eire to prevent an Irish women having an abortion in England. 4 These considerations divide into two groups: features that are on normal, normally bad, operations of states, and features that are normic on institution and operation of states. The first group of criticisms are eliminated under good to ideal operation of states, what officiandos of states characteristically unwarr^ntedly make. For the evidence seems to be that in practice states will tend away from the ideal. There are arguments from low efficiencies of complex mechanical structures that can be adopted to lend support to what evidence reveals. Features that are normic, and perhaps inevitable upon institution of states do however yield arguments against states that do not depend on ym*e contingencies of most states, their and so on. / 2. Ways of demonstrating that the State is not Required: as for God and the Church, so for the State. There is a theological component in the presumption and theory of the State; that theological component and therewith of the argMmenfa/ foundations for the State should be fully exposed. By contrast, anarchism, ^ approached from an argument perspective, enjoys nn considerable strength requiring no leaps of faith. The State is like God: the anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of what is commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed. The awn by Bakunin, has as well as considerable strength certain weaknesses. While the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe that there are no states: on the contrary, there are all too many, though none are legitimate.^The important parallel is as to argM/n^n^. The agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed, and so adopts a 'neutral' stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence-sitting position. Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not only faulting the argumentybr, but taking it for granted that there are arguments, or at least solid considerations, <2g(?in.yL So it is with soundly based anarchism; it both faults arguments for the State, showing none are generally viable, and de ps an incisive case against the State. A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again emphasised by Bakunin,2 is that of State and Church. 'Of course Knever should have eventuated; several bad political turnings were taken in the modern period following the Renaissance, t In several respects the comparison is better than that of the State and God, since both belong to the same category, institutions. Thus too both have looked to some philosophers as human inventions or artifices, both have looked to others (reductionists) as objects that could be reduced to features of the individuals involved in their organisation (but it is hard to see why such fictions or logical constructions shuld be assigned the power and deference they are 2 Bakunin on Anap^hy-(gdited S. Dolgolff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973, especially p.139. 5 accorded). This institutional comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised; for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly on organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually answerable to its police, and thence to its officers and military; how it is of the same category as business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church used to, it has nominal support of most of its 'subjects', though many of them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but as a necessary evil. It is easy now, in retrospect, to see how from being a compulsory feature of social life in many places, the Church has become a voluntary, and fragmented one; such a parallel desirable transformation of the State would eliminate it. Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is so it will be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove that God exists. That is, much as there are several ways of arguing to the existence of God, assembled by Aquinas into the famous (but not exhaustive, and invariably invalid) Five Ways, as well as various less famous but also important arguments against the existence of God, so in a parallel fashion there are various arguments that the State is required, as well as, what comes later that is especially relevant for anarchism, several ways of arguing against the necessity and desirability of the State. Since the State is unnecessary, as well as costly and typically at least evil in many of its practices and in other respects, it should be superseded. And it can be succeeded, by alternative social arrangements. It can be superseded or replaced as the Churches to a .9*1 large extent been supeyuated or replaced in many places. Just as the power of the ChurchAas declined until it has lost its authority over parishioners, so authority of the State can be undermined, and it can lose recognition and its claim to sovereignty over those in its territory,/A But there is a crucial difference between State and Church: under those conditions the State vanishes; for authority backed by coercive power is essential to the State but not (any longer) to the Church. And where the State differs crucially from Society anarchistically organised is as to the matter of coercion and of authority back^by force, such a Society relying basically on voluntary cooperation where the State relies on authority backed by force. Furthermore, the Church is justified through a religious theory, and is backed up ultimately by appeal to God's authority. The modern secular State by contrast annexes itself authority (or has simply inherited it) and, though it may claim to be justified by some political theory which confers upon it legitimacy, makes no appeal back to a justifying or authorizing agent. So what justifies it? Briefly, nothing does. * The First Way of Showing that the State is not Required: t&e Argument. / 6 The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State activity being dispensed with. The argument is not a straight substitution argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements. There is much the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, for instance, sponsorship of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIP's; and a great deal of typical State activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, for instance, graft, corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land and other resources, and encouragement; of protection^ of polluting or qvironmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forest-destructive pine planting and woodchip projects). The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind. This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism. The argument, implicit in the works of the classical anarchists, goesjike this: The functions of the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions, and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the powerful groups the State tends to serve). But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions which are in the collecdve interest, no coercion is required. For why should people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their collective interest? Such functions can be performed, and performed better, without the coercion which is the hallmark of the State, and without the accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it 'serves'. The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case-by-case form considering each function in turn.3 In each case the function is carried out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary co-operation by the people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements. Consider, for example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services, or community access communications (e.g. radio), most of which are presently either starved of infrastucture or hindered by the State. Such beneficial services would in general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally held, and That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of generally beneficial state activity - there is only a (relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it can be replaced in one way or another. Replacement is not of course uniquely determined. Lines such replacements can take are indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature, consider especially, but no, uncritically, P. Kropootkin, MMfMai Aid, New York University Press 1972, and also his Fi^/dy, Faci<?rie.y and WorLyAo/w, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and 77te Con<?Me.yf o/Brgad. Chapman and Hall, London, 1913. 7 those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals and powerful agencies. Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private individuals. As for the second type of functions, those which are no? in the collective interest, coercion will normally be required for the performance of functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation. But those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective interest. In this way, while the good part of the state's operation is retained and improved upon, the bad part — especially the evils of brutality, corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus - is detached. State services that are concerned with orr/gr, in the general sense, may be similarly removed or replaced. These services, which include reduction of violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services, security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it. They do not. Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by communities themselves without intervention by the State. Secondly, a great many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence of which the State is the main purveyor and which is often the outcome of the State's propping up of gross inequalitiesA A community which seriously limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for many "welfare services and the basis for a great many offences involving violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and many of those involving personal violence. Such a left-leaning anarchism is also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the State, such as those based on the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth allegedly achieved by State enforcement of redistribution. As all too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and police inequitable distribution. This then is the main classical argument for anarchism. The argument has however been challenged, both by historical and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot act in their collective interest without coercion. On these points see, e.g. 7?6wZMZz'a/zary Pawp/z/^tj (edited S. Baldwin), Kover Publications, New York, 1970, p.206ff.; also P.J. Proudhon, Cazz/e^jza/M' a/* a R^va/azza/zary. For recent discussion of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law court procedures (Zzaz for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone, Sawg <?H arhZzrazZag oar way ra anarcAy, Anarchism (reprint of Nomos XIX) New York University Press, 1978, pp.213- s 8 It is from the simulation argument, in particular, that the corollary of the q/ will follow? For, to overstate the case, anything the State can do that does reflect sought collective interests,, cooperation and other techniques can also achieve in the longer run, and mostly better. * The Second Way: The argument from problem recurrence. The solution by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more dangerous form the very real problems introduction of the State was designed to solve, including new Dilemmas. Suppose, for instance, the secular State really introduced in order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas, then the array of States so resulting generates new Prisoners' Dilemmas (with States as 'prisoners'), which there is no Super-State to resolve by coercion. In fact, as opposed to State-justifying mythology, the modem secular State was not introduced (just as the original states were not initiated) for any such apparently intellectually reputable reasons, but was largely inherited from the religious State (and the Church) and maintained to prop up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests. Or suppose, as the myth also has it, that the State really were introduced, or contracted, in the interest of order and stability and to curb violence; then the array of States resulting more than negates these advantages, with instability, disorder and violence (e.g. between States) on a grander scale than before the emergence of modern secular States? * The Third Way: The overshoot argument, from the inadequacy of institutional controls on state power. Having ceded a monopoly of power of the State in order to resolve some dilemmas, some of them arising from an inequitable distribution of power, what controls or balances the power of the State? A Super-State. And its power? There is a vicious infinite regress if the reply to the question 'What controls the controller?' is 'a further controller'? The only promising way of avoiding this problem — other routes lead (even more) directly to totalitarianism — is by having the first of these controllers, the State, answer back to those in whose interests it is allegedly established, those of the society or group of communities it controls. This implies democratic methods of some kind. Others go further: 'democracy [is] the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which we can try to The title of a joint paper upon which several of these sections draw^. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op cif, chapter 7. A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining regions. Several historical examples of this phenomenon are alluded to in M. Harris, and Ajngj, Collins, London. 1978, where it is also revealed how little the actual origin and rise of the State had to do with Dilemma situations, e.g. escaping a Hobbesian state of nature. Indeed, it was (j^th the advent and development of the State that life became for many what it had not apparently been in pre-State neolithic times, 'nasty, brutish and short'. The question is in effect Plato's question and the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man argument. 9 protect ourselves against the misuse of political power'.R In this event, control has mostly failed. Democracy is extremely attentuated, even in those states that claim to practice it. The exercise of power in modem 'democratic' states is often channelled through 'non-elected authority' and 'is not democratic in the traditional meaning of the term'.9 Moreover, the much increased power in the modern State, which reaches deep into people's lives, has passed, with no increase in legitimacy, to certain managerial elites who present the power as directed at the attainment of 'generally accepted' objectives such as economic growth (but through, e.g., increased military expenditure) or material 'progress' (but through, e.g., increased military expenditure) or material 'progress' (but through, e.g. subsidization of environmentally destructive enterprises of off-shore companies), though the acceptability of such particular objectives is never democratically tested. In any case, indirect democratic and other institutional checks are in as much as they depend ultimately on the toleration of those who have direct control of the forces of the State. Experience seems to show that such toleration will only be shown so long as democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are broadly in accord iwth what those who control the coercive power are prepared to accept. (Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation). But institutional checks which operate only insofar as a system acceptable to the powerholders is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration of those 'checked', are not really checks at all. The problem of controlling the power of the State and preventing the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its mandate, is only solved by not ceding power to the State in the first place. The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation. * The Fourth Way: The argument from freedom and autonomy. A person is responsible for actions deliberately undertaken. This premise can be derived, if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent. Taking responsibility for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about what to do on each such occasion oneself; not acting on direction from outside, but determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision over to someone or something else. It implies, that is, moral autonomy. Autonomy in turn implies what responsibility requires, freedom. For the autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is K.R. Popper, 77ie (?/?<?/i 5*<9c;'<?ry and Vol. II. Fourth edition (revised), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p.129 and p.127. The (overshoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the dangerous accumulation of power represented in teh State' 'upon which' Marxists never had 'any wellconsidered view' (p.129). V. Lauber, Eco/ogy, po/ZzZcj and Zz&emZ ^efwocracy, Government and Opposition, 13 (1978), 199-217: seep.209 and p.211. 10 not subject to the will of another. Even if it does what another directs, it is not another so directs. In being free, nof of constraints (both physical and self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous being is morally free. A necessary feature of the State is (XMf/ionry over those in its territory (under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will uon them. Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and with freedom. An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State. In sum, being a person, as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on personhood implies, if the argument is sound, anarchism, io It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated 'State', one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy. But such a 'State', with no independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism. On the contrary, such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic organisation. * The Fifth Way: The argument from anarchistic experience. The replacement argument enables construction of a model of a society functioning without the State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State is not necessary. But it can always be - even if the claim can seldom or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable. The gap may be closed by appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various times and places anarchism has been tested and has rworked. Examples of such Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have not been omitted. There are many examples of non-industrialised societies which were, or are, anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,n and there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic arrangements within the State structure. 12 The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated, but in a very individualistic and Kantian fashion, in R.P. Wolff, 7% of A/iarc/H-sw, Harper & Row, New York, 1970. No argument is without assumptions, which are open to dispute. Wolffs argument, from which the argument in the text is adapted, has its pitfalls, and is, for example, disputed by G. Wall, P/uZo-yop/wcaZ revi\yg<7, Anarchism, op.cit. p.273ff. Documented in 77ze 1974. Co/Zecfiv&y (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions New York As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of self-management and alternative lifestyles 11 The state is far from necessary and iacks adequate justification. The state is not a self-justifying object. But none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A familiar theme, conceding that the state is a problematic object, is that the state is a necessary evil. 13 But, to the contrary, states, though generally evil, are hardly necessary. It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak any necessity claimed has to be. For it is becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical modellings and computer simulations of other worlds, virtual states and the like, to envisage accessible worlds organised without modern states. As such worlds, inhabited by humans or human-like creatures are possible, states are not necessary. No doubt then, the necessity has to be of some more andpr^m^Jc sort, a "social human necessity" for example appealing to emergent features of humans, kinks of human nature, obtruding in unfavourable situations of high concentrations and extensive scarcity (situations that states themselves have, like many survival systems, helped contrive). Further the necessity has to be relative to certain organisational objectives, such as a particular state delivery of collective goods and services. Remarkably, none of the extant arguments to the state make it plain that such a weak pragmatic relative "necessity" is indicated, though they would hardly establish more, and though they Jo make strong (implausible) assumptions about the brutal situation outside states, in states-of-nature and so on, and about human motivation and practice, its utterly selfish, self-interested and acquisitive, and frequently debased character (i.e. what appears encouraged under economic rationalism, and pretty much what many have come to expect under conditions of advanced capitalism). Mostly no effort is made any longer, outside a few abstruse texts, to justify the state. Within contemporary institutional arrangement it is simply taken for granted (like Big Science), as axiomatic, as God was under medieval arrangements. But unlike God, who was good personified and therefore had a large problem with the extent of evil in the world, the state is acknowledged as problematic and far from unimplicated in the evil of the world (but directly engaged therein when the councils of the many Machievellis are heeded). Such a problematic object cannot stand up as merely postulated. Nor is there a corresponding ontological argument for the state, as that organisational structure than which nothing more are many and significant. And these alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of evidence and experience to support their superiority over the present way society operates. The obstacles to self-management and alternative lifestyles are powerful vested interests and institutional resistance to change', C/zanging f/x? C<%f, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979. p.6. 13 The theme, enunciated for instance by Popper, that * state power must always remain a dangerous though necessary evil' (II, p.30) is a commonplace one. 12 perfect can exist. Outside the flawed imagination of German idealists there is no such Super State; all actual states are manifestly highly imperfect, all humanly realisable ones are likely similar. As a result of the institutionalisation of the state itself, as a received and indeed central part of modern political arrangements, the onus of proof has become curiously inverted. Efforts to justify the state have become fairly ideal and academic, no longer a serious issue, and onus transferred to anarchists to demonstrate that human social life could proceed well and smoothly (as it now does, of course) without states. While anarchists are not absolved from offering some account of operations of good social lives without states (for, except in fairy tales, it does not all just emerge, unplanned, in the new stateless setting), neither are archists absolved from justification of de facto statist arrangements, beginning with the state itself. 4 a ARCrpM&^S-. The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state, therewithal state-like institutions a/t? %/ro /j /< 7 ) c /A—Zb n X! ct A<$ Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes: * States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification. * Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes. * Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of social and environmental bungles or evils in their train. In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils The anarchist critique does not end there, but typically includes.'further themes/ such as : w States are devices for channelling privilege and wealth to certain minorities with inside , The state is an undesirable, or even downright evii, institution, for the following range of reasons:- * States entrench inequities, domination and exploitation. States are devices for the protection of wealth, property and privilege, and usually for the redistribution upwards, and often concentration, of wealth and privilege. A minor but popular illustration is offered by the expensive conferences and other junkets that state employees or party officials organise for themselves and manage to bill to state revenue, in turn sucked up from inequitable taxation. Certainly a main historical outcome of the state has been domination of exploitation of certain segments of society by others, and some see its main, and barely concealed, purpose as just that: domination and exploitation. ) * States are typically corrupt. For example, there are enquiries presently in train, or with follow-through activities yet to be duly completed, in many states in Australia, enquires which have revealed considerable corruption, and there are prima facie cases for similar enquiries in most of the remainder. Nor is this a new phenomenon: these revelations often resemble older or on-going scandals. * States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources, and accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden, but a main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over­ remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that many state operations are far from lean and efficient, but incorporate many duplications, drag factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms, of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens, weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organisation would be very significantly reduced. * States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive and demanding^. As a Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous denouncement of state government: ^1/7^ To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first world of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality (quoted in M p.6). result, there are constant demands for the reduction of the cancerous state, for removing parts of it through deregulation, selling off state enterprises and so on. There are two troubles with such demands from anarchist standpoints: they never go far enough, to the complete reduction of the state to zero, but characteristically retain parts supportive of or favourable to bigger business, and they proceed in the wrong way, stripping away social safety nets rather than ripping off business support nets (such as limited liability, strike limitation legislation, etc.). * States, for all that they have been promoted as delivering public goods, are mostly dismal news for environmental protection and health and for social justice. Furthermore they are liable to impose substantial hazards or risks upon subservient populations not merely through military and like activities but, more insidious, through support and promotion of dangerous industries, such as nuclear and giant chemical industries. * Statetusually exert a heavy pressure to uniformity, they tend to eliminate plurality and cultural differences. These pressures are exercised by a state in the alleged interests of national unity, and against its enemies, external and internal. Even the most liberal of states tend to give minorities more difficult lives in times of stress, such as war. They are always espousing national values, state interests, and commonly assimilation and adoption of state values (thus for example Canada, formerly and briefly a state toying with multiculturalism, now insistent upon "Canadian values"). Such exercises are conspicuous, not only in citizen ceremonies and other state rituals, such as national sporting and religious events, but more important are virtually ubiquitous in elementary education (down to deference to the f la , and similar). * States are a major source of wars, and the major source of major wars, undoubted evils (however supposedly inevitable). They are major sources and suppliers of military technology and weapons, the means of war. Roughly, the more powerful and "advanced" a state, the further it is engaged in weapon production and export. Without states it is doubtful that there would be any nuclear weapons, and accordingly there would be no prospect of nuclear wars as there would be no weapons with which to fight them. * States are a serious drag on a more satisfactory international order. That there are not more, and more satisfactory, international regulatory organisations 'is mainly a matter of the reluctance of nation states to surrender their powers and the dangers of their being dominated by very powerful states. If only nation states would be dissolved into specialized [departments] there is every reason to believe that most world problems could be handled by appropriate specialized [organisations]' (Burnheimp.221). * States have excessive power, and are even accumulating or trying to accumulate more, for (hT) instance through more centralization, further controls, additional licences, etc., etc. Obvious responses to excessive power are separation of powers, achieved by decoupling and some fragmentation, limitation of powers, and so on. States thus appear farTrom a good bargain on a preliminary consideration of costs, Especially bad states, the run of states, which engage in politically-motivated incun-ation or t.ifure of their citizens, and so on. Where are the compensating benefits?' yven that we can get along without them, would we really be significantly worse off without them? Even in the better cases (not allowing for alternative nonstatist arrangements which states have precluded or systems they have usurped)? But arguments for states are not usually so directly utilitarian in character. Such arguments would make it look as if we might well opt out of state organisation, and often be better off doing so. Mat it is contended that, contrary to appearances, we cannot get along without state cossetting: states are necessary. , *?: - Present monolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which they are not competent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as impartial referees by their business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and control top much, as a consequence it does very much unsatisfactorily. Improved arrangements would separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power. wcef- /%^2^ /\^^ 1 C 4 Z Z^-^7 W GW, //?(? C/7//A /7, jWr f/7(? 3/(7/d The State is like God: the anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of what is commonly assumed, mostlv as a matter of faith, to be needed. T)ie pafatlel, BakummTtlibjat^weaknessessas well as Rs strengt%^.''^Vhiie the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe that there are no states: on the contrary, there are all too many, though none are legitimate. The impor­ tant parallel is as to arguments. The agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God suc­ ceed, and so adopts a 'neutral' stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence­ sitting position. Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not only faulting the argumentsybr, but takingdt for granted that there are arguments, or at least solid considerations, rzgm/ry/. So it is with soundly based anarchism; <t both fault) arguments for the r" 3tatuce- a case against the State. A more obvious comparison, ap­ preciated from Reformation on and again emphasised bvBakunin,' is that of State and Church^ This institutional comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised; for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly on organised violence, all other internal security arrangernggt^)eing eventually answerable to its pdhee and military^; how it is of the same category as business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church used to, it has nominal support of most of its 'subjects', though many of them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have come to see the State as in many This does not upset the replacement respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but argument for anarchism. The argument, as a necessary evil.^) implicit in the works of the classical Whether the State is inevitably evil or anarchists, goes like this: The functions not, it is M/mecas-wry, so it will be of the State can be divided into two argued, in a wav parallelling the famous types, those that are in the collective in­ jVquinas designed to prove terest and generally beneficial such as that God exi^&^Since the State is un­ community welfare and organisational necessary, as welt as costly and typically functions, and those that are not (but at leas! evil in many of its practices and are, presumably, in the interests of some undesirable in other respects, it should of the powerful groups the State tends to be superseded. And it can be succeeded, serve). by alternative social arrangements, But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions gg 77^ /7r.v/ IWj Q/ SbotWg which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required. For why should /r7t?/ //?C S/t//^ Ay ,76)/ 7?^T//7W.' people have to be coerced into carrying //!f /?e/)GcT/77^?7/ WRM/W7/. out functions which are in their collec­ tive interest? Such functions can be per­ The core of the argument is simple formed, and performed better, without and persuasive: everything in the collec- the coercion which is the hallmark of the tive interest accomplished by the State State, and without the accompanying can equally be accomplished by alterna­ tendency of the State to pervert such tive arrangements such as voluntary co­ functions to the maintenance of privilege operation, the remainder of State activi­ and inequality of power, and to remove ty being dispensed with. The argument is power from those it 'serves'. The detail­ not a straight substitution argument, for ed argument that such functions can be it is not as if a rational person would performed takes a case by case form, want to have everything accomplished considering each function in turn7 In by the State replicated by alternative each case the function is carried out arrangements. There is much the State through alternative arrangements, such does or supports that is at best rather in­ different, ^"'sponsorship of pomp and as voluntary co-operation by the people directly concerned, which replace State ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a arrangements. Consider, for example, great deal of typical State activity is the operation of mutual aid or self help positively evil and not in the collective medical services or building programs, interest,'e^. gral^t, corruption, brutality, or self managed welfare, housing or en­ maintenance of inequitable distribution vironment services, or community access of wealth, land and other resources, and communications (e.g. radio), most of encouragement of protection of polluting or environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forest­ destructive pine planting and woodchip projects). The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind. which are presently either starved of infrastructure or hindered by the State. Such beneficia! services would in genera! be reorganised so that ah the relevant infrastructure became communaHy heid, and those wishing to arrange or use the service wou!d manage the operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professional and powerful agencies. Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal types of anarcnism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than individual labour) are already held by the com­ munity, sdthereis no need to apply coer­ cion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are privatis­ ed and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private in­ dividuals. As for the second type of functions, those which are /tor in the collective in­ terest, coercion will normally be required for the performance of //tew functions, and is thus an essentia! part of the State's operation. But those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the coHective interest. !n this way, while the good part of the State's operation is re­ tained and improved upon, the bad part — especially the evils of brutality, corruption and other abuses invariabty associated with the coercive apparatus — is detached. State services that are concerned with orjpr, in the genera! sense, may be similarly removed or replaced. These services, which include reduction of violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services, security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it. They do not. Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by communities themselves without intervention by the State. Secondly, a great many of these pro­ blems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence of which the State is the main purveyor and which is often the outcome of the State's propping up of gross inequalities? A community which seriously limits (or dispenses with) the in­ stitution of private property and removes gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for many 'welfare' services and the basis for a great many offences in­ volving violence: virtually ail those in­ volving violence to private property and many of those involving personal violence. Such a left-leaning anarchism is also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the State, such as those based on the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth allegedly achieved by State en­ forcement of redistribution. As all too many people are aware, a major func­ tion of the State is to maintain and police inequitable distribution. This then is the main classical argu­ ment for anarchism. The argument has however been challenged, both by historical and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot act in their collective interest without coercion. 7./ NOTES 14. [5. 16. oK !. Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgofl), Allen & LJnwin, London, (973, especially p.139. Much else in this paper, eg. the distinction between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin. 2. That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of generally beneficial state activity — there is only a (relatively small) finite number to consider — and shows how it can be replaced in one way or another. Replacement is not of course uniquely deter­ mined. Lines such replacements can take are indicated in much anarchist (and self management) literature, consider especially, but no/ uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, New York University Press, 1972, and also his Fields. Factories and Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and the Conquest of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913. 3. On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin's Revolu­ tionary Pamphlets (edited S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York, 1970, p.206 ff.; also P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolu­ tionary. For recent discussion of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law court procedures (6td for right-leaning anarchism), see C D. Stone, Some re/?ec//on.s on o/Tn/rohng our way /o anarc/ty * Anarchism (reprint of Nomos XIX) New York University Press, 1978, pp.213^4. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a littic in Taylor, op.cit., chapter 7. A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way in which emergence of the State com promises and even closes off nonstate solu­ tions to problems of social organisation in ad­ joining regions. Several historical examples of this phenomenon are alluded to in M. Harris, Cannibals and Kings, Collins, London. 1978. where it is also revealed how little the actual origin and rise of the State had to do with Dilemma situations, e.g. escaping a Hobbesian state of nature. Indeed, it was with the advent and development of the State that life became for many what it had not apparently been in prc-State neolithic times, 'nasty, brutish and short'. The question is m effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man argument. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies. Yol.iL Fourth edition (revised), Routledge and Kegan Paul. London. 1962, p.129 and p.127. The (overshoot) problem ts. according to Popper 'the most fundamental problem of all politics: the control of the con­ troller. of the dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State' 'upon which' Marxists never had view' (p. 129). 'any well-considered 17. V. Lauber. /co/o^y, po/t/tes an<7 hbera/ r/emocracv. Government and Opposition. 13 (1978), 199-217: see p.2O9 and p.211. 18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated, but tn a very individualistic and Kantian fashion, tn R.P. Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York. 1970. No argument is without assumptions, which are open to dispute. Wolff's argument, from which the argument in the text is adapted, has its pitfalls, and is, for example, disputed by G. Wall. P/b/o.sop/hca/ awc/n.sw re row/, Anarchism, op.cit. p.273ff. 19. Documented in The Anarchist Cotiectives (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions, New York. 1974. 20. As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of self-management and alternative lifestyles are many and significant. And these alter­ natives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of evidence and experience to support their superiority over the present way society operates. The obstacles to self-management and alternative lifestyles are powerful vested interests and institutional resistance to change', ( hanging the Cogs, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979, p.6. ANARCHISM - ENLARGED j ____________ foundations* There is a theological component in the theory of the ^tate;.the weakness af^whieh should be brought out. A A By contrast, anarchism ^.s approached from an argument pe^p^ctive, of considerable streng strength^ Since the &tate is an imposed structure that induces considerable costs, the onus of proof is moreover on the State side. (The State versus states: r instantiate the universal.) 2. they Circled numbers hereafter refer to insert places in elder working version. In §1:- (^ In several respects the comparison is better than that of the State and God, since both belong to the same category, institutions. /cc Thus both have looked to some philosophers as human inventions or artifices, both have looked to others (reductionists) as objects that could be reduced to features of the individuals involved in their organisation (but it is hard to see why such fictions or logical constructions should be assigned the power and deference they are accorded). 0 It can be superseded, or replaced^ as the Church has to a large, ^in many places. extent been Just as the power of the Church has declined until it has lost its authority over parishioners, so authority of the State can be undermined, and it can lose recognition and its claim to jAu&h^rit^ over those in its territory. But there is a crucial difference between State and Church: under those condit­ ions the State vanishes, for authority backs!by coercive power is essential to the State but not (any longer) to the Church. from Society anarchistically organised And where the State differs crucially is as to the matter of coercion and of authority backed by force, such a society relying basically on voluntary cooper­ ation where the State relies on authority backed by force. Furthermore, the Church is justified through a religious theory, and is backed up ultimately by appeal to God's authority. The modern secular State by contrast annexes itself J A 2. itself authority (or has simply inherited it) and, though it may claim to be justified by some political th(o^ry which confers upon it legitimacy, makes no appeal back to a justifying or authorizing <3<^e.nt. So what justifies it? 2^.^ These sorts of considerations prompt two connected complaints of the anarch- ist, which have never been satisfactorily met, the agnostic's complaint that the State has no adequate justification - the arguments for its imposition or certain action fail - and the stronger complaint that the State is not necessary at all. These complaints are backed by arguments and further arguments, namely an assess) ment of arguments. These arguments are important, not, or not merely, because they will show, if unsuccessful, that anarchism j^s irrefutable, but because they convey muqh information, e.g. as to the weak (to the point of vacuity) sense in which the State is "necessary", because they do much to determine the general 0^ logical shape of the anarchism that results, and because they indicate routes to anarchism, not merely why but, to some extent, how the State can be superseded by a Society anarchistically organised. t pfuch as there are several ways of arguing to the existence of God, assembled by Aquinas into the famous (but not exhaustive, and invariably invalid) Five Ways, and various less famous but also important arguments against the existence of God, apcni&Igs , (jAtb so there are various arguments that the State is required, and^ especially —-2 relevant for anarchism^, several ways of arguing against the necessity of the State. is from the simulation argument, in particular, that the irrefutibj.lity of Ai) anarchism will follow^ anything the State can do that does reflect the collective interests A/. A74 cooperation.can also do in the long-run, and mostly better. [Over- i g T7/E SECOAD X 777E /1RGGA7EATFROM PROEEEM RECGRREyVCE. The solution by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more dangerous form the very real problems introduction of the State was designed to solve, inciuding new Diiemmas. Suppose, for instance, the secular State realty were introduced in order to soive Prisoners' Dilemmas, then the array of States so resulting generates new Prisoners' Ditemmas (with States as 'prisoners'), which there is no Super-State to resotve by coercion. In fact, as opposed to State-justifying mythology, the modern secutar State was not introduced (just as the originat States were not initiated) for any such apparentty intellectually reputable reasons, but was targety inherited from che religious State (and the Church) and Jiaintained to prop up privitege and foster objectives that are not in its com­ munities' interests. Or suppose, as the myth atso has it, that the State reaity were introduced, or contracted, in the interest of order and stability and to curb violence; then the array of States resuming more than negates these advan­ tages, with instability, disorder and viotence (e.g. between States) on a grander scale than before the emergence of modern secutar States."* S 77/E 77//RD HA1 Y. RHE (9 YERSEOGE /IRGt/MEAE FROM EE/E /A/(/9E()G^CY GE /AF77EG77GA74E CGA7RGES GA A7MEE PG^ER Having ceded a monopoty of power J) the State in order to resotve some diiemmas, some of them arising from an inequitable distribution of power, what controts or batances the power of the State? A Super-State. And its power? There is a vicious infinite regress if the repty to the question 'What controts the controtter?' is 'a further controller'A The onty promising way of avoiding this problem — other routes tead (even 1 more) directty to totaiitarianism — is by having the first of these controllers, the State, answer back to those in whose in­ terests it is aitegediy estabtished, those of the society or group of communities it controts. This implies democratic methods of some kind. Others go fur­ ther: 'democracy (is] the onty known means to achieve this control, the onty known device by which we can try to protect oursetves against the misuse of pohtica! power'.'* In this event, control has mostty failed. Democracy is ex­ tremely attenuated, even in those states that claim to practice it. The exercise of power in modern 'democratic' states is often channelled through 'non-elected authority' and 'is not democratic in the traditional meaning of the term'E Moreover, the much increased power in the modern State, which reaches deep in­ to people's lives, has passed, with no in­ crease in legitimacy, to certain managerial elites who present the power as directed at the attainment of 'general­ ly accepted' objectives such as economic growth (but through, e.g.', increased military expenditure) or materia! 'pro­ gress' (but through, e.g. subsidization of environmentally destructive enterprises of off-shore companies), though the ac­ ceptability of such particular objectives is never democratically tested. In any case, indirect democratic and other institutional checks are /em/OMS in as much as they depend uttimately on the toleration of those who have direct con­ trol of the forces of the State. Experience seems to show that such toleration wit! only be shown so long as democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are broadly in ac­ cord with what those who control the coercive power are prepared to accept. (Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to those who hold power, especially the cover of legitima­ tion). But institutional checks which operate only insofar as a system accep­ table to the powerholders is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration of those 'checked', 39 EE/E FGGR 777 Y. EE/E ARGGMEA?^ FRGA7 EREEDGA7 ^lAD^l GEGAGAf Y. A person is responsible for actions deliberately undertaken. This premise can be derived, if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent. Taking responsiblity for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about what to do on each such occasion oneself; not acting on direction from outside, but determin­ ing how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision over to someone or something else. It implies, that is, moral autonomy. Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility re­ quires, freedom. For the autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is not subject to the will of another. Even if it does what another directs, it is not /yeemzse another so directs. In being free, no/ of constraints (both physical and self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous being is morally free. A necesary feature of the State is <7H//io,7/y over those in its territory (under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon them. Such authority backed by force is incom­ patible with moral autonomy and with freedom. An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some im­ peratives of the State, those it in­ dependently endorses, is bound to reject such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State. In sum, being a per­ son, as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on per­ sonhood implies, if the argument is sound, anarchism.'* It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated 'State', one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy. But such a 'State', with no independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism. On the contrary, such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic organisation. W E/7E E7E777 HA1Y. 777E are not really checks at ali. ^RGGMEAEFRGM The problem of controlling the power of the State and preventing the State M A91 RCA75&EAVER7EACE. once established from usurping further The replacement argument enables power and exceeding its mandate, is only construction of a model of a society w/cyAc/orr/y solved by not ceding power functioning without the State, of a prac­ to the State in the first place. The best tically possible Stateless world; which way of avoiding the evils of accumulated shows that the State is not necessary. But power is the anarchist way, of blocking it can always be c/c/wer/ — even if the its accumulation. claim can seldom or ever be made good — that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of real world circum­ stances, rendering it inapplicable. The gap may be closed by appeal to the inde­ pendently valuable argument from ex­ perience, that at various times and places anarchism has been tested and has work­ ed. Examples of such Stateless organisa­ tion suffice to show that crucial real world features have not been omitted. ^Yiere are many examples of nontndustrialised socieities which were, or are, anarchistic, there is the rich experi­ ence of the Spanish collectives,'" and there is much localised experience of seif-management and small-scale anar chistic arrangements within the State structure?" z e The state tacks adequate justification. The state is not a self-justifying object. But none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A familiar theme, conceding that the Al state is a problematic object, is that the state is a necessary evil. But, to the contrary, states, though generally evil, are hardly necessary^ It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak necessity claimed has to be. For it is becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical!^ modellings and computer simulations of other worlds, virtual states and the like, to envisage accessible worlds organised without modern states. No doubt then, the necessity has to be of some more pragmatic sort, a "social human necessity" for example appealing to emergent features of humans, kinks of human nature, obtruding in unfavourable situations of high concentrations and extensive scarcity (situations that states themselves have, like many survival systems, helped contrive).Remarkably, none of the extant arguments to the state make it plain that such a weak pragmatic "necessity" is intricated, though they would hardly establish more, and though they make strong (implausible) assumptions about the brutal situation outside states, in states-of-nature and so on, and about human motivation and practice, its utterly selfish, self-interested and acquisitive, and frequently debased character (i.e. what appears encouraged under economic rationalism, and pretty much what many have come to expect under conditions of advanced capitalism). Mostly no effort is made any longer, outside a few abstruse texts, to justify the state. Within contemporary institutional arrangement it is simply taken for granted (like Big Science), as axiomatic, as God was under medieval arrangements. But unlike God, who was good personified and therefore had a large problem with the extent of evil in the world, the state is acknowledged as problematic and far from unimplicated in the evil of the world (but directly engaged therein when the councils of the many Machievellis are heeded). Such a problematic Popper^s view that 'state power must always remain a dangerous though necess­ ary evil' (II, p.30) is a commonplace one. object cannot stand up as merely postulated. Nor is there a corresponding ontological argument for the state, as that organisational structure than which nothing more perfect can exist. Outside the flawed imagination of German idealists there is no such Super State; all actual states are manifestly highly imperfect, all humanly realisable ones are likely similar. As a result of the institutionalisation of the state itself, as a received and indeed central part of modem political arrangements, the onus of proof has become curiously inverted. Efforts to justify the state have become fairly ideal and academic, no longer a serious issue, and onus transferred to anarchists to demonstrate that human social life could proceed well and smoothly (as it now does, of course) without states. While anarchists are not absolved from offering some account of operations of good social lives without states (for, except in fairy tales, it does not all just emerge, unplanned, in the new stateless setting), neither are statists absolved from justification of de facto statist arrangements, beginning with the state itself.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 13, item 996: Draft chapters 1 to 4 on anarchism, for correction Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Description An account of the resource Typescripts and handwritten chapters, with handwritten emendations and annotations. Title in collection finding aid: Blue folder: Anarkism - For Correction - chapters 1-4. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span><span>,</span> Box 13, item 996 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [60] leaves. 137.3 MB. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9ab5607" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9ab5607</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/df8de55a3ac9bb4d5b8436b004c5b43d.pdf ae1e86b57088469825e03475b2c4723c PDF Text Text r at b'l 2051THE IRREFUTABILITY of anarchism 1. GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE. The State is like God: the anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of what is commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed. The parallel, drawn by Bakunin, has its weaknesses as well as its strengths. While the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe that there are no states: none are legitimate. on the contrary, there are all too many, though The important parallel is as to arguments. The agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed, and so adopts a "neutral" stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence­ sitting position. Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not only faulting the arguments for, but taking it for granted that there are arguments, or at least solid considerations, against. So it is with soundly based anarchism, which can both fault arguments for the State and produce a case against the State. A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again emphasised by Bakunin^ is that of State and Church. This institutional comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised; for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly an organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually answerable to its police and military; how it is of the same category as business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church used to, it has nominal support of most of its "subjects", though many of them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but as a necessary evil. Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is unnecessary, so it will be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove that God exists. Since the State is unnecessary, as well as costly and typically at least evil in many of its practices and undesirable in other respects, it should be superseded. social arrangements. And it can be succeeded, by alternative �2 2. THE FIRST WAY OF SHOWING THAT THE STATE IS NOT REQUIRED : THE REPLACEMENT ARGUMENT. The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State activity being dispensed with. The argument is not a straight substitution argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements. There is much the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, e.g. sponsorship of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a great deal of typical State activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, e.g. graft, corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land and other resources, and encouragement or protection of polluting or environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forest­ destructive pine planting and woodchip projects). The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind. This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism. The argument, implicit in the works of the classical anarchists, goes like this:- The functions of the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions, and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the powerful groups the State tends to serve). But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required. For why should people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their collective interest? Such functions can be performed, and performed better, without the coercion which is the hallmark of of the State, and without the accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it "serves". The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case by case 2 form, considering each function in turn. In each case the function is carried out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary cooperation by the people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements. Consider, for example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services or building programs, or self managed welfare, housing or environment services, or community access communications (e.g. radio)^ most of which are presently either starved of infrastructure or hindered by the State. Such beneficial services would in general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally �held, and those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals and powerful agencies. Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private individuals. As for the second type of functions, those which are not in the collective interest, coercion will normally be required for the performance of those functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation. But those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective interest. In this way, while the good part of the State's operation is retained and improved upon, the bad part - especially the evils of brutality, corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus is detached. State services that are concerned with order, in the general sense, may be similarly removed or replaced. These services, which include reduction of violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services, security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it. do not. They Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by communities themselves without intervention by the State. Secondly, a great many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence of which the State is the main purveyor .and which is often the outcome of WAvditai 3 the State's propping up of gross . A community which seriously A limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes «// gross inequities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for many "welfare" services and the basis for a great many offences involving violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and many of those involving personal violence. Such a left-leaning anarchism is also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the State, such as those from the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth that is alleged to be achieved by State enforcement of redistribution. As all too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and police inequitable distribution. 5? This then is the main classical argument for anarchism. The argument has however been challenged, both by historical �and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot act in their collective interest without coercion. I 3. THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE LIKE. The main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are important cases where individuals will not agree or cooperate to provide themselves with (or to maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as only the State can furnish.In such "dilemma" situations each individual will hope to gain advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others’ contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from others' restraint). The claim is that only the State with its backing of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed. A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type, Including Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the "Tragedy of the Commons" argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two players.Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have been separately imprisoned. A State representative makes the following offers separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while the accomplice gets 8 years. It so happens that if both prisoners remain silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence. if both confess they would each receive 4 years. But The "game" can be summarised in the following "payoff" matrix:Prisoner 1 S(ilence) C(onfess) S -1, -1 -8, 0 C 0, -8 S t rategies -4, -4 The game is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma:- It is in each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other does : strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' "dominant" strategy (and also in fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for example, remains silent, then 1 goes free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by confessing. But if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain an inferior outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously called "cooperating", by their both remaining silent. �5 4. FOILING THE PRISONERS' DILEMMA ARGUMENT. It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to show the necessity of the State - which is supposed to intervene, forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners "cooperate" to obtain an optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.Of course the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemmas is inessential, as is much else from the example. But some features of the prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate or really cooperate. Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests are opposed. The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly seriously limited.? A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference. It is claimed that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to cooperate, that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of the other (Abrams, p. 193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement' (Taylor, p. 5). Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is very often not so - and in a more cooperative social setting than the currently encouraged privatisation of life, the extent of cooperation and trust would o undoubtedly be much higher. The argument has to depend crucially then on substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings, e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people were that unreliable and devious,tate arrangements involved in providing public goods/-oueh as—taxatioa-y would not succeed either) . That such assumptions are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g., to bring out the first.suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g., they are friends or they are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical scepticism, involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the other security against default, and so on. The question of the character of human interests and preferences and the extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is fundamental to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities. A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count �is an independent parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings of others nor on the social context in which that human operates. While the individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural pressure on consumers to conform (through advertising, education, popular media), very many humans do not conform, and the extent of cultural pressure towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence, And, sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a small community A (which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners' Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State. 5. WHY THE DILEMMA ARGUMENTS CANNOT SUCCEED. What the Dilemma-based case for the State has to show - what never has been shown - is that there are outs tanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also o’wt foot damaging if unresolved, lint ypsoHved by State intervention, and only so g- fa (optimally) resolved, ami Finallythat in the course of so resolving these Dilemma situations, worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced. These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if they can be satisfied at all, in a way that is not question begging. For several of the conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is important, damaging, optional, worse) and involve considerations about whichf reasonable parties can differ. /W/’ chuck The selection of Dilemmas,provides an example: after all there are many such A A Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of .—t>n Vi o!-c h family -fs*tds) which are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not worthy of State attention. There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be satisfied at all. For many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" for instance, turn out when properly formalised to consist not just of a single game but of a sequence of such games, to be more adequately represented by what is called a supergame. But in many such sequential Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming separated players with purely egoistic interests/^ For what sequential games permit that isolated games exclude, is that players' actions may be dependent upon past performance of other players. This dependence effectively removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from past social interaction. In such supergames then, no intervention is required. �7 Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by "intervention", e.g. by allowing the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that they can really cooperate. Equally important, and equally independent of the State, is the matter of breaking down the adversary, or game, situation so the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to cooperate J'1 Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has a good record of adhering, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. A Nor is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal strategies : a range of other inducements and incentives they be required in recalcitrant cases), and is known (should is used even by the State, e.g. But at no stage is the State gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc. required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they are not already catered for. And in fact communal and cooperative organisation did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in the case of the Commons. In sum, here also replacement works. There are no important Dilemma situations, it seems, where the State is essential. The State has been thought to be essential because of certain influential false dichotomies; for example, that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon, and "irrational"), that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets - which tend to deal abysmally with collective goods - is through State control.But it is quite evident that there are other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by cooperatives, clubs). Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve some Dilemma situations /J has very extensive effects, many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma^ situations, appear to be substantially outweighed by the costs involved. For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State to put in the balance. As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with ty showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more , new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as/ /A t * /<» the working differently with the State as a further player (since the State may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.). also to further arguments against the State. These points lead �9 to accept. (Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation). But institutional checks which operate only insofar as a ^system*^ acceptable to the powerholders is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration of those checked,^ are not really checks at all. £ gand preventing The problem of controlling the power of the State, 'ur IA the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its mandate, is only satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the first place. The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation. 8. THE FOURTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY. responsible for actions deliberately undertaken. A person is This premiss can be derived, if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent, Taking responsibility for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about what to do on each occasion oneself; not acting simply on direction from outside,A 4 determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision over to someone or something else. , It implies, that is, moral autonomy, Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility requires, freedom. For the autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is not subject to the will of another. another so directs. Even if it does what another directs, it is not because In being free, not of constraints (both physical and self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous being is morally free. A necessary feature of the State is authority over those in its territory (under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon them. Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and with freedom. An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State. 7 s In sum, being a person, as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on , ika. /J 18 personhiood implies^anarchism. V It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated "State", one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy. But such a "State", with no independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism, On the contrary, such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic organisation. �10 9. The replacement THE FIFTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE. argument enables construction of a model of a society functioning without the State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State is not necessary. But it can always be claimed - even if the claim can seldom or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable. The gap may be closed by appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various times and places anarchism has been tested and has worked. Examples of such Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have not been omitted. There are many examples of nonindustrialised societies which were, or are, 19 anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives, and there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic 20 arrangements within the State structure. 10. THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM AND ITS ORGANISATION. The arguments outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on. For example, spontaneous anarchism — according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrange­ ments will arise spontaneously, and will be ushered in during the revolution without any prior organisation — is a position which is not viable and could not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which durable supersession of the State depends. which these theoretical arguments. A The sort of anarchist society will certainly be organised, but the organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures (and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening of the centralised State), relying heavily on voluntary cooperation and direct democracy. The society which emerges will be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes pictured it. It will be based on smaller-scale decentralised communities, for otherwise such arrangements as community replacement of State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily. Communities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by representation and subject to a downward system of command. Within each community there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth and property, and no highly concentrated economic power. community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is communally owned or not owned at all. A �11 While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely, they offer no detailed blueprint. Accordingly what emerges is not a particular form of anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and pluralistic anarchism, such as was instituted in the Spanish collectives. 11. STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETY ; THE FOREST SUCCESSION MODEL OF REPLACEMENT BY AN ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURE. The main strategy, emerging from the First Way, is that of replacement : transition to a new anarchist social order proceeds by replacement or addption of the more satisfactory State organisations and structures by organisations and structures of a more anarchistic cast, and by removal or phasing out of remaining no longer necessary or unsatisfactory State arrangements. Replacement and supersession suggest a biological model, of such change and succession as occurs where one forest type succeeds another; and such a model is in turn very suggestive. To make the model more definite, and to give it some local colour, consider forest succession where a sub-tropical rainforest replaces a eucalypt forest, as analogous to the case where anarchism replaces a Statist society. There is certainly a marked change in structure, typically from a tall forest with a fairly open canopy to a more compact closed forest with more layers of vegetation, much more local diversity and a richer variety of life forms, especially floral forms. A forest is not merely a set of trees, but trees in structural arrangement and interdependence, not merely on one another but on other life forms such as pollinating insects, seed-carrying birds and animals, and so on; and the changes in structure include changes in microclimate, in soil moisture levels and humus and bacterial content. The change of forest type may be by evolution, by hastened or induced evolution, or by catastrophe (revolution) as when a eucalypt forest is clearfelled and artificially succeeded by planted rainforest. (Strictly, there is a spectrum of practices and replacement strategies between evolutionary and revolutionary, and various different revolutionary strategies; and the standard evolutionary-revolutionary contrast presents a false dichotomy.) Even reliance on predominantly evolutionary methods, which tend to be very slow by human time scales may require some (management) practices, else evolution towards rainforest will not begin or continue. For example, seeds for rainforest species may not be available if adjoining areas have been stripped of suitable seed trees, e.g. by clearing or eucalypt conversion, in which case it will be necessary to introduce seeds (of anarchist ideas, methods, arrangements, etc.). And rainforest evolution may not be able to �13 12. APPLYING THE FOREST SUCCESSION MODEL. How to apply the model is not difficult to see in broad outline, and many of the further details have been filled out by work, that can be described as indicating how allegiance can be shifted in practice from where we mostly are to alternative social 22. arrangements and life-styles built on self-management and mutual aid. The seeds of anarchism should be broadcast or planted, anarchist (nonStatist) arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts made to replace or vulnerable Statist arrangements.^ Some of the practices are familiar : 'anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist) cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc. Others are slightly less familiar: avoidance of State influence by arrangements beyond State reach such as costless (or alternative currency) interchanges of goods and services, action directed at removing decision-making from State departments, such as forest services, and into citizen hands, and ultimately, to decentralized local communities. In this sort of way worthwhile State arrangements can be replaced, and power can be progressively transferred from the State, and returned to the community and to people more directly involved. "V- ht) �FOOTNOTES 1. Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London, especially p. 139. 1973, Much else in this paper, e.g. the distinction between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin. 2. That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of generally beneficial state activity - there is only a (relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it can be replaced in one way or another. course uniquely determined. Replacement is not of Lines such replacements can take are indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature, consider especially, but not uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid. New York University Press, 1972, and also his Fields, Factories and Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and The Conquest of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913. 3. On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (edited S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York, 1970, p. 206 ff. ; also P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary . For recent discussion of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law court procedures (but for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone, 'Some reflections on arbitrating our way to anarchy', A Nomos / XIX^New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4. V 4. J- Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest case that can be made for the desirability of the State' Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9). (M. Taylor, To cover all arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants of' and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations, 'Prisoner's Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are X not merely e^gjistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such games are iterated. As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate, there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of the same logical form - those where people do not contribute to supply themselves with, or with "optimum" quantities of, a "collective good" (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain "optimum" quantities of, some already available "collective good" (e.g. commons, �2 unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness). That received arguments of all these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op. cit. and elsewhere. An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter of R. Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University Press, New York, 5. 1980. An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance of population size in the arguments for the State. But size is not decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided (or relocated) by organisation info The figures smaller communities. given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p. 5. 6. It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation, when the State is (as on many theories) the result or reflection of social cooperation. 7. This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, Theories, Self Management, and 'Social Environmental Problems' in Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. 8. As a result of G. Hardin's "Travesty of the Commons", historical evidence has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's "Commons" diverges from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, The Self- Managing Environment, Allison & BUfsby, London, 1979, chapter 10, but also Routley, op. cit., p. 285 and pp. 329-332. Similar points apply as regards many other Dilemma situations. 'In the. experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'. Abrams, op. cit., p. 308. 9. Cf. the discussion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93. �3 10. This important result is established in Taylor, op. cit., for a number of critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p. 32 but especially chapter 5. 11. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including cases where the State is one of the "adversaries". 12. Both the false dichotomies cited are commonplace, not to say rife, in modem economic and political theorising. Both are to be found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the firstJ^(with an attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition^/ op. cit., p. 250 ff. 13. For instance, a certain social escapism : one escapes one's social roles erf and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze. Or so it may appear : for in reality anyone who works, works long and often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity. cit., chapter 7. A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way o/icA 14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op. in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off regions. 15. The question is in effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man argument. 16. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II. Fourth edition (revised), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p. 129 and p. 127. The (overshoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State1, 'upon which' Marxists never had 'any well-considered view' (p. 129). 17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and Opposition 13 (1978), 199-217: see p. 209 and p.(^25jTP 18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. l/olff, In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York, 1970. No argument is however without assumptions, which are open to dispute. argument, for example^is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff. Wolff's i nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining �THE IRREFUTABILITY OF ANARCHISM 1. GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE. The State is like God: the anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of what is commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed. The parallel, drawn by Bakunin, has its weaknesses as well as its strengths. While the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe that there are no states: none are legitimate. on the contrary, there are all too many, though The important parallel is as to arguments. The agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed, and so adopts a "neutral" stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence­ Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not sit-ting position. only faulting the arguments for, but taking it for granted that there are arguments, or at least solid considerations, against. So it is with soundly , nene. based anarchism^ which can both faults arguments for the State^and (ncisi'je. X case against the State. A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again emphasised by Bakunin^- is that of State and Church.Clx This institutional comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised; for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly an organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually answerable to its police and military; how it is of the same category as A business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church used to, it has nominal support of most of its "subjects", though many of them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but as a necessary evil Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is unnecessary, so it will be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove that God exists. Since the State is unnecessary, as well as costly and typically at least evil in many of its practices and undesirable in other respects, it should be superseded. social arrangements.,^ And it can be succeeded, by alternative �2. THE FIRST WAY OF SHOWING THAT THE STATE IS NOT REQUIRED : THE REPLACEMENT ARGUMENT. The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State activity being dispensed with. The argument is not a straight substitution argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements. There is much the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, e.g. sponsorship of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a great deal of typical State activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, e.g. graft, corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land and other resources, and encouragement or protection of polluting or environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forest­ destructive pine planting and woodchip projects). The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial J$ind. This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism. The argumertf:, implicit in the works of the classical anarchists, goes like this:- The functions of the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions, and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the powerful groups the State tends to serve). But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required. For why should people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their collective interest? Such functions can be performed, and performed better, without the coercion which is the hallmark of of the State, and without the accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it "serves". The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case by case 2 form, considering each function in turn. In each case the function is carried out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary cooperation by the people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements. Consider, for example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services or building programs, or self managed welfare, housing or environment services, or community access communications (e.g. radio)^ most of which are presently either starved of infrastructure or hindered by the State. Such beneficial services would in general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally �3 held, and those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals and powerful agencies. Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private individuals. As for the second type of functions, those which are not in the collective interest, coercion will normally be required for the performance of those functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation. But those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective interest. In this way, while the good part of the State's operation is retained and improved upon, the bad part - especially the evils of brutality, corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus is detached. State services that are concerned with order, in the general sense, may be similarly removed or replaced. These services, which include reduction of violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services, security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it. do not. They Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by communities themselves without intervention by the State. Secondly, a great many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence of which the State is the main purveyor and which is often the outcome of ol 3 the State's propping up of gross inequities. A community which seriously limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes a// gross inequities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for many "welfare" services and the basis for a great many offences involving violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and many of those involving personal violence. Such a left-leaning anarchism is also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the State, such as those from the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth that is alleged to be achieved by State enforcement of redistribution. As all too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and police inequitable distributionThis then is the main classical argument for anarchism. The argument has however been challenged, both by historical �and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot act in their collective interest without coercion. 3. THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE LIKE. The main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are important cases where --------- (?) individuals will not agree“or cooperate to provide themselves with (or to maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as only the State can 4 furnish. In such "dilemma" situations each individual will hope to gain advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others' contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from others' restraint). The claim is that only the State with its backing of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed. (6J A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type, including Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the "Tragedy of the Commons" argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two players.Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have been separately imprisoned. A State representative makes the following offers separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while the accomplice gets 8 years. It so happens that if both prisoners remain silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence. if both confess they would each receive 4 years. But The "game" can be summarised in the following "payoff" matrix:- Prisoner 2 The game is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma:- It is in each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other does : strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' "dominant" strategy (and also in fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for example, remains silent, then 1 goes free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by confessing. But if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain an inferior outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously called "cooperating", by their both remaining silent. �5 4. FOILING THE PRISONERS' DILEMMA ARGUMENT. It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to show the necessity of the State - which is supposed to intervene, forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners "cooperate" to obtain an optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.Of course the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemma£is inessential, as is much else from the example. But some features of the prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate or really cooperate. Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests are opposed. The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly seriously limited.? A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference. It is claimed that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to cooperate, that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of the other (Abrams, p. 193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement' (Taylor, p. 5). Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is very often not so - and in a more cooperative social setting than the currently encouraged privatisation of life, the extent of cooperation and trust would o undoubtedly be much higher. The argument has to depend crucially then on substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings, e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people were that unreliable and deviousState arrangements involved in providing public goodsy such as taxation', would not succeed either). That such assumptions are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g., to bring out the first,suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g., they are friends or they are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical scepticism, involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the other security against default, and so on. The question of the character of human interests and preferences and the extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is fundamental to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities. A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count �is an independent parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings of others nor on the social context in which that human operates. While the individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural pressure on consumers to conform (through advertising, education, popular media), very many humans do not conform, and the extent of cultural pressure towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence. And^sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a small community (which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners' Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State. 5. WHY THE DILEMMA ARGUMENTS CANNOT SUCCEED.' What the Dilemma-based case for the State has to show - what never has been shown - is that there are outstanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also qaA'-fkc-l' oft damaging if unresolved,\but resolve^/by State intervention, and only so A A- jZAz-zv (optimally) resolved, and finally.that in the course of so resolving these Dilemma situations, worse situation than those that are resolved are not thereby induced. These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if they can be satisfied at all, in a way that is not question begging. For several of the conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is important, damaging, optional, worse) and involve considerations about which reasonable parties can differ. The selection of Dilemmas^provides an example^: after all there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of l/«o|on<c or family, feuds) which are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not worthy of State attention. There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be satisfied at all. For many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" for instance, turn out when properly formalised to consist not just of a single game but of a sequence of such games, to be more adequately represented by what is called a supergame. But in many such sequential Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming separated players with purely egoistic interests?^ For what sequential games permit that isolated games exclude, is that players' actions may be dependent upon past performance of other players. This dependence effectively removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from past social interaction. In such supergames then, no intervention is required. �7 Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by "intervention", e.g. by allowing the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that they can really cooperate. Equally important, and equally independent of the State, is the matter of breaking down the adversary, or game, situation so the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to cooperate. Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has a good record of adhering, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. A Nor is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal strategies : a range of other inducements and incentives they be required in recalcitrant cases), and is known (should is used even by the State, e.g. But at no stage is the State gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc. required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners’ Dilemmas are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they are not already catered for. And in fact communal and cooperative organisation did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in the case of the Commons. In sum, here also replacement works. There are no important Dilemma situations, it seems, where the State is essential. The State has been thought to be essential because of certain influential false dichotomies; for example, that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon, and "irrational"), that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets - which tend to deal abysmally with collective goods - is through State control.1- But it is quite evident that there are other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by cooperatives, clubs). Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve some Dilemma situations has very extensive effects', many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma1 situations, appear to be substantially outweighed by the costs involved. For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State to put in the balance. As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more /A of important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as with the working example, or differently with the State as a further player (since the State may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.). also to further arguments against the State. These points lead �8 6. THE SECOND WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM PROBLEM RECURRENCE^/ The solution by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more dangerous form the very problems introduction of the State was designed to solve, including new Dilemmas. Suppose, for instance, the secular State really were introduced in order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas - introduced as opposed to inherited from the religious State and the Church, and maintained to prop up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests - then the array of States generates new Prisoners' Dilemmas, which there is no Super-State to resolve by coercion. Suppose, as the myth has it, the State really were introduced in the interest of order and stability and to curb violence; then the arrays of States resulting more than negates these advantages, with instability, disorder and violence on a grander scale than before the 14 emergence of modem secular States. 7. THE THIRD WAY : THE OVERSHOOT ARGUMENT,FROM THE INADEQUACY OF INSTITUTIONAL CONTROLS ON STATE POWER. Having ceded a monopoly on power to the State, in order to resolve some dilemmas, some of them arising from an oontrols or balances the power of the inequitable distribution of power, what State? A Super-State. And its power? There is a vicious infinite regress if the reply to the question "What controls the controller?" is "a further controller".^ The only promising way of avoiding this problem - other routes lead (even more) directly to totalitarianism - is by having the first of these controllers, the State, answer back to those in whose interests it is allegedly established, those of the society or group of communities it controls. implies democratic methods of some kind. Others go further: This 'democracy Lis] the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which , 16 we can try to protect ourselves against the misuse of political power . In this event, control has mostly failed. Democracy is extremely attenuated, even in those states that claim to practice it. The exercise of power in modern "democratic" states - much increased power reaching deep into peoples' lives, power which has passed to certain political elites and is directed at the attainment of such objectives as economic growth and material "progress" - is often channelled through 'non-elected authority' and 'is not democratic in the traditional meaning of the term'.In any case, indirect democratic and other institutional checks are tenuous in as much as they depend ultimately on the toleration of those who have direct control of the forces of the State. Experience seems to show that such toleration will only be shown so long as democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are broadly in accord with what those who control the coercive power are prepared �9 to accept. (Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation). But institutional /I checks which operate only insofar as a "system" acceptable to the powerholders is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration of those checked, are not really checks at all. n. ? ’■ The problem of controlling the power of the State, u/surping and preventing the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its mandate, is only satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the first place. The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation. 8. THE FOURTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY. responsible for actions deliberately undertaken. A person is This premiss can be derived, if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent. Taking responsibility for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about what to do on each occasion oneself; not acting simply on direction from outside,£»/ A determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision over to someone or something else. It implies, that is, moral autonomy. Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility requires, freedom. For the autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is not subject to the will of another. another so directs. Even if it does what another directs, it is not because In being free, not of constraints (both physical and self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous being is morally free. A necessary feature of the State is authority over those in its territory (under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon them. Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and with freedom. An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State. In sum, being a person, as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on ike. a >18 personhood implies anarchism. It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated "State", one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy. But such a "State", with no independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism. On the contrary, such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic organisation. �10 9. THE FIFTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE. The replacement argument enables construction of a model of a society functioning without the State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State is not necessary. But it can always be claimed - even if the claim can seldom or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable. The gap may be closed by appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various times and places anarchism has been tested and has worked. Examples of such Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have not been omitted. There are many examples of nonindustrialised societies which were, or are, 19 anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives, and there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic 20 arrangements within the State structure. 10. THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM AND ITS ORGANISATION. The arguments outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on. For example, spontaneous anarchism — according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrange­ ments will arise spontaneously, and will be ushered in during the revolution without any prior organisation — is a position which is not viable and could not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which durable supersession of the State depends. The sort of anarchist society deJintafe. which these theoretical arguments will certainly be organised, but the A organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures (and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening of the centralised State), relying heavily on voluntary cooperation and direct democracy. The society which emerges will be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes pictured it. It will be based on smaller-scale decentralised communities, for otherwise such arrangements as community replacement of State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily. Communities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by representation and subject to a downward system of command. Within each community there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth Zand property, and no highly concentrated economic power. A community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is communally owned or not owned at all. �FOOTNOTES 1. Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973, especially p. 139. Much else in this paper, e.g. the distinction between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin. 2. That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of generally beneficial state activity - there is only a (relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it can be replaced in one way or another. course uniquely determined. Replacement is not of Lines such replacements can take are indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature, consider especially, but not uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid. New York University Press, 1972, and also his Fields, Factories and Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and The Conquest of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913. 3. On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (edited S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York, 1970, p. 206 ff.; also P.O. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary. For recent discussion of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law court procedures (but for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone, 'Some reflections on arbitrating our way to anarchy', Anarchism(<y>»~7 Nomos, XIX), New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4. 4. Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest case that can be made for the desirability of the State' Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9). (M. Taylor, To cover all arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants of' and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations, 'Prisoner's Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are not merely eristic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such games are iterated. As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate, there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of che same logical form - those where people do not contribute to supply themselves with, or with "optimum" quantities of, a "collective good" (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain "optimum quantities of, some already available "collective good" (e.g. commons, �2 unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness). That received arguments of all these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op. cit. and elsewhere. An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter of R. Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University Press, New York, 5. 1980. An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance of population size in the arguments for the State. But size is not decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided (or relocated) by organisation into smaller communities. The figures given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p. 5. 6. It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation, when the State is (as on many theories) the result or reflection of social cooperation. 7. This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, 'Social Theories, Self Management, and Environmental Problems' in Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. 8. As a result of G. Hardin's "Travesty of the Commons", historical evidence has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's "Commons" diverges from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, The Self- Managing Environment, Allison & Ba<sby, London, 1979, chapter 10, <A./ but also Routley, op. cit., p. 285 and pp. 329-332. Similar points apply as regards many other Dilemma situations. ( ' 'In the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game . > approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'. Abrams, op. cit., p. 308. ). Cf. the discussion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93. �10. This important result is established in Taylor, op. cit., for a number of critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p. 32 but especially chapter 5. 11. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including cases where the State is one of the "adversaries". 12. Both the false dichotomies cited are commonplace, not to say rife, in modern economic and political theorising. Both are to be found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first (with an attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition) in Taylor. For a further criticism of such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit.,pp.250 13. For instance, a certain social escapism : one escapes one's social roles and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze. Or so it may appear : for in reality anyone who works, works long and often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity. 14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op. cit., chapter 7. A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining regions. X 15. The question is in effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man argument. 16. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II. Fourth edition (revised), Routledge and Regan Paul, London, 1962, p. 129 and p. 127. The (overshoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State1, Marxists never had 'any well-considered view' 'upon which' (p. 129). 17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and Opposition 13 ( 1978), 199-2 17: see p. 209 and p. 211 . 18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York, 1970. No argument is however without assumptions, which are open to dispute. Wolff's argument, for example, is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff. While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely, no detailed blueprint. they offer Accordingly what emerges is not a particular form of anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and pluralistic anarchism, such as was instituted in the Spanish collectives. �19. Documented in The Anarchist Collectives (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions, New York, 1974. 20. As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of self-management and alternative lifestyles are many and significant. And these alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of evidence and experience to support operates. their superiority over the present way society The obstacles to self-management and alternative life styles are powerful vested interests and institutional resistance to change', Changing the Cogs, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979, p- 6. 21. As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley, 284 ff. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document r at b'l 2051THE IRREFUTABILITY of anarchism 1. GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE. The State is like God: the anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of what is commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed. The parallel, drawn by Bakunin, has its weaknesses as well as its strengths. While the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe that there are no states: none are legitimate. on the contrary, there are all too many, though The important parallel is as to arguments. The agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed, and so adopts a "neutral" stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence­ sitting position. Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not only faulting the arguments for, but taking it for granted that there are arguments, or at least solid considerations, against. So it is with soundly based anarchism, which can both fault arguments for the State and produce a case against the State. A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again emphasised by Bakunin^ is that of State and Church. This institutional comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised; for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly an organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually answerable to its police and military; how it is of the same category as business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church used to, it has nominal support of most of its "subjects", though many of them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but as a necessary evil. Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is unnecessary, so it will be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove that God exists. Since the State is unnecessary, as well as costly and typically at least evil in many of its practices and undesirable in other respects, it should be superseded. social arrangements. And it can be succeeded, by alternative 2 2. THE FIRST WAY OF SHOWING THAT THE STATE IS NOT REQUIRED : THE REPLACEMENT ARGUMENT. The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State activity being dispensed with. The argument is not a straight substitution argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements. There is much the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, e.g. sponsorship of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a great deal of typical State activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, e.g. graft, corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land and other resources, and encouragement or protection of polluting or environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forest­ destructive pine planting and woodchip projects). The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind. This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism. The argument, implicit in the works of the classical anarchists, goes like this:- The functions of the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions, and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the powerful groups the State tends to serve). But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required. For why should people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their collective interest? Such functions can be performed, and performed better, without the coercion which is the hallmark of of the State, and without the accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it "serves". The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case by case 2 form, considering each function in turn. In each case the function is carried out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary cooperation by the people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements. Consider, for example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services or building programs, or self managed welfare, housing or environment services, or community access communications (e.g. radio)^ most of which are presently either starved of infrastructure or hindered by the State. Such beneficial services would in general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally held, and those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals and powerful agencies. Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private individuals. As for the second type of functions, those which are not in the collective interest, coercion will normally be required for the performance of those functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation. But those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective interest. In this way, while the good part of the State's operation is retained and improved upon, the bad part - especially the evils of brutality, corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus is detached. State services that are concerned with order, in the general sense, may be similarly removed or replaced. These services, which include reduction of violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services, security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it. do not. They Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by communities themselves without intervention by the State. Secondly, a great many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence of which the State is the main purveyor .and which is often the outcome of WAvditai 3 the State's propping up of gross . A community which seriously A limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes «// gross inequities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for many "welfare" services and the basis for a great many offences involving violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and many of those involving personal violence. Such a left-leaning anarchism is also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the State, such as those from the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth that is alleged to be achieved by State enforcement of redistribution. As all too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and police inequitable distribution. 5? This then is the main classical argument for anarchism. The argument has however been challenged, both by historical and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot act in their collective interest without coercion. I 3. THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE LIKE. The main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are important cases where individuals will not agree or cooperate to provide themselves with (or to maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as only the State can furnish.In such "dilemma" situations each individual will hope to gain advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others’ contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from others' restraint). The claim is that only the State with its backing of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed. A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type, Including Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the "Tragedy of the Commons" argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two players.Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have been separately imprisoned. A State representative makes the following offers separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while the accomplice gets 8 years. It so happens that if both prisoners remain silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence. if both confess they would each receive 4 years. But The "game" can be summarised in the following "payoff" matrix:Prisoner 1 S(ilence) C(onfess) S -1, -1 -8, 0 C 0, -8 S t rategies -4, -4 The game is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma:- It is in each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other does : strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' "dominant" strategy (and also in fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for example, remains silent, then 1 goes free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by confessing. But if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain an inferior outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously called "cooperating", by their both remaining silent. 5 4. FOILING THE PRISONERS' DILEMMA ARGUMENT. It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to show the necessity of the State - which is supposed to intervene, forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners "cooperate" to obtain an optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.Of course the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemmas is inessential, as is much else from the example. But some features of the prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate or really cooperate. Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests are opposed. The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly seriously limited.? A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference. It is claimed that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to cooperate, that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of the other (Abrams, p. 193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement' (Taylor, p. 5). Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is very often not so - and in a more cooperative social setting than the currently encouraged privatisation of life, the extent of cooperation and trust would o undoubtedly be much higher. The argument has to depend crucially then on substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings, e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people were that unreliable and devious,tate arrangements involved in providing public goods/-oueh as—taxatioa-y would not succeed either) . That such assumptions are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g., to bring out the first.suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g., they are friends or they are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical scepticism, involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the other security against default, and so on. The question of the character of human interests and preferences and the extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is fundamental to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities. A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count is an independent parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings of others nor on the social context in which that human operates. While the individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural pressure on consumers to conform (through advertising, education, popular media), very many humans do not conform, and the extent of cultural pressure towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence, And, sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a small community A (which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners' Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State. 5. WHY THE DILEMMA ARGUMENTS CANNOT SUCCEED. What the Dilemma-based case for the State has to show - what never has been shown - is that there are outs tanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also o’wt foot damaging if unresolved, lint ypsoHved by State intervention, and only so g- fa (optimally) resolved, ami Finallythat in the course of so resolving these Dilemma situations, worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced. These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if they can be satisfied at all, in a way that is not question begging. For several of the conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is important, damaging, optional, worse) and involve considerations about whichf reasonable parties can differ. /W/’ chuck The selection of Dilemmas,provides an example: after all there are many such A A Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of .—t>n Vi o!-c h family -fs*tds) which are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not worthy of State attention. There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be satisfied at all. For many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" for instance, turn out when properly formalised to consist not just of a single game but of a sequence of such games, to be more adequately represented by what is called a supergame. But in many such sequential Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming separated players with purely egoistic interests/^ For what sequential games permit that isolated games exclude, is that players' actions may be dependent upon past performance of other players. This dependence effectively removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from past social interaction. In such supergames then, no intervention is required. 7 Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by "intervention", e.g. by allowing the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that they can really cooperate. Equally important, and equally independent of the State, is the matter of breaking down the adversary, or game, situation so the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to cooperate J'1 Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has a good record of adhering, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. A Nor is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal strategies : a range of other inducements and incentives they be required in recalcitrant cases), and is known (should is used even by the State, e.g. But at no stage is the State gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc. required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they are not already catered for. And in fact communal and cooperative organisation did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in the case of the Commons. In sum, here also replacement works. There are no important Dilemma situations, it seems, where the State is essential. The State has been thought to be essential because of certain influential false dichotomies; for example, that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon, and "irrational"), that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets - which tend to deal abysmally with collective goods - is through State control.But it is quite evident that there are other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by cooperatives, clubs). Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve some Dilemma situations /J has very extensive effects, many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma^ situations, appear to be substantially outweighed by the costs involved. For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State to put in the balance. As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with ty showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more , new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as/ /A t * /<» the working differently with the State as a further player (since the State may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.). also to further arguments against the State. These points lead 9 to accept. (Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation). But institutional checks which operate only insofar as a ^system*^ acceptable to the powerholders is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration of those checked,^ are not really checks at all. £ gand preventing The problem of controlling the power of the State, 'ur IA the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its mandate, is only satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the first place. The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation. 8. THE FOURTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY. responsible for actions deliberately undertaken. A person is This premiss can be derived, if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent, Taking responsibility for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about what to do on each occasion oneself; not acting simply on direction from outside,A 4 determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision over to someone or something else. , It implies, that is, moral autonomy, Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility requires, freedom. For the autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is not subject to the will of another. another so directs. Even if it does what another directs, it is not because In being free, not of constraints (both physical and self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous being is morally free. A necessary feature of the State is authority over those in its territory (under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon them. Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and with freedom. An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State. 7 s In sum, being a person, as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on , ika. /J 18 personhiood implies^anarchism. V It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated "State", one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy. But such a "State", with no independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism, On the contrary, such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic organisation. 10 9. The replacement THE FIFTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE. argument enables construction of a model of a society functioning without the State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State is not necessary. But it can always be claimed - even if the claim can seldom or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable. The gap may be closed by appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various times and places anarchism has been tested and has worked. Examples of such Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have not been omitted. There are many examples of nonindustrialised societies which were, or are, 19 anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives, and there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic 20 arrangements within the State structure. 10. THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM AND ITS ORGANISATION. The arguments outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on. For example, spontaneous anarchism — according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrange­ ments will arise spontaneously, and will be ushered in during the revolution without any prior organisation — is a position which is not viable and could not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which durable supersession of the State depends. which these theoretical arguments. A The sort of anarchist society will certainly be organised, but the organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures (and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening of the centralised State), relying heavily on voluntary cooperation and direct democracy. The society which emerges will be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes pictured it. It will be based on smaller-scale decentralised communities, for otherwise such arrangements as community replacement of State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily. Communities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by representation and subject to a downward system of command. Within each community there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth and property, and no highly concentrated economic power. community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is communally owned or not owned at all. A 11 While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely, they offer no detailed blueprint. Accordingly what emerges is not a particular form of anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and pluralistic anarchism, such as was instituted in the Spanish collectives. 11. STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETY ; THE FOREST SUCCESSION MODEL OF REPLACEMENT BY AN ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURE. The main strategy, emerging from the First Way, is that of replacement : transition to a new anarchist social order proceeds by replacement or addption of the more satisfactory State organisations and structures by organisations and structures of a more anarchistic cast, and by removal or phasing out of remaining no longer necessary or unsatisfactory State arrangements. Replacement and supersession suggest a biological model, of such change and succession as occurs where one forest type succeeds another; and such a model is in turn very suggestive. To make the model more definite, and to give it some local colour, consider forest succession where a sub-tropical rainforest replaces a eucalypt forest, as analogous to the case where anarchism replaces a Statist society. There is certainly a marked change in structure, typically from a tall forest with a fairly open canopy to a more compact closed forest with more layers of vegetation, much more local diversity and a richer variety of life forms, especially floral forms. A forest is not merely a set of trees, but trees in structural arrangement and interdependence, not merely on one another but on other life forms such as pollinating insects, seed-carrying birds and animals, and so on; and the changes in structure include changes in microclimate, in soil moisture levels and humus and bacterial content. The change of forest type may be by evolution, by hastened or induced evolution, or by catastrophe (revolution) as when a eucalypt forest is clearfelled and artificially succeeded by planted rainforest. (Strictly, there is a spectrum of practices and replacement strategies between evolutionary and revolutionary, and various different revolutionary strategies; and the standard evolutionary-revolutionary contrast presents a false dichotomy.) Even reliance on predominantly evolutionary methods, which tend to be very slow by human time scales may require some (management) practices, else evolution towards rainforest will not begin or continue. For example, seeds for rainforest species may not be available if adjoining areas have been stripped of suitable seed trees, e.g. by clearing or eucalypt conversion, in which case it will be necessary to introduce seeds (of anarchist ideas, methods, arrangements, etc.). And rainforest evolution may not be able to 13 12. APPLYING THE FOREST SUCCESSION MODEL. How to apply the model is not difficult to see in broad outline, and many of the further details have been filled out by work, that can be described as indicating how allegiance can be shifted in practice from where we mostly are to alternative social 22. arrangements and life-styles built on self-management and mutual aid. The seeds of anarchism should be broadcast or planted, anarchist (nonStatist) arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts made to replace or vulnerable Statist arrangements.^ Some of the practices are familiar : 'anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist) cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc. Others are slightly less familiar: avoidance of State influence by arrangements beyond State reach such as costless (or alternative currency) interchanges of goods and services, action directed at removing decision-making from State departments, such as forest services, and into citizen hands, and ultimately, to decentralized local communities. In this sort of way worthwhile State arrangements can be replaced, and power can be progressively transferred from the State, and returned to the community and to people more directly involved. "V- ht) FOOTNOTES 1. Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London, especially p. 139. 1973, Much else in this paper, e.g. the distinction between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin. 2. That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of generally beneficial state activity - there is only a (relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it can be replaced in one way or another. course uniquely determined. Replacement is not of Lines such replacements can take are indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature, consider especially, but not uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid. New York University Press, 1972, and also his Fields, Factories and Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and The Conquest of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913. 3. On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (edited S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York, 1970, p. 206 ff. ; also P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary . For recent discussion of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law court procedures (but for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone, 'Some reflections on arbitrating our way to anarchy', A Nomos / XIX^New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4. V 4. J- Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest case that can be made for the desirability of the State' Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9). (M. Taylor, To cover all arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants of' and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations, 'Prisoner's Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are X not merely e^gjistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such games are iterated. As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate, there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of the same logical form - those where people do not contribute to supply themselves with, or with "optimum" quantities of, a "collective good" (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain "optimum" quantities of, some already available "collective good" (e.g. commons, 2 unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness). That received arguments of all these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op. cit. and elsewhere. An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter of R. Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University Press, New York, 5. 1980. An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance of population size in the arguments for the State. But size is not decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided (or relocated) by organisation info The figures smaller communities. given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p. 5. 6. It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation, when the State is (as on many theories) the result or reflection of social cooperation. 7. This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, Theories, Self Management, and 'Social Environmental Problems' in Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. 8. As a result of G. Hardin's "Travesty of the Commons", historical evidence has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's "Commons" diverges from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, The Self- Managing Environment, Allison & BUfsby, London, 1979, chapter 10, but also Routley, op. cit., p. 285 and pp. 329-332. Similar points apply as regards many other Dilemma situations. 'In the. experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'. Abrams, op. cit., p. 308. 9. Cf. the discussion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93. 3 10. This important result is established in Taylor, op. cit., for a number of critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p. 32 but especially chapter 5. 11. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including cases where the State is one of the "adversaries". 12. Both the false dichotomies cited are commonplace, not to say rife, in modem economic and political theorising. Both are to be found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the firstJ^(with an attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition^/ op. cit., p. 250 ff. 13. For instance, a certain social escapism : one escapes one's social roles erf and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze. Or so it may appear : for in reality anyone who works, works long and often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity. cit., chapter 7. A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way o/icA 14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op. in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off regions. 15. The question is in effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man argument. 16. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II. Fourth edition (revised), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p. 129 and p. 127. The (overshoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State1, 'upon which' Marxists never had 'any well-considered view' (p. 129). 17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and Opposition 13 (1978), 199-217: see p. 209 and p.(^25jTP 18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. l/olff, In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York, 1970. No argument is however without assumptions, which are open to dispute. argument, for example^is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff. Wolff's i nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining THE IRREFUTABILITY OF ANARCHISM 1. GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE. The State is like God: the anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of what is commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed. The parallel, drawn by Bakunin, has its weaknesses as well as its strengths. While the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe that there are no states: none are legitimate. on the contrary, there are all too many, though The important parallel is as to arguments. The agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed, and so adopts a "neutral" stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence­ Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not sit-ting position. only faulting the arguments for, but taking it for granted that there are arguments, or at least solid considerations, against. So it is with soundly , nene. based anarchism^ which can both faults arguments for the State^and (ncisi'je. X case against the State. A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again emphasised by Bakunin^- is that of State and Church.Clx This institutional comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised; for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly an organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually answerable to its police and military; how it is of the same category as A business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church used to, it has nominal support of most of its "subjects", though many of them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but as a necessary evil Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is unnecessary, so it will be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove that God exists. Since the State is unnecessary, as well as costly and typically at least evil in many of its practices and undesirable in other respects, it should be superseded. social arrangements.,^ And it can be succeeded, by alternative 2. THE FIRST WAY OF SHOWING THAT THE STATE IS NOT REQUIRED : THE REPLACEMENT ARGUMENT. The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State activity being dispensed with. The argument is not a straight substitution argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements. There is much the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, e.g. sponsorship of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a great deal of typical State activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, e.g. graft, corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land and other resources, and encouragement or protection of polluting or environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forest­ destructive pine planting and woodchip projects). The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial J$ind. This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism. The argumertf:, implicit in the works of the classical anarchists, goes like this:- The functions of the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions, and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the powerful groups the State tends to serve). But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required. For why should people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their collective interest? Such functions can be performed, and performed better, without the coercion which is the hallmark of of the State, and without the accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it "serves". The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case by case 2 form, considering each function in turn. In each case the function is carried out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary cooperation by the people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements. Consider, for example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services or building programs, or self managed welfare, housing or environment services, or community access communications (e.g. radio)^ most of which are presently either starved of infrastructure or hindered by the State. Such beneficial services would in general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally 3 held, and those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals and powerful agencies. Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private individuals. As for the second type of functions, those which are not in the collective interest, coercion will normally be required for the performance of those functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation. But those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective interest. In this way, while the good part of the State's operation is retained and improved upon, the bad part - especially the evils of brutality, corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus is detached. State services that are concerned with order, in the general sense, may be similarly removed or replaced. These services, which include reduction of violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services, security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it. do not. They Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by communities themselves without intervention by the State. Secondly, a great many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence of which the State is the main purveyor and which is often the outcome of ol 3 the State's propping up of gross inequities. A community which seriously limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes a// gross inequities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for many "welfare" services and the basis for a great many offences involving violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and many of those involving personal violence. Such a left-leaning anarchism is also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the State, such as those from the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth that is alleged to be achieved by State enforcement of redistribution. As all too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and police inequitable distributionThis then is the main classical argument for anarchism. The argument has however been challenged, both by historical and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot act in their collective interest without coercion. 3. THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE LIKE. The main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are important cases where --------- (?) individuals will not agree“or cooperate to provide themselves with (or to maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as only the State can 4 furnish. In such "dilemma" situations each individual will hope to gain advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others' contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from others' restraint). The claim is that only the State with its backing of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed. (6J A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type, including Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the "Tragedy of the Commons" argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two players.Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have been separately imprisoned. A State representative makes the following offers separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while the accomplice gets 8 years. It so happens that if both prisoners remain silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence. if both confess they would each receive 4 years. But The "game" can be summarised in the following "payoff" matrix:- Prisoner 2 The game is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma:- It is in each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other does : strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' "dominant" strategy (and also in fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for example, remains silent, then 1 goes free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by confessing. But if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain an inferior outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously called "cooperating", by their both remaining silent. 5 4. FOILING THE PRISONERS' DILEMMA ARGUMENT. It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to show the necessity of the State - which is supposed to intervene, forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners "cooperate" to obtain an optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.Of course the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemma£is inessential, as is much else from the example. But some features of the prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate or really cooperate. Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests are opposed. The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly seriously limited.? A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference. It is claimed that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to cooperate, that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of the other (Abrams, p. 193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement' (Taylor, p. 5). Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is very often not so - and in a more cooperative social setting than the currently encouraged privatisation of life, the extent of cooperation and trust would o undoubtedly be much higher. The argument has to depend crucially then on substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings, e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people were that unreliable and deviousState arrangements involved in providing public goodsy such as taxation', would not succeed either). That such assumptions are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g., to bring out the first,suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g., they are friends or they are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical scepticism, involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the other security against default, and so on. The question of the character of human interests and preferences and the extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is fundamental to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities. A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count is an independent parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings of others nor on the social context in which that human operates. While the individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural pressure on consumers to conform (through advertising, education, popular media), very many humans do not conform, and the extent of cultural pressure towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence. And^sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a small community (which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners' Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State. 5. WHY THE DILEMMA ARGUMENTS CANNOT SUCCEED.' What the Dilemma-based case for the State has to show - what never has been shown - is that there are outstanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also qaA'-fkc-l' oft damaging if unresolved,\but resolve^/by State intervention, and only so A A- jZAz-zv (optimally) resolved, and finally.that in the course of so resolving these Dilemma situations, worse situation than those that are resolved are not thereby induced. These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if they can be satisfied at all, in a way that is not question begging. For several of the conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is important, damaging, optional, worse) and involve considerations about which reasonable parties can differ. The selection of Dilemmas^provides an example^: after all there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of l/«o|on<c or family, feuds) which are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not worthy of State attention. There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be satisfied at all. For many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" for instance, turn out when properly formalised to consist not just of a single game but of a sequence of such games, to be more adequately represented by what is called a supergame. But in many such sequential Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming separated players with purely egoistic interests?^ For what sequential games permit that isolated games exclude, is that players' actions may be dependent upon past performance of other players. This dependence effectively removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from past social interaction. In such supergames then, no intervention is required. 7 Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by "intervention", e.g. by allowing the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that they can really cooperate. Equally important, and equally independent of the State, is the matter of breaking down the adversary, or game, situation so the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to cooperate. Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has a good record of adhering, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. A Nor is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal strategies : a range of other inducements and incentives they be required in recalcitrant cases), and is known (should is used even by the State, e.g. But at no stage is the State gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc. required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners’ Dilemmas are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they are not already catered for. And in fact communal and cooperative organisation did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in the case of the Commons. In sum, here also replacement works. There are no important Dilemma situations, it seems, where the State is essential. The State has been thought to be essential because of certain influential false dichotomies; for example, that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon, and "irrational"), that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets - which tend to deal abysmally with collective goods - is through State control.1- But it is quite evident that there are other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by cooperatives, clubs). Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve some Dilemma situations has very extensive effects', many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma1 situations, appear to be substantially outweighed by the costs involved. For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State to put in the balance. As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more /A of important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as with the working example, or differently with the State as a further player (since the State may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.). also to further arguments against the State. These points lead 8 6. THE SECOND WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM PROBLEM RECURRENCE^/ The solution by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more dangerous form the very problems introduction of the State was designed to solve, including new Dilemmas. Suppose, for instance, the secular State really were introduced in order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas - introduced as opposed to inherited from the religious State and the Church, and maintained to prop up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests - then the array of States generates new Prisoners' Dilemmas, which there is no Super-State to resolve by coercion. Suppose, as the myth has it, the State really were introduced in the interest of order and stability and to curb violence; then the arrays of States resulting more than negates these advantages, with instability, disorder and violence on a grander scale than before the 14 emergence of modem secular States. 7. THE THIRD WAY : THE OVERSHOOT ARGUMENT,FROM THE INADEQUACY OF INSTITUTIONAL CONTROLS ON STATE POWER. Having ceded a monopoly on power to the State, in order to resolve some dilemmas, some of them arising from an oontrols or balances the power of the inequitable distribution of power, what State? A Super-State. And its power? There is a vicious infinite regress if the reply to the question "What controls the controller?" is "a further controller".^ The only promising way of avoiding this problem - other routes lead (even more) directly to totalitarianism - is by having the first of these controllers, the State, answer back to those in whose interests it is allegedly established, those of the society or group of communities it controls. implies democratic methods of some kind. Others go further: This 'democracy Lis] the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which , 16 we can try to protect ourselves against the misuse of political power . In this event, control has mostly failed. Democracy is extremely attenuated, even in those states that claim to practice it. The exercise of power in modern "democratic" states - much increased power reaching deep into peoples' lives, power which has passed to certain political elites and is directed at the attainment of such objectives as economic growth and material "progress" - is often channelled through 'non-elected authority' and 'is not democratic in the traditional meaning of the term'.In any case, indirect democratic and other institutional checks are tenuous in as much as they depend ultimately on the toleration of those who have direct control of the forces of the State. Experience seems to show that such toleration will only be shown so long as democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are broadly in accord with what those who control the coercive power are prepared 9 to accept. (Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation). But institutional /I checks which operate only insofar as a "system" acceptable to the powerholders is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration of those checked, are not really checks at all. n. ? ’■ The problem of controlling the power of the State, u/surping and preventing the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its mandate, is only satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the first place. The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation. 8. THE FOURTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY. responsible for actions deliberately undertaken. A person is This premiss can be derived, if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent. Taking responsibility for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about what to do on each occasion oneself; not acting simply on direction from outside,£»/ A determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision over to someone or something else. It implies, that is, moral autonomy. Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility requires, freedom. For the autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is not subject to the will of another. another so directs. Even if it does what another directs, it is not because In being free, not of constraints (both physical and self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous being is morally free. A necessary feature of the State is authority over those in its territory (under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon them. Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and with freedom. An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State. In sum, being a person, as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on ike. a >18 personhood implies anarchism. It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated "State", one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy. But such a "State", with no independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism. On the contrary, such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic organisation. 10 9. THE FIFTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE. The replacement argument enables construction of a model of a society functioning without the State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State is not necessary. But it can always be claimed - even if the claim can seldom or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable. The gap may be closed by appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various times and places anarchism has been tested and has worked. Examples of such Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have not been omitted. There are many examples of nonindustrialised societies which were, or are, 19 anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives, and there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic 20 arrangements within the State structure. 10. THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM AND ITS ORGANISATION. The arguments outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on. For example, spontaneous anarchism — according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrange­ ments will arise spontaneously, and will be ushered in during the revolution without any prior organisation — is a position which is not viable and could not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which durable supersession of the State depends. The sort of anarchist society deJintafe. which these theoretical arguments will certainly be organised, but the A organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures (and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening of the centralised State), relying heavily on voluntary cooperation and direct democracy. The society which emerges will be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes pictured it. It will be based on smaller-scale decentralised communities, for otherwise such arrangements as community replacement of State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily. Communities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by representation and subject to a downward system of command. Within each community there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth Zand property, and no highly concentrated economic power. A community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is communally owned or not owned at all. FOOTNOTES 1. Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973, especially p. 139. Much else in this paper, e.g. the distinction between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin. 2. That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of generally beneficial state activity - there is only a (relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it can be replaced in one way or another. course uniquely determined. Replacement is not of Lines such replacements can take are indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature, consider especially, but not uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid. New York University Press, 1972, and also his Fields, Factories and Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and The Conquest of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913. 3. On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (edited S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York, 1970, p. 206 ff.; also P.O. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary. For recent discussion of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law court procedures (but for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone, 'Some reflections on arbitrating our way to anarchy', Anarchism(<y>»~7 Nomos, XIX), New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4. 4. Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest case that can be made for the desirability of the State' Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9). (M. Taylor, To cover all arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants of' and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations, 'Prisoner's Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are not merely eristic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such games are iterated. As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate, there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of che same logical form - those where people do not contribute to supply themselves with, or with "optimum" quantities of, a "collective good" (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain "optimum quantities of, some already available "collective good" (e.g. commons, 2 unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness). That received arguments of all these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op. cit. and elsewhere. An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter of R. Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University Press, New York, 5. 1980. An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance of population size in the arguments for the State. But size is not decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided (or relocated) by organisation into smaller communities. The figures given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p. 5. 6. It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation, when the State is (as on many theories) the result or reflection of social cooperation. 7. This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, 'Social Theories, Self Management, and Environmental Problems' in Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. 8. As a result of G. Hardin's "Travesty of the Commons", historical evidence has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's "Commons" diverges from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, The Self- Managing Environment, Allison & Ba<sby, London, 1979, chapter 10, <A./ but also Routley, op. cit., p. 285 and pp. 329-332. Similar points apply as regards many other Dilemma situations. ( ' 'In the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game . > approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'. Abrams, op. cit., p. 308. ). Cf. the discussion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93. 10. This important result is established in Taylor, op. cit., for a number of critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p. 32 but especially chapter 5. 11. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including cases where the State is one of the "adversaries". 12. Both the false dichotomies cited are commonplace, not to say rife, in modern economic and political theorising. Both are to be found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first (with an attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition) in Taylor. For a further criticism of such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit.,pp.250 13. For instance, a certain social escapism : one escapes one's social roles and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze. Or so it may appear : for in reality anyone who works, works long and often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity. 14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op. cit., chapter 7. A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining regions. X 15. The question is in effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man argument. 16. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II. Fourth edition (revised), Routledge and Regan Paul, London, 1962, p. 129 and p. 127. The (overshoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State1, Marxists never had 'any well-considered view' 'upon which' (p. 129). 17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and Opposition 13 ( 1978), 199-2 17: see p. 209 and p. 211 . 18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York, 1970. No argument is however without assumptions, which are open to dispute. Wolff's argument, for example, is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff. While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely, no detailed blueprint. they offer Accordingly what emerges is not a particular form of anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and pluralistic anarchism, such as was instituted in the Spanish collectives. 19. Documented in The Anarchist Collectives (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions, New York, 1974. 20. As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of self-management and alternative lifestyles are many and significant. And these alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of evidence and experience to support operates. their superiority over the present way society The obstacles to self-management and alternative life styles are powerful vested interests and institutional resistance to change', Changing the Cogs, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979, p- 6. 21. As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley, 284 ff.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 14, item 2051: Irrefutability of anarchism Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Val+Plumwood&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Plumwood</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Description An account of the resource Two copies of paper (typescript), with handwritten emendations and annotations. Title in collection finding aid: RS: Irrefutability of anarchism (2 tss). [28] leaves. Two copies of paper (typescript), with handwritten emendations and annotations. 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Taylor</a>. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [28] leaves. 21.99 MB. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Australian National University - Desk Top Subject The topic of the resource Two copies of paper (typescript), with handwritten emendations and annotations. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'The irrefutability of anarchism', Social alternatives, 2(3): 23-29. Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Desk Top Box 14: Green Projects in Progress https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/b924da0714a05e99687172f7e19976c9.pdf 3ffd527e64c5c0c1829544faecf614ca PDF Text Text �f Chapter 10 _ CRITICS OF ANARCHISM AND FURTHER CRITICISM. .. One of the regular obstacles almost any innovative ideology encounters is hardened dogfpMdwi. Hardened dogmatism characteristically sees little scope for movement from some established status quo. There are many hardened dogmatists who see no alternative to the modern state. In this they join company with a huge and motley crew of political "realists": 'There simply is no way an advanced industrial state can cope with technological complexities, can minimize waste and misery and the danger of revolutions without strong government controls' (Gardner!, our sample dcifnatist, selected^because he has ranted^at verbose length,on his anti-anarchist disposition). We can grant that there is no viable state without requisite government controls, no state without a state. The question is rather whether such objectives as reduction of waste and misery and control of technology even he accomplished, perhaps significantly better without the state, which tends to wagnt/y the problems concerned. A feature of dogmatism is that assertion, reiterated assertion, replaces argument. So it is with^state dogmatism: 'As things are, there simply is no way a modem industrial society can flourish without a strong government to enforce the law' (p.123). international industrial society flourishes, after a fashion ^without such a government. Analogous functional ways in which regional industrial societies can operate, way implicit in historic anarchism, have been explained. 'It is not just the necessity of a state to preserve law and order that makes the anarchist dream so hopeless' (p.124). Order requires only a certain organisation^, for which the state is quite unnecessary. As for law, the necessity is but analytic on the law being state-law. But a wide network of conventions and regulations can operate without a state; there are many examples, beginning with stateless societies, continuing through a range of voluntary organisations. Why 'so hopeless'? ,, Even if small communities [observe the limitation on anarchism immediately slippst in]... found a way to police themselves, there is no way they could maintain, let alone establish, an industrial society. Small selfgoverning groups are incapable of building reservoirs to bring them clean water, or roads to connect cities, or dynamos to supply electricity, or cars, or printing presses, or modem hospitals, or anything else that is a product of an advanced technology. Big tasks can be done only by big corporations that are either state-owned or state-controlled, or that operate as vast independent oligarches within the state (p.124). eV As well as intellectually lazy, this is hopelessly astray: there resides the hopelessness. In some regions, pioneer societies and industrial society developed more or less regardless of the state. Even small f^rm communities built themselves reservoirs for stock and household water supplies, built their local roads, and so on (in Australia, USA, and elsewhere). They still do. Electricity generates and printing presses can be manufactured in fairly unsophisticated i . Martin Gardner 776-7SS. e W7ry.y i?/ *# / ch.7 Aafe.- WTry 7 owi an ' �workshops, where the state need be nowhere in evidence. As for big tasks, international organisations (for construction, forestry, dam building, oil-well sinking,^ substantially independent of particular states can, and do, perform the work. They may presently be required to have a state location, but that is strictly unnecessary for accomplishing the tasks; they are certainly not state-owned, or state-controlled, nor do they, in any real sense, operate within the states'. Furthermore, regions investing in large works beyond their capacities can set up their own specialized structures, to oversee such big tasks, to monitor activities and ensure accountability, and to exclude cowboy operations. It is simply false that the advancement and application of science and technology requires the state, as much history reveals. In a similar way, it is simply misleading that 'if we want to enjoy the benefits of science and technology, the ideals of an archism are as irrelevant as the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount' (p.124). By contrast with the ideals of the Sermon, the impact of which are quite indirect, much anarchist output concerns science and technology, their promotion and qualified benefits, proper place and appropriateness. Next our philosophical scrivener turns to pulling down anarchism by a superficial comparison with and sen^up of the American 'counter culture scene of the sixties' (pp. 1244-5). As technology is not condemned by one bad result, nor is anarchism shown impracticable by one presumed form wht^e merit remain a matter of controversy. In any case, m^re accurate comparisons are available than Gardner's prejudical poQ)ourL These set anarchist elements of the counterculture substantially witli^th&\merican individual, pro-violence form of anarchism. Hardened dogmatists are almost invariably crt^ss critics. They do not ever get at close quaters^et alon^ inside, what they are criticising; so they do not achieve a good view, still less adequate sympathetic view, of what they ^/are criticising. Fortunately there are less cr^ss critics, most of them with heavy commitments to democratic states (Gardner, though he makes obeisant gestures towards democracy, is underneath it committed to the strong tech,o-cratic state.) It should be plain that any critic with heavy commit^nts to democracy would have to take anarchism more seriously as an option; for the demos may chose, or rule, to remove their state. (Quite constitutional means may, and should, permit this.) The point, though elementary, has escaped apparently more sympathetic opponents of anarchism such as Dahl, who premisses his critique of anarchism upon the incompatibility of anarchism with democracy. He appears to manage this yhnx by mistakenly equating democracy with the democratic state. Certainly anarchism is incompatible with the democratic state, as with any state, but it does not follow, except through a variant of the mistaken equation, that it is incompatible with democracy. And it should be evident that this latter incompatibility is contested. For the^e have many proposals for combining anarchism with m^re participatory democracy (ul^minating on enterprises like Burgheim's quest fortrue democracy^ which arrives at a dilute anarchism). Dahl begins his criticism of anarchism by asserting that anarchist (and guardianship) 'objections to democracy aare so fundamental that unless they can be satisfactorily met any further explanations of the democratic idea would be futile' (p.37). Given the heavy �commitment of much anarchism to democratic processes, this assertion faces evident rejoinders. And Dahl himself quickly shifts ground (though a page later he shifts back, assuming that his archetypal democrat and anarchist are opposed as archist and anarchist): 'Because democracy might well be the most des^be process for governing [anarchist v^lu^ttpry] it might also be the prevented form of government in an anarchist society. But i^ the anarchist view democracy cannot redeem a state * (p.37, two paragraphs down). Since nothing can redeem the state, ergo neither gods nor people nor democracy can. Yet Dahl begins his cri^tism with this curious twist: since the state^coercism, and coercisaa is intrinsically bad, can the democratic process somehow make it good? * (p.37). This problem for archism, which Dahl assumes, is no problem at all for anarchism. Instead of addressing the question posed, Dahl switches focus, by challenging the coherence and consistency of anarchism. But all his exhibition of divWity/shows is that anarchism is a family-resemblance notion, like many Wittgenstein pointed outigbwc, warAewatic.?, and so on. It is a family­ resemblance notion with certain key features (as being played, is of a game), namely rejection of archie authority, ^percion and the state; beyond that there is a plurality of forms. Once the pluralistic conceptualisation is appreciated, there need be no incoherence; it all fits together. ^^Many of the criticisms of anarchism turn on the issue of especially how economic activity such asf marketing, distribution, and so on, is to be organised in the absence of a central state authority. Meeting these criticisms in appropriate detail is no mean feat, requiring the elaboration of substantially new economic theory (except for excessively individualistic anarchists like Rothbart, but sketchy details and hints have been offered by anarchist theorists). While economic criticisms bulk large in recent criticism of anarchism, the state having assumed the role of grand macro-economic organiser, these by no means exhaust criticisms. There are serious issues also concerning political and cultural organisation, concerning the presumed enemies of organisation and order. In many criticisms it is simply assumed that anarchistic organisation will have to take over the arrangements of present mega-states and somehow substitute for those, without mega­ states. The assumption is astray. Mega-states are mostly recent undesirable constructions, obtained by conquest or war dealings, and held together coercive means and other devices of state. These would, would be allowed to, fragment into regional components. Thus the problem of organisation is a substantially smaller problem than that of organisation of mega­ states; namely, that of organisation of regions. The regions would naturally be grouped together, by principles of federation. (The new Europe provides a partial, suggestive example.) No strand of anarchism 'has developed an adequate economic theory. The individualists are stymied by the public goods problem, the communists by the problems of coordination. [Even more plausible intermediate positions] require the support of the state at a number of critical points' (M p.172). How the state is presumed to provide its benign supportative role is well illustrated in the case of more individualistic anarchism, where the familiar problem of public goods is also taken to manifest itself. �4 A cynic might well observe that no strand of capitalism or of socialism has developed an adequate economic theory. But theories there no doubt are, in certain narrow reaches in abundance. * Anarchism assumes the benefits of autonomous operations, indeed the individualistic ideal is one of personal sovereignty in the market place', but 'is not the state an indispensible prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy?' (M p.169). There are two parts to a response. First, markets functioned before states, and function outside states, for example internationally. Second, whatever institutions are required for the operation of markets can be supplied regionally under anarchistic fragmentation of the state. How much background structure do markets depend upon, which might presuppose apparatus of state. A market has a place of transactions, which can be common or waste ground, a supply of goods or services to be exchanged there for other goods or services (barter) or currency (in a money economy). Buyers and sellers enter the market to effect exchanges. No doubt presupposed are at least limited entitlements (leasehold or property rights, so a seller is entitled to dispose of, to a new user, holder or owner, what is offered for sale), contractual arrangements, and in a money economy, some recognised currency. Also presumed, normally where markets operate, are certain levels of safety, for instance protection against invasion, assault and theft. But these are normal expectations for much of social life, for even conducting a conversation. As for the rest, except perhaps for currency, it is a mere pretence that a state is required for their assurance: customary or tribal arrangements will ensure both property in transportable goods and recognition of verbal contracts or undertakings. An appropriate currency too can develop in the absence of states, as exemplified in the shell currencies of Melanesia and the bank notes of early America. Bank notes are not fully public goods; for a bank which can profit from their circulation or issue has an incentive to supply them. (And banks themselves do not require a sponsoring state, even if sometimes that helps, as in bailing them out.) It is worth observing that much of the conventional apparatus presumed for markets is already presupposed for the fictional covenant by which the state is supposedly established. Namely, meeting in relative safety, entering into contractual arrangements (in the case of the state of a very sophisticated sophistical sort). * Anarchism has not met the 'intractable ... problem of co-ordinating the activities of many independent social units without recourse to central authority' (M p.181). But there are many examples, most notably at an international level again, where such coordination has been achieved (e.g. IUCO). Examples are increasing with new networking arrangements (e.g. Pegasus network). Where substantially self-managing arrangements, such as traditional markets are allowed to flourish, there are no such intractable problems. Certainly, however, with anarcho-communist structures which aim to suppress such self-managing arrangements, there are problems: namely those of * co-ordinating productive activity, aligning production with the needs of consumers without �5 markets or central planning. Key approach: localising production, face-to-face. How can this work in an advanced industrial economy, where a high degree of specialization and much division of labour. Suggestion CAN'T! * motivating people to work. Pressure, sanctions, rewards. While this is a problem in any setting, it is caAaaccJ since certain personal rewards removed. * a central agency seems necessary to maintain any society-wide distribution of resources' (p.172). W/nc/i resources? Where markets operate, many resources will be distributed without any role for a central agency, which would often serve as a serious blockage. WAat distribution? What was intended was: a distribution of resources, so the blatant inequalities now observed in even the wealthist societies are mitigated and the conditions of the worst-off are alleviated. That is drawing upon experience of capitalism: anarchism would not start out from such an invidious position. Further, it is assumed that there are only two ways of righting such (capitalistic) maldistribution: through purely private means or by a centralised state means. So presented it represents an extremely familiar false dichotomy, private or state, in which society is either equated with the state or else drops out, and all other public means disappear. For socially-inclined anarchists there is no disputing that there need to be safety nets in place for the poor and disadvantaged. What is in question is how those nets are placed and administered, and whether the state has an essential role or is rather a less efficient more officious nuisance. One option is an exposed tithing system, where members of society are offered a choice of schemes to contribute to, and expected to contribute to these, and encouraged to make their contribution open to public inspection. Those who tried to evade contribution and closed their books would be subject to a range of social pressures. It is further claimed that while smaller anarchist communities, especially those of a collectivistic or communistic bent, may be able to resolve inequitable distribution problems, 'there are major difficulties' in attempting to realise some distributive ideal 'between communities' (p.173). There may be major difficulties, there are now, but that is scarcely an argument for a central authority. Some redistribution and a small transfer of wealth occurs intentionally without a central authority. There is not even decisive evidence that a central authority helps, so far from making matters worse. * AaarcA/sw no /or /aw. Anarchism cannot traffic in law - at least in the initial and prominent sense of /aw (ventured e.g. in the OED), namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter balancing this prognostication is a second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical uses' from which likewise anarchism is not debarred): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'. Thus as the term gavcrawcar is variably determinable, so also is /aw. Under the main determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. �6 But under a different determinate, there is no incompatibility. Anarchism could operate with such a derminate (as with appropriate notions of moral law, and similar). Law, however, deservedly has a tarnished reputation, in anarchism as elsewhere. Most of it is arcane, administered by an expensive oligopolistic priesthood. Too often it is an oppressive tool of the state. While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatible with heavy authoritarian law, it is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely assented to sorts, and so on. These can substitute. The state has other less conspicuous roles than law and order, war and defence, and managing the economy. * The state serves as representative of national identity, which people crave. Anarchism does not cater for this basic human need. This is pretty dubious stuff. Such a need is by no means ubiquitous, and is, if not manufactured, certainly exaggerated in convenient cases, by state devices. But let us concede a need hypothesis (there is nothing basic about it). Is it true that The anarchist does nothing to replace the notion; his ideal society is devoid of any features which might serve as a focus of identity' (M p.180)? No. The components in terms of which an anarchistic society is structured — the local community, the local region, the regional federations,... - offer foci for identification, bases for sporting teams, and so on. But, in any event, nothing excludes national organisations, fielding cultural groups, artistic troupes, sporting teams, and so on. The present structure of national sporting bodies, only loosely affiliated with states, and coordinated in model anarchist fashion, provides in fact a worthwhile example of anarchism in action (Burnheim again). Do such concessions to features of nationhood 'naturally lead to a demand for self government', and thence for a nation-state (p.181)? They may (as with the Basques) or may not (as with the Cornish), and if so more likely the former than the latter? Further these demands may come only from a small minority of nationals, or may be ill-founded. A demand on its own demonstates comparatively of merit, for all that modem economics would have us imagine. A repeated criticism of anarchism is that 'with the state removed, the system has no ultimate guarantor ...'. So it used to be said in favour of God. But who guarantees the guarantor? (A state may underwrite a bank, but a state itself can fail, despite support of other states.) There is no ultimate guarantor. There are other issues also, such as the character of the guarantor. While it is seen to in theology, as a matter of further (illicit) characterisation, that God has the right features, nothing guarantees that an "ultimate guarantor" is not, rather like most states, corrupt, unfair, heavy handed and incompetent.^ Even if an ultimate guarantee was needed, none could be provided. But lesser assurances can be offered. For example, a bank's 2 If a guarantee cannot be obtained without violence, it is most unlikely that a satisfactory one will be obtained with it. �7 books can be open to public scrutiny and assessment, so that it can be seen that it is trading in a responsible and viable fashion. (It is better that a person's healthy state be assured by observation that the person is functioning well, than by maintaining the person as a closed system and relying on the doctor's guarantee of the person's health.) �^/^ w: C^^cj /# o^= C/f'77C/J'^ J* yy" "7 %? '4%y /<^ 4^7^ z%^-/^3 �c/jevve, L__ found a way to police themselves, f there is no way they could maintain, let alone establish, an industrial \ society. Small self-governing groups are incapable of building reser1 voirs to bring them clean water, or roads to connect cities, or dynamos S to supply electricity, or cars, or printing presses, or modern hospitals, ' product of ofan an advanced advanced technology. technology. Btg Big tasks tasks i, 1 or anything else that is a product can be done only by big corporations tha^are either state-owned or state-controlled, or that operate as vast independent oligarchies wtthm ; the stated/2^-), ^.. rcT/ T. —. ,^y T^, TA 7./^ /c- ' 4^<!- /L</-c T ^7'7 p-T4^, 2^/ cv<^A^7 /42 iu-^C- <*^cc /; /^ c ;%a^ ^4-^ -4^ * ^ T^e , %^L /!^f <^< *\ ct^ J ^e* z^c ^7Lt-CTL^9-^<7 CO M7 /t-x e ^47t_ J / t , 4*^s/ ^, * cr^ ^^4-- �*4 ��. Z!^" ^-Z2Z z^% c <r^^— / r ^i)^< -Z^ /Z^/f .J, <^X'Zr' "* ^*- —. /-^z.y-rc/<^Z7 .^. , ^4h— / 7'^- ! �Many of the criticisms of anarchism turn on the issue of orgam.Mric'K, especially how gconcwHC activity such as: marketing, distribution, and so on, is to be organised in the absence of a central state authority. Meeting these criticisms in appropriate detail is no mean feat, requiring the elaboration of substantially new economic theory (except for excessively individualistic anarchists like Rothbart, but sketchy details and hints have been offered by anarchist theorists). While economic criticisms bulk large in recent criticism of anarchism, the state having assumed the role of grand macro-economic organiser, these by no means exhaust criticisms. There are serious issues also concerning political and cultural organisation, concerning the presumed enemies of organisation and order. In many criticisms it is simply assumed that anarchistic organisation will have to take over �the arrangements of present mega-states and somehow substitute for those, without mega-states. The assumption is astray. Mega-states are mostly recent undesirable constructions, obtained by conquest or war dealings, and held together coercive means and other devices of state. These would, would be allowed to, fragment into regional components. Thus the problem of organisation is a substantially smaller problem than that of organisation of mega-states; namely, that of organisation of regions. The regions would naturally be grouped together, by principles of federation. (The new Europe provides a partial, suggestive example.) J * No strand of anarchism 'has developed an adequate economic theory. The individualists are stymied by the public goods problem, the communists by the problems of coordination. [Even more plausible intermediate positions] require the support of the state at a number of critical points' (M p.172). How the state is presumed to provide its benign supportative role is well illustrated in the case of more individualistic anarchism, where the familiar problem of public goods is also taken to manifest itself. A cynic might well observe that no strand of capitalism or of socialism has developed an adequate economic theory. But theories there no doubt are, in certain narrow reaches in abundance. * Anarchism assumes the benefits of autonomous market operations, indeed The individualistic ideal is one of personal sovereignty in the market place', but 'is not the state an indispensible prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy?' (M p.169). There are two parts to a response. First, markets functioned before states, and function outside states, for example internationally. Second, whatever institutions are required for the operation of markets can be supplied regionally under anarchistic fragmentation of the state. How much background structure do markets depend upon, which might presuppose apparatus of state. A market has a place of transactions, which can be common or waste ground, a supply of goods or services to be exchanged there for other goods or services (barter) or currency (in a money economy). Buyers and sellers enter the market to effect exchanges. No doubt presupposed are at least limited entitlement (leasehold or property rights, so a seller is entitled to dispose of, to a new user, holder or owner, what is offered for sale), contractual arrangements, and in a money economy, some recognised currency. Also presumed, normally where markets operate, are certain levels of safety, for instance protection against invasion, assault and theft. But these are normal expectations for much of social life, for even conducting a conversation. As for the rest, except perhaps for currency, it is a mere pretence that a state is required for their assurance: custom^ or tribal arrangements will ensure both property in transportable goods and recognition of verbal contracts or undertakings. An appropriate currency too can develop in the absence of states, as exemplified in the shell currencies of Melanesia and the bank notes of early America. Bank notes are not fully public goods; for a bank which can profit from their circulation or issue has an incentive to supply them. (And �32 banks themselves do not require a sponsoring state, even if sometimes that helps, as in bailing them out.) It is worth observing that much of the conventional apparatus presumed for markets is already presupposed prg-sMfe for the fictional covenant by which the state is supposedly established. Namely, meeting in relative safety, entering into contractual arrangements (in the case of the state of a very sophisticated sophistical sort). * Anarchism has not met the 'intractable ... problem of co-ordinating the activities of many examples, most notably at an international level again, where such coordination has been achieved (e.g. IUCO). Examples are increasing with new networking arrangements (e.g. Pegasus network). Where substantially self-managing arrangements, such as traditional markets are allowed to flourish, there are no such intractable problems. Certainly, however, with anarcho-communist structures which aim to suppress such self-managing arrangements, there are problems: * ^o-ordinating productive activity, aligning production with *needs of consumers without markets <?r central planning. Key approach: localising production, face-to-face. How can this work in an advanced industrial economy, where a high degree of specialization and much division of labour. Suggestion CAN'T! * motivating people to work. Pressure, sanctions, rewards. in any setting, but rewards removed. since certain personal * '... a central agency seems necessary to maintain any society-tide distribution of resources' (p.172). WTu'cA resources? Where markets operate, many resources will be distributed without any role for a central agency, which would often serve as a serious blockage. What distribution? What was intended was: ayMst distribution of resources, so the blatant inequalities now observed in even the wealthist societies are mitigated and the conditions of the worst-off are alleviated. That is drawing upon experience of capitalism: anarchism would not start out from such an invidious position. Further, it is assumed that there are only two ways of righting such (capitalistic) maldistribution: through purely private means or by a centralised state means. So presented it represents an extremely familiar false dichotomy, private or state, in which society is either equated with the state or else drops out, and all other public means disappear. For socially-inclined anarchists there is no disputing that there need to be safety nets in place for the poor and disadvantaged. What is in question is how those nets are placed and administered, and whether the state has an essential role or is rather a less efficient more officious nuisance. One option is an exposed tithing system, where members of society are /v �33 offered a choice of schemes to contribute to, and expected to contribute to these, and encouraged to make their contribution open to public inspection. Those who tried to evade contribution and closed their books would be subject to a range of social pressures. It is further claimed that while smaller anarchist communities, especially those of a collectivistic or communistic bent, may be able to resolve inequitable distribution problems, 'there are major difficulties' in attempting to realise some distributive ideal communities' (p.173). There may be major difficulties, there are now, but that is scarcely an argument for a central authority. Some redistribution and a small transfer of wealth occurs intentionally without a central authority. There is not even decisive evidence that a central authority helps, so far from making matters worse. The state has other less conspicuous roles than law and order, war and defence, and managing the economy. * The state serves as representative of national identity, which people crave. Anarchism does not cater for this basic human need. This is pretty dubious stuff. Such a need is by no means ubiquitous, and is, if not manufactured, certainly exaggerated in convenient cases, by state devices. But let us concede a need hypothesis? Is it true that 'the anarchist does nothing to replace the notion; his ideal society is devoid of any features which might serve as a focus of identity' (M p.180)? No. The components in terms of which an anarchistic society is structured - the local community, the local region, the regional federations, ... — offer foci for identification, bases for sporting teams, and so on. But, in any event, nothing excludes national organisations, fielding cultural groups, artistic troupes, sporting teams, and so on. The present structure of national sporting bodies, only loosely affiliated with states, and coordinated in model anarchist fashion, provides in fact a worthwhile example of anarchism in action (Bumheim again). Do such concessions to features of nationhood 'naturally lead to a demand for self government', and thence for a nation-state (p.181)? They may (as with the Basques) or may not (as with the Cornish), and if so more likely the former than the latter? Further these demands may come only from a small minority of nationals, or may be ill-founded. A demand on its own demonstates comparatively ZZrr/e of merit, for all that modern economics would have us imagine. A repeated criticism of anarchism is that 'with the state removed, the system has no ultimate guarantor ...'. So it used to be said in favour of God. But who guarantees the guarantor? (A state may underwrite a bank, but a state itself can fail, despite support of other states.) There is no ultimate guarantor. There are other issues also, such as the character of the �s [Jj[government is variably determinable, so also is /ow. Under the mam a JS/' /A%> determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. But under a different determinate, there is no ( incmpatibiHty. --------------- —----------------- ------------------------------ ------ L_ --- Cjy. Anarchism cannot traffic in law, in the initial and prominent sense of /<2w(offered in the OEE^, namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter^teducing this prognostication is a second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical - uses'): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'. ^aw deservedly has a tarnished reputation^ m anarchism. Most of it is arcane, administered by an expensive, priesthood. Too often it is an oppression tool of the state. While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatable with heavy authoritarian law, it is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely assented to Kats, and so On. can t ? �guarantor. While it is seen to in theology, as a matter of further (illicit) characterisation, that God has the right features, nothing guarantees that an "ultimate guarantor" is not, rather like most states, corrupt, unfair, heavy handed and incompetent? Even if an ultimate guarantee was needed, none could be provided. But lesser assurances can be offered. For example, a bank's books can be open to public scrutiny and assessment, so that it can be seen that it is trading in a responsible and viable fashion. (It is better that a person's healthy state be assured by observation that the person is functioning well, than by maintaining the person as a closed system and relying on the doctor's guarantee of the person s health.) �6^/77///^ ,^7c-. _ y ^L /^/ " A-^-' <) / 4<cc^< / 8(^ '"-^ T=^r V z^_, /c rc /rrA^ r* r^. /*-x /^^c *L^4? 7^ /t �J c "*e- * /(^? /^l . ( ���1 A DEEP RIFT ON PROPERTY A main element in the major divide between right and left anarchism, as between left and right, is property. Other elements in the divide, such as the accumulation of capital essential to capitalism, depend upon property, because it in it as a transferable commodity that capital is held. It is unremarkable then that property balks large, as an institution to be defended and even extended (with new rights to address environmental issues) in right-leaving political theory and, what heavily overlaps that g^ave. American anarchism. At the opposing end of the right-left tug of war, state, .social or common ownership of property used to be all the go: but left coalitions are presently down-playing such ideals and aspirations. Reflective green theory once again moves off the right-left axis, questioning aspects of the strong ownership and control relations presumed in the tug-of war. Prope^tarian relations are all based upon older domination and control ideologies, but diluted in kinder stewardship approaches, not removed. For, while the idea of land as a mere commodity subject to the $hims of present owners is softened, the steward normally but manages and controls for some higher master, god or humanity. Reflect further on what both private owners and state owners may do to the environments and habitats they "own". Green reflection le^ds then towards the modification of entrenched institutions of private and state property. Green anarchism automatically eliminates certain types of ownership, namely state ownership which has to depart with the state. The demise of the state should at least suggest that associated institutions such as property and the law may be in some trouble. So it proves, to an interesting extent. For, much as arguments to the state are, like those to the Master, Dominus, fatally flawed, so are those to strong and established systems of property subject to lethal objections. Further, much as the unwarranted state may be substituted for less dominating justifiable institutions, so property and its adjuncts may be replaced by alternative less dominating arrangements, such as use­ hold, leasehold, and the like. A central claim, argued^ detail, will be that none of the arguments for property as justified, as an entitlement as right, succeeds,?!// that the whole run of arguments supports is the need, or desirability for some lesser arrangements. It is advantageous to have some terminology to cover both property anJ lesser arrangements, <7aa.n-proper?y so to say, or gua/efty as will be said. 'The concept of property is fundamental to our [U.S.] society, probably to any workable society' (Friedman p.3). The second claim is soon strengthened, and a third insupportable claim added: '... property is a central economic institution of any society, and private property is the central institution of a free society' (p.4). The onus of proof strictly lies with those who claim property, property rights, etc. For outside certain far from universal social conditions there is no such property as is claimed. Considering the way the onus falls, the situation is remarkable. 77?ere are no JecM/ve argawenM, so far as I can ascertain,/or such an institution as property. That /r �<t 2 situation, if confirmed, raises important questions, such as how and w/ry the institution is in place? But first the arguments, such as they are. The main argument preferred by Friedman in support of his grand claims takes off from the problem of the distribution of scarce material resources among competing parties who seek access or use. The usual solution is for the use of each t/ung to be decided by a person or some group of persons organised under some o/ Such t/ungs are called property. If each thing is controlled by an individual who has the power to transfer that control to any other individual, we call the institution private property (p.4). Firstly, all the distribution of resources problem points to is some allocation of uses, or some sharing thereof. For such purposes many arrangements far short of property will serve; for instance, lease, limited use rights, and so on. Secondly, what immediately stands out, an attempt is made to close the chasm between what is so far delivered and what the claims concerning property require through an appallingly low redefinition of 'property'. What one gets to use under some set of rules may not be property at all (e.g. a cove, a sea passage,...). Property requires much more: ownership in a nonv^cuous sense, coupled with a high level of potential control. Nor, thirdly, is the characterisation of private property satisfactory, as transferable leasehold will meet the conditions given. It may be argued that leasehold itself requires owne^h^ip; it will be argued that it does not. But it certainly does not require private property, nor does proprietorship transfer across leasehold arrangements. That is^ it. Friedman proceeds, on the quite unwarranted assumption that all is property, to argue the respective merits of private property and demerits of what is not private, public property so it is supposed. 'Under public property, the values of the public as a whole are imposed on the individuals who require the use of that property to accomplish their ends' (p.7). Something remotely that may hold for the example Friedman is discussing, the inordinately dull broadcast media of the USA; but it certainly does not hold generally given the remainder way in which 'public property' is characterised, so that no values whatsoever may be imposed. What subjects hold property rights (if any) or like rights? The standard chauvinistic assumption is that the class of such subjects comprises humans, or competent humans, or humans who have competent guardians. But why should other creatures not hold and maintain territories, as many appear to do? And if incompetent or disqualified humans can hold property managed by guardians, trustees and the like, and if legal persons such as corporations can do likewise, why should not a range of nonhumans (for instance, those that are credited with interests) do something similar? Given that many nonhumans can (and do) have proprietory rights, there can be a head-on conflict between human rights and property rights (in opposition to Friedman p.3). /o /e �%L ^7r/^ /e^/ . y. < c) / ^ / '/ cvy.oA/:/^ /^)/ ^/ Jc^/ ^^v^4r-V -y y.yr^ . //. / J^yJ^ /.y^Av J 74 /^; *"" %7y//- , y , A ^J. Jc-^f ^r- 4<^ y/y^ ' <2^? <L-TT!? ^-'<!^{ ^/L �Z'fA ? �7 / 77/^0 /%77?77(<f /J*AA Anarchistic societies of any complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisation, or a federation of these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue, role or function. Thus they will include what might well be accounted Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, �for instance. The organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join. Typically they will be voluntary arrangements. A critical question is to how these organisations, substituting for the operation of state, are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In such favoured democratic structures control is usually remarkably indirect. A populace weakly selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bodies some control of state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments. It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component of each organisation is chosen randomly from those of the regional community who volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications, and disqualifications (e.g. by having served before, by some disqualifying record). Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be represented, e.g. disable, minorities, then it is a matter of arranging random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's Po/m'cy). Nowadays it is called dwxirc/ty (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the ecologism dewa/tarcAy. Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing an expensive duplication, government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of parliamentary government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is duly removed - as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, no centre, which is directly linked to functional organisation. Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre and its command structure, no longer there to capture.^ Community defence is thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who controls the controllers: partly because control is so diffused, and prartly because a main controller is the community (one of the advantages of democracy). Appropriate institutions take care of the day-to-day running of community affairs; but what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure. These can be accomplished 3 For there is no command or control structure that could be taken by an invador or internal insurrection. �from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the iike (organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down inflexible fashion. (These methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of Europe, are investigated in Wolff.) A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed wirAoM? coecive mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It should be observed, in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is persued for reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms or individuals, where in a more equitible community much of the funding would derive from (by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* Mt/cA less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard military forces and defense establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison establishment and expensive courts. Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements). * Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import organisation they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or redistribution powers. * Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate royalties and the like), rental taxes on property, gift and gains taxes, and through auctions (of previously inherited goods), how this would work depends upon community arrangements. Consider however a preferred anarchistic arrangement where that problematic item, private property, has not been instituted or has been oblished (as with most European anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable with stealing for sale in present systems) will be rented instead of bought. Learnchold systems can be operated very like private property (as the land system in A.C.T. reveals) fruit-feting market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a rental, and they can be of finite terms and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is excluded. In place of the �customery land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described.^ 4 Here as with rcfcraHs, computing fasiiibiies remove many previous obstacles to each arguments. Organisation can move with new technology. ��,. —-- ------------------------- ^4^ / A ����CHAPTER ROADS TO ANARCHY: OLD ROUTES AND NEW INPUTS STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETIES, AND AFTER. As there is a plurality of anarchistic positions and end-states, so, but not in a directly corresponding way, there is a plurality of routes to anarchism. As the positions vary very considerably in quality, so do the routes, some of them risky, all of them difficult. Anarchism, even though theoretical viable, undoubtedly looks /iard to obtain on any scale. For states are now extremely well entrenched - in furthermore a mutually supportive exclusive club of states. There is now immense resistance to their removal, deriving from several sources. In particular, state actors and power-brokers are most unlikely to modify statist arrangements in ways inadvantageous to themselves, to relinquish any power, still less to step down easily. Such actors will often take desperate steps to retain institutional power; it is very difficult to persuade most political human to relinquish power simply and gracefully. Nonetheless opportunities arise for overthrowing or superseding states (for instance, in most of Eastern Europe and much of Western Asia in the early 1990s). Periods of crises or "power vacuum", in particular, afford opportunities, which should be seized as they may not arise often in more stable states (most recently in 1974 in Australia). A well-prepared anarchist movement will organise, then, and when the moment arrives, pounce (a partial model is feline hunting practice). But such opportunistic and risky revolutionary routes are only one way to change, as the following diagram, designed to survey the possibility field, should reveal. Diagram 5.7 Ways /a poZiWca/ change. WAYS Intra-State: within State setting EVOLUTIONARY 1. typically slow or incremental REVOLUTIONARY ] ' operations through received political channels 2. t < j typically rapid operations circuiting established channels: coups, insurrections, etc. ) Extra-State 3. operations establishing alternative organisations bypassing or substituting for statist arrangements, or functioning within the interstices of the state ! * 4. operations comprising j) . ' ] external inference or intervention: by negotiation, military means, sanctions, examples, etc. �0 2 Pluralistic anarchist practice will pursue each and every one of these ways and means, so far as resources indicate and permit, subject to constraints. For example, a nonviolent movement will not adopt violent means (unless it insists upon a strange separation of ends and means). There is nothing distinctively anarchist about these ways, except for 3; all otherwise are ways of changing state arrangements, 2 of trading one sort of state for another, 3 of imposing state control and discipline where it is lapsing from "approved" form or where there may have been none (as with colonial adventures). As there have been many attempts to narrowly delimit anarchism, so there have been repeated attempts to restrict roads and byways to anarchism. Exposing these attempts will at the same time show what is open. J, Deploying and making wore sZads/ po/f/fcaf arrange/ncnis Use of orthodox political channels is not excluded. Pluralistic anarchism is not obliged to dismiss political routes to anarchism or to anarchist objectives. Parliamentary and other constitutional routes (such as through referenda) to an anarchist end-state are perfectly possible, if difficult because of the tendency of state apparatus to endeavour to perpetuate itself. (As a related example, a main successful party in the multi-party Australian Capital Territory government was organised and supported by those opposed to such a government.) A main difficulty confronting change through conventional political procedure is simply that, w/tere it does occur, it is usually extraordinarily slow and limited, it is almost invariably small change at the margins. It may take a little lateral reasoning to see the advantages, or occasionally practical necessity, of working through or within a system or even strengthening it first in order to demolish it (strengthening does not imply endorsing forever, but nothing more "counterintuitive" than appears in a battery of stock psychological tests or clever martial arts). Authentic Marxism, for example, which is ultimately anarchistic, is committed to very much such a circuitous route: the circuit goes through a rejuvenated super-productive state, which in old age withers away. A main reason why it has been imagined that use of established political channels is excluded, in anarchist practice, is not because of the slow evolutionary nature of the process, but because of a doctrine of means-ends congruence, which is given too circumscribed a construal. This over-strong congruence doctrine requires more than what coherence seems to demand, namely that the means should be compatible with comprehensive ends sought (thus precluding, for example, violent means to achieve non-violent ends). It further requires that in anarchist action, particularly the revolution, the end of a stateless society should be "prefigured", not some intervening non-congruent objective. Even if the geometric metaphor were duly clarified, few reasons have been advanced for accepting the crippling doctrine, which is not self-evident. �3 Frankly, anarchism does not need to give itself unnecessary handicaps; it faces enough real-world obstacles without dubious doctrinaire additions from well-intentioned friends. An anarchist organisation is plainly not a contradiction in terms; nor therefore is an anarchist coalition or party, committed for instance to removing coercive institutions. Pursuing this tack, an anarchist can vote for a party which comes closer to realising immediate anarchist objectives than other parties, or, very differently, for a party which will assist long-term anarchist objectives (for instance, by wreaking the national economy and thereby helping green objectives and generating appropriate political discontent and dissent), without any commitment to the parties concerned, and without endorsing the political system within which they operate. Strategic voting is not precluded; strategic anarchist voters may well (unlike totalitarian voters) support (preferential) democratic procedures. While the state is to be dis-established, meanwhile there are more benign and less benign states, in relevant respects, apart from how decently they treat their citizens and noncitizens and aliens. It is no longer altogether accurate to insist, as anarchists used to a century ago, that 'every state is an agency whereby a ruling minority exploits and oppresses a majority' (M p.87). Many in majorities may do very nicely, thank you, while some in the elite minority may be grindstoned. Moreover, the mass of people is generally not only resistant to change, but highly reluctant to force changed unless there is very considerable dis-ease, which in most developed states there is not. These are some of a mix of reasons why a revolution is so remote in comfortable countries; no longer the incendiary states kindled for the anarchist match that 19th century anarchists imagined. Despite mass lethargy, dissatisfaction with the state is extensive and comes from right across the conventional political spectrum. There is widespread popular sentiment to the effect that "the state has become our master instead of our servant", a reversal of roles that should not surprise Hegelians. Libertarians interpret this in terms of a much reduced state, a much leaner and hopefully much less hungry state - a route to anarchism if dismantling went in a right direction and far enough. Right-thinking socialists interpret it in terms of a much transformed state, a helping but unobtrusive rather than a commanding busybody state. A familiar view of the state from a section of Green Movement represents a turn on the old anarcho-socialist view: The ... state and the corporate sector are in alliance for the sake of "development".... We try to wean people away from the belief that the state will act in the interest of the cidzens. So we believe the ... state is best viewed as an oppressor (Orton, Response to Dwandik Quesdons, p.6). Orton argues on the basis of this for not trying 'to "use" the state' and 'not seeking government funds'. But if the funds largely represent social wealth, why not judicious use? And if the state is 1 Social psychology appears to show as much. �4 the only legal means of requisite change? And so on.. In fact Orton himself proposes to make changes through the state by mobilizing the people. A state may also be more benign in other significant respects: for instance, in that it facilitates minority political representation, including green anarchist groups, and in that it does not significantly impede anarchist political and practical activity or render paths significantly more difficult. Overlapping that, more benign less domineering states may leave substantial room for significant anarchist practice both in lifestyle and in building organisational structures and (as it were) alternatives to archist arrangements (such as peoples' books, time stores, etc.) What are in important respects anarchist communities can operate within, as well as be modelled within, less intrusive states (the limits to this quasi-anarchism, elaborated in Nozick, are explained in UT). States that better meet anarchist (and green socialist) criteria for benignness can conveniently be disdnguished as more .sywparico states. Committed anarchists can quite well also be committed, as an intermediate goal among others, to achieving more sympatico states, which may involve conventional (as well as unconventional) political activity. No doubt engagement in conventional political activity carries a risk of co-option; but there are obvious way of reducing that risk, of avoiding the 'slide into collaboration with the bourgeoisie [and] ... willingness to play the game of parliamentary politics'.2 For example, precautionary strategies include: engagement also in unconventional political activity, anarchist or communal practice, consciousness-raising exercises, and use of time limits, interruption tactics, rotations of leaders, and so on. Green party activities and procedures can serve as a useful model here?. Apart from the real dangers of co-option and state collaboration, there are other intertwined objections standardly made to attempting political roads to anarchism and socialism. One objection is that any attempt to use the state 'unavoidably reproduces all the features of that institution', such as exploitation by a ruling or elite minority, and oppression of the majority. Few, it is continued, will escape from effective control, or, when if offers, be able to resist using the immense powers of the state. New people, new power-holders, will be transformed (by the usual devices, such as being made to feel important, given an exaggerated impression of their own worth). It should be evident that the objection has drifted from "reproduction of the state" to variants of "power corrupts". Both are overstated, and there are strategies for overcoming both. Sometimes the state c/tang&y, perhaps for the better; the British state has altered significantly in the last 300 years, seemingly for better. Corresponding the power of certain power-holders has declined significantly, from monarchs and aristocracy down. 2 3 M p.89, see also Goodin in Green Politics. See Spretnak and Capra 86 for details. �5 Another objection is better focussed. It is that use of the state leads the wrong ways, through organisation by centralization and hierarchy, and action by legislation. As a result state routes will not lead to decentralization, distribution of power and wealth downwards, and so on. While state practices are commonly antipathetic to the sort of constructive objectives indicated, they are not always, and they do not /Mvg to be. States, like large corporations, can reorganise, and occasionally attempt to (thus reform and restructuring of bureaucracies, or even of whole public services, etc.). Although unlikely for reasons indirected, state reorganisation can in principle proceed by decentralization and devolution of power. Nor is there any lethal objection to achieving action by legislation, so long as that legislation is not enforced by inadmissible coercive methods. In sum, what the objection reemphasizes is that considerable care has to be exercised in using the state, as with any major source of power. Further it shows again that transition can only proceed so far through the state; the state route only leads so far, after which other means of transport need to be taken or considered. There are other ways of amending statist political arrangements than political approaches, notably legal means, through courts. There is little anarchist precedence for such activity; mostly anarchists have had heavy legal apparatus used against them. However, once again environmental practice serves as a valuable exemplar, with many worthwhile results achieved (especially in American courts) through litigation. In principle there is much that could be achieved in this way, in state and international courts, to reduce the power of states and their instrumentalities. For example, in Australia there are very many statues and laws which unjustifiably limit freedoms and restrict individual and group action: examples include not only little activated but appalling legislation on sedition, assembly, and similar, but a sweeping range of actively used and opportunistically exploited legislation concerning defamation and freedom of speech, victimless crimes, paternalism, restrictive trade and banking, sheltered professions, compulsory voting, and so on, and on. There is also much room for variation and experimentation within prevailing political and legal arrangements. For example, applying procedures of statistical democracy to a few greater range of activities than (adjusted) jury servicing to the organisation of municipal services, public companies, and so on. alternative structures and the forest succession model. A main strategy for transition, emerging from the arguments for the viability of anarchism, is that of replacement: transition to a new anarchist social order proceeds by replacement or adaptation of the more satisfactory State organisations and structures by organisations and structures of a more anarchistic cast, and by removal or phasing out of remaining no longer necessary or unsatisfactory State arrangements. Replacement and supersession suggest a biological model, of such change and succession, as occurs where one forest type succeeds another; and such a model is in turn very suggestive. To <?, �6 make the model more definite, and to give it some local colour, consider forest succession where a sub-tropical rainforest replaces a eucalypt forest, as analogous to the case where anarchism replaces a Statist society. There is certainly a marked change in structure, typically from a tall forest with a fairly open canopy to a more compact closed forest with more layers of vegetation, much more local diversity and a richer variety of life forms, especially floral forms. A forest is not merely a set of trees, but trees in structural arrangement and interdependence, not merely on one another but on other life forms such as pollinating insects, seed-carrying birds and animals, and so on; and the changes in structure include changes in microclimate, in soil moisture levels and humus and bacterial content. The change of forest type may be by evolution, by hastened or induced evolution, or by catastrophe (revolution) as when a eucalypt forest is clearfelled and artificially succeeded by planted rainforest. (Strictly, there is a spectrum of practices and replacement strategies between evolutionary and revolutionary and various different revolutionary strategies; and the standard evolutionary-revolutionary contrast presents a false dichotomy.) Even reliance on predominantly evolutionary methods, which tend to be very slow by human time scales, way require some (management) practices, else evolution towards rainforest will not begin or continue. For example, seeds for rainforest species may not be available if adjoining areas have been stripped of suitable seed trees, e.g. by clearing or eucalypt conversion, in which case it will be necessary to introduce seeds (of anarchist ideas, methods, arrangements, etc.). And rainforest evolution may not be able to continue because the area is burnt occasionally, e.g. by State officers, in which case protection against fire will be required: for with burning (and the suppression) regimes rainforest seedlings are killed and eucalypt dominance perpetuated. Furthermore, evolution can be hastened or induced by introducing seeds, or planting rainforest trees in poorly seeded areas (i.e. setting up alternative social arrangements) under the eucalypt overstorey, or even by some careful culling of eucalypts. But even without culling there will be much for anarchist management to do. As the rainforest cover begins to grow up through the eucalypt forest, the forest begins to change structurally. Younger eucalypt poles die, and their replacement by eucalypts is generally precluded owing to low light intensities near the forest floor (in something the same way conditions for political entrepreneurs to flourish are excluded in an emerging anarchist society). Gradually, as the rainforest grows, only scattered giant eucalypts protrude through the canopy, and in time these fall to the forest floor, to rot and not to be replaced - unless the climax rainforest is subject to catastrophe, such as fire or cyclone. Catastrophic methods, such as clearfelling the eucalypt forest, replanting with rainforest, protecting the new forest, and removing eucalyptus regrowth, are wocA more problematic. To be applied they require either a large workforce or much mechanical power (so it is with violent revolutions which need a large support basis not generally available in advanced capitalist and state �7 socialist countries, or else access to means of perpetrating violence comparable to that of the State). There are often similar requirements for success; otherwise the area may be choked by rapidly growing weeds or the rainforest plants may be suppressed by eucalypt seedlings and a pioneer eucalypt stage recur. Moreover, a eucalypt overstorey can sometimes afford good conditions for rainforest growth, e.g. plant protection from excessive sun, from occasional frosts, and from drying winds, better moisture retention conditions, and so on. Similarly anarchist social organisations may sometimes be able to the environment afforded by the State to get started. Thus not all forms of the State are necessarily equally inimical, and some may provide much more favourable conditions for the development of anarchist social organisation than others.^ The forest model (together with preceding arguments) helps to illustrate why violent and catastrophic methods are not congruent witty the goals of an anarchist society and why there is an intimate connection between these goals and a strong preference for nonmilitaristic and non-violent methods of achieving change. Replacement involves a (normally gradual) process of developing alternative institutions and forms of social organisation and the growth of the new form of society within the old, and is not a catastrophic single event conceived of as outside the normal order of things, and for whose advent all other action for change is held suspended. And just as methods of change such as clearfelling are likely to perpetuate the eucalypt cycle and are unlikely to favour the development of the rainforest, so the use of catastrophic and especially militaristic methods is likely to perpetuate an authoritarian social order and unlikely to favour the development of a co­ operative, non-violent and non-coercive one. * applying the forest succession model. How to apply the model is not difficult to appreciate at least in broad outline. As well many of the further details have been filled out by work that can be described as indicating how allegiance can be shifted in practice from where we mostly are to alternative social arrangements and lifestyles built on self-management and mutual aid.$ The seeds of anarchism should be broadcast or planted, anarchist (non-Statist) arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts made to replace or modify vulnerable Statist arrangements, e.g. by democratisation of present institutions and development of nonstatist and noncapitalist alternatives. Some of the practices are familiar: anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist) cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc. Others are slightly less familiar: avoidance of State influence by arrangements beyond State reach such as costless (or alternative currency) interchanges of goods and services, barter, black-green economies, and so on, action directed at removing decision-making from State departments, such as forest services, and into citizen hands, and ultimately, to decentralized interested communities. In this sort of way, 4 5 This has an important bearing on strategies for achieving change: see D. Altman, ReAearsaAs ybr CAange, Fontana, Melbourne. 1980. As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley, p.284 ff.,SM. �8 worthwhile State arrangements can be replaced, and power can be progressively transferred from the State, and returned to the communities and to people more directly involved. Formation of networks of anarchistic communities and neighbourhoods, functioning within the interstices of the state and state bureaucracies, would represent a significant stage in succession. Something like this is beginning to develop in Australia (by contrast with the USA where the commune movement appears to have gone into decline).^ 3. Types of individual and small group actions While strategies proceeding through movements are social in character, a variety of individna/ action can also be highly effective if widely enough separately undertaken. Naturally if there is some solidarity, some coordination of individuals, such action will be both fostered and enhanced. Witness the practice of early Christians, which combined individual action and consciousness change, within a support and solidarity network. But Christianity misleadingly promised more than anarchism and environmentalism can, not merely future better lives, but after­ lives in splendour, a bogus transcendentalism which however was, and still is, widely believed, a damaging transcendentalism too, in that satisfactory lives in real space-time can be foregone, in favour of virtual after-lives. * fran-y/br/nano/M. There are a range of proposals for comprehensive personal change, but they all share fundamentals, which are personal improvement and enhanced personal relationships. It is because of these shared fundamentals that religious change, such as that offered under new Testament Christianity shades into the quasi-spiritualism of sects linked to Deep Ecology (such as Council of All-Beings, Homage to Gaia, Earth Empowerment, etc.) which in tum shades into Californian personal therapy fashions. Proposals for transformation do not however have to hang^ out on the fringes of religion; hardheads like Passmore (in direct descent^ from 18th century sympathy-based ethics) have emphasized both personal relationships, love for others, and moral improvement, better adherence to tested moral principles. Put together, these individual changes would lead us, it is optimistically imagined, out of the environmental morass and to a socially and environmentally better world. While it is not that simple, while the problems lie deeper, some thought it was simpler still. Either the Beatles in their famous lines 'All you need is love', reflecting an extremely popular sentiment, only saw one part of what was recognised, or they erroneously supposed that part would yield the remainder. Love slobs are one sort of counterexample; they achieve love and just wallow in that, not seeking any sort of improvement, moral or other. Let us not diminish the relevance of these proposals: the more rounded people among the thin paper-mache economic and political men focussed only upon maximizing their own self- interested utility in material consumer goods the better, the better for many concerns, including no 6 Refs �9 doubt prospects for anarchism. But let us not delude ourselves that herein lies the way out or forward. Many of those proposals have been around for rather long time, and suggested again and again, with no conspicuous results. A lot of it is to found in Spinoza, whence it has percolated through both to Deep Ecology and Freudian therapy. The Deep Ecological emphasis on self­ realisation goes back at leas a century, to Humboldt and Mill, with Self already expanded in German and British idealists. German and British industrial development did not lose a beat. A mental revolution, in some people's minds, is no doubt essential for a properly planned revolution. But mental transformations have to be translated into action, to practices that make a material difference. And consciousness transformations may not translate into appropriate action; many such transformations are politically very conservative, and lead to no relevant action or effort for structural change. Much of what is said of consciousness transformation applies also to * a route to change recommended by reformers and radicals for at least a century, from Mill through Bookchin. Education, appropriately undertaken, can amend ideology, change consciousness. But at its best it is very slow in operation, very partial because it has to compete against other sources of propaganda (such as media, dominant society, etc.). And it is more likely to carry dominant messages, and reinforce dominant attitudes. There is a major problem in getting alternative messages appropriately delivered and action undertaken. * c^pting oat (so far as this is possible or even now possible). To be effective, this has to be focussed, not merely a dropping out parasitic on the state system. It has to be focussed in way^which challenge the state systems, it inevitability, decidability, etc., in Redirect *-F ways which withdraw contributions to it and ^.... activity elsewhere^creating an atwojpaere, of expectation and of belief (perhaps even if false). . If you or your group produce the impression that there is going to be a continuing recession or a revolution, if your spread the conviction that there is widespread dissatisfaction, that society is sick or rotten to the core and is about to decline further or collapse, then you are taking a significant step towards such outcomes, towards decline or fall? If these efforts to develop an atmosphere are widely orchestrated then they are likely to be so much the more effective. It is appreciated in business and advertising circles how much psychological atmosphere counts; a Pint , * Al r climate of confidence is important ^for climbing out of a recession. A climate of revolutionary expectation can set the scene for revolution events. While it is dishonest to create an impression of imminent decline and disaster knowing full well that such scenarios are utterly unlikely, informed greens and anarchists are not in any such compromised situation. Environmental decline, continuing extensive unemployment, persisting 7 To adapt Joll p.222. v /s �10 periodic recession, and in due course collapse, are likely futures under present capitalist state trajectories. Anarchists can assist in producing an atmosphere of gloom and depression and pessimism about capitalist economic circumstances and prospects. But they will aim to generate a quite different impression of the stability of capitalistic arrangements. 4. Widening operations to exceed standard political and legal arrangements. Unorthodox political ways and means, a prominent part of historical anarchist activity, are much more extensive than political textbooks would suggest (or have impressionable readers believe). These have been restored to contemporary prominence through civil disobedience practices, and peace and environmental actions. Methods have also been modified (for instance to exclude pointless personal violence) and substantially expanded. Practical tactics include protests, occupations, blockades, parades demonstrations, theatre, civil disobedience, refusals, boycotts, tax and financial withholdings, plant disobilizations, monkey wrenching, and so on.8 Such methods, more accurately active applications of those tactics, are grouped under Jirec? action, a vague appellation sometimes taken or extended to include forms of guerrilla warfare on the one side and more indirect pressure group activity (lobbying, petitioning, public meetings, etc) on the other. (Such tactics substantially improve upon, and rechannel, the often misguided and rather illfated "deeds" and "acts of propaganda" of late 19th C anarchists.) Such tactics can be both shorttermed and sustained. Important among sustained practices are resistance movements and organised refusals (preferably without conspicuous leaders). While individuals can be selectively picked off, enough people well organised cannot. Mass social actions and Grand Refusals could constitute significant political happenings. Such strategies can be pursued both for specific objectives (to preserve a forest here, a building there) and for much more general objectives, up to and including dislodging an unpopular governing party, or overturning a state. For more general and dramatic results to be achieved, there are some important preliminary desiderata to be satisfied. These include * establishment of a movement, to carry out actions, and subsequently to participate in the supersession of the state. * a certain amount of planning, of how to proceed, to direct limited resources. Subsequently, as supersession of the state becomes a live issue, much planning of the transition and of post-state arrangements is important, if a successful outcome, or even a good attempt, is to be achieved. Proper preparation is critical. Once again, planning and organisation of anarchist activity is certainly not excluded, in revolutionary movements or elsewhere. The rival spontaneity view, still fashionable in anarchist circles, is underpinned by a confused picture of freedom;^ is inconsistent 8 9 See Coover et al, B. Martin, Changing t/te %bgs, G Sharp. Duly criticised in "Hot immigration". �11 with the coupled congruence doctrine where end-states are prefigured; and issues in poor decision­ making, choice deliberately uninformed by available information. But naturally planning is not, and cannot be, total; and it should not be too inflexible, but allow for contingencies, extraordinary happenings, even spontaneous redirection (e.g. though a range of flexible ranked options). Initiating an anarchist movement virtually from a zero base (the present situation in most developed states), would be a slow difficult and no doubt frustrating task. Fortunately there are attractive alternatives, such as integration with already effective movements, notably those already engaged and experienced in direct action. Declared or self-conscious anarchists are now few in number, and lacking in power. Contemporary anarchists live like the counterculture did, around the margins or in the interstices of contemporary dominant statist societies, rarely seen in the boardrooms of top companies or at the clubs of power brokers. Accordingly, transitions to anarchism are most unlikely to proceed at all directly, either upwards by democratic or popular procedures or downwards through constitutional procedures invoked by controlling elites. Anarchist strategies, in order to work, will need to be indirect and smarter. There is much scope for such strategies. For direct action along the lines sketched to amount to anything, an anarchist movement with considerable organisational capabilities is needed. The most promising way of fast-tracking such a movement is to mobilize already established movements, namely, once again, green and peace and like movements. The idea, in brief, to form an active anarchist movement within the union of green and peace movements. It will have to be wif/un these movements. For not all those affiliated with those loose movements are opposed to statist political arrangements or anarchistically inclined. Many of the leaders and prominent spokespeople among environmentalists for instance, have a cosy relationship with state political figures and bureaucrats. Indeed these days many of these state-intricated people, who may well have genuine environmental commitments, account themselves green, but they are generally unlikely to consider rocking the ship of state. Nor do these state people generally participate in extended or vigorous protest operations, of which there are increasing many. An anarchist movement will link into the extensive more radical end of green and peace movements. There is already considerable linkage, and considerable scope for expansion of linkage. Many radical greens are vaguely aware of the anarchist character of several of their own proposals for change. More radical greens are mostly already aware of the extent of state involvement in environmental degradation, and of state connections with, and encouragement of, large corporations engaged in environmentally destructive enterprises. Nor will they be long bought off by (what threatens to split the green movement) attempts at reconciliation, most recently under the ambiguous banner of "sustainable development". It is becoming clear to more radical greens that this normally means sustaining economic development, that is capitalistic business and macroeconomic growth largely as usual, not sustaining the already developed environmental heritage. More radical peace activists are even more keenly aware of the intrication of states in �12 activities hostile to peace such as military activity, weapons production, support of repressive states and client army/armies funding of counter-insurgency, terrorist and destabilization operators, and so on. There is evidently much common ground to build upon, from which to organise. Correladvely, mobilization through loose green and peace movements effects the character of the activated anarchism, shaping and limiting its forms. It will be an ecosocial anarchism of pacific slant: ESP anarchism for short (for ecosociopacific anarchism). There is no similar prospect of mobilizing most other forms of anarchism, in particular robustly individualistic varieties. For the natural allies of the latter varieties, economic rationalist and libertarianians are overwhelmingly committed to a minimalistic state to guarantee, coercively, the fundamentals of market capitalism (private property, constitu^onal and contract law, etc.). Until a movement is organised there is little chance of a satisfactory revolution. While a few people may be able to gain control, briefly, of some states, without a larger movement requisite restructuring of state functions cannot be carried through. A viable anarchism further supposes some alternative fairly detailed organisational and social arrangements. If such a system is to come to pass and to persist, then its prospects are exceedingly poor if it is a do-nothing set of arrangements spontaneously arising out of a revolution. But the state as it grows tends to undermine or eliminate such alternative arrangements; and simultaneously people come more and more to expect the government to do what they might formerly have done, or banded together to do, themselves. The state again proceeds, like other persistent systems and ecosystems, to establish conditions for its own survival: to be needed for social and even individual activities. Formation q/ movements wMwn movements. There is presently very little in the way of organised anarchist activity anywhere in the world, and no real movements. There is, for instance, Liberty Foundation in USA which supports anarchist productions, but it does not discriminate in what it supports between anarchism and minimal statism and economic rationalism. There are other organisations that do or could play a creative role in anarchist movements (such as Black Rose publicadons in Montreal, and the small Institute of Social Ecology in Vermont). As it takes some time, and much effort, to establish a viable movement, the situation for anarchistic change may look bleak. But there is no reason why anarchism need form an independent movement; it can hitch to already established movements. There are obvious movements, of very sympathetic character, to join (this is no inHitration or annexation): namely the green movement and the peace movement. In both these overlapping movements there is wide appreciation that states themselves are major sources of the issues they are concerned with; for states are the main cause of wars, major participants in nuclear industries, major sources of the issues they are concerned with; for states are the main cause of wars, major participants in nuclear industries, major proponents of economic growth and its concomitant pollution and waste. (Despite the definite descriptions, these "movement" are really loose A �13 c coalitions, often not even organised in one group in individual countries.) Development of anarchist groundswells within green organisations and among green sympathizers appears particularly promising. For many greens are beginning to recognise that they are getting nowhere much, or even going backwards, through state support and state-directed appeals and activity. Turning enough of these doubtful or disillusional greens in positive anarchist directions looks a genuine prospect, io There are very great advantages in mobilizing relevant parts of green and peace movements ( in anarchistic direcdons. Not only are there substantially concordant ideologies and goods; further the to these ends lie available and quite well developed. Readily to be drawn upon is much knowledge of and experience in direct action methods, nonviolent resistance and sabotage, civil (and state) disobedience, and similar.n While several of these methods and procedures derive from earlier anarchist, resistance and civil disobedience practices (and many are common currency of direct oppositional organisations everywhere), they have been brought to a new level of refinement. Further, some extremely important restrictions are recognised. By contrast with methods deployed by "illegal" armies, guerillas, insurgents and the like, paramilitary techniques are out. Such paramilitary organisations are, in any case, operating within the statist paradigm, normally aiming to replace some state arrangements by others. Methods applied are expected to be nonviolent, and to inflict no serious damage upon living creatures.^ What is foreshadowed, then, is formation and development, in each region, of a radical change movement, a radwienf or Ideal radments in different regions are in communication and loosely federated. A radment proceeds to undertake both reformist action and radical action, marginally political and extra-political action, up to and including revolutionary action. Much action is undertaken by smaller groups within the radment, vands (to choose a heady combination of "band" and "van").^ Vands undertake specific projects, of a wide variety of sorts. So far much of their activity has been directed to halting or redirecting specific vandalistic activities of governments, governmental authorities or government-licensed corporations, such as logging, whaling, sealing, polluting, transporting hazardous waste,... The simple proposal is that the range 10 11 12 13 Experiences or processes of change involved do not amount to conversion; for there is no adoption of a faith. Anarchism resembles atheism, a loss of faith, rather than a religion. Rather there is a comingdown-to-earth, a realisation that institutions in which trust and hope had been placed did not warrant those investments and were without justificatory clothes. There is now an array of texts documenting methods, explaining how they are applied, how they can be taught (e.g. through enactments, drama, practice, etc), and so on. See (as above). There are some controversial procedures, such as the tree spiking used by Earth-Firsters and MonkeyWrenchers. Those may do minor damage to some trees spiked, and serious damage to loggers and sawmillers who proceed to mill spiked trees, (a careful formulation of admissible procedures and practices is required.) Vands may include wanderers and wanderlebeners, but they are not vandals. Environmental vandalism is one of the major practices they oppose. �14 of vand activity should be expanded, to include revolutionary action. Such action would include counter-option, taking over the administrations of organisations that are being specifically combated or targeted. Experience could be gained on organisations like universities, though the ultimate target is naturally the state. Designing a s/nari revo/afton.' and revo/MZfonary achion. If the state were justified, if it had a moral right to be there, the action, revolutionary or other, by ethically guided anarchists to dislodge or remove it would be excluded. But it is not. So action, including revolutionary action against it, is not thereby excluded. Perhaps the richest literature on rapid transformation of society, on revolution, falls within the orbit of marxism. There is much to be learnt from this literature, and much from it can be adopted. Some of the elements for textual adaptation are simple. Replace 'the working class' or 'workers' appropriately (unfortunately the replacement is not uniform). For example, substitute 'people's councils' for 'workers councils'; replace 'vanguard class' by 'revolutionary coalition', etc. Not only does marxism presume a vanguard class; more difficult it presumes violence as an inevitable component of revolutionary action. Here the direct and other action methods already alluded to substitute for marxist methods. But while much can be learnt form Marxist socialists, there are fundamental differences as to the point and character of revolution. While the Marxist objective is to siege power and use it, the anarchist objective is not to seize power, and then remove it or relinquish it, a dubious and risky indirect route, but rather to neutralize and remove power directly. There are said to be classic problems confronting any revolutionary movement. One of these is the alleged stability of states, in the West at least. This stability, which does not extend far east, or even into Central Europe, is considerably exaggerated; belief in this stability, which was shaken by the events in Paris in 1968, can be undermined, by an appropriate subversive campaign, so that belief no longer constitutes such an intellectual obstacle to revolutionary activity. Another classic problem turns upon the issue of revolutionary organisation. Some of these organisation^ problems, practices in green and peace movements, especially in groups like Greenpeace, have already effectively solved.[detail]. Z/te ZransMon. Like stages before the transition, stages q/fer transitions to post-state societies will not be easy. There is a commonplace anarchist sentiment that removal of the state, its burden and oppressiveness, a real incubus, will release an enormous amount of energy, with great scope for spontaneity, fulfilment of human potentialities, and so on. Although this sentiment is widely reiterated, very little evidence for the sentiment is ever assembled. My own sentiment is that the commonplace sentiment, and what is taken to ensue from it, is largely moonshine, because, for one thing, there is a countermodel that is at least as plausible. Those who are released from an �15 immense burden, or very hard oppressive forced labour, simply stop, relax and do very little, or little more than is necessary for life and limb. For similar reasons the common anarchist proposition that productivity will rise enormously after the state is stripped away is very doubtful. If the state is like some sort of slave-driver, post­ state productivity will presumably fall. The flood of goods and the end of scarcity, with the demise of the state and its well-published appropriation of the surplus, looks unlikely (not to say environmentally undesirable because the impact of the "goods"). Wishful thinking appears to have gained control in much anarchist literature. There are other important reasons why parts of post­ state productivity will decline considerably. Much too much of present production, fostered by the state, involves erosion of biological capital, and should be wound down accordingly, and alternatives sought. In a similar way, anarchists often look far too optimistic about the rapid regeneration of supportative societies destroyed by, and through machinations of the state. Some of those supportative arrangements, developed in ages of suppression are gone, perhaps forever; others will take much tiwg to repair. Social healing is sometimes very slow. As with post-war reconstruction, living and social arrangements could be very difficult for some for some considerable time. There will need to be, for instance, * intermediate support structures put in place to ease the transition for some; * much flexibility, and some preparedness to experiment to see what works; * vigilance to ensure that old forces of state do not remerge on the back of social discontent. Intelligent anarchist arrangements will have flexible plans, enabling anticipation of main problem areas and sensitive coping with them. 5. External interference �Chapter 11 FEASIBLE ANARCHIST CONTRIBUTIONS TO GLOBAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL PROBLEMS Heavy criticisms of anarchism, driving in strongly from socialist and marxist quarters, include these: that anarchism offers no worthwhile practice for and offers no useful contributions far coping with global problems^ meaning problems in present social and political conditions (not usually problems concerning world environments). Among the problems alluded to, which it is alleged anarchism does not and cannot address, are human proverty, human malnutrition, inequitable distribution of resources, human (over-)population, and so on. Granted, there are great many problems, many of them getting worse rapidly. Though anarchist arrangements played little or no part in producing these problems — many of them o developing and getting out of control under free-enterprise capitalist and state-socialist arrangements — it is sometimes outrageously claimed that anarchism should be able to deal successfully with an array of these problems. To add to the insult, it is said to fail as a theory because it is unable to do so. Why on earth should anarchism be presumed to do this? One critic endowed with this level of 'gall' (one A. Wertheimer) contends that anarchism is unable to successfully deal with four presently existing world social conditions. These are: 1) that "the population of the earth is (perhaps) too large, but increasing at a rapid rate with no prospect for a serious reduction"; 2) that "in much of the world, basic human needs are not being satisfied"; 3) that "the world's natural and human resources are not evenly distributed across the globe"; and finally 4) that "the present level of subsistence is based on a high level of social and economic interdependence among various regions of the world and within the regions themselves". In addition [5)J... anarchism is unable to cope with conflicts between individual self-interest and social needs, particularly as relates to ... defense (Clark p.142). The short response is, So what? Anarchism is not really saddled with the global legacies of p^archist practice. A longer response begins thus:- Firstly, insofar as these conditions constitute problems ("condition " 3) is more a "fact" than a "problem"), no political theory is coping successfully, only an all-conquering ideology would pretend to be able to cope. Democratic capitalism has had (important isolated pockets excepted) little impact in limiting India's gross population; Maoist socialism^' has de^ only a little better in China. Part of the problem in almost all such overpopulated regions lies in getting the problem recognised as a problem, and making appropriate adjustments; as with education and adjustment concerning the hazards of pollution and smoking, this is largely because of remiss state practice. Part of the problem, the present resolutions will have ethically inadmissible outcomes or by-products. —------------ .------------------ ——___ �2 Only for the future is there some glimmer of hope, but not under present archist arrangements. Secondly, prospects of success for anarchism are primarily regional, not global. But a region can hardly be expected to handle, rather than make limited contributions towards, world problems. Suppose, for instance, Niue became (or reverted to) an anarchist society, a successful one locally. It would be no detraction from its local success that it made no impact upon demilitarizing the USA or in halting the world's resource drain te thereto, or that its success was (through standard US media practice) scarcely known about there. * iMMM. As we have already noticed, it is often asserted that anarchism cannot work in regions of large populations or with high population densities. That anarchy only has prospects of success in small, and perhaps technologically unsophisticated, communities is a widely espoused thesis? These kinds of assertion have already been criticised. What do not work are stock archist procedures, e.g. expanding \m out-of-touch bureaucracy. Poly-archic arrangements cannot handle tough decisions. By contrast, sortition allows them to be taken (Burgheim). This is important as wide range of decisions: transport systems, restructuring urban systems, and so on, as well as population and immigration policies. As there is a range of lobbies (ethnics, etc.) in favour of population increase: hard for party systems to ignor these lobbies, because of voting system. * Deliberate social reorganisation, which undercuts reasons for large families, namely old-age care, cheap labour in fields, etc. (Seeams as successor (technology here)? * Scarcity is re/aftw to wants and presumed needs. Similarly abundance: it depends on extent to which materialism, consumerism, ete, prevail. When wants are large, perhaps insatiable, there will always be scarcity. Wants are not a given; needs, through culturally dependent, can be. Whan needs are set high (e.g. to include domestic ref^rgeaati^s), then too there will be scarcity for the foreseeable future? No doubt there is a rough band of minimal sustenance and shelter requirement for keeping humans (why are we back to this) alive, for bare sustenance. Even if they could be met, satisfactory lives would not result. * Creation of needs (Marx). Industrial revolution under capitalism aggravated of scarcity and toil. * Anarchists have a bad track-record on scarcity. They have tended to assume abundance. A vast increase once the shades of the state are removed. A Following Kropotkin's proposals they have taken for granted enormous productivity from labour-intensive garden plots, a sort of anarchist green revolution, neglecting the extensive * 3 4 Even so, oneway to resolve/is by building up from local and regional solutions. Compare nuclear freedom, peace, etc.( Thus both sympathetic and unsympathetic commentators; Taylor, Wertheimer etc. n frequently claimed that we know more or less how to meet population problems. Only political structures and vested interests stand in way of doing so. But it is not quite that simple and easy. Arguments that wants/needs distinction cannot be drawn. //' �3 inputs required to make this feasible, (water, energy, manure, pesticides, etc.). [Thus e.g. Clark p.148.) * There are some sharp limits on the extent of growth to cater for human populations and their "needs". An important limitation can be seen by tracking energy, which is limited, more abundant production of which encounters other limits (pollution, nasty works production, etc.) D&triZwHon, q/T&Kmrcgs. . 4. * Necessity is regularly exaggerated. Often this done to enable capitalist routes to be taken, access to foreign business provided etc. * 'Necessity becomes part of imperialistic exploitation. Contrast the equally unsatisfactory Marxist line: distribution is one with production. What is required is a change in technological systems and productive relations. Undesirable patterns of production result in maldistribution. '... the entire problematic of "redistribution" is bared jn the questionable assumption of the feasibility of seeking a solution to the problem while continuing a technological system founded ^n dependency and disproperti%s in economic power * (Clark p.154). * The Aid record of present liberal democratic states is dismal. * As regards more basic provisioning, mutual aid through free federation. Example of Spanish collective ((^ebal ref 19 pp. 184-5). Argument that anarchist approach could succeed, from socio-psychological assumption: 'unless humans develop patterns of life and values based on mutual aid at level of small groups and local communities, one cannot expect them to go very far in the practice of mutual aid at any other level of social organisation * (Clark p.154). But really heeds the convert: when have no developed, can be suspected to deliver aid. Present arrangement for human living are not made on the basis of quality of life for the livers, but all too often to suit the needs of industry J returns to capitalism, etc. The results are everywhere conspicuous, especially in contemporary cities — which characteristically dominate whole regions. Many major local problems derive from the environmental states and living conditions of cities. An anarchist resolution involves restructuring cities. This would include development of network cities and restoration of community. �4. Appendix: ON SELECTION OF COMMITTEES For how committees should be comprised, look at what they are supposed to accomplish, what sorts of decisions deliver, and so on. For example, the basis of decision for allocating public money has to be: 'attempting to balance all legitimate claims on the basis of need and public benefit in accordance with recognised moral values and principles'.^ Evidently such committees should not be composed of 1. members of competing constitutions seeking funds (i.e. anti-model is premiers conference) 2. power traders (i.e. anti-model is /...... or typical bureaucratic committee). What appears to be required are candidates who are * impartial (without chauvinistic or other prejudices) * varied in evolutionary complex claims * informed of.... moral values and principles, and committed to some such. H <3-. After that try statically for spread of attitudes from conservative to radical. Such committees according directly violate (Burheim) relevant interests criteria. In general however for lower level committees relevance criteria obtain. 5. Demanarchoid ecodesigns for Australia �Chapter 5.1 THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM: VARIETIES AND OPTIONS The arguments outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on. For example, spontaneous anarchism - according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrangements will arise spontaneously and will be ushered in during the revolution without any prior organisation - is a position which is not viable and could not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which durable supersession of the State depends. The sort of anarchist society which these theoretical arguments delineate will certainly be organised, but the organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures (and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening of the centralised State), relying heavily no doubt on voluntary co­ operation and direct democracy. The society which emerges may be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes pictured it, or it may not. It may well be based on smaller-scale decentralised communities: for otherwise such arrangements as community replacements of State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of Prisoners" Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily. Communities may well be federated and control will be bottomup, not merely by representation and subject to a downward system of command. Within each community there will, under such social anarchism, not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth and property, and no highly concentrated economic power. Under social anarchism, a community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is communally owned or not owned at all. While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and also economic arrangements, they are very far from determining them completely; they offer no detailed blueprint. Accordingly what emerges is not a particular from of anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and anarchism, such as was broadly instituted in the Spanish collectives. There are several recognised varieties of anarchism, among the more common: individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarchosyndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms, and now eco-anarchisms. These varieties are not particularly well-characterised. They are by no means at all exclusive. They certainly do not exhaust the interesting possibilities. So far indeed a satisfactory classification is lacking. Usually something of a ragbag is offered: textbooks single out a very few varieties, and look at them. Invariably they leave out important varieties. �2 But it is not difficult to discern some of the more independent dimensions^ along which variation occurs, and which accordingly are relevant to an improved multi-dimensional tabular classification: Part-w/to/e dimension: atomism pole O <— individual social---------- communal —O total holism This is a most important dimension of variation among organisational arrangements (for analysis see SM). It accounts for a major bifurcation between European anarchisms, which tend to be socially oriented, and American anarchisms, which are usually highly individualistic (religious communities and some European transplants excepted). For markedly holistic arrangements to persist, some strong ideological relational glue appears required, such as an immersing spiritual ideology. Property spectrum: Although this can be compressed into two dimensional form, it is better presented three dimensionally as follows: full O <individualistic ---privatization communalistic -> O full public (tribal) ownership diminished ownership no ownership This spectrum evidently connects with the preceding holistic dimension, and both contribute to what was the old right-left political division (a sort of crude super-position), and to what should be superseding it, three-colour political spectrum: (old right) blue <- red (old left) green (new environmental) and electoral spectrum: Gronp fully O <- bottom up — democratic — oligopolistic — top down participatory O fully dictatorial Change proceJnre dimensions: violent non-constitutional constitutional <pacific 1 Some of these "dimensions" are not really linear in the way strictly required. That they are not, and that they are not fully independent, does not impede a much improved classification. �3 C/tangg wufMfors: vanguard group or class; <Lumpen-proletariat-workers' syndicates bottom "the people" -----------------business political companies parties ruling elites top greens alternative coalitions And so on. The schema presented are clearly far from exhaustive; nothing has been directly included concerning distribution methods (market vs command, open vs closed storehouses, etc.), admissible technology, or work-leisure arrangements, to take three important examples. More pieces will be picked up as we proceed (the approximate number of dimensions is computationally small), and some of the rather schematic sketches ventured above, elements of which should be familiar, will receive some development in what follows. Once the (n) dimensions are duly elaborated an anarc/tAm can be located and classified (pigeon-holed in n-space) by placement in each dimension. For instance, the form of anarchism preferred by me (see SM for an early presentation), is located as follows: it is social (with a significantly qualified communistic safety net: each according to her or his basic needs), local­ market-oriented but non-capitalistic, with diminished ownership, democratic but without politicians and with alternative electoral arrangements, pacific but not bound by "constitutional" procedures, utilizing modest safe technologies,.... But it is but one sort never to be instituted everywhere, from a rich variety of alternatives There are then MMny anarchisms, a rich variety of different forms, some of them scarcely investigated or known. That anarchism comprises such a plurality has proved puzzling to those (for example of one name-one thing persuasion) who assumed it must be a single ideology, either individual or collective,.... Indeed the pluralist character of anarchism has led even more apparently sympathetic critics, to 'wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or merely a jumble of beliefs ...' (M. p.3). Of course the impression that anarchism 'is amorphous and full of paradoxes and contradictions' is marvellously assisted by conflating degenarchism with anarchism, chaos with order, and by combining the variant forms, individualism with socialism and communism. By properly regarding anarchism as a sheaf of overlapping positions assembled around a core characterisation, a standard model for pluralism, the problematic elements of anarchism as an ideology disappear. No doubt it is not an ideology like Marxism, but then Marxism is atypical in its set of paradigmatic texts, concentrated in the works of the master. Other ideologies such as liberalism or environmentalism afford better comparisons. While anarchism is an ideology (in both good and bad senses), it is not really a movement. There is not, anywhere really, such a movement, in the way there have been a succession of liberation movements or there is a green movement and within it a deep ecology movement. �4 As anarchisms are plural, so by similar arguments are green, and deep-green, anarchisms. Certainly green effect a select among their cluse of anarchism; it excludes, for example, the run of individualistic anarchisms peddial in USA, because these admit much anti-environmental activity, manifested for instance through "externalities" and market failure (some of these could be very pale green). But selection does not, even for deep-green tend to a singleton, but still to a wide pluralism. These pluralisms are not merely descriptive, but normative. Insofar as any anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it should be * pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who want to organise differently than its preferred way. It should also be * non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatible with broad-based non­ coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like.2 That is, there is a doublish standard on vio/encg: It is alright to apply violence against state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this can be justified through namely it is OK for me to do violence to you bot not OK for you to apply violence to me. Accordingly a conc/MMon is: A moral anarchism will not be a form committed to violence (except unavoidable forms etc.). Such pluralism does not enjoy a strong historic track-record, and does not go unopposed. Standard anarchist positions, sketching of which was mainly a nineteenth century preoccupation (but extending into twentieth century science fiction and utopian literature), shied away from pluralism in the direction of monistic forms, towards insistence upon particular structure, organisation and distributional methods. Such monistic rigidity led to much intense, often fruitless discussion and friction between anarchists committed to different arrangements. Certainly there was a doctrine of spontaneity — according to which in a state-overthrowing revolution (in the very heat of the revolution!) the masses world spontaneously decide upon new arrangements — which makes it appear that any structures at all were open for consideration; but it was also assumed that certain arrangements would be selected, towards which active anarchists would provide guidance. It is not difficult to indicate some of the broad features of emergent arrangements features that flow from the character of anarchism. But anarchists, over-attracted like others to monistic schemes, have regularly attempted to advance their own schemes, introducing many further postulates, that reach far beyond what flows from the basic characterisation, and that need not 2 There are serious pro&Anw for anarchism that accept coercive methods: why not aiso accept the state then? Such positions tend to be forced back towards an organised individualism. But how then do they stop voluntary organisation arising (legitimately)? �5 be adopted by genuine anarchistics (some further examples of optional and rejectable extras from a recent manifesto: ... direct democracy, destruction of all hierarchies, maximization of freedom, total Revolution, no ends-means distinction, no leaders, optimism about an anarchist future,...). Because of the expansive pluralism of anarchism, it overlaps many other ideologies, indeed virtually all that do not include as a theme unmitigated commitment to a state or like central authority. Thus while anarchism excludes fascism and is incompatible with state capitalism, anarchism overlaps liberalism, democracy, and even Marxism, since Marxism affords a long-term anarchism. There has been much confusion about these interrelations. Take democracy. Anarchism does not entail democracy, as is sometimes claimed. Advice of a select minority or of a single sage could regularly be adopted, though the advice did not reflect the will of the people and its source was not elected or appointed by the people. Nor does anarchism entail undemocratic procedures. There are, in the plurality, democratic forms, of various sorts, and undemocratic forms. Democratic forms may have a better prospect of enabling genuine democracy than life under the state. For as some have argued, 'both the nation state and electoral democracy are inadequate as vehicles for democracy under modern conditions' (Bumheim p.218). Is its goal individual freedom or communal solidarity? Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes neither, sometimes both (a typical four-valued logical structure). A pluralistic anarchism offers several different sorts of communities, not just one kind: for instance, independent individuals, perhaps interrelated and organised through contracts, solidaristic groups working freely together and sharing according to need, and various attractive intermediaries, where there may be more individual-oriented market arrangements but there are also safety nets ensuring distribution according to basic needs. It is not difficult in theory to devise structures that allow a wide variety of kinds. For example, in simple cases this can be accomplished through regional patterning, as illustrated in the following with 6 varieties. 2 1 5 3 6 4 (Such a modelling for political pluralism is further elaborated in UT.) The brief interlude of anarchism in Spain afforded a small-scale example of regional patterning at work The kinds of anarchistic societies are bound to be of very variable quality, both theoretically and in practice. Some will only work with rather special sorts of people, for instance certain communes with members with strong religious or ideological commitments; some will not succeed at all. Some verge on incoherence, for instance those against coercive organisation that approve group terrorist tactics. But while some kinds of anarchism are entangled in serious problems, others are not. Anarchists generally have no obligation to �6 defend defective kinds; yet many criticisms of anarchism are directed at just such defective forms. Although there is a rich variety of anarchistic end-states (virtually uninstantiated possibilities), there are same common or overlapping organisational and structural features. Such family-resemblance features are what hold the plurality together, and include noncoercive versions of those arrangements essential to a functioning society: for instance, broad features of arrangements for production and distribution, for arbitration and reconciliation, and so on, and on. But although each such anarchist society will have some such organizational features, they will differ in detail. For example, a main distributional feature of a simple communist society may comprise a common storehouse from which members take according to need, whereas in individualist societies distribution will normally proceed through some sort of exchange in market systems. More generally different types of anarchism will offer different economic theories. Those with stronger individualistic component will tend to rely upon not merely market or allied exchange arrangements, but upon capitalistic organisation. The type of anarchism favoured here strikes an intermediate route: markets without capitalism. How is such complex organisation to be achieved without a state? Does not such organisation and government require a state? To remove that familiar assumption and associated blockages — encouraged by too much life under states and no experience of alternatives - take a wider look around. Look at how many activities and procedures are organised without states or essential participation of states. By voluntary arrangements. Prominent examples are again sporting organisations, labour unions and business corporations of various sorts. In short, organisation can be accomplished through a range of appropriate institutions. Such examples also provide the appropriate key unlocking the door as to how more extensive organisation can be achieved in the absence of the state, namely through appropriate institutions. The state dissolves into functioning components, a set of appropriate institutions, and at bottom into its relevant minimization. It fragments into compartments — in two interconnected ways: into regional parts and into capacities, functional parts. There are other valuable clues to stateless reorganisation. What happens within the more self-regulating state can also happen without it. As Gramsci emphasized, the ability to govern without overt coercion depends largely on the ability of those in power to exploit systems of belief that the larger population shares. The nature of that system of belief is to some extent determinable by policy makers, since in the modern state they possess a significant ability to propagandize for their view. Yet.... (p.63). Recent empirical investigations tend to yield similar results. People tend to follow rules and obey laws they regard as moral or otherwise satisfactory. There are important messages for anarchistic organisation here also, for arrangements without coercion, overt or other. �7 Anarchistic rules will try to go with the prevailing flow, and will only vary (as over vindictive punishment) where an evidently satisfactory justification can be given. More generally, smarter anarchistic arrangements will aim to include desirable self-regulating systems, such as small- scale markets. Though there are many different strands that can be interwoven through the pluralistic out-fall from the basic characterisation, there are some broad tendencies of anarchistic arrangement which include: * reliance on self-regulatory methods of organisation that require little or no intervention, as opposed to highly regulated procedures, perhaps tending towards centralism or paternalism. This is one reason why markets are often favoured, analogues of centralised control and coercive legal systems are not. * emphasis on voluntary methods, in place of imposed methods — coercive methods are of course excluded by virtue of basic characterisation. Certainly de facto power may remain, but it will be without justification. * favouring of decentralisation and deconcentration rather than centralised or concentrated structures. That does not imply there can be no downward relations. Of course under federal arrangements there will be, and sideways natural relations as well (a full control system). * discouragement of empowerment, encouragement of depowerment. * opposition to oppression is a corollary. There are too many alternatives in the pluralistic basket to look at all of them. Let us consider only some of them, with however preferred features. (An example that does not rank highly and will not be further assessed is Stimer's individualism.) Anarchistic societies of any complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisations, or a federation of these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue, role or function. Thus they will include what might well be accounted gcorggiowuZ /hnctiona/iym. Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join. Typically they will be voluntary arrangements. A critical question concerns how these organisations, substituting for the operation of state, are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In much favoured democratic structures, such as electoral bureaucracies, control is usually weak and remarkably mJirgct. A populace weakly selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bureaucratic bodies some control of state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments. It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component of each organisation is chosen randomly from those qualified of the regional community who volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications (e.g. �8 having served before at a lower level), and avoid disqualifications (e.g. having acquired a disqualifying record).^ Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be represented, for instance disabled, minorities, and so forth, then it is a matter of arranging random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's Po/t/fc^). Nowadays it is called Je/narchy (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the neologism JewMwiarc/ty. Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing a most expensive duplication, government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of central parliamentary government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is duly removed - as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, itself no centre, which is directly linked to functional organisation. Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre and its command structure, no longer there to capture (for there is no command or control structure that could be taken by an invader or with internal insurrection). Community defence is thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who controls the controllers: partly because control is so diffused, partly because also gone are legions of soldiers and security forces, and partly because a main controller is the community (one of the advantages of more direct democracy). Appropriate institutions take care then of the day-to-day running of community affairs. But what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure? These can be accomplished from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the like (with public assessment organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down inflexible fashion. (Some of these methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of Europe, are investigated in Wolff.) A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed coercive mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It 3 People can serve their administrative apprenticeship at iocal or group levels. One when they are adjudged to have exhibited sufficient competence here are they entitled to nominate for selection at grander levels. That is, there is a tiered structure for administralive careers, which would no longer be full-time or working life long. This is one reasonable way of obtained some quality control in selection of administrators. (Note these/evefy do not provide a vicious hierarchy.) �9 should be observed, in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is pursued for reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms or individuals, from where in a more equitable community much of the funding would derive (by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* Muc/t less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard military forces and defence establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison establishment and expensive courts. * Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements). * Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import organisations they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or redistribution powers. * Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate royalties and the like), rental taxes on property or leases, gift and gains taxes, and through auctions (of previously inherited goods). How this would work depends upon community arrangements. Consider for instance anarchistic arrangements where that problematic item, private property, has not been instituted or has been abolished (as under main examples of European anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable worth stealing for sale in present systems) will be instead of bought. Leasehold systems can be operated very like private property (as the land system in the Australian Capital Territory reveals) thus facilitating market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a rental, and they can be of finite term and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is excluded. In place of the customary land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described. Here, as with referenda, computing facilities remove many previous obstacles to such developments. Organisation can move with newer technologies. Leasehold arrangements are readily applied to prevent the accumulation ol scarce property resources, such as urban land, which is a major feature of capitalism. For leases of scarce commodities can be allocated according to need and ability to use, not merely through a 4 The costs are enormous. A minute component, a singie federai election in Australia, now costs about $54 million to arrange. �10 historically rooted market distribution as with private property. It is private property, not a market system of distribution, that is really distinctive of capitalism, since it not only provides a place to park and increase capital, but it enables transmission of accumulated wealth (e.g. within a family or dynasty) and control of the means of production. Where can anarchism work — satisfactively: on stock presumptions of community and smallness. Even proponents of the state have allowed that anarchy can work, indeed their position often depends upon it. The horrible alternative to their, or their friends' or patrons', splendid state and statecraft, is that a region should lapse into anarchy (a regular fear of the US administration). Anarchism, that is, works, but works very nastily, like that presumed in "states of nature", like that many in fact encounter in the encampments, slums or ghettos of terrorist or other states. But it now fairly widely appreciated, outside those intellectually incarcerated in the allencompassing realm of states, that anarchism can work rather satisfactorily, and did in may pre­ state societies. Concurrent anthropological findings concerning small communities and collective action results concerning small collective have demolished the assumption that anarchy is impossible, either in practice or techno-logically. Since then it has become fashionable to concede that anarchy is possible but on/y where there is a suitable small community. This sort of anarchimin-the-small is commonly conceded by socialists, but dismissively. While anarchism may, it is allowed, work well enough in small, isolated or primitive communities, it cannot work in large industrial or urban societies such as now predominate globally. Anarchism is accordingly but a marginal possibility, unworthly any longer of much serious political concern. Such dismissals tend to be strong on claims and unfavourable judgements but excessingly weak on supporting argument, where socialist handwaving takes over (obviously this widespread phenomenon is not confined to socialism, or even to political debate). Confidence that anarchism cannot succeed seems to be largely founded on the erroneous assumption that anarchism cannot supply any but a primitive organisational structure. By contrast, a sort of anarchism-in-the-small has been forcefully pursued, with due argument, by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (-.166). That is: '... community is nec&wary — if people are to live without the state' (p.3). The argument to community that Taylor offers reduces a modified Hobbesianism; social order can only be maintained, without the state and in the small, if the relations between individuals are those of community (cf. p.2). Insofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably broken- down argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal justification of the state' — from the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperated to provide themselves without requisite collective goods — breaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its �1 11 argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply of such goods (p.59). It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred is that, if public goods are to be provided, means must be found of getting people to do their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are unfortunately far from decisive. That leaves the state for public larger than communities, and communitarian anarchism as an extra-terrestrial possibility for small communities (because communities in the vicinity of states do not, it is claimed, survive). For all the talk about anarchism, it looks like another triumph for the state. But the argument is unsound, because there are methods than those Taylor locates. Non-statist organisation, which comes in a range of forms — functional, regional and others — is not a combination of the pure methods considered. As a broad type of method it is hardly "unproposed", or without precedents or examples (e.g. medieval orders and present international order). While there is no need to dispute that prospects for anarchism tend to be enhanced in smaller communities, or in conglomerates that can be arranged in networks of smaller communities, anarchism can work, if less satisfactorily, in modem mass society. Such is one of the large themes being advanced. �777E EA7FFG//VG OF /LV1/?C77/.SM: ^/<^r cipy?^s , i The arguments outlined, predominancy theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the options open for anarchism, courses of action in superan­ nuating the State and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on. For exam­ ple, spontaneous anarchism — accor­ ding to which organisation is un­ necessary and social arrangements will arise spontaneously and will be ushered in during the revolution without any prior organisation — is a position which is not viable and could not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which durable supersession of the State depends. The sort of anarchist society which these theoretical arguments delineate will certainly be organised, but the organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures (and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transi­ tion by any strengthening oj^he cen­ tralised State), relying heavil\^on volun­ tary co-operation and direct democracy. ^ The society which emerges mciy be much . ..as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes piAuredH^lt /9^be based on smallerscale decentralised communities? for otherwise such arrangements as com munity replacement of State welfare ar­ rangements, control of their environ ment, removal of Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will w(?rk less satisfactorily. Communities .be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by representation and subject to a downward system of command.__ Within each community there will hot be great discrepancies in the distribution of weakh and property, ar^p hi^^ycom centrated economic powercommum ty win be a rather equaiitarian group, sharing in much that is communally owned or not owned at a!i. White theoretical arguments heip outtine the generat shape of social, ami aiso economic arrangements,they determine^them compietety; they offer no detaited btueprint. Accordingty what emerges is not a particular form of anar­ chism, for instance anarchist com­ munism, but a more experinienta^an.^ p/ura/bhc anarchism, such as was^tnstituted in the Spanish cokectives. traced/ \^^There are several recognised varieties of anarchism among the more common: individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarcho- syndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms, and now eco-anarchisms. These varieties are not particularly well-characterised, /hey are by no means at all exclusive. So far indeed a satisfactory classification is lacking. Usually something of a ragbag is offered: textbooks single out a very few varieties, and look at them. Invariably they leave out important varieties. ��But it is not difficult to discern some of the more independent dimensions^ along which variation occurs, and which accordingly are relevant to an improved multi-dimensional tabular classification: Parf-w/zo/g/ dimension: atomism pole O <— individual ---- social ---- communal —> O total holism This is a most important dimension of variation among organisational arrangements (for analysis see SM). It accounts for a major bifpriation between European anarchisms, which tend ... . 1 'S^ to be socially oriented, and American anarchism^ which are usually highly individual (religious communities^ some European transplants/ excepted). For markedly holistic arrangements to persist, some strong ideological relational glue appears required, such as an immersing spiritual ideology. Properly spectrum: Although this can be compressed into two dimensional form, it is better presented three dimensionally as follows: full privatization —> O full public (tribal) ownership no ownership This spectrum evidently connects with the preceding holistic dimension, and both contribute to what was the old right-left political division (a sort of crude super-position), and to what should be superseding it, three-colour political spectrum: (old right) blue <------------------------ .--------------------------- > red (old left) green (new environmental) Group Jectwon and electoral spectrum: fully O <- bottom up — democratic —y oligopolistic — top down participatory C/umge procedure dimensions: ^violent -* O fully dictatorial constitutional <------------------------- —---------------------------------- > non-constitutional pacific 5 Some of these "dimensions" are not really h'wear in the way strictly required. That they are not, and that they are not fully independent, does not impede a much improved classification. �22 CTtangc mmai/ors': vanguard group or class; <— Lumpen-proletariat—workers * syndicates bottom "the people" political parties business ---companies top alternative ccylitions a/ And so on. The schema presented are clearly far from exhaustive; nothing has been directly included concerning distribution methods (market vs command, open vs closed storehouses, etc.), admissible technology, or work-leisure arrangements, to take three important examples. More pieces will be picked up as we proceed (the approximate number of dimensions is computationally small), and some of the rather schematic sketches ventured above, elements of which should be familiar, will receive some development in what follows^ Once the (n) dimensions are duly elaborated an anarchism can be located and classified (pidgeon-holed in n- space) by placement in sach dimension. For instance, the form of anarchism preferred by me (s<$SM for an early presentation),[But one sort never to be^instituted everywhere/rom a riciT' <L. variety of altematie^s located as follows: it is social (with a significantly qualified communistic safety net: each according to her or his basic needs),' market-oriented but non-capitalistic, with diminished ownership, democratic but without politicians and with alternative electoral arrangements, pacific but not bound by "constitutional" procedures, utilizing modest safe technologies, .... There are then many anarchisms, a rich variety of different forms, some of them scarcely investigated or known. That anarchism comprises such a plurality has proved puzzling to those (for example of one name-one thing persuasion) who assumed it must be a single ideology, either individual or collective,.... Indeed the pluralist character of anarchism has led even more apparently sympathetic critics, to 'wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or merely a jumble of beliefs (M, p.3). Of course the impression that anarchism 'is amorphous and full of paradoxes and contradictions' is marvellously assisted by conflating degenarchism with anarchism, chaos with order, and by combining the variant forms, individualism with socialism and communism. By properly regarding anarchism as a sheaf of overlapping positions assembled around a core characterisation, a standard model for pluralism, the problematic elements of anarchism as an ideology disappear. No doubt it is not an ideology like Marxism, but then Marxism is atypical in its set of paradigmatic texts, concentrated in the works of the master. Other ideologies such as liberalism or environmentalism afford better comparisons. While anarchism is an ideology (in both good and bad senses), it is not really a movement. There is not, anywhere really, such a movement, in the way there have been a succession of liberation movements or there is a green ^deep ecology^movement. 9 2 : . / A /f 7 �z^4-v^- /i cY&v-e, Insofar a^ anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it should be * pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who want to organise differently thatiits preferred way. * non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatible with broad-based non­ coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like/ That is, there is a doublish standard on violence: It is alright to apply violence against state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this can be justified through cgoLwr namely OK for me to do violence to you but not OK for you to apply violence to me. Accordingly tentative conc/MMon is: A moral anarchism will not be a form committed to violence Except unavoidable forms etc. Such pluralism does not enjoy a strong historic track-record, and does not go unopposed. Standard anarchist positions, sketching of which was mainly a nineteenth century preoccupation (but extending into twentieth century science fiction and utopian literature), shied away from pluralism in the direction of monistic forms, towards insistence upon particular structure, organisation and distributional methods. Such monistic rigidity led to much intense, often fruitless discussion and friction between anarchists committed to different arrangements. Certainly there was a doctrine of spontaneity — according to which in a state-overthrowing revolution (in the very heat of the revolution!) the masses world spontaneously decide upon new arrangements — which makes it appear that any structures at all were open for consideration; but it was also assumed that certain arrangements would be selected, towards which active anarchists would provide guidance. It is not difficult to indicate some of the broad features of emergent arrangemens features that flow from the character of anarchism. But anarchists, over-attracted like others to monistic schemes, have regularly attempted to advance their own schemes, introducing many further postulates, that reach far beyond what flows from the basic characterisation, and that need not be adopted by genuine anarchistics (some further examples of optional and rejectable extras from a recent manifesto:... direct democracy, destruction of all hierarchies, maximization of freedom, total Revolution, no ends-means distinction, no leaders, optimism about an anarchist future,...). �23 Because of the expansive pluralism of anarchism, it overlaps many other ideologies, indeed all that do not include as a theme unmitigated commitment to a state or like central authority. Thus while anarchism excludes fascism and is incompatible with state capitalism, anarchism overlaps liberalism, democracy, and even Marxism, since Marxism affords a long­ term anarchism. There has been much confusion about these interrelations. Take democracy. Anarchism does not entail democracy, as is sometimes claimed. Advice of a select minority or of a^sage could regularly be adopted, though the advice did not reflect the will of the people and its source was not elected or appointed by the people. Nor does anarchism entail undemocratic procedures. There are, in the plurality, democratic forms, of various sorts, and undemocratic forms. Democratic forms may have a better prospect of enabling genuine democracy than life under the state. For as some have argued, 'both the nation state and electoral democracy are inadequate as vehicles for democracy under modem conditions' (Bumheim p.218). Is its goal individual freedom or communal solidarity? Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes neither, sometimes both (a typical four-valued logical structure). A pluralistic anarchism offers several different sorts of communities, not just one kind: for instance, independent individuals, perhaps interrelated and organised through contracts, solidaristic groups working freely together and sharing according to need, and various attractive intermediaries, where there may be more individual-oriented market arrangements but there are also safety nets ensuring distribution according to basic needs. It is not difficult in theory to devise structures that allow a wide variety of kinds. For example, in simple cases this can be accomplished through regional patterning, as illustrated with 6 varieties. (Such a modelling for political pluralism is further elaborated in UT.) The brief interlude of anarchism in Spain afforded a small-scale example of regional patterning at work The kinds of anarchistic societies are bound to be of very variable quality, both theoretically and in practice. Some will only work with rather special sorts of people, for instance certain Answers with members with strong religious or ideological commitments; some will not succeed at all. Some verge on incoherence, for instance those against coercive organistions that approve group terrqist tactics. But while some kinds of anarchism are entangled in serious problems, others are not. Anarchists generally have no obligation to defend defective kinds; yet many criticisms of anarchism are directed at just such defective forms. Although there is a rich variety of anarchistic end-states (virtually uninstantiated ) f /-I'y e �24 or 1^- *rc! n possibilities), there are^ common organisational and structural features. Such cluster features are A J what hold the plurality together, and include noncoercive versions of those arrangements essential to a functioning society: for instance, broad features of arrangements for production and distribution, for arbitration and reconciliation, and so on, and on. But although each such anarchist society will have such organizational features, they will differ in detail. For example, a main distributional feature of a simple communist society may comprise a common storehouse from which members take according to need, whereas in individualist societies distribution will normally proceed through some sort of exchange in market systems. MoK ( generally different types of anarchism will offer different economic theories. Those with stronger individualistic component will tend to rely upon not merely market or allied exchange arrangements, but upon capitalistic organisation. The type of anarchism favoured here strikes an intermediate route: markets without capitalism. How is such complex organisation to be achieved without a state? Does not such organisation and government require a state? To remove that familiar assumption and associated blockages - encouraged by too much life under states and no experience of alternatives - take a wider look around. Look at how many activities and procedures are organised without states or essential participation of states. By voluntary arrangements. Prominent examples are again sporting organisations, labour unions and business corporations of various sorts. In short, organisation can be accomplished through a range of appropriate institutions. Such examples also provide the appropriate key unlocking the door as to how more extensive organisation can be achieved in the absence of the state, namely through appropriate institutions. The state dissolves into functioning components, a set of appropriate institutions, and at bottom into its relevant minimization. It fragments into compartments - in two interconnected ways: into regional parts and into capacities, functional parts. There are other valuable clues to stateless reorganisation. What happens within the more self-regulating state can also happen without it. As Gramsci emphasized, the ability to govern without overt coercion depends largely on the ability of those in power to exploit systems of belief that the larger population shares. The nature of that system of belief is to some extent determinable by policy makers, since in the modern state they possess a significant ability to propagandize for their view. Yet.... (p.63). Recent empirical investigations tend to yield similar results. People tend to follow rules and obey laws they regard as moral or otherwise satisfactory. There are important messages for anarchistic organisation here also, for arrangements without coercion, overt or other. Anarchistic rules will try to go with the prevailing flow, and will only vary (as over vindictive punishment) where an evidently satisfactory justification can be given. More generally, smarter anarchistic arrangements will aim to include desirable self-regulating systems, such as small- /<? �25 scale markets. t There are too many alternatives in the pluralistic basket to look at all of them. Let us consider only some of them, with however preferred features. (An example that does not rank highly and will not be further assessed is Stirner's individualism.) Anarchistic societies of any complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisations, or a federation of these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue, role or function. Thus they will include what might well be accounted ecoregiona/ Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join. Typically they will be voluntary arrangements. A critical question is-to how these organisations, substitudng for the operation of state, are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In much favoured democratic structures, such as electoral bureaucracies, control is usually weak and remarkably tnJtrecf. A populace weakly selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bureaucratic bodies some control of state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments. It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component of each organisation is chosen randomly from those qualified of the regional community who volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications (e.g. having served before at a lower level), and avoid disqualifications (e.g. having acquired a disqualifying record).6 Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be represented, for instance disabled, minorities, and so forth, then it is a matter of arranging random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's P<?/iric.y). Nowadays it is called t/gwarcAy (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the neologism dewanarcAy. Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing a most expensive duplication, government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of central parliamentary 6 People can serve their administrative apprenticeship at local or group levels. One when they are adjudged to have exhibited sufficient competence here are they entitled to nominate for selection at grander levels. This is one reasonable way of obtained some quality control in selection of administrators. (Note /gve/^ do not provide a vicious hierarchy.) A"" �—H Though there are many different strands that can be interwoven through the pluralistic out-fall from the basic characterisation, there are some broad tendencies of anarchistic arrangement which include: * reliance on self-regulatory methods of organisation that require little or no intervention, as opposed to highly regulated procedures, perhaps tending towards centralism or paternalism. This is one reason why markets are favoured, analogues of centralised control and coercive legal systems are not. * emphasis on voluntary methods, in place of imposed methods - coercive methods are of course excluded by virtue of basic characterisation. Certainly de facto power may remain, but it will be without justification. * favouring of decentralisation and deconcentration rather than centralised or concentrated structures. That does not imply there can be no downward relations. Of course under federal arrangements there will be, and sideways natural relations as well (a full control system). * discouragement of empowerment, encouragement of depowerment. * opposition to oppression is a corollary. �26 government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is duly removed — as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are . .... eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, no centre, which is directly linked to functional organisation. Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre and its command structure, no longer there to capture (for there is no command or control structure that could be taken by an invador or with internal insurrection). Community defence is thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who controller is the community (one of the advantages of more direct democracy). Appropriate institutions take care then of the day-to-day running of community affairs. But what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure? These can be accomplished from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the like (with public assessment organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down inflexible fashion. (Some of these methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of Europe, are investigated in Wolff.) A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed coecive mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It should be observed, in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is pursued for otAgr reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms or individuals, from where in a more equitable community much of the funding would derive (by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* AfMcA less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard military forces and defense establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison establishment and expensive courts. -— Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements). * Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import organisation^ they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or redistribution powers. * Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate �royalties and the like), rental taxes on property or leases, gift and gains taxes, and through auctions (of previously inherited goods). How this would work depends upon community arrangements. Consider for instance anarchistic arrangements where that problematic item, private property, has not been instituted or has been abolished (as under main examples of European anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable worth stealing for sale in present systems) will be renfed instead of bought. Leasehold systems can be operated very like private property (as the land system in the Australian Capital Territory reveals)^facilitating market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a rental, and they can be of finite term and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is excluded. In place of the customary land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described. (Here, as with referenda, computing facililies remove many previous obstacles to such developments. Organisation can move with newer technologies. Leasehold arrangements are readily applied to prevent the accumulation of scarce property resources, such as urban land, which is a major feature of capitalism. For leases of scarce commodities can be allocated according to need and ability to use, not merely through a historically rooted market distribution as with private property. It is private property, not a market system of distribution, that is really distinctive of capitalism, since it not only provides a place to park and increase capital, but it enables transmission of accumulated wealth (e.g. within a family or dynasty) and control of the means of production. CZ �4^? y and SwiaMness 7^4 ,^. y?e A^.V< c. 4^^ * ^AAv^A A^ r4A 7^?/- / z- yy^fA, ^Tz- A y . yy r/At- Ac x' 4- z A^. A^ ^-A. AzA /A^'A xA.A^ z^^-^-xxAA/ Aa A ^//x/---? -— /^c �has become fashionable/^ince th^oncurrent anthropological findings concerning small communities and the collective action results concerning small collectives demolished the assumption that anarchy impossible, t& concede that anarchy is possible but only where there is a suitable small community. /Az' - A // /X <_y ' y 'A,,' ' / // ^ y / . / ,y, .. . ^_ —y/- Zf ..J. / /z, y y- 7 / �a— - sort of anarchism in-the-small has been forcefully pursued by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (p.166). That is: ... community is necawa/y — if people are to live without the state' (p.3). The argument to community that Taylor offers reduces a modified Hobbesipnism; social order can oly be maintained, without the state and in the small, if the relations between individuals are those of community (cf p.2). Insofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably brokeddown argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal justification of the state' - from the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves without requisite collective goods - breaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply of such goods (p.59). It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred is that, if public goods are to be provided, jowc means must be found of getting people to do their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are far from decisive. That leaves the state for public larger than communities, and communitarian anarchism as an extra-terrestial possibility for small communities (because communities in the vicinity of states do not, it is claimed, survive). For all the talk about anarchism^it looks like another triumph for the state. &t the argument is unsound, because there are other methods than those Taylor locates. Non-statist organisation, which comes in a range of forms^ is not a combination of the pure methods considered. As a broad type of method it is hardly "unproposed", or without precedents or examples (e.g. medieval orders and present international order). 7^ A er C 4 �!/V [1] p.3O Important among these practices are resistance movements and organised refusals (preferably without conspicuous leaders). While individuals can be selectively picked off, enough people well organsed cannot. As a result grand refusals could be significant political happenings. [3] p.4? The practice of anarchism, generously construed, naturally includes the state of being in anarchist conditions, of living under anarchism (though perhaps unaware). There is cope for anarchism without doctrine. Many primitive societies thus qualify on anarchistic; they practice, or practiced, anarchism though unaware (somewhat as wild animals practice hygine). Further, no doubt now stretching 'practice' beyond its assumed anthropic context, many animal communities practice anarchism. Many attracted ^anarchism, an anarchism without name even, long for analogous pure practice.^ Th^ hope that whatever it is ill operate, perhps even materilize, without any heave- ithouteness or e any intellectualizing, perhaps without even thought or much ef on their part. In contemporary circumstances they would thave to be extrordinary lucky (a paternal state with caring elements, such as safe jobs and spoon-fed indoctrinal education for all citizens, does not relinquish its control voluntarily). [4] #awan Harare. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious /refprious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to force various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones (including defence focus, standing armies, survellience etc.) [5] about p.20 (connector^ Present minolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which they are not competent, ffom some of wlpdrihey are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as impartial referees by ^h^r/businessjsofnmitments). Because the centre tries to do and control too much, as a consequenc$4tdoes very much unsatisifactorily. Improved arrangements would separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power. [6] p.30. As^?ovemmenr is variably determinable, so also is /aw. Under the main determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. But under a different determinate, there is no incompatibility. Anarchism cannot traffic in law, in the initial and prominent sense of /aw offered in the OED, namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter reducing this prognastication is a'second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical uses'): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'. �Law deservedly has a tarnished reputation in anarchism. Most of it is arcane, administered by an expensive priesthood. Too often it is an oppression tool of the state. While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatable with heavy authoritarian law, it is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely asserted to lists, and so on. [7] Democracy within ANARCHY, and DEMANARCHY Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with each other their patronage and cites/br the acclaimed right to govern. Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other elite team. For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected, not controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative. By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see Burnheim). are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as /a// bacty. B argues that they are not satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent. Mows 1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote. 2. only structural, not material issues to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for instance, not capital punishment, not abortion. Dgwarc/ty has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It means 'the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or governnorj; a popular government. The municipal body of a modern Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply, however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving Jcwa/MrAy. [8] [after authority, coercion. To coerce is maintain or change state, normaliy of another creature, by force. �Re Chap 4) Insofar as anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it should be * pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who want to organise differently that its preferred way. * non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatibile with broad-based non­ coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like. That is, there is a doublish standard on vio/ence: It is alright to apply violence against state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this can be justified through ggoi-sw: namely OK for me to do violence to you but not OK for you to apply violence to me. Accordingly afentadve is: A moral anarchism will not be a form committed to violence - except unavoidable forms etc. [9] anJ Smallness It has become fashionable, since the concurrent anthropological finalings concerning small communities and the collective action results concerning small collectiyes demolisted the assumption that anarchy was impossible, to concede that anarchy is possible but only where there is a suitable small community. This sort of anarchism in-the-small has been forcefully pursued by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (p.166). That is: ... community is necessary - if people are to live without the state' (p.3). The argument to community that Taylor offeysreduces a modified Hobbesionism; social order can oly be maintained, without the st^te and in the small, if the relations between individuals are those of community (cf p.2L lnsofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably brokeddown argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal jusdfication of the state' - from the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves without requisite collective goods - brdaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply of such goods (p.59). It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred is that, if public goods are to be provided, some means must be found of getting people to do their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are far from �14 e OF / 7 One appalling mes from a Russi icrionary that is hostile to all -bourgeours socio-political tr authority a e, and counterpasses ' intere^s of petty private ownersbib and small ant economy to progress of^ociety based on large-scale production v, 2nd revision s, Progress, bsever, 1989). ^nether-dismal-eharaeterisati [4] scientistIfApter). narurg. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious reforious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to .v(0 force various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones [including defence focus, standing armies, survellience etc.) *[5FabouFpT2O-(G0miect0f) Present\p^nolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which they are not co etent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as KHLI Ut impartial referees by\[ieir business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and epntro too much, as a conseque it does very much unsatisifactofily. Improve tents wouldl .separate these roles, deconcen^ating and decentralizing power. [7] Democracy within ANARCHY, and DEMANARCHY Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with each other their patronage and citesybr the acclaimed right to govern. Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other elite team. For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected, not controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative. By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see Burnheim). o �— /^W/ 6'J n / /I 15 7?^/<?rc/!^Az are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as /< */// /?ocA.s'. B argues that they are not satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent. Moray 1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote. 2. only structural, not material issues to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for instance, not capital punishment, not abortion. Z)^marc/ty has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It means the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or govemnor]; a popular government. The municipal body of a modem Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply, however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving IM) A �* * ��Chapter 8A ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THEORY AND OF A PREFERRED THEORY There are many preliminaries. One, like preparing a badly used building site, consists in removing the rubbish. That of course is but the beginning of philosophy, not the sole content and end, as some zealous followers of Lockejhave supposed. 1. Issues in appalling methodology. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political philosophy, i Bad practices abound; anarchism has suffered particularly as a result. Redefinitions, and redefinitional stratagems to try to close gappy arguments, abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally unfriendly, at best. False dichotomies abound. And so on. Among the deleterious practices, several deserve special mention: * 7%#/ o/ There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream intellectual activity and strikingly manifest in political theory. A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and practice, is that of over­ powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles more powerful than reason can justify, is dis-assessed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision-making and institutional arrangements (see MR). Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on. Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are 1 One reason is that much of it is done by political thinking. with no adequate grounding tn logic or �/' m we/Ttoi/o/ogy. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political * philosophy. Redefinitions, and redefinitional otologies to try to close gappy arguments, abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally unfriendly, at best. P/tcno/ncnon o/ * excessive strength. There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream intellectual activity and strikingly manifest in political theory. A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and practice, is that of over-powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles more powerful than reason can justify, is disassesed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision making and obstitutional arrangements (see MR). Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on. Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in Prisimers Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flowed from the very outset, and should be set aside. A central time in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions. Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument and practice appear,to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have 1 One reason is that much of it is done by poiiticai szds with no adequate grounding in logic or critical thinking. �tried, rather......... to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state besereft of adequate justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire. So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined "property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state legal systems. ON DEFINING ANARCHISM DEFINITIONS OF ANARCHISM One characterisation that is utterly appalling comes from a Russian Dictionary of PAi/<9^o/?Ay: 'Anarc&i.wn, a petty-bourgeours socio-political trend that is hostile to all authority and the state, and counterpasses the interests of petty private ownership and small peasant economy to the progress of society based on large-scale production' (ed I. Frolov, 2nd revision eds, Progress, Plosever, 1989). Another dismal characterisation comes from an American political scientist (Apter). Defective definitions of anarchism abound, many supplied by high profile anarchists (whereupon they assume a certain air of authority, a bogus air). A few examples will be considered, mostly drawn from a large list of similarly defective definitions included in Clark, p.ll8ff., who is out to show that any definition which attempts to do justice to anarchism through an assentialistic definition deploying one simple idea is bound to fail, abysmally. AnarcAy does not "mean literally "without government'" contrary to Caster p.14. It does however imply without governments of prevailing cuts which is what the immediately proceeds to: 'and the lowerst common demominstor of anarchist thought is the conviction that existing forms of government are productive of wars, internal violence, repression and misery' (p.14). Right on! The very short characterisation of anarc/iAy/?? (and redition of anarc/taj) as 'no * government'is defective because of the elosticity, and slippiness of 'government'. For example, according to one dictionary (Dniverya/ E/tg/Bh) govern/ytenr means '... system of polity in a state; territory ruled by a governor ...' in which case it fy incompatible with Thus, e.g. Carter, Websters (?). �2 achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in Prisoners Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flawed from the very outset, and should be set aside. A central issue in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions. Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument and practice appear to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have tried, rather deviously, to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state bereft of adequate justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire. So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined "property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state legal systems. * Htg/t anJ low Wolffs little book, billed as "a defence of anarchism" is a small treasury of these. Virtually all the characterisations proposed at the beginning of this book, of state, sovereignty, authority, power, actomomy, are defective, often by virtue of definitional features. Consider Wolffs opening: 'Politics is the exercise of the power of the state, or the attempt to influence that exercise. Political philosophy is therefore ... the philosophy of the state' (p.3 also p.ll). Politics went on before the rise of the state, and with some good fortune, will persist often its demise. Again, consider: 'the state is a group of persons who have or exercise suppose authority within a given territory' (p3; repeated p.5). This shows the fallacy of redirectionism. For a state normally does not change when those who exercise power do. On the de facto state Wolff is also astray: 'a & Jacio state is simply a state whose subjects believe it to be ligitimate (i.e. really to have the authority it claims for itself)' (p.10). Many subjects may nor believe that, but be intimidated through state power. Very fashionable in removing anarchism are low redefinitions of Ftare, where there is a state given any positional components in society, such as political specialisation or division of labour (see Taylor on anthopoligical efforts on societies without states). As a result there can be effortessly be both anarchy and "state"; any complex anarchist society is a state! Another rich source of redefinitions is founded by Taylor's books on anarchism. Examples include: a fairly hopeless definition of gooJ.' it is desired (p.45). Most interesting is a �3 disgustingly low redefinition of property.- 'Property' is here a shorthand for a variety of entilements or use rights (Taylor 82 p.44). So as I am entitled to use the byway or to bathe in the stream, they are my property, so I run them? Another example concerns coercion: In the claim that to avoid the Hobbesian prisoners' dilemma 'every man must be coerced', Taylor continues (87 p. 145), 'by which I mean simply that he must be made to behave differently than he otherwise would (... (i.e.) would "ovlantarily" in the state of nature).' But such a difference may be effectively achieved, depending on the subject, by noncoercive means, such as persassion, sanctions, and so forth. Furthermore it would not guarantee what Taylor and Hobbes appear to expect, authority and sovereignty. Among the most pernicious of redefinitions, constraints, and elides are those concerning interests and preferences - often reduction bases for gooJ and other value qualities, often quickly converted from interest to self-interest (thus Taylor)^ Examples from within this circle include harmony and cooperation. For instance.'Harmony requires complete identity of interests' (in Ope, p.226). It hardly requires comment. Again '...cooperation occurs when actors adjust their behaviour to the actual or anticipated preferences of others (in Ope p.226). But suppose creatures simply work or act together (what 'cooperation' means). psychological accounts are seriously astray. * ZHc%#%MnoMS or ctf^cr-or-M/n. Such Humans are extraordinarily addicted to flawed dichotomous reasoning, again powerfully exhibited with regard to anarchism and the state? For example, the alternative to the state is presumed to be anarchism which is equated with disorder; so it is either the state or disorder. Again, the only alternative to a market system of government is central control - market or control - and the market has won out decisively now (one of the presumed reasons for the prematurely announced "end to ideology"). Other objectionable methodological assumptions include '..Po.w&Mh'g mJzvo/aa/LSW (after McP p.3) 'Its possessive quality is its conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owning nothing to society for them. The individual (is not)... part of a larger..... whole, but... surer of himself.' As a result: 'Society consists of relations of exchange between proprietors. Political socieity becomes a celebrated device for the protection of this property and for the maintenance of an orderly relation of exchange.' 2 3 The fallacious shifts are dealt with in 'Aquinst, A famous Australian example is the truculent stance of its richest mum, Packer, in a parliamentary inquiry: Either you believe me or call be a liar. Reflect on how far "call me a liar" goes beyond "you do not believe me". , „ There should be some eodness^ that we are now trying to build machines in our own inadequate image. (Many examples in SM). �4 (a prime example in economics: the data of extremality). * /tM/nan * g/fwn o/va/ne, or reduction of value to preference. All of these have been crically assessed elsewhere. But some features deserve further elaboration: * f/tg tAgo/y With rule and compass techniques it is wn/MM.n&Zg to trirect angle. Of course by measuring it is rather easy. Similarly with rationality: wider means can do what state was supposed to be necessary for. Put differently, the theoretical state is an artifact on a certain ultra-thin theory of rationality. The thin theory of rationality is an extraordinarily widespread ideological....... among Anglo-American social theorists (many of whom feel obliged to make public dealeraatous of faith). But that it is 'almost universally taken for granted by economists' does nothing to show its correctness, unless an argument from expectise has required a new validity. What it reveals rather is something about the ideological commitments,...........of economists. The thing theory of rationality is almost invariably coupled with individualism, methodological individualism as it is usually cleverly called (after Popper's theorizing).^ Many of these objectionabl assumption are melted together in theories of /mman nafnrg. Mafnrg, CM/tMrg anJconfro/. Part of the intellectual aim of a theory of human nature is to achieve an account of hum^n /motivation. But a uniform story of motivation is scarcely more likely drawn as uniform account of human nature.^ Motivations are no doubt important; but they are many and various. It is still fashionable to assert, as if it was a truism, that 'all political philosophies ... base themselves upon a conception of human nature' (Wolff Povgrty p. 140, pluralised). That is no longer so (certainly, since Foucault) is that the notion of //n/nnn nnturg is not well defined, and never was except under high redefinitions. Work in decqtralized artificial intelligence readily suggests that communities of robots could operate without statist arrangements (nor need outiside imput be state bound). That suggests in tum that it is something about humans, as many humans, that leads to development or imposition of states. That something has been ascribed, rather too quickly, to human nature, or to human culture, or to some mix of human genetypic and phenotypic features, features that other creatures or artificial intelligences do not share. It is something peculiarly pertaining to and special to humans, their nature or culture, that amends institutional control. But has never been satisfactorily explained what these special features are or how they operate. There is much space for total scepticism about such justificatory or apologetic approaches. 4 5 Taylor has a dreadful argumejpj (892 p.57) that people are agents, because otherewise default to understand why so many goods and supplied (also 87 p.109). The usual uniform story depends upon self inferey/, which is widened into mteresM under pressure. �5 2. Aa/Mrc, CM/tMro, awJ contra/. A major function of culture is to regulate and control changed Political change in the South Pacific, and political divergence from the industrial North, can, in principle then, be grounded in and powered by features of local and regional culture. One organising theme, a corollary of the argument, facilitates the transition from principle to practice:- It is that the requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality is there, for the South Pacific region (and Australia in particular) to proceed in a very different social political direction from the North (and from the USA in particular). Given the radical unsatisfactoriness of the American arrangements, in many frequently exposed respects,7 such a different direction is worth taking — if it can be. But a serious problem in the way of change is imposition of political arrangements, from outside or from above. And, since imposition shades into political pressure, this is only one of the obstacles impeding change in the South Pacific and elsewhere. Another forcing more and more peoples, no longer sheltered by geographical isolation, into the same type of socio­ political arrangements is supposed to derive from human nature itself. Free people are economic people, in pretty much the American mould, so it is claimed. By this route, economic imperialism can replace political imperialism. A key question in political theory — one to which we are said to have no satisfactory answer in the absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) — is supposedly this:To what extent does human nature allow for alternative political and social arrangements? Or, to tum the question around:- What restrictions are imposed in virtue of the nature of humans on the broad range of political possibilities? How does that "nature" reduce the organisational options? A much-promoted Anglo-American answer, directly descended from the Enlightenment, is that once /rcc/Y from systems of myths, taboos and tribal controls, from superstition, people are essentially (and will generally become) self-centred individuals, (properly) concerned with maximising their own gain or interests; that is, but for their shortage of information (including technical know-how), free people are basically economic peopled As ought now to be evident, that is to replace one ideology by another. But the Enlightenment ideology is no longer so evident^: what recommends it? Under pressure of this sort, the AngloAmerican answer gets transformed to the theme that the economic picture of human nature is superior, and fitting of rational creatures. That 'self-appointed West European superiority' has 6 7 8 9 Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30. These sections are drawn from Cu/turc onJ rAc RooM of Political Divergence.' a SowtA Pacific perspective. For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers. These people are also picked out under various alternative (but not strictly equivalent) descriptions, e g. as acquisitive individuals, possessive individuals. See e g. DP, chapter 10. �6 in turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and the Romantics.^ Fortunately, however, the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided. For all these questions and answers presuppose, to begin with, a certain misplaced essentialism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human beings, which exactly separates humans from other creatures. Attempts to specify such an essence, suitably constant and invariant and given by necessary and sufficient conditions,^ are legion. They are a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. All ment are the same because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and avoidance of pain]. These drives will operate independently of any location. Chief among those drives was that towards self-preservation — Holbach, for instance, stipulates: we shall call nafare in man the collection of properties and qualities which constitute him what he is, which are inherent to his species, which distinguish him from other animal species or which he as in common with them ... every man feels, things, acts and seeks his own well-being at all times; these are the qualities and properties that constitute human nature 12 But this attempt at essentialist definition of /mman naA/re fails, in a quite characteristic way. As it stands, the definition is inadequate; for not all humans seek just their own well-being always; some are "stupid", some are altruistic, some have other commitments. However, suppose we avoid such familiar counter-instances to egoism, by replacing 'well-being' by say 'broad well- being', thus rendering such internal egoism analytic. And suppose to avoid other counter­ expales (such as human vegetables, morons and the like), we normalise the definition, replacing 'every man' by 'every normal human'. But then the definition is again inadequate; for it fails to distinguish humans from, for example, dolphins. It applies equally to Jo/p/un natMrg or, for that matter, to gon/Z# natMrg. 10 11 12 See Berry, p.30ff., from whom the quote is taken. It is worth spelling out a little the extent of agreement and disagreement with Herder. What is applauded is 1. 'Herder's dismissal of the Enlightenment's conception of human nature as static, acultural and ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but nor *1. Herder's cultural relativism, that 'each culture ... should be treated on its own merits and not judged by some faulty perspective such as Io bel/e nature' (p.30), or from any other perspective. In the pluralistic framework of the text (which presuppoes PPP), a good many cross-cultural judgements ate made and defended. *2. Herder's relativisation of human nature to culture, and embodiment of it in culture; for example, 'it is through language that human nature can be seen to be .spect/iicaPy embodied in culture' (p.32). With relativisation the notion loses its original theoretical point; but while failing in this role, cultural nature is open to many of the same sorts of objections as human nature. Nor can language bear the weight Herder loads upon it. *3. Herder's human chauvinism: '... it is speech and with that reason and freedom, that differentiates man. Man can choose, man is king' (p.36). Wild animals are free, can choose, communicate, solve puzzles, and carry out elementary reasoning; in these respects they surpass children and many other humans. Furthermore, * *3 gets Herder into serious trouble, not to say inconsistency, with 1. Abraham, drawing on Wittgenstein, presents just these conditions for an essence, p.23ff. Berry p.17. Berry supplies several other similar examples. �7 Of course the definition can again be patched, by appealing to the anatomical cluster of features that separate humans from other mammals or to the biological specification of /tomo But the resulting normalised definition, with its analytical egoism, does little more than such biological definitions of An/nan: it does not supply a natnrg, it does not deliver -ynp^rbiological features of political relevance. The notion of human nature thus fragments: into the satisfactory enough biological notion of human, and an unsatisfactory superbiological (or sociobiological) addition: that of human nature or essence. What is this further, problematic nature? The Romantics can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from culture, only /oca/ nature (Herder's term) which coincides with culture. Peeling off cultural excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves, like Wittgenstein's artichoke, nothing. Just nothing. The notion of human nature is a theoretical item, introduced to provide stability amid cultural variability, a constant bulwark against relativism, but designed as well to justify — as natural or, failing that as superior — a porr/cn/or type of political economy, state and legislature, and its imposition everywhere else. 13 But its application is even grander: Human nature is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious nefarious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to justify or enforce various restrictive types of social arrangements, statist ones (including defence forces, standing armies, survellience — arrangements, and so on). Human nature is a highly resilient notion which has been widely applied in such fashions; it is not so easily dissolved, certainly not through one illustration. However the fact that the notion is written large in much political theory, and is received, does not show that it or the embedding theory is sound. And it is not, but is defective, and in its socio-political selectivity it is, as the illustration reveals, virtually of a piece with human chauvinism (which would assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the ecological scheme of things). Most conveniently, the superbiological notion of human nature begins to dissolve under any attempt to set it down, in mmuch the way that attempts supporting human chauvinism to set down something ethically special about humans disintegrate. *^ 13 14 The notion of human nature — Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western culture everywhere, later emphasised by Bentham. 'The Legislator, Knowing that human nature is ever the same [different countries do not have different catalogues of pleasure and pain], can reform the laws and even transplant them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18). This claim concerning human chauvinism is argued in detail in EE. But the claim concerning human nature is only sketchily defended in the text. For the alleged social-arrangement-dictating features of human nature, like similar alleged features of economic or technological determinism, are rather major obstacles to be removed — especially insofar as they supposedly severely and inevitably restrict the character of future societies — than the main business of the present enterprise. Fortunately then the claim, that the superbiological notion of human nature is a defective theoretical one which dissolves, is defended elsewhere: not only, in effect, in work of Romantics from Herder �8 a nature or essence for a// and on/y humans (some special classes of humans excepted perhaps) — presuppoes that there are some stable or constant social features holding for all peoples, across different cultures, which are furthermore distinctively human features. The presupposition fails, because once cultural variation between peoples is fully taken into account, only some rather trivial shared characteristics remain, which furthermore are shared by various animal cultures, such as those of primates. Consider, first, such products or tools of more literary cultures as books, or of contemporary cultures as telephones and computers. Since most historical cultures lacked such items, their possession or distribution obviously cannot figure as part of what marks out human nature. Consider next, then, what are commonly taken to be key components of (human) nature, certain basic human needs, such as food and shelter. These requirements are far from free of cultural and environmental determinants. For look at what is regarded as required in the way of shelter, and how it varies from culture to culture, place to place. (And even what is taken as basic can often be met in a myriad of ways, though acceptably in some cultures only in a few fixed ways.) The common denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort of shelter under more extreme conditions — a requirement also of wombats. The situation with food, sex, and so on, is hardly better. Dietary requirements vary considerably from race to race, Europeans for example being very inefficient by many tribal standards and unable to survive satisfactorily where tribal people flourish. 1$ Again the somewhat trivial lowest common denominator applies also to various groups of animals. Nor are attempts to mark out the human nature by some more complex list of jointly necessary and sufficient conditions, or more loosely by a cluster of natural features, much more successful, or of direct political application without the importation of what is culturally at issue — values. In any case, such vague and general lists as emerge^ impose little constraint at all on a political direction, since a variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings. 15 16 on, but also in significant recent literature. Foucault, for example, can be read as saying that human nature is an invention of the Enlightenment which dissolves: 'his much discussed ... di&MdMhon of mon is nothing more, or less, than the claim that the attempt to establish order upon a scientific understanding of human nature is both profoundly mistaken and profoundly unstable' (Philp, p.15, italics added). The converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight on European diets. At another level, consider the Maori attitude to, and underlying revulsion by, cooked food: see Alpers, p.7-9. For one such list, which however requires pruning and adjustment, see Wilson, p.22. As it happens, Wilson does not make anything much of this list (which does not supply necessary conditions), immediately presents a parallel list for insect societies — a list which does considerable damage to more traditional claims about human nature — and then proceeds in effect to demolish main criteria that have been used to separate humans from animals and to restrict cultures to human societies (e.g. p.39). �9 Accordingly, human nature as such is not an important constraint on political theory, or a theory of human nature a key ingredient in endeavours to work out a political philosophy or political directions. *7 The reason is like the reason that determining the conditions for the good life would not impose a satisfactory constraint on a political theory, namely presupposition failure. Like the meaning of life *s, the good life fails to demarcate a single thing; there are many styles of good lives. So too there is human nature and human nature, depending on the culture or social paradigm and on the setting. Nature, both human and not, varies with culture and environment. Because of this two-way dependence, there is no unique stable superbiological human nature. A corollary of the dissolution of the notion of human nature is the rejection also, as misleading, of the usual picture of nature as given, as a stable notion across races and tribes, with culture as a variable on top. There is no such culturally invariant division: culture affects local nature. The picture is flawed in much the same way, then, as the familiar picture of perception, as consisting of given uninterpreted sense data, stable across (normal) perceivers, with interpretation imposed on the neutral data. Nor therefore is culture something that can be creamed off the top, so to speak, to find real human features or basic nature underneath. Certainly, cultures can be destroyed; however what results from removal by destruction of a culture is not something closer to real people, but people with a destroyed culture. So it is also with attempts like Hobbes or Rawls to peel political organisation off the the top, in order to locate in a quasi-analytical or quasi-historical way, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised state or other. A flawed picture, derived from mistaken or questionable presuppositions, is assumed. What will be found underneath, or in the original (natural) state, is, it is usually conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the view to be developed — with the right values very fortunately in-built. Given that what is to be explained or justified is something like present socio-political arrangements and the privileged position of some status quo — as well as a dominant culture's image of itself, and elements of the dominant Northern social paradigm — underlying human nature turns out to be, hardly surprisingly, that of fully competitive possessive individualism (much the same model, that is, which serves for economic man, for Enlightenment man, for the "rational person", etc.) The myth of unique human nature 17 18 For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human nature for social and political ends, see Appendix 2. Which is perhaps as well, since we still have so little reliable and unprejudiced information as to what "human nature" amounts to, what its variational possibilities, in different environments, might be, or of the possibilities beyond past terrestrial selections of cultures. On which see Routley and Griffin. �10 functions, like many other myths, to perpetuate or instil particular social arrangements and special privilege. Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths, the myths of all (normal) humans as aggressive individuals and as predominantly self-interested maximizers (at least insofar as they are rational) — to bring in some of the myths bound up with the image of contemporary urban-industrial humans. As there is no underlying hard ground, no firm starting point in human nature, so there is none in these associated myths. The South Pacific was, and remains, rich in cultures which upset these associated myths. Non of the Melanesians, Polynesians or Australian aboriginal peoples comprised societies of individuallyoriented maximizers; indeed their strongly communal lifestyles and preparedness to stop, work especially, after a low sufficiency threshold had been reached, was a major and repeated source of criticism from the European cultures that came to dominate the region. Even forms and types of aggressiveness, and approaches to war, often taken to be solid ground, are culture and environment dependent, and vary with both parameters. 19 Aggressiveness is often supposed to impose hugh constraints on political arrangements. But there is little substance to the claim that humans are naturally aggressive independently of social or cultural setting. The most that appears clear is that circumstances can be arranged, for instance through crowding or provocation or cultural relocation, where peoples of more familiar cultures will become aggressive^ — and perhaps people of other cultures will not, but will just give up, as people often do in the face of immense brutality. Certainly some arrangements are required to cope with or suitably isolate aggression, but these can be of a wide range of alternative types. Once again, what is normally accounted human nature depends upon and varies with culture and environment, which people often shortsightedly see as fixed: certainly, such components as selfishness, cooperativeness, individuality do. What is often much more important than either culture or nature in determining social arrangements is another factor: namely, outside control or imposition. Whatever social arrangements have evolved in a region (through local "nature and culture") can be overridden, A striking illustration of environmental variation is afforded by the differences between savannah dwelling and forest dwelling tribes of baboons. For a local illustration, consider Maori approaches to war (like war conventions, a social phenomenon), before European corruption. Thus Best reports that 'an individual, or a whole clan, might decline to take part in an engagement on account of some evil omen, and such an action would be approved of (p.15). There are several, apparently reliable, stories of Maoris engaged in war supplying the opposition with equipment or ammunition, or temporarily abandoning their fighting effort to help out the other (British) side, so the battle could proceed properly. 20Wilson's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an invalid move: he looks at the behaviour of Semai men when 'taken out of their nonviolent society' by recruitment in a British colonial army (p.100)! As well, Wilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of innateness, and a low redefinition of aggressiveness to take in form of mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.99-100). 19 �11 and new arrangements imposed, in one way or another. With long-standing arrangements, imposition is almost invariably from without, and the changes in arrangements typically involve either violence in their adaption or mass migration of people or both. In the last two hundred years, especially, the South Pacific has, like much of the newer world, been drastically so affected, in a complex way. And the changes, still flowing strongly from the North, continue. We are in the last days of the destruction of old cultures, and the destruction is now to a considerable extend by more subtle cultural, economic and technological means than the cruder methods of slightly earlier times. Outside control can be exercised, or occur, in many ways less blatant than direct intervention of one sort or another, such as through introduction of new technologies, economic sanctions, monetary and loan policies, etc., as well as through exchange and training programs, textbooks, advertising and magazines, film and television (i.e. through physical exemplifications of culture). European peoples in the South pacific are often unwittingly, part of this quieter process of cultural conversion and erosion; but many of us are now victimes as well as, or rather than, perpetrators (cf. Crough and Wheelwright). Human communities have been — and many still are — as insensitive to other human cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness American and their allies in Vietnam). Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed, or pushed beyond redemption. This is sufficiently well-known. Yet the creation of political disaster areas proceeds apace — in blatant cases typically by disruption of culture and lifestyle using violence^ There is furthermore, where recovery is possible at all, a long recovery period, perhaps sometimes of the order of human generations. Yet there is increasing production of these politically contaminated regions, especially through imperialism, e.g. USA in Central America, Israel in Lebanon, Russia in Afghanistan, Indonesia in East Timor and West papua, etc. In the south Pacific, there are many quieter Northern influences at work, but the strongest now is unquestionably the American. American companies, businessmen, academics, tourists and warships, their technology and patents, films and television programs, are the most evident and influential. There can be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the newer cultural and economic imperialism, behind endeavours such as the American to install their "free enterprise" philosophy and practice everywhere. 22 Granted it mostly contributes to American economic supremacy, to American business23 and to the transfer of substantial regional wealth and surplus value to the USA. But national economic reasons are not the only sort of reasons 21 22 23 These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off like those infected by communicable disease, but from continuing disruptive, outside interference. What is said about American cultural and political imperialism applies, with adaption, in a lesser way, to imperialism and colonialism by other nation-states such as USSR, Britian, France and Indonesia. USA has no monopoly on imperialism. US imerialism in the third world is in part documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman. Though not invariably as the experience with the Japanese motor industry has indicated. �12 such policies are pursued; apart from the side-issue of integrity, that many Americans really do believe in the optimality of their local ideals to the exclusion of other arrangements, there are deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological reasons as well. The imperialistic endeavours can be underpinned by a J^cripftve assumption that all human nature is at bottom really like American human nature, for instance highly economically oriented. Thus, but for political distortions (a political analogue of economic externalities) and lack of technological means, other peoples would choose the American (political and economic) way: they simply have not really been given the opportunity or means. For many peoples this is simply not true; for most other cultures let us hope, or pray, that this is not the case. Alternatively, or as well, a more arrogant prescriptive assumption may be at work, that all human nature ought to be like American nature at its best, because America not only has the best way of life in the world and mostly the best ways of doing things^, but has a special hold on rationality. The free-enterprise system (perhaps with representative democracy American-style tackedon) is the rational enterprise embodied. Certainly the system is sometimes peddled, by genuine believers in the American way, with the same evangelism as Christianity, which was often seen and presented as the rational religion, at least before science got at it. Well, science hasn't got at the free-enterprise religion yet, but on the contrary now has a social division heavily devoted to its justification and furtherance.^ However some philosophy has got at the system, sufficiently to reveal that it is no unique embodiment of rationality — there is none such — but is a decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances. Thus, it is especially irrational if local goals are to preserve local environments and cultures, as much experience helps attest. It is aspects of the false descriptive assumption, and what can emerge with its rejection, that are a main focus in what follows (though various of the reasons for rejecting the prescriptive assumption will also emerge or get recorded). An important underlying theme will 24 25 Thus, for example, American agricultural textbooks and agricultural spokespeople are fond of announcing that American agriculture is the best in the world; similarly for environmental protection, forestry, technology, university education, and so on. But since they are the best, it is evident that these American ways should be exported, isn't it? Even granting the large assumptions, No, firstly, because that is to neglect important regional and local variations and differences, and secondly because these ways may interfere with other significant features of reginal life or culture. It has not passed unremarked that the high standard of material life in USA depends in part on a very fortunate inheritance (e g. some of the best and deepest soils) and in part, as in Europe, on a lower standard of life and conditions elsewhere, upon siphoning off wealth and especially resources (US currently uses about one-fifth of world resources and 30% of world energy) from other regions. To be sure, economic apologetics proffer other explanations of American transcendence, e.g. ingenious constuctions like that of Olson, built on a sandy logic of economic actors collectively locked into economically determined arrangements, substantially independent of the resource base. In elaborating on how modem societies control their citizens, Foucaul has explained various extensive types of social control exercised and licensed through received social sciences, by way of approved standards of normality, health, stability, adequacy, rationality, etc.: See Phil p.15. �13 continue to be that neither broader nor basic human nature is a single stable thing, but varies substantially in ways that are highly political relevant — relevant to the sort of political framework a society adopts. In freer societies, less imposed upon from outside or above, the variation can be largely accounted for through cultural variation (which in tum depends on environment, etc.). The alternative assumptions, are then, those of cultural pluralism, that culture is part of "nature", shaping in particular local human nature. Of course once again "human nature" can be pared back and back to try to remove cultural variations; but in this way what are taken to be important superbiological features of human nature for political theory are also excised (e.g. features that make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies come out one way rather than another). Just as different cultures can mean different social arrangements, so in a larger setting they can imply different political organisation and different political directions. Where requisite differences do not occur, because incongrous arrangements have been imposed, ca/tMra/ can a powcr/hZ /brcc ybr change. Likewise developing elements of cultural difference can be a potent base for social change — or resistance to imposed change — (especially, in communities where other more orthodox bases for change, such as economic incentives or penalties, have become inoperative or failed, or are not available. Culture is however a double-edged instrument, not only to be used, but resisted. For example, though leading [valuable] features of indigenous Pacific cultures are to be reactivated, as forces for change, some features of these cultures are to be resisted (such as male domination), along with many features of modern Western cultures. Features of culture are thus used to resist and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sorces of culture; such as, inequitable political arrangements, excessive consumerism, persuasive advertising media and loaded news systems, hollow suburbia, alienating job structures, etc. It is important not only to build and design alternatives — for which elements of local culture afford a solid foundation — but also to dismantle, and build up resistance against, prime sources of antagonistic culture. This is as true for American culture as Antipodean. One of the chief reasons why mainstream American culture is so individualistic, so competitive, so violent, and so forth, is that movements offering or encouraging alternatives have been repressed by the dominant corporations and the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein). �/& C/ <7^ /7 ) 7/7^e /2J/ 77^^ , /^/-W7/? Z< X. X . c<?^ /t^ 2^^^ ' /LtXt- X^vc^<-%/ ^7/^ c/^c(^7 /^ cA) ?€ Z^/Ti^<7 /<t%-7 c f <rt^I / *c 2^V<^-/o c.o * r/ X^J /ssues fa wef/todo/ogy. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political philosophy.; Redefinitions, and redefinitional -otolJgies to try to close gappy arguments, abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally unfriendly, at best, w, —-— — * /%&1L ^p&enoMienon o/ excessive sfrengt/i. There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream intellectual aedvity and strikingly manifest in polidcal theory. 2 y" ; ''r&c-r/KA * One reason is that much of it is done by poiitical 6,..Is with no adequate grounding in logic or critical thinking. �A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and practice, is that of over-powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles more powerful than reason can justify, is dis^assesed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision-making and obstitutional arrangements (see MR). Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on. Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in Prisoners Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flowed from the very outset, and should be set aside. A central time in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions. Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument and practice appear to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have tried, rather ^".^..^to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state be^ereft of adequate justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire. So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined "property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state legal systems. �/ 7^ �/ ^1 / .^' <%-^/. 4r <C-^^VC-/ C ^T^COvT^t J^" /%y% , A/4,^ /' ' /^7 Z4 ?%./ <Z? , y <A?^.—, f" ^ziy -, ^-/^l , - *^-* J7 ^n. /Z yy<&/ y X/?^L C c ^47 *w. A? 7 ^v"L y **^ y �3^ ^7 . ' -' < ^^7^—-1—o X 77L 76 ^.7 7" -a—i 7^ /^ -^X ^Tt2^7T-Ie_. * gx/ j t^f aV <*Z^ c. %%L^ X-^4 //N/^ <^^17 - 7.7j J c>. V77 1 Joseph Agassi J c w gprAn c,^ oce details of the selected workd, as sketched out^in JB. 7 �4).^ A 4 1- ------------- y' / X"X ^r<? X^W ^?tVC (^X ^C <^c^/ ^^7^^ ^Q. , ^^7) A c^/Z - (^V ^ * '"^ Vt ^s/ ! /^y , �l/2^ A A^-y%-4/ ^jL / ^2^/-^)4^r 3? ,^, ^z^7 ^//^n- ^/ .-^L, -" . *^ -t ''—-* ' '- -* -/); ^^ *. , " ��V <f&y7?«- //^7^ / / /J f �7 /^X2^7 7^0 / - AA. 2^ x y <^J^/ �NQRK4-N&-5RAFT CULTURE AND THE ROOTS OF POLITICAL DIVERGENCE: a South Pacific perspective the Austral ian/American contrast major A Political change industrial of -Function in in regulate and control and political divergence principle then, features of local and regional culture. the to is the South Pacific, can, North, culture be grounded in and change. 1 from the powered by One organising theme, a corollary of facilitates the transition from principle to practice:- It argument, is that the requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality is for there, South Pacific region (and Australia the particular) in to proceed in a very different social and political direction from the North (and from USA in particular). the American arrangements, unsatisfactoriness of the 2 in many frequently exposed respects , such a different Given the radical direction is worth taking - if it can be. serious problem in the nay of a But arrangements, from outside or from above. change is imposition of And, political since imposition shades into this is only one of the obstacles impeding change in the South Pacific and elsewhere. Another forcing more and more peoples, no longer political pressure, sheltered by geographical isolation, arrangements of socio-political is supposed to derive from human nature itself. Free people are economic people, into the same type in pretty much the American mould, this route, economic imperialism can replace political 1. Nature, theory - one culture, to which and control. so it is By claimed. imperialism. A supposedly,key question in political we are said to have no satisfactory'' answer in the absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) - is .his: 1. Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30. 2. For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers. 1 * 7%- �To extent does human nature allow tor alternative political and what arrangements? Or, to turn the question around:- in virtue of the nature of possibilities? How does that much-promoted Anglo-American Enlightenment, is controls, become) from or superstition, answer, people broad range directly taboos and (and 6 from descended are essentially but for their will the tribal generally shortage information of free people are basically economic people. that is to replace one ideology by another. ideology is no longer so Enlightenment political of (properly) concerned with maximising their that is, interests; As ought now to be evident, the the that once freed from systems of myths, technical know-how), (including on What restrictions are imposed "nature" reduce the organisational options? self-centred individuals, gain own humans social evident: what But recommends it? Under pressure of this sort, the Anglo-American answer gets transformed to the that the economic picture of human nature is superior, theme rational creatures. and fitting That 'self-appointed West European superiority * turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and the Romantics. has of in Fortunately, however, the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided For all these questions and answers presuppose, to begin with, a certain misplaced essential ism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human beings, which such exactly separates humans from other creatures. suitably constant and invariant 5 necessary and sufficient conditions , are legion. They are specify an essence, Attempts and given to by a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. All men are the same because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and the avoidance of pain). These drives will operate independently of any location. Chief among those drives was that towards self-preservation - Holbach, for instance, stipulates: we .shall call nature in man the collection of properties and qualities which constitute him what he is, which are inherent .o his species, which distinguish him from other animal species ur which he has in common with them ... every man feels, thinks, 3. These people are also picked out under various alternative (but strictly equivalent) descriptions, e.g. as acquisitive m i?i ua s, possessive individuals. �acts and seeks his own well-being at all times, these are^ kilties and property thet constitute human nature ... o. But th,, attempt at essenti.list defin.ti.n of human nature fail,, in a quite A, -t stands, th. d.dtniti.n is inadequate; tor net a!) *c yo< / humans seek just their o<an ujeii-being always; .ssome ar. altruistic, s<xne have characterrst-c ^y. other commitment,. to ego-sm, by replacing rendering such internal examples suppose Hoover, uell-being- egoism analytic. (such a, human vegetables, definition, replacing every definition 1, again inadequate; example, avoid such tamtl.ar counter.ostance, by say broad m.ll-being', And suppose to avoid other counter­ morons and th. like), man' by thus every normal human'. ^normalise the then the But tor it fails to distinguish humans from, for It applies equally to dolphin nature or, for that matter, dolphins. to aori11 a nature. Of 4. course the definition can again be patched, by appealing to the (From previous page) See Berry, p.30ff., from whom the quote is taken, It is worth spelling out a little the extent of agreement and disagreement with Herder. Nhat is applauded is 1. 'Herder's dismissal dismissal of of the the Enlightenment's Enlightenment's conception conception of human nature as static, acultural and ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but no^ that 'each culture ... should be 31. Herder's cultural relativism, t judged by some faulty perspective such treated on its own merits and no! . "nature' (p.30), or from any other perspective. In the as la belle p.u,77^^k of th. text ("huh presupposes PPP), a good many pluralistic cross-cultural judgements are made and defended. Order's relativisation of human nature to culture, and embodiment 32. Herder s relafivisatio through language that human nature of it in culture; for example, it is Mi th * 32). (p can be seen to be specifically embodied in culture' but theoretical point; relativisation the notion loses its original same cultural nature is open to many of the ojhile failing in this role, Nor can language bear the weight sorts of objections as human nature. Herder loads upon it. A it is speech and with that reason Herder's human chauvinism: 33. Man can choose, man is king' that differentiates man. and freedom, can choose, communicate, solve puzzles, < <=Hrn^^s (p.36). 1Wild animals are free, ---- -----) out elementary reasoning; m these ^^=-7 ; and carryand many other humans. Furthermore, 33 gets Herder into serious chi 1dren trouble, not to say inconsistency, with 1. 5. 6. drying on Nittg.nste.n, Abraham, essence, p.23ff. Berry p.17. Berry supplies severa pre^nt, Just these condition, for an 1 other similar examples. �cluster of -features that separate humans from other mammals or anatomical the biological specification of homo sapiens. But the resulting to normalised definition, with its analytical egoism, does little more than such biological definitions of human: it does not supply a nature, deliver not does it The notion of human superbiological features of political relevance. thus fragments: into the satisfactory enough biological notion of human, an unsatisfactory superbiological (or sociobiological) and of that addition^ The Romantics What is this further, problematic, nature? nature or essence. nature can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from culture, cultural off Peeling only local nature (Herder's term) which coincides with culture. excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves, liKe Wittgenstein's artichoke, nothing. of human nature is a theoretical item, The notion cultural variability, amid stabi1i ty but designed as wel 1 particular type everywhere else. of 7 fashionj; fact and that received, not, the introduced to a constant bulwark against to justify ^as natural or, failing that, political economy and legislature, and provide relativism, as superior^ its imposi t i on such Tlsf?s resilient notion has been widely applied in i is not so easily dissolved, notion by one illustration. is wri tten large in much political but is defective, 3 However the theory, the embedding theory is sound. does not show that it or a and is Hnd it is and in its socio-political selectivity it is, as the a piece with human chauvinism (which would assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the ecological scheme of things). under 7. . the superbiological notion of human nature begins to dissol\ * A any attempt to set it down, in much the way that attempts supporting Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western cultur^ everywhere, later emphasised by Bentham. 'The Legislator, lowing t human nature is ever the same [different countries do not have catalogues of pleasure and pain], can reform the laws and even transplan them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18). namrg. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious reforious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort toy i .7"& $ 11T A enforce various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones (including defence foc^s, �to chauvinism human humans that there ethically something about special humans The notion of human nature - a nature or essence for alj_ disintegrate. only down set (some special classes of humans excepted perhaps) are stable or constant social some - presupposes holding features and for all across different cultures, which are furthermore distinctively human peoples, features. peoples The is presupposition fails, fully characteristics taken remain, because once cultural variation between into account, which some only furthermore are rather shared by trivial shared various animal cultures, such as those of primates. Consider, books, or historical first, such products or tools of more literary cultures as of contemporary cultures as telephones and computers. cultures lacked such items, their possession or Since most distribution obviously cannot figure as part of what marks out human nature. Consider next, what are commonly taken to be key components of (human) nature, certain then, basic human needs, such as food and shelter. free of cultural and environmental as required in the way of shelter, place to place. of ways, common under 8. These requirements are far from determinants. For look at what is regarded and how it varies from culture to culture, (And even what is taken as basic can often be met in a myriad though acceptably in some cultures only in a few fixed ways.) denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort of more extreme conditions - a requirement also of wombats. The shelter The situation This claim concerning human chauvinism is argued in detail in EE. But the claim concerning human nature is only sketchily defended in the ex -or the alleged social-arrangement-dictating features of human nature, like similar alleged features of economic or technological determinism, are rather major obstacles to be removed - especially insofar as they supposedly severely and inevitably restrict the character of u ure societies - than the main business of the present enterprise. Fortunately then the claim, that the superbiological notion of human nature is a defective theoretical one which dissolves, is defende elsewhere: not only, in effect, in work of Romantics from Herder on, but also in significant recent literature. Foucault, for example, can be read as saying * that human nature is an invention of the Enlightenment which dissolves: "his much discussed ... dissolution of man is nothing more, or less, than the claim that the attempt to establish order upon a scientific understanding of human nature is both profoundly mistaken an profoundly unstable" (Philp, p.15, italics added). 5 �with 1-ood, sex, and so on, considerably from race to race, by many people is hardly better. vary Europeans for example being very inefficient tribal standards and unable to survive satisfactorily where tribal 9 flourish. figain the somewhat trivial lowest common denominator applies also to various groups of animals. human requirements Dietary by some more complex list of jointly necessary nature conditions, Nor are attempts to mark out more or loosely by a cluster of natural and features, the sufficient more much successful, or of direct political application without the importation of what is culturally at issue - values. In any case, such vague and general impose little constraint at all on apolitical emerge direction, lists as since a variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings. Accordingly, political theory, human nature as such is not an important constraint on or a theory of human nature a key ingredient in endeavours 11 work out a political philosophy or political directions to . The reason is the reason that determining the conditions for the good life would like not impose a satisfactory constraint on a political theory, namely presupposition 12 failure. Like the meaning of life , the good life fails to demarcate a single '?. thing; there are many styles of good lives. So too there is human The converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight on European diets. At another level, consider the Maori attitude to, and underlying revulsion by, cooked food: see Alpers, p.7-9. 10. For one such list, which however requires pruning and adjustment, see Nilson, p.22. As it happens, Wilson does not make anything much of this list (which does not supply necessary conditions), immediately presents a parallel list for insect societies - a list which does considerable damage to more traditional claims about human nature - and then proceeds in effect to demolish main criteria that have been used to separate humans from animals and to restrict cultures to human societies <e.a. p. 39) . For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human nature for social and political ends, see Appendix 2. 11. Which is perhaps as well, since we still have so little reliable and unprejudiced information as to what "human nature" amounts to, what its variational possibilities, in different environments, might be, or of the possibilities beyond past terrestrial selections of cultures. 12. On which see Routley and Griffin. �and human nature, nature depending on the culture or social paradigm and on Nature, both human and not, varies with culture and environment. the setting. there is no unique stable superbiological Because of this two-way dependence, human nature. of corollary 6 rejection also, across races and tribes, The picture is flawed in much the same way, the on top. culture affects local nature. as the familiar picture of then, consisting of given uninterpreted sense data, as is with culture as a variable There is no such culturally invariant division: perception, nature of the usual picture of nature as given, as a as misleading, notion stable the dissolution of the notion of human stable across (normal) perceivers, with interpretation imposed on the neutral data. Nor therefore is culture something that can be creamed off the top, so to find real human features or basic nature to speak, Certainly, underneath. cultures can be destroyed; however what results from removal by destruction of a culture is not something closer to real people, culture. So organisation but people with a destroyed it is also with attempts like Hobbes or Rawls to peel off in order to locate in a the the top, political quasi-analytical or quasi-historical way, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised state or other. A flawed picture, derived from mistaken or questionable presuppositions, is assumed. Nhat will be found underneath, or in the original (natural) state, is, it is usually conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the view to be developed with the explained the and culture's right values very fortunately in-built. is privileged image position of some of itself, and status quo - elements of the as well dominant as a Northern be serves for economic man, 7 dominant social hardly surprisingly, that fully competitive possessive individualism (much the same model, which to or justified is something like present socio-political arrangements paradigm - underlying human nature turns out to be, of Given that what for Enlightenment man, for the that is, rational �myths, The myth of unique human nature functions, etc.) person", perpetuate to other tike many or instit particular social arrangements special and pr ivi1ege. Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths, myths the predominantly rational) all of humans (normal) self-interested - to bring maximizers no firm starting point in human nature, myths. aggressive (at least some of the myths bound in urban-industrial humans. contemporary as individuals as they are Mi th the image of up As there is no underlying hard ground, associated so there is none in these The South Pacific Mas, and remains, rich in cultures Mhich upset these of the Melanesians, Polynesians None aboriginal peoples comprised societies of individually-oriented after especially, lifestyles and strongly communal their to a loM sufficiency threshold had been reached, source of criticism from the repeated preparedness European cultures Australian or myths. and as insofar associated indeed and maximizers; Mork stop, Mas a major that came to dominate the region. forms and types of Even aggressiveness, and approaches to Mar, often taken to be solid ground, are culture and environment dependent, and vary Mi th 13 both parameters . Aggressiveness is often supposed to impose huge constraints on political arrangements. But there is little substance to the claim that humans are naturally aggressive independently of social or cultural setting. for 13. The most that appears instance clear is that circumstances can be through croMding or provocation or cultural arranged, relocation, Mhere A striking illustration of environmental variation is afforded by the differences betMeen savannah dMelling and forest dMelling tribes of baboons. For a local illustration, consider Maori approaches to Mar (like Mar conventions, a social phenomenon), before European corruption. Thus Best reports that 'an individual, or a Mhole clan, might decline to take part in an engagement on account of some evil omen, and such an action Mould be approved of' (p.15). There are several, apparently reliable, stories of Maoris engaged in Mar supplying the opposition Mith equipment or ammunition, or temporarily abandoning their fighting effort to help out the other (British) side, so the battle could proceed properly. 8 �14 of peoples cultures will become aggressive familiar more but Mill just give up, people of other cultures Mill not, in the face of immense brutality. types. depends upbn Once shortsightedly again, as fixed: see as people often do but these can be of a Mide range of Mhat is normally accounted varies Mi th culture and environment, and perhaps Certainly some arrangements are required to cope Mi th or suitably isolate aggression, alternative - and certainly, such nature people Mhich components human as often selfishness, cooperativeness, individuality do. What much more important than either culture or nature is determining social arrangements is another factor: social Whatever imposition. one May or another. from invariably namely, outside control or arrangements have evolved in a local^nature and cultureican be overridden, through region and neM arrangements imposed, With long-standing arrangements, Mithout, imposition is and the changes in arrangements typically the South Pacific has, especially, in almost involve either violence in their adaption or mass migration of people or both. last tMO hundred years, in In the like much of the been drastically so affected, in a complex May. And the changes, neMer world, still flowing strongly from the North, continue. We are in the last days of the destruction of old and cultures, destruction is now to a considerable extent by more subtle cultural, and technological Outside direct control can be exercised, economic sanctions, film and television (i.e. economic earlier times. in many ways less blatant such as through introduction monetary and loan policies, as through exchange and training programs, magazines, 14. or occur, intervention of one sort or another, new technologies, well means than the cruder methods of slightly textbooks, through physical the etc., advertising than of as and exemplifications of Wilson's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an invalid move: he looks at the behaviour of Semai men when taken out of their nonviolent society'' by recruitment in a British colonial army (p.100)! As well, Wilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of innateness, and a low redefinition of aggressiveness to take in forms of mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.99-100). 9 �process of cultural conversion and erosion; this quieter are unwittingly, part European peoples in the South Pacific are often culture). or rather than, victims as well as, now but many of perpetrators (cf. US and Crough Wheelwright). Human communities have been and many still are as to insensiti other human cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness Americans Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed, and their allies in Vietnam). pushed creation political of typically This is beyond redemption. disaster sufficiently apace areas proceeds where is possible at all, recovery a sometimes of the order of human generations. production of imperial ism, - in these politically e.g. USA in contaminated Central America, long blatant cases There recovery is period, Yet there is increasing regions, Israel the Yet disruption of cultu-e and lifestyle using violence. by -fur thermore, perhaps well-known. in especially Lebanon, through Russia in Afghanistan, Indonesia in East Timor and West Papua, etc. In the South Pacific, there are but the strongest now is unquestionably the businessmen, films can many quieter Northern influences at work, academics, American. American companies, tourists and warships, their technology and patents, are the most evident and influential. and television programs, be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the newer There cultural behind endeavours such as the American 16 Granted it everywhere . their "free enterprise * philosophy and practice 17 to American business and mostly contributes to American economic supremacy, and economic imperialism, These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off li.e by communicable disease, but from continuing disruptive, infec ted outside in ter-ference. What is said about American cultural and political imperialism applies, with adaption, in a lesser way, to imperialism and colonialism by other nation-states such as USSR, Britain, France and Indonesia.. USA L.. has no in the third world is in part monopoly on imperialism. US imperialism i......... documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman. Though not md.riaMy a. th. experience "ith the Japanese ctor industry has indicated. 10 �to the transfer of substantia! regional wealth and surplus value to the But national economic reasons &re not the only sort of reasons such are pursued; apart from the side-issue of integrity, really do believe in the optimality of their local USA. policies Americans that many ideals to the exclusion of other arrangements, there are deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological reasons as Mel 1. imperialistic The assumption that (a distortions technological economic) means. can be underpinned all human nature is at bottom really instance highly economically oriented. for nature, endeavours political means, May: they by American like Thus, descr i pt ive a human but for political analogue of economic externalities) and lack other peoples Mould choose the American (political simply have not really been given the For many peoples this is simply not true; of and opportunity or for most other cultures let us hope, or pray, that this is not the case. Alternatively, or as Mell, a more arrogant prescriptive assumption may be at Mork, that all human nature ought to be like American nature at its best, because America not only has the best 18 May of life in the Morld and mostly the best Mays of doing things , but has a special hold on rationality. The free-enterprise representative democracy American-style tacked on) 18. system (perhaps is the rational Mith enterprise Thus, for example, American agricultural textbooks and agricultural spokespeople are fond of announcing that American agriculture is the best in the Morld; similarly for environmental protection, forestry, technology, university education, and so on. But since they are the best, it is evident that these American Mays should be exported, isn't it? Even granting the large assumptions, No, firstly, because that is to neglect important regional and local variations and differences, and secondly because these Mays may interfere Mith other significant features of regional life or culture. It has not passed unremarked that the high standard of material life in USA depends in part on a very fortunate inheritance (e.g. some of the best and deepest soils) and in part, as in Europe, on a loMer standard of life and conditions elseMhere, upon siphoning off Meal th and especially resources (US currently uses about one-fifth of Morld resources and 30 X of Morld energy) from other regions. To be sure, economic apologetics proffer other explanations of American transcendence, e.g. ingenious constructions like that of Olson, built on a sandy logic of economic actors collectively locked into economically determined arrangements, substantially independent of the resource base. �by genuine believers in bridled Certainly the system is sometimes peddl , embodied. which Mas often with the same evangelism as Christianity, American way, the at least before science got at rational religion, as the seen and presented yet, but on the got at the free-enterprise religion hasn't i t. MeH, science justification and division heavily devoted to its contrary now has a social sufficiently to 19 philosophy has got at the system, furtherance. However some _ tp,t it is no unique embodiment of rationality - there -s none sue reveal decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances. is but a preserve local environments end if local goals are to irrational especial ly Thus, cultures, as much experience helps attest. is aspects of tt with false descriptive and what can assumption, .what follows (though various of are a main focus in rejection,that th. prescripts, assumption Mill .'so -.rg. °r 9^ its the reasons for rejecting underlying theme Mil! continue to be An recorded). nor broader emerge basic human . nature is a single in substantially sort of political framework a society adopts. In outside cultural nei ther important ways that are highly political upon *from that or above, the variation can be variation <Mhich turn in depends stable thing, varies but the to relevant - relevant freer societies, less imposed largely accounted for through The environment,etc). on those of cuitura! pluralism, that culture alternative assumptions, are then, ..cal human nature. Of course once is part of "nature", "human nature" again ^nations-, but shaping in particular can be pared back and back to try to m this way what are taken to be remove important superbi ologi c a * matures of human nature for political theory are also excised (e.g that make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies cu1tura' feature one way rathe than another). 1?. in elaborating on h.M has explained ^"soc'ial"control various extensile typ p. 15. 12 exercised py^.y of approved �Just as dttterent cultures can.mean different social arrangements, so tn , larger setting they can imply different political organisation and different directions. political incongrous Where requisite differences had. arrangements been imposed, do not occur, because cultural differences can b.^. nnuerful force for change. Lihemse d^.loping elements of cultural difference can a potent base for social change - or resistance to imposed be in communities inhere other more orthodox (especially) a, economic mcertioes or penalties, have bases for change, become inoperative or - change such tailed, or used, but are not avaitable. Culture is hotter a double-edged instrument, For resisted. though example, leading not only to be of [valuable] features indigenous Pacific cultures are to be reactivated, as forces for change, some features of these cultures are to be resisted (such as male domination), features modern Western cultures. of along mth used Features of culture are thus and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sources resist many to culture; of such as, inequitable political arrangements, excessive consumerism, persuasive advertising media and loaded news systems, structures, etc. for culture. chief build and competi tive encouraging culture afford a solid foundation - but also prime sources of up resistance against, is as true for American culture as Antipodean. This reasons alienating ^hy so job build and design alternatives It is important not only to which elements of local dismantle, holloa suburbia, mainstream American culture violent, and so forth, is is that so to antagonistic One of the ndividualistlc, so offering or movements alternatives have been repressed by the dominant corporations and the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein). 2. The Why work with such an unfavourable contrast case as Australian—^iety^ regional and environmental orientation. cultural variation and their force for change, contrast than US In defence of theme. for instance Melanesian culture. 13 g it Mould no doubt be easier to culture with some other culture which diverges Australian culture, <_on-_ more Or, strikingly differe y, �ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL PLURALLISM * Let us begin by sketching, in summary form, what political pluralism was, and then explaining what it becomes under contemporary plurallism, ecopluralism in particular. These new pluralisms, while they differ markedly from former political pluralsm, undoubtedly can build upon it Political pluralism used to be a theory viewing social life in terms of groups, which were said to be the priwMry .s*oc/o/ On this theory, an individual's primary allegiance is not to any abstract government but to groups, unions, clubs, churches. Thus there is no absolute necessity for a highly unified political or legal order - whence developed a critical stance towards the state and towards sovereignty among somg pluralists and so elements of anarchistic pluralism. There was, however, no systematic theory of political pluralism (a further anarchistic feature). The position (and both British and American pluralism, however different) were unified not by any doctrine but by crinco/ response to growth of the state. A major theme was, and remains, moderate (as further explained in EP). Humans are neither isolated atoms, nor components of centralised states, but social creatures who function in crisscrossing groups of their own choice. Moreover, groups are genuine objects with choices, capacities, purposes, etc. Pluralist society respects and tries to reconcile diverse interests of humans without thwarting them. Groups communicate via negotiation and the like; their operations are not delegative from some higher authority. Contemporary ecological pluralism takes over most of these scene setting features, but emphasizes the communitarian bases, and expands the scope of communities and groups to include communities, which include creatures and systems other than humans. Perhaps the best known example of such a mixed community is that, introduced by Naess and elaborated by Devall (in 89) of a Norwegian community of bears and wolves, sheep and humans (but earlier Leopold and other had offered examples of expanded communities). A problem which group theory hides, perhaps deliberately, but which such communities at once expose, is that of internal conflict. Conflict cannot be avoided even by going right down to families or individuals; for as much conflict may be bottled up in a family or even in one * Early versions of the first section of these notes drew heavily on Vincent, TAeonej of ytote. The text takes up the working draft of 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism: II. Anarchistic pluralism'. �2 individual as in a small group. That is, there are no pure conflict-free atoms from which to build up group or community structure. Conflict within individuals is strikingly exhibited in certain sorts of schizopherenia. But it happens also in many humans. On conflict issues, in dilemmatic situations, and similar, one part of a person pulls in one direction, another part in another. Or, more accurately, because often no such neat separation into directional components can be affected, there are inconsistent allegiances, derives, drives. Under orthodox theory, it is presumed that such conflicts, personal inconsistency, can be removed by artificial fragmentation. What happens in orthodox social theory is that individuals are effectively broken down and whittled down, not without significant.... . into iJca/ components — classical individuals — with properly organised (duly transitive, etc.) preferences and coherent desires. While such idealization is alright for limited theoretical purposes, let us not falsey imagine that it is adequate for a satisfactory social theory. Let us not pretend that such thin classical individuals offer a saatisfactory model for rich actual individuals. Ecopluralism not only extends the group basis; like gontc contemporary pluralism, the variety of positions and practices is also much expanded. Early political pluralism (so-called) was far from advocating a plural variety. (Figgin, an early British pluralist, would have been shocked at such a supposition: Vincent p.182.) A fairly narrow normative consensus was assumed, e.g. Christian morality in British "pluralism", American political arrangements in American "pluralism". Indeed several American "pluralists", political scientists from Bentley on, erroneously "saw pluralism as a description of the American political system. In this usage, pluralism moves into the area of interest group and pressure group theory' (Vincent p.183). Herein lies the route to p/ura/hwn: While the state may remain discredited as a unitary order, it is now seen a complex multiple entity, which tried to incorporate and theorize diversity of group life. In the American version, groups are seen as interested in reaching some kind of bargain. Government policy is the outcome of group pressures. Government is alleged to seek out some abstract national interest. Public police is ...' the equilibrium reached in this struggle at any given moment' .... Today's loser, it is blithely assumed, will be tomorrow's winner. Most American pluralists of this ilk assume that the contest between groups will be fair and that there is some kind of lurking normative consensus in the background. Certain types of behaviour are presumably un-American. Practical politics, therefore, for the American pluralist is about bargaining, compromise and trade-offs. There is no normative appraisal of the State, but rather an gjtp/anation anJ partial/y % yn^ti/icarion o/ wAat t/tgy ta%g to actaa//y tAg ca^g in tAg qo/irica/ qrocc.y^g.y of the USA. Government is not an impartial umpire. It reflects the dominant coalition on a particular policy — although it will try to maintain some balance. ... In American pluralism a group is simply a collection or aggregation of individuals acting in specific roles. �3 Most significantly the American pluralists were not concerned with any normative account of the State as an institution or practice. They were far more interested in examing, empirically, the effects of group pressures on the actual activity of government (Vincent p.190 emphasis added). In even more degenerate Eastern European forms, pluralism comes down to some sort of multi-party electoral arrangements; plurality just amounts to many parties. Political arrangements can however remain highly paternalistic and authoritarian. Because we are interested in genuine free pluralisms, we shall leave these desperate terms behind. EXTRA SPACE Now consider the organisational possibilities for the Earth, i The Earth divides variously into (geographical) regions; under ecological organisation the decomposition will be into ecoregions. Those regions that are occupied will be occupied by structures of (mixed) communities. The assumption that each occupied region is occupied by a single community is too simple to account even for the present impoverished arrangements offering on Earth. Some regions are occupied by communities of communities, community structure so to say.2 It seems unlikely that on Earth, given a suitable choice of regions, it is necessary to ascend beyond communities of communities to third-order community structures. Thus for each region it is appropriate to begin with the ancient ideal of a community of communities. But of course there will be higher-order structure involved, such as regional federations of regions, and federations of these federations, and so on and up. Call this organisational structure, the Earth frame. This frame is not of course unique; there are many other ways, of varying levels of adequacy, of unscrambling an organisational grid. 1 Off the Earth, in free logical space, case arrangements are wry much greater. Not only can many terrestrial limitations be transcended, for instance with wiser creatures than humans, and many fairer regions, but the interaction of regions can be avoided, so that, for example, an intense dense industrial society need not transmit its pollution outside its own borders, indeed in the right circumstances it need not be polluting at all. A beginning is made in investigating this richer structure by Nozick, but even his useful beginnings leave much to be desired, as brought out in UT. 2 Whether communities of communities amount just to communities will depend upon the final characterisation of community, or what sort of members they can have and the extent and character of the interrelations of their members. If communities were mere set-like objects, it would be a matter of the transitivity of membership; but obviously communities are more than mere sets, internal relations counting for much. �4 The frame selected is in fact intimately tied to real mundane arrangements. For the short time that they survived state interference, the Spanish anarchistic communities coexisted and coevolved in genuine pluralistic fashion (as Dolgoffs sympathetic description has revealed). That is by no means the only occasion on which the old ideal of a community of communities (communitas communitatorum) has achieved partial realisation, but is one of the better known recent examples involving anarchistic communities in a limited geographic region - at a time in world history when state domination of social life continues to break up communities and impose a grey uniformity across former community diversity. But the concern here is not with what is, with present depressing (but temporary) political realities, but with how things might well be, with different and - no difficult feat - superior political arrangements, in particular pluralist arrangements. A recent picture of pluralistic political arrangements by Nozick supposedly allows for virtually anarchistic communities within an overarching minarchic framework. It would seem a simple matter to vary this picture, in particular, to weaken or strengthen the overarching framework; and that indeed the system of Spanish communities (which of course did not persist) weakened the minimum state arrangements in true anarchistic fashion to zero. Nozick has however a complex (and also seriously flawed) argument that variations are without justification, that political possibilities which can be justified are omc/t tighter than the wide range of the logical possibilities would suggest. A crucial early question once an Earth frame is untangled is, for each structural level: what are the broad organising principles? Consider a more important case, the regional level. Will the same broad principles reappear for each region? Only in a very tenuous fashion, if such desiderata as regional diversity are to be given appropriate play. Naturally these had better be included some procedure or other for conflict resolution where conflict is severe, but there is a wide variety of procedures of very varying merit; some procedures or other for the numerous issues that have to be dealt with to keep communities functioning, such as to take a sample of issues, burying the dead, taking care of the indigent. * A crucial question, for each structural level,is: what are the broad organisational principles? One working idea is that in the sort of organisational framework sought will enable a mix of desiderata to be pushed over some far out natural thresholds. The comy desiderata include liberal and environmental objectives, such as those of freedom, liberation. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc. 3 Levels of organisation, by geographical region (functional with a that), local, small ecoregion, large ecoregion, ... (old large state), continent - federations, world federation. �Direction of world reorganisation: to a plurality of possibilities, with different possibilities in different regions. Cities for those who like them in the substantially ecologically destroyed urban land recipes of the North. Etc. Diversity is a prime desideratum. We should rgjoicc in Jhw-yity where it recurs, and encourage ir where it does not, subject as always to certain constraints. In particular, then, attempt to impose fashionable ideologies everywhere should be strongly resisted; this includes religious faith and other gospels such as those of market capitalism and state socialism. Such drives to unity and conformity, and intellectual monoculture, should be derailed. Evidently in an interlinked system such as the Earth form, federal organisation should include arrangements to block imposition of ideologies by expansive neighbours on other regions. (Included herein are states; here is yet another reason for the abolition of states.) Not to be encouraged, but opposed, are mc.MMnic ging/c-way movements, such as messianic catholism, messianic communism, and messianic capitalism. These come with a amvcrya/Mtic perspectic, and a single, allegedly universal set of values: they do not, unless severely cut down in size, fit into a generous plurallism. Needless to say, these universalistic (one-tuming) movements cannot rationally justify their practices. It can no more be established that there is only one god with such and such properties (e.g. those ascribed to Allah under Islam) than it can be established that there is only one logic; indeed the justificatory situation is considerably worse (imagine the faithful chanting each day, facing one Cambridge or other, "There is no logic but classical logic ..."; of course most Anglo-American philosophers are committed to something like this in their philosophical practice, but they rarely recognise the character of the commitment). Note: Many of the economic objectives presented as absolute, are not merely dubious. They are not intrinsic values, but merely instrumental, and instrumental to goals that a community may not have. Leading examples of such objectives are efficiency, production. Out of the same stable as broad monoculturalism, with its uniform urban systems, universities, etc., is the method of consensus (or one opinion, as it might as well have been called). Consensus — unless severely limited, as for instance to argument on a pluralistic structure — is anti-pluralistic. Nonetheless there can be consensus of a sort at one remove, metaconsensus on one story, "agreement" to differ. Limited agreement does however have its virtues in conflict resolution. * To be sure, cases where have to resolve what is to be done, how to act. Many ways to go: single uniform recipe approach too absolutist. On the other hand, it is not entirely situational. Set of recognised decent procedures. �6 The problematicness of conflict, and need for its removal, is much exaggerated. The drive for conflict-free conditions is like, and linked to, the drive for consistency. But conflict is not always undesirable, but often advantageous (and perhaps, as Heracleitus claimed, necessary). Often conflict should just be allowed to stand; it does not require resolution. Political and social arrangements should allow for it and be able to absorb it. Where removal is required, it is often by achieved by distancing, regionalisations etc. APPENDICES 1. On Walzer's p/ara/Mm there is a plurality of distributive systems. From Plato onwards it is suggested that only one distributive arrangement that can be justified, (p.5). Walzer suggests the Rawlsian picture of reeled strand choosers provides modern arrangements. But 'Justice is a human construction, and it is doubtful that it can be made in only one way' (p.5). Thus there is a plurality also of distributive justice. While the argument is plausible, its construction prescription is not. Walzers' 7%Mt'.? (p.6) is: 'the principles of justice are themselves pluralistic in form [whatever that means); that different social goods ought to be distributed for different reasons, in accordance with different procedures, by different agents; and that all these differences derive from different understandings of the social goods themselves — the inevitable product of historical and cultural particularism'. There is also a theory of goods, and f/teir distribution. In the usual form, people distribute goods to people. The basic relation is a proc^Jarg. In fact there are many procedures: given, allocating, exchanging, selling, etc. Walzer wants to claim: People conceived create goods, which they then distribute among themselves. This is really a Concatenation of two procedures. His iJea is to split goods into quaser sphere, and to have different dibtributive criteria for different spheres. This is said to be complex e^aa/ity (p. 18)! According to Walzer, there are sp/tereg/ or regions of competition, etc. For example, in Pascal: strength, beauty, intelligence, devoteness; but it could be: rugby, soccer, rules, horse racing, mountain climbing, etc. However there are divisions, barriers between these — but they compete for key items e.g. money, fields, etc. [so population growth is a total menance for a easily pluralistic society.) 1] 'Personal qualities and social goods have their own spheres of operation, where they work their effects freely, spontaneously legitimately' (p.19) wAat does this seem: work? by legitimally? etc. 2] Disregard of those sepaate spheres is tyranny; Attempting to convert one good in one place to another in another is ruled out. Meaning of "complex equality" (nothing much of equality about it): 'no citizens' standing in one sphere or with regard to one social good can be undercut by his standing in some other �sphere, with regard to one other good' (p.19). Thus political advantage does not confer advantage in other spheres, e.g. health care, advoting, etc. W 'open-ended distributive principle' (p.20): 'no social good x should be distributed to nea .... who possess some other good y merely because they possess y and without regard to the meaning of x'. �*^-V ^T)/ ^/' y-a-y^, C-V ?^^-<- , ece/."* y4^^y Z—r '^/?^' A// g)Z y ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL PLURALLISM^ Political pluralism was a theory viewing social life in terms of groups, which were said to be the primary social objects. Further an individual's primary allegiance is not to any abstract government but to groups, unions, clubs, churches. Thus there is no absolute necessity for a highly unified political or legal order - whence developed a critical stance towards the state and towards sovereignty among yomg pluralist^and so elements of anarchistic pluralism. There was, however, no systematic theory of political pluralism (a further anarchistic feature.) The position (and both British and American pluralism, however different) were unified not by any doctrine but by crit/ca/ response to growth of the state. A major theme wa^aadd^a^ay&M^ one (as/in EP)t humans are neither isolated atoms, nor components of centralised states, but social creatures who^werkedin crisscrossing groups of their own choice. Moreover, groups are genuine objects with choices, capacities, purposes, etc. Pluralist society respects and tries to reconcile diverse interests of humans without , . , — . . . thwarting them. Groups communicate via negotiation etc.; their operations are not delegadve from some higher authority. Contemporary ecological pluralism takes over most of these scene setting features, but emphasizes the communitarian bases, and expands the scope of communities and groups to include communities, which include creatures and systems other than humans. Perhaps the best known example of such a mixed community is the exampley-^givaa by Naess and elaborated by Devall (89^dhapter-^3)^of a Norwegian community of bears and wolves, sheep and humans'. A problem which group theory hides, perhaps deliberately, but which such communities at once expose, is that of internal conflict. Conflict cannot be avoided even by going right down to familiar or individuals; for as much conflict may be Early versions of the first section of these notes drew heavily on Vincent, TAcorier <?f The text takes up the working drift of 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism: II. Anarchistic pluralism',, and thus completes (so far as it can presently be taken) a series on this generous topic *. ; TW J �^4? ^c A /^T %T j f iSj !^3 Ph.. r t> ", ', P * <r '*^ c e \y—Z , ")"WMnm reached In d.i, Hn<wk at aav'tiv'en m..n<„, <l<AS,p. 31,). Today', loser, i, I, bh.hol, a,,u,„ed. wdl ho tomorrow s wmner. Most American pluralists of this ilk assume that the contest tween groups wtll be fhir and that there is some kind of lurking normative consensus in the background. Certain types of behaviour are presumably un-American. Practical politics, therefore, fbr the mertcan p urahst is about bargaining, compromise and trade-ofls lore is no normative appraisal of the State, but rather an of what they take to be acm^ processesTnhXUSA Gov * . dm^c^updTe^J^a "——------ -R—-±A1 1 PLl^uSses^oi the USA. Government is not an impartial umpire. It reflects reflects the the domii.^ dominant coalition on a particular policy - although it will try to maintain some balance * I'.--D. D. Roosevelt remarked, 'The ' science of politics, indeed, mav properly be said to be m large part the science of the adjustment of conflicting group interests' (quoted in Nicholls, 1974, p. 2). This aim is contrary to that of the English pluralists, who would have been deeply critical of the idea that the State becomes a focal point for group pressure, also that policy should emanate from dominant coalitions of groups via the State apparatus. Individuals, in English pluralism, pursue their goals within groups. The State should not be inked to any such partial interests. Each of theSe groups is recognized as a moral person with a legal status. In American pluralism a group is simply a collection or aggregation of individuals acting m specific roles. Most significantly the American pluralists were not concerned with any normative account of the State as an institution or practice. They were fhr more interested in examining empirically, the effects of group pressures on the actual activity of government, th^y ^in not cltscnsswn. �7bottled up in a family or even in one individual as in a small group. That is, there are no <*/o pure conflict-free it^ms from which to build up group or community structure. ' @ Ecopluralism not only extends the group basis; like contemporary pluralism, the variety of positions and practices is much expanded. Early political pluralism (so-called) was far from advocating a plural variety. (Figgin, an early British pluralist, would have been shocked at such a supposition: Vincent p.182.) A fairly narrow normative consensus was assumed, e.g. Christian morality in British "pluralism", American political arrangements in American "pluralism". Indeed several American "pluralists", political scientists from Bentley Erroneously on^'saw pluralism as a description of the American political system. In this usage, pluralism moves into the area of interest group and pressure group theory" (Vincent p.183). Herein lies the route to While the state jLSxiiscredited as a unitary ordef} it is now seen a complex multiple entity, which tried to incorporate and theorize diversity of group life. In the American version, groups are seen as interested in reaching some kind of bargain. Government policy is the outcome of group pressures. Government is alleged to seek out some abstract national interest^In even more degenerate Eastern European forms, pluralism comes down to some sort of multiparty electoral arrangements; plurality just amounts to many parties. Political arrangements can however remain highly paternalistic and . Because we are interested in genuine free pluralisms, we shall leave these desperate ^rms behind. /^copyV^ncent-l$0, on US pluraKstsof this sort] /)^onsider the organisational possibilities for the Earth.i The Earth divides variously into (geographical) rggto/ts; under ecological organisation the decomposition will be into jporegions. Those regions that are occupied will be occupied by structures of (mixed) communities. The assumption that each occupied region is occupied by a single community is too simple to account even for the present impoverished arrangements offering on Earth. Some regions are occupied by communities of communities, community structure so to say.z It seems unlikely that Earth, given a suitable choice of regions, it is _ . cm 1 Off the Earth, in free logicat space, case arrangements are very much greater. Not only can many terrestrial iimiations be transcended, (widi for instance wiscr creatures than humans, and many fairer regions, but the interaction of regions can be avoided, so that, for example, an intense dense industrial society need not transmit its pollution outside its own borders, indeed in the right circumstances it need not be polluting at all. A beginning is made in investigating this richer structure by Nozick, but even his beginnings leave much to be desired? *. 4/7 2 Whether communities of communities amount just to communities will depend upon the final characterisation of comwMnhy, or what sort of members they can have and c? /- �3 necessary to ascend beyond communities of communities to third-order community structures. Thus for each region it is appropriate to begin with the ancient ideal of a community of communities. But of course there will be higher-order structure involved, such as regional federations of regions, and federations of these federations, and so on and up. Call this organisational structure, the Earth frame. This frame is not of course unique; there are many other ways, of varying levels of adequacy, of unscrambling an organisational grid. The frame selected is in fact intimately tied to real mundane arrangements. For the short time that they survived state interference, the Spanish anarchistic communities coexisted and coevolved in genuine pluralistic fashion (as Dolgoff s sympathetic description has revealed). That is by no means the only occasion on which the old ideal of a community of communities (communitas communitatorum) has achieved partial realisation, but is one of the better known recent examples involving anarchistic communities in a limited geographic region - at a time in world history when state domination of social life continues to break up communities and impose a grey uniformity across former community diversity. But the concern here is not with what is, with present depressing (but temporary) political realities, but with how things might well be, with different and - no difficult feat superior political arrangements, in particular pluralist arrangements. A recent picture of pluralistic political arrangements by Nozick supposedly allows for virtually anarchistic communities within an overarching minarchic framework. It would seem a simple matter to vary this picture, in particular, to weaken or strengthen the overarching framework; and that indeed the system of Spanish communities (which of course did not persist) weakened the minimum state arrangements in true anarchisdc fashion to zero. Nozick has however a complex (and also seriously flawed) argument that variations are without justification, that political possibilities which can be justified are mMc/z tighter than the wide range of the logical possibilities would suggest. A crucial early question once an Earth frame is untangled is, for each structural level: what are the broad organising principles? Consider a more important case, the regional level. Will the same broad principles reappear for each region? Only in a very tenu/ous fashion, if such desiderate as regional diversity are to be given appropriate play. Naturally the extent and character of the interrelations of their members. If communities were mere set-like objects, it would be a matter of the transitivity of membership; but obviously communities are more than mere sets, internal relations counting for much. *j �these had better be some procedure or other for conflict resolution where conflict is severe, but there is a wide variety of procedures of very varying merit; some procedures or other for the numerous issues that have to be dealt with to keep communities functioning, such as to take a sample of issues, burying the dead, taking care of the indigent. A crucial question, for each structural level, is: what are the broad organisational principles? . The working idea is that in the sort of organisational framework sought will enable a mix of desiderata to be pushed over some far out natural thresholds. The, desiderata include liberal and environmental objectives, each as those of freedom, liberation. Life liberty, pursuit of happiness^etc. Direction of world reorganisation: to a plurality of possibilities, with different possibilities in different regions. Cities for those who like them in the substantially ecologically destroyed urban land recipes of the North. Etc. Diversity is a prime desideratum. We should re/'ozce in JivgrHfy where it recurs, and if where it does not, subject as always to certain constraints. In particular, then, attempts to impose fashionable ideologies everywhere should be strongly resisted; this includes religious faith and other gospels such as those of market capitalism and state socialism. Such drives to unity and conformity, and intellectualm^njt culture, should be derailed. Evidently in an interlinked system such as the Earth form; federal organisation should include arrangements to block imposition of ideologies by expansive neighbours on other regions. (Included herein are states; here is yet another reason for the ahabition of states.) Not to be encouraged, but opposed, are sing/c-way movements, such as messianic catholism, messianic communism, and messianic capitalism. These come with a M/uvcrM/Af/c perspectic, and a single, allegedly universal set of values: they do not, unless severely cut down in size, fit into a generous plurallism. Needless to say, these universalistic (one-turning) movements cannot rationally justify their practices. It can no more be established that there is only one god with such and such properties (e.g. thvse ascribed to Allah under Islam) than it can be established that there is only one logic; indeed the justificatory situation is considerably worse (imagine the faithful chanting each day, facing one Cambridge or other, "There is no logic but classical logic of course most Anglo-American philosophers are committed to something like this in their philosophical practice, but they rarely recognise the character of the commitment). �Note: Many of the economic objectives presented as absolute, are not merely dubious. They are not intrinsic values, but merely instrumental, and instrumental to %^that a community may not have. Leading examples of such objectives are efficiency, production. Out of the same stable as broad monoculturalism, with its uniform urban systems, universities, etc., is the method of consensus (or one opinion, as it might as well have been called). Consensus - unless severely limited, as for instance to argument on a pluralistic structure - is anti-pluralistic. Nonetheless there can be consensus of a sort at one remove, metacon^ensus on^ one story, "agreement" to differ. Limited agreement does however have its virtues in conflict resolution. * To be sure, cases where have to resolve what is to be down, how to act. Many ways to go: -si^i uniform recipe approach too absolutist. On the other hand act entirely situational. Last of recognised decent procedures. The problematicness of conflict, and need for its removal, is much exaggerated. The drive for conflict-free conditions is like, and linked to, the drive for consistency. But conflict is not always undesirable, but often advantageous (read perhaps, as Heracleitus claimed, necessary). Often conflict should just be allowed to stand; it does not require resolution. Political and social arrangements should allow for it and be able to absorb it. ��C**------ - � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document f Chapter 10 _ CRITICS OF ANARCHISM AND FURTHER CRITICISM. .. One of the regular obstacles almost any innovative ideology encounters is hardened dogfpMdwi. Hardened dogmatism characteristically sees little scope for movement from some established status quo. There are many hardened dogmatists who see no alternative to the modern state. In this they join company with a huge and motley crew of political "realists": 'There simply is no way an advanced industrial state can cope with technological complexities, can minimize waste and misery and the danger of revolutions without strong government controls' (Gardner!, our sample dcifnatist, selected^because he has ranted^at verbose length,on his anti-anarchist disposition). We can grant that there is no viable state without requisite government controls, no state without a state. The question is rather whether such objectives as reduction of waste and misery and control of technology even he accomplished, perhaps significantly better without the state, which tends to wagnt/y the problems concerned. A feature of dogmatism is that assertion, reiterated assertion, replaces argument. So it is with^state dogmatism: 'As things are, there simply is no way a modem industrial society can flourish without a strong government to enforce the law' (p.123). international industrial society flourishes, after a fashion ^without such a government. Analogous functional ways in which regional industrial societies can operate, way implicit in historic anarchism, have been explained. 'It is not just the necessity of a state to preserve law and order that makes the anarchist dream so hopeless' (p.124). Order requires only a certain organisation^, for which the state is quite unnecessary. As for law, the necessity is but analytic on the law being state-law. But a wide network of conventions and regulations can operate without a state; there are many examples, beginning with stateless societies, continuing through a range of voluntary organisations. Why 'so hopeless'? ,, Even if small communities [observe the limitation on anarchism immediately slippst in]... found a way to police themselves, there is no way they could maintain, let alone establish, an industrial society. Small selfgoverning groups are incapable of building reservoirs to bring them clean water, or roads to connect cities, or dynamos to supply electricity, or cars, or printing presses, or modem hospitals, or anything else that is a product of an advanced technology. Big tasks can be done only by big corporations that are either state-owned or state-controlled, or that operate as vast independent oligarches within the state (p.124). eV As well as intellectually lazy, this is hopelessly astray: there resides the hopelessness. In some regions, pioneer societies and industrial society developed more or less regardless of the state. Even small f^rm communities built themselves reservoirs for stock and household water supplies, built their local roads, and so on (in Australia, USA, and elsewhere). They still do. Electricity generates and printing presses can be manufactured in fairly unsophisticated i . Martin Gardner 776-7SS. e W7ry.y i?/ *# / ch.7 Aafe.- WTry 7 owi an ' workshops, where the state need be nowhere in evidence. As for big tasks, international organisations (for construction, forestry, dam building, oil-well sinking,^ substantially independent of particular states can, and do, perform the work. They may presently be required to have a state location, but that is strictly unnecessary for accomplishing the tasks; they are certainly not state-owned, or state-controlled, nor do they, in any real sense, operate within the states'. Furthermore, regions investing in large works beyond their capacities can set up their own specialized structures, to oversee such big tasks, to monitor activities and ensure accountability, and to exclude cowboy operations. It is simply false that the advancement and application of science and technology requires the state, as much history reveals. In a similar way, it is simply misleading that 'if we want to enjoy the benefits of science and technology, the ideals of an archism are as irrelevant as the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount' (p.124). By contrast with the ideals of the Sermon, the impact of which are quite indirect, much anarchist output concerns science and technology, their promotion and qualified benefits, proper place and appropriateness. Next our philosophical scrivener turns to pulling down anarchism by a superficial comparison with and sen^up of the American 'counter culture scene of the sixties' (pp. 1244-5). As technology is not condemned by one bad result, nor is anarchism shown impracticable by one presumed form wht^e merit remain a matter of controversy. In any case, m^re accurate comparisons are available than Gardner's prejudical poQ)ourL These set anarchist elements of the counterculture substantially witli^th&\merican individual, pro-violence form of anarchism. Hardened dogmatists are almost invariably crt^ss critics. They do not ever get at close quaters^et alon^ inside, what they are criticising; so they do not achieve a good view, still less adequate sympathetic view, of what they ^/are criticising. Fortunately there are less cr^ss critics, most of them with heavy commitments to democratic states (Gardner, though he makes obeisant gestures towards democracy, is underneath it committed to the strong tech,o-cratic state.) It should be plain that any critic with heavy commit^nts to democracy would have to take anarchism more seriously as an option; for the demos may chose, or rule, to remove their state. (Quite constitutional means may, and should, permit this.) The point, though elementary, has escaped apparently more sympathetic opponents of anarchism such as Dahl, who premisses his critique of anarchism upon the incompatibility of anarchism with democracy. He appears to manage this yhnx by mistakenly equating democracy with the democratic state. Certainly anarchism is incompatible with the democratic state, as with any state, but it does not follow, except through a variant of the mistaken equation, that it is incompatible with democracy. And it should be evident that this latter incompatibility is contested. For the^e have many proposals for combining anarchism with m^re participatory democracy (ul^minating on enterprises like Burgheim's quest fortrue democracy^ which arrives at a dilute anarchism). Dahl begins his criticism of anarchism by asserting that anarchist (and guardianship) 'objections to democracy aare so fundamental that unless they can be satisfactorily met any further explanations of the democratic idea would be futile' (p.37). Given the heavy commitment of much anarchism to democratic processes, this assertion faces evident rejoinders. And Dahl himself quickly shifts ground (though a page later he shifts back, assuming that his archetypal democrat and anarchist are opposed as archist and anarchist): 'Because democracy might well be the most des^be process for governing [anarchist v^lu^ttpry] it might also be the prevented form of government in an anarchist society. But i^ the anarchist view democracy cannot redeem a state * (p.37, two paragraphs down). Since nothing can redeem the state, ergo neither gods nor people nor democracy can. Yet Dahl begins his cri^tism with this curious twist: since the state^coercism, and coercisaa is intrinsically bad, can the democratic process somehow make it good? * (p.37). This problem for archism, which Dahl assumes, is no problem at all for anarchism. Instead of addressing the question posed, Dahl switches focus, by challenging the coherence and consistency of anarchism. But all his exhibition of divWity/shows is that anarchism is a family-resemblance notion, like many Wittgenstein pointed outigbwc, warAewatic.?, and so on. It is a family­ resemblance notion with certain key features (as being played, is of a game), namely rejection of archie authority, ^percion and the state; beyond that there is a plurality of forms. Once the pluralistic conceptualisation is appreciated, there need be no incoherence; it all fits together. ^^Many of the criticisms of anarchism turn on the issue of especially how economic activity such asf marketing, distribution, and so on, is to be organised in the absence of a central state authority. Meeting these criticisms in appropriate detail is no mean feat, requiring the elaboration of substantially new economic theory (except for excessively individualistic anarchists like Rothbart, but sketchy details and hints have been offered by anarchist theorists). While economic criticisms bulk large in recent criticism of anarchism, the state having assumed the role of grand macro-economic organiser, these by no means exhaust criticisms. There are serious issues also concerning political and cultural organisation, concerning the presumed enemies of organisation and order. In many criticisms it is simply assumed that anarchistic organisation will have to take over the arrangements of present mega-states and somehow substitute for those, without mega­ states. The assumption is astray. Mega-states are mostly recent undesirable constructions, obtained by conquest or war dealings, and held together coercive means and other devices of state. These would, would be allowed to, fragment into regional components. Thus the problem of organisation is a substantially smaller problem than that of organisation of mega­ states; namely, that of organisation of regions. The regions would naturally be grouped together, by principles of federation. (The new Europe provides a partial, suggestive example.) No strand of anarchism 'has developed an adequate economic theory. The individualists are stymied by the public goods problem, the communists by the problems of coordination. [Even more plausible intermediate positions] require the support of the state at a number of critical points' (M p.172). How the state is presumed to provide its benign supportative role is well illustrated in the case of more individualistic anarchism, where the familiar problem of public goods is also taken to manifest itself. 4 A cynic might well observe that no strand of capitalism or of socialism has developed an adequate economic theory. But theories there no doubt are, in certain narrow reaches in abundance. * Anarchism assumes the benefits of autonomous operations, indeed the individualistic ideal is one of personal sovereignty in the market place', but 'is not the state an indispensible prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy?' (M p.169). There are two parts to a response. First, markets functioned before states, and function outside states, for example internationally. Second, whatever institutions are required for the operation of markets can be supplied regionally under anarchistic fragmentation of the state. How much background structure do markets depend upon, which might presuppose apparatus of state. A market has a place of transactions, which can be common or waste ground, a supply of goods or services to be exchanged there for other goods or services (barter) or currency (in a money economy). Buyers and sellers enter the market to effect exchanges. No doubt presupposed are at least limited entitlements (leasehold or property rights, so a seller is entitled to dispose of, to a new user, holder or owner, what is offered for sale), contractual arrangements, and in a money economy, some recognised currency. Also presumed, normally where markets operate, are certain levels of safety, for instance protection against invasion, assault and theft. But these are normal expectations for much of social life, for even conducting a conversation. As for the rest, except perhaps for currency, it is a mere pretence that a state is required for their assurance: customary or tribal arrangements will ensure both property in transportable goods and recognition of verbal contracts or undertakings. An appropriate currency too can develop in the absence of states, as exemplified in the shell currencies of Melanesia and the bank notes of early America. Bank notes are not fully public goods; for a bank which can profit from their circulation or issue has an incentive to supply them. (And banks themselves do not require a sponsoring state, even if sometimes that helps, as in bailing them out.) It is worth observing that much of the conventional apparatus presumed for markets is already presupposed for the fictional covenant by which the state is supposedly established. Namely, meeting in relative safety, entering into contractual arrangements (in the case of the state of a very sophisticated sophistical sort). * Anarchism has not met the 'intractable ... problem of co-ordinating the activities of many independent social units without recourse to central authority' (M p.181). But there are many examples, most notably at an international level again, where such coordination has been achieved (e.g. IUCO). Examples are increasing with new networking arrangements (e.g. Pegasus network). Where substantially self-managing arrangements, such as traditional markets are allowed to flourish, there are no such intractable problems. Certainly, however, with anarcho-communist structures which aim to suppress such self-managing arrangements, there are problems: namely those of * co-ordinating productive activity, aligning production with the needs of consumers without 5 markets or central planning. Key approach: localising production, face-to-face. How can this work in an advanced industrial economy, where a high degree of specialization and much division of labour. Suggestion CAN'T! * motivating people to work. Pressure, sanctions, rewards. While this is a problem in any setting, it is caAaaccJ since certain personal rewards removed. * a central agency seems necessary to maintain any society-wide distribution of resources' (p.172). W/nc/i resources? Where markets operate, many resources will be distributed without any role for a central agency, which would often serve as a serious blockage. WAat distribution? What was intended was: a distribution of resources, so the blatant inequalities now observed in even the wealthist societies are mitigated and the conditions of the worst-off are alleviated. That is drawing upon experience of capitalism: anarchism would not start out from such an invidious position. Further, it is assumed that there are only two ways of righting such (capitalistic) maldistribution: through purely private means or by a centralised state means. So presented it represents an extremely familiar false dichotomy, private or state, in which society is either equated with the state or else drops out, and all other public means disappear. For socially-inclined anarchists there is no disputing that there need to be safety nets in place for the poor and disadvantaged. What is in question is how those nets are placed and administered, and whether the state has an essential role or is rather a less efficient more officious nuisance. One option is an exposed tithing system, where members of society are offered a choice of schemes to contribute to, and expected to contribute to these, and encouraged to make their contribution open to public inspection. Those who tried to evade contribution and closed their books would be subject to a range of social pressures. It is further claimed that while smaller anarchist communities, especially those of a collectivistic or communistic bent, may be able to resolve inequitable distribution problems, 'there are major difficulties' in attempting to realise some distributive ideal 'between communities' (p.173). There may be major difficulties, there are now, but that is scarcely an argument for a central authority. Some redistribution and a small transfer of wealth occurs intentionally without a central authority. There is not even decisive evidence that a central authority helps, so far from making matters worse. * AaarcA/sw no /or /aw. Anarchism cannot traffic in law - at least in the initial and prominent sense of /aw (ventured e.g. in the OED), namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter balancing this prognostication is a second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical uses' from which likewise anarchism is not debarred): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'. Thus as the term gavcrawcar is variably determinable, so also is /aw. Under the main determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. 6 But under a different determinate, there is no incompatibility. Anarchism could operate with such a derminate (as with appropriate notions of moral law, and similar). Law, however, deservedly has a tarnished reputation, in anarchism as elsewhere. Most of it is arcane, administered by an expensive oligopolistic priesthood. Too often it is an oppressive tool of the state. While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatible with heavy authoritarian law, it is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely assented to sorts, and so on. These can substitute. The state has other less conspicuous roles than law and order, war and defence, and managing the economy. * The state serves as representative of national identity, which people crave. Anarchism does not cater for this basic human need. This is pretty dubious stuff. Such a need is by no means ubiquitous, and is, if not manufactured, certainly exaggerated in convenient cases, by state devices. But let us concede a need hypothesis (there is nothing basic about it). Is it true that The anarchist does nothing to replace the notion; his ideal society is devoid of any features which might serve as a focus of identity' (M p.180)? No. The components in terms of which an anarchistic society is structured — the local community, the local region, the regional federations,... - offer foci for identification, bases for sporting teams, and so on. But, in any event, nothing excludes national organisations, fielding cultural groups, artistic troupes, sporting teams, and so on. The present structure of national sporting bodies, only loosely affiliated with states, and coordinated in model anarchist fashion, provides in fact a worthwhile example of anarchism in action (Burnheim again). Do such concessions to features of nationhood 'naturally lead to a demand for self government', and thence for a nation-state (p.181)? They may (as with the Basques) or may not (as with the Cornish), and if so more likely the former than the latter? Further these demands may come only from a small minority of nationals, or may be ill-founded. A demand on its own demonstates comparatively of merit, for all that modem economics would have us imagine. A repeated criticism of anarchism is that 'with the state removed, the system has no ultimate guarantor ...'. So it used to be said in favour of God. But who guarantees the guarantor? (A state may underwrite a bank, but a state itself can fail, despite support of other states.) There is no ultimate guarantor. There are other issues also, such as the character of the guarantor. While it is seen to in theology, as a matter of further (illicit) characterisation, that God has the right features, nothing guarantees that an "ultimate guarantor" is not, rather like most states, corrupt, unfair, heavy handed and incompetent.^ Even if an ultimate guarantee was needed, none could be provided. But lesser assurances can be offered. For example, a bank's 2 If a guarantee cannot be obtained without violence, it is most unlikely that a satisfactory one will be obtained with it. 7 books can be open to public scrutiny and assessment, so that it can be seen that it is trading in a responsible and viable fashion. (It is better that a person's healthy state be assured by observation that the person is functioning well, than by maintaining the person as a closed system and relying on the doctor's guarantee of the person's health.) ^/^ w: C^^cj /# o^= C/f'77C/J'^ J* yy" "7 %? '4%y /<^ 4^7^ z%^-/^3 c/jevve, L__ found a way to police themselves, f there is no way they could maintain, let alone establish, an industrial \ society. Small self-governing groups are incapable of building reser1 voirs to bring them clean water, or roads to connect cities, or dynamos S to supply electricity, or cars, or printing presses, or modern hospitals, ' product of ofan an advanced advanced technology. technology. Btg Big tasks tasks i, 1 or anything else that is a product can be done only by big corporations tha^are either state-owned or state-controlled, or that operate as vast independent oligarchies wtthm ; the stated/2^-), ^.. rcT/ T. —. ,^y T^, TA 7./^ /c- ' 4^<!- /L</-c T ^7'7 p-T4^, 2^/ cv<^A^7 /42 iu-^C- <*^cc /; /^ c ;%a^ ^4-^ -4^ * ^ T^e , %^L /!^f <^< *\ ct^ J ^e* z^c ^7Lt-CTL^9-^<7 CO M7 /t-x e ^47t_ J / t , 4*^s/ ^, * cr^ ^^4-- *4 . Z!^" ^-Z2Z z^% c <r^^— / r ^i)^< -Z^ /Z^/f .J, <^X'Zr' "* ^*- —. /-^z.y-rc/<^Z7 .^. , ^4h— / 7'^- ! Many of the criticisms of anarchism turn on the issue of orgam.Mric'K, especially how gconcwHC activity such as: marketing, distribution, and so on, is to be organised in the absence of a central state authority. Meeting these criticisms in appropriate detail is no mean feat, requiring the elaboration of substantially new economic theory (except for excessively individualistic anarchists like Rothbart, but sketchy details and hints have been offered by anarchist theorists). While economic criticisms bulk large in recent criticism of anarchism, the state having assumed the role of grand macro-economic organiser, these by no means exhaust criticisms. There are serious issues also concerning political and cultural organisation, concerning the presumed enemies of organisation and order. In many criticisms it is simply assumed that anarchistic organisation will have to take over the arrangements of present mega-states and somehow substitute for those, without mega-states. The assumption is astray. Mega-states are mostly recent undesirable constructions, obtained by conquest or war dealings, and held together coercive means and other devices of state. These would, would be allowed to, fragment into regional components. Thus the problem of organisation is a substantially smaller problem than that of organisation of mega-states; namely, that of organisation of regions. The regions would naturally be grouped together, by principles of federation. (The new Europe provides a partial, suggestive example.) J * No strand of anarchism 'has developed an adequate economic theory. The individualists are stymied by the public goods problem, the communists by the problems of coordination. [Even more plausible intermediate positions] require the support of the state at a number of critical points' (M p.172). How the state is presumed to provide its benign supportative role is well illustrated in the case of more individualistic anarchism, where the familiar problem of public goods is also taken to manifest itself. A cynic might well observe that no strand of capitalism or of socialism has developed an adequate economic theory. But theories there no doubt are, in certain narrow reaches in abundance. * Anarchism assumes the benefits of autonomous market operations, indeed The individualistic ideal is one of personal sovereignty in the market place', but 'is not the state an indispensible prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy?' (M p.169). There are two parts to a response. First, markets functioned before states, and function outside states, for example internationally. Second, whatever institutions are required for the operation of markets can be supplied regionally under anarchistic fragmentation of the state. How much background structure do markets depend upon, which might presuppose apparatus of state. A market has a place of transactions, which can be common or waste ground, a supply of goods or services to be exchanged there for other goods or services (barter) or currency (in a money economy). Buyers and sellers enter the market to effect exchanges. No doubt presupposed are at least limited entitlement (leasehold or property rights, so a seller is entitled to dispose of, to a new user, holder or owner, what is offered for sale), contractual arrangements, and in a money economy, some recognised currency. Also presumed, normally where markets operate, are certain levels of safety, for instance protection against invasion, assault and theft. But these are normal expectations for much of social life, for even conducting a conversation. As for the rest, except perhaps for currency, it is a mere pretence that a state is required for their assurance: custom^ or tribal arrangements will ensure both property in transportable goods and recognition of verbal contracts or undertakings. An appropriate currency too can develop in the absence of states, as exemplified in the shell currencies of Melanesia and the bank notes of early America. Bank notes are not fully public goods; for a bank which can profit from their circulation or issue has an incentive to supply them. (And 32 banks themselves do not require a sponsoring state, even if sometimes that helps, as in bailing them out.) It is worth observing that much of the conventional apparatus presumed for markets is already presupposed prg-sMfe for the fictional covenant by which the state is supposedly established. Namely, meeting in relative safety, entering into contractual arrangements (in the case of the state of a very sophisticated sophistical sort). * Anarchism has not met the 'intractable ... problem of co-ordinating the activities of many examples, most notably at an international level again, where such coordination has been achieved (e.g. IUCO). Examples are increasing with new networking arrangements (e.g. Pegasus network). Where substantially self-managing arrangements, such as traditional markets are allowed to flourish, there are no such intractable problems. Certainly, however, with anarcho-communist structures which aim to suppress such self-managing arrangements, there are problems: * ^o-ordinating productive activity, aligning production with *needs of consumers without markets <?r central planning. Key approach: localising production, face-to-face. How can this work in an advanced industrial economy, where a high degree of specialization and much division of labour. Suggestion CAN'T! * motivating people to work. Pressure, sanctions, rewards. in any setting, but rewards removed. since certain personal * '... a central agency seems necessary to maintain any society-tide distribution of resources' (p.172). WTu'cA resources? Where markets operate, many resources will be distributed without any role for a central agency, which would often serve as a serious blockage. What distribution? What was intended was: ayMst distribution of resources, so the blatant inequalities now observed in even the wealthist societies are mitigated and the conditions of the worst-off are alleviated. That is drawing upon experience of capitalism: anarchism would not start out from such an invidious position. Further, it is assumed that there are only two ways of righting such (capitalistic) maldistribution: through purely private means or by a centralised state means. So presented it represents an extremely familiar false dichotomy, private or state, in which society is either equated with the state or else drops out, and all other public means disappear. For socially-inclined anarchists there is no disputing that there need to be safety nets in place for the poor and disadvantaged. What is in question is how those nets are placed and administered, and whether the state has an essential role or is rather a less efficient more officious nuisance. One option is an exposed tithing system, where members of society are /v 33 offered a choice of schemes to contribute to, and expected to contribute to these, and encouraged to make their contribution open to public inspection. Those who tried to evade contribution and closed their books would be subject to a range of social pressures. It is further claimed that while smaller anarchist communities, especially those of a collectivistic or communistic bent, may be able to resolve inequitable distribution problems, 'there are major difficulties' in attempting to realise some distributive ideal communities' (p.173). There may be major difficulties, there are now, but that is scarcely an argument for a central authority. Some redistribution and a small transfer of wealth occurs intentionally without a central authority. There is not even decisive evidence that a central authority helps, so far from making matters worse. The state has other less conspicuous roles than law and order, war and defence, and managing the economy. * The state serves as representative of national identity, which people crave. Anarchism does not cater for this basic human need. This is pretty dubious stuff. Such a need is by no means ubiquitous, and is, if not manufactured, certainly exaggerated in convenient cases, by state devices. But let us concede a need hypothesis? Is it true that 'the anarchist does nothing to replace the notion; his ideal society is devoid of any features which might serve as a focus of identity' (M p.180)? No. The components in terms of which an anarchistic society is structured - the local community, the local region, the regional federations, ... — offer foci for identification, bases for sporting teams, and so on. But, in any event, nothing excludes national organisations, fielding cultural groups, artistic troupes, sporting teams, and so on. The present structure of national sporting bodies, only loosely affiliated with states, and coordinated in model anarchist fashion, provides in fact a worthwhile example of anarchism in action (Bumheim again). Do such concessions to features of nationhood 'naturally lead to a demand for self government', and thence for a nation-state (p.181)? They may (as with the Basques) or may not (as with the Cornish), and if so more likely the former than the latter? Further these demands may come only from a small minority of nationals, or may be ill-founded. A demand on its own demonstates comparatively ZZrr/e of merit, for all that modern economics would have us imagine. A repeated criticism of anarchism is that 'with the state removed, the system has no ultimate guarantor ...'. So it used to be said in favour of God. But who guarantees the guarantor? (A state may underwrite a bank, but a state itself can fail, despite support of other states.) There is no ultimate guarantor. There are other issues also, such as the character of the s [Jj[government is variably determinable, so also is /ow. Under the mam a JS/' /A%> determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. But under a different determinate, there is no ( incmpatibiHty. --------------- —----------------- ------------------------------ ------ L_ --- Cjy. Anarchism cannot traffic in law, in the initial and prominent sense of /<2w(offered in the OEE^, namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter^teducing this prognostication is a second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical - uses'): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'. ^aw deservedly has a tarnished reputation^ m anarchism. Most of it is arcane, administered by an expensive, priesthood. Too often it is an oppression tool of the state. While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatable with heavy authoritarian law, it is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely assented to Kats, and so On. can t ? guarantor. While it is seen to in theology, as a matter of further (illicit) characterisation, that God has the right features, nothing guarantees that an "ultimate guarantor" is not, rather like most states, corrupt, unfair, heavy handed and incompetent? Even if an ultimate guarantee was needed, none could be provided. But lesser assurances can be offered. For example, a bank's books can be open to public scrutiny and assessment, so that it can be seen that it is trading in a responsible and viable fashion. (It is better that a person's healthy state be assured by observation that the person is functioning well, than by maintaining the person as a closed system and relying on the doctor's guarantee of the person s health.) 6^/77///^ ,^7c-. _ y ^L /^/ " A-^-' <) / 4<cc^< / 8(^ '"-^ T=^r V z^_, /c rc /rrA^ r* r^. /*-x /^^c *L^4? 7^ /t J c "*e- * /(^? /^l . ( 1 A DEEP RIFT ON PROPERTY A main element in the major divide between right and left anarchism, as between left and right, is property. Other elements in the divide, such as the accumulation of capital essential to capitalism, depend upon property, because it in it as a transferable commodity that capital is held. It is unremarkable then that property balks large, as an institution to be defended and even extended (with new rights to address environmental issues) in right-leaving political theory and, what heavily overlaps that g^ave. American anarchism. At the opposing end of the right-left tug of war, state, .social or common ownership of property used to be all the go: but left coalitions are presently down-playing such ideals and aspirations. Reflective green theory once again moves off the right-left axis, questioning aspects of the strong ownership and control relations presumed in the tug-of war. Prope^tarian relations are all based upon older domination and control ideologies, but diluted in kinder stewardship approaches, not removed. For, while the idea of land as a mere commodity subject to the $hims of present owners is softened, the steward normally but manages and controls for some higher master, god or humanity. Reflect further on what both private owners and state owners may do to the environments and habitats they "own". Green reflection le^ds then towards the modification of entrenched institutions of private and state property. Green anarchism automatically eliminates certain types of ownership, namely state ownership which has to depart with the state. The demise of the state should at least suggest that associated institutions such as property and the law may be in some trouble. So it proves, to an interesting extent. For, much as arguments to the state are, like those to the Master, Dominus, fatally flawed, so are those to strong and established systems of property subject to lethal objections. Further, much as the unwarranted state may be substituted for less dominating justifiable institutions, so property and its adjuncts may be replaced by alternative less dominating arrangements, such as use­ hold, leasehold, and the like. A central claim, argued^ detail, will be that none of the arguments for property as justified, as an entitlement as right, succeeds,?!// that the whole run of arguments supports is the need, or desirability for some lesser arrangements. It is advantageous to have some terminology to cover both property anJ lesser arrangements, <7aa.n-proper?y so to say, or gua/efty as will be said. 'The concept of property is fundamental to our [U.S.] society, probably to any workable society' (Friedman p.3). The second claim is soon strengthened, and a third insupportable claim added: '... property is a central economic institution of any society, and private property is the central institution of a free society' (p.4). The onus of proof strictly lies with those who claim property, property rights, etc. For outside certain far from universal social conditions there is no such property as is claimed. Considering the way the onus falls, the situation is remarkable. 77?ere are no JecM/ve argawenM, so far as I can ascertain,/or such an institution as property. That /r <t 2 situation, if confirmed, raises important questions, such as how and w/ry the institution is in place? But first the arguments, such as they are. The main argument preferred by Friedman in support of his grand claims takes off from the problem of the distribution of scarce material resources among competing parties who seek access or use. The usual solution is for the use of each t/ung to be decided by a person or some group of persons organised under some o/ Such t/ungs are called property. If each thing is controlled by an individual who has the power to transfer that control to any other individual, we call the institution private property (p.4). Firstly, all the distribution of resources problem points to is some allocation of uses, or some sharing thereof. For such purposes many arrangements far short of property will serve; for instance, lease, limited use rights, and so on. Secondly, what immediately stands out, an attempt is made to close the chasm between what is so far delivered and what the claims concerning property require through an appallingly low redefinition of 'property'. What one gets to use under some set of rules may not be property at all (e.g. a cove, a sea passage,...). Property requires much more: ownership in a nonv^cuous sense, coupled with a high level of potential control. Nor, thirdly, is the characterisation of private property satisfactory, as transferable leasehold will meet the conditions given. It may be argued that leasehold itself requires owne^h^ip; it will be argued that it does not. But it certainly does not require private property, nor does proprietorship transfer across leasehold arrangements. That is^ it. Friedman proceeds, on the quite unwarranted assumption that all is property, to argue the respective merits of private property and demerits of what is not private, public property so it is supposed. 'Under public property, the values of the public as a whole are imposed on the individuals who require the use of that property to accomplish their ends' (p.7). Something remotely that may hold for the example Friedman is discussing, the inordinately dull broadcast media of the USA; but it certainly does not hold generally given the remainder way in which 'public property' is characterised, so that no values whatsoever may be imposed. What subjects hold property rights (if any) or like rights? The standard chauvinistic assumption is that the class of such subjects comprises humans, or competent humans, or humans who have competent guardians. But why should other creatures not hold and maintain territories, as many appear to do? And if incompetent or disqualified humans can hold property managed by guardians, trustees and the like, and if legal persons such as corporations can do likewise, why should not a range of nonhumans (for instance, those that are credited with interests) do something similar? Given that many nonhumans can (and do) have proprietory rights, there can be a head-on conflict between human rights and property rights (in opposition to Friedman p.3). /o /e %L ^7r/^ /e^/ . y. < c) / ^ / '/ cvy.oA/:/^ /^)/ ^/ Jc^/ ^^v^4r-V -y y.yr^ . //. / J^yJ^ /.y^Av J 74 /^; *"" %7y//- , y , A ^J. Jc-^f ^r- 4<^ y/y^ ' <2^? <L-TT!? ^-'<!^{ ^/L Z'fA ? 7 / 77/^0 /%77?77(<f /J*AA Anarchistic societies of any complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisation, or a federation of these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue, role or function. Thus they will include what might well be accounted Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join. Typically they will be voluntary arrangements. A critical question is to how these organisations, substituting for the operation of state, are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In such favoured democratic structures control is usually remarkably indirect. A populace weakly selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bodies some control of state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments. It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component of each organisation is chosen randomly from those of the regional community who volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications, and disqualifications (e.g. by having served before, by some disqualifying record). Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be represented, e.g. disable, minorities, then it is a matter of arranging random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's Po/m'cy). Nowadays it is called dwxirc/ty (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the ecologism dewa/tarcAy. Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing an expensive duplication, government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of parliamentary government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is duly removed - as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, no centre, which is directly linked to functional organisation. Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre and its command structure, no longer there to capture.^ Community defence is thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who controls the controllers: partly because control is so diffused, and prartly because a main controller is the community (one of the advantages of democracy). Appropriate institutions take care of the day-to-day running of community affairs; but what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure. These can be accomplished 3 For there is no command or control structure that could be taken by an invador or internal insurrection. from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the iike (organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down inflexible fashion. (These methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of Europe, are investigated in Wolff.) A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed wirAoM? coecive mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It should be observed, in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is persued for reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms or individuals, where in a more equitible community much of the funding would derive from (by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* Mt/cA less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard military forces and defense establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison establishment and expensive courts. Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements). * Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import organisation they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or redistribution powers. * Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate royalties and the like), rental taxes on property, gift and gains taxes, and through auctions (of previously inherited goods), how this would work depends upon community arrangements. Consider however a preferred anarchistic arrangement where that problematic item, private property, has not been instituted or has been oblished (as with most European anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable with stealing for sale in present systems) will be rented instead of bought. Learnchold systems can be operated very like private property (as the land system in A.C.T. reveals) fruit-feting market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a rental, and they can be of finite terms and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is excluded. In place of the customery land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described.^ 4 Here as with rcfcraHs, computing fasiiibiies remove many previous obstacles to each arguments. Organisation can move with new technology. ,. —-- ------------------------- ^4^ / A CHAPTER ROADS TO ANARCHY: OLD ROUTES AND NEW INPUTS STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETIES, AND AFTER. As there is a plurality of anarchistic positions and end-states, so, but not in a directly corresponding way, there is a plurality of routes to anarchism. As the positions vary very considerably in quality, so do the routes, some of them risky, all of them difficult. Anarchism, even though theoretical viable, undoubtedly looks /iard to obtain on any scale. For states are now extremely well entrenched - in furthermore a mutually supportive exclusive club of states. There is now immense resistance to their removal, deriving from several sources. In particular, state actors and power-brokers are most unlikely to modify statist arrangements in ways inadvantageous to themselves, to relinquish any power, still less to step down easily. Such actors will often take desperate steps to retain institutional power; it is very difficult to persuade most political human to relinquish power simply and gracefully. Nonetheless opportunities arise for overthrowing or superseding states (for instance, in most of Eastern Europe and much of Western Asia in the early 1990s). Periods of crises or "power vacuum", in particular, afford opportunities, which should be seized as they may not arise often in more stable states (most recently in 1974 in Australia). A well-prepared anarchist movement will organise, then, and when the moment arrives, pounce (a partial model is feline hunting practice). But such opportunistic and risky revolutionary routes are only one way to change, as the following diagram, designed to survey the possibility field, should reveal. Diagram 5.7 Ways /a poZiWca/ change. WAYS Intra-State: within State setting EVOLUTIONARY 1. typically slow or incremental REVOLUTIONARY ] ' operations through received political channels 2. t < j typically rapid operations circuiting established channels: coups, insurrections, etc. ) Extra-State 3. operations establishing alternative organisations bypassing or substituting for statist arrangements, or functioning within the interstices of the state ! * 4. operations comprising j) . ' ] external inference or intervention: by negotiation, military means, sanctions, examples, etc. 0 2 Pluralistic anarchist practice will pursue each and every one of these ways and means, so far as resources indicate and permit, subject to constraints. For example, a nonviolent movement will not adopt violent means (unless it insists upon a strange separation of ends and means). There is nothing distinctively anarchist about these ways, except for 3; all otherwise are ways of changing state arrangements, 2 of trading one sort of state for another, 3 of imposing state control and discipline where it is lapsing from "approved" form or where there may have been none (as with colonial adventures). As there have been many attempts to narrowly delimit anarchism, so there have been repeated attempts to restrict roads and byways to anarchism. Exposing these attempts will at the same time show what is open. J, Deploying and making wore sZads/ po/f/fcaf arrange/ncnis Use of orthodox political channels is not excluded. Pluralistic anarchism is not obliged to dismiss political routes to anarchism or to anarchist objectives. Parliamentary and other constitutional routes (such as through referenda) to an anarchist end-state are perfectly possible, if difficult because of the tendency of state apparatus to endeavour to perpetuate itself. (As a related example, a main successful party in the multi-party Australian Capital Territory government was organised and supported by those opposed to such a government.) A main difficulty confronting change through conventional political procedure is simply that, w/tere it does occur, it is usually extraordinarily slow and limited, it is almost invariably small change at the margins. It may take a little lateral reasoning to see the advantages, or occasionally practical necessity, of working through or within a system or even strengthening it first in order to demolish it (strengthening does not imply endorsing forever, but nothing more "counterintuitive" than appears in a battery of stock psychological tests or clever martial arts). Authentic Marxism, for example, which is ultimately anarchistic, is committed to very much such a circuitous route: the circuit goes through a rejuvenated super-productive state, which in old age withers away. A main reason why it has been imagined that use of established political channels is excluded, in anarchist practice, is not because of the slow evolutionary nature of the process, but because of a doctrine of means-ends congruence, which is given too circumscribed a construal. This over-strong congruence doctrine requires more than what coherence seems to demand, namely that the means should be compatible with comprehensive ends sought (thus precluding, for example, violent means to achieve non-violent ends). It further requires that in anarchist action, particularly the revolution, the end of a stateless society should be "prefigured", not some intervening non-congruent objective. Even if the geometric metaphor were duly clarified, few reasons have been advanced for accepting the crippling doctrine, which is not self-evident. 3 Frankly, anarchism does not need to give itself unnecessary handicaps; it faces enough real-world obstacles without dubious doctrinaire additions from well-intentioned friends. An anarchist organisation is plainly not a contradiction in terms; nor therefore is an anarchist coalition or party, committed for instance to removing coercive institutions. Pursuing this tack, an anarchist can vote for a party which comes closer to realising immediate anarchist objectives than other parties, or, very differently, for a party which will assist long-term anarchist objectives (for instance, by wreaking the national economy and thereby helping green objectives and generating appropriate political discontent and dissent), without any commitment to the parties concerned, and without endorsing the political system within which they operate. Strategic voting is not precluded; strategic anarchist voters may well (unlike totalitarian voters) support (preferential) democratic procedures. While the state is to be dis-established, meanwhile there are more benign and less benign states, in relevant respects, apart from how decently they treat their citizens and noncitizens and aliens. It is no longer altogether accurate to insist, as anarchists used to a century ago, that 'every state is an agency whereby a ruling minority exploits and oppresses a majority' (M p.87). Many in majorities may do very nicely, thank you, while some in the elite minority may be grindstoned. Moreover, the mass of people is generally not only resistant to change, but highly reluctant to force changed unless there is very considerable dis-ease, which in most developed states there is not. These are some of a mix of reasons why a revolution is so remote in comfortable countries; no longer the incendiary states kindled for the anarchist match that 19th century anarchists imagined. Despite mass lethargy, dissatisfaction with the state is extensive and comes from right across the conventional political spectrum. There is widespread popular sentiment to the effect that "the state has become our master instead of our servant", a reversal of roles that should not surprise Hegelians. Libertarians interpret this in terms of a much reduced state, a much leaner and hopefully much less hungry state - a route to anarchism if dismantling went in a right direction and far enough. Right-thinking socialists interpret it in terms of a much transformed state, a helping but unobtrusive rather than a commanding busybody state. A familiar view of the state from a section of Green Movement represents a turn on the old anarcho-socialist view: The ... state and the corporate sector are in alliance for the sake of "development".... We try to wean people away from the belief that the state will act in the interest of the cidzens. So we believe the ... state is best viewed as an oppressor (Orton, Response to Dwandik Quesdons, p.6). Orton argues on the basis of this for not trying 'to "use" the state' and 'not seeking government funds'. But if the funds largely represent social wealth, why not judicious use? And if the state is 1 Social psychology appears to show as much. 4 the only legal means of requisite change? And so on.. In fact Orton himself proposes to make changes through the state by mobilizing the people. A state may also be more benign in other significant respects: for instance, in that it facilitates minority political representation, including green anarchist groups, and in that it does not significantly impede anarchist political and practical activity or render paths significantly more difficult. Overlapping that, more benign less domineering states may leave substantial room for significant anarchist practice both in lifestyle and in building organisational structures and (as it were) alternatives to archist arrangements (such as peoples' books, time stores, etc.) What are in important respects anarchist communities can operate within, as well as be modelled within, less intrusive states (the limits to this quasi-anarchism, elaborated in Nozick, are explained in UT). States that better meet anarchist (and green socialist) criteria for benignness can conveniently be disdnguished as more .sywparico states. Committed anarchists can quite well also be committed, as an intermediate goal among others, to achieving more sympatico states, which may involve conventional (as well as unconventional) political activity. No doubt engagement in conventional political activity carries a risk of co-option; but there are obvious way of reducing that risk, of avoiding the 'slide into collaboration with the bourgeoisie [and] ... willingness to play the game of parliamentary politics'.2 For example, precautionary strategies include: engagement also in unconventional political activity, anarchist or communal practice, consciousness-raising exercises, and use of time limits, interruption tactics, rotations of leaders, and so on. Green party activities and procedures can serve as a useful model here?. Apart from the real dangers of co-option and state collaboration, there are other intertwined objections standardly made to attempting political roads to anarchism and socialism. One objection is that any attempt to use the state 'unavoidably reproduces all the features of that institution', such as exploitation by a ruling or elite minority, and oppression of the majority. Few, it is continued, will escape from effective control, or, when if offers, be able to resist using the immense powers of the state. New people, new power-holders, will be transformed (by the usual devices, such as being made to feel important, given an exaggerated impression of their own worth). It should be evident that the objection has drifted from "reproduction of the state" to variants of "power corrupts". Both are overstated, and there are strategies for overcoming both. Sometimes the state c/tang&y, perhaps for the better; the British state has altered significantly in the last 300 years, seemingly for better. Corresponding the power of certain power-holders has declined significantly, from monarchs and aristocracy down. 2 3 M p.89, see also Goodin in Green Politics. See Spretnak and Capra 86 for details. 5 Another objection is better focussed. It is that use of the state leads the wrong ways, through organisation by centralization and hierarchy, and action by legislation. As a result state routes will not lead to decentralization, distribution of power and wealth downwards, and so on. While state practices are commonly antipathetic to the sort of constructive objectives indicated, they are not always, and they do not /Mvg to be. States, like large corporations, can reorganise, and occasionally attempt to (thus reform and restructuring of bureaucracies, or even of whole public services, etc.). Although unlikely for reasons indirected, state reorganisation can in principle proceed by decentralization and devolution of power. Nor is there any lethal objection to achieving action by legislation, so long as that legislation is not enforced by inadmissible coercive methods. In sum, what the objection reemphasizes is that considerable care has to be exercised in using the state, as with any major source of power. Further it shows again that transition can only proceed so far through the state; the state route only leads so far, after which other means of transport need to be taken or considered. There are other ways of amending statist political arrangements than political approaches, notably legal means, through courts. There is little anarchist precedence for such activity; mostly anarchists have had heavy legal apparatus used against them. However, once again environmental practice serves as a valuable exemplar, with many worthwhile results achieved (especially in American courts) through litigation. In principle there is much that could be achieved in this way, in state and international courts, to reduce the power of states and their instrumentalities. For example, in Australia there are very many statues and laws which unjustifiably limit freedoms and restrict individual and group action: examples include not only little activated but appalling legislation on sedition, assembly, and similar, but a sweeping range of actively used and opportunistically exploited legislation concerning defamation and freedom of speech, victimless crimes, paternalism, restrictive trade and banking, sheltered professions, compulsory voting, and so on, and on. There is also much room for variation and experimentation within prevailing political and legal arrangements. For example, applying procedures of statistical democracy to a few greater range of activities than (adjusted) jury servicing to the organisation of municipal services, public companies, and so on. alternative structures and the forest succession model. A main strategy for transition, emerging from the arguments for the viability of anarchism, is that of replacement: transition to a new anarchist social order proceeds by replacement or adaptation of the more satisfactory State organisations and structures by organisations and structures of a more anarchistic cast, and by removal or phasing out of remaining no longer necessary or unsatisfactory State arrangements. Replacement and supersession suggest a biological model, of such change and succession, as occurs where one forest type succeeds another; and such a model is in turn very suggestive. To <?, 6 make the model more definite, and to give it some local colour, consider forest succession where a sub-tropical rainforest replaces a eucalypt forest, as analogous to the case where anarchism replaces a Statist society. There is certainly a marked change in structure, typically from a tall forest with a fairly open canopy to a more compact closed forest with more layers of vegetation, much more local diversity and a richer variety of life forms, especially floral forms. A forest is not merely a set of trees, but trees in structural arrangement and interdependence, not merely on one another but on other life forms such as pollinating insects, seed-carrying birds and animals, and so on; and the changes in structure include changes in microclimate, in soil moisture levels and humus and bacterial content. The change of forest type may be by evolution, by hastened or induced evolution, or by catastrophe (revolution) as when a eucalypt forest is clearfelled and artificially succeeded by planted rainforest. (Strictly, there is a spectrum of practices and replacement strategies between evolutionary and revolutionary and various different revolutionary strategies; and the standard evolutionary-revolutionary contrast presents a false dichotomy.) Even reliance on predominantly evolutionary methods, which tend to be very slow by human time scales, way require some (management) practices, else evolution towards rainforest will not begin or continue. For example, seeds for rainforest species may not be available if adjoining areas have been stripped of suitable seed trees, e.g. by clearing or eucalypt conversion, in which case it will be necessary to introduce seeds (of anarchist ideas, methods, arrangements, etc.). And rainforest evolution may not be able to continue because the area is burnt occasionally, e.g. by State officers, in which case protection against fire will be required: for with burning (and the suppression) regimes rainforest seedlings are killed and eucalypt dominance perpetuated. Furthermore, evolution can be hastened or induced by introducing seeds, or planting rainforest trees in poorly seeded areas (i.e. setting up alternative social arrangements) under the eucalypt overstorey, or even by some careful culling of eucalypts. But even without culling there will be much for anarchist management to do. As the rainforest cover begins to grow up through the eucalypt forest, the forest begins to change structurally. Younger eucalypt poles die, and their replacement by eucalypts is generally precluded owing to low light intensities near the forest floor (in something the same way conditions for political entrepreneurs to flourish are excluded in an emerging anarchist society). Gradually, as the rainforest grows, only scattered giant eucalypts protrude through the canopy, and in time these fall to the forest floor, to rot and not to be replaced - unless the climax rainforest is subject to catastrophe, such as fire or cyclone. Catastrophic methods, such as clearfelling the eucalypt forest, replanting with rainforest, protecting the new forest, and removing eucalyptus regrowth, are wocA more problematic. To be applied they require either a large workforce or much mechanical power (so it is with violent revolutions which need a large support basis not generally available in advanced capitalist and state 7 socialist countries, or else access to means of perpetrating violence comparable to that of the State). There are often similar requirements for success; otherwise the area may be choked by rapidly growing weeds or the rainforest plants may be suppressed by eucalypt seedlings and a pioneer eucalypt stage recur. Moreover, a eucalypt overstorey can sometimes afford good conditions for rainforest growth, e.g. plant protection from excessive sun, from occasional frosts, and from drying winds, better moisture retention conditions, and so on. Similarly anarchist social organisations may sometimes be able to the environment afforded by the State to get started. Thus not all forms of the State are necessarily equally inimical, and some may provide much more favourable conditions for the development of anarchist social organisation than others.^ The forest model (together with preceding arguments) helps to illustrate why violent and catastrophic methods are not congruent witty the goals of an anarchist society and why there is an intimate connection between these goals and a strong preference for nonmilitaristic and non-violent methods of achieving change. Replacement involves a (normally gradual) process of developing alternative institutions and forms of social organisation and the growth of the new form of society within the old, and is not a catastrophic single event conceived of as outside the normal order of things, and for whose advent all other action for change is held suspended. And just as methods of change such as clearfelling are likely to perpetuate the eucalypt cycle and are unlikely to favour the development of the rainforest, so the use of catastrophic and especially militaristic methods is likely to perpetuate an authoritarian social order and unlikely to favour the development of a co­ operative, non-violent and non-coercive one. * applying the forest succession model. How to apply the model is not difficult to appreciate at least in broad outline. As well many of the further details have been filled out by work that can be described as indicating how allegiance can be shifted in practice from where we mostly are to alternative social arrangements and lifestyles built on self-management and mutual aid.$ The seeds of anarchism should be broadcast or planted, anarchist (non-Statist) arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts made to replace or modify vulnerable Statist arrangements, e.g. by democratisation of present institutions and development of nonstatist and noncapitalist alternatives. Some of the practices are familiar: anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist) cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc. Others are slightly less familiar: avoidance of State influence by arrangements beyond State reach such as costless (or alternative currency) interchanges of goods and services, barter, black-green economies, and so on, action directed at removing decision-making from State departments, such as forest services, and into citizen hands, and ultimately, to decentralized interested communities. In this sort of way, 4 5 This has an important bearing on strategies for achieving change: see D. Altman, ReAearsaAs ybr CAange, Fontana, Melbourne. 1980. As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley, p.284 ff.,SM. 8 worthwhile State arrangements can be replaced, and power can be progressively transferred from the State, and returned to the communities and to people more directly involved. Formation of networks of anarchistic communities and neighbourhoods, functioning within the interstices of the state and state bureaucracies, would represent a significant stage in succession. Something like this is beginning to develop in Australia (by contrast with the USA where the commune movement appears to have gone into decline).^ 3. Types of individual and small group actions While strategies proceeding through movements are social in character, a variety of individna/ action can also be highly effective if widely enough separately undertaken. Naturally if there is some solidarity, some coordination of individuals, such action will be both fostered and enhanced. Witness the practice of early Christians, which combined individual action and consciousness change, within a support and solidarity network. But Christianity misleadingly promised more than anarchism and environmentalism can, not merely future better lives, but after­ lives in splendour, a bogus transcendentalism which however was, and still is, widely believed, a damaging transcendentalism too, in that satisfactory lives in real space-time can be foregone, in favour of virtual after-lives. * fran-y/br/nano/M. There are a range of proposals for comprehensive personal change, but they all share fundamentals, which are personal improvement and enhanced personal relationships. It is because of these shared fundamentals that religious change, such as that offered under new Testament Christianity shades into the quasi-spiritualism of sects linked to Deep Ecology (such as Council of All-Beings, Homage to Gaia, Earth Empowerment, etc.) which in tum shades into Californian personal therapy fashions. Proposals for transformation do not however have to hang^ out on the fringes of religion; hardheads like Passmore (in direct descent^ from 18th century sympathy-based ethics) have emphasized both personal relationships, love for others, and moral improvement, better adherence to tested moral principles. Put together, these individual changes would lead us, it is optimistically imagined, out of the environmental morass and to a socially and environmentally better world. While it is not that simple, while the problems lie deeper, some thought it was simpler still. Either the Beatles in their famous lines 'All you need is love', reflecting an extremely popular sentiment, only saw one part of what was recognised, or they erroneously supposed that part would yield the remainder. Love slobs are one sort of counterexample; they achieve love and just wallow in that, not seeking any sort of improvement, moral or other. Let us not diminish the relevance of these proposals: the more rounded people among the thin paper-mache economic and political men focussed only upon maximizing their own self- interested utility in material consumer goods the better, the better for many concerns, including no 6 Refs 9 doubt prospects for anarchism. But let us not delude ourselves that herein lies the way out or forward. Many of those proposals have been around for rather long time, and suggested again and again, with no conspicuous results. A lot of it is to found in Spinoza, whence it has percolated through both to Deep Ecology and Freudian therapy. The Deep Ecological emphasis on self­ realisation goes back at leas a century, to Humboldt and Mill, with Self already expanded in German and British idealists. German and British industrial development did not lose a beat. A mental revolution, in some people's minds, is no doubt essential for a properly planned revolution. But mental transformations have to be translated into action, to practices that make a material difference. And consciousness transformations may not translate into appropriate action; many such transformations are politically very conservative, and lead to no relevant action or effort for structural change. Much of what is said of consciousness transformation applies also to * a route to change recommended by reformers and radicals for at least a century, from Mill through Bookchin. Education, appropriately undertaken, can amend ideology, change consciousness. But at its best it is very slow in operation, very partial because it has to compete against other sources of propaganda (such as media, dominant society, etc.). And it is more likely to carry dominant messages, and reinforce dominant attitudes. There is a major problem in getting alternative messages appropriately delivered and action undertaken. * c^pting oat (so far as this is possible or even now possible). To be effective, this has to be focussed, not merely a dropping out parasitic on the state system. It has to be focussed in way^which challenge the state systems, it inevitability, decidability, etc., in Redirect *-F ways which withdraw contributions to it and ^.... activity elsewhere^creating an atwojpaere, of expectation and of belief (perhaps even if false). . If you or your group produce the impression that there is going to be a continuing recession or a revolution, if your spread the conviction that there is widespread dissatisfaction, that society is sick or rotten to the core and is about to decline further or collapse, then you are taking a significant step towards such outcomes, towards decline or fall? If these efforts to develop an atmosphere are widely orchestrated then they are likely to be so much the more effective. It is appreciated in business and advertising circles how much psychological atmosphere counts; a Pint , * Al r climate of confidence is important ^for climbing out of a recession. A climate of revolutionary expectation can set the scene for revolution events. While it is dishonest to create an impression of imminent decline and disaster knowing full well that such scenarios are utterly unlikely, informed greens and anarchists are not in any such compromised situation. Environmental decline, continuing extensive unemployment, persisting 7 To adapt Joll p.222. v /s 10 periodic recession, and in due course collapse, are likely futures under present capitalist state trajectories. Anarchists can assist in producing an atmosphere of gloom and depression and pessimism about capitalist economic circumstances and prospects. But they will aim to generate a quite different impression of the stability of capitalistic arrangements. 4. Widening operations to exceed standard political and legal arrangements. Unorthodox political ways and means, a prominent part of historical anarchist activity, are much more extensive than political textbooks would suggest (or have impressionable readers believe). These have been restored to contemporary prominence through civil disobedience practices, and peace and environmental actions. Methods have also been modified (for instance to exclude pointless personal violence) and substantially expanded. Practical tactics include protests, occupations, blockades, parades demonstrations, theatre, civil disobedience, refusals, boycotts, tax and financial withholdings, plant disobilizations, monkey wrenching, and so on.8 Such methods, more accurately active applications of those tactics, are grouped under Jirec? action, a vague appellation sometimes taken or extended to include forms of guerrilla warfare on the one side and more indirect pressure group activity (lobbying, petitioning, public meetings, etc) on the other. (Such tactics substantially improve upon, and rechannel, the often misguided and rather illfated "deeds" and "acts of propaganda" of late 19th C anarchists.) Such tactics can be both shorttermed and sustained. Important among sustained practices are resistance movements and organised refusals (preferably without conspicuous leaders). While individuals can be selectively picked off, enough people well organised cannot. Mass social actions and Grand Refusals could constitute significant political happenings. Such strategies can be pursued both for specific objectives (to preserve a forest here, a building there) and for much more general objectives, up to and including dislodging an unpopular governing party, or overturning a state. For more general and dramatic results to be achieved, there are some important preliminary desiderata to be satisfied. These include * establishment of a movement, to carry out actions, and subsequently to participate in the supersession of the state. * a certain amount of planning, of how to proceed, to direct limited resources. Subsequently, as supersession of the state becomes a live issue, much planning of the transition and of post-state arrangements is important, if a successful outcome, or even a good attempt, is to be achieved. Proper preparation is critical. Once again, planning and organisation of anarchist activity is certainly not excluded, in revolutionary movements or elsewhere. The rival spontaneity view, still fashionable in anarchist circles, is underpinned by a confused picture of freedom;^ is inconsistent 8 9 See Coover et al, B. Martin, Changing t/te %bgs, G Sharp. Duly criticised in "Hot immigration". 11 with the coupled congruence doctrine where end-states are prefigured; and issues in poor decision­ making, choice deliberately uninformed by available information. But naturally planning is not, and cannot be, total; and it should not be too inflexible, but allow for contingencies, extraordinary happenings, even spontaneous redirection (e.g. though a range of flexible ranked options). Initiating an anarchist movement virtually from a zero base (the present situation in most developed states), would be a slow difficult and no doubt frustrating task. Fortunately there are attractive alternatives, such as integration with already effective movements, notably those already engaged and experienced in direct action. Declared or self-conscious anarchists are now few in number, and lacking in power. Contemporary anarchists live like the counterculture did, around the margins or in the interstices of contemporary dominant statist societies, rarely seen in the boardrooms of top companies or at the clubs of power brokers. Accordingly, transitions to anarchism are most unlikely to proceed at all directly, either upwards by democratic or popular procedures or downwards through constitutional procedures invoked by controlling elites. Anarchist strategies, in order to work, will need to be indirect and smarter. There is much scope for such strategies. For direct action along the lines sketched to amount to anything, an anarchist movement with considerable organisational capabilities is needed. The most promising way of fast-tracking such a movement is to mobilize already established movements, namely, once again, green and peace and like movements. The idea, in brief, to form an active anarchist movement within the union of green and peace movements. It will have to be wif/un these movements. For not all those affiliated with those loose movements are opposed to statist political arrangements or anarchistically inclined. Many of the leaders and prominent spokespeople among environmentalists for instance, have a cosy relationship with state political figures and bureaucrats. Indeed these days many of these state-intricated people, who may well have genuine environmental commitments, account themselves green, but they are generally unlikely to consider rocking the ship of state. Nor do these state people generally participate in extended or vigorous protest operations, of which there are increasing many. An anarchist movement will link into the extensive more radical end of green and peace movements. There is already considerable linkage, and considerable scope for expansion of linkage. Many radical greens are vaguely aware of the anarchist character of several of their own proposals for change. More radical greens are mostly already aware of the extent of state involvement in environmental degradation, and of state connections with, and encouragement of, large corporations engaged in environmentally destructive enterprises. Nor will they be long bought off by (what threatens to split the green movement) attempts at reconciliation, most recently under the ambiguous banner of "sustainable development". It is becoming clear to more radical greens that this normally means sustaining economic development, that is capitalistic business and macroeconomic growth largely as usual, not sustaining the already developed environmental heritage. More radical peace activists are even more keenly aware of the intrication of states in 12 activities hostile to peace such as military activity, weapons production, support of repressive states and client army/armies funding of counter-insurgency, terrorist and destabilization operators, and so on. There is evidently much common ground to build upon, from which to organise. Correladvely, mobilization through loose green and peace movements effects the character of the activated anarchism, shaping and limiting its forms. It will be an ecosocial anarchism of pacific slant: ESP anarchism for short (for ecosociopacific anarchism). There is no similar prospect of mobilizing most other forms of anarchism, in particular robustly individualistic varieties. For the natural allies of the latter varieties, economic rationalist and libertarianians are overwhelmingly committed to a minimalistic state to guarantee, coercively, the fundamentals of market capitalism (private property, constitu^onal and contract law, etc.). Until a movement is organised there is little chance of a satisfactory revolution. While a few people may be able to gain control, briefly, of some states, without a larger movement requisite restructuring of state functions cannot be carried through. A viable anarchism further supposes some alternative fairly detailed organisational and social arrangements. If such a system is to come to pass and to persist, then its prospects are exceedingly poor if it is a do-nothing set of arrangements spontaneously arising out of a revolution. But the state as it grows tends to undermine or eliminate such alternative arrangements; and simultaneously people come more and more to expect the government to do what they might formerly have done, or banded together to do, themselves. The state again proceeds, like other persistent systems and ecosystems, to establish conditions for its own survival: to be needed for social and even individual activities. Formation q/ movements wMwn movements. There is presently very little in the way of organised anarchist activity anywhere in the world, and no real movements. There is, for instance, Liberty Foundation in USA which supports anarchist productions, but it does not discriminate in what it supports between anarchism and minimal statism and economic rationalism. There are other organisations that do or could play a creative role in anarchist movements (such as Black Rose publicadons in Montreal, and the small Institute of Social Ecology in Vermont). As it takes some time, and much effort, to establish a viable movement, the situation for anarchistic change may look bleak. But there is no reason why anarchism need form an independent movement; it can hitch to already established movements. There are obvious movements, of very sympathetic character, to join (this is no inHitration or annexation): namely the green movement and the peace movement. In both these overlapping movements there is wide appreciation that states themselves are major sources of the issues they are concerned with; for states are the main cause of wars, major participants in nuclear industries, major sources of the issues they are concerned with; for states are the main cause of wars, major participants in nuclear industries, major proponents of economic growth and its concomitant pollution and waste. (Despite the definite descriptions, these "movement" are really loose A 13 c coalitions, often not even organised in one group in individual countries.) Development of anarchist groundswells within green organisations and among green sympathizers appears particularly promising. For many greens are beginning to recognise that they are getting nowhere much, or even going backwards, through state support and state-directed appeals and activity. Turning enough of these doubtful or disillusional greens in positive anarchist directions looks a genuine prospect, io There are very great advantages in mobilizing relevant parts of green and peace movements ( in anarchistic direcdons. Not only are there substantially concordant ideologies and goods; further the to these ends lie available and quite well developed. Readily to be drawn upon is much knowledge of and experience in direct action methods, nonviolent resistance and sabotage, civil (and state) disobedience, and similar.n While several of these methods and procedures derive from earlier anarchist, resistance and civil disobedience practices (and many are common currency of direct oppositional organisations everywhere), they have been brought to a new level of refinement. Further, some extremely important restrictions are recognised. By contrast with methods deployed by "illegal" armies, guerillas, insurgents and the like, paramilitary techniques are out. Such paramilitary organisations are, in any case, operating within the statist paradigm, normally aiming to replace some state arrangements by others. Methods applied are expected to be nonviolent, and to inflict no serious damage upon living creatures.^ What is foreshadowed, then, is formation and development, in each region, of a radical change movement, a radwienf or Ideal radments in different regions are in communication and loosely federated. A radment proceeds to undertake both reformist action and radical action, marginally political and extra-political action, up to and including revolutionary action. Much action is undertaken by smaller groups within the radment, vands (to choose a heady combination of "band" and "van").^ Vands undertake specific projects, of a wide variety of sorts. So far much of their activity has been directed to halting or redirecting specific vandalistic activities of governments, governmental authorities or government-licensed corporations, such as logging, whaling, sealing, polluting, transporting hazardous waste,... The simple proposal is that the range 10 11 12 13 Experiences or processes of change involved do not amount to conversion; for there is no adoption of a faith. Anarchism resembles atheism, a loss of faith, rather than a religion. Rather there is a comingdown-to-earth, a realisation that institutions in which trust and hope had been placed did not warrant those investments and were without justificatory clothes. There is now an array of texts documenting methods, explaining how they are applied, how they can be taught (e.g. through enactments, drama, practice, etc), and so on. See (as above). There are some controversial procedures, such as the tree spiking used by Earth-Firsters and MonkeyWrenchers. Those may do minor damage to some trees spiked, and serious damage to loggers and sawmillers who proceed to mill spiked trees, (a careful formulation of admissible procedures and practices is required.) Vands may include wanderers and wanderlebeners, but they are not vandals. Environmental vandalism is one of the major practices they oppose. 14 of vand activity should be expanded, to include revolutionary action. Such action would include counter-option, taking over the administrations of organisations that are being specifically combated or targeted. Experience could be gained on organisations like universities, though the ultimate target is naturally the state. Designing a s/nari revo/afton.' and revo/MZfonary achion. If the state were justified, if it had a moral right to be there, the action, revolutionary or other, by ethically guided anarchists to dislodge or remove it would be excluded. But it is not. So action, including revolutionary action against it, is not thereby excluded. Perhaps the richest literature on rapid transformation of society, on revolution, falls within the orbit of marxism. There is much to be learnt from this literature, and much from it can be adopted. Some of the elements for textual adaptation are simple. Replace 'the working class' or 'workers' appropriately (unfortunately the replacement is not uniform). For example, substitute 'people's councils' for 'workers councils'; replace 'vanguard class' by 'revolutionary coalition', etc. Not only does marxism presume a vanguard class; more difficult it presumes violence as an inevitable component of revolutionary action. Here the direct and other action methods already alluded to substitute for marxist methods. But while much can be learnt form Marxist socialists, there are fundamental differences as to the point and character of revolution. While the Marxist objective is to siege power and use it, the anarchist objective is not to seize power, and then remove it or relinquish it, a dubious and risky indirect route, but rather to neutralize and remove power directly. There are said to be classic problems confronting any revolutionary movement. One of these is the alleged stability of states, in the West at least. This stability, which does not extend far east, or even into Central Europe, is considerably exaggerated; belief in this stability, which was shaken by the events in Paris in 1968, can be undermined, by an appropriate subversive campaign, so that belief no longer constitutes such an intellectual obstacle to revolutionary activity. Another classic problem turns upon the issue of revolutionary organisation. Some of these organisation^ problems, practices in green and peace movements, especially in groups like Greenpeace, have already effectively solved.[detail]. Z/te ZransMon. Like stages before the transition, stages q/fer transitions to post-state societies will not be easy. There is a commonplace anarchist sentiment that removal of the state, its burden and oppressiveness, a real incubus, will release an enormous amount of energy, with great scope for spontaneity, fulfilment of human potentialities, and so on. Although this sentiment is widely reiterated, very little evidence for the sentiment is ever assembled. My own sentiment is that the commonplace sentiment, and what is taken to ensue from it, is largely moonshine, because, for one thing, there is a countermodel that is at least as plausible. Those who are released from an 15 immense burden, or very hard oppressive forced labour, simply stop, relax and do very little, or little more than is necessary for life and limb. For similar reasons the common anarchist proposition that productivity will rise enormously after the state is stripped away is very doubtful. If the state is like some sort of slave-driver, post­ state productivity will presumably fall. The flood of goods and the end of scarcity, with the demise of the state and its well-published appropriation of the surplus, looks unlikely (not to say environmentally undesirable because the impact of the "goods"). Wishful thinking appears to have gained control in much anarchist literature. There are other important reasons why parts of post­ state productivity will decline considerably. Much too much of present production, fostered by the state, involves erosion of biological capital, and should be wound down accordingly, and alternatives sought. In a similar way, anarchists often look far too optimistic about the rapid regeneration of supportative societies destroyed by, and through machinations of the state. Some of those supportative arrangements, developed in ages of suppression are gone, perhaps forever; others will take much tiwg to repair. Social healing is sometimes very slow. As with post-war reconstruction, living and social arrangements could be very difficult for some for some considerable time. There will need to be, for instance, * intermediate support structures put in place to ease the transition for some; * much flexibility, and some preparedness to experiment to see what works; * vigilance to ensure that old forces of state do not remerge on the back of social discontent. Intelligent anarchist arrangements will have flexible plans, enabling anticipation of main problem areas and sensitive coping with them. 5. External interference Chapter 11 FEASIBLE ANARCHIST CONTRIBUTIONS TO GLOBAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL PROBLEMS Heavy criticisms of anarchism, driving in strongly from socialist and marxist quarters, include these: that anarchism offers no worthwhile practice for and offers no useful contributions far coping with global problems^ meaning problems in present social and political conditions (not usually problems concerning world environments). Among the problems alluded to, which it is alleged anarchism does not and cannot address, are human proverty, human malnutrition, inequitable distribution of resources, human (over-)population, and so on. Granted, there are great many problems, many of them getting worse rapidly. Though anarchist arrangements played little or no part in producing these problems — many of them o developing and getting out of control under free-enterprise capitalist and state-socialist arrangements — it is sometimes outrageously claimed that anarchism should be able to deal successfully with an array of these problems. To add to the insult, it is said to fail as a theory because it is unable to do so. Why on earth should anarchism be presumed to do this? One critic endowed with this level of 'gall' (one A. Wertheimer) contends that anarchism is unable to successfully deal with four presently existing world social conditions. These are: 1) that "the population of the earth is (perhaps) too large, but increasing at a rapid rate with no prospect for a serious reduction"; 2) that "in much of the world, basic human needs are not being satisfied"; 3) that "the world's natural and human resources are not evenly distributed across the globe"; and finally 4) that "the present level of subsistence is based on a high level of social and economic interdependence among various regions of the world and within the regions themselves". In addition [5)J... anarchism is unable to cope with conflicts between individual self-interest and social needs, particularly as relates to ... defense (Clark p.142). The short response is, So what? Anarchism is not really saddled with the global legacies of p^archist practice. A longer response begins thus:- Firstly, insofar as these conditions constitute problems ("condition " 3) is more a "fact" than a "problem"), no political theory is coping successfully, only an all-conquering ideology would pretend to be able to cope. Democratic capitalism has had (important isolated pockets excepted) little impact in limiting India's gross population; Maoist socialism^' has de^ only a little better in China. Part of the problem in almost all such overpopulated regions lies in getting the problem recognised as a problem, and making appropriate adjustments; as with education and adjustment concerning the hazards of pollution and smoking, this is largely because of remiss state practice. Part of the problem, the present resolutions will have ethically inadmissible outcomes or by-products. —------------ .------------------ ——___ 2 Only for the future is there some glimmer of hope, but not under present archist arrangements. Secondly, prospects of success for anarchism are primarily regional, not global. But a region can hardly be expected to handle, rather than make limited contributions towards, world problems. Suppose, for instance, Niue became (or reverted to) an anarchist society, a successful one locally. It would be no detraction from its local success that it made no impact upon demilitarizing the USA or in halting the world's resource drain te thereto, or that its success was (through standard US media practice) scarcely known about there. * iMMM. As we have already noticed, it is often asserted that anarchism cannot work in regions of large populations or with high population densities. That anarchy only has prospects of success in small, and perhaps technologically unsophisticated, communities is a widely espoused thesis? These kinds of assertion have already been criticised. What do not work are stock archist procedures, e.g. expanding \m out-of-touch bureaucracy. Poly-archic arrangements cannot handle tough decisions. By contrast, sortition allows them to be taken (Burgheim). This is important as wide range of decisions: transport systems, restructuring urban systems, and so on, as well as population and immigration policies. As there is a range of lobbies (ethnics, etc.) in favour of population increase: hard for party systems to ignor these lobbies, because of voting system. * Deliberate social reorganisation, which undercuts reasons for large families, namely old-age care, cheap labour in fields, etc. (Seeams as successor (technology here)? * Scarcity is re/aftw to wants and presumed needs. Similarly abundance: it depends on extent to which materialism, consumerism, ete, prevail. When wants are large, perhaps insatiable, there will always be scarcity. Wants are not a given; needs, through culturally dependent, can be. Whan needs are set high (e.g. to include domestic ref^rgeaati^s), then too there will be scarcity for the foreseeable future? No doubt there is a rough band of minimal sustenance and shelter requirement for keeping humans (why are we back to this) alive, for bare sustenance. Even if they could be met, satisfactory lives would not result. * Creation of needs (Marx). Industrial revolution under capitalism aggravated of scarcity and toil. * Anarchists have a bad track-record on scarcity. They have tended to assume abundance. A vast increase once the shades of the state are removed. A Following Kropotkin's proposals they have taken for granted enormous productivity from labour-intensive garden plots, a sort of anarchist green revolution, neglecting the extensive * 3 4 Even so, oneway to resolve/is by building up from local and regional solutions. Compare nuclear freedom, peace, etc.( Thus both sympathetic and unsympathetic commentators; Taylor, Wertheimer etc. n frequently claimed that we know more or less how to meet population problems. Only political structures and vested interests stand in way of doing so. But it is not quite that simple and easy. Arguments that wants/needs distinction cannot be drawn. //' 3 inputs required to make this feasible, (water, energy, manure, pesticides, etc.). [Thus e.g. Clark p.148.) * There are some sharp limits on the extent of growth to cater for human populations and their "needs". An important limitation can be seen by tracking energy, which is limited, more abundant production of which encounters other limits (pollution, nasty works production, etc.) D&triZwHon, q/T&Kmrcgs. . 4. * Necessity is regularly exaggerated. Often this done to enable capitalist routes to be taken, access to foreign business provided etc. * 'Necessity becomes part of imperialistic exploitation. Contrast the equally unsatisfactory Marxist line: distribution is one with production. What is required is a change in technological systems and productive relations. Undesirable patterns of production result in maldistribution. '... the entire problematic of "redistribution" is bared jn the questionable assumption of the feasibility of seeking a solution to the problem while continuing a technological system founded ^n dependency and disproperti%s in economic power * (Clark p.154). * The Aid record of present liberal democratic states is dismal. * As regards more basic provisioning, mutual aid through free federation. Example of Spanish collective ((^ebal ref 19 pp. 184-5). Argument that anarchist approach could succeed, from socio-psychological assumption: 'unless humans develop patterns of life and values based on mutual aid at level of small groups and local communities, one cannot expect them to go very far in the practice of mutual aid at any other level of social organisation * (Clark p.154). But really heeds the convert: when have no developed, can be suspected to deliver aid. Present arrangement for human living are not made on the basis of quality of life for the livers, but all too often to suit the needs of industry J returns to capitalism, etc. The results are everywhere conspicuous, especially in contemporary cities — which characteristically dominate whole regions. Many major local problems derive from the environmental states and living conditions of cities. An anarchist resolution involves restructuring cities. This would include development of network cities and restoration of community. 4. Appendix: ON SELECTION OF COMMITTEES For how committees should be comprised, look at what they are supposed to accomplish, what sorts of decisions deliver, and so on. For example, the basis of decision for allocating public money has to be: 'attempting to balance all legitimate claims on the basis of need and public benefit in accordance with recognised moral values and principles'.^ Evidently such committees should not be composed of 1. members of competing constitutions seeking funds (i.e. anti-model is premiers conference) 2. power traders (i.e. anti-model is /...... or typical bureaucratic committee). What appears to be required are candidates who are * impartial (without chauvinistic or other prejudices) * varied in evolutionary complex claims * informed of.... moral values and principles, and committed to some such. H <3-. After that try statically for spread of attitudes from conservative to radical. Such committees according directly violate (Burheim) relevant interests criteria. In general however for lower level committees relevance criteria obtain. 5. Demanarchoid ecodesigns for Australia Chapter 5.1 THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM: VARIETIES AND OPTIONS The arguments outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on. For example, spontaneous anarchism - according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrangements will arise spontaneously and will be ushered in during the revolution without any prior organisation - is a position which is not viable and could not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which durable supersession of the State depends. The sort of anarchist society which these theoretical arguments delineate will certainly be organised, but the organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures (and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening of the centralised State), relying heavily no doubt on voluntary co­ operation and direct democracy. The society which emerges may be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes pictured it, or it may not. It may well be based on smaller-scale decentralised communities: for otherwise such arrangements as community replacements of State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of Prisoners" Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily. Communities may well be federated and control will be bottomup, not merely by representation and subject to a downward system of command. Within each community there will, under such social anarchism, not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth and property, and no highly concentrated economic power. Under social anarchism, a community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is communally owned or not owned at all. While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and also economic arrangements, they are very far from determining them completely; they offer no detailed blueprint. Accordingly what emerges is not a particular from of anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and anarchism, such as was broadly instituted in the Spanish collectives. There are several recognised varieties of anarchism, among the more common: individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarchosyndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms, and now eco-anarchisms. These varieties are not particularly well-characterised. They are by no means at all exclusive. They certainly do not exhaust the interesting possibilities. So far indeed a satisfactory classification is lacking. Usually something of a ragbag is offered: textbooks single out a very few varieties, and look at them. Invariably they leave out important varieties. 2 But it is not difficult to discern some of the more independent dimensions^ along which variation occurs, and which accordingly are relevant to an improved multi-dimensional tabular classification: Part-w/to/e dimension: atomism pole O <— individual social---------- communal —O total holism This is a most important dimension of variation among organisational arrangements (for analysis see SM). It accounts for a major bifurcation between European anarchisms, which tend to be socially oriented, and American anarchisms, which are usually highly individualistic (religious communities and some European transplants excepted). For markedly holistic arrangements to persist, some strong ideological relational glue appears required, such as an immersing spiritual ideology. Property spectrum: Although this can be compressed into two dimensional form, it is better presented three dimensionally as follows: full O <individualistic ---privatization communalistic -> O full public (tribal) ownership diminished ownership no ownership This spectrum evidently connects with the preceding holistic dimension, and both contribute to what was the old right-left political division (a sort of crude super-position), and to what should be superseding it, three-colour political spectrum: (old right) blue <- red (old left) green (new environmental) and electoral spectrum: Gronp fully O <- bottom up — democratic — oligopolistic — top down participatory O fully dictatorial Change proceJnre dimensions: violent non-constitutional constitutional <pacific 1 Some of these "dimensions" are not really linear in the way strictly required. That they are not, and that they are not fully independent, does not impede a much improved classification. 3 C/tangg wufMfors: vanguard group or class; <Lumpen-proletariat-workers' syndicates bottom "the people" -----------------business political companies parties ruling elites top greens alternative coalitions And so on. The schema presented are clearly far from exhaustive; nothing has been directly included concerning distribution methods (market vs command, open vs closed storehouses, etc.), admissible technology, or work-leisure arrangements, to take three important examples. More pieces will be picked up as we proceed (the approximate number of dimensions is computationally small), and some of the rather schematic sketches ventured above, elements of which should be familiar, will receive some development in what follows. Once the (n) dimensions are duly elaborated an anarc/tAm can be located and classified (pigeon-holed in n-space) by placement in each dimension. For instance, the form of anarchism preferred by me (see SM for an early presentation), is located as follows: it is social (with a significantly qualified communistic safety net: each according to her or his basic needs), local­ market-oriented but non-capitalistic, with diminished ownership, democratic but without politicians and with alternative electoral arrangements, pacific but not bound by "constitutional" procedures, utilizing modest safe technologies,.... But it is but one sort never to be instituted everywhere, from a rich variety of alternatives There are then MMny anarchisms, a rich variety of different forms, some of them scarcely investigated or known. That anarchism comprises such a plurality has proved puzzling to those (for example of one name-one thing persuasion) who assumed it must be a single ideology, either individual or collective,.... Indeed the pluralist character of anarchism has led even more apparently sympathetic critics, to 'wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or merely a jumble of beliefs ...' (M. p.3). Of course the impression that anarchism 'is amorphous and full of paradoxes and contradictions' is marvellously assisted by conflating degenarchism with anarchism, chaos with order, and by combining the variant forms, individualism with socialism and communism. By properly regarding anarchism as a sheaf of overlapping positions assembled around a core characterisation, a standard model for pluralism, the problematic elements of anarchism as an ideology disappear. No doubt it is not an ideology like Marxism, but then Marxism is atypical in its set of paradigmatic texts, concentrated in the works of the master. Other ideologies such as liberalism or environmentalism afford better comparisons. While anarchism is an ideology (in both good and bad senses), it is not really a movement. There is not, anywhere really, such a movement, in the way there have been a succession of liberation movements or there is a green movement and within it a deep ecology movement. 4 As anarchisms are plural, so by similar arguments are green, and deep-green, anarchisms. Certainly green effect a select among their cluse of anarchism; it excludes, for example, the run of individualistic anarchisms peddial in USA, because these admit much anti-environmental activity, manifested for instance through "externalities" and market failure (some of these could be very pale green). But selection does not, even for deep-green tend to a singleton, but still to a wide pluralism. These pluralisms are not merely descriptive, but normative. Insofar as any anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it should be * pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who want to organise differently than its preferred way. It should also be * non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatible with broad-based non­ coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like.2 That is, there is a doublish standard on vio/encg: It is alright to apply violence against state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this can be justified through namely it is OK for me to do violence to you bot not OK for you to apply violence to me. Accordingly a conc/MMon is: A moral anarchism will not be a form committed to violence (except unavoidable forms etc.). Such pluralism does not enjoy a strong historic track-record, and does not go unopposed. Standard anarchist positions, sketching of which was mainly a nineteenth century preoccupation (but extending into twentieth century science fiction and utopian literature), shied away from pluralism in the direction of monistic forms, towards insistence upon particular structure, organisation and distributional methods. Such monistic rigidity led to much intense, often fruitless discussion and friction between anarchists committed to different arrangements. Certainly there was a doctrine of spontaneity — according to which in a state-overthrowing revolution (in the very heat of the revolution!) the masses world spontaneously decide upon new arrangements — which makes it appear that any structures at all were open for consideration; but it was also assumed that certain arrangements would be selected, towards which active anarchists would provide guidance. It is not difficult to indicate some of the broad features of emergent arrangements features that flow from the character of anarchism. But anarchists, over-attracted like others to monistic schemes, have regularly attempted to advance their own schemes, introducing many further postulates, that reach far beyond what flows from the basic characterisation, and that need not 2 There are serious pro&Anw for anarchism that accept coercive methods: why not aiso accept the state then? Such positions tend to be forced back towards an organised individualism. But how then do they stop voluntary organisation arising (legitimately)? 5 be adopted by genuine anarchistics (some further examples of optional and rejectable extras from a recent manifesto: ... direct democracy, destruction of all hierarchies, maximization of freedom, total Revolution, no ends-means distinction, no leaders, optimism about an anarchist future,...). Because of the expansive pluralism of anarchism, it overlaps many other ideologies, indeed virtually all that do not include as a theme unmitigated commitment to a state or like central authority. Thus while anarchism excludes fascism and is incompatible with state capitalism, anarchism overlaps liberalism, democracy, and even Marxism, since Marxism affords a long-term anarchism. There has been much confusion about these interrelations. Take democracy. Anarchism does not entail democracy, as is sometimes claimed. Advice of a select minority or of a single sage could regularly be adopted, though the advice did not reflect the will of the people and its source was not elected or appointed by the people. Nor does anarchism entail undemocratic procedures. There are, in the plurality, democratic forms, of various sorts, and undemocratic forms. Democratic forms may have a better prospect of enabling genuine democracy than life under the state. For as some have argued, 'both the nation state and electoral democracy are inadequate as vehicles for democracy under modern conditions' (Bumheim p.218). Is its goal individual freedom or communal solidarity? Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes neither, sometimes both (a typical four-valued logical structure). A pluralistic anarchism offers several different sorts of communities, not just one kind: for instance, independent individuals, perhaps interrelated and organised through contracts, solidaristic groups working freely together and sharing according to need, and various attractive intermediaries, where there may be more individual-oriented market arrangements but there are also safety nets ensuring distribution according to basic needs. It is not difficult in theory to devise structures that allow a wide variety of kinds. For example, in simple cases this can be accomplished through regional patterning, as illustrated in the following with 6 varieties. 2 1 5 3 6 4 (Such a modelling for political pluralism is further elaborated in UT.) The brief interlude of anarchism in Spain afforded a small-scale example of regional patterning at work The kinds of anarchistic societies are bound to be of very variable quality, both theoretically and in practice. Some will only work with rather special sorts of people, for instance certain communes with members with strong religious or ideological commitments; some will not succeed at all. Some verge on incoherence, for instance those against coercive organisation that approve group terrorist tactics. But while some kinds of anarchism are entangled in serious problems, others are not. Anarchists generally have no obligation to 6 defend defective kinds; yet many criticisms of anarchism are directed at just such defective forms. Although there is a rich variety of anarchistic end-states (virtually uninstantiated possibilities), there are same common or overlapping organisational and structural features. Such family-resemblance features are what hold the plurality together, and include noncoercive versions of those arrangements essential to a functioning society: for instance, broad features of arrangements for production and distribution, for arbitration and reconciliation, and so on, and on. But although each such anarchist society will have some such organizational features, they will differ in detail. For example, a main distributional feature of a simple communist society may comprise a common storehouse from which members take according to need, whereas in individualist societies distribution will normally proceed through some sort of exchange in market systems. More generally different types of anarchism will offer different economic theories. Those with stronger individualistic component will tend to rely upon not merely market or allied exchange arrangements, but upon capitalistic organisation. The type of anarchism favoured here strikes an intermediate route: markets without capitalism. How is such complex organisation to be achieved without a state? Does not such organisation and government require a state? To remove that familiar assumption and associated blockages — encouraged by too much life under states and no experience of alternatives - take a wider look around. Look at how many activities and procedures are organised without states or essential participation of states. By voluntary arrangements. Prominent examples are again sporting organisations, labour unions and business corporations of various sorts. In short, organisation can be accomplished through a range of appropriate institutions. Such examples also provide the appropriate key unlocking the door as to how more extensive organisation can be achieved in the absence of the state, namely through appropriate institutions. The state dissolves into functioning components, a set of appropriate institutions, and at bottom into its relevant minimization. It fragments into compartments — in two interconnected ways: into regional parts and into capacities, functional parts. There are other valuable clues to stateless reorganisation. What happens within the more self-regulating state can also happen without it. As Gramsci emphasized, the ability to govern without overt coercion depends largely on the ability of those in power to exploit systems of belief that the larger population shares. The nature of that system of belief is to some extent determinable by policy makers, since in the modern state they possess a significant ability to propagandize for their view. Yet.... (p.63). Recent empirical investigations tend to yield similar results. People tend to follow rules and obey laws they regard as moral or otherwise satisfactory. There are important messages for anarchistic organisation here also, for arrangements without coercion, overt or other. 7 Anarchistic rules will try to go with the prevailing flow, and will only vary (as over vindictive punishment) where an evidently satisfactory justification can be given. More generally, smarter anarchistic arrangements will aim to include desirable self-regulating systems, such as small- scale markets. Though there are many different strands that can be interwoven through the pluralistic out-fall from the basic characterisation, there are some broad tendencies of anarchistic arrangement which include: * reliance on self-regulatory methods of organisation that require little or no intervention, as opposed to highly regulated procedures, perhaps tending towards centralism or paternalism. This is one reason why markets are often favoured, analogues of centralised control and coercive legal systems are not. * emphasis on voluntary methods, in place of imposed methods — coercive methods are of course excluded by virtue of basic characterisation. Certainly de facto power may remain, but it will be without justification. * favouring of decentralisation and deconcentration rather than centralised or concentrated structures. That does not imply there can be no downward relations. Of course under federal arrangements there will be, and sideways natural relations as well (a full control system). * discouragement of empowerment, encouragement of depowerment. * opposition to oppression is a corollary. There are too many alternatives in the pluralistic basket to look at all of them. Let us consider only some of them, with however preferred features. (An example that does not rank highly and will not be further assessed is Stimer's individualism.) Anarchistic societies of any complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisations, or a federation of these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue, role or function. Thus they will include what might well be accounted gcorggiowuZ /hnctiona/iym. Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join. Typically they will be voluntary arrangements. A critical question concerns how these organisations, substituting for the operation of state, are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In much favoured democratic structures, such as electoral bureaucracies, control is usually weak and remarkably mJirgct. A populace weakly selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bureaucratic bodies some control of state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments. It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component of each organisation is chosen randomly from those qualified of the regional community who volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications (e.g. 8 having served before at a lower level), and avoid disqualifications (e.g. having acquired a disqualifying record).^ Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be represented, for instance disabled, minorities, and so forth, then it is a matter of arranging random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's Po/t/fc^). Nowadays it is called Je/narchy (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the neologism JewMwiarc/ty. Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing a most expensive duplication, government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of central parliamentary government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is duly removed - as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, itself no centre, which is directly linked to functional organisation. Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre and its command structure, no longer there to capture (for there is no command or control structure that could be taken by an invader or with internal insurrection). Community defence is thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who controls the controllers: partly because control is so diffused, partly because also gone are legions of soldiers and security forces, and partly because a main controller is the community (one of the advantages of more direct democracy). Appropriate institutions take care then of the day-to-day running of community affairs. But what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure? These can be accomplished from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the like (with public assessment organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down inflexible fashion. (Some of these methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of Europe, are investigated in Wolff.) A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed coercive mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It 3 People can serve their administrative apprenticeship at iocal or group levels. One when they are adjudged to have exhibited sufficient competence here are they entitled to nominate for selection at grander levels. That is, there is a tiered structure for administralive careers, which would no longer be full-time or working life long. This is one reasonable way of obtained some quality control in selection of administrators. (Note these/evefy do not provide a vicious hierarchy.) 9 should be observed, in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is pursued for reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms or individuals, from where in a more equitable community much of the funding would derive (by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* Muc/t less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard military forces and defence establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison establishment and expensive courts. * Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements). * Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import organisations they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or redistribution powers. * Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate royalties and the like), rental taxes on property or leases, gift and gains taxes, and through auctions (of previously inherited goods). How this would work depends upon community arrangements. Consider for instance anarchistic arrangements where that problematic item, private property, has not been instituted or has been abolished (as under main examples of European anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable worth stealing for sale in present systems) will be instead of bought. Leasehold systems can be operated very like private property (as the land system in the Australian Capital Territory reveals) thus facilitating market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a rental, and they can be of finite term and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is excluded. In place of the customary land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described. Here, as with referenda, computing facilities remove many previous obstacles to such developments. Organisation can move with newer technologies. Leasehold arrangements are readily applied to prevent the accumulation ol scarce property resources, such as urban land, which is a major feature of capitalism. For leases of scarce commodities can be allocated according to need and ability to use, not merely through a 4 The costs are enormous. A minute component, a singie federai election in Australia, now costs about $54 million to arrange. 10 historically rooted market distribution as with private property. It is private property, not a market system of distribution, that is really distinctive of capitalism, since it not only provides a place to park and increase capital, but it enables transmission of accumulated wealth (e.g. within a family or dynasty) and control of the means of production. Where can anarchism work — satisfactively: on stock presumptions of community and smallness. Even proponents of the state have allowed that anarchy can work, indeed their position often depends upon it. The horrible alternative to their, or their friends' or patrons', splendid state and statecraft, is that a region should lapse into anarchy (a regular fear of the US administration). Anarchism, that is, works, but works very nastily, like that presumed in "states of nature", like that many in fact encounter in the encampments, slums or ghettos of terrorist or other states. But it now fairly widely appreciated, outside those intellectually incarcerated in the allencompassing realm of states, that anarchism can work rather satisfactorily, and did in may pre­ state societies. Concurrent anthropological findings concerning small communities and collective action results concerning small collective have demolished the assumption that anarchy is impossible, either in practice or techno-logically. Since then it has become fashionable to concede that anarchy is possible but on/y where there is a suitable small community. This sort of anarchimin-the-small is commonly conceded by socialists, but dismissively. While anarchism may, it is allowed, work well enough in small, isolated or primitive communities, it cannot work in large industrial or urban societies such as now predominate globally. Anarchism is accordingly but a marginal possibility, unworthly any longer of much serious political concern. Such dismissals tend to be strong on claims and unfavourable judgements but excessingly weak on supporting argument, where socialist handwaving takes over (obviously this widespread phenomenon is not confined to socialism, or even to political debate). Confidence that anarchism cannot succeed seems to be largely founded on the erroneous assumption that anarchism cannot supply any but a primitive organisational structure. By contrast, a sort of anarchism-in-the-small has been forcefully pursued, with due argument, by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (-.166). That is: '... community is nec&wary — if people are to live without the state' (p.3). The argument to community that Taylor offers reduces a modified Hobbesianism; social order can only be maintained, without the state and in the small, if the relations between individuals are those of community (cf. p.2). Insofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably broken- down argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal justification of the state' — from the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperated to provide themselves without requisite collective goods — breaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its 1 11 argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply of such goods (p.59). It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred is that, if public goods are to be provided, means must be found of getting people to do their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are unfortunately far from decisive. That leaves the state for public larger than communities, and communitarian anarchism as an extra-terrestrial possibility for small communities (because communities in the vicinity of states do not, it is claimed, survive). For all the talk about anarchism, it looks like another triumph for the state. But the argument is unsound, because there are methods than those Taylor locates. Non-statist organisation, which comes in a range of forms — functional, regional and others — is not a combination of the pure methods considered. As a broad type of method it is hardly "unproposed", or without precedents or examples (e.g. medieval orders and present international order). While there is no need to dispute that prospects for anarchism tend to be enhanced in smaller communities, or in conglomerates that can be arranged in networks of smaller communities, anarchism can work, if less satisfactorily, in modem mass society. Such is one of the large themes being advanced. 777E EA7FFG//VG OF /LV1/?C77/.SM: ^/<^r cipy?^s , i The arguments outlined, predominancy theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the options open for anarchism, courses of action in superan­ nuating the State and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on. For exam­ ple, spontaneous anarchism — accor­ ding to which organisation is un­ necessary and social arrangements will arise spontaneously and will be ushered in during the revolution without any prior organisation — is a position which is not viable and could not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which durable supersession of the State depends. The sort of anarchist society which these theoretical arguments delineate will certainly be organised, but the organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures (and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transi­ tion by any strengthening oj^he cen­ tralised State), relying heavil\^on volun­ tary co-operation and direct democracy. ^ The society which emerges mciy be much . ..as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes piAuredH^lt /9^be based on smallerscale decentralised communities? for otherwise such arrangements as com munity replacement of State welfare ar­ rangements, control of their environ ment, removal of Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will w(?rk less satisfactorily. Communities .be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by representation and subject to a downward system of command.__ Within each community there will hot be great discrepancies in the distribution of weakh and property, ar^p hi^^ycom centrated economic powercommum ty win be a rather equaiitarian group, sharing in much that is communally owned or not owned at a!i. White theoretical arguments heip outtine the generat shape of social, ami aiso economic arrangements,they determine^them compietety; they offer no detaited btueprint. Accordingty what emerges is not a particular form of anar­ chism, for instance anarchist com­ munism, but a more experinienta^an.^ p/ura/bhc anarchism, such as was^tnstituted in the Spanish cokectives. traced/ \^^There are several recognised varieties of anarchism among the more common: individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarcho- syndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms, and now eco-anarchisms. These varieties are not particularly well-characterised, /hey are by no means at all exclusive. So far indeed a satisfactory classification is lacking. Usually something of a ragbag is offered: textbooks single out a very few varieties, and look at them. Invariably they leave out important varieties. But it is not difficult to discern some of the more independent dimensions^ along which variation occurs, and which accordingly are relevant to an improved multi-dimensional tabular classification: Parf-w/zo/g/ dimension: atomism pole O <— individual ---- social ---- communal —> O total holism This is a most important dimension of variation among organisational arrangements (for analysis see SM). It accounts for a major bifpriation between European anarchisms, which tend ... . 1 'S^ to be socially oriented, and American anarchism^ which are usually highly individual (religious communities^ some European transplants/ excepted). For markedly holistic arrangements to persist, some strong ideological relational glue appears required, such as an immersing spiritual ideology. Properly spectrum: Although this can be compressed into two dimensional form, it is better presented three dimensionally as follows: full privatization —> O full public (tribal) ownership no ownership This spectrum evidently connects with the preceding holistic dimension, and both contribute to what was the old right-left political division (a sort of crude super-position), and to what should be superseding it, three-colour political spectrum: (old right) blue <------------------------ .--------------------------- > red (old left) green (new environmental) Group Jectwon and electoral spectrum: fully O <- bottom up — democratic —y oligopolistic — top down participatory C/umge procedure dimensions: ^violent -* O fully dictatorial constitutional <------------------------- —---------------------------------- > non-constitutional pacific 5 Some of these "dimensions" are not really h'wear in the way strictly required. That they are not, and that they are not fully independent, does not impede a much improved classification. 22 CTtangc mmai/ors': vanguard group or class; <— Lumpen-proletariat—workers * syndicates bottom "the people" political parties business ---companies top alternative ccylitions a/ And so on. The schema presented are clearly far from exhaustive; nothing has been directly included concerning distribution methods (market vs command, open vs closed storehouses, etc.), admissible technology, or work-leisure arrangements, to take three important examples. More pieces will be picked up as we proceed (the approximate number of dimensions is computationally small), and some of the rather schematic sketches ventured above, elements of which should be familiar, will receive some development in what follows^ Once the (n) dimensions are duly elaborated an anarchism can be located and classified (pidgeon-holed in n- space) by placement in sach dimension. For instance, the form of anarchism preferred by me (s<$SM for an early presentation),[But one sort never to be^instituted everywhere/rom a riciT' <L. variety of altematie^s located as follows: it is social (with a significantly qualified communistic safety net: each according to her or his basic needs),' market-oriented but non-capitalistic, with diminished ownership, democratic but without politicians and with alternative electoral arrangements, pacific but not bound by "constitutional" procedures, utilizing modest safe technologies, .... There are then many anarchisms, a rich variety of different forms, some of them scarcely investigated or known. That anarchism comprises such a plurality has proved puzzling to those (for example of one name-one thing persuasion) who assumed it must be a single ideology, either individual or collective,.... Indeed the pluralist character of anarchism has led even more apparently sympathetic critics, to 'wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or merely a jumble of beliefs (M, p.3). Of course the impression that anarchism 'is amorphous and full of paradoxes and contradictions' is marvellously assisted by conflating degenarchism with anarchism, chaos with order, and by combining the variant forms, individualism with socialism and communism. By properly regarding anarchism as a sheaf of overlapping positions assembled around a core characterisation, a standard model for pluralism, the problematic elements of anarchism as an ideology disappear. No doubt it is not an ideology like Marxism, but then Marxism is atypical in its set of paradigmatic texts, concentrated in the works of the master. Other ideologies such as liberalism or environmentalism afford better comparisons. While anarchism is an ideology (in both good and bad senses), it is not really a movement. There is not, anywhere really, such a movement, in the way there have been a succession of liberation movements or there is a green ^deep ecology^movement. 9 2 : . / A /f 7 z^4-v^- /i cY&v-e, Insofar a^ anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it should be * pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who want to organise differently thatiits preferred way. * non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatible with broad-based non­ coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like/ That is, there is a doublish standard on violence: It is alright to apply violence against state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this can be justified through cgoLwr namely OK for me to do violence to you but not OK for you to apply violence to me. Accordingly tentative conc/MMon is: A moral anarchism will not be a form committed to violence Except unavoidable forms etc. Such pluralism does not enjoy a strong historic track-record, and does not go unopposed. Standard anarchist positions, sketching of which was mainly a nineteenth century preoccupation (but extending into twentieth century science fiction and utopian literature), shied away from pluralism in the direction of monistic forms, towards insistence upon particular structure, organisation and distributional methods. Such monistic rigidity led to much intense, often fruitless discussion and friction between anarchists committed to different arrangements. Certainly there was a doctrine of spontaneity — according to which in a state-overthrowing revolution (in the very heat of the revolution!) the masses world spontaneously decide upon new arrangements — which makes it appear that any structures at all were open for consideration; but it was also assumed that certain arrangements would be selected, towards which active anarchists would provide guidance. It is not difficult to indicate some of the broad features of emergent arrangemens features that flow from the character of anarchism. But anarchists, over-attracted like others to monistic schemes, have regularly attempted to advance their own schemes, introducing many further postulates, that reach far beyond what flows from the basic characterisation, and that need not be adopted by genuine anarchistics (some further examples of optional and rejectable extras from a recent manifesto:... direct democracy, destruction of all hierarchies, maximization of freedom, total Revolution, no ends-means distinction, no leaders, optimism about an anarchist future,...). 23 Because of the expansive pluralism of anarchism, it overlaps many other ideologies, indeed all that do not include as a theme unmitigated commitment to a state or like central authority. Thus while anarchism excludes fascism and is incompatible with state capitalism, anarchism overlaps liberalism, democracy, and even Marxism, since Marxism affords a long­ term anarchism. There has been much confusion about these interrelations. Take democracy. Anarchism does not entail democracy, as is sometimes claimed. Advice of a select minority or of a^sage could regularly be adopted, though the advice did not reflect the will of the people and its source was not elected or appointed by the people. Nor does anarchism entail undemocratic procedures. There are, in the plurality, democratic forms, of various sorts, and undemocratic forms. Democratic forms may have a better prospect of enabling genuine democracy than life under the state. For as some have argued, 'both the nation state and electoral democracy are inadequate as vehicles for democracy under modem conditions' (Bumheim p.218). Is its goal individual freedom or communal solidarity? Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes neither, sometimes both (a typical four-valued logical structure). A pluralistic anarchism offers several different sorts of communities, not just one kind: for instance, independent individuals, perhaps interrelated and organised through contracts, solidaristic groups working freely together and sharing according to need, and various attractive intermediaries, where there may be more individual-oriented market arrangements but there are also safety nets ensuring distribution according to basic needs. It is not difficult in theory to devise structures that allow a wide variety of kinds. For example, in simple cases this can be accomplished through regional patterning, as illustrated with 6 varieties. (Such a modelling for political pluralism is further elaborated in UT.) The brief interlude of anarchism in Spain afforded a small-scale example of regional patterning at work The kinds of anarchistic societies are bound to be of very variable quality, both theoretically and in practice. Some will only work with rather special sorts of people, for instance certain Answers with members with strong religious or ideological commitments; some will not succeed at all. Some verge on incoherence, for instance those against coercive organistions that approve group terrqist tactics. But while some kinds of anarchism are entangled in serious problems, others are not. Anarchists generally have no obligation to defend defective kinds; yet many criticisms of anarchism are directed at just such defective forms. Although there is a rich variety of anarchistic end-states (virtually uninstantiated ) f /-I'y e 24 or 1^- *rc! n possibilities), there are^ common organisational and structural features. Such cluster features are A J what hold the plurality together, and include noncoercive versions of those arrangements essential to a functioning society: for instance, broad features of arrangements for production and distribution, for arbitration and reconciliation, and so on, and on. But although each such anarchist society will have such organizational features, they will differ in detail. For example, a main distributional feature of a simple communist society may comprise a common storehouse from which members take according to need, whereas in individualist societies distribution will normally proceed through some sort of exchange in market systems. MoK ( generally different types of anarchism will offer different economic theories. Those with stronger individualistic component will tend to rely upon not merely market or allied exchange arrangements, but upon capitalistic organisation. The type of anarchism favoured here strikes an intermediate route: markets without capitalism. How is such complex organisation to be achieved without a state? Does not such organisation and government require a state? To remove that familiar assumption and associated blockages - encouraged by too much life under states and no experience of alternatives - take a wider look around. Look at how many activities and procedures are organised without states or essential participation of states. By voluntary arrangements. Prominent examples are again sporting organisations, labour unions and business corporations of various sorts. In short, organisation can be accomplished through a range of appropriate institutions. Such examples also provide the appropriate key unlocking the door as to how more extensive organisation can be achieved in the absence of the state, namely through appropriate institutions. The state dissolves into functioning components, a set of appropriate institutions, and at bottom into its relevant minimization. It fragments into compartments - in two interconnected ways: into regional parts and into capacities, functional parts. There are other valuable clues to stateless reorganisation. What happens within the more self-regulating state can also happen without it. As Gramsci emphasized, the ability to govern without overt coercion depends largely on the ability of those in power to exploit systems of belief that the larger population shares. The nature of that system of belief is to some extent determinable by policy makers, since in the modern state they possess a significant ability to propagandize for their view. Yet.... (p.63). Recent empirical investigations tend to yield similar results. People tend to follow rules and obey laws they regard as moral or otherwise satisfactory. There are important messages for anarchistic organisation here also, for arrangements without coercion, overt or other. Anarchistic rules will try to go with the prevailing flow, and will only vary (as over vindictive punishment) where an evidently satisfactory justification can be given. More generally, smarter anarchistic arrangements will aim to include desirable self-regulating systems, such as small- /<? 25 scale markets. t There are too many alternatives in the pluralistic basket to look at all of them. Let us consider only some of them, with however preferred features. (An example that does not rank highly and will not be further assessed is Stirner's individualism.) Anarchistic societies of any complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisations, or a federation of these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue, role or function. Thus they will include what might well be accounted ecoregiona/ Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join. Typically they will be voluntary arrangements. A critical question is-to how these organisations, substitudng for the operation of state, are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In much favoured democratic structures, such as electoral bureaucracies, control is usually weak and remarkably tnJtrecf. A populace weakly selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bureaucratic bodies some control of state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments. It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component of each organisation is chosen randomly from those qualified of the regional community who volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications (e.g. having served before at a lower level), and avoid disqualifications (e.g. having acquired a disqualifying record).6 Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be represented, for instance disabled, minorities, and so forth, then it is a matter of arranging random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's P<?/iric.y). Nowadays it is called t/gwarcAy (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the neologism dewanarcAy. Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing a most expensive duplication, government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of central parliamentary 6 People can serve their administrative apprenticeship at local or group levels. One when they are adjudged to have exhibited sufficient competence here are they entitled to nominate for selection at grander levels. This is one reasonable way of obtained some quality control in selection of administrators. (Note /gve/^ do not provide a vicious hierarchy.) A"" —H Though there are many different strands that can be interwoven through the pluralistic out-fall from the basic characterisation, there are some broad tendencies of anarchistic arrangement which include: * reliance on self-regulatory methods of organisation that require little or no intervention, as opposed to highly regulated procedures, perhaps tending towards centralism or paternalism. This is one reason why markets are favoured, analogues of centralised control and coercive legal systems are not. * emphasis on voluntary methods, in place of imposed methods - coercive methods are of course excluded by virtue of basic characterisation. Certainly de facto power may remain, but it will be without justification. * favouring of decentralisation and deconcentration rather than centralised or concentrated structures. That does not imply there can be no downward relations. Of course under federal arrangements there will be, and sideways natural relations as well (a full control system). * discouragement of empowerment, encouragement of depowerment. * opposition to oppression is a corollary. 26 government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is duly removed — as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are . .... eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, no centre, which is directly linked to functional organisation. Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre and its command structure, no longer there to capture (for there is no command or control structure that could be taken by an invador or with internal insurrection). Community defence is thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who controller is the community (one of the advantages of more direct democracy). Appropriate institutions take care then of the day-to-day running of community affairs. But what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure? These can be accomplished from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the like (with public assessment organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down inflexible fashion. (Some of these methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of Europe, are investigated in Wolff.) A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed coecive mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It should be observed, in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is pursued for otAgr reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms or individuals, from where in a more equitable community much of the funding would derive (by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* AfMcA less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard military forces and defense establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison establishment and expensive courts. -— Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements). * Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import organisation^ they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or redistribution powers. * Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate royalties and the like), rental taxes on property or leases, gift and gains taxes, and through auctions (of previously inherited goods). How this would work depends upon community arrangements. Consider for instance anarchistic arrangements where that problematic item, private property, has not been instituted or has been abolished (as under main examples of European anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable worth stealing for sale in present systems) will be renfed instead of bought. Leasehold systems can be operated very like private property (as the land system in the Australian Capital Territory reveals)^facilitating market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a rental, and they can be of finite term and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is excluded. In place of the customary land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described. (Here, as with referenda, computing facililies remove many previous obstacles to such developments. Organisation can move with newer technologies. Leasehold arrangements are readily applied to prevent the accumulation of scarce property resources, such as urban land, which is a major feature of capitalism. For leases of scarce commodities can be allocated according to need and ability to use, not merely through a historically rooted market distribution as with private property. It is private property, not a market system of distribution, that is really distinctive of capitalism, since it not only provides a place to park and increase capital, but it enables transmission of accumulated wealth (e.g. within a family or dynasty) and control of the means of production. CZ 4^? y and SwiaMness 7^4 ,^. y?e A^.V< c. 4^^ * ^AAv^A A^ r4A 7^?/- / z- yy^fA, ^Tz- A y . yy r/At- Ac x' 4- z A^. A^ ^-A. AzA /A^'A xA.A^ z^^-^-xxAA/ Aa A ^//x/---? -— /^c has become fashionable/^ince th^oncurrent anthropological findings concerning small communities and the collective action results concerning small collectives demolished the assumption that anarchy impossible, t& concede that anarchy is possible but only where there is a suitable small community. /Az' - A // /X <_y ' y 'A,,' ' / // ^ y / . / ,y, .. . ^_ —y/- Zf ..J. / /z, y y- 7 / a— - sort of anarchism in-the-small has been forcefully pursued by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (p.166). That is: ... community is necawa/y — if people are to live without the state' (p.3). The argument to community that Taylor offers reduces a modified Hobbesipnism; social order can oly be maintained, without the state and in the small, if the relations between individuals are those of community (cf p.2). Insofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably brokeddown argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal justification of the state' - from the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves without requisite collective goods - breaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply of such goods (p.59). It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred is that, if public goods are to be provided, jowc means must be found of getting people to do their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are far from decisive. That leaves the state for public larger than communities, and communitarian anarchism as an extra-terrestial possibility for small communities (because communities in the vicinity of states do not, it is claimed, survive). For all the talk about anarchism^it looks like another triumph for the state. &t the argument is unsound, because there are other methods than those Taylor locates. Non-statist organisation, which comes in a range of forms^ is not a combination of the pure methods considered. As a broad type of method it is hardly "unproposed", or without precedents or examples (e.g. medieval orders and present international order). 7^ A er C 4 !/V [1] p.3O Important among these practices are resistance movements and organised refusals (preferably without conspicuous leaders). While individuals can be selectively picked off, enough people well organsed cannot. As a result grand refusals could be significant political happenings. [3] p.4? The practice of anarchism, generously construed, naturally includes the state of being in anarchist conditions, of living under anarchism (though perhaps unaware). There is cope for anarchism without doctrine. Many primitive societies thus qualify on anarchistic; they practice, or practiced, anarchism though unaware (somewhat as wild animals practice hygine). Further, no doubt now stretching 'practice' beyond its assumed anthropic context, many animal communities practice anarchism. Many attracted ^anarchism, an anarchism without name even, long for analogous pure practice.^ Th^ hope that whatever it is ill operate, perhps even materilize, without any heave- ithouteness or e any intellectualizing, perhaps without even thought or much ef on their part. In contemporary circumstances they would thave to be extrordinary lucky (a paternal state with caring elements, such as safe jobs and spoon-fed indoctrinal education for all citizens, does not relinquish its control voluntarily). [4] #awan Harare. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious /refprious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to force various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones (including defence focus, standing armies, survellience etc.) [5] about p.20 (connector^ Present minolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which they are not competent, ffom some of wlpdrihey are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as impartial referees by ^h^r/businessjsofnmitments). Because the centre tries to do and control too much, as a consequenc$4tdoes very much unsatisifactorily. Improved arrangements would separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power. [6] p.30. As^?ovemmenr is variably determinable, so also is /aw. Under the main determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. But under a different determinate, there is no incompatibility. Anarchism cannot traffic in law, in the initial and prominent sense of /aw offered in the OED, namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter reducing this prognastication is a'second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical uses'): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'. Law deservedly has a tarnished reputation in anarchism. Most of it is arcane, administered by an expensive priesthood. Too often it is an oppression tool of the state. While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatable with heavy authoritarian law, it is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely asserted to lists, and so on. [7] Democracy within ANARCHY, and DEMANARCHY Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with each other their patronage and cites/br the acclaimed right to govern. Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other elite team. For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected, not controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative. By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see Burnheim). are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as /a// bacty. B argues that they are not satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent. Mows 1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote. 2. only structural, not material issues to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for instance, not capital punishment, not abortion. Dgwarc/ty has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It means 'the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or governnorj; a popular government. The municipal body of a modern Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply, however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving Jcwa/MrAy. [8] [after authority, coercion. To coerce is maintain or change state, normaliy of another creature, by force. Re Chap 4) Insofar as anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it should be * pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who want to organise differently that its preferred way. * non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatibile with broad-based non­ coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like. That is, there is a doublish standard on vio/ence: It is alright to apply violence against state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this can be justified through ggoi-sw: namely OK for me to do violence to you but not OK for you to apply violence to me. Accordingly afentadve is: A moral anarchism will not be a form committed to violence - except unavoidable forms etc. [9] anJ Smallness It has become fashionable, since the concurrent anthropological finalings concerning small communities and the collective action results concerning small collectiyes demolisted the assumption that anarchy was impossible, to concede that anarchy is possible but only where there is a suitable small community. This sort of anarchism in-the-small has been forcefully pursued by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (p.166). That is: ... community is necessary - if people are to live without the state' (p.3). The argument to community that Taylor offeysreduces a modified Hobbesionism; social order can oly be maintained, without the st^te and in the small, if the relations between individuals are those of community (cf p.2L lnsofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably brokeddown argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal jusdfication of the state' - from the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves without requisite collective goods - brdaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply of such goods (p.59). It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred is that, if public goods are to be provided, some means must be found of getting people to do their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are far from 14 e OF / 7 One appalling mes from a Russi icrionary that is hostile to all -bourgeours socio-political tr authority a e, and counterpasses ' intere^s of petty private ownersbib and small ant economy to progress of^ociety based on large-scale production v, 2nd revision s, Progress, bsever, 1989). ^nether-dismal-eharaeterisati [4] scientistIfApter). narurg. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious reforious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to .v(0 force various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones [including defence focus, standing armies, survellience etc.) *[5FabouFpT2O-(G0miect0f) Present\p^nolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which they are not co etent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as KHLI Ut impartial referees by\[ieir business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and epntro too much, as a conseque it does very much unsatisifactofily. Improve tents wouldl .separate these roles, deconcen^ating and decentralizing power. [7] Democracy within ANARCHY, and DEMANARCHY Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with each other their patronage and citesybr the acclaimed right to govern. Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other elite team. For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected, not controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative. By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see Burnheim). o — /^W/ 6'J n / /I 15 7?^/<?rc/!^Az are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as /< */// /?ocA.s'. B argues that they are not satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent. Moray 1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote. 2. only structural, not material issues to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for instance, not capital punishment, not abortion. Z)^marc/ty has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It means the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or govemnor]; a popular government. The municipal body of a modem Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply, however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving IM) A * * Chapter 8A ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THEORY AND OF A PREFERRED THEORY There are many preliminaries. One, like preparing a badly used building site, consists in removing the rubbish. That of course is but the beginning of philosophy, not the sole content and end, as some zealous followers of Lockejhave supposed. 1. Issues in appalling methodology. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political philosophy, i Bad practices abound; anarchism has suffered particularly as a result. Redefinitions, and redefinitional stratagems to try to close gappy arguments, abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally unfriendly, at best. False dichotomies abound. And so on. Among the deleterious practices, several deserve special mention: * 7%#/ o/ There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream intellectual activity and strikingly manifest in political theory. A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and practice, is that of over­ powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles more powerful than reason can justify, is dis-assessed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision-making and institutional arrangements (see MR). Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on. Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are 1 One reason is that much of it is done by political thinking. with no adequate grounding tn logic or /' m we/Ttoi/o/ogy. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political * philosophy. Redefinitions, and redefinitional otologies to try to close gappy arguments, abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally unfriendly, at best. P/tcno/ncnon o/ * excessive strength. There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream intellectual activity and strikingly manifest in political theory. A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and practice, is that of over-powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles more powerful than reason can justify, is disassesed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision making and obstitutional arrangements (see MR). Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on. Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in Prisimers Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flowed from the very outset, and should be set aside. A central time in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions. Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument and practice appear,to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have 1 One reason is that much of it is done by poiiticai szds with no adequate grounding in logic or critical thinking. tried, rather......... to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state besereft of adequate justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire. So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined "property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state legal systems. ON DEFINING ANARCHISM DEFINITIONS OF ANARCHISM One characterisation that is utterly appalling comes from a Russian Dictionary of PAi/<9^o/?Ay: 'Anarc&i.wn, a petty-bourgeours socio-political trend that is hostile to all authority and the state, and counterpasses the interests of petty private ownership and small peasant economy to the progress of society based on large-scale production' (ed I. Frolov, 2nd revision eds, Progress, Plosever, 1989). Another dismal characterisation comes from an American political scientist (Apter). Defective definitions of anarchism abound, many supplied by high profile anarchists (whereupon they assume a certain air of authority, a bogus air). A few examples will be considered, mostly drawn from a large list of similarly defective definitions included in Clark, p.ll8ff., who is out to show that any definition which attempts to do justice to anarchism through an assentialistic definition deploying one simple idea is bound to fail, abysmally. AnarcAy does not "mean literally "without government'" contrary to Caster p.14. It does however imply without governments of prevailing cuts which is what the immediately proceeds to: 'and the lowerst common demominstor of anarchist thought is the conviction that existing forms of government are productive of wars, internal violence, repression and misery' (p.14). Right on! The very short characterisation of anarc/iAy/?? (and redition of anarc/taj) as 'no * government'is defective because of the elosticity, and slippiness of 'government'. For example, according to one dictionary (Dniverya/ E/tg/Bh) govern/ytenr means '... system of polity in a state; territory ruled by a governor ...' in which case it fy incompatible with Thus, e.g. Carter, Websters (?). 2 achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in Prisoners Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flawed from the very outset, and should be set aside. A central issue in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions. Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument and practice appear to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have tried, rather deviously, to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state bereft of adequate justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire. So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined "property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state legal systems. * Htg/t anJ low Wolffs little book, billed as "a defence of anarchism" is a small treasury of these. Virtually all the characterisations proposed at the beginning of this book, of state, sovereignty, authority, power, actomomy, are defective, often by virtue of definitional features. Consider Wolffs opening: 'Politics is the exercise of the power of the state, or the attempt to influence that exercise. Political philosophy is therefore ... the philosophy of the state' (p.3 also p.ll). Politics went on before the rise of the state, and with some good fortune, will persist often its demise. Again, consider: 'the state is a group of persons who have or exercise suppose authority within a given territory' (p3; repeated p.5). This shows the fallacy of redirectionism. For a state normally does not change when those who exercise power do. On the de facto state Wolff is also astray: 'a & Jacio state is simply a state whose subjects believe it to be ligitimate (i.e. really to have the authority it claims for itself)' (p.10). Many subjects may nor believe that, but be intimidated through state power. Very fashionable in removing anarchism are low redefinitions of Ftare, where there is a state given any positional components in society, such as political specialisation or division of labour (see Taylor on anthopoligical efforts on societies without states). As a result there can be effortessly be both anarchy and "state"; any complex anarchist society is a state! Another rich source of redefinitions is founded by Taylor's books on anarchism. Examples include: a fairly hopeless definition of gooJ.' it is desired (p.45). Most interesting is a 3 disgustingly low redefinition of property.- 'Property' is here a shorthand for a variety of entilements or use rights (Taylor 82 p.44). So as I am entitled to use the byway or to bathe in the stream, they are my property, so I run them? Another example concerns coercion: In the claim that to avoid the Hobbesian prisoners' dilemma 'every man must be coerced', Taylor continues (87 p. 145), 'by which I mean simply that he must be made to behave differently than he otherwise would (... (i.e.) would "ovlantarily" in the state of nature).' But such a difference may be effectively achieved, depending on the subject, by noncoercive means, such as persassion, sanctions, and so forth. Furthermore it would not guarantee what Taylor and Hobbes appear to expect, authority and sovereignty. Among the most pernicious of redefinitions, constraints, and elides are those concerning interests and preferences - often reduction bases for gooJ and other value qualities, often quickly converted from interest to self-interest (thus Taylor)^ Examples from within this circle include harmony and cooperation. For instance.'Harmony requires complete identity of interests' (in Ope, p.226). It hardly requires comment. Again '...cooperation occurs when actors adjust their behaviour to the actual or anticipated preferences of others (in Ope p.226). But suppose creatures simply work or act together (what 'cooperation' means). psychological accounts are seriously astray. * ZHc%#%MnoMS or ctf^cr-or-M/n. Such Humans are extraordinarily addicted to flawed dichotomous reasoning, again powerfully exhibited with regard to anarchism and the state? For example, the alternative to the state is presumed to be anarchism which is equated with disorder; so it is either the state or disorder. Again, the only alternative to a market system of government is central control - market or control - and the market has won out decisively now (one of the presumed reasons for the prematurely announced "end to ideology"). Other objectionable methodological assumptions include '..Po.w&Mh'g mJzvo/aa/LSW (after McP p.3) 'Its possessive quality is its conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owning nothing to society for them. The individual (is not)... part of a larger..... whole, but... surer of himself.' As a result: 'Society consists of relations of exchange between proprietors. Political socieity becomes a celebrated device for the protection of this property and for the maintenance of an orderly relation of exchange.' 2 3 The fallacious shifts are dealt with in 'Aquinst, A famous Australian example is the truculent stance of its richest mum, Packer, in a parliamentary inquiry: Either you believe me or call be a liar. Reflect on how far "call me a liar" goes beyond "you do not believe me". , „ There should be some eodness^ that we are now trying to build machines in our own inadequate image. (Many examples in SM). 4 (a prime example in economics: the data of extremality). * /tM/nan * g/fwn o/va/ne, or reduction of value to preference. All of these have been crically assessed elsewhere. But some features deserve further elaboration: * f/tg tAgo/y With rule and compass techniques it is wn/MM.n&Zg to trirect angle. Of course by measuring it is rather easy. Similarly with rationality: wider means can do what state was supposed to be necessary for. Put differently, the theoretical state is an artifact on a certain ultra-thin theory of rationality. The thin theory of rationality is an extraordinarily widespread ideological....... among Anglo-American social theorists (many of whom feel obliged to make public dealeraatous of faith). But that it is 'almost universally taken for granted by economists' does nothing to show its correctness, unless an argument from expectise has required a new validity. What it reveals rather is something about the ideological commitments,...........of economists. The thing theory of rationality is almost invariably coupled with individualism, methodological individualism as it is usually cleverly called (after Popper's theorizing).^ Many of these objectionabl assumption are melted together in theories of /mman nafnrg. Mafnrg, CM/tMrg anJconfro/. Part of the intellectual aim of a theory of human nature is to achieve an account of hum^n /motivation. But a uniform story of motivation is scarcely more likely drawn as uniform account of human nature.^ Motivations are no doubt important; but they are many and various. It is still fashionable to assert, as if it was a truism, that 'all political philosophies ... base themselves upon a conception of human nature' (Wolff Povgrty p. 140, pluralised). That is no longer so (certainly, since Foucault) is that the notion of //n/nnn nnturg is not well defined, and never was except under high redefinitions. Work in decqtralized artificial intelligence readily suggests that communities of robots could operate without statist arrangements (nor need outiside imput be state bound). That suggests in tum that it is something about humans, as many humans, that leads to development or imposition of states. That something has been ascribed, rather too quickly, to human nature, or to human culture, or to some mix of human genetypic and phenotypic features, features that other creatures or artificial intelligences do not share. It is something peculiarly pertaining to and special to humans, their nature or culture, that amends institutional control. But has never been satisfactorily explained what these special features are or how they operate. There is much space for total scepticism about such justificatory or apologetic approaches. 4 5 Taylor has a dreadful argumejpj (892 p.57) that people are agents, because otherewise default to understand why so many goods and supplied (also 87 p.109). The usual uniform story depends upon self inferey/, which is widened into mteresM under pressure. 5 2. Aa/Mrc, CM/tMro, awJ contra/. A major function of culture is to regulate and control changed Political change in the South Pacific, and political divergence from the industrial North, can, in principle then, be grounded in and powered by features of local and regional culture. One organising theme, a corollary of the argument, facilitates the transition from principle to practice:- It is that the requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality is there, for the South Pacific region (and Australia in particular) to proceed in a very different social political direction from the North (and from the USA in particular). Given the radical unsatisfactoriness of the American arrangements, in many frequently exposed respects,7 such a different direction is worth taking — if it can be. But a serious problem in the way of change is imposition of political arrangements, from outside or from above. And, since imposition shades into political pressure, this is only one of the obstacles impeding change in the South Pacific and elsewhere. Another forcing more and more peoples, no longer sheltered by geographical isolation, into the same type of socio­ political arrangements is supposed to derive from human nature itself. Free people are economic people, in pretty much the American mould, so it is claimed. By this route, economic imperialism can replace political imperialism. A key question in political theory — one to which we are said to have no satisfactory answer in the absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) — is supposedly this:To what extent does human nature allow for alternative political and social arrangements? Or, to tum the question around:- What restrictions are imposed in virtue of the nature of humans on the broad range of political possibilities? How does that "nature" reduce the organisational options? A much-promoted Anglo-American answer, directly descended from the Enlightenment, is that once /rcc/Y from systems of myths, taboos and tribal controls, from superstition, people are essentially (and will generally become) self-centred individuals, (properly) concerned with maximising their own gain or interests; that is, but for their shortage of information (including technical know-how), free people are basically economic peopled As ought now to be evident, that is to replace one ideology by another. But the Enlightenment ideology is no longer so evident^: what recommends it? Under pressure of this sort, the AngloAmerican answer gets transformed to the theme that the economic picture of human nature is superior, and fitting of rational creatures. That 'self-appointed West European superiority' has 6 7 8 9 Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30. These sections are drawn from Cu/turc onJ rAc RooM of Political Divergence.' a SowtA Pacific perspective. For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers. These people are also picked out under various alternative (but not strictly equivalent) descriptions, e g. as acquisitive individuals, possessive individuals. See e g. DP, chapter 10. 6 in turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and the Romantics.^ Fortunately, however, the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided. For all these questions and answers presuppose, to begin with, a certain misplaced essentialism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human beings, which exactly separates humans from other creatures. Attempts to specify such an essence, suitably constant and invariant and given by necessary and sufficient conditions,^ are legion. They are a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. All ment are the same because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and avoidance of pain]. These drives will operate independently of any location. Chief among those drives was that towards self-preservation — Holbach, for instance, stipulates: we shall call nafare in man the collection of properties and qualities which constitute him what he is, which are inherent to his species, which distinguish him from other animal species or which he as in common with them ... every man feels, things, acts and seeks his own well-being at all times; these are the qualities and properties that constitute human nature 12 But this attempt at essentialist definition of /mman naA/re fails, in a quite characteristic way. As it stands, the definition is inadequate; for not all humans seek just their own well-being always; some are "stupid", some are altruistic, some have other commitments. However, suppose we avoid such familiar counter-instances to egoism, by replacing 'well-being' by say 'broad well- being', thus rendering such internal egoism analytic. And suppose to avoid other counter­ expales (such as human vegetables, morons and the like), we normalise the definition, replacing 'every man' by 'every normal human'. But then the definition is again inadequate; for it fails to distinguish humans from, for example, dolphins. It applies equally to Jo/p/un natMrg or, for that matter, to gon/Z# natMrg. 10 11 12 See Berry, p.30ff., from whom the quote is taken. It is worth spelling out a little the extent of agreement and disagreement with Herder. What is applauded is 1. 'Herder's dismissal of the Enlightenment's conception of human nature as static, acultural and ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but nor *1. Herder's cultural relativism, that 'each culture ... should be treated on its own merits and not judged by some faulty perspective such as Io bel/e nature' (p.30), or from any other perspective. In the pluralistic framework of the text (which presuppoes PPP), a good many cross-cultural judgements ate made and defended. *2. Herder's relativisation of human nature to culture, and embodiment of it in culture; for example, 'it is through language that human nature can be seen to be .spect/iicaPy embodied in culture' (p.32). With relativisation the notion loses its original theoretical point; but while failing in this role, cultural nature is open to many of the same sorts of objections as human nature. Nor can language bear the weight Herder loads upon it. *3. Herder's human chauvinism: '... it is speech and with that reason and freedom, that differentiates man. Man can choose, man is king' (p.36). Wild animals are free, can choose, communicate, solve puzzles, and carry out elementary reasoning; in these respects they surpass children and many other humans. Furthermore, * *3 gets Herder into serious trouble, not to say inconsistency, with 1. Abraham, drawing on Wittgenstein, presents just these conditions for an essence, p.23ff. Berry p.17. Berry supplies several other similar examples. 7 Of course the definition can again be patched, by appealing to the anatomical cluster of features that separate humans from other mammals or to the biological specification of /tomo But the resulting normalised definition, with its analytical egoism, does little more than such biological definitions of An/nan: it does not supply a natnrg, it does not deliver -ynp^rbiological features of political relevance. The notion of human nature thus fragments: into the satisfactory enough biological notion of human, and an unsatisfactory superbiological (or sociobiological) addition: that of human nature or essence. What is this further, problematic nature? The Romantics can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from culture, only /oca/ nature (Herder's term) which coincides with culture. Peeling off cultural excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves, like Wittgenstein's artichoke, nothing. Just nothing. The notion of human nature is a theoretical item, introduced to provide stability amid cultural variability, a constant bulwark against relativism, but designed as well to justify — as natural or, failing that as superior — a porr/cn/or type of political economy, state and legislature, and its imposition everywhere else. 13 But its application is even grander: Human nature is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious nefarious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to justify or enforce various restrictive types of social arrangements, statist ones (including defence forces, standing armies, survellience — arrangements, and so on). Human nature is a highly resilient notion which has been widely applied in such fashions; it is not so easily dissolved, certainly not through one illustration. However the fact that the notion is written large in much political theory, and is received, does not show that it or the embedding theory is sound. And it is not, but is defective, and in its socio-political selectivity it is, as the illustration reveals, virtually of a piece with human chauvinism (which would assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the ecological scheme of things). Most conveniently, the superbiological notion of human nature begins to dissolve under any attempt to set it down, in mmuch the way that attempts supporting human chauvinism to set down something ethically special about humans disintegrate. *^ 13 14 The notion of human nature — Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western culture everywhere, later emphasised by Bentham. 'The Legislator, Knowing that human nature is ever the same [different countries do not have different catalogues of pleasure and pain], can reform the laws and even transplant them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18). This claim concerning human chauvinism is argued in detail in EE. But the claim concerning human nature is only sketchily defended in the text. For the alleged social-arrangement-dictating features of human nature, like similar alleged features of economic or technological determinism, are rather major obstacles to be removed — especially insofar as they supposedly severely and inevitably restrict the character of future societies — than the main business of the present enterprise. Fortunately then the claim, that the superbiological notion of human nature is a defective theoretical one which dissolves, is defended elsewhere: not only, in effect, in work of Romantics from Herder 8 a nature or essence for a// and on/y humans (some special classes of humans excepted perhaps) — presuppoes that there are some stable or constant social features holding for all peoples, across different cultures, which are furthermore distinctively human features. The presupposition fails, because once cultural variation between peoples is fully taken into account, only some rather trivial shared characteristics remain, which furthermore are shared by various animal cultures, such as those of primates. Consider, first, such products or tools of more literary cultures as books, or of contemporary cultures as telephones and computers. Since most historical cultures lacked such items, their possession or distribution obviously cannot figure as part of what marks out human nature. Consider next, then, what are commonly taken to be key components of (human) nature, certain basic human needs, such as food and shelter. These requirements are far from free of cultural and environmental determinants. For look at what is regarded as required in the way of shelter, and how it varies from culture to culture, place to place. (And even what is taken as basic can often be met in a myriad of ways, though acceptably in some cultures only in a few fixed ways.) The common denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort of shelter under more extreme conditions — a requirement also of wombats. The situation with food, sex, and so on, is hardly better. Dietary requirements vary considerably from race to race, Europeans for example being very inefficient by many tribal standards and unable to survive satisfactorily where tribal people flourish. 1$ Again the somewhat trivial lowest common denominator applies also to various groups of animals. Nor are attempts to mark out the human nature by some more complex list of jointly necessary and sufficient conditions, or more loosely by a cluster of natural features, much more successful, or of direct political application without the importation of what is culturally at issue — values. In any case, such vague and general lists as emerge^ impose little constraint at all on a political direction, since a variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings. 15 16 on, but also in significant recent literature. Foucault, for example, can be read as saying that human nature is an invention of the Enlightenment which dissolves: 'his much discussed ... di&MdMhon of mon is nothing more, or less, than the claim that the attempt to establish order upon a scientific understanding of human nature is both profoundly mistaken and profoundly unstable' (Philp, p.15, italics added). The converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight on European diets. At another level, consider the Maori attitude to, and underlying revulsion by, cooked food: see Alpers, p.7-9. For one such list, which however requires pruning and adjustment, see Wilson, p.22. As it happens, Wilson does not make anything much of this list (which does not supply necessary conditions), immediately presents a parallel list for insect societies — a list which does considerable damage to more traditional claims about human nature — and then proceeds in effect to demolish main criteria that have been used to separate humans from animals and to restrict cultures to human societies (e.g. p.39). 9 Accordingly, human nature as such is not an important constraint on political theory, or a theory of human nature a key ingredient in endeavours to work out a political philosophy or political directions. *7 The reason is like the reason that determining the conditions for the good life would not impose a satisfactory constraint on a political theory, namely presupposition failure. Like the meaning of life *s, the good life fails to demarcate a single thing; there are many styles of good lives. So too there is human nature and human nature, depending on the culture or social paradigm and on the setting. Nature, both human and not, varies with culture and environment. Because of this two-way dependence, there is no unique stable superbiological human nature. A corollary of the dissolution of the notion of human nature is the rejection also, as misleading, of the usual picture of nature as given, as a stable notion across races and tribes, with culture as a variable on top. There is no such culturally invariant division: culture affects local nature. The picture is flawed in much the same way, then, as the familiar picture of perception, as consisting of given uninterpreted sense data, stable across (normal) perceivers, with interpretation imposed on the neutral data. Nor therefore is culture something that can be creamed off the top, so to speak, to find real human features or basic nature underneath. Certainly, cultures can be destroyed; however what results from removal by destruction of a culture is not something closer to real people, but people with a destroyed culture. So it is also with attempts like Hobbes or Rawls to peel political organisation off the the top, in order to locate in a quasi-analytical or quasi-historical way, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised state or other. A flawed picture, derived from mistaken or questionable presuppositions, is assumed. What will be found underneath, or in the original (natural) state, is, it is usually conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the view to be developed — with the right values very fortunately in-built. Given that what is to be explained or justified is something like present socio-political arrangements and the privileged position of some status quo — as well as a dominant culture's image of itself, and elements of the dominant Northern social paradigm — underlying human nature turns out to be, hardly surprisingly, that of fully competitive possessive individualism (much the same model, that is, which serves for economic man, for Enlightenment man, for the "rational person", etc.) The myth of unique human nature 17 18 For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human nature for social and political ends, see Appendix 2. Which is perhaps as well, since we still have so little reliable and unprejudiced information as to what "human nature" amounts to, what its variational possibilities, in different environments, might be, or of the possibilities beyond past terrestrial selections of cultures. On which see Routley and Griffin. 10 functions, like many other myths, to perpetuate or instil particular social arrangements and special privilege. Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths, the myths of all (normal) humans as aggressive individuals and as predominantly self-interested maximizers (at least insofar as they are rational) — to bring in some of the myths bound up with the image of contemporary urban-industrial humans. As there is no underlying hard ground, no firm starting point in human nature, so there is none in these associated myths. The South Pacific was, and remains, rich in cultures which upset these associated myths. Non of the Melanesians, Polynesians or Australian aboriginal peoples comprised societies of individuallyoriented maximizers; indeed their strongly communal lifestyles and preparedness to stop, work especially, after a low sufficiency threshold had been reached, was a major and repeated source of criticism from the European cultures that came to dominate the region. Even forms and types of aggressiveness, and approaches to war, often taken to be solid ground, are culture and environment dependent, and vary with both parameters. 19 Aggressiveness is often supposed to impose hugh constraints on political arrangements. But there is little substance to the claim that humans are naturally aggressive independently of social or cultural setting. The most that appears clear is that circumstances can be arranged, for instance through crowding or provocation or cultural relocation, where peoples of more familiar cultures will become aggressive^ — and perhaps people of other cultures will not, but will just give up, as people often do in the face of immense brutality. Certainly some arrangements are required to cope with or suitably isolate aggression, but these can be of a wide range of alternative types. Once again, what is normally accounted human nature depends upon and varies with culture and environment, which people often shortsightedly see as fixed: certainly, such components as selfishness, cooperativeness, individuality do. What is often much more important than either culture or nature in determining social arrangements is another factor: namely, outside control or imposition. Whatever social arrangements have evolved in a region (through local "nature and culture") can be overridden, A striking illustration of environmental variation is afforded by the differences between savannah dwelling and forest dwelling tribes of baboons. For a local illustration, consider Maori approaches to war (like war conventions, a social phenomenon), before European corruption. Thus Best reports that 'an individual, or a whole clan, might decline to take part in an engagement on account of some evil omen, and such an action would be approved of (p.15). There are several, apparently reliable, stories of Maoris engaged in war supplying the opposition with equipment or ammunition, or temporarily abandoning their fighting effort to help out the other (British) side, so the battle could proceed properly. 20Wilson's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an invalid move: he looks at the behaviour of Semai men when 'taken out of their nonviolent society' by recruitment in a British colonial army (p.100)! As well, Wilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of innateness, and a low redefinition of aggressiveness to take in form of mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.99-100). 19 11 and new arrangements imposed, in one way or another. With long-standing arrangements, imposition is almost invariably from without, and the changes in arrangements typically involve either violence in their adaption or mass migration of people or both. In the last two hundred years, especially, the South Pacific has, like much of the newer world, been drastically so affected, in a complex way. And the changes, still flowing strongly from the North, continue. We are in the last days of the destruction of old cultures, and the destruction is now to a considerable extend by more subtle cultural, economic and technological means than the cruder methods of slightly earlier times. Outside control can be exercised, or occur, in many ways less blatant than direct intervention of one sort or another, such as through introduction of new technologies, economic sanctions, monetary and loan policies, etc., as well as through exchange and training programs, textbooks, advertising and magazines, film and television (i.e. through physical exemplifications of culture). European peoples in the South pacific are often unwittingly, part of this quieter process of cultural conversion and erosion; but many of us are now victimes as well as, or rather than, perpetrators (cf. Crough and Wheelwright). Human communities have been — and many still are — as insensitive to other human cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness American and their allies in Vietnam). Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed, or pushed beyond redemption. This is sufficiently well-known. Yet the creation of political disaster areas proceeds apace — in blatant cases typically by disruption of culture and lifestyle using violence^ There is furthermore, where recovery is possible at all, a long recovery period, perhaps sometimes of the order of human generations. Yet there is increasing production of these politically contaminated regions, especially through imperialism, e.g. USA in Central America, Israel in Lebanon, Russia in Afghanistan, Indonesia in East Timor and West papua, etc. In the south Pacific, there are many quieter Northern influences at work, but the strongest now is unquestionably the American. American companies, businessmen, academics, tourists and warships, their technology and patents, films and television programs, are the most evident and influential. There can be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the newer cultural and economic imperialism, behind endeavours such as the American to install their "free enterprise" philosophy and practice everywhere. 22 Granted it mostly contributes to American economic supremacy, to American business23 and to the transfer of substantial regional wealth and surplus value to the USA. But national economic reasons are not the only sort of reasons 21 22 23 These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off like those infected by communicable disease, but from continuing disruptive, outside interference. What is said about American cultural and political imperialism applies, with adaption, in a lesser way, to imperialism and colonialism by other nation-states such as USSR, Britian, France and Indonesia. USA has no monopoly on imperialism. US imerialism in the third world is in part documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman. Though not invariably as the experience with the Japanese motor industry has indicated. 12 such policies are pursued; apart from the side-issue of integrity, that many Americans really do believe in the optimality of their local ideals to the exclusion of other arrangements, there are deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological reasons as well. The imperialistic endeavours can be underpinned by a J^cripftve assumption that all human nature is at bottom really like American human nature, for instance highly economically oriented. Thus, but for political distortions (a political analogue of economic externalities) and lack of technological means, other peoples would choose the American (political and economic) way: they simply have not really been given the opportunity or means. For many peoples this is simply not true; for most other cultures let us hope, or pray, that this is not the case. Alternatively, or as well, a more arrogant prescriptive assumption may be at work, that all human nature ought to be like American nature at its best, because America not only has the best way of life in the world and mostly the best ways of doing things^, but has a special hold on rationality. The free-enterprise system (perhaps with representative democracy American-style tackedon) is the rational enterprise embodied. Certainly the system is sometimes peddled, by genuine believers in the American way, with the same evangelism as Christianity, which was often seen and presented as the rational religion, at least before science got at it. Well, science hasn't got at the free-enterprise religion yet, but on the contrary now has a social division heavily devoted to its justification and furtherance.^ However some philosophy has got at the system, sufficiently to reveal that it is no unique embodiment of rationality — there is none such — but is a decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances. Thus, it is especially irrational if local goals are to preserve local environments and cultures, as much experience helps attest. It is aspects of the false descriptive assumption, and what can emerge with its rejection, that are a main focus in what follows (though various of the reasons for rejecting the prescriptive assumption will also emerge or get recorded). An important underlying theme will 24 25 Thus, for example, American agricultural textbooks and agricultural spokespeople are fond of announcing that American agriculture is the best in the world; similarly for environmental protection, forestry, technology, university education, and so on. But since they are the best, it is evident that these American ways should be exported, isn't it? Even granting the large assumptions, No, firstly, because that is to neglect important regional and local variations and differences, and secondly because these ways may interfere with other significant features of reginal life or culture. It has not passed unremarked that the high standard of material life in USA depends in part on a very fortunate inheritance (e g. some of the best and deepest soils) and in part, as in Europe, on a lower standard of life and conditions elsewhere, upon siphoning off wealth and especially resources (US currently uses about one-fifth of world resources and 30% of world energy) from other regions. To be sure, economic apologetics proffer other explanations of American transcendence, e.g. ingenious constuctions like that of Olson, built on a sandy logic of economic actors collectively locked into economically determined arrangements, substantially independent of the resource base. In elaborating on how modem societies control their citizens, Foucaul has explained various extensive types of social control exercised and licensed through received social sciences, by way of approved standards of normality, health, stability, adequacy, rationality, etc.: See Phil p.15. 13 continue to be that neither broader nor basic human nature is a single stable thing, but varies substantially in ways that are highly political relevant — relevant to the sort of political framework a society adopts. In freer societies, less imposed upon from outside or above, the variation can be largely accounted for through cultural variation (which in tum depends on environment, etc.). The alternative assumptions, are then, those of cultural pluralism, that culture is part of "nature", shaping in particular local human nature. Of course once again "human nature" can be pared back and back to try to remove cultural variations; but in this way what are taken to be important superbiological features of human nature for political theory are also excised (e.g. features that make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies come out one way rather than another). Just as different cultures can mean different social arrangements, so in a larger setting they can imply different political organisation and different political directions. Where requisite differences do not occur, because incongrous arrangements have been imposed, ca/tMra/ can a powcr/hZ /brcc ybr change. Likewise developing elements of cultural difference can be a potent base for social change — or resistance to imposed change — (especially, in communities where other more orthodox bases for change, such as economic incentives or penalties, have become inoperative or failed, or are not available. Culture is however a double-edged instrument, not only to be used, but resisted. For example, though leading [valuable] features of indigenous Pacific cultures are to be reactivated, as forces for change, some features of these cultures are to be resisted (such as male domination), along with many features of modern Western cultures. Features of culture are thus used to resist and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sorces of culture; such as, inequitable political arrangements, excessive consumerism, persuasive advertising media and loaded news systems, hollow suburbia, alienating job structures, etc. It is important not only to build and design alternatives — for which elements of local culture afford a solid foundation — but also to dismantle, and build up resistance against, prime sources of antagonistic culture. This is as true for American culture as Antipodean. One of the chief reasons why mainstream American culture is so individualistic, so competitive, so violent, and so forth, is that movements offering or encouraging alternatives have been repressed by the dominant corporations and the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein). /& C/ <7^ /7 ) 7/7^e /2J/ 77^^ , /^/-W7/? Z< X. X . c<?^ /t^ 2^^^ ' /LtXt- X^vc^<-%/ ^7/^ c/^c(^7 /^ cA) ?€ Z^/Ti^<7 /<t%-7 c f <rt^I / *c 2^V<^-/o c.o * r/ X^J /ssues fa wef/todo/ogy. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political philosophy.; Redefinitions, and redefinitional -otolJgies to try to close gappy arguments, abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally unfriendly, at best, w, —-— — * /%&1L ^p&enoMienon o/ excessive sfrengt/i. There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream intellectual aedvity and strikingly manifest in polidcal theory. 2 y" ; ''r&c-r/KA * One reason is that much of it is done by poiitical 6,..Is with no adequate grounding in logic or critical thinking. A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and practice, is that of over-powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles more powerful than reason can justify, is dis^assesed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision-making and obstitutional arrangements (see MR). Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on. Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in Prisoners Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flowed from the very outset, and should be set aside. A central time in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions. Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument and practice appear to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have tried, rather ^".^..^to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state be^ereft of adequate justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire. So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined "property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state legal systems. / 7^ / ^1 / .^' <%-^/. 4r <C-^^VC-/ C ^T^COvT^t J^" /%y% , A/4,^ /' ' /^7 Z4 ?%./ <Z? , y <A?^.—, f" ^ziy -, ^-/^l , - *^-* J7 ^n. /Z yy<&/ y X/?^L C c ^47 *w. A? 7 ^v"L y **^ y 3^ ^7 . ' -' < ^^7^—-1—o X 77L 76 ^.7 7" -a—i 7^ /^ -^X ^Tt2^7T-Ie_. * gx/ j t^f aV <*Z^ c. %%L^ X-^4 //N/^ <^^17 - 7.7j J c>. V77 1 Joseph Agassi J c w gprAn c,^ oce details of the selected workd, as sketched out^in JB. 7 4).^ A 4 1- ------------- y' / X"X ^r<? X^W ^?tVC (^X ^C <^c^/ ^^7^^ ^Q. , ^^7) A c^/Z - (^V ^ * '"^ Vt ^s/ ! /^y , l/2^ A A^-y%-4/ ^jL / ^2^/-^)4^r 3? ,^, ^z^7 ^//^n- ^/ .-^L, -" . *^ -t ''—-* ' '- -* -/); ^^ *. , " V <f&y7?«- //^7^ / / /J f 7 /^X2^7 7^0 / - AA. 2^ x y <^J^/ NQRK4-N&-5RAFT CULTURE AND THE ROOTS OF POLITICAL DIVERGENCE: a South Pacific perspective the Austral ian/American contrast major A Political change industrial of -Function in in regulate and control and political divergence principle then, features of local and regional culture. the to is the South Pacific, can, North, culture be grounded in and change. 1 from the powered by One organising theme, a corollary of facilitates the transition from principle to practice:- It argument, is that the requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality is for there, South Pacific region (and Australia the particular) in to proceed in a very different social and political direction from the North (and from USA in particular). the American arrangements, unsatisfactoriness of the 2 in many frequently exposed respects , such a different Given the radical direction is worth taking - if it can be. serious problem in the nay of a But arrangements, from outside or from above. change is imposition of And, political since imposition shades into this is only one of the obstacles impeding change in the South Pacific and elsewhere. Another forcing more and more peoples, no longer political pressure, sheltered by geographical isolation, arrangements of socio-political is supposed to derive from human nature itself. Free people are economic people, into the same type in pretty much the American mould, this route, economic imperialism can replace political 1. Nature, theory - one culture, to which and control. so it is By claimed. imperialism. A supposedly,key question in political we are said to have no satisfactory'' answer in the absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) - is .his: 1. Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30. 2. For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers. 1 * 7%- To extent does human nature allow tor alternative political and what arrangements? Or, to turn the question around:- in virtue of the nature of possibilities? How does that much-promoted Anglo-American Enlightenment, is controls, become) from or superstition, answer, people broad range directly taboos and (and 6 from descended are essentially but for their will the tribal generally shortage information of free people are basically economic people. that is to replace one ideology by another. ideology is no longer so Enlightenment political of (properly) concerned with maximising their that is, interests; As ought now to be evident, the the that once freed from systems of myths, technical know-how), (including on What restrictions are imposed "nature" reduce the organisational options? self-centred individuals, gain own humans social evident: what But recommends it? Under pressure of this sort, the Anglo-American answer gets transformed to the that the economic picture of human nature is superior, theme rational creatures. and fitting That 'self-appointed West European superiority * turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and the Romantics. has of in Fortunately, however, the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided For all these questions and answers presuppose, to begin with, a certain misplaced essential ism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human beings, which such exactly separates humans from other creatures. suitably constant and invariant 5 necessary and sufficient conditions , are legion. They are specify an essence, Attempts and given to by a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. All men are the same because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and the avoidance of pain). These drives will operate independently of any location. Chief among those drives was that towards self-preservation - Holbach, for instance, stipulates: we .shall call nature in man the collection of properties and qualities which constitute him what he is, which are inherent .o his species, which distinguish him from other animal species ur which he has in common with them ... every man feels, thinks, 3. These people are also picked out under various alternative (but strictly equivalent) descriptions, e.g. as acquisitive m i?i ua s, possessive individuals. acts and seeks his own well-being at all times, these are^ kilties and property thet constitute human nature ... o. But th,, attempt at essenti.list defin.ti.n of human nature fail,, in a quite A, -t stands, th. d.dtniti.n is inadequate; tor net a!) *c yo< / humans seek just their o<an ujeii-being always; .ssome ar. altruistic, s<xne have characterrst-c ^y. other commitment,. to ego-sm, by replacing rendering such internal examples suppose Hoover, uell-being- egoism analytic. (such a, human vegetables, definition, replacing every definition 1, again inadequate; example, avoid such tamtl.ar counter.ostance, by say broad m.ll-being', And suppose to avoid other counter­ morons and th. like), man' by thus every normal human'. ^normalise the then the But tor it fails to distinguish humans from, for It applies equally to dolphin nature or, for that matter, dolphins. to aori11 a nature. Of 4. course the definition can again be patched, by appealing to the (From previous page) See Berry, p.30ff., from whom the quote is taken, It is worth spelling out a little the extent of agreement and disagreement with Herder. Nhat is applauded is 1. 'Herder's dismissal dismissal of of the the Enlightenment's Enlightenment's conception conception of human nature as static, acultural and ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but no^ that 'each culture ... should be 31. Herder's cultural relativism, t judged by some faulty perspective such treated on its own merits and no! . "nature' (p.30), or from any other perspective. In the as la belle p.u,77^^k of th. text ("huh presupposes PPP), a good many pluralistic cross-cultural judgements are made and defended. Order's relativisation of human nature to culture, and embodiment 32. Herder s relafivisatio through language that human nature of it in culture; for example, it is Mi th * 32). (p can be seen to be specifically embodied in culture' but theoretical point; relativisation the notion loses its original same cultural nature is open to many of the ojhile failing in this role, Nor can language bear the weight sorts of objections as human nature. Herder loads upon it. A it is speech and with that reason Herder's human chauvinism: 33. Man can choose, man is king' that differentiates man. and freedom, can choose, communicate, solve puzzles, < <=Hrn^^s (p.36). 1Wild animals are free, ---- -----) out elementary reasoning; m these ^^=-7 ; and carryand many other humans. Furthermore, 33 gets Herder into serious chi 1dren trouble, not to say inconsistency, with 1. 5. 6. drying on Nittg.nste.n, Abraham, essence, p.23ff. Berry p.17. Berry supplies severa pre^nt, Just these condition, for an 1 other similar examples. cluster of -features that separate humans from other mammals or anatomical the biological specification of homo sapiens. But the resulting to normalised definition, with its analytical egoism, does little more than such biological definitions of human: it does not supply a nature, deliver not does it The notion of human superbiological features of political relevance. thus fragments: into the satisfactory enough biological notion of human, an unsatisfactory superbiological (or sociobiological) and of that addition^ The Romantics What is this further, problematic, nature? nature or essence. nature can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from culture, cultural off Peeling only local nature (Herder's term) which coincides with culture. excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves, liKe Wittgenstein's artichoke, nothing. of human nature is a theoretical item, The notion cultural variability, amid stabi1i ty but designed as wel 1 particular type everywhere else. of 7 fashionj; fact and that received, not, the introduced to a constant bulwark against to justify ^as natural or, failing that, political economy and legislature, and provide relativism, as superior^ its imposi t i on such Tlsf?s resilient notion has been widely applied in i is not so easily dissolved, notion by one illustration. is wri tten large in much political but is defective, 3 However the theory, the embedding theory is sound. does not show that it or a and is Hnd it is and in its socio-political selectivity it is, as the a piece with human chauvinism (which would assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the ecological scheme of things). under 7. . the superbiological notion of human nature begins to dissol\ * A any attempt to set it down, in much the way that attempts supporting Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western cultur^ everywhere, later emphasised by Bentham. 'The Legislator, lowing t human nature is ever the same [different countries do not have catalogues of pleasure and pain], can reform the laws and even transplan them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18). namrg. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious reforious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort toy i .7"& $ 11T A enforce various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones (including defence foc^s, to chauvinism human humans that there ethically something about special humans The notion of human nature - a nature or essence for alj_ disintegrate. only down set (some special classes of humans excepted perhaps) are stable or constant social some - presupposes holding features and for all across different cultures, which are furthermore distinctively human peoples, features. peoples The is presupposition fails, fully characteristics taken remain, because once cultural variation between into account, which some only furthermore are rather shared by trivial shared various animal cultures, such as those of primates. Consider, books, or historical first, such products or tools of more literary cultures as of contemporary cultures as telephones and computers. cultures lacked such items, their possession or Since most distribution obviously cannot figure as part of what marks out human nature. Consider next, what are commonly taken to be key components of (human) nature, certain then, basic human needs, such as food and shelter. free of cultural and environmental as required in the way of shelter, place to place. of ways, common under 8. These requirements are far from determinants. For look at what is regarded and how it varies from culture to culture, (And even what is taken as basic can often be met in a myriad though acceptably in some cultures only in a few fixed ways.) denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort of more extreme conditions - a requirement also of wombats. The shelter The situation This claim concerning human chauvinism is argued in detail in EE. But the claim concerning human nature is only sketchily defended in the ex -or the alleged social-arrangement-dictating features of human nature, like similar alleged features of economic or technological determinism, are rather major obstacles to be removed - especially insofar as they supposedly severely and inevitably restrict the character of u ure societies - than the main business of the present enterprise. Fortunately then the claim, that the superbiological notion of human nature is a defective theoretical one which dissolves, is defende elsewhere: not only, in effect, in work of Romantics from Herder on, but also in significant recent literature. Foucault, for example, can be read as saying * that human nature is an invention of the Enlightenment which dissolves: "his much discussed ... dissolution of man is nothing more, or less, than the claim that the attempt to establish order upon a scientific understanding of human nature is both profoundly mistaken an profoundly unstable" (Philp, p.15, italics added). 5 with 1-ood, sex, and so on, considerably from race to race, by many people is hardly better. vary Europeans for example being very inefficient tribal standards and unable to survive satisfactorily where tribal 9 flourish. figain the somewhat trivial lowest common denominator applies also to various groups of animals. human requirements Dietary by some more complex list of jointly necessary nature conditions, Nor are attempts to mark out more or loosely by a cluster of natural and features, the sufficient more much successful, or of direct political application without the importation of what is culturally at issue - values. In any case, such vague and general impose little constraint at all on apolitical emerge direction, lists as since a variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings. Accordingly, political theory, human nature as such is not an important constraint on or a theory of human nature a key ingredient in endeavours 11 work out a political philosophy or political directions to . The reason is the reason that determining the conditions for the good life would like not impose a satisfactory constraint on a political theory, namely presupposition 12 failure. Like the meaning of life , the good life fails to demarcate a single '?. thing; there are many styles of good lives. So too there is human The converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight on European diets. At another level, consider the Maori attitude to, and underlying revulsion by, cooked food: see Alpers, p.7-9. 10. For one such list, which however requires pruning and adjustment, see Nilson, p.22. As it happens, Wilson does not make anything much of this list (which does not supply necessary conditions), immediately presents a parallel list for insect societies - a list which does considerable damage to more traditional claims about human nature - and then proceeds in effect to demolish main criteria that have been used to separate humans from animals and to restrict cultures to human societies <e.a. p. 39) . For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human nature for social and political ends, see Appendix 2. 11. Which is perhaps as well, since we still have so little reliable and unprejudiced information as to what "human nature" amounts to, what its variational possibilities, in different environments, might be, or of the possibilities beyond past terrestrial selections of cultures. 12. On which see Routley and Griffin. and human nature, nature depending on the culture or social paradigm and on Nature, both human and not, varies with culture and environment. the setting. there is no unique stable superbiological Because of this two-way dependence, human nature. of corollary 6 rejection also, across races and tribes, The picture is flawed in much the same way, the on top. culture affects local nature. as the familiar picture of then, consisting of given uninterpreted sense data, as is with culture as a variable There is no such culturally invariant division: perception, nature of the usual picture of nature as given, as a as misleading, notion stable the dissolution of the notion of human stable across (normal) perceivers, with interpretation imposed on the neutral data. Nor therefore is culture something that can be creamed off the top, so to find real human features or basic nature to speak, Certainly, underneath. cultures can be destroyed; however what results from removal by destruction of a culture is not something closer to real people, culture. So organisation but people with a destroyed it is also with attempts like Hobbes or Rawls to peel off in order to locate in a the the top, political quasi-analytical or quasi-historical way, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised state or other. A flawed picture, derived from mistaken or questionable presuppositions, is assumed. Nhat will be found underneath, or in the original (natural) state, is, it is usually conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the view to be developed with the explained the and culture's right values very fortunately in-built. is privileged image position of some of itself, and status quo - elements of the as well dominant as a Northern be serves for economic man, 7 dominant social hardly surprisingly, that fully competitive possessive individualism (much the same model, which to or justified is something like present socio-political arrangements paradigm - underlying human nature turns out to be, of Given that what for Enlightenment man, for the that is, rational myths, The myth of unique human nature functions, etc.) person", perpetuate to other tike many or instit particular social arrangements special and pr ivi1ege. Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths, myths the predominantly rational) all of humans (normal) self-interested - to bring maximizers no firm starting point in human nature, myths. aggressive (at least some of the myths bound in urban-industrial humans. contemporary as individuals as they are Mi th the image of up As there is no underlying hard ground, associated so there is none in these The South Pacific Mas, and remains, rich in cultures Mhich upset these of the Melanesians, Polynesians None aboriginal peoples comprised societies of individually-oriented after especially, lifestyles and strongly communal their to a loM sufficiency threshold had been reached, source of criticism from the repeated preparedness European cultures Australian or myths. and as insofar associated indeed and maximizers; Mork stop, Mas a major that came to dominate the region. forms and types of Even aggressiveness, and approaches to Mar, often taken to be solid ground, are culture and environment dependent, and vary Mi th 13 both parameters . Aggressiveness is often supposed to impose huge constraints on political arrangements. But there is little substance to the claim that humans are naturally aggressive independently of social or cultural setting. for 13. The most that appears instance clear is that circumstances can be through croMding or provocation or cultural arranged, relocation, Mhere A striking illustration of environmental variation is afforded by the differences betMeen savannah dMelling and forest dMelling tribes of baboons. For a local illustration, consider Maori approaches to Mar (like Mar conventions, a social phenomenon), before European corruption. Thus Best reports that 'an individual, or a Mhole clan, might decline to take part in an engagement on account of some evil omen, and such an action Mould be approved of' (p.15). There are several, apparently reliable, stories of Maoris engaged in Mar supplying the opposition Mith equipment or ammunition, or temporarily abandoning their fighting effort to help out the other (British) side, so the battle could proceed properly. 8 14 of peoples cultures will become aggressive familiar more but Mill just give up, people of other cultures Mill not, in the face of immense brutality. types. depends upbn Once shortsightedly again, as fixed: see as people often do but these can be of a Mide range of Mhat is normally accounted varies Mi th culture and environment, and perhaps Certainly some arrangements are required to cope Mi th or suitably isolate aggression, alternative - and certainly, such nature people Mhich components human as often selfishness, cooperativeness, individuality do. What much more important than either culture or nature is determining social arrangements is another factor: social Whatever imposition. one May or another. from invariably namely, outside control or arrangements have evolved in a local^nature and cultureican be overridden, through region and neM arrangements imposed, With long-standing arrangements, Mithout, imposition is and the changes in arrangements typically the South Pacific has, especially, in almost involve either violence in their adaption or mass migration of people or both. last tMO hundred years, in In the like much of the been drastically so affected, in a complex May. And the changes, neMer world, still flowing strongly from the North, continue. We are in the last days of the destruction of old and cultures, destruction is now to a considerable extent by more subtle cultural, and technological Outside direct control can be exercised, economic sanctions, film and television (i.e. economic earlier times. in many ways less blatant such as through introduction monetary and loan policies, as through exchange and training programs, magazines, 14. or occur, intervention of one sort or another, new technologies, well means than the cruder methods of slightly textbooks, through physical the etc., advertising than of as and exemplifications of Wilson's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an invalid move: he looks at the behaviour of Semai men when taken out of their nonviolent society'' by recruitment in a British colonial army (p.100)! As well, Wilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of innateness, and a low redefinition of aggressiveness to take in forms of mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.99-100). 9 process of cultural conversion and erosion; this quieter are unwittingly, part European peoples in the South Pacific are often culture). or rather than, victims as well as, now but many of perpetrators (cf. US and Crough Wheelwright). Human communities have been and many still are as to insensiti other human cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness Americans Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed, and their allies in Vietnam). pushed creation political of typically This is beyond redemption. disaster sufficiently apace areas proceeds where is possible at all, recovery a sometimes of the order of human generations. production of imperial ism, - in these politically e.g. USA in contaminated Central America, long blatant cases There recovery is period, Yet there is increasing regions, Israel the Yet disruption of cultu-e and lifestyle using violence. by -fur thermore, perhaps well-known. in especially Lebanon, through Russia in Afghanistan, Indonesia in East Timor and West Papua, etc. In the South Pacific, there are but the strongest now is unquestionably the businessmen, films can many quieter Northern influences at work, academics, American. American companies, tourists and warships, their technology and patents, are the most evident and influential. and television programs, be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the newer There cultural behind endeavours such as the American 16 Granted it everywhere . their "free enterprise * philosophy and practice 17 to American business and mostly contributes to American economic supremacy, and economic imperialism, These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off li.e by communicable disease, but from continuing disruptive, infec ted outside in ter-ference. What is said about American cultural and political imperialism applies, with adaption, in a lesser way, to imperialism and colonialism by other nation-states such as USSR, Britain, France and Indonesia.. USA L.. has no in the third world is in part monopoly on imperialism. US imperialism i......... documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman. Though not md.riaMy a. th. experience "ith the Japanese ctor industry has indicated. 10 to the transfer of substantia! regional wealth and surplus value to the But national economic reasons &re not the only sort of reasons such are pursued; apart from the side-issue of integrity, really do believe in the optimality of their local USA. policies Americans that many ideals to the exclusion of other arrangements, there are deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological reasons as Mel 1. imperialistic The assumption that (a distortions technological economic) means. can be underpinned all human nature is at bottom really instance highly economically oriented. for nature, endeavours political means, May: they by American like Thus, descr i pt ive a human but for political analogue of economic externalities) and lack other peoples Mould choose the American (political simply have not really been given the For many peoples this is simply not true; of and opportunity or for most other cultures let us hope, or pray, that this is not the case. Alternatively, or as Mell, a more arrogant prescriptive assumption may be at Mork, that all human nature ought to be like American nature at its best, because America not only has the best 18 May of life in the Morld and mostly the best Mays of doing things , but has a special hold on rationality. The free-enterprise representative democracy American-style tacked on) 18. system (perhaps is the rational Mith enterprise Thus, for example, American agricultural textbooks and agricultural spokespeople are fond of announcing that American agriculture is the best in the Morld; similarly for environmental protection, forestry, technology, university education, and so on. But since they are the best, it is evident that these American Mays should be exported, isn't it? Even granting the large assumptions, No, firstly, because that is to neglect important regional and local variations and differences, and secondly because these Mays may interfere Mith other significant features of regional life or culture. It has not passed unremarked that the high standard of material life in USA depends in part on a very fortunate inheritance (e.g. some of the best and deepest soils) and in part, as in Europe, on a loMer standard of life and conditions elseMhere, upon siphoning off Meal th and especially resources (US currently uses about one-fifth of Morld resources and 30 X of Morld energy) from other regions. To be sure, economic apologetics proffer other explanations of American transcendence, e.g. ingenious constructions like that of Olson, built on a sandy logic of economic actors collectively locked into economically determined arrangements, substantially independent of the resource base. by genuine believers in bridled Certainly the system is sometimes peddl , embodied. which Mas often with the same evangelism as Christianity, American way, the at least before science got at rational religion, as the seen and presented yet, but on the got at the free-enterprise religion hasn't i t. MeH, science justification and division heavily devoted to its contrary now has a social sufficiently to 19 philosophy has got at the system, furtherance. However some _ tp,t it is no unique embodiment of rationality - there -s none sue reveal decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances. is but a preserve local environments end if local goals are to irrational especial ly Thus, cultures, as much experience helps attest. is aspects of tt with false descriptive and what can assumption, .what follows (though various of are a main focus in rejection,that th. prescripts, assumption Mill .'so -.rg. °r 9^ its the reasons for rejecting underlying theme Mil! continue to be An recorded). nor broader emerge basic human . nature is a single in substantially sort of political framework a society adopts. In outside cultural nei ther important ways that are highly political upon *from that or above, the variation can be variation <Mhich turn in depends stable thing, varies but the to relevant - relevant freer societies, less imposed largely accounted for through The environment,etc). on those of cuitura! pluralism, that culture alternative assumptions, are then, ..cal human nature. Of course once is part of "nature", "human nature" again ^nations-, but shaping in particular can be pared back and back to try to m this way what are taken to be remove important superbi ologi c a * matures of human nature for political theory are also excised (e.g that make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies cu1tura' feature one way rathe than another). 1?. in elaborating on h.M has explained ^"soc'ial"control various extensile typ p. 15. 12 exercised py^.y of approved Just as dttterent cultures can.mean different social arrangements, so tn , larger setting they can imply different political organisation and different directions. political incongrous Where requisite differences had. arrangements been imposed, do not occur, because cultural differences can b.^. nnuerful force for change. Lihemse d^.loping elements of cultural difference can a potent base for social change - or resistance to imposed be in communities inhere other more orthodox (especially) a, economic mcertioes or penalties, have bases for change, become inoperative or - change such tailed, or used, but are not avaitable. Culture is hotter a double-edged instrument, For resisted. though example, leading not only to be of [valuable] features indigenous Pacific cultures are to be reactivated, as forces for change, some features of these cultures are to be resisted (such as male domination), features modern Western cultures. of along mth used Features of culture are thus and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sources resist many to culture; of such as, inequitable political arrangements, excessive consumerism, persuasive advertising media and loaded news systems, structures, etc. for culture. chief build and competi tive encouraging culture afford a solid foundation - but also prime sources of up resistance against, is as true for American culture as Antipodean. This reasons alienating ^hy so job build and design alternatives It is important not only to which elements of local dismantle, holloa suburbia, mainstream American culture violent, and so forth, is is that so to antagonistic One of the ndividualistlc, so offering or movements alternatives have been repressed by the dominant corporations and the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein). 2. The Why work with such an unfavourable contrast case as Australian—^iety^ regional and environmental orientation. cultural variation and their force for change, contrast than US In defence of theme. for instance Melanesian culture. 13 g it Mould no doubt be easier to culture with some other culture which diverges Australian culture, <_on-_ more Or, strikingly differe y, ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL PLURALLISM * Let us begin by sketching, in summary form, what political pluralism was, and then explaining what it becomes under contemporary plurallism, ecopluralism in particular. These new pluralisms, while they differ markedly from former political pluralsm, undoubtedly can build upon it Political pluralism used to be a theory viewing social life in terms of groups, which were said to be the priwMry .s*oc/o/ On this theory, an individual's primary allegiance is not to any abstract government but to groups, unions, clubs, churches. Thus there is no absolute necessity for a highly unified political or legal order - whence developed a critical stance towards the state and towards sovereignty among somg pluralists and so elements of anarchistic pluralism. There was, however, no systematic theory of political pluralism (a further anarchistic feature). The position (and both British and American pluralism, however different) were unified not by any doctrine but by crinco/ response to growth of the state. A major theme was, and remains, moderate (as further explained in EP). Humans are neither isolated atoms, nor components of centralised states, but social creatures who function in crisscrossing groups of their own choice. Moreover, groups are genuine objects with choices, capacities, purposes, etc. Pluralist society respects and tries to reconcile diverse interests of humans without thwarting them. Groups communicate via negotiation and the like; their operations are not delegative from some higher authority. Contemporary ecological pluralism takes over most of these scene setting features, but emphasizes the communitarian bases, and expands the scope of communities and groups to include communities, which include creatures and systems other than humans. Perhaps the best known example of such a mixed community is that, introduced by Naess and elaborated by Devall (in 89) of a Norwegian community of bears and wolves, sheep and humans (but earlier Leopold and other had offered examples of expanded communities). A problem which group theory hides, perhaps deliberately, but which such communities at once expose, is that of internal conflict. Conflict cannot be avoided even by going right down to families or individuals; for as much conflict may be bottled up in a family or even in one * Early versions of the first section of these notes drew heavily on Vincent, TAeonej of ytote. The text takes up the working draft of 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism: II. Anarchistic pluralism'. 2 individual as in a small group. That is, there are no pure conflict-free atoms from which to build up group or community structure. Conflict within individuals is strikingly exhibited in certain sorts of schizopherenia. But it happens also in many humans. On conflict issues, in dilemmatic situations, and similar, one part of a person pulls in one direction, another part in another. Or, more accurately, because often no such neat separation into directional components can be affected, there are inconsistent allegiances, derives, drives. Under orthodox theory, it is presumed that such conflicts, personal inconsistency, can be removed by artificial fragmentation. What happens in orthodox social theory is that individuals are effectively broken down and whittled down, not without significant.... . into iJca/ components — classical individuals — with properly organised (duly transitive, etc.) preferences and coherent desires. While such idealization is alright for limited theoretical purposes, let us not falsey imagine that it is adequate for a satisfactory social theory. Let us not pretend that such thin classical individuals offer a saatisfactory model for rich actual individuals. Ecopluralism not only extends the group basis; like gontc contemporary pluralism, the variety of positions and practices is also much expanded. Early political pluralism (so-called) was far from advocating a plural variety. (Figgin, an early British pluralist, would have been shocked at such a supposition: Vincent p.182.) A fairly narrow normative consensus was assumed, e.g. Christian morality in British "pluralism", American political arrangements in American "pluralism". Indeed several American "pluralists", political scientists from Bentley on, erroneously "saw pluralism as a description of the American political system. In this usage, pluralism moves into the area of interest group and pressure group theory' (Vincent p.183). Herein lies the route to p/ura/hwn: While the state may remain discredited as a unitary order, it is now seen a complex multiple entity, which tried to incorporate and theorize diversity of group life. In the American version, groups are seen as interested in reaching some kind of bargain. Government policy is the outcome of group pressures. Government is alleged to seek out some abstract national interest. Public police is ...' the equilibrium reached in this struggle at any given moment' .... Today's loser, it is blithely assumed, will be tomorrow's winner. Most American pluralists of this ilk assume that the contest between groups will be fair and that there is some kind of lurking normative consensus in the background. Certain types of behaviour are presumably un-American. Practical politics, therefore, for the American pluralist is about bargaining, compromise and trade-offs. There is no normative appraisal of the State, but rather an gjtp/anation anJ partial/y % yn^ti/icarion o/ wAat t/tgy ta%g to actaa//y tAg ca^g in tAg qo/irica/ qrocc.y^g.y of the USA. Government is not an impartial umpire. It reflects the dominant coalition on a particular policy — although it will try to maintain some balance. ... In American pluralism a group is simply a collection or aggregation of individuals acting in specific roles. 3 Most significantly the American pluralists were not concerned with any normative account of the State as an institution or practice. They were far more interested in examing, empirically, the effects of group pressures on the actual activity of government (Vincent p.190 emphasis added). In even more degenerate Eastern European forms, pluralism comes down to some sort of multi-party electoral arrangements; plurality just amounts to many parties. Political arrangements can however remain highly paternalistic and authoritarian. Because we are interested in genuine free pluralisms, we shall leave these desperate terms behind. EXTRA SPACE Now consider the organisational possibilities for the Earth, i The Earth divides variously into (geographical) regions; under ecological organisation the decomposition will be into ecoregions. Those regions that are occupied will be occupied by structures of (mixed) communities. The assumption that each occupied region is occupied by a single community is too simple to account even for the present impoverished arrangements offering on Earth. Some regions are occupied by communities of communities, community structure so to say.2 It seems unlikely that on Earth, given a suitable choice of regions, it is necessary to ascend beyond communities of communities to third-order community structures. Thus for each region it is appropriate to begin with the ancient ideal of a community of communities. But of course there will be higher-order structure involved, such as regional federations of regions, and federations of these federations, and so on and up. Call this organisational structure, the Earth frame. This frame is not of course unique; there are many other ways, of varying levels of adequacy, of unscrambling an organisational grid. 1 Off the Earth, in free logical space, case arrangements are wry much greater. Not only can many terrestrial limitations be transcended, for instance with wiser creatures than humans, and many fairer regions, but the interaction of regions can be avoided, so that, for example, an intense dense industrial society need not transmit its pollution outside its own borders, indeed in the right circumstances it need not be polluting at all. A beginning is made in investigating this richer structure by Nozick, but even his useful beginnings leave much to be desired, as brought out in UT. 2 Whether communities of communities amount just to communities will depend upon the final characterisation of community, or what sort of members they can have and the extent and character of the interrelations of their members. If communities were mere set-like objects, it would be a matter of the transitivity of membership; but obviously communities are more than mere sets, internal relations counting for much. 4 The frame selected is in fact intimately tied to real mundane arrangements. For the short time that they survived state interference, the Spanish anarchistic communities coexisted and coevolved in genuine pluralistic fashion (as Dolgoffs sympathetic description has revealed). That is by no means the only occasion on which the old ideal of a community of communities (communitas communitatorum) has achieved partial realisation, but is one of the better known recent examples involving anarchistic communities in a limited geographic region - at a time in world history when state domination of social life continues to break up communities and impose a grey uniformity across former community diversity. But the concern here is not with what is, with present depressing (but temporary) political realities, but with how things might well be, with different and - no difficult feat - superior political arrangements, in particular pluralist arrangements. A recent picture of pluralistic political arrangements by Nozick supposedly allows for virtually anarchistic communities within an overarching minarchic framework. It would seem a simple matter to vary this picture, in particular, to weaken or strengthen the overarching framework; and that indeed the system of Spanish communities (which of course did not persist) weakened the minimum state arrangements in true anarchistic fashion to zero. Nozick has however a complex (and also seriously flawed) argument that variations are without justification, that political possibilities which can be justified are omc/t tighter than the wide range of the logical possibilities would suggest. A crucial early question once an Earth frame is untangled is, for each structural level: what are the broad organising principles? Consider a more important case, the regional level. Will the same broad principles reappear for each region? Only in a very tenuous fashion, if such desiderata as regional diversity are to be given appropriate play. Naturally these had better be included some procedure or other for conflict resolution where conflict is severe, but there is a wide variety of procedures of very varying merit; some procedures or other for the numerous issues that have to be dealt with to keep communities functioning, such as to take a sample of issues, burying the dead, taking care of the indigent. * A crucial question, for each structural level,is: what are the broad organisational principles? One working idea is that in the sort of organisational framework sought will enable a mix of desiderata to be pushed over some far out natural thresholds. The comy desiderata include liberal and environmental objectives, such as those of freedom, liberation. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc. 3 Levels of organisation, by geographical region (functional with a that), local, small ecoregion, large ecoregion, ... (old large state), continent - federations, world federation. Direction of world reorganisation: to a plurality of possibilities, with different possibilities in different regions. Cities for those who like them in the substantially ecologically destroyed urban land recipes of the North. Etc. Diversity is a prime desideratum. We should rgjoicc in Jhw-yity where it recurs, and encourage ir where it does not, subject as always to certain constraints. In particular, then, attempt to impose fashionable ideologies everywhere should be strongly resisted; this includes religious faith and other gospels such as those of market capitalism and state socialism. Such drives to unity and conformity, and intellectual monoculture, should be derailed. Evidently in an interlinked system such as the Earth form, federal organisation should include arrangements to block imposition of ideologies by expansive neighbours on other regions. (Included herein are states; here is yet another reason for the abolition of states.) Not to be encouraged, but opposed, are mc.MMnic ging/c-way movements, such as messianic catholism, messianic communism, and messianic capitalism. These come with a amvcrya/Mtic perspectic, and a single, allegedly universal set of values: they do not, unless severely cut down in size, fit into a generous plurallism. Needless to say, these universalistic (one-tuming) movements cannot rationally justify their practices. It can no more be established that there is only one god with such and such properties (e.g. those ascribed to Allah under Islam) than it can be established that there is only one logic; indeed the justificatory situation is considerably worse (imagine the faithful chanting each day, facing one Cambridge or other, "There is no logic but classical logic ..."; of course most Anglo-American philosophers are committed to something like this in their philosophical practice, but they rarely recognise the character of the commitment). Note: Many of the economic objectives presented as absolute, are not merely dubious. They are not intrinsic values, but merely instrumental, and instrumental to goals that a community may not have. Leading examples of such objectives are efficiency, production. Out of the same stable as broad monoculturalism, with its uniform urban systems, universities, etc., is the method of consensus (or one opinion, as it might as well have been called). Consensus — unless severely limited, as for instance to argument on a pluralistic structure — is anti-pluralistic. Nonetheless there can be consensus of a sort at one remove, metaconsensus on one story, "agreement" to differ. Limited agreement does however have its virtues in conflict resolution. * To be sure, cases where have to resolve what is to be done, how to act. Many ways to go: single uniform recipe approach too absolutist. On the other hand, it is not entirely situational. Set of recognised decent procedures. 6 The problematicness of conflict, and need for its removal, is much exaggerated. The drive for conflict-free conditions is like, and linked to, the drive for consistency. But conflict is not always undesirable, but often advantageous (and perhaps, as Heracleitus claimed, necessary). Often conflict should just be allowed to stand; it does not require resolution. Political and social arrangements should allow for it and be able to absorb it. Where removal is required, it is often by achieved by distancing, regionalisations etc. APPENDICES 1. On Walzer's p/ara/Mm there is a plurality of distributive systems. From Plato onwards it is suggested that only one distributive arrangement that can be justified, (p.5). Walzer suggests the Rawlsian picture of reeled strand choosers provides modern arrangements. But 'Justice is a human construction, and it is doubtful that it can be made in only one way' (p.5). Thus there is a plurality also of distributive justice. While the argument is plausible, its construction prescription is not. Walzers' 7%Mt'.? (p.6) is: 'the principles of justice are themselves pluralistic in form [whatever that means); that different social goods ought to be distributed for different reasons, in accordance with different procedures, by different agents; and that all these differences derive from different understandings of the social goods themselves — the inevitable product of historical and cultural particularism'. There is also a theory of goods, and f/teir distribution. In the usual form, people distribute goods to people. The basic relation is a proc^Jarg. In fact there are many procedures: given, allocating, exchanging, selling, etc. Walzer wants to claim: People conceived create goods, which they then distribute among themselves. This is really a Concatenation of two procedures. His iJea is to split goods into quaser sphere, and to have different dibtributive criteria for different spheres. This is said to be complex e^aa/ity (p. 18)! According to Walzer, there are sp/tereg/ or regions of competition, etc. For example, in Pascal: strength, beauty, intelligence, devoteness; but it could be: rugby, soccer, rules, horse racing, mountain climbing, etc. However there are divisions, barriers between these — but they compete for key items e.g. money, fields, etc. [so population growth is a total menance for a easily pluralistic society.) 1] 'Personal qualities and social goods have their own spheres of operation, where they work their effects freely, spontaneously legitimately' (p.19) wAat does this seem: work? by legitimally? etc. 2] Disregard of those sepaate spheres is tyranny; Attempting to convert one good in one place to another in another is ruled out. Meaning of "complex equality" (nothing much of equality about it): 'no citizens' standing in one sphere or with regard to one social good can be undercut by his standing in some other sphere, with regard to one other good' (p.19). Thus political advantage does not confer advantage in other spheres, e.g. health care, advoting, etc. W 'open-ended distributive principle' (p.20): 'no social good x should be distributed to nea .... who possess some other good y merely because they possess y and without regard to the meaning of x'. *^-V ^T)/ ^/' y-a-y^, C-V ?^^-<- , ece/."* y4^^y Z—r '^/?^' A// g)Z y ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL PLURALLISM^ Political pluralism was a theory viewing social life in terms of groups, which were said to be the primary social objects. Further an individual's primary allegiance is not to any abstract government but to groups, unions, clubs, churches. Thus there is no absolute necessity for a highly unified political or legal order - whence developed a critical stance towards the state and towards sovereignty among yomg pluralist^and so elements of anarchistic pluralism. There was, however, no systematic theory of political pluralism (a further anarchistic feature.) The position (and both British and American pluralism, however different) were unified not by any doctrine but by crit/ca/ response to growth of the state. A major theme wa^aadd^a^ay&M^ one (as/in EP)t humans are neither isolated atoms, nor components of centralised states, but social creatures who^werkedin crisscrossing groups of their own choice. Moreover, groups are genuine objects with choices, capacities, purposes, etc. Pluralist society respects and tries to reconcile diverse interests of humans without , . , — . . . thwarting them. Groups communicate via negotiation etc.; their operations are not delegadve from some higher authority. Contemporary ecological pluralism takes over most of these scene setting features, but emphasizes the communitarian bases, and expands the scope of communities and groups to include communities, which include creatures and systems other than humans. Perhaps the best known example of such a mixed community is the exampley-^givaa by Naess and elaborated by Devall (89^dhapter-^3)^of a Norwegian community of bears and wolves, sheep and humans'. A problem which group theory hides, perhaps deliberately, but which such communities at once expose, is that of internal conflict. Conflict cannot be avoided even by going right down to familiar or individuals; for as much conflict may be Early versions of the first section of these notes drew heavily on Vincent, TAcorier <?f The text takes up the working drift of 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism: II. Anarchistic pluralism',, and thus completes (so far as it can presently be taken) a series on this generous topic *. ; TW J ^4? ^c A /^T %T j f iSj !^3 Ph.. r t> ", ', P * <r '*^ c e \y—Z , ")"WMnm reached In d.i, Hn<wk at aav'tiv'en m..n<„, <l<AS,p. 31,). Today', loser, i, I, bh.hol, a,,u,„ed. wdl ho tomorrow s wmner. Most American pluralists of this ilk assume that the contest tween groups wtll be fhir and that there is some kind of lurking normative consensus in the background. Certain types of behaviour are presumably un-American. Practical politics, therefore, fbr the mertcan p urahst is about bargaining, compromise and trade-ofls lore is no normative appraisal of the State, but rather an of what they take to be acm^ processesTnhXUSA Gov * . dm^c^updTe^J^a "——------ -R—-±A1 1 PLl^uSses^oi the USA. Government is not an impartial umpire. It reflects reflects the the domii.^ dominant coalition on a particular policy - although it will try to maintain some balance * I'.--D. D. Roosevelt remarked, 'The ' science of politics, indeed, mav properly be said to be m large part the science of the adjustment of conflicting group interests' (quoted in Nicholls, 1974, p. 2). This aim is contrary to that of the English pluralists, who would have been deeply critical of the idea that the State becomes a focal point for group pressure, also that policy should emanate from dominant coalitions of groups via the State apparatus. Individuals, in English pluralism, pursue their goals within groups. The State should not be inked to any such partial interests. Each of theSe groups is recognized as a moral person with a legal status. In American pluralism a group is simply a collection or aggregation of individuals acting m specific roles. Most significantly the American pluralists were not concerned with any normative account of the State as an institution or practice. They were fhr more interested in examining empirically, the effects of group pressures on the actual activity of government, th^y ^in not cltscnsswn. 7bottled up in a family or even in one individual as in a small group. That is, there are no <*/o pure conflict-free it^ms from which to build up group or community structure. ' @ Ecopluralism not only extends the group basis; like contemporary pluralism, the variety of positions and practices is much expanded. Early political pluralism (so-called) was far from advocating a plural variety. (Figgin, an early British pluralist, would have been shocked at such a supposition: Vincent p.182.) A fairly narrow normative consensus was assumed, e.g. Christian morality in British "pluralism", American political arrangements in American "pluralism". Indeed several American "pluralists", political scientists from Bentley Erroneously on^'saw pluralism as a description of the American political system. In this usage, pluralism moves into the area of interest group and pressure group theory" (Vincent p.183). Herein lies the route to While the state jLSxiiscredited as a unitary ordef} it is now seen a complex multiple entity, which tried to incorporate and theorize diversity of group life. In the American version, groups are seen as interested in reaching some kind of bargain. Government policy is the outcome of group pressures. Government is alleged to seek out some abstract national interest^In even more degenerate Eastern European forms, pluralism comes down to some sort of multiparty electoral arrangements; plurality just amounts to many parties. Political arrangements can however remain highly paternalistic and . Because we are interested in genuine free pluralisms, we shall leave these desperate ^rms behind. /^copyV^ncent-l$0, on US pluraKstsof this sort] /)^onsider the organisational possibilities for the Earth.i The Earth divides variously into (geographical) rggto/ts; under ecological organisation the decomposition will be into jporegions. Those regions that are occupied will be occupied by structures of (mixed) communities. The assumption that each occupied region is occupied by a single community is too simple to account even for the present impoverished arrangements offering on Earth. Some regions are occupied by communities of communities, community structure so to say.z It seems unlikely that Earth, given a suitable choice of regions, it is _ . cm 1 Off the Earth, in free logicat space, case arrangements are very much greater. Not only can many terrestrial iimiations be transcended, (widi for instance wiscr creatures than humans, and many fairer regions, but the interaction of regions can be avoided, so that, for example, an intense dense industrial society need not transmit its pollution outside its own borders, indeed in the right circumstances it need not be polluting at all. A beginning is made in investigating this richer structure by Nozick, but even his beginnings leave much to be desired? *. 4/7 2 Whether communities of communities amount just to communities will depend upon the final characterisation of comwMnhy, or what sort of members they can have and c? /- 3 necessary to ascend beyond communities of communities to third-order community structures. Thus for each region it is appropriate to begin with the ancient ideal of a community of communities. But of course there will be higher-order structure involved, such as regional federations of regions, and federations of these federations, and so on and up. Call this organisational structure, the Earth frame. This frame is not of course unique; there are many other ways, of varying levels of adequacy, of unscrambling an organisational grid. The frame selected is in fact intimately tied to real mundane arrangements. For the short time that they survived state interference, the Spanish anarchistic communities coexisted and coevolved in genuine pluralistic fashion (as Dolgoff s sympathetic description has revealed). That is by no means the only occasion on which the old ideal of a community of communities (communitas communitatorum) has achieved partial realisation, but is one of the better known recent examples involving anarchistic communities in a limited geographic region - at a time in world history when state domination of social life continues to break up communities and impose a grey uniformity across former community diversity. But the concern here is not with what is, with present depressing (but temporary) political realities, but with how things might well be, with different and - no difficult feat superior political arrangements, in particular pluralist arrangements. A recent picture of pluralistic political arrangements by Nozick supposedly allows for virtually anarchistic communities within an overarching minarchic framework. It would seem a simple matter to vary this picture, in particular, to weaken or strengthen the overarching framework; and that indeed the system of Spanish communities (which of course did not persist) weakened the minimum state arrangements in true anarchisdc fashion to zero. Nozick has however a complex (and also seriously flawed) argument that variations are without justification, that political possibilities which can be justified are mMc/z tighter than the wide range of the logical possibilities would suggest. A crucial early question once an Earth frame is untangled is, for each structural level: what are the broad organising principles? Consider a more important case, the regional level. Will the same broad principles reappear for each region? Only in a very tenu/ous fashion, if such desiderate as regional diversity are to be given appropriate play. Naturally the extent and character of the interrelations of their members. If communities were mere set-like objects, it would be a matter of the transitivity of membership; but obviously communities are more than mere sets, internal relations counting for much. *j these had better be some procedure or other for conflict resolution where conflict is severe, but there is a wide variety of procedures of very varying merit; some procedures or other for the numerous issues that have to be dealt with to keep communities functioning, such as to take a sample of issues, burying the dead, taking care of the indigent. A crucial question, for each structural level, is: what are the broad organisational principles? . The working idea is that in the sort of organisational framework sought will enable a mix of desiderata to be pushed over some far out natural thresholds. The, desiderata include liberal and environmental objectives, each as those of freedom, liberation. Life liberty, pursuit of happiness^etc. Direction of world reorganisation: to a plurality of possibilities, with different possibilities in different regions. Cities for those who like them in the substantially ecologically destroyed urban land recipes of the North. Etc. Diversity is a prime desideratum. We should re/'ozce in JivgrHfy where it recurs, and if where it does not, subject as always to certain constraints. In particular, then, attempts to impose fashionable ideologies everywhere should be strongly resisted; this includes religious faith and other gospels such as those of market capitalism and state socialism. Such drives to unity and conformity, and intellectualm^njt culture, should be derailed. Evidently in an interlinked system such as the Earth form; federal organisation should include arrangements to block imposition of ideologies by expansive neighbours on other regions. (Included herein are states; here is yet another reason for the ahabition of states.) Not to be encouraged, but opposed, are sing/c-way movements, such as messianic catholism, messianic communism, and messianic capitalism. These come with a M/uvcrM/Af/c perspectic, and a single, allegedly universal set of values: they do not, unless severely cut down in size, fit into a generous plurallism. Needless to say, these universalistic (one-turning) movements cannot rationally justify their practices. It can no more be established that there is only one god with such and such properties (e.g. thvse ascribed to Allah under Islam) than it can be established that there is only one logic; indeed the justificatory situation is considerably worse (imagine the faithful chanting each day, facing one Cambridge or other, "There is no logic but classical logic of course most Anglo-American philosophers are committed to something like this in their philosophical practice, but they rarely recognise the character of the commitment). Note: Many of the economic objectives presented as absolute, are not merely dubious. They are not intrinsic values, but merely instrumental, and instrumental to %^that a community may not have. Leading examples of such objectives are efficiency, production. Out of the same stable as broad monoculturalism, with its uniform urban systems, universities, etc., is the method of consensus (or one opinion, as it might as well have been called). Consensus - unless severely limited, as for instance to argument on a pluralistic structure - is anti-pluralistic. Nonetheless there can be consensus of a sort at one remove, metacon^ensus on^ one story, "agreement" to differ. Limited agreement does however have its virtues in conflict resolution. * To be sure, cases where have to resolve what is to be down, how to act. Many ways to go: -si^i uniform recipe approach too absolutist. On the other hand act entirely situational. Last of recognised decent procedures. The problematicness of conflict, and need for its removal, is much exaggerated. The drive for conflict-free conditions is like, and linked to, the drive for consistency. But conflict is not always undesirable, but often advantageous (read perhaps, as Heracleitus claimed, necessary). Often conflict should just be allowed to stand; it does not require resolution. Political and social arrangements should allow for it and be able to absorb it. C**------ -  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 13, item 998: Draft chapters on anarchism, for correction Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span><span>,</span> Box 13, item 998 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:490d6e5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:490d6e5</a> Description An account of the resource Typescripts and handwritten chapters, with handwritten emendations and annotations. [133] leaves. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [133] leaves. 370.52 MB. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Lake George - Floor - Pile 7 Box 13: Green Projects in Progress Lake George House Lake George House > Floor > Pile 7 https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/1a6f9df968598ef8d62edae0aa4919b3.pdf 14219e5a05ca328939e6d5788eb441bf PDF Text Text IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW, AN ENVIRONMENTAL, ETHIC? Richard Routley (Australia) § 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's relations to the natural environ­ ment, in Leopold’s words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it' (| 1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling ethics do not deal with man’s relation to nature: they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as he pleases, i.e. his relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect others, are not subject to moral censure. Thus assertions such as ‘Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees’ are significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.1 It is to this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex­ ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that an extension of traditional morality is required to cover such cases, to fill a moral void. If Leopold is right in his criticism of prevailing conduct what is required is a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations. For as matters stand, as he himself-explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the woods ofTa 75% slope, turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society.’ (UJ), p.245) Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism. Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a 1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits 2 To the consternation nodoubt of Quineans But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary systems the identity of which may be indeterminate 205 �single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilisation: on many issues, and especially on controversial issues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin­ ciples. Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have. Indeed Passmore (in [21) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and the co-operative position with man as perfcctor. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views. The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the mainstream Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are inconsistent with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth’s surface should be preserv­ ed from substantial human interference, whether of the “improving” sort or not. Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth’s land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and com­ fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position man’s proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature — all nature eventually - by bringing out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; while on the stewardship view man’s role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means that will deliberately degrade its resources. Although these positions both depart from the dominant position in a way which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible farmer, they do not go far enough: for in the present situation of expanding populations confined to finite natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas. Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used3 for human ends, “humanized”. As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so straightforward; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is not always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assump­ tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have supplanted the dominant position; and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer’s polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the stream. Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The posi­ tion may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa­ tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted. 2. -A^ we noticed-(an) ethic is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a specific ethic, and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S 3 If ‘use’ is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use principle is tied to the resource view of nature 4 A meta-ethic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions 206 �'^"es - a( SeS’a,Pr0pos^r th«>ry whlch in. is, near enough, a proposit1or ., ~"f'm (1.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in--.:ludes ( like individuals of a th• . a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set ° of general or to‘other he^er conduct. to verselytypically to its of thers obligatory, or isonf ? applypermissible n’ untableand wrong, what concern,n~ evaluativeOnjudgements of what are rights, what is valued, and !>O forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a principle; and certainly if systems S, and S2 contain _different principles, then they are different systems. It follows that any en\llnnmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlined. Moreover if environmental ethic5 lifTer from Western ethical systems on some core principle embedded in Western systems, then ,hese systems differ from the Western super ethic (assurring, what seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environmental ethic is needed t!ien a new ethic is wanted It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide environmental count,·r examples to 1t. It 1s commonly assumed that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western ethical systems. principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed in the Golden Ruk I w ,des one example. Directly relevant here. as a good stab at a core principle. is the com111unli, formulated liberal principle 0f the moqified flominan"-,~siti on..A recent for-""•..._ ,/c,.,.M,....,,, ~ lo/,'/ mulation~ runs a, follows ( 131, p. 58}: 'The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that one should be able to do what he wishes, providing ( I) that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not hkel 1 to harm himself irreparably.' Let us call this prmciple basic (/Funan) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people, come fir~t and everything else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom principle because it gives perm1ss10n to perform a wide range of actions (including actions which mess up the environment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of proof to others. It is wortti remarking that harming others in the restriction is narrower than a rc,tnction tu the I usual) interests of others; it is not enough that 1t is in my interests, because I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being anywa~ because 1t does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to e~actly what counts as harm or interference. Moreover the width of the pnnciple is so far obscure because 'other' ma~ be filled out in significantly diffen:nt 11, ays. it makes a difference to the e,itent, and pri, ilege, of the chauvinism whether 'other' expands to ·other human' - which is too restrictive - or to 'other'peradequacy toCthe a ^t being'; and fnd uture k to 'other'sentient s^ed other as well thaut^ atter s it wmakes °u'd o nn re °difference "°w and^t °mpletel y “n-of the principle, and inson'it or versely to its economic applicability, to which class of others it is intended to apply, whether to Wor kable, Th^ atake future "ymakethe as count t0 others, Co m°St whether to P to remote future others or only to non-discountable present aspato asis well future e. whether to possible others. The latter would make the principle completely unand others, future It ysK" ^nled in des<gning anaJ ). "ple ™' last m,„ « u,,, ,k 1 -1/.'l;· nr semantical workable, and it is generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others. ,( ., ■ „di examples to basic chauvinist principles, that a It is taken for granted in designing counter ·~ .....-<;,_ semantical analysis of permissibility and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations , ... ~#... ideal some in (which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds situation, what is obligatory in every id.:al situation, and what is wrong is excluded in every ideal situation. But the mam point to grasp for the counter example\ that follow, is that ethical principles if correct are universal and are assessed over the class of ideal situations. -(i) The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system lays about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you like, as a• the best abattoirs). What he doc~ 1s quite permissible according to ba 1c chauvinism, but on environmental ground~ what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to regard Mr Last Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that raof corresponding in' advance dical thinking and values have shifted in an environmental usurne direction ’’ ^""oplos shifts in the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles}. (ii) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example. We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects have blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rul!! out «rcorre p„ that what these people do harms or somehow physically interferes with later people. the spossibility Otherwise one could as well 1..ons1der science fiction cases where peoole arrive at a new planet and »™ ^“xxi™r <"■■— ^.^ ^ sssh ss ±“ ™.™««. oS «’Srr "”'be “ ” “c,v A ™88eZ™1£„XXe°' rw S,SCUre ss?wX".“ . ,.. ___ X;»,XyrXt“ber ® S “ xxr •' xe xz^x z “:zz:::?“~ssss fgs 5 A related principle is that (m d11ieJ •,.., •.,r.i ..,, »c can operate "ith,n similar limits 207 207 WIMI iWlliMMW-l-i �destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell of it. Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and all remaining forests disappear in favour of quarries or plantations, and so on. They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an en­ vironmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wreck­ ed place. But this conduct may conform with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the principles enjoined by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or co­ operation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons”, the variant is still environmentally inadequate. (iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since he much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur’s behaviour is on the Western ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better off’. Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this ex­ ample to the industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours. (iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic pic­ ture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up­ set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist: nor need whale hun­ ting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the blue whale example are provided by cases where a species is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man’s activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite permissible-at least according to basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not. However the free-market mechanism will not cease allocating whale^ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the blue whale population is no longer viable—if that point has not already been passed. In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren’t en­ vironmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respected in dustrialists, fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading ac tivities of the sort described, in a morally impermissible way ? No. what these people do is to a greater or lesser extent evil, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible. For example, insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who stand in the way of an industrial development is morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is the slaughter of the last remain­ ing blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvinism as a satisfactory 6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in 131 �2^°;™ pn"c,p e ls 3 morc d,flku11 matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude speciepide. It may be preferable, m view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof, simply to scrap it altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct, as in a bill of rights. rei2tsArhadRaJ change-ri" a ^eory some,,mcs forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which jects the Reference Theory tn 4 thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmen­ tally important notions, such as conservation, pollution, growth and preservation, for meta-ethical analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such characteristic actions as natural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and per­ missibility to rights; it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as \alue and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejec­ tion of many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a verv brie! examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some major positions,7 Hart (in |5|) accepts, subject to defeating conditions which are here irrelevant, the classical doctrine of natural rights according to which, among other things, ‘any adult human ... capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons’. But this sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an environmental ethic rejects, since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same defective principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the classical notion of a natural right, a far from straight forward matter now that human rights with respect to animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major re-evaluation. An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees have rights (though such a view is occasionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right not to be mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has in­ terests. Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can (significantly) have rights, and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth, to practically anything at all. r J The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions typica ly employ a single criterion p. such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum; characteristically each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps including future humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of afTairs, of the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in terms of individual prankings, and what is best or ought to be done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism, in terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking. The species bias is transparent from the selection of the base class. And even if the base class is extended to embrace persons, or even some animals (at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing P°’ntS arC deVdOped by thOSC protcstin« about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays �testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that the whole of the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust principles. For example if every member of the base class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes’ behaviour, then by the Pareto ranking test the collective ranking will rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the evaluation of most Australian farmers anyway). Likewise it would just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective demand (horizontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy with blue whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then ‘‘rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi­ sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for deciding on what is environmentally desirable. These ethical and economic theories are not alone in their species chauvinism; much the same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the base class; on a social justice picture rights and obligations spring from the application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the ~^^base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on a Kantian position which has some * v^gue obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the base class, persons. In each case if members of the base class happen to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class then that is too bad for them: that is (rough) justice. REFERENCES 1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966). 2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished). 3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the Problem, New York (1972). 4. S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), Animals, Men and Morals. 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C-*^-y^'A-'» Co £^4-2- Z-CC V1" ZX) v^<.^J>rC r-O\ i^j-Ca. U-v_ ^V*-4^'r-^A~^-> A>U jXK ^-^-^jl _pL v^x-'JxClLa^ A—>—v<_ -*~-<_>JLv. .'CvAz^ £O^ AXzv^A. ♦ < — c+^ “/JU. “T^Gl 'Ao*- 0 -" —A^* <A*^Cg ^L xX*^ULt—□ iGs^G^ /i<>‘-*-c. '-C»— Ca^ a^Ll I VAaA >>An^ '-O-Qa*~t__ 4 > "^“*~^> V-'JK—A.'^C. Xg.^u^j c Ou%**j "’0^^ 55T *-<a ^~L ^to £)La-a?< H- G>' rG A? ^AQst^.... yO<*-w»»A . QkJLLl . Go^^-a^AA. ..... l^x>— !jC l*Jc — . .... ^n*w^^v&A. Va.^ cG*-? L& -^ >-***- u> C-tfktA^. _. -XSL( o-G_lX %^?yr r <j2^ z>tnC/X**-vjtX '***"■ z/V\z^^Ax ^*-*-^ £ -c<X *V~>~ ^wK>-‘\SwjLX Cczl XJbu-t A'>>~“ _ 'Yvv\U~’J—V (V^Ffr s r * /^v—4-V3 ^>r<. 1^'-*-* , "to _ 0a>-< 3> ^>i~x “ \> ■ k>*- -a^Xaa -•■• (k.c>^\ f //-V . ' / . <r" U<_ , !0'-^C_. <\b*-GA^x^ fiLMs-ut. p- -G— "**{1^-5 Cysut, >—oKxi^t k Tg ^^cJUc I x-v| , �■ IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW, AN ENVIRONMENTAL, ETHIC? Richard Routley (Australia) § 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's relations to the natural environ­ ment, in Leopold's words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it’ ([1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling ethics do not deal with man's relation to nature: they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as he pleases, i.e. his relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect others, are not subject to moral censure. Thus assertions such as ‘Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees’ are significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.1 It is to this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex­ ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that an extension of traditional morality is required to cover such cases, to fill a moral void. If Leopold is right in his criticism of prevailing conduct what is required is a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations. For as matters stand, as he himself explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the woods off a 75% slope,turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall,rocks, andsoil into the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society.’ ([1]), p.245) Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism. Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a 1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits 2 To the consternation .nodoubt of Quineans. But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary systems the identity of which may be indeterminate 205 �is, near enough: ~ propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which includes ( like md1v1duals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general evaluative Ju~gements co~cermng conduct, typically of what is obligatory, permissible and wrong of_ what ~re rights, what _is valued, and so forth. A ~eneral or lawlike proposition of a system is ~ prmc1ple, and certainly 1f syst~ms S, and S2 contam different principles, then they are different systems. It foll?ws t~at any environmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlined. Moreo~er 1f environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principle embedded m Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming wh~t _seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environm~ntai eth1_c 1s needed then a new ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide environmental counter examples to it. It is com_monly assu_med that_ there are. what amount to, core principles of Western ethical ~ystems, principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed ~n the Golden Rule provides o~e example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core principle, ts the . commonly formulated hberal pnnc1ple of the modified dominance position .. A recent for: · " • "'• ,;, /'' /,'. / ~·- - ·· ..._ mulation 5 runs as follows ( [ 3 I, p. 58): . 'The liberal philosophy of the Wes tern world holds that one should be able to do what he wishes, prov1dmg ( 1) that he d0es not harm orhers and (2) that he is not likely to harm himself irreparably.' Let us call this principle basic (human) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people. co_me_ first and everyt_hmg else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom pnnc1ple becaus~ 1t gives perm1ss1on to perform a wide range of actions (including actio.ns which mess_ up the ~nv1ronment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to c_unn_mgly shift the onus of pro?fto others. It is worth remarking that harming others in the restrict10n 1s narrower than a restnct1on to the (usual) interests of others; it is not enough that it is in my mterests, because. I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being anyway, because 1t does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to exactly what counts as harm or mter_ference. Mor~over the width of the principle is so far obscure because 'other' may be fill~d. out m s1gmficantly different ways: it makes a difference to the e~tent, and privilege, of the cha~vm1s~ whe~her '.other' _ex~ands to 'other human' - which is too restrictive - or to 'other'person or to _other sent1~nt be1~g ; and 1t mak~s a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its economic apphcab1hty, to which class of others it is intended to apply whether to future as well as to present others, whether to remote future others or only to non-discountable future others, a?d. whether to possible others. The latter would make the principle completely unworkable, and 1t 1s generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others. ' //4-_ ItIt_ is taken for granted. in_ d_e_signing counter examples to basic chauvinist principles, that a ....,. /..~..., . ( sem_antical analysis of perm1ss1b1hty and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations r.,.·-=-"'t.. :.;1 -c.: , · ~/:_ (".~-htch may be mcon:iplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some ideal ideal every in s1tuat10n, what 1s obl_1gato_ry in every ideal situation, and what is wrong is excluded ~1tuat10n. But the_mam pomt to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles · t· 1f correct are umversal and are assessed over the class of I·deal s1tua ions. (') Th z collapse of the world system the 1 _survi~ing perso~) (or man e as_t ma~ e~a~ple. The last lays ~bout him, ehmmatmg, ~s far as he can, e~ery !tvmg th_mg, animal or plant (but painlessly if iou hke, a~ at the best abattoirs). What he does 1s qmte permissible according to basic chauvinism ut on envir?nmental grounds what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be commit~ ~~d \o e~ot~nc values to regard M'.. Las_t Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that ra~cfa th mkmg a nd val~es have shifted m an environmental direction in advance of corresponding s .. 1 ts m the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles). (u) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example. We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects h_a~~ blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rule out ~e pos~1b1hty that what these pe~ple d~ harms or somehow physically interferes with later people. therwise one could as well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet and single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on controversial issues such as infanticide, women's rights and drugs, there are competing sets of principles. Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have. Indeed Passmore (in [2]) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views concerning man's relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views. The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the mainstream Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are inconsistent with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserved from substantial human interference, whether of the "improving" sort or not. Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and comfortable north-Europea n small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position man's proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; while on the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means that will deliberately degrade its resources. Although these positions both depart from the dominant position in a way which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible farmer, they do not go far enough: for in the present situation of expanding populations confined to finite natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas. Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a 3 principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used for human ends, "humanized". As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so straightforwa rd; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is riot always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assumption). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for m~ny thinkers, to have supplanted the dominant position; and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer's polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the stream. Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The position may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situation excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted. a ~pecific ethic, /§ 2. -As. we noticed----(a~ ethic is ambi~uous, as bet_ween a specifi~ ethical system, and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S ./ 3 If 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use p1 inciple is tied to the resource view of nature 4-A meta-elhic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions 5 A related principle is that (modified) free c.1tcrprise can operate I il 11 ,·thi'n s· -1 1- • 1m1 ar 1m11s 207 �destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell of it. Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild ar,imal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and all ~emaining forests disappear in favour of quarries or plantations, and so on. They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an environmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wrecked place. But this conduct may conform with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the principles enjoined ·by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or cooperation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of reasons", the variant is still environmentally inadequate. (iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is improving outpJt to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since h~ much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being "better off'. Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this example to the industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours. (iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic picture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hunting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the blue whale example are provided by cases where a species is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man's activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The l?ehaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accqrdingly quite permissible-at least according to basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not. However the free-market mechanism will not cease allocating whal~[~ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental econo_mics would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the blue whale population is no longer viable-if that point has not already been passed. In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment _is more narrowly circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren't environmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respe~ted industrialists fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of ;he sort described, in a morally impermissible way~ No, what these people do _is to a greater or lesser extent evil, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible. For exampl_e, mso~ar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who stand in the way of an mdustnal development is morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is _the slau~hter of the last_ remaining blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvm1sm as a satisfactory 6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in [31 freedom principle is a more difficult matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude specieside. It may be preferable , in view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof. simply to scrap it altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct. as in a bill of rights. § 3. A radical change in a {eory sometimes forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which rejects the Reference Theory in a thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmentally important notions, such as conservation, pollu1io11, growth and presen•atio11,for meta-ethical analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such characteristic actions as na1ural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and permissibility to rights: it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as i-alue and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejection o [ many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a very brief examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some major positions. 7 Hart (in I 5]) accepts. subject to defeating conditions which are here irrelevant, the classical doctrine of natural rights according to which. among other things, 'any adult human . .. capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons'. But this sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an em iron mental ethic rt::jects, since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the deflni1io11 of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same defective principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the classical notion of a natural right. a far from straight forward matter now that human rights with rcspc:ct to animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect to slaves not all that lon g ago, undergoing major re-evaluation. An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees have rights (though such a view is occa~ionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right n_ot to _be mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has interests . Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can (significantly) have rights. and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth. to practically anything at all. The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions typically employ a single criterion p, such as preference or happiness, as a summ.um_ bonu_m; characteristically each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps mcludmg future humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, 6f the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in terms of individual prankings, and what is best or ought to be done is determined either_ ~ire~tl~, as in act-utilitarianism under the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, asin rule-ut1lttanantsm, in terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking. The species bias is transparent from the selection of the base class. And even if the base class is extended to embr~ce persons. or even some animals (at the cost. like that of including remotely future humans, of losing 1 Some of thes< points arc developed by those protesting about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays collec!ed in I 4 I 9 ~ iii 208 WJ 6 14 209 �testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that the whole of the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust principles. For example if every member of the base class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes’ behaviour, then by the Pareto ranking test the collective ranking will rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the evaluation of most Australian farmers anyway). Likewise it would just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective demand (horizontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy with blue whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then “rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi­ sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for deciding on what is environmentally desirable. These ethical and economic theories are not alone in their species chauvinism; much the same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the base class; on a social justice picture rights and obligations spring from the application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the _base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on a Kantian position which has some v v^gue obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the base class, persons. In each case if members of the base class happen to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class then that is too bad for them: that is (rough) justice. REFERENCES 1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966). 2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished). 3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the Problem, New York (1972). 4. S. and R.Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), A nimals, Men and Morals. 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UgsTma ku-w-tins C^vZ i4! o Act rGJ < Cg/- z/^/zj Aa c't'wJ #4^ (Xi h i i"u^i'u Lt-1 /zo Zte^ > 0- i . ■X c- a-rt-fW^ have. o^e- �7 �er o ’e £ PC- �1 in nmUCh at ,eaSt aS CrUSOe'S w-th —2£S^2SS SS=S=E-lg=:==ES maltreat the land, extract frontU>2 *"* 3 W,'dcrness',f taken to tnterfere with and does not rouse the moral indtgnL^n ofThey ’ C°ndUCt ” not Z^eyyero/ woods off a 75% slope, turns his cows intn rh»> •he „«k. „ SIi„ (ir otherwise dccenl) farmer who clears the <f^^- s a- z. // / A * /7~. z^r&sz A, / ' Z - — ^z4— C ��» Ci s t2"* 7^ ji /<t^/ <- f /'t ^ ~C ' f' /~ e^ttcfuc^ / /^b. f 0 /•> | it is none loo clear what is going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are not clearly articulated or al all well worked out. so that the application of identity criteria foi ethics may remain obscure. Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical sy stems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christen ethic, which is an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there are two,.other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethicszor that of the development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the /?<rf fff /> (Het-//'s-j Ilk > Ct at— single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on ckd«°T^a *ssues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin S’ T. ? nCW e^h‘C and Prevai,ln8 ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity that prevathng ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have. - r. . jM40/ Indeed Passmore (in |2|) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.-31 ' j i 7) el'f'r/rel-x rC-~ r* �A. The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the mainstream Stoic^— Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious backdrop is removeej, eg. vv/zo is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are inconsistent with a ^environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth’s surface should be presen ed from substantial human interference, whether of the “improving” sort or not. Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and com fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position man’s proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect galiye - all nature eventually - by bringing out its potentialities, the test of perfection being ^usefulness for.human purposes: while on the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means that will deliberately degrade its resources./ '7Zu^ /fate- c.C^( 4c~S~ £^7 7c/<*-/'- /rw*. e-1 Cr*..s~y 7 7 , J - cvalua,,^. of an environmental ethic.oXs" coter^^ A t !(^ ; ^,l(he1SStmECXPa!’U"’g P?pula,ions eon,'^d ‘0 finite Indeeo these lesser traditions lead to what a thomnpho’ ‘dr‘”"lg anJ utl,izing ofall natural areas principle of total use,imping that every r-turJl X m ^v,ronmental othic would reject, a human ends, “humanized” ' area shou,d be ^‘^ted or otherw.se used 3 f v 3 rr • H use is extended, somewhat illicitly, to inciud. as regards its actual eftects. Note that the toU’ e •eSiCrVat‘<>n; thiS tOtal USe Princ‘P|c is rendered mocuous al least <»e pr , pie is tied to the resource view of nature , �such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or’romantic, would be new aljigjiu The matter is r straightforward: for the dominant.ethic has been substantial!v uuaiitle^y the n&er that one is not always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically int^Tes \0tn peers'. 7 > proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the Goiyuuterference assump­ tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have supplanted the dominant position: and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further '* towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer's polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the stream. Likewise business enterprises which, destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [31) that blends with the modified position; /hcrt/t f'cd c-Z^x . may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is adequate as an environmental ethic, as I ^vall A new ethic is wanted, aoh/ 1, /T-- < zfre^e^ 7y 7> j7**u\ �5 /g^7rc> e*- /5> g Zte-Z*-^ a-rfCsC , 'sCett /J /tr ! t>7 f rCL , ioG-j . c s f~CT /fc. /•J2 crt-cc^ a m 7 7/ s e fJ Ifc,'-* 7 ■ is, near‘enough, a propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in dudes (like individuals of a theory > a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general evaluative judgements concerning conduct, typically of what is obligators permissible and wrong.'x* ! of what are rights, what is valued, and so forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a \ principle; and certamlv if systems S, and S2contain different principles, then they are different systems. It follows that anv en onmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlin ed. Moreover if environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principlaJL embedded in Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming. I what seems to be so. that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environmental ethic /s needed then a new- ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide environ mental counter examples to it z , /3^'f> Ji^f^ yt �i« * Q-. V '5'" 7/ / Z/t-y -y ZLo c^-T V / C o-~f^ e o—•. /K^~ . are' w^at amount to, core principles of Western ethicaSR ? 1 7 accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed ' m the Golden Rule provides one example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core^&iple ' is the commonly formulated liberal principle ' / * ...2>^-.Yjr7 , /fol; >ws ( j 3J. p. 58): (D). The liberal philosophy of (he Western world holds that one should be able to d< □ what he wishes, providing (1) that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not likely to harm .himself jrreparablv.' ■ "Wf® /Ac7 7^— /zxc principle because it e.ves permission m st. some,im« the principle is haded as a freedom SESSSSSsasyr??”- •A?x chauvinism whether ‘other’ expands io ‘other h "* ' ■’ ' Ten' '° lhe c*Ient- antl Pn' 'lege, of the son* or toother sentient be.nXnd t makes aX" wh,chu’s t0° r^<ttive or Mother per verselj to its economic applicability to whieh I LrenrCe l.° the ar,e4uacy of the principle, and in future as well as present other" whether to r '55 ,° r°therS “? t0 ‘ w,lcther to future others, and whether to possible others Th -Th utur<J othefs or onl-v t0 non-discountable V and it is generally c /wf- e \ ��c) fff)Ct^ &J C'C. X ) 1. CAu^f ' b- / ^U4r<fc C 7 *4 & S f/'t J &&&!&&— ?£*~ ^KBMCfc. a/ fiU €t y^ < r- cC 7 ^C/>< Z__i___ �* sC I y/L j (ft) f . } /a fC*2— z’vz/XLt,/ /XL x« /'c-^ anaivjfe of permissibility; £ 7 Zcz2—z obhgatio/falementsjstretc^. out over ideal mInations• (which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some idefl^fe situation, what is obligatory in every ideal situation, and what is wrong is excluded in every ideal ' ■ situation. But the main point to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles if correct are universal and are assessed over the class of ideal situations. ZSl ezn^Tfez- />?> b /> C&7 rr cX? eef ff (i) ’ The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system Zo eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you like, as at the best abattoirs). What he does is quite permissible according to f/)) but on environmental grounds what he does is wrong. Moreover pne d^gsjtot have to Ke commit ted to esoteric values to regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly, (the reason l^eing^crhapsthatra dica! thinking and values have shifted in an environmental direction in advance of corresponding shifts in the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles)./^ f /U, Corf MG /<€ C ifZ (ii) The last people example. The last man example can be . to the last people example. We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects have blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rule out the possibility that what these people do harms or somehow physically interferes with later people. Otherwise one could as well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet and ft}) �destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, " and all remaining forests disappear in favour ofpatfuM or plantations, and so on. They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an en­ vironmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; £ qfXL/ }r ex/ s* e< 9 they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wreck­ ed place. But this conduct may conform with the ’ CCW (£>) Ccf'tC I ^cZ /y //I- /IZPCC-X c'LjruZ^ ~Z / / s/y i ■ jr.ru effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons’", the variant is still environmentally inadequate. (iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since he much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better ofT’. 7 /<L. , /tMVbcr^r, Z^> /7^ cx-yr .1 , C< /ctj'/ //’fr ) 7(3 /&- cL C ^^T- �77 toe-^ g rXl-rr^ ^/y) <L c7t Qr<g,*y/i/& , M zrzreX e*i SKfX&d ft C^ g<c /&- ^<XaY£- 77 ^1 4rc7jW4— ) f re/nctd lb— /f ... --*^g*._ K on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hun ting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the blue w'hale example are provided by cases where a speues is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man’s activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite permissible-at least according to basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not However the free-market mechanism will not cease allocating whale$ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics I would; instead the market r ynuX InGswkblj C/bf £?3 ) tr^Cjec(j-ep-HtL- Cornnc nJ 7 Ct/on(j e(.&^ Ma Jt>«f Cu-Ort- wd ?a6 J w*v7YY w/cX<2- * //> /t * ■J <Y // / Ara /jo f cjff c c , 7 i- ft-T X_S>'C''lf X-S" c x c^r^r Ca— „v z Xc< ✓ » . J ♦ �4 �Zl. e/?o f M dyeeft (T& fd- Ci/c / Awl 7 ■J'yt jf vironmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respected in­ dustrialists, fishermen and farmers arc behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading ac tivities of the sort described, in a morally impermissible way? No, what these people do is to a 5 greater or lesser extent eviitand hence in serious vases morally impermissible. For example, insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primiioe peoples who stand in the way of an industrial development is morally indefensible and-^r* permissible, so also is the slaughter ol the last remain ing blue whale^for private profit,. , or fa & 1 j“'/z^4> i ■T.JS �(X. (t^o-r<- a~ ^~h%AJ2-A Au—4^-, -vGtt^y ^-■-? —j—G\A<?-‘-*-k Cj^ /^tc /&rf SV-ev*^. 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(though such a view But pantheism is false For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object do^riot award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right not to be mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). 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Zv€>v^_^ <_<_ x^-aZ-xA' 0 5 <3^ tX,L 4Z <^/ 4b»-ULk /h <-<&— e2 \> c-^^uuxxi ��78 t ��A__ -V �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW, AN ENVIRONMENTAL, ETHIC? Richard Routley (Australia) § 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's relations to the natural environ­ ment, in Leopold’s words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it' (| 1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling ethics do not deal with man’s relation to nature: they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as he pleases, i.e. his relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect others, are not subject to moral censure. Thus assertions such as ‘Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees’ are significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.1 It is to this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex­ ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that an extension of traditional morality is required to cover such cases, to fill a moral void. If Leopold is right in his criticism of prevailing conduct what is required is a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations. For as matters stand, as he himself-explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the woods ofTa 75% slope, turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society.’ (UJ), p.245) Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism. Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a 1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits 2 To the consternation nodoubt of Quineans But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary systems the identity of which may be indeterminate 205 single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilisation: on many issues, and especially on controversial issues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin­ ciples. Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have. Indeed Passmore (in [21) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and the co-operative position with man as perfcctor. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views. The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the mainstream Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are inconsistent with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth’s surface should be preserv­ ed from substantial human interference, whether of the “improving” sort or not. Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth’s land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and com­ fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position man’s proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature — all nature eventually - by bringing out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; while on the stewardship view man’s role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means that will deliberately degrade its resources. Although these positions both depart from the dominant position in a way which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible farmer, they do not go far enough: for in the present situation of expanding populations confined to finite natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas. Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used3 for human ends, “humanized”. As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so straightforward; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is not always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assump­ tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have supplanted the dominant position; and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer’s polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the stream. Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The posi­ tion may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa­ tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted. 2. -A^ we noticed-(an) ethic is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a specific ethic, and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S 3 If ‘use’ is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use principle is tied to the resource view of nature 4 A meta-ethic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions 206 '^"es - a( SeS’a,Pr0pos^r th«>ry whlch in. is, near enough, a proposit1or ., ~"f'm (1.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in--.:ludes ( like individuals of a th• . a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set ° of general or to‘other he^er conduct. to verselytypically to its of thers obligatory, or isonf ? applypermissible n’ untableand wrong, what concern,n~ evaluativeOnjudgements of what are rights, what is valued, and !>O forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a principle; and certainly if systems S, and S2 contain _different principles, then they are different systems. It follows that any en\llnnmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlined. Moreover if environmental ethic5 lifTer from Western ethical systems on some core principle embedded in Western systems, then ,hese systems differ from the Western super ethic (assurring, what seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environmental ethic is needed t!ien a new ethic is wanted It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide environmental count,·r examples to 1t. It 1s commonly assumed that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western ethical systems. principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed in the Golden Ruk I w ,des one example. Directly relevant here. as a good stab at a core principle. is the com111unli, formulated liberal principle 0f the moqified flominan"-,~siti on..A recent for-""•..._ ,/c,.,.M,....,,, ~ lo/,'/ mulation~ runs a, follows ( 131, p. 58}: 'The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that one should be able to do what he wishes, providing ( I) that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not hkel 1 to harm himself irreparably.' Let us call this prmciple basic (/Funan) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people, come fir~t and everything else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom principle because it gives perm1ss10n to perform a wide range of actions (including actions which mess up the environment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of proof to others. It is wortti remarking that harming others in the restriction is narrower than a rc,tnction tu the I usual) interests of others; it is not enough that 1t is in my interests, because I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being anywa~ because 1t does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to e~actly what counts as harm or interference. Moreover the width of the pnnciple is so far obscure because 'other' ma~ be filled out in significantly diffen:nt 11, ays. it makes a difference to the e,itent, and pri, ilege, of the chauvinism whether 'other' expands to ·other human' - which is too restrictive - or to 'other'peradequacy toCthe a ^t being'; and fnd uture k to 'other'sentient s^ed other as well thaut^ atter s it wmakes °u'd o nn re °difference "°w and^t °mpletel y “n-of the principle, and inson'it or versely to its economic applicability, to which class of others it is intended to apply, whether to Wor kable, Th^ atake future "ymakethe as count t0 others, Co m°St whether to P to remote future others or only to non-discountable present aspato asis well future e. whether to possible others. The latter would make the principle completely unand others, future It ysK" ^nled in des<gning anaJ ). "ple ™' last m,„ « u,,, ,k 1 -1/.'l;· nr semantical workable, and it is generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others. ,( ., ■ „di examples to basic chauvinist principles, that a It is taken for granted in designing counter ·~ .....-<;,_ semantical analysis of permissibility and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations , ... ~#... ideal some in (which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds situation, what is obligatory in every id.:al situation, and what is wrong is excluded in every ideal situation. But the mam point to grasp for the counter example\ that follow, is that ethical principles if correct are universal and are assessed over the class of ideal situations. -(i) The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system lays about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you like, as a• the best abattoirs). What he doc~ 1s quite permissible according to ba 1c chauvinism, but on environmental ground~ what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to regard Mr Last Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that raof corresponding in' advance dical thinking and values have shifted in an environmental usurne direction ’’ ^""oplos shifts in the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles}. (ii) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example. We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects have blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rul!! out «rcorre p„ that what these people do harms or somehow physically interferes with later people. the spossibility Otherwise one could as well 1..ons1der science fiction cases where peoole arrive at a new planet and »™ ^“xxi™r <"■■— ^.^ ^ sssh ss ±“ ™.™««. oS «’Srr "”'be “ ” “c,v A ™88eZ™1£„XXe°' rw S,SCUre ss?wX".“ . ,.. ___ X;»,XyrXt“ber ® S “ xxr •' xe xz^x z “:zz:::?“~ssss fgs 5 A related principle is that (m d11ieJ •,.., •.,r.i ..,, »c can operate "ith,n similar limits 207 207 WIMI iWlliMMW-l-i destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell of it. Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and all remaining forests disappear in favour of quarries or plantations, and so on. They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an en­ vironmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wreck­ ed place. But this conduct may conform with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the principles enjoined by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or co­ operation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons”, the variant is still environmentally inadequate. (iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since he much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur’s behaviour is on the Western ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better off’. Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this ex­ ample to the industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours. (iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic pic­ ture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up­ set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist: nor need whale hun­ ting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the blue whale example are provided by cases where a species is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man’s activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite permissible-at least according to basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not. However the free-market mechanism will not cease allocating whale^ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the blue whale population is no longer viable—if that point has not already been passed. In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren’t en­ vironmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respected in dustrialists, fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading ac tivities of the sort described, in a morally impermissible way ? No. what these people do is to a greater or lesser extent evil, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible. For example, insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who stand in the way of an industrial development is morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is the slaughter of the last remain­ ing blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvinism as a satisfactory 6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in 131 2^°;™ pn"c,p e ls 3 morc d,flku11 matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude speciepide. It may be preferable, m view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof, simply to scrap it altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct, as in a bill of rights. rei2tsArhadRaJ change-ri" a ^eory some,,mcs forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which jects the Reference Theory tn 4 thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmen­ tally important notions, such as conservation, pollution, growth and preservation, for meta-ethical analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such characteristic actions as natural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and per­ missibility to rights; it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as \alue and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejec­ tion of many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a verv brie! examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some major positions,7 Hart (in |5|) accepts, subject to defeating conditions which are here irrelevant, the classical doctrine of natural rights according to which, among other things, ‘any adult human ... capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons’. But this sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an environmental ethic rejects, since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same defective principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the classical notion of a natural right, a far from straight forward matter now that human rights with respect to animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major re-evaluation. An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees have rights (though such a view is occasionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right not to be mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has in­ terests. Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can (significantly) have rights, and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth, to practically anything at all. r J The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions typica ly employ a single criterion p. such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum; characteristically each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps including future humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of afTairs, of the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in terms of individual prankings, and what is best or ought to be done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism, in terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking. The species bias is transparent from the selection of the base class. And even if the base class is extended to embrace persons, or even some animals (at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing P°’ntS arC deVdOped by thOSC protcstin« about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that the whole of the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust principles. For example if every member of the base class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes’ behaviour, then by the Pareto ranking test the collective ranking will rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the evaluation of most Australian farmers anyway). Likewise it would just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective demand (horizontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy with blue whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then ‘‘rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi­ sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for deciding on what is environmentally desirable. These ethical and economic theories are not alone in their species chauvinism; much the same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the base class; on a social justice picture rights and obligations spring from the application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the ~^^base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on a Kantian position which has some * v^gue obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the base class, persons. In each case if members of the base class happen to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class then that is too bad for them: that is (rough) justice. REFERENCES 1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966). 2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished). 3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the Problem, New York (1972). 4. S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), Animals, Men and Morals. 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It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's relations to the natural environ­ ment, in Leopold's words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it’ ([1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling ethics do not deal with man's relation to nature: they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as he pleases, i.e. his relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect others, are not subject to moral censure. Thus assertions such as ‘Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees’ are significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.1 It is to this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex­ ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that an extension of traditional morality is required to cover such cases, to fill a moral void. If Leopold is right in his criticism of prevailing conduct what is required is a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations. For as matters stand, as he himself explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the woods off a 75% slope,turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall,rocks, andsoil into the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society.’ ([1]), p.245) Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism. Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a 1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits 2 To the consternation .nodoubt of Quineans. But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary systems the identity of which may be indeterminate 205 is, near enough: ~ propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which includes ( like md1v1duals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general evaluative Ju~gements co~cermng conduct, typically of what is obligatory, permissible and wrong of_ what ~re rights, what _is valued, and so forth. A ~eneral or lawlike proposition of a system is ~ prmc1ple, and certainly 1f syst~ms S, and S2 contam different principles, then they are different systems. It foll?ws t~at any environmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlined. Moreo~er 1f environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principle embedded m Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming wh~t _seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environm~ntai eth1_c 1s needed then a new ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide environmental counter examples to it. It is com_monly assu_med that_ there are. what amount to, core principles of Western ethical ~ystems, principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed ~n the Golden Rule provides o~e example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core principle, ts the . commonly formulated hberal pnnc1ple of the modified dominance position .. A recent for: · " • "'• ,;, /'' /,'. / ~·- - ·· ..._ mulation 5 runs as follows ( [ 3 I, p. 58): . 'The liberal philosophy of the Wes tern world holds that one should be able to do what he wishes, prov1dmg ( 1) that he d0es not harm orhers and (2) that he is not likely to harm himself irreparably.' Let us call this principle basic (human) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people. co_me_ first and everyt_hmg else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom pnnc1ple becaus~ 1t gives perm1ss1on to perform a wide range of actions (including actio.ns which mess_ up the ~nv1ronment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to c_unn_mgly shift the onus of pro?fto others. It is worth remarking that harming others in the restrict10n 1s narrower than a restnct1on to the (usual) interests of others; it is not enough that it is in my mterests, because. I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being anyway, because 1t does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to exactly what counts as harm or mter_ference. Mor~over the width of the principle is so far obscure because 'other' may be fill~d. out m s1gmficantly different ways: it makes a difference to the e~tent, and privilege, of the cha~vm1s~ whe~her '.other' _ex~ands to 'other human' - which is too restrictive - or to 'other'person or to _other sent1~nt be1~g ; and 1t mak~s a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its economic apphcab1hty, to which class of others it is intended to apply whether to future as well as to present others, whether to remote future others or only to non-discountable future others, a?d. whether to possible others. The latter would make the principle completely unworkable, and 1t 1s generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others. ' //4-_ ItIt_ is taken for granted. in_ d_e_signing counter examples to basic chauvinist principles, that a ....,. /..~..., . ( sem_antical analysis of perm1ss1b1hty and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations r.,.·-=-"'t.. :.;1 -c.: , · ~/:_ (".~-htch may be mcon:iplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some ideal ideal every in s1tuat10n, what 1s obl_1gato_ry in every ideal situation, and what is wrong is excluded ~1tuat10n. But the_mam pomt to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles · t· 1f correct are umversal and are assessed over the class of I·deal s1tua ions. (') Th z collapse of the world system the 1 _survi~ing perso~) (or man e as_t ma~ e~a~ple. The last lays ~bout him, ehmmatmg, ~s far as he can, e~ery !tvmg th_mg, animal or plant (but painlessly if iou hke, a~ at the best abattoirs). What he does 1s qmte permissible according to basic chauvinism ut on envir?nmental grounds what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be commit~ ~~d \o e~ot~nc values to regard M'.. Las_t Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that ra~cfa th mkmg a nd val~es have shifted m an environmental direction in advance of corresponding s .. 1 ts m the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles). (u) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example. We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects h_a~~ blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rule out ~e pos~1b1hty that what these pe~ple d~ harms or somehow physically interferes with later people. therwise one could as well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet and single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on controversial issues such as infanticide, women's rights and drugs, there are competing sets of principles. Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have. Indeed Passmore (in [2]) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views concerning man's relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views. The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the mainstream Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are inconsistent with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserved from substantial human interference, whether of the "improving" sort or not. Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and comfortable north-Europea n small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position man's proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; while on the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means that will deliberately degrade its resources. Although these positions both depart from the dominant position in a way which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible farmer, they do not go far enough: for in the present situation of expanding populations confined to finite natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas. Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a 3 principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used for human ends, "humanized". As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so straightforwa rd; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is riot always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assumption). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for m~ny thinkers, to have supplanted the dominant position; and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer's polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the stream. Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The position may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situation excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted. a ~pecific ethic, /§ 2. -As. we noticed----(a~ ethic is ambi~uous, as bet_ween a specifi~ ethical system, and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S ./ 3 If 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use p1 inciple is tied to the resource view of nature 4-A meta-elhic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions 5 A related principle is that (modified) free c.1tcrprise can operate I il 11 ,·thi'n s· -1 1- • 1m1 ar 1m11s 207 destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell of it. Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild ar,imal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and all ~emaining forests disappear in favour of quarries or plantations, and so on. They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an environmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wrecked place. But this conduct may conform with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the principles enjoined ·by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or cooperation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of reasons", the variant is still environmentally inadequate. (iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is improving outpJt to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since h~ much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being "better off'. Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this example to the industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours. (iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic picture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hunting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the blue whale example are provided by cases where a species is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man's activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The l?ehaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accqrdingly quite permissible-at least according to basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not. However the free-market mechanism will not cease allocating whal~[~ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental econo_mics would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the blue whale population is no longer viable-if that point has not already been passed. In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment _is more narrowly circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren't environmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respe~ted industrialists fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of ;he sort described, in a morally impermissible way~ No, what these people do _is to a greater or lesser extent evil, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible. For exampl_e, mso~ar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who stand in the way of an mdustnal development is morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is _the slau~hter of the last_ remaining blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvm1sm as a satisfactory 6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in [31 freedom principle is a more difficult matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude specieside. It may be preferable , in view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof. simply to scrap it altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct. as in a bill of rights. § 3. A radical change in a {eory sometimes forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which rejects the Reference Theory in a thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmentally important notions, such as conservation, pollu1io11, growth and presen•atio11,for meta-ethical analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such characteristic actions as na1ural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and permissibility to rights: it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as i-alue and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejection o [ many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a very brief examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some major positions. 7 Hart (in I 5]) accepts. subject to defeating conditions which are here irrelevant, the classical doctrine of natural rights according to which. among other things, 'any adult human . .. capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons'. But this sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an em iron mental ethic rt::jects, since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the deflni1io11 of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same defective principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the classical notion of a natural right. a far from straight forward matter now that human rights with rcspc:ct to animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect to slaves not all that lon g ago, undergoing major re-evaluation. An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees have rights (though such a view is occa~ionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right n_ot to _be mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has interests . Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can (significantly) have rights. and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth. to practically anything at all. The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions typically employ a single criterion p, such as preference or happiness, as a summ.um_ bonu_m; characteristically each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps mcludmg future humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, 6f the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in terms of individual prankings, and what is best or ought to be done is determined either_ ~ire~tl~, as in act-utilitarianism under the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, asin rule-ut1lttanantsm, in terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking. The species bias is transparent from the selection of the base class. And even if the base class is extended to embr~ce persons. or even some animals (at the cost. like that of including remotely future humans, of losing 1 Some of thes< points arc developed by those protesting about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays collec!ed in I 4 I 9 ~ iii 208 WJ 6 14 209 testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that the whole of the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust principles. For example if every member of the base class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes’ behaviour, then by the Pareto ranking test the collective ranking will rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the evaluation of most Australian farmers anyway). Likewise it would just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective demand (horizontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy with blue whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then “rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi­ sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for deciding on what is environmentally desirable. These ethical and economic theories are not alone in their species chauvinism; much the same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the base class; on a social justice picture rights and obligations spring from the application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the _base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on a Kantian position which has some v v^gue obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the base class, persons. In each case if members of the base class happen to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class then that is too bad for them: that is (rough) justice. REFERENCES 1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966). 2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished). 3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the Problem, New York (1972). 4. S. and R.Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), A nimals, Men and Morals. An enquiry into the maltreatment of non-humans, London (1971). 5. H.L.A.Hart, ‘Are there any natural rights?’, reprinted in A.Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy, Oxford (1967). C'/■ClUi/! n /t'v'Tl tf-t / ^■nt's 'z 0/7 /#£■* O/^Z ^rfscr . J*. B? c ey-rzZ^ft. Z ZZzztZszL. , tZ/at-e-Zf/^ ; /f ?Z Sl’lff/Z' A0S fe 3 /c^^Z Z,z ZzZ L^f-4- ) /-^ // -------- ----------- ;.. ^z t e-'T— /) <LSfC t-x. e *<~Z^<--~ -f &'? } e- Xa^C^Tl f fs>\ . Zc'T- /ZZr^. t c*/'d />t^r*-( x X-C- ct'Ze^ &a L '—4. HA- ZZ> / Z^S. Zt Z&-'■?■&■'£ -, 4^ t J&-*. ro X, fle^ Si. ^ef/'Yrv Caf^ ---- )CS~ /pf" /J'ttx J 7 G-y 7 Jg; V JK-Ajtj <S\_Cc-O'/n--^> <2/- if y 1 ix j o vt/ hj ’ J) k t-C u, 1 <1 Sa-d- A ansi. OrttQ- &<v&tsx. J A Irt V- — 7 l>o!ri\f<i i&- ©a. * —, >1 /<^®./?v. /, z for * o^fh dUrl c^f'v^r *x 7&/I g fzZf c^e crftor. 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UgsTma ku-w-tins C^vZ i4! o Act rGJ < Cg/- z/^/zj Aa c't'wJ #4^ (Xi h i i"u^i'u Lt-1 /zo Zte^ > 0- i . ■X c- a-rt-fW^ have. o^e- 7 er o ’e £ PC- 1 in nmUCh at ,eaSt aS CrUSOe'S w-th —2£S^2SS SS=S=E-lg=:==ES maltreat the land, extract frontU>2 *"* 3 W,'dcrness',f taken to tnterfere with and does not rouse the moral indtgnL^n ofThey ’ C°ndUCt ” not Z^eyyero/ woods off a 75% slope, turns his cows intn rh»> •he „«k. „ SIi„ (ir otherwise dccenl) farmer who clears the <f^^- s a- z. // / A * /7~. z^r&sz A, / ' Z - — ^z4— C » Ci s t2"* 7^ ji /<t^/ <- f /'t ^ ~C ' f' /~ e^ttcfuc^ / /^b. f 0 /•> | it is none loo clear what is going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are not clearly articulated or al all well worked out. so that the application of identity criteria foi ethics may remain obscure. Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical sy stems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christen ethic, which is an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there are two,.other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethicszor that of the development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the /?<rf fff /> (Het-//'s-j Ilk > Ct at— single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on ckd«°T^a *ssues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin S’ T. ? nCW e^h‘C and Prevai,ln8 ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity that prevathng ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have. - r. . jM40/ Indeed Passmore (in |2|) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.-31 ' j i 7) el'f'r/rel-x rC-~ r* A. The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the mainstream Stoic^— Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious backdrop is removeej, eg. vv/zo is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are inconsistent with a ^environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth’s surface should be presen ed from substantial human interference, whether of the “improving” sort or not. Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and com fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position man’s proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect galiye - all nature eventually - by bringing out its potentialities, the test of perfection being ^usefulness for.human purposes: while on the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means that will deliberately degrade its resources./ '7Zu^ /fate- c.C^( 4c~S~ £^7 7c/<*-/'- /rw*. e-1 Cr*..s~y 7 7 , J - cvalua,,^. of an environmental ethic.oXs" coter^^ A t !(^ ; ^,l(he1SStmECXPa!’U"’g P?pula,ions eon,'^d ‘0 finite Indeeo these lesser traditions lead to what a thomnpho’ ‘dr‘”"lg anJ utl,izing ofall natural areas principle of total use,imping that every r-turJl X m ^v,ronmental othic would reject, a human ends, “humanized” ' area shou,d be ^‘^ted or otherw.se used 3 f v 3 rr • H use is extended, somewhat illicitly, to inciud. as regards its actual eftects. Note that the toU’ e •eSiCrVat‘<>n; thiS tOtal USe Princ‘P|c is rendered mocuous al least <»e pr , pie is tied to the resource view of nature , such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or’romantic, would be new aljigjiu The matter is r straightforward: for the dominant.ethic has been substantial!v uuaiitle^y the n&er that one is not always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically int^Tes \0tn peers'. 7 > proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the Goiyuuterference assump­ tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have supplanted the dominant position: and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further '* towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer's polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the stream. Likewise business enterprises which, destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [31) that blends with the modified position; /hcrt/t f'cd c-Z^x . may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is adequate as an environmental ethic, as I ^vall A new ethic is wanted, aoh/ 1, /T-- < zfre^e^ 7y 7> j7**u\ 5 /g^7rc> e*- /5> g Zte-Z*-^ a-rfCsC , 'sCett /J /tr ! t>7 f rCL , ioG-j . c s f~CT /fc. /•J2 crt-cc^ a m 7 7/ s e fJ Ifc,'-* 7 ■ is, near‘enough, a propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in dudes (like individuals of a theory > a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general evaluative judgements concerning conduct, typically of what is obligators permissible and wrong.'x* ! of what are rights, what is valued, and so forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a \ principle; and certamlv if systems S, and S2contain different principles, then they are different systems. It follows that anv en onmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlin ed. Moreover if environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principlaJL embedded in Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming. I what seems to be so. that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environmental ethic /s needed then a new- ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide environ mental counter examples to it z , /3^'f> Ji^f^ yt i« * Q-. V '5'" 7/ / Z/t-y -y ZLo c^-T V / C o-~f^ e o—•. /K^~ . are' w^at amount to, core principles of Western ethicaSR ? 1 7 accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed ' m the Golden Rule provides one example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core^&iple ' is the commonly formulated liberal principle ' / * ...2>^-.Yjr7 , /fol; >ws ( j 3J. p. 58): (D). The liberal philosophy of (he Western world holds that one should be able to d< □ what he wishes, providing (1) that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not likely to harm .himself jrreparablv.' ■ "Wf® /Ac7 7^— /zxc principle because it e.ves permission m st. some,im« the principle is haded as a freedom SESSSSSsasyr??”- •A?x chauvinism whether ‘other’ expands io ‘other h "* ' ■’ ' Ten' '° lhe c*Ient- antl Pn' 'lege, of the son* or toother sentient be.nXnd t makes aX" wh,chu’s t0° r^<ttive or Mother per verselj to its economic applicability to whieh I LrenrCe l.° the ar,e4uacy of the principle, and in future as well as present other" whether to r '55 ,° r°therS “? t0 ‘ w,lcther to future others, and whether to possible others Th -Th utur<J othefs or onl-v t0 non-discountable V and it is generally c /wf- e \ c) fff)Ct^ &J C'C. X ) 1. CAu^f ' b- / ^U4r<fc C 7 *4 & S f/'t J &&&!&&— ?£*~ ^KBMCfc. a/ fiU €t y^ < r- cC 7 ^C/>< Z__i___ * sC I y/L j (ft) f . } /a fC*2— z’vz/XLt,/ /XL x« /'c-^ anaivjfe of permissibility; £ 7 Zcz2—z obhgatio/falementsjstretc^. out over ideal mInations• (which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some idefl^fe situation, what is obligatory in every ideal situation, and what is wrong is excluded in every ideal ' ■ situation. But the main point to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles if correct are universal and are assessed over the class of ideal situations. ZSl ezn^Tfez- />?> b /> C&7 rr cX? eef ff (i) ’ The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system Zo eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you like, as at the best abattoirs). What he does is quite permissible according to f/)) but on environmental grounds what he does is wrong. Moreover pne d^gsjtot have to Ke commit ted to esoteric values to regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly, (the reason l^eing^crhapsthatra dica! thinking and values have shifted in an environmental direction in advance of corresponding shifts in the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles)./^ f /U, Corf MG /<€ C ifZ (ii) The last people example. The last man example can be . to the last people example. We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects have blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rule out the possibility that what these people do harms or somehow physically interferes with later people. Otherwise one could as well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet and ft}) destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, " and all remaining forests disappear in favour ofpatfuM or plantations, and so on. They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an en­ vironmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; £ qfXL/ }r ex/ s* e< 9 they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wreck­ ed place. But this conduct may conform with the ’ CCW (£>) Ccf'tC I ^cZ /y //I- /IZPCC-X c'LjruZ^ ~Z / / s/y i ■ jr.ru effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons’", the variant is still environmentally inadequate. (iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since he much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better ofT’. 7 /<L. , /tMVbcr^r, Z^> /7^ cx-yr .1 , C< /ctj'/ //’fr ) 7(3 /&- cL C ^^T- 77 toe-^ g rXl-rr^ ^/y) <L c7t Qr<g,*y/i/& , M zrzreX e*i SKfX&d ft C^ g<c /&- ^<XaY£- 77 ^1 4rc7jW4— ) f re/nctd lb— /f ... --*^g*._ K on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hun ting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the blue w'hale example are provided by cases where a speues is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man’s activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite permissible-at least according to basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not However the free-market mechanism will not cease allocating whale$ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics I would; instead the market r ynuX InGswkblj C/bf £?3 ) tr^Cjec(j-ep-HtL- Cornnc nJ 7 Ct/on(j e(.&^ Ma Jt>«f Cu-Ort- wd ?a6 J w*v7YY w/cX<2- * //> /t * ■J <Y // / Ara /jo f cjff c c , 7 i- ft-T X_S>'C''lf X-S" c x c^r^r Ca— „v z Xc< ✓ » . J ♦ 4 Zl. e/?o f M dyeeft (T& fd- Ci/c / Awl 7 ■J'yt jf vironmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respected in­ dustrialists, fishermen and farmers arc behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading ac tivities of the sort described, in a morally impermissible way? No, what these people do is to a 5 greater or lesser extent eviitand hence in serious vases morally impermissible. For example, insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primiioe peoples who stand in the way of an industrial development is morally indefensible and-^r* permissible, so also is the slaughter ol the last remain ing blue whale^for private profit,. , or fa & 1 j“'/z^4> i ■T.JS (X. (t^o-r<- a~ ^~h%AJ2-A Au—4^-, -vGtt^y ^-■-? —j—G\A<?-‘-*-k Cj^ /^tc /&rf SV-ev*^. 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(though such a view But pantheism is false For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object do^riot award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right not to be mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). 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Zv€>v^_^ <_<_ x^-aZ-xA' 0 5 <3^ tX,L 4Z <^/ 4b»-ULk /h <-<&— e2 \> c-^^uuxxi 78 t A__ -V  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 15, item 1721: Notes and cuttings on environmental ethics Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Subject The topic of the resource Handwritten notes and annotated photocopy (2 copies) of Routley R (1973) 'Is there a need for a new, an environmental, ethic?', Proceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy, 1:205-210. Description An account of the resource Title in collection finding aid: Blue Folder containing more of the same . Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span><span>,</span> Box 15, item 1721 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [68] leaves. 62.47 MB. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:62d159c" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:62d159c</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Second Bookcase > Third Shelf > Second Pile Box 15: Green Projects in Progress https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/b621a0cc825817baa2733c0711227cea.pdf 75dfb9e06db0b9033822e454a690eaa0 PDF Text Text 1165 PARADIGMATIC ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not be adequately addressed. Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade, impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more satisfactory answer can be broached. Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems, and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers, fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the present investigation. . . . A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking, philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental news. 3.7.95 �2 PARADIGMATIC ROOTS of ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Broaching focal questions, and searching for deeper answers. Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate (liquidation of natural forest systems affords just one striking example). In modem times humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system degradation. Often in the past they would not have seen such transformation as mattering, many remain so programmed, regarding transformation as increasing wealth (a presumption encouraged under mainstream economics). More recently dominant human cultures have developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through need, tax impositions, pressure to engage in cash economies, and so on) and which weave entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, councils, courts, educations, missions, and so on). Whence arises an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More explicitly, why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their environments, their own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a long period, destroy their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps in jeopardy through human enterprise? For those eager to anticipate the main outcome, the unremarkable answer to be eventually found to these focal questions is in essence this: because too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, remain committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigm?, diverse paradigms but all displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the earth. Parts of any answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies, and so on. While such answers are important, and often correct as far as they go in combination, and while they may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are nonetheless somewhat superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do not explain why a community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or why it is so resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes. Less superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to 1 In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Contrary to other sources, such as Marshall, humans are by no means the only biological species that proceed to degrade or impoverish their own environments. Introduced “pest” species, such as rabbits and mynahs in the Antipodes, also do so; perhaps some botanical species contrive to as well. �3 pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood­ production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”, and market ideology does economic practice, even so-called “environmental economics”.2 An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea­ systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever. Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent s routing procedures. Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding topography on action space. Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also correlatively give permission—as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize. But paradigms do even more; they facilitate explanation, above all they make understanding possible. In these regards, they may work for better as well as for worse. Thus it is not a matter of getting rid of them, were this even feasible, but of getting right paradigms. The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures, creeds, ideologies, pervasive myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a technical sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of humans are governed by background ideosystems. It is in terms of these background ideosystems that a great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments can be explained, what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4 That explanation comes not however through a single paradigm, as has too often been supposed in trying to answer focal questions, but through a bundle of somehow aligned paradigms. Compare how a person may be represented, in social science, not through a single 2 3 4 For more on this style of explanation, see further RP. It is not, going to be contended that religion—or a certain Abramic religion, such as Christianity—is the main villain of the environmental piece. It is now well enough appreciated that religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from ancient philosophies. What will however, be suggested is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in this regard. Further, as logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to overlap. How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or superficial explanation, of them. As well, positivistic theories show, though in an oversimplified way, how models, which paradigms are, serve in explanation justification and understanding. See e.g. Hanson. �4 role or program, but by way of a set of interconnected roles. What has been regularly overlooked in seeking deeper paradigmatic sources of environmental problems is systematic plurality. In part this neglect of plurality can be explained through countervailing propensity to seek single answers, and to try to locate uniqueness, where however causes and sources are plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are plural. As to what is going on theoretically, there is a fairly complex story to be told, an easier working image for which is appropriately ecological. That image focusses upon the structure of a perhaps impenetrable thicket or tangle, such as a dense rainforest patch, or, itself simplified, a fig or bamboo thicket. Below an emergent top layer representing the problems concerned, those raised by the focal questions, there is the canopy layer, of interlinked proximate causes. Below that again stands a plurality of stems, plural supports, which can be construed as supporting sources, and below them again, ultimately sustaining the whole structure, a multiplicity of intertwined roots, representing paradigmatic basics. What is sought are ultimate sources, and roots, not immediate causes. The cause of local pollution may be a factory that an agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea­ structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and sources. Nonetheless there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are ‘‘A is source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated? While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or developments virtually none of it addresses the question of what is meant by the partially buried metaphors of roots and sources . One striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful introductory text, The Roots of Modem Environmentalism. Although this text presents itself specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots metaphor on which it turns. For that matter there is no direct account of what the roots of environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental problems to which environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much oblique material). It is apparent also that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots metaphor, throwing it into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to mean simply elements (from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme of reconciliation of freedom and authority’ (p. 193). Such usage is unsound. Because rudiments of some idea make an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may not have arrived at such an idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where they did quite independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or (genetic) causal linkage into a mere temporal conjunction: post hoc, propter hoc. Neither roots nor sources are mere beginnings or simply early occurrences; there have to be continuing connections, with directional relationships such as supply or sustenance. But for �5 roots and sources different connections and elaborations are to be expected. After all, the metaphors, and likewise what they give rise to, are evidently different; more literally, plants have roots, normally below them, springs and streams rise from sources, not roots, often above them, and so on. Both differ from another popular basis-beginning buried metaphor, that of foundations. Foundations bring in other features such as solidity, stability and comparative permanency, while severing critical transmission features (for foundations may merely passively support, not sustain supported superstructure). So foundations, for all their importance in epistemology and elsewhere if foundationalism is correct, can be set aside. So far dictionaries do better than popular and philosophical texts. For instance, a short listing for the figurature use of ‘root’ runs: ‘the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc. (Concise English Dictionary). Such a two component account will serve nicely, for a start. However conjunctions should substantially displace disjunctions, else roots could collapse to foundations or could collapse to mere trace element supplements. Roots both give a basis and bottom binding into a substratum and supply sustenance and means of development. Roots connections are richer as well as more specific than sources, which may merely show from where an item comes or is obtained. Further that place of derivation that may not be a basis or bottom, but for instance a source­ book. With roots, like normal foundations, a basis or bottom is reached, whereas sources may have further sources (hence the search for ’‘deeper”, even ultimate, sources). Finally, root and source connections carry explanations, at least genetic explanations—concerning how items got to be what and the way they are—because roots and sources are characteristically that from which items develop. Sometimes even more information, including a whole control system, gets transmitted. As much happens where roots are paradigmatic, to return to that strange mix of buried metaphors. Reaching deeper roots is important. Without locating them, perhaps all the roots (should they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at these, cutting them off or replacing them, will also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. Such is the fate of many proposals concerning environmental problems. There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaboratedincluding a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions, and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal questions. But we can be brief on these necessary preliminaries, because main details are already in circulation and because they have been addressed elsewhere. 1. Problems and paradigms. 5 Despite a referee’s suggestion that discussion of “roots” ‘could be improved by a contrast of the “roots” metaphor with the “foundations” metaphor, the fact is that we are decidedly not concerned with foundations of environmental problems; to the contrary, we do not wish to see them supported (if shoddily), established and so on. On the growing complexity and varying interpretations offoundations, an emergent bog, see for instance Chisholm. �6 Although these will be duly connected, with paradigms implicated in problems, they are different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation. la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions. Definitions of ‘environmental problem’, and classifications of such problems, have already been ventured.6 What problems emerge as environmental depends upon background value framework. What counts as a major problem on deeper environmental perceptions may be but a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such indicator problems, ones here taken as serious problems, are those of • sustaining biodiversity and • maintaining significant wilderness.7 Even if the broad impact of human enterprise were sufficiently reduced to guarantee comfortable survival of future humans, these desiderata may well not be guaranteed. There would be outstanding problems. In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are (at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how they might be resolved. Environmental impact equations, encountered in a more perceptive classification of problems, reveal how they can be resolved. Namely, by altering relevant impact parameters. Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very little spent, despite all the talk.8 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys us, are not however satisfactory stopping points. How is it, given so much scientific information and expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially destroying, their habitats. To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on offer or to be met in an extensive literative. As we will soon discover, most of these answers are too simple; and taken, as intended, as comprehensive, they are wrong. Correct answers to the questions are however important, because if we fail to get to the bottom of the issues, there is even less prospect of satisfactory action to mm around a difficult and deteriorating situation. That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships, or how many devaluing dollars uncaring humans can briefly stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of habitats—these sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence) derive from and are supported by particular ideologies. lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on. A paradigm can be explicated, technically, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.9 6 7 8 9 See for example GE, which duly details connections of the problems with impact equations and proximate solutions. As to the extent of the problem (even) in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The Wildlands Project. See e.g. The cost of past environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24. See RP, where many environmentally relevant illustrations are given and explained. �7 That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a general system, i.e. semantical and other evaluations defined on an integrated relational structure. Naturally it is required to be faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms, scientific research programs, or whatever. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and action theory, the socio-political themes and value judgements, is that of a social group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part of the life-styles and life-forms of the community concerned. There are now many examples of formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures; from these, mostly sketchy formulations we can work back towards the underlying models. The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a complex universal10 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g. metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists, historians and geographers have repeated one another in vaguely discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures under different categorisations: thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of consciousness (Marx), of life (Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes (Conant), presuppositions (Collingwood), discursive formations (Foucault), Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess), traditions (MacIntyre), traditions of thought, cultures, perspectives, outlooks, ideologies, programs, .... An ideology, for instance, in the non-derogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideas- system, initially a propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative, from which a paradigm can be discerned and elaborated. Such models are typically presented in extremely truncated form, for example through a tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example: TABLE 1: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant paradigm: an initial capsule formulation -11 Taoism Deep Ecology Dominant (Western) Paradigm Harmony with nature, through Tao Harmony with nature Domination over nature Nature valuable in itself; “humanism” rejected Natural environment valued for itself Nature a resource; intrinsic value confined to humans 10 11 It resembles a structured universal; compare e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex ideas. Naturally there are differences between, for instance, traditions (of thought) which are historically bound, cultures, which are geographically and otherewise connected, and conceptual schemes (where a conceptual reduction is insinuated), but all are, at logical bottom, models of paradigmatic sort. This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly expanded. �8 Levelling of differences; wide impartiality Biocentric egalitarianism Human supremacy Supplies ample Earth supplies limited Ample resources with substitutes Following Tao-te Spiritual goals, especially self-realisation Material economic growth a predominant goal Enlightenment Self-realisation Personal (material) enrichment Doing with enough (recycling inappropriate) Doing with enough; recycling Consumerism Non-competitive lifestyle; voluntary simplicity Cooperative lifestyle Competitive lifestyle Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus Decentralised/bioregional /neighbourhood focus Centralised/urban centred/ national focus Hierarchy without power structure; anarchoid Non-hierarchical/ grassroots democracy Power structure hierarchical Limited technology Appropriate technology High technology Considerable caution Precautionary practice Risking taking (verging upon adventurism) Paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; under an earlier analogy, red and green lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations and prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modem ideologies, eschews deontic judgements.) Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors' worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world. In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads (or rather consciousnesses) have to be changed, not rolled. 2. Proposed answers to focal questions: a preliminary classification of inadequate answers and suggested remedies. Most of the extraordinary range of answers proposed supply but a single source, and are accordingly defective for this reason, usually among other reasons. Indeed it is not much of an exaggeration to assert that virtually everything proposed, in a now extensive literature, is wrong. TABLE 2. Main tabulation of answers and remedies , in three stages. D. Defective practice answers Source Remedy Objections �9 DI. Ignorance Relevant information Information now available D2. Unintended consequences Relevant information Information now available D2a Faulty technique, or technology Repairs Repairs already made D3 Deviation (from theory, etc.) Education (for failure to limit deviance) Adherence a. Deviation uneliminable, or b. Adherence no remedy D4. Systemic lock-in (through poverty, ensnarement in market forces, etc.) Trap removal a. Explains only certain cases, and b. Due to paradigmatic features D5. Insensitivity or insensibility Problem apprised Remedy tried; background ideological blockage D3a When pursued, objections like those noted either force defective practice out as unsatisfactory, or push it back to paradigmatic features. Source single paradigm Remedies proposed (among others) Pl. Christianity (mainstream Catholicism) Scientific enlightenment, or alternative (Eastern) religion Pla. Protestantism and its ethic P2. P2a Cartesianism Dualism Anti-dualism P2b Mechanism Organicism P. Defective paradigm answers Substance metaphysics P3. P3a Possessive individualism P3aa Personalism Monism Modified holism Process metaphysics Non-reductionism Transpersonalism P4. Capitalism Socialism P5. Industrialism Pre-industrialism (romanticism) Post-industrialism P5a Technocratic bureaucracy P5aa. Transnational business P6. Enlightenment Anti-enlightenment Anti-materialism �10 P6a Materialism Spiritualism P8. P9 Patriarchy, andocentrism Human domination of humans Feminism Anti-domination (anti-hierarchy) Observe that what some have proposed as remedies, others have seen as sources; remedies proposed tend to share defects of sources. PS. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject specific or partial) include: Typical remedy suggested Source Platonism Leibnitzianism Kantianism Anglo-American philosophy12 Utilitarianism Economism (economic imperialism as New metaphysics New metaphysics Consequentialism Continental philosophy Alternative ethics New social science; ethics contrasted with straight economic roots) Contractarianism Consequentialism Domination transfer Domination removal Human nature (esp. aggression) Adolescencism Infantilism (from Freudian physchology) Maturation Maturation And so on. A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in dominant Western thought. Then many—perhaps it is not excessive to say most—entries in that list will have been nominated, likely separately, by someone as the source of the problems. That list accordingly continues (even including, sometimes, entries like Taylorism, i.e. reorganisation of industry along lines popularized by Taylor), but what is included is representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other allegedly nonparadigmatic answers however, varying from interesting to crazy, that should also be taken into some account, for instance answers like Shepard’s challenging answer. Although Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false cast. Strange answers include pushing it all back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard, but also Fox, and Ehrlich and other gurus with insistence upon ‘mental maladaptation’). 12 The mainstream form, analytic philosophy, appears to comprise empiricism-cum-utilitarianism in Britain, tempered in America by pragmatism. �11 Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick —in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, along psychological routes, that are to be resisted. One slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not physically usually, it must be mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad. But the sources of mental sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide continues to: what we have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No doubt there is something to the theme that dominant societies, USA especially (which now influences so much in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive adolescence.13 No doubt, too, that maturity—but an environmental maturity—is desirable, even mandatory. Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society, to spend their money through tourism, on new compact housing, in those most wasteful of modem institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth. 3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources. Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat perfunctory, tending here and there towards notes. Of course there are excuses. While whole theses could be spun out on several of these topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a prime objective here is different from usual: neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to partially implicate most items cited in the main tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of the usually accredited sources: • Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems, ‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over nature’, was repeated in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.14 One helpful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows: Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development, however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns’, namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress, 13 14 It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in the Appendix . White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall, snowed. �12 a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action, not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will. Because today's attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it ‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.15 What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more sensitive and telling criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.16 Similar responses are apposite for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy. Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ... responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection today. ... Religion ... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.17 • Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1) prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not impossible.18 More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies. • Cartesian philosophy. 15 16 17 18 The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue continues to be debated; for an older survey of traditions see Passmore, for a challenging recent contribution to the debate see Callicott. Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms: Ask, not merely what they say, but what they do, and would do. For an outline of just such a telling criticism of mainstream Christianity, see Singer esp. pp.265-8. Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help expose. Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really, while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted. There is a much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of the very different roles and impacts of Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans, and of neo-Platonists. For a modest beginning, see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands. �13 denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes, upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.19 While Descartes was undoubtedly extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such. Evidently it substantially overlaps other modem ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment, widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems. • Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others (some potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is presented is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly exhibiting a heavy Heideggerean influence: . The roots of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode (sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present, the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a “natural resource” —and people become “human resources . The sources of anthropocentricism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can all be traced back to metaphysics. Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering, exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as vestigial traces. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system. We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually ensconced technocratic rationalism.20 An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics, characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions or mere Western seeds. Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or plenum metaphysics.21 19 20 21 For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising Drengson’s exposition, see RP, table 5. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy. Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘rejecting] in its entirety mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmcntalj problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies’ (thus Bellett). This charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep Ecology (now included in UTD). For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews. �14 • Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’ (e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those of modern mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and theistic scholastic hang-overs). • Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were revealed), can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production.22 But, as observed, a main embedded theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the idea of nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ’Now if nature makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all animals for the sake of man’.23 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species. The theme was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in shallower Stoicism. But the subjection of everything to utility, no doubt a relative of capitalism, appears to be a distinctively modem contribution. • Modern industrial society or industrialism. Modem industrialism (‘the smooth­ superhighway of industrial progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme: ‘... the root causes of the present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial paradigm’.24 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of modem industrial society’.2526Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed The popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial technology can without any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as, 22 23 24 25 26 It should not be overlooked that some of those who nominated metaphysics meant thereby paradigm or paradigms or an equivalent. But what they may gain thereby in verisimilitude, they tend to lose in confusion. Grundrisse p.409f. Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further Hargrove p.25. M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature”’, a paper presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and more broadly the environment itself (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the evident problem. Gabriel ibid. Similarly industrialism is assumed as the source throughout McLaughlin (the theme pervades his book) and as the root of the modem problem in Marshall (p.5ff). While seriously astray as to roots and sources, those critical of industrialism have a significant case. For, as well as functioning as a major inflator of intact problems, industrialism has helped generate side problems of its own, as with new types of chemical and nuclear pollution. Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2. �15 less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes, what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice. • Economic growth or economic development. ‘According to a common and currently influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots’.27 One widespread misconception is that economic growth is the source of environmental problems. The assumption is astray for several reasons. For one, growth is at best a proximate cause, itself in need of explanation. More importantly, growth may occur in sectors of an economy, such as information technology or religious or artistic services, which have little or no environmental impact. Also conversely, an economy which fails to grow, but is desperately trying to survive, may exact heavy environmental costs (e.g. the forests are clear-felled to pay for continuing employment). No doubt though, stock economic growth is intimately intricated with proximate causes of environmental problems (through environmental impact equations). Similar considerations tell against the familiar proposition that the source of the problems is economic development itself or, what is different, the entrenched model of economic development. While it is no doubt correct, and important to emphasize, that ‘the Western model of economic development, far from being the solution to’ environmental and social problems, is ‘actually fuelling’ them, it is not the sole or distinguished source of the problems.28 • Human nature. "... the roots of our ecologic crisis reach beyond the variable topsoil of intellectual history, whether Eastern or Western, into the common substrata of human nature itself.’29 What such “nature” amounts to and how it functions as roots, both commonly left obscure, turns upon background hypotheses as to the nature of this nature. Different false 27 28 29 Goodin, p.573. While not contesting the theme, Goodin does continue: ‘the problem is not just that there are too many people, or even that they are enjoying too high a standard of living. All that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives as they pursue their various goals’ (p.573). That too will be seen to be seriously astray, though it contains large grains of truth; it presumes unchanged the prevailing economically-skewed dominant social paradigm. Both socialists and other opponents of capitalistic conspicuous consumption tend to select the living-standard component of the main environmental impact equation as the source of the crisis. Thus Cuban luminary, Castro, in a recent stunningly succinct speech: ‘Less luxury, less wastage. Otherwise it will be too late’. Quoting claims of E. Goldsmith, advanced in an interview in Forest and Bird 273 (August 1994) pp.46-7. The need for emphasis will persist while locally prominent political figures like the present Prime Minister of Australia travel around the Earth with the hackneyed message that only economic growth will solve environmental problems. Seeing growth as the problem affords only a superficial analysis, like that of pointing to overconsumption with which growth is interconnected. As deeper inquiry reveals, underlying both issues of economic growth, employment and consumption, and alternatives taken, are models, paradigmatic models. Growth is but a means to objectives assumed in the dominant paradigm. A deeper analysis shows too why more growth will not ultimately solve relevant problems. Callicott and Ames, ‘Epilogue: On the relation of idea and action’ p.282 (see also p.281), in a desperate and apparently unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the claim (repeatedly advanced in their book) that Asian traditions of thought can make a significant contribution to much improved treatment for natural and built environments, with ‘the deplorable environmental conditions prevailing in contemporary Asia’ (p.280). �16 hypotheses, that humans are invariably driven by aggression, sexual or reproductive imperatives, economic needs, yield different defective accounts. In Catholic orthodoxy such a source, human nature, comes burdened with original sin; the source of a sweep of problems, including now environmental ones, is “man’s fallen nature”. That astonishing source also comes contaminated, as for instance gender biassed. • Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.30 ‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.31 One sample linkage statement runs as follows: there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both historically and ... presently] and ... this is the same energy that, turned against the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly destroying the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that consume the Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches and I believe that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless we simultaneously address our gender issues.32 Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes: • Human domination and exploitation of humans'. It is an extraordinarily widespread assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend-setters, including Marcuse, Illich, Passmore, Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from deep-seated social problems’.33 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus: all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology. Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships 30 31 32 33 Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a more critical assessment see the sequel to GE. See Seed, quoted in the sequel to GE; also Salleh (e.g. in EP3). John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91. Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along with unrelational property claims. Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination of nature always results from humans’ domination of other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346). The text EP3 contains a sizeable section providing a useful introduction to social ecology. �17 —domination of nature thus following from human domination’.... It follows that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a harmonious man-nature relationship.34 Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the dominated. • A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.35 • Modern educational systems: Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems. Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as, so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.36 Therewith we are transported full circle back to defective practice answers. 4. A selective commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two stages reflecting a major division in the main tabulation. ad D. Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them. (Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.) Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time, perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While “consequences” or outputs such things as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying ‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste­ watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of their industry. That should now be a rotten joke, itself with serious consequences. Accordingly new ecological economics insists that we dig deeper—without however exceeding economic settings or a shifting dominant paradigm—to discover why markets may 34 35 36 Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given humans could so socially organise, that they could settle into harmonious small-scale communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments. Such a proposition obtains a much fuller elaboration within Plumwood. In an interesting way, such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion reached below that a set of defective paradigms is at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by a set of them in each case, somewhat as numbers can be represented in binary terms, generated from a basic two-oneness duality. Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see GE �18 foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.3738Where they usually arrive, travelling within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics before ecological, at better regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of plans and incentives, controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do not reach very deep, or tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources. But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure, environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries, namely that true, or authentic, Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been, environmental consequences would be little better, given the heavy industrial commitments and environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.3^ Differently, enlightenment liberals like Passmore try to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in mainstream theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence to these “well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains of its wilderness and remarkable diversity. Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting (collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts like Topsoil and Civilization and Agricultural Origins and Dispersal) of degradation of prime agricultural lands by imposed farming practices, where at least early on (before damage became visible) ignorance and unintended consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most historical cases we do not have enough information to be able to say with much assurance that agriculture proceeded until effective collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because practices were locked-in in one way or another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know more about present agricultural practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia, concerning both irrigated and dry-land agriculture. Many of these practices are undoubtedly sharply degrading lands, and the consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend ignorance, are sufficiently appreciated. But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a sweep of subsidies or concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim that they are locked into bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their control such as financial pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the need to make a living. But some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make no such claims or excuses, nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place, and similar. Their obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not 37 38 Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24. It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have their property confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who made those points, also observed). �19 deviation from theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm. ad P and PS. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed, business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few broad themes: 1. Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example, substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and so forth). To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not, on its own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges, link principles, from metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy operates. Thus subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of environmental problems which take them as derived from metaphysics of one sort or another. Such a criticism does not however extend to more comprehensive paradigms which connect appropriately with practice. 2. While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on39)—none are necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different paradigms; for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms, Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism. At this stage in dialectic, green history and the like—bio-history, eco-history, and related virtual histories (concerning what would have happened)—enter decisively. For instance, Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and ecological fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also conveniently documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological degradation or collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms.40 An important example (much less speculative than some of the numerous other examples because of a comparative wealth of primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples—Polynesian, Mayan, Sumerian and others—also reveal is that no very high level of technology is needed to inflict serious environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological project (with nothing directly to 39 40 While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to have the means, and so on. Ponting’s valuable though rather simple book is but one of several bleak texts. Another is Hillel’s, and there is a succession of earlier classic works by geographers: Lowdermilk, Dale, Mallory, Thorp and others. In general however, geographers and historians do not dig deep enough, to paradigmatic roots. �20 do with basic needs) will suffice. Other cultures did wreak, or would (given the technology and numbers, both of which some were gaining) have wreaked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination, megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established, and expanding, before (or effectively outside) the rise of modem Western paradigms, or in extensive regions outside their influence. 3. The list of paradigms, as so far assembled, is substantially Western in orientation. Moreover environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources wrongly. For nonWestem paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese chauvinism).41 Or consider Islam, with its reach across the Middle East and beyond. The main tabulation (of table 2) should accordingly be extended to take due account of non-Westem paradigms, including for example: Other Abrahamic religions Islam Judaism Confucianism Shintoism Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island. What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic. Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in, or encouraged by, religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent. 4. All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms. While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements, such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism though Descartes, for all his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.) Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modem rationalism and much else. 41 Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large fauna worldwide. �5. A general method of showing the inadequacy of all the paradigmatic answers tabulated, and others, is familiar from logical theory: namely, the method of counter-models, of which the counter-examples (under head 2) provide special cases. A presently important illustration concerns patriarchy as a source of environmental woes. Counter-models reveal the substantial independence of mistreatment of women and mistreatment of environmental items such as animals or ecosystems. One the one hand, it is easy to envisage situations, not far from the actual in some regions, where the lot of women is significantly improved, but the lot of environmental items is not (e.g. men change their behaviour and attitudes relevantly as regards women, are forced to change, or whatever); just such an outcome would accord with persisting human chauvinism. More relevant, on the other, there are situations where the position of environmental items is much improved, for instance under much more careful husbandry, but that of women is not, for one reason or another (e.g. they remain other, different, second class, etc.). It follows from the elaboration of such counter-models that patriarchy is not the source of environmental problems, as there can be continuing patriarchy without the present range of environmental problems (problems can dry up while patriarchy continues to operate). There is no need to deny that patriarchy as (contingently) practised, with its sweeping supremacist attitudes which make no due distinctions between inferior items, may be a major contributing factor in present problems. Such slack contingent conjunctions do not convert to roots or sources. Similarly with other social roots of environmental problems, for instance with human domination of humans as the supposed source of all problems. 5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation. Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences in calibre, in environmental friendliness. For example, Cartesianism which regards animals as mere automata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life­ forms and their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience. The family is not exclusively Western, nor somewhat more plausibly Northern, even though as a result of forces like migration, colonialism and cultural imperialism, paradigms of these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and of third world communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally and regionally. Nor are major inflators of environmental problems essentially Western. Industrialization and technological advance—neither intrinsically Western, both manifested in varying degrees in other cultures—are, without much doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from �22 rather localised ones, damaging for instance islands and river catchments, to grander and even global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems, generating thereby spin­ off problems as well. But, once again, they are not deeper sources, but only means. (For again push questioning deeper, and ask: why bother or persist with industry, the effort and dirt and mess involved?) Nor, however, did they run on their own, nor do they continue on their own. Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.42 They evolved primarily in the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could have occurred, and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as state socialism or post-imperial Confucianism. Now however these engines have been rendered more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transformed to run in less favourable settings. Thus inflation can escalate from a multiplicity of prepared sources, thereby intensifying problems and spreading them to larger regions. The intensification and spread is much facilitated by the joint transfer of technology, industry and coupled problems from region to region. As a result of transfer, inflation can occur within settings of quite different paradigms. Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other enthusiastic cultures. For instance, the West could in theory collapse through protracted war, through pollution and congestion, or climate change and agriculture failure (there are many unexcludible routes to catastrophic decline, outlined in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could differentially impact on the West). Degradation would now continue however; there would be only temporary respite from environmental crises. While most of the conspicuous problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary environmental crises, are accelerated by—what connects them—contemporary industrial society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. However, too many of the other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by­ products or similar of the main generators. Thus, in the illustration, the peasants displaced by agribusiness or absentee wealth-holders, arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the forests, and often wrecked this damage using industrial machinery. An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant cultures, Western or non-Westem. A friendly paradigm would not only ensure much more Lacking favourable ideological settings, earlier technological “break throughs” were not duly developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, dyes, gunpowder, etc. Western cultures did not enjoy a monopoly upon technology powerful enough, when massed, to induce global crises. The pictuie of development of large-scale environmental problems being sketched bears superficial resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where, to achieve presumed size, a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by huge inflationary phenomena. Naturally the resemblance has limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not terrestrially replicable in the way industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf, pollution problems and all, with a big price tag). �23 selectivity and care, but would sharply limit impacts of damaging technology and industrialization. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack sophisticated contemporary elaboration and they may be flawed in other respects. Examples of more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems and crises conditions, include those now tabulated: TABLE 3: Examples, some flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms. Oriental ideologies: Taoism (classical) recessive traditions, now with tiny followings and little political influence. Jainism Indigenous cultures: Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda) Amazonian Indians. Western philosophies: under certain favourable interpretations old Stoicism new Deep-green theories, such as deep ecology. Given the remoteness of most of these examples from predominant contemporary life, and difficulties with their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new paradigms need to be worked out soon. Much much more intellectual effort should be devoted to such enterprise. One upshot, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two families, the second large: environmentally friendly, and unfriendly. No doubt there is a small fuzzy residue class lying between major unfriendly and friendly divisions. Environmental friendliness means more or less what it appears to mean, what a functional break-down into components would yield: friendliness in approaches, practices and attitudes, to environments, especially more natural environments, with friendliness including, as usual, goodwill and kindliness towards (and substantially displaceable by these). As indicated, such friendliness concerns not merely actual practices, but also attitudes held, as reflected in what would be done in certain other sorts of situations. Certainly a culture that manifests unfriendliness, as a sweep of Northern cultures do, is unfriendly. But, as well, various “primitive” cultures, whose practices are not hostile, for example because they lack means or resources, energy or health, may nonetheless be unfriendly; for instance all members of a culture hold thoroughly negative attiudes which they are in fact unable to put into practice. 43 In logical terms neither, perhaps as well as another residue class, both. �24 It is not too difficult to explain in outline which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse. Certain family characteristics, of unfriendly paradigms are worth elaborating: * Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism. More generally, direct impact is illustrated by any idea-system which attributes little or no value to natural items, and typically much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite) projects, and whose themes are linked to practice. So it is with Confucianism, which is entirely human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as his goal the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’44 The outside world, the natural environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only instrumentally, to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex machinery. ‘The exception is [znznJ, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation language: this alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to assert a fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts’”.45 The remaining world, the natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral significance. It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose to confer or project upon it, typically little or none. Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans has no thoughts, purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could hardly matter what happens to it. It could be regarded and treated, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans. Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive, by one route or another from Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went further than some others. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were aimed at making men the masters and possessors of nature’ .46 Untowards effects result through linkage of ideological theory to heavy practice. Link principles, reminiscent of “correspondence rules” used in explaining applications of scientific theories and normally included in comprehensive paradigms, connect the theoretic level to practice, they also serve to activate otherwise inoperative or uncoupled paradigms. Such principles may take the form of directives; familiar examples include maximization directives, such as maximize personal fun, tribal utility, national interest, or state GNP. * Indirect combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which yield satisfaction of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz’s fragmentary ideology. Leibnitz was substantially committed to all of human population 44 45 46 Reese p.102 For much more on the geographic impact of Confucianism, as also compared with other (Asian) paradigms, see Tuan’s investigations. Cottingham p. 15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument (reported in Cottingham) to this divide is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no such status divides—-just as flamboyant forms of deep ecology maintain. See Descartes, Discourse VI. �25 growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption,47 in short, to precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts upon environments. However neutral Leibnitz’s metaphysics, his monadology, may have been—by contrast with Plato’s or Descartes’, both of which explicitly devalued much or all of the natural world—Leibnitz’s wider ideology is linked indirectly, through impact equations, to damaging effects. Some imagine that this oblique formalistic detailing, through direct and indirect classes, can be simply cut through, retaining plurality and so forth. Surely environmental friendliness is nothing but environmental depth? While the suggestion points in the right sort of direction (for the relevant sort of depth) it too is astray.48 Depth is neither necessary nor sufficient. Take the move plausible sufficiency half, plausible because depth helps, no end. Nonetheless depth can be achieved in macho ways (as ecofeminism has emphasized against deep ecology), ways which may not be altogether friendly to less favoured species, groups or habitats. For example, depth can be satisfied through due selection and support of some super species and magnificent habitats—requisite environmental impartiality (and reflected justice), critical for friendliness as intended, being neglected.49 Still less in depth necessary. For kindliness can, both in principle and in practice, extend far beyond humans, still ranked top, to much more of “creation . Such extensive kindliness, observed in some humanistic humans, appears to be exhibited in some sects and tribes not committed to depth, and it could well be considerably more widespread, under changed but not deepened ideological conditions. Naturally, however, deepening would afford an obvious, and excellent, reason for change. As friendliness is not tantamount to depth, nor similarly is a prime part of what explains depth, recognition of intrinsic value in nature outside humans. Some animal liberationists who display high regard for creatures with capacity to suffer, show little goodwill towards forests largely unpopulated by such creatures. Conversely, though shifting ground, an environmentally friendly society may hold that value is but an anthropocentric construct, merely projected onto a basically neutral world. All the same, aspects of depth are normally reliable indicators of environmental sensitivity and friendliness, and inversely, aspects of shallowness (as investigated in authentic deep ecology) marks of unfriendliness. Shallowness will work out satisfactorily environmentally only with what is now rare (given ideological dominance), a right mix of humans; and its any longer working widely is implausible. These reliable marks include such familiar features as 47 48 49 For requisite details, see Aiton. The case against Leibnitzianism is developed in a sequel. As to the relevant sort of depth, see GE. Other accounts of depth are also preferred in deep ecology, some of which relate to the present exercise. In particular deep questioning should lead to paradigmatic roots, to Naess’s “total views”. Herein lies another reason why something like biospecies egalitarianism is essential in deep ecology; such a requirement needs, not dilution away (as has happened in American and transpersonal deep ecology), but rectification. �26 * short-term framework. * devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting human chauvinism); and, as a corollary of heavy devaluation, * entitlement to domination, dominion ove’r nature; * appropriation of nature, its conversion to property. * maximization assumptions concerning personal or societal aggrandizement, utility and size, coupled with grand projects. * technofix approach to environmental problems. Friendly paradigms will tend to invert these features. An environmentally friendly paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as the following samples: * an end to degrading primary production; instead ecological forestry and ecological agriculture will come to prevail. * a strong selectivity regarding industrialization, which weeds out damaging forms. * a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of unfriendly technology can go a very long way. As unfriendly paradigms are decidedly plural, so likewise are answers to questions as to why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Some of the diverse answers match answers already encountered in the main tabulation. Reasons are psychological, social and cultural (with a familiar circularity here encountered), and include considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed; because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought; because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on. A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because, in one way or another, most agents are bound to—locked into, committed to, captured by, or just passively go along with—environmentally unfriendly paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the rest of environments does not matter, or matter enough. 6. Glimpsing an entertaining corollary: an unfavourable report upon dominant philosophy. It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Stripped of metaphor, there are environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet. In an environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to satisfactory environmental outcomes. Predominant philosophy, not just Western philosophy, has by and large been bad environmental news. �27 It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly under-estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even govern action and practice, especially reflective and rational action. The substantial point is not therefore removed through any alleged practical impotence of philosophy. Mainstream philosophy has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, dominant unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be trashed, as even defective enterprises or evil projects may include decent part or worthwhile features; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness), there are brash new alternatives such as authentic deep ecology, and there are recessive paradigms and neglected traditions to peruse for suggestions, for inspiration, and perhaps to rehabilitate. Richard Sylvan* APPENDIX. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions. A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard s intriguing books. In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the stock responses to focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in earlier work), such as lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political inertia, change to agriculture and settlement, 5<\.. . He would (and should, for his eliminative argument) have also dismissed industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on. More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’— similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism. But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feel no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended An earlier, even rougher version of this article was presented at the Environmental Paradigms Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 1993. It would not have been written without its solicitation for the Conference; also it might well not been thought through in fashionable but confining and perhaps misleading paradigmatic terms. A subsequent working draft has benefitted, slightly, from comments from very unimpressed reviewers. Thanks certainly to Holmes Rolston for helpful comments. No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement is simplistic: that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes. �28 target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here. Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of life together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing conservation, and so on. Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians, representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots51) that having certain ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”. So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic dislocations at the root of modem society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15). Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages, Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of the alleged sickness.52 It supposedly arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is 51 52 For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us. Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing) piactices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus, Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests rather than masters' (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy. ‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the third page of the main text. �29 manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destructive adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.55 A superior explanation to widespread individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial humans are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies, without coming to know or properly experience alternatives. The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound, resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.* 54 They are not exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature mixed communities. Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health. Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness smallgroup, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings. ... there is the rub—... for us, now, that world no longer exists’ (p.14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural surrounding can even now be restored. In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing erosion of life-support systems. 55 54 A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument: . ‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery (p.16). But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms. Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in ‘taking mothers off to work’ (p. 15)! �30 REFERENCES E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985. R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics 13(1991) 127-137. R. Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1991. A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental Questions Papers, No.2, CRES, Australian National University, 1990. J.B. Callicott and R.T. Ames (eds), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, SUNY Press, Albany NY., 1989. J. 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Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993. C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991. R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982; also, modified, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. R. Elliot and A. Gare), University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1983; referred to as RP. C. O. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersal, American Geographical Society, New York, 1952. P. Singer, Practical Ethics, expanded edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993. P. Shepard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982. R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994; referred to as GE. R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD. The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993. Y.F. Tuan, ‘Discrepancies between environmental attitude and behaviour: examples from Europe and China’, The Canadian Geographer 12(1968) 176-91. S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982. L. White Jr., ‘Historic roots of our ecologic crisis’, Science 155(1967) 1203-7. J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Blackwell, Oxford, 1953. M. Zimmerman and others (eds.), Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1993; referred to as EP3. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 1165 PARADIGMATIC ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not be adequately addressed. Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade, impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more satisfactory answer can be broached. Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems, and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers, fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the present investigation. . . . A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking, philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental news. 3.7.95 2 PARADIGMATIC ROOTS of ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Broaching focal questions, and searching for deeper answers. Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate (liquidation of natural forest systems affords just one striking example). In modem times humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system degradation. Often in the past they would not have seen such transformation as mattering, many remain so programmed, regarding transformation as increasing wealth (a presumption encouraged under mainstream economics). More recently dominant human cultures have developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through need, tax impositions, pressure to engage in cash economies, and so on) and which weave entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, councils, courts, educations, missions, and so on). Whence arises an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More explicitly, why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their environments, their own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a long period, destroy their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps in jeopardy through human enterprise? For those eager to anticipate the main outcome, the unremarkable answer to be eventually found to these focal questions is in essence this: because too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, remain committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigm?, diverse paradigms but all displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the earth. Parts of any answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies, and so on. While such answers are important, and often correct as far as they go in combination, and while they may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are nonetheless somewhat superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do not explain why a community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or why it is so resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes. Less superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to 1 In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Contrary to other sources, such as Marshall, humans are by no means the only biological species that proceed to degrade or impoverish their own environments. Introduced “pest” species, such as rabbits and mynahs in the Antipodes, also do so; perhaps some botanical species contrive to as well. 3 pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood­ production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”, and market ideology does economic practice, even so-called “environmental economics”.2 An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea­ systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever. Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent s routing procedures. Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding topography on action space. Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also correlatively give permission—as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize. But paradigms do even more; they facilitate explanation, above all they make understanding possible. In these regards, they may work for better as well as for worse. Thus it is not a matter of getting rid of them, were this even feasible, but of getting right paradigms. The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures, creeds, ideologies, pervasive myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a technical sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of humans are governed by background ideosystems. It is in terms of these background ideosystems that a great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments can be explained, what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4 That explanation comes not however through a single paradigm, as has too often been supposed in trying to answer focal questions, but through a bundle of somehow aligned paradigms. Compare how a person may be represented, in social science, not through a single 2 3 4 For more on this style of explanation, see further RP. It is not, going to be contended that religion—or a certain Abramic religion, such as Christianity—is the main villain of the environmental piece. It is now well enough appreciated that religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from ancient philosophies. What will however, be suggested is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in this regard. Further, as logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to overlap. How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or superficial explanation, of them. As well, positivistic theories show, though in an oversimplified way, how models, which paradigms are, serve in explanation justification and understanding. See e.g. Hanson. 4 role or program, but by way of a set of interconnected roles. What has been regularly overlooked in seeking deeper paradigmatic sources of environmental problems is systematic plurality. In part this neglect of plurality can be explained through countervailing propensity to seek single answers, and to try to locate uniqueness, where however causes and sources are plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are plural. As to what is going on theoretically, there is a fairly complex story to be told, an easier working image for which is appropriately ecological. That image focusses upon the structure of a perhaps impenetrable thicket or tangle, such as a dense rainforest patch, or, itself simplified, a fig or bamboo thicket. Below an emergent top layer representing the problems concerned, those raised by the focal questions, there is the canopy layer, of interlinked proximate causes. Below that again stands a plurality of stems, plural supports, which can be construed as supporting sources, and below them again, ultimately sustaining the whole structure, a multiplicity of intertwined roots, representing paradigmatic basics. What is sought are ultimate sources, and roots, not immediate causes. The cause of local pollution may be a factory that an agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea­ structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and sources. Nonetheless there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are ‘‘A is source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated? While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or developments virtually none of it addresses the question of what is meant by the partially buried metaphors of roots and sources . One striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful introductory text, The Roots of Modem Environmentalism. Although this text presents itself specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots metaphor on which it turns. For that matter there is no direct account of what the roots of environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental problems to which environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much oblique material). It is apparent also that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots metaphor, throwing it into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to mean simply elements (from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme of reconciliation of freedom and authority’ (p. 193). Such usage is unsound. Because rudiments of some idea make an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may not have arrived at such an idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where they did quite independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or (genetic) causal linkage into a mere temporal conjunction: post hoc, propter hoc. Neither roots nor sources are mere beginnings or simply early occurrences; there have to be continuing connections, with directional relationships such as supply or sustenance. But for 5 roots and sources different connections and elaborations are to be expected. After all, the metaphors, and likewise what they give rise to, are evidently different; more literally, plants have roots, normally below them, springs and streams rise from sources, not roots, often above them, and so on. Both differ from another popular basis-beginning buried metaphor, that of foundations. Foundations bring in other features such as solidity, stability and comparative permanency, while severing critical transmission features (for foundations may merely passively support, not sustain supported superstructure). So foundations, for all their importance in epistemology and elsewhere if foundationalism is correct, can be set aside. So far dictionaries do better than popular and philosophical texts. For instance, a short listing for the figurature use of ‘root’ runs: ‘the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc. (Concise English Dictionary). Such a two component account will serve nicely, for a start. However conjunctions should substantially displace disjunctions, else roots could collapse to foundations or could collapse to mere trace element supplements. Roots both give a basis and bottom binding into a substratum and supply sustenance and means of development. Roots connections are richer as well as more specific than sources, which may merely show from where an item comes or is obtained. Further that place of derivation that may not be a basis or bottom, but for instance a source­ book. With roots, like normal foundations, a basis or bottom is reached, whereas sources may have further sources (hence the search for ’‘deeper”, even ultimate, sources). Finally, root and source connections carry explanations, at least genetic explanations—concerning how items got to be what and the way they are—because roots and sources are characteristically that from which items develop. Sometimes even more information, including a whole control system, gets transmitted. As much happens where roots are paradigmatic, to return to that strange mix of buried metaphors. Reaching deeper roots is important. Without locating them, perhaps all the roots (should they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at these, cutting them off or replacing them, will also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. Such is the fate of many proposals concerning environmental problems. There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaboratedincluding a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions, and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal questions. But we can be brief on these necessary preliminaries, because main details are already in circulation and because they have been addressed elsewhere. 1. Problems and paradigms. 5 Despite a referee’s suggestion that discussion of “roots” ‘could be improved by a contrast of the “roots” metaphor with the “foundations” metaphor, the fact is that we are decidedly not concerned with foundations of environmental problems; to the contrary, we do not wish to see them supported (if shoddily), established and so on. On the growing complexity and varying interpretations offoundations, an emergent bog, see for instance Chisholm. 6 Although these will be duly connected, with paradigms implicated in problems, they are different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation. la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions. Definitions of ‘environmental problem’, and classifications of such problems, have already been ventured.6 What problems emerge as environmental depends upon background value framework. What counts as a major problem on deeper environmental perceptions may be but a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such indicator problems, ones here taken as serious problems, are those of • sustaining biodiversity and • maintaining significant wilderness.7 Even if the broad impact of human enterprise were sufficiently reduced to guarantee comfortable survival of future humans, these desiderata may well not be guaranteed. There would be outstanding problems. In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are (at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how they might be resolved. Environmental impact equations, encountered in a more perceptive classification of problems, reveal how they can be resolved. Namely, by altering relevant impact parameters. Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very little spent, despite all the talk.8 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys us, are not however satisfactory stopping points. How is it, given so much scientific information and expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially destroying, their habitats. To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on offer or to be met in an extensive literative. As we will soon discover, most of these answers are too simple; and taken, as intended, as comprehensive, they are wrong. Correct answers to the questions are however important, because if we fail to get to the bottom of the issues, there is even less prospect of satisfactory action to mm around a difficult and deteriorating situation. That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships, or how many devaluing dollars uncaring humans can briefly stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of habitats—these sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence) derive from and are supported by particular ideologies. lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on. A paradigm can be explicated, technically, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.9 6 7 8 9 See for example GE, which duly details connections of the problems with impact equations and proximate solutions. As to the extent of the problem (even) in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The Wildlands Project. See e.g. The cost of past environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24. See RP, where many environmentally relevant illustrations are given and explained. 7 That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a general system, i.e. semantical and other evaluations defined on an integrated relational structure. Naturally it is required to be faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms, scientific research programs, or whatever. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and action theory, the socio-political themes and value judgements, is that of a social group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part of the life-styles and life-forms of the community concerned. There are now many examples of formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures; from these, mostly sketchy formulations we can work back towards the underlying models. The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a complex universal10 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g. metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists, historians and geographers have repeated one another in vaguely discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures under different categorisations: thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of consciousness (Marx), of life (Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes (Conant), presuppositions (Collingwood), discursive formations (Foucault), Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess), traditions (MacIntyre), traditions of thought, cultures, perspectives, outlooks, ideologies, programs, .... An ideology, for instance, in the non-derogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideas- system, initially a propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative, from which a paradigm can be discerned and elaborated. Such models are typically presented in extremely truncated form, for example through a tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example: TABLE 1: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant paradigm: an initial capsule formulation -11 Taoism Deep Ecology Dominant (Western) Paradigm Harmony with nature, through Tao Harmony with nature Domination over nature Nature valuable in itself; “humanism” rejected Natural environment valued for itself Nature a resource; intrinsic value confined to humans 10 11 It resembles a structured universal; compare e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex ideas. Naturally there are differences between, for instance, traditions (of thought) which are historically bound, cultures, which are geographically and otherewise connected, and conceptual schemes (where a conceptual reduction is insinuated), but all are, at logical bottom, models of paradigmatic sort. This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly expanded. 8 Levelling of differences; wide impartiality Biocentric egalitarianism Human supremacy Supplies ample Earth supplies limited Ample resources with substitutes Following Tao-te Spiritual goals, especially self-realisation Material economic growth a predominant goal Enlightenment Self-realisation Personal (material) enrichment Doing with enough (recycling inappropriate) Doing with enough; recycling Consumerism Non-competitive lifestyle; voluntary simplicity Cooperative lifestyle Competitive lifestyle Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus Decentralised/bioregional /neighbourhood focus Centralised/urban centred/ national focus Hierarchy without power structure; anarchoid Non-hierarchical/ grassroots democracy Power structure hierarchical Limited technology Appropriate technology High technology Considerable caution Precautionary practice Risking taking (verging upon adventurism) Paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; under an earlier analogy, red and green lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations and prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modem ideologies, eschews deontic judgements.) Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors' worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world. In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads (or rather consciousnesses) have to be changed, not rolled. 2. Proposed answers to focal questions: a preliminary classification of inadequate answers and suggested remedies. Most of the extraordinary range of answers proposed supply but a single source, and are accordingly defective for this reason, usually among other reasons. Indeed it is not much of an exaggeration to assert that virtually everything proposed, in a now extensive literature, is wrong. TABLE 2. Main tabulation of answers and remedies , in three stages. D. Defective practice answers Source Remedy Objections 9 DI. Ignorance Relevant information Information now available D2. Unintended consequences Relevant information Information now available D2a Faulty technique, or technology Repairs Repairs already made D3 Deviation (from theory, etc.) Education (for failure to limit deviance) Adherence a. Deviation uneliminable, or b. Adherence no remedy D4. Systemic lock-in (through poverty, ensnarement in market forces, etc.) Trap removal a. Explains only certain cases, and b. Due to paradigmatic features D5. Insensitivity or insensibility Problem apprised Remedy tried; background ideological blockage D3a When pursued, objections like those noted either force defective practice out as unsatisfactory, or push it back to paradigmatic features. Source single paradigm Remedies proposed (among others) Pl. Christianity (mainstream Catholicism) Scientific enlightenment, or alternative (Eastern) religion Pla. Protestantism and its ethic P2. P2a Cartesianism Dualism Anti-dualism P2b Mechanism Organicism P. Defective paradigm answers Substance metaphysics P3. P3a Possessive individualism P3aa Personalism Monism Modified holism Process metaphysics Non-reductionism Transpersonalism P4. Capitalism Socialism P5. Industrialism Pre-industrialism (romanticism) Post-industrialism P5a Technocratic bureaucracy P5aa. Transnational business P6. Enlightenment Anti-enlightenment Anti-materialism 10 P6a Materialism Spiritualism P8. P9 Patriarchy, andocentrism Human domination of humans Feminism Anti-domination (anti-hierarchy) Observe that what some have proposed as remedies, others have seen as sources; remedies proposed tend to share defects of sources. PS. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject specific or partial) include: Typical remedy suggested Source Platonism Leibnitzianism Kantianism Anglo-American philosophy12 Utilitarianism Economism (economic imperialism as New metaphysics New metaphysics Consequentialism Continental philosophy Alternative ethics New social science; ethics contrasted with straight economic roots) Contractarianism Consequentialism Domination transfer Domination removal Human nature (esp. aggression) Adolescencism Infantilism (from Freudian physchology) Maturation Maturation And so on. A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in dominant Western thought. Then many—perhaps it is not excessive to say most—entries in that list will have been nominated, likely separately, by someone as the source of the problems. That list accordingly continues (even including, sometimes, entries like Taylorism, i.e. reorganisation of industry along lines popularized by Taylor), but what is included is representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other allegedly nonparadigmatic answers however, varying from interesting to crazy, that should also be taken into some account, for instance answers like Shepard’s challenging answer. Although Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false cast. Strange answers include pushing it all back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard, but also Fox, and Ehrlich and other gurus with insistence upon ‘mental maladaptation’). 12 The mainstream form, analytic philosophy, appears to comprise empiricism-cum-utilitarianism in Britain, tempered in America by pragmatism. 11 Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick —in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, along psychological routes, that are to be resisted. One slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not physically usually, it must be mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad. But the sources of mental sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide continues to: what we have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No doubt there is something to the theme that dominant societies, USA especially (which now influences so much in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive adolescence.13 No doubt, too, that maturity—but an environmental maturity—is desirable, even mandatory. Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society, to spend their money through tourism, on new compact housing, in those most wasteful of modem institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth. 3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources. Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat perfunctory, tending here and there towards notes. Of course there are excuses. While whole theses could be spun out on several of these topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a prime objective here is different from usual: neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to partially implicate most items cited in the main tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of the usually accredited sources: • Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems, ‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over nature’, was repeated in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.14 One helpful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows: Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development, however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns’, namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress, 13 14 It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in the Appendix . White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall, snowed. 12 a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action, not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will. Because today's attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it ‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.15 What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more sensitive and telling criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.16 Similar responses are apposite for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy. Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ... responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection today. ... Religion ... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.17 • Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1) prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not impossible.18 More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies. • Cartesian philosophy. 15 16 17 18 The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue continues to be debated; for an older survey of traditions see Passmore, for a challenging recent contribution to the debate see Callicott. Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms: Ask, not merely what they say, but what they do, and would do. For an outline of just such a telling criticism of mainstream Christianity, see Singer esp. pp.265-8. Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help expose. Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really, while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted. There is a much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of the very different roles and impacts of Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans, and of neo-Platonists. For a modest beginning, see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands. 13 denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes, upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.19 While Descartes was undoubtedly extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such. Evidently it substantially overlaps other modem ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment, widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems. • Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others (some potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is presented is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly exhibiting a heavy Heideggerean influence: . The roots of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode (sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present, the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a “natural resource” —and people become “human resources . The sources of anthropocentricism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can all be traced back to metaphysics. Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering, exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as vestigial traces. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system. We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually ensconced technocratic rationalism.20 An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics, characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions or mere Western seeds. Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or plenum metaphysics.21 19 20 21 For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising Drengson’s exposition, see RP, table 5. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy. Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘rejecting] in its entirety mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmcntalj problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies’ (thus Bellett). This charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep Ecology (now included in UTD). For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews. 14 • Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’ (e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those of modern mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and theistic scholastic hang-overs). • Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were revealed), can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production.22 But, as observed, a main embedded theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the idea of nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ’Now if nature makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all animals for the sake of man’.23 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species. The theme was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in shallower Stoicism. But the subjection of everything to utility, no doubt a relative of capitalism, appears to be a distinctively modem contribution. • Modern industrial society or industrialism. Modem industrialism (‘the smooth­ superhighway of industrial progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme: ‘... the root causes of the present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial paradigm’.24 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of modem industrial society’.2526Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed The popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial technology can without any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as, 22 23 24 25 26 It should not be overlooked that some of those who nominated metaphysics meant thereby paradigm or paradigms or an equivalent. But what they may gain thereby in verisimilitude, they tend to lose in confusion. Grundrisse p.409f. Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further Hargrove p.25. M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature”’, a paper presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and more broadly the environment itself (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the evident problem. Gabriel ibid. Similarly industrialism is assumed as the source throughout McLaughlin (the theme pervades his book) and as the root of the modem problem in Marshall (p.5ff). While seriously astray as to roots and sources, those critical of industrialism have a significant case. For, as well as functioning as a major inflator of intact problems, industrialism has helped generate side problems of its own, as with new types of chemical and nuclear pollution. Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2. 15 less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes, what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice. • Economic growth or economic development. ‘According to a common and currently influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots’.27 One widespread misconception is that economic growth is the source of environmental problems. The assumption is astray for several reasons. For one, growth is at best a proximate cause, itself in need of explanation. More importantly, growth may occur in sectors of an economy, such as information technology or religious or artistic services, which have little or no environmental impact. Also conversely, an economy which fails to grow, but is desperately trying to survive, may exact heavy environmental costs (e.g. the forests are clear-felled to pay for continuing employment). No doubt though, stock economic growth is intimately intricated with proximate causes of environmental problems (through environmental impact equations). Similar considerations tell against the familiar proposition that the source of the problems is economic development itself or, what is different, the entrenched model of economic development. While it is no doubt correct, and important to emphasize, that ‘the Western model of economic development, far from being the solution to’ environmental and social problems, is ‘actually fuelling’ them, it is not the sole or distinguished source of the problems.28 • Human nature. "... the roots of our ecologic crisis reach beyond the variable topsoil of intellectual history, whether Eastern or Western, into the common substrata of human nature itself.’29 What such “nature” amounts to and how it functions as roots, both commonly left obscure, turns upon background hypotheses as to the nature of this nature. Different false 27 28 29 Goodin, p.573. While not contesting the theme, Goodin does continue: ‘the problem is not just that there are too many people, or even that they are enjoying too high a standard of living. All that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives as they pursue their various goals’ (p.573). That too will be seen to be seriously astray, though it contains large grains of truth; it presumes unchanged the prevailing economically-skewed dominant social paradigm. Both socialists and other opponents of capitalistic conspicuous consumption tend to select the living-standard component of the main environmental impact equation as the source of the crisis. Thus Cuban luminary, Castro, in a recent stunningly succinct speech: ‘Less luxury, less wastage. Otherwise it will be too late’. Quoting claims of E. Goldsmith, advanced in an interview in Forest and Bird 273 (August 1994) pp.46-7. The need for emphasis will persist while locally prominent political figures like the present Prime Minister of Australia travel around the Earth with the hackneyed message that only economic growth will solve environmental problems. Seeing growth as the problem affords only a superficial analysis, like that of pointing to overconsumption with which growth is interconnected. As deeper inquiry reveals, underlying both issues of economic growth, employment and consumption, and alternatives taken, are models, paradigmatic models. Growth is but a means to objectives assumed in the dominant paradigm. A deeper analysis shows too why more growth will not ultimately solve relevant problems. Callicott and Ames, ‘Epilogue: On the relation of idea and action’ p.282 (see also p.281), in a desperate and apparently unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the claim (repeatedly advanced in their book) that Asian traditions of thought can make a significant contribution to much improved treatment for natural and built environments, with ‘the deplorable environmental conditions prevailing in contemporary Asia’ (p.280). 16 hypotheses, that humans are invariably driven by aggression, sexual or reproductive imperatives, economic needs, yield different defective accounts. In Catholic orthodoxy such a source, human nature, comes burdened with original sin; the source of a sweep of problems, including now environmental ones, is “man’s fallen nature”. That astonishing source also comes contaminated, as for instance gender biassed. • Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.30 ‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.31 One sample linkage statement runs as follows: there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both historically and ... presently] and ... this is the same energy that, turned against the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly destroying the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that consume the Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches and I believe that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless we simultaneously address our gender issues.32 Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes: • Human domination and exploitation of humans'. It is an extraordinarily widespread assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend-setters, including Marcuse, Illich, Passmore, Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from deep-seated social problems’.33 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus: all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology. Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships 30 31 32 33 Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a more critical assessment see the sequel to GE. See Seed, quoted in the sequel to GE; also Salleh (e.g. in EP3). John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91. Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along with unrelational property claims. Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination of nature always results from humans’ domination of other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346). The text EP3 contains a sizeable section providing a useful introduction to social ecology. 17 —domination of nature thus following from human domination’.... It follows that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a harmonious man-nature relationship.34 Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the dominated. • A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.35 • Modern educational systems: Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems. Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as, so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.36 Therewith we are transported full circle back to defective practice answers. 4. A selective commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two stages reflecting a major division in the main tabulation. ad D. Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them. (Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.) Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time, perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While “consequences” or outputs such things as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying ‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste­ watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of their industry. That should now be a rotten joke, itself with serious consequences. Accordingly new ecological economics insists that we dig deeper—without however exceeding economic settings or a shifting dominant paradigm—to discover why markets may 34 35 36 Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given humans could so socially organise, that they could settle into harmonious small-scale communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments. Such a proposition obtains a much fuller elaboration within Plumwood. In an interesting way, such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion reached below that a set of defective paradigms is at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by a set of them in each case, somewhat as numbers can be represented in binary terms, generated from a basic two-oneness duality. Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see GE 18 foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.3738Where they usually arrive, travelling within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics before ecological, at better regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of plans and incentives, controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do not reach very deep, or tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources. But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure, environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries, namely that true, or authentic, Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been, environmental consequences would be little better, given the heavy industrial commitments and environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.3^ Differently, enlightenment liberals like Passmore try to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in mainstream theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence to these “well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains of its wilderness and remarkable diversity. Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting (collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts like Topsoil and Civilization and Agricultural Origins and Dispersal) of degradation of prime agricultural lands by imposed farming practices, where at least early on (before damage became visible) ignorance and unintended consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most historical cases we do not have enough information to be able to say with much assurance that agriculture proceeded until effective collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because practices were locked-in in one way or another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know more about present agricultural practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia, concerning both irrigated and dry-land agriculture. Many of these practices are undoubtedly sharply degrading lands, and the consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend ignorance, are sufficiently appreciated. But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a sweep of subsidies or concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim that they are locked into bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their control such as financial pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the need to make a living. But some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make no such claims or excuses, nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place, and similar. Their obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not 37 38 Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24. It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have their property confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who made those points, also observed). 19 deviation from theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm. ad P and PS. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed, business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few broad themes: 1. Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example, substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and so forth). To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not, on its own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges, link principles, from metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy operates. Thus subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of environmental problems which take them as derived from metaphysics of one sort or another. Such a criticism does not however extend to more comprehensive paradigms which connect appropriately with practice. 2. While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on39)—none are necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different paradigms; for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms, Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism. At this stage in dialectic, green history and the like—bio-history, eco-history, and related virtual histories (concerning what would have happened)—enter decisively. For instance, Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and ecological fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also conveniently documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological degradation or collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms.40 An important example (much less speculative than some of the numerous other examples because of a comparative wealth of primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples—Polynesian, Mayan, Sumerian and others—also reveal is that no very high level of technology is needed to inflict serious environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological project (with nothing directly to 39 40 While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to have the means, and so on. Ponting’s valuable though rather simple book is but one of several bleak texts. Another is Hillel’s, and there is a succession of earlier classic works by geographers: Lowdermilk, Dale, Mallory, Thorp and others. In general however, geographers and historians do not dig deep enough, to paradigmatic roots. 20 do with basic needs) will suffice. Other cultures did wreak, or would (given the technology and numbers, both of which some were gaining) have wreaked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination, megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established, and expanding, before (or effectively outside) the rise of modem Western paradigms, or in extensive regions outside their influence. 3. The list of paradigms, as so far assembled, is substantially Western in orientation. Moreover environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources wrongly. For nonWestem paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese chauvinism).41 Or consider Islam, with its reach across the Middle East and beyond. The main tabulation (of table 2) should accordingly be extended to take due account of non-Westem paradigms, including for example: Other Abrahamic religions Islam Judaism Confucianism Shintoism Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island. What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic. Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in, or encouraged by, religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent. 4. All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms. While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements, such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism though Descartes, for all his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.) Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modem rationalism and much else. 41 Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large fauna worldwide. 5. A general method of showing the inadequacy of all the paradigmatic answers tabulated, and others, is familiar from logical theory: namely, the method of counter-models, of which the counter-examples (under head 2) provide special cases. A presently important illustration concerns patriarchy as a source of environmental woes. Counter-models reveal the substantial independence of mistreatment of women and mistreatment of environmental items such as animals or ecosystems. One the one hand, it is easy to envisage situations, not far from the actual in some regions, where the lot of women is significantly improved, but the lot of environmental items is not (e.g. men change their behaviour and attitudes relevantly as regards women, are forced to change, or whatever); just such an outcome would accord with persisting human chauvinism. More relevant, on the other, there are situations where the position of environmental items is much improved, for instance under much more careful husbandry, but that of women is not, for one reason or another (e.g. they remain other, different, second class, etc.). It follows from the elaboration of such counter-models that patriarchy is not the source of environmental problems, as there can be continuing patriarchy without the present range of environmental problems (problems can dry up while patriarchy continues to operate). There is no need to deny that patriarchy as (contingently) practised, with its sweeping supremacist attitudes which make no due distinctions between inferior items, may be a major contributing factor in present problems. Such slack contingent conjunctions do not convert to roots or sources. Similarly with other social roots of environmental problems, for instance with human domination of humans as the supposed source of all problems. 5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation. Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences in calibre, in environmental friendliness. For example, Cartesianism which regards animals as mere automata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life­ forms and their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience. The family is not exclusively Western, nor somewhat more plausibly Northern, even though as a result of forces like migration, colonialism and cultural imperialism, paradigms of these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and of third world communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally and regionally. Nor are major inflators of environmental problems essentially Western. Industrialization and technological advance—neither intrinsically Western, both manifested in varying degrees in other cultures—are, without much doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from 22 rather localised ones, damaging for instance islands and river catchments, to grander and even global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems, generating thereby spin­ off problems as well. But, once again, they are not deeper sources, but only means. (For again push questioning deeper, and ask: why bother or persist with industry, the effort and dirt and mess involved?) Nor, however, did they run on their own, nor do they continue on their own. Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.42 They evolved primarily in the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could have occurred, and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as state socialism or post-imperial Confucianism. Now however these engines have been rendered more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transformed to run in less favourable settings. Thus inflation can escalate from a multiplicity of prepared sources, thereby intensifying problems and spreading them to larger regions. The intensification and spread is much facilitated by the joint transfer of technology, industry and coupled problems from region to region. As a result of transfer, inflation can occur within settings of quite different paradigms. Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other enthusiastic cultures. For instance, the West could in theory collapse through protracted war, through pollution and congestion, or climate change and agriculture failure (there are many unexcludible routes to catastrophic decline, outlined in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could differentially impact on the West). Degradation would now continue however; there would be only temporary respite from environmental crises. While most of the conspicuous problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary environmental crises, are accelerated by—what connects them—contemporary industrial society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. However, too many of the other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by­ products or similar of the main generators. Thus, in the illustration, the peasants displaced by agribusiness or absentee wealth-holders, arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the forests, and often wrecked this damage using industrial machinery. An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant cultures, Western or non-Westem. A friendly paradigm would not only ensure much more Lacking favourable ideological settings, earlier technological “break throughs” were not duly developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, dyes, gunpowder, etc. Western cultures did not enjoy a monopoly upon technology powerful enough, when massed, to induce global crises. The pictuie of development of large-scale environmental problems being sketched bears superficial resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where, to achieve presumed size, a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by huge inflationary phenomena. Naturally the resemblance has limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not terrestrially replicable in the way industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf, pollution problems and all, with a big price tag). 23 selectivity and care, but would sharply limit impacts of damaging technology and industrialization. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack sophisticated contemporary elaboration and they may be flawed in other respects. Examples of more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems and crises conditions, include those now tabulated: TABLE 3: Examples, some flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms. Oriental ideologies: Taoism (classical) recessive traditions, now with tiny followings and little political influence. Jainism Indigenous cultures: Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda) Amazonian Indians. Western philosophies: under certain favourable interpretations old Stoicism new Deep-green theories, such as deep ecology. Given the remoteness of most of these examples from predominant contemporary life, and difficulties with their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new paradigms need to be worked out soon. Much much more intellectual effort should be devoted to such enterprise. One upshot, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two families, the second large: environmentally friendly, and unfriendly. No doubt there is a small fuzzy residue class lying between major unfriendly and friendly divisions. Environmental friendliness means more or less what it appears to mean, what a functional break-down into components would yield: friendliness in approaches, practices and attitudes, to environments, especially more natural environments, with friendliness including, as usual, goodwill and kindliness towards (and substantially displaceable by these). As indicated, such friendliness concerns not merely actual practices, but also attitudes held, as reflected in what would be done in certain other sorts of situations. Certainly a culture that manifests unfriendliness, as a sweep of Northern cultures do, is unfriendly. But, as well, various “primitive” cultures, whose practices are not hostile, for example because they lack means or resources, energy or health, may nonetheless be unfriendly; for instance all members of a culture hold thoroughly negative attiudes which they are in fact unable to put into practice. 43 In logical terms neither, perhaps as well as another residue class, both. 24 It is not too difficult to explain in outline which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse. Certain family characteristics, of unfriendly paradigms are worth elaborating: * Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism. More generally, direct impact is illustrated by any idea-system which attributes little or no value to natural items, and typically much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite) projects, and whose themes are linked to practice. So it is with Confucianism, which is entirely human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as his goal the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’44 The outside world, the natural environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only instrumentally, to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex machinery. ‘The exception is [znznJ, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation language: this alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to assert a fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts’”.45 The remaining world, the natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral significance. It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose to confer or project upon it, typically little or none. Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans has no thoughts, purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could hardly matter what happens to it. It could be regarded and treated, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans. Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive, by one route or another from Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went further than some others. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were aimed at making men the masters and possessors of nature’ .46 Untowards effects result through linkage of ideological theory to heavy practice. Link principles, reminiscent of “correspondence rules” used in explaining applications of scientific theories and normally included in comprehensive paradigms, connect the theoretic level to practice, they also serve to activate otherwise inoperative or uncoupled paradigms. Such principles may take the form of directives; familiar examples include maximization directives, such as maximize personal fun, tribal utility, national interest, or state GNP. * Indirect combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which yield satisfaction of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz’s fragmentary ideology. Leibnitz was substantially committed to all of human population 44 45 46 Reese p.102 For much more on the geographic impact of Confucianism, as also compared with other (Asian) paradigms, see Tuan’s investigations. Cottingham p. 15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument (reported in Cottingham) to this divide is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no such status divides—-just as flamboyant forms of deep ecology maintain. See Descartes, Discourse VI. 25 growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption,47 in short, to precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts upon environments. However neutral Leibnitz’s metaphysics, his monadology, may have been—by contrast with Plato’s or Descartes’, both of which explicitly devalued much or all of the natural world—Leibnitz’s wider ideology is linked indirectly, through impact equations, to damaging effects. Some imagine that this oblique formalistic detailing, through direct and indirect classes, can be simply cut through, retaining plurality and so forth. Surely environmental friendliness is nothing but environmental depth? While the suggestion points in the right sort of direction (for the relevant sort of depth) it too is astray.48 Depth is neither necessary nor sufficient. Take the move plausible sufficiency half, plausible because depth helps, no end. Nonetheless depth can be achieved in macho ways (as ecofeminism has emphasized against deep ecology), ways which may not be altogether friendly to less favoured species, groups or habitats. For example, depth can be satisfied through due selection and support of some super species and magnificent habitats—requisite environmental impartiality (and reflected justice), critical for friendliness as intended, being neglected.49 Still less in depth necessary. For kindliness can, both in principle and in practice, extend far beyond humans, still ranked top, to much more of “creation . Such extensive kindliness, observed in some humanistic humans, appears to be exhibited in some sects and tribes not committed to depth, and it could well be considerably more widespread, under changed but not deepened ideological conditions. Naturally, however, deepening would afford an obvious, and excellent, reason for change. As friendliness is not tantamount to depth, nor similarly is a prime part of what explains depth, recognition of intrinsic value in nature outside humans. Some animal liberationists who display high regard for creatures with capacity to suffer, show little goodwill towards forests largely unpopulated by such creatures. Conversely, though shifting ground, an environmentally friendly society may hold that value is but an anthropocentric construct, merely projected onto a basically neutral world. All the same, aspects of depth are normally reliable indicators of environmental sensitivity and friendliness, and inversely, aspects of shallowness (as investigated in authentic deep ecology) marks of unfriendliness. Shallowness will work out satisfactorily environmentally only with what is now rare (given ideological dominance), a right mix of humans; and its any longer working widely is implausible. These reliable marks include such familiar features as 47 48 49 For requisite details, see Aiton. The case against Leibnitzianism is developed in a sequel. As to the relevant sort of depth, see GE. Other accounts of depth are also preferred in deep ecology, some of which relate to the present exercise. In particular deep questioning should lead to paradigmatic roots, to Naess’s “total views”. Herein lies another reason why something like biospecies egalitarianism is essential in deep ecology; such a requirement needs, not dilution away (as has happened in American and transpersonal deep ecology), but rectification. 26 * short-term framework. * devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting human chauvinism); and, as a corollary of heavy devaluation, * entitlement to domination, dominion ove’r nature; * appropriation of nature, its conversion to property. * maximization assumptions concerning personal or societal aggrandizement, utility and size, coupled with grand projects. * technofix approach to environmental problems. Friendly paradigms will tend to invert these features. An environmentally friendly paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as the following samples: * an end to degrading primary production; instead ecological forestry and ecological agriculture will come to prevail. * a strong selectivity regarding industrialization, which weeds out damaging forms. * a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of unfriendly technology can go a very long way. As unfriendly paradigms are decidedly plural, so likewise are answers to questions as to why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Some of the diverse answers match answers already encountered in the main tabulation. Reasons are psychological, social and cultural (with a familiar circularity here encountered), and include considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed; because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought; because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on. A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because, in one way or another, most agents are bound to—locked into, committed to, captured by, or just passively go along with—environmentally unfriendly paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the rest of environments does not matter, or matter enough. 6. Glimpsing an entertaining corollary: an unfavourable report upon dominant philosophy. It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Stripped of metaphor, there are environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet. In an environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to satisfactory environmental outcomes. Predominant philosophy, not just Western philosophy, has by and large been bad environmental news. 27 It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly under-estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even govern action and practice, especially reflective and rational action. The substantial point is not therefore removed through any alleged practical impotence of philosophy. Mainstream philosophy has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, dominant unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be trashed, as even defective enterprises or evil projects may include decent part or worthwhile features; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness), there are brash new alternatives such as authentic deep ecology, and there are recessive paradigms and neglected traditions to peruse for suggestions, for inspiration, and perhaps to rehabilitate. Richard Sylvan* APPENDIX. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions. A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard s intriguing books. In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the stock responses to focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in earlier work), such as lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political inertia, change to agriculture and settlement, 5<\.. . He would (and should, for his eliminative argument) have also dismissed industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on. More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’— similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism. But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feel no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended An earlier, even rougher version of this article was presented at the Environmental Paradigms Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 1993. It would not have been written without its solicitation for the Conference; also it might well not been thought through in fashionable but confining and perhaps misleading paradigmatic terms. A subsequent working draft has benefitted, slightly, from comments from very unimpressed reviewers. Thanks certainly to Holmes Rolston for helpful comments. No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement is simplistic: that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes. 28 target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here. Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of life together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing conservation, and so on. Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians, representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots51) that having certain ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”. So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic dislocations at the root of modem society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15). Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages, Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of the alleged sickness.52 It supposedly arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is 51 52 For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us. Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing) piactices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus, Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests rather than masters' (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy. ‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the third page of the main text. 29 manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destructive adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.55 A superior explanation to widespread individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial humans are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies, without coming to know or properly experience alternatives. The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound, resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.* 54 They are not exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature mixed communities. Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health. Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness smallgroup, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings. ... there is the rub—... for us, now, that world no longer exists’ (p.14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural surrounding can even now be restored. In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing erosion of life-support systems. 55 54 A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument: . ‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery (p.16). But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms. Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in ‘taking mothers off to work’ (p. 15)! 30 REFERENCES E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985. R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics 13(1991) 127-137. R. Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1991. A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental Questions Papers, No.2, CRES, Australian National University, 1990. J.B. Callicott and R.T. Ames (eds), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, SUNY Press, Albany NY., 1989. J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ ReVision 12(3) (1990) 31-41. R. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, Harvester Press, Sussex, 1982. J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988. C. Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, Revised edition by V.G. Carter, University of Oklahama Press, Norman, 1974. A Dobson (ed.), Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991? A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10. R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992. W. Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology, Shambala, Boston, 1990. A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bungendore, 1993. C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967. R. Goodin, ‘Selling environmental indulgences’, Kyklos 47(1994) 573-596. N. R. Hanson, Patterns of discovery: an inquiry into conceptual foundations of science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1958. E. C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989. D Hillel, Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil., Free Press, Macmillan, 1991. M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991. K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy, Harmondsworth, England 1973. F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991. A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology , SUNY Press, Albany N. Y., 1993. P. Marshall, Nature’s Web, in two editions, Simon and Schuster, 1992 and 1993. A. Naess and D. Rothenberg, Ecology, community and Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989. J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974. D. Pearce and others, Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989. D. Pepper, The Roots of Modem Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H. Croom Helm 1984. 31 V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993. C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991. R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982; also, modified, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. R. Elliot and A. Gare), University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1983; referred to as RP. C. O. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersal, American Geographical Society, New York, 1952. P. Singer, Practical Ethics, expanded edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993. P. Shepard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982. R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994; referred to as GE. R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD. The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993. Y.F. Tuan, ‘Discrepancies between environmental attitude and behaviour: examples from Europe and China’, The Canadian Geographer 12(1968) 176-91. S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982. L. White Jr., ‘Historic roots of our ecologic crisis’, Science 155(1967) 1203-7. J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Blackwell, Oxford, 1953. M. Zimmerman and others (eds.), Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1993; referred to as EP3.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. 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Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:e6f8cad" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:e6f8cad</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Lake George - Desk Pile 7 Box 15: Green Projects in Progress Lake George House Lake George House > Desk Pile 7 https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/444eca0d35c73ff9b0dc82f8f6d70024.pdf 3284ae43134cb50aa3c5e509c6f30d24 PDF Text Text �����The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of Meyers DT (1981) 'The inevitability of the state', Analysis, 41:46-47, https://doi.org/10.2307/3327871. (3 leaves) ��The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of four pages from Chomsky N (1992) Deterring democracy, Hill and Wang. (2 leaves) �V -^<rj z%^-7* ��The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of two pages from unidentified publication. (1 leaf) �zt/ /r^/^<L-*-^- c.4. tx . (/-L- X—. -^f r (T^-< , ��/^t <^A y<^?A - --- ^-e-^ - . ------- (L^? A / ����r f <r L 7/^ Loc^^an The strategy of the first section of the book is to see where we might fnd up if we began with a state of nature as described by Locke and ttuck within the constraints of the Lockean "laws of nature". We "focus a nonstate situation in which peopie generally satisfy moral conuratnts and generally act as they ought. Such an assumption is not wildly 'Wmistic... Yet it is the best anarchic situation one could reasonably ! ) for... If one could show that the State would be superior event to most favored situation of anarchy... it would justify the state." (5) J why should we do this? Presumably Locke and before him painted their pictures of the state of nature as they did because thought that's the way people really were. Nozick doesn't seem to that, thought he also seems to think that Hobbes' characterization ^mptjusibte or unreliable. But if truth to fact isn't the motive, then what there is. in short, the question of how we are to the alternatives . *hat ^nteria of superiority one is going to use. And here lies the rub. ^jrcty Locke and Hobbes were trying to paint a picture of the "state ^*!urc which wou!d not only provide a point of comparison but also -2993> �<M-C avC- ��3. In §2 introduce contrast between left-leaning and right-leaning anarchisms. In the enlarged version will carry both of these through the arguments, comparing The main initial, and striking, differences concern replace­ and contrasting them. ment. The following, for example, is how mere right-leaning replacement will tend to look:[A ?irst complication of the simulation argument:- A properly democratic state can be simulated, in that all it accomplishes that is considered worthwhile can be duplicated. The argument is as before for services for which the means can be obtained. _ ___ ___ __ . Otherwise let S' be a service for which s^L-Lici. und.it cnjmpu_L so ry caxarion Or tLie , - But if it is in the collective interest then it will obtain the means, e.g. it generates these by its own operation, as a telephone service does, or it raises the equivalent of subscriptions as a community television station or magazine may. Then however the network n may be replaced by a network n* of relations of operators who choose to do the work without state directives and n' accomplishes a service s^ which duplicates s.^ Given the means, which the collective interest assumed, state authority is nowhere required for such a service, as is evident from examples where community or private services grow up alongside state services where permitted to do so. Often anarchists have such services will be performed better than the A H state services they replace. Note that the left-leaning argument does not assume that organisation is unnecessary or that people in their 0^1 interest. It assumes will always and inevi/j&6 ly act that people themselves, and net some power­ ful elite in charge, are best placed to determine what is in their and to pMcfe it though VcJunhiry 04M interest organisation and cooperation. However people will do things themselves in an organised way, instead of being, as often now, passive recipients of welfare. Beneficial services, such as community-access radio and television stations, and also welfare arrangements, would in general be reorganised so that all the necessary infrastructure became community owned, and those wishing to use the service would and^ to operate it, would carry out much of the operation themselves - taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of good things metered out to them by powerful agencies or professionals who take it upon themselves to judge what is in their [best!] interests. �3.^ the means are not forthcoming. Then the state would not be able to supply means either unless it exceeded its democratic mandate.] Let service s, e.g. a telephone or postal or transport service, be some state activity which is in the collective interest, and let it be accomplished by network n which will include a system of operators standing in various relations. Picture the network that makes up a state postal system or a local radio station. Such a system does not require the authority of the state of operate: what it may require is means to operate acquired by methods other than compulsory taxation or the like. But if it is in the collective interest then it will obtain the means, e.g. it generates these by its own operation, as a telephone service does, or it raises the equivalent of subscriptions as a community television station or magazine may. Then however the network n may be replaced by a network n of relations of operators who choose to do the work without state directives and n' accomplishes a service s^ which duplicates s.^ Given the means, which the collective interest assumed, state authority is nowhere required for such a service, as is evident from examples where community or private services grow up alongside state services where permitted to do so. /a? Often anarchists have such services will be performed better than the n A state services they replace. Note that the left-leaning argument does not assume that organisation is unnecessary or that people in their 0^1 interest. It assumes will always and inevi/a.bly act that people themselves, and not some power­ ful elite in charge, are best placed to determine what is in their and to pn?$qe it tliough V<7?un?ary OMH interest organisation and cooperation. However people will do things themselves in an organised way, instead of being, as often now, passive recipients of welfare. Beneficial services, such as community—access radio and television stations, and also welfare arrangements, would in general be reorganised so that all the necessary infrastructure became community owned, and those wishing to use the service would and^to operate it, would carry out much of the operation themselves - taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of good things metered out to them by powerful agencies or professionals who take it upon themselves to judge what is in their [best!] interests. �7^ Arguments from freedom, autonomy and personhood. Re §8: Observe that these arguments do not require the rejection of society or of voluntary cooperation: it is the (claim to supreme) authority of the State that is essential to the Nor do the arguments depend on individualistic assumptions, such as argument. that persons stand in isolation and are not intensionally inter-related to one another: all that is supposed is that responsibility for actions can be (largely) individually assigned.^ 8. Re §9: It is likely to be objected that most of the experience is of pre­ industrial societies. experience. First, this is not true: there is now lots of local Secondly, insofar as it is true regarding large-scale industrial societies, it is not damaging. For it is precisely the structures of these societies that the aim is to change. Etc. Re §10. The replacement (or substitution) argument when duly followed through i) that is elaborated in requisite detail for each component of State actually that 9. is in the collective interest, shows that the State is not necessary. There are finitely many components which can be readily enumerated. In the case of each component anarchist replacements or alternatives have already been worked out, often in some detail; Put alternatively, see especially Kropotkin's work. the replacements enable the construction of a model which reveals a society functioning without the State, the design of, what can be arrived at in other less constructive ways, a practically possible stateless world; (practically) necessary. and this shows that the State is not But it can always be claimed that the modelling procedure has left out some critical feature of real world circumstances especially as to human psychology, that makes the model inapplicable to real world circumstances. This is a further point where^ appeal to the argument fjc/pi experience, that at various times and places anarchism has worked. Examples of Were the argument to depend on individualistic assumptions, it could be re-presented in an interesting reductio form, beginning: Suppose, as arguments for the State do, that persons are individuals (of the following cast; purely selfinterested, competing, ...). Then ... �10. such organisation with.a State suffice to show that critical real- world features have not been omitted. Criticism of Undirected Happening, and Anarchism with^Organistion In §10. 10. In particular, the Roszak position of an undirected change just happening is inadequate. The conditions for change have to be determined in some detail at least, and nurtured. No more satisfactory than the Let's Leave Everything Open, and so excessively to chance, is the Blueprint for the Future idea which tries to set everything into place. For example, how untried arrangements will work is uncertain, and in future possibilities may arise which have not yet been clearly envisaged. A much more flexible model is wanted: model is intended to provide. (See also 13). Beware of arguments concering organisation based &n efficiency (as usually 11. Need replacement for efficiency as for several other organis­ defined E = 0/1). ational values. Similarly for economic terms : optimum quantity of as defined in economic terms. quantities of nuclear power. 12. this the forest succession e.g. (in §3) be This may i of eid^e.g.^to optimum Point same as with respect to efficiency. Although the forest succession model (pp.11-13) is attractive, you do not seem to have provided any gripping arguments for its superiority, which might run along the lines of the moral value of anarchist means reflecting anarchist ends, or more concretely in terms of a political analysis of contemporary society (e.g. as done by Dennis Altman). as a relevant one. In short, the model needs to be justified in some way More generally, the basic thrust of the paper is on the superiority of anarchism as an end state. The part on strategy opens up a vast new area, including for example the tactics of anarchists in relation to elections, to mass uprisings, to opportunities opened by social cataclysms (e.g. Germany after WWI), to heavily authoritarian governments, etc. - which you don't treat so far. 13. Re 6: The Tragedy of Commons issues arise again between States, e.g. over fisheries, air pollution, etc., as well as war (cf. also Sinking Ark, p.105). �11. 14. In footnote 14. Th^s Bakunin urged a revolution everywhere at once: other­ wise there remained a continual risk and worry of State colonisation of adjacent areas, as of State imperialism. In footnote 12: There are steps towards locally managed legal arrangements, on which see Stone in Nemos XIX. 15. 2) On self-managed medicine, see Illych. Footnotes not fully taken up (through some overlap): A detailed argument to this conclusion is presented in Taylor, who also points out how the "Tragedy of the Commons" is the same general type. In fact Taylor Contends that arguments of the type -represent 'the strongest ca$e which can be made for the desirability of the State' 5) The small f^rms of economic (p.9), and that they are wanting. theory and the natipn states of political theory also, of course, satisfy the independence requirements. An independence require­ ment is retained in Hobbes' theory, though an individual's payoff is supposed to depend as well on the individual's eminence. [Marxists on social determinism?] Such organisations could in any case be valuable, not only in improving the Some. e/* eV" lot of those $*tuck in dilemma situations, but in providing ^situations, a matter 8) ?) about which there is increasing speculations and argument. 9) We don't of course wish to suggest that working within the system is just a waste of time, and we should watch it all go while we sit back and wait for the revolution. But in each urgent battle it's easy to lose sight of fact that each hard won victory is only temporary, to lose sight of the urgent necessity to begin constructing the sort of society in which they will not be so temporary. This is not and cannot be a matter of imposing some sort of Boy Scout 'Conservation Ethic' or minor changes in the direction of energy saving on a society which produces environmental degradation as a matter of its fundamental structure. 12) It also overlooks the extent to which the structure generates its own style of politicians and its own self-supporting procedures and mechanisms. 16. Opposition to the theoretical in Australian intellectual life runs right up through the universities even to research institutes, e.g. the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. �12. 17. None of the ways are original, all being found in at least rudimentary form in 19th century anarchist writings. original. 18. But no more were the ways of Aquinas [Ties with several footnotes.] Re detailed replacement: In the contemporary situations of privatisation of wealth and resources (by State distribution and enforcement thereof) nonstatist public and community organisations all struggle, even given a supply of voluntary labour, for want of community infrastructure, which under alternative social arrangements would be provided. Because under (&. g.) left-leaning (communal) forms of anarchism, wealth, resources, etc., are held or controlled by the community, there is no need to apply coercion to wrest these from often unwilling privatised individuals in order to /^rnisA infrastructure, etc. The situation in right-leaning anarchism is very different. 19. The extent to which States operate in the public good is vastly exaggerated. The situation as regards wealth, large corporations, etc, are only some examples. Cities are another: they are not designed so that they operate in the interests of people, of all those who dwell in them or visit them, but are dominated at present by the interests of commerce. Compare also modern metropolitan, where cities dominate life of the countrysides. 20. Serious defects in Wolff's arguments: a) reasons on p.78 are quite inadequate, b) false dichotomy between voluntary/constracts. 21. Conclusion: the State has the myth of legitimacy. no legitimacy. Weber has material (essay?) on This should be compared with Edelman's material on bogus legitimacy obtained by symbolic means. The transformation of the State is through the State; the removal of the State is by the State. 22. Rewiode!: (1) In some of these things alternative groups work with the State or its representatives (as rainforest patches grow within a eucalypt forest). This does not imply recognition of the State as legitimate, as a power de jure; but its de facto power is hard to avoid, and like the judo expert alternative groups will try to take advantage of the power of the operation. points OK: reeXD/-e$$*. ] [Seme �13. (2) An appropriate natural evolution model exonerates us from the difficult - and unnecessary - task of setting down a blueprint for change, or for trying to predict how things should go. false dichotomy. 23. It shows that revolution/evolution presents a In between is, e.g. Encouraged of speeded-up evolution Further questions. Re §1: a) All current States are evil, but is even the best State attainable seriously flawed? While ideal states with ideal citizens are not evil (as model worlds will show), the ideal is unattainable? Otherwise, where is the necessity (of evil)? one-world necessity, virtually: Also "necessity" contracts to in all worlds like the real one is having states, there are states, so "necessarily" there are states, b) of upturns to individuals is over intensional features. The reduction failure The point deserves expanding. Re §10: The extent to which the new organisations permit punishment, or a) constraints, or rely upon it, is a ticklish issue, especially given the argument, b) Generally there are various ways of changing or regulating an organisation, e.g. external/internal. For instance, outside, state,regulation is replaced by group regulation, e.g. worker-consumer, which is an intery)a^*eA&Mrn<t/ mix. 24. How useful is this distinction? An important prerequisite for directed (i.e. unaimless) change is an alter­ native view, such as the Alternative Paradigm affords, the rudiments of theory, where some goals are indicated. Once such a view is obtained, in rough outline, efforts can be made to further it, e.g. to put into practice with, for example, more people attempting to introduce changes into their own lives. In the energy case, to take a major example, the goals are clear enough: maih"T.y to lead less energy consumptive lives. Ways to do this are well enough known, e.g. to wear sweaters instead of switching on radiators, to reduce motor commuting by living nearer one's work and friends or going less frequently or using alternative transport, e.g. public or bicycle. But— though most Australians �14. (e.g.) are in favour of energy conservation, in principle - social arrangements are so structured that some of the alternatives are impossibly difficult or are arduous, e.g. a may may have little option but to commute long distances when the factory at which he works moves to an outer industrial suburb, and all his commitments lie in the areas to which he is mortgaged. Similarly packaging is increasingly difficult if not impossible to avoid, even in essential purchases and those designed to lead the good life. Thus an effective change is often going to have to be part of a more far-reaching change. For a working example - reforming and restructuring forest services - see Anarchism letter, p.3 ff. Further Arguments for the State, not already taken up explicitly:- 25. The argument from efficiency, growth, etc: (1) isation ! really the argument from organ­ Efficiency is little double edged as e.g. in efficiency ys employment: There is a trade-off. (Griffin on 6?ff,C4C7tcyof smaM-scale argiculture). itarian states more efficient, etc. (disputed). Total­ Maximization of efficiency is not that the game is about - antifreedom, antidemocratic, anti-good-life, and what is valuable. Also reward for initiative in terms of grossly inequitable distrib­ ution of wealth is not required. Work is often undesirable. No way in which the the upper<$ worth the salaries they get. The argument from political possiblity, "reality". (2) argument from the status quo, from^Old Paradigm. invalidity. realistic" or The argument is really an An historical comparison shows Life without the Church would no doubt have been dismissed as "un­ impossible" by many of those who lived in the Middle Ages. More generally different economies are extar)t and many more are possible. Supply demand theory and theory of historic market will work without profit maxim assumption, but instead e.g. certain satisfactions (satisfying). is needed is an assu_jnption of rea SO/) able return. All that A range of other assumptions. However, marginal (calculus) theory builds in assumption of profit op* return �15. Maximisation. There are several Myths concerning the Market to dispose of here: a) it s historic b) it's efficient: depends how assess: e.g. net of new technology. Paradigm differences, deep differences in what is considered valuable, begin to emerge rather quickly in arguments for the State, once discussion of their the Dominant Paradigm organisational goals of In particular, adequacy begins. efficiency and growth (on which see Scott), instead of being taken for granted as formerly, are up for debate and overturning. Is it possible to obtain an exhaustive diversification of arguments for 26. the State? It is doubtful that theoretical classifications so far are of nh/cA merit. Classification Scheme 1:- Empiricist (pragmatist) *Non empiricist ( ? Idealist *Nonidealist Classification 2:- ? ? *Non-u^itarian ? ? Empirical survey gives Contract U^.ity economic Idealist Don't often get State, but only Society,as e.g. in Green. And it is important to distinguish these: for anarchism admits Society. 27. a) Russell, History of \N. Phil, makes some useful points: Glorification of the State begins, so far as modern times are concerned, with the Reformation. In the Roman Empire, The Emperor was defied, and the State �/ 16. thereby acquired a sacred character; but the philosophers of the Middle Ages, with few exceptions, were ecclesiastical, and therefore put the Church before the State. Luther began the opposite practice ... Hobbes ... developed the doctrine of the supremacy of the State, and Spinoza, on the whole, agreed with him. u. Rosseau ... thought that the State should not tolerate other political organisations. Hegel ... goes to lengths which are astonishing (p.739). that these are all protestants that are cited.) (Note On p.742 there is a goodish page on Hegel's doctrine of State including: ' If shj} follow from Hegel's principles that every interested which is not Aatmftll ^the community and which can be promoted by cooperation, have its appropriate organisation ... 'jjhere is also some good stuff in Russell on holism (trad, logic) ett. on pp.744-5 and p.732 bettei^J �Comment on collectivism "Collectivism -the doctrine that the means of production should be collectively owned - is, like many other features of radical dogma, the bastard child of capitalist parents. Collectivism is the doctrine of people who imagine production as taking place in large collectively operated units - it's a factory or production-line picture. Historically it arose after the industrial revolution had driven people off the land and created workers for the large-scale factory enterprises set up by capitalists for their own profit. The class which supported it were the urban workers in such enterprises, not the peasants, and others in self-directed employment, such as craftspeople, carpenters and shoemakers - the latter group were mostly mutualists, later anarchists. This is why Marxism, which lays heavy stress on collectivism, also emphasises the role of the urban proletariat at the expense of other non-capitalist groups, and also stresses the idiocy of rural life, the blessings of progress, technology, and industrialism generally. Collectivism essentially buys the large-scale, mass-producticn technology-dependent character of capitalist economic organisation. It does not see that if one does not have such a structure, collectivism amounts to an otiose, damaging and unjustifiable restriction on possible forms of non-capitalist social and economic organisation, ruling out particularly the self-directed type of option for production and various combination cooperative forms."- Richard Routley and Vai Routley �The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. 1. Cutting of Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'The irrefutability of anarchism', Social Alternatives, 2(3):23-29. (9 leaves) 2. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of Grofman B (1980) 'Review, Taylor, Michael, Anarchy and Cooperation, John Wiley and Sons, London, 1976', Theory and decision, 12(1):107114, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00154661. (5 leaves) ���/2/ <i^%?^ Z" C <^y, 1/^.- ) �7^ x _ z ^^.c �^5/ 1/ 4!L^/^4) / / z A 7z^ <^<—< %-/<r ��) 4//? c/^ 4^*7" 1 /^o^ — < jT*' A//^ 7*x ??s �. * The state is necessary ybr this or that, for the optimal provision of public goods (including, but not merely, preservation of public order). Notice that this important type of argument need /ot presume to establish necessity. It is obvious, from the operation of nastier states, that ' societies can function not only without optimal provision of public goods, but indeed with very little provision of any such goods. It would, moreover, be a rash archist who pretended that modern states deliver anything remotely approaching optimal allocations of public goods. Competition for anarchistic alternatives is accordingly not with opdmal allocations, but perhaps only a matter of exceeding rather poor provision. More generally, it is enough that these alternatives do well enough, satisize not maximize. Most of the arguments from provision of public good depend not only upon maximization assumptions, just rejected, but also upon, what flows from individualism, a false private/public dichotomy, with the private delivered by individuals or individual firms, and the public by the state. In between, however, lie many social groupings: clubs, communities, unions, societies, clans, tribes, and so on. Such groups can deliver social goods. As the modern state developed more or less at the time of the rise of individualism in its extreme modem forms, it is hardly surprising that there is a heavy individualistic setting presumed in most arguments to the state. An important group of the arguments alluded to (variations upon Prisoners' Dilemma, Tragedy of the Commons,...) take the following broad form:- individuals operating on their own, in a certain prearranged settings which involve relations to other individuals also operating independently, will make seriously suboptimal �18 decisions or follow suboptimal practices - unless brought into line by an outside authority, swiftly presumed to be a surrogate of the state. It should be evident, even without proper details of the arguments, that the state is neither sufficient nor necessary for resolution of the problems that issue from independent individual operations and from individual competition. It is not sufficient because commons' tragedies, such as the overexploitation of commons' resources by individual competing firms, can proceed apace in the presence of the state and may even be encouraged through state activity. It is not necessary because the dependence-relations of individuals in dilemma or tragedy situations can be exposed, and restored, in a variety of ways into which the state does not enter; for example, by establishing communication linkages, by social activity or arbitration by engaged societies, special groups, and so on. (Commonly such relations are, in any case, evident in analogous real-life situations before the state becomes involved, or can be persuaded or pushed into being involved.) Also indicated thereby is how anarchism can resolve such dilemmas as need to be resolved in the absence of the state, namely by having alternative arrangements and organisation in place which will serve instead. One of the major deceits of modern political theory hides in the persistent theme that the state, with a centralised monopoly of force, is necessary in order to assure adequate public goods, including public order. But the most that appears required, the most that arguments would deliver, are specific organisations that look after specific kinds of goods. There is no inherent reason why societies should not institute and regulate specialised bodies, coordinated among themselves by negotiation, or failing that by recognised arbitrators, to ensure the adequate maintenance or production of various types of public goods, including control of damaging crime. Each such institution would gain community standing from its support base, for instance through possessing fairly general democratically-generated recognition. Such an institution would aim to secure execution of its recommendations and decisions by sanctions and like means, and for this it could mobilize in co-operation with other recognised institutions. spheres postal and communication arrangements (Kropotkin's favourite examples) to sport. Each major sport has its international [organisation] that regulates a variety of matters ranging from the rules of the game to the administration of competitions. Such bodies are, of course, open to schisms and rivalries, but these are rarely a major problem, in spite of the fact that they have no sanctions to enforce their authority other than excluding competitors from participation in the events they organise (Burnheim p.221, whom the whole preceding paragraph paraphrases). �* An apparently powerful argument for the state, again from public order concerns, advances the following claim:- The state is required to control and limit such social evils as crime and corruption. Observe, it is not supposed these features of life are eliminated under the state; so questions arise about tolerable levels, cost-benefit ratios upon varying levels of controls (down to the point of any controls at all), and so on. Observe again that the typical state, so far from limiting corruption and crime, is itself a major source of them. The state structure, by virtue of its power, expanse and character, indMcay much of the evil it is supposed to remove, such as the extent of crime. There are several different reasons for this. For one, the state tends to become the guardian of a partisan morality, and tried to prosecute what, outside a "moral minority", are not offences at all, are victimless "crimes", and so on. Thus a range of medical, sexual and drug "offences". For another, the state acts to protect its questionable monopolies, whence a range of banking, gambling, gaming and other offences. Differently, state-supported or sponsored social outcomes, such as gross inequalities, and privatization of wealth and resources, encourage property crime. Anarchists agree that the major background source of these crimes, the state and its legion of "law and order" officers, should be removed. Over what, if anything, replaces this extensive apparatus, they differ. Different forms of anarchism are bound to offer different suggestions. For example, under communist forms, where an extensive institution of private property vanishes, property crimes will therewith disappear also; but under individualistic forms which sanction unlimited accumulation of property, some procedures for safeguarding property will need to be provided. There are again many ways, much less demanding than resort to the state to achieve some requisite protection of property. One is what effectively operates in many places that also waste their finances paying for police protection, namely insurance. Another is private, neighbourhood, or community security. �n/Q^- --T'- ; ��Sojustified or not, there is no practical aiternative to the state. A/^e .f ika * Anarchism has not worked in practice, and is unworkable.^ Meiiher is true. Before the modern era of states it seemed to work well enough in some places, for instance in parts of the Americas and of the Pacific. Since the modem advent of states, it has been afforded but little opportunity to work at the national level, but it remains operative - a most striking example - at the transnational level. According to a condescending pragmatic argument, simple primitive societies may have been able to struggle along without state structure or organisation, but it is entirely out of the question for the practical operation for modem industrial societies. No recent anarchist societies have worked. A short response is that but few have had an opportunity to succeed. There is extroardinarily little room for social experiment in modem state dominated societies. Moreover, where anarchist societies have had some chance to flourish, as briefly in Spain before they were �4^^ // c �20 suppressed, they appear to have functioned moderately well. At the international level, anarchy has operated for many generations, although few would wish to argue that the arrangements, though they though successful in a sense, are particularly satisfactory. The international order is anarchistic, because there is no coercive government or authoritiative political body, with the authority backed by enforcing power. International order is instead a prime example of anarchy (not a wonderful example, but then nor are many states terrific examples of archy). And it affords a conspicuous counterexample to stock arguments, like that of Hobbes, to some sort of well-ordering authority such as the state. Granted, then, international order leaves much to be desired (though it is not significantly worse than order in some states); so there are repeated calls for new world orders of one sort or another. It has been persuasively argued (through a sort of top-down argument against states) that international order is as bad as it is because of the power and intransigence of states. One way to an improved world order is through the erosion of states, diminution of state sovereignty. As for real testing in practice, there is now no experimental space outside states. There used to be some room in the world for sizeable political experimentation, for testing different arrangements. We are now locked into large, overpopulated states with little room to move, let alone experiment without states. There is however space w/r/un more liberal states for limited experimentation, and there is increasing scope for simulation and modellings as computer power and versatility grow. Most of the experimentation has been with small commune arrangements. [What practice has shown, about all it has shown negatively, is that communistic arrangements do not tend to work well for long with present humans, unless they are committed to an authoritarian ideology.] * As some stage as the dialectic advances, argument merges, as here, with responses to criticism. But before criticisms are considered in more detail, it is important to examine �/^^zr <?t'a ??J' Z^^* Z^b 7^7°^ z^ *—-^7, J * V?/ 7 /?'Z? f//-e/?r �/?'?=? f^/?r �=* rc <*r7^<r /c? xSj^, 7; r? r ^2. 7 ) t ��/ ^7 ^7 A. *^J �* ! �y --- - y^D^t <g) - .42 <2^/ d -^y ! ^y-t^ y^ ^r-%—,_/, yy �7^S . /A - / /^)7 /j <—^ -t' �7 ���;/ ��The prob!em of cont robing the power of the state and preventing the State once established from usurping further power to the State in the mandate, is oniy satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the first place. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of Meyers DT (1981) 'The inevitability of the state', Analysis, 41:46-47, https://doi.org/10.2307/3327871. (3 leaves) The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of four pages from Chomsky N (1992) Deterring democracy, Hill and Wang. (2 leaves) V -^<rj z%^-7* The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of two pages from unidentified publication. (1 leaf) zt/ /r^/^<L-*-^- c.4. tx . (/-L- X—. -^f r (T^-< , /^t <^A y<^?A - --- ^-e-^ - . ------- (L^? A / r f <r L 7/^ Loc^^an The strategy of the first section of the book is to see where we might fnd up if we began with a state of nature as described by Locke and ttuck within the constraints of the Lockean "laws of nature". We "focus a nonstate situation in which peopie generally satisfy moral conuratnts and generally act as they ought. Such an assumption is not wildly 'Wmistic... Yet it is the best anarchic situation one could reasonably ! ) for... If one could show that the State would be superior event to most favored situation of anarchy... it would justify the state." (5) J why should we do this? Presumably Locke and before him painted their pictures of the state of nature as they did because thought that's the way people really were. Nozick doesn't seem to that, thought he also seems to think that Hobbes' characterization ^mptjusibte or unreliable. But if truth to fact isn't the motive, then what there is. in short, the question of how we are to the alternatives . *hat ^nteria of superiority one is going to use. And here lies the rub. ^jrcty Locke and Hobbes were trying to paint a picture of the "state ^*!urc which wou!d not only provide a point of comparison but also -2993> <M-C avC- 3. In §2 introduce contrast between left-leaning and right-leaning anarchisms. In the enlarged version will carry both of these through the arguments, comparing The main initial, and striking, differences concern replace­ and contrasting them. ment. The following, for example, is how mere right-leaning replacement will tend to look:[A ?irst complication of the simulation argument:- A properly democratic state can be simulated, in that all it accomplishes that is considered worthwhile can be duplicated. The argument is as before for services for which the means can be obtained. _ ___ ___ __ . Otherwise let S' be a service for which s^L-Lici. und.it cnjmpu_L so ry caxarion Or tLie , - But if it is in the collective interest then it will obtain the means, e.g. it generates these by its own operation, as a telephone service does, or it raises the equivalent of subscriptions as a community television station or magazine may. Then however the network n may be replaced by a network n* of relations of operators who choose to do the work without state directives and n' accomplishes a service s^ which duplicates s.^ Given the means, which the collective interest assumed, state authority is nowhere required for such a service, as is evident from examples where community or private services grow up alongside state services where permitted to do so. Often anarchists have such services will be performed better than the A H state services they replace. Note that the left-leaning argument does not assume that organisation is unnecessary or that people in their 0^1 interest. It assumes will always and inevi/j&6 ly act that people themselves, and net some power­ ful elite in charge, are best placed to determine what is in their and to pMcfe it though VcJunhiry 04M interest organisation and cooperation. However people will do things themselves in an organised way, instead of being, as often now, passive recipients of welfare. Beneficial services, such as community-access radio and television stations, and also welfare arrangements, would in general be reorganised so that all the necessary infrastructure became community owned, and those wishing to use the service would and^ to operate it, would carry out much of the operation themselves - taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of good things metered out to them by powerful agencies or professionals who take it upon themselves to judge what is in their [best!] interests. 3.^ the means are not forthcoming. Then the state would not be able to supply means either unless it exceeded its democratic mandate.] Let service s, e.g. a telephone or postal or transport service, be some state activity which is in the collective interest, and let it be accomplished by network n which will include a system of operators standing in various relations. Picture the network that makes up a state postal system or a local radio station. Such a system does not require the authority of the state of operate: what it may require is means to operate acquired by methods other than compulsory taxation or the like. But if it is in the collective interest then it will obtain the means, e.g. it generates these by its own operation, as a telephone service does, or it raises the equivalent of subscriptions as a community television station or magazine may. Then however the network n may be replaced by a network n of relations of operators who choose to do the work without state directives and n' accomplishes a service s^ which duplicates s.^ Given the means, which the collective interest assumed, state authority is nowhere required for such a service, as is evident from examples where community or private services grow up alongside state services where permitted to do so. /a? Often anarchists have such services will be performed better than the n A state services they replace. Note that the left-leaning argument does not assume that organisation is unnecessary or that people in their 0^1 interest. It assumes will always and inevi/a.bly act that people themselves, and not some power­ ful elite in charge, are best placed to determine what is in their and to pn?$qe it tliough V<7?un?ary OMH interest organisation and cooperation. However people will do things themselves in an organised way, instead of being, as often now, passive recipients of welfare. Beneficial services, such as community—access radio and television stations, and also welfare arrangements, would in general be reorganised so that all the necessary infrastructure became community owned, and those wishing to use the service would and^to operate it, would carry out much of the operation themselves - taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of good things metered out to them by powerful agencies or professionals who take it upon themselves to judge what is in their [best!] interests. 7^ Arguments from freedom, autonomy and personhood. Re §8: Observe that these arguments do not require the rejection of society or of voluntary cooperation: it is the (claim to supreme) authority of the State that is essential to the Nor do the arguments depend on individualistic assumptions, such as argument. that persons stand in isolation and are not intensionally inter-related to one another: all that is supposed is that responsibility for actions can be (largely) individually assigned.^ 8. Re §9: It is likely to be objected that most of the experience is of pre­ industrial societies. experience. First, this is not true: there is now lots of local Secondly, insofar as it is true regarding large-scale industrial societies, it is not damaging. For it is precisely the structures of these societies that the aim is to change. Etc. Re §10. The replacement (or substitution) argument when duly followed through i) that is elaborated in requisite detail for each component of State actually that 9. is in the collective interest, shows that the State is not necessary. There are finitely many components which can be readily enumerated. In the case of each component anarchist replacements or alternatives have already been worked out, often in some detail; Put alternatively, see especially Kropotkin's work. the replacements enable the construction of a model which reveals a society functioning without the State, the design of, what can be arrived at in other less constructive ways, a practically possible stateless world; (practically) necessary. and this shows that the State is not But it can always be claimed that the modelling procedure has left out some critical feature of real world circumstances especially as to human psychology, that makes the model inapplicable to real world circumstances. This is a further point where^ appeal to the argument fjc/pi experience, that at various times and places anarchism has worked. Examples of Were the argument to depend on individualistic assumptions, it could be re-presented in an interesting reductio form, beginning: Suppose, as arguments for the State do, that persons are individuals (of the following cast; purely selfinterested, competing, ...). Then ... 10. such organisation with.a State suffice to show that critical real- world features have not been omitted. Criticism of Undirected Happening, and Anarchism with^Organistion In §10. 10. In particular, the Roszak position of an undirected change just happening is inadequate. The conditions for change have to be determined in some detail at least, and nurtured. No more satisfactory than the Let's Leave Everything Open, and so excessively to chance, is the Blueprint for the Future idea which tries to set everything into place. For example, how untried arrangements will work is uncertain, and in future possibilities may arise which have not yet been clearly envisaged. A much more flexible model is wanted: model is intended to provide. (See also 13). Beware of arguments concering organisation based &n efficiency (as usually 11. Need replacement for efficiency as for several other organis­ defined E = 0/1). ational values. Similarly for economic terms : optimum quantity of as defined in economic terms. quantities of nuclear power. 12. this the forest succession e.g. (in §3) be This may i of eid^e.g.^to optimum Point same as with respect to efficiency. Although the forest succession model (pp.11-13) is attractive, you do not seem to have provided any gripping arguments for its superiority, which might run along the lines of the moral value of anarchist means reflecting anarchist ends, or more concretely in terms of a political analysis of contemporary society (e.g. as done by Dennis Altman). as a relevant one. In short, the model needs to be justified in some way More generally, the basic thrust of the paper is on the superiority of anarchism as an end state. The part on strategy opens up a vast new area, including for example the tactics of anarchists in relation to elections, to mass uprisings, to opportunities opened by social cataclysms (e.g. Germany after WWI), to heavily authoritarian governments, etc. - which you don't treat so far. 13. Re 6: The Tragedy of Commons issues arise again between States, e.g. over fisheries, air pollution, etc., as well as war (cf. also Sinking Ark, p.105). 11. 14. In footnote 14. Th^s Bakunin urged a revolution everywhere at once: other­ wise there remained a continual risk and worry of State colonisation of adjacent areas, as of State imperialism. In footnote 12: There are steps towards locally managed legal arrangements, on which see Stone in Nemos XIX. 15. 2) On self-managed medicine, see Illych. Footnotes not fully taken up (through some overlap): A detailed argument to this conclusion is presented in Taylor, who also points out how the "Tragedy of the Commons" is the same general type. In fact Taylor Contends that arguments of the type -represent 'the strongest ca$e which can be made for the desirability of the State' 5) The small f^rms of economic (p.9), and that they are wanting. theory and the natipn states of political theory also, of course, satisfy the independence requirements. An independence require­ ment is retained in Hobbes' theory, though an individual's payoff is supposed to depend as well on the individual's eminence. [Marxists on social determinism?] Such organisations could in any case be valuable, not only in improving the Some. e/* eV" lot of those $*tuck in dilemma situations, but in providing ^situations, a matter 8) ?) about which there is increasing speculations and argument. 9) We don't of course wish to suggest that working within the system is just a waste of time, and we should watch it all go while we sit back and wait for the revolution. But in each urgent battle it's easy to lose sight of fact that each hard won victory is only temporary, to lose sight of the urgent necessity to begin constructing the sort of society in which they will not be so temporary. This is not and cannot be a matter of imposing some sort of Boy Scout 'Conservation Ethic' or minor changes in the direction of energy saving on a society which produces environmental degradation as a matter of its fundamental structure. 12) It also overlooks the extent to which the structure generates its own style of politicians and its own self-supporting procedures and mechanisms. 16. Opposition to the theoretical in Australian intellectual life runs right up through the universities even to research institutes, e.g. the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. 12. 17. None of the ways are original, all being found in at least rudimentary form in 19th century anarchist writings. original. 18. But no more were the ways of Aquinas [Ties with several footnotes.] Re detailed replacement: In the contemporary situations of privatisation of wealth and resources (by State distribution and enforcement thereof) nonstatist public and community organisations all struggle, even given a supply of voluntary labour, for want of community infrastructure, which under alternative social arrangements would be provided. Because under (&. g.) left-leaning (communal) forms of anarchism, wealth, resources, etc., are held or controlled by the community, there is no need to apply coercion to wrest these from often unwilling privatised individuals in order to /^rnisA infrastructure, etc. The situation in right-leaning anarchism is very different. 19. The extent to which States operate in the public good is vastly exaggerated. The situation as regards wealth, large corporations, etc, are only some examples. Cities are another: they are not designed so that they operate in the interests of people, of all those who dwell in them or visit them, but are dominated at present by the interests of commerce. Compare also modern metropolitan, where cities dominate life of the countrysides. 20. Serious defects in Wolff's arguments: a) reasons on p.78 are quite inadequate, b) false dichotomy between voluntary/constracts. 21. Conclusion: the State has the myth of legitimacy. no legitimacy. Weber has material (essay?) on This should be compared with Edelman's material on bogus legitimacy obtained by symbolic means. The transformation of the State is through the State; the removal of the State is by the State. 22. Rewiode!: (1) In some of these things alternative groups work with the State or its representatives (as rainforest patches grow within a eucalypt forest). This does not imply recognition of the State as legitimate, as a power de jure; but its de facto power is hard to avoid, and like the judo expert alternative groups will try to take advantage of the power of the operation. points OK: reeXD/-e$$*. ] [Seme 13. (2) An appropriate natural evolution model exonerates us from the difficult - and unnecessary - task of setting down a blueprint for change, or for trying to predict how things should go. false dichotomy. 23. It shows that revolution/evolution presents a In between is, e.g. Encouraged of speeded-up evolution Further questions. Re §1: a) All current States are evil, but is even the best State attainable seriously flawed? While ideal states with ideal citizens are not evil (as model worlds will show), the ideal is unattainable? Otherwise, where is the necessity (of evil)? one-world necessity, virtually: Also "necessity" contracts to in all worlds like the real one is having states, there are states, so "necessarily" there are states, b) of upturns to individuals is over intensional features. The reduction failure The point deserves expanding. Re §10: The extent to which the new organisations permit punishment, or a) constraints, or rely upon it, is a ticklish issue, especially given the argument, b) Generally there are various ways of changing or regulating an organisation, e.g. external/internal. For instance, outside, state,regulation is replaced by group regulation, e.g. worker-consumer, which is an intery)a^*eA&Mrn<t/ mix. 24. How useful is this distinction? An important prerequisite for directed (i.e. unaimless) change is an alter­ native view, such as the Alternative Paradigm affords, the rudiments of theory, where some goals are indicated. Once such a view is obtained, in rough outline, efforts can be made to further it, e.g. to put into practice with, for example, more people attempting to introduce changes into their own lives. In the energy case, to take a major example, the goals are clear enough: maih"T.y to lead less energy consumptive lives. Ways to do this are well enough known, e.g. to wear sweaters instead of switching on radiators, to reduce motor commuting by living nearer one's work and friends or going less frequently or using alternative transport, e.g. public or bicycle. But— though most Australians 14. (e.g.) are in favour of energy conservation, in principle - social arrangements are so structured that some of the alternatives are impossibly difficult or are arduous, e.g. a may may have little option but to commute long distances when the factory at which he works moves to an outer industrial suburb, and all his commitments lie in the areas to which he is mortgaged. Similarly packaging is increasingly difficult if not impossible to avoid, even in essential purchases and those designed to lead the good life. Thus an effective change is often going to have to be part of a more far-reaching change. For a working example - reforming and restructuring forest services - see Anarchism letter, p.3 ff. Further Arguments for the State, not already taken up explicitly:- 25. The argument from efficiency, growth, etc: (1) isation ! really the argument from organ­ Efficiency is little double edged as e.g. in efficiency ys employment: There is a trade-off. (Griffin on 6?ff,C4C7tcyof smaM-scale argiculture). itarian states more efficient, etc. (disputed). Total­ Maximization of efficiency is not that the game is about - antifreedom, antidemocratic, anti-good-life, and what is valuable. Also reward for initiative in terms of grossly inequitable distrib­ ution of wealth is not required. Work is often undesirable. No way in which the the upper<$ worth the salaries they get. The argument from political possiblity, "reality". (2) argument from the status quo, from^Old Paradigm. invalidity. realistic" or The argument is really an An historical comparison shows Life without the Church would no doubt have been dismissed as "un­ impossible" by many of those who lived in the Middle Ages. More generally different economies are extar)t and many more are possible. Supply demand theory and theory of historic market will work without profit maxim assumption, but instead e.g. certain satisfactions (satisfying). is needed is an assu_jnption of rea SO/) able return. All that A range of other assumptions. However, marginal (calculus) theory builds in assumption of profit op* return 15. Maximisation. There are several Myths concerning the Market to dispose of here: a) it s historic b) it's efficient: depends how assess: e.g. net of new technology. Paradigm differences, deep differences in what is considered valuable, begin to emerge rather quickly in arguments for the State, once discussion of their the Dominant Paradigm organisational goals of In particular, adequacy begins. efficiency and growth (on which see Scott), instead of being taken for granted as formerly, are up for debate and overturning. Is it possible to obtain an exhaustive diversification of arguments for 26. the State? It is doubtful that theoretical classifications so far are of nh/cA merit. Classification Scheme 1:- Empiricist (pragmatist) *Non empiricist ( ? Idealist *Nonidealist Classification 2:- ? ? *Non-u^itarian ? ? Empirical survey gives Contract U^.ity economic Idealist Don't often get State, but only Society,as e.g. in Green. And it is important to distinguish these: for anarchism admits Society. 27. a) Russell, History of \N. Phil, makes some useful points: Glorification of the State begins, so far as modern times are concerned, with the Reformation. In the Roman Empire, The Emperor was defied, and the State / 16. thereby acquired a sacred character; but the philosophers of the Middle Ages, with few exceptions, were ecclesiastical, and therefore put the Church before the State. Luther began the opposite practice ... Hobbes ... developed the doctrine of the supremacy of the State, and Spinoza, on the whole, agreed with him. u. Rosseau ... thought that the State should not tolerate other political organisations. Hegel ... goes to lengths which are astonishing (p.739). that these are all protestants that are cited.) (Note On p.742 there is a goodish page on Hegel's doctrine of State including: ' If shj} follow from Hegel's principles that every interested which is not Aatmftll ^the community and which can be promoted by cooperation, have its appropriate organisation ... 'jjhere is also some good stuff in Russell on holism (trad, logic) ett. on pp.744-5 and p.732 bettei^J Comment on collectivism "Collectivism -the doctrine that the means of production should be collectively owned - is, like many other features of radical dogma, the bastard child of capitalist parents. Collectivism is the doctrine of people who imagine production as taking place in large collectively operated units - it's a factory or production-line picture. Historically it arose after the industrial revolution had driven people off the land and created workers for the large-scale factory enterprises set up by capitalists for their own profit. The class which supported it were the urban workers in such enterprises, not the peasants, and others in self-directed employment, such as craftspeople, carpenters and shoemakers - the latter group were mostly mutualists, later anarchists. This is why Marxism, which lays heavy stress on collectivism, also emphasises the role of the urban proletariat at the expense of other non-capitalist groups, and also stresses the idiocy of rural life, the blessings of progress, technology, and industrialism generally. Collectivism essentially buys the large-scale, mass-producticn technology-dependent character of capitalist economic organisation. It does not see that if one does not have such a structure, collectivism amounts to an otiose, damaging and unjustifiable restriction on possible forms of non-capitalist social and economic organisation, ruling out particularly the self-directed type of option for production and various combination cooperative forms."- Richard Routley and Vai Routley The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. 1. Cutting of Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'The irrefutability of anarchism', Social Alternatives, 2(3):23-29. (9 leaves) 2. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of Grofman B (1980) 'Review, Taylor, Michael, Anarchy and Cooperation, John Wiley and Sons, London, 1976', Theory and decision, 12(1):107114, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00154661. (5 leaves) /2/ <i^%?^ Z" C <^y, 1/^.- ) 7^ x _ z ^^.c ^5/ 1/ 4!L^/^4) / / z A 7z^ <^<—< %-/<r ) 4//? c/^ 4^*7" 1 /^o^ — < jT*' A//^ 7*x ??s . * The state is necessary ybr this or that, for the optimal provision of public goods (including, but not merely, preservation of public order). Notice that this important type of argument need /ot presume to establish necessity. It is obvious, from the operation of nastier states, that ' societies can function not only without optimal provision of public goods, but indeed with very little provision of any such goods. It would, moreover, be a rash archist who pretended that modern states deliver anything remotely approaching optimal allocations of public goods. Competition for anarchistic alternatives is accordingly not with opdmal allocations, but perhaps only a matter of exceeding rather poor provision. More generally, it is enough that these alternatives do well enough, satisize not maximize. Most of the arguments from provision of public good depend not only upon maximization assumptions, just rejected, but also upon, what flows from individualism, a false private/public dichotomy, with the private delivered by individuals or individual firms, and the public by the state. In between, however, lie many social groupings: clubs, communities, unions, societies, clans, tribes, and so on. Such groups can deliver social goods. As the modern state developed more or less at the time of the rise of individualism in its extreme modem forms, it is hardly surprising that there is a heavy individualistic setting presumed in most arguments to the state. An important group of the arguments alluded to (variations upon Prisoners' Dilemma, Tragedy of the Commons,...) take the following broad form:- individuals operating on their own, in a certain prearranged settings which involve relations to other individuals also operating independently, will make seriously suboptimal 18 decisions or follow suboptimal practices - unless brought into line by an outside authority, swiftly presumed to be a surrogate of the state. It should be evident, even without proper details of the arguments, that the state is neither sufficient nor necessary for resolution of the problems that issue from independent individual operations and from individual competition. It is not sufficient because commons' tragedies, such as the overexploitation of commons' resources by individual competing firms, can proceed apace in the presence of the state and may even be encouraged through state activity. It is not necessary because the dependence-relations of individuals in dilemma or tragedy situations can be exposed, and restored, in a variety of ways into which the state does not enter; for example, by establishing communication linkages, by social activity or arbitration by engaged societies, special groups, and so on. (Commonly such relations are, in any case, evident in analogous real-life situations before the state becomes involved, or can be persuaded or pushed into being involved.) Also indicated thereby is how anarchism can resolve such dilemmas as need to be resolved in the absence of the state, namely by having alternative arrangements and organisation in place which will serve instead. One of the major deceits of modern political theory hides in the persistent theme that the state, with a centralised monopoly of force, is necessary in order to assure adequate public goods, including public order. But the most that appears required, the most that arguments would deliver, are specific organisations that look after specific kinds of goods. There is no inherent reason why societies should not institute and regulate specialised bodies, coordinated among themselves by negotiation, or failing that by recognised arbitrators, to ensure the adequate maintenance or production of various types of public goods, including control of damaging crime. Each such institution would gain community standing from its support base, for instance through possessing fairly general democratically-generated recognition. Such an institution would aim to secure execution of its recommendations and decisions by sanctions and like means, and for this it could mobilize in co-operation with other recognised institutions. spheres postal and communication arrangements (Kropotkin's favourite examples) to sport. Each major sport has its international [organisation] that regulates a variety of matters ranging from the rules of the game to the administration of competitions. Such bodies are, of course, open to schisms and rivalries, but these are rarely a major problem, in spite of the fact that they have no sanctions to enforce their authority other than excluding competitors from participation in the events they organise (Burnheim p.221, whom the whole preceding paragraph paraphrases). * An apparently powerful argument for the state, again from public order concerns, advances the following claim:- The state is required to control and limit such social evils as crime and corruption. Observe, it is not supposed these features of life are eliminated under the state; so questions arise about tolerable levels, cost-benefit ratios upon varying levels of controls (down to the point of any controls at all), and so on. Observe again that the typical state, so far from limiting corruption and crime, is itself a major source of them. The state structure, by virtue of its power, expanse and character, indMcay much of the evil it is supposed to remove, such as the extent of crime. There are several different reasons for this. For one, the state tends to become the guardian of a partisan morality, and tried to prosecute what, outside a "moral minority", are not offences at all, are victimless "crimes", and so on. Thus a range of medical, sexual and drug "offences". For another, the state acts to protect its questionable monopolies, whence a range of banking, gambling, gaming and other offences. Differently, state-supported or sponsored social outcomes, such as gross inequalities, and privatization of wealth and resources, encourage property crime. Anarchists agree that the major background source of these crimes, the state and its legion of "law and order" officers, should be removed. Over what, if anything, replaces this extensive apparatus, they differ. Different forms of anarchism are bound to offer different suggestions. For example, under communist forms, where an extensive institution of private property vanishes, property crimes will therewith disappear also; but under individualistic forms which sanction unlimited accumulation of property, some procedures for safeguarding property will need to be provided. There are again many ways, much less demanding than resort to the state to achieve some requisite protection of property. One is what effectively operates in many places that also waste their finances paying for police protection, namely insurance. Another is private, neighbourhood, or community security. n/Q^- --T'- ; Sojustified or not, there is no practical aiternative to the state. A/^e .f ika * Anarchism has not worked in practice, and is unworkable.^ Meiiher is true. Before the modern era of states it seemed to work well enough in some places, for instance in parts of the Americas and of the Pacific. Since the modem advent of states, it has been afforded but little opportunity to work at the national level, but it remains operative - a most striking example - at the transnational level. According to a condescending pragmatic argument, simple primitive societies may have been able to struggle along without state structure or organisation, but it is entirely out of the question for the practical operation for modem industrial societies. No recent anarchist societies have worked. A short response is that but few have had an opportunity to succeed. There is extroardinarily little room for social experiment in modem state dominated societies. Moreover, where anarchist societies have had some chance to flourish, as briefly in Spain before they were 4^^ // c 20 suppressed, they appear to have functioned moderately well. At the international level, anarchy has operated for many generations, although few would wish to argue that the arrangements, though they though successful in a sense, are particularly satisfactory. The international order is anarchistic, because there is no coercive government or authoritiative political body, with the authority backed by enforcing power. International order is instead a prime example of anarchy (not a wonderful example, but then nor are many states terrific examples of archy). And it affords a conspicuous counterexample to stock arguments, like that of Hobbes, to some sort of well-ordering authority such as the state. Granted, then, international order leaves much to be desired (though it is not significantly worse than order in some states); so there are repeated calls for new world orders of one sort or another. It has been persuasively argued (through a sort of top-down argument against states) that international order is as bad as it is because of the power and intransigence of states. One way to an improved world order is through the erosion of states, diminution of state sovereignty. As for real testing in practice, there is now no experimental space outside states. There used to be some room in the world for sizeable political experimentation, for testing different arrangements. We are now locked into large, overpopulated states with little room to move, let alone experiment without states. There is however space w/r/un more liberal states for limited experimentation, and there is increasing scope for simulation and modellings as computer power and versatility grow. Most of the experimentation has been with small commune arrangements. [What practice has shown, about all it has shown negatively, is that communistic arrangements do not tend to work well for long with present humans, unless they are committed to an authoritarian ideology.] * As some stage as the dialectic advances, argument merges, as here, with responses to criticism. But before criticisms are considered in more detail, it is important to examine /^^zr <?t'a ??J' Z^^* Z^b 7^7°^ z^ *—-^7, J * V?/ 7 /?'Z? f//-e/?r /?'?=? f^/?r =* rc <*r7^<r /c? xSj^, 7; r? r ^2. 7 ) t / ^7 ^7 A. *^J * ! y --- - y^D^t <g) - .42 <2^/ d -^y ! ^y-t^ y^ ^r-%—,_/, yy 7^S . /A - / /^)7 /j <—^ -t' 7 ;/ The prob!em of cont robing the power of the state and preventing the State once established from usurping further power to the State in the mandate, is oniy satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the first place.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 13, item 997: Draft argument chapters on anarchism Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. 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Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Lake George - Floor - Pile 7 Box 13: Green Projects in Progress Lake George House Lake George House > Floor > Pile 7 https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/5920bc40eda84ef7c51d0a551039383b.pdf 6aa8131b8382bef6992e275a7bff05a8 PDF Text Text 1031 /&J 29.5.95 PARADIGMATIC ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not be adequately addressed. Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade, impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more satisfactory answer can be broached. Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems, and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers, fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the present investigation. A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking: philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental news. �2 PARADIGMATIC ROOTS of ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Broaching focal questions, and searching for deeper answers. Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate (liquidation of natural forest systems affords just one striking example). In modern times humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system degradation. Often in the past they would not have seen such transformation as mattering; many remain so programmed, regarding transformation as increasing wealth (a presumption encouraged under mainstream economics). More recently dominant human cultures have developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through need, tax impositions, pressure to engage in cash economies, and so on) and which weave entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, councils, courts, educations, missions, and so on). Whence arises an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More explicitly, why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their environments, their own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a long period, destroy their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps in jeopardy through human enterprise^ For those eager to anticipate the main outcome, the unremarkable answer to be eventually found to these focal questions is in essence this: because too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, remain committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigms, diverse paradigms but all displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the earth. Parts of any answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies, and so on. While such answers are important, and often correct as far as they go in combination, and while they may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are nonetheless somewhat superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do not explain why a community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or why it is so resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes. Less superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to 1 In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Contrary to other sources, such as Marshall, humans are by no means the only biological species that proceed to degrade or impoverish their own environments. Introduced “pest” species, such as rabbits and mynahs in Antipodes, also do so; perhaps some botanical species contrive to as well. �3 pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood­ production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”, and market ideology does economic practice, even so-called “environmental economics”.2 An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea­ systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever. Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent's routing procedures. Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also correlatively give permission—as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new topography on action space. species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize. But paradigms do even more; they facilitate explanation, above all they make understanding possible. In these regards, they may work for better as well as for worse. Thus it is not a matter of getting rid of them, were this even feasible, but of getting right paradigms. The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures, creeds, ideologies, pervasive myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a technical sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of humans are governed by background ideosystems. It is in terms of these background ideosystems that a great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments can be explained, what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4 That explanation comes not however through a single paradigm, as has too often been supposed in trying to answer focal questions, but through a bundle of somehow aligned paradigms. Compare how a person may be represented, in social science, not through a single 2 3 4 For more on this style of explanation, see further RP. It is not, going to be contended that religion—or a certain Abramic religion, such as Christianity—is the main villain of the environmental piece. It is now well enough appreciated that religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from ancient philosophies. What will however, be suggested is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in this regard. Further, as logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to overlap. How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or superficial explanation, of them. ; As well, positivistic theories show, though in an oversimplified way, how models, which paradigms are, serve in explanation justification and understanding. See e.g. Hanson. /. / �4 role or program, but by way of a set of interconnected roles. What has been regularly overlooked in seeking deeper paradigmatic sources of environmental problems is systematic plurality. In part this neglect of plurality can be explained through countervailing propensity to seek single answers, and to try to locate uniqueness, where however causes and sources are plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are plural. As to what is going on theoretically, there is a fairly complex story to be told, an easier working image for which is appropriately ecological. That image focusses upon the structure of a perhaps impenetrable thicket or tangle, such as a dense rainforest patch, or, itself simplified, a fig or bamboo thicket. Below an emergent top layer representing the problems concerned, those raised by the focal questions, there is the canopy layer, of interlinked proximate causes. Below that again stands a plurality of stems, plural supports, which can be construed as supporting sources, and below them again, ultimately sustaining the whole structure, a multiplicity of intertwined roots, representing paradigmatic basics. What is sought are ultimate sources, and roots, not immediate causes. The cause of local pollution may be a factory that an agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea­ structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and sources. Nonetheless there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are “A is source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated? While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or developments virtually none of it addresses the question of what is meant by the partially buried metaphors of roots and sources . One striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful introductory text, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism. Although this text presents itself specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots metaphor/which it turns. For that matter there is no direct account of what the roots of environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental problems to which environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much oblique material). It is apparent also that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots metaphor, throwing it into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to mean simply elements (from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme of reconciliation of freedom and authority’ (p.193). Such usage is unsound. Because rudiments of some idea make an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may not have arrived at such an idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where they did quite independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or (genetic) causal linkage into a mere temporal conjunction: post hoc, propter hoc. Neither roots nor sources are mere beginnings or simply early occurrences; there have to be continuing connections, with directional relationships such as supply or sustenance. But for �5 roots and sources different connections and elaborations are to be expected. After all, the metaphors, and likewise what they give rise to, are evidently different; more literally, plants have roots, normally below them, springs and streams rise from sources, not roots, often above them, and so on. Both differ from another popular basis-beginning buried metaphor, that of foundations. Foundations bring in other features such as solidity, stability and comparative permanency, while severing critical transmission features (for foundations may merely passively support, not sustain supported superstructure). So foundations, for all their importance in epistemology and elsewhere iffoundationalism is correct, can be set aside.5 So far dictionaries do better than popular and philosophical texts. For instance, a short listing for the figurature use of ‘root’ runs: ‘the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc.’ (Concise English Dictionary). Such a two component account will serve nicely, for a start. However conjunctions should substantially displace disjunctions, else roots could collapse to foundations or could collapse to mere trace element supplements. Roots both give a basis and bottom binding into a substratum and supply sustenance and means of development. Roots connections are richer as well as more specific than sources, which may merely show from where an item comes or is obtained. Further that place of derivation that may not be a basis or bottom, but for instance a source­ book. With roots, like normal foundations, a basis or bottom is reached, whereas sources may have further sources (hence the search for “deeper”, even ultimate, sources). Finally, root and source connections carry explanations, at least genetic explanations—concerning how items got to be what and the way they are—because roots and sources are characteristically that from which items develop. Sometimes even more information, including a whole control system, gets transmitted. As much happens where roots are paradigmatic, to return to that strange mix of buried metaphors. Reaching deeper roots is important. Without locating them, perhaps all the roots (should they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at these, cutting them off or replacing them, will also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. Such is the fate of many proposals concerning environmental problems. There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaborated— including a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions, and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal questions. But we can be brief on these necessary preliminaries, because main details are already in circulation and because they have been addressed elsewhere. 1. Problems and paradigms. 5 Despite a referee’s suggestion that discussion of “roots” ‘could be improved by a contrast of the “roots” metaphor with the “foundations” metaphor, the fact is that we are decidedly not concerned with foundations of environmental problems; to the contrary, we do not wish to see them supported (if shoddily), established and so on. On the growing complexity and varying interpretations offoundations, an emergent bog, see for instance Chisholm. �6 Although these will be duly connected, with paradigms implicated in problems, they are different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation. la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions. Definitions of ‘environmental problem’, and classifications of such problems, have already been ventured.6 What problems emerge as environmental depends upon background value framework. What counts as a major problem on deeper environmental perceptions may be but a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such indicator problems, ones here taken as serious problems, are those of • sustaining biodiversity and • maintaining significant wilderness.7 Even if the broad impact of human enterprise were sufficiently reduced to guarantee comfortable survival of future humans, these desiderata may well not be guaranteed. There would be outstanding problems. In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are (at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how they might be resolved. Environmental impact equations, encountered in a more perceptive classification of problems, reveal how they can be resolved. Namely, by altering relevant impact parameters. Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very little spent, despite all the talk.8 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys us, are not however satisfactory stopping points. How is it, given so much scientific information and expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially destroying, their habitats. To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on offer or to be met in an extensive literative. As we will soon discover, most of these answers are too simple; and taken, as intended, as comprehensive, they are wrong. Correct answers to the questions are however important, because if we fail to get to bottom of the issues, there is even less prospect of satisfactory action to turn around a difficult and deterioration situation^. That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships, or how many devaluing dollars uncaring humans can briefly stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of habitats—these sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence) derive from and are supported by particular ideologies. lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on. A paradigm can be explicated, technically, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.9 See for example GE, which duly details connections of the problems with impact equations and proximate solutions. As to the extent of the problem (even) in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The Wildlands Project. See e.g. The cost ofpast environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24. See RP, where many environmentally relevant illustrations are given and explained. ry) �- That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a general system, i.e. semantical and other evaluations defined on an integrated relational structure. Naturally it is required to be faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms, scientific research programs, or whatever. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and action theory, the socio-political themes and value judgements, is that of a social group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part of the life-styles and life-forms of the community concerned. There are now many examples of formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures; from these, mostly sketchy formulations we can work back towards the underlying models. The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a complex universal10 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g. metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists, historians and geographers have repeated one another in vaguely discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures under different categorisations: thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of consciousness (Marx), of life (Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes (Conant), presuppositions (Collingwood), discursive formations (Foucault), Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess), traditions (MacIntyre), traditions of thought, cultures, perspectives, outlooks, ideologies, programs,.... An ideology, for instance, in the nonderogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideasA system, initially a propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative, from which a paradigm can be discerned and elaborated. Such models are typically presented in extremely truncated form, for example through a tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example: TABLE 1: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant paradigm: an initial capsule formulation J1 Taoism Deep Ecology Dominant (Western) Paradigm Harmony with nature, through Tao Harmony with nature Domination over nature Nature valuable in itself; “humanism” rejected Natural environment valued for itself Nature a resource; intrinsic value confined to humans It resembles a structured universal; compare e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex ideas. Naturally there are differences between, for instance, traditions (of thought) which are historically bound, cultures, which are geographically and otherewise connected, and conceptual schemes (where a conceptual reduction is insinuated), but all are, at logical bottom, models of paradigmatic sort. This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly expanded. �8 Levelling of differences; wide impartiality Biocentric egalitarianism Human supremacy Supplies ample Earth supplies limited Ample resources with substitutes Following Tao-te Spiritual goals, especially self-realisation Material economic growth a predominant goal Enlightenment Self-realisation Personal (material) enrichment Doing with enough (recycling inappropriate) Doing with enough; recycling Consumerism Non-competitive lifestyle; voluntary simplicity Cooperative lifestyle Competitive lifestyle Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus Decentralised/bioregional /neighbourhood focus Centralised/urban centred/ national focus Hierarchy without power structure; anarchoid Non-hierarchical/ grassroots democracy Power structure hierarchical Limited technology Appropriate technology High technology Considerable caution Precautionary practice Risking taking (verging upon adventurism) Paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; under an earlier analogy, red and green lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations and prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modern ideologies, eschews deontic judgements.) Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors' worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world. In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads (or rather consciousnesses) have to be changed, not rolled. 2. Proposed answers to focal questions; a preliminary classification of inadequate answers (7) and suggested remedies. Most of the extraordinary range of answers proposed supply but a single source, and are accordingly defective for this reason, usually among other reasons. Indeed it is not much of an exaggeration to assert that virtually everything proposed, in a now extensive literature, is wrong. TABLE 2. Main tabulation of answers and remedies, in three stages. D. Defective practice answers Source Remedy Objections 7 �9 DI. Ignorance Relevant information Information now available D2. Unintended consequences Relevant information Information now available D2a Faulty technique, or technology Repairs Repairs already made D3 Deviation (from theory, etc.) Education (for failure to limit deviance) Adherence D4. Systemic lock-in (through poverty, ensnarement in market forces, etc.) Trap removal a. Explains only certain cases, and b. Due to paradigmatic features D5. Insensitivity or insensibility Problem apprised Remedy tried; background ideological blockage D3a a. Deviation uneliminable, or b. Adherence no remedy When pursued, objections like those noted either force defective practice out as unsatisfactory, or push it back to paradigmatic features. Source single paradigm Remedies proposed (among others) Pl. Christianity (mainstream Catholicism) Scientific enlightenment, or alternative (Eastern) religion Pla. Protestantism and its ethic P2. P2a Cartesianism Dualism P. Defective paradigm answers Monism Anti-dualism Modified holism P2b Mechanism Substance metaphysics P3. P3a Possessive individualism P3aa Personalism Organicism Process metaphysics Non-reductionism Transpersonalism P4. Capitalism Socialism P5. Industrialism Pre-industrialism (romanticism) Post-industrialism P5a Technocratic bureaucracy P5aa. Transnational business P6. Enlightenment Anti-enlightenment Anti-materialism �10 P6a Materialism Spiritualism P8. P9 Patriarchy, andocentrism Human domination of humans Feminism Anti-domination (anti-hierarchy) Observe that what some have proposed as remedies, others have been as sources; remedies proposed tend to share defects of sources. PS. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject specific or partial) include: Source Platonism Typical remedy suggested New metaphysics Leibnitzianism New metaphysics Kantianism Anglo-American philosophy12 Consequentialism Utilitarianism Economism (economic imperialism as Alternative ethics Continental philosophy New social science; ethics contrasted with straight economic roots) Contractarianism Domination transfer Consequentialism Domination removal Human nature (esp. aggression) Adolescencism Maturation Infantilism (from Freudian physchology) Maturation And so on. A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in dominant Western thought. Then many—perhaps it is not excessive to say most—entries in that list will have been nominated, likely separately, by someone as the source of the problems. That list accordingly continues (even including, sometimes, entries like Taylorism, i.e. reorganisation of industry along lines popularized by Taylor), but what is included is representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other allegedly nonparadigmatic answers however, varying from interesting to crazy, that should also be taken into some account, for instance answers like Shepard's challenging answer. Although Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false cast. Strange answers include pushing it all back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard, but also Fox, and Ehrlich and other gurus with insistence upon ‘mental maladaptation’). The mainstream form, analytic philosophy, appears to comprise empiricism-cum-utilitarianism in Britain, tempered in America by pragmatism. /s ' �11 Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick —in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, along psychological routes, that are to be resisted. One slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not physically usually, it must be mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad. But the sources of mental sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide continues to: what we have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No doubt there is something toyheme that dominant societies, USA especially (which now influences so much in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive adolescence.13 No doubt, too, that maturity—but an environmental maturity—is desirable, even mandatory. Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society, to spend their money through tourism, on new compact housing, in those most wasteful of modem institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth. 3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources. Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat perfunctory, tending here and there towards notes. Of course there are excuses. While whole theses could be spun out on several of these topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a prime objective here is different from usual: neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to partially implicate most items cited in the main tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of the usually accredited sources: • Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems, ‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over nature’, was repeated in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.14 One helpful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows: Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development, however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns , namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress, 13 14 It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in the Appendix . White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall, snowed. �12 a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action, not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will. Because today's attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it ‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.15 What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more sensitive and telling criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.16 Similar responses are apposite for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy. Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ... responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection today.... Religion ... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.17 • Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1) prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not impossible.18 More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies. • Cartesian philosophy. The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes 15 16 17 18 Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue continuejto be debated; for an older survey of traditions see Passmore, for a challenging recent contribution to the debate see Callicott. Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms: Ask, not merely what they say, but what they do, and would do. For an outline of just such a telling criticism of mainstream Christianity, see Singer esp. pp.265-8. Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help expose. Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really, while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted. There is a much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of the very different roles and impacts of Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans, and of neo-Platonists. For a modest beginning, see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands. [S �13 denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes, upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.19 While Descartes was undoubtedly extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such. Evidently it substantially overlaps other modern ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment, widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems. • Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others (some potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is presented is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly exhibiting a heavy Heideggerean influence: The roots of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode (sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present, the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a “natural resource” —and people become “human resources”. The sources of anthropocentricism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can all be traced back to metaphysics. Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering, exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as vestigial traSces. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system. We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually ensconced technocratic rationalism.20 An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining b rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics, characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions or mere Western seeds. Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or plenum metaphysics.21 For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising Drengson’s exposition, see RP, table 5. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy. Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘rejecting] in its entirety mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmental] problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies’ (thus Bellett). This charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep Ecology (now included in UTD). For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews. �14 • Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’ (e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those of modern mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and theistic scholastic hang-overs). • Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were revealed), can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production.22 But, as observed, a main embedded theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the idea of nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ‘Now if nature makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all animals for the sake of man’.23 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species. The theme was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in shallower Stoicism. But the subjection of everything to utility, no doubt a relative of capitalism, appears to be a distinctively modem contribution. • Modern industrial society or industrialism. Modern industrialism (‘the smooth­ superhighway of industrial progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme: ‘... the root causes of the present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial paradigm’.24 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of modern industrial society’25 Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed’26 The popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial technology can without any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as, It should not be overlooked that some of those who nominated metaphysics meant thereby paradigm or paradigms or an equivalent. But what they may gain thereby in verisimilitude, they tend to lose in confusion. Grundrisse p.409f. Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further Hargrove p.25. M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature’”, a paper presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and more broadly the environment itself’ (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the evident problem. Gabriel ibid. Similarly industrialism is assumed as the source throughout McLaughlin (the theme pervades his book) and as the root of the modern problem in Marshall (p.5ff). While seriously astray as to roots and sources, those critical of industrialism have a significant case. For, as well as functioning as a major inflator of intact problems, industrialism has helped generate side problems of its own, as with new types of chemical and nuclear pollution. Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2. �15 less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes, what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice. • Economic growth or economic development. ‘According to a common and currently influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots One widespread misconception is that economic growth is the source of environmental problems. The assumption is astray for several reasons. For one, growth is at best a proximate cause, itself in need of explanation. More importantly, growth may occur in sectors of an economy, such as information technology or religious or artistic services, which have little or no environmental impact. Also conversely, an economy which fails to grow, but is desperately trying to survive, may exact heavy environmental costs (e.g. the forests are clear-felled to pay for continuing employment). No doubt though, stock economic growth is intimately intricated with proximate causes of environmental problems (through environmental impact equations). Similar considerations tell against the familiar proposition that the source of the problems is economic development itself or, what is different, the entrenched model of economic development. While it is no doubt correct, and important to emphasize, that ‘the Western model of economic development, far from being the solution to’ environmental and social problems, is ‘actually fuelling’ them, it is not the sole or distinguished source of the problems.27 28 • Human nature. "... the roots of our ecologic crisis reach beyond the variable topsoil of intellectual history, whether Eastern or Western, into the common substrata of human nature itself.’29 What such “nature” amounts to and how it functions as roots, both commonly left obscure, turns upon background hypotheses as to the nature of this nature. Different false 27 28 29 Goodin, p.573. While not contesting the theme, Goodin does continue: ‘the problem is not just that there are too many people, or even that they are enjoying too high a standard of living. All that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives as they pursue their various goals’ (p.573). That too will be seen to be seriously astray, though it contains large grains of truth; it presumes unchanged the prevailing economically-skewed dominant social paradigm. Both socialists and other opponents of capitalistic conspicuous consumption tend to select the living-standard component of the main environmental impact equation as the source of the crisis. Thus Cuban luminary, Castro, in a recent stunningly succinct speech: ‘Less luxury, less wastage. Otherwise it will be too late’. Quoting claims of E. Goldsmith, advanced in an interview in Forest and Bird 273 (August 1994) pp.46-7. The need for emphasis will persist while locally prominent political figures like the present Prime Minister of Australia travel around the Earth with the hackneyed message that only economic growth will solve environmental problems. Seeing growth as the problem affords only a superficial analysis, like that of pointing to overconsumption with which growth is interconnected. As deeper inquiry reveals, underlying both issues of economic growth, employment and consumption, and alternatives taken, are models, paradigmatic models. Growth is but a means to objectives assumed in the dominant paradigm. A deeper analysis shows too why more growth will not ultimately solve relevant problems. Callicott and Ames, ‘Epilogue: On the relation of idea and action’ p.282 (see also p.281), in a desperate and apparently unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the claim (repeatedly advanced in their book) that Asian traditions of thought can make a significant contribution to much improved treatment for natural and built environments, with ‘the deplorable environmental conditions prevailing in contemporary Asia’ (p.280). �16 hypotheses, that humans are invariably driven by aggression, sexual or reproductive imperatives, economic needs, yield different defective accounts. 0 • Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.30 ‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.31 One sample linkage statement runs as follows: ... there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both historically and ... presently] and ... this?the same energy that, turned against the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly destroying the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that consume the Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches and I believe that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless we simultaneously address our gender issues.32 A 15 Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes: • Human domination and exploitation of humans'. It is an extraordinarily widespread assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend-setters, including Marcuse, Illich, Passmore, Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from deep-seated social problems’.33 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus: all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology. Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships —domination of nature thus following from human domination’. ... It follows that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a 30 31 32 33 /n Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a more critical assessment see the sequel to GE. See Seed, quoted in the sequel to GE; also Salleh (e.g. in EP3). John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91. Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along with unrelational property claims. Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination of nature always results from humans’ domination of other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346). The text EP3 contains a sizeable section providing a useful introduction to social ecology. f/e. orths Jwy JHcA a ztci/uvC-., <‘oi»rW «L , as fw (Aibttnte qfndw hiasseX. Jrn. ; rvuzcC. cf �17 harmonious man-nature relationship.34 Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the dominated. • A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.35 • Modern educational systems'. Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems. Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as, so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.36 Therewith we are transported full circle back to defective practice answers. 4. A selective commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two stages reflecting a major division in the main tabulation. ad D. Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them. (Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.) Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time, perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While “consequences” or outputs such things as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying ‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste­ watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of their industry. That should now be a rotten joke, itself with serious consequences. Accordingly new ecological economics insists that we dig deeper—without however exceeding economic settings or a shifting dominant paradigm—to discover why markets may foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.37 Where they Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given humans could so socially organise, that they could settle into harmonious small-scale communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments. Such a proposition obtains a much fuller elaboration within Plumwood. In an interesting way, such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion reached below that a set of defective paradigms ifl at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by a set of them in each case, somewhat as numbers can be represented in binary terms, generated from a basic two-oneness duality. Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see GE Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24. �18 usually arrive, travelling within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics before ecological, at better regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of plans and incentives, controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do not reach very deep, or tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources. But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure, environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries; namely that true, or authentic, Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been, environmental consequences would be little better, given the heavy industrial commitments and environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.38 Differently, enlightenment liberals like Passmore try to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in mainstream theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence to these “well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains of its wilderness and remarkable diversity. Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting (collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts like Topsoil and Civilization and Agricultural Origins and Dispersal) of degradation of prime agricultural lands by imposed farming practices, where at least early on (before damage became visible) ignorance and unintended consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most historical cases we do not have enough information to be able to say with much assurance that agriculture proceeded until effective collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because practices were locked-in in one way or another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know more about present agricultural practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia, concerning both irrigated and dry-land agriculture. Many of these practices are undoubtedly sharply degrading lands, and the consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend ignorance, are sufficiently appreciated. But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a sweep of subsidies or concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim that they are locked into bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their control such as financial pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the need to make a living. But some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make no such claims or excuses, nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place, and similar. Their obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not deviation from theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm. ad P and PS. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed, 38 It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have their property confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who made those points, also observed). �19 business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few broad themes: 1. Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example, substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and so forth). To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not, on its own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges, link principles, from metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy operates. Thus subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of environmental problems which take them as derived from metaphysics of one sort or another. Such a criticism does not however extend to more comprehensive paradigms which connect appropriately with practice. 2. While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on39)—none are necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different paradigms; for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms, Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism. At this stage in dialectic, green history and the like—bio-history, eco-history, and related virtual histories (concerning what would have happened)—enter decisively. For instance, Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and ecological fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also conveniently documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological degradation or collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms.40 An important example (much less speculative than some of the numerous other examples because of a comparative wealth of primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples—Polynesian, Mayan, Sumerian and others—also reveal is that no very high level of technology is needed to inflict serious environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological project (with nothing directly to do with basic needs) will suffice. Other cultures did wreak, or would (given the technology and numbers, both of which While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to have the means, and so on. Ponting’s valuable/ though rather simple/ book is but one of several bleak texts. Another is Hillel’s, and there is a succession of earlier classic works by geographers: Lowdermilk, Dale, Mallory, Thorp and others. In general however, geographers and historian do not dig deep enough, to paradigmatic roots. /3 �20 some were gaining) have wreaked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination, megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established, and expanding, before (or effectively outside) the rise of modern Western paradigms, or in extensive regions outside their influence. 3. The list of paradigms, as so far assembled, is substantially Western in orientation. Moreover environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources — wrongly. For non­ Western paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese chauvinism).41 Or consider Islam, with its reach across the Middle East and beyond. The main tabulation (of table 2) should accordingly be extended to take due account of non-Western paradigms, including for example: Other Abrahamic religions Islam Judaism Confucianism Shintoism Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island. What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic. Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in, or encouraged by, religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent. 4. All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms. While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements, such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism—though Descartes, for all his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.) Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modern rationalism and much else. 5. A general method of showing the inadequacy of all the paradigmatic answers tabulated, and others, is familiar from logical theory: namely, the method of counter-models, of which the 41 Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large fauna worldwide. �21 counter-examples (under head 2) provide special cases. A presently important illustration concerns patriarchy as a source of environmental woes. Counter-models reveal the substantial independence of mistreatment of women and mistreatment of environmental items such as animals or ecosystems. One the one hand, it is easy to envisage situations, not far from the actual in some regions, where the lot of women is significantly improved, but the lot of environmental items is not (e.g. men change their behaviour and attitudes relevantly as regards women, are forced to change, or whatever); just such an outcome would accord with persisting human chauvinism. More relevant, on the other, there are situations where the position of environmental items is much improved, for instance under much more careful husbandry, but that of women is not, for one reason or another (e.g. they remain other, different, second class, etc.). It follows from the elaboration of such counter-models that patriarchy is not the source of environmental problems, as there can be continuing patriarchy without the present range of environmental problems (problems can dry up while patriarchy continues to operate). There is no need to deny that patriarchy as (contingently) practised, with its sweeping supremacist attitudes which make no due distinctions between inferior items, may be a major contributing factor in present problems. Such slack contingent conjunctions do not convert to roots or sources. Similarly with other social roots of environmental problems, for instance with human domination of humans as^supposed source of all problems. 5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation. Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences—in calibre, in environmental friendliness. For example, Cartesianism which regards animals as mere automata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life­ forms and their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience. The family is not exclusively Western, nor somewhat more plausibly Northern, even though as a result of forces like migration, colonialism and cultural imperialism, paradigms of these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and of third world communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally and regionally. Nor are major inflators of environmental problems essentially Western. Industrialization and technological advance—neither intrinsically Western, both manifested in varying degrees in other cultures—are, without much doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from rather localised ones, damaging for instance islands and river catchments, to grander and even global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems, generating thereby spin­ �22 off problems as well. But, once again, they are not deeper sources, but only means. (For again push questioning deeper, and ask: why bother or persist with industry, the effort and dirt and mess involved?) Nor, however, did they run on their own, nor do they continue on their own. Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.42 They evolved primarily in the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could have occurred, and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as state socialism or post-imperial Confucianism. Now however these engines have been rendered more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transformed to run in less favourable settings. Thus inflation can escalate from a multiplicity of prepared sources, thereby intensifying problems and spreading them to larger regions. The intensification and spread is much facilitated by the joint transfer of technology, industry and coupled problems from region to region. As a result of transfer, inflation can occur within settings of quite different paradigms. Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other enthusiastic cultures. For instance, the West could in theory collapse through protracted war, through pollution and congestion, or climate change and agriculture failure (there are many unexcludible routes to catastrophic decline, outlined in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could differentially impact on the West). Degradation would now continue however; there would be only temporary respite from environmental crises. While most of the conspicuous problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary environmental crises, are accelerated by—what connects them—contemporary industrial society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. However, too many of the other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by­ products or similar of the main generators. Thus, in the illustration, the peasants displaced by agribusiness or absentee wealth-holders, arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the forests, and often wrecked this damage using industrial machinery. An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant cultures, Western or non-Western. A friendly paradigm would not only ensure much more selectivity and care, but would sharply limit impacts of damaging technology and industrialization. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack Lacking favourable ideological settings, earlier technological “break throughs” were not duly developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, dyes, gunpowder, etc. Western cultures did not enjoy a monopoly upon technology powerful enough, when massed, to induce global crises. The picture of development of large-scale environmental problems being sketched bears superficial resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where, to achieve presumed size, a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by huge inflationary phenomena. Naturally the resemblance has limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not terrestrially replicable in the way industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf, pollution problems and all, with a big price tag). �Ti sophisticated contemporary elaboration and they may be flawed in other respects. Examples of more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems and crises conditions, include those now tabulated: TABLE 3: Examples, some flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms. Oriental ideologies: Taoism (classical) recessive traditions, now with tiny followings and little political influence. Jainism Indigenous cultures: Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda) Amazonian Indians. Western philosophies: under certain favourable interpretations old Stoicism new Deep-green theories, such as deep ecology. Given the remoteness of most of these examples from predominant contemporary life, and difficulties with their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new paradigms need to be worked out soon. Much much more intellectual effort should be devoted to such enterprise. One upshot, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two families, the second large: environmentally friendly, and unfriendly. No doubt there is a small fuzzy residue class43 lying between major unfriendly and friendly divisions. Environmental friendliness means more or less what it appear, to mean, what a functional break-down into components would yield: friendliness in approaches, practices and attitudes, to environments, especially more natural environments, with friendliness including, as usual, goodwill and kindliness towards (and substantially displaceable by these). As indicated, such friendliness concerns not merely actual practices, but also attitudes held, as reflected in what would be done in certain other sorts of situations. Certainly a culture that manifests unfriendliness, as a sweep of Northern cultures do, is unfriendly. But, as well, various “primitive” cultures, whose practices are not hostile, for example because they lack means or resources, energy or health, may nonetheless be unfriendly; for instance all members of a culture hold thoroughly negative attiudes which they are in fact unable to put into practice. It is not too difficult to explain in outline which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse. In logical terms neither, perhaps as well as another residue class, both. Certain family �24 characteristics, of unfriendly paradigms are worth elaborating: * Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism. More generally, direct impact is illustrated by any idea-system which attributes little or no value to natural items, and typically much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite) projects, and whose themes are linked to practice. So it is with Confucianism, which is entirely human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as his goal the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’44 The outside world, the natural environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only instrumentally, to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex machinery. ‘The exception is [mind, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation language: this alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to assert a fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts’”.45 The remaining world, the natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral significance. It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose to confer or project upon it, typically little or none. Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans has no thoughts, purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could hardly matter what happens to it. It could be regarded and treated, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans. Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive, by one route or another from Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went further than some others. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were ‘aimed at making men the masters and possessors of nature’.46 Untowards effects result through linkage of ideological theory to heavy practice. Link principles, reminiscent of “correspondence rules” used in explaining applications of scientific theories and normally included in comprehensive paradigms, connect the theoretic level to practice, they also serve to activate otherwise inoperative or uncoupled paradigms. Such principles may take the form of directives; familiar examples include maximization directives, such as maximize personal fun, tribal utility, national interest, or state GNP. * Indirect combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which yield satisfaction of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz’s fragmentary ideology. Leibnitz was substantially committed to all of human population growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption,47 in short, to Reese p.102 For much more on the geographic impact of Confucianism, as also compared with other (Asian) paradigms, see Tuan’s investigations. Cottingham p.15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument (reported in Cottingham) to this divide is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no such status divides—just as flamboyant forms of deep ecology maintain. See Descartes, Discourse VI. For requisite details, see Aiton. The case against Leibnitzianism is developed in a sequel. �25 precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts upon environments. However neutral Leibnitz’s metaphysics, his monadology, may have been—by contrast with Plato’s or Descartes’, both of which explicitly devalued much or all of the natural world—Leibnitz’s wider ideology is linked indirectly, through impact equations, to damaging effects. Some imagine that this oblique formalistic detailing, through direct and indirect classes, can be simply cut through, retaining plurality and so forth. Surely environmental friendliness is nothing but environmental depth? While the suggestion points in the right sort of direction (for the relevant sort of depth) it too is astray.48 Depth is neither necessary nor sufficient. Take the move plausible sufficiency half, plausible because depth helps, no end. Nonetheless depth can be achieved in macho ways (as ecofeminism has emphasized against deep ecology), ways which may not be altogether friendly to less favoured species, groups or habitats. For example, depth can be satisfied through due selection and support of some super species and magnificent habitats—requisite environmental impartiality (and reflected justice), critical for friendliness as intended, being neglected.49 Still less in depth necessary. For kindliness can, both in principle and in practice, extend far beyond humans, still ranked top, to much more of “creation”. Such extensive kindliness, observed in some humanistic humans, appears to be exhibited in some sects and tribes not committed to depth, and it could well be considerably more widespread, under changed but not deepened ideological conditions. Naturally, however, deepening would afford an obvious, and excellent, reason for change. As friendliness is not tantamount to depth, nor similarly is a prime part of what explains depth, recognition of intrinsic value in nature outside humans. Some animal liberationists who display high regard for creatures with capacity to suffer, show little goodwill towards forests largely unpopulated by such creatures. Conversely, though shifting ground, an environmentally friendly society may hold that value is but an anthropocentric construct, merely projected onto a basically neutral world. All the same, aspects of depth are normally reliable indicators of environmental sensitivity and friendliness, and inversely, aspects of shallowness (as investigated in authentic deep ecology) marks of unfriendliness. Shallowness will work out satisfactorily environmentally only with what is now rare (given ideological dominance), a right mix of humans; and its any longer working widely is implausible. These reliable marks include such familiar features as * short-term framework. * devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting As to the relevant sort of depth, see GE. Other accounts of depth are also preferred in deep ecology, some of which relate to the present exercise. In particular deep questioning should lead to paradigmatic roots, to Naess’s “total views”. Herein lies another reason why something like biospecies egalitarianism is essential in deep ecology; such a requirement needs, not dilution away (as has happened in American and transpersonal deep ecology), but rectification. �26 human chauvinism); and, as a corollary of heavy devaluation, * entitlement to domination, dominion over nature; * appropriation of nature, its conversion to property. * maximization assumptions concerning personal or societal aggrandizement, utility and size, coupled with grand projects. * technofix approach to environmental problems. Friendly paradigms will tend to invert these features. An environmentally friendly paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as the following samples: * an end to degrading primary production; instead ecological forestry and ecological agriculture will come to prevail. * a strong selectivity regarding industrialization, which weeds out damaging forms. * a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of unfriendly technology can go a very long way. As unfriendly paradigms are decidedly plural, so likewise are answers to questions as to why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Some of the diverse answers match answers already encountered in the main tabulation. Reasons are psychological, social and cultural (with a familiar circularity here encountered), and include considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed; because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought; because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on. A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because, in one way or another, most agents are bound to—locked into, committed to, captured by, or just passively go along with—environmentally unfriendly paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the rest of environments does not matter, or matter enough. 6. Glimpsing an entertaining corollary: an unfavourable report upon dominant philosophy. It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Stripped of metaphor, there are environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet. In an environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to satisfactory environmental outcomes. Predominant philosophy, not just Western philosophy, has by and large been bad environmental news. It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to �27 such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly under-estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even govern action and practice, especially reflective and rational action. The substantial point is not therefore removed through any alleged practical impotence of philosophy. Mainstream philosophy has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, dominant unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be trashed, as even defective enterprises or evil projects may include decent part or worthwhile features; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness), there are brash new alternatives such as authentic deep ecology, and there are recessive paradigms and neglected traditions to peruse for suggestions, for inspiration, and perhaps to rehabilitate. Richard Sylvan* APPENDIX. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions. A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard’s intriguing books. In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the stock responses to focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in earlier work), such as lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political inertia, change to agriculture and settlement,50... . He would (and should, for his eliminative argument) have also dismissed industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on. More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’— similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism. But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feel no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the An earlier, even rougher version of this article was presented at the Environmental Paradigms Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 1993. It would not have been written without its solicitation for the Conference; also it might well not been thought through in fashionable but confining and perhaps misleading paradigmatic terms. A subsequent working draft has benefitted, slightly, from comments from very unimpressed reviewers. Thanks certainly to Holmes Rolston for helpful comments. No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement zs simplistic: that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes. �28 facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here. Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of like together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing conservation, and so on. Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians, representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots51) that having certain ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”. So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic dislocations at the root of modern society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15). Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages, Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of th'e alleged sickness.52 It supposedly arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destructive adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us. Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing) practices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus, Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests rather than masters' (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy. ‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the third page of the main text. �29 person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.53 A superior explanation to widespread individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial humans are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies, without coming to know or properly experience alternatives. The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound, resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.54 They are not exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature mixed communities. Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health. Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness ‘small- group, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings. ... there is the rub—... for us, now, that world no longer exists’ (p. 14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural surrounding can even now be restored. In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing erosion of life-support systems. REFERENCES E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985. 53 54 A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument: ‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of ' society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery’ (p. 16). But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms. Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in ‘taking mothers off to work’ (p. 15)! �30 R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics 13(1991) 127-137. R. Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1991. A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental Questions Papers, No.2, CRES, Australian National University, 1990. J.B. Callicott and R.T. Ames (eds), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, SUNY Press, Albany NY., 1989. J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ ReVision 12(3) (1990) 31-41. R. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, Harvester Press, Sussex, 1982. J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988. C. Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, Revised edition by V.G. Carter, University of Oklahama Press, Norman, 1974. A Dobson (ed.), Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991? A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10. R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992. W. Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology, Shambala, Boston, 1990. A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bungendore, 1993. C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967. R. Goodin, ‘Selling environmental indulgences’, Kyklos 47(1994) 573-596. N. R. Hanson, Patterns of discovery: an inquiry into conceptual foundations of science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1958. E. C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989. D Hillel, Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil., Free Press, Macmillan, 1991. M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991. K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy, Harmondsworth, England 1973. F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991. A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology , SUNY Press, Albany N. Y., 1993. P. Marshall, Nature’s Web, in two editions, Simon and Schuster, 1992 and 1993. A. Naess and D. Rothenberg, Ecology, community and Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989. J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974. D. Pearce and others, Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989. D. Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H. Croom Helm 1984. V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993. C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991. �31 R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982; also, modified, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. R. Elliot and A. Gare), University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1983; referred to as RP. C. O. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersal, American Geographical Society, New York, 1952. P. Singer, Practical Ethics, expanded edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993. P. Shepard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982. R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994; referred to as GE. R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD. The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993. Y.F. Tuan, ‘Discrepancies between environmental attitude and behaviour: examples from Europe and China’, The Canadian Geographer 12(1968) 176-91. S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982. L. White Jr., ‘Historic roots of our ecologic crisis’, Science 155(1967) 1203-7. J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Blackwell, Oxford, 1953. M. Zimmerman and others (eds.), Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1993; referred to as EP3. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 1031 /&J 29.5.95 PARADIGMATIC ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not be adequately addressed. Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade, impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more satisfactory answer can be broached. Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems, and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers, fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the present investigation. A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking: philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental news. 2 PARADIGMATIC ROOTS of ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Broaching focal questions, and searching for deeper answers. Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate (liquidation of natural forest systems affords just one striking example). In modern times humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system degradation. Often in the past they would not have seen such transformation as mattering; many remain so programmed, regarding transformation as increasing wealth (a presumption encouraged under mainstream economics). More recently dominant human cultures have developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through need, tax impositions, pressure to engage in cash economies, and so on) and which weave entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, councils, courts, educations, missions, and so on). Whence arises an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More explicitly, why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their environments, their own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a long period, destroy their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps in jeopardy through human enterprise^ For those eager to anticipate the main outcome, the unremarkable answer to be eventually found to these focal questions is in essence this: because too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, remain committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigms, diverse paradigms but all displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the earth. Parts of any answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies, and so on. While such answers are important, and often correct as far as they go in combination, and while they may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are nonetheless somewhat superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do not explain why a community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or why it is so resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes. Less superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to 1 In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Contrary to other sources, such as Marshall, humans are by no means the only biological species that proceed to degrade or impoverish their own environments. Introduced “pest” species, such as rabbits and mynahs in Antipodes, also do so; perhaps some botanical species contrive to as well. 3 pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood­ production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”, and market ideology does economic practice, even so-called “environmental economics”.2 An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea­ systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever. Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent's routing procedures. Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also correlatively give permission—as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new topography on action space. species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize. But paradigms do even more; they facilitate explanation, above all they make understanding possible. In these regards, they may work for better as well as for worse. Thus it is not a matter of getting rid of them, were this even feasible, but of getting right paradigms. The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures, creeds, ideologies, pervasive myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a technical sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of humans are governed by background ideosystems. It is in terms of these background ideosystems that a great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments can be explained, what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4 That explanation comes not however through a single paradigm, as has too often been supposed in trying to answer focal questions, but through a bundle of somehow aligned paradigms. Compare how a person may be represented, in social science, not through a single 2 3 4 For more on this style of explanation, see further RP. It is not, going to be contended that religion—or a certain Abramic religion, such as Christianity—is the main villain of the environmental piece. It is now well enough appreciated that religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from ancient philosophies. What will however, be suggested is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in this regard. Further, as logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to overlap. How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or superficial explanation, of them. ; As well, positivistic theories show, though in an oversimplified way, how models, which paradigms are, serve in explanation justification and understanding. See e.g. Hanson. /. / 4 role or program, but by way of a set of interconnected roles. What has been regularly overlooked in seeking deeper paradigmatic sources of environmental problems is systematic plurality. In part this neglect of plurality can be explained through countervailing propensity to seek single answers, and to try to locate uniqueness, where however causes and sources are plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are plural. As to what is going on theoretically, there is a fairly complex story to be told, an easier working image for which is appropriately ecological. That image focusses upon the structure of a perhaps impenetrable thicket or tangle, such as a dense rainforest patch, or, itself simplified, a fig or bamboo thicket. Below an emergent top layer representing the problems concerned, those raised by the focal questions, there is the canopy layer, of interlinked proximate causes. Below that again stands a plurality of stems, plural supports, which can be construed as supporting sources, and below them again, ultimately sustaining the whole structure, a multiplicity of intertwined roots, representing paradigmatic basics. What is sought are ultimate sources, and roots, not immediate causes. The cause of local pollution may be a factory that an agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea­ structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and sources. Nonetheless there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are “A is source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated? While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or developments virtually none of it addresses the question of what is meant by the partially buried metaphors of roots and sources . One striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful introductory text, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism. Although this text presents itself specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots metaphor/which it turns. For that matter there is no direct account of what the roots of environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental problems to which environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much oblique material). It is apparent also that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots metaphor, throwing it into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to mean simply elements (from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme of reconciliation of freedom and authority’ (p.193). Such usage is unsound. Because rudiments of some idea make an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may not have arrived at such an idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where they did quite independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or (genetic) causal linkage into a mere temporal conjunction: post hoc, propter hoc. Neither roots nor sources are mere beginnings or simply early occurrences; there have to be continuing connections, with directional relationships such as supply or sustenance. But for 5 roots and sources different connections and elaborations are to be expected. After all, the metaphors, and likewise what they give rise to, are evidently different; more literally, plants have roots, normally below them, springs and streams rise from sources, not roots, often above them, and so on. Both differ from another popular basis-beginning buried metaphor, that of foundations. Foundations bring in other features such as solidity, stability and comparative permanency, while severing critical transmission features (for foundations may merely passively support, not sustain supported superstructure). So foundations, for all their importance in epistemology and elsewhere iffoundationalism is correct, can be set aside.5 So far dictionaries do better than popular and philosophical texts. For instance, a short listing for the figurature use of ‘root’ runs: ‘the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc.’ (Concise English Dictionary). Such a two component account will serve nicely, for a start. However conjunctions should substantially displace disjunctions, else roots could collapse to foundations or could collapse to mere trace element supplements. Roots both give a basis and bottom binding into a substratum and supply sustenance and means of development. Roots connections are richer as well as more specific than sources, which may merely show from where an item comes or is obtained. Further that place of derivation that may not be a basis or bottom, but for instance a source­ book. With roots, like normal foundations, a basis or bottom is reached, whereas sources may have further sources (hence the search for “deeper”, even ultimate, sources). Finally, root and source connections carry explanations, at least genetic explanations—concerning how items got to be what and the way they are—because roots and sources are characteristically that from which items develop. Sometimes even more information, including a whole control system, gets transmitted. As much happens where roots are paradigmatic, to return to that strange mix of buried metaphors. Reaching deeper roots is important. Without locating them, perhaps all the roots (should they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at these, cutting them off or replacing them, will also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. Such is the fate of many proposals concerning environmental problems. There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaborated— including a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions, and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal questions. But we can be brief on these necessary preliminaries, because main details are already in circulation and because they have been addressed elsewhere. 1. Problems and paradigms. 5 Despite a referee’s suggestion that discussion of “roots” ‘could be improved by a contrast of the “roots” metaphor with the “foundations” metaphor, the fact is that we are decidedly not concerned with foundations of environmental problems; to the contrary, we do not wish to see them supported (if shoddily), established and so on. On the growing complexity and varying interpretations offoundations, an emergent bog, see for instance Chisholm. 6 Although these will be duly connected, with paradigms implicated in problems, they are different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation. la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions. Definitions of ‘environmental problem’, and classifications of such problems, have already been ventured.6 What problems emerge as environmental depends upon background value framework. What counts as a major problem on deeper environmental perceptions may be but a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such indicator problems, ones here taken as serious problems, are those of • sustaining biodiversity and • maintaining significant wilderness.7 Even if the broad impact of human enterprise were sufficiently reduced to guarantee comfortable survival of future humans, these desiderata may well not be guaranteed. There would be outstanding problems. In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are (at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how they might be resolved. Environmental impact equations, encountered in a more perceptive classification of problems, reveal how they can be resolved. Namely, by altering relevant impact parameters. Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very little spent, despite all the talk.8 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys us, are not however satisfactory stopping points. How is it, given so much scientific information and expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially destroying, their habitats. To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on offer or to be met in an extensive literative. As we will soon discover, most of these answers are too simple; and taken, as intended, as comprehensive, they are wrong. Correct answers to the questions are however important, because if we fail to get to bottom of the issues, there is even less prospect of satisfactory action to turn around a difficult and deterioration situation^. That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships, or how many devaluing dollars uncaring humans can briefly stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of habitats—these sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence) derive from and are supported by particular ideologies. lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on. A paradigm can be explicated, technically, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.9 See for example GE, which duly details connections of the problems with impact equations and proximate solutions. As to the extent of the problem (even) in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The Wildlands Project. See e.g. The cost ofpast environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24. See RP, where many environmentally relevant illustrations are given and explained. ry) - That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a general system, i.e. semantical and other evaluations defined on an integrated relational structure. Naturally it is required to be faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms, scientific research programs, or whatever. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and action theory, the socio-political themes and value judgements, is that of a social group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part of the life-styles and life-forms of the community concerned. There are now many examples of formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures; from these, mostly sketchy formulations we can work back towards the underlying models. The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a complex universal10 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g. metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists, historians and geographers have repeated one another in vaguely discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures under different categorisations: thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of consciousness (Marx), of life (Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes (Conant), presuppositions (Collingwood), discursive formations (Foucault), Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess), traditions (MacIntyre), traditions of thought, cultures, perspectives, outlooks, ideologies, programs,.... An ideology, for instance, in the nonderogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideasA system, initially a propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative, from which a paradigm can be discerned and elaborated. Such models are typically presented in extremely truncated form, for example through a tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example: TABLE 1: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant paradigm: an initial capsule formulation J1 Taoism Deep Ecology Dominant (Western) Paradigm Harmony with nature, through Tao Harmony with nature Domination over nature Nature valuable in itself; “humanism” rejected Natural environment valued for itself Nature a resource; intrinsic value confined to humans It resembles a structured universal; compare e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex ideas. Naturally there are differences between, for instance, traditions (of thought) which are historically bound, cultures, which are geographically and otherewise connected, and conceptual schemes (where a conceptual reduction is insinuated), but all are, at logical bottom, models of paradigmatic sort. This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly expanded. 8 Levelling of differences; wide impartiality Biocentric egalitarianism Human supremacy Supplies ample Earth supplies limited Ample resources with substitutes Following Tao-te Spiritual goals, especially self-realisation Material economic growth a predominant goal Enlightenment Self-realisation Personal (material) enrichment Doing with enough (recycling inappropriate) Doing with enough; recycling Consumerism Non-competitive lifestyle; voluntary simplicity Cooperative lifestyle Competitive lifestyle Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus Decentralised/bioregional /neighbourhood focus Centralised/urban centred/ national focus Hierarchy without power structure; anarchoid Non-hierarchical/ grassroots democracy Power structure hierarchical Limited technology Appropriate technology High technology Considerable caution Precautionary practice Risking taking (verging upon adventurism) Paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; under an earlier analogy, red and green lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations and prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modern ideologies, eschews deontic judgements.) Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors' worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world. In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads (or rather consciousnesses) have to be changed, not rolled. 2. Proposed answers to focal questions; a preliminary classification of inadequate answers (7) and suggested remedies. Most of the extraordinary range of answers proposed supply but a single source, and are accordingly defective for this reason, usually among other reasons. Indeed it is not much of an exaggeration to assert that virtually everything proposed, in a now extensive literature, is wrong. TABLE 2. Main tabulation of answers and remedies, in three stages. D. Defective practice answers Source Remedy Objections 7 9 DI. Ignorance Relevant information Information now available D2. Unintended consequences Relevant information Information now available D2a Faulty technique, or technology Repairs Repairs already made D3 Deviation (from theory, etc.) Education (for failure to limit deviance) Adherence D4. Systemic lock-in (through poverty, ensnarement in market forces, etc.) Trap removal a. Explains only certain cases, and b. Due to paradigmatic features D5. Insensitivity or insensibility Problem apprised Remedy tried; background ideological blockage D3a a. Deviation uneliminable, or b. Adherence no remedy When pursued, objections like those noted either force defective practice out as unsatisfactory, or push it back to paradigmatic features. Source single paradigm Remedies proposed (among others) Pl. Christianity (mainstream Catholicism) Scientific enlightenment, or alternative (Eastern) religion Pla. Protestantism and its ethic P2. P2a Cartesianism Dualism P. Defective paradigm answers Monism Anti-dualism Modified holism P2b Mechanism Substance metaphysics P3. P3a Possessive individualism P3aa Personalism Organicism Process metaphysics Non-reductionism Transpersonalism P4. Capitalism Socialism P5. Industrialism Pre-industrialism (romanticism) Post-industrialism P5a Technocratic bureaucracy P5aa. Transnational business P6. Enlightenment Anti-enlightenment Anti-materialism 10 P6a Materialism Spiritualism P8. P9 Patriarchy, andocentrism Human domination of humans Feminism Anti-domination (anti-hierarchy) Observe that what some have proposed as remedies, others have been as sources; remedies proposed tend to share defects of sources. PS. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject specific or partial) include: Source Platonism Typical remedy suggested New metaphysics Leibnitzianism New metaphysics Kantianism Anglo-American philosophy12 Consequentialism Utilitarianism Economism (economic imperialism as Alternative ethics Continental philosophy New social science; ethics contrasted with straight economic roots) Contractarianism Domination transfer Consequentialism Domination removal Human nature (esp. aggression) Adolescencism Maturation Infantilism (from Freudian physchology) Maturation And so on. A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in dominant Western thought. Then many—perhaps it is not excessive to say most—entries in that list will have been nominated, likely separately, by someone as the source of the problems. That list accordingly continues (even including, sometimes, entries like Taylorism, i.e. reorganisation of industry along lines popularized by Taylor), but what is included is representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other allegedly nonparadigmatic answers however, varying from interesting to crazy, that should also be taken into some account, for instance answers like Shepard's challenging answer. Although Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false cast. Strange answers include pushing it all back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard, but also Fox, and Ehrlich and other gurus with insistence upon ‘mental maladaptation’). The mainstream form, analytic philosophy, appears to comprise empiricism-cum-utilitarianism in Britain, tempered in America by pragmatism. /s ' 11 Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick —in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, along psychological routes, that are to be resisted. One slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not physically usually, it must be mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad. But the sources of mental sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide continues to: what we have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No doubt there is something toyheme that dominant societies, USA especially (which now influences so much in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive adolescence.13 No doubt, too, that maturity—but an environmental maturity—is desirable, even mandatory. Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society, to spend their money through tourism, on new compact housing, in those most wasteful of modem institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth. 3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources. Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat perfunctory, tending here and there towards notes. Of course there are excuses. While whole theses could be spun out on several of these topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a prime objective here is different from usual: neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to partially implicate most items cited in the main tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of the usually accredited sources: • Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems, ‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over nature’, was repeated in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.14 One helpful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows: Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development, however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns , namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress, 13 14 It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in the Appendix . White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall, snowed. 12 a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action, not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will. Because today's attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it ‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.15 What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more sensitive and telling criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.16 Similar responses are apposite for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy. Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ... responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection today.... Religion ... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.17 • Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1) prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not impossible.18 More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies. • Cartesian philosophy. The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes 15 16 17 18 Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue continuejto be debated; for an older survey of traditions see Passmore, for a challenging recent contribution to the debate see Callicott. Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms: Ask, not merely what they say, but what they do, and would do. For an outline of just such a telling criticism of mainstream Christianity, see Singer esp. pp.265-8. Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help expose. Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really, while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted. There is a much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of the very different roles and impacts of Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans, and of neo-Platonists. For a modest beginning, see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands. [S 13 denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes, upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.19 While Descartes was undoubtedly extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such. Evidently it substantially overlaps other modern ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment, widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems. • Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others (some potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is presented is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly exhibiting a heavy Heideggerean influence: The roots of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode (sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present, the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a “natural resource” —and people become “human resources”. The sources of anthropocentricism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can all be traced back to metaphysics. Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering, exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as vestigial traSces. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system. We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually ensconced technocratic rationalism.20 An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining b rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics, characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions or mere Western seeds. Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or plenum metaphysics.21 For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising Drengson’s exposition, see RP, table 5. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy. Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘rejecting] in its entirety mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmental] problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies’ (thus Bellett). This charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep Ecology (now included in UTD). For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews. 14 • Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’ (e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those of modern mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and theistic scholastic hang-overs). • Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were revealed), can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production.22 But, as observed, a main embedded theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the idea of nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ‘Now if nature makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all animals for the sake of man’.23 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species. The theme was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in shallower Stoicism. But the subjection of everything to utility, no doubt a relative of capitalism, appears to be a distinctively modem contribution. • Modern industrial society or industrialism. Modern industrialism (‘the smooth­ superhighway of industrial progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme: ‘... the root causes of the present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial paradigm’.24 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of modern industrial society’25 Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed’26 The popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial technology can without any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as, It should not be overlooked that some of those who nominated metaphysics meant thereby paradigm or paradigms or an equivalent. But what they may gain thereby in verisimilitude, they tend to lose in confusion. Grundrisse p.409f. Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further Hargrove p.25. M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature’”, a paper presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and more broadly the environment itself’ (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the evident problem. Gabriel ibid. Similarly industrialism is assumed as the source throughout McLaughlin (the theme pervades his book) and as the root of the modern problem in Marshall (p.5ff). While seriously astray as to roots and sources, those critical of industrialism have a significant case. For, as well as functioning as a major inflator of intact problems, industrialism has helped generate side problems of its own, as with new types of chemical and nuclear pollution. Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2. 15 less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes, what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice. • Economic growth or economic development. ‘According to a common and currently influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots One widespread misconception is that economic growth is the source of environmental problems. The assumption is astray for several reasons. For one, growth is at best a proximate cause, itself in need of explanation. More importantly, growth may occur in sectors of an economy, such as information technology or religious or artistic services, which have little or no environmental impact. Also conversely, an economy which fails to grow, but is desperately trying to survive, may exact heavy environmental costs (e.g. the forests are clear-felled to pay for continuing employment). No doubt though, stock economic growth is intimately intricated with proximate causes of environmental problems (through environmental impact equations). Similar considerations tell against the familiar proposition that the source of the problems is economic development itself or, what is different, the entrenched model of economic development. While it is no doubt correct, and important to emphasize, that ‘the Western model of economic development, far from being the solution to’ environmental and social problems, is ‘actually fuelling’ them, it is not the sole or distinguished source of the problems.27 28 • Human nature. "... the roots of our ecologic crisis reach beyond the variable topsoil of intellectual history, whether Eastern or Western, into the common substrata of human nature itself.’29 What such “nature” amounts to and how it functions as roots, both commonly left obscure, turns upon background hypotheses as to the nature of this nature. Different false 27 28 29 Goodin, p.573. While not contesting the theme, Goodin does continue: ‘the problem is not just that there are too many people, or even that they are enjoying too high a standard of living. All that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives as they pursue their various goals’ (p.573). That too will be seen to be seriously astray, though it contains large grains of truth; it presumes unchanged the prevailing economically-skewed dominant social paradigm. Both socialists and other opponents of capitalistic conspicuous consumption tend to select the living-standard component of the main environmental impact equation as the source of the crisis. Thus Cuban luminary, Castro, in a recent stunningly succinct speech: ‘Less luxury, less wastage. Otherwise it will be too late’. Quoting claims of E. Goldsmith, advanced in an interview in Forest and Bird 273 (August 1994) pp.46-7. The need for emphasis will persist while locally prominent political figures like the present Prime Minister of Australia travel around the Earth with the hackneyed message that only economic growth will solve environmental problems. Seeing growth as the problem affords only a superficial analysis, like that of pointing to overconsumption with which growth is interconnected. As deeper inquiry reveals, underlying both issues of economic growth, employment and consumption, and alternatives taken, are models, paradigmatic models. Growth is but a means to objectives assumed in the dominant paradigm. A deeper analysis shows too why more growth will not ultimately solve relevant problems. Callicott and Ames, ‘Epilogue: On the relation of idea and action’ p.282 (see also p.281), in a desperate and apparently unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the claim (repeatedly advanced in their book) that Asian traditions of thought can make a significant contribution to much improved treatment for natural and built environments, with ‘the deplorable environmental conditions prevailing in contemporary Asia’ (p.280). 16 hypotheses, that humans are invariably driven by aggression, sexual or reproductive imperatives, economic needs, yield different defective accounts. 0 • Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.30 ‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.31 One sample linkage statement runs as follows: ... there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both historically and ... presently] and ... this?the same energy that, turned against the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly destroying the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that consume the Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches and I believe that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless we simultaneously address our gender issues.32 A 15 Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes: • Human domination and exploitation of humans'. It is an extraordinarily widespread assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend-setters, including Marcuse, Illich, Passmore, Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from deep-seated social problems’.33 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus: all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology. Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships —domination of nature thus following from human domination’. ... It follows that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a 30 31 32 33 /n Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a more critical assessment see the sequel to GE. See Seed, quoted in the sequel to GE; also Salleh (e.g. in EP3). John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91. Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along with unrelational property claims. Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination of nature always results from humans’ domination of other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346). The text EP3 contains a sizeable section providing a useful introduction to social ecology. f/e. orths Jwy JHcA a ztci/uvC-., <‘oi»rW «L , as fw (Aibttnte qfndw hiasseX. Jrn. ; rvuzcC. cf 17 harmonious man-nature relationship.34 Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the dominated. • A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.35 • Modern educational systems'. Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems. Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as, so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.36 Therewith we are transported full circle back to defective practice answers. 4. A selective commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two stages reflecting a major division in the main tabulation. ad D. Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them. (Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.) Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time, perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While “consequences” or outputs such things as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying ‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste­ watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of their industry. That should now be a rotten joke, itself with serious consequences. Accordingly new ecological economics insists that we dig deeper—without however exceeding economic settings or a shifting dominant paradigm—to discover why markets may foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.37 Where they Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given humans could so socially organise, that they could settle into harmonious small-scale communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments. Such a proposition obtains a much fuller elaboration within Plumwood. In an interesting way, such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion reached below that a set of defective paradigms ifl at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by a set of them in each case, somewhat as numbers can be represented in binary terms, generated from a basic two-oneness duality. Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see GE Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24. 18 usually arrive, travelling within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics before ecological, at better regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of plans and incentives, controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do not reach very deep, or tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources. But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure, environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries; namely that true, or authentic, Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been, environmental consequences would be little better, given the heavy industrial commitments and environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.38 Differently, enlightenment liberals like Passmore try to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in mainstream theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence to these “well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains of its wilderness and remarkable diversity. Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting (collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts like Topsoil and Civilization and Agricultural Origins and Dispersal) of degradation of prime agricultural lands by imposed farming practices, where at least early on (before damage became visible) ignorance and unintended consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most historical cases we do not have enough information to be able to say with much assurance that agriculture proceeded until effective collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because practices were locked-in in one way or another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know more about present agricultural practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia, concerning both irrigated and dry-land agriculture. Many of these practices are undoubtedly sharply degrading lands, and the consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend ignorance, are sufficiently appreciated. But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a sweep of subsidies or concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim that they are locked into bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their control such as financial pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the need to make a living. But some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make no such claims or excuses, nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place, and similar. Their obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not deviation from theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm. ad P and PS. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed, 38 It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have their property confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who made those points, also observed). 19 business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few broad themes: 1. Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example, substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and so forth). To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not, on its own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges, link principles, from metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy operates. Thus subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of environmental problems which take them as derived from metaphysics of one sort or another. Such a criticism does not however extend to more comprehensive paradigms which connect appropriately with practice. 2. While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on39)—none are necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different paradigms; for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms, Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism. At this stage in dialectic, green history and the like—bio-history, eco-history, and related virtual histories (concerning what would have happened)—enter decisively. For instance, Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and ecological fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also conveniently documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological degradation or collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms.40 An important example (much less speculative than some of the numerous other examples because of a comparative wealth of primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples—Polynesian, Mayan, Sumerian and others—also reveal is that no very high level of technology is needed to inflict serious environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological project (with nothing directly to do with basic needs) will suffice. Other cultures did wreak, or would (given the technology and numbers, both of which While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to have the means, and so on. Ponting’s valuable/ though rather simple/ book is but one of several bleak texts. Another is Hillel’s, and there is a succession of earlier classic works by geographers: Lowdermilk, Dale, Mallory, Thorp and others. In general however, geographers and historian do not dig deep enough, to paradigmatic roots. /3 20 some were gaining) have wreaked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination, megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established, and expanding, before (or effectively outside) the rise of modern Western paradigms, or in extensive regions outside their influence. 3. The list of paradigms, as so far assembled, is substantially Western in orientation. Moreover environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources — wrongly. For non­ Western paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese chauvinism).41 Or consider Islam, with its reach across the Middle East and beyond. The main tabulation (of table 2) should accordingly be extended to take due account of non-Western paradigms, including for example: Other Abrahamic religions Islam Judaism Confucianism Shintoism Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island. What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic. Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in, or encouraged by, religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent. 4. All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms. While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements, such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism—though Descartes, for all his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.) Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modern rationalism and much else. 5. A general method of showing the inadequacy of all the paradigmatic answers tabulated, and others, is familiar from logical theory: namely, the method of counter-models, of which the 41 Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large fauna worldwide. 21 counter-examples (under head 2) provide special cases. A presently important illustration concerns patriarchy as a source of environmental woes. Counter-models reveal the substantial independence of mistreatment of women and mistreatment of environmental items such as animals or ecosystems. One the one hand, it is easy to envisage situations, not far from the actual in some regions, where the lot of women is significantly improved, but the lot of environmental items is not (e.g. men change their behaviour and attitudes relevantly as regards women, are forced to change, or whatever); just such an outcome would accord with persisting human chauvinism. More relevant, on the other, there are situations where the position of environmental items is much improved, for instance under much more careful husbandry, but that of women is not, for one reason or another (e.g. they remain other, different, second class, etc.). It follows from the elaboration of such counter-models that patriarchy is not the source of environmental problems, as there can be continuing patriarchy without the present range of environmental problems (problems can dry up while patriarchy continues to operate). There is no need to deny that patriarchy as (contingently) practised, with its sweeping supremacist attitudes which make no due distinctions between inferior items, may be a major contributing factor in present problems. Such slack contingent conjunctions do not convert to roots or sources. Similarly with other social roots of environmental problems, for instance with human domination of humans as^supposed source of all problems. 5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation. Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences—in calibre, in environmental friendliness. For example, Cartesianism which regards animals as mere automata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life­ forms and their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience. The family is not exclusively Western, nor somewhat more plausibly Northern, even though as a result of forces like migration, colonialism and cultural imperialism, paradigms of these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and of third world communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally and regionally. Nor are major inflators of environmental problems essentially Western. Industrialization and technological advance—neither intrinsically Western, both manifested in varying degrees in other cultures—are, without much doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from rather localised ones, damaging for instance islands and river catchments, to grander and even global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems, generating thereby spin­ 22 off problems as well. But, once again, they are not deeper sources, but only means. (For again push questioning deeper, and ask: why bother or persist with industry, the effort and dirt and mess involved?) Nor, however, did they run on their own, nor do they continue on their own. Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.42 They evolved primarily in the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could have occurred, and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as state socialism or post-imperial Confucianism. Now however these engines have been rendered more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transformed to run in less favourable settings. Thus inflation can escalate from a multiplicity of prepared sources, thereby intensifying problems and spreading them to larger regions. The intensification and spread is much facilitated by the joint transfer of technology, industry and coupled problems from region to region. As a result of transfer, inflation can occur within settings of quite different paradigms. Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other enthusiastic cultures. For instance, the West could in theory collapse through protracted war, through pollution and congestion, or climate change and agriculture failure (there are many unexcludible routes to catastrophic decline, outlined in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could differentially impact on the West). Degradation would now continue however; there would be only temporary respite from environmental crises. While most of the conspicuous problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary environmental crises, are accelerated by—what connects them—contemporary industrial society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. However, too many of the other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by­ products or similar of the main generators. Thus, in the illustration, the peasants displaced by agribusiness or absentee wealth-holders, arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the forests, and often wrecked this damage using industrial machinery. An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant cultures, Western or non-Western. A friendly paradigm would not only ensure much more selectivity and care, but would sharply limit impacts of damaging technology and industrialization. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack Lacking favourable ideological settings, earlier technological “break throughs” were not duly developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, dyes, gunpowder, etc. Western cultures did not enjoy a monopoly upon technology powerful enough, when massed, to induce global crises. The picture of development of large-scale environmental problems being sketched bears superficial resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where, to achieve presumed size, a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by huge inflationary phenomena. Naturally the resemblance has limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not terrestrially replicable in the way industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf, pollution problems and all, with a big price tag). Ti sophisticated contemporary elaboration and they may be flawed in other respects. Examples of more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems and crises conditions, include those now tabulated: TABLE 3: Examples, some flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms. Oriental ideologies: Taoism (classical) recessive traditions, now with tiny followings and little political influence. Jainism Indigenous cultures: Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda) Amazonian Indians. Western philosophies: under certain favourable interpretations old Stoicism new Deep-green theories, such as deep ecology. Given the remoteness of most of these examples from predominant contemporary life, and difficulties with their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new paradigms need to be worked out soon. Much much more intellectual effort should be devoted to such enterprise. One upshot, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two families, the second large: environmentally friendly, and unfriendly. No doubt there is a small fuzzy residue class43 lying between major unfriendly and friendly divisions. Environmental friendliness means more or less what it appear, to mean, what a functional break-down into components would yield: friendliness in approaches, practices and attitudes, to environments, especially more natural environments, with friendliness including, as usual, goodwill and kindliness towards (and substantially displaceable by these). As indicated, such friendliness concerns not merely actual practices, but also attitudes held, as reflected in what would be done in certain other sorts of situations. Certainly a culture that manifests unfriendliness, as a sweep of Northern cultures do, is unfriendly. But, as well, various “primitive” cultures, whose practices are not hostile, for example because they lack means or resources, energy or health, may nonetheless be unfriendly; for instance all members of a culture hold thoroughly negative attiudes which they are in fact unable to put into practice. It is not too difficult to explain in outline which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse. In logical terms neither, perhaps as well as another residue class, both. Certain family 24 characteristics, of unfriendly paradigms are worth elaborating: * Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism. More generally, direct impact is illustrated by any idea-system which attributes little or no value to natural items, and typically much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite) projects, and whose themes are linked to practice. So it is with Confucianism, which is entirely human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as his goal the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’44 The outside world, the natural environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only instrumentally, to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex machinery. ‘The exception is [mind, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation language: this alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to assert a fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts’”.45 The remaining world, the natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral significance. It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose to confer or project upon it, typically little or none. Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans has no thoughts, purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could hardly matter what happens to it. It could be regarded and treated, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans. Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive, by one route or another from Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went further than some others. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were ‘aimed at making men the masters and possessors of nature’.46 Untowards effects result through linkage of ideological theory to heavy practice. Link principles, reminiscent of “correspondence rules” used in explaining applications of scientific theories and normally included in comprehensive paradigms, connect the theoretic level to practice, they also serve to activate otherwise inoperative or uncoupled paradigms. Such principles may take the form of directives; familiar examples include maximization directives, such as maximize personal fun, tribal utility, national interest, or state GNP. * Indirect combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which yield satisfaction of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz’s fragmentary ideology. Leibnitz was substantially committed to all of human population growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption,47 in short, to Reese p.102 For much more on the geographic impact of Confucianism, as also compared with other (Asian) paradigms, see Tuan’s investigations. Cottingham p.15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument (reported in Cottingham) to this divide is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no such status divides—just as flamboyant forms of deep ecology maintain. See Descartes, Discourse VI. For requisite details, see Aiton. The case against Leibnitzianism is developed in a sequel. 25 precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts upon environments. However neutral Leibnitz’s metaphysics, his monadology, may have been—by contrast with Plato’s or Descartes’, both of which explicitly devalued much or all of the natural world—Leibnitz’s wider ideology is linked indirectly, through impact equations, to damaging effects. Some imagine that this oblique formalistic detailing, through direct and indirect classes, can be simply cut through, retaining plurality and so forth. Surely environmental friendliness is nothing but environmental depth? While the suggestion points in the right sort of direction (for the relevant sort of depth) it too is astray.48 Depth is neither necessary nor sufficient. Take the move plausible sufficiency half, plausible because depth helps, no end. Nonetheless depth can be achieved in macho ways (as ecofeminism has emphasized against deep ecology), ways which may not be altogether friendly to less favoured species, groups or habitats. For example, depth can be satisfied through due selection and support of some super species and magnificent habitats—requisite environmental impartiality (and reflected justice), critical for friendliness as intended, being neglected.49 Still less in depth necessary. For kindliness can, both in principle and in practice, extend far beyond humans, still ranked top, to much more of “creation”. Such extensive kindliness, observed in some humanistic humans, appears to be exhibited in some sects and tribes not committed to depth, and it could well be considerably more widespread, under changed but not deepened ideological conditions. Naturally, however, deepening would afford an obvious, and excellent, reason for change. As friendliness is not tantamount to depth, nor similarly is a prime part of what explains depth, recognition of intrinsic value in nature outside humans. Some animal liberationists who display high regard for creatures with capacity to suffer, show little goodwill towards forests largely unpopulated by such creatures. Conversely, though shifting ground, an environmentally friendly society may hold that value is but an anthropocentric construct, merely projected onto a basically neutral world. All the same, aspects of depth are normally reliable indicators of environmental sensitivity and friendliness, and inversely, aspects of shallowness (as investigated in authentic deep ecology) marks of unfriendliness. Shallowness will work out satisfactorily environmentally only with what is now rare (given ideological dominance), a right mix of humans; and its any longer working widely is implausible. These reliable marks include such familiar features as * short-term framework. * devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting As to the relevant sort of depth, see GE. Other accounts of depth are also preferred in deep ecology, some of which relate to the present exercise. In particular deep questioning should lead to paradigmatic roots, to Naess’s “total views”. Herein lies another reason why something like biospecies egalitarianism is essential in deep ecology; such a requirement needs, not dilution away (as has happened in American and transpersonal deep ecology), but rectification. 26 human chauvinism); and, as a corollary of heavy devaluation, * entitlement to domination, dominion over nature; * appropriation of nature, its conversion to property. * maximization assumptions concerning personal or societal aggrandizement, utility and size, coupled with grand projects. * technofix approach to environmental problems. Friendly paradigms will tend to invert these features. An environmentally friendly paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as the following samples: * an end to degrading primary production; instead ecological forestry and ecological agriculture will come to prevail. * a strong selectivity regarding industrialization, which weeds out damaging forms. * a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of unfriendly technology can go a very long way. As unfriendly paradigms are decidedly plural, so likewise are answers to questions as to why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Some of the diverse answers match answers already encountered in the main tabulation. Reasons are psychological, social and cultural (with a familiar circularity here encountered), and include considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed; because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought; because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on. A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because, in one way or another, most agents are bound to—locked into, committed to, captured by, or just passively go along with—environmentally unfriendly paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the rest of environments does not matter, or matter enough. 6. Glimpsing an entertaining corollary: an unfavourable report upon dominant philosophy. It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Stripped of metaphor, there are environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet. In an environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to satisfactory environmental outcomes. Predominant philosophy, not just Western philosophy, has by and large been bad environmental news. It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to 27 such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly under-estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even govern action and practice, especially reflective and rational action. The substantial point is not therefore removed through any alleged practical impotence of philosophy. Mainstream philosophy has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, dominant unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be trashed, as even defective enterprises or evil projects may include decent part or worthwhile features; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness), there are brash new alternatives such as authentic deep ecology, and there are recessive paradigms and neglected traditions to peruse for suggestions, for inspiration, and perhaps to rehabilitate. Richard Sylvan* APPENDIX. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions. A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard’s intriguing books. In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the stock responses to focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in earlier work), such as lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political inertia, change to agriculture and settlement,50... . He would (and should, for his eliminative argument) have also dismissed industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on. More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’— similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism. But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feel no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the An earlier, even rougher version of this article was presented at the Environmental Paradigms Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 1993. It would not have been written without its solicitation for the Conference; also it might well not been thought through in fashionable but confining and perhaps misleading paradigmatic terms. A subsequent working draft has benefitted, slightly, from comments from very unimpressed reviewers. Thanks certainly to Holmes Rolston for helpful comments. No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement zs simplistic: that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes. 28 facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here. Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of like together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing conservation, and so on. Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians, representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots51) that having certain ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”. So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic dislocations at the root of modern society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15). Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages, Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of th'e alleged sickness.52 It supposedly arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destructive adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us. Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing) practices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus, Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests rather than masters' (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy. ‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the third page of the main text. 29 person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.53 A superior explanation to widespread individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial humans are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies, without coming to know or properly experience alternatives. The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound, resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.54 They are not exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature mixed communities. Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health. Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness ‘small- group, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings. ... there is the rub—... for us, now, that world no longer exists’ (p. 14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural surrounding can even now be restored. In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing erosion of life-support systems. REFERENCES E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985. 53 54 A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument: ‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of ' society. 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Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967. R. Goodin, ‘Selling environmental indulgences’, Kyklos 47(1994) 573-596. N. R. Hanson, Patterns of discovery: an inquiry into conceptual foundations of science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1958. E. C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989. D Hillel, Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil., Free Press, Macmillan, 1991. M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991. K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy, Harmondsworth, England 1973. F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991. A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology , SUNY Press, Albany N. Y., 1993. P. Marshall, Nature’s Web, in two editions, Simon and Schuster, 1992 and 1993. A. Naess and D. Rothenberg, Ecology, community and Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989. J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974. D. Pearce and others, Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989. D. Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H. Croom Helm 1984. V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993. C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991. 31 R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982; also, modified, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. R. Elliot and A. Gare), University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1983; referred to as RP. C. O. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersal, American Geographical Society, New York, 1952. P. Singer, Practical Ethics, expanded edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993. P. Shepard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982. R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994; referred to as GE. R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD. The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993. Y.F. Tuan, ‘Discrepancies between environmental attitude and behaviour: examples from Europe and China’, The Canadian Geographer 12(1968) 176-91. S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982. L. White Jr., ‘Historic roots of our ecologic crisis’, Science 155(1967) 1203-7. J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Blackwell, Oxford, 1953. M. Zimmerman and others (eds.), Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1993; referred to as EP3.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 15, item 1031: Paradigmatic roots on environmental problems Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-05-29. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Subject The topic of the resource Typescript dated 29.5.95. With handwritten emendations. Description An account of the resource Title in collection finding aid: RS: Paradigmatic Roots of Environmental Problems. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 15, item 1031 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [31] leaves. 33.04 MB. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:01d025b" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:01d025b</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Lake George - Desk Pile 1: Theories for Everything Box 15: Green Projects in Progress Lake George House Lake George House > Desk Pile 1: Theories for Everything https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/7a9a113e9450d48a14c3453e40634d75.pdf 8b2ff607f479ab23bd89d5f3693348f9 PDF Text Text 00948 ��' A ,-,/X^ ^6- c4>-yil^r7^7 Tt%^ . /. ^C- 7. — �4 ^r-^7^ /.^ ^4 , 4 " /z^ JL,^ ^c^-< y4^/^4L — �2- �/^ /t4>vx - <^jt/y! ? ?^L CC^s. 7^ / ^ , ** / / �The most notorious of these (econstructions*are the social contract theories ^pf^ilg&bes, Rousseau,reccntly Rawls. , whereby individual members of a society fictitiously enter into an enforceable contract, inescapable for themselves and all their descendants, setting up the state, primarily as a security arrangement. In later versions4here is much negotiating and bargaining in contrived sifuations, where humans lose many of their distinctive features and accoutrements (in a effort to ensure some initial fairness). A variant on contract theories, which justify some sort of state arrangements aj y they arose in an ideal way, is retrojustification of the state as naturally arising, as a sort of super­ insurance agency, from pre-state arrangements. For example, the minimal state evolves from a competing set of state-like security agencies one of which somehow gains a monopoly, and is retrojustified through insurance arguments (concerning risk and compensation). Now modern states did not arise in any such "natural" or contractual way. Often they we^^posed by conquest or through colonialisation, and with a few exceptions, using military means^ra&*than Offering much sweetness and light and choic^Nor do the ideal constructions ( or histories offer much justification for these resulting state power configurations. For the states so delivered are very different from those most people presently toil under. In any case, the arguments involved do not succeed. They are extraordinarily gappy by contemporary logical standards, amd (hey depend upon some utterly implausible assumptions, for example as to how vile conditions are in extra-state situations. No doubt some of the gaps Could be plugged by further, further contestable, assumptions, but such analytic work remains ,^V- Au to be attempted and assessed. In fact it was ea^ realised that such arguments exhibit unlikely and even paradoxical features. For example, in consenting to a state for security purposes, '4 participants to the state contract proceed to establish an institution which is far more dangerous to them than the power of others taken distribudvely. It would seem that those smart enough to enter into a social contract for a state would be smart enough to foresee the problems of hiring a monster, and to avoid the steer and stated along without it. WA s c<\/ /dv 01/ j A < *-T? A- <0^. �yZ / / ^z<* v^!<L-^ //f/4//?^. /^r Z y?/-ftz<&4 ^,';Z^rZ? 7z^7^; c/^7L- */ ^4^ c^ ' /^/<r J / <r<^-n> <4 Zs //^4 4- ,ZJV *- _ , "77^/ \ y ��____j ^<9C/<3/ co/trract arguments Ms^that-ofTiobbes areScon jobs.) ^uch argument, aim to show / 'the state is necessary and that ' the state is superior to its absence, 1)ut w;, argument^as are presented depend upon a false choice. For only two opdons are considered: H, a horrible Hobbesian "state of nature" and S, a well ordered(contructually-rea^e^Hobbesian state. The argument, appealing to the vices of H and the virtues of S, has little trouble in concluding * * S is better than H (or similarly, radial agents would select S over H, etc.) The choice conveniently leaves out other options, as anarchist ones. Why should anarchists want to line up with S? They can agree with proposition * *. They might also want to assert that anarchistic arrangements Z are superior to S. Whereupon it is evident that neither * nor * follows. For necessity all aggeRible alternatives have to be considered (by the That has not been done. For superiority the superiority of S to Z and semantics of other altemadves has to be taken into account. That has not been done. One alternative is Carter's -Society which produces 'the kind of individuals who have strongly internalized values and can live cooperatively and freely without the threat of force ...' (p-25).5 5 " Hobbe s Bottom half: really a reranking. �ryn< \C /)<te<ft^j A. /t"^**', the arguments, ^even if somehow repaired, would not establish an institution with anything approaching the power and complexity of the modem state. Arguments to the state typically establish, only a rather minimal state, with certain protective and regulatory powers. Such * minimal state, would not deliver many of the goods economists, still less socialists, have come to expect of the state. The arguments certainly do not establish anything like the oppressive paternal state with a panoply of powers that many citizens are forceably subject to, powers states have accumulated by their own unjustified predatory activity. In this respect too, arguments to the state resemble arguments to God. Deistic arguments characteristically establish (insofar as they establish anything) only a quite minimal fAtzr w/hcA, a first cause, a most perfect object, a universal designer, "clockmaker" or the like. They do nothing to establish many of the powers or properties ascribed to God. ;CK(L ? trt P ) A �4?^ -v.y.^z *^<L ** ^/c^j/ ) /r^ /y rt^Z /4^ C1—\ " -Z /^,/ 7.^/ Z^ 7^, _ y x, . Zt rZZ'l^L^ /"^ /%-/ A^' Z<^ C-€_ ^EEE%zE^ " "YT^ 7 r—<4. V y <<^,^ 7^, ^ <7^ K— ; ?4- 7%,^/ ,-;/^ CL-^ ^4c. ,y . /^C-v*t t-a. *4? ��:///W7< // rc)^"T / 3 <y <? *^, ^7*^ 7*c �^RORLEM& IN PRESENT WORLD SOCIAL AND-POLITICAL There are great many problems, many of them getting worse rapidly. Though anarchist arrangements played little part in producing these problems, many of them developing and & . . —. getting out of central under free-enterprise capitalist and state-socialist arrangements, it is sometimes outragously with an array of these problems, and fail/ as s...^.. Because it is unable to do so. Why on earth should anarchism be presumed to do this?----- -, One critic endowed with this level of 'gall' (one A. Werthei'per) contends that anarchism is unable to successfully deal with four presently existing world social conditions. These are: 1) that "the population of the earth is (perhaps) too large, but increasing at a rapid rate with no prospect for a serious reduction"; 2) that "in much of the world, basic human needs are not being satisfied"; 3) that "the world's natural and human resources are not evenly distributed ac%ross the globe"; and finally 4) that "the present level of subsistence is based on a high level of social and economic interdependence among various regions of the world and within the regions themselves". In addition/?^., anarchism is unable to cope with conflicts between individual self-interest and social needs, particularly as relates to... defense (Clark p.142). The short response is So what? Firstly, insofar as these conditions constitute problems ("condition " 3) is more a fact than a "problem"^ no political theory is coping successfully, only bn all-conquering ideology would pretend to be able to cope. Democratic capitalism has had (important isolated pockets excepted) little impact in limiting India's gross population; Maorist socialism has done only a little better in China. Part of the problem in almost all such overpopulated regions lies in getting the problem recognised as a problem. ^.Secondly, prospects of success for anarchism are primarily regional, But a region can hardly be expected to handle, rather than make limited contributions towards, world problems. Suppose, for instance, Niue became (or reverted to) an anarchist society, a successful one locally. It would be no detraction from its local success that it made no impact upon demilitarizing the USA or halting the world's resource drain to thereto, or that its success was scarcely known aboutthere. ,,6 �3 -.J /yj*<^47j ^0^' Ar"t^- <^y 4/^ ^y ^X^C//4*c/ r^^—? <a ^7 / <*^V* '%^<- <^4?t^ A-?- '^-^' ^zfcLfyF*/, / /^ 4 y^?4/ y 4^ yw/ ^7 7- ^^-t-cy-^y ^L<<\- /' 7 ��, /tA_^ A / ^4/^- 4-n[ y -1- Z ^o _ �6' �^2 - /,^i//;; / ' / / Z^V / ' J /^- ' -' <' ^7^ 4i /^V , ^7^7 gsa^ v-T^EksCTs / ^3 7t<^ ^-. ^7 r, 7^\ 7^— <^/ %si^-7 <T7 Z7/ �2? 4^/ / �/^//^7^.A^(L- !?J 7^ . CL- z" 4?c/. ( ^*4A* /%^CP < y^^^y<^-<-. -^-j <?z<^-v ^**/" . ZtZZC f) Z^ rs^zZ; -- (,^v-crA-c— ^/!? t. ^ -^-? y y^4/- /7 ^Z<) ,- z\o/^ Z C^Z^ *Z_ <=t*^ ? C tZZZ^^/^^ Z<_ .c.4^- s^Z, Z^^/ y?^ /^ZyZ 7 < 4^-* 4?, />^^ 47/^^ 7^ , zj ^Z^^7'^Z4Z-^y A^/\ <-4'^-7 ^^c/Zf* /%^)Z yi zZ/^yZ^-LrVv^J . -7^'Z<x?^tA/ /^y c< r< —bZ* ^i/?-J</ <^Z ^y^c^T, /^ry-e s. cc^X*^-JL^, ^Jcr c^vr^ .——------ c^c^y- ; Zn//3-^ Z ZhT/^ ^4^-? /Z /Z/. c z^v-^ ^7 , /%yi<^ , /^c/, Z? ^4V/^ /Zc^_ Z^? ^jL/ 7t) 4t- ^s^ZZr 4/TLt^*-t"TM—%r /<?4^<^ /4yc)7t^ ZLZ^4^y4^/ ? t <4 Zy ^^s<Z ^7 Z-* Z *^yZ^y<yZ �/C/, c-3%7tr&<^ /%%*/%i^< 7%CV(1 ^02 . /2L y �%2 c <2-7 ^*<L_ ^4o /^7^/ ��y , / / / A ' z ' /<wr^ ^//V/^^L i ^f^92^ //T^ /^\*^ /^ ^7^4^ r<. 7/c^^ ^?- ^^1/Ct -^7 Vyt^Zt-T ^-CC-^A ' / Z/?/ y^v /^ V ^tt^/^-ZY^r /1u/^ y <5^T^/ e%3/J ^2r^ cy^Zt ^r <^ ; �^7. �y,.^ ^y^7< ^x:?S-.^ y ,;*.^^^- ' <.^^4 A /4fA 2/^ . n -*^ "—<- 2/2? ?' ^//" ^1'^S ' ^/ 2%. �4 ��^336^? �/// r<zc/^^ /$^V z? /^C^J r A/7" VO^AZ? ^2/7*7 c/^ € (7 / 7 77 y4^/j ^7o c)-v^ 7j Z^T^ ZZ /"X / ^LC 7 j/<c �f �^./ J ) //yyi ^2 c %/ ^ ^ZL-y <^-<gy>--, A �7^7,. (4) 7 A? ^7^ '-"A ^*. ,^T4_ A c' / /^r7 , / ��/ / < j*^s- C/T%^ ? . c*^c* �% /f^cy^ 4 /j €< 6 y-^CL 4 f4 r A " ,<^4A. y^./^*,^/ <^=. 'r^ ' 4 / px^^ <et^<? A_^_l_ A"' <3L^ A ^A C, < 4-_ ���JJ/' ^/ <*soZ � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 00948 ' A ,-,/X^ ^6- c4>-yil^r7^7 Tt%^ . /. ^C- 7. — 4 ^r-^7^ /.^ ^4 , 4 " /z^ JL,^ ^c^-< y4^/^4L — 2- /^ /t4>vx - <^jt/y! ? ?^L CC^s. 7^ / ^ , ** / / The most notorious of these (econstructions*are the social contract theories ^pf^ilg&bes, Rousseau,reccntly Rawls. , whereby individual members of a society fictitiously enter into an enforceable contract, inescapable for themselves and all their descendants, setting up the state, primarily as a security arrangement. In later versions4here is much negotiating and bargaining in contrived sifuations, where humans lose many of their distinctive features and accoutrements (in a effort to ensure some initial fairness). A variant on contract theories, which justify some sort of state arrangements aj y they arose in an ideal way, is retrojustification of the state as naturally arising, as a sort of super­ insurance agency, from pre-state arrangements. For example, the minimal state evolves from a competing set of state-like security agencies one of which somehow gains a monopoly, and is retrojustified through insurance arguments (concerning risk and compensation). Now modern states did not arise in any such "natural" or contractual way. Often they we^^posed by conquest or through colonialisation, and with a few exceptions, using military means^ra&*than Offering much sweetness and light and choic^Nor do the ideal constructions ( or histories offer much justification for these resulting state power configurations. For the states so delivered are very different from those most people presently toil under. In any case, the arguments involved do not succeed. They are extraordinarily gappy by contemporary logical standards, amd (hey depend upon some utterly implausible assumptions, for example as to how vile conditions are in extra-state situations. No doubt some of the gaps Could be plugged by further, further contestable, assumptions, but such analytic work remains ,^V- Au to be attempted and assessed. In fact it was ea^ realised that such arguments exhibit unlikely and even paradoxical features. For example, in consenting to a state for security purposes, '4 participants to the state contract proceed to establish an institution which is far more dangerous to them than the power of others taken distribudvely. It would seem that those smart enough to enter into a social contract for a state would be smart enough to foresee the problems of hiring a monster, and to avoid the steer and stated along without it. WA s c<\/ /dv 01/ j A < *-T? A- <0^. yZ / / ^z<* v^!<L-^ //f/4//?^. /^r Z y?/-ftz<&4 ^,';Z^rZ? 7z^7^; c/^7L- */ ^4^ c^ ' /^/<r J / <r<^-n> <4 Zs //^4 4- ,ZJV *- _ , "77^/ \ y ____j ^<9C/<3/ co/trract arguments Ms^that-ofTiobbes areScon jobs.) ^uch argument, aim to show / 'the state is necessary and that ' the state is superior to its absence, 1)ut w;, argument^as are presented depend upon a false choice. For only two opdons are considered: H, a horrible Hobbesian "state of nature" and S, a well ordered(contructually-rea^e^Hobbesian state. The argument, appealing to the vices of H and the virtues of S, has little trouble in concluding * * S is better than H (or similarly, radial agents would select S over H, etc.) The choice conveniently leaves out other options, as anarchist ones. Why should anarchists want to line up with S? They can agree with proposition * *. They might also want to assert that anarchistic arrangements Z are superior to S. Whereupon it is evident that neither * nor * follows. For necessity all aggeRible alternatives have to be considered (by the That has not been done. For superiority the superiority of S to Z and semantics of other altemadves has to be taken into account. That has not been done. One alternative is Carter's -Society which produces 'the kind of individuals who have strongly internalized values and can live cooperatively and freely without the threat of force ...' (p-25).5 5 " Hobbe s Bottom half: really a reranking. ryn< \C /)<te<ft^j A. /t"^**', the arguments, ^even if somehow repaired, would not establish an institution with anything approaching the power and complexity of the modem state. Arguments to the state typically establish, only a rather minimal state, with certain protective and regulatory powers. Such * minimal state, would not deliver many of the goods economists, still less socialists, have come to expect of the state. The arguments certainly do not establish anything like the oppressive paternal state with a panoply of powers that many citizens are forceably subject to, powers states have accumulated by their own unjustified predatory activity. In this respect too, arguments to the state resemble arguments to God. Deistic arguments characteristically establish (insofar as they establish anything) only a quite minimal fAtzr w/hcA, a first cause, a most perfect object, a universal designer, "clockmaker" or the like. They do nothing to establish many of the powers or properties ascribed to God. ;CK(L ? trt P ) A 4?^ -v.y.^z *^<L ** ^/c^j/ ) /r^ /y rt^Z /4^ C1—\ " -Z /^,/ 7.^/ Z^ 7^, _ y x, . Zt rZZ'l^L^ /"^ /%-/ A^' Z<^ C-€_ ^EEE%zE^ " "YT^ 7 r—<4. V y <<^,^ 7^, ^ <7^ K— ; ?4- 7%,^/ ,-;/^ CL-^ ^4c. ,y . /^C-v*t t-a. *4? :///W7< // rc)^"T / 3 <y <? *^, ^7*^ 7*c ^RORLEM& IN PRESENT WORLD SOCIAL AND-POLITICAL There are great many problems, many of them getting worse rapidly. Though anarchist arrangements played little part in producing these problems, many of them developing and & . . —. getting out of central under free-enterprise capitalist and state-socialist arrangements, it is sometimes outragously with an array of these problems, and fail/ as s...^.. Because it is unable to do so. Why on earth should anarchism be presumed to do this?----- -, One critic endowed with this level of 'gall' (one A. Werthei'per) contends that anarchism is unable to successfully deal with four presently existing world social conditions. These are: 1) that "the population of the earth is (perhaps) too large, but increasing at a rapid rate with no prospect for a serious reduction"; 2) that "in much of the world, basic human needs are not being satisfied"; 3) that "the world's natural and human resources are not evenly distributed ac%ross the globe"; and finally 4) that "the present level of subsistence is based on a high level of social and economic interdependence among various regions of the world and within the regions themselves". In addition/?^., anarchism is unable to cope with conflicts between individual self-interest and social needs, particularly as relates to... defense (Clark p.142). The short response is So what? Firstly, insofar as these conditions constitute problems ("condition " 3) is more a fact than a "problem"^ no political theory is coping successfully, only bn all-conquering ideology would pretend to be able to cope. Democratic capitalism has had (important isolated pockets excepted) little impact in limiting India's gross population; Maorist socialism has done only a little better in China. Part of the problem in almost all such overpopulated regions lies in getting the problem recognised as a problem. ^.Secondly, prospects of success for anarchism are primarily regional, But a region can hardly be expected to handle, rather than make limited contributions towards, world problems. Suppose, for instance, Niue became (or reverted to) an anarchist society, a successful one locally. It would be no detraction from its local success that it made no impact upon demilitarizing the USA or halting the world's resource drain to thereto, or that its success was scarcely known aboutthere. ,,6 3 -.J /yj*<^47j ^0^' Ar"t^- <^y 4/^ ^y ^X^C//4*c/ r^^—? <a ^7 / <*^V* '%^<- <^4?t^ A-?- '^-^' ^zfcLfyF*/, / /^ 4 y^?4/ y 4^ yw/ ^7 7- ^^-t-cy-^y ^L<<\- /' 7 , /tA_^ A / ^4/^- 4-n[ y -1- Z ^o _ 6' ^2 - /,^i//;; / ' / / Z^V / ' J /^- ' -' <' ^7^ 4i /^V , ^7^7 gsa^ v-T^EksCTs / ^3 7t<^ ^-. ^7 r, 7^\ 7^— <^/ %si^-7 <T7 Z7/ 2? 4^/ / /^//^7^.A^(L- !?J 7^ . CL- z" 4?c/. ( ^*4A* /%^CP < y^^^y<^-<-. -^-j <?z<^-v ^**/" . ZtZZC f) Z^ rs^zZ; -- (,^v-crA-c— ^/!? t. ^ -^-? y y^4/- /7 ^Z<) ,- z\o/^ Z C^Z^ *Z_ <=t*^ ? C tZZZ^^/^^ Z<_ .c.4^- s^Z, Z^^/ y?^ /^ZyZ 7 < 4^-* 4?, />^^ 47/^^ 7^ , zj ^Z^^7'^Z4Z-^y A^/\ <-4'^-7 ^^c/Zf* /%^)Z yi zZ/^yZ^-LrVv^J . -7^'Z<x?^tA/ /^y c< r< —bZ* ^i/?-J</ <^Z ^y^c^T, /^ry-e s. cc^X*^-JL^, ^Jcr c^vr^ .——------ c^c^y- ; Zn//3-^ Z ZhT/^ ^4^-? /Z /Z/. c z^v-^ ^7 , /%yi<^ , /^c/, Z? ^4V/^ /Zc^_ Z^? ^jL/ 7t) 4t- ^s^ZZr 4/TLt^*-t"TM—%r /<?4^<^ /4yc)7t^ ZLZ^4^y4^/ ? t <4 Zy ^^s<Z ^7 Z-* Z *^yZ^y<yZ /C/, c-3%7tr&<^ /%%*/%i^< 7%CV(1 ^02 . /2L y %2 c <2-7 ^*<L_ ^4o /^7^/ y , / / / A ' z ' /<wr^ ^//V/^^L i ^f^92^ //T^ /^\*^ /^ ^7^4^ r<. 7/c^^ ^?- ^^1/Ct -^7 Vyt^Zt-T ^-CC-^A ' / Z/?/ y^v /^ V ^tt^/^-ZY^r /1u/^ y <5^T^/ e%3/J ^2r^ cy^Zt ^r <^ ; ^7. y,.^ ^y^7< ^x:?S-.^ y ,;*.^^^- ' <.^^4 A /4fA 2/^ . n -*^ "—<- 2/2? ?' ^//" ^1'^S ' ^/ 2%. 4 ^336^? /// r<zc/^^ /$^V z? /^C^J r A/7" VO^AZ? ^2/7*7 c/^ € (7 / 7 77 y4^/j ^7o c)-v^ 7j Z^T^ ZZ /"X / ^LC 7 j/<c f ^./ J ) //yyi ^2 c %/ ^ ^ZL-y <^-<gy>--, A 7^7,. (4) 7 A? ^7^ '-"A ^*. ,^T4_ A c' / /^r7 , / / / < j*^s- C/T%^ ? . c*^c* % /f^cy^ 4 /j €< 6 y-^CL 4 f4 r A " ,<^4A. y^./^*,^/ <^=. 'r^ ' 4 / px^^ <et^<? A_^_l_ A"' <3L^ A ^A C, < 4-_ JJ/' ^/ <*soZ  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 13, Item 948: Early drafts and finished papers on anarchism Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Description An account of the resource Typescripts and handwritten chapters, with handwritten emendations and annotations. Title in collection finding aid: RS: Anarkism. Early Drafts + Finished Papers. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span><span>,</span> Box 13, item 948 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [41] leaves. 87.25 MB. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:a6a08c8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:a6a08c8</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Lake George - Floor - Pile 6 Box 13: Green Projects in Progress Lake George House Lake George House > Floor > Pile 6