1 20 90 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 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. 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 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. 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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 - 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/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/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. 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/. 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/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. 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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). Environmental views can stick with,jmainstrean» theses according to which rights X coupled with corresponding responsibilities and so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concerns; i.e., at least, whatever, has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever^has a right has^interests st- <■ J ? j2_x>~«^-^—4“V- C>----- <~*'f~'^ < —r_>4 AN-^V5i „ /s i—^Jj-o- -gk, zLo jfe-f-4-^- c^-^a- c'k <j£—*A C. -in ^..Sj-oSL-U-^-^zf- ^LM. c_f-<_ C-O x_ C*"^——'p^^— ^ri»|^e>\A»tL' (o~— 1_ <"7 Qr*—S—Ic^-k^pj —.*—*L_ d /'—>-^—^- J &i $"'z'~1<— . — -^_T-Ca_Xa—<__ Aj<, J^«-------- .__><sxbV_ vyH-m <Ji J<$A_ Aal -n^tx/$J'_>~'lx<"c~j-^_<vj4-toA V 2 k^hssXkx^ Z 4----- ------------------- A-S <—<-^-^X_ rA-c____ cL<i—A, "t^-ajZavJ^v i^a--— (kx_A_—-C—, .O-JL '*-^>>J2—AziUAAA O^ . _ _ aAUL :A>=> v __ <=y- fcAlA- v-*o-aA c-» ^Sjhj /"Xr-j-«_ -t~s p-vvj-^MSV-s »_—c<-^»ji—, 'V—Ci.’V' c_r—4~ iUvagk-A-tar^ t (__r-i!e~-^~--> 3 ci r \ 'Wt or e_. fkftyt i‘n ■'—^££ -T©t? 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/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. 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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/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. 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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/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/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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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/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/. Title A name given to the resource Box 14, item 2073: On extirpating war: Tao and deep-green pacifism marked 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. Subject The topic of the resource Typescript with handwritten emendations and annotations. 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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/0b7902d211e4ae23ce6364a79b1fdef4.pdf 903a4c17a0584ed036707fe4b4aa469a PDF Text Text ������������������������������������������������������������� 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. 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Title A name given to the resource Nuclear Power—Some Ethical, Social and Political Dimensions 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> <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=val+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">Val Routley</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://manuscripts.library.uq.edu.au/index.php/uqfl291" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Richard Sylvan Papers, UQFL291</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>. 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Manuscript https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/448d8517e9ca68f07df1452eec947883.pdf 5534af9a9b545e7a7587c7c0c0504e3a PDF Text Text ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 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  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 of Nuclear Power—Some Ethical, Social and Political Dimensions 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> <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=val+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">Val Routley</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://manuscripts.library.uq.edu.au/index.php/uqfl291" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Richard Sylvan Papers, UQFL291</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>. 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Manuscript https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/2a58a736a0fbf8719d74d4ee50c7d4ca.pdf 07f4f100b518084f6934e2d356da87a8 PDF Text Text 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 far 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 fashionable answers to the focal questions is satisfactory. A different more complex answer through broader classes of paradigms is accordingly investigated. Among significant corollaries, this one stands out: philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental news. 0. Focal questions and deeper answers. Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate. In modem times humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system degradation; formerly they would have seen such transformation for not mattering, many still do, transformation as increasing wealth (as in mainstream economics). More recently they have developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through need, induction into cash economies, and so on) and which weave entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, bureaus, courts, and so on). Whence 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? The answer to be arrived at to these focal questions is in essence this: because too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, are committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigms, paradigms displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the earth. 1 In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). �Parts of the 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, often correct as far as they go, 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 pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood-production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”.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. 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, 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 2 3 4 For main details of this illustrative example, see FF. For more on this style of explanation, see further Routley. I am not, however, going to maintain that religion, or a certain religion such as Christianity, is the main villain of the environmental piece. Religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from philosophies (see below). What I shall be suggesting is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in this regard. As logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to coincide. How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or superficial �3 through a single paradigm, as has too often been supposed, but through a bundle of apparently aligned paradigms. One working image for what is going on here is appropriately ecological: that of a fig cluster (similarly a mangrove or bamboo thicket): Diagram 1: Structural diagram connecting problems with their multiple roots many emergent problems interlinked proximate causes plural supporting sources multiple interlinked roots Observe systematic plurality. Notice however a countervailing human propensity to seek single answers and uniqueness (as depicted in the rhomboidal box), where causes and sources are plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are plural.5 What is sought are ultimate sources, or roots, not immediate causes. The cause of the pollution may be a factory that the 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. (But 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? In terms of directional explanatory and other rational transmission connections.6) explanation, of them. History too is not singular, but plural, as has occasionally been recognized; at the very least there are plausible alternative histories. While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or developments virtually none of it addresses die question of what is meant by the partially buried metaphors ot roots and sources (the metaphors are evidently different; more literally, plants have roots, normally below them, streams rise from sources, not roots, normally above them, and so on). A striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful introductory text. Although this text, The �4 These deeper sources are important. Without locating them, perhaps all of them (if they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at ±ese, cutting them off or replacing them, will also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. 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 the necessary preliminaries, because they have been addressed elsewhere. 1. Problems and paradigms. Although these will be duly connected, paradigms implicated in problems, they are different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation. la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions. A definition of ‘environmental problem’, and a classification of such problems, has already been proposed.7 Observe that the final sets of problems that emerge are not value-framework independent. What constitutes a major problem on deeper perceptions may be but a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such indicator problems, that it is here presumed are serious problems, are those of • sustaining biodiversity and • maintaining significant wilderness.8 Even if the broad impact of human enterprise is sufficiently reduced to guarantee comfortable survival of future humans, these, desiderata may not be guaranteed. There will 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 are to be resolved. Impact equations, emerging immediately from a classification of Roots of Modem Environmentalism, presents itself specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots metaphor, and for that matter 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 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 a 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 injunction: post hoc, propter hoc. Dictionaries do better, with a short listing for the figurature use of root running: the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc.’ (Concise English Dictionary). That will serve, for a start. 7 See Sylvan and Bennett, GE. 8 As to the extent of the problem in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The Wildlands Project. �5 problems, reveal how they are to be resolved.9 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.10 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys us, are not a satisfactory stopping point. 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. As we will soon see, most of these answers too simple, and taken as intended as comprehensive, they are wrong. The questions however are important, because if we fail to get to bottom of these, there is even less prospect of satisfactory action to turn around a very difficult situation. That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships or how many dollars uncaring humans can 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 was explicated, in previous work, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.11 That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a general system, i.e. on an integrated relational structure. Naturally it is required to faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms, scientific research programs, etc. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and imperatival 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 capsule formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures; from these 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 universal12 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 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), For details see again Greening of Ethics. See e.g. The cost ofpast environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24. See Routley, where many environmentally relevant examples are documented. For an analogous account of culture see Sylvan 86. It resembles a structured universal, e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex ideas. �6 Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess), perspectives, outlooks, ideologies, programs, ... . An ideology, for instance, in the nonderogatory (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. Paradigms are now regularly presented, in extremely truncated form, through a tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example: TABLE 2: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant paradigm: an initial capsule formulation ,13 Taoism Deep Ecology Dominant (Western) Paradigm Harmony with nature, ±rough 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 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) 13 This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly expanded. �7 I As observed, paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; 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 ideosystems, eschews deontics.) 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 have to be changed, not rolled. 2. Proposed answers to focal questions; a preliminary classification of inadequate answers and suggested remedies. Most of the wide range of answers proposed supply a single source, and are defective. Roughly, virtually everything you have read on this (or may read elsewhere) is wrong. TABLE 3. Main tabulation of answers and remedies Source Defective practice answers Remedy Objections 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 Source single paradigm Remedies proposed (among others) Christianity (mainstream Catholicism) Scientific enlightenment, or alternative (Eastern) religion D3a Defective paradigm answers Pl. i �8 Pla. Protestantism and its ethic P2. P2a Cartesianism Dualism P2b Mechanism Monism Anti-dualism Modified holism 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 Enlightenment Anti-enlightenment P6a Materialism Anti-materialism Spiritualism P8. P8a Patriarchy, Masculinism Human domination of humans Feminism Anti-domination (anti-hierarchy) P6. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject specific or partial) include: Source Typical remedy suggested Platonism New metaphysics Leibnitzianism New metaphysics Kantianism C onsequentialism Mainstrand Anglo-American philosophy: reductive empiricism-cum-utilitarianism Continental philosophy Utilitarianism Economism New social science, or ethics Contractarianism Consequentialism Domination transfer Domination removal 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 most elements in that list will have been nominated, likely �9 separately but perhaps only in combination, by someone as the source of the problems. That list accordingly continues (even including sometimes entries like Taylorism), but what is included is representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other answers however, some varying from interesting to crazy, that we should also take into account, for instance Shepard's answers. Although Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false cast. Strange answers include pushing it back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard, but also Fox, and Ehrlich with talk of ‘mental maladaptation’). 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, that are to be resisted. The 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 theme that dominant societies, USA especially (which influences so much now in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive adolescence.1415No doubt, too, that maturity — but a 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 housing, in those most wasteful of modern 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 towards notes. 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 advanced in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White. One useful 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 14 15 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 Appendix 3. 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. �10 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, 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.16 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 criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.17 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.18 • 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.19 16 17 18 19 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 interesting recent contribution see Callicott. Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms. Ask, first, not what they say, but what they do, and would do. 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: see Appendix 1. There is a much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of the very different roles and impacts ot Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans. For a modest beginning, �11 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 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.20 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 root 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 trances. 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.21 An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining 20 21 see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands. For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising Drengson’s exposition, see Routley, table 5. For certain critical elements of Descartes contribution, see Appendix 2. 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 ‘reject[ing] 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). �12 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.22 • 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 modem 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.23 But, as observed, the main 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’.24 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 appears to be a distinctively modem contribution. ♦ Modem industrial society. 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’.25 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of modem industrial society .26 Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed’27 The popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial technology can without 22 23 24 25 26 27 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. 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 in McLauglin. Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2. �13 any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as, less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes, what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice. • 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’.28 ‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.29 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.30 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, Ulich, 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’.31 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 Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a more critical assessment see GEF. See Seed, quoted in GEF; also Salleh (see e.g. 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 die humans domination ot other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346). The text EP3 contains a big section providing a useful introduction to social ecology. �14 harmonious man-nature relationship.32 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.33 • 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.34 Therewith we are transported full circle back to defective practice answers. 4. 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 the major division in the main tabulation. 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 outputs or “consequences” such matters 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 bad joke. Accordingly new green economics insists that we dig deeper—without however exceeding economic settings—to discover why markets may foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.35 Where they usually arrive, travelling 32 33 34 35 Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given humans could so socially organise, that they could setde into harmonious small-scale communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments. Such a proposition, outlined in V. and R. Routley, 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 in at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by set of diem 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 Sylvan and Bennett. Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24. �a 15 within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics before green, 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 Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been, environmental consequences would be no better, given the heavy industrial commitments and environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.36 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 ) 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. P. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed, 36 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 dieir property confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who made those points, also observed). �16 business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few 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 it own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges 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. 2. While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on37)—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 or ecohistory, and related virtual histories, enter decisively. 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. An important example (much less speculative than some of the examples because of a comparative wealth of primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples 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, or would have (given the technology and numbers), wrecked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination, megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established before rise of modem Western paradigms, or in regions outside their influence. 3. The list of paradigms, as so far presented, is entirely 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 37 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. �17 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).38 Or Islam, with its reach across the Middle East. The main tabulation (of table 3) 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 modern rationalism and much else. 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. A Cartesianism which regards animals as mere auto­ 38 Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large fauna. �18 mata 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, or Northern, though (through colonialism and cultural imperialism) paradigm of these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and third world communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally and regionally. Industrialization and technological advance are, without doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from rather localised ones, damaging islands and river catchments, to grander and global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems/9 They did not however run on their own, nor do they continue on their own. Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.39 40 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. Now however these engines have been rendered more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transferred to run in less favourable settings. TABLE 4: Connected continuing sources of global environmental problems Transfer of technology, industry and problems to other regions Inflation intensification and spread of problems to larger regions Technologicalindustrial development within ideological cultural framework development within another , \ or different / • framework / Multiple sources of various regional problems 39 40 The picture of development of environmental problems preferred accordingly bears passing resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by a huge inflationary phenomenon. 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). Lacking such favourable ideological surroundings, earlier technological “break throughs were not duly developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, gunpowder, etc. �19 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 cultures. For instance, the West could collapse through protracted war, through choking on its own toxic wastes, or whatever (there are many routes to catastrophic decline, outlined for instance 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 problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary environmental crises, are produced or accelerated by — what connects them — contemporary industrial society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. But many of the other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by-products, or similar; thus, in the example, the peasants displaced by agribusiness, absentee wealth-holders or similar, 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. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack sophisticated contemporary elaboration. Examples of more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems and crises include those now tabulated: TABLE 5: Examples, several flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms. Oriental ideologies: Taoism (classical) Jainism recessive traditions, now with tiny followings and little political influence. Indigenous cultures: Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda) Amazonian Indians, etc. Western philosophies: old Stoicism Spinozism new Deep green theories, such as deep ecology. under certain favourable interpretations Given the remoteness of most of these examples from 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. Much more intellectual effort should be devoted to such enterprise. What we have arrived at, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two large �20 families: environmentally friendly and unfriendly. No doubt there is a fuzzy residue class (neither, and perhaps both). DIAGRAM 6: Broad environmental division of paradigms. To questions as to why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms, the answers are likewise plural, and diverse (and some match answers in Table 3). Reasons are psychological, social and cultural (with 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. It is not difficult to indicate, more or less, which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse. Some family characteristics, then, of unfriendly paradigms: * Combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which guarantees 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 (though Leibnitz's fragmentary work did not initiate any genuine historic school). Leibnitz was heavily committed to all of human population growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption, in short, to precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts upon environments. There is fair evidence for these contentions. First, Leibnitz was an early exponent of utilitarianism, indeed he was all-round an enthusiastic maximizer. From his formulation of utilitarianism, he drew an immediate obvious corollary: the directive to increase human population (maximizing on aggregate human pleasure is most obviously achieved by production of more happy humans, other aspects of which technology and affluence can assure).41 Secondly, Leibnitz was a technology enthusiast; he was heavily committed to the developments and use of scientific technology, for which he had all sorts of schemes (e.g. the characteristic universalis intended to encapsulate all of knowledge in an accessible useable form, a complete calculus duly mechanised, as well as numerous technological projects.42). Thirdly, he was committed to an affluent lifestyle for himself and (through symmetry and basic assumptions of utilitarianism) for others. For his own part, he For Leibnitz’s anticipation of utilitarianism, see Hruschka. For Leibnitz’s immediate application of the principle, to support human population increase, see p.172. ‘Leibnitz's interest in machinery is illustrated by his complicated plan to drain the Harz mines, which involved the construction of a new type of windmill, and a virtually friction-free pump’, Cottingham p.193. For a detailed account of Leibnitz’s extensive entrepreneurial and technological activities, see Aiton. �21 abandoned an academic career at an obscure German university ‘in favour of the more active and lucrative pursuits of the courtier and diplomat’ and, so it turned out, the bright lights of major European cities and grand tours of Europe.43 Leibnitz has sometimes been accounted environmentally friendly. Some of that apparent friendliness was due to scholastic conservativism. Thus he was opposed to mechanism; he was sympathetic to the organic and teleological, which did not contract to isolated human and superhuman loci. His metaphysical theory of monads, which are centres of living energy, effectively distributed life everywhere, though not equally. Harmony and order too prevailed throughout the universe, though under God's maximizing management, the presence of which they duly established! But even this life-expanding harmonious order, variants of which are now familiar from Whiteheadian and deep ecological quarters, was not as benign as it has superficially appeared. Leibnitz supposed that, by virtue of pre-established harmony and final causes governing inevitable progress, humans would not go wrong in the longer term in their environmental activities, that they could not 'cumulatively make undesirable changes in nature’.44 Leibnitz joyfully foresaw more and more of the Earth coming under cultivation, and its long-term advancement to a complete intensive garden, even if there were occasional relapses where parts deteriorated back temporarily towards wild state. Leibnitz even criticised Cartesianism, now widely regarded as prime villain of the environmental piece, as failing ‘to provide the modal stimulus .... to the control of nature’ ... ‘to scientific advance’. The idea of control, advancing to total control, total management, is prophesized in Leibnitz (in a sort of chauvinistic Gaia hypothesis). He saw ‘order as progressively increasing, with the help of man [as] a finisher of nature. He boldly applauded the idea of progress to the earth as a unit, assuming both an orderliness on earth and an orderliness in the changes it had undergone by man’.45 No doubt Leibnitz’s lifestyle commitments need not (and may not) be reflected in his philosophy, which may have independent environmental merit, for example as stimulation or input for later developments. There is unfortunately little evidence that that is so. Nonetheless, substantial fragments of Leibnitz’s philosophy do admit environmental bending and adaptation, in a way that Descartes’ philosophy does not at all easily. An important corollary does emerge: that a promising new metaphysics is no panacea for improved environmental performance or paradigms. Not merely neutral metaphysics, but even positive metaphysics, such as certain organic and process theories, are compatible with, and can be coupled with, damaging social theories and life-styles. It is almost enough to consider the theories, practices and lifestyles of Aristotle, Leibnitz and Whitehead.46 43 44 45 46 Cottingham p.24, p.26. Glacken p.478. As he remarks, these bold assumptions made by Leibnitz have proved wrong. Glacken p.506. Leibnitz’s standing in die history of philosophy is somewhat curious. His main achievement, setting aside his reputation as an intellectual wizard with lots of ideas, appears to be spasmodic work upon a beautiful ruin, an incomplete (and incompletable) metaphysics, of which only �22 * Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism, or indeed any system which attributes little or no value to natural items, and perhaps much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite) projects. 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.’47 The outside world, the nature 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”’.48 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. Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans had no thoughts, purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could not matter what happened to it. It could be regarded, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans.49 Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive from Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went further. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were ‘aimed at making men the masters and possessors of nature’.50 * devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting human chauvinism);51 as a corollary, * entitlement to domination, dominion over nature; * short-term framework; * maximization assumptions, coupled with grand projects. Family characteristic of friendly paradigms will tend to invert (in effect negate) these features. An environmentally friendly paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as: * an end to degrading primary production, wherever it prevails. 47 48 49 50 51 Instead ecological forestry tantalizing fragmentary structures were ever available. It is not even as if there is a surviving supply of challenging bad arguments that can be put before baffled students, as with Descartes and Berkeley for instance. Reese p. 102. Cottingham p.15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument to this divide (cited by Cottingham) is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no such status divides. See further Appendix 2. Borrowing some nice phraseology from F. Mathews. See Discourse VI. Shallow will work out only with right mix ol humans. But in any case, it is implausible. An appealing ecological dieorem insinuates itself hereabouts: Given certain conditions (such as short-term vision, techno-fix, ...), shallowness is necessary and sulficient for environmental crisis. �23 and ecological agriculture will come to prevail. • 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 technology can go a very long way. A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because most agents are bound to (locked into, committed to, or captively 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. Resulting unfavourable report on 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. Philosophy, not just Western philosophy, has by and large been bad environmental news.52 It has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, main unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be tipped; 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 recessive paradigms and neglected traditions to look to for suggestions, and inspiration, and perhaps to rehabilitate. Richard Sylvan* via Bungendore, OZ. APPENDIX 1. Dominant philosophy has aided and abetted ruination of terrestrial environments. That dominant intellectual paradigms are dismal news for deep (nonchauvinistic) environmental theory has been previously argued, in contraposed form.53 More recently Hargrove has investigated, in detail, negative implications of the main philosophical tradition 53 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. On the substantial point, not dierefore removed through the alleged practical impotence ot philosophy, see Appendix 1. An earlier version of this article was presented at die Environmental Paradigms Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 93. It would not have been written otherwise. Notably at the end of EE, pp. 188-9. �24 for environmental theory and practice, especially/or environmental attitudes concerned with nature and creature preservation, with nature appreciation and development of a proper ecological perspective.54 However Hargrove has ventured some of his particularly challenging themes in insufficiently careful form, thereby leaving himself unnecessarily vulnerable to criticism and counter-claims. These include the criticisms assembled by Attfield, who, though not unsympathetic to Hargrove’s case, has excessively weakened the themes. For example, what Attfield presents as ‘substantially correct’ is Hargrove’s ‘verdict that the history of philosophy has discouraged preservationist attitudes’, vastly less than Hargrove’s actual negative verdict which comprehended considerably more than just “preservationist attitudes”, and recorded a situation conspicuously worse than mere “discouragement” of nature and creature preservation, as well as much else. Indeed it is worse than Hargrove has charged; Hargrove’s indictment of mainstream philosophy is itself weaker than that here ventured, which takes mainstream philosophy as thoroughly implicated in the present escalating environmental mess, through its roles as a major source and supplier of operative ideas and paradigms. There is a single qualification, invoked incidentally by Attfield himself, that would remove much of Attfield’s criticism: a restriction to mainstream philosophy (or differently, to dominant philosophy). Consider Attfield’s exceptions to ‘the adverse impacts of Western philosophy’, those alleged ‘philosophical traditions that have encouraged taking nature seriously’. Firstly, insofar as the Church Fathers, medieval Christians and others Attfield alludes to are philosophers at all, they are entirely minor figures, unlikely to be known to many philosophers, and but rarely or never referred to in regular philosophy courses; they do not form part of mainstream philosophy.55 Secondly, these minor figures do not afford the clear support for his claims that Attfield has regularly assumed.56 Many of the statements supposed to offer support are ambivalent, or environmentally dubious, supporting some form of managerialism (e.g. perfectionism or stewardship); and in any case they have to be set against the remainder of what a figure says and does (so far as can be ascertained). After all, as regards the latter matter, there are isolated claims in major philosophers (Plato is regularly cited in this regard) which may make them appear environmentally aware and even sympathetic. Although Plato’s philosophy generally suggests that he neither knew or cared about environmental problems, one passage in the Critias shows that he was very much aware of at least one problem: the effect of deforestation on soil See e.g. Hargrove, p.21. Consider the sorts of exceptions: • minor philosophers, many of whom we know very little about, outside gossip and speculation, such as Ilieophrastus, early Stoics, and lesser Epicureans. • figures who are only secondarily or marginally philosophers, such as Hooke, Boyle, Ray and Evelyn. • medieval and early modem Christians, who typically are not significant philosophers, and were usually committed not the nature preservation and the like, but to nature management or perfection. In work referred to on p. 127. The main historical claims, many of them based on secondary sources, are stated in his The Ethics of Environmental Concern A more detailed criticism of these claims will be made elsewhere. �25 ♦ quality in Greece during his own lifetime.57 Unfortunately Hargrove does but a comparatively poor job in accounting for what he alleges, Plato’s indifference and lack of ecological concern.58 The reasons for Plato’s indifference to serious ecological degradation of forests and soils in Greece can be ascribed to a combination of several elements of Plato’s philosophy (a natural-world-dismissive ideology) including: elevation of transcendental forms as what was truly real and really of value, denigration and dismissal of the everyday natural world as utterly inferior, of entirely lower existence or even illusory and certainly not of rational concern. This dualistic ontology and axiology—a wonderfully valuable world of forms standing in complete contrast with the illusory material world of perception—was supplemented and reinforced by a corresponding epistemology. Under a tripartite theory of mind, the higher rational part, which gave epistemic access to the forms, a part exhibited only by humans and more elevated beings, was sharply separated from the two lower animal parts. Thus under Plato’s conception of the human, humans and especially the important rational component of the human, stood in opposition to nature; the distinctively human task is completely separate from nature and concerned with control of it and its unruly elements. It is because what really has value—rational selves cavorting among the forms—is separate from nature, transcending it, with nature at best comprising very inferior copies, of lower existence, that it does not matter what happens to the earth and earthly things, to mere matter, that is a matter of indifference. 59 APPENDIX 2. On the prominent roles of dominant philosophy in the inferiorization and mistreatment of (mere) animals. Although the attitudes concerned reach back to antiquity, and were rationalized in classical Greek philosophy (through a theory of separate parts, “highest” of which was a soul or rational component), the whole appalling affair was given an enormous stimulus by Cartesian philosophy. Descartes cherished a scheme for a purely mechanistic science of physiology. Descartes compares the human body to an ‘automaton’ and argues that had we sufficient knowledge of the structure of its working parts we could explain even highly complex behavioural responses in purely mechanical terms. The exception is thought, and its external manifestation, language: this leads Descartes to assert a fundamental divide between human beings and ‘the beasts’: There are no men so dull-witted or stupid—and this includes even madmen— that they are incapable of arranging various words together and forming an utterance in order to make their thoughts understood, whereas no animal, however perfect, can do the like. This is not because they lack the necessary organs, for we see that magpies and parrots can utter words as we do, and yet cannot speak as we do (i.e. show that they are thinking what they are saying). By contrast, even men born deaf and dumb, and thus deprived of speech organs as much as the beasts, or more so, normally invent their own signs to make 59 Hargrove, p.29. This sort of problem arises not merely in regard to Plato, as Attfield observes, with decided relish. There is little doubt but that Hargrove’s historical excess needs to be sharpened and much elaborated, and, in some critical areas, rectified. On this classical polarisation of nature and higher humanity, see Plumwood. �26 themselves understood ... This shows that the beasts do not merely have less reason than man, but have no reason at all ...^® These sorts of considerations have been immensely influential in establishing a received fundamental ontological divide, not merely between humans and (other) animals, but between humans and nature. But, as we should now appreciate, they are all subtly, or less subtly, astray, and do not sustain the conclusion drawn. Firstly, investigation reveals internal incoherence. No men are incapable of stringing words together and forming utterances, yet many men are so incapable, not least those who are dumb. As his differential objective demands, Descartes exaggerates what those bom deaf and dumb may do—they do not ‘normally invent their own signs’, but may painstakingly learn a sign language—by contrast with ‘the beasts’. But, as we are now learning, many animals, whose organs are not well adapted to speech, can also painstakingly learn sign language. Indeed they may communicate by signs and sounds (though not usually speech) “in the wild”. There is no sharp cut-off, such as a fundamental divide presumes, between creatures that can, or do, communicate by signs and sounds, and those who cannot, or do not. Secondly, even less is there a significant boundary between those that can understand inputs and reason, and those that cannot, or do not. None of reasoning, thought and understanding are inextricably or inexorably tied to speech, nor, more broadly, to language.60 61 For example, dogs, whose speech is rather limited (though they certainly communicate, including to humans, by a range of different sounds, as well as signs), can understand and respond to several hundred commands and the like (that is, to a number of the same order as the vocabulary of basic languages). As for reasoning, the problem-solving capabilities of many sorts of animals, especially laboratory rats, are now well (even excessively, for primal comfort) documented. Regrettably, Descartes has not been on his own, or out on an exceptional limb. Virtually all past great philosophers insisted, if not on an unbridgeable gap, certainly on a difference in kind of supreme philosophical importance, between humans and other animals. Only Hume afforded a conspicuous exception to unedifying philosophical orthodoxy. Worse with other supposedly fundamental divides, such as that partitioning off nonsentients, there appear to have been no exceptions. The world was and is sharply divided, so it was and is imagined, into fixed inflexible categories. Furthermore, despite Hume, Cartesian inputs have persisted, for instance in the widespread philosophical idea—running contrary to an enormous body of evidence—that animals have no interests, preferences or intentions, that they receive no satisfaction from what they do or choose to do, and so on. Cartesianism certainly assisted, not merely in changing philosophical method importantly, 60 61 Cottingham, Three Rationalists, p.15, also quoting Descartes. For this reason, the “language of thought” conception, pervading much cognitive science, is decidedly regressive. Nor is it necessary: combinatorial operations, which can perform a fine representational job, provide an improved replacement for such a “language”: see DP chapter 11. �27 but in altering metaphysics irrevocably, above all as regards human place in nature. As an outcome of rectified method, Philosophy, including physical science, becomes in Descartes a selfcontained discipline, guided by the light of reason; it has no need to be supplemented by revelation, scripture, or ecclesiastic teaching.62 As to the new physics and its outcome in metaphysics, despite a certain amount of judicious fudging over whether the earth ‘really’ moves, Descartes was firmly committed to the new Copernican cosmology, whereby the Earth is dethroned from its central position. The Earth is simply a planet, it has the same status as Mars and Saturn—‘bodies we do not make so much of’... . What is more, the sun itself is only one star among innumerable others, each of which is the centre of its own celestial ‘vortex’. Descartes [rightly] saw all this as having important implications for human life. The universe, as conceived of in medieval and scholastic cosmology, was one which revealed, in all its details, the purposes of a benevolent creator. In the words of Paracelsus, writing some hundred years before Descartes ‘all things belonging to nature exist for the benefit of man’. For Descartes the vastly expanded size of the post-Copernican universe, the possibility of innumerable other worlds, and the insignificance of our planet in comparison with the hugeness of the whole, made it impossible to continue to regard man as the ‘dearest of God’s creatures’.... The belief that all things exist for our benefit alone, says Descartes ..., involves a presumptuous view of our status and a failure to recognize the unlimited vastness of God’s creation....63 So, in important respects, Cartesianism offered improvements and a way forward. environmentally. But the message was mixed and muffled, as with that concerning final causes, hostility to which Descartes justified as a corollary. No doubt final causes were used to smuggle in divine purposes, specifically God’s special concern for the welfare of humans (no doubt the Church and Church fathers who engaged in this smuggling were not to be trusted). However undesirable practices could be weeded out, without eradicating respectable ones. Over-zealous in just this fashion was the common 17th Century slogan, ‘Abandon final causes and look for underlying structures’, which affords another example of explanatory skimping.64 Sound methodology can admit both internal structures and final causes. Nonetheless, dethroning, relegating or abandoning final causes was a major movement within modern deanthropocentrization, so far as it has yet proceeded. Lovejoy has highlighted the matter. For, according to him, ...physico-theological ideas came to rest on the assumption that all other elements of nature were created for man’s sake, and therefore put man and nature into an unequal relationship: Tout est cree pour Thomme is at once the tacit premise and the triumphant conclusion of that long series of teleological arguments which ... is one of the 62 63 64 Cottingham pp. 176-177. Unfortunately for Descartes’ grand systematic-doubt project, reason was far from sufficient, and did need supplementation, though not through reinstatement of established prejudice. Though judiciously shedding some ancient conventional wisdom (e.g. concerning humans’ privileged control place in nature), Descartes was either forced or else felt obliged to reinstate much received wisdom, through poorly concealed subterfuges, in order to get his rationalistic roadshow moving. Cottingham, ibid. On the slogan, and the Church, see Cottingham p. 178. On skimping, see DP chapter 11. �most curious moments of human imbecility.65 APPENDIX 3. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions. A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard’s 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,66.... 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 feels 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 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, 65 66 Pepper p.44, quoting Lovejoy. No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement ir 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. �29 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 subplots67) 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 dislocation 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.68 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 destractive 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.69 A superior explanation to widespread individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial human 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 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. 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. �30 growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.70 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. 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. A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental Questions Papers, No.2 CRES, Australian National University, 1990. J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ Re Vision 12(3) (1990) 31-41. J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988. C. Dale, V.G. Carter, Topsoil and Civilization, Rev ed. Norman; University of Oklahama Press, 1974. A Dobson, Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991? A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10. R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992. A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bun gendore, 1993. C.J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967. E.C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989. J. Hruschka, ‘The greatest happiness principle and other early German anticipations of utilitarian theory’, Utilitas 3(2)(1991) 165-177 M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991. 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.l5)! �31 A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature'. Industrialism and Deep Ecology SUNY Press, Albany N.Y., 1993. F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Bames and Noble, Maryland, 1991. J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974 D. Pearce and others, Blueprintfor 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 Master of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993. C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991. V. and R. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, RSSS, Australian National University, 1973; referred to as FF. R. and V. Routley, ‘Social themes, self-management and environmental problems’, in Environmental Philosophy (eds. D. Mannison and others) RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. R. and V. Routley ‘Human chauvinism and environmental ethics’, in Environmental Philosophy (eds. D. Mannison and others), RSSS Australian National University, 1980; referred to as EE. R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982. P. Shephard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982. R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994. R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD. R. Sylvan, Culture and the Roots of Political Divergence, mimeographed, Canberra, 1986. R. Sylvan, Deep Pluralism, University of Edinburgh Press, 1994; referred to as DP. The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993. S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982. 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 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 far 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 fashionable answers to the focal questions is satisfactory. A different more complex answer through broader classes of paradigms is accordingly investigated. Among significant corollaries, this one stands out: philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental news. 0. Focal questions and deeper answers. Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate. In modem times humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system degradation; formerly they would have seen such transformation for not mattering, many still do, transformation as increasing wealth (as in mainstream economics). More recently they have developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through need, induction into cash economies, and so on) and which weave entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, bureaus, courts, and so on). Whence 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? The answer to be arrived at to these focal questions is in essence this: because too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, are committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigms, paradigms displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the earth. 1 In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Parts of the 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, often correct as far as they go, 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 pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood-production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”.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. 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, 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 2 3 4 For main details of this illustrative example, see FF. For more on this style of explanation, see further Routley. I am not, however, going to maintain that religion, or a certain religion such as Christianity, is the main villain of the environmental piece. Religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from philosophies (see below). What I shall be suggesting is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in this regard. As logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to coincide. How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or superficial 3 through a single paradigm, as has too often been supposed, but through a bundle of apparently aligned paradigms. One working image for what is going on here is appropriately ecological: that of a fig cluster (similarly a mangrove or bamboo thicket): Diagram 1: Structural diagram connecting problems with their multiple roots many emergent problems interlinked proximate causes plural supporting sources multiple interlinked roots Observe systematic plurality. Notice however a countervailing human propensity to seek single answers and uniqueness (as depicted in the rhomboidal box), where causes and sources are plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are plural.5 What is sought are ultimate sources, or roots, not immediate causes. The cause of the pollution may be a factory that the 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. (But 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? In terms of directional explanatory and other rational transmission connections.6) explanation, of them. History too is not singular, but plural, as has occasionally been recognized; at the very least there are plausible alternative histories. While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or developments virtually none of it addresses die question of what is meant by the partially buried metaphors ot roots and sources (the metaphors are evidently different; more literally, plants have roots, normally below them, streams rise from sources, not roots, normally above them, and so on). A striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful introductory text. Although this text, The 4 These deeper sources are important. Without locating them, perhaps all of them (if they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at ±ese, cutting them off or replacing them, will also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. 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 the necessary preliminaries, because they have been addressed elsewhere. 1. Problems and paradigms. Although these will be duly connected, paradigms implicated in problems, they are different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation. la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions. A definition of ‘environmental problem’, and a classification of such problems, has already been proposed.7 Observe that the final sets of problems that emerge are not value-framework independent. What constitutes a major problem on deeper perceptions may be but a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such indicator problems, that it is here presumed are serious problems, are those of • sustaining biodiversity and • maintaining significant wilderness.8 Even if the broad impact of human enterprise is sufficiently reduced to guarantee comfortable survival of future humans, these, desiderata may not be guaranteed. There will 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 are to be resolved. Impact equations, emerging immediately from a classification of Roots of Modem Environmentalism, presents itself specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots metaphor, and for that matter 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 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 a 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 injunction: post hoc, propter hoc. Dictionaries do better, with a short listing for the figurature use of root running: the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc.’ (Concise English Dictionary). That will serve, for a start. 7 See Sylvan and Bennett, GE. 8 As to the extent of the problem in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The Wildlands Project. 5 problems, reveal how they are to be resolved.9 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.10 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys us, are not a satisfactory stopping point. 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. As we will soon see, most of these answers too simple, and taken as intended as comprehensive, they are wrong. The questions however are important, because if we fail to get to bottom of these, there is even less prospect of satisfactory action to turn around a very difficult situation. That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships or how many dollars uncaring humans can 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 was explicated, in previous work, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.11 That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a general system, i.e. on an integrated relational structure. Naturally it is required to faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms, scientific research programs, etc. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and imperatival 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 capsule formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures; from these 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 universal12 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 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), For details see again Greening of Ethics. See e.g. The cost ofpast environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24. See Routley, where many environmentally relevant examples are documented. For an analogous account of culture see Sylvan 86. It resembles a structured universal, e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex ideas. 6 Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess), perspectives, outlooks, ideologies, programs, ... . An ideology, for instance, in the nonderogatory (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. Paradigms are now regularly presented, in extremely truncated form, through a tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example: TABLE 2: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant paradigm: an initial capsule formulation ,13 Taoism Deep Ecology Dominant (Western) Paradigm Harmony with nature, ±rough 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 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) 13 This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly expanded. 7 I As observed, paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; 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 ideosystems, eschews deontics.) 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 have to be changed, not rolled. 2. Proposed answers to focal questions; a preliminary classification of inadequate answers and suggested remedies. Most of the wide range of answers proposed supply a single source, and are defective. Roughly, virtually everything you have read on this (or may read elsewhere) is wrong. TABLE 3. Main tabulation of answers and remedies Source Defective practice answers Remedy Objections 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 Source single paradigm Remedies proposed (among others) Christianity (mainstream Catholicism) Scientific enlightenment, or alternative (Eastern) religion D3a Defective paradigm answers Pl. i 8 Pla. Protestantism and its ethic P2. P2a Cartesianism Dualism P2b Mechanism Monism Anti-dualism Modified holism 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 Enlightenment Anti-enlightenment P6a Materialism Anti-materialism Spiritualism P8. P8a Patriarchy, Masculinism Human domination of humans Feminism Anti-domination (anti-hierarchy) P6. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject specific or partial) include: Source Typical remedy suggested Platonism New metaphysics Leibnitzianism New metaphysics Kantianism C onsequentialism Mainstrand Anglo-American philosophy: reductive empiricism-cum-utilitarianism Continental philosophy Utilitarianism Economism New social science, or ethics Contractarianism Consequentialism Domination transfer Domination removal 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 most elements in that list will have been nominated, likely 9 separately but perhaps only in combination, by someone as the source of the problems. That list accordingly continues (even including sometimes entries like Taylorism), but what is included is representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other answers however, some varying from interesting to crazy, that we should also take into account, for instance Shepard's answers. Although Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false cast. Strange answers include pushing it back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard, but also Fox, and Ehrlich with talk of ‘mental maladaptation’). 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, that are to be resisted. The 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 theme that dominant societies, USA especially (which influences so much now in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive adolescence.1415No doubt, too, that maturity — but a 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 housing, in those most wasteful of modern 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 towards notes. 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 advanced in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White. One useful 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 14 15 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 Appendix 3. 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. 10 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, 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.16 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 criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.17 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.18 • 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.19 16 17 18 19 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 interesting recent contribution see Callicott. Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms. Ask, first, not what they say, but what they do, and would do. 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: see Appendix 1. There is a much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of the very different roles and impacts ot Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans. For a modest beginning, 11 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 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.20 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 root 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 trances. 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.21 An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining 20 21 see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands. For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising Drengson’s exposition, see Routley, table 5. For certain critical elements of Descartes contribution, see Appendix 2. 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 ‘reject[ing] 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). 12 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.22 • 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 modem 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.23 But, as observed, the main 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’.24 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 appears to be a distinctively modem contribution. ♦ Modem industrial society. 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’.25 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of modem industrial society .26 Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed’27 The popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial technology can without 22 23 24 25 26 27 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. 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 in McLauglin. Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2. 13 any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as, less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes, what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice. • 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’.28 ‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.29 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.30 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, Ulich, 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’.31 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 Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a more critical assessment see GEF. See Seed, quoted in GEF; also Salleh (see e.g. 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 die humans domination ot other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346). The text EP3 contains a big section providing a useful introduction to social ecology. 14 harmonious man-nature relationship.32 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.33 • 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.34 Therewith we are transported full circle back to defective practice answers. 4. 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 the major division in the main tabulation. 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 outputs or “consequences” such matters 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 bad joke. Accordingly new green economics insists that we dig deeper—without however exceeding economic settings—to discover why markets may foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.35 Where they usually arrive, travelling 32 33 34 35 Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given humans could so socially organise, that they could setde into harmonious small-scale communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments. Such a proposition, outlined in V. and R. Routley, 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 in at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by set of diem 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 Sylvan and Bennett. Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24. a 15 within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics before green, 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 Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been, environmental consequences would be no better, given the heavy industrial commitments and environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.36 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 ) 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. P. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed, 36 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 dieir property confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who made those points, also observed). 16 business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few 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 it own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges 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. 2. While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on37)—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 or ecohistory, and related virtual histories, enter decisively. 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. An important example (much less speculative than some of the examples because of a comparative wealth of primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples 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, or would have (given the technology and numbers), wrecked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination, megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established before rise of modem Western paradigms, or in regions outside their influence. 3. The list of paradigms, as so far presented, is entirely 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 37 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. 17 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).38 Or Islam, with its reach across the Middle East. The main tabulation (of table 3) 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 modern rationalism and much else. 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. A Cartesianism which regards animals as mere auto­ 38 Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large fauna. 18 mata 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, or Northern, though (through colonialism and cultural imperialism) paradigm of these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and third world communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally and regionally. Industrialization and technological advance are, without doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from rather localised ones, damaging islands and river catchments, to grander and global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems/9 They did not however run on their own, nor do they continue on their own. Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.39 40 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. Now however these engines have been rendered more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transferred to run in less favourable settings. TABLE 4: Connected continuing sources of global environmental problems Transfer of technology, industry and problems to other regions Inflation intensification and spread of problems to larger regions Technologicalindustrial development within ideological cultural framework development within another , \ or different / • framework / Multiple sources of various regional problems 39 40 The picture of development of environmental problems preferred accordingly bears passing resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by a huge inflationary phenomenon. 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). Lacking such favourable ideological surroundings, earlier technological “break throughs were not duly developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, gunpowder, etc. 19 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 cultures. For instance, the West could collapse through protracted war, through choking on its own toxic wastes, or whatever (there are many routes to catastrophic decline, outlined for instance 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 problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary environmental crises, are produced or accelerated by — what connects them — contemporary industrial society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. But many of the other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by-products, or similar; thus, in the example, the peasants displaced by agribusiness, absentee wealth-holders or similar, 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. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack sophisticated contemporary elaboration. Examples of more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems and crises include those now tabulated: TABLE 5: Examples, several flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms. Oriental ideologies: Taoism (classical) Jainism recessive traditions, now with tiny followings and little political influence. Indigenous cultures: Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda) Amazonian Indians, etc. Western philosophies: old Stoicism Spinozism new Deep green theories, such as deep ecology. under certain favourable interpretations Given the remoteness of most of these examples from 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. Much more intellectual effort should be devoted to such enterprise. What we have arrived at, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two large 20 families: environmentally friendly and unfriendly. No doubt there is a fuzzy residue class (neither, and perhaps both). DIAGRAM 6: Broad environmental division of paradigms. To questions as to why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms, the answers are likewise plural, and diverse (and some match answers in Table 3). Reasons are psychological, social and cultural (with 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. It is not difficult to indicate, more or less, which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse. Some family characteristics, then, of unfriendly paradigms: * Combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which guarantees 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 (though Leibnitz's fragmentary work did not initiate any genuine historic school). Leibnitz was heavily committed to all of human population growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption, in short, to precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts upon environments. There is fair evidence for these contentions. First, Leibnitz was an early exponent of utilitarianism, indeed he was all-round an enthusiastic maximizer. From his formulation of utilitarianism, he drew an immediate obvious corollary: the directive to increase human population (maximizing on aggregate human pleasure is most obviously achieved by production of more happy humans, other aspects of which technology and affluence can assure).41 Secondly, Leibnitz was a technology enthusiast; he was heavily committed to the developments and use of scientific technology, for which he had all sorts of schemes (e.g. the characteristic universalis intended to encapsulate all of knowledge in an accessible useable form, a complete calculus duly mechanised, as well as numerous technological projects.42). Thirdly, he was committed to an affluent lifestyle for himself and (through symmetry and basic assumptions of utilitarianism) for others. For his own part, he For Leibnitz’s anticipation of utilitarianism, see Hruschka. For Leibnitz’s immediate application of the principle, to support human population increase, see p.172. ‘Leibnitz's interest in machinery is illustrated by his complicated plan to drain the Harz mines, which involved the construction of a new type of windmill, and a virtually friction-free pump’, Cottingham p.193. For a detailed account of Leibnitz’s extensive entrepreneurial and technological activities, see Aiton. 21 abandoned an academic career at an obscure German university ‘in favour of the more active and lucrative pursuits of the courtier and diplomat’ and, so it turned out, the bright lights of major European cities and grand tours of Europe.43 Leibnitz has sometimes been accounted environmentally friendly. Some of that apparent friendliness was due to scholastic conservativism. Thus he was opposed to mechanism; he was sympathetic to the organic and teleological, which did not contract to isolated human and superhuman loci. His metaphysical theory of monads, which are centres of living energy, effectively distributed life everywhere, though not equally. Harmony and order too prevailed throughout the universe, though under God's maximizing management, the presence of which they duly established! But even this life-expanding harmonious order, variants of which are now familiar from Whiteheadian and deep ecological quarters, was not as benign as it has superficially appeared. Leibnitz supposed that, by virtue of pre-established harmony and final causes governing inevitable progress, humans would not go wrong in the longer term in their environmental activities, that they could not 'cumulatively make undesirable changes in nature’.44 Leibnitz joyfully foresaw more and more of the Earth coming under cultivation, and its long-term advancement to a complete intensive garden, even if there were occasional relapses where parts deteriorated back temporarily towards wild state. Leibnitz even criticised Cartesianism, now widely regarded as prime villain of the environmental piece, as failing ‘to provide the modal stimulus .... to the control of nature’ ... ‘to scientific advance’. The idea of control, advancing to total control, total management, is prophesized in Leibnitz (in a sort of chauvinistic Gaia hypothesis). He saw ‘order as progressively increasing, with the help of man [as] a finisher of nature. He boldly applauded the idea of progress to the earth as a unit, assuming both an orderliness on earth and an orderliness in the changes it had undergone by man’.45 No doubt Leibnitz’s lifestyle commitments need not (and may not) be reflected in his philosophy, which may have independent environmental merit, for example as stimulation or input for later developments. There is unfortunately little evidence that that is so. Nonetheless, substantial fragments of Leibnitz’s philosophy do admit environmental bending and adaptation, in a way that Descartes’ philosophy does not at all easily. An important corollary does emerge: that a promising new metaphysics is no panacea for improved environmental performance or paradigms. Not merely neutral metaphysics, but even positive metaphysics, such as certain organic and process theories, are compatible with, and can be coupled with, damaging social theories and life-styles. It is almost enough to consider the theories, practices and lifestyles of Aristotle, Leibnitz and Whitehead.46 43 44 45 46 Cottingham p.24, p.26. Glacken p.478. As he remarks, these bold assumptions made by Leibnitz have proved wrong. Glacken p.506. Leibnitz’s standing in die history of philosophy is somewhat curious. His main achievement, setting aside his reputation as an intellectual wizard with lots of ideas, appears to be spasmodic work upon a beautiful ruin, an incomplete (and incompletable) metaphysics, of which only 22 * Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism, or indeed any system which attributes little or no value to natural items, and perhaps much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite) projects. 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.’47 The outside world, the nature 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”’.48 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. Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans had no thoughts, purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could not matter what happened to it. It could be regarded, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans.49 Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive from Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went further. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were ‘aimed at making men the masters and possessors of nature’.50 * devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting human chauvinism);51 as a corollary, * entitlement to domination, dominion over nature; * short-term framework; * maximization assumptions, coupled with grand projects. Family characteristic of friendly paradigms will tend to invert (in effect negate) these features. An environmentally friendly paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as: * an end to degrading primary production, wherever it prevails. 47 48 49 50 51 Instead ecological forestry tantalizing fragmentary structures were ever available. It is not even as if there is a surviving supply of challenging bad arguments that can be put before baffled students, as with Descartes and Berkeley for instance. Reese p. 102. Cottingham p.15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument to this divide (cited by Cottingham) is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no such status divides. See further Appendix 2. Borrowing some nice phraseology from F. Mathews. See Discourse VI. Shallow will work out only with right mix ol humans. But in any case, it is implausible. An appealing ecological dieorem insinuates itself hereabouts: Given certain conditions (such as short-term vision, techno-fix, ...), shallowness is necessary and sulficient for environmental crisis. 23 and ecological agriculture will come to prevail. • 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 technology can go a very long way. A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because most agents are bound to (locked into, committed to, or captively 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. Resulting unfavourable report on 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. Philosophy, not just Western philosophy, has by and large been bad environmental news.52 It has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, main unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be tipped; 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 recessive paradigms and neglected traditions to look to for suggestions, and inspiration, and perhaps to rehabilitate. Richard Sylvan* via Bungendore, OZ. APPENDIX 1. Dominant philosophy has aided and abetted ruination of terrestrial environments. That dominant intellectual paradigms are dismal news for deep (nonchauvinistic) environmental theory has been previously argued, in contraposed form.53 More recently Hargrove has investigated, in detail, negative implications of the main philosophical tradition 53 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. On the substantial point, not dierefore removed through the alleged practical impotence ot philosophy, see Appendix 1. An earlier version of this article was presented at die Environmental Paradigms Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 93. It would not have been written otherwise. Notably at the end of EE, pp. 188-9. 24 for environmental theory and practice, especially/or environmental attitudes concerned with nature and creature preservation, with nature appreciation and development of a proper ecological perspective.54 However Hargrove has ventured some of his particularly challenging themes in insufficiently careful form, thereby leaving himself unnecessarily vulnerable to criticism and counter-claims. These include the criticisms assembled by Attfield, who, though not unsympathetic to Hargrove’s case, has excessively weakened the themes. For example, what Attfield presents as ‘substantially correct’ is Hargrove’s ‘verdict that the history of philosophy has discouraged preservationist attitudes’, vastly less than Hargrove’s actual negative verdict which comprehended considerably more than just “preservationist attitudes”, and recorded a situation conspicuously worse than mere “discouragement” of nature and creature preservation, as well as much else. Indeed it is worse than Hargrove has charged; Hargrove’s indictment of mainstream philosophy is itself weaker than that here ventured, which takes mainstream philosophy as thoroughly implicated in the present escalating environmental mess, through its roles as a major source and supplier of operative ideas and paradigms. There is a single qualification, invoked incidentally by Attfield himself, that would remove much of Attfield’s criticism: a restriction to mainstream philosophy (or differently, to dominant philosophy). Consider Attfield’s exceptions to ‘the adverse impacts of Western philosophy’, those alleged ‘philosophical traditions that have encouraged taking nature seriously’. Firstly, insofar as the Church Fathers, medieval Christians and others Attfield alludes to are philosophers at all, they are entirely minor figures, unlikely to be known to many philosophers, and but rarely or never referred to in regular philosophy courses; they do not form part of mainstream philosophy.55 Secondly, these minor figures do not afford the clear support for his claims that Attfield has regularly assumed.56 Many of the statements supposed to offer support are ambivalent, or environmentally dubious, supporting some form of managerialism (e.g. perfectionism or stewardship); and in any case they have to be set against the remainder of what a figure says and does (so far as can be ascertained). After all, as regards the latter matter, there are isolated claims in major philosophers (Plato is regularly cited in this regard) which may make them appear environmentally aware and even sympathetic. Although Plato’s philosophy generally suggests that he neither knew or cared about environmental problems, one passage in the Critias shows that he was very much aware of at least one problem: the effect of deforestation on soil See e.g. Hargrove, p.21. Consider the sorts of exceptions: • minor philosophers, many of whom we know very little about, outside gossip and speculation, such as Ilieophrastus, early Stoics, and lesser Epicureans. • figures who are only secondarily or marginally philosophers, such as Hooke, Boyle, Ray and Evelyn. • medieval and early modem Christians, who typically are not significant philosophers, and were usually committed not the nature preservation and the like, but to nature management or perfection. In work referred to on p. 127. The main historical claims, many of them based on secondary sources, are stated in his The Ethics of Environmental Concern A more detailed criticism of these claims will be made elsewhere. 25 ♦ quality in Greece during his own lifetime.57 Unfortunately Hargrove does but a comparatively poor job in accounting for what he alleges, Plato’s indifference and lack of ecological concern.58 The reasons for Plato’s indifference to serious ecological degradation of forests and soils in Greece can be ascribed to a combination of several elements of Plato’s philosophy (a natural-world-dismissive ideology) including: elevation of transcendental forms as what was truly real and really of value, denigration and dismissal of the everyday natural world as utterly inferior, of entirely lower existence or even illusory and certainly not of rational concern. This dualistic ontology and axiology—a wonderfully valuable world of forms standing in complete contrast with the illusory material world of perception—was supplemented and reinforced by a corresponding epistemology. Under a tripartite theory of mind, the higher rational part, which gave epistemic access to the forms, a part exhibited only by humans and more elevated beings, was sharply separated from the two lower animal parts. Thus under Plato’s conception of the human, humans and especially the important rational component of the human, stood in opposition to nature; the distinctively human task is completely separate from nature and concerned with control of it and its unruly elements. It is because what really has value—rational selves cavorting among the forms—is separate from nature, transcending it, with nature at best comprising very inferior copies, of lower existence, that it does not matter what happens to the earth and earthly things, to mere matter, that is a matter of indifference. 59 APPENDIX 2. On the prominent roles of dominant philosophy in the inferiorization and mistreatment of (mere) animals. Although the attitudes concerned reach back to antiquity, and were rationalized in classical Greek philosophy (through a theory of separate parts, “highest” of which was a soul or rational component), the whole appalling affair was given an enormous stimulus by Cartesian philosophy. Descartes cherished a scheme for a purely mechanistic science of physiology. Descartes compares the human body to an ‘automaton’ and argues that had we sufficient knowledge of the structure of its working parts we could explain even highly complex behavioural responses in purely mechanical terms. The exception is thought, and its external manifestation, language: this leads Descartes to assert a fundamental divide between human beings and ‘the beasts’: There are no men so dull-witted or stupid—and this includes even madmen— that they are incapable of arranging various words together and forming an utterance in order to make their thoughts understood, whereas no animal, however perfect, can do the like. This is not because they lack the necessary organs, for we see that magpies and parrots can utter words as we do, and yet cannot speak as we do (i.e. show that they are thinking what they are saying). By contrast, even men born deaf and dumb, and thus deprived of speech organs as much as the beasts, or more so, normally invent their own signs to make 59 Hargrove, p.29. This sort of problem arises not merely in regard to Plato, as Attfield observes, with decided relish. There is little doubt but that Hargrove’s historical excess needs to be sharpened and much elaborated, and, in some critical areas, rectified. On this classical polarisation of nature and higher humanity, see Plumwood. 26 themselves understood ... This shows that the beasts do not merely have less reason than man, but have no reason at all ...^® These sorts of considerations have been immensely influential in establishing a received fundamental ontological divide, not merely between humans and (other) animals, but between humans and nature. But, as we should now appreciate, they are all subtly, or less subtly, astray, and do not sustain the conclusion drawn. Firstly, investigation reveals internal incoherence. No men are incapable of stringing words together and forming utterances, yet many men are so incapable, not least those who are dumb. As his differential objective demands, Descartes exaggerates what those bom deaf and dumb may do—they do not ‘normally invent their own signs’, but may painstakingly learn a sign language—by contrast with ‘the beasts’. But, as we are now learning, many animals, whose organs are not well adapted to speech, can also painstakingly learn sign language. Indeed they may communicate by signs and sounds (though not usually speech) “in the wild”. There is no sharp cut-off, such as a fundamental divide presumes, between creatures that can, or do, communicate by signs and sounds, and those who cannot, or do not. Secondly, even less is there a significant boundary between those that can understand inputs and reason, and those that cannot, or do not. None of reasoning, thought and understanding are inextricably or inexorably tied to speech, nor, more broadly, to language.60 61 For example, dogs, whose speech is rather limited (though they certainly communicate, including to humans, by a range of different sounds, as well as signs), can understand and respond to several hundred commands and the like (that is, to a number of the same order as the vocabulary of basic languages). As for reasoning, the problem-solving capabilities of many sorts of animals, especially laboratory rats, are now well (even excessively, for primal comfort) documented. Regrettably, Descartes has not been on his own, or out on an exceptional limb. Virtually all past great philosophers insisted, if not on an unbridgeable gap, certainly on a difference in kind of supreme philosophical importance, between humans and other animals. Only Hume afforded a conspicuous exception to unedifying philosophical orthodoxy. Worse with other supposedly fundamental divides, such as that partitioning off nonsentients, there appear to have been no exceptions. The world was and is sharply divided, so it was and is imagined, into fixed inflexible categories. Furthermore, despite Hume, Cartesian inputs have persisted, for instance in the widespread philosophical idea—running contrary to an enormous body of evidence—that animals have no interests, preferences or intentions, that they receive no satisfaction from what they do or choose to do, and so on. Cartesianism certainly assisted, not merely in changing philosophical method importantly, 60 61 Cottingham, Three Rationalists, p.15, also quoting Descartes. For this reason, the “language of thought” conception, pervading much cognitive science, is decidedly regressive. Nor is it necessary: combinatorial operations, which can perform a fine representational job, provide an improved replacement for such a “language”: see DP chapter 11. 27 but in altering metaphysics irrevocably, above all as regards human place in nature. As an outcome of rectified method, Philosophy, including physical science, becomes in Descartes a selfcontained discipline, guided by the light of reason; it has no need to be supplemented by revelation, scripture, or ecclesiastic teaching.62 As to the new physics and its outcome in metaphysics, despite a certain amount of judicious fudging over whether the earth ‘really’ moves, Descartes was firmly committed to the new Copernican cosmology, whereby the Earth is dethroned from its central position. The Earth is simply a planet, it has the same status as Mars and Saturn—‘bodies we do not make so much of’... . What is more, the sun itself is only one star among innumerable others, each of which is the centre of its own celestial ‘vortex’. Descartes [rightly] saw all this as having important implications for human life. The universe, as conceived of in medieval and scholastic cosmology, was one which revealed, in all its details, the purposes of a benevolent creator. In the words of Paracelsus, writing some hundred years before Descartes ‘all things belonging to nature exist for the benefit of man’. For Descartes the vastly expanded size of the post-Copernican universe, the possibility of innumerable other worlds, and the insignificance of our planet in comparison with the hugeness of the whole, made it impossible to continue to regard man as the ‘dearest of God’s creatures’.... The belief that all things exist for our benefit alone, says Descartes ..., involves a presumptuous view of our status and a failure to recognize the unlimited vastness of God’s creation....63 So, in important respects, Cartesianism offered improvements and a way forward. environmentally. But the message was mixed and muffled, as with that concerning final causes, hostility to which Descartes justified as a corollary. No doubt final causes were used to smuggle in divine purposes, specifically God’s special concern for the welfare of humans (no doubt the Church and Church fathers who engaged in this smuggling were not to be trusted). However undesirable practices could be weeded out, without eradicating respectable ones. Over-zealous in just this fashion was the common 17th Century slogan, ‘Abandon final causes and look for underlying structures’, which affords another example of explanatory skimping.64 Sound methodology can admit both internal structures and final causes. Nonetheless, dethroning, relegating or abandoning final causes was a major movement within modern deanthropocentrization, so far as it has yet proceeded. Lovejoy has highlighted the matter. For, according to him, ...physico-theological ideas came to rest on the assumption that all other elements of nature were created for man’s sake, and therefore put man and nature into an unequal relationship: Tout est cree pour Thomme is at once the tacit premise and the triumphant conclusion of that long series of teleological arguments which ... is one of the 62 63 64 Cottingham pp. 176-177. Unfortunately for Descartes’ grand systematic-doubt project, reason was far from sufficient, and did need supplementation, though not through reinstatement of established prejudice. Though judiciously shedding some ancient conventional wisdom (e.g. concerning humans’ privileged control place in nature), Descartes was either forced or else felt obliged to reinstate much received wisdom, through poorly concealed subterfuges, in order to get his rationalistic roadshow moving. Cottingham, ibid. On the slogan, and the Church, see Cottingham p. 178. On skimping, see DP chapter 11. most curious moments of human imbecility.65 APPENDIX 3. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions. A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard’s 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,66.... 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 feels 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 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, 65 66 Pepper p.44, quoting Lovejoy. No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement ir 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. 29 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 subplots67) 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 dislocation 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.68 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 destractive 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.69 A superior explanation to widespread individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial human 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 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. 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. 30 growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.70 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. 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. A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental Questions Papers, No.2 CRES, Australian National University, 1990. J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ Re Vision 12(3) (1990) 31-41. J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988. C. Dale, V.G. Carter, Topsoil and Civilization, Rev ed. Norman; University of Oklahama Press, 1974. A Dobson, Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991? A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10. R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992. A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bun gendore, 1993. C.J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967. E.C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989. J. Hruschka, ‘The greatest happiness principle and other early German anticipations of utilitarian theory’, Utilitas 3(2)(1991) 165-177 M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991. 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.l5)! 31 A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature'. Industrialism and Deep Ecology SUNY Press, Albany N.Y., 1993. F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Bames and Noble, Maryland, 1991. J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974 D. Pearce and others, Blueprintfor 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 Master of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993. C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991. V. and R. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, RSSS, Australian National University, 1973; referred to as FF. R. and V. Routley, ‘Social themes, self-management and environmental problems’, in Environmental Philosophy (eds. D. Mannison and others) RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. R. and V. Routley ‘Human chauvinism and environmental ethics’, in Environmental Philosophy (eds. D. Mannison and others), RSSS Australian National University, 1980; referred to as EE. R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982. P. Shephard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982. R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994. R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD. R. Sylvan, Culture and the Roots of Political Divergence, mimeographed, Canberra, 1986. R. Sylvan, Deep Pluralism, University of Edinburgh Press, 1994; referred to as DP. The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993. S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982. 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 951: Paradigmatic roots on environmental problems Subject The topic of the resource Uncorrected paper (typescript, photocopy). Description An account of the resource Title in collection finding aid: RS: Paradigmatic Roots of Environmental Problems uncorrected ts. 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> 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 951 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> 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [31] leaves. 27.82 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:04c2bd6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:04c2bd6</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/68d29df80f9d20e41a77ef7fdb412966.pdf f2093594e525a6ba4c68813d0f8e0eb4 PDF Text Text GAEAN GREENHOUSE, NUCLEAR WINTER, AND ANTHROPIC DOOMSDAY. ... climate change, like no other issue, calls the whole notion of human progress into question. The [ever promised] benefits of newer technologies, more efficient economics, and improved political systems could be overwhelmed by uncontrolled global warming. ... the pace of climate change will soon overwhelm natural variability in the earth's climate. Indeed, it can be improved with nuclear war for its potential to disrupt a wide range of human and natural systems, [severely] complicating the back of moneying economics and coping with other problems. Irrigation works, settlement patterns, and food production [among others] would be tragically disrupted ... (Worldwatch 89, p.ll, p.10) There are many approaches to the Greenhouse problematique, upon which this philosophical investigation focuses. These approaches, range from playing the issue down entirely, dismissing it as not a problem, not something anyone should worry about, at the one end of the range, to playing it up at the other. Those who play it up may even foresee the demise of the human race, the substantially new socio-economic arrangements soon eventuate. There is certainly plenty of room for different approaches, and for some eclecticism. For what is being relied upon, in every case, comprises shaky and contestable arguments, from flimsy forecasting models lacking many apparently relevant details. No one of sound judgment, aware that weather reports for twelve hours ahead can be wildly astray, would place a very high level of confidence on climatic forests for fifty years ahead down a very hazardous track. But there is enough information to act; and there is information rationally requiring action. For things in the future are not going to be the same. It is very doubtful that they are going to be any better (though much important economic theorizing presupposes as much, such as the monetary discounting of the future). They are not going to be similar even, because so many parameters important to life are changing, several at exponential rates. Significant in these changes are likely climatic changes. The Greenhouse effect is among those, a result of the increases of “greenhouse” gases, especially carbon dioxide and methane, in the Earth's atmosphere, which have followed exponential paths since the highenergy phase of industrial culture. The growth in gas concentration produces, what it is lagged by, but is now apparent, a significant increase in mean global temperatures. This has major implications for much of life on Earth. �2 Diagram 1. Spectrum of approaches: Course of action Reasons offered Short response No problem Refutable No certainty Irrational Adaptive capacity Exaggerated High tech resolution Wishful thinking Severe dislocation otherwise Utopian Individual survival Pointless No action1 Moderate action Considerable action These very condensed responses will be expanded and explained as we proceed. Breifly too the outcome is that there is no easy path; future humans should expect a hard landing. 1. Investigative philosophy, argument and rational decision The role of philosophy in such a complex problematique as that of Greenhouse is not difficult to state briefly. Philosophy, Anglo-American philosophy especially, is concerned above all with argument. Investigative philosophy is applied philosophy, investigating arguments, their features - assumptions, reliability, etc. - and their generalisation to rational processes, but outside normal philosophical topics. The generalisation to rational processes comprehends a wider range of philosophical throughput than the orthodox range of argument typically addressed in logic courses; to probabilistic and plausibilistic reasoning, to decision processing and making. A main objective in this piece of investigative philosophy is to consider certain arguments for severe dislocation pprobabilities, as a result of Greenhouse effects, and the resulting impact on rational decision formation and action. There are certain arguments of particular interest radical decision and action: various neo-Malthusian arguments, and doomsday arguments. 1 Taoist no-action would be different. It would not have undertaken excessive industrial action in the first place. �3 The main run of arguments to considerable action are neo-Malthusian in character. The general form of these arguments is simply this: growth in some parameter encounters limits, with severe effects. A characteristic graphic representation is as follows: limits growth parameter time exponential growth pattern J encountering limits subsequent varying unstable behavior The limits are often imposed just by finitude, e.g. finiteness of a resource or a sink. But other limits can be important, for instance where new phenomena or thresholds come into play. General Malthusian arguments loom in the background in what follows. But a different argument, of especial concern as regard climatic changes, is the following anthropic doomsday argument:• There is some probability that the Gaean “greenhouse effect”, generated by human activity, will get out of control, that Gaean control mechanisms will fail, and that the Earth will, for example, overheat (Runaway Greenhouse, or Lesser Venus Prospect, premiss). • That result would be disastrous for human activities, and indeed for humans (Catastrophe Prospect). • Because of the unusual, and unusually precarious, position of humans, such a probability of disaster is not in fact small but decidedly large As a consequence then, the human species will probably sharply decline, and even become extinct (Catastrophe Probability). That is, by a rectified version of Murphy's law - that if something can go wrong then in appropriate unusual conditions, it very probability will - an incrementally small probability is inflated into a very large probability. �4 It would be a mistake to conclude that because the argument itself is an unlikely one, everyone can stop worrying. The argument is but one of a substantial raft of arguments that should have everyone worried; it is but a final intellectual string, so to say, from the inconspicuous cosmological tail. Such a doomsday argument no doubt puts together, in one more exact form, some of the sorts of considerations that are troubling many people, especially concerned youth, about the Greenhouse business: that humans (including themselves) are on a decline or extinction path. It is no doubt not the only consideration that should be troubling them or us. For whether or not doomsday warnings are warranted, there are other matters that should be sufficiently worrisome, to anyone of moral integrity:• Future times are likely to be exceedingly uncomfortable for very many creatures, as habitats are destroyed, food producing regions are eliminated, and environments seriously impoverished. (Many of these creatures are nonexistents, mere future existents, i.e. creatures that do not yet exist or participate in market or voting rituals, but who -will exist and may participate. But, despite their presently unfavourable ontological status, they are entitled to fair and decent treatment.) • Given such future prospects, present practices which do nothing or vanishingly little to ameliorate these prospects, are decidedly irrational. Indeed a main message that will emerge from the present exercise is the moral irrationality of critical large-scale human practices. The irrationality, morally-weighed-down irrationality, of present large-scale human practices is already conspicuous from the wintry downside of climatic prospects of which Greenhouse warming is the upside. Diagram 2. Macro-climatic setting. Bands: all boundaries fuzzy mean global temperature (degrees C) escalating emissions Disequilibrium: Venus prospect increasing dislocation possible adaptation increasing dislocation thermonuclear war disequilibrium: Mars prospect �5 1860 1990 The apparatus for conducting a world-wide nuclear wars is entirely in place and indeed on alert. The probability of such a war, even if small, is not zero. Among the many awful effects of a large nuclear war is that of nuclear winter, which would bring about the demise of present human civilisation, and would at the very least mean enormous dislocation for most surviving humans and other creatures. A sufficiently diabolical chemo-nuclear war, reaching into all inhabited parts of the globe, could indeed drive the human species close to extinction. The decidedly dubious rationality and morality of these nuclear arrangements - both through what they are in themselves for what purposes, and through their moral opportunity costs - are widely appreciated. The thesis that the arrangements and practices are immoral, irrational, and ought to be dismantled - already much argued, and also contested2 - is not the present concern. The thermonuclear downside is, by comparison, a very easy case to examine philosophically, and argue, as compared with the greenhouse upside.3 For there is, for instance, a case of sorts, for much increased use of greenhouse gases, such as CFCs in refrigerators, a case that hardly extends very plausibly to nuclear weapons. It is a case heavily pressed by some “developing” nations, for polluting devices already in widespread use in more affluent places, as necessary for local standards of living. Greenhouse and nuclear winter are more intricately connected than being the upside and downside of meteorological phenomena. One of the high-tech solutions suggestions for atmospheric overheating, involves the generation of wintering effects - to cool things down - by flinging enough dust up into the atmosphere, a trick most easily achieved no doubt on the requisite scale by nuclear explosives. Needless to say, like backburning against out-of- control fires, artificial winter would be a pretty desperate and, given present expertise, irrational expedient. 2. The Greenhouse debate, main policy responses, and irrational decision. The Greenhouse debate, as to what to do, if anything, about forecast Greenhouse effects on Earth, is intellectually disturbing. For it has revealed, as we shall soon see, that many of those who have spoken, worse that many who have some role in decision making For my very small contribution to this, see the War and Peace series in Discussion Papers in Environmental Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National UniversityGlobal warming, by no means entirely certain, is assumed to be the outcome of increasing greenhouse gas build up. Of course though some temperatures will rise, cooling will probably occur also in some localized regions. �6 (including both experts and politicians), lack a firm grasp on decision-making in conditions of uncertainty or possible risk.4 The main canvassed policy approaches to the Greenhouse problematique lie firmly within the dominant social paradigm, the high-tech growth and development ideology. Diagram 2 Broad policy responses to the Greenhouse problematique. Dominant paradigm Alternative paradigm Procrastination (wait-and-see) Soft energy paths and alternative regulation Adaptation (sink-or-swim) Socio-economic transformation Regulation Intervention (star wars) We will briefly outline, and find wanting, all the dominant approaches. • Procrastination, the prevailing response. In fact the main gooon mental and conservative response thus far has been procrastination, or “wait-and-see” as it is more benignly known.5 The approach makes much of the uncertainties, of the shortcomings in even the most elaborate general circulation models, of the high noise-to-signal levels. On such bases, it contends that it is too early to do anything, except staging some meetings, organising some review committees, undertaking some monitoring, and funding a little more “research”. It obviously does nothing to rock the growth ideology boat. There is the pretence that we do not know enough to act6 But it is known that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are fast increasing. The main causes and enough likely consequences are also known. Theoretical consideration, have already been partially confirmed by rising temperatures in the eighties. Outlines of rising temperatures are also known in broad outline, rising sea levels, and so forth. In addition, there are partial Following Knight, some economists (try to) distinguish between uncertainty and risk. Risk is said to obtain when some more or less objective numberable probabilities can be assigned to outcomes, a situation not obtaining as regards the global greenhouse effect. Bayesians, who can always assign subjective probabilities tend to eschew the distinction, e.g. Cyert and DeGroot, also say that ‘decision making under uncertainty refers to situations in which the outcome of the decision is not precisely predictable’ (p.3). Either way, Greenhouse involves uncertainty. There is significant rhetorical art in the choice of classificatory labels, a rather philosophically neglected art. A PR person must have been hired to produce the Greenhouse adaptation of ‘adaptation’. Part of the problem is that scientists have been caught out (e.g. crying wolf) and have become ultra-cautious. With the advent of thermodymumies, for instance, scientists begin ‘threatening mankind with a rather swift “bad death’” as the universe random ‘Thus m. Aber, on ‘balant ideological use of science even by scientists themselves’ (Bernard p.9). �7 small-scale models of the Greenhouse effect in action. For example a city such as MexicoCity, which is situated in the bowl-like valley is placed in an environment traps heat as well as pollution. The ecological affects, like the human affects, are pretty dramatic even at this small level, and hardly to be sought, or amelated elsewhere. There is a pretence, fostered also by many scientists, that Greenhouse difficulties have only just been discovered; a date commonly set for that watershed even is the Villiers conference and statement of 1986 (e.g. Pittoch ....). Actually there have been Greenhouse warmings for more than a decade, and there has been a corresponding decade of inaction. Nor is any action of much significance presently seriously contemplated. Back in 1979 Bernard wrote at length about and reported the substantial concern of climate logists about Greenhouse effects. Even the magazine Nature, not noted for its green sympathies, recorded that ‘the release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels is, concemally, the most important environmental issue in the world today’ (May ? 1975). Bernard quotes many other concerned scientists, several asserting that ‘the government must start dealing with this problem now’. They meant the United States government. “The” government didn't take the hint. For more than a decade then scientists have been emphasizing that the greenhouse threat is a major environmental problem, and that action should be taken immediately. Over 10 years nothing of real significance to counter the problem has happened. There has been more than a decade of inaction , during which matters have got worse, and the time frame for evasive action disturbingly shorter. It is already evident that requisite decision making under uncertainty is not taking place. On straight inductive grounds, it would be reasonable to expect nothing will be done. While there are theoretical grounds to bark up such an assessment, still it is only just beginning to get through to a much wider public (which can exercise a marginal influence on what politicians say) that there is - or may be, as some more reactionary modal-managering academics would have - a problem or two. Many scientists have joined the wait-and-see queue, with their begging bowls, hoping for more hand-outs for research. They assume, rightly enough, that more information would assist with rational decision-making, and also, quite wrongly, that “scientific activity” is required for action to be taken. Physical scientists are not done in their misapprehension of rational decision methods. Although there is a good deal of practical experience available of statistical-type decision making order uncertainty, for instance as regards insurance coverage and engineering projects, decision theory, especially as regards unreputable situations, has not penetrated very far into standard scientific methodology or much into mainstream parts of social sciences. ‘Economists in particular have shown a talent for bringing ever problem back to a world of certainty where all solutions are known or can be easily found.’ Natural scientists �including dematologists are, for the most part, on the same erroneous-reduction-toconlittainable-certainty trip. ‘This is not to say that economists have not worked on uncertainty. ... however ... uncertainty is introduced and then taken out by assumption’ (Cyort and DeGroot p.l). But there are several classes of problematic situations, where decision and action may be required, where uncertainty cannot be discarded by first, reduction strategeness or otherwise, notably:• inheritantly probabilistic situations, such as those of indeterminacy in quantum theory; • essentially unpredictable situations (which may be deterministic) such as those now under investigation chaos theory; • presently uncertain situations and outcomes, which may eventually resolve into certain cases, or may turn into some of the above classes, where there is not time to wait for resolution. The Greenhouse problem is regularly put into the latter class, a standard assumption being that with enough money and research effort thrown at it, it will resolve to decent certainty. But it may well not; there are grounds for supposing that critical parts of climatology will fall into the essentially unpredictable class. The standard approach of too many research scientists is a pathetic begging-bowl posture: Supply more funding so we can go on researching until we obtain certainty.7 There are some severe problems with this standard response. Firstly, it is irrational. Certainty if achieved may be achieved too late. What was required for rationality was decision making in advance of certainty. Secondly, certainty may be unobtainable. The meteorological equations may be non additive (non additive) and so incapable of delivering stable results over slightly fluctuating in strict data. The standard response is methodologically unsound. • Adaptation, learning to live with and love the Greenhouse. The policy ‘that tends to be favoured by most economists’ is an adaptive strategy: “Let society adjust to environmental changes without attempting to mitigate or prevent the changes in advance” We could adapt to climate change for example, by planting alternative crop strain [themselves] ... more widely adopted... ’ (Schneider p.8). Observe, however, that it is a decidedly restricted “adaptation” that is being proposed, that humans adjust to the results of present economic and industrial practices, rather than adjusting them. It is assumed that economic growth comes first, that we do not change (e.g. through decent regulation) high energy industrial practices. A fuller and smarter adaptation would adapt these practices. The policy is like a pernicious agriculture policy that says, “Let farmers adjust to the results of soil erosion, salination and 7 It does not seem to have occurred to most research scientists demanding more money (even more per article) that an important reason why they are not obtaining the funding they expect is because their research results could, if unfavorable, act a serious drag on the industrial establishment. They are not going to be funded to delegitimize modem industrial society. �9 so on, without attempting to mitigate or prevent these deleterious changes in advance.” Such “adaptative agriculture”, the present predominant practice in advanced agriculture, is antienvironmental, but is given a spurious air of evolutionary inevitability and evolutionary redistributive justice; you can't back natural evolution, which is entirely natural, can you. Let us condense such far-from-inevitable and highly artificial mal-adaptation in the neologism badaptation. Greenhouse adaptation, like nuclear adaptation, is badaptation (some, less kind, would say medaptation). There is a pragmatic, if cynical, political argument for badaptation, namely, that unilateral action to prevent a warning is unfeasible and requisite international cooperation unattainble. Both contentions open to doubt. Unilateral action by the USA, by far the World's heaviest resource and energy consumer (per capita and on several other relevant domains) backed up by pressure (familiar from other settings, such as the narcotics war) on other nations and through the United Nations could make a major difference. Unfortunately the USA is also the world's largest supplier of influential grown economists. In any case, international agreements such as those in whaling and Antarctica, are attainable, and sometimes effective. The ozone protocols, limiting production of CFCs show that results can be achieved to limit trace gas emissions. The adaptation proposal is presently compatible with wait-and-see; both mean no hauling back on trace gas production. Indeed procrastination will force societies towards badaptation. Typical of adaptation, like procrastination, is an (over-)emphasis on the uncertainties of Greenhouse forecasts, and on the decision-theoretic paralysis such uncertainties are alleged to produce. Characteristic of adaptation too is a minimisation of the extent of Greenhouse modification. No doubt the impression that things won't be so very different, or far removed from what has already been experienced, is important in getting adaptationism more readily accepted, as a rational course of action (instead of the seemingly irrational course it is). Thus badaptation tends to play with figures at the law end of projected ranges of temperature increase, such as 1.5°C for 2050, when in fact present data indicates something rather in the vicinity of 4°C - in a setting, furthermore, where fractions of a degree centigrade may well be linked ot macro-physical and macro-biological change. Recent modellings deliver, an average, on increase in 2°C attributable to carbon dioxide, and it is widely thought that other trace gases will double the CO2 effect, yielding a 4°C temperature increase.8 8 Sources. Note that methane is beginning to rival carbon dioxide as a gas where atmospheric propostems really matter and whose present increase is excessive. �10 The colossal extent of future human dislocation has correspondingly been deliberately underemphasized. The adaptive capacities of human arrangements, when humans are living at the margin, to massive natural shifts, has been grossly exaggerated. Consider agriculture alone - set aside flooded cities, sunken atoll islands, and all the rest. Some of the Earth's major grain producing regions - upon which famine relief projects depend - could be pushed substantially out of business. The conditions which prevailed during the American dust-bowl experience of the nineteen-thirties were benign indeed compared with those which threaten with mid twenty-first century Greenhouse conditions. The mid continental summer temperatures were only 1-2° C warmer than the present average, under greenhouse conditions they could be more than 3-4° C warmer. In the dustbowl rainfall only slipped at critical growing times (e.g. July for northern com) to 80% of the contemporary norm; but under Greenhouse conditions it could be significantly less again. A super dust-bowl is not improbable (for much more detail, see Bernard). Similarly for other similar latitude Northern grain producing regions. But the high-energy industrial superstructure is crucially based upon sufficient cheap food (bread) for the urban masses. • Intervention, high-tech Gaean engineering. Interventionist proposals so far floated include • New oceans in parts of the Earth's land surface lying below, at, or near sea level. These projects would make the mega-dams of recent times look like childrens' play. • Wintering effects. Production of sufficient dust in the atmosphere, achieved for instance by nuclear detonations, to mitigate heating effects. Such enterprise would make modification of the weather by cloud seeding look like childs' play. Fortunately these and other expensive and grandiose proposals, which would call for considerable international cooperation, are far down the planning track; with these schemes procrastination is rational. • Regulation, controlling free(-wheeling) enterprise. Regulation itself, not so bureaucratically popular under that presentation in these latter days of economic irrationalism, is of course transparadigmatic, where it belongs depend on what measures (what sorts of constraints, rights, etc.) are proposed and how they are imposed or enforced. If it is, for example, some industrial law-and-order, smokestack scrubbing regulations or Greenhouse polluting rights, within the status quo, that is one thing, but if a minimally-constrained growth paradigm is questioned and alternative socio-economic arrangements advocated, that is quite another, and falls outside the dominant paradigm. Such policies involving regulations controlling fossil fuel emissions especially, are negatively labelled prevention in the predominantly American policy literature, though there is now no preventing some Greenhouse effects; but the worse to follow could still be prevented. What is usually covered under the label is however some regulation within prevailing political arrangements. So energy efficiencies and savings for investment in �11 growth elsewhere is comprehensible, straight growth-curtailing non-consumption is not contemplated. But the latter is just what alternatives do contemplate. Democratic political arrangements do not exclude such alternatives both the power bases of political leaders and economic prescriptions do. Adequate regulation within prevailing socio-economic arrangements is going to prove impossible, without adjustment of power structures and economic imperatives, in effect without far-reaching systems and a devological adjustment. While such adjustment may be rational, it is unlikely. Power structures have too much to lose.9 This is an opposite point to record the chauvinism and environmental shallowness of the Greenhouse debate. Like heart disease and cancer, the Greenhouse effect is gaining much discussion and some funding because it just may severely effect the affluent, affluent people and affluent nations, that have a good deal to lose, in North America especially. The impact will, however, be at least as severe in some third world nations, whose lands or much of them will be flooded, countries which cannot afford extensive expensive dyking (or where such effort would be in the longer term, as seas rise, pointless), countries such as Pacific coral atoll nations and delta states like Bangladesh. But the really serious losers will no doubt be, not humans , rich or poor, but nonhumans. Biological diversity, already being reduced by various human activities, may be one of the chief casualties of global worming. Massive destruction of forests, wetlands, and even the polar tundra could irrevocably destroy complex ecosystems that have existed for millennia. Indeed, various biological reserves created in the past decade to protect species diversity could become virtual death traps as wildlife attempt to survive in conditions for which they are poorly suited. Accelerated species extinction is an inevitable consequence of a rapid warming (Worldwatch p.10). 3. Arguments to dislocation and for a Lesser Venus Prospect. There is at least a small probability that predicted increase in mean atmospheric temperatures will seriously interfere with most remaining natural environments and result in the degeneration or destruction of many of them, especially forests wetlands, maritime environments. Nor will adaptationism help here; for natural evolution is much too slow for adaptationism to succeed (cf. Keeton pp.763-4). Natural ecosystems will not adapt effectively to rapid climatic change,... With regard to forests, habitats for plants and animals cannot be re-created or transplanted rapidly. Continuing climatic changes would strain the capabilities Holistic problems are too extensive for individuals, or even small collectives, to make much difference acting or their own. Some are too beg even for large collectives or states, but would require whole regions of the Earth acting in concerte. But of course some state players, such as the superpowers, as regards nuclear winter, can make a substantial difference, or even all the difference. �12 of management practices even in commercial tree plantations (Beijer Institute Report pp.21-3). The decline or demise of these systems, vast reservoirs for greenhouse gases will accelerate the warming, and accordingly make matters substantially worse: Trees are adapted to a narrow range of temperature and moisture levels, and cannot cope with rapid climate change. A temperature increase of 1 degree Celsius per decade in mid- to upper latitudes translates into a shift in vegetation zones of 60-100 miles northward. Terrestrial ecosystems cannot migrate that fast. Vast numbers of trees are likely to die, and new trees adapted to warmer temperatures are unlikely to be able to replace them rapidly. During such a disruption, huge areas of forest could die and, as they decay or bum, send large quantities of additional CO2 into the atmosphere, accelerating the warming (Brown p.10). Of course the immediate climate patterns would be somewhat more complex. If enough soot and ash from fires were flung into the atmosphere there would be a cooling effect, like that of a small nuclear winter, before heating accelerated. The present pattern of ecosystemic loss would also be sharply accelerated. When natural ecosystems get reduced to about 30% of their initial size, they tend to collapse of themselves. Moreover, there would be other significant positive feedback from ecosystems other than the terrestrial forests, from the oceans especially. As the oceans warm, they lose their capacity to serve as carbon dioxide reservoirs. So they too release additional gases, including previously absorbed CO2, back into the atmosphere, further accelerating the warming. A critical question arises as to how much danger such positive feedback poses? As so often, informed opinions, and so probability estimates differ. However ‘several scientists working in the area consider that positive feedback effects will force a very bleak picture to be drawn’ (p.19 ref?)10 Unlike the interim effect of a small nuclear winter, where after a few years at most, climatic behavior (as distinct from radioactivity levels) would presumably return towards the previous norm, there will be no similar recovery under greenhouse impact. Technically then, stability would be lost under the impact,11 disequilibrium induced. An eventual longterm return to some different equilibrium could well be excluded. Under new climatic regimes plants themselves may be able to do little more than hang on for part of their own lives. In many places conditions would be too severe for much of the “year” to permit normal plant functioning, including what is crucial for greenhouse amelioration, photosynthesis. In most plants, photosynthesis only occurs across a narrow band of Second order probabilities, probabilities and uncertainties in the light of first order subjective probabilities, enter importantly. Stability is defined in physics in terms of return to an initial (inertial) position after small disturbance. �13 temperatures (e.g. 6 - 34°C); outside that range the plants shut down operations.12 Even more important, many plants would leave few or no successful successors. Even where plants set seed, seedlings would not survive under the severe conditions expected; for instance, they would be killed by hot dry summer conditions, or in other places by frosts to which they are not adapted, both phenomena already familiar after clearfelling of forests. The situation at... in southern Sahara, where there is but one ancient tree hanging on in thousands of square kilometers of desert, a tree with viable seeds which sets no seedlings, could be more or less replicated in many other places where forests or woody plants once grew. In fact we are already witnessing the demise of the trees in much of Australia. Already dead and dying trees form a predominant feature of the Australian rural landscape. Virtually whichever way ecologists travel in Australia where trees remain, they are confronted with dead and dying trees 13 The reasons for the present decline of trees in rural Australia is, for the most part, not to be attributed to early greenhouse or even pollution effects.14 It is thought to be due to a complex of factors, including a range of insect predators whose effects are enhanced on isolated trees left after an excessive zeal for clearing (i.e. holistic effects enter as regards healthy persistence of trees). The relevant point is that these features are likely to be accelerated given the additional impact of greenhouse warming on plant functioning and reproduction. There are several major ways through which the maintenance structures of the Earth can be not merely awkwardly disturbed, but thrown right out of kilter - perhaps, given the delicacy of several critical matters, never to return present norms. Most obvious and immediately threatening is • nuclear warfare, and therewith nuclear Winter. But there are of course other severe shocks the planet could suffer than those chemo-nuclear warfare, some human induced, some a “chance” matter of the planets' position in space, namely • a mini Big Bang, or an undermining of metastability, brought about through very high energy experimentation (see Leslie) • a collision with a large meteorite or asteroid. Such uncertainties, not germane to the main climatic arguments, are listed, not to achieve a bogus completeness, but to emphasize that complete certainty is not to expected, not rationally.. Should we obtain it, should we obtain easy relatively unproblematic lives, then we have, by world standards, been rather lucky. Moreover, these latter uncertainties do The upper bound may be difficult to appreciate in most of Aotearoa. But in much of Australia, during the summer, many plants close down their operations for much of the day. Reported by Recher on Earthworm. Thus coastline vegetational destruction through detergents in sewerage waters. �14 appear negligible compared with those bound up with climate, ascribable to: • excess economic development. The practices involve a complex and sustained assault on most of the Earth's major ecosystems, forests, seas, etc, along with the alteration of atmospheric composition by greenhouse gases. For example, the forests are cut down, burnt, poisoned by herbicides and acid rain, or otherwise removed or destroyed. (Therewith too a great deal more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere and major sinks of carbon dioxide are removed.) As a result of these concerted growth-and-development activities such systems are driven to limits, and breakdown occurs. Once it occurs at some weak point it can escalate elsewhere, like a conflagration.; thus again ecosystemic collapse for example. Quite apart from breakdown at or approaching limits, for instance because of systemic overload, remarkable changes can occur in desiccative systems under stress or strain. • excess energy or chemical loading. Though such striking examples as the chemical clock, it has been demonstrated that dissipative systems can suddenly, and often rather unpredictably, undergo extraordinary changes, as for instance energy flux is increased (Prigogine and others), [describe briefly] Such non-additive, or nonlinear, effects, characteristic of more holistic dissipative systems, are bound to occur within the Earth's atmosphere and oceans as they undergo compositional changes. Carbon dioxide itself provides a good example. With small quantities its effect on the temperature of the air is proportional to the amount added; there is a linear effect. However once the carbon dioxide concentration in the air approaches 1%, new nonlinear effects come into play and heating greatly increases. In the absence of a biosphere to fix carbon dioxide, its concentration in the atmosphere would probably exceed the critical figure of 1%. The Earth would then heat up rapidly to a temperature near to that of boiling water. Increasing temperatures would speed up chemical reactions and accelerate their progress towards chemical equilibrium. ... eventually ... the Earth would become permanently cocooned in a brilliant white cloud - a second Venus, although not quite as hot (Lovelock pp.45-6). Fortunately for Gaean prospects, the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now nowhere near 1% nor likely to be pushed near 1% by projected doubting of carbon dioxide levels under economic activity over the next 50 years15. However eventual exponential growth will lead towards levels, and the side effect of such growth, the release of carbon dioxide from forests and oceans and the considerable reduction in fixation of carbon dioxide with the decline of forests, will lead in that disastrous direction rather more rapidly. The 1% 15 In the atmosphere of the very early Earth, CO2 exceeded the critical 1% figure; but solar luminority was about 25% less than now. With increasing solar flux the Earth would have overheated had the proposition of CO2 not been much reduced (e.g. see Lovelock 88 p.56). �15 bound constitutes just one of the many serious limits to continuation of present developmental practices. Now there can be no rational confidence with respect to complex dissipative systems - about the behavior of which we presently know comparatively little - that no other nonadditive effects will no be encountered at a much earlier stage. After all, the Gaean system, its atmosphere, oceans and ecosystems, will be pushed into essentially unexperienced and substantially unknown reaches. There is, for example, no experience from past times of such elevated temperatures as Green house effects will lead to, to draw upon. ‘There is no evidence that the land-bound glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica have ever completely melted in the last two million years’. There is experience of much colder periods. ‘During ice ages, the earth's average temperature has been about 5°C colder than at present, with glaciers covering major portions of continents’ (Barth p.7). But there is no similar experience of temperatures 4-5° C warmer than at present (in a warm interglacial period), ‘a global increase of more than 2°C above present is unprecedented in the era of human civilization’ (Schneider p.6) It would accordingly be decidedly rash, rash decision makings, to assign a zero or negligible probability to the emergence of new or unknown effects of relevance, to assume all will go smoothly and well. That would presuppose, in any event, a completeness in present scientific knowledge, contrary to the information we have that present investigation of holistic systems, among much else, is still in its infancy. The probability of something critical (e.g. perhaps radicals like hydroxyl) having been left out of estimations, of room accordingly for something unexpected or for something to go wrong, may be small, though experience implies it is not always so but it certainly appears to be non-zero. For the overconfident, with excess faith in the flimsy scientific edifice, there is a salutary lesson to be drawn from the erratic and stumbling path of the main proponent of Gaia hypotheses, Lovelock. Lovelock, coming from a working life as an industrial chemist, part of that time for a giant chemical transnational, had, and retained for a considerable time after he began his holistic hypothesizing a strong antipathy for environmentalists.16 Even Gaia was for industry and against the environmentalists; she was going to laughingly soak up all the pollution, courtesy of the chemical companies especially, that we humans could throw at her. In particular, we did not really need to worry much about ozone depletion or greenhouse gas escalation.17 ‘Contrary to the forebodings of many environmentalists, Coupled with this, there is a certain schizophrenia in Lovelock's attitude to the natural environment. There is also a matching schizophrenia as to the fragility of life on Earth. On the one side, it required very delicate settings and fine barring to arise; this is part of the argument for a Gaia hypothesis. On the other side, life is ‘tough, robust, and [highly] adaptable’, virtually indestructable (p.90). But though a flawed hero, Lovelock is a hero nonetheless. See Lovelock 79, p.40ff; and also 88? [detail] �16 finding a suitable’ destructive agent to bring about a ‘doom scenario’ ‘turns out to be an almost insoluble problem’ (p.40). Lovelock makes it easier for himself by helping himself to the assumption that a doomsday scenario involves the destruction of all “life”, ‘down to the last spore of some deep-buried anaerobic bacteria’ (p.40). But even for the least chauvinistic of environmentalists, destruction of all humans but the select elect would be quite enough for a decent doomsday. Lovelock's high redefinition of a environmental ‘doomsday scenario’ is unacceptable. Lovelock does not however stay within the bound of his redefinition. He proceeds to pooh-pooh the idea that anything much that we humans could accomplish would make any difference to Gaia (p.41) or even to most humans, including use of nuclear devices. Unfortunately for Lovelock's credibility, he was writing three years before the seemingly obvious wintering effects of a major nuclear war were realised by the accredited scientific community. Appealing in a common scientific fashion to scientific authority, he proceeds to minimalize the human and ecological effects of a major war. The report he relies upon as authoritative was a 1975 (unreferenced) one of ‘the US National Academy of Sciences ... prepared by an eight-man committee of their own distinguished members, assisted by forty-eight other scientists chosen from those expert in the effects of nuclear explosions and all things subsequent to them’ (p.41, italics added). Lovelock draws from the distinguished expert report the findings that ... if half of all the nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals, about 10,000 megatons, were used in a nuclear war the effects on most of the human and man-made ecosystems of the world would be small at first and would become negligible within thirty years. Both aggressor and victim nations would of course suffer catastrophic local devastation, but areas remote from the battle and, especially important in the biosphere, marine and coastal ecosystems would be minimally disturbed (p.41). Three years later Turco and others proceeded to detail a very different scenario that of widespread and ecologically damaging nuclear winter.. Not for the first time, Lovelock had been caught out badly. As with pollution, Lovelock has more recently shifted ground18 considerably in the vulnerability of the Earth to human-induced disturbance. When a system such as Gaia in homeostatis is stressed to near the limits of regulation even a small disturbance may cause it to jump to a new stable state or even fail entirely.... Shifting ground may be fine, especially when it is to an improved position. But it should be done honestly and openly, not stealthily or shiftily. Lovelock proceeds to attribute a caricuture of his own previous position to critics of the Gaia hypothesis (as a clever ‘fabrication’ which it was not); that it is ‘an argument developed to allow industry to pollute at will, since mother Gaia will clean up the mess (85 p.53). �17 It could be that the regulation of the Earth's climate is not far from one of these limits. Thus if some part of climate regulation is connected with the natural level of CO2 then clearly we are close to the limits of its regulation. This is because CO2 cannot be reduced much below the level observed for the last glaciation, about 180 ppm, without seriously limiting the rate of growth of the more abundant C3 type plants. If we perturb the Earth's radiation balance by adding more CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere or reduce its capacity to regulate by decreasing the area of forests or both of these together then we could be surprised by a sudden jump of both CO2 and temperature to a new and much warmer steady state; or by the initiation of periodic fluctuations between that state and our present climate. The anomalously low abundance of CO2 on Earth when compared with the other terrestrial planets and especially the fact that the mean temperature of the Earth is on the cool side of the optimum for regulation, suggests strongly that the biota is regulating the climate by pumping CO2 from the air. The common feature of most of our pollutions and of our exploitation of the land surface seems to be unintentionally to thwart this natural process (Lovelock 85 pp5354). The argument to the lesser Venus path, to significant disequilibrium with the Earth's ecological support system destabilized, takes the following lines. The Earth appears to be a discipative (far-from-equilibrium) system held at its present balance by a combination of an (increasing) solar flux - a main energy input into the system - and its major ecological arrangements, especially vegetation complanes and live oceans. The sheer extent to which the resulting system differs from the stable dead system it could otherwise be is shown by the following table for atmospheric and oceanic composition. TABLE 1. Substance Carbon dioxide A Nitrogen T R Oxygen Argon 0 C E A N S Water Planetary comparisons (principal components per cent). Equilibrium Earth Venus Lifeless Earth Mass Present Earth 99 0 98 1.9 98 1.9 95 2.7 0.03 79 0 1 trace 0.1 trace 0.1 0.13 2 21 1 63 Salt 3.5 Sodium nitrate 1.7 96 n.a. n.a. 3.5 traces Surface temperatures (°C) n.a 477 Total pressure (bars) n.a. 90 290±50 60 -53 13 0064 1 The table is based upon tables 1 and 2 of Lovelock 79, pp37 and p.39. �18 The whole Earth system is accordingly far from equilibrium. Unpredictable behavior as locals increase is therefore almost to be expected. A likely moral is presumably: stress they system, or destabilize ecosystem controls sufficiently, and the system may be in deep trouble. It is relevant to inquire into what evidence we have on this case. To do so let us reconsider some of the array of arguments there are from some sort of holistic organisation of the Earth (for a modest Gaia hypothesis). But for the participation of the Earth's ecological support systems, plant complexes especially the Earth would not be blessed with its present life-benign physical characteristics. The oceans would be much saltios and too salty for most life, the air would not contain the present rich mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide so important for terrestrial life, and so on, perhaps most important the Earth would be significantly hotter and too hot for most life, for what of what does the regulating and stabilizing of present conditions. For the solar flux has increased in intensity about 30% since life appeared on Earth, but the mean global temperatures have exhibited no corresponding increase, but have remained relatively constant. Such an expected consistency in the face of disturbing inputs is ascribed, under holistic approaches that do something to explain it, to the concerted activity of plants, [detail] Lovelock and collaberaters have devised an elementary daisy world model which reveals how a feedback system with two types of daisies can, within limits, stabilize temperatures despite increasing energy input. The limits are important, for as these limits are approached the maintenance systems break down. diagram Q Similarly several of the well-known chemical cycles, such as those for nitrogen, sulphur, sodium and so forth depends for their maintenance on the adequate operation of active ecological structures. Plainly if a cycle loops through a component, such as forests, which is severely disturbed then the cycle itself could be disrupted. There is some probability furthermore that the foregoing changes will disturb crucial equilibrium systems and chemical cycles. Some of these feedback systems are in fact maintained in equilibrium by natural ecosystems (an example is Lovelock's daisy world model, which becomes unstable when temperature rises too high). Instability could ensue under disturbance [explain, include Greenhouse holism]. Without doubt these matters are bad enough. Demise of most of the Earth's richness19 is not a minor matter. Worse could follow. Natural richness is the main richness, much exceeding human artifice. �19 The general tenor of the argument is so far this:- By arguments from physical models, and because of uncertainties, the probability that something could go badly wrong is nonzero,20 and indeed far from negligible. Part of the argument can be put as follows: there is a decent probability that a modest Gaia hypothesis holds. But then, there is a considerable probability that excessive Greenhouse build up will lead to damaging system destabilization. So containing probabilities, there at least a nonneglizible probability of such destabilization. An analogy should now emphasize both the dubiousness of what is being proposed under adaptationism and the precariousness of the human predicament. The proposal is to take this ancient craft, now overloaded with human passengers and their heavy baggage, a cargo it was never organised to carry, out on new routes and run it fast and higher than it has ever travelled before. Even for an experimental prototype, a now very fast (air-)bus say, with a select text crew, such a procedure, of running over new uncharted routes at speeds and heights never attained before, would be risky enterprise. With an ancient craft, with a heavy nonelite cargo of baggage and passengers (some whom try to interfere with the controls), the proposal is extremely rash. For the chances that the craft will breakdown and perhaps crash, with serious consequences to passengers and for the baggage, are greatly elevated over the risks of proceeding as usual much more slowly. With the costs of crashing so severe, rational operators and sensible pilots would not take them.21 Unfortunately the analogy is not at all far-fetched, but resembles what is in store for spaceship Earth, already under significant stress with its excessive human passenger load and their heavy ecological practices. Not only is the future itself pretty new territory, but it is a future at terrestrial temperatures, important processes will proceed faster than ever before, in particular all chemical processes. Simply to take the craft up there, as do-nothing and adaptation approaches would have is to emulate the risks and hubris of Daedelus; such approaches are aptly rarely Daedelian 4. The Sting in the Cosmic Tail: the mini-Furphy theorem and the likely demise of homo sapiens, spp. economicus.. The trouble with the initial formulation of Murphy's law: if anything can go wrong, it will, From logical theories of probability such as Carnap's non-zero probabilities are rather easily reached (perhaps too easily, with the converse feature that natural laws never obtain high probabilities. The difficulty can be characteristed, to some extent, by restruction to physical models). The analogy is an old one, which we exploited before in the nuclear case; for the “bus analogy”, see Routley and Routley. The analogy admits of much graphic variation. Instead of running the craft at excess speed, an alternative or additional image is that of destroying the controls of the craft. Lovelock deploys this opposite image (88 p.63), which corresponds to the demolition of Gaians control systems. �20 was that it was insufficiently qualified, much too absolutist, and apparently self-refuting..22 Certain crucial qualifications are required:• Replacement of the certain (certainlistic) conclusion by a somewhat weaker probabilistic one: namely, it probably will. • Correlative to weakening the conclusion, strengthening the premiss, by rendering it more specific; namely, in place of ‘anything’ or ‘something’ put ‘some thing ... given a chancy situation’. The modified formulation is accordingly the following Mini-Furphy result:23 if some thing can genuinely go wrong, given a relatively chancy situation, it probably will. Here ‘chancy’ means more or less what it means according to the dictionaries: doubtful, decidedly risky, or as we shall construe it, having a comparatively low probability vis-a-vis its alternatives. The precise extent of relative chanciness will be explained as we go. To prove this proposition, let us first recast it in appropriate symbolic form. Let D be some arbitrary bad situation, a suitable disaster. Let the possibility of D's happening something's going wrong - be represented by a non-zero probability, and genuineness by non-negligible probability. It can be assumed that that probability, P(D), is small, otherwise the requisite conclusion would follow in any case. Let C represent the features that render the situation chancy. Then what we aim to show is that where P(D) is small positive, P(D < C) is probable. The proof applies a special case of Bayes' theorem, which take the following form where there are n alternative hypotheses hi,...,hn including h: Pv(h) x P(i < h) P(h < i) X P(hr) X P(i < hr) r = 1 Here h is the hypothesis, which in our application is D, i is the additional information (or, is in Carnap, a new observation), which in our case is C.24 P(h < i) is the probability of h 22 23 24 For this and other formulations of Murphy's law, and many loosely associated humorous maxims with grains of truth encapsulated, see Block. As to the history of the “law”, which originated with J.M. Chase, editor of Aviation Mechanics, see the Encyclopaedia Americana', Chase's initial formulation in a 1955 issue read ‘If an aircraft part can be installed in correctly, someone will install it the way”. This little theorem was originally more accurately entitled the Murphy-Leslie theorem. It is an adaptation, suggested by Leslie's work, of Murphy's Law. This section is overwhelmingly indebted to Leslie; for Leslie's debts, and so the transitive debts of this section, see Leslie himself, who deserves to be read in defence his legitimate doomsday apprehensions. The next not indicates the limited extent to which Leslie's arguments are endorsed. The formulation is a special case of that proved in Carnap, p.331; namely that (absolute) case where the evidence e is elided, or e set = 1. A similar result follows, subject to slightly more rigorous conditions, in relevant probability theory; see Routley 79 p.954. �21 given i, or of h on condition i (the backward arrow notation, <, symbolises the condition involved and shows its direction). For simplicity we shall suppose that all the alternatives to D are concentrated (as far as symbolic exposure goes) in one, namely D*. Then the form we seek to apply is simply: p(D < C) __________ P(D) x P(C < D)__________ P(D) x P(C < D) + P(D*) x P(C < D*)' = The arithmetic details needed can be tabulated in a revealing form as follows: Cases D D* Initial (or prior) probability d 1-d m, say Vd m/l, say 1/dl of outcome relative chance that C As it is the relative chance of C that matters, we can rescale to set m = 1/d. To make C relatively chancy, I has some modest size; specifically let I exceed 1-d/d. Then the probability to be estimated, P(D < C), is d x 1/d d x 1/d + (l-d)/dl where k = • 1 1+k _ “ That is» and P(D < C) | y when k < 1, i.e. when I [ p(D < C) = where k = 1, . Thud D is probable, at least in being more probable than not, given C, when I is of at least modest size, i.e. given C is relatively chancy. In a merely apparently more general form of the estimation, where we do not align m to d, In effect we shall look at the form P(h < i) = --------------- < h)------------------------------P(h) X P(i < h) + XP(hr) X P(i < hr)’ n with the sum excluding the product for h. Though demonstrable given satisfiable exclusion and exhaustion conditions, Bayes' theorem is not lacking critics, in part because of the surprises this bit of logic can deliver. Carnap meets the objection that Bayes' theorem has sometimes ‘been applied to cases where it led to strange or even absurd results’ thus: ‘This was mostly due to an uncritical use of the principle of indifference :... [The] theorem is provable ... on the basis of those weak assumptions which practically all theories of probability seem to have in common’ (p.331, sub 1 elided). Of course the present applications could (just) be objected to on the grounds that the logical conditions for the theorem to apply are not fully satisfied. �P(D [ C) 22 d x m d x m + (1-d) x m/l 1 1 + k’ 1 as before. That is m drops out, only the relative chanciness really matters. The little Furphy theorem follows as before. Now to put some relevant flesh on these abstract statements and figures. Let D be some future disaster such as the catastrophic decline, for instance, through summer or winter phenomena of the human species, from which the enormous present population never recovers. At worst (from a chauvinistic angle) the population, like many catastrophically effected by human activities, goes extinct. Suppose, for a bifurcating outcome, there is a catastrophe stage, before halfway through next century, 2050. If humans do not get their act together before then, they go into catastrophic decline, as already indicated. If however they do get their ecopolitical act together then humans, while they hardly live happily ever after (poverty, inequality, domination, and other evils not being removed), they continue to persist or even grow in numbers, perhaps fanning out through the solar system ( in the way envisaged by too many physicists). Suppose further we are optimists, imagining that the prior probability of D ecodisaster and human decline, is small, say 1%. That is d = .01, and the initial probability of D*, human “success”, is .99. The figures are pretty notional. Supreme optimists would want to set d much smaller, pessimists rather at a higher probability. Application Table 1. Cases D human decline D* human success Initial probabilities 1%, i.e. .01 99%, i.e. .99 Relative chanciness, VlOO, i.e. .01 1/100 x l/l ofC Then the probability of human decline given .01 x ,01 P(D < C) .01 x .01 + .99 x .01/1 1 !/2 , when I > 99. �23 It remains to fill out C, thereby showing that I is likely much much larger, and correspondingly human decline so much the more probable in the light of additional information, i.e. a posteriori probable in the usual jargon. There are several high risk factors, acting in a certain concert, factors emphasized more than a decade ago in world systems modellings (such as, most famously that, of the Club of Rome) Malthusian factors such as human population, economic product, pollution, energy consumption,.... It is appropriate for estimate posterier probability relative to anyone of these, any of which can serve as C, in order to expose the riskiness of present gross human practices. In brief, because there are several high risk factors, so there are several appropriate relative or reference classes. Thus the posterier probability is assessed relative to such matters as our being alive, humans being thus and so (Leslie's reference class), this being present energy use, present wast output, present forest destruction and so forth.25 The anthropic argument considers the environmentally invidious situation of present humans on the Earth. The argument can be carried through either in terms of sheer population, gross numbers, or in terms of human resource grabbing, as estimated for instance through energy consumption. Let us consider the prospects given additional information as to the present phase of gross human population. C will be some such proposition as: the proportional preponderance of humans who have ever lived alive now, or to personalize it: the chance that you or your family, is alive now. Chart: Our present population predictment on the two scenerios. Demise scenerio “Success” scenerio - representative zjs human numbers human numbers On of the weaknesses in the argument may appear to be its dependence on an appropriate choice of relative class. For, the relative probabilities can fall away if different reference classes, not exhibiting such growth patterns are taken, e.g. present wattle distribution, birds being thus and so. On the other hand, probabilities can be elevated even more by selection of more unusual reference classes cuh as our being scientists, or being computer programmers, etc.. �24 Humans have got themselves - to some extent put themselves, though much may be the result of muddling through - into an extremely dubious, environmentally insidious and unsustainable position, on a range of critical parameters. Their numbers are excessive, their high energy use is excessive, their waste and their pollution are both excessive - and all chose and other excesses are at the steep end of upward exponential curves. Several relevant graphs are distressingly exponential, with the present in the near vertical growth phase: graphs Many other similarly shaped graphs26 could be added, for instance for growth of pollution, of waste products, of weapons (in terms of tonnes of explosive power), of other greenhouse gases such as methane, and so on. The display typifies the accelerating human roller coaster. Those curves are tightly interconnected, in criss-crossing fashion. For example, the productivity of contemporary agriculture which enables the feeding of hugh urbanised human populations depends on a very high energy use (in term of energy efficiency, contemporary high-tech agriculture falls below that of much traditional agriculture). The maintenance of high populations with supplies of cheap food depends in turn on fossil fuel agriculture. Because of the intertwining of these phenomena, there is no easy way of getting off the accelerating roller-coaster. 26 All the graphs exhibited are drawn from Boyden. �25 Nor, as observed, is there much effort devoted to slowing the coaster. For politicians it would be politically risky and inexpedient to try (for them the rhetoric about an ecologically sustainable future must remain just that, more rhetoric). For many other power holders and brokers such ideas are ideologically excluded: growth remains the gospel. So a precarious position becomes ever more precarious. Humans are in a decidedly chancy position, because of their population situation and other Malthusian factors; they are becoming very disasterprone. If humans want an acceptable future for themselves - they have virtually ruled out an acceptable future for many other creatures, through their predominantly selfish thoughtless greedy practices - then they will probably have to mend their ways, very considerably and very soon. But, given the nature of the beast, that itself seems improbable. Humans, if they seek a more assured future, should make a concerted effort to put themselves into a less precarious position. That could be achieved by proceeding to reduce relative risks. These relative risks, sharply reducing prospects for a reliable future, fall into two classes:• manufactured risk factors, including weaponry such as mega-nuclear devices and elements of biochemical warfard, and experimental equipment such as very high energy particle accelerators (which could perhaps tunnel under a metastable state or induce a min-Big-Bang; see Leslie). • Accumulated risk factors, such as the hugh relative size of human population, energy consumption, greenhouse gas production, etc..27 Despite the ideological obstacles, enormous political, religious and economic obstacles blocking the way of requisite change, major efforts should be put into reducing both these types of risks. Philosophers could have a significant role in breaking down the ideological barriers and in clarifying and developing the arguments involved. 5. What ought to be done about Greenhouse? The general result already reached, that humans collectively should reduce their risk taking, and in particular reduce their gross numbers, extends to rational Greenhouse decision and action theory. But that large and difficult challenge is not all that there is to try, that should rationally be attempted. While some increase in mean global temperatures, and all that implies, can no longer be averted, the potentially most damaging effects can be: namely, by curtailing human-induced 27 As before, there are various different reasons why these induce risk, neo-Malthusian and probabilistic in particular. �26 output of Greenhouse gases. Moreover, there is an approximate upper bound upon temperature of importance, which can serve to supply a significant limit as output. That bound - which reduces risk taking by confining encountered situations to those where there is some past experiential basis - is given by estimated temperatures during Altithermal and Eemian eras. Those temperatures are estimated to have been between about 1/2 a degree and 1 degree Centigrade above contemporary (pre-1980) temperatures; so the upper bound is about 1°C. Not only will a continuation of current emission trends take global temperatures clean through and way beyond that bound, so also will an alternative set-up where emission rates are fixed more or less at current rates. The only apparent way to remain rationally within an experiential domain is to curtail sharply trace gas emissions beginning easily in the 1990s. That means shifting from the dominant growth paradigm; it means expensive re- and deindustrialisation. It is unlikely. Final corollary: Humans collectively are not (particularly) rational. But we had already guessed as much from the latest...... in the long history of human wars. References H.W. Bernard, The Greenhouse Effect, Ballinger, Cambridge Mass., 1980. A. Block, Murphy's Law. Book Two, Magnum, Methuen, ... S. Boyden, Western Civilization in Biological Perspective, Clarendon, Oxford, 1987. L.R. Brown and others, State of the World 1989, Norton/Worldwatch, New York, 1989; referred to as Worldwatch. R. Carnap, Logical Foundations of Probability, Second edition, University of Chicago Press, 1962. R.M. Cyert and M.H. DeGroot, Bayesian Analysis and Uncertainty in Economic Theory, Rowman & Littfield, New Jersey, 1987. ‘Developing policies for responding to climatic change’, Report of the Beijer Institute, February 1988. Keeton, J. Leslie, ‘Risking and World's End’, Bulletin of the Curiadian Nuclear Society 10(3) (1989) 1-6; all references to Leslie are to this article unless otherwise indicated. J. Leslie, ‘Is the end of the world nigh?’, The Philosophical Quarterly, to appear; referred to as PQ. J.E. Lovelock, Gaia. A new look at life on Earth, Oxford University Press, 1979. J. Lovelock, ‘Are we destabilising world climate?’, The Ecologist 15(1985) 52-55. �27 J.Lovelock, ‘Man and Gaia’, The Earth Report Monitoring the Battle for Our Environment, (ed. E. Goldsmith and N. Hilgard) Mitchell Benzley, London, 1988, 51-64. R. and V. Routley, ‘Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquirey 21(1978) 133R. Routley, ‘Ultralogic as universal?’ reprinted as an Appendix in Exploring Meinong's Jungle, RSSS, Australian National University, 1979. S. Schneider ‘Not to decide is to decide’, in Greenhouse 1988: Planning for Climate Change (ed. T. Dendy), Department of Environment and Planning, Adelaide, 1989, 5-10. R.P. Turco and others, ‘Nuclear winter: Global consequences of multiple nuclear explosions’, Science 222 (1983) 1283-1292. � 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 GAEAN GREENHOUSE, NUCLEAR WINTER, AND ANTHROPIC DOOMSDAY. ... climate change, like no other issue, calls the whole notion of human progress into question. The [ever promised] benefits of newer technologies, more efficient economics, and improved political systems could be overwhelmed by uncontrolled global warming. ... the pace of climate change will soon overwhelm natural variability in the earth's climate. Indeed, it can be improved with nuclear war for its potential to disrupt a wide range of human and natural systems, [severely] complicating the back of moneying economics and coping with other problems. Irrigation works, settlement patterns, and food production [among others] would be tragically disrupted ... (Worldwatch 89, p.ll, p.10) There are many approaches to the Greenhouse problematique, upon which this philosophical investigation focuses. These approaches, range from playing the issue down entirely, dismissing it as not a problem, not something anyone should worry about, at the one end of the range, to playing it up at the other. Those who play it up may even foresee the demise of the human race, the substantially new socio-economic arrangements soon eventuate. There is certainly plenty of room for different approaches, and for some eclecticism. For what is being relied upon, in every case, comprises shaky and contestable arguments, from flimsy forecasting models lacking many apparently relevant details. No one of sound judgment, aware that weather reports for twelve hours ahead can be wildly astray, would place a very high level of confidence on climatic forests for fifty years ahead down a very hazardous track. But there is enough information to act; and there is information rationally requiring action. For things in the future are not going to be the same. It is very doubtful that they are going to be any better (though much important economic theorizing presupposes as much, such as the monetary discounting of the future). They are not going to be similar even, because so many parameters important to life are changing, several at exponential rates. Significant in these changes are likely climatic changes. The Greenhouse effect is among those, a result of the increases of “greenhouse” gases, especially carbon dioxide and methane, in the Earth's atmosphere, which have followed exponential paths since the highenergy phase of industrial culture. The growth in gas concentration produces, what it is lagged by, but is now apparent, a significant increase in mean global temperatures. This has major implications for much of life on Earth. 2 Diagram 1. Spectrum of approaches: Course of action Reasons offered Short response No problem Refutable No certainty Irrational Adaptive capacity Exaggerated High tech resolution Wishful thinking Severe dislocation otherwise Utopian Individual survival Pointless No action1 Moderate action Considerable action These very condensed responses will be expanded and explained as we proceed. Breifly too the outcome is that there is no easy path; future humans should expect a hard landing. 1. Investigative philosophy, argument and rational decision The role of philosophy in such a complex problematique as that of Greenhouse is not difficult to state briefly. Philosophy, Anglo-American philosophy especially, is concerned above all with argument. Investigative philosophy is applied philosophy, investigating arguments, their features - assumptions, reliability, etc. - and their generalisation to rational processes, but outside normal philosophical topics. The generalisation to rational processes comprehends a wider range of philosophical throughput than the orthodox range of argument typically addressed in logic courses; to probabilistic and plausibilistic reasoning, to decision processing and making. A main objective in this piece of investigative philosophy is to consider certain arguments for severe dislocation pprobabilities, as a result of Greenhouse effects, and the resulting impact on rational decision formation and action. There are certain arguments of particular interest radical decision and action: various neo-Malthusian arguments, and doomsday arguments. 1 Taoist no-action would be different. It would not have undertaken excessive industrial action in the first place. 3 The main run of arguments to considerable action are neo-Malthusian in character. The general form of these arguments is simply this: growth in some parameter encounters limits, with severe effects. A characteristic graphic representation is as follows: limits growth parameter time exponential growth pattern J encountering limits subsequent varying unstable behavior The limits are often imposed just by finitude, e.g. finiteness of a resource or a sink. But other limits can be important, for instance where new phenomena or thresholds come into play. General Malthusian arguments loom in the background in what follows. But a different argument, of especial concern as regard climatic changes, is the following anthropic doomsday argument:• There is some probability that the Gaean “greenhouse effect”, generated by human activity, will get out of control, that Gaean control mechanisms will fail, and that the Earth will, for example, overheat (Runaway Greenhouse, or Lesser Venus Prospect, premiss). • That result would be disastrous for human activities, and indeed for humans (Catastrophe Prospect). • Because of the unusual, and unusually precarious, position of humans, such a probability of disaster is not in fact small but decidedly large As a consequence then, the human species will probably sharply decline, and even become extinct (Catastrophe Probability). That is, by a rectified version of Murphy's law - that if something can go wrong then in appropriate unusual conditions, it very probability will - an incrementally small probability is inflated into a very large probability. 4 It would be a mistake to conclude that because the argument itself is an unlikely one, everyone can stop worrying. The argument is but one of a substantial raft of arguments that should have everyone worried; it is but a final intellectual string, so to say, from the inconspicuous cosmological tail. Such a doomsday argument no doubt puts together, in one more exact form, some of the sorts of considerations that are troubling many people, especially concerned youth, about the Greenhouse business: that humans (including themselves) are on a decline or extinction path. It is no doubt not the only consideration that should be troubling them or us. For whether or not doomsday warnings are warranted, there are other matters that should be sufficiently worrisome, to anyone of moral integrity:• Future times are likely to be exceedingly uncomfortable for very many creatures, as habitats are destroyed, food producing regions are eliminated, and environments seriously impoverished. (Many of these creatures are nonexistents, mere future existents, i.e. creatures that do not yet exist or participate in market or voting rituals, but who -will exist and may participate. But, despite their presently unfavourable ontological status, they are entitled to fair and decent treatment.) • Given such future prospects, present practices which do nothing or vanishingly little to ameliorate these prospects, are decidedly irrational. Indeed a main message that will emerge from the present exercise is the moral irrationality of critical large-scale human practices. The irrationality, morally-weighed-down irrationality, of present large-scale human practices is already conspicuous from the wintry downside of climatic prospects of which Greenhouse warming is the upside. Diagram 2. Macro-climatic setting. Bands: all boundaries fuzzy mean global temperature (degrees C) escalating emissions Disequilibrium: Venus prospect increasing dislocation possible adaptation increasing dislocation thermonuclear war disequilibrium: Mars prospect 5 1860 1990 The apparatus for conducting a world-wide nuclear wars is entirely in place and indeed on alert. The probability of such a war, even if small, is not zero. Among the many awful effects of a large nuclear war is that of nuclear winter, which would bring about the demise of present human civilisation, and would at the very least mean enormous dislocation for most surviving humans and other creatures. A sufficiently diabolical chemo-nuclear war, reaching into all inhabited parts of the globe, could indeed drive the human species close to extinction. The decidedly dubious rationality and morality of these nuclear arrangements - both through what they are in themselves for what purposes, and through their moral opportunity costs - are widely appreciated. The thesis that the arrangements and practices are immoral, irrational, and ought to be dismantled - already much argued, and also contested2 - is not the present concern. The thermonuclear downside is, by comparison, a very easy case to examine philosophically, and argue, as compared with the greenhouse upside.3 For there is, for instance, a case of sorts, for much increased use of greenhouse gases, such as CFCs in refrigerators, a case that hardly extends very plausibly to nuclear weapons. It is a case heavily pressed by some “developing” nations, for polluting devices already in widespread use in more affluent places, as necessary for local standards of living. Greenhouse and nuclear winter are more intricately connected than being the upside and downside of meteorological phenomena. One of the high-tech solutions suggestions for atmospheric overheating, involves the generation of wintering effects - to cool things down - by flinging enough dust up into the atmosphere, a trick most easily achieved no doubt on the requisite scale by nuclear explosives. Needless to say, like backburning against out-of- control fires, artificial winter would be a pretty desperate and, given present expertise, irrational expedient. 2. The Greenhouse debate, main policy responses, and irrational decision. The Greenhouse debate, as to what to do, if anything, about forecast Greenhouse effects on Earth, is intellectually disturbing. For it has revealed, as we shall soon see, that many of those who have spoken, worse that many who have some role in decision making For my very small contribution to this, see the War and Peace series in Discussion Papers in Environmental Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National UniversityGlobal warming, by no means entirely certain, is assumed to be the outcome of increasing greenhouse gas build up. Of course though some temperatures will rise, cooling will probably occur also in some localized regions. 6 (including both experts and politicians), lack a firm grasp on decision-making in conditions of uncertainty or possible risk.4 The main canvassed policy approaches to the Greenhouse problematique lie firmly within the dominant social paradigm, the high-tech growth and development ideology. Diagram 2 Broad policy responses to the Greenhouse problematique. Dominant paradigm Alternative paradigm Procrastination (wait-and-see) Soft energy paths and alternative regulation Adaptation (sink-or-swim) Socio-economic transformation Regulation Intervention (star wars) We will briefly outline, and find wanting, all the dominant approaches. • Procrastination, the prevailing response. In fact the main gooon mental and conservative response thus far has been procrastination, or “wait-and-see” as it is more benignly known.5 The approach makes much of the uncertainties, of the shortcomings in even the most elaborate general circulation models, of the high noise-to-signal levels. On such bases, it contends that it is too early to do anything, except staging some meetings, organising some review committees, undertaking some monitoring, and funding a little more “research”. It obviously does nothing to rock the growth ideology boat. There is the pretence that we do not know enough to act6 But it is known that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are fast increasing. The main causes and enough likely consequences are also known. Theoretical consideration, have already been partially confirmed by rising temperatures in the eighties. Outlines of rising temperatures are also known in broad outline, rising sea levels, and so forth. In addition, there are partial Following Knight, some economists (try to) distinguish between uncertainty and risk. Risk is said to obtain when some more or less objective numberable probabilities can be assigned to outcomes, a situation not obtaining as regards the global greenhouse effect. Bayesians, who can always assign subjective probabilities tend to eschew the distinction, e.g. Cyert and DeGroot, also say that ‘decision making under uncertainty refers to situations in which the outcome of the decision is not precisely predictable’ (p.3). Either way, Greenhouse involves uncertainty. There is significant rhetorical art in the choice of classificatory labels, a rather philosophically neglected art. A PR person must have been hired to produce the Greenhouse adaptation of ‘adaptation’. Part of the problem is that scientists have been caught out (e.g. crying wolf) and have become ultra-cautious. With the advent of thermodymumies, for instance, scientists begin ‘threatening mankind with a rather swift “bad death’” as the universe random ‘Thus m. Aber, on ‘balant ideological use of science even by scientists themselves’ (Bernard p.9). 7 small-scale models of the Greenhouse effect in action. For example a city such as MexicoCity, which is situated in the bowl-like valley is placed in an environment traps heat as well as pollution. The ecological affects, like the human affects, are pretty dramatic even at this small level, and hardly to be sought, or amelated elsewhere. There is a pretence, fostered also by many scientists, that Greenhouse difficulties have only just been discovered; a date commonly set for that watershed even is the Villiers conference and statement of 1986 (e.g. Pittoch ....). Actually there have been Greenhouse warmings for more than a decade, and there has been a corresponding decade of inaction. Nor is any action of much significance presently seriously contemplated. Back in 1979 Bernard wrote at length about and reported the substantial concern of climate logists about Greenhouse effects. Even the magazine Nature, not noted for its green sympathies, recorded that ‘the release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels is, concemally, the most important environmental issue in the world today’ (May ? 1975). Bernard quotes many other concerned scientists, several asserting that ‘the government must start dealing with this problem now’. They meant the United States government. “The” government didn't take the hint. For more than a decade then scientists have been emphasizing that the greenhouse threat is a major environmental problem, and that action should be taken immediately. Over 10 years nothing of real significance to counter the problem has happened. There has been more than a decade of inaction , during which matters have got worse, and the time frame for evasive action disturbingly shorter. It is already evident that requisite decision making under uncertainty is not taking place. On straight inductive grounds, it would be reasonable to expect nothing will be done. While there are theoretical grounds to bark up such an assessment, still it is only just beginning to get through to a much wider public (which can exercise a marginal influence on what politicians say) that there is - or may be, as some more reactionary modal-managering academics would have - a problem or two. Many scientists have joined the wait-and-see queue, with their begging bowls, hoping for more hand-outs for research. They assume, rightly enough, that more information would assist with rational decision-making, and also, quite wrongly, that “scientific activity” is required for action to be taken. Physical scientists are not done in their misapprehension of rational decision methods. Although there is a good deal of practical experience available of statistical-type decision making order uncertainty, for instance as regards insurance coverage and engineering projects, decision theory, especially as regards unreputable situations, has not penetrated very far into standard scientific methodology or much into mainstream parts of social sciences. ‘Economists in particular have shown a talent for bringing ever problem back to a world of certainty where all solutions are known or can be easily found.’ Natural scientists including dematologists are, for the most part, on the same erroneous-reduction-toconlittainable-certainty trip. ‘This is not to say that economists have not worked on uncertainty. ... however ... uncertainty is introduced and then taken out by assumption’ (Cyort and DeGroot p.l). But there are several classes of problematic situations, where decision and action may be required, where uncertainty cannot be discarded by first, reduction strategeness or otherwise, notably:• inheritantly probabilistic situations, such as those of indeterminacy in quantum theory; • essentially unpredictable situations (which may be deterministic) such as those now under investigation chaos theory; • presently uncertain situations and outcomes, which may eventually resolve into certain cases, or may turn into some of the above classes, where there is not time to wait for resolution. The Greenhouse problem is regularly put into the latter class, a standard assumption being that with enough money and research effort thrown at it, it will resolve to decent certainty. But it may well not; there are grounds for supposing that critical parts of climatology will fall into the essentially unpredictable class. The standard approach of too many research scientists is a pathetic begging-bowl posture: Supply more funding so we can go on researching until we obtain certainty.7 There are some severe problems with this standard response. Firstly, it is irrational. Certainty if achieved may be achieved too late. What was required for rationality was decision making in advance of certainty. Secondly, certainty may be unobtainable. The meteorological equations may be non additive (non additive) and so incapable of delivering stable results over slightly fluctuating in strict data. The standard response is methodologically unsound. • Adaptation, learning to live with and love the Greenhouse. The policy ‘that tends to be favoured by most economists’ is an adaptive strategy: “Let society adjust to environmental changes without attempting to mitigate or prevent the changes in advance” We could adapt to climate change for example, by planting alternative crop strain [themselves] ... more widely adopted... ’ (Schneider p.8). Observe, however, that it is a decidedly restricted “adaptation” that is being proposed, that humans adjust to the results of present economic and industrial practices, rather than adjusting them. It is assumed that economic growth comes first, that we do not change (e.g. through decent regulation) high energy industrial practices. A fuller and smarter adaptation would adapt these practices. The policy is like a pernicious agriculture policy that says, “Let farmers adjust to the results of soil erosion, salination and 7 It does not seem to have occurred to most research scientists demanding more money (even more per article) that an important reason why they are not obtaining the funding they expect is because their research results could, if unfavorable, act a serious drag on the industrial establishment. They are not going to be funded to delegitimize modem industrial society. 9 so on, without attempting to mitigate or prevent these deleterious changes in advance.” Such “adaptative agriculture”, the present predominant practice in advanced agriculture, is antienvironmental, but is given a spurious air of evolutionary inevitability and evolutionary redistributive justice; you can't back natural evolution, which is entirely natural, can you. Let us condense such far-from-inevitable and highly artificial mal-adaptation in the neologism badaptation. Greenhouse adaptation, like nuclear adaptation, is badaptation (some, less kind, would say medaptation). There is a pragmatic, if cynical, political argument for badaptation, namely, that unilateral action to prevent a warning is unfeasible and requisite international cooperation unattainble. Both contentions open to doubt. Unilateral action by the USA, by far the World's heaviest resource and energy consumer (per capita and on several other relevant domains) backed up by pressure (familiar from other settings, such as the narcotics war) on other nations and through the United Nations could make a major difference. Unfortunately the USA is also the world's largest supplier of influential grown economists. In any case, international agreements such as those in whaling and Antarctica, are attainable, and sometimes effective. The ozone protocols, limiting production of CFCs show that results can be achieved to limit trace gas emissions. The adaptation proposal is presently compatible with wait-and-see; both mean no hauling back on trace gas production. Indeed procrastination will force societies towards badaptation. Typical of adaptation, like procrastination, is an (over-)emphasis on the uncertainties of Greenhouse forecasts, and on the decision-theoretic paralysis such uncertainties are alleged to produce. Characteristic of adaptation too is a minimisation of the extent of Greenhouse modification. No doubt the impression that things won't be so very different, or far removed from what has already been experienced, is important in getting adaptationism more readily accepted, as a rational course of action (instead of the seemingly irrational course it is). Thus badaptation tends to play with figures at the law end of projected ranges of temperature increase, such as 1.5°C for 2050, when in fact present data indicates something rather in the vicinity of 4°C - in a setting, furthermore, where fractions of a degree centigrade may well be linked ot macro-physical and macro-biological change. Recent modellings deliver, an average, on increase in 2°C attributable to carbon dioxide, and it is widely thought that other trace gases will double the CO2 effect, yielding a 4°C temperature increase.8 8 Sources. Note that methane is beginning to rival carbon dioxide as a gas where atmospheric propostems really matter and whose present increase is excessive. 10 The colossal extent of future human dislocation has correspondingly been deliberately underemphasized. The adaptive capacities of human arrangements, when humans are living at the margin, to massive natural shifts, has been grossly exaggerated. Consider agriculture alone - set aside flooded cities, sunken atoll islands, and all the rest. Some of the Earth's major grain producing regions - upon which famine relief projects depend - could be pushed substantially out of business. The conditions which prevailed during the American dust-bowl experience of the nineteen-thirties were benign indeed compared with those which threaten with mid twenty-first century Greenhouse conditions. The mid continental summer temperatures were only 1-2° C warmer than the present average, under greenhouse conditions they could be more than 3-4° C warmer. In the dustbowl rainfall only slipped at critical growing times (e.g. July for northern com) to 80% of the contemporary norm; but under Greenhouse conditions it could be significantly less again. A super dust-bowl is not improbable (for much more detail, see Bernard). Similarly for other similar latitude Northern grain producing regions. But the high-energy industrial superstructure is crucially based upon sufficient cheap food (bread) for the urban masses. • Intervention, high-tech Gaean engineering. Interventionist proposals so far floated include • New oceans in parts of the Earth's land surface lying below, at, or near sea level. These projects would make the mega-dams of recent times look like childrens' play. • Wintering effects. Production of sufficient dust in the atmosphere, achieved for instance by nuclear detonations, to mitigate heating effects. Such enterprise would make modification of the weather by cloud seeding look like childs' play. Fortunately these and other expensive and grandiose proposals, which would call for considerable international cooperation, are far down the planning track; with these schemes procrastination is rational. • Regulation, controlling free(-wheeling) enterprise. Regulation itself, not so bureaucratically popular under that presentation in these latter days of economic irrationalism, is of course transparadigmatic, where it belongs depend on what measures (what sorts of constraints, rights, etc.) are proposed and how they are imposed or enforced. If it is, for example, some industrial law-and-order, smokestack scrubbing regulations or Greenhouse polluting rights, within the status quo, that is one thing, but if a minimally-constrained growth paradigm is questioned and alternative socio-economic arrangements advocated, that is quite another, and falls outside the dominant paradigm. Such policies involving regulations controlling fossil fuel emissions especially, are negatively labelled prevention in the predominantly American policy literature, though there is now no preventing some Greenhouse effects; but the worse to follow could still be prevented. What is usually covered under the label is however some regulation within prevailing political arrangements. So energy efficiencies and savings for investment in 11 growth elsewhere is comprehensible, straight growth-curtailing non-consumption is not contemplated. But the latter is just what alternatives do contemplate. Democratic political arrangements do not exclude such alternatives both the power bases of political leaders and economic prescriptions do. Adequate regulation within prevailing socio-economic arrangements is going to prove impossible, without adjustment of power structures and economic imperatives, in effect without far-reaching systems and a devological adjustment. While such adjustment may be rational, it is unlikely. Power structures have too much to lose.9 This is an opposite point to record the chauvinism and environmental shallowness of the Greenhouse debate. Like heart disease and cancer, the Greenhouse effect is gaining much discussion and some funding because it just may severely effect the affluent, affluent people and affluent nations, that have a good deal to lose, in North America especially. The impact will, however, be at least as severe in some third world nations, whose lands or much of them will be flooded, countries which cannot afford extensive expensive dyking (or where such effort would be in the longer term, as seas rise, pointless), countries such as Pacific coral atoll nations and delta states like Bangladesh. But the really serious losers will no doubt be, not humans , rich or poor, but nonhumans. Biological diversity, already being reduced by various human activities, may be one of the chief casualties of global worming. Massive destruction of forests, wetlands, and even the polar tundra could irrevocably destroy complex ecosystems that have existed for millennia. Indeed, various biological reserves created in the past decade to protect species diversity could become virtual death traps as wildlife attempt to survive in conditions for which they are poorly suited. Accelerated species extinction is an inevitable consequence of a rapid warming (Worldwatch p.10). 3. Arguments to dislocation and for a Lesser Venus Prospect. There is at least a small probability that predicted increase in mean atmospheric temperatures will seriously interfere with most remaining natural environments and result in the degeneration or destruction of many of them, especially forests wetlands, maritime environments. Nor will adaptationism help here; for natural evolution is much too slow for adaptationism to succeed (cf. Keeton pp.763-4). Natural ecosystems will not adapt effectively to rapid climatic change,... With regard to forests, habitats for plants and animals cannot be re-created or transplanted rapidly. Continuing climatic changes would strain the capabilities Holistic problems are too extensive for individuals, or even small collectives, to make much difference acting or their own. Some are too beg even for large collectives or states, but would require whole regions of the Earth acting in concerte. But of course some state players, such as the superpowers, as regards nuclear winter, can make a substantial difference, or even all the difference. 12 of management practices even in commercial tree plantations (Beijer Institute Report pp.21-3). The decline or demise of these systems, vast reservoirs for greenhouse gases will accelerate the warming, and accordingly make matters substantially worse: Trees are adapted to a narrow range of temperature and moisture levels, and cannot cope with rapid climate change. A temperature increase of 1 degree Celsius per decade in mid- to upper latitudes translates into a shift in vegetation zones of 60-100 miles northward. Terrestrial ecosystems cannot migrate that fast. Vast numbers of trees are likely to die, and new trees adapted to warmer temperatures are unlikely to be able to replace them rapidly. During such a disruption, huge areas of forest could die and, as they decay or bum, send large quantities of additional CO2 into the atmosphere, accelerating the warming (Brown p.10). Of course the immediate climate patterns would be somewhat more complex. If enough soot and ash from fires were flung into the atmosphere there would be a cooling effect, like that of a small nuclear winter, before heating accelerated. The present pattern of ecosystemic loss would also be sharply accelerated. When natural ecosystems get reduced to about 30% of their initial size, they tend to collapse of themselves. Moreover, there would be other significant positive feedback from ecosystems other than the terrestrial forests, from the oceans especially. As the oceans warm, they lose their capacity to serve as carbon dioxide reservoirs. So they too release additional gases, including previously absorbed CO2, back into the atmosphere, further accelerating the warming. A critical question arises as to how much danger such positive feedback poses? As so often, informed opinions, and so probability estimates differ. However ‘several scientists working in the area consider that positive feedback effects will force a very bleak picture to be drawn’ (p.19 ref?)10 Unlike the interim effect of a small nuclear winter, where after a few years at most, climatic behavior (as distinct from radioactivity levels) would presumably return towards the previous norm, there will be no similar recovery under greenhouse impact. Technically then, stability would be lost under the impact,11 disequilibrium induced. An eventual longterm return to some different equilibrium could well be excluded. Under new climatic regimes plants themselves may be able to do little more than hang on for part of their own lives. In many places conditions would be too severe for much of the “year” to permit normal plant functioning, including what is crucial for greenhouse amelioration, photosynthesis. In most plants, photosynthesis only occurs across a narrow band of Second order probabilities, probabilities and uncertainties in the light of first order subjective probabilities, enter importantly. Stability is defined in physics in terms of return to an initial (inertial) position after small disturbance. 13 temperatures (e.g. 6 - 34°C); outside that range the plants shut down operations.12 Even more important, many plants would leave few or no successful successors. Even where plants set seed, seedlings would not survive under the severe conditions expected; for instance, they would be killed by hot dry summer conditions, or in other places by frosts to which they are not adapted, both phenomena already familiar after clearfelling of forests. The situation at... in southern Sahara, where there is but one ancient tree hanging on in thousands of square kilometers of desert, a tree with viable seeds which sets no seedlings, could be more or less replicated in many other places where forests or woody plants once grew. In fact we are already witnessing the demise of the trees in much of Australia. Already dead and dying trees form a predominant feature of the Australian rural landscape. Virtually whichever way ecologists travel in Australia where trees remain, they are confronted with dead and dying trees 13 The reasons for the present decline of trees in rural Australia is, for the most part, not to be attributed to early greenhouse or even pollution effects.14 It is thought to be due to a complex of factors, including a range of insect predators whose effects are enhanced on isolated trees left after an excessive zeal for clearing (i.e. holistic effects enter as regards healthy persistence of trees). The relevant point is that these features are likely to be accelerated given the additional impact of greenhouse warming on plant functioning and reproduction. There are several major ways through which the maintenance structures of the Earth can be not merely awkwardly disturbed, but thrown right out of kilter - perhaps, given the delicacy of several critical matters, never to return present norms. Most obvious and immediately threatening is • nuclear warfare, and therewith nuclear Winter. But there are of course other severe shocks the planet could suffer than those chemo-nuclear warfare, some human induced, some a “chance” matter of the planets' position in space, namely • a mini Big Bang, or an undermining of metastability, brought about through very high energy experimentation (see Leslie) • a collision with a large meteorite or asteroid. Such uncertainties, not germane to the main climatic arguments, are listed, not to achieve a bogus completeness, but to emphasize that complete certainty is not to expected, not rationally.. Should we obtain it, should we obtain easy relatively unproblematic lives, then we have, by world standards, been rather lucky. Moreover, these latter uncertainties do The upper bound may be difficult to appreciate in most of Aotearoa. But in much of Australia, during the summer, many plants close down their operations for much of the day. Reported by Recher on Earthworm. Thus coastline vegetational destruction through detergents in sewerage waters. 14 appear negligible compared with those bound up with climate, ascribable to: • excess economic development. The practices involve a complex and sustained assault on most of the Earth's major ecosystems, forests, seas, etc, along with the alteration of atmospheric composition by greenhouse gases. For example, the forests are cut down, burnt, poisoned by herbicides and acid rain, or otherwise removed or destroyed. (Therewith too a great deal more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere and major sinks of carbon dioxide are removed.) As a result of these concerted growth-and-development activities such systems are driven to limits, and breakdown occurs. Once it occurs at some weak point it can escalate elsewhere, like a conflagration.; thus again ecosystemic collapse for example. Quite apart from breakdown at or approaching limits, for instance because of systemic overload, remarkable changes can occur in desiccative systems under stress or strain. • excess energy or chemical loading. Though such striking examples as the chemical clock, it has been demonstrated that dissipative systems can suddenly, and often rather unpredictably, undergo extraordinary changes, as for instance energy flux is increased (Prigogine and others), [describe briefly] Such non-additive, or nonlinear, effects, characteristic of more holistic dissipative systems, are bound to occur within the Earth's atmosphere and oceans as they undergo compositional changes. Carbon dioxide itself provides a good example. With small quantities its effect on the temperature of the air is proportional to the amount added; there is a linear effect. However once the carbon dioxide concentration in the air approaches 1%, new nonlinear effects come into play and heating greatly increases. In the absence of a biosphere to fix carbon dioxide, its concentration in the atmosphere would probably exceed the critical figure of 1%. The Earth would then heat up rapidly to a temperature near to that of boiling water. Increasing temperatures would speed up chemical reactions and accelerate their progress towards chemical equilibrium. ... eventually ... the Earth would become permanently cocooned in a brilliant white cloud - a second Venus, although not quite as hot (Lovelock pp.45-6). Fortunately for Gaean prospects, the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now nowhere near 1% nor likely to be pushed near 1% by projected doubting of carbon dioxide levels under economic activity over the next 50 years15. However eventual exponential growth will lead towards levels, and the side effect of such growth, the release of carbon dioxide from forests and oceans and the considerable reduction in fixation of carbon dioxide with the decline of forests, will lead in that disastrous direction rather more rapidly. The 1% 15 In the atmosphere of the very early Earth, CO2 exceeded the critical 1% figure; but solar luminority was about 25% less than now. With increasing solar flux the Earth would have overheated had the proposition of CO2 not been much reduced (e.g. see Lovelock 88 p.56). 15 bound constitutes just one of the many serious limits to continuation of present developmental practices. Now there can be no rational confidence with respect to complex dissipative systems - about the behavior of which we presently know comparatively little - that no other nonadditive effects will no be encountered at a much earlier stage. After all, the Gaean system, its atmosphere, oceans and ecosystems, will be pushed into essentially unexperienced and substantially unknown reaches. There is, for example, no experience from past times of such elevated temperatures as Green house effects will lead to, to draw upon. ‘There is no evidence that the land-bound glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica have ever completely melted in the last two million years’. There is experience of much colder periods. ‘During ice ages, the earth's average temperature has been about 5°C colder than at present, with glaciers covering major portions of continents’ (Barth p.7). But there is no similar experience of temperatures 4-5° C warmer than at present (in a warm interglacial period), ‘a global increase of more than 2°C above present is unprecedented in the era of human civilization’ (Schneider p.6) It would accordingly be decidedly rash, rash decision makings, to assign a zero or negligible probability to the emergence of new or unknown effects of relevance, to assume all will go smoothly and well. That would presuppose, in any event, a completeness in present scientific knowledge, contrary to the information we have that present investigation of holistic systems, among much else, is still in its infancy. The probability of something critical (e.g. perhaps radicals like hydroxyl) having been left out of estimations, of room accordingly for something unexpected or for something to go wrong, may be small, though experience implies it is not always so but it certainly appears to be non-zero. For the overconfident, with excess faith in the flimsy scientific edifice, there is a salutary lesson to be drawn from the erratic and stumbling path of the main proponent of Gaia hypotheses, Lovelock. Lovelock, coming from a working life as an industrial chemist, part of that time for a giant chemical transnational, had, and retained for a considerable time after he began his holistic hypothesizing a strong antipathy for environmentalists.16 Even Gaia was for industry and against the environmentalists; she was going to laughingly soak up all the pollution, courtesy of the chemical companies especially, that we humans could throw at her. In particular, we did not really need to worry much about ozone depletion or greenhouse gas escalation.17 ‘Contrary to the forebodings of many environmentalists, Coupled with this, there is a certain schizophrenia in Lovelock's attitude to the natural environment. There is also a matching schizophrenia as to the fragility of life on Earth. On the one side, it required very delicate settings and fine barring to arise; this is part of the argument for a Gaia hypothesis. On the other side, life is ‘tough, robust, and [highly] adaptable’, virtually indestructable (p.90). But though a flawed hero, Lovelock is a hero nonetheless. See Lovelock 79, p.40ff; and also 88? [detail] 16 finding a suitable’ destructive agent to bring about a ‘doom scenario’ ‘turns out to be an almost insoluble problem’ (p.40). Lovelock makes it easier for himself by helping himself to the assumption that a doomsday scenario involves the destruction of all “life”, ‘down to the last spore of some deep-buried anaerobic bacteria’ (p.40). But even for the least chauvinistic of environmentalists, destruction of all humans but the select elect would be quite enough for a decent doomsday. Lovelock's high redefinition of a environmental ‘doomsday scenario’ is unacceptable. Lovelock does not however stay within the bound of his redefinition. He proceeds to pooh-pooh the idea that anything much that we humans could accomplish would make any difference to Gaia (p.41) or even to most humans, including use of nuclear devices. Unfortunately for Lovelock's credibility, he was writing three years before the seemingly obvious wintering effects of a major nuclear war were realised by the accredited scientific community. Appealing in a common scientific fashion to scientific authority, he proceeds to minimalize the human and ecological effects of a major war. The report he relies upon as authoritative was a 1975 (unreferenced) one of ‘the US National Academy of Sciences ... prepared by an eight-man committee of their own distinguished members, assisted by forty-eight other scientists chosen from those expert in the effects of nuclear explosions and all things subsequent to them’ (p.41, italics added). Lovelock draws from the distinguished expert report the findings that ... if half of all the nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals, about 10,000 megatons, were used in a nuclear war the effects on most of the human and man-made ecosystems of the world would be small at first and would become negligible within thirty years. Both aggressor and victim nations would of course suffer catastrophic local devastation, but areas remote from the battle and, especially important in the biosphere, marine and coastal ecosystems would be minimally disturbed (p.41). Three years later Turco and others proceeded to detail a very different scenario that of widespread and ecologically damaging nuclear winter.. Not for the first time, Lovelock had been caught out badly. As with pollution, Lovelock has more recently shifted ground18 considerably in the vulnerability of the Earth to human-induced disturbance. When a system such as Gaia in homeostatis is stressed to near the limits of regulation even a small disturbance may cause it to jump to a new stable state or even fail entirely.... Shifting ground may be fine, especially when it is to an improved position. But it should be done honestly and openly, not stealthily or shiftily. Lovelock proceeds to attribute a caricuture of his own previous position to critics of the Gaia hypothesis (as a clever ‘fabrication’ which it was not); that it is ‘an argument developed to allow industry to pollute at will, since mother Gaia will clean up the mess (85 p.53). 17 It could be that the regulation of the Earth's climate is not far from one of these limits. Thus if some part of climate regulation is connected with the natural level of CO2 then clearly we are close to the limits of its regulation. This is because CO2 cannot be reduced much below the level observed for the last glaciation, about 180 ppm, without seriously limiting the rate of growth of the more abundant C3 type plants. If we perturb the Earth's radiation balance by adding more CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere or reduce its capacity to regulate by decreasing the area of forests or both of these together then we could be surprised by a sudden jump of both CO2 and temperature to a new and much warmer steady state; or by the initiation of periodic fluctuations between that state and our present climate. The anomalously low abundance of CO2 on Earth when compared with the other terrestrial planets and especially the fact that the mean temperature of the Earth is on the cool side of the optimum for regulation, suggests strongly that the biota is regulating the climate by pumping CO2 from the air. The common feature of most of our pollutions and of our exploitation of the land surface seems to be unintentionally to thwart this natural process (Lovelock 85 pp5354). The argument to the lesser Venus path, to significant disequilibrium with the Earth's ecological support system destabilized, takes the following lines. The Earth appears to be a discipative (far-from-equilibrium) system held at its present balance by a combination of an (increasing) solar flux - a main energy input into the system - and its major ecological arrangements, especially vegetation complanes and live oceans. The sheer extent to which the resulting system differs from the stable dead system it could otherwise be is shown by the following table for atmospheric and oceanic composition. TABLE 1. Substance Carbon dioxide A Nitrogen T R Oxygen Argon 0 C E A N S Water Planetary comparisons (principal components per cent). Equilibrium Earth Venus Lifeless Earth Mass Present Earth 99 0 98 1.9 98 1.9 95 2.7 0.03 79 0 1 trace 0.1 trace 0.1 0.13 2 21 1 63 Salt 3.5 Sodium nitrate 1.7 96 n.a. n.a. 3.5 traces Surface temperatures (°C) n.a 477 Total pressure (bars) n.a. 90 290±50 60 -53 13 0064 1 The table is based upon tables 1 and 2 of Lovelock 79, pp37 and p.39. 18 The whole Earth system is accordingly far from equilibrium. Unpredictable behavior as locals increase is therefore almost to be expected. A likely moral is presumably: stress they system, or destabilize ecosystem controls sufficiently, and the system may be in deep trouble. It is relevant to inquire into what evidence we have on this case. To do so let us reconsider some of the array of arguments there are from some sort of holistic organisation of the Earth (for a modest Gaia hypothesis). But for the participation of the Earth's ecological support systems, plant complexes especially the Earth would not be blessed with its present life-benign physical characteristics. The oceans would be much saltios and too salty for most life, the air would not contain the present rich mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide so important for terrestrial life, and so on, perhaps most important the Earth would be significantly hotter and too hot for most life, for what of what does the regulating and stabilizing of present conditions. For the solar flux has increased in intensity about 30% since life appeared on Earth, but the mean global temperatures have exhibited no corresponding increase, but have remained relatively constant. Such an expected consistency in the face of disturbing inputs is ascribed, under holistic approaches that do something to explain it, to the concerted activity of plants, [detail] Lovelock and collaberaters have devised an elementary daisy world model which reveals how a feedback system with two types of daisies can, within limits, stabilize temperatures despite increasing energy input. The limits are important, for as these limits are approached the maintenance systems break down. diagram Q Similarly several of the well-known chemical cycles, such as those for nitrogen, sulphur, sodium and so forth depends for their maintenance on the adequate operation of active ecological structures. Plainly if a cycle loops through a component, such as forests, which is severely disturbed then the cycle itself could be disrupted. There is some probability furthermore that the foregoing changes will disturb crucial equilibrium systems and chemical cycles. Some of these feedback systems are in fact maintained in equilibrium by natural ecosystems (an example is Lovelock's daisy world model, which becomes unstable when temperature rises too high). Instability could ensue under disturbance [explain, include Greenhouse holism]. Without doubt these matters are bad enough. Demise of most of the Earth's richness19 is not a minor matter. Worse could follow. Natural richness is the main richness, much exceeding human artifice. 19 The general tenor of the argument is so far this:- By arguments from physical models, and because of uncertainties, the probability that something could go badly wrong is nonzero,20 and indeed far from negligible. Part of the argument can be put as follows: there is a decent probability that a modest Gaia hypothesis holds. But then, there is a considerable probability that excessive Greenhouse build up will lead to damaging system destabilization. So containing probabilities, there at least a nonneglizible probability of such destabilization. An analogy should now emphasize both the dubiousness of what is being proposed under adaptationism and the precariousness of the human predicament. The proposal is to take this ancient craft, now overloaded with human passengers and their heavy baggage, a cargo it was never organised to carry, out on new routes and run it fast and higher than it has ever travelled before. Even for an experimental prototype, a now very fast (air-)bus say, with a select text crew, such a procedure, of running over new uncharted routes at speeds and heights never attained before, would be risky enterprise. With an ancient craft, with a heavy nonelite cargo of baggage and passengers (some whom try to interfere with the controls), the proposal is extremely rash. For the chances that the craft will breakdown and perhaps crash, with serious consequences to passengers and for the baggage, are greatly elevated over the risks of proceeding as usual much more slowly. With the costs of crashing so severe, rational operators and sensible pilots would not take them.21 Unfortunately the analogy is not at all far-fetched, but resembles what is in store for spaceship Earth, already under significant stress with its excessive human passenger load and their heavy ecological practices. Not only is the future itself pretty new territory, but it is a future at terrestrial temperatures, important processes will proceed faster than ever before, in particular all chemical processes. Simply to take the craft up there, as do-nothing and adaptation approaches would have is to emulate the risks and hubris of Daedelus; such approaches are aptly rarely Daedelian 4. The Sting in the Cosmic Tail: the mini-Furphy theorem and the likely demise of homo sapiens, spp. economicus.. The trouble with the initial formulation of Murphy's law: if anything can go wrong, it will, From logical theories of probability such as Carnap's non-zero probabilities are rather easily reached (perhaps too easily, with the converse feature that natural laws never obtain high probabilities. The difficulty can be characteristed, to some extent, by restruction to physical models). The analogy is an old one, which we exploited before in the nuclear case; for the “bus analogy”, see Routley and Routley. The analogy admits of much graphic variation. Instead of running the craft at excess speed, an alternative or additional image is that of destroying the controls of the craft. Lovelock deploys this opposite image (88 p.63), which corresponds to the demolition of Gaians control systems. 20 was that it was insufficiently qualified, much too absolutist, and apparently self-refuting..22 Certain crucial qualifications are required:• Replacement of the certain (certainlistic) conclusion by a somewhat weaker probabilistic one: namely, it probably will. • Correlative to weakening the conclusion, strengthening the premiss, by rendering it more specific; namely, in place of ‘anything’ or ‘something’ put ‘some thing ... given a chancy situation’. The modified formulation is accordingly the following Mini-Furphy result:23 if some thing can genuinely go wrong, given a relatively chancy situation, it probably will. Here ‘chancy’ means more or less what it means according to the dictionaries: doubtful, decidedly risky, or as we shall construe it, having a comparatively low probability vis-a-vis its alternatives. The precise extent of relative chanciness will be explained as we go. To prove this proposition, let us first recast it in appropriate symbolic form. Let D be some arbitrary bad situation, a suitable disaster. Let the possibility of D's happening something's going wrong - be represented by a non-zero probability, and genuineness by non-negligible probability. It can be assumed that that probability, P(D), is small, otherwise the requisite conclusion would follow in any case. Let C represent the features that render the situation chancy. Then what we aim to show is that where P(D) is small positive, P(D < C) is probable. The proof applies a special case of Bayes' theorem, which take the following form where there are n alternative hypotheses hi,...,hn including h: Pv(h) x P(i < h) P(h < i) X P(hr) X P(i < hr) r = 1 Here h is the hypothesis, which in our application is D, i is the additional information (or, is in Carnap, a new observation), which in our case is C.24 P(h < i) is the probability of h 22 23 24 For this and other formulations of Murphy's law, and many loosely associated humorous maxims with grains of truth encapsulated, see Block. As to the history of the “law”, which originated with J.M. Chase, editor of Aviation Mechanics, see the Encyclopaedia Americana', Chase's initial formulation in a 1955 issue read ‘If an aircraft part can be installed in correctly, someone will install it the way”. This little theorem was originally more accurately entitled the Murphy-Leslie theorem. It is an adaptation, suggested by Leslie's work, of Murphy's Law. This section is overwhelmingly indebted to Leslie; for Leslie's debts, and so the transitive debts of this section, see Leslie himself, who deserves to be read in defence his legitimate doomsday apprehensions. The next not indicates the limited extent to which Leslie's arguments are endorsed. The formulation is a special case of that proved in Carnap, p.331; namely that (absolute) case where the evidence e is elided, or e set = 1. A similar result follows, subject to slightly more rigorous conditions, in relevant probability theory; see Routley 79 p.954. 21 given i, or of h on condition i (the backward arrow notation, <, symbolises the condition involved and shows its direction). For simplicity we shall suppose that all the alternatives to D are concentrated (as far as symbolic exposure goes) in one, namely D*. Then the form we seek to apply is simply: p(D < C) __________ P(D) x P(C < D)__________ P(D) x P(C < D) + P(D*) x P(C < D*)' = The arithmetic details needed can be tabulated in a revealing form as follows: Cases D D* Initial (or prior) probability d 1-d m, say Vd m/l, say 1/dl of outcome relative chance that C As it is the relative chance of C that matters, we can rescale to set m = 1/d. To make C relatively chancy, I has some modest size; specifically let I exceed 1-d/d. Then the probability to be estimated, P(D < C), is d x 1/d d x 1/d + (l-d)/dl where k = • 1 1+k _ “ That is» and P(D < C) | y when k < 1, i.e. when I [ p(D < C) = where k = 1, . Thud D is probable, at least in being more probable than not, given C, when I is of at least modest size, i.e. given C is relatively chancy. In a merely apparently more general form of the estimation, where we do not align m to d, In effect we shall look at the form P(h < i) = --------------- < h)------------------------------P(h) X P(i < h) + XP(hr) X P(i < hr)’ n with the sum excluding the product for h. Though demonstrable given satisfiable exclusion and exhaustion conditions, Bayes' theorem is not lacking critics, in part because of the surprises this bit of logic can deliver. Carnap meets the objection that Bayes' theorem has sometimes ‘been applied to cases where it led to strange or even absurd results’ thus: ‘This was mostly due to an uncritical use of the principle of indifference :... [The] theorem is provable ... on the basis of those weak assumptions which practically all theories of probability seem to have in common’ (p.331, sub 1 elided). Of course the present applications could (just) be objected to on the grounds that the logical conditions for the theorem to apply are not fully satisfied. P(D [ C) 22 d x m d x m + (1-d) x m/l 1 1 + k’ 1 as before. That is m drops out, only the relative chanciness really matters. The little Furphy theorem follows as before. Now to put some relevant flesh on these abstract statements and figures. Let D be some future disaster such as the catastrophic decline, for instance, through summer or winter phenomena of the human species, from which the enormous present population never recovers. At worst (from a chauvinistic angle) the population, like many catastrophically effected by human activities, goes extinct. Suppose, for a bifurcating outcome, there is a catastrophe stage, before halfway through next century, 2050. If humans do not get their act together before then, they go into catastrophic decline, as already indicated. If however they do get their ecopolitical act together then humans, while they hardly live happily ever after (poverty, inequality, domination, and other evils not being removed), they continue to persist or even grow in numbers, perhaps fanning out through the solar system ( in the way envisaged by too many physicists). Suppose further we are optimists, imagining that the prior probability of D ecodisaster and human decline, is small, say 1%. That is d = .01, and the initial probability of D*, human “success”, is .99. The figures are pretty notional. Supreme optimists would want to set d much smaller, pessimists rather at a higher probability. Application Table 1. Cases D human decline D* human success Initial probabilities 1%, i.e. .01 99%, i.e. .99 Relative chanciness, VlOO, i.e. .01 1/100 x l/l ofC Then the probability of human decline given .01 x ,01 P(D < C) .01 x .01 + .99 x .01/1 1 !/2 , when I > 99. 23 It remains to fill out C, thereby showing that I is likely much much larger, and correspondingly human decline so much the more probable in the light of additional information, i.e. a posteriori probable in the usual jargon. There are several high risk factors, acting in a certain concert, factors emphasized more than a decade ago in world systems modellings (such as, most famously that, of the Club of Rome) Malthusian factors such as human population, economic product, pollution, energy consumption,.... It is appropriate for estimate posterier probability relative to anyone of these, any of which can serve as C, in order to expose the riskiness of present gross human practices. In brief, because there are several high risk factors, so there are several appropriate relative or reference classes. Thus the posterier probability is assessed relative to such matters as our being alive, humans being thus and so (Leslie's reference class), this being present energy use, present wast output, present forest destruction and so forth.25 The anthropic argument considers the environmentally invidious situation of present humans on the Earth. The argument can be carried through either in terms of sheer population, gross numbers, or in terms of human resource grabbing, as estimated for instance through energy consumption. Let us consider the prospects given additional information as to the present phase of gross human population. C will be some such proposition as: the proportional preponderance of humans who have ever lived alive now, or to personalize it: the chance that you or your family, is alive now. Chart: Our present population predictment on the two scenerios. Demise scenerio “Success” scenerio - representative zjs human numbers human numbers On of the weaknesses in the argument may appear to be its dependence on an appropriate choice of relative class. For, the relative probabilities can fall away if different reference classes, not exhibiting such growth patterns are taken, e.g. present wattle distribution, birds being thus and so. On the other hand, probabilities can be elevated even more by selection of more unusual reference classes cuh as our being scientists, or being computer programmers, etc.. 24 Humans have got themselves - to some extent put themselves, though much may be the result of muddling through - into an extremely dubious, environmentally insidious and unsustainable position, on a range of critical parameters. Their numbers are excessive, their high energy use is excessive, their waste and their pollution are both excessive - and all chose and other excesses are at the steep end of upward exponential curves. Several relevant graphs are distressingly exponential, with the present in the near vertical growth phase: graphs Many other similarly shaped graphs26 could be added, for instance for growth of pollution, of waste products, of weapons (in terms of tonnes of explosive power), of other greenhouse gases such as methane, and so on. The display typifies the accelerating human roller coaster. Those curves are tightly interconnected, in criss-crossing fashion. For example, the productivity of contemporary agriculture which enables the feeding of hugh urbanised human populations depends on a very high energy use (in term of energy efficiency, contemporary high-tech agriculture falls below that of much traditional agriculture). The maintenance of high populations with supplies of cheap food depends in turn on fossil fuel agriculture. Because of the intertwining of these phenomena, there is no easy way of getting off the accelerating roller-coaster. 26 All the graphs exhibited are drawn from Boyden. 25 Nor, as observed, is there much effort devoted to slowing the coaster. For politicians it would be politically risky and inexpedient to try (for them the rhetoric about an ecologically sustainable future must remain just that, more rhetoric). For many other power holders and brokers such ideas are ideologically excluded: growth remains the gospel. So a precarious position becomes ever more precarious. Humans are in a decidedly chancy position, because of their population situation and other Malthusian factors; they are becoming very disasterprone. If humans want an acceptable future for themselves - they have virtually ruled out an acceptable future for many other creatures, through their predominantly selfish thoughtless greedy practices - then they will probably have to mend their ways, very considerably and very soon. But, given the nature of the beast, that itself seems improbable. Humans, if they seek a more assured future, should make a concerted effort to put themselves into a less precarious position. That could be achieved by proceeding to reduce relative risks. These relative risks, sharply reducing prospects for a reliable future, fall into two classes:• manufactured risk factors, including weaponry such as mega-nuclear devices and elements of biochemical warfard, and experimental equipment such as very high energy particle accelerators (which could perhaps tunnel under a metastable state or induce a min-Big-Bang; see Leslie). • Accumulated risk factors, such as the hugh relative size of human population, energy consumption, greenhouse gas production, etc..27 Despite the ideological obstacles, enormous political, religious and economic obstacles blocking the way of requisite change, major efforts should be put into reducing both these types of risks. Philosophers could have a significant role in breaking down the ideological barriers and in clarifying and developing the arguments involved. 5. What ought to be done about Greenhouse? The general result already reached, that humans collectively should reduce their risk taking, and in particular reduce their gross numbers, extends to rational Greenhouse decision and action theory. But that large and difficult challenge is not all that there is to try, that should rationally be attempted. While some increase in mean global temperatures, and all that implies, can no longer be averted, the potentially most damaging effects can be: namely, by curtailing human-induced 27 As before, there are various different reasons why these induce risk, neo-Malthusian and probabilistic in particular. 26 output of Greenhouse gases. Moreover, there is an approximate upper bound upon temperature of importance, which can serve to supply a significant limit as output. That bound - which reduces risk taking by confining encountered situations to those where there is some past experiential basis - is given by estimated temperatures during Altithermal and Eemian eras. Those temperatures are estimated to have been between about 1/2 a degree and 1 degree Centigrade above contemporary (pre-1980) temperatures; so the upper bound is about 1°C. Not only will a continuation of current emission trends take global temperatures clean through and way beyond that bound, so also will an alternative set-up where emission rates are fixed more or less at current rates. The only apparent way to remain rationally within an experiential domain is to curtail sharply trace gas emissions beginning easily in the 1990s. That means shifting from the dominant growth paradigm; it means expensive re- and deindustrialisation. It is unlikely. Final corollary: Humans collectively are not (particularly) rational. But we had already guessed as much from the latest...... in the long history of human wars. References H.W. Bernard, The Greenhouse Effect, Ballinger, Cambridge Mass., 1980. A. Block, Murphy's Law. Book Two, Magnum, Methuen, ... S. Boyden, Western Civilization in Biological Perspective, Clarendon, Oxford, 1987. L.R. Brown and others, State of the World 1989, Norton/Worldwatch, New York, 1989; referred to as Worldwatch. R. Carnap, Logical Foundations of Probability, Second edition, University of Chicago Press, 1962. R.M. Cyert and M.H. DeGroot, Bayesian Analysis and Uncertainty in Economic Theory, Rowman & Littfield, New Jersey, 1987. ‘Developing policies for responding to climatic change’, Report of the Beijer Institute, February 1988. Keeton, J. Leslie, ‘Risking and World's End’, Bulletin of the Curiadian Nuclear Society 10(3) (1989) 1-6; all references to Leslie are to this article unless otherwise indicated. J. Leslie, ‘Is the end of the world nigh?’, The Philosophical Quarterly, to appear; referred to as PQ. J.E. Lovelock, Gaia. A new look at life on Earth, Oxford University Press, 1979. J. Lovelock, ‘Are we destabilising world climate?’, The Ecologist 15(1985) 52-55. 27 J.Lovelock, ‘Man and Gaia’, The Earth Report Monitoring the Battle for Our Environment, (ed. E. Goldsmith and N. Hilgard) Mitchell Benzley, London, 1988, 51-64. R. and V. Routley, ‘Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquirey 21(1978) 133R. Routley, ‘Ultralogic as universal?’ reprinted as an Appendix in Exploring Meinong's Jungle, RSSS, Australian National University, 1979. S. Schneider ‘Not to decide is to decide’, in Greenhouse 1988: Planning for Climate Change (ed. T. Dendy), Department of Environment and Planning, Adelaide, 1989, 5-10. R.P. Turco and others, ‘Nuclear winter: Global consequences of multiple nuclear explosions’, Science 222 (1983) 1283-1292.  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 2064: Gaean Greenhouse, Nuclear Winter, and Anthropic Doomsday Subject The topic of the resource Typescript of paper published in Australian National University. Department of Philosophy (1990) Research series in unfashionable philosophy, 4. Description An account of the resource Title in collection finding aid: RS: Gaean Greenhouse, Nuclear Winter, Anthropic Doomsday ts. 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> 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 2064 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> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990-01-01. 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>. 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [27] leaves. 18.58 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <div class="element-set"> <div id="dublin-core-identifier" class="element"> <div class="element-text"><a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:fdb034b" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:fdb034b</a></div> </div> </div> Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Miscellaneous Box 14: Green Projects in Progress https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/7b1c84739c22e1c37ca763396ee394af.pdf 2304fe555b3c35b58cc702e12a63a8a7 PDF Text Text MORRL fWERS WHER - EM-JIROtVEtfrOLLV? Begond moraL extens ion isms. Some find us of mereig not ourseives at with odds mainstream environmentaL thinking - which remains shaLLow, heaviig exptoitative, and LikeLg disastrous, not ontg for mang other species but for mang humans as weLL - but uneasg atso with main deeper environmentaL approaches, most of which now emanate from North Rmerica. ELsewhere I have, to mg cost, taken issue with Deep Ecotogg, a movement with European origins quickig captured Ln CaLifornia; but here I wLsh to crLtLcLse forms of Norat Extensionism that now have a main base Ln Southern USF)!, forms that etaborate moraL standtng, consLderabLLLtg, and rLghts theorLes. the crLtLcLsm wLLL not be puretg negative; posLtLve atternatLve posLtLons Rgain wLLL beg Ln to emerge Ln earLg mornLng outLLne. extensLonLsms extend moraL Ltg and convent Lona L chauvLnLstLc moraL MoraL apparatus conventLonaL Lts begond (but certaLnLg subjects and areas where Lt has not been appLLed, certaLn confLnes to unwarranted) or eLse, more LLkeLg, has been used for dLscrLmLnatLon and other negatLve purposes. Theg sLmpLg extend wag the moraL apparatus wLthout much Ln the assumptions vatue, (equaL appLLed to a wider cLass equat of rLghts, of adjustment, consLderatLons, etc.) sLmpLg equaL a (Rs subjects. moraL egaLLtarLan wLth tgpe, generaL moraL ex tens Lon isms have been described and criticised Ln some detaiL Ln EE, p.lSSff., under and the tgpicaL and usefuL weapon movements of Liberation with proceed couLd Ln Rodman.) MoraL ex tens LonLsm is a MoraLisms Nature LabLe more rLghts and accurate movements Less but equipment). Seen from a conservative opposition, moraL to moraLitg bend to iLLegitimate certain interests, etc), are equaLitg, standing, but in ang case evergthing is sufficientLg in order, at Least on the boundaries, as it ex tens Lon isms endeavour not onLg do the since (rights, such impressive pubLLcLg extensLonLsms purposes, extensions make nonsense of the notions invoLved (though is! from Seen a wider perspective, environmentaL not aLwags unjustified in where theg go, but Ln how theg go, in the pseudo-egaLitarian facades of the extensions, and more important in where theg stop. For though priviLege is widened and so diiuted, it remains. The zones of extension remain too Limited, and things outside the usuai as forests, species, ecosgstems, continue mistreatment, expioitation and so on (see EE, things be to p.llf.1). Nor can such substantiaL to open the sorts of invoLved pLausibLg be brought within the extension foLd (though isoLated efforts are not Lacking); for theg appear to Lack requisite which extensions, extensions operate, such as sentience, LndividuaLitg, or whatever. For exampLe, the verg characteristics pain-receptivitg, idea of an on interests, environmentaL ethic, which serves to protect uninhabited environments and to Justifg requisite respect for naturat sgstems and communities, founders on the moraL rights position propounded bg Regan in defence of certain animats (RR p.35^ff). �Mang a Ls MoraLLtg weapon, purpose depLoged bg pressure and often interest groups. Throughout Modern hLstorg Lt has tgpLcaLLg been used to and justLfg wLde a actLvLtg of range and hostLLe practices ground naturaL to envLronnents. HuMans are entLtLed to thLs or that, whLch interfere; thetr needs generate these or those requLreMents, whLch ought to be Met there though even are costs to LocaL envLronnents, and so forth. Those opposed to MoraLLtg - there Ls a Long and dLstLnguLshed phLLosophLcaL chaLn froM Lao-tsu and PLgden - have a poLnt MoraLLtLes Lt when MoraL-poLnts-of-vLew and to coMes The MoraLLtg. such HLnckfuss through daMage of seeM substanttaLLg hLgher than the often benefLts conferred. For the restrLctLons theg LMpose are heavg, and work often the wrong wags. R sort of cost/benefLt assessMent of MoraLLtg thus gets under wag2, supposedLg gLetdLng negatLve resutts. Mang are the arguMents for MoraLLtg, begLnntng wLth the cLaLM that Lt Ls oneseLf and one s LLfe wLthout LapsLng Lnto Morat taLk, conduct to LMpossLbLe concepts, practLces and, generaLLsLng, back Lnto MoraLLtg. Part of the response to such fauttg arguMents Ls atwags that there are dLstLnctLons, LnsLsted upon bg LeadLng MoraL theorLsts theMsetves, between vaLue Matters and MoraLLtg, tougher dLstLnctLon, (practLcaL hard j^s (whLch axLoLogg to to avoLd) MaLntaLn, between there Ls a further deontLc expressLons Rnd deontLes. and practLcat between expedLent oughts and shouLds for Lnstance) and MoraL ones. ULth and such dev Lees, antL-MoroLLsts, who do have a soLLd case agaLnst objectLve or absoLute MoraLLtLes, can escape MoraL hooks. Hagbe the net a carefuL practLtLoner can shun deontLc dLscourse, but wouLdn t on the treatMent of envtronMents be worse rather than better?, LMpact soMe of the grossest practLces? The quest Lons can doesn t MoraLLtg coLLect a range of answers, LncLudLng such uncharLtabLe ones as: Not so cLearLg constraLn that one wouLd notLce. The MaLn LMpact of MoraLLtg affaLrs; and even here onLg the grossest appear to be turned around through abuses, of an Ls Lnput on chauvLnLstLc, as such froM sLaverg, huMan MoraLLtg. huMan Even so the persuavLve force and LnfLuence of MoraL consLderatLons, properLg redLrected, are not thLngs to be LLghtLg abandoned. For rLghtLg dLrected theg posLtLveLg Ln thLngs contrLbute couLd that Matter socLaLLg and envLronMentaLLg. In partLcuLar, MoraLLtg affords soMe needed protect Lon and, especLaLLg as rectLfLed, offers the prospect of More, More protectLon, Less dLscrLMLnatLon. But actuaL protectLon Ls tgpLcaLLg provLded, where Lt Ls, through verg channeLLed MoraL ftowLng, through aLL too LegaL often, rather to the than wrong dLfferent LnstLtutLons; wLth fraMeworks, part Les, such as the Lt Ls the benefLts strong and estabLLshed. HakLng MoraLLtg work the rLght wags, where Lt does ftgure serLousLg, Ls, Moreover, uncoMfortabtg LLke MakLng weapons work for peace (MoraLLtg beLng a MaLn force behLnd wars and preparatLon for wars), More LLke than Lt ought to be. -2- �Nor is Lt nearLg as easg as Lt was: beating swords Lnto pioughshares, to provide an assauit on the environMent instead of other creatures, subMarine to peaceful purposes (genuineLg peacefut ones, or a prettg easg feat coMpared wLth converting an Fl-11 fighter-boMber or a Modern technoLogicaL LLke was that course, of is; Ln the Liest, theg re peacenakers). For Locat chauvLnLsn, Ln one fom guns another or (huMan, Ls now deeptg natLonat, state or race), LLkeLg, More entrenched Ln Most bureaucratLc arrangeMents and an LntegaL part supportLng of scLences and technoLogg. Even so, whatever Locat practLces, MoraL theorg socLaL can be rectified; the theorLsLng can be accoMpLLshed, even Lf a new MoraLLtg not and appLLed, successfuttg Must awaLt Ls Lts post-RrMeggedon dag. Thus the protected battte to dutg expand MoraLLtg goes on. There are two Ma Ln battLe—LLnes over whLch LdeoLogLcaL wars antL-MoraLLsts) equated) nottons: MoraL status, rLghts, sag, even an outsLde surveg such as thLs But the tern can scarceLg escape attogether MoraL def Ln Lt tons Ls so stack (as dLet tonarg reveaL) that tern (Ln LatLn ortgLn Just a substitute for the Greek expressLon for to have becoMe Linked to features and behaviour of accountabLe such MoraL group: narrower the ang Ls bound to be partLg LegLsLatLve. R Ma Ln Modern tendeneg Ls for the use ttght of as to what Makes soMethtng, a consLderatLon or perMLssLon, MoraL. Lssue coMMon cLuster consLderatLon, retevance, a on foLLowLng These LLnes wLLL be surveged Ln turn; needLess to . ... the standing, consLderabLLLtg,... The second LLne concentrates perMissions, to are fought as regards MoraL extensLon Lssues, LLnes parportedLg MarkLng MoraL outer bounds. The fLrst LLne concerns (often (guaLnt ethicai ) (hunan) actors, as character, disposition, action, virtue. These are the areas where MoraL attributes are at hoMe. Hence MoraL notions tend to occupg inner pLaces Ln the Much Larger evaLuative circLe, and not to extend without sone forcing to naturaL that are not accountabLe actors. PartLg for these reasons too, the terM objects MoraL , Much favoured Ln ex tens Lona List enterprises, tends to be shunned Ln The notion of deeper environMentaL theorg. SiMoraL RgaLnst MoraL standing and siMpiistic ethicaL tgpoLogies. standing, introduced notion of LegaL standing, is coning to pLag environMentaL heavg, but ethics. It is anaiogg questionabte bg a Major, with the RngLo-RMerLcan but d3Maging, danaging because, verg briefLg, rote it wouLd paint a rather arbitrarg, bLack/white boundarg - segregating off those that have not froM those territorg. that have MoraL standing - across Much conpLex More Rs to its rote, it Ls soMetiMes ctaiMed that adoption and defence criterion in of MoraL standing is probieM soLving; absoiuteLg basic reasonabLg addressing of a in environMentaL thinking and the Lssue of MoraL standLng Must be vLewed as a benchMark of ang pLausLbLe "environMentaL ethic"' (PP, pl6). None of thLs Ls so evLdent, especLaLLg gLven the MurkLness of the not Lon of MoraL �standing. In the sane vein, an a necessarg condition ... for Lt is stated that ethicaL theorg is the Most [}] defensibLe criterion of moraL standing adequate Such statements are suretg overstatements. For, Ln pLace, fLrst the there can be, and Lndeed appear to be eth Les, which count as environmentaL ones, which do not LncLude a not Lon of moraL ecoLogLcat Rodman s deep Naess s (e.g. ecotogg, sensLbLLLtg). Secondtg, etaboratLons of these theorLes can cLaLms to adequacg, wtthout introducing, and perhaps expLLcLttg warranted make standing rejecting (for the sorts of reasons gLven betow), a notLon of morat standing. For these sorts of reasons, too, Regan's moraL of notLon attempt (Ln NP) to a make standing Lntegrat to the verg Ldea of an environmentaL ethic, part of the conditions of adequacg for such as ethic, is far off course (as weii as ahistoricai, a piece of footnoted Regan s retrospective account of Legisiation). as But, it happens, standing, according to which a being has moraL morat standing if and onig if we moratig ought to consider how it is affected bg a given action or poiieg, both enabies elimination of the notion as a parasitic middieman) bg substitution using the exposed (thus biconditionaL invoLved in the conditions of adequacg, and aiso enabies straightforward satisfaction of the conditions tgpes of ethics that are hardLg environmental. Consider a forest bg sgstem about be to buiidozed, or the Moon about to be bg tourized an Rmerican—based transnational Hang the development or progress ethics these dags that wiii at Low we ought to consider how the forest or the Moon wiLL be that affected, but then cLaim that we shouid proceed, though perhaps in a modified wag. Thus, in such contexts, the forest and the Moon have moraL standing. Rn so, such a deveiopment ethics meets Regan s conditions for an environmentaL ethic; for the forest and the Moon are nonhuman beings, and indeed nonconscious beings, which have moraL standing. The resuLt is not what Regan intended; for he proceed to suggest (p.21^,p.3O) that intrinsic vaLue is a necessarg condition standLng, something his footnoted for moraL account does not guarantee. The LegaListic notion of moraL standing is not so cLear and distinct after aLL. Rn initiaL tacticaL point against the notion of moraL standing concerns its origin, on the modei of LegaL standing. LegaL standing is for ang sufficientLg comprehensive notion of a sometimes entering into moraL consideration (which can be true of aLmost angthing). For one reason, some decidedtg restrictive assumptions, concerning interests and whatever has such standing. But mang things of vaLue, which enter assessment on modeL dubious it imports rights into ethicaL occasions, do not have, and are not the sorts of things that can significantig have, interests or hoLd rights. LegaL standing aLwags operates terms of having of thing in certain sorts of interests, which can be represented, whereas what has or deserves environmentaL standing mag not have interests, sort of that couLd or be the have interests, even as derived (as in the case of LegaL persons, such as companies) from those of its members. More often -4- indeed, �Legat have to standing to have certain rights, duties, protectton, etc., is begtnntng with the rtght of betng abLe to proceed to the courts. room Of course there ts constderabte standtng not ton the widen to Legat of tn RustraLia can even exctude environmentaL organtsattons) and (which "cLaimants to admit, through representatton, other to the PresentLg, courts. for sure, the modeL ts Much too narrow, restrtcttng access to certatn capitalist cLaimants. But there are severe conceptuat dtfftcutttes tn the wag and persons of broadentng the standtng not ton objects, agatn because to encompass Limitations the the mang requisite environmentaL nottons of tnterests and rtghts impose. Organtsattons of persons, such as partnershtps, coattttons and so on, do not exceed (easg stretchtng at Most of) these Limits, stnce tnterests and rtghts accrue frow coMponent members: untnhabtted ecosgsteMs, the MonuMents, and bg a brazen, and tMptaustbte, overrtdtng of Ontg constderabtg. do, Like naturat these conceptuat ttMttattons (such as Stone ts prepared to fancg Rmerican courts tndutgtng tn) can the in-buiLt severe tnternat restrtcttons of the wodet Legat be overcome. coutd be recogntsed, account of the Stttt the tnadequactes of Lts Legat 3natogg anaLogg behtnd, Left unimpeded fresh a and now standtng woraL rather propose free-fLoattng not Lon offered. Van De Veer and Pterce are rash enough to an expLLcatton of Recordtng to them, can be construed atong these LLnes. whtch For ang thtng X, X has woraL standtng Lff the continued extstence of X fISl. tnterests Lts theg sag Ln that weLL-betng have postttve moraL weight stLpuLattng theg re the but this; theg re or (PP. p.3). RctuaLLg, not free simpig to given that Lt ts a notton wtth some currencg aLreadg, soMethtng theg sttputate, recogntze Ln proceeding at once to consider various to their standard answers basic question Llhich things have MoraL standing? . The account proposed is wore in LittLe curious, not to sag obscure and scarceLg graMMaticat. Later theg a than effect substitute a tortuous Less nameLg account, generaLLtg (in interpretation) MS2. X has moraL standing iff the (continued) existence positive moraL weight (see e.g. p^., plG: pureLg since future items mag have ancestors). Either wag the account is weight and having moraL continued some moraL circutar, or shouLd however be significance, since having X of wetfare has deLeted, as mag dead positive moraL standing are interdependent notions (cf. Goodpaster. p-311). In fact some of the probLems with the account coutd have been avoided bg cutting out the troubLesome middLe part and moving on to the simpLer, expLLcitLg circutar, H33. But has X then as moraL standing Lff X possesses (or obtains) positive moraL weight. a expLication, the definition might aimost as weLL drop out; Lt expticates nothing, connecting some near sgnongms onLg. Perhaps it is better to ask: Uhat work does the notion do? -5- The troubie �Ls except that theories, whLch LegLsLate as to what has moraL partLcuLar on standing, the notion Ln fact does verg because hoMe Ma Ln whose eth Les, chauvLnLstLc base does whLch LLes wLthLn the not extend or traveL unsatLsfactorg; wLth as coMpetence, or m s Ln sorts of reason for theLr Lnadequacg are weLL The personhood). are (such cLassLfLcatLons bLoLogLcaL socLopsgchoLogLcsL dLstLnctLons (such as LLnguLstLc capacLtg or potentLaL standLng MoraL Homo sap Lens or of the zooLogLcaL bLngdon) or wLth spec Les the of the wLder to onLg unstabLe and rather arbLtrarg, but tend to not ctassLfLcatLons ethLcaL MeMbershLp are theg trad Lt LonaL of weLL for ethLcs, It Ls one of those confLnes envLronMentaL settLng. RLL the MaLn crLterLa proposed confuse envLronmentaL Ln work Ls LLttLe agreement about what determLnes Lt. there not Lons, LLttLe enough documented Ln PP (and Ln Much other earLLer LLterature, e.g. EE) DespLte the enthusLasM shown for the not Lon of Morat standLng, then, no satLsfactorg crLterLon for Morat standLng eMerges, or Ls Ln ctear sLght, Ln PP - or Lt eLsewhere It remaLns to be denonstrated that there Ls a stabLe, seens. non-arbttrarg context-LnvarLant notLon of MoraL standLng worth pursuLng. Rather the notLon tends to force awkward choLces (e.g. those offered Ln PP on p.S.) The for reason the needs what cost-benefLt LMperatLves be to Looked at presuppose a Morat Ln appLLcatLons assessments, (whLch thLs dLffLcuLt notLon, that does no present Lt wouLd decLsLvetg Ls evLdent enough: usefuL work, space, about enthusLasM and deLLMLt of the categorLcaL of deLLMLtatLons behLnd proposed some notLon, for Lnstance use of the dLstLnctLon to reduce the humanLstLc/chauvLnLstLc foLd (partLg moraL ). MoraL standLng Ls not a MoraLLg bg use of the term achLeved Ls search unLverse, usuaLLg of persons), and so Morat search space towards the confLnes of the thLs MoraL confLLct Lssues, utLLLtarLan forth. There are as weLL More sLnLster uLterLor purposes appLLcatLons the neutraL notLon, but a fraMework and cuLturaLLg dependent one; hence some of Lts LLmLtatLons. ConsLder standLng moraL Lnstead of work, Lnstead of straLghtforward pragmatLcs, what supposed to confer or remove? It Ls assumed that Lf X has moraL standLng (m-s) then moraL agents have presumptLve obLLgatLons, and dutLes to X, e.g. Let to Lt theg otherwLse not atone, do not to confLne Lt or underMLne Lts Lnterests; but (cf-p.3-p.tt). Or, to put Lt the other wag around, thLng has m-s Lt Ls entLtLed to conttnued exLstence, pursuLt of whereas Lf Lacks m-s, Lt Lt does not have thLs protectLon, 3 Lnstead there Ls entLtLement to Lnterfere wLth Lt . def Ln Lt Lon of moraL standLng ... Lf somethLng weLL-beLng Just does not LtseLf moraLLg count Lts Lf a Lnterests, Lt does not count, .... Indeed, so Lt Ls Lacks (p.t+). The moraL saLd, standLng, defLnLtLon Bg Lts however deLLvers no such resuLt; a further LmpLausLbLe assumptLons, (reductLon of weLght to weLL-beLng, equaLLtg condLtLons for countLng) from an underLgLng moraL wLthout pLcture of assessment are LmpLLcLtLg Lncorporated (a utLLLtarLan pLcture where Ltems m-s are dLscounted, and trade-offs contempLated, p.16). -6- of Ltems wLth m-s are soon �Such appLication an if division; accordingtg LmpLies an unfortunate aLL-or-nothing item is tn tt gets (carefut) constderatton, otherwise Lt gets nothing - exacttg what the Legat anatogg impLies: a proper heartng Lf be and otherwise nothtng. Hhat this bLack-and-white division shoutd standing contrasted with ts not removaL of att distinctions, but rather a wore sophisticated ethicat such tgpoLogg, that of the annutar picture (of EE, p.107 and DC, p.2). The as tgpoiogg is based on a Listing of ethicaiLg re Levant such as having vaiue, weLL-being, appropriate p.!2).^ the character aLL-or-nothing from at Least Modified becomes evident of various (e.g. p.5) to keep it afLoat, e.g. duties capacities, so and and forth; to moraL standing distinctions soon duties) (direct to needs be introduced as opposed to (indirect, and perhaps derivative, duties). The wain strategg regarding duties autonomg, and postuLates and princ ip Les are geared to these (cf. aLso PP ethicaL That preferences, features adopted in PP to save the aLL-or-nothing context-independent boundarg consists in appeaL to the speciaLLg-adjusted notion of presumptive duties. MoraL standing is assumed to be necessarg and sufficient for presumptive duties: specificaLLg PSI. floraL agents iff But have a presumptive dutg to X has moraL standing (this takes up the content of signposted item 1, p.t*.). presumptive are duties even more prone to be bg upset circumstances than the oider prima facie duties (which the notion the notion overriding expands); standing, p.S), the forged connections things than without much too simpLe, as wiLL are for appear. FirstLg, a more comptex cLassification of things is required purposes so operates even more as a theorg-saving device. But even as so hedged around, and so extended (bg derivative duties, duties regarding moraL decentLg] X [to treat it moraLLg moraL a hard division into moraL countabLes and others, a nonarbitrarg cLassification such as that of the annutar picture. SecondLg, rights and duties, which the notion of moraL standing is supposed to bound. Link rather with vaLue, and extent of vaLue (see SM). Much of the importance ascribed to moraL standing or moraL consideration comes from confLating it with vaLue consideration, which is in turn equated with having some (non-negLigibLe) vaLue, bearing account, and counted, perhaps (if sometimes that wouLd be taken into in ang compLete vaLue assessment. Though moraL attributes are evidentLg a subcLass commonpLace vaLue of surprising, vaLue as attributes, e.g. in the confiation CaLLicott). is Possessing intrinsic or inherent vaLue is even offered sometimes as an aLternative to moraL status (cf. PP, p.16 fn 3); but more often the confusion is Less bLatant. Indeed PP begin bg warning us about sLipperiness (fn 3), soon stides itsetf from m-s to intrinsic vaLue with their being evident, and considerabLe, (p.S) and before Long has identified moraL standing of things vaLuabte prove in damaging. Goodpaster themseLves Towards Lapses (p.I6). Such equations are not the end of his essag, on being moraLLg from -7- moraL considerabiLitg into �that Hag that natters for ctains wade. For exanpte, Ln vatue-for-itsetf, psgchotogicat or hedonLstLc capacities sophLstLcated unnecessaritg seen Lt Ls true when Lt cones to Locating the ntnLnaL condLtLons for sonethLng s deserving to be Lts for vatued own (p.320); sake Lt not so obvious that theg are too but sophLstLcated for the capture of norat consLderabLLLtg. R sLnLLar conftatLon at work Ln Goodpaster s hgpothesis that that there Ls a nonaccLdentaL affLnLtg between a person s or a socLetg s conceptLon of and vatue ontg — consLderabLLLtg to appears obtaLn where vatue Ls unreduced (LLLLcLtg) contracted to a range where norat considerations enter; for exanpte tn Goodpaster's sotitarg LLLustration, the setting is hedonisn (when as where, of conceptLon Lts (p.3t*). The affLnLtg — nore than accLdentat for vatue and noraL consLderabLLLtg vatue Ls no doubt norat considerabititg Ls, so far as norat natters are attowed to enter, characteristicattg bounded at botton bg sone sentience criterion). The biocentric criterion for norat considerabititg that Goodpaster Leaps to (p.313) has itsetf to be differenttg Looked at if exchanged for vatue-in-itsetf. For Life is point even norat the obvioustg Less stopping vatue consideration. Rssune, for instance, that Wars or the Moon has for estate no [significient] Life. Theg stitt have vatue; indeed theg nag have reat vatue verg chauvinistic vatue "neasure ) now that theg are beconing hunantg (a accessibte nining, residentiat and other transfiguring purposes). Suppose (for further, what is not at att untiketg, that sgstens natch that Moon the has fornations sone shoutd be the that thensetves, into account in ang environnentat inpact assessnent of taken projects interfering with parts of the Moon. But insist or naturat nonunents of the Rnerican arid Lands. It is a the defensible ctain, these dags, that the Moon nonunents have vatue in which is considerabititg Lt woutd be LnptausLbte to Moon nonunents are norattg considerabte; for theg are not the right sorts of things (as a natter of significance) to have noraL attributes. It is just not the feature of having intrinsic vatue that shoutd be separated fron that of having norat status. Sone of the circte have suggests different sone exanpte, For connotations. notions beLng Ln noraL the consLderabLe norat dinension, sone weight to be taken into account, suitabte not neretg sone retevance. Consideration atso characteristicattg requires the iten in question has interests or at Least a such tetos), an that agent discussion-setting can phrase be deserves norat weLL-being towards considerate notions are deptoged that wag (eg. p.31 does norat retevance, R different get nere artifacts are norattg etc., dependent, quarrg that (a Goodpaster s Rnd nornattg the notion do presunabtg nornattg woutd not. Nor, not it erroneoustg, reLevant on occasions (for sinitar reasons norat significance differs fron standing). MoraL retevance renains context Like that another different notion sonetines equated with norat standing (e.g. PLuhar p.^7), though since does nornattg an organisn'; PP p.3 inpose these Linitations, e.g. those of awe, respect, appear, (as or consideration ). certain organisns'; and in Goodpaster's Leap.) woutd norat an etusive, has evaded contenporarg norat phitosophers of -8- �high standing, despite Much effort put Lnto other chase. the however, Since these are not goLng to be put to serLous work - Most of theM are, Like notLons MoraL standing, better MothbaLLed or - scrapped we qutetLg can bgpass the vaiue the nuances and differences. CertaLnLg MoraL considerations and vaiue interconnect, wider notion and Moraiitg, if wag theg inportant in which not at derivative, Least with R dependent. Most connect is through LiMitat ions on interference. MoraLitg preciudes the gross reduction of vaLue. LittLe R More preciseLg, a actor is not norMaLLg entitLed to interfere deLiberateLg in such a wag as MoraL to reduce signifLeantLg overaLL vaLue (or risk the various possibiLitg of such reduction^). But exact forMuLation of such noninterference princ ip Les is a sensitive Matter MainLg because deontic principLes do not excLude soMe vaLue, provided it is sufficientLg Linited - a Matter to which we of reduction - shaLL be obLiged to return. Bg contrast with MoraL considerabiLitg, and standing Like, the vaLue notions are fundaMentaL, and not at aLL easiLg avoided, even bg anti-Moraiists, in the regions of environMentat ethics.^ SoMe of the anaiogue notions are however, e.g. a thing warrants vaLue consideration iff it has vaLue; it triviaL is of vaLue reLevance iff it has nonnegiigibte vaLue circuMstances); the (in Even so the ana Logue notions heLp in shifting the issues and showing where the reaL prob ten Lies with the group of MoraL notions, naneig in what Makes soMething Morai. It this notion too that has induced the unwarranted narrow ing of focus, to chauvinistic concerns. For a coMMonp Lace answer, certainig wrong, to what deternines what is MoraL is: hunan concerns. Rather, etc. what is MoraL has to do with interest-independent vaLue and with a certain iMpartiaLitg and Lack of discrininations (i.e. in More oLd-fashioned forMs, with justice and goodness), features refLected fornaLLg in suitabLe universaLizabiiitg of principie.^ So conceived, MoraL Matters do not terMinate at narrower certain ethicaL tgpes, which excLude the wider environnent. The width of concern wouLd be better revested bg repLacing ethicaL*. equivaLent ethics a of (For coMparison, rec Lass ification as consider "environMentat bg MoraL its originaL the effect in environMentat MoraLs" environMentat or Moratitg"). $2. Rgainst environMentaLLg-restrictive rights packages. EthicaL standing does not striettg get or grant a thing rights. Standing gets an iteM door for hearing. a hearing; in an ethicaL it Mag, or Mag not, be conceded or granted rights in the Rights inpLg sone standing, but not vice versa; sone standing is even, if gou Like, a proper part of a right. MhiLe such an equation is not Much excuse for identifging standing and rights (short assuMption that of the astonishing but prevaLent aLL reLations are identities), stiLL too often the differences are giossed over, having MoraL rights is equated with having MoraL standing �The stoppage between the notions Goodpaster exptoits (p.3I8) CaLLicott). (e.g. Ln converting conditions on having rights into conditions (expioitation consideration free not exersibie rights is Much Less piausibie for Underneath consideration). MoraL these equations and conventions Lie important assunptions; triviaL MoraL deserving since wh3t is piausibie for costs, of for just not the More that what has a status therebg has a right, for instance to get in one but the ethicaL door, consideration are assuMption the rendered that equivaLent having and rights standing or a coMMon Middie terM, such as through having interests, being capabLe of being represented, being abLe to benefit. For exaMpte, an iteM has MoraL standing (or deserves MoraL consideration) iff it has iff it has (or even have) rights. (or can have) interests, i.e. iMpiicit appear but (with Minor Such equations quaLifications) in Goodpaster, and exp Lie it etsewhere, for a wide notion if "interests" extending to aLL Living things; but Much More coMMontg theg appear (e.g. as in Freg) for a verg Much More restricted of (huManoid) interest. notion If such fauLtg equations did hoLd, what has been said against MoraL standing wouLd appLg to that extend aiso against rights. But theg do not, and rights require More independent investigation. contrast Bg with anti-Moratists, who wouLd reject (MoraL) rights taLk and institutions aitogether, and with Mang utiLitarians, who view notion of considerabte suspicion at Least, it wiLL be argued, in g passing, that rights are aLrcght . The chief targets for criticisM wiLL be (MoraL) rights with certain unduLg narrow theories rights, of which wouLd have, if theg stood, decidedLg unfavourabLe environMentat consequences. RLthough for which he has iLLegitiMateig bagged the titie view, Regan's particuLar the rights view (as if an aniMat rights supporter had to adopt his sort of view), is verg far froM the attention, worst of these theories, it is worth singLing out for speciaL it has score heaviLg been proMoted since in environMentat ethics Literature and it does exceedingig weLL, coMpared with its usuaL chauvinistic rivaLs, in certain areas of Major environMentat concern, such as the (Mis-)treatMent of aniMats. R theorg of rights a coMprises representation (in the fashion of other package, which can be given fornaL theories) genetic as containing the foLLowing coMponents: D. a definition of a right, and P. further postuLates (perhaps independentLg argued for) deLiMiting rights. Rs MatheMaticaL exaMpLes (such as those of vector space and categorg) reveaL there is a good deat of stippage between D ord inarg usage controts and P. But because of the More on phiLosophicaL theories, onLg so Much in the wag of postuLates can be puMped into the definitions offered. The package aLso coMMontg includes as weLL 0. a set of canonicaL forMS into which aLL (nondiscarded) rights Locutions or cases can be put, and perhaps aLso (with ground prepared through C) R. a set of reduction scheMes for eiiMinating transLation, reduction ruLes, etc. -10- rights Locutions, e.g. bg �The of rLghts advocated bg Regan convenLentLg Lends theory partLcuLar LtseLf to separatLon Lnto these components, as weLL as suggestLng genetLc such breakdown. It begLns wLth a neat defLnLtLon of rLght drawn from HLLL, accordLng to whLch a rLght Ls, roughLg, a vaLLd (or suffLcLent) cLaLm whLch socLetg shouLd It guarantee. Ls coup Led wLth a serLes of prLncLpLes or postubates, each gLven some Lndependent support, of whLch the most basLc Ls the rLght of and treatment. respectfuL to patLents canonLcat RLthough expLLcLtLg addressed, one does emerge, whLch takes the form to [not] , where - onLg rLghts-hotder on the theorg, but Lt X[s] of The rLght as for Lnstance not Ln to permtts (the pLuraLLsatLon partLcuLar to some sort of utLLLtarLan anatgsLs, Ls strongLg resisted the rLghts vLew features onto LndLvLduaLs). FLnaLLg reductLon of rLghts, Ln back dLstrLbutLng context not are The basLc form Ls sLnguLar, appLgLng to LndLvLduaLs, who are the harm . LncLuded forms Lntroduces an LnfLnLtLvaL ctause LndLcatLng a tgpe of to actLon or actLvLtg. The cLauses mag be negated, unduLg agents moraL has a LLttLe more thLs LrreducLbLe the Ls Lt poLnt, (Ln rLghts vLew as opposed to a mot Leg arrag of reduct LonLstLc posLtLons, wLth 'the' sLgnLfgLng a coLLectLve.) be UhLLe Regan s rLghts package wLLL crLtLcLsed, Ln sLgnLfLeant rejected, through Lts varLatLon a dLfferent rLghts theorg wLLL emerge. respects Some of the crucLaL prLncLpLes Regan arrLves at depend theg and heavLLg upon - though do not foLLow from - defLnLtLon of rLght(s) he defends. Hnd severaL of the unnecessarLLg restrLctLve features of the vLew do fLow from eLaboratLon of thLs defLnLtLon, Ln partLcuLar the LLmLtatLon of rLghts to certaLn LndLvLduaL thLngs, to anLmaLs. It Ls Lmportant then to begLn wLth, and hard to avoLd, the certaLn Lssue of defLnLtLon. To ground the varLant defLnLtLon and theorg of rLghts to be reached fLrmLg Ln usage, consLder fLrst the maLn reLevant sense^' of rLght (to) gLven bg the Oxford EngLLsh DLctLonarg, vLz. 11.7 JustLfLabLe cLaLms, on LegaL or grounds, to have or obtaLn some thLng, or to act Ln a certaLn wag. of gLven rLghts sLmLLar core: hLm the Ln bg MLLL (whLch of ... account Regan cLaLms to endorse, p.369.) contaLns a a person s rLght ....[Ls] a vaLLd cLaLm upon socLetg possessLon The moraL somethLng socLetg to protect ought to defend...', MLLL provtdes, however, an Lmportant Lnsurance or cover cLause, as to who Ls supposed to cover the cLaLm, whLch the OED account does whLch Regan after a brLef dLscussLon aLso correctLg omLts (begLnnLng p.270). That Ls, rLght not LncLude, and quLckLg contracts to the Less than adequate vaLLd cLaLm; but the force of MLLL s Lnsurance cover Ls supposed to foLLow, prLmarLLg Ln vLrtue of what Ls pushed Lnto the Ldea of a cLaLm. Rs Lt turns out, Regan, now features of rLghts LmLtatLng FeLnberg s Lt does foLLow, but not Ln that wag. trLcks, trLes to puLL substantLve out of the notLon of a cLaLm. But the notLon does not bear the weLght theg trg to Lmpose upon Lt; a stronger rope Ls needed for -11- such acts �than ciaim can suppig. The cruciai act, which tries to read anticipated features of the notion of riqht into that of ciaim, faiis at the outset: is entitied to treatment of a certain kind is to assert that someone... ... To wake a ciaim and that the treatment is due or owed directig to the individuai ... in question. To a make individuais, ciaim thus, invoives both ciaims-to and ciaims-against... (p.271). Such an anaigsis of making a ciaim imports much the that ordinarg notion does not support, nameig, in the first piace, that it invoives or asserts entitiement, entitiement to treatment of a certain sort, secondig, that it is a transaction between individuais^, thirdig, that the imputed treatment is owed it is a ciaim-against given individuais. But in making directig to the ciaimant, such ciaims as that one has visited Mount Rthos, has seen the iark ascend, at tea one sunset, doing ang of those things in ang straightforward not is sense. There is nothing significant due or owed, directed at other took individuais in the the demanding assertions wag, or at need not be aii; and no entitiement to speciai treatment is asked for. Ciaim is a transitive verb, so it as requires weii as subjects, ciaimants, objects, ciaims, propositionai items tgpicaiig introduced bg or 'to . Someone who makes a that ciaims ciaim that something or to (have or have done) something. But that is aii. Onig some ciaims are directed against others, onig some ciaims are entitiements. Rnd if is it ciaims that are entitiements that are to be distinguished, it wouid be better to start with entitiements (cf McCioskeg). Just such a fresh start wiii be made, in the first stage of modification of the definitions OED integration and it with Miii's definition. Upon of separating off iegai rights (which Regan correctig distinguishes in prettg much the standard wag, p.267), the foiiowing then resuits: M2. Vaiid entitiement, on morai grounds, to something (of a correct categorg). The changes (from 11.7) deserve some justification. Firstig, or have obtain or something, characteristic fiii to to in act a certain "justifiabie justifiabie to (to) something , iogicaiig adds iittie content. For each something entaiis and mag to be entitiement ciaims sufficient, ent ireig warrant vaiid. from Thirdig, and ang case entitiing ones, and that in are i.e. dubious ciaims-against preconceptions, without be regarded appears most need not ciaim restrict to on but aiso the ciaim because make or the sheds unduig and expected ciass of rights havers or haver of a it, but it is hard to escape the assumption that if something has a ciaim then it shouid be the sort of thing potentiaiig?) important entitiement hoiders, what can have or ho id rights, to ciaimants. Of course the right as grounds morai ciaim , not mereig for the reasons given, that improves upon invoived an sort of justification, which as it turns out is not fuiig some adequate, can be given, whereas for a right the derivation has converseig an entitiement to have something. Secondig, is not strong enough; a ciaimed entitiement if (To) phrase wag , which gives the of the sorts of entitiement is an entitiement to something, entitiement the stake that ciaims. Thus use of the term -12- can ciaim (at ieast makes it an �even tougher uphiLL struggLe to work the powerfut rights medicine on behatf of wttd animats and wiLde messes. Of course too, what cLaims are wade coutd be wade through indirectLg, representatives; the tern but representatives" suggests verg easiig that rights havers have interests to be represented. Opportunitg wake the to interests" shouid not be afforded rights" to dubious inference from bg the basic definition; and "entitLement" gives appropriate distance. R Lot hangs on choice of basic (as then terms other in chaiienging phiiosophicai areas, such as the fundamentsLs of reasoning), even if it seems to right' newcomers, as it does to dictionaries, that entitLement cLaim' and are more or Less interchangeabLe (each is characterised in standard dictionaries partLg in terms of the others) tautoLogous. and expticative satisfactorg UeLL, Like definitions that M2 definitions virtuaLLg are are but anaLgtic, preferabLg not trivaLLg circuiar, eLse informativeness is sacrificed. R weakness of the entitLement account (hard to credit after Regan's attack upon it) is that it risks the Latter. Mhat is needed in pLace of entitLement, putative entitLement' expression, right , i.e. it a since doesn t a becomes an entitLement, or right, when vaLiditg is that appropriateLg estabLished, and so on. From this angLe, better something, is write in To vaLiditg. avoid a is sLightLg a reaL or supposed to amounts sometimes cLaim cLaim' these probLems with avaiiabie terminoiogg, there is a case for coining a rather immediate expression basic definition something, R vaLid in that something (after fiLL to into in M2) and avoid disappearance of the VaLid something, on to something , which couLd embrace Lots of items other than rights). term suitabie entitLement, titiement ; is which a or a is titiement aLLeged or putative mag or mag not be correctLg vaLidated, en-ed (cf. titLe *6. That which justifies or substantiates a cLaim; a aLLeged (e.g. vacuitg quant ificationaL recognised right', Const, with cLaimed .) R titiement is a transformation ground inf. of a or right; of to, suitabie hence, an of the thing in, deontic principLe, cat Led a susta in ing principLe. For instance, the form It is mostig permissibie [for X] to R , where suitabie, gieLds the titiement form There is a titiement [for X] R . Requirements for what conditions objects (Rs) and suitabiLitg, subjects (Xs) shouLd satisfg, are investigated in what foLLows. Before trging for a mark-3 definition of right (to), MiLL, as interpreted bg Regan (pp.270-1). MiLL titiements are to be vaLidated: depend on compLiance its independentLg estabLished' the vaLiditg of with (p.270), derivation from these correct moraL stack, the vaguer a right (to) moraL principLes us return a right, whose correct that he beiieves, takes up, must have been vaLiditg principLes. to as to how provides...guidance princ ip Les i.e. Let It is the removing the "moraL grounds" (cf. M2 and 11.7). Then in the mark-3 version, is a M3. VaLid titiement, from correct moraL principLes, appropriate) item. The LogicaL form is aLmost immediate: -13- to some (categoriaLLg �H3S. premLsses correct worst prtncLpLes SustaLnLng prtnctpLe as to R vaLLd dertvatton cone Lus con There Ls a tttLement to R RssumLng evergthtng Ls Ln order Ln the scheme H3S, the inference to a rLght-to R Ls then LmmedLate, bg f13. The whoLe pattern Ls at once duLg reLatLvLsabLe to suLtabLe havers. Thus X has a rLght to R Lff X has a tttLement, vaLLd Trow correct woraL prtncLpLes, to R, somethtng that a suLtabLe reLatLvLsed derLvatLon wag estabLLsh. candLdates The fLLL to R provLde a famLLLar LLst, e.g. out freedom from unnecessarg sufferLng, respectfuL treatment, satLsfg sound LLfe, needs, support, rewarding work, a fatr go, etc.. Bg no means aLL of these candLdates can be vaLLdated, wLthout at Least severaL basLc restrLct the quaLLftcatLon, consLderabLe and categorg of subjects, L.e. the LogLcaL sort of Ltem that can have the purported tttLement. Such a scheme, as f13S not (whLLe entLretg wLthout adequate eLaborated notLon of tLtLement) both enabLes further features of and revests much about rtghts. derLved important addttLon to the deftnLtLon of ought to protect can hoLders, be regards as correct moraL rLght , of a requLrement and therefore rLghts, to Lnsure protectLon, dLffuse correLatLve dutLes 3pptg prtncLpLes, to Ls no doubt Ls thus a consequentLaL over vaLLd characterLstLc poLnt of R tLtLements. as socLetLes Lt transmLt uphoLd, feature. SLmLLarLg such obLLgatLons to uphoLd rLghts are not feature from thetr character. In parttcuLar, the FeLnberg-Regan cLaLm-agaLnst component of thetr proposed anaLgsts Ls not part of the meanLng of that soctetg that that reLevant soctettes ought to part of the deftnLtLon of rLghts, but a LogLcaLLg emergent dertvatLve be separated as a consequence; Lt Ls not (as uphoLd them. But such functors, as obLLgatLon to derLvatLons; to rtghts In the fLrst pLace, Lt shows that HLLLs dLcttonarg defLnLtLons atso LndLcate) a deftntng feature. For true duLg 3 rLght, but somethtng foLLows from the prtncLpLes sustatntng a rLght to somethtng. For Lnstance, Lf Lt Ls generaLLg permtsstbLe to LLve others, free from unnecessarg suffering then moraL agents are therebg prohtbLted from causing unnecessarg sufferLng; -14- �and prohLbLtLon the functor Ls transnLtted the down cLaLn-agaLnst certain, tgpLcaLLg unspecLfLed, norat agents R derLvatLon.^ Ls consequentLaL a feature of vaLLd tLtLenents to, transnLtted fron the sustaLnLng noraL prLncLpLe. (ThLs Ls whg Regan can aLwags easLLg nanage to fLLL out a cLaLn-agaLnst forn where a McCLoskeg ent Lt Lenent can be estabLLshed; see RR p.231). SecondLg, the schene and defLnLtLon nake Lt evLdent that seLf-evLdent puretg or rLghts. axLonatLc a aLwags defence It foLLows, then, that ang theorg rLghts bg reference to such derLvatLons. cLaLns are no For ang rLght that stands up, that connands the tLtte, has a vaLLd derLvatLon. Rnd there Ls Lags there of that seLf-evLdent rLghts (such as FIcCLoskeg s), or axLonatLc rLghts to (such as DworkLn's), and ang decLaratLons, constLtuttons or bLLL of rLghts (such as that RnerLcan) the announces seLf-evLdent rLghts, Ls nLstaken. RLghts are aLwags derLvatLve fron other parts of an ethLcaL sgsten. ThLrdLg, the theorg shows dLrectLg the "derLvatLve character" of rLghts, and hetps to LndLcate the extent of theLr eLLnLnabLLLtg. For Lf rLghts are ever to be estabLLshed, then there nust, Ln the end, be correct noraL prLncLpLes, as there are, fron whLch tLtLenents do derLve. Thus a requLrenent of ground hoLds, are rLghts and generated fron other noraL prLncLpLes, Ln partLcuLar those of pernLssLon and obLLgatLon. RLghts are derLvatLve, not Ln the sense that there Ls a precLse recLpe for transLatLng rLghts dLscourse out - ang adequate transLatLon renaLns wLthLn the rLghts cLrcLe, of entLtLenent, cLaLns, etc. - but Ln the derLvatLonaL sense, that theg derLve fron another part of the deontLc area, that argunents and JustLfLcatLons for then go back to deontLc prLncLpLes. Because of theLr nuLtLpLg derLvatLve character, rLghts are dLspensLbLe after a fashLon, and at sone cost. So theg envLronnentaL ethLcaL enterprLses. not are But Ln essentLaL absoLuteLg a strongLg for LndLvLduaLLstLc rLghts-orLented socLetg, such as the USR, where rLghts notLons (and partLcuLarLg LndLvLduaL propertg notLons) are taken verg serLousLg, Lt Ls a snart strategg to nake heavg use of then, after the node of Regan. EnvLronnentaL posLtLons can do thLs aLso, bg derLvLng approprLate tLtLenents. RLghts are not nereLg derLvatLve, because, for Lnstance, of the force theg are accorded and the rotes theg can pLag when adnLtted. Rs RnerLcan wrLters stress, rLghts are anong the weLghtLest of others (hence the Lnportance Ln a noraL consLderatLons, whLch noraL or evLronnentaL cause of obtaLnLng rLghts accredLtatLon). RLghts certaLnLg have Lnportant protectLve and rotes, of Ln persuasLve so Lnsurance sheLterLng Ltens fron powerfuL actors and Lnterests. For those sorts prLncLpLes, and truno on. argunentatLve reasons too, Lnputed rLghts are Lnportant Ln reLnforcLng gettLng others to take Ltens serLousLg, to treat then decentLg, Ln The socLaL advantages LnstLtutLonaLLsatLon of rLghts accordLngLg offers not to be taken LLghtLg or abandoned. For these sorts of reasons, too, rLghts are not superfLuous (as Freg Ls LncLLned to suggest: -15- he �aLso incLined to suggest, not aLtogether consistentLg, that there aren t ang is woraL rtghts, p.7, p.17). Granted that for Mang purposes we can proceed back Lt ts not a consequence that Me prtnctpLes froM which rtghts derive; stLLL, the can get a Long as weLL without theM, stLLL Less that there potnt no ts advantage or Set-theorettctans can get a Long without nunbers; woMen can get theM. to to aLong wtthout thetr bras, soMe of theM teLL us; nucLear reactors can get aLong wtthout doubLe shteLdtng, so Russ Lan experts used to teLL us. R fourth set of consequences of the rtghts package offered Ls that there Ls no basts for various restrtcttons wtdetg tMposed upon the having senttence, tnterest, as such etc. (a rather now rtghts, of faniLiar test). Constder tnterests ftrst, stnee an "tnterests" restr Let Lon on rights-havers Ls pervasive. Nothtng Ln the deftnttton and dertvatton schene gtven, or Ln Ln the Ln suttabLLLtg requtreMents). Yet a cruciaL theg coutd be incorporated, Ln defLntttons McCLoskeg, MiLL, ...), requtres such tnterests (though (OED, vLctnttg other preMtss the issue of whether things other than persons, aninats especiaLLg, can have rights Links rights-hoLding with interest. R tgpicaL bridge princLpLe is RI. OnLg iteMs which (can) have MoraL rights (cf. Freg, p.5). Rs Freg RI is observes, not obvious (he Later appLies a strong forM of RI, without 3ngthing Much in the wag of argunent, nonetheiess), and has had Mang with notabtg rivaLs, interests repLaced bg other candidates put up for gaining MoraL standing (rationaLitg, Language, sentience, etc. - the saMe tiresoMe List).^ How then does the interest requireMent, RI, gain its wide accreditation and grip? For an astonishing series of bad reasons (as FreedMan Ln effect brings out), 1) inc Lud ing: we Usage; speak of Ltens Lacking interests (individuaLitg, etc.) as don't possessing rights (thus Ln effect McCLoskeg). and non-usage to has be backed In fact we do, bg other consideration if arbitrariness and prejudice are to be avoided (FreedMan pp. 160-1). 2) RbgsMaL anaigses, such as TooLeg s anaLgsis of X has a right to R as to refrain fron actions that wouLd deprive hiM (again dissected bg FreedMan p.161 ff.)^ it of and coupied 3) Mistaken thenes, such as Feinberg s (drawn fron McCLoskeg) that protection of an interest, and hence [it is ciaiMed] for right it cLaiM). Must have Nothing characteristicaLLg an interest however requires afford (FreedMan, is that reasoning a right is a sonething to a have p.16^., who upsets the inferred the protection rights that of an interest; as far as the Meaning of goes it can be of a thing or a sgsteM. t*) exercising roughig if R desires X, then others are under a prina-facie obLLgation with sgnongnous have; others and Confusion of having right with right a a right (pp.162-3), or even with being abLe to cLain a right. Though these are evidentLg different, and entaitMents froM having to exercising or to cLaining evidentLg faiL, such confLations are encouraged bg easg but unwarranted transition, such as those froM having a cLaiM to Making or being abLe to Make a cLain. But, to reiterate, rights have nothing highig intiMate -16- to do with the �Mak Lng bg c La LMS of a hoLder (though no doubt an art Lou Late Maker of cLaLMS hoLds soMe advantage Ln achLevLng Lts and others cLaLns). R creature or LteM wLth cLaLMS Mag have no abLLLtg or coMpetence to Make or present theM; or be the sort of thLng that can. ^a) ContractLons of rLghts to a subcLass of rLghts, such as exercLsabLe rLghts, Lndeed Lnterest-protectLng rLghts, accountabLe rLghts, etc. Then conatLve requLreMents do foLLow (e.g. what has an exercLsabLe rLght Must presunabLg at sone stage be suLtabLg aLLve and capabLe but reLevant actLvLtg), requLreMents foLLow froM the subcLassLfLcatLon LnvoLved, not froM the such notLon of rLght. of For Lnstance, the Lnterest-protectLng aspect of tnterest-protecttng rLghts foLLows froM the Lnterest-protectLng restrLctLon, not froM the notLon of rLghts, whLch Mag serve to protect thLngs LackLng interests (especLaLLg under chauvLnLstLcaLLg-favoured hLgh redefLnLtLons of Lnterests). R reLated cLuster of poLnts appLLes to attenpts to rLghts restrLct to persons or to LndLvLduaLs, atteMpts aLso tgpLcaLLg underpLnned bg the assuMptton that what has or can have rLghts Must have Lnterests, or desLres, or a suLtabLe conatLve LLfe, or whatever. But nothLng Ln the notLon of rLghts restrLcts rLghts to persons, or to LndLvLduaLs, or persons" Ln a generous LegaL sense; nothLng restrLcts theM to LndLvLduaLs and "persons". RLL these restr Let Lons on rLght-hoLders are Lnposed, wLthout Much or suffLcLent justLfLcatLon, usuaLLg for LdeoLogLcaL reasons, such as bLockLng LegLtLMate cLaLMS on behaLf of daMaged dLsadvantaqe LteMs or sgsteMs, MerLtLng protect Lon. or �§3. and rebuiLding environMentaLLg. the rLghts vLew Deconstructing Most iMportant, Regan's sharp LiMitation of rLghts LndLvLduaL to Consider, a subjects, LLMLtatLon whLch has a Most daMaging effect on the abLLLtg of hLs rLghts vLew to cope decentLg spec Les, concernLng rare 3nd endangered (e.g. Regan s pp.395-6). prob Lens of our tines, such as those envLronnentaL Major wLth forest does restrLctLon ecosgsteMs, wLLderness, foLLow froM not even etc. hLs own defLnLtLon of a rLght, as a vaLLd ciaiM. Rather the restrLctLon Ls progressLveLg LnfLLtrated, as postuLates the concerning are eLaborated. It is not rights uniforMig inf titrated (and in other work Rgan appears to abandon restrictions to individuaLs, e.g. HP, p.32). For instance at a cLosing stage (in p.39S) RR, a arguMent against priviLeged status for rare or endangered species begins, brief because paradigMatic right-hoLders are individuaLs (In sgLLogistic extended IndividuaLs forM the arguMents runs: ParadigM3tic right-hoLders are individuaLs. not acquire ang further rights if theg beLong to rare or endangered species. do Therefore, paradigMatic right-hoLders do not so acquire further rights. So the rights view does not acknow Ledge ang priviLeged MoraL status on the part of rare endangered or species right-hoLders needn t be individuaLs, aniMais.) of so The restricted beginning after aLL, onLg the species (with a if are paradigMs MoraL the about or MeMbers species e.g., as Hutiean entities, certaintg then treated, individuaLs, at Least BoodnanesqLg). But earLier Regan view as Look undercutting the brief argunent. For siMpig consider sone further non-paradignatic right-hoLders, such as endangered species theiisetves. it Makes of announces, rights The Species are not individuaLs, and the rights view does not recognise the MoraL rights of species to is view 3ngthing rights individuaLs. (p.3S9). Thus individuaLs, whatever theg are (no characterisation is actuaLLg offered), are not MereLg the right-hoLders; paradigMatic theg right-hoLders. The More conciiiatorg paradigMatic Line gives wag to the exhaust iron-fisted thene of (p.361), according the to aLLeged individuaListic nature of MoraL rights which the notion of MoraL rights cannot be neaningfuLLg appiied other than to individuaLs (p.36I). Rs far as evergdag, MoraL and LegaL usage goes this just isn t true; there is no such categoriaL restriction. Uhg trg to iMpose such an iMpLausibLe and environnentaLLg daMaginq atoMistic restriction on a rights view? Or, siMiLarLg, on a MoraL standing view? EMending the brief arguMent awag froM anti-environMentaL ends indicates whg. a rebuiit rights view, an individuaL Mag acquire More rights, and warrant More protection, bg be Longing to an endangered group, in virtue of princ ip Les such as that significant endangered species ought to be protected. creatures wouLd hoLd different But then different rights, contradicting Regan's assuMption that aLL aniMaLs are equaL* (p.395) - at Least in rights heid, this, On but as a Matter of definition) in and basis (the of inherent vaLue'. Here is the source of the troubLe, of individuaListic restrictions, not the basic account but the adjoined equaLitg assuMptions. -18- of rights, �restriction to individuats Ls not just an optionaL extra Ln Regan s The package, that can simpig be pee Led off. rLghts appt LeatLons of super-imposed theorg, the but Ls essentLaL wLth for the given coherence a super-individuaL, such as a specLes, If postuLates. equaLLtg hetd rLghts on an equaL basts It Ls requLred not ontg Ln major Lt, composLng LndLvLduaLs the then the wouLd both have more rLghts than Lts LndLvLduaLs (those of aLL super-individuaL Lts components) and the same rLghts (cf.DE on bLocentrLc egaLitarianism; DC, Furthermore, equaLLtg assumptLons are verg heavLLg depLoged Ln foLLowing p.3S). through LmpLLcatLons of the LndLvLduaL rLghts view, where dLfferentLaL treatment of different sorts of creatures Ls repeatedLg ruLed out bg appeats to equaLLtg. IntegraL as equaLLtg assumptLons are to Regan s LndLvLduaL-rLghts view, theg are neLther part of more ordLnarg ref Leet Lons on rLghts nor part of what Ls meant bg rLghts, but addLtLonat postuLates. Theg can accordLngLg be removed, and deconstructLon on of the rLghts exactLg view thLs Ls EquaLLtg done. assumptLons concernLng moraL rLghts are supposed, Ln the fLrst pLace, to from dLrectLg dLstLnguLshLng moraL rLghts, for Lnstance unLversaLLtg features absoLute are quaLLt Les, theg do Ls aspect ref Leets and equaLLtg features (p.267). But aLL thLs "equaLLtg rLghts foLLow that (p.368). It does not come Ln degrees not foLLow that one Ltem cannot have more rLghts than another (because, e.g., of Ltems the sort of thLng Lt Ls), or therefore that aLL bund Les equaL that have have rLghts of (even baste) rLghts. Nor does equaLLtg of basLc rLghts foLLow from unLversaLLtg requLrements, but ontg a certain Ln LmpartLaLLtg treatment (often confused however wLth egatttartanLsm). equaLLtg NeLther nor assumptLons LndLvLduaLLstLc restrtctLons emerge then; and Ln fact theg do not fLgure eLsewhere Ln the anaLgsLs of rLghts To them fend we have to foLLow gLven. the text past the anaLgsLs, through to the LntroductLon of the fundamentaL respect prtncLpLe and the rLght respectfuL to treatment (p.277 ff.), where both equaLLtg and LndLvLduaLLtg enter Ln a bLg wag, both beLng imported parts of the theorg of Lnherent vaLue (and assocLated as justLce prLncLpLe) from a previous chapter. For what Ls rLght those of who have argued Ls basic the Lnherent vaLue to... respectfuL treatment (p.277), where Lnherent vaLue Ls bg def Ln Lt Lon confLned to LndLvLduaLs and somethLng aLL suLtabLg conatLve LndLvLduaLs (those subject-of-a-Life) have equaLLg. ConsLder subjects' vaLue as - what we LL caLL Lnherent LndLvLduaLs vaLue. ... aLL who have Lnherent vaLue have Lt equaLLg p.23S ff.). (pp p.37; Inherent vaLue Ls thus a theoretLcaL notLon, conforming sLmLLarLg to HR various postuLates, notabLg LndLvLduaLLtg and equaLLtg. ObviousLg the theorg of Lnherent vaLue can be varied, pLace of Lnherent vaLue, LndLvLduaL as Regan effectiveLg admits (p.362). Consider, then, Ln LnLtLaL or connate vaLue, X, or not, as foLLows: the vaLue of X, defined, for ang Ltem if ang, as an Ltem (and not as a mere receptacLe). In pLace of the equaLitg postuLated for Lnherent vaLue, Lt assumed that, for Ls ang X and Y of the same ethicaL tgpe, X and Y have the came -17- �connate vaLue. Then, white connate vaLue Ls not verg Mett characterised, Ls Lt as adequateLg specified as Lnherent V3tue, and can carrg Lts work-Load. showing Before that Let s Look at differences, and Limitations, of the notion. Mhite inherent vaLue is an aLL-or-nothing (certain affairs individual tgpes have Lt, nothing eLse does, but has zero vaLue), connate vaLue Ls not. Not that have (non-zero) connate vaLue need have equaL positive vaLue or tgpes aLL positive vaLue at aLL. DeviLs, certainLg if theg existed, wouLd negative vaLue connate disboLicainess, if (their ontoLogicaL no nonexistence proofs objects are to be beLLeved.) Connate doubt have decidedLg to adding their the existence of top connate vaLue of are vaLues somewhat thus initiaL Like LeveLs of perfection. Connate vaLue Ls, Like inherent vaLue properLg understood, at an best initiaL assignment. The assignments Like those of initiaL are probabiLLtg under a principLe of indifference (particuLarLg vaLue; connate out themseLves presumptive those of inherent vaLue invoLves a further tgpoLogg). UntiL actors, objects, sort their bg initiaL Life-stgLes, can which vaLue, then intrinsic vaLue gets cLarified; compare a be theg states worLd-Lines, posteriori a diminished as or increased receive probabiLLtg assignments. Thus too connate vaLue is not aLL that is taken into account in discerning moraL and so Ln deriving rights. Further vaLue-making or vaiue-detracting prtncLpLes, features of things which affect intrinsic vaLue are aLso reLevant. 0 criticaL question is whether connate vaLue can serve to carrg enough (not aLL, of course) of the requisite argument; in particuLar, that to a respect principLe. appears Examination to show that it can, at Least to this extent: insofar as the argument (pp.277-9) based on respectfuL fact, Ln individuat bg to item substitute connate made is principLe, principLe as aLso to repLace required, nameig resuLts defence of the modified, succeeds. It does, as inspection of the bg shows, where the the same substitutions as before. The modified principLe Looks near-anaLgtic: Ue are to treat those items which have connate that respect their connate vaLue (pp.2t+8). The modified respect wags in and presupposed argument (pp.258-60) for the modified respect principLe soon vaLue right throughout, and to verifg bg inspection that aLL detaiLs that evergthing does work as weLL, given that the modified the features of moraL rights. But it is straightforward to verifg concerning respect to inherent for work just as weLL. Minor use of some points aireadg those vaLue succeeds, so does that based instead on connate vaLue. It treatment suffices, inherent principLe appLies of course to species and sgstems, as weLL as for individuaLs, and so does the expanded right to respectfuL treatment. Much of the remainder of Regan's text can be simiLarLg reinterpreted, but again bg no means aLL.15 (Limitations of space, time, and energg preciude a fuLLer de- and re-construction). Some initiaL indication onLg of the expanded environmentaL rights theorg offered. But it which repLaces the moraL rights view wiLL be is important to observe right awag, that mang of the goats of -20- �the anLmaL rights Movement, as Regan conceives Lt Largetg intact under the expanded rLghts theorg (e.g. can PP,p.32), perhaps (minus remain totaLitg the cLaims), for instance, the theme of aboLition of the use of animats Ln scLence. But not aLL the further postulates of Regan's rLghts view remain intact, most notabLg that of vegetarianism, which Ls not a consequence of themes of rLghts movement. Nonethe Less? animat the rLghts view hotds that the LndLvLduaL h3s a dutg to Lead a vegetarian Mag of LLfe supererogatorg; Lt (p.351,p.3^.6) to thLs permLssLbLe Ls vegetarianism Ls (p.39!+); But (p.3^6). obLLgatorg' cone Lus Lon the appear to most the arguments the not Ls Lt that Ls estab LLsh not to consume the products of commercLaL animat agrLcuLture (LncLudLng Since the anLmaL Lndustrg routLneLg presumabLg eggs and pureLg bread sausages). vLoLates the rLghts of these anLmaLs, for the reasons Ls Lt given, wrong to purchase Lts products. That Ls whg, on the rLghts view, vegetarLanLsm Ls moraLLg obLLgatorg, (p.3SI,LtaLLs added). Rs an argument to vegetarLanLsm (a vegetarLan beLng, one who abstaLns from anLmaL food, and LLves on veqatabLe food, and, '16 ----usuaLLg eggs, mitk, etc ), the argument Ls a major nonsequLtur (Likewise the argument, p.3^.6)^\ For there are mang wags of obtaLnLng anLmaL food whLch do not LnvoLve commercLaL anLmaL agrLcuLture or commercLaL practLces (the no proper of focus Regan's sLnce attach, such practLces tgpLcaLLg dLsrespectfuL and insensitive use and rLghts vLoLatLons). Examp Les of practLces huntLng-gatherLng LLfestgLes, of doubt Lead LncLude to the the gardenLng cuLtures of the Pie Lanes La and PoLgnesia, of subsLstence farmLng and of some of the new communes. Regan's further argument (Lt wouLd be unfaLr to stick hLm wLth the awfuL page 3nd 351 with eatLng dogs) commLts hLm, moreover, to the moraL LmproprLetg of (as these extensive tradLtLonaL LLfestgLes weLL as mtnor ones), newfangLed Lnsofar as theg LnvoLve the kiLLLng of pLgs and fLsh and occasLonaL wLLdLLfe and so R chLef reason gLven Ls that on. end theLr LLves are brought to an untLmeLg antmaLs' (e.g. p.39^.). But suppose, to dLspose fLrst of strLct tLme has come, vegetarLanLsm, that or, more straLghtforwardLg, that theg are aLreadg dead. Mhat precLudes respectfuL use? Rn expanded rLghts theorg does not entaLL vegetarLanLsm - ang more connected theorLes, such as aLL that consLderatLon, or rLvaL theorLes such as restrLctLons, wLthout further Large sent Lent utLLLtarLanLsm, are Longer no sentient or entaLL moraL deserve such dLetarg assumptLons. For there are mang tgpes of circumstance where Lt Ls perfectLg permLssLbLe to which beLngs than eat dead creatures, things which wLLL not now attain sentience (as DC exp Lains and argues). The more probLematic area Ls not that of consuming what is aLreadg dead, but of causing prematureLg, Ln order death (or, to a Lesser extent, Letting die) to achieve that option or, to gieLd it as a bg-product. For this appears to infringe rights to Life and LLveLihood and to vioLate moraL standing of creatures interfered with so drasticaLLg. Rppears to. For even ethicaL theorLes that now concede various rLghts to -21- �anLmaLs bauLk anLmaLs. Rnd at for sone patLents, Papuans the rLghts extensive to LLfe and LLveLhood to own vLew provLdes, Ln the categorLaL dLstLnctLon between Regan's noraL agents and moraL treatment, such admLttLng ground of treatment dLfferentLaL further and pLgs, a peopLe dLstLnctLon Ln whLch Regan hLmseLf takes refuge when pressed. Regan s dLfferentLaL justLfgLng for So how tLght Ls Ln partLcuLar when reconsLdered as appLgLng agaLnst arguMent, tradLtLonaL LLfestgLes rather than agaLnst modern commercLaL practLces? The buLk of the crucLaL argument ff.) dLd not treat resources. Nor dLd theg (p.3{+^); receptacLes does sLmpLg cuLtures tradLtLonaL renewabLe (p.3t*3 appLg. not anLmaLs just as resources, stLLL Less as as anLmaLs treat Lnstruments mere excLude some kLLLLng of anLmaLs - or do theg? It wouLd seem that of tradLtLonaL unLLke peopLes, provLsLon (p.3t*3), are prLncLpLe dubLous admLtted commercLaL under derLved supposedLg who farmers Regan's from prLncLpLe LLbertg respect prLncLpLe, p.332). R the LncLudLng fundumentaL respect prLncLpLe LtseLf. On a straLght readLng requLres whLch that treatment creatures of vaLue Lnherent are however Some excLuded. Ls not of for prLncLpLe, the countervaLLLng respectfuL No excLuded. LnfrLnged because a creature of Lnher- nt vaLue persLst, come what mag. There use Ls respectfuL of the kLnd of vatue theg have (p.277), such uses of anLmaLs are not wLth a (p.331, stgLe of better tradLtLonaL practLces Ls excLuded under the more the Ln practLces the vLoLate the respect crLtLcaL quest Lon Ls whether the respectfuL use of anLmaLs, food, Papua, pLgs before kLLLLng. CarefuL, respectfuL practLces do not exchanged often or consLder the respectfuL treatment of mang hunter-gatherer groups Ln aborLgLnaL RustraLLa, or the practLces of gardenLng peopLes Ln who Large and Bg does rLghts are therebg a acquLre not Ln LndLctLons Lnterference rLght text Regan s to (and eLsewhere Ln hLs "preservatLon prLncLpLe") whLch wouLd go far towards sustaLnLng the vegetarLan concLusLons he faLLs to reach, and therebg to ruLLng tradLtLonaL the bLoconatLvLst assumptLons that Lt Ls LLfestgLes LnadmLssLbLe. Such are aLwags wrong to destrog LLfe (verg specLat cLrcumstances apart perhaps), that Lt Ls never permLssLbLe to reduce vaLue catastrophLcaLLg the wag that LLfe anLmaLs brLnqtrg to an untLMeLg end does. But Ln fact Regan does not endorse such prLncLpLes, strongLg rejectLng prLncLpLes LLke the pacLfLst prLncLpLe use or harmfuL destructLve wLth LncompatLbLe bLoconatLvLst the vLoLence "LLbertg" assumptLons, no (p.287); prLncLpLes matter as Lnterpreted. dLffLcuLt how wouLd maxLMLae never to bLoconatLvLsm appears Lndeed to NonetheLess, LLve bg, are hLghLg appeaLLng to mang ethLcaL pacesetters and theorg desLgners, especLaLLg who an to mang vaLue. But theg throw the whoLe naturaL order Lnto ethLcaL dLsorder; predatLon, fuLL terrLtorLaL defence and mang other commonpLace naturaL happenLngs are thrown Lnto ethLcaL doubt or MorLd magbe a Ls not verg rendered LnadmLssLbLe. ilagbe The RequLred the wag Lt surprLsLngLg Ls (LesLLe's thesLs) after aLL; dLfferent predator-free sLn-eradLcated RequLred, where V3tue j^s maxLmLzed? -22- post-naturaL worLd Ls �$4.' Ti'tt'eMsnts and substantiaL prob tews. tivehood: and predation, territoriatitg other the dust that status-quo-supporting phiiosophers Despite have raised, there is no doubt, tooking through the ctoud, but that * Rnimats have various interests, mang of then of the human as those of instance, sustenance, survivat, sex, species, sheiter (see for animats, sort sane e.g. RR, PR). * Rnimats have various For exampte, theg have, in the same wag that rights. humans do, a right to iive free from unnecessarg suffering, and from excessive interference. these ciaims are substantiaitg independent (having interests is Logicaitg Mhite neither necessarg nor sufficient significant connections, inasmuch rights), having for as rights are nonethetess protect permissibie there to serve worthwhiie interests which more powerfui operators, such de-foresters, as mag otherwise override or ignore. There is no doubt, furthermore, that present human practices sgstematicaLLg infringe animai rights, especiatig those tied to their interests. For exampie, much animai suffering. causes experimentation unnecessarg quite there is a powerfui case for changing these practices (compare Thus and contrast Freg p.t*.), a case both enhanced, and easier obtain to positive action upon, bg the due admission of relevant rights. Rttainment of the sorts of sociai protection the widespread admission of rights can iead to shouid not be underestimated, in the wag it is bg utiiitarians and anti-moraiists. Granted animats have rights, some of them higher humans rights nohumans, widespread a have, main animats phenomenon of predation, a par with those that question (pace Freg) concerns which outstanding particutartg, on have. Because especiatig of the essential to the continued tivetihood of mang creatures, the issue can took tike an exceedingtg difficult one (and one comes to grief upon). There are undoubtedtg serious confticts of interest Regan induced through the phenomenon, some of them unavoidable as when a herbivore s interest in continued existence ctashes with a carnivore s interest in continued sustenance, avoidabte others as in human Predation is not of course the ontg source of territoriatitg, slaughter of whates and dotphins. serious conflict of interests; for instance, C3n atso iead to serious encounters, particutartg in situations of expanding poputations (thus too the issues are connected). Such matters as predation, territoriatitg and population been converted into increase serious prob terns bg mistaken atomistic views of vaiue and associated excessive ciaims as to rights. Removing these defective the but integral part much of atomistic non-utititarian positions such as Regan's, hotds that vaiue (or utititg) is a feature, at bottom, of atomistic as themes probtematic. The vatue theorg involved, tgpified bg utilitarianism reduces an have individuats, that those items items such (constituting the base ctass) have a fixed -23- �(equaL) vaLue whLLe theg persist, which Ls not substitutibLe for and that vaLues (derived) Ls ecosystems, of whaLes additive an simpLy functLon the of aLLenabLe, such structures, organised and or atoms as Lt. within CharacteristicaLLg aLso theses of maximization and preservatLon of present vaLue are incorporated Lnto the theorg. On such assumptions, predatLon and LnvoLve a reductLon Ln vaLue, at Least Ln the shorter tern, and so a infringing path, and maximization preservatLon enhances the prob Lens bg postuLating a rLght to has that LndLvLduaL (Lnherent) LnLtLaL to everg simiLarLy woraL exLstence (and vaLue suboptimaL The rights view desLderata. contLnued Like the considerabLLitg posLtLons add to the dLffLcuLtLes). But the assumptions LnvoLved shouLd be removed. Both the wag the probLems are generated fron the assumptions, and the reasons for revising the vaLue eLsewhere than which are wore LncLude sun the of predators, theLr LndLvLduaL escaLation The the of theg though components, be hLghLg vaLuabLe Ln theLr own rLght, wLth mag LLves of herbLvores substituted for wLthtn vaLue. detaLL Ln the Breen SerLes, especLaLLg OC ^). Host important, ecosystems, (Ln tgpLcaLLg expLaLned are assumptions, the through probLems wLthout system, reductLon of theorLes deserves, rights however, some eLaboratLon. R serLous cLash of Lnterest, as between carnLvores and herbLvores, fortunateLg does not therebg Lnduce an imcompatibLLLtg rLghts, of unLess too Lnterests are eievated to rLghts. But just thLs appears to happen when the many extensLve (but not LnvarLabLe) Lnterests of LLvLng creatures exLst are sharpLg upgraded to unquaLLfLed rLghts to LLfe (a Ln contLnuLng mistaken to eLevatLon that Ls common Ln ethLcaL thought). The rLght to LLfe of a success Lon of gnus Ls LnfrLnged bg LLon whLch aLso has a rLght to sustenance to sustaLn Lts LLfe. a MLth the advance of technoLogg Lt wouLd now be possLbLe cases of to Lnterfere some Ln predatLon, e.g. that of the remaLnLng Large carnLvores, to uphoLd gnu rLghts , bg switchLng the carnLvores to an appropriate vegetarian dLet (and, to avoLd cuLLLng, our spLended contraceptLve technoLogg couLd be appLLed hoLd to gnu popuLatLon Ln check). But to deaL wLth aLL cases of predatLon and assocLated issues in these bizarre sorts of wags Ls not onig practicaLLg LmpossLbLe; but at further, such extensLve interference with naturaL ecosgstems is LtseLf, verg Least, dubiousLg permissibLe. High-tech vegetarLan-stgLe resoLutLons of probLems of predatLon, territoriaLitg and so on, are On contrary, the virtuaLLy aLL the remaining naturaL radicaLLg unsatisfactory. systems containing Large carnLvores shouLd be Left substantiaLLg intact or restored towards their naturaL states. These ecosystems ought to persist, and have a Can t an rights to, right fLourishing LnvoLves reguLar vioLation of aLLeged absoLute though their rLghts to Life. to LLfe be Left intact (L.e. mereLg moraLLg extended from unauthentic human setting), and the probLems skirted around? Rfter aLL, some confLict, and inconsistency even, of rights, obLigations and so on, is inevitabLe, and can be LogLcaLLg Lived with in these Latter paraconsistent dags. Some can, but not too much. ConfLict shouLd be confined to exceptionaL (often -24- �significant) sorts of cases. In these terns, bg accommodated Mag of up confLLct sgstematic reguLar such confLLct anatogous S3tisfactoriig It Ls too reguLar, deontLc does sgstem not because theg remove part of the poLnt of deontLc cases, structures: for then much too much rather not of rLghts or prLncLpLes. confLLet sgstematic and commonpLace. R sufficientLg effLcLent muLtipLg is predatton Ls time cases. R confLLct, repuzziing spent undermines MhLch fash Lon to deaL wLth sattsfactorg more redecLdLng and the point and force of prLncLpLes, is revision of principLe. Furthermore, a confLLct of rights approach (no more than a confLLct of vaLues approach: right. feeL doesn't p.33) DC, at aLL Lion Ls not acting MrongLg or infringing rights MhoLesaLe, everg Meek R Mhen it mag kLLL an anteLope or other creature. R aLternative, atreadg indicated, consists then in Minding in superior excessive titLement concessions, so as to avoid extensive confLLct. R strong and Legitimate interest in a continuing LiveLihood to right does not an give unquaLified Life, which can be conferred against associated predators. It affords onLg a defeasibLe right, which can be forfeited or Lapse. In these terms, a Lion that takes a Meaker aged gnu, taiLing or separated from a herd, does not vioLate Lts defeasibLe right to Life. The different. Mith situation their take chances. rights to Life are not predatorg is essentiaLLg not LLL-equipped or reck Less humans who put themseLves Ln or find LJeak, themseives in threatening situations, such as traveL humans animats or wiiderness If theg therebu Lose their Lives, their defeasibLe therebg or action highspeed infringed animats where (and defending their animats are territories LnvoLved, not shouid be HL id animats such as gnus are aLmost aiwags on Mitderness traveL, persecuted). except when imprisoned in zoos; theg properLg take their chances with naturaL predators. Rs pursuit of this approach suggests, a hetpfuL wag of coming with predation and Like issues happens, what grips is through zoning, or more generaLLg through bioregionaLLsm, which zones regions of the earth s surface what to and eisewhere. is protected, what Ls permissibie and right, Ln wiiderness can be significantLg different from that in urban areas. R tiger that moves of out a wiiderness to a supposedLg easier Life in a citg where incautious citizens are pLentifuL, cannot expect 3nd doesn t merit the same treatment as Lt did wiiderness, nameLg being Left LargeLg atone. Moreover, with bioregions big For wiiderness as Locus, Lt is much to think hoLLsticaLLg, easier predation as an LntegraL and significant part of such a rich naturaL the as to see structure rather than isoLated action of individuaLs without a further just ifg ing setting. (The adjustment of ethicaL principtes to regions, and Large communities, need invoLves no Loss of universaLizabLLitg; wiiderness is an appropriatetg generat notion, not get a proper name.) The action of carnivores (LncLuding traditionaL peoptes) in wiiderness areas, in taking preg conservativeLg, Ln defending their territories and so -25- on, �LnvoLves no LtseLf Ln infringeMents of rLghts then, whether what Ls taken Ls huMan or not (Ls "repL3cabLe" or not). There Ls Moreover no need for Lnstance Lf a carnLvore had coMsuMed a career. that tresspassLng Darwin Ln earLg hLs brash utLLLtarLan wouLd LnsLst, or pretend, that, when aLL the a OnLg deng Lts frequent vioLence and death, nag LnvoLve Loss of vaLue, as with predatLon, to undo-abLe cowputat tons are done, the sufferLng and Losses and repLacenents of sgsteMS, net vaLue of overaLL naturaL processes Ls aLwags approxtMattng naturaL MaxtMaLLtg. On the other stde, thought Lt wouLd be a supreMe technoLogtcaL opttMtst sgsteMS couLd perforw nearLg as sattsfactortLg, huMan-engtneered that even on a qutte Modest scaLe. HuMan breakdown, who efforts, whtch especLaLLg are prone to soMettMes Make soMe SMaLL iMproveMents around the edges; MostLg can theg reLg upon expottLng what Ls aLreadg there or nearbg. Rs a worktng ruLe, the More huMans interfere wLth naturaL processes, the More probLeMs the as there are and More thtngs go wrong. Med LeaL experience wLth intervention, even in Matters norMaLLg straightforward huMan chLLdbirth, provide weLL-docuMented ruLe at work. The chances of huMans iMproving, technicaLLg or the of evidence as MoraLLg, upon Nature Ln wLLderness areas Ls exceedLngLg sLight. To adapt one the ecoLogicaL Laws to of encapsuLate the working ruLe: Nature generaLLg does better than huMans. Its coroLLarg Ls: CurtaLL excessive huMan interference Ln naturaL regions. It does not Matter if, because of predation and the Like, vaLue a Lwags as poLiticaL high wickedness, evoLutionarg not it Might be. Mith the persistence of sin and prevaLence of as Ls copious reason for conjecturing that we do not there inhabit the best of possibLe worLds. Besides we 3re free to specuLate Long is process - that the no doubt a rather restricted, heaviLg interfered with, and verg hit and Miss business - did not turn out as perfectLg as Lt Might have. Major ecosgsteMs certainLg do not appear to have evoLved adapted in weLL wag a to (or anticipating, so to sag) the 3rrivai of Modern huMans with their enorMOUs destructive capacitg and wLLL to power. But, even apart froM the advent it is far froM cLear that Nature of such huMans, provides rather Nature satisizes (an adjustMent of ecoLogicaL an optiMat sgsteM; Law" argued for eLsewhere: see SM). The facts of satisization do not put Nature out of step with deontic best MoraLLtg, principLes. For deontic principLes aLso answer back eventuaLLg to sufficient LeveLs of vaLue, not to MaxiMaL consequences (see were with that vaLue SH). Even it be Maximized, obLigation certainLg does not require Lt. Predation can take a rightfuL pLace Ln such a satisizing environnent; naturaL sgsteMS which have evoLved with predation seeM to offer quite and often dazzLing, Lf LeveLs of vaLue. Richard SgLvan via Bungendore -26- for the adequate, �RustraLia 2621 NOTES 1- For aLL that I an crLtLcaL of Much of that thought environmentaL Lt far of southern and western Rmerican schooLs, out fLows the surpasses the drearg and reactionary anti-environmentaL dross that emerges typLcaLLy the froM prestigious More universities Ln LndustrLaL north-eastern USR and British LLght-engLneerLng centres LLke Oxford. 2. May ThLs a strike MoraL as theorist aiMost cost/benefit ana Lysis of (mainstream) econoMics - as curious as a order in aLso and having reaL point - wouLd strike econoMists. But the cases are different. assessMents Cost/benefit depend on a vaLue theory of soMe (perhaps degenerate) sort, but not necessarily on MoraLity. 3- EntitLement to whom? On traditionaL views, and amounts what choice seLf-appointed chosen, (p.!*). makers entitLement a to in There are probiems according PP, to we free and rationaL use regarding of contexts, since entitLement moves in the these rights-circLe and items with m-s May Lack rights. The annuLar picture is open to the separate charges of being but a devious sort of moraL ex tens ion ism and of introducing or invoLving a moraL hierarchy, both of which set scenes for condemnation. But neither charge is justified in a form that wouLd do damage. MoraL notions are not extended, rather their proper significience ranges and catagoriaL features are investigated and put to principLed work. Rs to the matter of hierarchy, the dLvisions of ref Leets cLassification things in terms of such features, where theg appLy, as capacities and capabiiities. This wouLd yieLd a hierarchy these features ranked, which on the annuLar picture they are not. (Even if they were and a hierarchy aLL Not probiematic. resuLted, hierarchies are need that damaging, e.g. ciassificatoru ones, such as BioLogicaL divisions may oniy were when be. not be mereLy It is hierarchies serve to distribute, or become a means to, power or priviLege or favour, that theg warrant the criticism hierarchies have encountered. That criticism wouLd have deservedLy been directed at certain power hierarchies are of this sort.) -27- hierarchies; but not aLL �UorrLes about LnstaLLLng a MoraL power hterarchg or pecktng order and accoMpangtng MoraL eLLtes are one reason whg sone philosophers an (west go qutteLg atong wLth eLLtes) operate wtth LMpoverLshed ethLcaL tgpotogg. For instance, a Mtsp Laced egaLLtartantsM appears both as deep ecoLogg, Ln bLo-con3ttvtsM 3nd Ln rLghts vLews such Ln where both Lnherent vaLue and the equaL basLc rLghts Regan's, Lt supports behave Ln an aLL-or-nothLng fash Lon. 5. StwLLar funng busLness Ls goLng on standLng vaLue-Ln-LtseLf wLth Freg, Ln equates who worst and proceeds to bound Lt (p.!+S), beLow, not bLocentrLcaLLg as Ln Goodpaster, but bg sentLence. ThLs part happens as coLLapse of a of wore wLdespread huwanLstLc utLLLtarLan Major ethtcaL dtsttnctLons, wLth rLghts as a further casuaLLtg. 6. PossLbLLLtg and forws of nonLnterference prLncLpLes probabtLLtg are basLc to the Ma Ln arguwents the to LMMoraLLtg of nucLear arrangements: see LiP. 7. But Fox has M3de a sustaLned - though now apparentLg parttaLLg repeated - attewpt to do so, tn hts crtttctsM of axtotogg. Such an attempt Ls bound to faLL. VaLues are baste and LnescapabLe (theg enter even Lnto truth cLatms). Thus, for Lnstance, a crtttctsM woraLLtg as Ln a generaL bad Lnstttutton, cost/beneftt record and, has wrought Much enMeshed whtch damage, Ls of has a poor thoroughtg Ln vaLue concerns. RntL-MoraLtsm depends on axLoLogg; Lt does not sustain and antt-axtoLogg. 8. UnLversaLLzabLLLtg Ls used Ln the text because Lt Ls famLLLar. But what are reaLLg Lwportant are LntersubstLtutLvLLg and reptaceMent prLncLpLes, whtch underLLe generaLLztbLLLtg and other features. 8. SoMe of opposttton and standard objeettons to rLghts taLk resuLt froM Mtsgutded ontoLogtcaL assuMpttons. For exaMpLe, Lt Ls aLteged that rLghts are verg curtous sorts of entctLes, untversaLs that sctence casts no LLght upon and does not need. RccordtngLg, prtncLpLe of such p3rstMong, as OccuM s weLL as provLdtng a pasttng such propertLes, such as betng objeettons of such crude LnstruMents as OccoM s razor: consutt JB, Lndex). Creatures have have a razor, such ent Lt Les shouLd be dLscarded. Object-theorg shortcLrcuLts (as bg derLvatLve rLghts; froM rLghts certaLn obLtgattons; but rLghts do not exLst, soMewhere, or at aLL. RLghts are LogtcaLLg weLL-enough behaved nonexLatent objects. -28- �10. The not Lon of right[sj, though -a coMparativetg Modern Ls one, a verg coMpLex one, sone of the conpLexLtg beLng ref Leoted Ln the 20 right' LLsted Ln the OED. Rn atteMpt to senses of the substantive brLng sone order and sgsteM to thLs coMptexLtg Ls Made Ln SN. RLthough the takes anaLgsis frow off one Ma Ln OED sense, the eLaboratLon wLLL Lead bg or through other connected 1.3 as whLch that MoraLLg just or due concerned Ls (as in LnvoLveMent activities); be no issues concerning opportunitg (as in rights to work) or LLbertg (as in rights state-iMposed such equitg or ... which is right-doing ). But there wiLL Main Ln wLth senses, not to in participate are priMariig issues for MoraL these actors. 11. reLevant or coMMunities to capabie or individuats within theM, i.e. he reguLarLg resorts to individualizing strategies. The status of iterated deontic princ ip Les invoLved in such exact arguMents can be Left open, e.g. whether OOC is entaLLed bg 00 is or further substantive principie which can be asserted when 00 a is. 13. Not aLL these substitutes are incoMpatibLe, fortunateLg for who Leaps to the cone Lus ion that sentience, beings and the "higher ... is an the fact that huMan aniMats have experiences or MentaL states the uLtiMate and fundaMentai basis of the ctaiM that theg (p.^3). No arguMent at aLL are possessors of MoraL rights than appeaL to (other is to be found for this ciatM, a authoritg) surprising OMission in an author who is fond of LaMbasting for Freg, faiLure suppig to others arguMents (e.g. p.7) - especiaLLg in the MereLg citing Light of his eartier reMarks that sentieneg as a criterion for the possession of MoraL rights neither shows that it is one nor even creates the presuMption that it is, ... untiL soMe respects are provided ... arguMents in these subsequent chapters, such arguMents are . Rs we shaLL see in scarce on the ground (p.33). lit- Too Leg s anaLgsis standard account substituting can "right of for desires , an wouLd Mark out onLg subcLass rights, of be upgraded, and brought into Line with (adopted to" Ln EE, p.176), chooses or wouLd chose . Even so Lt iMportant roughLg consequentiai exercisabLe criticisM teLLs against EE). -2?- feature rLghts (a of a siMLLar �IS. Rn important exanpLe is the argunent which bg broken is concedLng to that vaLue, equat not p.33, PP aLL hunans, serLousLg genet LeaLLg defectLve and weLL-endowed contractuaLLg-capabLe, need have equat connate vaLue, and thus renoving the preniss. 16. London,1932). RecordLng to the Concise EngLLsh DLcttonarg (Onega, the But qutte not Ls natter not a reputation of sLnpLe, so vegetartantsn on the basts of the avaiLabititg of dead aninats decisive. carefuL definition, which wouLd however render nore R sone hunter-gathers (and even sone cannibats) vegetarians, is 'one who Lives whoLLg or principaLLg OED account, so upon the vegetabie a person who on principle abstains fron ang forn of aninaL foods; food, or at Least such as Ls obtained bg the direct destruction of Life'. 17. that not decisivetg support vegetartantsn, even inproved connerciat faming does UtLLitarianisn invoLving s Laugh ter and of so Regan correctLg contends (p.3S0 suns up his extensive aninats, argunent). Ln Rnd fact fLawed the case utititarian vegetartantsn Ls effectiveLg abandoned in the recent work for of one choice of of its Leading proponents, Singer (see DC, p.36). 13. sone Uhite such terntnoLogg distinction singuLarLg is unfortunate given the non-obsoiete patient . Most aninats are not patients. senses of the noun 13. the inportant, is For exanpLe, in a range of, adnittedLg difficuLt, confiict such as Lifeboat situations (p.32^,p.351), and nore inportant, as regards interspecies reL3tions (p.357 ff.). and threats to rabid foxes to the crunch; hunans aLwags outrank aninats. (So nuch for the then strict norat restrictions, grounded in ... inherent vaiue , the sane aLL and hunans (e.g. p.353). Despite his discLainers, Regan s egaLitarian princ ip Les ring hoLLow when Lt cones for cases, for subjects-of-a-LLfe, on the strength of which even carefuL and respectfuL defective farngard greater C3n practices vaLue assunption be p.3^.2). condenned, R is snuggLed into the rights view, seriousLg detracting fron its environnentaL depth (see DE, si). 20. On bioconativisn see CaLLicott; Leading ideas go back to -Jainisn. 21. Predation bg Large carnivores can conpared with hunan travet be usefuLLg, sporting and predation (no accident of -30- course) favourabig, accidents. UhiLe the nunber of kiLLings annuaLLg are of a siniLar order aninaL and of nagnitude, appears to invoLve �rather Less suffertng and pstn. Rnd though reduct ton tn vatue tn the removat tt tnvotve may some of on-gotng ttves, tt atso offers some very constderabte compensattng ecosystemtc beneftts. REFERENCES J.B. A t Catttcott, On the tntrtnstc vatues of nonhuman spectes' tn The Preservatton of Spectes (e.d. B.G.Norton) Prtnceton Untverstty Press, 1386; pp.138-172. R. Dworktns, Taktng Rtghts Sertousty, Duckworth, London, 1377. J. Fetnberg, The rtghts of antmats and unborn generattons, tn Phttosophy and Envtronmentat Crtsts (e.d. M.J. Btackstone) Untverstty of Georgta Press; Rthens, 1371+, pp. 1+3-68. U. Fox, R postcrtpt on 2(1+) (1385) 17-23. deep ecotogy and tntrtnstc vatue , The Trumoeter The enttty-restrtctton of rights: Notes on a fashion tn ethtcs B. Freedman, Hetaphttosophy 12(1381) 153-168. R.G. Frey, Interests and Rtghts. The Case Rgatnst Rntmats, 1880. K.E. Goodpaster, 308-325. Ctarendon, Oxford, On betnq moratty constderabte , Journat of Phttosophy 75(1378) I. H tnckf uss, The Morat Soctety: Its Structure and Effects, rev used ve rs con, Untverstty of Queenstand, 1386. J. Lestte, Vatue and Extstence, Oxford, 1373. H.J. McCtoskey, Respect for humans morat rtghts versus maxtmtztng good tn Uttttty and Rtghts (e.d. R.6. Frey), Btackwett, Oxford, 1385 pp.121-136. C. Ptgden, Nthtttsm: a Defence, Ph.D Thests, LaTrobe Untverstty, 1385. E.B. PLuhar, The Justtftcatton for envtronmentat etttc , Envtronmentat Ethtcs 5(1383 )l+7-61. T. Regan, The Case for Rntmat Rtghts, Routtedge & Kegan Paut, London, 1383; to as HR. T. Regan, On the nature and posstbtttty of on envtronmentat ethtcs', Envtronmentat Ethtcs 3(1381) 13-31+; referred to as NP. J. Rodman, Theory and practtce tn the envtronnentat Movement: notes towards an -31- �ecoiogg of experience', Ln The Search for Rbsotute VaLues Ln a Changing UorLd, InternationaL CuLturaL Foundation, New Yorh 1978, pp.1+5-56. J. Rodman, Ecoiogg sensibiLitg , in Ethics and the Environment (ed. D. Scherer and T. Rttig), Prentice HiLL, NJ, 1983, pp.88-92; reprinted in VanDeVeer and Pierce, pp.185-8. R. RoutLeg, RLLeged probLems in attributing beLiefs and intensionaiitg to animats , Inquirg 21+ (1981) 387-L17; referred to as PR. R. Rout Leg, In defence of cannibaLism. I. Tgpes of admissibte and LnadmissibLe cannibatism , Green Series, RSSS. RNU; referred to as DC. R. Rout Leg, Exp Loring Pie inong's JungLe and Begond, RSSS, RustraLian NationaL Universitg, 1979; referred to as JB. R. Rout Leg, Liar and Peace I On the ethics of Large-scaLe nucLear Mar and nucLear-deferrence and the poLiticaL faLL-out , Green Series, RSSS, RNU 1981+; referred to as UP. R. and V. Rout Leg, Human chauvinism and environmentaL ethics , in Environmental Ph i Losophg (e.d. D. Plannison and others) RSSS, RustraLian NationaL Universitg, 1980, pp.98-189; referred to as EE. ' 1 T. Rgan, The case for animaL rights' in VanDeVeer and Pierce, pp.32-39. % C.D. Stone, ShouLd Trees have Standing? Towards Legat Rights for NaturaL Objects Kaufmann, Los RLtos, 197!+. R. SgLvan, R critique of deep ecoiogg', 1+1(1985); referred to as DE. Radicatj^hiLosophg 1+0(1985) ana R. SgLvan, SuppLanting maximization, and other utiLitarian assumptions, in Western ethicai ideoiogg , Topci, 1986, to appear; referred to as SN. D. VanDeVeer and C. Pierce (e.ds), PeopLe, Penguins, and PLas tic Trees, UadsMorth, CaLLfornia, 1988; referred to as PP. � 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 MORRL fWERS WHER - EM-JIROtVEtfrOLLV? Begond moraL extens ion isms. Some find us of mereig not ourseives at with odds mainstream environmentaL thinking - which remains shaLLow, heaviig exptoitative, and LikeLg disastrous, not ontg for mang other species but for mang humans as weLL - but uneasg atso with main deeper environmentaL approaches, most of which now emanate from North Rmerica. ELsewhere I have, to mg cost, taken issue with Deep Ecotogg, a movement with European origins quickig captured Ln CaLifornia; but here I wLsh to crLtLcLse forms of Norat Extensionism that now have a main base Ln Southern USF)!, forms that etaborate moraL standtng, consLderabLLLtg, and rLghts theorLes. the crLtLcLsm wLLL not be puretg negative; posLtLve atternatLve posLtLons Rgain wLLL beg Ln to emerge Ln earLg mornLng outLLne. extensLonLsms extend moraL Ltg and convent Lona L chauvLnLstLc moraL MoraL apparatus conventLonaL Lts begond (but certaLnLg subjects and areas where Lt has not been appLLed, certaLn confLnes to unwarranted) or eLse, more LLkeLg, has been used for dLscrLmLnatLon and other negatLve purposes. Theg sLmpLg extend wag the moraL apparatus wLthout much Ln the assumptions vatue, (equaL appLLed to a wider cLass equat of rLghts, of adjustment, consLderatLons, etc.) sLmpLg equaL a (Rs subjects. moraL egaLLtarLan wLth tgpe, generaL moraL ex tens Lon isms have been described and criticised Ln some detaiL Ln EE, p.lSSff., under and the tgpicaL and usefuL weapon movements of Liberation with proceed couLd Ln Rodman.) MoraL ex tens LonLsm is a MoraLisms Nature LabLe more rLghts and accurate movements Less but equipment). Seen from a conservative opposition, moraL to moraLitg bend to iLLegitimate certain interests, etc), are equaLitg, standing, but in ang case evergthing is sufficientLg in order, at Least on the boundaries, as it ex tens Lon isms endeavour not onLg do the since (rights, such impressive pubLLcLg extensLonLsms purposes, extensions make nonsense of the notions invoLved (though is! from Seen a wider perspective, environmentaL not aLwags unjustified in where theg go, but Ln how theg go, in the pseudo-egaLitarian facades of the extensions, and more important in where theg stop. For though priviLege is widened and so diiuted, it remains. The zones of extension remain too Limited, and things outside the usuai as forests, species, ecosgstems, continue mistreatment, expioitation and so on (see EE, things be to p.llf.1). Nor can such substantiaL to open the sorts of invoLved pLausibLg be brought within the extension foLd (though isoLated efforts are not Lacking); for theg appear to Lack requisite which extensions, extensions operate, such as sentience, LndividuaLitg, or whatever. For exampLe, the verg characteristics pain-receptivitg, idea of an on interests, environmentaL ethic, which serves to protect uninhabited environments and to Justifg requisite respect for naturat sgstems and communities, founders on the moraL rights position propounded bg Regan in defence of certain animats (RR p.35^ff). Mang a Ls MoraLLtg weapon, purpose depLoged bg pressure and often interest groups. Throughout Modern hLstorg Lt has tgpLcaLLg been used to and justLfg wLde a actLvLtg of range and hostLLe practices ground naturaL to envLronnents. HuMans are entLtLed to thLs or that, whLch interfere; thetr needs generate these or those requLreMents, whLch ought to be Met there though even are costs to LocaL envLronnents, and so forth. Those opposed to MoraLLtg - there Ls a Long and dLstLnguLshed phLLosophLcaL chaLn froM Lao-tsu and PLgden - have a poLnt MoraLLtLes Lt when MoraL-poLnts-of-vLew and to coMes The MoraLLtg. such HLnckfuss through daMage of seeM substanttaLLg hLgher than the often benefLts conferred. For the restrLctLons theg LMpose are heavg, and work often the wrong wags. R sort of cost/benefLt assessMent of MoraLLtg thus gets under wag2, supposedLg gLetdLng negatLve resutts. Mang are the arguMents for MoraLLtg, begLnntng wLth the cLaLM that Lt Ls oneseLf and one s LLfe wLthout LapsLng Lnto Morat taLk, conduct to LMpossLbLe concepts, practLces and, generaLLsLng, back Lnto MoraLLtg. Part of the response to such fauttg arguMents Ls atwags that there are dLstLnctLons, LnsLsted upon bg LeadLng MoraL theorLsts theMsetves, between vaLue Matters and MoraLLtg, tougher dLstLnctLon, (practLcaL hard j^s (whLch axLoLogg to to avoLd) MaLntaLn, between there Ls a further deontLc expressLons Rnd deontLes. and practLcat between expedLent oughts and shouLds for Lnstance) and MoraL ones. ULth and such dev Lees, antL-MoroLLsts, who do have a soLLd case agaLnst objectLve or absoLute MoraLLtLes, can escape MoraL hooks. Hagbe the net a carefuL practLtLoner can shun deontLc dLscourse, but wouLdn t on the treatMent of envtronMents be worse rather than better?, LMpact soMe of the grossest practLces? The quest Lons can doesn t MoraLLtg coLLect a range of answers, LncLudLng such uncharLtabLe ones as: Not so cLearLg constraLn that one wouLd notLce. The MaLn LMpact of MoraLLtg affaLrs; and even here onLg the grossest appear to be turned around through abuses, of an Ls Lnput on chauvLnLstLc, as such froM sLaverg, huMan MoraLLtg. huMan Even so the persuavLve force and LnfLuence of MoraL consLderatLons, properLg redLrected, are not thLngs to be LLghtLg abandoned. For rLghtLg dLrected theg posLtLveLg Ln thLngs contrLbute couLd that Matter socLaLLg and envLronMentaLLg. In partLcuLar, MoraLLtg affords soMe needed protect Lon and, especLaLLg as rectLfLed, offers the prospect of More, More protectLon, Less dLscrLMLnatLon. But actuaL protectLon Ls tgpLcaLLg provLded, where Lt Ls, through verg channeLLed MoraL ftowLng, through aLL too LegaL often, rather to the than wrong dLfferent LnstLtutLons; wLth fraMeworks, part Les, such as the Lt Ls the benefLts strong and estabLLshed. HakLng MoraLLtg work the rLght wags, where Lt does ftgure serLousLg, Ls, Moreover, uncoMfortabtg LLke MakLng weapons work for peace (MoraLLtg beLng a MaLn force behLnd wars and preparatLon for wars), More LLke than Lt ought to be. -2- Nor is Lt nearLg as easg as Lt was: beating swords Lnto pioughshares, to provide an assauit on the environMent instead of other creatures, subMarine to peaceful purposes (genuineLg peacefut ones, or a prettg easg feat coMpared wLth converting an Fl-11 fighter-boMber or a Modern technoLogicaL LLke was that course, of is; Ln the Liest, theg re peacenakers). For Locat chauvLnLsn, Ln one fom guns another or (huMan, Ls now deeptg natLonat, state or race), LLkeLg, More entrenched Ln Most bureaucratLc arrangeMents and an LntegaL part supportLng of scLences and technoLogg. Even so, whatever Locat practLces, MoraL theorg socLaL can be rectified; the theorLsLng can be accoMpLLshed, even Lf a new MoraLLtg not and appLLed, successfuttg Must awaLt Ls Lts post-RrMeggedon dag. Thus the protected battte to dutg expand MoraLLtg goes on. There are two Ma Ln battLe—LLnes over whLch LdeoLogLcaL wars antL-MoraLLsts) equated) nottons: MoraL status, rLghts, sag, even an outsLde surveg such as thLs But the tern can scarceLg escape attogether MoraL def Ln Lt tons Ls so stack (as dLet tonarg reveaL) that tern (Ln LatLn ortgLn Just a substitute for the Greek expressLon for to have becoMe Linked to features and behaviour of accountabLe such MoraL group: narrower the ang Ls bound to be partLg LegLsLatLve. R Ma Ln Modern tendeneg Ls for the use ttght of as to what Makes soMethtng, a consLderatLon or perMLssLon, MoraL. Lssue coMMon cLuster consLderatLon, retevance, a on foLLowLng These LLnes wLLL be surveged Ln turn; needLess to . ... the standing, consLderabLLLtg,... The second LLne concentrates perMissions, to are fought as regards MoraL extensLon Lssues, LLnes parportedLg MarkLng MoraL outer bounds. The fLrst LLne concerns (often (guaLnt ethicai ) (hunan) actors, as character, disposition, action, virtue. These are the areas where MoraL attributes are at hoMe. Hence MoraL notions tend to occupg inner pLaces Ln the Much Larger evaLuative circLe, and not to extend without sone forcing to naturaL that are not accountabLe actors. PartLg for these reasons too, the terM objects MoraL , Much favoured Ln ex tens Lona List enterprises, tends to be shunned Ln The notion of deeper environMentaL theorg. SiMoraL RgaLnst MoraL standing and siMpiistic ethicaL tgpoLogies. standing, introduced notion of LegaL standing, is coning to pLag environMentaL heavg, but ethics. It is anaiogg questionabte bg a Major, with the RngLo-RMerLcan but d3Maging, danaging because, verg briefLg, rote it wouLd paint a rather arbitrarg, bLack/white boundarg - segregating off those that have not froM those territorg. that have MoraL standing - across Much conpLex More Rs to its rote, it Ls soMetiMes ctaiMed that adoption and defence criterion in of MoraL standing is probieM soLving; absoiuteLg basic reasonabLg addressing of a in environMentaL thinking and the Lssue of MoraL standLng Must be vLewed as a benchMark of ang pLausLbLe "environMentaL ethic"' (PP, pl6). None of thLs Ls so evLdent, especLaLLg gLven the MurkLness of the not Lon of MoraL standing. In the sane vein, an a necessarg condition ... for Lt is stated that ethicaL theorg is the Most [}] defensibLe criterion of moraL standing adequate Such statements are suretg overstatements. For, Ln pLace, fLrst the there can be, and Lndeed appear to be eth Les, which count as environmentaL ones, which do not LncLude a not Lon of moraL ecoLogLcat Rodman s deep Naess s (e.g. ecotogg, sensLbLLLtg). Secondtg, etaboratLons of these theorLes can cLaLms to adequacg, wtthout introducing, and perhaps expLLcLttg warranted make standing rejecting (for the sorts of reasons gLven betow), a notLon of morat standing. For these sorts of reasons, too, Regan's moraL of notLon attempt (Ln NP) to a make standing Lntegrat to the verg Ldea of an environmentaL ethic, part of the conditions of adequacg for such as ethic, is far off course (as weii as ahistoricai, a piece of footnoted Regan s retrospective account of Legisiation). as But, it happens, standing, according to which a being has moraL morat standing if and onig if we moratig ought to consider how it is affected bg a given action or poiieg, both enabies elimination of the notion as a parasitic middieman) bg substitution using the exposed (thus biconditionaL invoLved in the conditions of adequacg, and aiso enabies straightforward satisfaction of the conditions tgpes of ethics that are hardLg environmental. Consider a forest bg sgstem about be to buiidozed, or the Moon about to be bg tourized an Rmerican—based transnational Hang the development or progress ethics these dags that wiii at Low we ought to consider how the forest or the Moon wiLL be that affected, but then cLaim that we shouid proceed, though perhaps in a modified wag. Thus, in such contexts, the forest and the Moon have moraL standing. Rn so, such a deveiopment ethics meets Regan s conditions for an environmentaL ethic; for the forest and the Moon are nonhuman beings, and indeed nonconscious beings, which have moraL standing. The resuLt is not what Regan intended; for he proceed to suggest (p.21^,p.3O) that intrinsic vaLue is a necessarg condition standLng, something his footnoted for moraL account does not guarantee. The LegaListic notion of moraL standing is not so cLear and distinct after aLL. Rn initiaL tacticaL point against the notion of moraL standing concerns its origin, on the modei of LegaL standing. LegaL standing is for ang sufficientLg comprehensive notion of a sometimes entering into moraL consideration (which can be true of aLmost angthing). For one reason, some decidedtg restrictive assumptions, concerning interests and whatever has such standing. But mang things of vaLue, which enter assessment on modeL dubious it imports rights into ethicaL occasions, do not have, and are not the sorts of things that can significantig have, interests or hoLd rights. LegaL standing aLwags operates terms of having of thing in certain sorts of interests, which can be represented, whereas what has or deserves environmentaL standing mag not have interests, sort of that couLd or be the have interests, even as derived (as in the case of LegaL persons, such as companies) from those of its members. More often -4- indeed, Legat have to standing to have certain rights, duties, protectton, etc., is begtnntng with the rtght of betng abLe to proceed to the courts. room Of course there ts constderabte standtng not ton the widen to Legat of tn RustraLia can even exctude environmentaL organtsattons) and (which "cLaimants to admit, through representatton, other to the PresentLg, courts. for sure, the modeL ts Much too narrow, restrtcttng access to certatn capitalist cLaimants. But there are severe conceptuat dtfftcutttes tn the wag and persons of broadentng the standtng not ton objects, agatn because to encompass Limitations the the mang requisite environmentaL nottons of tnterests and rtghts impose. Organtsattons of persons, such as partnershtps, coattttons and so on, do not exceed (easg stretchtng at Most of) these Limits, stnce tnterests and rtghts accrue frow coMponent members: untnhabtted ecosgsteMs, the MonuMents, and bg a brazen, and tMptaustbte, overrtdtng of Ontg constderabtg. do, Like naturat these conceptuat ttMttattons (such as Stone ts prepared to fancg Rmerican courts tndutgtng tn) can the in-buiLt severe tnternat restrtcttons of the wodet Legat be overcome. coutd be recogntsed, account of the Stttt the tnadequactes of Lts Legat 3natogg anaLogg behtnd, Left unimpeded fresh a and now standtng woraL rather propose free-fLoattng not Lon offered. Van De Veer and Pterce are rash enough to an expLLcatton of Recordtng to them, can be construed atong these LLnes. whtch For ang thtng X, X has woraL standtng Lff the continued extstence of X fISl. tnterests Lts theg sag Ln that weLL-betng have postttve moraL weight stLpuLattng theg re the but this; theg re or (PP. p.3). RctuaLLg, not free simpig to given that Lt ts a notton wtth some currencg aLreadg, soMethtng theg sttputate, recogntze Ln proceeding at once to consider various to their standard answers basic question Llhich things have MoraL standing? . The account proposed is wore in LittLe curious, not to sag obscure and scarceLg graMMaticat. Later theg a than effect substitute a tortuous Less nameLg account, generaLLtg (in interpretation) MS2. X has moraL standing iff the (continued) existence positive moraL weight (see e.g. p^., plG: pureLg since future items mag have ancestors). Either wag the account is weight and having moraL continued some moraL circutar, or shouLd however be significance, since having X of wetfare has deLeted, as mag dead positive moraL standing are interdependent notions (cf. Goodpaster. p-311). In fact some of the probLems with the account coutd have been avoided bg cutting out the troubLesome middLe part and moving on to the simpLer, expLLcitLg circutar, H33. But has X then as moraL standing Lff X possesses (or obtains) positive moraL weight. a expLication, the definition might aimost as weLL drop out; Lt expticates nothing, connecting some near sgnongms onLg. Perhaps it is better to ask: Uhat work does the notion do? -5- The troubie Ls except that theories, whLch LegLsLate as to what has moraL partLcuLar on standing, the notion Ln fact does verg because hoMe Ma Ln whose eth Les, chauvLnLstLc base does whLch LLes wLthLn the not extend or traveL unsatLsfactorg; wLth as coMpetence, or m s Ln sorts of reason for theLr Lnadequacg are weLL The personhood). are (such cLassLfLcatLons bLoLogLcaL socLopsgchoLogLcsL dLstLnctLons (such as LLnguLstLc capacLtg or potentLaL standLng MoraL Homo sap Lens or of the zooLogLcaL bLngdon) or wLth spec Les the of the wLder to onLg unstabLe and rather arbLtrarg, but tend to not ctassLfLcatLons ethLcaL MeMbershLp are theg trad Lt LonaL of weLL for ethLcs, It Ls one of those confLnes envLronMentaL settLng. RLL the MaLn crLterLa proposed confuse envLronmentaL Ln work Ls LLttLe agreement about what determLnes Lt. there not Lons, LLttLe enough documented Ln PP (and Ln Much other earLLer LLterature, e.g. EE) DespLte the enthusLasM shown for the not Lon of Morat standLng, then, no satLsfactorg crLterLon for Morat standLng eMerges, or Ls Ln ctear sLght, Ln PP - or Lt eLsewhere It remaLns to be denonstrated that there Ls a stabLe, seens. non-arbttrarg context-LnvarLant notLon of MoraL standLng worth pursuLng. Rather the notLon tends to force awkward choLces (e.g. those offered Ln PP on p.S.) The for reason the needs what cost-benefLt LMperatLves be to Looked at presuppose a Morat Ln appLLcatLons assessments, (whLch thLs dLffLcuLt notLon, that does no present Lt wouLd decLsLvetg Ls evLdent enough: usefuL work, space, about enthusLasM and deLLMLt of the categorLcaL of deLLMLtatLons behLnd proposed some notLon, for Lnstance use of the dLstLnctLon to reduce the humanLstLc/chauvLnLstLc foLd (partLg moraL ). MoraL standLng Ls not a MoraLLg bg use of the term achLeved Ls search unLverse, usuaLLg of persons), and so Morat search space towards the confLnes of the thLs MoraL confLLct Lssues, utLLLtarLan forth. There are as weLL More sLnLster uLterLor purposes appLLcatLons the neutraL notLon, but a fraMework and cuLturaLLg dependent one; hence some of Lts LLmLtatLons. ConsLder standLng moraL Lnstead of work, Lnstead of straLghtforward pragmatLcs, what supposed to confer or remove? It Ls assumed that Lf X has moraL standLng (m-s) then moraL agents have presumptLve obLLgatLons, and dutLes to X, e.g. Let to Lt theg otherwLse not atone, do not to confLne Lt or underMLne Lts Lnterests; but (cf-p.3-p.tt). Or, to put Lt the other wag around, thLng has m-s Lt Ls entLtLed to conttnued exLstence, pursuLt of whereas Lf Lacks m-s, Lt Lt does not have thLs protectLon, 3 Lnstead there Ls entLtLement to Lnterfere wLth Lt . def Ln Lt Lon of moraL standLng ... Lf somethLng weLL-beLng Just does not LtseLf moraLLg count Lts Lf a Lnterests, Lt does not count, .... Indeed, so Lt Ls Lacks (p.t+). The moraL saLd, standLng, defLnLtLon Bg Lts however deLLvers no such resuLt; a further LmpLausLbLe assumptLons, (reductLon of weLght to weLL-beLng, equaLLtg condLtLons for countLng) from an underLgLng moraL wLthout pLcture of assessment are LmpLLcLtLg Lncorporated (a utLLLtarLan pLcture where Ltems m-s are dLscounted, and trade-offs contempLated, p.16). -6- of Ltems wLth m-s are soon Such appLication an if division; accordingtg LmpLies an unfortunate aLL-or-nothing item is tn tt gets (carefut) constderatton, otherwise Lt gets nothing - exacttg what the Legat anatogg impLies: a proper heartng Lf be and otherwise nothtng. Hhat this bLack-and-white division shoutd standing contrasted with ts not removaL of att distinctions, but rather a wore sophisticated ethicat such tgpoLogg, that of the annutar picture (of EE, p.107 and DC, p.2). The as tgpoiogg is based on a Listing of ethicaiLg re Levant such as having vaiue, weLL-being, appropriate p.!2).^ the character aLL-or-nothing from at Least Modified becomes evident of various (e.g. p.5) to keep it afLoat, e.g. duties capacities, so and and forth; to moraL standing distinctions soon duties) (direct to needs be introduced as opposed to (indirect, and perhaps derivative, duties). The wain strategg regarding duties autonomg, and postuLates and princ ip Les are geared to these (cf. aLso PP ethicaL That preferences, features adopted in PP to save the aLL-or-nothing context-independent boundarg consists in appeaL to the speciaLLg-adjusted notion of presumptive duties. MoraL standing is assumed to be necessarg and sufficient for presumptive duties: specificaLLg PSI. floraL agents iff But have a presumptive dutg to X has moraL standing (this takes up the content of signposted item 1, p.t*.). presumptive are duties even more prone to be bg upset circumstances than the oider prima facie duties (which the notion the notion overriding expands); standing, p.S), the forged connections things than without much too simpLe, as wiLL are for appear. FirstLg, a more comptex cLassification of things is required purposes so operates even more as a theorg-saving device. But even as so hedged around, and so extended (bg derivative duties, duties regarding moraL decentLg] X [to treat it moraLLg moraL a hard division into moraL countabLes and others, a nonarbitrarg cLassification such as that of the annutar picture. SecondLg, rights and duties, which the notion of moraL standing is supposed to bound. Link rather with vaLue, and extent of vaLue (see SM). Much of the importance ascribed to moraL standing or moraL consideration comes from confLating it with vaLue consideration, which is in turn equated with having some (non-negLigibLe) vaLue, bearing account, and counted, perhaps (if sometimes that wouLd be taken into in ang compLete vaLue assessment. Though moraL attributes are evidentLg a subcLass commonpLace vaLue of surprising, vaLue as attributes, e.g. in the confiation CaLLicott). is Possessing intrinsic or inherent vaLue is even offered sometimes as an aLternative to moraL status (cf. PP, p.16 fn 3); but more often the confusion is Less bLatant. Indeed PP begin bg warning us about sLipperiness (fn 3), soon stides itsetf from m-s to intrinsic vaLue with their being evident, and considerabLe, (p.S) and before Long has identified moraL standing of things vaLuabte prove in damaging. Goodpaster themseLves Towards Lapses (p.I6). Such equations are not the end of his essag, on being moraLLg from -7- moraL considerabiLitg into that Hag that natters for ctains wade. For exanpte, Ln vatue-for-itsetf, psgchotogicat or hedonLstLc capacities sophLstLcated unnecessaritg seen Lt Ls true when Lt cones to Locating the ntnLnaL condLtLons for sonethLng s deserving to be Lts for vatued own (p.320); sake Lt not so obvious that theg are too but sophLstLcated for the capture of norat consLderabLLLtg. R sLnLLar conftatLon at work Ln Goodpaster s hgpothesis that that there Ls a nonaccLdentaL affLnLtg between a person s or a socLetg s conceptLon of and vatue ontg — consLderabLLLtg to appears obtaLn where vatue Ls unreduced (LLLLcLtg) contracted to a range where norat considerations enter; for exanpte tn Goodpaster's sotitarg LLLustration, the setting is hedonisn (when as where, of conceptLon Lts (p.3t*). The affLnLtg — nore than accLdentat for vatue and noraL consLderabLLLtg vatue Ls no doubt norat considerabititg Ls, so far as norat natters are attowed to enter, characteristicattg bounded at botton bg sone sentience criterion). The biocentric criterion for norat considerabititg that Goodpaster Leaps to (p.313) has itsetf to be differenttg Looked at if exchanged for vatue-in-itsetf. For Life is point even norat the obvioustg Less stopping vatue consideration. Rssune, for instance, that Wars or the Moon has for estate no [significient] Life. Theg stitt have vatue; indeed theg nag have reat vatue verg chauvinistic vatue "neasure ) now that theg are beconing hunantg (a accessibte nining, residentiat and other transfiguring purposes). Suppose (for further, what is not at att untiketg, that sgstens natch that Moon the has fornations sone shoutd be the that thensetves, into account in ang environnentat inpact assessnent of taken projects interfering with parts of the Moon. But insist or naturat nonunents of the Rnerican arid Lands. It is a the defensible ctain, these dags, that the Moon nonunents have vatue in which is considerabititg Lt woutd be LnptausLbte to Moon nonunents are norattg considerabte; for theg are not the right sorts of things (as a natter of significance) to have noraL attributes. It is just not the feature of having intrinsic vatue that shoutd be separated fron that of having norat status. Sone of the circte have suggests different sone exanpte, For connotations. notions beLng Ln noraL the consLderabLe norat dinension, sone weight to be taken into account, suitabte not neretg sone retevance. Consideration atso characteristicattg requires the iten in question has interests or at Least a such tetos), an that agent discussion-setting can phrase be deserves norat weLL-being towards considerate notions are deptoged that wag (eg. p.31 does norat retevance, R different get nere artifacts are norattg etc., dependent, quarrg that (a Goodpaster s Rnd nornattg the notion do presunabtg nornattg woutd not. Nor, not it erroneoustg, reLevant on occasions (for sinitar reasons norat significance differs fron standing). MoraL retevance renains context Like that another different notion sonetines equated with norat standing (e.g. PLuhar p.^7), though since does nornattg an organisn'; PP p.3 inpose these Linitations, e.g. those of awe, respect, appear, (as or consideration ). certain organisns'; and in Goodpaster's Leap.) woutd norat an etusive, has evaded contenporarg norat phitosophers of -8- high standing, despite Much effort put Lnto other chase. the however, Since these are not goLng to be put to serLous work - Most of theM are, Like notLons MoraL standing, better MothbaLLed or - scrapped we qutetLg can bgpass the vaiue the nuances and differences. CertaLnLg MoraL considerations and vaiue interconnect, wider notion and Moraiitg, if wag theg inportant in which not at derivative, Least with R dependent. Most connect is through LiMitat ions on interference. MoraLitg preciudes the gross reduction of vaLue. LittLe R More preciseLg, a actor is not norMaLLg entitLed to interfere deLiberateLg in such a wag as MoraL to reduce signifLeantLg overaLL vaLue (or risk the various possibiLitg of such reduction^). But exact forMuLation of such noninterference princ ip Les is a sensitive Matter MainLg because deontic principLes do not excLude soMe vaLue, provided it is sufficientLg Linited - a Matter to which we of reduction - shaLL be obLiged to return. Bg contrast with MoraL considerabiLitg, and standing Like, the vaLue notions are fundaMentaL, and not at aLL easiLg avoided, even bg anti-Moraiists, in the regions of environMentat ethics.^ SoMe of the anaiogue notions are however, e.g. a thing warrants vaLue consideration iff it has vaLue; it triviaL is of vaLue reLevance iff it has nonnegiigibte vaLue circuMstances); the (in Even so the ana Logue notions heLp in shifting the issues and showing where the reaL prob ten Lies with the group of MoraL notions, naneig in what Makes soMething Morai. It this notion too that has induced the unwarranted narrow ing of focus, to chauvinistic concerns. For a coMMonp Lace answer, certainig wrong, to what deternines what is MoraL is: hunan concerns. Rather, etc. what is MoraL has to do with interest-independent vaLue and with a certain iMpartiaLitg and Lack of discrininations (i.e. in More oLd-fashioned forMs, with justice and goodness), features refLected fornaLLg in suitabLe universaLizabiiitg of principie.^ So conceived, MoraL Matters do not terMinate at narrower certain ethicaL tgpes, which excLude the wider environnent. The width of concern wouLd be better revested bg repLacing ethicaL*. equivaLent ethics a of (For coMparison, rec Lass ification as consider "environMentat bg MoraL its originaL the effect in environMentat MoraLs" environMentat or Moratitg"). $2. Rgainst environMentaLLg-restrictive rights packages. EthicaL standing does not striettg get or grant a thing rights. Standing gets an iteM door for hearing. a hearing; in an ethicaL it Mag, or Mag not, be conceded or granted rights in the Rights inpLg sone standing, but not vice versa; sone standing is even, if gou Like, a proper part of a right. MhiLe such an equation is not Much excuse for identifging standing and rights (short assuMption that of the astonishing but prevaLent aLL reLations are identities), stiLL too often the differences are giossed over, having MoraL rights is equated with having MoraL standing The stoppage between the notions Goodpaster exptoits (p.3I8) CaLLicott). (e.g. Ln converting conditions on having rights into conditions (expioitation consideration free not exersibie rights is Much Less piausibie for Underneath consideration). MoraL these equations and conventions Lie important assunptions; triviaL MoraL deserving since wh3t is piausibie for costs, of for just not the More that what has a status therebg has a right, for instance to get in one but the ethicaL door, consideration are assuMption the rendered that equivaLent having and rights standing or a coMMon Middie terM, such as through having interests, being capabLe of being represented, being abLe to benefit. For exaMpte, an iteM has MoraL standing (or deserves MoraL consideration) iff it has iff it has (or even have) rights. (or can have) interests, i.e. iMpiicit appear but (with Minor Such equations quaLifications) in Goodpaster, and exp Lie it etsewhere, for a wide notion if "interests" extending to aLL Living things; but Much More coMMontg theg appear (e.g. as in Freg) for a verg Much More restricted of (huManoid) interest. notion If such fauLtg equations did hoLd, what has been said against MoraL standing wouLd appLg to that extend aiso against rights. But theg do not, and rights require More independent investigation. contrast Bg with anti-Moratists, who wouLd reject (MoraL) rights taLk and institutions aitogether, and with Mang utiLitarians, who view notion of considerabte suspicion at Least, it wiLL be argued, in g passing, that rights are aLrcght . The chief targets for criticisM wiLL be (MoraL) rights with certain unduLg narrow theories rights, of which wouLd have, if theg stood, decidedLg unfavourabLe environMentat consequences. RLthough for which he has iLLegitiMateig bagged the titie view, Regan's particuLar the rights view (as if an aniMat rights supporter had to adopt his sort of view), is verg far froM the attention, worst of these theories, it is worth singLing out for speciaL it has score heaviLg been proMoted since in environMentat ethics Literature and it does exceedingig weLL, coMpared with its usuaL chauvinistic rivaLs, in certain areas of Major environMentat concern, such as the (Mis-)treatMent of aniMats. R theorg of rights a coMprises representation (in the fashion of other package, which can be given fornaL theories) genetic as containing the foLLowing coMponents: D. a definition of a right, and P. further postuLates (perhaps independentLg argued for) deLiMiting rights. Rs MatheMaticaL exaMpLes (such as those of vector space and categorg) reveaL there is a good deat of stippage between D ord inarg usage controts and P. But because of the More on phiLosophicaL theories, onLg so Much in the wag of postuLates can be puMped into the definitions offered. The package aLso coMMontg includes as weLL 0. a set of canonicaL forMS into which aLL (nondiscarded) rights Locutions or cases can be put, and perhaps aLso (with ground prepared through C) R. a set of reduction scheMes for eiiMinating transLation, reduction ruLes, etc. -10- rights Locutions, e.g. bg The of rLghts advocated bg Regan convenLentLg Lends theory partLcuLar LtseLf to separatLon Lnto these components, as weLL as suggestLng genetLc such breakdown. It begLns wLth a neat defLnLtLon of rLght drawn from HLLL, accordLng to whLch a rLght Ls, roughLg, a vaLLd (or suffLcLent) cLaLm whLch socLetg shouLd It guarantee. Ls coup Led wLth a serLes of prLncLpLes or postubates, each gLven some Lndependent support, of whLch the most basLc Ls the rLght of and treatment. respectfuL to patLents canonLcat RLthough expLLcLtLg addressed, one does emerge, whLch takes the form to [not] , where - onLg rLghts-hotder on the theorg, but Lt X[s] of The rLght as for Lnstance not Ln to permtts (the pLuraLLsatLon partLcuLar to some sort of utLLLtarLan anatgsLs, Ls strongLg resisted the rLghts vLew features onto LndLvLduaLs). FLnaLLg reductLon of rLghts, Ln back dLstrLbutLng context not are The basLc form Ls sLnguLar, appLgLng to LndLvLduaLs, who are the harm . LncLuded forms Lntroduces an LnfLnLtLvaL ctause LndLcatLng a tgpe of to actLon or actLvLtg. The cLauses mag be negated, unduLg agents moraL has a LLttLe more thLs LrreducLbLe the Ls Lt poLnt, (Ln rLghts vLew as opposed to a mot Leg arrag of reduct LonLstLc posLtLons, wLth 'the' sLgnLfgLng a coLLectLve.) be UhLLe Regan s rLghts package wLLL crLtLcLsed, Ln sLgnLfLeant rejected, through Lts varLatLon a dLfferent rLghts theorg wLLL emerge. respects Some of the crucLaL prLncLpLes Regan arrLves at depend theg and heavLLg upon - though do not foLLow from - defLnLtLon of rLght(s) he defends. Hnd severaL of the unnecessarLLg restrLctLve features of the vLew do fLow from eLaboratLon of thLs defLnLtLon, Ln partLcuLar the LLmLtatLon of rLghts to certaLn LndLvLduaL thLngs, to anLmaLs. It Ls Lmportant then to begLn wLth, and hard to avoLd, the certaLn Lssue of defLnLtLon. To ground the varLant defLnLtLon and theorg of rLghts to be reached fLrmLg Ln usage, consLder fLrst the maLn reLevant sense^' of rLght (to) gLven bg the Oxford EngLLsh DLctLonarg, vLz. 11.7 JustLfLabLe cLaLms, on LegaL or grounds, to have or obtaLn some thLng, or to act Ln a certaLn wag. of gLven rLghts sLmLLar core: hLm the Ln bg MLLL (whLch of ... account Regan cLaLms to endorse, p.369.) contaLns a a person s rLght ....[Ls] a vaLLd cLaLm upon socLetg possessLon The moraL somethLng socLetg to protect ought to defend...', MLLL provtdes, however, an Lmportant Lnsurance or cover cLause, as to who Ls supposed to cover the cLaLm, whLch the OED account does whLch Regan after a brLef dLscussLon aLso correctLg omLts (begLnnLng p.270). That Ls, rLght not LncLude, and quLckLg contracts to the Less than adequate vaLLd cLaLm; but the force of MLLL s Lnsurance cover Ls supposed to foLLow, prLmarLLg Ln vLrtue of what Ls pushed Lnto the Ldea of a cLaLm. Rs Lt turns out, Regan, now features of rLghts LmLtatLng FeLnberg s Lt does foLLow, but not Ln that wag. trLcks, trLes to puLL substantLve out of the notLon of a cLaLm. But the notLon does not bear the weLght theg trg to Lmpose upon Lt; a stronger rope Ls needed for -11- such acts than ciaim can suppig. The cruciai act, which tries to read anticipated features of the notion of riqht into that of ciaim, faiis at the outset: is entitied to treatment of a certain kind is to assert that someone... ... To wake a ciaim and that the treatment is due or owed directig to the individuai ... in question. To a make individuais, ciaim thus, invoives both ciaims-to and ciaims-against... (p.271). Such an anaigsis of making a ciaim imports much the that ordinarg notion does not support, nameig, in the first piace, that it invoives or asserts entitiement, entitiement to treatment of a certain sort, secondig, that it is a transaction between individuais^, thirdig, that the imputed treatment is owed it is a ciaim-against given individuais. But in making directig to the ciaimant, such ciaims as that one has visited Mount Rthos, has seen the iark ascend, at tea one sunset, doing ang of those things in ang straightforward not is sense. There is nothing significant due or owed, directed at other took individuais in the the demanding assertions wag, or at need not be aii; and no entitiement to speciai treatment is asked for. Ciaim is a transitive verb, so it as requires weii as subjects, ciaimants, objects, ciaims, propositionai items tgpicaiig introduced bg or 'to . Someone who makes a that ciaims ciaim that something or to (have or have done) something. But that is aii. Onig some ciaims are directed against others, onig some ciaims are entitiements. Rnd if is it ciaims that are entitiements that are to be distinguished, it wouid be better to start with entitiements (cf McCioskeg). Just such a fresh start wiii be made, in the first stage of modification of the definitions OED integration and it with Miii's definition. Upon of separating off iegai rights (which Regan correctig distinguishes in prettg much the standard wag, p.267), the foiiowing then resuits: M2. Vaiid entitiement, on morai grounds, to something (of a correct categorg). The changes (from 11.7) deserve some justification. Firstig, or have obtain or something, characteristic fiii to to in act a certain "justifiabie justifiabie to (to) something , iogicaiig adds iittie content. For each something entaiis and mag to be entitiement ciaims sufficient, ent ireig warrant vaiid. from Thirdig, and ang case entitiing ones, and that in are i.e. dubious ciaims-against preconceptions, without be regarded appears most need not ciaim restrict to on but aiso the ciaim because make or the sheds unduig and expected ciass of rights havers or haver of a it, but it is hard to escape the assumption that if something has a ciaim then it shouid be the sort of thing potentiaiig?) important entitiement hoiders, what can have or ho id rights, to ciaimants. Of course the right as grounds morai ciaim , not mereig for the reasons given, that improves upon invoived an sort of justification, which as it turns out is not fuiig some adequate, can be given, whereas for a right the derivation has converseig an entitiement to have something. Secondig, is not strong enough; a ciaimed entitiement if (To) phrase wag , which gives the of the sorts of entitiement is an entitiement to something, entitiement the stake that ciaims. Thus use of the term -12- can ciaim (at ieast makes it an even tougher uphiLL struggLe to work the powerfut rights medicine on behatf of wttd animats and wiLde messes. Of course too, what cLaims are wade coutd be wade through indirectLg, representatives; the tern but representatives" suggests verg easiig that rights havers have interests to be represented. Opportunitg wake the to interests" shouid not be afforded rights" to dubious inference from bg the basic definition; and "entitLement" gives appropriate distance. R Lot hangs on choice of basic (as then terms other in chaiienging phiiosophicai areas, such as the fundamentsLs of reasoning), even if it seems to right' newcomers, as it does to dictionaries, that entitLement cLaim' and are more or Less interchangeabLe (each is characterised in standard dictionaries partLg in terms of the others) tautoLogous. and expticative satisfactorg UeLL, Like definitions that M2 definitions virtuaLLg are are but anaLgtic, preferabLg not trivaLLg circuiar, eLse informativeness is sacrificed. R weakness of the entitLement account (hard to credit after Regan's attack upon it) is that it risks the Latter. Mhat is needed in pLace of entitLement, putative entitLement' expression, right , i.e. it a since doesn t a becomes an entitLement, or right, when vaLiditg is that appropriateLg estabLished, and so on. From this angLe, better something, is write in To vaLiditg. avoid a is sLightLg a reaL or supposed to amounts sometimes cLaim cLaim' these probLems with avaiiabie terminoiogg, there is a case for coining a rather immediate expression basic definition something, R vaLid in that something (after fiLL to into in M2) and avoid disappearance of the VaLid something, on to something , which couLd embrace Lots of items other than rights). term suitabie entitLement, titiement ; is which a or a is titiement aLLeged or putative mag or mag not be correctLg vaLidated, en-ed (cf. titLe *6. That which justifies or substantiates a cLaim; a aLLeged (e.g. vacuitg quant ificationaL recognised right', Const, with cLaimed .) R titiement is a transformation ground inf. of a or right; of to, suitabie hence, an of the thing in, deontic principLe, cat Led a susta in ing principLe. For instance, the form It is mostig permissibie [for X] to R , where suitabie, gieLds the titiement form There is a titiement [for X] R . Requirements for what conditions objects (Rs) and suitabiLitg, subjects (Xs) shouLd satisfg, are investigated in what foLLows. Before trging for a mark-3 definition of right (to), MiLL, as interpreted bg Regan (pp.270-1). MiLL titiements are to be vaLidated: depend on compLiance its independentLg estabLished' the vaLiditg of with (p.270), derivation from these correct moraL stack, the vaguer a right (to) moraL principLes us return a right, whose correct that he beiieves, takes up, must have been vaLiditg principLes. to as to how provides...guidance princ ip Les i.e. Let It is the removing the "moraL grounds" (cf. M2 and 11.7). Then in the mark-3 version, is a M3. VaLid titiement, from correct moraL principLes, appropriate) item. The LogicaL form is aLmost immediate: -13- to some (categoriaLLg H3S. premLsses correct worst prtncLpLes SustaLnLng prtnctpLe as to R vaLLd dertvatton cone Lus con There Ls a tttLement to R RssumLng evergthtng Ls Ln order Ln the scheme H3S, the inference to a rLght-to R Ls then LmmedLate, bg f13. The whoLe pattern Ls at once duLg reLatLvLsabLe to suLtabLe havers. Thus X has a rLght to R Lff X has a tttLement, vaLLd Trow correct woraL prtncLpLes, to R, somethtng that a suLtabLe reLatLvLsed derLvatLon wag estabLLsh. candLdates The fLLL to R provLde a famLLLar LLst, e.g. out freedom from unnecessarg sufferLng, respectfuL treatment, satLsfg sound LLfe, needs, support, rewarding work, a fatr go, etc.. Bg no means aLL of these candLdates can be vaLLdated, wLthout at Least severaL basLc restrLct the quaLLftcatLon, consLderabLe and categorg of subjects, L.e. the LogLcaL sort of Ltem that can have the purported tttLement. Such a scheme, as f13S not (whLLe entLretg wLthout adequate eLaborated notLon of tLtLement) both enabLes further features of and revests much about rtghts. derLved important addttLon to the deftnLtLon of ought to protect can hoLders, be regards as correct moraL rLght , of a requLrement and therefore rLghts, to Lnsure protectLon, dLffuse correLatLve dutLes 3pptg prtncLpLes, to Ls no doubt Ls thus a consequentLaL over vaLLd characterLstLc poLnt of R tLtLements. as socLetLes Lt transmLt uphoLd, feature. SLmLLarLg such obLLgatLons to uphoLd rLghts are not feature from thetr character. In parttcuLar, the FeLnberg-Regan cLaLm-agaLnst component of thetr proposed anaLgsts Ls not part of the meanLng of that soctetg that that reLevant soctettes ought to part of the deftnLtLon of rLghts, but a LogLcaLLg emergent dertvatLve be separated as a consequence; Lt Ls not (as uphoLd them. But such functors, as obLLgatLon to derLvatLons; to rtghts In the fLrst pLace, Lt shows that HLLLs dLcttonarg defLnLtLons atso LndLcate) a deftntng feature. For true duLg 3 rLght, but somethtng foLLows from the prtncLpLes sustatntng a rLght to somethtng. For Lnstance, Lf Lt Ls generaLLg permtsstbLe to LLve others, free from unnecessarg suffering then moraL agents are therebg prohtbLted from causing unnecessarg sufferLng; -14- and prohLbLtLon the functor Ls transnLtted the down cLaLn-agaLnst certain, tgpLcaLLg unspecLfLed, norat agents R derLvatLon.^ Ls consequentLaL a feature of vaLLd tLtLenents to, transnLtted fron the sustaLnLng noraL prLncLpLe. (ThLs Ls whg Regan can aLwags easLLg nanage to fLLL out a cLaLn-agaLnst forn where a McCLoskeg ent Lt Lenent can be estabLLshed; see RR p.231). SecondLg, the schene and defLnLtLon nake Lt evLdent that seLf-evLdent puretg or rLghts. axLonatLc a aLwags defence It foLLows, then, that ang theorg rLghts bg reference to such derLvatLons. cLaLns are no For ang rLght that stands up, that connands the tLtte, has a vaLLd derLvatLon. Rnd there Ls Lags there of that seLf-evLdent rLghts (such as FIcCLoskeg s), or axLonatLc rLghts to (such as DworkLn's), and ang decLaratLons, constLtuttons or bLLL of rLghts (such as that RnerLcan) the announces seLf-evLdent rLghts, Ls nLstaken. RLghts are aLwags derLvatLve fron other parts of an ethLcaL sgsten. ThLrdLg, the theorg shows dLrectLg the "derLvatLve character" of rLghts, and hetps to LndLcate the extent of theLr eLLnLnabLLLtg. For Lf rLghts are ever to be estabLLshed, then there nust, Ln the end, be correct noraL prLncLpLes, as there are, fron whLch tLtLenents do derLve. Thus a requLrenent of ground hoLds, are rLghts and generated fron other noraL prLncLpLes, Ln partLcuLar those of pernLssLon and obLLgatLon. RLghts are derLvatLve, not Ln the sense that there Ls a precLse recLpe for transLatLng rLghts dLscourse out - ang adequate transLatLon renaLns wLthLn the rLghts cLrcLe, of entLtLenent, cLaLns, etc. - but Ln the derLvatLonaL sense, that theg derLve fron another part of the deontLc area, that argunents and JustLfLcatLons for then go back to deontLc prLncLpLes. Because of theLr nuLtLpLg derLvatLve character, rLghts are dLspensLbLe after a fashLon, and at sone cost. So theg envLronnentaL ethLcaL enterprLses. not are But Ln essentLaL absoLuteLg a strongLg for LndLvLduaLLstLc rLghts-orLented socLetg, such as the USR, where rLghts notLons (and partLcuLarLg LndLvLduaL propertg notLons) are taken verg serLousLg, Lt Ls a snart strategg to nake heavg use of then, after the node of Regan. EnvLronnentaL posLtLons can do thLs aLso, bg derLvLng approprLate tLtLenents. RLghts are not nereLg derLvatLve, because, for Lnstance, of the force theg are accorded and the rotes theg can pLag when adnLtted. Rs RnerLcan wrLters stress, rLghts are anong the weLghtLest of others (hence the Lnportance Ln a noraL consLderatLons, whLch noraL or evLronnentaL cause of obtaLnLng rLghts accredLtatLon). RLghts certaLnLg have Lnportant protectLve and rotes, of Ln persuasLve so Lnsurance sheLterLng Ltens fron powerfuL actors and Lnterests. For those sorts prLncLpLes, and truno on. argunentatLve reasons too, Lnputed rLghts are Lnportant Ln reLnforcLng gettLng others to take Ltens serLousLg, to treat then decentLg, Ln The socLaL advantages LnstLtutLonaLLsatLon of rLghts accordLngLg offers not to be taken LLghtLg or abandoned. For these sorts of reasons, too, rLghts are not superfLuous (as Freg Ls LncLLned to suggest: -15- he aLso incLined to suggest, not aLtogether consistentLg, that there aren t ang is woraL rtghts, p.7, p.17). Granted that for Mang purposes we can proceed back Lt ts not a consequence that Me prtnctpLes froM which rtghts derive; stLLL, the can get a Long as weLL without theM, stLLL Less that there potnt no ts advantage or Set-theorettctans can get a Long without nunbers; woMen can get theM. to to aLong wtthout thetr bras, soMe of theM teLL us; nucLear reactors can get aLong wtthout doubLe shteLdtng, so Russ Lan experts used to teLL us. R fourth set of consequences of the rtghts package offered Ls that there Ls no basts for various restrtcttons wtdetg tMposed upon the having senttence, tnterest, as such etc. (a rather now rtghts, of faniLiar test). Constder tnterests ftrst, stnee an "tnterests" restr Let Lon on rights-havers Ls pervasive. Nothtng Ln the deftnttton and dertvatton schene gtven, or Ln Ln the Ln suttabLLLtg requtreMents). Yet a cruciaL theg coutd be incorporated, Ln defLntttons McCLoskeg, MiLL, ...), requtres such tnterests (though (OED, vLctnttg other preMtss the issue of whether things other than persons, aninats especiaLLg, can have rights Links rights-hoLding with interest. R tgpicaL bridge princLpLe is RI. OnLg iteMs which (can) have MoraL rights (cf. Freg, p.5). Rs Freg RI is observes, not obvious (he Later appLies a strong forM of RI, without 3ngthing Much in the wag of argunent, nonetheiess), and has had Mang with notabtg rivaLs, interests repLaced bg other candidates put up for gaining MoraL standing (rationaLitg, Language, sentience, etc. - the saMe tiresoMe List).^ How then does the interest requireMent, RI, gain its wide accreditation and grip? For an astonishing series of bad reasons (as FreedMan Ln effect brings out), 1) inc Lud ing: we Usage; speak of Ltens Lacking interests (individuaLitg, etc.) as don't possessing rights (thus Ln effect McCLoskeg). and non-usage to has be backed In fact we do, bg other consideration if arbitrariness and prejudice are to be avoided (FreedMan pp. 160-1). 2) RbgsMaL anaigses, such as TooLeg s anaLgsis of X has a right to R as to refrain fron actions that wouLd deprive hiM (again dissected bg FreedMan p.161 ff.)^ it of and coupied 3) Mistaken thenes, such as Feinberg s (drawn fron McCLoskeg) that protection of an interest, and hence [it is ciaiMed] for right it cLaiM). Must have Nothing characteristicaLLg an interest however requires afford (FreedMan, is that reasoning a right is a sonething to a have p.16^., who upsets the inferred the protection rights that of an interest; as far as the Meaning of goes it can be of a thing or a sgsteM. t*) exercising roughig if R desires X, then others are under a prina-facie obLLgation with sgnongnous have; others and Confusion of having right with right a a right (pp.162-3), or even with being abLe to cLain a right. Though these are evidentLg different, and entaitMents froM having to exercising or to cLaining evidentLg faiL, such confLations are encouraged bg easg but unwarranted transition, such as those froM having a cLaiM to Making or being abLe to Make a cLain. But, to reiterate, rights have nothing highig intiMate -16- to do with the Mak Lng bg c La LMS of a hoLder (though no doubt an art Lou Late Maker of cLaLMS hoLds soMe advantage Ln achLevLng Lts and others cLaLns). R creature or LteM wLth cLaLMS Mag have no abLLLtg or coMpetence to Make or present theM; or be the sort of thLng that can. ^a) ContractLons of rLghts to a subcLass of rLghts, such as exercLsabLe rLghts, Lndeed Lnterest-protectLng rLghts, accountabLe rLghts, etc. Then conatLve requLreMents do foLLow (e.g. what has an exercLsabLe rLght Must presunabLg at sone stage be suLtabLg aLLve and capabLe but reLevant actLvLtg), requLreMents foLLow froM the subcLassLfLcatLon LnvoLved, not froM the such notLon of rLght. of For Lnstance, the Lnterest-protectLng aspect of tnterest-protecttng rLghts foLLows froM the Lnterest-protectLng restrLctLon, not froM the notLon of rLghts, whLch Mag serve to protect thLngs LackLng interests (especLaLLg under chauvLnLstLcaLLg-favoured hLgh redefLnLtLons of Lnterests). R reLated cLuster of poLnts appLLes to attenpts to rLghts restrLct to persons or to LndLvLduaLs, atteMpts aLso tgpLcaLLg underpLnned bg the assuMptton that what has or can have rLghts Must have Lnterests, or desLres, or a suLtabLe conatLve LLfe, or whatever. But nothLng Ln the notLon of rLghts restrLcts rLghts to persons, or to LndLvLduaLs, or persons" Ln a generous LegaL sense; nothLng restrLcts theM to LndLvLduaLs and "persons". RLL these restr Let Lons on rLght-hoLders are Lnposed, wLthout Much or suffLcLent justLfLcatLon, usuaLLg for LdeoLogLcaL reasons, such as bLockLng LegLtLMate cLaLMS on behaLf of daMaged dLsadvantaqe LteMs or sgsteMs, MerLtLng protect Lon. or §3. and rebuiLding environMentaLLg. the rLghts vLew Deconstructing Most iMportant, Regan's sharp LiMitation of rLghts LndLvLduaL to Consider, a subjects, LLMLtatLon whLch has a Most daMaging effect on the abLLLtg of hLs rLghts vLew to cope decentLg spec Les, concernLng rare 3nd endangered (e.g. Regan s pp.395-6). prob Lens of our tines, such as those envLronnentaL Major wLth forest does restrLctLon ecosgsteMs, wLLderness, foLLow froM not even etc. hLs own defLnLtLon of a rLght, as a vaLLd ciaiM. Rather the restrLctLon Ls progressLveLg LnfLLtrated, as postuLates the concerning are eLaborated. It is not rights uniforMig inf titrated (and in other work Rgan appears to abandon restrictions to individuaLs, e.g. HP, p.32). For instance at a cLosing stage (in p.39S) RR, a arguMent against priviLeged status for rare or endangered species begins, brief because paradigMatic right-hoLders are individuaLs (In sgLLogistic extended IndividuaLs forM the arguMents runs: ParadigM3tic right-hoLders are individuaLs. not acquire ang further rights if theg beLong to rare or endangered species. do Therefore, paradigMatic right-hoLders do not so acquire further rights. So the rights view does not acknow Ledge ang priviLeged MoraL status on the part of rare endangered or species right-hoLders needn t be individuaLs, aniMais.) of so The restricted beginning after aLL, onLg the species (with a if are paradigMs MoraL the about or MeMbers species e.g., as Hutiean entities, certaintg then treated, individuaLs, at Least BoodnanesqLg). But earLier Regan view as Look undercutting the brief argunent. For siMpig consider sone further non-paradignatic right-hoLders, such as endangered species theiisetves. it Makes of announces, rights The Species are not individuaLs, and the rights view does not recognise the MoraL rights of species to is view 3ngthing rights individuaLs. (p.3S9). Thus individuaLs, whatever theg are (no characterisation is actuaLLg offered), are not MereLg the right-hoLders; paradigMatic theg right-hoLders. The More conciiiatorg paradigMatic Line gives wag to the exhaust iron-fisted thene of (p.361), according the to aLLeged individuaListic nature of MoraL rights which the notion of MoraL rights cannot be neaningfuLLg appiied other than to individuaLs (p.36I). Rs far as evergdag, MoraL and LegaL usage goes this just isn t true; there is no such categoriaL restriction. Uhg trg to iMpose such an iMpLausibLe and environnentaLLg daMaginq atoMistic restriction on a rights view? Or, siMiLarLg, on a MoraL standing view? EMending the brief arguMent awag froM anti-environMentaL ends indicates whg. a rebuiit rights view, an individuaL Mag acquire More rights, and warrant More protection, bg be Longing to an endangered group, in virtue of princ ip Les such as that significant endangered species ought to be protected. creatures wouLd hoLd different But then different rights, contradicting Regan's assuMption that aLL aniMaLs are equaL* (p.395) - at Least in rights heid, this, On but as a Matter of definition) in and basis (the of inherent vaLue'. Here is the source of the troubLe, of individuaListic restrictions, not the basic account but the adjoined equaLitg assuMptions. -18- of rights, restriction to individuats Ls not just an optionaL extra Ln Regan s The package, that can simpig be pee Led off. rLghts appt LeatLons of super-imposed theorg, the but Ls essentLaL wLth for the given coherence a super-individuaL, such as a specLes, If postuLates. equaLLtg hetd rLghts on an equaL basts It Ls requLred not ontg Ln major Lt, composLng LndLvLduaLs the then the wouLd both have more rLghts than Lts LndLvLduaLs (those of aLL super-individuaL Lts components) and the same rLghts (cf.DE on bLocentrLc egaLitarianism; DC, Furthermore, equaLLtg assumptLons are verg heavLLg depLoged Ln foLLowing p.3S). through LmpLLcatLons of the LndLvLduaL rLghts view, where dLfferentLaL treatment of different sorts of creatures Ls repeatedLg ruLed out bg appeats to equaLLtg. IntegraL as equaLLtg assumptLons are to Regan s LndLvLduaL-rLghts view, theg are neLther part of more ordLnarg ref Leet Lons on rLghts nor part of what Ls meant bg rLghts, but addLtLonat postuLates. Theg can accordLngLg be removed, and deconstructLon on of the rLghts exactLg view thLs Ls EquaLLtg done. assumptLons concernLng moraL rLghts are supposed, Ln the fLrst pLace, to from dLrectLg dLstLnguLshLng moraL rLghts, for Lnstance unLversaLLtg features absoLute are quaLLt Les, theg do Ls aspect ref Leets and equaLLtg features (p.267). But aLL thLs "equaLLtg rLghts foLLow that (p.368). It does not come Ln degrees not foLLow that one Ltem cannot have more rLghts than another (because, e.g., of Ltems the sort of thLng Lt Ls), or therefore that aLL bund Les equaL that have have rLghts of (even baste) rLghts. Nor does equaLLtg of basLc rLghts foLLow from unLversaLLtg requLrements, but ontg a certain Ln LmpartLaLLtg treatment (often confused however wLth egatttartanLsm). equaLLtg NeLther nor assumptLons LndLvLduaLLstLc restrtctLons emerge then; and Ln fact theg do not fLgure eLsewhere Ln the anaLgsLs of rLghts To them fend we have to foLLow gLven. the text past the anaLgsLs, through to the LntroductLon of the fundamentaL respect prtncLpLe and the rLght respectfuL to treatment (p.277 ff.), where both equaLLtg and LndLvLduaLLtg enter Ln a bLg wag, both beLng imported parts of the theorg of Lnherent vaLue (and assocLated as justLce prLncLpLe) from a previous chapter. For what Ls rLght those of who have argued Ls basic the Lnherent vaLue to... respectfuL treatment (p.277), where Lnherent vaLue Ls bg def Ln Lt Lon confLned to LndLvLduaLs and somethLng aLL suLtabLg conatLve LndLvLduaLs (those subject-of-a-Life) have equaLLg. ConsLder subjects' vaLue as - what we LL caLL Lnherent LndLvLduaLs vaLue. ... aLL who have Lnherent vaLue have Lt equaLLg p.23S ff.). (pp p.37; Inherent vaLue Ls thus a theoretLcaL notLon, conforming sLmLLarLg to HR various postuLates, notabLg LndLvLduaLLtg and equaLLtg. ObviousLg the theorg of Lnherent vaLue can be varied, pLace of Lnherent vaLue, LndLvLduaL as Regan effectiveLg admits (p.362). Consider, then, Ln LnLtLaL or connate vaLue, X, or not, as foLLows: the vaLue of X, defined, for ang Ltem if ang, as an Ltem (and not as a mere receptacLe). In pLace of the equaLitg postuLated for Lnherent vaLue, Lt assumed that, for Ls ang X and Y of the same ethicaL tgpe, X and Y have the came -17- connate vaLue. Then, white connate vaLue Ls not verg Mett characterised, Ls Lt as adequateLg specified as Lnherent V3tue, and can carrg Lts work-Load. showing Before that Let s Look at differences, and Limitations, of the notion. Mhite inherent vaLue is an aLL-or-nothing (certain affairs individual tgpes have Lt, nothing eLse does, but has zero vaLue), connate vaLue Ls not. Not that have (non-zero) connate vaLue need have equaL positive vaLue or tgpes aLL positive vaLue at aLL. DeviLs, certainLg if theg existed, wouLd negative vaLue connate disboLicainess, if (their ontoLogicaL no nonexistence proofs objects are to be beLLeved.) Connate doubt have decidedLg to adding their the existence of top connate vaLue of are vaLues somewhat thus initiaL Like LeveLs of perfection. Connate vaLue Ls, Like inherent vaLue properLg understood, at an best initiaL assignment. The assignments Like those of initiaL are probabiLLtg under a principLe of indifference (particuLarLg vaLue; connate out themseLves presumptive those of inherent vaLue invoLves a further tgpoLogg). UntiL actors, objects, sort their bg initiaL Life-stgLes, can which vaLue, then intrinsic vaLue gets cLarified; compare a be theg states worLd-Lines, posteriori a diminished as or increased receive probabiLLtg assignments. Thus too connate vaLue is not aLL that is taken into account in discerning moraL and so Ln deriving rights. Further vaLue-making or vaiue-detracting prtncLpLes, features of things which affect intrinsic vaLue are aLso reLevant. 0 criticaL question is whether connate vaLue can serve to carrg enough (not aLL, of course) of the requisite argument; in particuLar, that to a respect principLe. appears Examination to show that it can, at Least to this extent: insofar as the argument (pp.277-9) based on respectfuL fact, Ln individuat bg to item substitute connate made is principLe, principLe as aLso to repLace required, nameig resuLts defence of the modified, succeeds. It does, as inspection of the bg shows, where the the same substitutions as before. The modified principLe Looks near-anaLgtic: Ue are to treat those items which have connate that respect their connate vaLue (pp.2t+8). The modified respect wags in and presupposed argument (pp.258-60) for the modified respect principLe soon vaLue right throughout, and to verifg bg inspection that aLL detaiLs that evergthing does work as weLL, given that the modified the features of moraL rights. But it is straightforward to verifg concerning respect to inherent for work just as weLL. Minor use of some points aireadg those vaLue succeeds, so does that based instead on connate vaLue. It treatment suffices, inherent principLe appLies of course to species and sgstems, as weLL as for individuaLs, and so does the expanded right to respectfuL treatment. Much of the remainder of Regan's text can be simiLarLg reinterpreted, but again bg no means aLL.15 (Limitations of space, time, and energg preciude a fuLLer de- and re-construction). Some initiaL indication onLg of the expanded environmentaL rights theorg offered. But it which repLaces the moraL rights view wiLL be is important to observe right awag, that mang of the goats of -20- the anLmaL rights Movement, as Regan conceives Lt Largetg intact under the expanded rLghts theorg (e.g. can PP,p.32), perhaps (minus remain totaLitg the cLaims), for instance, the theme of aboLition of the use of animats Ln scLence. But not aLL the further postulates of Regan's rLghts view remain intact, most notabLg that of vegetarianism, which Ls not a consequence of themes of rLghts movement. Nonethe Less? animat the rLghts view hotds that the LndLvLduaL h3s a dutg to Lead a vegetarian Mag of LLfe supererogatorg; Lt (p.351,p.3^.6) to thLs permLssLbLe Ls vegetarianism Ls (p.39!+); But (p.3^6). obLLgatorg' cone Lus Lon the appear to most the arguments the not Ls Lt that Ls estab LLsh not to consume the products of commercLaL animat agrLcuLture (LncLudLng Since the anLmaL Lndustrg routLneLg presumabLg eggs and pureLg bread sausages). vLoLates the rLghts of these anLmaLs, for the reasons Ls Lt given, wrong to purchase Lts products. That Ls whg, on the rLghts view, vegetarLanLsm Ls moraLLg obLLgatorg, (p.3SI,LtaLLs added). Rs an argument to vegetarLanLsm (a vegetarLan beLng, one who abstaLns from anLmaL food, and LLves on veqatabLe food, and, '16 ----usuaLLg eggs, mitk, etc ), the argument Ls a major nonsequLtur (Likewise the argument, p.3^.6)^\ For there are mang wags of obtaLnLng anLmaL food whLch do not LnvoLve commercLaL anLmaL agrLcuLture or commercLaL practLces (the no proper of focus Regan's sLnce attach, such practLces tgpLcaLLg dLsrespectfuL and insensitive use and rLghts vLoLatLons). Examp Les of practLces huntLng-gatherLng LLfestgLes, of doubt Lead LncLude to the the gardenLng cuLtures of the Pie Lanes La and PoLgnesia, of subsLstence farmLng and of some of the new communes. Regan's further argument (Lt wouLd be unfaLr to stick hLm wLth the awfuL page 3nd 351 with eatLng dogs) commLts hLm, moreover, to the moraL LmproprLetg of (as these extensive tradLtLonaL LLfestgLes weLL as mtnor ones), newfangLed Lnsofar as theg LnvoLve the kiLLLng of pLgs and fLsh and occasLonaL wLLdLLfe and so R chLef reason gLven Ls that on. end theLr LLves are brought to an untLmeLg antmaLs' (e.g. p.39^.). But suppose, to dLspose fLrst of strLct tLme has come, vegetarLanLsm, that or, more straLghtforwardLg, that theg are aLreadg dead. Mhat precLudes respectfuL use? Rn expanded rLghts theorg does not entaLL vegetarLanLsm - ang more connected theorLes, such as aLL that consLderatLon, or rLvaL theorLes such as restrLctLons, wLthout further Large sent Lent utLLLtarLanLsm, are Longer no sentient or entaLL moraL deserve such dLetarg assumptLons. For there are mang tgpes of circumstance where Lt Ls perfectLg permLssLbLe to which beLngs than eat dead creatures, things which wLLL not now attain sentience (as DC exp Lains and argues). The more probLematic area Ls not that of consuming what is aLreadg dead, but of causing prematureLg, Ln order death (or, to a Lesser extent, Letting die) to achieve that option or, to gieLd it as a bg-product. For this appears to infringe rights to Life and LLveLihood and to vioLate moraL standing of creatures interfered with so drasticaLLg. Rppears to. For even ethicaL theorLes that now concede various rLghts to -21- anLmaLs bauLk anLmaLs. Rnd at for sone patLents, Papuans the rLghts extensive to LLfe and LLveLhood to own vLew provLdes, Ln the categorLaL dLstLnctLon between Regan's noraL agents and moraL treatment, such admLttLng ground of treatment dLfferentLaL further and pLgs, a peopLe dLstLnctLon Ln whLch Regan hLmseLf takes refuge when pressed. Regan s dLfferentLaL justLfgLng for So how tLght Ls Ln partLcuLar when reconsLdered as appLgLng agaLnst arguMent, tradLtLonaL LLfestgLes rather than agaLnst modern commercLaL practLces? The buLk of the crucLaL argument ff.) dLd not treat resources. Nor dLd theg (p.3{+^); receptacLes does sLmpLg cuLtures tradLtLonaL renewabLe (p.3t*3 appLg. not anLmaLs just as resources, stLLL Less as as anLmaLs treat Lnstruments mere excLude some kLLLLng of anLmaLs - or do theg? It wouLd seem that of tradLtLonaL unLLke peopLes, provLsLon (p.3t*3), are prLncLpLe dubLous admLtted commercLaL under derLved supposedLg who farmers Regan's from prLncLpLe LLbertg respect prLncLpLe, p.332). R the LncLudLng fundumentaL respect prLncLpLe LtseLf. On a straLght readLng requLres whLch that treatment creatures of vaLue Lnherent are however Some excLuded. Ls not of for prLncLpLe, the countervaLLLng respectfuL No excLuded. LnfrLnged because a creature of Lnher- nt vaLue persLst, come what mag. There use Ls respectfuL of the kLnd of vatue theg have (p.277), such uses of anLmaLs are not wLth a (p.331, stgLe of better tradLtLonaL practLces Ls excLuded under the more the Ln practLces the vLoLate the respect crLtLcaL quest Lon Ls whether the respectfuL use of anLmaLs, food, Papua, pLgs before kLLLLng. CarefuL, respectfuL practLces do not exchanged often or consLder the respectfuL treatment of mang hunter-gatherer groups Ln aborLgLnaL RustraLLa, or the practLces of gardenLng peopLes Ln who Large and Bg does rLghts are therebg a acquLre not Ln LndLctLons Lnterference rLght text Regan s to (and eLsewhere Ln hLs "preservatLon prLncLpLe") whLch wouLd go far towards sustaLnLng the vegetarLan concLusLons he faLLs to reach, and therebg to ruLLng tradLtLonaL the bLoconatLvLst assumptLons that Lt Ls LLfestgLes LnadmLssLbLe. Such are aLwags wrong to destrog LLfe (verg specLat cLrcumstances apart perhaps), that Lt Ls never permLssLbLe to reduce vaLue catastrophLcaLLg the wag that LLfe anLmaLs brLnqtrg to an untLMeLg end does. But Ln fact Regan does not endorse such prLncLpLes, strongLg rejectLng prLncLpLes LLke the pacLfLst prLncLpLe use or harmfuL destructLve wLth LncompatLbLe bLoconatLvLst the vLoLence "LLbertg" assumptLons, no (p.287); prLncLpLes matter as Lnterpreted. dLffLcuLt how wouLd maxLMLae never to bLoconatLvLsm appears Lndeed to NonetheLess, LLve bg, are hLghLg appeaLLng to mang ethLcaL pacesetters and theorg desLgners, especLaLLg who an to mang vaLue. But theg throw the whoLe naturaL order Lnto ethLcaL dLsorder; predatLon, fuLL terrLtorLaL defence and mang other commonpLace naturaL happenLngs are thrown Lnto ethLcaL doubt or MorLd magbe a Ls not verg rendered LnadmLssLbLe. ilagbe The RequLred the wag Lt surprLsLngLg Ls (LesLLe's thesLs) after aLL; dLfferent predator-free sLn-eradLcated RequLred, where V3tue j^s maxLmLzed? -22- post-naturaL worLd Ls $4.' Ti'tt'eMsnts and substantiaL prob tews. tivehood: and predation, territoriatitg other the dust that status-quo-supporting phiiosophers Despite have raised, there is no doubt, tooking through the ctoud, but that * Rnimats have various interests, mang of then of the human as those of instance, sustenance, survivat, sex, species, sheiter (see for animats, sort sane e.g. RR, PR). * Rnimats have various For exampte, theg have, in the same wag that rights. humans do, a right to iive free from unnecessarg suffering, and from excessive interference. these ciaims are substantiaitg independent (having interests is Logicaitg Mhite neither necessarg nor sufficient significant connections, inasmuch rights), having for as rights are nonethetess protect permissibie there to serve worthwhiie interests which more powerfui operators, such de-foresters, as mag otherwise override or ignore. There is no doubt, furthermore, that present human practices sgstematicaLLg infringe animai rights, especiatig those tied to their interests. For exampie, much animai suffering. causes experimentation unnecessarg quite there is a powerfui case for changing these practices (compare Thus and contrast Freg p.t*.), a case both enhanced, and easier obtain to positive action upon, bg the due admission of relevant rights. Rttainment of the sorts of sociai protection the widespread admission of rights can iead to shouid not be underestimated, in the wag it is bg utiiitarians and anti-moraiists. Granted animats have rights, some of them higher humans rights nohumans, widespread a have, main animats phenomenon of predation, a par with those that question (pace Freg) concerns which outstanding particutartg, on have. Because especiatig of the essential to the continued tivetihood of mang creatures, the issue can took tike an exceedingtg difficult one (and one comes to grief upon). There are undoubtedtg serious confticts of interest Regan induced through the phenomenon, some of them unavoidable as when a herbivore s interest in continued existence ctashes with a carnivore s interest in continued sustenance, avoidabte others as in human Predation is not of course the ontg source of territoriatitg, slaughter of whates and dotphins. serious conflict of interests; for instance, C3n atso iead to serious encounters, particutartg in situations of expanding poputations (thus too the issues are connected). Such matters as predation, territoriatitg and population been converted into increase serious prob terns bg mistaken atomistic views of vaiue and associated excessive ciaims as to rights. Removing these defective the but integral part much of atomistic non-utititarian positions such as Regan's, hotds that vaiue (or utititg) is a feature, at bottom, of atomistic as themes probtematic. The vatue theorg involved, tgpified bg utilitarianism reduces an have individuats, that those items items such (constituting the base ctass) have a fixed -23- (equaL) vaLue whLLe theg persist, which Ls not substitutibLe for and that vaLues (derived) Ls ecosystems, of whaLes additive an simpLy functLon the of aLLenabLe, such structures, organised and or atoms as Lt. within CharacteristicaLLg aLso theses of maximization and preservatLon of present vaLue are incorporated Lnto the theorg. On such assumptions, predatLon and LnvoLve a reductLon Ln vaLue, at Least Ln the shorter tern, and so a infringing path, and maximization preservatLon enhances the prob Lens bg postuLating a rLght to has that LndLvLduaL (Lnherent) LnLtLaL to everg simiLarLy woraL exLstence (and vaLue suboptimaL The rights view desLderata. contLnued Like the considerabLLitg posLtLons add to the dLffLcuLtLes). But the assumptions LnvoLved shouLd be removed. Both the wag the probLems are generated fron the assumptions, and the reasons for revising the vaLue eLsewhere than which are wore LncLude sun the of predators, theLr LndLvLduaL escaLation The the of theg though components, be hLghLg vaLuabLe Ln theLr own rLght, wLth mag LLves of herbLvores substituted for wLthtn vaLue. detaLL Ln the Breen SerLes, especLaLLg OC ^). Host important, ecosystems, (Ln tgpLcaLLg expLaLned are assumptions, the through probLems wLthout system, reductLon of theorLes deserves, rights however, some eLaboratLon. R serLous cLash of Lnterest, as between carnLvores and herbLvores, fortunateLg does not therebg Lnduce an imcompatibLLLtg rLghts, of unLess too Lnterests are eievated to rLghts. But just thLs appears to happen when the many extensLve (but not LnvarLabLe) Lnterests of LLvLng creatures exLst are sharpLg upgraded to unquaLLfLed rLghts to LLfe (a Ln contLnuLng mistaken to eLevatLon that Ls common Ln ethLcaL thought). The rLght to LLfe of a success Lon of gnus Ls LnfrLnged bg LLon whLch aLso has a rLght to sustenance to sustaLn Lts LLfe. a MLth the advance of technoLogg Lt wouLd now be possLbLe cases of to Lnterfere some Ln predatLon, e.g. that of the remaLnLng Large carnLvores, to uphoLd gnu rLghts , bg switchLng the carnLvores to an appropriate vegetarian dLet (and, to avoLd cuLLLng, our spLended contraceptLve technoLogg couLd be appLLed hoLd to gnu popuLatLon Ln check). But to deaL wLth aLL cases of predatLon and assocLated issues in these bizarre sorts of wags Ls not onig practicaLLg LmpossLbLe; but at further, such extensLve interference with naturaL ecosgstems is LtseLf, verg Least, dubiousLg permissibLe. High-tech vegetarLan-stgLe resoLutLons of probLems of predatLon, territoriaLitg and so on, are On contrary, the virtuaLLy aLL the remaining naturaL radicaLLg unsatisfactory. systems containing Large carnLvores shouLd be Left substantiaLLg intact or restored towards their naturaL states. These ecosystems ought to persist, and have a Can t an rights to, right fLourishing LnvoLves reguLar vioLation of aLLeged absoLute though their rLghts to Life. to LLfe be Left intact (L.e. mereLg moraLLg extended from unauthentic human setting), and the probLems skirted around? Rfter aLL, some confLict, and inconsistency even, of rights, obLigations and so on, is inevitabLe, and can be LogLcaLLg Lived with in these Latter paraconsistent dags. Some can, but not too much. ConfLict shouLd be confined to exceptionaL (often -24- significant) sorts of cases. In these terns, bg accommodated Mag of up confLLct sgstematic reguLar such confLLct anatogous S3tisfactoriig It Ls too reguLar, deontLc does sgstem not because theg remove part of the poLnt of deontLc cases, structures: for then much too much rather not of rLghts or prLncLpLes. confLLet sgstematic and commonpLace. R sufficientLg effLcLent muLtipLg is predatton Ls time cases. R confLLct, repuzziing spent undermines MhLch fash Lon to deaL wLth sattsfactorg more redecLdLng and the point and force of prLncLpLes, is revision of principLe. Furthermore, a confLLct of rights approach (no more than a confLLct of vaLues approach: right. feeL doesn't p.33) DC, at aLL Lion Ls not acting MrongLg or infringing rights MhoLesaLe, everg Meek R Mhen it mag kLLL an anteLope or other creature. R aLternative, atreadg indicated, consists then in Minding in superior excessive titLement concessions, so as to avoid extensive confLLct. R strong and Legitimate interest in a continuing LiveLihood to right does not an give unquaLified Life, which can be conferred against associated predators. It affords onLg a defeasibLe right, which can be forfeited or Lapse. In these terms, a Lion that takes a Meaker aged gnu, taiLing or separated from a herd, does not vioLate Lts defeasibLe right to Life. The different. Mith situation their take chances. rights to Life are not predatorg is essentiaLLg not LLL-equipped or reck Less humans who put themseLves Ln or find LJeak, themseives in threatening situations, such as traveL humans animats or wiiderness If theg therebu Lose their Lives, their defeasibLe therebg or action highspeed infringed animats where (and defending their animats are territories LnvoLved, not shouid be HL id animats such as gnus are aLmost aiwags on Mitderness traveL, persecuted). except when imprisoned in zoos; theg properLg take their chances with naturaL predators. Rs pursuit of this approach suggests, a hetpfuL wag of coming with predation and Like issues happens, what grips is through zoning, or more generaLLg through bioregionaLLsm, which zones regions of the earth s surface what to and eisewhere. is protected, what Ls permissibie and right, Ln wiiderness can be significantLg different from that in urban areas. R tiger that moves of out a wiiderness to a supposedLg easier Life in a citg where incautious citizens are pLentifuL, cannot expect 3nd doesn t merit the same treatment as Lt did wiiderness, nameLg being Left LargeLg atone. Moreover, with bioregions big For wiiderness as Locus, Lt is much to think hoLLsticaLLg, easier predation as an LntegraL and significant part of such a rich naturaL the as to see structure rather than isoLated action of individuaLs without a further just ifg ing setting. (The adjustment of ethicaL principtes to regions, and Large communities, need invoLves no Loss of universaLizabLLitg; wiiderness is an appropriatetg generat notion, not get a proper name.) The action of carnivores (LncLuding traditionaL peoptes) in wiiderness areas, in taking preg conservativeLg, Ln defending their territories and so -25- on, LnvoLves no LtseLf Ln infringeMents of rLghts then, whether what Ls taken Ls huMan or not (Ls "repL3cabLe" or not). There Ls Moreover no need for Lnstance Lf a carnLvore had coMsuMed a career. that tresspassLng Darwin Ln earLg hLs brash utLLLtarLan wouLd LnsLst, or pretend, that, when aLL the a OnLg deng Lts frequent vioLence and death, nag LnvoLve Loss of vaLue, as with predatLon, to undo-abLe cowputat tons are done, the sufferLng and Losses and repLacenents of sgsteMS, net vaLue of overaLL naturaL processes Ls aLwags approxtMattng naturaL MaxtMaLLtg. On the other stde, thought Lt wouLd be a supreMe technoLogtcaL opttMtst sgsteMS couLd perforw nearLg as sattsfactortLg, huMan-engtneered that even on a qutte Modest scaLe. HuMan breakdown, who efforts, whtch especLaLLg are prone to soMettMes Make soMe SMaLL iMproveMents around the edges; MostLg can theg reLg upon expottLng what Ls aLreadg there or nearbg. Rs a worktng ruLe, the More huMans interfere wLth naturaL processes, the More probLeMs the as there are and More thtngs go wrong. Med LeaL experience wLth intervention, even in Matters norMaLLg straightforward huMan chLLdbirth, provide weLL-docuMented ruLe at work. The chances of huMans iMproving, technicaLLg or the of evidence as MoraLLg, upon Nature Ln wLLderness areas Ls exceedLngLg sLight. To adapt one the ecoLogicaL Laws to of encapsuLate the working ruLe: Nature generaLLg does better than huMans. Its coroLLarg Ls: CurtaLL excessive huMan interference Ln naturaL regions. It does not Matter if, because of predation and the Like, vaLue a Lwags as poLiticaL high wickedness, evoLutionarg not it Might be. Mith the persistence of sin and prevaLence of as Ls copious reason for conjecturing that we do not there inhabit the best of possibLe worLds. Besides we 3re free to specuLate Long is process - that the no doubt a rather restricted, heaviLg interfered with, and verg hit and Miss business - did not turn out as perfectLg as Lt Might have. Major ecosgsteMs certainLg do not appear to have evoLved adapted in weLL wag a to (or anticipating, so to sag) the 3rrivai of Modern huMans with their enorMOUs destructive capacitg and wLLL to power. But, even apart froM the advent it is far froM cLear that Nature of such huMans, provides rather Nature satisizes (an adjustMent of ecoLogicaL an optiMat sgsteM; Law" argued for eLsewhere: see SM). The facts of satisization do not put Nature out of step with deontic best MoraLLtg, principLes. For deontic principLes aLso answer back eventuaLLg to sufficient LeveLs of vaLue, not to MaxiMaL consequences (see were with that vaLue SH). Even it be Maximized, obLigation certainLg does not require Lt. Predation can take a rightfuL pLace Ln such a satisizing environnent; naturaL sgsteMS which have evoLved with predation seeM to offer quite and often dazzLing, Lf LeveLs of vaLue. Richard SgLvan via Bungendore -26- for the adequate, RustraLia 2621 NOTES 1- For aLL that I an crLtLcaL of Much of that thought environmentaL Lt far of southern and western Rmerican schooLs, out fLows the surpasses the drearg and reactionary anti-environmentaL dross that emerges typLcaLLy the froM prestigious More universities Ln LndustrLaL north-eastern USR and British LLght-engLneerLng centres LLke Oxford. 2. May ThLs a strike MoraL as theorist aiMost cost/benefit ana Lysis of (mainstream) econoMics - as curious as a order in aLso and having reaL point - wouLd strike econoMists. But the cases are different. assessMents Cost/benefit depend on a vaLue theory of soMe (perhaps degenerate) sort, but not necessarily on MoraLity. 3- EntitLement to whom? On traditionaL views, and amounts what choice seLf-appointed chosen, (p.!*). makers entitLement a to in There are probiems according PP, to we free and rationaL use regarding of contexts, since entitLement moves in the these rights-circLe and items with m-s May Lack rights. The annuLar picture is open to the separate charges of being but a devious sort of moraL ex tens ion ism and of introducing or invoLving a moraL hierarchy, both of which set scenes for condemnation. But neither charge is justified in a form that wouLd do damage. MoraL notions are not extended, rather their proper significience ranges and catagoriaL features are investigated and put to principLed work. Rs to the matter of hierarchy, the dLvisions of ref Leets cLassification things in terms of such features, where theg appLy, as capacities and capabiiities. This wouLd yieLd a hierarchy these features ranked, which on the annuLar picture they are not. (Even if they were and a hierarchy aLL Not probiematic. resuLted, hierarchies are need that damaging, e.g. ciassificatoru ones, such as BioLogicaL divisions may oniy were when be. not be mereLy It is hierarchies serve to distribute, or become a means to, power or priviLege or favour, that theg warrant the criticism hierarchies have encountered. That criticism wouLd have deservedLy been directed at certain power hierarchies are of this sort.) -27- hierarchies; but not aLL UorrLes about LnstaLLLng a MoraL power hterarchg or pecktng order and accoMpangtng MoraL eLLtes are one reason whg sone philosophers an (west go qutteLg atong wLth eLLtes) operate wtth LMpoverLshed ethLcaL tgpotogg. For instance, a Mtsp Laced egaLLtartantsM appears both as deep ecoLogg, Ln bLo-con3ttvtsM 3nd Ln rLghts vLews such Ln where both Lnherent vaLue and the equaL basLc rLghts Regan's, Lt supports behave Ln an aLL-or-nothLng fash Lon. 5. StwLLar funng busLness Ls goLng on standLng vaLue-Ln-LtseLf wLth Freg, Ln equates who worst and proceeds to bound Lt (p.!+S), beLow, not bLocentrLcaLLg as Ln Goodpaster, but bg sentLence. ThLs part happens as coLLapse of a of wore wLdespread huwanLstLc utLLLtarLan Major ethtcaL dtsttnctLons, wLth rLghts as a further casuaLLtg. 6. PossLbLLLtg and forws of nonLnterference prLncLpLes probabtLLtg are basLc to the Ma Ln arguwents the to LMMoraLLtg of nucLear arrangements: see LiP. 7. But Fox has M3de a sustaLned - though now apparentLg parttaLLg repeated - attewpt to do so, tn hts crtttctsM of axtotogg. Such an attempt Ls bound to faLL. VaLues are baste and LnescapabLe (theg enter even Lnto truth cLatms). Thus, for Lnstance, a crtttctsM woraLLtg as Ln a generaL bad Lnstttutton, cost/beneftt record and, has wrought Much enMeshed whtch damage, Ls of has a poor thoroughtg Ln vaLue concerns. RntL-MoraLtsm depends on axLoLogg; Lt does not sustain and antt-axtoLogg. 8. UnLversaLLzabLLLtg Ls used Ln the text because Lt Ls famLLLar. But what are reaLLg Lwportant are LntersubstLtutLvLLg and reptaceMent prLncLpLes, whtch underLLe generaLLztbLLLtg and other features. 8. SoMe of opposttton and standard objeettons to rLghts taLk resuLt froM Mtsgutded ontoLogtcaL assuMpttons. For exaMpLe, Lt Ls aLteged that rLghts are verg curtous sorts of entctLes, untversaLs that sctence casts no LLght upon and does not need. RccordtngLg, prtncLpLe of such p3rstMong, as OccuM s weLL as provLdtng a pasttng such propertLes, such as betng objeettons of such crude LnstruMents as OccoM s razor: consutt JB, Lndex). Creatures have have a razor, such ent Lt Les shouLd be dLscarded. Object-theorg shortcLrcuLts (as bg derLvatLve rLghts; froM rLghts certaLn obLtgattons; but rLghts do not exLst, soMewhere, or at aLL. RLghts are LogtcaLLg weLL-enough behaved nonexLatent objects. -28- 10. The not Lon of right[sj, though -a coMparativetg Modern Ls one, a verg coMpLex one, sone of the conpLexLtg beLng ref Leoted Ln the 20 right' LLsted Ln the OED. Rn atteMpt to senses of the substantive brLng sone order and sgsteM to thLs coMptexLtg Ls Made Ln SN. RLthough the takes anaLgsis frow off one Ma Ln OED sense, the eLaboratLon wLLL Lead bg or through other connected 1.3 as whLch that MoraLLg just or due concerned Ls (as in LnvoLveMent activities); be no issues concerning opportunitg (as in rights to work) or LLbertg (as in rights state-iMposed such equitg or ... which is right-doing ). But there wiLL Main Ln wLth senses, not to in participate are priMariig issues for MoraL these actors. 11. reLevant or coMMunities to capabie or individuats within theM, i.e. he reguLarLg resorts to individualizing strategies. The status of iterated deontic princ ip Les invoLved in such exact arguMents can be Left open, e.g. whether OOC is entaLLed bg 00 is or further substantive principie which can be asserted when 00 a is. 13. Not aLL these substitutes are incoMpatibLe, fortunateLg for who Leaps to the cone Lus ion that sentience, beings and the "higher ... is an the fact that huMan aniMats have experiences or MentaL states the uLtiMate and fundaMentai basis of the ctaiM that theg (p.^3). No arguMent at aLL are possessors of MoraL rights than appeaL to (other is to be found for this ciatM, a authoritg) surprising OMission in an author who is fond of LaMbasting for Freg, faiLure suppig to others arguMents (e.g. p.7) - especiaLLg in the MereLg citing Light of his eartier reMarks that sentieneg as a criterion for the possession of MoraL rights neither shows that it is one nor even creates the presuMption that it is, ... untiL soMe respects are provided ... arguMents in these subsequent chapters, such arguMents are . Rs we shaLL see in scarce on the ground (p.33). lit- Too Leg s anaLgsis standard account substituting can "right of for desires , an wouLd Mark out onLg subcLass rights, of be upgraded, and brought into Line with (adopted to" Ln EE, p.176), chooses or wouLd chose . Even so Lt iMportant roughLg consequentiai exercisabLe criticisM teLLs against EE). -2?- feature rLghts (a of a siMLLar IS. Rn important exanpLe is the argunent which bg broken is concedLng to that vaLue, equat not p.33, PP aLL hunans, serLousLg genet LeaLLg defectLve and weLL-endowed contractuaLLg-capabLe, need have equat connate vaLue, and thus renoving the preniss. 16. London,1932). RecordLng to the Concise EngLLsh DLcttonarg (Onega, the But qutte not Ls natter not a reputation of sLnpLe, so vegetartantsn on the basts of the avaiLabititg of dead aninats decisive. carefuL definition, which wouLd however render nore R sone hunter-gathers (and even sone cannibats) vegetarians, is 'one who Lives whoLLg or principaLLg OED account, so upon the vegetabie a person who on principle abstains fron ang forn of aninaL foods; food, or at Least such as Ls obtained bg the direct destruction of Life'. 17. that not decisivetg support vegetartantsn, even inproved connerciat faming does UtLLitarianisn invoLving s Laugh ter and of so Regan correctLg contends (p.3S0 suns up his extensive aninats, argunent). Ln Rnd fact fLawed the case utititarian vegetartantsn Ls effectiveLg abandoned in the recent work for of one choice of of its Leading proponents, Singer (see DC, p.36). 13. sone Uhite such terntnoLogg distinction singuLarLg is unfortunate given the non-obsoiete patient . Most aninats are not patients. senses of the noun 13. the inportant, is For exanpLe, in a range of, adnittedLg difficuLt, confiict such as Lifeboat situations (p.32^,p.351), and nore inportant, as regards interspecies reL3tions (p.357 ff.). and threats to rabid foxes to the crunch; hunans aLwags outrank aninats. (So nuch for the then strict norat restrictions, grounded in ... inherent vaiue , the sane aLL and hunans (e.g. p.353). Despite his discLainers, Regan s egaLitarian princ ip Les ring hoLLow when Lt cones for cases, for subjects-of-a-LLfe, on the strength of which even carefuL and respectfuL defective farngard greater C3n practices vaLue assunption be p.3^.2). condenned, R is snuggLed into the rights view, seriousLg detracting fron its environnentaL depth (see DE, si). 20. On bioconativisn see CaLLicott; Leading ideas go back to -Jainisn. 21. Predation bg Large carnivores can conpared with hunan travet be usefuLLg, sporting and predation (no accident of -30- course) favourabig, accidents. UhiLe the nunber of kiLLings annuaLLg are of a siniLar order aninaL and of nagnitude, appears to invoLve rather Less suffertng and pstn. Rnd though reduct ton tn vatue tn the removat tt tnvotve may some of on-gotng ttves, tt atso offers some very constderabte compensattng ecosystemtc beneftts. REFERENCES J.B. A t Catttcott, On the tntrtnstc vatues of nonhuman spectes' tn The Preservatton of Spectes (e.d. B.G.Norton) Prtnceton Untverstty Press, 1386; pp.138-172. R. Dworktns, Taktng Rtghts Sertousty, Duckworth, London, 1377. J. Fetnberg, The rtghts of antmats and unborn generattons, tn Phttosophy and Envtronmentat Crtsts (e.d. M.J. Btackstone) Untverstty of Georgta Press; Rthens, 1371+, pp. 1+3-68. U. Fox, R postcrtpt on 2(1+) (1385) 17-23. deep ecotogy and tntrtnstc vatue , The Trumoeter The enttty-restrtctton of rights: Notes on a fashion tn ethtcs B. Freedman, Hetaphttosophy 12(1381) 153-168. R.G. Frey, Interests and Rtghts. The Case Rgatnst Rntmats, 1880. K.E. Goodpaster, 308-325. Ctarendon, Oxford, On betnq moratty constderabte , Journat of Phttosophy 75(1378) I. H tnckf uss, The Morat Soctety: Its Structure and Effects, rev used ve rs con, Untverstty of Queenstand, 1386. J. Lestte, Vatue and Extstence, Oxford, 1373. H.J. McCtoskey, Respect for humans morat rtghts versus maxtmtztng good tn Uttttty and Rtghts (e.d. R.6. Frey), Btackwett, Oxford, 1385 pp.121-136. C. Ptgden, Nthtttsm: a Defence, Ph.D Thests, LaTrobe Untverstty, 1385. E.B. PLuhar, The Justtftcatton for envtronmentat etttc , Envtronmentat Ethtcs 5(1383 )l+7-61. T. Regan, The Case for Rntmat Rtghts, Routtedge & Kegan Paut, London, 1383; to as HR. T. Regan, On the nature and posstbtttty of on envtronmentat ethtcs', Envtronmentat Ethtcs 3(1381) 13-31+; referred to as NP. J. Rodman, Theory and practtce tn the envtronnentat Movement: notes towards an -31- ecoiogg of experience', Ln The Search for Rbsotute VaLues Ln a Changing UorLd, InternationaL CuLturaL Foundation, New Yorh 1978, pp.1+5-56. J. Rodman, Ecoiogg sensibiLitg , in Ethics and the Environment (ed. D. Scherer and T. Rttig), Prentice HiLL, NJ, 1983, pp.88-92; reprinted in VanDeVeer and Pierce, pp.185-8. R. RoutLeg, RLLeged probLems in attributing beLiefs and intensionaiitg to animats , Inquirg 21+ (1981) 387-L17; referred to as PR. R. Rout Leg, In defence of cannibaLism. I. Tgpes of admissibte and LnadmissibLe cannibatism , Green Series, RSSS. RNU; referred to as DC. R. Rout Leg, Exp Loring Pie inong's JungLe and Begond, RSSS, RustraLian NationaL Universitg, 1979; referred to as JB. R. Rout Leg, Liar and Peace I On the ethics of Large-scaLe nucLear Mar and nucLear-deferrence and the poLiticaL faLL-out , Green Series, RSSS, RNU 1981+; referred to as UP. R. and V. Rout Leg, Human chauvinism and environmentaL ethics , in Environmental Ph i Losophg (e.d. D. Plannison and others) RSSS, RustraLian NationaL Universitg, 1980, pp.98-189; referred to as EE. ' 1 T. Rgan, The case for animaL rights' in VanDeVeer and Pierce, pp.32-39. % C.D. Stone, ShouLd Trees have Standing? Towards Legat Rights for NaturaL Objects Kaufmann, Los RLtos, 197!+. R. SgLvan, R critique of deep ecoiogg', 1+1(1985); referred to as DE. Radicatj^hiLosophg 1+0(1985) ana R. SgLvan, SuppLanting maximization, and other utiLitarian assumptions, in Western ethicai ideoiogg , Topci, 1986, to appear; referred to as SN. D. VanDeVeer and C. Pierce (e.ds), PeopLe, Penguins, and PLas tic Trees, UadsMorth, CaLLfornia, 1988; referred to as PP.  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 20, Item 1: Draft of Moral matters matter - environmentally? Subject The topic of the resource Typescript draft. Paper published, Sylvan R (1997) 'Do moral matters matter- environmentally?', Between the species, 3(4):163-176. https://doi.org/10.15368/bts.1987v3n4.2 Description An account of the resource Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff. 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> 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 20, Item 1 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. 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Vlrt· uc1l ly .11 1 t h e ph i1os ophi.c ;l1 lit cri'!ture on nur.le a r war ls wr i t te n from ;-1 SllfK·rpower (predomin an tly Amer i can) or e lse European (mainl.y German, British or Fre nch) viewpoint. This art:icle, a f ter connecting in initial section s with Northern Catholic literatur e , adopts a very different Antipodean s La nce . Such re gional per spective s , whil e t he should not affect the morality o [ t he mat t e r, ,ff , highly po1i ticaJly relevrmt. eitlH_•t t he phJ.lo so ph i ca l li tera tun~, c>spec ially t:ha t emanating from th e als o a i l s th e test of morality. lt is c oncerned only or primAr i ly with what i s good o r "rati onal" or prudential f o r A.raer.i.cans, or for the American sl.ltc, t o do ~ whereas mora l ity is ind e pende n t o f place, race , natio na lity and t ile li ke . This article tries t.o take the morality of the matter, and the r es ult ing r ed is tribution of mora l and political obligations, seriously. It c onc l ud es, amon g other things, that th e Ame r i can and Russian states have no moral bu s ine ss putting nonaligned peoples at suc h grave risk as pre sent nuclear ar r angemen ts involve. Mtwh o f U~A, CUNTENTS AND OUTLINE: Itali ci sed heading s §3 - §8 indicate the ma i n structure of the argument Pag e No §O. Introduction. Nuclear vs conventional wa rs, and new moral l. i ss llPS . L,1 rg e-sc nle (LSN) vs limited nuel ea r wars , the focus on the f ormer , but the l mplic tions for the latter. §1 . J_l5)w nuclea r wa rs differ from o t her wars; wars and Htates, and the 2::.9s ulti ng l imi ted appr~riateness of older models and theories of war. War chc1rac t e ri sed. The e ss e ntial role of th e state. New and diff~r nt featur es o f nucle ar wars. 2 0 §2 . The mora l si tuation: the recent: tendE:'n_c::L of moral consid e rations -~-~~s_ome e_n t.i.re ly submerge d_ in_ the context o f war. The nncl e nt d ist i nction of morality and expediency. Strategic planning base on expe di enc y. Argume nts tha t war must be expediency-base d refuted. Mor a l i ty dues nol have to, and ought not to, give way to expediency. Uti lit ari a ni sm nnd expediency distinguish ed . Limits to consensus: s upermen and s u pe rhawks. National Interest and expediency assimilated. Li mits of st ate e n titlement. §3 . The initial a rgum':nt to the immorality of LSN wars. One ke y argume nt, from the wrongness of ki.lling noncombatants in mass, is pr esen t ed, ass es sed, and criticisms met. Ar guments for the premisses of the ke y argumen t elabo r ated. §L1. Argum e nt s f r om historica] r equirement s on ,just wars: the important a rgume nt from convergence, and env:l.ronment a_l ar~Ements_ . Argume nts from just war requJrements: di sc rimination; proportionality , p r ospe ct of success. The detailed convergence argument, from rival moral positions. Arguments from enviro1nental principles. § 5. The shift t:o nuclear deterrence: nrgume nts to its immora~-~~· De t e rre nc e seen a s the only prac tical way to satisfy major desiderata: p re ve ntion of wa r: and maintenance of pruden t ial values. Pure deterrence not t. he po H e y. De terr c nce ais prac t.! c (• d has i.ncreased the probability of nuclea r war. Th e first argume nt to imruorHlity of deterrence, from the pla u s ibi l i t y of probab-Ui.ty of Immorality. F11rther arguments through <l ~u n t i c conn e ct.l.ng principl(~S : the probahl ll Ly l.inkage. Refuti.ng the c ou n t e rargume nt from the succe ss of deterr ence . The way the onus of 1. 5 11 1 !• 17 �Page No !,ills on deterrence policy , 1.Jhi ·h cannot mt>et. evidcnlla J. requireThe second connecting principle: the wrongness of serious prc'p.tralio n for nuclear war. The general form of connecting pri nc ipl es; separating out t hose hat arc correct . Th e third connecting principle: the wrongness of se rious threats of nuclear devastati.on . Criticism of this principle lead s to further connecting principles, th rough i n te ntion and through commitment. Meet i ng counterargumen ts from utilitarianism . AppJying the connec ting prlncip1es to argue to the jmmoral:tty of deterrence. Arguments from limited convergence: pro- and anti -ut ilitarian versions. Other reasons for deep dissatisfaction with de terrence . piu,.,f Till·lll H. 56. ~£0Ctical ,___pru<lcnU.al and more moral arguments from national daugers Lo nuclear build-up of the ~upe r statc.s, and the genes i s . - of nu c 1 t',ff di lemmas . The tirgume nts from nucle,:-ir black.ma:!.l and foreign domination, and from risk of nuclear destruction. The crucial arg ume11t from basic ri g ht s and f11ncl;iml.'nl.al values. The argument from i solated people to superstate iwnoral ity. The supers tat e theme, and rea&ons for its appeal . The much less p0rsuasive de endcnt state theme. Ch:1llcnging the assumptions of tllr> undt'rlying rc latiatory mode]. §7. The rcsulring nuclear di~emmas ·- fo r nligned states and their _supporl e rs. Ch,nc1ct. er ot the nuclear fix. Subsid iary di lemmas: natio na l securit y vs 37 43 fre edo m nnd democratic arrangements; personal and role dilemmas. Features of deontlc dilemmas. Deterrence presented as second-bes t escape from the nud.car fix . The nuclear fix a fix of s t ates' own making . Interconnection s between the nuclear fix and nation-state arrangeme nts. §8. Wavs out of nuc lear dilemmas: initial political fall-out f rom th e ethical res 1lts. Tl1e inevit.c1bil i ty of limitation s on nat1onal sovereignt y. In terstate and ex trastate approache s . The Way Up and th e Way Down of extrastate approaches . Arguments for the Way Up, and the decisive case aga i.ns t it. FaiJurc of internati onal agreement s) espe ci ally on human rights and geno ci de. Excl11s ion of nuclear dete rrence und er the Genocid e Convention. Need fur the reexam i na t i on of current political arrangements i mpo sed b y the nuclear fix. Deficiencies in present antiquated politi cal a r ra ngen.ents revealed by nuclear problems . Further arguments from the nucle a r 1 ix for polll lc:il reassessme nt. The we . k J i.nk: the sovereig n nationstatc. Forfeit11re of political obligation by many st~tes . Alternative po 1 I. Lical arr;__ingcmen t s vs nuc lcar time hor 1.zons. 49 The rnultt-track Way Out of the nuclear dilemma. The main polit ica l mea ns lle outside state governmenta l apparatus. Laying the s pectre of ideo1ogicnl domination. Social restr uct u ring a nd devolution of powe r. Graduated disarmament and transarmament, and letting state sovereignty go. Dissolving the arguments f r om natiorrnl dangers. S .. a e r e si.stance to loss of po wer . Further lines of o r ganised act ion agains t nuclear states. Appendix 1: On Scl1;!1l t he fate of mankind and the ea r th, according to and Anders. Nuclear prophets a nd prophet .i c ru bb ish . The ext in ct ion assumption . Common emerging themes of Sc-hell and Anders. The extravagant anthropocentric assumption , and some of wha t is wrong wi.th i t. Second death dlsmlssed . The universal i ty of peril. The alleged universality of responsibili t y : the Pogo theme . The correct, but undeveloped, whole earth theme . Ultimately Schell offers little hope and s upe rf icialiqy. Nuclear war is war. The logic and illogic of de t er renc e. H 64 �.1,t . . .. Page No ~~~_cl_:!~~; On mat t ers of co lJective and individual rt'sp oirn:ibilit.y a nd on regional strat egies. Individual and state responsibi.J.ity. Opt-·ouL positions , and o.rguments t.o Lhem. Failure of the arguments, and the impact of group co peration . Arguments to direct obligations of individ1rnls to the nuclear dissociation. Limitations of rival political ob l igati ons. Dif f eren L pol ic y r e organi sati on for d:i ff 're n l regions. Shallm,•er and deeper g a]s. Th e important opportunity for deepe r r eo rg.nnisution afforde d by nuclear dilemmas. Ob.ligations of those in the Antipodes: what i. s required, and justifi d . Soci a l and ec onomic reorganisation in the An tipodes, and reducing costs i.nvolv1~d. Bloc kages to social and po litical adjus tment. iii 73 �ON THE ETHICS OF LARGE-SCALE NUCLEA! WAR AN!) NtlCLEAR DETERRENCE AND THE POLITICAL FALL-OUT Large -seal ~ nuclear wars raise cthlcal questions not generated, ~ Ll o r n~ arly HO th11 n e of even t he larges d if f0 r· c n c:' !n kln<l of war. invo l ve, and threatened sa id to so differ co nv entiona l wars ( t he World Wars ) as to yield a CertFdnly ma s sive PX hAnges Gt1ch as nuc.le:ir wars exchanges such a s nuc lear deterrence presupposes , ar e neither envisaced nor fully accommodate d by tr·d ltional theories of Muc h at forcefully, by previo us human mili tar y cncounters. 1 This is at bottom because of their projected effect . , which are often f r om eit her just wars. new philosophic al reflection and inveRtigatio n is required, even if r a ther wel l -t est d and old-fashion ed moral princip l es will se rv e as initial ethical ba se. Al though nuclear wars are, thus non ex i s tent (extrapolat e va r ie tiea, objects, 1 nuclear wa rs from n very limited Ia fnr, only a decidedly menac1.ng class of proper have several distinctive properties nu .lear experlence 2 ) and come in several particular, confined or limited nuclear war s, of which tactical or st rat eg ic ar c subvarietie s, contrast witl1 lirge-scale nuclear wars (LSN wars) - - - ------- ---- -1, The US Catholic Bi shops i n t heir Pastoral Letter (PL) make the point forc e fully: 'Nuclear weapons •.. and nuclear warfare ••• are new moral issu s . •. The re exists a capacity to do something no other age could ima g ine: we can threaten the created ord 1· • • • We could des roy [God ' s] work' (PL, p.312). While the independent analysis offered in what follows has a great deal .i n common with the Bishop ' s position, it differs significant ly in removing the religious backdrop and associated fe a tures and, it is hoped, in bringing out the logical structure of the argument more clearly and sharply. To illust ra t e the differences tha t emerge with removal of the religious backdrop ~nd its the associated unity-of-ev il theme, consider what happens to two examples from PL, p.323:- First l y, peace is possible without religious enligh t enment if it is possible wit h it: religious enlightenme nt is not an essential c ondition as there implied . Secondly, violence does no take all the forms the Bishops tr y to give it , e .g. sexual discriminat ion is hardly a form of violence, pornography an aper tc without it , etc. It ia a serious m stok e to try to heap so many diverse and independent issues together under the one heading (forms or violence) along wi.th war aa if t hey stood and fell together, e.g. abortion and nuclear war. Note tha t referencing , ·where not through an au thor's name, :ls by way of acronym explained in the references at the end. 2. an The isolal ed, and unnece sary, bombing of two Japanese cities at the very end of World War II did not render that war a genuine nuclear war. Nuclear wars proper will he very different and v ry nmeh mo re horrifying. Nuclear wars proper, though elements of uncomfortab ly adjacent possible wor l ds, ought therefore to be onfined t o merely possible worlds. Enough of their features we can appreciate without their being brought to act~ality. �111hicl. r1c'ed not howe ver. be unlimited 3 • explosio n A large-sca le nuclear involv es war of l arge quantitie s of nucl ear devices ove r a sizeable region; a [unction of two main parameter s: distr i bution. Such strnt.egic ) nuclear quant l t leo of a war war quantity diffe rs which explosivc n, ts markedly limited, nnd (megatonn age wh ere from by the a of t:,Hget.s it i s ex plosive) limited assumptio n, the to and (tactical much or smaller chnr.uctcr i Rtic ,111.y arc cl rcumscr ibed, f or instance confined in pr i ncip l e to military inst al l ations in a given reg ion. Though t he focus in what follows is upon I.SN wars and th eir prev e nti.on, limLted nuclear wars are by no nucl.car arsenal means a separate st r ike 1 s ince a is a prereq utsite, an d th e probabil ities of escalatio n of suc l1 waxs to LS N wars arc high (given usual reasonabl e aosumptio ns second iss ue , et c. ). 4 Because of these of follow -up or connecti ons, much of the ca se made acainst LSN wars transfers to more limited wars, as wi l l become evid ent . How nuclear wars reHultlng d-Lffer from oth er war s: wars and states and th e -- ---------- - -- - -- llmltcd appropria teness of old er modelY and theories of war. of war that has dominated mucl1 thinking, including strategi c two party (or thinking, A model is th e severa l person) game or, as a complicat ion of that, th e clan or trib e bat tle ~. A picture of war thu s refle c tion r e quirement s for legitimat e and just wa rs, which technolog ical on advances have trad iti ona l now theo ry ender ed of war, emerg ed, inapprop riate ha rdly and especiall y sometimes surprisin gly, as a result inapplica ble. of The made no allowance for such J. Another dimension of varia tion concerns the sequence of the war, es pe cially the type of strike :lnvolved. Though the sequence is j_mportant for the mo r al ass es smen t , for example of th e ma in actors , it in no way alters the immorali ty of LS N wars, as will emerge. 4. 'T he overwhelm in pro babi li.ty [.is1 that a nucl e ar exchange would have no limits ' (PL, p.31 !+). He nce am, Jor org ument. against limited nuclear wars: t hat any such war risks , inde ed renders highly probable, an unlimited war, and the ris k is far too large to take. The point in fact follows by s Lrai g htforwanl a ppli a_tio n of decislon theory, multi.plyi ng the mass lv e undesira bi lit y (mora l and ot h ~rw ise ) of n LSN war by 'ts probabill ty gi ven a limited nuclear war.-Giv en th e character of weapons developme nt and present communica tion ar.rangem ents, the id e a of a highly circumscr ibed purel y nuclea r exchange between the s upe rpower s , perhaps in the European "theatre'' , is really a myth. 5. There was a substanti al element of sport (and connec ted features of prowess) in t radi tional wars tha t bas been eroded in modern t echnologi cal wars. Nuc lear wars may be not just un s po r ting , in that no notice is given, etc. , t hey a re also remote and impersona l, and different ly unjust, in a mu h deeper wa y, �j phenomena ns mass bomb.lng o f lar.ge citJes, such a s Tokyo. rn1clear bomb.fng , wi.th And j t.' many occurred wi.th Dre s d e n and further crucial effects be yond mass bombJng, adds furthe r new d imens ions . Ycl lt is impor t a nt for tic argument 1Jnchors, Lo historica l were accounted unjust war l s essential ly a ma tter of states and their control: the Oxford Eng l is h Dictionar y acc ount, w~..!::_ is 'hos t .ile contentio n ar1ncd 'war' of content io n or comba t; cxct1i1nge is the actual e xp<irience . but other are not literal, but transferr ed, metaphor ic, etc. 8 proLagon ists, antag onists or players; means and or wrong. to elabo rate by means of forces, car ried on betwe en nations, states , or rulers, or between part i es in t he same nation or state' for control of the state7 ; noun linkages G to be awa re of what counted as war (the :emantice of the matter), and of wh Pn , 2nd why, w;-1rs an<l military ac tions Firstly , r e tain always a f nction of sens es of the States are the forces c omprising armed soldiers are the a nd comba t or forceful and typically viol_ent Thus wars ar _ external or internal states or their rule. (c.ivi.l), Thus too wars have grown in quantity and fr eque ncy as states hav e expanded , wars have changed as states have transform ~d, and nuclear war has emerged with nuclear states. lhf,on°tic al way then to eliminate wars is t o remove states : 6. An obvious :i.n short, wars ar e There arc interes ting si delights concernin g eve n the etymology of the term 1 war' , wh ich wa s deri ved from a term meaning 'confusio n ' . In particula r, 'it is a curious fact that no Germanic nation in early historic times ha d in living use any word pro pe r ly meani ng 'war'': Oxford English Dictiona rt ( OED) o n wa r, 7. But of co urse there can be something quite a nalogous to war waged between clans , gangs, multinati onal firms, even against Nature , and still more me taphorica lly against poverty, etc. To this extent , a strict definitio n of 'war' is being insisted upon. Even so the diffusion of power structure s the argumen t will direct us to, has to ex t end beyond just the brea k-down of nation--s tates. 8. Tn to thls category (si.n ce Natu re i s no naU.on) falls the ubiquitou s and unwa rranted war against Nature of modern times , wh ic h features just as large in Marxism as in capitalism . As could have be en guessed , someone .t was James - suggest ed channelli ng all war into "war'' in the me taphorica l sens e agai.nst that unarmed and nonaggres sive "opponen t'', Natur e. James proposed a s a substitut e for war proper, conscripU .on of the youth for a wa r again st Nature (see Wasserstr om, p.12). What it boiled down to, howev er , was that youth -was to be c hannelled into all the dirty work, in that way to acqui r e manly virtu.s mil i tary ac.tivit.ie s "rightly" i.nstil, especia lly discipline ;---but also service, devotion, physical fitness, con struc tive exertion, responsi bility, and order. Another less diabolica l sub st it ute for wars p r oper (in America n ecoropian literatur e) is through wnr gam es and other game s of competit i ve cast. Again specious arguments enter for t hose bringing- out the "best" in human males, etc . �.:1n uut ,~01•1p of ro llt:ica l :.ind asso ci ated t cclmoJ .ogJ--n l st ru cture, and are nltcr i ng by the s tructu r e. Wars j _Lu a t from c an thu s be seen as a struct ural problem of (other wi se defect ive) politi ca l organ isatio n of states ; they are a ional fix , n struct ural malfor mation . helps wa r arise War Thls seman t.ically based pictur e of exp.la in why th e rad ical a rgumen t agains t nuclea r wars and deterr ence d t: vo lves into an war-m akers , argume nt agains t aga.in st states . In the fact ( s<'1 f-legit i.mise d) on the war-d eclare rs and tradit ional theory , wars wer e r estric ted to extern al wars, which were coni:;tr u ed as t heir r emoved t1 e right of r ulers (p ri nces) to conduc t for certai n politi cal purpos es; states or the argume nt was that priva t e person s with grieva nces had access to the c our ts 9, while states did not ( wa r s w_re, so to speak, the intern a ti.onal analog ue of th e law courts ). But this is itself a very sta tist conce pti on of th• legitim at e place of wars; ll1c• scmiJn tica i s not so rest.r .i ctive and permtt s intern a l wars with i.n i; t ate s, for examp le t.o end wars, injust ice, etc. Let. us a h OW\ ) V1_. r to brlng out what is differ ent now - confin e att e nt1on - basic and moat famili ar cas e, extern al wa rs hetwe n two s tates or sets (axes) of st a t. es , two-pl a yer ex t cr n;il wars. ·ompr litive game s, could be won. attent uated form for some "victo rs") Lhc World vfars. strate gy. surrou nding trad i tional ly firstl y for mass ive armed wa rs, Like exchan ges such as th •re may well be no winnin g in ar e as the of No r thern very hemisp here countr yside. Thus, and the second ly, for laying the was te _£Dint of of substa ntially substa ntiall y oblite rated 10 , (cxe rcl sed and most as nothin g all worse off than at the outset of the "play" . are huge war seen, to settle seriou s inters tate disput es , is remove d: a nothe r point of diff e rcn ~e , the phenom enon of wars that prepar ed that: That assum ption still held good ~hough in Wj th LSN wars it no longer holds; is settle d with main protag onists player s It war; assume d An LS N war could involv e destru c t ion of all main Wester n metro polita n agglom e ra tio ns 9. to main Hence elabor ately f0r , etc,), but which can never be pointf ully fought ; Thus Aquina s a nd Grotiu s for examp le (see Ba rnes , p . 776, top). The argume nt presup poses rather a lo t , includ ing a neat public /priva te dis t inctio n . Put Aquin as's way, it looks as if it could be readil y t r .-:m sf erred into an argume nt for intern atio·n al govern ment, or at least effect ive law-co urt s , Yet all Christe ndom was suppos ed a t that time to be one state! �5 hence t he ineviL Bl>Je emphasis on .l:..l!.E.~- deterrenc e. .:uid ot her Lhf' e lements o f gamesmen ship ha d a role in earlier wars, but it was not pu re de t e rr e nc e . to mil i tary Certainly , deterrenc e, bluff, Lastly, tradition al wars could be confined in tar gets r egn rd s ju s t wa r s ; and military e xchanges. principle 11 This feature iG fundnnent al as for, as will appear, wars that spill over in gross uni nvolved par t ie s sac rifice any pretensio n to morality. ways to The special effects of nu -lea r exp lo s i •cs , e s pecially operated in mass, mean however that large nuclear canno t w3rs be legitimat e ly confined. l1orrify lng det a i l i n popu l a r so 1rce s uz0ne <lestr uc ti on, s hockwav es, suc h effe cts gign nt l c fum i gat i on s §2. a nd th e e nti re l y rapid ••. speed special effects (presente d in Schell) include radioacti vity, pu lses, fireball or firestorm e tc., etc. As a result of these of exchange, LSN wars will resembl e mor e than they re semble old e r - style war:s. The mora l s ituation: be c ome as el ec troma gnet1 c <lcv .,su1t .i o11, rog ue bac t e r in ;.rnd viru se s, com pounded Th e se the r ecent tend e ncy submerged in the context of war. of moral considera tions to It is particula rly important i n t he ca se of war to mainta in a firm grasp on the ancient distinctio n mo r a lity or local or nat :l. onal and ~ ..e5:..diency. What is done in war, especiall y between advant a ge, may be very diff e r ent from what ought morally to be done, whether the l ') . There is however the degen e rate idea of war as i.nvolving annihilat ion or extinctio n, and of winning a nuclear war as annihilat ion of the enemy whil e no t be i ng e ntirely annl.hilat ed oneself: the side that somehow "survlves " suff ic iently to r ebuild is said to "win". But this is, at best, an extremely t e nuous sense of winning , wl1ich in any case neglects the medical ev idence conce rning nuclear destructi on. Recen t t alk a bout winning or even s urviving a nuclear war must reflect a failure to appre ciate a medical reality: Any nuclear war would inevitabl y cause death, disease and suffering of pa nde~onic proportio ns and without the possibili ty of effective me d ical int e rvention (PL, p.313). Mo reov e r an y such phoenix war is r adically unjust, because of violat ion cf the tr adit i onal requireme nt of pro portional ity, and for other reasons de veloped in the tex~. Unf o rtunat e ly as doc umented ir Sch ee r, significa nt off i cials who are resp o nsibl e for the nuclear destiny of the USA - and so of t he world t hink that the devast a tion o nuc l ear war an be survived by Americans and t hat a gl oba l nucl e2 r war can actua lly be "won"! They re ly , among other things, on a n incredibl y low , and unaccepta ble, redefinit ion of "winning" . 11. In prac t i ce they often were not, they drained limited economies , they layed wa s te countr yside (though to a minor extent compared with nuclear or c hemic al wa rf Rre or mod er n min i ng), im poverishi ng inhabit·n ts, etc. �l all('.l" f u determ in e d usi ng the cod es :ind conv en l:lotH' Much t.h at oug h t war , of or othenlis e 12, not t o be do 1c i n wa r is do ne, for one (alleged) advantage or anothr·r, desplte modern m:i l tt ar y cod es a n d co nv ent i ons ani the like . we liv e not go in a rat her bar barous age : unremarke d, if the th e horrors of the twentieth century will history Furt.l1c1inore rn Ll tta ry t h i nki n g a nd ge t s writt e n as wi pi ng moves : based on "stra t e gy" disad van t ages , of mor a lly excluded actions, ·a J.culaU o ns. charncterist i ca---1J:x its is. that rur al populations, be come real 1o ss ib i liti e s, included in o t con,w<ptr·n ti nli.sr d0.Lcrmi nes (accurately) str ate gtc pl an n ing tend (.1s Nagel ex plains) t o induce a ce r ta i n mo ral numbing, so th a t a r ang e such Hllitarily its e xp<'di e n cy . by gains own i.t _o u~ !:_, morally, cons i d e r i n g and Eac h side only lo s 8e s a s a in a military encounter own its advantages and r e sult. of alterna tJve possible to consider those of the other side( s) as well. In t h is way stra t eg ic planning di s places morality . I nd eed l t ha s been contended that wa r should be planned and conducted wa y, a no-holds barred combat fought to the maximal (local) advantage, without l i mit s , moral or other (except insofar a s technology limits the means of eLc.) . Such t he class lcal through "bald an inc r emental a distinct nrgumen t tc.tt1s . g a r gument from an t ha t th e It would And (bu t The externally wil l be broken by each pl a yer in turn for advantag e . ext r aordi na r i l y na rrow motivat1ona l bas e i s assumed. the of li mit) escalation man" f a llac yi 3), t hat there can be no limit. assum p tion is t hat a ny merely s e lected limit (as enforced force, Js the so-called "classic " view of Clausewicz, oft: repeated. Cl ause wicz Lr ics to argue, reall y this Thus t oo follow from i d ea of a limited wa r is some so r t of contradiction i n nut i t i. s not, though breaking off i n the he at of war, or the s upposedl y l imited nucle a r exchange, may be s ingularly impr obable . c onfusion Nuclear 12. For a s Nage l c ontend s (early on), there are moral restr ic tions on the c onduct of warfare which are not legalistic only and which are neither a r bit r a ry no merely conventional, nor a mat t e r of usefulness. These t li cn1<•s run er Lindy co11n t •r Lo the. cll.llrn :l.c t heory of war of Clnuscwic z - n th e ory outlin ed In Walz e r. 13. As one l e s s hair does not, at any stage, dis t inguish a bald man from a hirsute ma n, there a r , starting from the hirsute end, no ba ld men. Th e prog~e ssiv e escalation ar.gument concerning war is an inc remental ar gument Jike the t e chnic a l Sorites syJlo gisms , formalising the type of fallaciou s a r g ume n t which shows that one more straw never makes a heap. Th e fn l l;i.cio us e scalation argument 'i. s pa rt of the so-called "logi.c of war ", f or more on whJch see the conclusion of Appendtx 1.. �i' war s thus appear dec i dedl y Cla usewiczj_ a n . for the l anc, r or players Still the !irgument is inc onclu s ive; can choose, at leafJ t J n sma ll er calmer wars, not t o e scnlate, examplt!, agree to abide b y arranged practlccs , t y pes of we a pons, etc. l· 4 A s t 11tc engaged in war se ld om sees i t self a s e ntirely bound by of mo ·al i t y: lt i s t ake n to be me r e prude nce on t he pa r t o f those attacked to take account of the no-imr oral- holds-ban:-e d appr oa ch t h e y c<;p,~, f,11 ly t lw 1 constraint s from the ot her s'ido. 11w~Liou not onl y as to ma y well enc ount e r, So 0a , h g1·oup po t e n t i a 1l y e ngn g cd in war f;1cps it wlw t o u g ht to do in mor a lly permi ss ibl e si. lu<1tlons , but al s o both wha t i t ou g h~_ r ea l ly do, a nd wh a t it can morally do in the morally flawed situati on s it finds i t s e lf. But the last question do e s not, in tli,1L cnsc•, r e d uce t o o ne of ex pe di e nc y . There i s no que st ion, then, of moral i t y giving or having 0:x.pe<.lienc y, even under extreme to give way to circumst a nc e s such as the prospect of LSN war involves . Fo r it i s not as if s haky con Ri de r a tions of give to the f i rm ground of exped iency when t he c hips are down, since often way morality eno1gh such mora l ero s ion does not occ ur in c risis s ituations. t hcorc~ical fac t is that both deliver f r om us But the the vnlue the o q'.: . to Expedlency fact, but urg('s , tba t does foreign takes local va l.ue s - o f sel f , family, clan, class, or nation - ar e conside rat i on s . proper charact risa t i on , a remote By cont r ast, mo rality requires, as a matter of its much univ• r sa lizable mor e univ e rsal pr inciples . rePultan t i1,tersu bstlt uti vit y fairness, eq u ita billty and of value and, And morality thereby imposes, through principl e s, jus t ice. distributio n c ertain requ i rements of general Ex pe di e ncy yields an unfair , inequitable value system, one tha t subscribe rs would not a dh e re to if differe n tly Ttie no t It assumes, or what really coun t, and ov e rride or are t o be max imized at the expe ns e of or to cruci al simply narrowl.y-co nstr;.icd l oca l a dv anta ge or powe r a s wha t i s valuable . even bound moral i ty a nd expe dien c y fall within the same, eq 1:. 'J l y f~lrnky or equally sol ! d , doma tn_ of v al ue miraculousl y are placed 1 :., . Jeep thcorcL ical u1 s ati sfact orinc ss of ex pedi e ncy, and associa t ed strategic Lhinldne , n l so Jer lv ci; from Lh i s faU. ur e of ·va l untioi1~:; pe r so ns X and Y are interchange d under 14. 11nd r es ults not ho ld -f ng whe1 i nt e rr e pla cement, from the same As Wa l zer a r gue s, p. 24. An histori cal ex ample i s the era of ge nu inely I imi t cd w:1 rs l n Europe fo ll owi ng t he hilrba rl s m o f th e Thirty Years war. �B . expr d 1e1cy assessm ents 16 • ic c~ n For expedie ncy loes not elude deontic presen tation: be pr er;ented as through such popul a r slogans as "local might i.s right", or ft lvcn tight formal rest•mb le charac terisat ion . The charac terisat ion will normal ly that o[ utilita rianism , except Lhat util i tic . are only assigne d to, or arc bi asse d in favo ur of, certnin indivld u~ds. Howeve r, theorie s of ut.llity ~ol have to he posi tions of expedie ncy if utility is 11ot locally confi ned. util llariun ism prope r is not to be dismiss ed as cnn Thus onside ring only expedie ncy; intcrsu bstitut iv:i. y rc'quire ments of morali ty ; meet do it Lt does not, unlike the me hods of war game theory, assign differe nt weights to the individ ual uti.lity of ( ce rtnin) Americ ans, as opposed to Russi ans , say. There are dc•ont.o .logis ts r egardin g war mora ll y howeve r signlfic a11t e.speci ally, 17 • which differe nces, between utilita rians serve to further compli cate the moral pie t u re In particu lar , utilita rian approac hes have permis sible, or to seemed to effect some to rend er justify , ugly strateg i es and practic es as regards ~nemy civi. lians, that deonto logical princ iples wo uld not permit. already and partisa nship , since utilita rians But this is would reject the descrip tion of pr.ctic es permitt ed under thei r princip les as 'ugly'; wherea s an a im in what follows is to avoid meta-e thical me ta-ethi cal neutra lity, though of course not there is a neutra lity. to achieve And morally large area of consen sus, or at least moral converg ence, from which ar gumt'n l ,an bt'gtn. S('Vcr al moral partisa nship, VJ.rtua ily all positio n s grc• that the obltter ation of major ci ties ln a LSN war. would be wrong, indeed morally outrage ous. If tltere is diss e nsion, as there may be among nuclea r stra tegists who seem to feel no qur.Jms when lt. comes to trading loss of some Americ an cities for some Rus si a n ones, s imply increas e the costs involve d, up to loss of whole nations if l.5. The severe limitat ions of t:hoBe l esse r ''virtue s ", nationa lism and pAlriot isrn, also come from the failure of replace men t which exces siv e applica tions of nationa lism easily engend er. Try for example swappi ng a person from inside the homelan d with one from outs i de as regards treatme nt. The point of, and reaso·n s for , intersu bs t itutivi ty as a require ment of morali ty, is well explain ed in Har e , p.78ff. Hare applies the require ment to make a telling case agains t nEtion ali sm (a case which exte nds to strat eg ic decisio n-theo ry). Nation alism, al ong with fanatic ism, is the main cause of war, so Hare conten ds, p . 72. 16. The case aga inst expedie ncy was develop ed in detail especi ally the critici sm of Thrasym achus in The Republ ic . 17. Thus the differe nces between Nagel on the one side, and Brandt and Hare the other, i.n Collen et al. by Pl ato ; see on �:iccesi:iary , unti.l moral repugnanc e :fs Tile ncounlere d; _!: hen try to work down again. fact remains howe ver that Jn the nuclear area things have got substanti ally oul of perspecti ve, morally. abandon or Strategic thinking, i n particula r, has tended to suppress moral considera tions ( as indeed theories of the state also do, somet imes flamboyan tly, in favour of partisan values). Naturally Lhe fact of broad consensus as to the morality of th e matter does not m ·an that there are none who would welcome such outrageou s happening s, that to t al nu clear destructio n of the North even, would be Cons id er t he w11rld ,·inpl r1•. be so thern risi.ng (hemisphe re) no one's advant3ge . strongman , SS, who has v :lsions of Wlillo l.lH' t,uperpowt• rn of lli<' no ·t. h rcm:i in, SS ' 1.1 dnwm ·a n realised. Thus his best strategy, having rid s ubmarines and ·outhern lands of US bases, is to try nil lear to exchange in the North, There would southern to be waters encourage a hardly an of US all - out point then in securing institutio nal arra ng emen ts so that potential SS's do not accum ulate much espe . ially given the apparent instabi lity of crucial world arrangeme nts. tlrnt is to nnt1eipnt e: lhc present point :1. has and tts power, limitatio ns, is an thnt ( t he fnct of) moral inadequat e But conse nsus const r aint without accompany ing struct ural adjus tments. For , typJrnlly , <lifferc11 tly to nationa l impose interest ls taken hosta ges or override morality, e ven holding civilian populatio ns kill:lng m111.lons in the national :i.nterest 18 ). unfortuna tely, these assumptio ns are not confined to more totalitar ian such as of those those of Eastern Europe. things. substitut ion of jus tificatio n; fails in The first, expedienc y , . C.!.BSSC,S And, regimes, But morally national interest can do neither the overridin g for morality , of morality, which the second, the alleged mor a l dominance of :important or irresi stibl e ethic a l claims t ha t dominate mo r e ordinary cthicnl considera tions (such as those conc er ni g nuclear to is entirely national simply lacks the mo r al interests , of cases, including , so the argument wi.11 go, the case of LSN war. 18 . As Sche ll blun l:ly puts it, 'What io being cl.aj_med is that one or two countries have the right to jeopardis e all countries and their descenden ts in the name of certain bel iefs' (p.132). However this way of putting it leaves room for ambiguity , since the belie fs may be morally grounded rat her than based on national interests . �Stales may i ns i st upon opera ting one self ish national interest basis , Ii:!. It nol be pretended expcJ i<"ncy (na me l y , that tha t of it i.s "group but n montl basi, as distJnct from one of ego1 sm " ). There no 1s special moral d.ispensa ll on fo r governments. j ndiv iduals : ther e ia no loe;i.cal diffe ' nee .ln the patter1 of jus ti fi.cation, or analys is of obligation. Morality works :ln the same way for groups as for For e xample , what ought to be as regards Xis (analy~ed semant i cally) what would happen as reg a rd s X in all ideal worlds; no di ff e r e nce organisation. extenuating killers: whether X is an · individual States such as Israel (in i ts recent invasion reaso ns aside, be having just as beeu conce ded , special moral dispensations; more Lhan tha.t and do not sta nd up to crit.i.cism. cannot immorally makes system, grou p or of Lebano n) are, as brigands or mass there is no moral difference. Certainly t here are gro unds on which states or individual or and it f11rnish two (incompatibl e) their a gents 01: have claimed , but the excuses offered are no A moralities , a s atis factory state moral theory or public one and a private or individual ci tiz en one - state expediency Rnd individual morality becaur;e thi s would lead t o violations of sub st itutlvity , neutrality, etc. 1 '3 ins t ance , a state ope ra ti e X could us e s tate mor~lJy impermi ssi ble ways, ways ruled Y are permuted . special 01 1t cover (e.g. to considerati.ons citizen Y in by state interests) when X and A group or organisation or pe rson can be der iv ati ve damage For bound of course by in virtue of role, but these are der ivative prin c iples - good for any such 1nstitution - which fit within and answer back to general moral principles. So it is also with a state which is an institutional arrangement justlfied ( i nsofar as it is) by the way it answers back to some least) of its citizens: its charter does not legitimate emergent allegedly 1orR l principles which convenien tl y coincide with those of state expediency . particular, a sta te is not 1 morally) survivrd . In entitled to risk the lives of many of its own citizens and of other p~oplcs and creatures for its own ends, even ow n ( at for its Thus it is not entJ.t led to do what both nuclear war and nuclear de terre n ce r equ l re, as will emerge. 19 . There a n ~ also othc•r arguments agai nst two (or see Routley a nd Plumwood. multiple) morality Lines: �11 !-: ' ) 'j.J. The i_ni t i<d argument p:1cifli;m yield arguments to the tmmora1 lt.1_ of _ LSN wars. to tb e 1mmora1it.y of war. But 1wch a rgum ents ;ire controversi a l in an area where th ere is no go od r·ason to Argumen ts be for controve rsial. Pacifism can accordingly be se t aside as a spec i a l case, stnce the immorality of LSN wars follows . All but pacif is t positions concede that war in itsel f is not a c rime. nil wars are immo ral, though eve n inoffensive wars may be pointless or inferior ways of settling po litlcal issues between states . wa r s who Not are Among more or l es s admissible th e inte rna tiona l " tourname n ts '' of arlstocrat ic young men or warriors volu11l'cer :w Ho ldlers nnd whos<' actfon does no t 6pi.ll ov er on to noncombar.an ts , a nd some early a nd medievvL wars , wh ere few or evet no combatants were kjl.led in war. conscrip tlon, Since the esta bl i shme nt press-gangs and recruitment of such of the lHrgely ceased to take these less offe nsive for ms; induction prac tices as near-d es titute, wars hav e modern massive war s are far removed from the ideal war-tourn ament typ es (which fea ture now only in ecotopian por traya l s, in ways that are in creasingly dub ious ). imrnornl, Most s orts of wars are because of what is done to the essentially un5_nvolved, but few to such a n exte nt as LS N war s . The first argument to th e immorality of LSN wars and of sufficientl y larg e-sca l e wars ge neral ly, takes the following form: Pl. The (deliberate ) killing in mass of noncombatan ts is wrong. P2. LS N wars involve the killing in mass of noncombatan ts. P3. Wha t inv olv es wha t Is wrong is wrong . ( KA) LSN wnrs ar• wrong. The parttcular a rgument g lven i s ju st one r epresenta tive of a set of Lhis type. the (KA ) t·cpL1ccs But the qu1. te 'kl.11:!.ng su ff i c l en tly 11v :i.l. crcH tu res' . Thu s t n ma ss o f noncombatan ts' by a cl~rnse concerning 'huge des truct-lon of 11.f esty l e of uninvolved or i. nvolvecl f ocus can destructio n cf li.festyle of nonhumans and humans fJJ i k(~ Ll w t :in L'., N war wJ 11 brf ng l a on arguments Cha racte ri sti cally, in Western culture, it is thought that mass kl l Ling of h11m<1ns ls a bout the worst th i ng that can happen. vadu tlo n of not ll fir s t uitable directly Other vuriatlons will emerge in the di.scussi.on (i.ncluding �th at: where the bracketed 'de.liberate' figures ) . The argumenL Js valid, ,1L t a .kcd) on the basi :3 but of may each be attacked ( and of its p1·emisses. has in ef fe ct been Let us consider these in reverse order. The principle, P3, used in the argument, that what involves 11 what is wrong" is -wrong, has been c hallenged on r:1ther Scholastic grounds. There are, in partic ular. problems like those generated by Good Samaritan arguments, purport o shot.J tha t some proper obligations involve wrongdoing. as~~lst.i.ng :rn in jured robbed per son is said robbed; but, s ince the ro bbin g is wrong, to "involve." providing For which instance, that person ' s assistance belng is also wrong. But thes e pr oblems derive from too slack a not1on of i.nvolvement; w:i:th a tighter accoun t of invo lvement th e problems disappear and P3 stands . 20 As aga inst P2, it may legitimately directed be argued against that mi lit ary nuclear targets. wars can be encounters But given the character of nuc lear wea pon s, LSN war s could in no way be co nfined to such targets. net merely the likelihood that many missiles ex plode off target, ther e are all the ot:he r eff ects of large-scale nuclear. bombings. fnlloul There i s down-wlnd from military pcopJc, es pecial Ly in the cas e of uninvo.lved co u11 t rl cs aucl tnrgcts US and For example, t he radioactive will affect large conc entratio ns o( European t argets , and may affe ct as Conn <l o. There may be an attempt to avoid the problem of massive civilian casualties by appeal cffcrl ) 2 1. t o s uch dubious pri nciples as the doctri ne of double effect (or side If missiles wer e c haracte ristically r.eliAbly on target, and one 20. The challenge to P3, which is often expanded to a "distribution of obl igat ion over entailment " pd.nciple ,, can be removed by a ti.ghter involvement connective, linked to a good paradox-free entailment. For de t a il s s ec Routley nnd Plumwood, where Good Snmar.i tan problems arc diagn osed. 21. According t o the doctrine , which is one concerni ng responsibility, we are rcs ponsJblc only for the intended e ffects or consequenc ~s of our freely-c hos e n actions, and not for other (side) effects or consequences, even U these are foreseen and/or intimately tied to the intended conseq uences . Unless carefully hedg ed, the doctrine is pernicious , a llowing those who suitably adjust their intention to escape responsibility for evi l th e y knowingly perpetrate. Thus, for instance, a Russian supreme comma nd which intended only to take out US military targets would, under double effect , have no responsi bil ity for the resultant effect on American and Canadian cities! Taking the i ssues concerning do ub le effect to a more satisfactory conclusion would however require a larger theory of action, which duly dis tingui s hed acts (what is done) and outcomes from attached intentions . �whicl1 was intend ed unfort unatel y only went off to destro y an unma1H1<HI und e r g round Such claims shou ld be reject ed : ci ty. dou bl e effect Noneth e l ess the circum sta nc es differ ence , for they m.ay mitiga te atti tu des to tho s e rcflpo ns lbl f' ,1 for firing the nd ssi.le, .·i.nce the the thr actjo n would be wrong, and th e ~.:_~:~ ~css nol ]c$sen cd by the g lv n lntent l.on. innkc silo course and destro yed a large ci ty, it c ould be claime d th.:it t.h ~~ (uni.nt cndcd) mass dest ructio n is legitim ised under could missil e j t was not as if t he y had del iberat ely aimed at The double effect princ ipl e confla te s [dimin u tion of] respo nsibil ity Assign ed for an act with the [dimin ution of ] wrong ness of the act. ~s agains t Pl, and as regard s the middle term of argued tha t there is an impor tant equivo cation . the br~cke ted term, ' delibe rate ' . killin g and P2, it The equivo cation is induc ed by be conc eded that de libera te milJta ry , e . g. farmer s or goods or servic es bootma ke r s or ente rtaine rs . used exclud ed as innoce nt . The s econd d~ten sible - versio n of pr emis s P2. other. for re a sons, it by proper ly point concer ns a much narrow er - and les s Bec a use P2 s o amende d is less defen sible, is bes t to l eave out the "modi fier" 'd el ibera te'. What is import ant for the presen t purpos es i s the moral status of what is mixtur e of tha t wi th the motive s of the perpet ra to rs. requir e the qualif icatio n 'delib e rate' or done, So 'delib erate' gets left out, equiv ocatio n is avo ided, P2 stands , and so does Pl. not t he Second ly, it will be conten ded thAt LSN wars do no t i nvolve t he delibe rate killin g of t hos e a It no means al l inn ocent , many being direct ly involv ed in mi litary ef f ort, whethe r just as taxpay ers or as s upplie r s of not be charge d firs tly that noncom batant s, insofa r as they are distin guish able, by and ma y of genuin e innoc ents is imperm issible , two challe nges will be made . will b are While it will Pl For Pl do es 'int e ntiona l' or the like. 22 Admit tedly nlso 'nonco mbat a nt' is a fuzzy term , but none the worse for that, and Lhere is no seriou s p·o blem in markin g out a class of clear noncom batant s, people who a rc not <lir cctly involv ed i n the comman d and J.s, mnrco v'r, no need to adopt action chains . There the prncti c e , derivi ng from catho li c ism, of statin g rn init i.al verslo n of Pl in terms of in noce nts at l e ast as proble matic 22. Despit e Na3el ' s sugge stion that it does (p.158 ). The sugge stion depend s upon oimila r mistak en assim ilati ons , of ac t wi t h intent ion, and wrong ness with respo nsibil ity, to t ho se of the double effect doctri ne. �,1 rlns:; ":'i ,c mnk.t~ t,-,nt of r~on ,~omb:1t ants to try t:(, endenvourlng c..hnrac t er i z .. , -- Rnd then i:h c dif f ic11.Lt transiti.on to noncombatants. there Nnt only can arguments aga i ns t the premlsses of the argument be met, .tr,~ for ;ir311mcnts the prt:'ndsses, thongh for t he subc-tant iv e moral premiss Pl and Lhcy aru of the cha tacterlstlcally nonconclu sive moral sor t tend will For examp le, one argument for v3ry sowcwhat with th e underlyi ng ethical th e ory. Pl, .rnd for objecting to the kil l ing of non~ombatan ts, ts the Kant i a n one, (to poi.nt) , re s pect: owe d to tnem a<· pc so ns mi n f nn l from -~_gume nts §4 . the understate sc,rio usly doing so 23 histori_ca~ __ ..::_e~qu i rcm nts on wars, just ur dreamed by conlemporary "free·-enl<'. rp r fs c" cap:l. Lalist st.ale (and opponents communis t im portant the The conclusion t hat LS,' wars cacno t be justly waged - nnd accordingly are ?njustified - 1e that fail s to treat them with the .0..1~Jl~l5:!..'..~- from con-:_er_ger~£:::J and cnv.t ronment al arguments . r.;omet. lti to of is Americ a inspired, me r ely not or et c), th e of same The conclus ion fnlls out of vc1rlouR trc1dj t i0nc1l requirements, worked out i.n mediev al t:irnt•s , (or jusL wars. first One of t h e r equi r ements gives but a varia nt on the ;>1 :irgumen t (KA). · 1 For a necesso r y co nd i Lion for fighting a wat· justly was th a t it to no t be the case t hat large numb e rs of [innocent] noncombatants are bound killc.:<l (cf. be Barnes , p .77.5) . A just war req ui res just means , that t he war should be fought by morally which impli es in partic ula r that there is no indis c riminate killing of noncombatants . The implied principle was escapsulated in a princi pl e legitimate of means , discrimination (betwee n combata nts and othe rs) whi c h 'prohibits all actions directly intended to take the lives of p.312) /. ~:, . civilians and of noncombatants' (PL, LSN wars, where not only military installations are targeted, violate ') ( I.lits ·cqulremcnt '' . 7.3. Of course there are co~nterarg uments too , and not merely from t c military in the case of small numbers of obst r uc tive noncomb a tants. One ;.rngLP favored argument is a va r i at ion on the Bald Man: the re is no clear line between combatants and noncombata11ts. Howe v er a s Nag el a rgues (p . 20) there in are distinctions between t hem, firstly in terms of thei r roles , e.g. c,irry-Lng or u!,in? ;irm · o r dircc . ing t. lnBe who do, a nd s econdly in terms of See a l so PL , p.312, where a their liarmf.uJ.ness , the threat they offe r. uj rr.p1, and ef fec ive paradigm case nrg11mcnt is up pli ed . 2 1~. Note th at throughout, tile• te:xt adopts Llie OED eq u.:itio ns, reflecting common lust wit h mo~ally right or correct, and unjust with morally usage. of �- - - -··---·-- Overlapping the requirement of Just means is thac 6f being that of net evil to net good: pro ro rLi on cor; tr-: up proporclonality, 'the damage to be infljcted and lnc urn.> d by the war must be pro porti.onate to the good ex pect ed the damage and costs , req 1irement: disproportio nate to goods moral pr0p0 rt lonnl ·l ty re qui.r ement i R er i t1! rlon of the which doctrine through war . "improvement" ln achieved of confined, nationally no t ar that way. ov e r a ll co n sequences of abstaining i mprov ement "puts wrongs to righ ts": c ondi. tion s "nmel.ioratlve " wn y the 'a nation wages war justly than Similarly on l y if the for that nation or the wronged n8tion it is supporting have a decent s:1tisfy for bad, from war ' (Barnes, p.72) . LSN wars can in these conditio ns, as scen.-i:rios depicting the aftermath of s 1ch Some oft.h e lesser r e quirements for a just war are also wa rLl , nnd war According to the fl.rst, 'X wages wa r c han ce of be ing better after the fighting ends' (Wakin, p.20). no are Entangl ed with the justly upon Y if the overall consequences of wa r a re bette r, or less th e taking by p,312). 27 Tt Ls not difflcu lt to see that LSN wars violate this (PL, arms' the e :a mple that of infringed reasonable expectation of success. by LSN It seems that tl ie r· c ca n b e no rea onable expe c tation of suite success in nn LSN war ·- whatev e r t!il' v0 ry d lf !<r<' n t'Jy, cx rhanges . 1 lmilcd prospccUJ of: succl'SS for whatever the p rospcct:s of succf•ss in Wha t some sm11ll strictly state limited clltc , or nucl ea r is le ss clear cut is th e question of whether LSN wars conflict with th e requir ements of just cause or due fnu lt, and of right intention. Fo r One (by no means be arg ued to in various ways. c onclusive) way is Nage l's way, from the requirements of directness and r e l e vance in combat, the underlying ( co ntroversial) principle being that, 1 wh<1tcvcr on<.> does t:o another person inte ntionally must be ai med at him as a subject, wlth the intention that he receive it as a subject' (p.15). 25 . Til e principle can 26 . wars where t he targets ar e c8 s cntially military ones, and noncombatants are unaccountably killed "!nd:lrectly",would b~~ :i.ffe r cnt. Such wars are no t however excused by t he For such wars remain unjust on pe rnicious doctrine ~f double effect . on lif e several counts, e.g. they inflict disproportionate damage, e.g. As Zuckcrmnun says, 1 Tt is st ill inevitable t hat were s ys tnms, etc. mil i tary i nstalla t ions rather than cities to become the objectives of nt lack, millions, even Lens of mlll.lons of ci v.Lli a.ns w-ould be nucl 'lH kill e d .. • ' (quoted i.n Thomp s on and Sm i.th , p .14, where the italics are The situation witli strlctly llmi ted nuclear ndded ). Zi. Tli! r; i s riol Lo b e confus0d wi.tli wlwt lB very different, the vi.cious anclent doctrine of proportional response - an eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and so on - recently adapted by the Americans in their latest offi cial policy of fli>;,cib1e r e so0T1se. ,vii11~ted to the level " f att ack, �t hi i, ilc> p e nds on the s e nsitive jssue of the weight assigned to what are se e n as b:J1; i c human r1. gh ts and fundame ntal value s , a nd the extent to which just wars can b e i.dco J og i.c a lly justif i ed. Whil<': the ma instr eam pos1.tion of medieva l theory oppo s ed to id e ologica ll y jus tifi ed war s a nd "humani tarian" wars, these wer e was no L ck f' nitlvely exclud ed by the trndiU.o nal theory ( cf. lltt J e is wlw n 1.;o m,rn y arc se nsitive howe ver, me rit, ( a nd when issue s will ari s e again subsequ ently). a r g uments are not do There .In puzzling ov e r dubi usly effcctlv e requirem ents, dec isive ng a lnst LS N war s h i st orica l r e quireme nts Barnes, p .778). not simply commit argumen t s matters underlyi ng the Finally , these argumen ts from any presc r iptive fallacy; from historic al autho r ity for to th e mo r al c oncl 11 s i ons, but use also premisse s to the effect that th e requirem ents imposed, a nd nome times applied , were justifie d. As they are. I n the Christia n traditio n t here were two main strands of r eflectio n on the mo ral rightnes s or justness of wars, the just war t heory and a rival pacifist str a nd, promine nt in early Christia nity, but largely submerge d from Augustin e on co ntempor ary u n ti l times. Both exc lude nuclear wars, one strand because they arc ine v i tably unjust, the other because they are wa rs and This ls the involve beginnin g of the converge nce argumen t agai ns t nuclear wars : such wari, a re exclud e d from all ethical perspec tives, once remov ed ( a nd e ven, howr• vcr you look conse ns us violence 28 • Ht very f requentl y , when it is not) . il morally . a r gument; it The argume nt i.s not proceeds expedi.en cy that is duly They a re morally wrong the same as the weaker fr om similar results from the full sweep of ge nui nely e thi c al position s, not from massive agreeme nt of opinion. The deta :! le d conv ergence argumen t is an exhausti ve case by case each type of moral theory. Fortuna tely deta ils can be de ontolog ical a nd contrac tual theories l ead back to requirem ents 28. one, from shortcu t. For for just war These alte rnatives are not as far. removed .r..ractic ally as may appear. For the aim of just wa ~ theory is not 'to legitimi ze war but t o pr event it. The pr1~sump tion is against the use of force ' (PL, p.312 ) . And ~..£. types of wa r s a r c ruled out by Lite theory. However not all wars or violent revoluti ons a re excluded , and that is enough to guarante e the distinct ion be tween t he a ltern a tives. In particu lar, defensiv e ware are allowed - at l e ast for th e defendin g side, though from a wider viewpoi nt these too may be co nd emned 'the classic case [of the just war] ••• was the use of l et ha l forc e to prevent aggressi on against innocen t victims' (PL, p.311). Und e r rec e nt internat ional law, defence , narrowly construe d, is the only legi Uma t e basis for wa r; Roma n law was only slightly more generou s, in a llow i ng for th e restitut ion of eoods (see Barnes , p.780). �.l / whi c l1, it ha s ,ilrcady been s hown, LSN wai·s violate. w.1r were i_;ornctimes a rriv ed at or l n fact conditions for just defended through pr inciples of such moral th12ori · s , so tl,at a good deal of the r equls i. te argumentative been done . work already The latter point hold s a lso as r egards ut ilitarianism, where it has in c[fec t bee n c•hown that whatever br a nd of utilitarianism is maxim j.sati on utl lHy has is final ly ac complished, LSN adopted, wars are howe ve r excluded ut1· 1 ·Ltar1an · g r oun d s . 2 9 Tl,e reason f or suc1 l converg nee .i snot f ar to see k ; wars Llw l involv e on LSN 1:uch ma ssive infliction of pa in and colossal removal of pleasure, tills dominates i n assessmentn howev •r Lhey 1:1 te accomplished in utllitarlan Tilu s any genuine alternative to LSN war ls bette r 30 • L1i; ldon. The arguments ovcrwhc .lming so moral far case outlined against such mora J princi ples whi ch the waging of a n principles are de riv able from agains t some LSN wa rs. LSN would su bstanti ally wo rse are tha n exhaust th e violate thes e of the theories just considered). These ac countable, condition not ( again th e obligation to maint a in earth jn proper shape a nd not de grade it s systems : we do For there are oth e r significant war pri q•f pl es include e nvironmental ones, such ns : p,cnera tions, to whom wars we the r.-esponsibility to futur e pas s to th e " recei ved the world it". Such on" not in conservative principl 0s - howeve r they are finally s atisfact or i ly formulated - are bound to be vio lat ed in t he event of a n LSN war. §5. The shi ft to nuclear deterrence: suppo rt nuclear arguments to its immorality . Those who arrangements have had a way of halting - and if not defeating, certainly turning and deflating - arguments from the immorality of LSN wars , by pointing out that there is no actual engagemen t in any such wars. What i s being done ls, it is cla imed, quite different fr om war: deterrence is most important precisely engagement in preventing in LSN such wars from ever occur ri ng , as we ll as in mR int ai ning other fundamental Western values. it is continued , deterrence is the .9nly practical d e siderata, prevention of war and maintenance of values. way indeed Indeed, of obtaining both Similar arguments 29. For details see, e.g ., Lackey, especially MM. 30. An argwnent of this sort is devel oped in more detail, complete gc ner ality, j r Goodin, esp •c i £tlly 'Disarmame nt'. are But compare Hardin. though not in �a<lvnncerl for all tl1e va ri ous guises that de terrence is presented in: mutually ;.~ssurcd des truction as fnrrnerly, fle xi ble r espo nse as latter ly, or otherw.ise. 31 Su,h c1aims as to the roles and dubious, for seve ral reasons. objective s of deterrence If i.t t.rere, "sufficiency" to deter would be an adequate goal. s uperior ity. than th i s, and sometime s even a mili ta ry goal. In fac t there ha s renewed driv e for Pure delerrence can account nei t her for act ual nuclear weapons nor for orthodox Wester n military strategy 32 process decidedl y A first reason is th a t there i s much e vid e nce, despite pronouncements, that dete rrence is not the - the only - been a que st for more are Nor has deterrence set in motion the of disarmament to be expected to reduce armaments to levels ap propriate for dctct"rence . On the cont rn ry, un<ler " its" impu.ls e there has been almost unli mi te d acce l era tion in building arms (to pa ra phr a se PL p.318). A other major re a son for serious doubt a bout what sold 31. is being 11nder "d e terrence" labe ls conce r ns th e _proba bility f actor: marketed a nd deterrence has It ts important to observe that the di sc ussion is not restricted to one form of deterrence, such as that of mutually assured destruction (MAD), but applies t o al l for ms of response likely to engender LSN wa r. This includ es "flex ible r es ponse", since the lik e ly further development i s massiv e ret al iation to a n ini tia l Soviet nuclear raid. Part of the reason for thi s is the extreme vuln erabilit y of the US defence systems, especially the communication systems, e.g. to early strikes a nd to electromagnetic pulses. In the result i ng great confusion, escalation appears the likely out come . I n a ny case, fle x ible response includes massive retaliations, as part of its ra ng e and is ultimat e ly backed by it. It is a l so im portant to observe that deterrence as practised is not confined to responses to (nuclear) a ttack. The threat of nuclear action has been made in cases where a rival encroaches on a zone of interest of a nucle a r power. I t is in part because deterrence includes nuclear responses to what is construed as serious misbehaviour of rivals that the practice of deterrence raises the probability of LSN war to the extent it does. 32. As to the firs t po int, there is not onl y overkill capacity and the driv e for suped ori ty ( oft e n repr esent ed as '"negotiating'" strength) but the matter of counterforce weapons which are offensive weapons. As regards the second point, US policy has been de cidedly expansionist with regul a r intervertion in o ther nations; there have been r epe ated US threats to use nucl0ar weapons, espec ially to deal wi th revolutionary activities in t he third wo rld , but also in Europe in "li.mited'" nuclear war; and i n official military stra tegy no s ha rp line has be e n drawn between c.onventi.onal and nuclear weapons: on these and other r elated points see furth e r Lackey MM, p.19lff., and also Thompson and Smith. The argument can be pressed [1rLher, to the alarming conclus ion that deterrence is larg e ly a front, which plays onl y a minor, but justificatory, role in actual US policy. Among fu rther evidence is behavioural data: a government with a genuine deterrenc e policy would repeatedl y emphasize its strength (even when it la c ks strengt h), whereas the US govcrrnnent ofte n parades its vulnerability and weakness in public . For other evidence see Smith, e.g. p.46ff. �i.ncrt.:ascd the probability nrms-race type t hat of LSN war. More precis ely, deterrence of th e is being practised, which invol·es full-scale prepar a tion for Lota] nuclear war, has prepared the cond i tions for nuclear war to occur, and hns to that ,,,·te nt least en hanced its prospect s of occurring . at r easons also, connected with pure original setting), the last 30 years. the deterrence and with the For other "cold war"' (its probability of a LSN war has increased consid erabl y in The reasons include the threatening posture called for by deterrence, the propaganda, which comes to be believed, that must be promulgated to main tain credibility overridden or with ''sacrificed" a population whos e real for military objectives; state of military readiness; etc. The situation has many ther e sober analysts century , i.e. think before 2000 . is a high There are s e veral interests are being the dangerous and risky now been reached where pr obability of an LSN war this routes to such a probability assir,nrnc•n t.33 It wo uld only rccp ii re one in ' id e nt wi.th a 20% chance of leading to an rscalating wnr every 8 years between 1960 and Amer lean 2000. alerts, hav e been lucky already . In of nuclear markedly. the years ahead it appears likely that th e For the danger supplicant nations resources declines. and the worsens and the extent The danger is enhanced by connected increasing chance of the lot. 33. Cox). easily as the plight extractable continuation of of crucia l the arms of nuclear acci dent and human or t ec l1nical error, none of them negligible factors as (cf . :l.ncrease zones separating the superstates are increasing in sjze and number, with Soviet and American expansionism, and r e veals the exchange . number of incidents with a real chance of engendering nuclear war wil l race, on sidE? ;i.lone, have been at least as frequent, and sometimes , as with the Cuban missile crisis , carry a considerably higher chance We Full past experience copiously Such a sketch can of course be elaborated and tidied up a Even so every substantial point involved can be contested, and many are Another route to a moie than subjective assessment is to apply Delphi methods: weigh up the experts' a sse ssments. In this regard it is worth noting that it is not only ''nuclear doves" who consider the probability of nuclear war has increased in r e cent years. Amer ica n officials have themselves admitted that the policies of r ealis ing th e st rategic potential of counterforce attacks and of selective and flexible responses have increased the probability of nuclear wnr (Hall, p.128). �20 conlcntlous (thoug h not always for good reasons) . s e em s no way Fof better or worse, ther e to rna~e such an overall probability argument particularly tight; a nd ti1t: r E:! arc p] a usi. b le arguments , from the complexity of th e data concerned and t he conti ng ency of the future, that it cannot be made tight . IL is bad enough however that l.t 2-._~_ de c idedly pla usible that it proha bJ~ that LSN an war will d i st r ibu tion pri c iples) that it proba bl e that c entury. And that is enough a grossly occur this ce ntury. is immoral to decidedly morally on moral grounds, to change deterrence as policy is i.mmoral. For then it follows ( by plausi ble that it highly is sequence of events will be perpetrated this warrant morally to take acti on to avert the outc ome. de terrence highly is evasiv e act.Lon. We ought That in turn implies taking steps , presently practised. Thus present That i.s but the first of several ways we shall nrrivc at that damaging conclusion for pres ent super-state deterrence policies. The plnusibil ity of claims as to the hi gh or increasing probability of war h a s of cour s e been disputed. LSN The mai n counte rargument runs as fol lows : Nuclear war is unlikely , be ca use the consequ ences are too horri fying. The underlying assumption i.s that wars and the like, with ar c improbable. assumption. Unfortunately however horrifying outcomes, much ava i lable evidence counters this More th an enough humans have not shrunk from brutal exchanges horr if y i ng wars , or even from genocide, as human history attests (cf. Kuper ). What ts le!;s assailable than the high probabili ty claim, what the ce r tnin ly Ther e by, through det errence, we si t uation, since have already got into t.h e probA.bility. immoral of r aising The mor e detai led underlyi.n g arg ument s , then, to the immora lity of nucle ar deterrence proceed by LSN an deterrence operates by the perverse practice of preparing for thereby perhaps helping t o bring it about, in the sense war, against evidence s eems to support, ls that there is a non-negl i g ible probability of an LSN war . LSN a nd way of princ iple s mapping war into ar.gum~nts a gaJns t deter r ence of LSN war. mi.gilt appropriately be called deont:ic connecti ng pr inciples . moral arg uments Such principles The fl rst of the s e principles t a kes the foll owing preliminary form: Cl. should If 1t is wro ng that X s ho uld occur, t hen not only be pr ob3ble is it wrong that it that X occur, but, more important, it is wrong to directly �i ncrease t he pt' o ba bility that X occur . Thus, f or example , s i nc e is it wrong to ki l l a large noncomb atant po~ulatf on in LSN wa r (by §4) it is al s o wr ong to put the populati on at ris k and wrong to increase t he chance tha t the hostage popul a tion is wiped out, which nuclea r de terre nce does . botl1 of For simil ar r eas ons a super s t te is not morally entitled to im pose nucl ea r r i sks upon un invo l ved noncomb atants, esp ecial ly t ho se of third part y no nal i gned most Like "' t tuations . defeat by example , 0 t a te s . sub s t an ti ve Unless mo ra l count erexamp l es, the second principl es oc c u r s. probabi lity that par t princ ipl e s in Cl runs into dilemma. and of a c c ord i ng l y, Cl e ncount e rs to require complic ation. For apparen t trouble where clash of Thu s it may be argued th a t it is permiss ible to increase the oc curs X ord er to apartmen t bui l dings 3 4 • nuclec1r ethi s, d l l emmas a r e duly all owed for, Cl appears li a ble to t o avoid a greater evil. pilot who increase s the pr obabilit y c r ashes, in dct:crrcn ce , make that t he Cons i der for example the passeng er plane he ic flying sure that the troubled aircraf t does not hit cit y Suc h a defeatin g cond i tion do e s not apply in the case of ihe r e (though the r e explains ) wro ngness of a pr a ct ic e is not ls a of fs e t clash or of principl e s, as §6 removed by its role in avoiding greate r e vil. I L can be a r gued that it is: argumen t from t he pr e vious a r gumen t. de s erves lit t le perhaps f rom more such is pa rt of succe s s credence t he de terrence . th a n the of the popular However this inductiv e racing world As Barnett argues, driver's argumen t, 'the happy acciden t has surv iv ed the first thirty-f ive years of th e nuclear era is unimp r e s si ve e v i d e nce that we can avoid nuclea r war 34. point a s imilar time base, that because he hasn't had a fa tal crash yet (des pite some close calla ) , he won't, th a t of the in the coming era, This dilemma exampl e was s uppli ed by D. Johnston . There are more dif f i c ul t putative coun t e rexampl es. For example , in inciting people to c ivil disobedi ence, the ri s k of stat e violence in r etaliat i on is increase d. Thus, t o ta ke C, Pigden's example , 1.n encourag ing disobed ience, Gandhi i nc r ea s ed t he proba bility of wrongdo ing by the British Raj. But surely Ga ndhi, un l i ke th e Raj, did not act wrongly? It can be claimed that Gandhi d i d no t d irect ly incre a s e the probabi l i ty of viol ence . But spelling out what 'dir ec tly' means in terms of short causal chains over which r espo nsi bil i ty ca n be distribu ted - i s not only problem atic but leads on to ot her connect ing princ i ples. �·2 (p. 100) . lie offers fami.liar reasons suc h as the changing power incrt.' ,ise 111 Russian strengt h, the ri se r e 1aU. ons, th e of other nu c lear powcr·s, etc . (cf. simllarly Cox ). There ar e, a ccordingly, powerful reasons for concluding that Dl. De errencc will not continu e to work, and. more lmportant for the present argumenl, that D2 . De t e rrence does increase the proba bi lity of LSN war. The themes are of course i.nter related, and t he re as ons for t hem (which are again persuasive bu t in: oncl usive) can be t a ken together : some respects) weaker D2 ·- the probability facto r. proliferati on, the emergence bu t the focus is on the ( in An initial of lesser nuc lear powers. reason concerns As a result there are many more ways of starting a nuclear conflagrat.i on, and so enhanced prospect Some nnnlyula co ns id e r that lt. -i~i us e of nuclear weapons by confrontation a 11 lesser very Jf ke ly route to I.SN war l · th stat e . Moreover scarcitJ ;::i nd o f chea per suppli es, etc , weapo n systems, more or Lcrror s ltua ttons, deterrence power lnvolv e s 36 , being mainta.ined : costs Wi t h so many more Arms races, and interwoven balanc e of have an exc eed ingly bad 1,istorical track record. lncr cas lng as tl1c race p roce eds . of resource A second group of reasons concerns the Ther e is substantial inductive evi dence that pres en t for wi<iel y d lstributed, the probabili.ty of war through accide nt o r e rr o r is inc reased. powrr opportunities growing nuclear arms race which deterr e nc e, as practised, is ti ed to. wec1pons .lnltlnl to lead on to war are increasing, with increasing world political Jnstnbillty , relat ing to thlrd world economic de cline, and the of lead escalating eventually to arms war , races, with such as probabili.ty Next, deterrence dep ends on a certai n balance if that balance is unduly disturbed, as can happen during escalation, deterrence may well fail. A related reason for 35. that deterrence practice increases It can be the or etically a r gued t hat the fewer the nations weap ons, t.he l ess the chance of nuclear. war: cf. n 1clcar p .. 2JO n. 36. supposi ng th e armed with Lackey, MM, The standard ar gument for deterrence as significantly decreasing the proboblli y of wa r, would be decidedly better if the arms race were nbandoned, a nd weapons held at the much smaller levels required just for dcle rrenc e. Of c our se s uch a probability-well assumption is only one of scvera l_ thi. ngs required if det erre nce i.s to be just:!.fled. �probabili ty of war conce rn s the continuin g shifts in poli c y, US especiall y th e rcncwc<l quest for superio rity wh i ch is in creasing the inc en tiv e of both sides to rcsorL to nuclcJr war, the USSR t o avoid being advantage of ov erwhelme d, USA the to take superiori ty ac hi eved . 37 Rece nt dangerous shifts in US poli cy the tow;Jrds war fighting a r e .in part induce d by a much inc re ased accuracy of nuclear missiles, which both weakens the case for MAD deterrenc e (sinc e mi l itary tar-gets con be selected for strike and ci ties to some extent r emoved as hostages ), thereby war. also weakens the case against resort to nucle a r detrrrenc c requires a certain (admitted l y r a ther minimal, ye t of mutual understan ding, leaders, and even some nuclear. sha r ed principle s , cooperati on supe r-states. and soundness transmi ss i on Finally, impor tant) level judgement among of of and informati on between It is not just that t he increasin g numbers of operator s in n position to J.aunch nuclear weapons must remain of " sound mind" and not, for instance, follow through on delusions of one sort or another. deterrenc e depends upon judgeme nts seriously mistaken: 'each is regarding the other It is al so tha t side , which slde ' s threat is to the other' (P L, p.313) . we think' • 38 But about what the o t her considera ble , and perhaps catastrop hic , margin of evidence, that on e perceptio n of what is possible resul t As s ide side thinks e rror. Not thinks , there only not can be is a there sid e (the USA) has misjudged the other side's (the USSR's) rational, as regards limited nuclear war, of a first strike countered by massive retaliatio n; must now be severe doubts cffectlvc ly. "conv inc ing " There is a grain of truth in the c1a"im that 'deterren ce is primarily about what t he other what be a t the mercy of t he o the r's percept io n of wha t strategy is "r.atio al", what kind of damage .is " un nccept able", how one may as to whether rationa l principle s are with the but there operating to the last consider, to take just one example, the erroneous 37. The point is discus sed in Dahlitz, e.g. p.213, where the US quest for super iority is doct1me nted. The v.lci ssi tudes of US "d efenc e" policy - not to say its shiftines s and occas ional incoheren ce (as in strategic forward defence) have confused many of lts supporter s even . Perhaps there is some advantage in the ver y incomplet e and limited exposure of USSR war and imperial policies : we don't see, wit h alarm, their incohe renc e and i.rrntiona llty . J8. Pym, quot,.• d .Ln Thompson , p .19. Yet a fundamen tal problem Russi a and the West fac e, Lt is sometimes claimed, is not merely that they do not understan d one another but that 'ther, is a lack of a wish to understan d'. This casts into douht the psycholog ical basis of nuclear deterrenc e. �24 idea (alread y allu<led to , as he l d in hi.gh pl a ces of powe r in USA and in UK) that LSN war cnn be sur viv ed i n r ud ime ntary s hel ters , and also won. The suppor ter of det er rence connec ting rrlnci ple s ri val case. such J1as not onl y to defeat a rgumen ts Cl, but, more difficu lt, to fie ld a convin cing as For the onus of pr oof lies in showing that the costly ~:.:..!.~_rr.cncc Ls justifi ed_. t hr o ugh practic e of Bu t for from th e fair ly decisiv (~ case that i s requi r ed ( Lo contras t with t he argume nt through Cl), only a feeble case through the questio na b le obv ers e of Cl, Cl i. If Xis wr ong then it is right to reduce the probab ility of X, nppears open . • For it has to be shown that deterre nce ( s ubstan tially) r e duc e s the proba bility of LSN war , and st ri ct lt (this indica tes part of the trouble with Clt) that deterre nce does this bett e r (more morally ) than availab le options . o The latter uniquen ess condit. ion ce rtainly fails, so it r,.,ill be argu e d. reasons already gi ven, does the probab ility claim. up i-hc v ery cond 1 t:1.ons probab ility of suc h for a an LSN war, it So , for When nuclear deterr e nce set s can ha rdly have reduced th e war , e speci a lly over the situati on a mere 25 years ag o when such an LS N wa r was not technic ally possib le. More genera lly , i n showlng that nuclear deterre nc e ls justifi e d, it i s c..! l1 0l l f',h refute the theme Lhat deterr e nce is wrong. LO out that deterre nce is permis sible, or alrigh t. altcrn1 1LJvc pe rmissi ble courses of a c tion condit:f . on ha s to be est a bli.shed ; to be no t merely alrigh t , bu t ;H:cc·p ' ah l<' cvidt!n tin l ato nd nrdA, r ig ht. But I t is not enough to make For t he re certain ly seem to withou t deterr ence , wh ic h appear more morally satisfa ctory. uniciue ne s s includi ng fright To surpass t hese option s, a nuclea r deterre nc e has to be shown es tablish ing such a 39. LSN war s , withou t .(cf. Jl 11 claim, to fear or is vf.nunl ly tmposa iblc. 39 OED) 40 • For most people, portray ing the horror of LSN wa rs would serve adequa tely enough from be the costs or problem s of Deterre nce cons ists in preven ting someth ing (often some wrong ) by t hr ea t s not the enormo us expense , t rouble vivid scenari os to deter t hem and wastage of An analogo us point will ap pea r whe n i.t is asked whethe r deterre nce is the way o ut oft.he nuclear fix, the thin g to persist with in the circum stances . Given that there are appare ntly super ior, le ss dangero us procedu res , the an s wl!r hn-, to be, No. �- - - - - - -- - - -- - - - - - p r epar i ng to e ngag e i n th em. det t·r rl'ncc And deterren ce i.n a ny cas e de pends upon) is of by such means ourse not immoral . (whi ch miJit4ry (Sc.h e ll was not immora l in publ ish ing hi s gra phic descri p tions of the nuclear destruc tion of New Yo rk .) But t hou gh de te rrence per se is permi ssible, nuclea~ deterren ce, that is deterren ce by complete prepa ration for the object to be preven te d , is no t , where this o bj e ct, a LSN war., itself is no t permiss ible. The argumen t for this is thro ug h t he pr lnc J ple C2 . l f X is wrong then c omplete prepara tion for (carryin g out) Xis wrong. Hence since p re para t i on, LS N wars nuc l ear are wrong and nuclear deterren ce deterren ce of LSN wars is wrong . claimed th a t prepa ring for Xis just as bad as doing X: wr ong a n d Z ( mue h) worse t1wn i Y• wi11at W.'.1 S wrong. complete It is not however being Y and Z may both be 41 i s wrong i s b y no means un if orm l y ev1.1. " Tn 19115 Lhcre would ha ve been littl e doubt that L SN wa r implies complete prepara tion for Among the three types of crime s pecif led in Article 6 of the Cha rt e r f or th e I nternati onal Military Tribuna ls (which tr ied the major war c r iminals a t Nurcm burg) we r e Cr1- mes a ga ins t peace: namely planning , .:e_repar ation, initiati on or waging o f a wa r of aggr e ssion, or a war in violatio n of internat iona l tr eat:!.es , ag reements or a s surance s, or particip ation in a common plan or cons pi ra c y for the accompl ishment of any of the followin g ( cited in Ku pe r , p.2 1; ita lic s added). But af t e r ma ny yea rs of nuclear deterren ce, the become J ncreasi ngly liable to question . wrongne ss implied in C2 has However the doubts mainly come from 40. De t er r e nc e a lso commonly includes elements of mendaci ty, deceptio n, mi si nforma t ion, that is elements of what a re, for the roost part, morally unde sirable traits. Li l . Nor a re ordered be cause wrong, equally degr e es of wrongne ss required : wrongs can simply be as reg a rds relative worsene ss. The point requires some it has been quite erroneo usly assumed t hat if y and z cat egorica lly or absolute ly , then they mus t be equally evil. Thus, e.g. William s: . partiall y labourin g are both wrong or . there is no moral differen ce between running a deterren t st r ategy on the one hand, and intentio nally - indeed wantonly - start i ng a nuclear war on the other; so that the first is as totally evil a s the second. This is because both are held to be absolute ly forbidde n. Not a t a ll. The argume n ts from "Y and Z are both absolute ly forbidde n" to "S o Y i s a s totally evil as Z" and to "Therefo re Y and Z do not differ mor all y " a r e both ent:i.rely without validity . Compare : 2 is a number, and 3 lg a numbe r; s o 2 is the same number as 3, or does not differ numeri c , lly from 3! �26 a~sum ing t!w l comp l e t e prepara t.i o n i nc }udc i:; l ss t: lwn Lt nee ds to or do e s. Complete prepa ration for something, s uch as sever~] other fea tures. LSN war , already writes in In particular, i t presup po ses the preparation is no t ha1 (·-hea rt ed hnt is serious, is not merely for show and is not simply pret e nce. Obser e tha t mere pretence, or ot her more psychologic a l ploys, cannot substi tut e for comp l ete prepa r a tion in nuclea r deterrence. too sophistica t ed for bluff alone to Military succeed: t here preparatJon for wa r accompanyin g the t h rea t s involved in t he ot her hand , has to is now be serious deterr ence . But, on c omplet e prepara tion does not imply that what i s prepared for wi l l be attempted other than condi tona lly: imply attemp t ed X. c omplete preparatio n for X does not It does however 1.nvolve a conditional undertaki ng to proc eed with wha l is prcpa·ed whell1er intelligenc e for under c ertain conditio ns. Comple te preparation , for a we dding or murder or wha tevcr, wo uld be po int les s otherwise, so a (proclaimed ) comm itment to proceed under given circumstanc es c an be taken of connecting for granted . Principle C2 principles . is part way not the line in a series pr inciple of the same sort that is hig he r in the series is that A con necting X with a tt empted X: perh,ps down if Xis wrong then attempted Xis wrong as bad ) , whether X succeeds or not . But the se ries ends ; off well before th e l ower limits of i nte ns ionalit y, contrary to the (thoug h it cuts claims of various religious pos i tio ns. For example, it does not foll ow that if Xis wrong then X the co n temp l ati on con sidcra t Jon of of is wrong carrying out Xis wrong. or that non-action- oriented The point ap plies equally to sexual fant asie s, power fan tasies, and nuclear nightmares . no Lhing mere In particular, there is wrong with contemplatin g nuclear war, or reflecting upon it, as we are: nuclear wars, even lf their horrors don't be ar thinki.ng on, a re not unthinkable , and in some senses are all too thinka ble. Indeed one of the reas on s why the connecting principles appeal is that each common ly involves lt connects with. decidedl y increased pro ab ility of the wrongdoing or outcome Accompanyin g the increased probability are certain r eprehensibl e atti tud e s tied t o the ac tion t he evil outcome involves; nol I ho:a· of mere pas s ! vc .o nt emµ l at f on I,, 1 '. Howev er oll the sets of these are connectl.ng �n prL nc lple s invoked except Cl ho l d, where the y do, ~, a n when the proba bi lity of wrongdo i ng ev e ntuating is not inc r eased. c ho:;c n One rea son for th1s is that the means o r epre hensible end s may be ineffica cious, for instance intendin g to do s omeo ne harm using witchcr aft . The inc r eased prohabi llty of an evil out come o l.mply makcB things worse . Nu clear deter r ence involves not only war pre parat ion, but thi s accompa nied by threats and a threaten ing posture . pot e ntial e nemy, has to be sui tably frighten ed or moved, announce ment For some pa rty , th e if deterr e nce s ucce ed : the threat must be recognis ed as s uch and be cr edible . n uc 1 L' i1 r deterren ce yie l ds a further conne cting princip le: CJ. of is to This aspect of if Xis wrong the n serious threat ening of X und er gi ven conditio ns is also wr o ng ; or , in br ief, If Xis wrong then conditio nal thre a tening of Xis wro ng . The r ema in i ng connecti ng conditio ns invoked all take this general form CG . If Xis wrong so is a cond itional r eq uires some further ex planati on. the fo rm, ~ ( X if C), wl1ere of' • 4 3 thre ate ning ~ Apar t intensio n to A condit'o na l do intentio ns e . g. themselv es, 1 the t ha t ) . C to (or in pr opos iti onal ra ther than event style: the most cond i tion a l lnte1slo ns are conditio nal obligati ons where~ is the oblj gati on form a are not impossi ble claim in whnt or even remote or imp r obable: (spe c ifica lly those involvin g cornmitn e nt) for follows certain is tha t s ort s there of discusse d an it is obligato ry conditio ns the conditi ons typicall y conc e rn those specif ying a rtuclear st rike by a potentia l fund ame ntal cred1ble functor: To r emove complica tion it can b e ass umed hencefo rth that the involv ed whic h intensio n is a judgemen t of is some intensio nal functor, f rom X enemy . The are intensio nal funct ors threaten ing , intendin g , and whic h CG holds , and that these versions suffice to demonst rate the immoral ity 42 . There is plenty of scope for f ur ther elabora tion here. Passiv e s pectntor shJp of evil e vent s where one is in an appropr iate pos i tion to make a differen ce i s quite another thing, from contemp lation of other worlds where e vil oc curs . 43. The condi tionnl i.nt nsion, ~ ( X if C), whic h is an intensio n , should not be confused wit h the provisio nal form, 1f C then ~x. which is not . The Ame rfcnns nre t hr eatening the Russians with retaliat ory action If tl1ey strike : Lt is not that: if the Russians strike the American s will threaten them with reta l ia t ory action . Such confusi on has arisen because of the problems of formalis ing conditio nal obligati on given usual defectiv e theories of condi ti onality. of nuclear deterren ce. Natural ly again there are many �28 no11-;-1ction ·-oriented functors for whi ch ve r s ions c.ont. :•mplat J.on, t'1l nld.ng, dreaming, etc. of e.g . fail, those of The.r e is also a n interesting group of more borderline functors, those of hoping ( for) , expecting, awaiting and the like, for which CG is only dub:i.ously correct:. Connecting pri nciple C3 evolved from the simp ler pri~ciple, if X is then threatcn.ing X 1s also wrong, or, as f ormulated by Ramsay: is wrong to threaten .•• ' 44 The r e ason is that to do into prac tic e (e.g. if wrong 'What is wrong putting something committ ing rape) is wrong then so also is what goes into tlin•at<'nl ne t o pu t that lnto practice , in pn rti c ul ar the declflred intent to that into pract i ce. beginning as fo] lows: The point ca n if worlds where alternative ly X happens be are put argued semanti cal ly, exclude d then so are adjacent wo rlds where Xis poised to happen. The comp li cat lon of the simple form is required for two reasons. nuclear war obta i n. However t he required c onditional form can be derived form, is through only c onditionall y threatened , i.e . the f ollowing wh ic h is pe rf ectly general , X if argument:- c. should certain cond itions particular, (of §§3-4) LSN oppo si. tion has struck, or not , and so wrong when it wrong, 44. so a lso is simple if it weren't it wouldn't (The converse route fails arg uments the Observe, furthermore that if something Xis have b en wrong in the first place. ear lier from su bstitute for X in the simple form, wrong, it is a l so wrong under restrictive co nditions; by Firstly , threatening X if C, war has. of course.) In is wrong whether the Hence, where X is More generally, to e sta blish CG it is Ramsay's formula tion of simplified CJ is considered in Wal zer, p.272. It i s this principle especially that forces Ramsay, a Protestant theologian who is a nuclear hawk , int o the awkward position he ends in, whi c h as Walzer explains , really leaves no room to move. For in virtue of slmp li.f led CJ H must he allowed that the threatened wars are permissible to carry out. Ramsay tries to limit these to military exchanges. But to be effective as a deterrent, Lhe exchange permitted must both threaten and also, i.n view of CJ, not threaten nonmi.lit ary targets, collateral oon-cornbata nt populations . It appears that Ramsay's position, if worked out, wou1d be inconsi.sten t. S!mpllf1cd pri nclple CJ 1.£ nlso invok<'d by the US Catholic Bishops: se PL, p.316. They put the point both in terms of threat and of declared "i.ntent to use nuclenr we apons, which they pronounce morally wrong. Ho wever s implifi ed CJ is rejected by Hare and Joynt (pp.106-7), who want to nssess Lhe moral stntus of u threat by way of expected utility. This is open to Rll the objec tions to expected utility as a test of morality mentione d below. �29 enough to e sta blish the s i mpl e r If Xis wron g s o i s a n int e nsion t o do X. CG'. The s e cond com plic ation in C3, modifying the threat to ca us es more t roubl e . a serious threat, Some modi f ica tion a ppears required, because it is often contend e d tha t empt y t hrea t s or bluff a r e wa rranted on occasion even whe r e is t l1r e o.tene d what l . i s wrong , to prevent t,1c occ urrence o f som et h.1 ng worse .11 s A"n d 1.n f ac t one wny o f tr ying to vi ndica te de te rrence , a s morally permissible , has been by pre se nti ng de t er rence as lnvo lv ing thr eats which do not involve any i nt en tion at all to pr oceed t o action on plaus ible Lhrc a t s . removes i t the support bas i s for of threats. s i mpl i f ied CJ. Insofar A seri ous th r eat th e n, in the slJ ghtly t echnic a l. sense co nditi on s, is con s i de r a accide nt . intended, For the challenge grossly immo r al unconvincing, case wh e r e conduct under certain not and calls for moral double-think. ci rcum st ances th e result from improbable To bring this an intricat e Eithe r the threat is followed through, automatically (as ordered, by Doomsday Mac h in e c ircui try, etc.) or w1th further choice, or - somehow Eit her not . is in ef fect tha t it is perfectly morally permissible to issue serious thr ea t s to under t a ke out is Principle CJ is not ope n to the same c ha l lenges as sJmplified a nd unqualified CJ. says this Hence the shift to serious one tha t i s no t a pre t ence, empty or a blu ff , but credible. which as it is way the out c ome is morally wrong, in the first case obviously , in the s e c ond cas e be cause the intermedia te reconsideration makes it plain that the thr eat nor ought not to have been issued at a ll, be ing justifiable on neither mo r al more .. pra ctic al " rep r es e n t atives grounds. Further more, while states thei r and ma y accept moral double at t itudes, such as morally assenting to immor a l threa t s, les s corrupt agents cannot: it moral principled agents they ar e or take natu r es , to t he kinds of th emse l ves to be ( a s Benn exp lains). i nsignif i c ant mora lly would run For su c h agents , who may counter to comprise their a not proportion _ of the electorate of a nuclear state, principles such a s CJ are no t in doubt. The a r gum e nt agai nst nu c le a r deterr e nce using C3 is as follows:- Either th e --- ---- ---- - - -- - - For a di sc us s ion of threats whe r e the threatener has no intention of ca r r ying ou t t he threat, or inc e ntive to do so, see Schelling, p.JSff . The quest ion of t he mo r ality of th e s e threa ts, where the item threatened is i.m,-,, or a l , ca n be left ope n. �30 t.hrcnt involved then is it Ln deterren ce is ser .!. 1);..i1.. or l t is m 1 t, inadequ ate. s o deterren ce is no Lhen by CJ deterren ce depcn<l is wrong . The maintain ed. sub-argu ment on se ri ous threats is a practica l one: Lf it s no t seri ous Bu t if i t j s ser io us that nu c l ea r dete r re nce name l y , that if the t h rea t s were not serio us , but merely gave the lmpressi o n that they would be fo l lowed thro ugh , then the op posit ion would flnd out, in one way or a nother. could not be entlorseJ i.n an open or democra tic polit i ca l wi LhouL A policy of bluff system , f or examp l e, coining some discussi on, and so giving the game away to the oppos iti o n . Even i n close d non-demo cratic systems maintain ing such a po licy weapons , espec ially informa lion would clown during l i kel y times escape the of there would be ma jor di f fic u l t ies i.n chains of c ommand i nv olved wit h nuc l ear change through in gov e rn ing el i t es , a nd the op pos itio n i ntellige nce. But then , since t he bluff could be called, deterren ce wou ld no t ha ve su c ceede d . Ther e a re as we l l ot her argumen t s t hat the thr ats invo l ved mu st he s e r io u s. On e is t hat nucl e ar d terrcnce already faces a cred i bility probl em , namely tha t do ubts a bo ut the r ationa lity of carry i ng out t he big nuclea r t hre a t weak e n th e c r e di bil ity essentia l. to its effec t iven ess . To be effec tive then i t mu s t be s e r i ous ( c f. Benn). Meeting obj ec tions t o pri ncip l e C3 leads on t o two fur t he r ve r sions of one centred on intent io n , one on commitm ent. CG, Princ ip l e CJ is int1ma t e ly linke d with , and it some times co nside r ed bu t a variant upon , t he pr i ncipl e C4 . If Xis wrong then t o conditio nally intend to do X [kn owing it is wrong ] is n!so wr0ng. The' prJrcJpl cs arc intimate ly a ssoci at ed because a th ea t is, ac c ordi ng t o die tionarie s, etc . ' . of 'a d claratio r of intent to 1nfU.c t puni shment, l oss , injury, It i s their intercon nect i o n which lies a t the bo t t om of deter rence, which in tend ing to go to war . princip l e , th a t turn 0 11 C4 is s ome pa r a doxes the prob l em of c red ibly t hrea tening war wi thout Princ i ple C4 is j us t i f i e d th rough th e s i mplified inte ndi ng to do wrong j_s wr ong, a nd s o al s o i s i nte ndl ng to do wrong unl es s favoura b le circums tanc es f o r one' s p inc.iple some an ex tr emel y position prevail. Si mplif i ed wi del y assumed mora l thesis, 46 perhap s for the excellen t reason that it holds a nalytica lly. Its ela bo ra t io n C4 can be us e d to �Jl agains t nuclear deterre nce , ea follows : argue siQ ~a pfoce eding to LSN war when the Qnemy duly misbeha ve s is wrong (by §§J-4) , by C4. intendi ng to go to LSN wa r when the enemy duly misbeh aves is also wrong . Nuclea r deterre nce involve s such an intenti on, all the availab le evidenc e shows. He nc e nuclear deter rence is wrong. But like virtua lly every utilita rian princip les utiJita rian grounds . deontic t hems e lv es , princip le , princ i ples For it is not difficu lt to except thos e flowing from CJ and C4 c a n be challe ng ed on outline str a tegic situati ons wher e mnxlrnum ex pected utility result s from a poli cy of nuclear det e rr ence. But on il s own this conces sion casts but little doub t upon C4. For it likewis e fs not princip les C3 difficu lt t o ou tli ne situati ons where the hanging oE innoce nt people , or other injusti ces , are sa nctio ne d or enjoine d by maximum expe cted a nd utility . pu rsuit Those who appeal to utilita rian assump tions try t o avoid suc h more obvious di fficult ies with .elianc e upon utilita rianism , scrappi ng the sp ots not by doctrin e, bu t by hedging app licatio ns of their princip les around with quall ficatio ns , whic h, they hope , will trou bl e of wit h utilit a riani sm. enable So .i. t them to evade the worst is with Kavka, whose work ni ce l y illustr ates that whatev er (little ) deterre nce has in its mo r al f avour depend s upon uti.lita rian ass umption s . Kavka 'bcgin[ s ] by no t ing that any reas ona ble system of fwbst,r ntial 1itil.ita ri a n e l ements ' (PD, p.287). consequ e n tia l elemen ts systems incl ud e must infiltr ate, an with the ' ass umption if Eve n observ atio n were correc t - it is nox, dep e nding f or one e thic s thing this upon must hav e astonis hing confla ting utilita rian - it would not follow that reasona bl e particu lar that assump tion produce s normat ive assump tio n involv e d is that t he a ct Kavka thereup on t ries the paradox es of · deterre nce'. wi t h maximum expecte d to The utility '( the most useful ac t) should be performe d whe never a very great deal of utility - - 46. ·•---- ---- - Ka vka , who labels simpli fie d C4 the Wr ongf ul Inte ntions Princip le (PD , p.289 ), attri butes th e princip le to Abela rd, Aquina s, Butler, Bentham , Kan t, Sldgwi. ck, Kenny and Narveso n. Ka vka also gi ves reasons as to why the pr i nciple ap pe ars 's o obviou sly tr ue'. Kenny and others apply C4 to argue, like the US Cathol ic Bishop s , that ' nuclea r deterre nce is immora l' (cf . Kavb p.29 1 ). It is the clas h of C4 with certain utJ li tarian princip les (espec iall y the maximi sation pr inc iple of p. 28 7) that directl y genera tes Kavka 's f irst paradox of dete rrenc e and l ies behind his other "parado xes'' : see PD. �. , •" . 12 i.s s t. a ke ' ( p .Z87). :;t obj ec tions as This as s um p t io n is ope n to es s e n tia lly the same ba t c h ut il i taria nism i self: it is mainl y a mat t er o f i ncre a sing or vary! ,1g the s t okes i nvol ved s uf ficient l y in a y co unte r examp l e . usud l stratc ~y of of Kavka tries t he weakening a nd fudging the nor mative a s s umption to a voi d the ~o r sl pro bl e ms of distri butive i n justice , and t he like , t hat max i mising u t i lit y can mora l ly e njo i u. But the c ru cial defect in Ka vka ' s argume n t l ies fo l Low fr om t he normative ( p . 28 7) • 11 7 what ov erridde n by C4 s u ppo sed u t il i t a rian to a ssumptio ns ' Though Kavka tends t o a pply t he fudg ed normat iv e as sumption s in thi s way, as If it domina ted C/4 ( see e s pe c ia lly p , 29 0), wh a t and is assump t i on howeve r fudged, namely that ' t his mea ns o t he r mo r al ass ump t io ns a r e t h at .•. in produce , situa t i on s , are whe n moral c ombi ned dilemmas . in si tu a t i ons These are not s uc h th e f udg ed as sump ti on as special de t e rr e nt c a ses where one decnti c pr inc ipl e , tl1a t yie l ded by ut i l i t a r ian i sm , ove rrid e s o t hers, but wher e t he r e ar e c ompe ting, ev en c nt ra d ic tory de ont ic pr inc i p l e s , such a s tha t it int e nd right to to pro c eed to LS N war whe n t he e nemy mi sbe ha ves (on specious u til i tarian gr ound s ) and. also wrong to i n te nd to do s o ( by C4) . wr ong : that judg ement is not ov e rr i den. Nuc lear de t e rr e nce is also t he case is t hat in r emai ns Nor do es it in any way foll ow that C4 i s in 1eed of qu a lifica ti on as a r es ult (Ka vka' s a ssump t ion, what is th e~e s pe cial p.290) . situations, Howeve r , t her e ar e count e r vall i ng u t ili t arian cons i dera tions s ugge sti ng different imperatives . For .ln t he s e is wrong . s pe c i a l ci rcumst a nce s a greater uti l:lty can be realised by doing what Howe ver it is ha rdly ne ws, but a standing objection, that ut ili t a ri a nism some time s en joins wl1at is wron g . Spec ial s pons on s hip de t e rre nt may appea r s itua t i.on a, where under ntl lit a ri a n t o get a foot i n t he moral door, ar e very speci a l. char a c ter is ed by Ka vka , the y a r e s uch that t he 47 . deterrence de t e r r e nce is very likely As to Lacke y ' s utiljt a rian app ro ach r e s t s on o similar fallacy, that u ti litari a n cons iderations predom~n a te wher e s t a k es are larg e enough: see hi s argument f or the ;i pp ro nch in MM p. 192 . Wha · hap p n s i s not that importa n t c ons quenc es ov e rrid e moral principles, but tha t Applica t ion of one pr inc iple wit h important consequence s conflic t s with t hat of ano t he r pr inci pl e wi t h less s i gni f i cant consequence s, and in the we igh-·up of what t o do in t he pro blemat ic circumstanc es the principl e with impor ta nt con s eq uence pr evai l s . �sucr<"£:d , and nothing else .i s likely tp lodc ed in a deep pr.obability-well. This is ve ry far removed from the real world su.:, ceed (see p . .2~16), i.e. si.tuat.J.on whe re nuc lear deterrence appears to be increasing the deterrence probabiU.ty is of LSN wRr, and where other procedures such as graduated nuclear disarmament are at least as J.ikely to succeed as deterrence . that <l1~ont <: principles sllbject Even if it were mistakenly to real-life d .1 .lcmmas should be qualified to avoid di.l mmas, there is little point in qualifying working such RS supposed de ontic principles C4, given the remoteness of the special deterrent situati ons. Instead of pul ling nuclear deterrence down though the immoral inte nt:lons it involves, it can be criticized more broadly throug h the commitments it equi. r es, by wa y of the following principle: CS. If Xis wrong then a conditional commltment to carry out Xis The reason is that the commitment is a commitment circumstances; and that commitment is to act itself wrong . lso wrong. wrongly in cer-tain Nuclear deterrence is however a poli cy which commits states to war under certain conditions . And as wi th conditional intention, so with conditional commitment, there is no doubt th a t su perstates and controlling commitmen t and their intention to use representatives nuclear weapons. did not occur) is enough to establish the relevant The dangerous strategy of launc h-on-warning (which could , for instanc e , result J n a thut have response to attacks the point, for which there is otherwise quite s ufficient factual evidence. Now the connecting principles suffice logically , but are nucl ar deterrence, for weighty principle would detachment from the by complete preparat i on fo r and Deterrence of this type is wrong. also reveals why the suggestion, that the morality of the whole deterrence trip depended on war itself never occurring, was so parad ox ical: det e rrence. ir self By case . i nstance conditi.onal comm.ltment to LSN war, is wrong. This sound wh n all are liable to be disputed, several defensible ones, ideally in concert, make for a principles one applied: it ou t the connections between and not be engaged in (unl ess i ts ha s appeared nuclear war and nuclear Nuclear deterrence should not be practised given that should chang ed, e.g . left bizarre nuclear war direct ion can be drastically at .least limited, per impossibile in the case of nucl ea r warfare, �to purely mi l i t ary targe ts). Til e a rguments t hrou gh conn e cting pr i nc i. ple s, can be reinforced by different sort s of ar gument s agai ns t the mo ral c orre c t ne s s of nuclear deterrenc e . a n 1 a r g uments from lim i ted c~nv erge nc e of et h i cal t heori e s I There wh i ch start from the commonplace ob se r va ti o n that ~ All the ethi c al a t"gum ents in favou r of nuclear deterrence are broadl y ut ilitar i an. In f nct roost of the arguments i.n favour of de t e rrence, including many t hat inf iltra t ed hav e the e thi.c a l l i t erature , ar e those of ge ner., l ly drawn f rom game t heory, and primar :tly intere sted in the one playe r, t h r> USA. Utilitar ia nism , t hough s till looking of those expedie ncy -· advantage of basically at ~dva n tages , i n t e r es t s and ( t ypi ca lly ind i vidual) utilities, has to take a partisan pain of posi t io n, a nd consider [ or[eiti ng i ts claim t o mor a lity sup po r t t d by o t he r na tional i ties othe rwi s e . The as well, commonplace on less observation is the fa c t that such qual i fied moral support as deter rence obtains, dflrive s from ut il i tarianism. 118 Th e re a r e two d ir e c tions on to a gene ra l cla1m ag a i.nst de terrence, either by wa y of t h e pro- ut il itar i an theme Uti l ita r ianism properly a pplied also comes out against deterrence or, 1n o r e s t rongly, by way of the a nti- utilt t arion t heme , Utilita r la nism doe s not furnish satisfactory moral arg uments. The n , by t h e ;rnti. -utilitarian theme, there are no satisfactory in f av our d ir ec tion: 48 . of de terrence. moral arguments Na turally, it would be easy to strengthen the second a ft e r all it is widely thought that u tilitarianism is a false, Thu s t he hed g ed utilitarian defences of Kavka and of Hare and J oynt, and a l s o within th e broadly utilitarian r ange , of Gautier . Showing that cogent de f ence s of nuclear deterrence have to take a util i tarian r ou te would he a much t oug her ent e rprise. Though it is a reasonable conjecture that the e n te r pr i se c ould be carried through, much would depend on what was · cc oun t e d cogent. For ce rtainly biz ar re principles, e.g. obverses of the conne ct ing pr incip l es, · can be i ntroduc ed, which afford deontological routes t.o deterre nce . An,l, rl e spi t r some back sliding by bi s hop s , all other ethical positions can be m., d c to "' penk again s t deterrence and i. t s cont.l.nuntio n . • A deontological ~RRC ngnln At dctc rr c nc · , pr ima rily he way of <lcontic connecting pr i ncip l e s, has been a rgued i n some detail. In the light of these prlnciplcs , Lt i s not difficul t to s e e how c a ses from other ethical positi ons would go. After a ll C4 ha s been defended from a wide range of stanc es , e.g . contra c t ua l, natural law, utilitarian even. �seriousl y as tray, or even shabby ethic~ ] pg&ition. pol it i ca l s yst em whic h depends in some uL l l lt:arJan a rgum e nts for its policieo. It hardly does measure then for a upon consensus , to rely on Yet with nuclear de.terrenc e just thnt appe;1rs to be happe ning, with readily ove rturned arguments at that. For whether even utilitari.a nism supports deterrenc e depends ess entia lly on: how it ls applied; with which maximisa tion recipes; along with what other r estrictiv e assum pti ons (such as those of a deep probabili ty-well); genc>rous arc utll i.ty· assignmen ts or upon With different (and · a rguably superior) va rying the guestimat ion methods, very differen t results emerge, oppo sing deterrenc e and favouring unilatera l nuclear disarmame nt. 49 basic reas on for this is straightfo rward (and like that ending §4). LSN war has a n extremely large negative utility. deterrenc e out to whi.c h increases th other recipes of feasible a how for such things as preservat l on of national sovereign ty , nationa l security, etc. assumptio ns , and on Any policy such The It is that as nuclear probabili ty of this, or even risks it , must los e alternati ves, conseque ntialist type whatever are initially applied (e.g. plausible decision Minimax, Dominance , Di.s as ter Avoidance , Expected Value) . The anti-ut ilitarian theme can be def ended either by a full-scal e criticism o[ ut j lltaria nlsm, beginning for instance with its well-know n justifica tion of l ocalised In justic e s , SO or else 11t i l i tarla ni sm when applied One obvi.ous dcflc iency is this: by to addressin g s ome of the inadequac ies of issues like that at hand, nuclear deterrenc e. on standard util itarianism , what to do , whether to proceed with deterrenc e, depends on the probabili ty of its success and on the improbabi l ity of other options working. deep, uti ~itarlanis m If the deterrenc e probabili ty-well is morally requires deterrenc e, otherwise not. 51 But what is morally required, or wrong, does not fluctuate with what outcomes are pro babl e. 49. Th e ins ab ility of utilitari anism is illustrate d by the discussio n inv olving KovkR, Lackey and Hardln, continued in Philosoph y and Public Affairs 12(3), 1983, where, on the basis of utilita r ianism, diametric ally opposed conclusio ns are reached. (Hardin 's approach tends however to expedienc y reasoning of the strategic type.) 50. Such wider critic isms of utilitaria nism, in all its forms, as an ethical theory are too well-know n to repeat. Some of the main defects are considere d in another article in this series, 'An expensive repair kit for utilit arl.an ism'. The point that util:Ltari anism gi ves no firm place to stand comes from L, Mirlin. �36 wheLh<'r deterrence i..s moraJ.ly wrong or not, i. s likPly to work or not. indepe nde nt deterrence are decidedly essentially nowhere i.s Moral princi p~s not are through expected Vf.llues, whether utilities or o th e rwis e - though how ba d :rnme outcome is ma y be . depend .Lt If nuclear deterrence is wrong wher e it increases the probablllty of war, the n ls it wrong, simpllclter . det:crmlne<l whcrhc r of upon firm to stand. Wor s e, si nce the expected utilities in the case uncertain, these a nd of the results util i ta r ianism delivers uncert ainty measures> util itari anism off ers In con t rast wi t h the soli.d deo nti c ground of principle , utilitariani sm provide s only shifting s and. The objections made apply esp eciall y aga ins t act uti l ita r ianism. (orm shows at special int e rests, such as conditions security (the of estimation rules are pulled in). probability- well state , have hi gh 1s deep , utilities, nat io n- s tat e and spe cial It does not yie ld a deterrence polici; ind eed hnrdly yields policies. tall (other than act utilitariani sm it s elf ). 11nd certain othe r diff i ulties may be avoided by considering instead a o[ act most that nuclear deter re nce is "wrong" a c c ordi ng to its l ig ht s under very il The acts. 52 But the method lacks sta bi lity; These seque nce di f fe r en t prescription s will res ult dependi11g upon how the sequence is se l ected, what is inc luded and what left (as also associa ted p obabilit i es depend crit ically on the sequence selected). No unequivocal rec ipe is delivered. selected out to To see this, suppose the sequence is include worst cases , for instance cases where deterrence fails a nd war breaks out. In this event it can hardl y be argued that deterrence is t he pol lcy that maximizes u til it y ov er the sequence. Along wit h the argument s, there are dissatisfac tion with nuc lear deterrence. other concom.itant conventiona l wa rs . f or Firstly, the peace it has provided 011l y nuclear pc~ce, or rather lack of nuclear war , as the re smaller-s cale reasons is no deep is s hort age of And the "peace " provided is a t best a tenuous pe3ce, which Is not stable , ~ut liable to upset at any stage by a r ange of 51.. Though this is to oversimplif y, the po int s made ar e not affected by the simplificat ion . In any case the simpl ifi ed picture reflects well enoug h the difference s between Kavka and Lacke y that matter in their debat e (ref rred to in footnote 49 ). 52. Whether thjs is rule util itarianism , or still act util i tariani sm the sequence can be construed as one long ac t, may be left open. becaus e �- - - -- - -- - - - - - · - 37 fn,t_0 rs, lncl 11d1ng er rot· , both human and t ec lrn1 .:fl.1, j)C:lc (_~ , p 0:i It thofl not offer genu i ne of the sort re riuir e d fo r a stabl e intec nat.lo nal 1. 1. fe, but only o fragi l e ·e o f a sort" (PL , p.316 ). Secon dly, there enorm ous is cost, mora l -~!_p_po r_t_~.r~~ _: ___ cost of de.ter renc_ ':_, be cause expe nditu re on it exclu des othe r urgen t moral prio ritie s. The US Bisho ps put th is fami liar poin t, in a surpr ising ly Marx i st way, in terms of destr uctiv e capac i ty and what 'the ls contr a dic tion ne e ded f or betwe en what cons truct iv the is spent for devel opme nt' ( PL, p . 316) . §6. Prac tical , prude ntial and more mora l arg umen ts from natio nal dange rs nuclr•ar build -up of the supe rstat es , a nd the gene sis of nucle ar dilem mas. to Whil e there are argum ents to the immo ra lity of nucle ar war prepa ra ti on, there are also counr c ·-arg ument s, that have prove d rema rkabl y persu asive (espe ciall y to Amer I c;wi, ), to the mora l just:!.fiab ili ty of nucle ar war pr e para tion in the _p_!.c s':~- circu mstan c es. The unde rlyin g style of argum ent is simpl y an elabo ratio n, or state -upl ift, of Liw1- for the esca lnti on of weapo ns at the local leve l, for acqu iring a gun or f o r s to c king- tip the neig hbour hood armou ry - and every bit a r gu1r.e nt from local dang ers. dom inati on ; a nd dubio us fir st of all seco nd of nucle ar destr uctio 11 . atom ic s urren der and so avoid the destr uct io n' (Wal zer, p.273 ). prepa ratio n is suppo sed to guard again st more than these ; third eleme nt , name ly, loss of basic rig hts there with these . black mail of forei gn appea seme nt In fact nucle ar is ways a cruc ial of life This furth er set of elem ents is linke d to the dange r of forei gn domi natio n - which is reall y a separ at e eleme nt from risk of Thoug h and (free dom, equa lity, etc .) and fund amen tal value s (upho lding of truth , human dign ity, etc .) and int eg rat ed that The two go toget her, sinc e lf we dtcl not f ea r the black mail , we migh t adop t a polic y or as It is that nucle ar prepa ratJo n, 'so we have be en tol d , gua r ds again st the doub le dang er: forei gn as black mail. dom inntl on -need not imply the loss of most basic value s it does imply the loss of a t le a st of one , self- de te rmin ation , freed om to choos e vario us natio nal objec tives ; conv ersel y loss or erosi on or infri ngeme n t of basic value s can occur witho ut fo re ign demi. natio n, for insta nce, as is comm onpla ce in the �"[ r •e " world, by internal change of go,wnmtent or irnvij,fnroenta l approach, through the iiicrc>nsed security and contro l a nti clcnr prepnratlon incr easi ngly nuclear risks, state demands, extensive etc. But what nuclear destruction, also involves loss of basic rights and values, through destruction ti, _ material of 53 of the cherJshed life-style. So nuclear preparation is hardly n c l earcut bnse me ans of guaranteeJng basic values. 51• fn other respe cts too t he argument from loss of lncku cogency an d rings ho 1 low, It is basic values and ri ghts hnrd to avoid th' f •cling r:hnt tl1c: oft-appealed-to basic values often function as something of a front, like ci tati.o n of religious values at politica l ceremonies; clean cover for economic consideration of one sort from demand s of the military-indus trial of private wealth and vnl \les appealed to category: in and anot he r, them having However arising to do with th e an argument isn't, or associations. And the rights and But not all the values commonly appealed to fall into particular nationalistic ones do not. And one of the main a l leged values of deterrence, the resistance to and containment or many are, most:ly, of the utmost importance, indeed fundamental, and worth much sacrifice . this of power. oughtn 't to be, defeated by lts unsavoury that t he argument 1.s a omplex , many concerned with foreign domJnatiun of other lesser states, and many conccut ·at:1.on pious of "communism" of "socialism ", can hardly be accounted fundamental, any more than retention of cnpi talism. communi.sm has What has been happened here confused with of course (the t o tal i tarianism, which does remove certain more freedoms (of opinion , association, is reality basic information, that ( the of) state values, etc., ideal socialist namely etc.), of) and certain so does derivative~ threaten basic values. One critical q uest i on, then, is whether extens ive nuclear LSN wa r, and indeed for rational way of preservtng nuclear those holocaust, fundamenmtal preparation for is a good or effective or even values, which we have left. 53. The converse obviously does not hold. Basic values and cherished life-style can be lost without nuclear destruction, or nuclear preparation, as when a more powerfuJ state imposes its values and way of life. 54 . The argument from freedom , advanced by Jaspers and repeatedly rolled out by state representatives , is further conside red early in Appendix 1. .... , �'lQ J, Simi la r ci. ue s tions dominntion and arJs e as regard s blackmail. argumeq;; H from er, e Justification danger which is itself open questioned (i n §8 ), both from the to ser i ous point foreign of the methods of extensi ve nuclear preparation depends essent i ally on an arrangement of hostil e structure of of question, v iew of nation and basic states, a i s subsequently valu s, such as freedom, and oth r wise. But whether ul tima tely jusU(ied or dangers are no t, t hese from natlonal those that have been taken to morally underwrite extensive nuclear prcpnration, and jus tific, tlon. have They been have par t of many people ' s accepted in moral by policy outlook. particular , that ex tens i ve nucle ar however , the makers as affording moral fact be e n wide ly accepte d, and undoubt e dly form Wi thi n frnmework the moral justification holds good . others, ar gumen t s arguments not a c onv entio nal Northern It i s within such a fram ewo rk, in preparatio n do such engenders establis h a moral fix. For the morality of extensive nuclear preparat ion, but only make a prudential case for such preparation. people not also face a nucl e ar dilemma, but, though evaluative in character, it ls specif ically moral one. ,1 impressed by And for ma ny other s again, who are who not so or as familiar wi th Soviet and American culture and ways of life, and thci.r r espec tive r ights and freedoms, there is no serious dilemma. peop)c Such live beyond For such the "beneficial" reach of t he supers t ates , prudenti al counter-arguments from national dang ers carry little weight, and the moral case against deterrence is not offset but stands unchallenged . Thls is the ge nesis of the argument fr om isolated people who live in people. Consi de r some a comparatively remote a rea, whose freedoms are not (yet) under threat from superpower expansionism, but whose lifestyle is put at risk by nucl~ar d ter r c nce (a s under pr inciple Cl). For such isolated people, who may ha ve little interes t i n the preservation of nuc lear states , there is no nucl ea r diJ emma , and nuclear lo cations may have problems problems people. as deterrence to natio nal is wro ng. dangers, genuine People in less fo r tu na te but in meeting these they are not entitled to impo se grave risks on the uninvolved isolated In doing so i mmorally; and f or through similar nuclea r reasons deterrence , superstates the are proceeding conventi onal No rthern framework is �j_mpug rwd. conclusion can be al ter n ' tlvely -c t>rl c hc<l Tht'. same argument:: put a reflective i s olat e d pe rson, and check S! 11 ci> Amer ican the or- resulting by a substitution Russi.an 1n the position of such an asse ssment of nuclear deterrence. IL wor Jd be th e snm c as that of n reflecti ve isolated person, stripped o f m1p, rs lntc bins, moral ly opposed to de terr ence and not rnot·all.y transfixed, t h <~ c onventional framework fails t o sati sfy requirement s of morality. The outcome of the arguments fr om dang e rs is, the~ ver y different depending whc her on the arguments are appU.ed as rega rds a superstate or not. The superstate theme which emerges is, in brief, SST. Because o f multiple connected dang e rs from other states which have nuclear weapons, a state - any state that is too large to rely upon other states - is obllged to invest in at least matching nuclear weapons. Henc e, by detachment, a super- nation-stat e, such as USA, ought to have something Jn orde r t hP meet of the nuclear armoury that it has. Or, weakening the theme to ol.Jjecli on s concerning excess, "overkU.l" capacity, it retain i1 t l east solid a ou~ core of the nu c 1ear devices it has. (moretlly] to For su bs equent argumc~nt it can be left open whether the oblig-'¾tion involved is a moral one, for inst a nce be cause of the character the of pro r·c·c tcd, or only (as nrg ued a bove) one of g rou nds to those di. sa rmame nL supporting ag ainst a the dangerous SS reason 55• prudent:ial the me nuclea r Northern values supposedly being On similar it can be argued that unilateral opponent would be prudentiall y Jrralto nal. It will be fr ely admitted that what is prudentiall y or morally requir ed is a s11 hopLimal st rategy , li.ke the famili.a r strategies of the prisoners ' dilemma si tu a tions and of certain related competitive games . that a su peri or would be cooperative For expen sive , re source s, dr ai ning of such t he details are wel l- enoug h kno~1. 55. admitted arrangement s. Cooperation and be better not merely in removing the nuclear dilemma, but in a ra nge of other r espects . future be strategy for nuclear adversaries , if sufficient trust and the lik . could be achif?Ved , would agreeme nt So it should arrangement s would be much less risky , destructive of the environment , a nd so on; However for the present and the foreseeable the prospe cts of cooperation a ppear - so we are repeatedly told by state It can stil l, a nd presumably does, amount to more than mere local expedi e ncy, s ince the 'freedom of Europe' is part of what is at issue. �rcprcscnlat lve s , who are (not always ~ ltt t~gly ) helpin~ unfortunate ly rather remote: only the ca make their polici es sure insurance is ex t e nsiv e nu c l ear preparntion and full preparednes s t o 3pply nuclear force. At least this is so where one is a superstate : proceed, largely unabated . nuclear preparation Where one is not a superstate , but a lesser state one must, the r e presentativ es continue, _t::_':l..l_ on a larger ally who has a one's a rsen a l, umbrella. nu c l ear pre paration , th e lA ck of trust d l splaye d, ,md for huddl es conf l.dencc in !ts and which under co ntrast s ncouragcd elsewhe r e . st·at (• , one whic h r.clics for i ts nuclear grrH1nd one anoth e r's But he r e a level of tr ust and coope ration is_ called for, by dep0 nd ent states, which is far from foolproof, with nu clear in s uranc e (which is pres umably not fre e ) is obtained indirectly thr oug h some supcrstate 's nuclear COVt!r super-· ally Does a "d epe nd ent" on a s 1pc r -a lly, rather tha n strangely have that exchange on its territory? mu ch Jt s ally's opponen t ? Confidence, for instanc e , that its ally will not r e nder i t a ta rget or nuclear must stag e a Given the pr ocliv i ty of states , especia ll y l arg0 states, to res ort to expediency, and give n the recen t histo ric al record of superstates and t heir leaders , too much fait h would be mi spl ace d . Thus, whatever th e l imited force of t he argume nt f or the superstat e it <loes theme , not extend t o the analogous them e for a dependent state, which d if fers f rom SST nnd end s as follows: DST. Because ... , a st a t e without adeq uate (or any) nuclear weapons is obliged to r e ly upo n a s u pe rstat e ally , and within that arrangement , to accommodate t he facilities and nuclear in stallations of the protecting ally . ln pa r t for reaso ns already given, principle DST is not very plausible (a nd same goes for mo re obvious variants upon it ). Nor do the arguments of f ered for SST t ranspose parti cularly well to direct arguments striking l y illu str ated by the case the for DST. 56 This is more of more remot e nuclear dependent states. Consider the a rgument from basic values, for instance , from the angle of nuclear dependent Australia. Basic values ln Australia are not threatened by, o r put in j eopardy through, the ac io ns or plans of the Sovi et Union. Nor ar e they thr eatened by the other superstate, t he USA, the only country with ' the physical 56. As ls widely known, inadmissi ble and usual l y much overrated considerat ions o f expediency frequently enter into reaso ns why states allow foreign nuc lea r facilit i e s upon th e ir territories , e. g. eco nomic consideratio ns such as trade or local revenue and short- term jobs. �ca1 1acity to launc h mot j .ve Lo <.111y <l o look convincing . carries full scale invasion of Aust r alia ', but R wc .i ght. reasons In fact, the with a rgumen t from of For there arg ument t he only is qucstLonable non-n l lf~twd prnc.ticcs. of 58 domina tion In this way too) the from dang er of nuclear destruction could be nullified . such supe r state foreign li t tl e care, the pr e s e nt level of a economic and political dom i nati on could be much reduc e d. fore(• lack(ing] so , , so far . 5 7 CJ.ear ly the argumen t from basic values does nol For similar 1 it t le 'clearly danger because nuclear of umbrella, superstate dang er facilities and th e tha t would be removed wi th With 1 ess remot e dependent Europc 1rn states these sorts a rguments from nationa l dangers are only marginally more convincing , and may b e defeated along analogous lines . The differe nces in the situations of st ate s, and peoples, break theme the of a of monolithic West. differently situated This is a theme especially favoured by US and the Wes t European rep resentati ves, who present the West, its freedom, as t hr eatened by Soviet domin atio n. und i.ffrrentiatcd unit. dep1!nd0nL i;tntes with But this l eadi ng idea, NATO desig ne d powers , and In this the West is a single in and part to align lesser to justify pu tting them at nuclear rl sk is as muc h a my th as th e idea of the Golde n West. The West is not so monolithic, it ls not so comprehensive, some of it is not so free , much of it (i ncluding the Ant ipodes) is not thr eate ned by Soviet domination. Principle DST - li kewise what it dep ends upon , SST - is now coming unde r attack by Eu ropean disarmament groups , who c hallenge the core assumptions of the. und er lying retaliatory model that 0 Safety lies in weapons , More weapons i mply more. security59 , Cerlainly, for mo:ce :f.s ol ated states, such as New Zealand, safety from nuclear. a t ack l i es not in wea pons bu t in excluding nuclear facilities (including visit s from nuclear submar ines ) . Europe ans are ar guing in present of syslem is more a similar wa y, that the a ris k, indeed l ia bility, than a protection (e.g. 57. For t he quote d c laim, and some of th e Au stralia ' s Se curi ty , p .94 . 58 . The Jssuc is furt her pursued in Ap pendix 2. 59 . Sec, for exam ple, t he las t article in Thom pson. argument for it, s ee Threats to �Thompson, p.251); envi s -1ged and thnt: w-ithou!: Lhcut.r e for a h\icJ. ,;,)ll'' instal1.st:!on1>i Europe cannot be limited nucle r wnr , in the way .l thf' is now seen by US ( ut not Soviet) strategists. Once the weapons assumptions are qu es tioned, other assumptions of the retaliatory model a nd its variants come up for examination, namely ci Whether the proper response to danger is armament, in particular o Whe th er tle proper response is through nuclear armament, as opposed , say, to other military responses, such as convent.ional arms, or, takin g off from the previ ous point, ~ Whcthrr military approaches and procedures (through ar e proper methods, armaments , etc.) or should be such dominant methods, of conflict resoLuti.on at the int er national level. It ls plausibly arg ued, against military procedures, that at no ordinary level do we sens5bly s et about meeting danger or settling disputes by acquiring lethal weapons and thr eatening to use them - except perhaps on an out-dated, and r e ally warranted, frontier ethics. This leads into the issue of alternative defence systems, a vital matter beginning to obtain the contemporary 60 and explana tion it deserves, questioning of the framework of but never one that already nation-states. While emphasis anticipates subsequent the state system is inrac · , force ls far from exceptional and military procedures are to be expe cted and are l LkcJ y ine vitnhl c. nation-state system ': For 'forc e has [a] permanent plac,~ in the thus Ramsay (on p.xv), who uses this as part of his very orthodox case for nuclear war arrangements. §7. Th resulting nuclear dilemmas for aligned st;:ites Ass~mbli.ng r eferred th~ to as themes the so far nuclear de v e lope d fix:- States war-deterrence, because (as argued in §J-§5 ) to engage jn war.-·deterrence , at l east 60. yields the both and their supporters. deontic dilemma. often ought not to engage in it is immoral, and also ought for prudential reasons (as Alternative defence systems were considered long ago in Mohists. For contemporary work on alter native systems , see su rvey in Sharp. There is in fact a considerable literature and social defence arrangemen ts, and a growing literature on i . e . convercd.on t o such arr angement s . argu ed using China by the especially the on non-violent transarmament, �·,,,,._ 44 SST and DST). tl w Th i s dilemma i.s no idle construction of virtues parac.onsisteot logic), but ( c onc octed 61 prod uced by war itself 62 , or at war and its version of the deon tic least war which spr.·eads beyond purely mjlitary la r gc ts, as larger wars in evi tably e . g. nuclear , a, wel l as bei ng virtu a lly ublqultous i.n nuclear war discu ssions. ThP nuclear fi.x 1s in part simply a mor e intense di 1 emma demonstrate a serious real-life dilemma, t he ouLJ.i n s of which are r e peatedly encountered i .n text s on asper.ts to do (since ra il t ra nsport , typically rely on ci.vilian ones) . military arrangeme nt s, The ma in dil emma arises from a combination of t he retaliat ory model with t he feat ures of war. War is requlr 0cl for defence of th e state and valu es it upholds (or pretend s to uphold); but war also invo lves imm oral ac ts and cv.tl co nseque nc es . war can undPr also ce rtain justified. be se e n as a t temp ting a rec onciliation by tryi ng t o show that ctrcumstanees Thus ' some these reall y ju tifications 0 evi l consequences Regis of war ' (Walls , p.260). accept ab l e than falla c ious ,symptotic are morally of war aim to show that a ctio ns deemed normally forbi dd en by moral ma nd ates are now pe rmissible the The doctrine of " ju st But this argume nts when perfo rmed under is no better or mor e morally for uti l itorianism as bein g corre c L \~hen the s takes are larg e . W;n· and preparedness for 61 . wa r als o gene rate s ubsidiary di.lemmas f or Thus Green, along with many others, ' find[s ] nucle a r deterrence the best of pra c tical policies available to us now •.. give n the realities of world politics ' bu t ' s till demur[ s ) because of mo ral qualms' (p . xii). Green also r e presents both Morgent hau a nd Halle as having 'rather agonisingly presented a • • . case for a deterrenc e strategy, even whil e asserting that the stra.tegy is morally indefensible according to the traditional et hical codes' (p.2 52 ). Walze r ends in a similar dil emma (he is committed to a str onge r a nd less qualif i ed form of it tha n he set s down): though it [deterrence ] is a bad way, there may well be no othe r tha t is practi cal in a world of sove reign and suspicious state s' (p.274) - an indictment of the state system that Walzer does not pur sue. Similar ly th e US Catho lic Bishops d :llemma; they s peak of ' th e dilemma of how to prev ent the use Fa s kius nn<l Dockrill and i n Benn terms of moral dilemmas. present the situation i n terms of a mora l political paradox of de terrence •.. the of nuclear weapons • .. ' (PL, p.3 13). In too the nuclear situation is pre s ent ed in Th e nuclear dilemma is of course not a dilemma for everyone, for those who think they have seen the clear admis sib i lity of deterrence, or differently for those who have seen through the argumen ts fr om nati onal dang e rs. But it i.s a dilemma for th ose locked into the conventional f r amework. 62. Situatior.s in war are als o a major so urce of moral dilemmas: see Routley and Plumwo od where several exampl es are gi ven. A general logic a l account of and theo r y of moral di.lemmas is elaborated therein. �. ... inst;ince, a sevc t·e tensio n be tween freedom and difficult prohlcms au t ho f· t c y: 'one of th e ~0s t o[ war involv es defending a free society witho u t destroying the values that g ive it meaning and vali dity' (PL, p.324). The problems are greatly enhanced by modern nuclear arra ng emen ts. The nuclear fix not onl y i nt ensifies a nd complicates other d-Lle rnm:-is induc ed by t he co ntemporary s ov ere i gn s t at~ 63 , in particula r the dee p tension c betwee n national security and the ope r at ion o f libera l-democrati c arrangement s (sucl1 a ., " lnd.lvidual li.herty , popular control of institution s, etc) . othe>r more persona l subsidiary d i l emmas , ( poll U ca l) obl lgations to s for example (the question the extent of one' s a nuclea r stat e, and ro le-induced d Uemmas such as one's conf licting obligatio ns as a docto r or a nuclear res c•archer It also accentuates of politic a l obligation s armame nt s and processor or eva sion is their considered f urther in Appendix 2). At the more personal level, tha t of individual and group ac tion, the re several ques Ions to 'Wh, t. should my sta t e be disen tangled - questions di ffere nt from the key issu e be doing and influence, d epending on who one is. I do? 1 one Jives, - do?', on whi c h one may exert influences, i.e. in what l it tle There is not only the question 'What shou ld a question whi c h will have a quite different force de pending a nd ar e on whe re sort of stat e, where one wo rks, what one contr ols or on who on e ls and one ' s role s - but also the questions ' What sort of person do I wan t to be ?', 'What am I prepared to answer for morally?'. 64 Answe rs to thes e latter char a cter questions will feed back to influence those t o act ion-or ien t ed questions . Each of thos e questions c an , in gi ven situations, induce subsidiary dilemmas . The essential fea t ure of a deontic dil emma is that both A and the of A are wrong (or di ffe rently, pursu ing a nuclear def ence policy. obliga tory), negation for some suitable A, such as The place and essential role of deontic and 63. The nuclear dilemma is not alo ne re sponsibl e fo r these other dilemmas. T.arg -sca l e nuclear power generation, a nd other types of warfare and security ar rangements, also contribute. But a conflict of freedom and autho rity is already an outcome of the la rge central state. 64. For gro up formula t i on of t he que stio ns rep l ace 'I' by 'my group', etc. The l mpo rtnn ce of distilling ouL th e se qu•s t ions, and the moral und es ir a bility of r!Pt0rrr,n~0 fn terms of whnt: Lt docs to p oplc morally, are brought out Ln Benn , where however the issues a r e made t o l ook somewhat more separate than they are . �moral d il emmas ure not l i t.t>r;,Lure f, !., • widely or well und er stood, p...." t'ticular]y __ e 1-1 ~ 1i in ca .1 Thi s l s par t ly be c a us e c urre ntly domin a nt e thic a l positlons lik e utilitarlnnism "annot at al l e asil y accommod a t e moral dilemmas or the data which giv•s to rise them but the n such positions do not r eally offer reporti ve acco11nU; of wr on~ an d obli ga_~_:!:_on anyw.-1 y. d i lemma doe Cont r ary t o utilitarian per ce pt:Lons a not neces s arily have any mo ral s olution , though there may be better a nd worse ways By 01t . wh c h assessments, contr a st f orm the with basis s uc h e thical theories , preanalytical oE se n s itive theories, do recognise mor a l dil~mmaa and reflect t he i r f e a tur e s. Reactions an f rom the res ponse s t hat a re c ha r ac t e ristic of deonti.c dilemmas fix. nuclear The r e 1<• an un s t end iness, an uncertainty a s to whnt to <lo , whJ.ch wny tu pr.occed , whl c h pr ind pl •n i n wa ter e d- down for m to temporary Thus , crutch . for as world' GG , that b st" j ethical RU;l1 ,)ps wt-o way a of neve r exerci s ing "mora lly ou r s J. n a morally-str a pped wor ld . fu nctor s peak moral A similar th e 'strictly mor;il Dete r r ence ha s a strlc tly temporary role but de t e er e nc: e th e c i rc um s t a nce s. de ter r .nc e, is be in a fallen to " second a acceptability ' object mus t cert ainly one str ictly and wrong, is of from th e conditional be to move beyond det er r ence, 'towards a optlon as to of what the to nucl ear do in Thus Wal z er, for example, s t r ugg les t o the conclusion though a "morally try to escape 'the paradox of deterrence', i.e. world free o f the threat of deterrence' (PL, p.317), out And can shift 'moral c ond i tional ' while a ccepta bi U.ty , good", responsibility d~t c rrcnce fix. ·s (as from good to a c ceptable) is made by the US Catholic of we gra s p examp l e , th e Bishop of London contends t hat the possession of nuclear wea pons 'whil e acceptable'' emerge neverthel e ss the policy to fix. awkward that war in the pursu e circumstances ( p .274) . 6 7 Howe ver as more than a n immediate stepping stone to a 65. There are exce pt i ons of course, e .g . i n the Catholic educated such as Sar t re; a nd Na ge l's f i nal example i s very instructive. For a fuller t h e or y of mo r a l dil emma s s ee howe ve r Routl e y and Plumwood. 66. Repo r ted in The Ec onoml s t; re pr i nted i n 1983, We ekend Magazin e p.2. 6 7. As a response to a moral dil e mma , Walz er ' s approach is perfectly in order logtcal ly. Tho se who, l i k e Be n n , ' f lnd i t ne ither coherent nor cceptable' hnvl! no t gras ped t he logic of mo r al di l emma s . The Australian, February 12-13 �!i '.rnp erior pol Ley ~ nsscrabled (in sufficien tly it is §5-§6), a dt! cidetlly reasons of ·1 }-toor the opti_ n, sort reasons i'o r that are decisive already for those, outside the conventio nal Northern f r amework, who find no genuine of nuc le ar nuclear dilemma. To make matters worse the nuclear fix ls, furthermo re, stal1.:s' own mald.n&_. fix a It is not somethi ng they blundered into, by accident. initial nuclear jnvolveme nt was deli berat e l y c hosen, primarily by the Lhc escaJAtio n of In these respects the situation is like peop.1 e who deliberat ely let themselve s be invo lved in two incompati ble relations hips , and build up though and U.:, A, has by and large also be en deliberat ely chos e n, again mainly by the USA and the USSR in in teractio n. th:1 t The one there by. It is build-up. The fact i programme is t o be in addition to existing ( which are to Sovi et that the USA initiated nuclear armament, and has frequentl y l ed escalatio n, and apparentl y still does. esources myth, a some currency, that adoption of nuclear weaponry, an d nuclear in North Amerlca occurred on a defensive basj_s in response bui ld·-up, nucl~a · with onflJctin g obligatio ns generally agr eed The recent (1980) United to States' strategic be already in excess of Russia ' s , and which always have been so ) (Thompson , p.21) . The present dilemma , that many people fe e l acute ly, state policy, allies, and Naturally not the USSR policies. indicates especiall y that merely route by a taken advanced response to capita list t he nations, Soviets (or of USA and its NATO state socialism ). would not have been feasible without compleme nting And independe nt evidence, t l1 ere is then a direct outcome suc h as Soviet-Si no confronta tion, is a strong internal military dynamic in state socialist n.:.iti.ons . There is a t wo-way co nn ecti on between world political arrangeme nts nation-st.' .ltes and the nuclear f ix . arrangeme nts are an evident source of the nuclear situation is increa singly present wo rld polJU.cal structure . is widely promulgat ed .'.lrrangcm ents : it .is' seen On the dil emma as one hand, with t he these result through political that the i nd icat ing the inadequac y of the Indeed it is no longer a radical theme but that: the source of the nucl ear problem comes from state n world of sovereign states . • . which brought the �wo.ld to the prese n t dangerous situation' ( PL, p,JlJ). nucJ.e11r fix tends to lo':.~ political arrangements into On th e other hand, th e the statist form, into arrangemen ts of an increas ing ly authoritarian and centralist cast. stutlst espoused purpose of nuclear weapons may be to kee p the and security, to defend national inter est s , reasons such as perpetuating the system advantageous of confrontation, st ate to (!), provid e but underneath there ore other sovereign st a tes and frame work the rlnd peace The military-indus t rial in ter ests, dependent state explo itation, and polit i cally favoured of inequa l ity it supports . The ~merg ing t heme is t he n that the ve ry nuc l ea r s i tuatio n arising from th e statist arrangements a nd interr e lations ( conomic ideologies , etc.) tends to , and is used to, lock a rr nngcme nl.s of s overeign where the pa ttern world states And zones of inter e st . t heme is a pi ecemea l pr a cti cal one . side the rivalries, into conflict i ng the present The argument to th1. s Consider first, the matter from the Soviet of nati ona l control and progressive military-economic reorientation common to all nuclear states is clearer . The threat from the West, whether it exi.sts or not (and in Soviet perception it certainly does) , has become a necessary legitimatio n for the power of the ruling elites , an excuse for their many ec onomic a nd social fa i lures , and an argument to isolate and silence critics within their own bo rders. In the West we have ••. care fully con trolled and se l ec tive release of 'offi c ial information ' (Thompson, p.20 ) . "We" in the West, e specially the Americans, also integrated with state appara tus, have, in forms increasingly the military-industrial complex, which is a major. benefi c iary a nd promoter of the nu c l eR r. arms race . 68 Secondly, there i s evidence of entrenchmen t of the arrangements, by th ing s S llCh as the SALT negotiation s ; shown there are f i xed s uperpower s an d a (growing) nucle ar club of nations all governed by a rule , partly held in place by deterrence . as flimsy negotiated set Connected with this , there are cases rev ea ling the fixing of zones of interest, such as the Afghanistan example. Soviet US i s 68 . of The invasion is not regarded as threatening US "vital interests", and so th e not over.duly worried about Afghanistan and its people. What was The role of the military-industrial complex in present US escalation is sketched i.n Cox. Marxists, with their dogma of economic determinism , would assign even more weight to this point. As some of them would free ly concede, a similar complex has figured prominently in USSR escalation. �diff~rent, what it was worried a bout a nd made ~uc]d a r threat~ adj~c ~nt ~estcrn oil supp li es : concerning, were these lay within the US zone of interest (cf . th e d Lscuss ion in Sche ll, p.212). §8 . Ways out of nuclear dilemmas: results. in itia l political fall-out from the ethical Virtual ly all the ways are wa ys of limitat:i.on , and they all invol ve in one way or another limitations on nuclear arms or the way they are deployed, and limJt~tions on the thu s inevitable. and more or power s of states. Limitations on national sovere~.EX _~re The limitations may be reache d by agreement and negotiation , less voluntarily agre ed to 69 , or they may be imposed, or possibly worst of all, they may eme rg e from an ini.t i. al war. As with other fixes produced by there are suggested ways the structural ar rangements of states, ou t which do not interfere with these ac-rangemen ts, inter.stR-te approache s, and there a r.e ways which do seriously alter the struct ure nnd power ·elations extrastate approaches . of state s (and, in the limit, remove t hem altogether) , All the familiar , allegedly "practical" and "realistic" , attempt~ to resolve the nuclear problem, for instance disarmament by mutual arms limitations , etc . , are interstate ; sovereign state . The s ame goes (graduated) unilate ral disarmament . about the nation- state; they do not tamper with that sacred cow, the for les s "realistic" But in fact there is proposals, nothing or empi rical fact , is it part icula r ly a stable one. nor, and its replacement by alternat.ive arrangement s. as a We are certainly free - Jn more libera l states, it should be eve rywhere - to theorise a s demise sacred it is not a particularl y well justified political form; it js 1ot even a very long-standin g form of political arrangement ; matter very such as to its And nuclear dilemmas s houl d have e nc ouraged such reflection. 69. In principle it would be relatively easy for sta tes to agree to settlement of their disputes by less damaging a nd expensive contests than military ones, e.g. by contests of selected rep re sentatives, and not just through fiB l1Llng ln some form, but by contests of footballers , singers, da ncers, lawyers , or etc . In prac ti c e, however, such more civilized alternative s are never much consldered in thes e days of superstates . Animals, by conLrast, are smart enough to settle dis pute s by means much more like these . Even the a nci en t Greeks - though they had a clear appreciatio n of limits, which has been lost by post-Enligh tenment leaders regarded the institution of war as fi nal ( al l egedly inevitable ) means of arbitration between city-st a t es , not seeing its social, structurally -emergent, characte r. �50 approaches take one of Extrnstr1te ittlernat ional of slate s. r.ol two rou tes, way ~Ile to l~, ge nuine power, or the way down, throt1gh fractio nation or deunionisat lon 7 0 The ways up and down are by no means one and the same; ,10ccss;1rily incompatibl e . but they are Some of the impo rt ant machinery, for a way up to world governmen t, is alre ady there in the international law-courts. Wer e the courts ns signed suf fi cien t authorit y and po we r, the remedy , namely through legal acl ion, that· medie val principle theo ri. t s saw to all disputes, could in be rxtended to in t ers ta te disput es , and th e just war between states S and T supersed ed by the just ~ase of S versLs T. given intrastate s n fflcienl least jilitial]y) But if the law courts were power then their a uthority and efficacy would likely rely (a t upon war deterrence , though not by military means. perhaps Law courts, as usually conceived, are not effective without police and jails or their and equiva l ent supcr-statist back-up eq uivalent for of economic other penalties; and the either wi l l involve the capacity to inflict quite substi'.tntial amounts of damage on "delinquents" -· which, bec ause delinquents will typicnlJy be organisations, will also involve damage to innocent, and perhaps dissent 'ng , participants in those organisations, as well as to other In pa rt i es. repC'ilt uninvolved short t such an approach does not resolve the problem but tends to rt . Tl1 • Way Up is one more stnt i s t, legali stic , authoritarian way of trying ec:t t. n gri.ps with the nuclear though mostly 1n passing to be to problem, and accordi ngly is often men tioned, dismi ss ed 71 , in orthodox strategic texts on -·--------- - - - -- -70. Am e ricans, for example, tend to forget that their state (like the US SR) is a union, of fairly recen t orig in, and that a differ e ntly-oriented State of the Union message could well consi der dissolution of the uni on. Regional movements in USA unfortunately lack much popular s upport at present. By contras t, the re are signif i cant se para ti on movemen ts , some deserving aid and e ncouragement, which affect most other nuclear states, especially USSR , UK and France . The USSR already has tr oub le in holding its (supposedly voluntarily integrated) satellite em pire together; and the one recent attempted add ition right on its frontier is proving extremely recalcitrant. Nor s ho uld powerful political unions under centralised state apparatus be f no t c rcd c l ocwhc r e . The some appli es to state empire expansion, ns .illustrated in contemporary Indonesia. Mos t important, the reunification of Germany should be resi sted; instead a more rational regional deuni fication than the p resent East-·West division of post-war Germany sho uld be oought , al ong wlth removal of nuclear weapons from the border regio n, and so on. 71 . Thus for example, Ka hn, where such a "solution" is quickly dismissed as, impractical , etc. Hardly ne ces sary to s a y the Way Up has won most favour wllh the 1 ga l f r a ternity , and from more Authoritaria n organi s ations. �5l thermonuclear war . By contrast, the Way Down, thoug h like the new, is sca rcely mentioned in the orthodox discussions; means an appcara nc Q (a comeback) in some more radi ca l discussions, combined with the Way Up (in "world ord e r" mode.ls: unl i ke t he Way Down, i.s considered however beginning to be cf. Way and is more sometimes The Way Up, sympatheti cally by those who take a moral rather than strategic viewpoint. a r e newed emphasis on world order, in rea c hing inte rna tiona l system'; and 'the 'towards a no but lt is making Galtung). much by Up mora lly There is integrated missing element of world order today is the absence of a properly constitu ted political authority' (PL, p . 320). A main argume nt for the Way Up is just a repetition of that which is commonly supposed to underpin sta.tist arrangements in the first place, namely an argument fr om ( gene rous) variations upon the Prisoners' Tragedy of t he Commons. traditionally, ecological order. not herdsmen as best solutions regards to problems as the of organisation, public order and, more rec ently, as to So with the "tragedy of nation-states") where the players are but nation·-states , and one of the prospects is destruction of a r,ood parl of th e commons by rwclear wa r, the solution is now sort such It is that authorlty and coerc ion - in the form of the state - a r e r equired to ensure espe cially, Dilemma, of superstnt e. said to be some Of course, this begins to undermine an earlier application of the "traged y" argument, since states will lose their sovereignty and some of thcjr be order-imposing corr espo, dingly weakened. ar gum ent s are role, and But all political this is obligation to There a re, then, many problems through these A further theoretical with h:1.tch the is Way that Up, a both "tragedy" theoretical and the Way Up merely repeats arrangements. It is contingency, of there being no rival intelligent civilisations nearby, that the probl ems of interstate relations are not repeated 72 . will 72. stalist arrangements at a level up, by way of superstate only that states good ones in the first place, when in fact they are not, but are only sound under quite restrictive assumptions. prac t ical. assume to See further loutley and Routley especially Griffin. and material referred to a level therein, up and The rea reas ons for th e state are of course very different from the thf!oretic::il c:ov er such argume nts af ord. Among other things, the state enables and guarant ees the accumulntlon of power, privilege and capital. �again . The maj or pra ctical hi tch is that there h no prospect at all of getting su ·ha "solution " t o work in tim e t o Aerve 5.ts intended purpose. Tn rc:,1.li l y , we ar e no ne arer a world gove rnment than we were a century ago , In fact, it is even arguable t hat since World War II we have moved furthe r a way from a world government than we were before Wo rld War TI. The disint e gration of empires has mul tiplied soverei g ntles . I t ia true that we hav e s omething called t he United Nations, but eve n the United Nations has decline d in power as it has grown in memb e rship. By the beg i nni ng of the 1970' s the United Nations ha d bec ome, in some ways, a l e ss powerful and e ven less influen tial organisati o n than it wa s a t the end of the 1950's (Hazrui, pp.2-3 ). The reaso n s for thj s Mazr ui goes on to o u t line . future For t he foreseeable nuclea r ideologica l d i ff e r e n ces be t we e n s tates , including especia l ly differenc e s as to how politica l arr angeme nts shoul d be e ff e cted, exclude any prospect of opcrnt l vc world governmen t or a worl d legal s ystem capable of resolving nuclear hostlllt i es . extre~ely I n some ways, this is just as well. monol ithic, woul d World gov ernme n t would cer t ainly , whatever it s ( g ray?) politic al colour, {~xplo l tatJ v e eco nomic sys tem whi ch would do i mmens e impose damage on to It undesira b le l eve l Ideological, r equ1 site the world an many remaining of inde e d u nity political and parad 'gmatic , cannot be and, e c o nomi c sepa r atio n expect e d in some crucial respects, unity. of Moreover , give n Northern main within nuclea r dea dlines. swee ping more sovereig nty , c o ul d blockages and agr ~ements, be negotiated? dea dl ocks i1 the involving genuine There an way is When not even endless of of that state series of s uch state reconciliation. a pp lies to int e rst a te arrang eme nts, whi .h ma y make limited us e the of The s ame Way Up nego tia tions or other conc i liation pr ocedu r es within a fram ewo rk arranged • - through the Unit ed Nations); 73. it limitations almost the cultures, nuc l ear weapon s li mitations can be worked out, how much less l ikely is (e .g . would systems. 7 3 The Way Up thu s presupposes an unlike ly much be f ost e r e conomism, would ent r ench bureaucracy with all l t s damaging f ea tur e s, a nd could e asil y tend to totalitarianism. ·1 n .:ltur.:iL an 7 11 Fo r a mor e de tailed (bu t decidedly mediocre) critique of the idea of a world gov e rnment, see Galtung. Naturall y the objections to world gov •rnmcnt , 11nd dlffl c ult lca in the woy of oht in i ng 1t, do not extend to mo r e f l ex ible world arrangements, such a world federation ofcultu res (cf . Ma zrui ). Such a plura l lstic ana rchlstic Way Up can be genuinely s yn thesized with the Way Down. �jJ There is arrnrgemant s regrettably and als o conventions much are e~ tdert ce frequ ently concerning war and human rights 75), a nd are scntJments signed does slide smoothly that not not 1nce rnational observed (especially those worth into despicable dee d s . bode well ever be rcc1chcd. ln <'nnv,•11t f< n any great deal: openly violated. I ndeed there:.> already appears to he at least one fon·C!, of lofty It for nuclear arms limitations , s hould suffl c i en t ag reemen t wl 1I C'h tn nl1 the following intEirna t i ona l i1P mtljor 11u clc•nr sL 1t:es ore slgnnt:o r l.en, w!1fc:h w11uld rule ·11t LSN war and nuclc11r cl ic• rcnc includes a Even agreements states have are oft e n enough disre ga rd ed, sklrted ar ound, or not tr ea tie s , 1 , t h ton genocide. Genoc i de ac.ts commit ted, in time of peace or war, with inl ~nt to destroy in whole or part a natural, e thical, racinl or rel igio us group as such: ki.11:lng members of the group, causi.ng serious bodily or me ntal harm to the members of the group , d e llbcrately inflicting condittons of life to bring about physical destruction i.n who l e or i n pa rt. f ollowing associated a ct s are also punishabl e : dJrcct and public shall Beside genoc ide th e c onspira cy to commit be Persons committing genocide o r any of punl.shed , whether they are the othe r act s responsible rul er s, priva te individuals or public officials. 76 It is not diffi cult to argue nucl~ar genocide, inc itement to commit ge no ci de , attempts to comm.it ge nocid e , complf.ci.ty i.n genoci de. mentioned ca lculat ed that a larg er st rike (such as det e r rence policy requires as a ba ck-up respon se ) would almost cer t ainl y consti tute an act of genocide, through what minority groups. conspir acy repr:esentati .v 'S does to some But then, by virtue of connecting principles like CS, nuclear deterrence stands indicted pa r ticular it of the and as involving i.ncitement . nuclea r s t a tes acts ass oci a ted with genocide, in Some wel.i - known political and military would thus ap pear to be li.able to indictment . and punishment und er internation al law . 7L1. Even Dahl itz, who gi.ves a detailed and s ympathetic accoun t of nuclear arms control at t empts and lost opportuniti es, is by no means confident th a t suitable arrangement s onn now be achieved (se e pp. 210- 13). Reasons include technologic al advance s now taki.ng place, and the renewed America n drlvc f or strategic super ior ity . 75. See Brownlie, Kuper, and Amnesty Int e rnat ional reports. in t his paragraph were sugg est ed by c. Pigden. 76. The accow1t of genocide given is taken directly f rom the Genocide Convention, whic h is reproduced i n Kuper, p . 210ff . Most of the points text of the �The nuclear fi.x cmergi.ng fr om nat.io ,,-stnte arran!_1, 111 ~nz:s - c ombin ed wi th the appare11t I mpot ence interstate relations to alleviate the situati on , indeed of with the apparent ability only to push the world further into the situation ne:.rer to nuclear the " brink" is now taken to ind ica te contemporary angle) the inad equacy of natio n-state po litica l tias gi v en new impetus sovereignty the best-seller and to co nsiderat ion of other extrastate r es olut ions . The According to can reorganise the radical namely n iclear in Sc.hell ' s 1 unsatis factoriness situat .l on The should the foundations of politic c l thought' pollllcal t.iicy opvrate •. , the indicates inst itutions Fate lead political of to req u i red a t he Earth . ' ful l-sca le to make 't he co n sonant with t he g lobal reality in which and in ' work [ lng] out the practicnl s teps by which mankind ... its political li fe' (p.219). However Schell himself tri e s to avoid the se ' awesome urgen t tasks, which , imposed on us by the of the present system of nati on stat e s has even reach ed stands, Schell reexaminatio n o f world ' c and book a new a rrangements, thesis that the nuc l ear problem national ( f r om and work of our age' else overimpressed by political t he oris ts. the 7 Z history, c onstitute So, no t feeling th e pressures of history or real ities of (unstable) nation-states , do most But there i s no good r eason to av oid the task of politic al rea ssessmen t, made so much more urgent by the nuclea r situation. There i.s li.tt l e doub t bu t t ha t we live ( too 11nthinklngly) with an an tiquated s ystem many present state arrangements, representative century communications •ery different condition; in a 77. when and the mai n outlines of the mod ern totalitari a n state and its mauifold defic i en cies recogni sed, even ea rl ier. of ( a llegedly 17th we re willing ly , The feat ures go vernme nt: , were largel y fashi oned in t he especially , us even of poli t ical a rrangements which t he nuclear impasse , among others, calls in to q 1est ion . best of even dem ocratic) techno log y, more were t he and primit i v e d iscerned, In the br iefs prese nt ed A similar theme , similarly qu estioning 'such sacred tradi tions as a bs olut e national so ve reignty', was p r essed by Bradley, a significant US g enera l ( sec Co x , p. 225). Sch 11. (like Bradley) does not mak e it entirely clear whether he is thi nking of the Way Up or t h e Way Down, but the names he drops suggest the Way Up. So does the mai n t hrus t of what he says, e.g. ' Thus the pe ril of extinction is the price that the world pays not f or "safet y" or "survival " bu t for ito [sic !] insistence on co ntinui ng to divide itse l f up into sovereign nations' (p.210), as if the natural or original st ate were an undivided one ? On Schell's position , see further Append ix 1. �for political a r rangements such as repr~nontat ive government, the excessive siz an,! compl ex ity of modern states was not envisaged . But such systems con tinue to opcrn Lc , i ns ufflciently questloned, though tl1el r justificato ry bas es und c r mi ne<l. prese nt Nuclear problems rep r esentative have political emphasized have been several other defici encies in arrangement s. In particular, they have rcv cn l ed how governments can thwart popular opinion, and act against the evident will of t he people on an issue , for instance in installing US missiles Euro pe a n countri es. cen tury ca s e for r e pr e sentative proced ires is dissolved. issues, ~ i s sues. The least, be reduced. reduced excessive power back at dev e lopme nts , pro cedures, But the route down through issue-regul ated large i mposes and complex other modern requirement s. states What lnl t .t1-1.l s maller a s iL ls to inf or med citizens gro uping than approx i mate of a g lant satisfa ctory good will. As the re .1 r c se riou s dcfic encies .f.n the l.nf ormation by are stn tes, government recent tec hnologic al called for a re smaller Firstly, in present information and democratic progressive procedure, of control, nation-stat es, channels, and so f o r.th. ncc e ptable the from These upon nuclear problems have again made patent, even ·release the and distributio n distortion r estrictive of most liberal of them (and Aga in, especi a lly with new and less systems , there is little excuse for thls. information , upward depends But there ar e e vi dently vest ed i.nterests whi c h stand to benefit from the limited pub} l t:1 y and Secondly , democracy, insofar political rela t ed clcfi c i ncies as regards educati.on). flow major li ke many other social arrangement s, appear to function better with lnt egraLJon of groups by principles of federation. a nd on of governments would, to that ex tent at grou p.i.ng s , information flo w, communicati on and education. cx pe n,, ive lea st governmenta l power to more participato ry democratic forms, a rout e mad e poss ibl e ev en in mu ch elected wny that is thoroughly ambiguous on most issues ) are not given an almost f r ee hand on eve ry issue, but are required to answer polic:y th e It is past time for mor e is sue-control led d mocratic procedures , where governments once (i n some Now that modern communicati ons a nd info r mati on-processin g make i t fe a si bl e to dete rmine the mi.x of public positions on major 19tl1 in of data featu res in have a vailab ility major communicati on helped in making present delib e rat e ly fostered pattern of nation-stat e �56 co11frontatl on, and in establishin g the prisoner's nuclear superstates are often seen to be gJlemma type situation th e locked into (on which see, e.g., llardin1. A central a rgument, arising from the nuclear fix, for political questi oning current arrangement s and seriously considering their adjustment (in theory at le~sl), takes the following shape:• Political arrangement s shoul d answer ba c k to certain j,rnt iff.-.d 111 te1·ms of dolng ut .eas t where and are so. 78 The s<.i r e quir ements lnclude ,mch things ns en;,blJ ng good and meaningful and moral l lve s for those arrangement s, requirement s (as certainly in who operate under the muc h of the West) the basic mat e rial condit i ons for such lives are met . • l\ccaus c of the nuclear [ix, nation-stat ~ arrangement s have these requirement s. For guarnntce the prospect of arrangement s. nation-stat es, good meaningful lives those to under their yet ther e ls a non-negligi ble probability that person's morality is jeopardised if the person is obliged a meet at least in the North, can no longer such 1.lv •s may terminate, leas tl11rn fulfilled, 1.n this way. support to A life's meaningfuln ess ls certainly diminished if it ends before its 1,rimc inn nuclear d i~aster ; m.-iny and ceased s tate to Furthermore a acquiesc e in or engaged in nucl ear war preparation or nuclear deterrence (cf. Benn) . Th_erefore, nation-stat e arrangement s have should be amended . have their justificatio n, and Variations on this type of argument apply to many (though not all) natlon-stat es: natio n- s t ate f orfeited it ls not only because of the forfeited their mandate. nuclear Political fix that some obligations to such states a r e corr espo ndingly dissolv ed . There is enough evidence that power- brokers who control stght of, or worse have lost don't care about, t11e point of political arrangement s, of wha t justifies or is supposed to justify their sta tes. 78. states This applies both to How they answer back admits of expansion in various ways, depending on the irn lerlyi.ng politica l theory. Rawls, for example, puts it in familiar contract ual form: that the political order is 'a cooperative venture for mutual adva ntage' (p.4). Mao puts i.t in a standard democratic way: 'since Lhe purpose of all political processes is nothing but to serve the people and the i r interests, it is the people who should control in a meaningful way, the gove rnment' (see Soo, p. 68). �r;7 rnnre powerful s tates nnd to lesser states, both c lai m popular Ln and mandate ag;iinsL the wllL of the pcopl(! , power~. put a value hi3 lier where, nlrea y illustrated milita ry situa ti ons: viol.1ted the 'IH' t:.1k er s on some have more often , they act without it or as The sit1.1at-ton has been reached sove reignty nation al survival. ' (Scliel1's conclu sion, p . 210; is -✓ hl.'lfe where than 'nuc l ear: they do on human for copio us evidence see Kupe r). Thi s by I srael, Vietnam and many other states in nonnuclear the principles of just warfare repeated ly, as hav e ma ny other pr i nciples. much of whn t c l .:i im they lv1d to externa l have been blatantJ.y Such states have forfeited respect or internal political obedienc e; so, on other grounds, have many other state s . It could just be, of course, as is oft en a lt er nat ives, that have been re s arc hlng glimpsed, though of world go vernment). dismissed, for s tirc withou very no possibly better alterna tives . but little As to whether all has such are no been expended on opportunity do to work, a nd not Appea r to give we alternative s w~y Down. There working tow ar d s the wea kening es pec .i.ally can be the may and ha ve been given know very little a bou t how humans suff icicnt org anisi ng and trying out alternative accessi ble alter natives instance as lacking feasibil ty , it is diff i cult to be enti r ely operate under su bstantially different arrangement s. But, t ime arrangemen t s, to even once again, proc eed thos e nuclear very far on of the mor e be time to pr oceed a l i ttle way ho wever , in breakdown of t he large r s uperunion s , which are the immedia te problem. ln valid to simp ly conclud e that alternative poli t ica l a nd while t here But alternat i ves the r e are, effor t toking the risk of being dogmati c; little d e ad ii ne[, tha t t1e r a nge of alte r na t ives or their features (except pe r haps for th e 0 op Li. on or insinuated , nuclear st a tes, Thus i t woul d be s oc i a l arrangemen t s, theoretic a lly feasible and certainly a l onge r- te rm goa l , do not present ly off er a part of t he practical response to the nuclear fi x. But there is no need to insist upon a s1 nglc-trac~ Way Out of dll emrna to th t: exclusion of all olh .rs: quite the contra r y . t he nuclear We can no t only afford to be fa:!.rly catholic about " second best " ap proache s and embra ce wha teve r seems to be working or looks like helpinJi • wUhin re c ogn i sed e thi c al ( and o t her ) con st rain ts ; Indeed, given the urge ncy, the direness of t he si tuat i on , we �58 :,hou1d ~s be fairly catholic and not lnflexibly co~mitt ed to narrow methods, such boRged rlown ( a nd v ery on a rms limitations ner,ot inti o n s m"thod::i should si~nifica nt be undemocratic perservered concessions unrepr•sentativ e) between main nuclear states. wi.th, from cert ai nly tJ nd and the attemp t s superstates, made to e.g . No-first···use declarat.lon, a ban on weapons in space, etc. But even s uch a wring further jointly signed The direction of most hope for progress has however come into view, a direction that is not especially new . The politica l means of the Way Out are what they have la rg e r eve r y liberal or huma nitarian been on issue that has matte r ed: from ou tside state governmental apparatus by organised pressure fr om within or nnd it ' by furnishing self ·- organising characte r is tically Bottom-Up famiL l ar cons i de rations are methods an alternatives practically wi t hout which never virtually upon bypass it , Top-Down. Such but part of the more general , and very effective, case agai nst relia nce upon states for a range of things they are now supposed to supply, but whic h effectively and [or can almost t hat invariably mnttcr le ss be obta i ned, where required, more e x pensive ly without them (and their monopo1 i.es) • In the case of security it i s states , with very few exceptions, impo sed , or acqulc s ced and nuclear weapons . frequently from time being , movement have in, milit a ry solutions involving nuclear installations The opposition to th e local a nd neighbourhood esca lating grou ps, nuclear fix has come some of them now feder a ted :1cr,;11s nntions ( " o the dir c cLion :!.a not rcnlly interstate). !we n rrnc:ccr-rn fu1 that These groups have in blo cki ng some nuclear ln s tal lat.tons and establishing, for the some a ga inst nuclear-free nu c le a r neighbourhoods . equipment The patchwo r k grass-roo ts is strongest in Europe, which is - as the mov emen t realised , and what gave it impetus - a leading thea tr e, on US strategic thinking, for a limited nuclear war not touching ext r eme ly doubtful th a t i~1crea i ng NATO and American Europe will E11 ropc wil l these mnke it a saf er place : American shores. nuclear r emoved installations in on the contrary it seems probable that bec nme much eafcr lf t he anti-nuclear movements installations It is succeed a nd Europe r e ndered nuclear-free. g ro ss ly lmmoral condu c t will ther e by also be conside1.·ably reduced. Ln having The chances of �mrnt of the spectre of Soviet dc)tnl.11t\don, mil..ib:Jt:t, ideological and Exc:c•p l in the case of Eu ope, where th e inexcusable suppression of Eastern Eu ru pe a ll too ev iden tly persis ts, this is a n obvious fabrication . 8Cr i ou s ly And even ir Western Europe the spec tre is failing partly g iant fashioned military-in dustrial allianc e. inc r easJ. ngly dominated and largely domi na t ed financially ideo l ogically. much propped exaggerat ed. no t nnd c1d c quatcJJ and ec onomically some of and, in some mea sure, Indeed much of the "free" world countered as mil.itary by The means . i .," in basic any mode of mUitary . But mil itary, and associated poli tl c al, domtnatlon of We ste rn Europe by the Sovi e ts is a problem, t here are several ways other predomi na ntly American nuclear weapons to mi tigate it. on] y local def e nc e arrangement s - whethe r top·-down alternative is it domina ted economicall y , by the US A. doml na ti on to whic h nuclea r weapons are con s ide r e d relevant in sofa r a up by the NATO powers ' i s not ge ncraJ. ly considered so much of a problem (as it ts 79 ), and ls anyon' Since the l ast World War, Western Europ e ha s be e n polHlcally and ideologica lly , by the USA , c a1;e Does expect the united Soviets to absorb China, let alone take over Canad a or Brasil say? Th Rt other? social methods but also some and much r eliance on These should include not state-suppl ied social decentralis ation , regionalisa tion and devolution of orga nlsat{ons, than me thods, or r estructurin g, such as power to dispersed local mo r e cooperation and interchange with the Soviets and East e rn Europe. Part of the point of whether external or r es tructuring internal, so is especiall y situa tions, is to st a t e-contrived 79. break make any military takeover, much more difficult and pointless, and the rest o r ation of loca l control easier . 80 Part of int e rch1nge, to the point of cooperation and at the level of more ordinary people, in more ordinary down conditions of hostility and distrust and to s abotage the West-East confrontati ons, and thereby to remove For many pe opl es of the world , and in it s impact on the natural world, advanced corporate capitalism is an oppress ive and damaging doctrine. But, in contrast wit h a ustere Marxism-·Len i.nism whic h would i mprove the lot of some of Lhe oppressed world while even worsening the impact on the natural world, corpora t e capitalism admits a certain pluralism, and recognises many mo r e individual ri gh t s and libertie s. Ce rtainly Marxism-Len inism which appears to degene rat e in practice to an authoritari an and totalitarian position is a less welcome alternative . It is fortunate, then. that we need be saddled wi t h neither: there are s u per ior options. �60 ot.hC'r motl ves fo r, and Western popul ar suppor t Eu r ope , for f or, long j. much Uitary too adventures partial to and military advt'nturcs, sho uld now be hel ping i t se lf rath e r: than relying on a leaky Amer.lean nucl e ar umbrella for its defe nce . Moreover it ough t to be, at the ve ry least, 1ncomfortable about the risls of c a tastrophi ca lly damaging t he world in the i nterests of its own security . extensive parts of Nor should other "nuclear depende nt" states be prepared to ac qui esce in this not uncharacteristic European impositlon. There wo rl<l, wha t LS N war is no risks, enormous for virtue Western in sacrificing othe r parts of t he Europe, rn i. li t r1ry-base d dom ina tio n to other parts of the worl d. which has long exporte d There ar e better. options than clublou s and ris ky nuclea r shields for Europe. -·-·- ----- --·- . ·-- 80. Thus , for exampl e, t o the exte nt that lo cal defence groups a re integrated under more centralised direction, it would be a built-in principle th at s urre nder of the central directing sect i on absolved the federated groups fr om following suit or following further dir ec tions. That is, through devolution of power, surrender becomes structurally impossible (though individuals or baste groups may surrender). Moreover, the central section wnuld ho ld only limited informa t ion about the federated uni ts it in tegra t e d. The locally organised groups themselves, which would mer ge wilh local po pulati ons, would be train e d in tact ics of passiv e resist ance, sabotage, (nonviolent) guerilla warfare, et c. The net effect (as c. Pigden, who made most of these points , argues) would be to make the cost of militar y conq uest, occupations and exploit a tion prohibitively high. One reason why t he Japanese Army High Conunand decided aga inst invasion of Au s LraHa i n March 1942 was th e cha r acte r of Australi.ans and the fact th a t th ey 'wo uld resist to the end' ( Threa t s to Australia's Secu rity, p . 62). Ycl th 1 9 112 (wa r r edu ced ) Aust ralian populatton was substantI.nlly untrained a nd unorganised for loc ally-based defenc e . With such a defence r estruc t uring, Aus tralia wou· d not only much reduce its vulnerab ility to military adventures, but remove standard reaso ns for succumbing to threat s of outside military domination, blackmail, and the like. 81 . In par ti cular , with sufficient cooperation and trust, competitive prisoner's dilemma situations, which depend on the prisoners being kept separa te, are removed. So too a main mode l supporting deterrenc e policy would be undercut. And the arguments from national dangers would b e further co rroded. In the same direc t io n, i t is import a nt to extend cooperation between USA and USSR down below t he l e vel of state trade deals, e.g. in grai n and gas, to communicati on and coope r ation between people. For such commercial deal s there is suff ici e n t tr us t, even in periods of intensive confrontation: why should it not be so also a t more significa nt people-to-people levels? Many f ur ther Ror ts of lnt c r rclo tionshfp ore fe slble, nnd jnexpenaive by m:llltary st a ndards, e . g . sister cities, common clubs, worker exchanges, gi.( t pro Jee ts . If, for ins tnnce , 100 1 000 o r mo r e ord lnnry Americans wer e l i ving, working or holiday i ng in USSR ( and vice versa), Americans would feel less enthusiasm for hurling nuclea r missiles into Russ ia (or vic e versa ) . Only quite inadequate efforts have been made to build up mutual respect and trust; or the con tr ary , a l ot of resources have been expended to enco urage pr ecisely th e opposite a tt itudes, e.g. as part of the strnteg y of the "cold war". ~ �6J What th e anti-nucle a r movement s must press b,oa rl out1 i.nc; fof ::tccordingly i.ic> perceptive t r ansarmamen t, to i.e. conversion outer edges of graduat e d the movements, alternative social defence arrangements). Bu t t h e ar gume n t a lso makes it clearer how f a r this should go, t hrough in i n pa rt it i s what they hav e_ been pushing for, nuclear reduction an d rlisarmamen t ( a nd, on the more wa y clear namely all the disarmament 82 to total nuclear disarmament, unilateral c e rt a inl y to lo cal disarmame nt across progr e ssively larger parts of the planet's s ur t~cc , inc luding especially Europe. For once the state is demoted , its i mpo r t ance a nd t he necessity of its maintena nce properly downgraded and reliance on dec i s i on- making its diminished de ci s ion-making - once all that is happe n ) , one in duly favour of allowed more localised cont r ol and for (it does not need to major component in the nucle a r fix is removed, namely the problem o f red 11ction or even loss of state sove reignty . Ma'ntenance of that sovereign ty has been ass i gned a mistake n importance, which in turn acco un ts for the mistaken we ig ht ass i gned to the arguments from national dangers. What is important and wo rt h pres e r vi ng is not the sovereign state, but certain ways of life within the stn r- c . The na ti o n- state and dangers to it, and accompanying features s uch as mis p.l aced natl.onal J.sm, are the weakest links i.n the nuclear fix situation . On ce th e demise of the soverei.gn nation-state is allowed f or, the arguments fr om nat iona l conce rni ng part i cul a r. dangers .lndividual also and grou p rights and In their freedoms, by t he that nation- s tate . matter The are to arguments liberties in for t hem, as sma ller or exclusivel y nation-state is neith r sufficient for are disappearing, nor community arrangements can ensure them. But a r guments f r om lnd i vidual and group dangers remain , do they not? ri sks are civil necessarily th em , since i n inc r eas ingly many states the s e liberties nec e ss ary pl ace None of these require national sovereignty or even a national life. None o f ti e rights and freedoms g ua r a n te ed disintegrate. in div id11a ls 11nd groups r e maln: To be sure, th a t has always been so, 83 and ls not ---~------ ----82. The In i ti a l but impor ta nt st e ps are at zero cost as regards deterrence. Wer e det e r re nce re a lJ.y the pol icy there would be little case for more than a f r a c t io n of pr ese11t nuclear arsennJ.s. The ste ps to disarmament ;ire well-known , e.g. the scrapping of obs olete weapons, and an end t o modernisati on, the removal of nuclea . weapons in crucial theatres such as Euro pe, et c . �62 hci n1~ clwnged but only woH,f!ncd in thi. s age of moslly to wont be sure t hat nucle or arc othe r outsiders. People t hclr li v es will contlnue to run their course, i.denlly i n a flourishing fash ion , a nd wi ll not be Russ nns natlon- states. t controlle d by Amiirican s or Nucl e ar arrangeme nts which threaten t he ir lives not a rational rout e to these ends . In t he weigh-u p t hat should occur in char t.tri g a way dilemmas the as nuclear out of such deo ntic fix and its subsid i ary dilemmas, there ar e then much more i mport a n t elements than featut·es of the nat :ion-st:ate, namely E~-~ of things those the st at e is s uppos ed to safeguard, such as individual and local we lfare and a ut onomy; wc,1pons. but those th i ngs are bett e r ensured by The main reasons are fam il iar : threaten Lhe lo ss of basic values, such the removal nuclear of in particular, nuclear circumstanc es as welfare and autonomy, for many cr•ntures and reg ions, and the potential los s is in general much great er than in a nuclear-frcP si tuation ( even should another with nuclear weapons ). ideological party the o pportunity armed There are also well -kn own supplementa ry reasons; example, the production of nuclear weapons reduces both local of remain welfare for (because costs of wea pons manu fa cture) and autonomy (bec ause of th e accompanyin g sec urity measures). Thus the appropriate ly de vi ces and nuclea r fix limiting weapo ns is resolv ed , theoretical ly it can deploy, and how ), and rate, by by allowing for the But, although that is a reasonable Way Out , at little c ost in the circums tances , it will be s ince any sovereignty of the st ate (especially as to what nuclear con sidera bl e reduc tion of st a t e sovereignty . pra ctice , at strongly resisted in those who hold power hold it , in one way or another, unde r th e au s pices of the state. This is a main reason why people must organise and act aga i nsl the state . Again the resolution also lo ok s practicnl enough, since sovereignt y reduction in ne ed apply es s e nt ially only to the the production and deployment of nuclear weapons . 83. the Ind eed it could in principle be obtained by negotiated It will rema in so und er any satisfactor y political arrangement s. Until human s ocial arrangement s change substantial ly , there is no substitute for on-golng vigi lance to ensure or maintain political liberty. �agreement ( at the top l e ve l s of s tat e) . to far with the superstates , the li mitations of s tate- powe r will likely ha ve to proceed further: for nuclear weapo nr y doc s no t stand in sp l endid isolation. i.nto both milita ry s yst ems - and ( c ivil) Rather it is industrial production of the states So, uns u r pr i s ingly, practica l- look ing resolu t ions are being concerned. ti ed solidly resisted by super states. Accordingly more popul a r (bottom up) act ion aga ins t nuclear-involved state s and espec i ally against the supe rstate s , af t e r all the stat e s causing the mo s t serious dilemmas, wil l have to be t aken much furth e r. variety of organ is ed forms. These in clud e a refusal to contribute to nuclear war preparatio n , e ithe r d i rectly or wld •l y, from such s t e ps ns Once again it will take a The indir ect l y. the forms of action range block adin g o f shipme nts of ur a nium, and the rc f1 1!:lal of suppJ 1, Qa a nd se rv i c es to sa i1or n o n nuc le ar ships and subma r i ne s, t he to withho lding or r ed i rect i on of t axes des t i ned for nuclear security purposes. They inc l ud e as we ll the whole r a ng e nuclea r facilities i nstal l a tions and of nonviolent (methods protest which method s against do exclude not i ncapaci t a t i on a nd decommissioning of equipment l and which do include new model . 8'~ resistance and de f e nce organisations). It is important to realise that petitioning of powe r state representat i ves and ho l d e rs, f or instance through letter campaigns, demonstrations and direct ap pea l, t s far f rom a complete strategy , a nd may be ine ffecti ve or ignored, th e r esul t s disco u r aging. and This is one reason why popular action should be based on a mor e com prehensive politi c al strategy, which also involves withdrawing s up po rt f r om prevailing state arrangements, and working out and partic ipati ng in alter nati v e a r r a ng emen ts, especially alternative defence forms. 85 Sufficient d etn' l s as t o what to do ar e already known, enough to make an immediate start. 84. For some imp r e ssion of the rang e of me thods, see aga i n Sharp. 85. For muc h mor e on all these points, s e e e .g. fu rt her Appe ndix 2. Martin . As to what to do, see �64 APPENDI X l. ON THE FATE or MANKIND AND THE EARTH, according to Sch e ll, and to Anders. A ncrtes of nucl cn r prophet s lw a pr odu c ed a EJ e r:les of ph ilosophj cal ly-·o riented works on nucl e ar war and the all e ged impl i.c c tions of l1 uman ex t inct io n . 1 The series is important for its dee pe r penetration into the nuclear d ilemma , down to metaphysical leve ls; i n this the series contrasts ith the transie nt s u pe rficialities of much o f the political commentary. The most wi de l y c i rc ul ated and influential text of the series is undoubtedly that of the s l ightest of t he ''prophets", Schell' s The Fate of the Ear th. This skillful piec e o f medi a -philo so phy uncannily redeploys some of the appar e ntly deep phenomcno]ogi cal themes of Anders . So, conveniently, main assumptions of Schell and And ers ca n often be considered together. To critic i se their a ssumptions is not of co u r s e t o belittle their wo rk. In pa rticular , Schell's little book, for a ll i.ts politic al shortcomings, is having a significant a nd much needed ef f ect j n sh i ft i.ng att: lt udes towards nuclear arrangements. It is especially valuable f or i ts vivid and horrifying scenarios of the aftermath of nuclear attack. Unfor t 1111,i t ely it: a lso exhibits, both phi losopld.cally and fac tually, sever e defects . Somr of it 1s simp ly ga rbage: to selec t one example , consider the claim that ' witho u t . . . a world-wide program of action for preserving th e [ human] spec i.es nothing else t hat we undertake together can make any pr a c t tea l or. moral sense (p.1 73, rearranged ). Th is s1ou l d cer t a inly be rejected phi losophica lly ; for ther e is no separate moral issue of s uch overwhelming importance that a ll other lssues become mor ally ne 11 t r al. Mo r a l issue s remain moral issues: they don 't cease to be so when compar ed wi t h more important moral issues ( as Schell effective ly acknowledge s el s ewhe r e, p . 130 ) . And the claim should a l so be junked on more f actual grounds. Humans fo rm a highl y resilient sped.es, like r abbit s i n Australia a survivor spec i es, unl i kely t o be exterminated unde r presently a rrang ed nuclear ho l oca usts . l. The di.st i ng ui shing term i s from Foley's Nuclear Prophets, wher e many of th e l eadi ng prophets are assessed. One well-known pro ph et not so consider e d there i s Jas pers , presumably because hJs ma in work (which might equally we ll ha ve been translated as The Fa te of Mankind) comes out in entirely th e wrong direction. For it gives heavy philosophi c al attire to the be tt e r -d e ad -than-red abomination, A ma ln argument agai nst Jaspers so presented i s simple. Howeve r bad being r d mig h t be come ( at present it is debatably worse than living under some of Lh e tot a l i tarian regimes th e free We st props u p), it still gives human s a fu rth e r chance for good lives , since r e gimes fall or can be topp led: bu t t o t al a nnihil a tion removes that all-important oppor t unity . But J as pe r s does not pr e sent his po s ition so simply . Rather his con t e nti on i s t hat there a re circum st a nc e s whe re a nd princ ip les for which a person or group of per sons ought .to s acri f ic e even their lives . Freedom is such: a l i f e worth living i s a fr e e life. But the latter pint can be granted w!. 1:liout conceding tha t s a c rlf1cc is a possible means to it , While the sai:rifice of one or a f e w l i ve s may be a possible ( if dub i ously effec tiv e) w~y t o fr • . l ivc D for oth e r s , c er t a inl y the sacrifi c e of all l ives is not a poss i ble rout e to fr e e llve s for a l l, s ince no human l i.ves r ·emain. To thi s rx Le nt Sche ll l s ri g h t (on p . 131) i n a ccusing Jasper s of an ea ch to all f al l Rcy. J aspe r 1 s i dea that "the f r ee life that they try to save by all po s s ibl e mea ns is mor e th a n me r e lif e or lives'' breaks down when applied to al l participating pe ople. None c a n ga in free live s by extinction of all: t hat is not a possibl e route to l ife e ve1. �was selected howev e .· b1?ca,.1se it 1eads i0to, lndeed presupposes, two of the major defec tive assumptiono in the work ot Mchell and And ers: Sl. Nuclear w,n· will ellroinate life, humnn li.fe r1t least, on arth (the 2x~_~nc:Uon assumption); and S2. 111 the absence of humans, very many notions, not only those of morality a nd value, but t hose of time and space for example, make no sense ; or, to put it into a more sympathetic philosophical form, these notions depend for their s nse on a n act ua l human context ( the ext ravagant a nthropocentric assumptlon). It is appli cations of S2 which giv Anders' and Schell 's work 2 some of its apparent phllosophical depth, and certainly induce much philosophical puzzlement through the paradoxica l propositions generated. B11t the frequ ent applications of S2 depend esse ntially on Sl. For without total extinction there will he humans abo ut, to make past and future, good and evil, go on making sense! Th ·-- exDmp l e Granled the factual assumpti on Sl is by no means ruled out as a real po ssibilit y; granted the technological means are now available to make it true, to render Homo sapiens extinct; 3 granted the prospect of nuclear war does t hreaten leacfing centres of Western c .i vilizat ion witb obliteration. Even so Sl appea r s unlikely in the light of present - admittedly inadequate - information. Even in Ca nada, which lies on the pol ar route of Soviet missiles, human li fe should be able to continue in certain northern areas (according to Canadian medi cal studies) . Sche l l's argument to Sl is extremely flimsy. It depends, for example, on an unjustified extrapolation from the Northern to the Southern Hem i s ph ere , but for the most part it does that very North American thing , of con tracting the world to North Arner.lea . (All that matters, all worthwhile civili zati on, i.s in USA, or at least, to be more char.itable, in North Ameri cA and Europe, which will also be wiped out, i.e. its human population will be eliminated in the nuclear holocaust.) Some of the data Schell relies upon , for example the effect of nuclear explosions on the ozone layer, is significant l y out of <late. Other effects than ozone destruction apparently transfer even less we ll f rom Nortl1 to South. A factually superior study of nuclear disaster than Schel l's, by Preddey and others, indicates that parts of the Southern Hemisp here , New Zealand and southern latitudes of Africa a nd Latin America could escape relatively unscathed from even most massive northern exchanges. 4 Roth Anders a nd Schell remark on the "impossibility of unlearning" th e mean s of manufacturing nuclear bombs. It would seem that extinction, which they both foresee as at least a live possibilit y, would furnish a good medium for unl e 3rning nuclear technolog y (something very like this emerges from van Daniken's theor y of an earlier "high" technology). In v i rtue of S2, they would however 0xc lud e such a possibility as a case of unlearning, contending wrongly 2. For a deta iled comparison of Schell and Anders' remarkably similar versions o( S2 , se Foley JS. 3. Thus the Las t Man argument, important in environmental ethics, is no longer merely hypothetical, awaiting the remote death of the Sun, but assumes new ur gt'ncy. It is this sort of argumen t: that connects environmental et hic s and nucl ear ethics, at a deeper metaphysical level. The Bomb and Bulld oz er are out of the s ame technological Pandora's box . Nuclear technology is not the only route to human extinction, nor the only Pando ra's box. Biological and chemical mea ns are perhaps even more effective, and ce rtain l y can be more selective in what gets extinguished. 4. Howev er, new modellifig~ and estimates, none so far very reliable, keep appearing, and amending the picture. On the basis of one recent scenario, generated by a computer modelling of a 5000 megaton nuclear exchange, th e immuni.ty of the Southern Hemisphere to the dire consequences of a northern LSN war has been questioned . In particular, Sagan, no doubt overreaching the evidence , has 'warn[ed] that the nuclear blasts would create enormous diff e rences in temperature between south and north, shifting normal wind pa tt e rns and carrying smoke and radioactivity south' (Newsweek, November 7 1983, p .56). Some sections of the environmental and peace movements have a vested interest in exaggerating the probable effects of nuclear holocaust for life on earth, much as many stotesmen have an interest in minimizing t'r""l . �66 th n t lhc notion no long er rnnde sense. But what tlh•y s(H'm t.o want to s uggest wi. Lh th e impo ssi bility-of-unle a rning mes sage is th "' inevitability of the de velopment and event ual use of the technology - as if having learnt th e means ull else was dete rmi ned , and manufac tur e and use ceased to be a matter of c hoi ce. Certainly such vie ws have been flo ated 5• But: they are no t t e na bl e . Ther e are man y examples of technological advances that have not been t ak en adva nt r1gc of, and there are even cases of tec hnological developme nts that have be en mRnufact u rcd but not marke ted or used. The re is not something ve ry special a bo ut n11 c l ear appa ratus that puts it beyond the scope of such· generalis;<1 tio ns . Both Schell a nd Anders do claim tha t the re are very special things about nu clear wea pon s , in particular that they do not allow "expe riments ". Even if thi s were tru e - i. t is certainly not of smal ler weapons i t would not tell aga .inr,t the pr e v.lous argument: against the ine vitability of nuclear weapons. And in fac t Anders and (e ven) Schell hedge thejr claims a bout testing , and the limits to nuclear sc..ient if i c work , to large-scale weapons and independent experiments which do not interfere w.ith tl1 e observers and those outside the " J.abnrn t.ories". Again they have latched ont o major po i nts: in parti c ular, we hnv e at present no way of testing the c umul a tive effe cts of large nuclea r weapons in concer t, e . g . for more holistic effe cts such as fireballs or firestorms , e le ct romagnet ic puls e or ozone destruct ion. Sho r t of an LSN war, and l ike ly eno ugh with it, these crucial effects must rema in largely untested and lypothelical in chara ct er. The penetrat.ion of human chauvini sm , a s in S2 , is not something peculiar to Sch e ll, but is a product of Western ph ilosop hy, European philoso phy especially. This cl,auvinism is unfortuna tely alive and sti ll well, Anders' ve rsi on of S2 being ju s t on e striking illustration ( c:f . AA p . 252ff . ) . It ha s a lso deeply penetra ted Anglo- Amer i can phi.losophy, and has recently been extended by Wittgenslein ' s wo rk , where even the necessary t ruths of mathematics are taken to be a pro duct of I um:rn co nv enti ons , and would va nish w.lth bumnnsl Such ar e all eged imp lications of ex tinction ; but the fact is that the truths of arithm PLlc a r e in no way dependent on the existence of humans or humano ids or of gods or g iraffes . In Sche ll, human c hauvinis m is dished up in a particularly powerfu l and obnoxious Kant ian form. Th oug ht s and proposit ion s, time and tens e s, history and memories , values and morality, al l depend on the life- giving pres e nce nf human being s - past or fu ture or me rely potential humans are not e nough , persons t hat are not humans are cer t ai nly not enough. Thus, a ccording to Sc hell (p.1 40 , e .g. ), ' ... t he thought "Humanity is now extinct" i s an impo ssi ble one for a rati onal person, because as soon as it is, we are not. In imagining a ny ot her event , we l ook ahead to a moment that is still within the strea m of huma n t.ime, The thought is howeve r perfectly possible for huma ns; we can have it right now. Though we no doubt have it falsely, a later ratl onal creature may well be able to hav e it tr uly. Schell erroneously denies that: t here is no "later" ' . . . outside th e human tens es of past, pres en t, and futur e (p . 14 0) 6 • Human ext inc t ion eliminates ' the creature that divide s time into past, presen t and f uture ' : so anni h ilati on canno t 'come t o pass' (p. lli3) . But it: is simply false that the tenses are human; the tens e s depend on a local time ordering (per ce ptible to many creature s ot her than humans, but no t depending at all on that perceptibilit y f or its via bil ity) relating other time s to the present , to now (a l so a huma n-independent location, evident t o other cr eatures, an d borne witness to by suc h sequences as the passing seasons). And nnn ih llntion may als o too easily come to pa ss , for ma ny humans in the Nort h at l e ast, as it came to pa ss in recent ge ologic al times that human s began to exist upon earth. Bef ore t hat ther e was a time befor there were any human beings. - •••-- - - H•--- - --- - - - - - S. Not merely by technologica l determinists of marxist persuasion. Hackworth, a form e r US general , a r gues by straight induction, that if the US mili ta ry ha s a wea pon it will u se it. 6. Th e ap palling theme that humans c reat e past, present and future repeated e l s ewhere , e . g . p .1 73. (etc.) is �Anders ' arg um ent for the demise of time, that 'what has been will no .Longer even what has been', is also explicitl y and narrowly verificat ioni.st: 'for wrwl wo u ld t he d iffer e nce be betwe en what. ha s only been and what has never been, if the r e J s no one t o r emember the things that have been' (AA p.245). Ther e would st l ll remai n ma ny sorts of differenc e; for one, the history record ed i n mm1y other org anisms would be differe n t. Temporal themes do not la c k ' legl lma y be ca use not regist e red [or verified] by anyone'; truth, signl Eica nc e , sti l l less meaning, are not matters of human verificat ion. be Here , a s e ls e where, the human cha uv i nism is mixed with other distortin g metapl1ysi ca l assumptio ns of our Western he ritage , in particula r, verificati onism and on t ol og ical assumptio ns (to the effect that there are severe difficult ies in talki ng ab out what does not exist). Thus, for example, Schell takes over dub I.o ns metaphys ic s from Freud, according to whom "it is indeed impossibl e to i magi ne our own death; and whenever we a ttempt to do so, we can perceive that we are i n f a ct s till present as spectator s" (p.138). The second clause goes a good dJ e l a ncc t owards refutjng the first. In fact there is no g r eet dlfficult y in descri bing coun terfactua l s ituations which undermJne both Freud's claims. The same go e s for Schell ' s extension s of human chauvinism into one of i t s main tr a<l 1 ti o nal str ong holds, value theory: the simple and basic fact [si c!] th at befor e t here can be good or evil, service or harm, lamenting or rejoici.ng there must be li f e' , human life ( p. 171) . These are no facts, but deeply entrenche d philo sophical dogmas whi c h have been exposed and criticise d elsewhere 7. Natura l ly s ome t hi ng s will disappear with the extinctio n of humans: trivial l y t here wi l l be no mor e humans (unless humans re-evolve or are rec eated ) , and t hus no mor e human ins ti tutions, human activitie s, huma n emo ti on s , and so forth. But it is a lready going too far to suggest, as Anders does, that t he r e will a c cord i ngly be 'no thought, no love, no struggle, no pain, no hope , no comf ort, no sa crifice, no imag e, no song ... '. For there are, and may eontlnue to exist, othe r creatures th a n humans with emotion, struggles , songs , Nor will the endJng of all such human Vf?ntures, if it comes to p3ss, show that nl l past huma n ve ntu res have be en 'all in vain', meaningle ss , and already so Lo say dead. The decay of t he s olar system, or the heat-deat h of the uni.ve r s,~ cv~n, wi l l no t s how t hat worthwhil e human activitie s were not worthwhi. le. 8 Sev er.a l of tbe other notions and themes common to Schell and Anders derive from t he i r shared assumptio ns Sl and S2. It is these that underlie the biblical no t io n (in Re vela tions ) of a Second Death , redeploye d by both. 'The death of mankind ', und e r Sl, is reckon d a ' second death', because by S2 end Sl remaining lJ fe i.s r e nder ed mean.lngle ss and already ' seems to be dead' (AA p .244, S p.166) a nd Ls already 'overhung with death' (S p.166). Thus, too, more trivially , a per son f a ··es ' a s econd death ', not merely one's own but in addition that greater de ath of the spe c ies and all future generatio ns (S p.166, p . 115). However even if nu c l e ar ext inction came to pass, the stronger notion would not be vindicate d, becau s e it de pe nds on the fallaciou s inference to the meaningle ssness of prec edi ng lif e and on the very questiona ble represent ation of this mea ni ng l ess nes s as a sort of death. There is no Second Death: creatures die just once , pe rh a ps all at about the same ti me . The idea of a Second Death lacks even a s o li d met aphys i cal bas e . From Sl , t og ether with the minor pr inciple that extinctio n being an absolu t e does n ' t d i ff er in deg ree, come s the universa lity of peril them e that ' we are al l exposed to pe r il in t he same degree', which is according ly 'd isguised' a nd 'diff ic ul t to rec ogni s e', be cause there is no contrast (AE p.61+; S p.15 0 ) . Thi s th eme fall s with Sl. In a ny event, not all peoples are equally i mperilled by t he nuclea r situation , th e Indians of southern Patagonia being 7. See , e .g ., ' ll uma n chauvi ni s m a nd env .l r onmental ethics', in Environm ental Ph i l oso n~ (ed i ted D. Mann.ison and other s )) Research School of Social Sciences , Aue trallnn Na tio na l Univ er0 l t y 1 1980. 8. Anders is here ( AA pp .244-5) r e l yi ng upon a ve rs i on of the argument from �68 rnLher betlcr pJac d than the Germans of northern gu , e . 1 011 Nor are all pe opl e C<JuaJJy locked in to the situation or inca pacitated by it; as exp l.aine d, th e po s ition is different in different countries a nd placeR. Nor, --- 1 i ke wise , are all people equally res ponsible, an obnoxious theme, (in co ntrast to Anders) r-c pc a tedly infiltrates . This is the Po go theme, ,iccord ing to which -S3.- · Responsibi lit y for t he pre sent nuclear si.tuation (fiasco, really) distributes onto e verybody, it be longs to very human in the world . 9 B11t there is 3lso , mixed in, a weaker more plausible claim that gives lie to the stronger one , namely that we have some responsi bil i ty (the Nazi situation is compared). An es peci ally blatant example of the Pogo theme 10 runs as follows: ' t he world's political leaders ... though they now menace the earth with nucl cnr wcapo nG, do so only with our permis si on, and even at our bidding. At least, this is true for democracies ' (pp .229- 30) . The theme is elaborated e l sewhere : we are the authors of that extinc tion. (For the populati ons of the super powe rs this is true in a positive sense, since we pay for extinction and support the governments that pose th e t hrea t of it, while for the peoples of t he non-nuc lear-armed world it is true only in the negative sense that they fail to try to do anythi ng about the danger)' (p . 152) . But this is more of an argt1ment indicting r epresentati ve government, by revealing its insensitiv ity and unr es pon s iveness to many of the populace they alleged ly govern, not to mention those affec t ed by its activJties who are not represented at all (namely ioreigne t-s ). But Schell convenient ly neglects all such points: we are pote n tial mass ki llers. The moral cost of nuclear a r maments is that it makes of all of us underwri. ters of t he slaughter of hundreds of m.lllions ' ( p .152). And again '[ as] perpe trators we co nvey t he steady message that life not only is not sacred but is worthless; that it had bee n judg ed acceptable fo r ever yone to be killed' (p.153) . Little of this is true . Those who campaign against nucl ear a rrangements , vote against nu c lear- committed parties so far as is possible , a nd the like, are certainly not the authors of potential des t r uction, and responsibi lity .for the nuclear situation does not simply dist r ibute onto them. Nor does responsibil ity - or the unlikely opinions as to worth Schell tl l eg itima ely attributes to everyone - fall on those who have don e less . Responslbil ity for de cisi ons taken in "liberal democracies " even by representat i ves (in the unlikely event of this happening in the case of anything as important as defence) cannot be traced back to those represented , since among wi ll c :1 Schell --- ·------·---- - - - 9. An inter•stJng converse of thls t heme is sometimes advanced , that no one is responsi bl e , the whole thing is out of control. The technologit al vers i on of this no-responsi bi l ity the me is dis cus sed s hort ly. More satisfactory is the theme that nuclear arrangement s are ou t of political cont ro l , but fo r re aso ns, in terms of vested interests in keeping nuclea r things goi ng, whic h enable respons ibility to be distributed . The vested interests , wh i ch bear considerabl e responsibil ity, include the mi li tary weapons i ndustry, a nd r e sea r ch and a cademic commurd.t.ies , Under pressure s for re-election especiall y, politicians give in to these powerf ul groups, so losing contro l o f pol itic a l. processes. The argument fai l s at it s final stag e. For many politicians either belong to or represent vested interests . Thus polit ic al processes tend rather to reflect vested interests than to run ou t of political control . 10. Another example of spreading the responsibil ity runs as follows: 'The self-extinc tion of our species is not an act that anyone describes as sa ne or sens ible; neverthel ess, it is an ac t that, without qu ite admitting it to ourselves, we pla.n in certain circumstanc e s to commit' (p . 186). Ev en for most of the plnnners, ex tinction is presumably not part of "the plan", but an 1ninte nd ed consequenc ; and most of us have little or no role in the pl a nning, enough of us even campaig n agai nst the planning . Fur ther 't he world chose the course of attemp ting to refashion the system of sovereignty to acconm1oda te nuclear weapons ' ( p . 194): the world'? This connec ts of course with the ideological argument from defence of fuodamental s, e .g. for libe rty, for the (USA ) nation, and against soc inli.sm. In the' .nurse of th:fA argument yet Rn o thm: fallR 1011s assumption is rolled out: ' The means to the end are not limited , for the end itself ~ets the limits in each case' (p,189 ) . �mnny otller th1.ngs, a representative .LH only represf.ltiJ:ai:ive of a p· rty which offers a complex and often ill-characteris ed package of policies, and a voter may vote for ze ro or more policies of this package. Only in the (uncommon) event of a clear single issue referendum, which is adopted, can respo n s i bility, st .Ill of a qualified sort, be sheeted home, to those who voted for it, not to e ve ry one in the community. While S3 is false, there is an important refated th eme that is much more plausible; namely that the present nucl ear situation generates responsibilitie s for every social ly involved person (thi s theme is discussed in Appendix 2). When moreover the Pogo assumption is disentangled from accompanying theme s, part of what r es ults is decidedly along the right lines; namely S4. The controllers (not to be confused, in Schell's fashion, with all of us] have failed to change our pre-nuclear institutions. The sovereign system is out f step with the nuclear age , the one-earth system, etc. (the whole ea r th theme ). Thoug h Schell remains relatively clear about the serious defects of the state and the frequently immoral purpo es for which the state is us ed, unfortunat el y he often loses sight of this i mportant theme (indicated pp.187-8). Yet S4 forms part of Schell's critique of the state which is, by and large, scatter ed and fragmentary. As observed (in §8) , Schell arrives at the conclusion t hat the nation-state has outlasted its usefulness, and that new pol iLlcal institutions more 'consonant with t he global reality' are required as a matter of urgency. But he evades what he admits is the major task, making out viable alternative s. At mos t he makes some passing gestures, some pointing towards the Wa y Up. So l utions to the nuclear dilemma come, if not easily, in a similar simpllstlc way, from the Top Down; tho se who can must appeal to the Top (cf. p.230). Schell places his hope in treaties for arms reduction and pmitat io ns ( such as SALT) and in worl d government ( as with the United Nations) . 1 Given the r ec ord of these organisations and treaties, the negotiations a nd regulators, it is by now a pathetic fai th. Nor is a serious need felt for further analysis of the nuclear situation, to investigate the origins of nuclear technology, to explore the roots of nuclear blindness, to consider effective changes to military-indus trial organisation and ways of life . But some of the requisite deeper analysis of the nuclear situation a nd , more generally, of t he roots of war can be found elsewhere. 12 The roots of the nuclear fix are not confi ned to the ideologically-a ligned arrangements of nation-slates , but penetrate also into key components of those states, their mjlit.ary, their controlli.ng classes, and their supporting bureaucracies . And both within the arrangements of states, what accounts in part for th e a rrangements, and in key components of the states , a con spicuous and crucial feature Ls the drive for power and domination . 13 Thus the push for [nuclear] supe r iority by the super-states, to be achie ved through military-orient ed science and technology, which involves a nd enables domination, in seve r al inter.related forms. The main power-base is the large nation-state, where enough surplus product can be accumulated (from at home and from abroad, and bled from nature) to proceed wlth military and bureaucratic ambitions and to found t he h.lgh-te)~nology research and devel opment means to ever more expendable power and energy. In changin g t he structural arrangements to eliminate the prospect of nucl e ar war, it is not ultimately enough just to downgrade the mai n power·-base, the natlon-stat0.; it ls also Important to alter key component s of the state, and, mor e swe epingly, to ·remove trouble-maki.ng patterns embedded in all these social and political arrangements , namely pat tern s of domina tion, patterns anife sted not only in state political organisation, but in white-coloured relations, ma le- female re l ations, human-animal relations, human-nature relations; to remove, in short , chauvinistic relations . However not everything 11. Sec p.225ff. 12. In Anders and el-borated in Foley, and more straightforward ly, in Martin. The inco1iplete list of items given ab ove, to be investigated in a deep er analysis of the ruclear situation, paraphrases Foley JS p,164. and especially p.227, bottom paragraph . j �nee ds to be accompl ished at once; and the clus~~ - of damaging power and do1nlnaL l on relatlons tied into war can be tackled separately. And there the probl e ms can largely be narrowed to certain problems of states and certain key components of sta tes. [n ~1at analysis he does offer of the problem with states, Schell repeats th<• familiar false contrast of state cxpedie.ncy with morality, as a c ontra st between "raison d'etat" and the Socratic-Ch ristian ethics. The teaching that 'tl1e end justifies the means j_s the basi s on which governments , in all times, ha ve li. ccnsed themselves to commit cr::imes of every sort' (p.134). So 'stat es may do virtually anything whatever in the name of [their] survival ' . Schel l then argues however, that extinction nullifies end-means justificatio n by destroying e very end; but again the argument is far from sound, a nd depends on human chauvinism (as under S2) combined with ontological assumptions . Even if all humans were extinguishe d (as under Sl) ends could remain, for instance for nonhumans such as animal s and extraterres trials , actual or not. The e nds-mea ns argument can however be repaired to remove such objections : instead i t is 13. These motivating drives form pa rt of a larger int egrated packag e, compris ing maximisatio n drives for power, knowledge, control, wealth, ('TI C" rgy, sp ecr, sat:f.sfnctto n, . • . • for the newer Enlightenme nt (but Faustian ) vlr tues. Frequently there are attempts (the human failing for excessiv e neatness nod implic1ty manifested ) to reduce th package to one main component, prefer e nce-satisfa c tion for 1nstance, or ut .i lity. And the type of drive ls justified (especially for those who have it, but worry abo11t i t) not 01ly as virtuous, which it is not, but also as rational, which agai.n it is not. Rationality , the deeply entrenched myth has it, consists in maximisatio n, of the virtues . Maxjmisatio n of the objects of the drives runs, however, into limitation theorems and associated paradoxes. The maximisatio n of power, as with the Christian-I slamic God, encounters the paradox of omnipotence , the parallel maximls ation of knowledge paradoxes of omniscience . There are no consistent objects which are omnipotent or omniscient. The drive for ma x i mum consistency , often taken to be the epit ome of rationality , also l e nd s to inconsisten cy in the case of more important theor i es, s uch as arithmetic and set theory (Godel's theorem and associated limitative t heo rems). IL, . R & D, though directed by military requirement s and the arms race, also drives the a rms race. Its role .is partly disguJsed by the myth of neu tral science. There have been a tt empts, not only by those committed to technologic al dcterminlsm , to involve technology more dee ply as the main, or single, source of t he nucle a r fix . It is technology, th e mega- machine, running out of control , that has brought us to this pred cament, the nuclear abyss. Sometimes t his serves to exonerate states and thei.r key components and those who control them, for they are simply caught up by this out-of-cont rol machine; but sometimes the s tate itself is se en as a machine also running out of control. But technologic al determinism , like other varieties of stronger (nonana lytic) determinism , is false . Nuclear technology was selected and proceeded with, after a well-known po l itical dispu te involv:i.ng distingu1.sh ed scientists ; it was deliberated , fund ed and promoted , while other alternative s were not. Damag ing technologie s of th e nuclear age were not inevitable, but dellbcra el y chosen by certain components of the large nation-sta tes. And murh as they need not have been chosen, so they do not have to be persisted with. The fashionable inevitability /determi.nis m themes admit not only of refutation by bringing out the many choices made in persisting with often recalcitran t technologie s. They also admit of being made t o look r idic ulous. If the Bomb is determined, as part of human evolut ion, then if it fu nctions (as it p ·obably will , a matter also determined ), it will serve as a human population control device, a matter also determined. That is, the Bomb has its fixed evolutionar y place in human population regulation. �7l claimed tha t ext inction null i fies ends-me ans justlft&A~ion by frustrating the r a J iqntion of ev ery re levant end - me a ning by ' r e levant', in this context, t hose end,, the rea li sa tion of which th e stat e appeals t o in justification of its n uc l ear pol i cies . 15 An LSN-war, even without human extinction but with severe c no1 1gh 1 sses , would undoubt e dly frustrat e the realisation of relevant state ends. So eve n f rom an ex pediency perspective, superstate policies are open to severe c r i t icism , for exampl e a s motivationa lly irrational. As to th~~ pa r. t of the st a te and (state) sovereignty tn war, Schell leave s us i n no do ub t . A s ov e r e ign state is virtually defin ed as one that enjoys the right and powe r to go to wa r ln defenc e or pursuit of its intet"ests (p,187). Wa r ari s es fro m how thi ngs are; from the a rrangement of politic a l affairs via jealous na t i o n stat es (p.188). Ind e ed th e r e is a two-way linkage betwe e n having s~:".'_E:_r~}:_f;;22.._~ a n d _ca pad 1:.7 t o wage war. On the one side, sovereignty is, Schell c o11Lends , nec e ss a r y f o r people to org a ni se fo r war. On the other side, withou t war it is impossibl e t o preserve s overeignty. Neither of these c ontentions i s t r Rnsparen t l y c lea r a s the y stand. The f l rst is damaged by civil war and the like, t h e s eco nd by t he per sistence of sma ll nonmilitary states. Now that the mac r o-state s ystem is e ntrenched, it is however easy for conservatives (in pci r ticu l ar ) t o a rgue from t he "'real:1.ti e s"' of international life, which include sel f··i n terest , agg r ,~ss i on, f em.· , ha tred. It is on this basis th a t peace ar r angeme nts are r e adi ly d ismissed as un rea listic, utopian, even (amu s ingly) as •xtrcmlsl (c f . p . 185). Schell's f ur ther th eme that nuclear "wa r"' is not war threatens, however, to undermine hi s ca s e a ga inst the s overeign state; for example, his ends-means arg11m nt and t he a rgument based on its nucl e ar war-maki ng capacity. Fortunately th e nol-wa r t heme needs much qualifi c ation, and starts out from an erroneous c ha rac t e r i s ati on of wa r as 'a violent mea ns employed by a nation to achieve an end' ( p .189 ): but--this is neither ne c e s s a ry nor sufficient for war. What is ri ght ( s o it i s a rgued in §1) is that nuclear wars are very different. from ea r lie r c onvent i onal wars. Schell goes on to claim that war requires an end whic h nuc l ear "' va r" does not have. But nuc l ear attacks can certainly have ends ( ev en if LSN war s cannot be won in the older sense: but not all wars or games a r e wo n). It is a lso cla imed that war depends on weakness; on one side being defeated on a de cision by arms. But in nuclear "war" thi.s doesn't happen, ' no o ne's st r e ng t h fa ils until both sides have been annihilated' (p.190). But what t hese sorts o f considerations contribute to showing is again not that nuclear wa r s a r e not wa r s, but that they are not wars of certain s o rts, e.g., not just wa r s (be cause they fall on such criteria a s reasonable prospect of successand improveme n t ), not rational wars (in a good sense), and so on. That conve n tional war s have pe rs isted into nuclear times does damage to Schell's argument that nu r:10,1r we a po ns h av also ru i ned " c onventio nal"' wars, and his connected theme t hat t he demise of war has left no me a ns to finally settle di.sputes between na t lo ns, f or th e final court of appeal has been removed (pp.192- 193 ) . The theme d epend s on the mistaken proposition concerning the demise of conventional war a nd t he mi s t ak e n proposition that war of some sort has to be the final "court of a ppea l'' betwe e n nations (for, as observed, there are other types of contests tha t coul d s e rv e , and there is also th e possibility of more cooperative behaviour, e . g. joint refer e nda) . The theme also imports the social-Darwinia n assum ption of Clausewicz (the "logic of wa r" theme criticised in §2) that war has to pr oc eed to the t e c hnological li mit as if war and violence were thoroughly nat 1 r a l actlvitLes independ e nt of recognised social settings (for winni ng, su r rende r, etc.) a nd rul e -less activities. On the contrary, wars are pa r asitic on s oc i a l organisations such as sta t es and are governed by a range of understandl ngs , conventions and rules . The y are a social phenomenon, with a rule structure, if no t a logic . Huch ca pital has bee n ma de not me rely from "the logic of war" but from what i s now cal l ed "'the logic of deterrenc e " a nd the "'logic of nuclear [strategic] plann lng'". The me ssage that is usually supposed to emerge is that the massive n uc l cnr 11rr.1 ngemc nt a t he wo d<l l s now en ll ng 1. ed in a rc perfectly loglcnl, sotmd, 15. Thi s re for mu lation was proposed by N. Griffin, who suggested that the main qual ificat ion can be inferred from Sche ll's context. - j �72 rcnGonab.le, rational. However thJs represents li l i:. le more than a cheap semn nti.cal trJ.ck . Logic in no way justifies the present arrangement s, or nnythiu g 1·ke them , or renders them reasonable. There is a logic of deci.sion (as presented , e .g., in Jeffrey) which ca n be appUed in strat eg ic. planning; but it does not yield s pecific results without desirabilit y measures being assigned to alternative outcomes, that is without values being pumped in, extraloglca lly. There are various ways these va lue assignments may be determined, to meet moral requirement s or not; but in nuclear s tr ~tegic planning they have invariably been set tled on the bas iG of expediency. l& In fact, 'logic of' tends to be used very gener ously, as a word of general commendatio n, to cover something like 'rational consideratio ns ente r ing into t he policy or strategy of '. In these terms, S hell, who like o thers enjoys pl.e ying with the term 'logic of', should write o f ' the il logi c of deterrence' , f or he emµlic1size~~ (p.21.J) tlP disparity bct:wc11n the supposed rati.onali ty o f t:hret1t~nl.ng 11se of nuclear weapons and the irrational i ty ( even from a national i n te r e s i viewpoint) of act ually using th m should the threat fail: 17 ~ the success of deterrence doctrine depends on the c redibili ty of the threat of thi s unjustifiab le and irrati onal use. I nd eed Schell wants to go sti l l further a nd locate a contradict ion in deterrence (e. g . pp.201-2): but the argume nt depends on an interesting conf uaion of cont:radictl on with cancell at ion , 18 along with the Rss •mption that deterrence invo lves cancellatio n . Nucl ear deterrence ma y wel l be irrational, i.t is immoral, but it is not inconsisten t . 16. Selecting the 11sual came theory scttlng sees to th is almost automaticnl ly; for it is then assumed that each player plays to ma ximiz e his or her own ndvantagc. Thus too th e presumption Jn Walze r, p .277, that 'the logi c of deterrence' is based on eye-for-eye and toot h- for-tooth as sumptions . 17. Even the irrationali ty of the use hac been contested, e . g . it wishful]y thought that America will rise l ike a phoe nix radioactiv ~ ashes . has be en f rom th e The r e is moreover a simple solution to Schell's problem of th e mis sing mo..!_ivc for retaliating to a first strike (p.204), namely, not a r etributiv e one, but a n ideological one: eliminate t he prospe ct of the f uture dominance of the riva i deo l ogy . 18. An anal ogous confusion of negation with cancel lation or obliteratio n appears in recent US " st a r war" thinking, where US missiles are supposed to "'negate" incoming USSR missiles . Moral paradoxes of deterrence take a diffe re nt dire ction; although involving negation t hey dep end upon perhaps questionabl e i nterconnexi ons of intensional func t ors. One type of paradox (consider ed in §5) derives from a policy of credibly threatening LSN war without however intending to proc eed to LSN war, though credible th reats ( ap pear to) imply an intention to proceed. Another s tyle derives from acclaimed intention to reduce the number of nuclear missiles when t he persis tent pract ice, which impl ies an intention, is to increase th e number. This paradox is technically r emov ed how satisfactor ily in another matter by a dis ti nction between longer- term ai.ms and :1.mmediate practic e , a time-ho noured method of removing �.PPENDIX 2. On the Matter of Collt>,.•Uyr,, and Indiyi,hli1 1 Responsi bility and on Regional ~~rategie ~ What one do e s depend s , naturally , on where one lives and what mea ns one hns , AS we ll as on wha t one should do and what sort of person one seeks to be . So too what s tr a t egy a stat e should adopt depends on where it is located and what sort of power it is , on national as we ll as on moral co nsi de r ations . In presen t circumsta nces states have an evident responsib il tty to work ouc th~lt• pol te l. cs . The r e nre however some pcrs uua iv • argum ents that this is where uLl r espo ns i bi l i ty ends : t he se major re sponsibi lities accrue entirely to states, a nd ther e is no individua l, or (smal le r scale) c oll ec tive, responsib ilit y to work out a pol i cy or stance on such matters as nuclear ar rangement s and still l ess to ac t, perh a ps against a state, on the basis of such a stance. While such a no-respon sibi l ity or ~-out posit ion no doubt suits many people many for th emsel ve s, s ome (especial ly mor e a u thoritari an power-hol ders) on behalf of othe s - it do e s involve i nadmissib ly opting out of moral responsib il itie s, r e spon si bil it i e s ac quired by vir t ue of being a person wHhin the fr amework of ce r tain soci al a r r angements . Now the r e is no doubt that individua ls a nd groups can do t his, c an opt ou t. They ca n neglect t he:tr moral re sponsibi liti e s; b ut they are not ju stified tn doing so. Against th i s clai.m, whi ch is bas ed ultimatel y upo n each person's being set i n a we b of respons i bj_lity-- induci.ng social r elat ions, whether they like it or no t so long a s they choose to liv e with others, there are some neat arguments which a ppear to pe r mi t , or even wa rrant, opting out. One influenti a l argument take s t he following lin es: 1. The (o r dina ry) ind i vidual, or group, ha s no poss ibil ity of making a d i fference t o wha t happens. Theref ore 2. Such ind ivid ua ls, or grou ps, have no obligatio n to try to make a differenc e . Hence 3. Suc h i ndivid uals, or groups, are not mor a lly responsib le , f or instance when thint s go wr ong. There are two mai n a ssumption s in this a rgument , both of which should be resiste d: fir stly, in gett i ng from l to 2, a varia n t of the "ought implies can " t heme 1 , and se condly, the ass1mptio n tha t individua ls can't make a differenc e . While it is true tha t individua ls cannot accomplis h much on their own, together th ey can. Wha t a n individua l can achieve depe nd s on what suff ic ien tly many other i. nd lvidua ls do. In highly competiti ve communi ties, full of hopeful f r ee- riders, a pe rson may encounter a familiar impasse: that he or she acts in ma nner M (e.g. morally, against nuclear arrangeme nt s , r a tio nally), at con si de r a ble pe r s onal cost , with no gua ra ntee that othe rs wil l also ac t M-ly. Suc h nn impasse no long e r faces so many in the West, at least as regards initi al s t eps agai nst nuclear a rrangemen ts. The individua l can cooperate with others in ways t hat do make a differenc e. An i ndividual is not exonerate d from r e s ponslb1.l ity by the argument . While ind iv iduals can re s pond by joining organisat ions whose activitie s are di rected a t mak i ng some differenc e , many individua ls a l so have the option of more indi vldu All st i c action in such forms as boycotts , go slows, po l itical di s obedi enc e. An important form of individua l resistanc e, a lready adopted in Canada and nor t h··we stern USA, is refusa l to pay income taxes directed towards defenc e or v·r ious pa r t s thereof ( e.g. nuc lear weapons productio n and de plo yment ), or a l ternat ively redirec t ion of such taxes , for instance to peace fun ds, Evi de n tl y, however) all these more indivi dualistic forms of political act ivi ty wo r k mo re ef fe ct iv~ly if individua ls integrate their activitie s, since th e i mpac t s aggregate ( a nd appear aft e r a certain stage to exponenti ate). As we l l co l lective action he lps in distribut ing the impact of retributio n or puni ti ve ac t io n by st a te aut horities. 1. Any sat i s f a c t ory d _ontic th e ory which t akes mora l dilemmas with du e se r io usn e ss is bound to r eject th i s theme. There are als o independe nt g rounds for j e ttisoning this Kantian theme : see Routley a nd Plurowood. - II �.,I<,' Th 0 re are, furthermo re, arguments of some weight that individua ls are under Ro1ne sort of moral obligati on to t a ke political ac t ion to disaffili ate tlwm,, l' lves f rom wlrnt contribut es to the prospects of nuclear war. What type of ac t ion Lhjs is depends on the sort of state one resides in, for instance, whether i l is a nuclea r power, whether it provides nuclear bases or facilitie s, etc., and o such complicat ing issues as what kind of preventiv e action the state iN l ikely to take in return. (Any state seriously practis ing deterrenc e Js bound to take some action against effective protest, or ri sk losing cred ibi l ity ; but there are limits to the amount of state coercion any one individua l need bear.) One a rgumen t - it is one of a type that can be varied from making nuclear wea pon s to, fo example, providing fac ili ties for them - proceeds from th e wron g ness of nu c lear war to the pos'ition that it is not right to be making the we~pons for such war. The argument here appli.es connectin g principle s (like those of §5), while appealing to such backgroun d informati on as that the manuf act ure and de ployment of such weapons j_ncreases the risk of s uch war. But j f it is not morally righ t to be making s uch weapons t hen those who live in a state that is doing so ought to d isaffilia te themselve s from such defence productio n, an1 disaffili ation includes not paying for such prodtictio n through d e fence taxes . The argument is not without substanti ve as sumption, but the a s sumptions appear morally reasonabl e and defensi ble. Another effective argument proceeds from the question of the type of moral person one wants to be : Does one want to le, or effective ly to be seen as, the kind of person who goes along with the nuclear destructi on of human populatio ns? Or with making c red i bl e a threat to do so, or th e like? What follows applies primarily to people wh o do not want to be, or be seen as, such people . Arguments like hese not only put opt-outer s and do-nothin gers on the spot insofar as they contribut e to national objective s; they also raise questions , perhaps eve n dil emmas, as to pol:L ti cal obligatio n fo r those who would take act ion, ev en limited action such as redirectio n of taxes 3. For are there not political obligatio ns to the state, such as paying due taxes and supportin g the national defenc e effort? It i.s usually assumed that there are. However, no dile mma occurs under a theory which, properly, takes political obligatio ns to be re gulated in some fashion by moral obligatio ns ; for in this case moral obli ga t i ons ov_rride political obligatio ns. In fact political obligatio ns are alread y significa ntly limited by moral constrain ts. The nuclear situation does not so muc h bring out new limits on political obligatio n, as em phasize the respects in which those obligatio ns are already limited, and introduce further moral considera tions against sponsorsh ip of national defence arrangeme nts. \n obligatio n to try 4 to dissociat e oneself from preparati on for nuclear war or from nuclear-d eterrence , for instance by not spending part of one' s working life contribut ing indirectl y to it, does not commit one to more t ha n this: to an obligatio n, for example, to work for an alternativ e nat ional defenc e policy which avoids nuclear elements. But no doubt this wou ld be a good thing to try to contribut e towards. Once again, what one attempts depends on wher e one lives, the level of one ' s commitme nts, e.g . to nonviolen ce, and so forth. For not only are different types of policy reorienta tion appropria te for different nations and regions, but there are more superfici al and deeper rcori ntations that can be worked out and promoted, e . g. schemes that leave 2. An argument of this type was deployed by Bishop Hunthauss en of s upport of his refusal to pay defense taxes. 3. This dilemma and op ti on is now removed in practice for most wage earners by Pay As You Earn taxation schemes - schemes ap parently introduce d to give t he state interest on gross earnings, bu t obviously very effective in remov .i ng taxation power from most workers, and so in further transferr ing ower from ind ividuals to the state. 4. Given the power of institutio ns and the state one may be able to do little more than .!:El_, without giving up one's work and thereby one's abili.ty to contribut e to other deserving causes. For example, it may be v ir tua lly mpossiblc for one to avoid contribut ing to a superannu ation fund which is Seattle in �"co nven ti on,'.11" warf a re a pparatus more that ch:ing,.. tha t . H T ~~ s intact, and deeper (ecological ) sch emes Th<:! US Bisho p , f or examplet pr esent R rather shallow set of goals for a su pe rp owe r s uc h as the USA, which includes such objectives as preventing the d e velo pmP n t a nd deployment of destabilizin g nuclear weapons systems and 1o1orking for better co nt r 1 of already operational systems (see PL, p.317). The nuclear s i t ua t i on a ffords an import ant opportunity to press however for a much deeper se t of cha nge s in the superstates . For those whose very limited political i nfluence is exe rted in cons i derably less powerful states, even the shallow goa ] ma y look quite different: there are no nuclear weapons (except perhaps t ho se of a nother power stationed on local territory) to redeploy or to bett er c ontr ol . The vi ew from the very minor powers in the Antipodes i s furthermor e diffe r e nt from that of the medium powers in Europe. There is some prospect ln much of the Antipodes of avoid.i.ng the more immediate effects of an LSN war, whi le t her e is Little such prospect in Europe (cf. Preddey and o thers). There i s ac cordingly some obligation - an obligation little considered and not grasped by the powe r holders - on those in the Antipodes to make some effort to preserve th e r e in the South elements of what is valuable in world civilizatio n. Local a nd re g ional self-intere st would also suggest substantial steps towards s e l f-p r e s e r va tion that (foolishly) have not been initiated. Wha t i s broadly required in the Antipodes is not difficult to discern once th e gonls are gli.mpsed. Steps include wlthdrawal from the American alliance, wh jch i s in an y case of questionabl e merit since its main advantages lie with the US a nd J.t affords no guarantee of local defence; 5 c losur e of American bases and wi t hd r awa l of Ame r ican a cess ri.ghts for. nuclear-car ryi ng equipment to por ts , a ir bas e s and other facilities, espe cially so as to remove local nuclear ta rget s; pursu i t of a mor e evenhanded policy of nonalignmen t (something quite s mal l powe rs elsewher e have managed to achieve ). That much is easy, in pri nci pl e ; and justified. It is justified because local commitment to th e Am e r ica n mi lit a ry operations in the r egion lacks a solid f oundation; it is preml s s ed prim a rily on t e acceptance of deterrence, which, so it has been a r r, ue <l ( in §5ff.), lacks justificatj_ · n. That Australian commitment to joint Aus t r al ian-US f acilities and to US military operations in the region is e x pl i citly bas e d on acceptance of deterrence emerges from several recent s t a t eme nt s of gov e rnm e nt policy. The jolnt fAcilities are 'part of a system of d e t erre nc e ' • 6 More dif f icult to e nsure, at least without much preparation , is that economi c and cultural collapse does not follow an LSN war in the North. Se condly, then, the building of increased socio-ec onomic independenc e in th e Antipod e s is r e quired. It is not enough to make the region a nuclear- free zone not wo rth targeting militarily: the regio n must also have a sustainabl e life of 1.ts own. For a small region, thcit lo oks a very costly exercise unless combined with other desirable objectives; for example, in Preddey and others it is estimated that a substantial portion of GDP would have to be diverted to build up New Zealand' s economic independenc e. 7 For a larger region whi ch included Aus t ra l ia, the costs would be less. They would compare favourably with many Northe rn military budgets, and l1ave the advantage that much of the expenditure is genuinely productive. If furthermore - what seems unlikely - the structu r al readjustmen t were combined with t he .independen tly desirable aims of moving th e 5. Se e the dJ s cussion in Ball, chapter 13, especially pp.14O-1. How slight t he commitments are, under the ANZUS treaty in particular, has been e mpha si ze d again in recent defence discussions between Australia and the USA . Of cour s e, the ANZUS Treaty is only one, and a comparative ly minor one , of he many mi.litary treaties that should be terminated: from a Eu rop ean nnd world viewpoint the winding down of NATO and the Warsaw Pact ar r a ngeme n t s , and the r moval of American and Russian forces from Europe ( a nd el s ewhere ), are very much more important. A ful l e r d i scussion of Austr.alia's defence phil osophy will appe nr in a subsequent publication in this series . and alternative s, �76 whole reg i on towa rd s a multi- c u ltural conserver societ y and perha ps even dh,r ,, r t i ng "d e fence " spend i ng to conne cted self-managem ent and soci al dt'!f ence gon l s, the costs would be very considerabl y lessened . They only appear so g r eat in th e s e tting of a consumer-s atellite soci ety. In any case, wher e lif e and c ul tu r e themselv e s are conce rned , the cos t s do not appear excessive. I n sum, Southern countries s ho uld be s e vering their milita ry linkages with Northern nuclear powers 8 , a nd s hould be preparing now, socia lly and e conom i cally, for the time af t er the LSN war, the g reat No rth ern war. Howev er ther e are serious blockages in the way of such th ngs in the Ant ipodes) and inde e d impeding an y substantial attempts to lessen the impact of LSN war. Some of the blockages derive agai n from the f act that present nuc l ear arrangement s favour man y of the power holders and s u it strong cor porate interests which wield poli t i c al powe r . But the main blockages to mo r e popular action a r e sl og a nis ed r.n the false dlchotomy: "either it won't hnppc.n or we ' re all dead a n}•wayj so why bot he r". One reason for blocka ge is then the extinction assumption ( S l of Appendi x 1), the unwarr · nted a doption of which is excessively nihil is tic . A mor e i mportan t reaso n is that most people, and most of the ir political re pres entatives, do not bel ieve that majo r repercussio ns of LSN war are going t o bcf;1l l th e m. These are e vents which , .l i. ke starvntion and tortur e , happen to o th ~r ( r mot) pe o ple , not them. It is no t tha t LSN war i s unthinkabl e : rather i t is that i t seems unb,~llev a hl e t ha t it should make any d ifference . Most people in t he Antipodes ~eal l y do not believe that thei r lives are likely to be shattered by nuclear. war. Wa king up and mo bi lis ing t hese peo ple is a major part of the problem in 6. Se e th e letter by R.G. Hawke, Prime Min1.ster , replying to a symposium on conseque nces of nuclear war, Canberra Times, Saturday July 23, l.9 83. The point is also made by the Fore ig n Minister in his Evat t Memor ial Lecture , as Hawke~ notes. The point is softe ne d by r e pr ese nting the fac i li ties as also having a role i n verificatio n, as well a s dete rr ence, 'that mak es arms c o nt rol and reduction feasi ble': the known role of the facilities in war fighting i s not alluded t o , and nor i s t he fact that any verificatio n role can be alte rnat iv ely a ccomplished us i ng satellites. However the matter is not in any do u bt: 'successive Australian governments . • . have taken the vi e w that our primary conce rn should be to suppo rt the effectivene ss of th e Uni ted States deterrent to war itself' (D.J. Killen, Minister for De fe nc e; quoted in Threats to Aust ralia ' s Sc ur.lty, p.17). Government representat ives (e. g . Hawke ) conc ed e that the joint facilities put Austr a lia at nucl ea r risk. ' Howev e r it is t he judgement of t hi s Government that the benef.its to Australia in terms of its immediate int e rest and globa l st r a tegic consideratio n outweigh potential risks'. A prope r de cision-t heoretic analysis would not sup port Hawke's claim: since Australia is known to be a nuclenr t arget because of American bas es (c f . Ball, pp.130-8 ), the pot e n t ial risks given that an LSN war has a non-ne gligible probability far outweigh a ny i mme diate benefit s . Since Australia has only a r egiona°i strategic role, the global st r ategic consideratio ns are , as could be othe rwi s e i nferred, primarily those of the ma in user of t he facilities , the USA. The Governme nt is prepare d to put Australia , its peoples and e cosystems , a t what is decide dly serious risk .for i.mmediate and Ame r ica n i.nt ere st s . A worthwhile re presenta tive government docs not hold its people s hostage for such re asons . Not only i s tha t short-sighte d expediency decision maki ng: it seems virtually cer tain t ha t the <letai l s of the decision mak ing, were they ever. revealed, would not justify the policy in the longer term even on the basis of expediency, bu t wou l d turn on s uch things as present trade advanta ges and short-term co mme r c ial considerati ons. 7. As to the e c onomic and so cial problems Aus tralia would face in t he event of a n LSN wa r, see Coombs fo r a preliminary as s es sment. 8. Id e ally the removal of s igni f icant nuclear targets should t a ke pl c e nc ro as the whole Sou thern Hemisphere , because this is the zone that is r e latively insulated, a t mosph e rically, from the Northern Hemisphe r e. �77 achie ving requ isi te social and politi e Rl ~djustmen t. -yen those who believe tha t LSN war ls no t improbabl e (but may well not be totally destructi v e of life) do little to reo r ganise their lives in a way that would reflect their assessmen t: . 9 Richard Routle y* 9. Aga in , for some of what to do, for some ways to reorg a nise, see e.g. Mart in . There is als o much in teJ.J.ec tual work to be undert ake n, for example , searching out details of alternati ve arrangeme nts, and al so dJ.scredit ing establis hment experts, especiall y economist s and poli.tical scienti s ts , who intellect ually underwrit e present nucl e ar arrangeme nts . * The tex t has bee n much improved as a result of detailed commen t s by C. Pigden , R. Good in, N. Gri ff in t B. Martin and L. Mirlin, and through cor r espondenc e with G. Fo ley. J. Norma n has helped in its final organisat ion. The initia l outlines of the pa pe r were worked out in Victoria , Canada; and an early version was read a t Simon Fraser Universit y in 1982 . �REFERENCES c;. Anders, Die __Ant_~q •i erthe!.t des Menschen, C.H. Beck, Munchen, 1956; to a$ A/i,. G. And0rs, Endzeitan d Zeitenend e : Gedanken zur atomaren Munc hen;--Pfi2 ; referred to as AE. Situation , referred c.u. Beck, T. Brownlie , e d., Basic Documents on Human Ri.ghts, Oxford, 19 71. D. Bnl.1, A su i.table. piece of real estate. American installttt ions Hale & Iremonger , Sydney, 1980. in Australia , J. Barnes, 'The just war' in N. Kretzmann , A. Kenny and J . Pinborg (eds). The Cambridge Histo r y of La ter Medieval Philosoph y, Carnbri.dge Universit y Press, 1982, pp . 771-784. R.J. Barnett, Real Security, Simon s. & Schuster , New York, 1981 . Benn, 'Deterren ce or appeaseme nt? Or, on trying to be rational about war', Appl led Philosoph y, to appear. nuclear P. Berg, Re!:._1::habitlng a Sepa_rate Countr.y, Pl anet Drum, San Francisco , 1979. M, Cohen, T. Nagel and T. Scanlan Pr inceton, Princeton UP, 19 74. (eds.), War and H.C. Coombs, 'The ec onomi c and social consequen ces of (Septembe r 1983) 8-9. Moral nuclear Responsi bility, Natuni war ', 5 A.i'!. Cox, Russian Roulette: the Superpowe r Game , Times Books, London, 1982 . J. Dahlltz, Nuclear Arms Control: with McPhec Gribble, Melbourne , 1983. effective internati onal G. Foley, ' Jonathan Schell : Genius - Phi losop her - Rewrite Brisbane, 1982; referred to as JS. Man ', agreemen ts. t ypescript , G. Foley, Nucl ea r Prophets. The True and the False_, typescrip t, Bri sbane, 1983. J. Galtung, The True Worlds, Free Press, New Yo r k, 1981. D, Gautier, 'Deterren ce, maximisa tion , and rationali ty ' , in The Security Gamble: Deterrenc e Dilemmas in the Nuclear Age, (ed. D. MacLean), Rowman and Littlefie ld , To t owa, N.J ., to appear ; also f ort hcoming in Et hics, April 198/¼. R.E . Goodin, 'Disarmin g nuclear apo l ogists', typescr i pt , 1982 . R.E. Goodin, 'Disarmam ent as a moral certainty ', Et_l2ics 95 ( 1984 ) , to appear. P(hilip) Green, Deadly Logic : The Theory Universit y Press, Columbus, 1966. of Nuclear Deterrenc e, Ohio State N. Griffi n, ' Lifeboat USA', Discussio n Papers in Environme ntal Philosoph y fi8, Research School of SociRl Sciences, Australia n National Universit y , 1983. Grou nd Ze ro Orgnnisat ion, Nuclear War: What's lo It For York, 1982. You? Pocke t Books , New R. Bardin, 'Unilater al vers us mutual disarmame nt', Philosoph y and Public Affairs 12 (1983) 236-54. J.E. Hare nnd C.B. Joynt, Ethi c s and Internati onal Affairs, 1982. Macmillan , London , �79 R.M. ll;,r.e, Applicati ons o[ Moral Philosop ~, M&Q1t1illan, l,~rn,hin , 1972. R. Jeffrey, The Logic of Decis~on, McGraw-H ill, York, 1965. New H. Kahn, On Thermonu clear War, Princeton Universit y Press , 1960. G.S . Kavka, 'Some paradoxeG of deterrenc e', Journal 285-302; referred to as PD. of Philosol?.!"1y G.S. K.-ivka, 'Deterren ce, utility and rational choice', Theory (1980) 41-60; referred to as RC . and 75 (1978) Decision 12 G,S. Kavkn, 'Doubts about unilatera l nuclear disarmame nt ' , Philosoph y and Public Affairs 12 ( 1983) 255-60; referred to as DU. L. Kuper, Genoclde: its Eoli~ical use Jn the Twentieth Century, Yale UP, 1982 . D,P. Lackey, 'Ethics and nuclear deterrenc e', Rachels), Harper and Row, New York, 1979. in Moral Problems (ed. James D.P. Lackey, 'Missiles and morals: a utilitaria n look at nuclea r det e rren ce' , Philosoph y and Public Affai.rs 11 (1982) 189-231; referred to as MM. D.P. Lackey, 'Disarmam ent revisited : A reply to Kavka and Public Affairs 12 (1 983) 261-64. a nd Har de n', Phil osopl'l_ B. MarU.n , Grass Roots Strategy Against War, Freedom Pr ess , Nottingha m, 1984 , to appear. A.A. Mazrui , A World Federatio n of Cultures: An African Pe rspective , Free Press, New York , 1976. J.C. Murray, Morality and Modern War, Affairs , New York, 1959. Cou ncil on Reli.gi on and Inte r nati onal T. Nagel, 'War and Massacre ', in Cohen et al, pp.3-24. J. Narveson, 'Vlolence and War ', i n Regan, pp.109 -146. National Conferenc e of Catholic Bishops, Committee on Wa r and Peace, ' The challenge of peace: God's promise and our re s ponse' , Origins 12 (20) (1982) 306-328; refer red to as PL, for 'New Draft of Pastoral Letter '. Oxford E_i~~lish Dictionar y, Oxford, 1971; referred to as QED. B. Paski.ns and M. Dockrill, The Ethics of War, Duckworth , London, 1979. G.F. Preddey and others, Future Contingen cies 4. Nuclear Disasters , A Rep o rt to the Comn1issio n for the Future, Governmen t Printer, Wel lington, New Zealand, 1982. P. Ramsay, The Just War : force and political responsib il itt, Scribner, New York, 1968. J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard Universit y Press, Cambridge Ma ss., 1971 . T. Regan (ed.), Matters of Life and Deat h, Random Hous e , New York , 1980. R. Routley and N, Griffin, 'Unrave l ling the meanings of life' , Discussio n Papers in Env i ronmental Philosoph y 113, Aust ralian Natio na l Universit y, Canberra, 1982. R. Routley and V. Routley , 'The Alternati ves 2 (1982), 23-8. irrefutab ility of ana rchism' , Social �80 R. Rou tl ey ~nd V. Plumwood, 'Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions' in Paracons i stent Logic (ed. G. Priest, and others~ Philosop hia Verlag, 1984. R. Scheer , Wi t h Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, Random House, York, 1982. New J . Sche l l, 'Refle ctions (Nuclea r Arms - Parts I-III) ', The New Yorker, February 48- 109, and 45-10 7, respecti vely. This P.<>rinr; , trnh tl t lcd Th£> Fat e of th Enrth, hfls now appcnred as a hook wlth t hat tit l e (Knopf, New York, 1982). Referenc es in the t ex t are to the book. 1, 8, and 15, 1982, pp.47-11 3, T.C. Sche lling, The St rategy of Conflic t , Ha rvard Univers ity Press, 1980 . G. Sharp, Explo ri ng Nonvio l ent Alterna tives, Boston, 1971. D. and R. Smith , The Economi cs of Militari sm, Pluto, London, 1983. F . Soo, ' Mao's vision for China', in ContemP?_rary Chinese Philosop hy Adelm ann ) Nijhof f , The Hague , 1982, pp.62-80 . T . Taylo r, Nurembu r g and V:letnam: An 19 72. American Tr agedy, Times (ed. Books, F.T. London, E . P. Thompson and D. Smith , Prot est and Survive , Monthly Review Press, New York, 198 1. Threats to Aus tr alia's Security . The ir na ture and Gove r nmen t Publishi ng Service , Ca nb erra , 1981. probabi lity, Austral ian R. W. Tuc ker , The J ust W r, John Hopkins Pr ess, Baltimo re, 1960. M.M. Wakin (ed.), War, Morality and the Mil i tary Professi .on, Westview , Colorado . 1979. Boulder , t M. Wa l ze r, Ju st and Unjust Wars , Basic Books, New York, 1977. R. A. Wasse rstr om ( ed.) War and Morality , Wadswor th, Belmont , Cal i forni a , 1970. B. Will.lams , ' How to t hink sceptic ally about t he bomb', New 1982). Society S. Zuck.e rma nn, Nuc lea r Illus :l.on and Reality, Collins , Lo ndon, 1982. ( Nov . 18, � 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 l 89 - .r 1 NTRO!)UCT f 0N. Vlrt· uc1l ly .11 1 t h e ph i1os ophi.c ;l1 lit cri'!ture on nur.le a r war ls wr i t te n from ;-1 SllfK·rpower (predomin an tly Amer i can) or e lse European (mainl.y German, British or Fre nch) viewpoint. This art:icle, a f ter connecting in initial section s with Northern Catholic literatur e , adopts a very different Antipodean s La nce . Such re gional per spective s , whil e t he should not affect the morality o [ t he mat t e r, ,ff , highly po1i ticaJly relevrmt. eitlH_•t t he phJ.lo so ph i ca l li tera tun~, c>spec ially t:ha t emanating from th e als o a i l s th e test of morality. lt is c oncerned only or primAr i ly with what i s good o r "rati onal" or prudential f o r A.raer.i.cans, or for the American sl.ltc, t o do ~ whereas mora l ity is ind e pende n t o f place, race , natio na lity and t ile li ke . This article tries t.o take the morality of the matter, and the r es ult ing r ed is tribution of mora l and political obligations, seriously. It c onc l ud es, amon g other things, that th e Ame r i can and Russian states have no moral bu s ine ss putting nonaligned peoples at suc h grave risk as pre sent nuclear ar r angemen ts involve. Mtwh o f U~A, CUNTENTS AND OUTLINE: Itali ci sed heading s §3 - §8 indicate the ma i n structure of the argument Pag e No §O. Introduction. Nuclear vs conventional wa rs, and new moral l. i ss llPS . L,1 rg e-sc nle (LSN) vs limited nuel ea r wars , the focus on the f ormer , but the l mplic tions for the latter. §1 . J_l5)w nuclea r wa rs differ from o t her wars; wars and Htates, and the 2::.9s ulti ng l imi ted appr~riateness of older models and theories of war. War chc1rac t e ri sed. The e ss e ntial role of th e state. New and diff~r nt featur es o f nucle ar wars. 2 0 §2 . The mora l si tuation: the recent: tendE:'n_c::L of moral consid e rations -~-~~s_ome e_n t.i.re ly submerge d_ in_ the context o f war. The nncl e nt d ist i nction of morality and expediency. Strategic planning base on expe di enc y. Argume nts tha t war must be expediency-base d refuted. Mor a l i ty dues nol have to, and ought not to, give way to expediency. Uti lit ari a ni sm nnd expediency distinguish ed . Limits to consensus: s upermen and s u pe rhawks. National Interest and expediency assimilated. Li mits of st ate e n titlement. §3 . The initial a rgum':nt to the immorality of LSN wars. One ke y argume nt, from the wrongness of ki.lling noncombatants in mass, is pr esen t ed, ass es sed, and criticisms met. Ar guments for the premisses of the ke y argumen t elabo r ated. §L1. Argum e nt s f r om historica] r equirement s on ,just wars: the important a rgume nt from convergence, and env:l.ronment a_l ar~Ements_ . Argume nts from just war requJrements: di sc rimination; proportionality , p r ospe ct of success. The detailed convergence argument, from rival moral positions. Arguments from enviro1nental principles. § 5. The shift t:o nuclear deterrence: nrgume nts to its immora~-~~· De t e rre nc e seen a s the only prac tical way to satisfy major desiderata: p re ve ntion of wa r: and maintenance of pruden t ial values. Pure deterrence not t. he po H e y. De terr c nce ais prac t.! c (• d has i.ncreased the probability of nuclea r war. Th e first argume nt to imruorHlity of deterrence, from the pla u s ibi l i t y of probab-Ui.ty of Immorality. F11rther arguments through <l ~u n t i c conn e ct.l.ng principl(~S : the probahl ll Ly l.inkage. Refuti.ng the c ou n t e rargume nt from the succe ss of deterr ence . The way the onus of 1. 5 11 1 !• 17 Page No !,ills on deterrence policy , 1.Jhi ·h cannot mt>et. evidcnlla J. requireThe second connecting principle: the wrongness of serious prc'p.tralio n for nuclear war. The general form of connecting pri nc ipl es; separating out t hose hat arc correct . Th e third connecting principle: the wrongness of se rious threats of nuclear devastati.on . Criticism of this principle lead s to further connecting principles, th rough i n te ntion and through commitment. Meet i ng counterargumen ts from utilitarianism . AppJying the connec ting prlncip1es to argue to the jmmoral:tty of deterrence. Arguments from limited convergence: pro- and anti -ut ilitarian versions. Other reasons for deep dissatisfaction with de terrence . piu,.,f Till·lll H. 56. ~£0Ctical ,___pru<lcnU.al and more moral arguments from national daugers Lo nuclear build-up of the ~upe r statc.s, and the genes i s . - of nu c 1 t',ff di lemmas . The tirgume nts from nucle,:-ir black.ma:!.l and foreign domination, and from risk of nuclear destruction. The crucial arg ume11t from basic ri g ht s and f11ncl;iml.'nl.al values. The argument from i solated people to superstate iwnoral ity. The supers tat e theme, and rea&ons for its appeal . The much less p0rsuasive de endcnt state theme. Ch:1llcnging the assumptions of tllr> undt'rlying rc latiatory mode]. §7. The rcsulring nuclear di~emmas ·- fo r nligned states and their _supporl e rs. Ch,nc1ct. er ot the nuclear fix. Subsid iary di lemmas: natio na l securit y vs 37 43 fre edo m nnd democratic arrangements; personal and role dilemmas. Features of deontlc dilemmas. Deterrence presented as second-bes t escape from the nud.car fix . The nuclear fix a fix of s t ates' own making . Interconnection s between the nuclear fix and nation-state arrangeme nts. §8. Wavs out of nuc lear dilemmas: initial political fall-out f rom th e ethical res 1lts. Tl1e inevit.c1bil i ty of limitation s on nat1onal sovereignt y. In terstate and ex trastate approache s . The Way Up and th e Way Down of extrastate approaches . Arguments for the Way Up, and the decisive case aga i.ns t it. FaiJurc of internati onal agreement s) espe ci ally on human rights and geno ci de. Excl11s ion of nuclear dete rrence und er the Genocid e Convention. Need fur the reexam i na t i on of current political arrangements i mpo sed b y the nuclear fix. Deficiencies in present antiquated politi cal a r ra ngen.ents revealed by nuclear problems . Further arguments from the nucle a r 1 ix for polll lc:il reassessme nt. The we . k J i.nk: the sovereig n nationstatc. Forfeit11re of political obligation by many st~tes . Alternative po 1 I. Lical arr;__ingcmen t s vs nuc lcar time hor 1.zons. 49 The rnultt-track Way Out of the nuclear dilemma. The main polit ica l mea ns lle outside state governmenta l apparatus. Laying the s pectre of ideo1ogicnl domination. Social restr uct u ring a nd devolution of powe r. Graduated disarmament and transarmament, and letting state sovereignty go. Dissolving the arguments f r om natiorrnl dangers. S .. a e r e si.stance to loss of po wer . Further lines of o r ganised act ion agains t nuclear states. Appendix 1: On Scl1;!1l t he fate of mankind and the ea r th, according to and Anders. Nuclear prophets a nd prophet .i c ru bb ish . The ext in ct ion assumption . Common emerging themes of Sc-hell and Anders. The extravagant anthropocentric assumption , and some of wha t is wrong wi.th i t. Second death dlsmlssed . The universal i ty of peril. The alleged universality of responsibili t y : the Pogo theme . The correct, but undeveloped, whole earth theme . Ultimately Schell offers little hope and s upe rf icialiqy. Nuclear war is war. The logic and illogic of de t er renc e. H 64 .1,t . . .. Page No ~~~_cl_:!~~; On mat t ers of co lJective and individual rt'sp oirn:ibilit.y a nd on regional strat egies. Individual and state responsibi.J.ity. Opt-·ouL positions , and o.rguments t.o Lhem. Failure of the arguments, and the impact of group co peration . Arguments to direct obligations of individ1rnls to the nuclear dissociation. Limitations of rival political ob l igati ons. Dif f eren L pol ic y r e organi sati on for d:i ff 're n l regions. Shallm,•er and deeper g a]s. Th e important opportunity for deepe r r eo rg.nnisution afforde d by nuclear dilemmas. Ob.ligations of those in the Antipodes: what i. s required, and justifi d . Soci a l and ec onomic reorganisation in the An tipodes, and reducing costs i.nvolv1~d. Bloc kages to social and po litical adjus tment. iii 73 ON THE ETHICS OF LARGE-SCALE NUCLEA! WAR AN!) NtlCLEAR DETERRENCE AND THE POLITICAL FALL-OUT Large -seal ~ nuclear wars raise cthlcal questions not generated, ~ Ll o r n~ arly HO th11 n e of even t he larges d if f0 r· c n c:' !n kln<l of war. invo l ve, and threatened sa id to so differ co nv entiona l wars ( t he World Wars ) as to yield a CertFdnly ma s sive PX hAnges Gt1ch as nuc.le:ir wars exchanges such a s nuc lear deterrence presupposes , ar e neither envisaced nor fully accommodate d by tr·d ltional theories of Muc h at forcefully, by previo us human mili tar y cncounters. 1 This is at bottom because of their projected effect . , which are often f r om eit her just wars. new philosophic al reflection and inveRtigatio n is required, even if r a ther wel l -t est d and old-fashion ed moral princip l es will se rv e as initial ethical ba se. Al though nuclear wars are, thus non ex i s tent (extrapolat e va r ie tiea, objects, 1 nuclear wa rs from n very limited Ia fnr, only a decidedly menac1.ng class of proper have several distinctive properties nu .lear experlence 2 ) and come in several particular, confined or limited nuclear war s, of which tactical or st rat eg ic ar c subvarietie s, contrast witl1 lirge-scale nuclear wars (LSN wars) - - - ------- ---- -1, The US Catholic Bi shops i n t heir Pastoral Letter (PL) make the point forc e fully: 'Nuclear weapons •.. and nuclear warfare ••• are new moral issu s . •. The re exists a capacity to do something no other age could ima g ine: we can threaten the created ord 1· • • • We could des roy [God ' s] work' (PL, p.312). While the independent analysis offered in what follows has a great deal .i n common with the Bishop ' s position, it differs significant ly in removing the religious backdrop and associated fe a tures and, it is hoped, in bringing out the logical structure of the argument more clearly and sharply. To illust ra t e the differences tha t emerge with removal of the religious backdrop ~nd its the associated unity-of-ev il theme, consider what happens to two examples from PL, p.323:- First l y, peace is possible without religious enligh t enment if it is possible wit h it: religious enlightenme nt is not an essential c ondition as there implied . Secondly, violence does no take all the forms the Bishops tr y to give it , e .g. sexual discriminat ion is hardly a form of violence, pornography an aper tc without it , etc. It ia a serious m stok e to try to heap so many diverse and independent issues together under the one heading (forms or violence) along wi.th war aa if t hey stood and fell together, e.g. abortion and nuclear war. Note tha t referencing , ·where not through an au thor's name, :ls by way of acronym explained in the references at the end. 2. an The isolal ed, and unnece sary, bombing of two Japanese cities at the very end of World War II did not render that war a genuine nuclear war. Nuclear wars proper will he very different and v ry nmeh mo re horrifying. Nuclear wars proper, though elements of uncomfortab ly adjacent possible wor l ds, ought therefore to be onfined t o merely possible worlds. Enough of their features we can appreciate without their being brought to act~ality. 111hicl. r1c'ed not howe ver. be unlimited 3 • explosio n A large-sca le nuclear involv es war of l arge quantitie s of nucl ear devices ove r a sizeable region; a [unction of two main parameter s: distr i bution. Such strnt.egic ) nuclear quant l t leo of a war war quantity diffe rs which explosivc n, ts markedly limited, nnd (megatonn age wh ere from by the a of t:,Hget.s it i s ex plosive) limited assumptio n, the to and (tactical much or smaller chnr.uctcr i Rtic ,111.y arc cl rcumscr ibed, f or instance confined in pr i ncip l e to military inst al l ations in a given reg ion. Though t he focus in what follows is upon I.SN wars and th eir prev e nti.on, limLted nuclear wars are by no nucl.car arsenal means a separate st r ike 1 s ince a is a prereq utsite, an d th e probabil ities of escalatio n of suc l1 waxs to LS N wars arc high (given usual reasonabl e aosumptio ns second iss ue , et c. ). 4 Because of these of follow -up or connecti ons, much of the ca se made acainst LSN wars transfers to more limited wars, as wi l l become evid ent . How nuclear wars reHultlng d-Lffer from oth er war s: wars and states and th e -- ---------- - -- - -- llmltcd appropria teness of old er modelY and theories of war. of war that has dominated mucl1 thinking, including strategi c two party (or thinking, A model is th e severa l person) game or, as a complicat ion of that, th e clan or trib e bat tle ~. A picture of war thu s refle c tion r e quirement s for legitimat e and just wa rs, which technolog ical on advances have trad iti ona l now theo ry ender ed of war, emerg ed, inapprop riate ha rdly and especiall y sometimes surprisin gly, as a result inapplica ble. of The made no allowance for such J. Another dimension of varia tion concerns the sequence of the war, es pe cially the type of strike :lnvolved. Though the sequence is j_mportant for the mo r al ass es smen t , for example of th e ma in actors , it in no way alters the immorali ty of LS N wars, as will emerge. 4. 'T he overwhelm in pro babi li.ty [.is1 that a nucl e ar exchange would have no limits ' (PL, p.31 !+). He nce am, Jor org ument. against limited nuclear wars: t hat any such war risks , inde ed renders highly probable, an unlimited war, and the ris k is far too large to take. The point in fact follows by s Lrai g htforwanl a ppli a_tio n of decislon theory, multi.plyi ng the mass lv e undesira bi lit y (mora l and ot h ~rw ise ) of n LSN war by 'ts probabill ty gi ven a limited nuclear war.-Giv en th e character of weapons developme nt and present communica tion ar.rangem ents, the id e a of a highly circumscr ibed purel y nuclea r exchange between the s upe rpower s , perhaps in the European "theatre'' , is really a myth. 5. There was a substanti al element of sport (and connec ted features of prowess) in t radi tional wars tha t bas been eroded in modern t echnologi cal wars. Nuc lear wars may be not just un s po r ting , in that no notice is given, etc. , t hey a re also remote and impersona l, and different ly unjust, in a mu h deeper wa y, j phenomena ns mass bomb.lng o f lar.ge citJes, such a s Tokyo. rn1clear bomb.fng , wi.th And j t.' many occurred wi.th Dre s d e n and further crucial effects be yond mass bombJng, adds furthe r new d imens ions . Ycl lt is impor t a nt for tic argument 1Jnchors, Lo historica l were accounted unjust war l s essential ly a ma tter of states and their control: the Oxford Eng l is h Dictionar y acc ount, w~..!::_ is 'hos t .ile contentio n ar1ncd 'war' of content io n or comba t; cxct1i1nge is the actual e xp<irience . but other are not literal, but transferr ed, metaphor ic, etc. 8 proLagon ists, antag onists or players; means and or wrong. to elabo rate by means of forces, car ried on betwe en nations, states , or rulers, or between part i es in t he same nation or state' for control of the state7 ; noun linkages G to be awa re of what counted as war (the :emantice of the matter), and of wh Pn , 2nd why, w;-1rs an<l military ac tions Firstly , r e tain always a f nction of sens es of the States are the forces c omprising armed soldiers are the a nd comba t or forceful and typically viol_ent Thus wars ar _ external or internal states or their rule. (c.ivi.l), Thus too wars have grown in quantity and fr eque ncy as states hav e expanded , wars have changed as states have transform ~d, and nuclear war has emerged with nuclear states. lhf,on°tic al way then to eliminate wars is t o remove states : 6. An obvious :i.n short, wars ar e There arc interes ting si delights concernin g eve n the etymology of the term 1 war' , wh ich wa s deri ved from a term meaning 'confusio n ' . In particula r, 'it is a curious fact that no Germanic nation in early historic times ha d in living use any word pro pe r ly meani ng 'war'': Oxford English Dictiona rt ( OED) o n wa r, 7. But of co urse there can be something quite a nalogous to war waged between clans , gangs, multinati onal firms, even against Nature , and still more me taphorica lly against poverty, etc. To this extent , a strict definitio n of 'war' is being insisted upon. Even so the diffusion of power structure s the argumen t will direct us to, has to ex t end beyond just the brea k-down of nation--s tates. 8. Tn to thls category (si.n ce Natu re i s no naU.on) falls the ubiquitou s and unwa rranted war against Nature of modern times , wh ic h features just as large in Marxism as in capitalism . As could have be en guessed , someone .t was James - suggest ed channelli ng all war into "war'' in the me taphorica l sens e agai.nst that unarmed and nonaggres sive "opponen t'', Natur e. James proposed a s a substitut e for war proper, conscripU .on of the youth for a wa r again st Nature (see Wasserstr om, p.12). What it boiled down to, howev er , was that youth -was to be c hannelled into all the dirty work, in that way to acqui r e manly virtu.s mil i tary ac.tivit.ie s "rightly" i.nstil, especia lly discipline ;---but also service, devotion, physical fitness, con struc tive exertion, responsi bility, and order. Another less diabolica l sub st it ute for wars p r oper (in America n ecoropian literatur e) is through wnr gam es and other game s of competit i ve cast. Again specious arguments enter for t hose bringing- out the "best" in human males, etc . .:1n uut ,~01•1p of ro llt:ica l :.ind asso ci ated t cclmoJ .ogJ--n l st ru cture, and are nltcr i ng by the s tructu r e. Wars j _Lu a t from c an thu s be seen as a struct ural problem of (other wi se defect ive) politi ca l organ isatio n of states ; they are a ional fix , n struct ural malfor mation . helps wa r arise War Thls seman t.ically based pictur e of exp.la in why th e rad ical a rgumen t agains t nuclea r wars and deterr ence d t: vo lves into an war-m akers , argume nt agains t aga.in st states . In the fact ( s<'1 f-legit i.mise d) on the war-d eclare rs and tradit ional theory , wars wer e r estric ted to extern al wars, which were coni:;tr u ed as t heir r emoved t1 e right of r ulers (p ri nces) to conduc t for certai n politi cal purpos es; states or the argume nt was that priva t e person s with grieva nces had access to the c our ts 9, while states did not ( wa r s w_re, so to speak, the intern a ti.onal analog ue of th e law courts ). But this is itself a very sta tist conce pti on of th• legitim at e place of wars; ll1c• scmiJn tica i s not so rest.r .i ctive and permtt s intern a l wars with i.n i; t ate s, for examp le t.o end wars, injust ice, etc. Let. us a h OW\ ) V1_. r to brlng out what is differ ent now - confin e att e nt1on - basic and moat famili ar cas e, extern al wa rs hetwe n two s tates or sets (axes) of st a t. es , two-pl a yer ex t cr n;il wars. ·ompr litive game s, could be won. attent uated form for some "victo rs") Lhc World vfars. strate gy. surrou nding trad i tional ly firstl y for mass ive armed wa rs, Like exchan ges such as th •re may well be no winnin g in ar e as the of No r thern very hemisp here countr yside. Thus, and the second ly, for laying the was te _£Dint of of substa ntially substa ntiall y oblite rated 10 , (cxe rcl sed and most as nothin g all worse off than at the outset of the "play" . are huge war seen, to settle seriou s inters tate disput es , is remove d: a nothe r point of diff e rcn ~e , the phenom enon of wars that prepar ed that: That assum ption still held good ~hough in Wj th LSN wars it no longer holds; is settle d with main protag onists player s It war; assume d An LS N war could involv e destru c t ion of all main Wester n metro polita n agglom e ra tio ns 9. to main Hence elabor ately f0r , etc,), but which can never be pointf ully fought ; Thus Aquina s a nd Grotiu s for examp le (see Ba rnes , p . 776, top). The argume nt presup poses rather a lo t , includ ing a neat public /priva te dis t inctio n . Put Aquin as's way, it looks as if it could be readil y t r .-:m sf erred into an argume nt for intern atio·n al govern ment, or at least effect ive law-co urt s , Yet all Christe ndom was suppos ed a t that time to be one state! 5 hence t he ineviL Bl>Je emphasis on .l:..l!.E.~- deterrenc e. .:uid ot her Lhf' e lements o f gamesmen ship ha d a role in earlier wars, but it was not pu re de t e rr e nc e . to mil i tary Certainly , deterrenc e, bluff, Lastly, tradition al wars could be confined in tar gets r egn rd s ju s t wa r s ; and military e xchanges. principle 11 This feature iG fundnnent al as for, as will appear, wars that spill over in gross uni nvolved par t ie s sac rifice any pretensio n to morality. ways to The special effects of nu -lea r exp lo s i •cs , e s pecially operated in mass, mean however that large nuclear canno t w3rs be legitimat e ly confined. l1orrify lng det a i l i n popu l a r so 1rce s uz0ne <lestr uc ti on, s hockwav es, suc h effe cts gign nt l c fum i gat i on s §2. a nd th e e nti re l y rapid ••. speed special effects (presente d in Schell) include radioacti vity, pu lses, fireball or firestorm e tc., etc. As a result of these of exchange, LSN wars will resembl e mor e than they re semble old e r - style war:s. The mora l s ituation: be c ome as el ec troma gnet1 c <lcv .,su1t .i o11, rog ue bac t e r in ;.rnd viru se s, com pounded Th e se the r ecent tend e ncy submerged in the context of war. of moral considera tions to It is particula rly important i n t he ca se of war to mainta in a firm grasp on the ancient distinctio n mo r a lity or local or nat :l. onal and ~ ..e5:..diency. What is done in war, especiall y between advant a ge, may be very diff e r ent from what ought morally to be done, whether the l ') . There is however the degen e rate idea of war as i.nvolving annihilat ion or extinctio n, and of winning a nuclear war as annihilat ion of the enemy whil e no t be i ng e ntirely annl.hilat ed oneself: the side that somehow "survlves " suff ic iently to r ebuild is said to "win". But this is, at best, an extremely t e nuous sense of winning , wl1ich in any case neglects the medical ev idence conce rning nuclear destructi on. Recen t t alk a bout winning or even s urviving a nuclear war must reflect a failure to appre ciate a medical reality: Any nuclear war would inevitabl y cause death, disease and suffering of pa nde~onic proportio ns and without the possibili ty of effective me d ical int e rvention (PL, p.313). Mo reov e r an y such phoenix war is r adically unjust, because of violat ion cf the tr adit i onal requireme nt of pro portional ity, and for other reasons de veloped in the tex~. Unf o rtunat e ly as doc umented ir Sch ee r, significa nt off i cials who are resp o nsibl e for the nuclear destiny of the USA - and so of t he world t hink that the devast a tion o nuc l ear war an be survived by Americans and t hat a gl oba l nucl e2 r war can actua lly be "won"! They re ly , among other things, on a n incredibl y low , and unaccepta ble, redefinit ion of "winning" . 11. In prac t i ce they often were not, they drained limited economies , they layed wa s te countr yside (though to a minor extent compared with nuclear or c hemic al wa rf Rre or mod er n min i ng), im poverishi ng inhabit·n ts, etc. l all('.l" f u determ in e d usi ng the cod es :ind conv en l:lotH' Much t.h at oug h t war , of or othenlis e 12, not t o be do 1c i n wa r is do ne, for one (alleged) advantage or anothr·r, desplte modern m:i l tt ar y cod es a n d co nv ent i ons ani the like . we liv e not go in a rat her bar barous age : unremarke d, if the th e horrors of the twentieth century will history Furt.l1c1inore rn Ll tta ry t h i nki n g a nd ge t s writt e n as wi pi ng moves : based on "stra t e gy" disad van t ages , of mor a lly excluded actions, ·a J.culaU o ns. charncterist i ca---1J:x its is. that rur al populations, be come real 1o ss ib i liti e s, included in o t con,w<ptr·n ti nli.sr d0.Lcrmi nes (accurately) str ate gtc pl an n ing tend (.1s Nagel ex plains) t o induce a ce r ta i n mo ral numbing, so th a t a r ang e such Hllitarily its e xp<'di e n cy . by gains own i.t _o u~ !:_, morally, cons i d e r i n g and Eac h side only lo s 8e s a s a in a military encounter own its advantages and r e sult. of alterna tJve possible to consider those of the other side( s) as well. In t h is way stra t eg ic planning di s places morality . I nd eed l t ha s been contended that wa r should be planned and conducted wa y, a no-holds barred combat fought to the maximal (local) advantage, without l i mit s , moral or other (except insofar a s technology limits the means of eLc.) . Such t he class lcal through "bald an inc r emental a distinct nrgumen t tc.tt1s . g a r gument from an t ha t th e It would And (bu t The externally wil l be broken by each pl a yer in turn for advantag e . ext r aordi na r i l y na rrow motivat1ona l bas e i s assumed. the of li mit) escalation man" f a llac yi 3), t hat there can be no limit. assum p tion is t hat a ny merely s e lected limit (as enforced force, Js the so-called "classic " view of Clausewicz, oft: repeated. Cl ause wicz Lr ics to argue, reall y this Thus t oo follow from i d ea of a limited wa r is some so r t of contradiction i n nut i t i. s not, though breaking off i n the he at of war, or the s upposedl y l imited nucle a r exchange, may be s ingularly impr obable . c onfusion Nuclear 12. For a s Nage l c ontend s (early on), there are moral restr ic tions on the c onduct of warfare which are not legalistic only and which are neither a r bit r a ry no merely conventional, nor a mat t e r of usefulness. These t li cn1<•s run er Lindy co11n t •r Lo the. cll.llrn :l.c t heory of war of Clnuscwic z - n th e ory outlin ed In Walz e r. 13. As one l e s s hair does not, at any stage, dis t inguish a bald man from a hirsute ma n, there a r , starting from the hirsute end, no ba ld men. Th e prog~e ssiv e escalation ar.gument concerning war is an inc remental ar gument Jike the t e chnic a l Sorites syJlo gisms , formalising the type of fallaciou s a r g ume n t which shows that one more straw never makes a heap. Th e fn l l;i.cio us e scalation argument 'i. s pa rt of the so-called "logi.c of war ", f or more on whJch see the conclusion of Appendtx 1.. i' war s thus appear dec i dedl y Cla usewiczj_ a n . for the l anc, r or players Still the !irgument is inc onclu s ive; can choose, at leafJ t J n sma ll er calmer wars, not t o e scnlate, examplt!, agree to abide b y arranged practlccs , t y pes of we a pons, etc. l· 4 A s t 11tc engaged in war se ld om sees i t self a s e ntirely bound by of mo ·al i t y: lt i s t ake n to be me r e prude nce on t he pa r t o f those attacked to take account of the no-imr oral- holds-ban:-e d appr oa ch t h e y c<;p,~, f,11 ly t lw 1 constraint s from the ot her s'ido. 11w~Liou not onl y as to ma y well enc ount e r, So 0a , h g1·oup po t e n t i a 1l y e ngn g cd in war f;1cps it wlw t o u g ht to do in mor a lly permi ss ibl e si. lu<1tlons , but al s o both wha t i t ou g h~_ r ea l ly do, a nd wh a t it can morally do in the morally flawed situati on s it finds i t s e lf. But the last question do e s not, in tli,1L cnsc•, r e d uce t o o ne of ex pe di e nc y . There i s no que st ion, then, of moral i t y giving or having 0:x.pe<.lienc y, even under extreme to give way to circumst a nc e s such as the prospect of LSN war involves . Fo r it i s not as if s haky con Ri de r a tions of give to the f i rm ground of exped iency when t he c hips are down, since often way morality eno1gh such mora l ero s ion does not occ ur in c risis s ituations. t hcorc~ical fac t is that both deliver f r om us But the the vnlue the o q'.: . to Expedlency fact, but urg('s , tba t does foreign takes local va l.ue s - o f sel f , family, clan, class, or nation - ar e conside rat i on s . proper charact risa t i on , a remote By cont r ast, mo rality requires, as a matter of its much univ• r sa lizable mor e univ e rsal pr inciples . rePultan t i1,tersu bstlt uti vit y fairness, eq u ita billty and of value and, And morality thereby imposes, through principl e s, jus t ice. distributio n c ertain requ i rements of general Ex pe di e ncy yields an unfair , inequitable value system, one tha t subscribe rs would not a dh e re to if differe n tly Ttie no t It assumes, or what really coun t, and ov e rride or are t o be max imized at the expe ns e of or to cruci al simply narrowl.y-co nstr;.icd l oca l a dv anta ge or powe r a s wha t i s valuable . even bound moral i ty a nd expe dien c y fall within the same, eq 1:. 'J l y f~lrnky or equally sol ! d , doma tn_ of v al ue miraculousl y are placed 1 :., . Jeep thcorcL ical u1 s ati sfact orinc ss of ex pedi e ncy, and associa t ed strategic Lhinldne , n l so Jer lv ci; from Lh i s faU. ur e of ·va l untioi1~:; pe r so ns X and Y are interchange d under 14. 11nd r es ults not ho ld -f ng whe1 i nt e rr e pla cement, from the same As Wa l zer a r gue s, p. 24. An histori cal ex ample i s the era of ge nu inely I imi t cd w:1 rs l n Europe fo ll owi ng t he hilrba rl s m o f th e Thirty Years war. B . expr d 1e1cy assessm ents 16 • ic c~ n For expedie ncy loes not elude deontic presen tation: be pr er;ented as through such popul a r slogans as "local might i.s right", or ft lvcn tight formal rest•mb le charac terisat ion . The charac terisat ion will normal ly that o[ utilita rianism , except Lhat util i tic . are only assigne d to, or arc bi asse d in favo ur of, certnin indivld u~ds. Howeve r, theorie s of ut.llity ~ol have to he posi tions of expedie ncy if utility is 11ot locally confi ned. util llariun ism prope r is not to be dismiss ed as cnn Thus onside ring only expedie ncy; intcrsu bstitut iv:i. y rc'quire ments of morali ty ; meet do it Lt does not, unlike the me hods of war game theory, assign differe nt weights to the individ ual uti.lity of ( ce rtnin) Americ ans, as opposed to Russi ans , say. There are dc•ont.o .logis ts r egardin g war mora ll y howeve r signlfic a11t e.speci ally, 17 • which differe nces, between utilita rians serve to further compli cate the moral pie t u re In particu lar , utilita rian approac hes have permis sible, or to seemed to effect some to rend er justify , ugly strateg i es and practic es as regards ~nemy civi. lians, that deonto logical princ iples wo uld not permit. already and partisa nship , since utilita rians But this is would reject the descrip tion of pr.ctic es permitt ed under thei r princip les as 'ugly'; wherea s an a im in what follows is to avoid meta-e thical me ta-ethi cal neutra lity, though of course not there is a neutra lity. to achieve And morally large area of consen sus, or at least moral converg ence, from which ar gumt'n l ,an bt'gtn. S('Vcr al moral partisa nship, VJ.rtua ily all positio n s grc• that the obltter ation of major ci ties ln a LSN war. would be wrong, indeed morally outrage ous. If tltere is diss e nsion, as there may be among nuclea r stra tegists who seem to feel no qur.Jms when lt. comes to trading loss of some Americ an cities for some Rus si a n ones, s imply increas e the costs involve d, up to loss of whole nations if l.5. The severe limitat ions of t:hoBe l esse r ''virtue s ", nationa lism and pAlriot isrn, also come from the failure of replace men t which exces siv e applica tions of nationa lism easily engend er. Try for example swappi ng a person from inside the homelan d with one from outs i de as regards treatme nt. The point of, and reaso·n s for , intersu bs t itutivi ty as a require ment of morali ty, is well explain ed in Har e , p.78ff. Hare applies the require ment to make a telling case agains t nEtion ali sm (a case which exte nds to strat eg ic decisio n-theo ry). Nation alism, al ong with fanatic ism, is the main cause of war, so Hare conten ds, p . 72. 16. The case aga inst expedie ncy was develop ed in detail especi ally the critici sm of Thrasym achus in The Republ ic . 17. Thus the differe nces between Nagel on the one side, and Brandt and Hare the other, i.n Collen et al. by Pl ato ; see on :iccesi:iary , unti.l moral repugnanc e :fs Tile ncounlere d; _!: hen try to work down again. fact remains howe ver that Jn the nuclear area things have got substanti ally oul of perspecti ve, morally. abandon or Strategic thinking, i n particula r, has tended to suppress moral considera tions ( as indeed theories of the state also do, somet imes flamboyan tly, in favour of partisan values). Naturally Lhe fact of broad consensus as to the morality of th e matter does not m ·an that there are none who would welcome such outrageou s happening s, that to t al nu clear destructio n of the North even, would be Cons id er t he w11rld ,·inpl r1•. be so thern risi.ng (hemisphe re) no one's advant3ge . strongman , SS, who has v :lsions of Wlillo l.lH' t,uperpowt• rn of lli<' no ·t. h rcm:i in, SS ' 1.1 dnwm ·a n realised. Thus his best strategy, having rid s ubmarines and ·outhern lands of US bases, is to try nil lear to exchange in the North, There would southern to be waters encourage a hardly an of US all - out point then in securing institutio nal arra ng emen ts so that potential SS's do not accum ulate much espe . ially given the apparent instabi lity of crucial world arrangeme nts. tlrnt is to nnt1eipnt e: lhc present point :1. has and tts power, limitatio ns, is an thnt ( t he fnct of) moral inadequat e But conse nsus const r aint without accompany ing struct ural adjus tments. For , typJrnlly , <lifferc11 tly to nationa l impose interest ls taken hosta ges or override morality, e ven holding civilian populatio ns kill:lng m111.lons in the national :i.nterest 18 ). unfortuna tely, these assumptio ns are not confined to more totalitar ian such as of those those of Eastern Europe. things. substitut ion of jus tificatio n; fails in The first, expedienc y , . C.!.BSSC,S And, regimes, But morally national interest can do neither the overridin g for morality , of morality, which the second, the alleged mor a l dominance of :important or irresi stibl e ethic a l claims t ha t dominate mo r e ordinary cthicnl considera tions (such as those conc er ni g nuclear to is entirely national simply lacks the mo r al interests , of cases, including , so the argument wi.11 go, the case of LSN war. 18 . As Sche ll blun l:ly puts it, 'What io being cl.aj_med is that one or two countries have the right to jeopardis e all countries and their descenden ts in the name of certain bel iefs' (p.132). However this way of putting it leaves room for ambiguity , since the belie fs may be morally grounded rat her than based on national interests . Stales may i ns i st upon opera ting one self ish national interest basis , Ii:!. It nol be pretended expcJ i<"ncy (na me l y , that tha t of it i.s "group but n montl basi, as distJnct from one of ego1 sm " ). There no 1s special moral d.ispensa ll on fo r governments. j ndiv iduals : ther e ia no loe;i.cal diffe ' nee .ln the patter1 of jus ti fi.cation, or analys is of obligation. Morality works :ln the same way for groups as for For e xample , what ought to be as regards Xis (analy~ed semant i cally) what would happen as reg a rd s X in all ideal worlds; no di ff e r e nce organisation. extenuating killers: whether X is an · individual States such as Israel (in i ts recent invasion reaso ns aside, be having just as beeu conce ded , special moral dispensations; more Lhan tha.t and do not sta nd up to crit.i.cism. cannot immorally makes system, grou p or of Lebano n) are, as brigands or mass there is no moral difference. Certainly t here are gro unds on which states or individual or and it f11rnish two (incompatibl e) their a gents 01: have claimed , but the excuses offered are no A moralities , a s atis factory state moral theory or public one and a private or individual ci tiz en one - state expediency Rnd individual morality becaur;e thi s would lead t o violations of sub st itutlvity , neutrality, etc. 1 '3 ins t ance , a state ope ra ti e X could us e s tate mor~lJy impermi ssi ble ways, ways ruled Y are permuted . special 01 1t cover (e.g. to considerati.ons citizen Y in by state interests) when X and A group or organisation or pe rson can be der iv ati ve damage For bound of course by in virtue of role, but these are der ivative prin c iples - good for any such 1nstitution - which fit within and answer back to general moral principles. So it is also with a state which is an institutional arrangement justlfied ( i nsofar as it is) by the way it answers back to some least) of its citizens: its charter does not legitimate emergent allegedly 1orR l principles which convenien tl y coincide with those of state expediency . particular, a sta te is not 1 morally) survivrd . In entitled to risk the lives of many of its own citizens and of other p~oplcs and creatures for its own ends, even ow n ( at for its Thus it is not entJ.t led to do what both nuclear war and nuclear de terre n ce r equ l re, as will emerge. 19 . There a n ~ also othc•r arguments agai nst two (or see Routley a nd Plumwood. multiple) morality Lines: 11 !-: ' ) 'j.J. The i_ni t i<d argument p:1cifli;m yield arguments to the tmmora1 lt.1_ of _ LSN wars. to tb e 1mmora1it.y of war. But 1wch a rgum ents ;ire controversi a l in an area where th ere is no go od r·ason to Argumen ts be for controve rsial. Pacifism can accordingly be se t aside as a spec i a l case, stnce the immorality of LSN wars follows . All but pacif is t positions concede that war in itsel f is not a c rime. nil wars are immo ral, though eve n inoffensive wars may be pointless or inferior ways of settling po litlcal issues between states . wa r s who Not are Among more or l es s admissible th e inte rna tiona l " tourname n ts '' of arlstocrat ic young men or warriors volu11l'cer :w Ho ldlers nnd whos<' actfon does no t 6pi.ll ov er on to noncombar.an ts , a nd some early a nd medievvL wars , wh ere few or evet no combatants were kjl.led in war. conscrip tlon, Since the esta bl i shme nt press-gangs and recruitment of such of the lHrgely ceased to take these less offe nsive for ms; induction prac tices as near-d es titute, wars hav e modern massive war s are far removed from the ideal war-tourn ament typ es (which fea ture now only in ecotopian por traya l s, in ways that are in creasingly dub ious ). imrnornl, Most s orts of wars are because of what is done to the essentially un5_nvolved, but few to such a n exte nt as LS N war s . The first argument to th e immorality of LSN wars and of sufficientl y larg e-sca l e wars ge neral ly, takes the following form: Pl. The (deliberate ) killing in mass of noncombatan ts is wrong. P2. LS N wars involve the killing in mass of noncombatan ts. P3. Wha t inv olv es wha t Is wrong is wrong . ( KA) LSN wnrs ar• wrong. The parttcular a rgument g lven i s ju st one r epresenta tive of a set of Lhis type. the (KA ) t·cpL1ccs But the qu1. te 'kl.11:!.ng su ff i c l en tly 11v :i.l. crcH tu res' . Thu s t n ma ss o f noncombatan ts' by a cl~rnse concerning 'huge des truct-lon of 11.f esty l e of uninvolved or i. nvolvecl f ocus can destructio n cf li.festyle of nonhumans and humans fJJ i k(~ Ll w t :in L'., N war wJ 11 brf ng l a on arguments Cha racte ri sti cally, in Western culture, it is thought that mass kl l Ling of h11m<1ns ls a bout the worst th i ng that can happen. vadu tlo n of not ll fir s t uitable directly Other vuriatlons will emerge in the di.scussi.on (i.ncluding th at: where the bracketed 'de.liberate' figures ) . The argumenL Js valid, ,1L t a .kcd) on the basi :3 but of may each be attacked ( and of its p1·emisses. has in ef fe ct been Let us consider these in reverse order. The principle, P3, used in the argument, that what involves 11 what is wrong" is -wrong, has been c hallenged on r:1ther Scholastic grounds. There are, in partic ular. problems like those generated by Good Samaritan arguments, purport o shot.J tha t some proper obligations involve wrongdoing. as~~lst.i.ng :rn in jured robbed per son is said robbed; but, s ince the ro bbin g is wrong, to "involve." providing For which instance, that person ' s assistance belng is also wrong. But thes e pr oblems derive from too slack a not1on of i.nvolvement; w:i:th a tighter accoun t of invo lvement th e problems disappear and P3 stands . 20 As aga inst P2, it may legitimately directed be argued against that mi lit ary nuclear targets. wars can be encounters But given the character of nuc lear wea pon s, LSN war s could in no way be co nfined to such targets. net merely the likelihood that many missiles ex plode off target, ther e are all the ot:he r eff ects of large-scale nuclear. bombings. fnlloul There i s down-wlnd from military pcopJc, es pecial Ly in the cas e of uninvo.lved co u11 t rl cs aucl tnrgcts US and For example, t he radioactive will affect large conc entratio ns o( European t argets , and may affe ct as Conn <l o. There may be an attempt to avoid the problem of massive civilian casualties by appeal cffcrl ) 2 1. t o s uch dubious pri nciples as the doctri ne of double effect (or side If missiles wer e c haracte ristically r.eliAbly on target, and one 20. The challenge to P3, which is often expanded to a "distribution of obl igat ion over entailment " pd.nciple ,, can be removed by a ti.ghter involvement connective, linked to a good paradox-free entailment. For de t a il s s ec Routley nnd Plumwood, where Good Snmar.i tan problems arc diagn osed. 21. According t o the doctrine , which is one concerni ng responsibility, we are rcs ponsJblc only for the intended e ffects or consequenc ~s of our freely-c hos e n actions, and not for other (side) effects or consequences, even U these are foreseen and/or intimately tied to the intended conseq uences . Unless carefully hedg ed, the doctrine is pernicious , a llowing those who suitably adjust their intention to escape responsibility for evi l th e y knowingly perpetrate. Thus, for instance, a Russian supreme comma nd which intended only to take out US military targets would, under double effect , have no responsi bil ity for the resultant effect on American and Canadian cities! Taking the i ssues concerning do ub le effect to a more satisfactory conclusion would however require a larger theory of action, which duly dis tingui s hed acts (what is done) and outcomes from attached intentions . whicl1 was intend ed unfort unatel y only went off to destro y an unma1H1<HI und e r g round Such claims shou ld be reject ed : ci ty. dou bl e effect Noneth e l ess the circum sta nc es differ ence , for they m.ay mitiga te atti tu des to tho s e rcflpo ns lbl f' ,1 for firing the nd ssi.le, .·i.nce the the thr actjo n would be wrong, and th e ~.:_~:~ ~css nol ]c$sen cd by the g lv n lntent l.on. innkc silo course and destro yed a large ci ty, it c ould be claime d th.:it t.h ~~ (uni.nt cndcd) mass dest ructio n is legitim ised under could missil e j t was not as if t he y had del iberat ely aimed at The double effect princ ipl e confla te s [dimin u tion of] respo nsibil ity Assign ed for an act with the [dimin ution of ] wrong ness of the act. ~s agains t Pl, and as regard s the middle term of argued tha t there is an impor tant equivo cation . the br~cke ted term, ' delibe rate ' . killin g and P2, it The equivo cation is induc ed by be conc eded that de libera te milJta ry , e . g. farmer s or goods or servic es bootma ke r s or ente rtaine rs . used exclud ed as innoce nt . The s econd d~ten sible - versio n of pr emis s P2. other. for re a sons, it by proper ly point concer ns a much narrow er - and les s Bec a use P2 s o amende d is less defen sible, is bes t to l eave out the "modi fier" 'd el ibera te'. What is import ant for the presen t purpos es i s the moral status of what is mixtur e of tha t wi th the motive s of the perpet ra to rs. requir e the qualif icatio n 'delib e rate' or done, So 'delib erate' gets left out, equiv ocatio n is avo ided, P2 stands , and so does Pl. not t he Second ly, it will be conten ded thAt LSN wars do no t i nvolve t he delibe rate killin g of t hos e a It no means al l inn ocent , many being direct ly involv ed in mi litary ef f ort, whethe r just as taxpay ers or as s upplie r s of not be charge d firs tly that noncom batant s, insofa r as they are distin guish able, by and ma y of genuin e innoc ents is imperm issible , two challe nges will be made . will b are While it will Pl For Pl do es 'int e ntiona l' or the like. 22 Admit tedly nlso 'nonco mbat a nt' is a fuzzy term , but none the worse for that, and Lhere is no seriou s p·o blem in markin g out a class of clear noncom batant s, people who a rc not <lir cctly involv ed i n the comman d and J.s, mnrco v'r, no need to adopt action chains . There the prncti c e , derivi ng from catho li c ism, of statin g rn init i.al verslo n of Pl in terms of in noce nts at l e ast as proble matic 22. Despit e Na3el ' s sugge stion that it does (p.158 ). The sugge stion depend s upon oimila r mistak en assim ilati ons , of ac t wi t h intent ion, and wrong ness with respo nsibil ity, to t ho se of the double effect doctri ne. ,1 rlns:; ":'i ,c mnk.t~ t,-,nt of r~on ,~omb:1t ants to try t:(, endenvourlng c..hnrac t er i z .. , -- Rnd then i:h c dif f ic11.Lt transiti.on to noncombatants. there Nnt only can arguments aga i ns t the premlsses of the argument be met, .tr,~ for ;ir311mcnts the prt:'ndsses, thongh for t he subc-tant iv e moral premiss Pl and Lhcy aru of the cha tacterlstlcally nonconclu sive moral sor t tend will For examp le, one argument for v3ry sowcwhat with th e underlyi ng ethical th e ory. Pl, .rnd for objecting to the kil l ing of non~ombatan ts, ts the Kant i a n one, (to poi.nt) , re s pect: owe d to tnem a<· pc so ns mi n f nn l from -~_gume nts §4 . the understate sc,rio usly doing so 23 histori_ca~ __ ..::_e~qu i rcm nts on wars, just ur dreamed by conlemporary "free·-enl<'. rp r fs c" cap:l. Lalist st.ale (and opponents communis t im portant the The conclusion t hat LS,' wars cacno t be justly waged - nnd accordingly are ?njustified - 1e that fail s to treat them with the .0..1~Jl~l5:!..'..~- from con-:_er_ger~£:::J and cnv.t ronment al arguments . r.;omet. lti to of is Americ a inspired, me r ely not or et c), th e of same The conclus ion fnlls out of vc1rlouR trc1dj t i0nc1l requirements, worked out i.n mediev al t:irnt•s , (or jusL wars. first One of t h e r equi r ements gives but a varia nt on the ;>1 :irgumen t (KA). · 1 For a necesso r y co nd i Lion for fighting a wat· justly was th a t it to no t be the case t hat large numb e rs of [innocent] noncombatants are bound killc.:<l (cf. be Barnes , p .77.5) . A just war req ui res just means , that t he war should be fought by morally which impli es in partic ula r that there is no indis c riminate killing of noncombatants . The implied principle was escapsulated in a princi pl e legitimate of means , discrimination (betwee n combata nts and othe rs) whi c h 'prohibits all actions directly intended to take the lives of p.312) /. ~:, . civilians and of noncombatants' (PL, LSN wars, where not only military installations are targeted, violate ') ( I.lits ·cqulremcnt '' . 7.3. Of course there are co~nterarg uments too , and not merely from t c military in the case of small numbers of obst r uc tive noncomb a tants. One ;.rngLP favored argument is a va r i at ion on the Bald Man: the re is no clear line between combatants and noncombata11ts. Howe v er a s Nag el a rgues (p . 20) there in are distinctions between t hem, firstly in terms of thei r roles , e.g. c,irry-Lng or u!,in? ;irm · o r dircc . ing t. lnBe who do, a nd s econdly in terms of See a l so PL , p.312, where a their liarmf.uJ.ness , the threat they offe r. uj rr.p1, and ef fec ive paradigm case nrg11mcnt is up pli ed . 2 1~. Note th at throughout, tile• te:xt adopts Llie OED eq u.:itio ns, reflecting common lust wit h mo~ally right or correct, and unjust with morally usage. of - - - -··---·-- Overlapping the requirement of Just means is thac 6f being that of net evil to net good: pro ro rLi on cor; tr-: up proporclonality, 'the damage to be infljcted and lnc urn.> d by the war must be pro porti.onate to the good ex pect ed the damage and costs , req 1irement: disproportio nate to goods moral pr0p0 rt lonnl ·l ty re qui.r ement i R er i t1! rlon of the which doctrine through war . "improvement" ln achieved of confined, nationally no t ar that way. ov e r a ll co n sequences of abstaining i mprov ement "puts wrongs to righ ts": c ondi. tion s "nmel.ioratlve " wn y the 'a nation wages war justly than Similarly on l y if the for that nation or the wronged n8tion it is supporting have a decent s:1tisfy for bad, from war ' (Barnes, p.72) . LSN wars can in these conditio ns, as scen.-i:rios depicting the aftermath of s 1ch Some oft.h e lesser r e quirements for a just war are also wa rLl , nnd war According to the fl.rst, 'X wages wa r c han ce of be ing better after the fighting ends' (Wakin, p.20). no are Entangl ed with the justly upon Y if the overall consequences of wa r a re bette r, or less th e taking by p,312). 27 Tt Ls not difflcu lt to see that LSN wars violate this (PL, arms' the e :a mple that of infringed reasonable expectation of success. by LSN It seems that tl ie r· c ca n b e no rea onable expe c tation of suite success in nn LSN war ·- whatev e r t!il' v0 ry d lf !<r<' n t'Jy, cx rhanges . 1 lmilcd prospccUJ of: succl'SS for whatever the p rospcct:s of succf•ss in Wha t some sm11ll strictly state limited clltc , or nucl ea r is le ss clear cut is th e question of whether LSN wars conflict with th e requir ements of just cause or due fnu lt, and of right intention. Fo r One (by no means be arg ued to in various ways. c onclusive) way is Nage l's way, from the requirements of directness and r e l e vance in combat, the underlying ( co ntroversial) principle being that, 1 wh<1tcvcr on<.> does t:o another person inte ntionally must be ai med at him as a subject, wlth the intention that he receive it as a subject' (p.15). 25 . Til e principle can 26 . wars where t he targets ar e c8 s cntially military ones, and noncombatants are unaccountably killed "!nd:lrectly",would b~~ :i.ffe r cnt. Such wars are no t however excused by t he For such wars remain unjust on pe rnicious doctrine ~f double effect . on lif e several counts, e.g. they inflict disproportionate damage, e.g. As Zuckcrmnun says, 1 Tt is st ill inevitable t hat were s ys tnms, etc. mil i tary i nstalla t ions rather than cities to become the objectives of nt lack, millions, even Lens of mlll.lons of ci v.Lli a.ns w-ould be nucl 'lH kill e d .. • ' (quoted i.n Thomp s on and Sm i.th , p .14, where the italics are The situation witli strlctly llmi ted nuclear ndded ). Zi. Tli! r; i s riol Lo b e confus0d wi.tli wlwt lB very different, the vi.cious anclent doctrine of proportional response - an eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and so on - recently adapted by the Americans in their latest offi cial policy of fli>;,cib1e r e so0T1se. ,vii11~ted to the level " f att ack, t hi i, ilc> p e nds on the s e nsitive jssue of the weight assigned to what are se e n as b:J1; i c human r1. gh ts and fundame ntal value s , a nd the extent to which just wars can b e i.dco J og i.c a lly justif i ed. Whil<': the ma instr eam pos1.tion of medieva l theory oppo s ed to id e ologica ll y jus tifi ed war s a nd "humani tarian" wars, these wer e was no L ck f' nitlvely exclud ed by the trndiU.o nal theory ( cf. lltt J e is wlw n 1.;o m,rn y arc se nsitive howe ver, me rit, ( a nd when issue s will ari s e again subsequ ently). a r g uments are not do There .In puzzling ov e r dubi usly effcctlv e requirem ents, dec isive ng a lnst LS N war s h i st orica l r e quireme nts Barnes, p .778). not simply commit argumen t s matters underlyi ng the Finally , these argumen ts from any presc r iptive fallacy; from historic al autho r ity for to th e mo r al c oncl 11 s i ons, but use also premisse s to the effect that th e requirem ents imposed, a nd nome times applied , were justifie d. As they are. I n the Christia n traditio n t here were two main strands of r eflectio n on the mo ral rightnes s or justness of wars, the just war t heory and a rival pacifist str a nd, promine nt in early Christia nity, but largely submerge d from Augustin e on co ntempor ary u n ti l times. Both exc lude nuclear wars, one strand because they arc ine v i tably unjust, the other because they are wa rs and This ls the involve beginnin g of the converge nce argumen t agai ns t nuclear wars : such wari, a re exclud e d from all ethical perspec tives, once remov ed ( a nd e ven, howr• vcr you look conse ns us violence 28 • Ht very f requentl y , when it is not) . il morally . a r gument; it The argume nt i.s not proceeds expedi.en cy that is duly They a re morally wrong the same as the weaker fr om similar results from the full sweep of ge nui nely e thi c al position s, not from massive agreeme nt of opinion. The deta :! le d conv ergence argumen t is an exhausti ve case by case each type of moral theory. Fortuna tely deta ils can be de ontolog ical a nd contrac tual theories l ead back to requirem ents 28. one, from shortcu t. For for just war These alte rnatives are not as far. removed .r..ractic ally as may appear. For the aim of just wa ~ theory is not 'to legitimi ze war but t o pr event it. The pr1~sump tion is against the use of force ' (PL, p.312 ) . And ~..£. types of wa r s a r c ruled out by Lite theory. However not all wars or violent revoluti ons a re excluded , and that is enough to guarante e the distinct ion be tween t he a ltern a tives. In particu lar, defensiv e ware are allowed - at l e ast for th e defendin g side, though from a wider viewpoi nt these too may be co nd emned 'the classic case [of the just war] ••• was the use of l et ha l forc e to prevent aggressi on against innocen t victims' (PL, p.311). Und e r rec e nt internat ional law, defence , narrowly construe d, is the only legi Uma t e basis for wa r; Roma n law was only slightly more generou s, in a llow i ng for th e restitut ion of eoods (see Barnes , p.780). .l / whi c l1, it ha s ,ilrcady been s hown, LSN wai·s violate. w.1r were i_;ornctimes a rriv ed at or l n fact conditions for just defended through pr inciples of such moral th12ori · s , so tl,at a good deal of the r equls i. te argumentative been done . work already The latter point hold s a lso as r egards ut ilitarianism, where it has in c[fec t bee n c•hown that whatever br a nd of utilitarianism is maxim j.sati on utl lHy has is final ly ac complished, LSN adopted, wars are howe ve r excluded ut1· 1 ·Ltar1an · g r oun d s . 2 9 Tl,e reason f or suc1 l converg nee .i snot f ar to see k ; wars Llw l involv e on LSN 1:uch ma ssive infliction of pa in and colossal removal of pleasure, tills dominates i n assessmentn howev •r Lhey 1:1 te accomplished in utllitarlan Tilu s any genuine alternative to LSN war ls bette r 30 • L1i; ldon. The arguments ovcrwhc .lming so moral far case outlined against such mora J princi ples whi ch the waging of a n principles are de riv able from agains t some LSN wa rs. LSN would su bstanti ally wo rse are tha n exhaust th e violate thes e of the theories just considered). These ac countable, condition not ( again th e obligation to maint a in earth jn proper shape a nd not de grade it s systems : we do For there are oth e r significant war pri q•f pl es include e nvironmental ones, such ns : p,cnera tions, to whom wars we the r.-esponsibility to futur e pas s to th e " recei ved the world it". Such on" not in conservative principl 0s - howeve r they are finally s atisfact or i ly formulated - are bound to be vio lat ed in t he event of a n LSN war. §5. The shi ft to nuclear deterrence: suppo rt nuclear arguments to its immorality . Those who arrangements have had a way of halting - and if not defeating, certainly turning and deflating - arguments from the immorality of LSN wars , by pointing out that there is no actual engagemen t in any such wars. What i s being done ls, it is cla imed, quite different fr om war: deterrence is most important precisely engagement in preventing in LSN such wars from ever occur ri ng , as we ll as in mR int ai ning other fundamental Western values. it is continued , deterrence is the .9nly practical d e siderata, prevention of war and maintenance of values. way indeed Indeed, of obtaining both Similar arguments 29. For details see, e.g ., Lackey, especially MM. 30. An argwnent of this sort is devel oped in more detail, complete gc ner ality, j r Goodin, esp •c i £tlly 'Disarmame nt'. are But compare Hardin. though not in a<lvnncerl for all tl1e va ri ous guises that de terrence is presented in: mutually ;.~ssurcd des truction as fnrrnerly, fle xi ble r espo nse as latter ly, or otherw.ise. 31 Su,h c1aims as to the roles and dubious, for seve ral reasons. objective s of deterrence If i.t t.rere, "sufficiency" to deter would be an adequate goal. s uperior ity. than th i s, and sometime s even a mili ta ry goal. In fac t there ha s renewed driv e for Pure delerrence can account nei t her for act ual nuclear weapons nor for orthodox Wester n military strategy 32 process decidedl y A first reason is th a t there i s much e vid e nce, despite pronouncements, that dete rrence is not the - the only - been a que st for more are Nor has deterrence set in motion the of disarmament to be expected to reduce armaments to levels ap propriate for dctct"rence . On the cont rn ry, un<ler " its" impu.ls e there has been almost unli mi te d acce l era tion in building arms (to pa ra phr a se PL p.318). A other major re a son for serious doubt a bout what sold 31. is being 11nder "d e terrence" labe ls conce r ns th e _proba bility f actor: marketed a nd deterrence has It ts important to observe that the di sc ussion is not restricted to one form of deterrence, such as that of mutually assured destruction (MAD), but applies t o al l for ms of response likely to engender LSN wa r. This includ es "flex ible r es ponse", since the lik e ly further development i s massiv e ret al iation to a n ini tia l Soviet nuclear raid. Part of the reason for thi s is the extreme vuln erabilit y of the US defence systems, especially the communication systems, e.g. to early strikes a nd to electromagnetic pulses. In the result i ng great confusion, escalation appears the likely out come . I n a ny case, fle x ible response includes massive retaliations, as part of its ra ng e and is ultimat e ly backed by it. It is a l so im portant to observe that deterrence as practised is not confined to responses to (nuclear) a ttack. The threat of nuclear action has been made in cases where a rival encroaches on a zone of interest of a nucle a r power. I t is in part because deterrence includes nuclear responses to what is construed as serious misbehaviour of rivals that the practice of deterrence raises the probability of LSN war to the extent it does. 32. As to the firs t po int, there is not onl y overkill capacity and the driv e for suped ori ty ( oft e n repr esent ed as '"negotiating'" strength) but the matter of counterforce weapons which are offensive weapons. As regards the second point, US policy has been de cidedly expansionist with regul a r intervertion in o ther nations; there have been r epe ated US threats to use nucl0ar weapons, espec ially to deal wi th revolutionary activities in t he third wo rld , but also in Europe in "li.mited'" nuclear war; and i n official military stra tegy no s ha rp line has be e n drawn between c.onventi.onal and nuclear weapons: on these and other r elated points see furth e r Lackey MM, p.19lff., and also Thompson and Smith. The argument can be pressed [1rLher, to the alarming conclus ion that deterrence is larg e ly a front, which plays onl y a minor, but justificatory, role in actual US policy. Among fu rther evidence is behavioural data: a government with a genuine deterrenc e policy would repeatedl y emphasize its strength (even when it la c ks strengt h), whereas the US govcrrnnent ofte n parades its vulnerability and weakness in public . For other evidence see Smith, e.g. p.46ff. i.ncrt.:ascd the probability nrms-race type t hat of LSN war. More precis ely, deterrence of th e is being practised, which invol·es full-scale prepar a tion for Lota] nuclear war, has prepared the cond i tions for nuclear war to occur, and hns to that ,,,·te nt least en hanced its prospect s of occurring . at r easons also, connected with pure original setting), the last 30 years. the deterrence and with the For other "cold war"' (its probability of a LSN war has increased consid erabl y in The reasons include the threatening posture called for by deterrence, the propaganda, which comes to be believed, that must be promulgated to main tain credibility overridden or with ''sacrificed" a population whos e real for military objectives; state of military readiness; etc. The situation has many ther e sober analysts century , i.e. think before 2000 . is a high There are s e veral interests are being the dangerous and risky now been reached where pr obability of an LSN war this routes to such a probability assir,nrnc•n t.33 It wo uld only rccp ii re one in ' id e nt wi.th a 20% chance of leading to an rscalating wnr every 8 years between 1960 and Amer lean 2000. alerts, hav e been lucky already . In of nuclear markedly. the years ahead it appears likely that th e For the danger supplicant nations resources declines. and the worsens and the extent The danger is enhanced by connected increasing chance of the lot. 33. Cox). easily as the plight extractable continuation of of crucia l the arms of nuclear acci dent and human or t ec l1nical error, none of them negligible factors as (cf . :l.ncrease zones separating the superstates are increasing in sjze and number, with Soviet and American expansionism, and r e veals the exchange . number of incidents with a real chance of engendering nuclear war wil l race, on sidE? ;i.lone, have been at least as frequent, and sometimes , as with the Cuban missile crisis , carry a considerably higher chance We Full past experience copiously Such a sketch can of course be elaborated and tidied up a Even so every substantial point involved can be contested, and many are Another route to a moie than subjective assessment is to apply Delphi methods: weigh up the experts' a sse ssments. In this regard it is worth noting that it is not only ''nuclear doves" who consider the probability of nuclear war has increased in r e cent years. Amer ica n officials have themselves admitted that the policies of r ealis ing th e st rategic potential of counterforce attacks and of selective and flexible responses have increased the probability of nuclear wnr (Hall, p.128). 20 conlcntlous (thoug h not always for good reasons) . s e em s no way Fof better or worse, ther e to rna~e such an overall probability argument particularly tight; a nd ti1t: r E:! arc p] a usi. b le arguments , from the complexity of th e data concerned and t he conti ng ency of the future, that it cannot be made tight . IL is bad enough however that l.t 2-._~_ de c idedly pla usible that it proha bJ~ that LSN an war will d i st r ibu tion pri c iples) that it proba bl e that c entury. And that is enough a grossly occur this ce ntury. is immoral to decidedly morally on moral grounds, to change deterrence as policy is i.mmoral. For then it follows ( by plausi ble that it highly is sequence of events will be perpetrated this warrant morally to take acti on to avert the outc ome. de terrence highly is evasiv e act.Lon. We ought That in turn implies taking steps , presently practised. Thus present That i.s but the first of several ways we shall nrrivc at that damaging conclusion for pres ent super-state deterrence policies. The plnusibil ity of claims as to the hi gh or increasing probability of war h a s of cour s e been disputed. LSN The mai n counte rargument runs as fol lows : Nuclear war is unlikely , be ca use the consequ ences are too horri fying. The underlying assumption i.s that wars and the like, with ar c improbable. assumption. Unfortunately however horrifying outcomes, much ava i lable evidence counters this More th an enough humans have not shrunk from brutal exchanges horr if y i ng wars , or even from genocide, as human history attests (cf. Kuper ). What ts le!;s assailable than the high probabili ty claim, what the ce r tnin ly Ther e by, through det errence, we si t uation, since have already got into t.h e probA.bility. immoral of r aising The mor e detai led underlyi.n g arg ument s , then, to the immora lity of nucle ar deterrence proceed by LSN an deterrence operates by the perverse practice of preparing for thereby perhaps helping t o bring it about, in the sense war, against evidence s eems to support, ls that there is a non-negl i g ible probability of an LSN war . LSN a nd way of princ iple s mapping war into ar.gum~nts a gaJns t deter r ence of LSN war. mi.gilt appropriately be called deont:ic connecti ng pr inciples . moral arg uments Such principles The fl rst of the s e principles t a kes the foll owing preliminary form: Cl. should If 1t is wro ng that X s ho uld occur, t hen not only be pr ob3ble is it wrong that it that X occur, but, more important, it is wrong to directly i ncrease t he pt' o ba bility that X occur . Thus, f or example , s i nc e is it wrong to ki l l a large noncomb atant po~ulatf on in LSN wa r (by §4) it is al s o wr ong to put the populati on at ris k and wrong to increase t he chance tha t the hostage popul a tion is wiped out, which nuclea r de terre nce does . botl1 of For simil ar r eas ons a super s t te is not morally entitled to im pose nucl ea r r i sks upon un invo l ved noncomb atants, esp ecial ly t ho se of third part y no nal i gned most Like "' t tuations . defeat by example , 0 t a te s . sub s t an ti ve Unless mo ra l count erexamp l es, the second principl es oc c u r s. probabi lity that par t princ ipl e s in Cl runs into dilemma. and of a c c ord i ng l y, Cl e ncount e rs to require complic ation. For apparen t trouble where clash of Thu s it may be argued th a t it is permiss ible to increase the oc curs X ord er to apartmen t bui l dings 3 4 • nuclec1r ethi s, d l l emmas a r e duly all owed for, Cl appears li a ble to t o avoid a greater evil. pilot who increase s the pr obabilit y c r ashes, in dct:crrcn ce , make that t he Cons i der for example the passeng er plane he ic flying sure that the troubled aircraf t does not hit cit y Suc h a defeatin g cond i tion do e s not apply in the case of ihe r e (though the r e explains ) wro ngness of a pr a ct ic e is not ls a of fs e t clash or of principl e s, as §6 removed by its role in avoiding greate r e vil. I L can be a r gued that it is: argumen t from t he pr e vious a r gumen t. de s erves lit t le perhaps f rom more such is pa rt of succe s s credence t he de terrence . th a n the of the popular However this inductiv e racing world As Barnett argues, driver's argumen t, 'the happy acciden t has surv iv ed the first thirty-f ive years of th e nuclear era is unimp r e s si ve e v i d e nce that we can avoid nuclea r war 34. point a s imilar time base, that because he hasn't had a fa tal crash yet (des pite some close calla ) , he won't, th a t of the in the coming era, This dilemma exampl e was s uppli ed by D. Johnston . There are more dif f i c ul t putative coun t e rexampl es. For example , in inciting people to c ivil disobedi ence, the ri s k of stat e violence in r etaliat i on is increase d. Thus, t o ta ke C, Pigden's example , 1.n encourag ing disobed ience, Gandhi i nc r ea s ed t he proba bility of wrongdo ing by the British Raj. But surely Ga ndhi, un l i ke th e Raj, did not act wrongly? It can be claimed that Gandhi d i d no t d irect ly incre a s e the probabi l i ty of viol ence . But spelling out what 'dir ec tly' means in terms of short causal chains over which r espo nsi bil i ty ca n be distribu ted - i s not only problem atic but leads on to ot her connect ing princ i ples. ·2 (p. 100) . lie offers fami.liar reasons suc h as the changing power incrt.' ,ise 111 Russian strengt h, the ri se r e 1aU. ons, th e of other nu c lear powcr·s, etc . (cf. simllarly Cox ). There ar e, a ccordingly, powerful reasons for concluding that Dl. De errencc will not continu e to work, and. more lmportant for the present argumenl, that D2 . De t e rrence does increase the proba bi lity of LSN war. The themes are of course i.nter related, and t he re as ons for t hem (which are again persuasive bu t in: oncl usive) can be t a ken together : some respects) weaker D2 ·- the probability facto r. proliferati on, the emergence bu t the focus is on the ( in An initial of lesser nuc lear powers. reason concerns As a result there are many more ways of starting a nuclear conflagrat.i on, and so enhanced prospect Some nnnlyula co ns id e r that lt. -i~i us e of nuclear weapons by confrontation a 11 lesser very Jf ke ly route to I.SN war l · th stat e . Moreover scarcitJ ;::i nd o f chea per suppli es, etc , weapo n systems, more or Lcrror s ltua ttons, deterrence power lnvolv e s 36 , being mainta.ined : costs Wi t h so many more Arms races, and interwoven balanc e of have an exc eed ingly bad 1,istorical track record. lncr cas lng as tl1c race p roce eds . of resource A second group of reasons concerns the Ther e is substantial inductive evi dence that pres en t for wi<iel y d lstributed, the probabili.ty of war through accide nt o r e rr o r is inc reased. powrr opportunities growing nuclear arms race which deterr e nc e, as practised, is ti ed to. wec1pons .lnltlnl to lead on to war are increasing, with increasing world political Jnstnbillty , relat ing to thlrd world economic de cline, and the of lead escalating eventually to arms war , races, with such as probabili.ty Next, deterrence dep ends on a certai n balance if that balance is unduly disturbed, as can happen during escalation, deterrence may well fail. A related reason for 35. that deterrence practice increases It can be the or etically a r gued t hat the fewer the nations weap ons, t.he l ess the chance of nuclear. war: cf. n 1clcar p .. 2JO n. 36. supposi ng th e armed with Lackey, MM, The standard ar gument for deterrence as significantly decreasing the proboblli y of wa r, would be decidedly better if the arms race were nbandoned, a nd weapons held at the much smaller levels required just for dcle rrenc e. Of c our se s uch a probability-well assumption is only one of scvera l_ thi. ngs required if det erre nce i.s to be just:!.fled. probabili ty of war conce rn s the continuin g shifts in poli c y, US especiall y th e rcncwc<l quest for superio rity wh i ch is in creasing the inc en tiv e of both sides to rcsorL to nuclcJr war, the USSR t o avoid being advantage of ov erwhelme d, USA the to take superiori ty ac hi eved . 37 Rece nt dangerous shifts in US poli cy the tow;Jrds war fighting a r e .in part induce d by a much inc re ased accuracy of nuclear missiles, which both weakens the case for MAD deterrenc e (sinc e mi l itary tar-gets con be selected for strike and ci ties to some extent r emoved as hostages ), thereby war. also weakens the case against resort to nucle a r detrrrenc c requires a certain (admitted l y r a ther minimal, ye t of mutual understan ding, leaders, and even some nuclear. sha r ed principle s , cooperati on supe r-states. and soundness transmi ss i on Finally, impor tant) level judgement among of of and informati on between It is not just that t he increasin g numbers of operator s in n position to J.aunch nuclear weapons must remain of " sound mind" and not, for instance, follow through on delusions of one sort or another. deterrenc e depends upon judgeme nts seriously mistaken: 'each is regarding the other It is al so tha t side , which slde ' s threat is to the other' (P L, p.313) . we think' • 38 But about what the o t her considera ble , and perhaps catastrop hic , margin of evidence, that on e perceptio n of what is possible resul t As s ide side thinks e rror. Not thinks , there only not can be is a there sid e (the USA) has misjudged the other side's (the USSR's) rational, as regards limited nuclear war, of a first strike countered by massive retaliatio n; must now be severe doubts cffectlvc ly. "conv inc ing " There is a grain of truth in the c1a"im that 'deterren ce is primarily about what t he other what be a t the mercy of t he o the r's percept io n of wha t strategy is "r.atio al", what kind of damage .is " un nccept able", how one may as to whether rationa l principle s are with the but there operating to the last consider, to take just one example, the erroneous 37. The point is discus sed in Dahlitz, e.g. p.213, where the US quest for super iority is doct1me nted. The v.lci ssi tudes of US "d efenc e" policy - not to say its shiftines s and occas ional incoheren ce (as in strategic forward defence) have confused many of lts supporter s even . Perhaps there is some advantage in the ver y incomplet e and limited exposure of USSR war and imperial policies : we don't see, wit h alarm, their incohe renc e and i.rrntiona llty . J8. Pym, quot,.• d .Ln Thompson , p .19. Yet a fundamen tal problem Russi a and the West fac e, Lt is sometimes claimed, is not merely that they do not understan d one another but that 'ther, is a lack of a wish to understan d'. This casts into douht the psycholog ical basis of nuclear deterrenc e. 24 idea (alread y allu<led to , as he l d in hi.gh pl a ces of powe r in USA and in UK) that LSN war cnn be sur viv ed i n r ud ime ntary s hel ters , and also won. The suppor ter of det er rence connec ting rrlnci ple s ri val case. such J1as not onl y to defeat a rgumen ts Cl, but, more difficu lt, to fie ld a convin cing as For the onus of pr oof lies in showing that the costly ~:.:..!.~_rr.cncc Ls justifi ed_. t hr o ugh practic e of Bu t for from th e fair ly decisiv (~ case that i s requi r ed ( Lo contras t with t he argume nt through Cl), only a feeble case through the questio na b le obv ers e of Cl, Cl i. If Xis wr ong then it is right to reduce the probab ility of X, nppears open . • For it has to be shown that deterre nce ( s ubstan tially) r e duc e s the proba bility of LSN war , and st ri ct lt (this indica tes part of the trouble with Clt) that deterre nce does this bett e r (more morally ) than availab le options . o The latter uniquen ess condit. ion ce rtainly fails, so it r,.,ill be argu e d. reasons already gi ven, does the probab ility claim. up i-hc v ery cond 1 t:1.ons probab ility of suc h for a an LSN war, it So , for When nuclear deterr e nce set s can ha rdly have reduced th e war , e speci a lly over the situati on a mere 25 years ag o when such an LS N wa r was not technic ally possib le. More genera lly , i n showlng that nuclear deterre nc e ls justifi e d, it i s c..! l1 0l l f',h refute the theme Lhat deterr e nce is wrong. LO out that deterre nce is permis sible, or alrigh t. altcrn1 1LJvc pe rmissi ble courses of a c tion condit:f . on ha s to be est a bli.shed ; to be no t merely alrigh t , bu t ;H:cc·p ' ah l<' cvidt!n tin l ato nd nrdA, r ig ht. But I t is not enough to make For t he re certain ly seem to withou t deterr ence , wh ic h appear more morally satisfa ctory. uniciue ne s s includi ng fright To surpass t hese option s, a nuclea r deterre nc e has to be shown es tablish ing such a 39. LSN war s , withou t .(cf. Jl 11 claim, to fear or is vf.nunl ly tmposa iblc. 39 OED) 40 • For most people, portray ing the horror of LSN wa rs would serve adequa tely enough from be the costs or problem s of Deterre nce cons ists in preven ting someth ing (often some wrong ) by t hr ea t s not the enormo us expense , t rouble vivid scenari os to deter t hem and wastage of An analogo us point will ap pea r whe n i.t is asked whethe r deterre nce is the way o ut oft.he nuclear fix, the thin g to persist with in the circum stances . Given that there are appare ntly super ior, le ss dangero us procedu res , the an s wl!r hn-, to be, No. - - - - - - -- - - -- - - - - - p r epar i ng to e ngag e i n th em. det t·r rl'ncc And deterren ce i.n a ny cas e de pends upon) is of by such means ourse not immoral . (whi ch miJit4ry (Sc.h e ll was not immora l in publ ish ing hi s gra phic descri p tions of the nuclear destruc tion of New Yo rk .) But t hou gh de te rrence per se is permi ssible, nuclea~ deterren ce, that is deterren ce by complete prepa ration for the object to be preven te d , is no t , where this o bj e ct, a LSN war., itself is no t permiss ible. The argumen t for this is thro ug h t he pr lnc J ple C2 . l f X is wrong then c omplete prepara tion for (carryin g out) Xis wrong. Hence since p re para t i on, LS N wars nuc l ear are wrong and nuclear deterren ce deterren ce of LSN wars is wrong . claimed th a t prepa ring for Xis just as bad as doing X: wr ong a n d Z ( mue h) worse t1wn i Y• wi11at W.'.1 S wrong. complete It is not however being Y and Z may both be 41 i s wrong i s b y no means un if orm l y ev1.1. " Tn 19115 Lhcre would ha ve been littl e doubt that L SN wa r implies complete prepara tion for Among the three types of crime s pecif led in Article 6 of the Cha rt e r f or th e I nternati onal Military Tribuna ls (which tr ied the major war c r iminals a t Nurcm burg) we r e Cr1- mes a ga ins t peace: namely planning , .:e_repar ation, initiati on or waging o f a wa r of aggr e ssion, or a war in violatio n of internat iona l tr eat:!.es , ag reements or a s surance s, or particip ation in a common plan or cons pi ra c y for the accompl ishment of any of the followin g ( cited in Ku pe r , p.2 1; ita lic s added). But af t e r ma ny yea rs of nuclear deterren ce, the become J ncreasi ngly liable to question . wrongne ss implied in C2 has However the doubts mainly come from 40. De t er r e nc e a lso commonly includes elements of mendaci ty, deceptio n, mi si nforma t ion, that is elements of what a re, for the roost part, morally unde sirable traits. Li l . Nor a re ordered be cause wrong, equally degr e es of wrongne ss required : wrongs can simply be as reg a rds relative worsene ss. The point requires some it has been quite erroneo usly assumed t hat if y and z cat egorica lly or absolute ly , then they mus t be equally evil. Thus, e.g. William s: . partiall y labourin g are both wrong or . there is no moral differen ce between running a deterren t st r ategy on the one hand, and intentio nally - indeed wantonly - start i ng a nuclear war on the other; so that the first is as totally evil a s the second. This is because both are held to be absolute ly forbidde n. Not a t a ll. The argume n ts from "Y and Z are both absolute ly forbidde n" to "S o Y i s a s totally evil as Z" and to "Therefo re Y and Z do not differ mor all y " a r e both ent:i.rely without validity . Compare : 2 is a number, and 3 lg a numbe r; s o 2 is the same number as 3, or does not differ numeri c , lly from 3! 26 a~sum ing t!w l comp l e t e prepara t.i o n i nc }udc i:; l ss t: lwn Lt nee ds to or do e s. Complete prepa ration for something, s uch as sever~] other fea tures. LSN war , already writes in In particular, i t presup po ses the preparation is no t ha1 (·-hea rt ed hnt is serious, is not merely for show and is not simply pret e nce. Obser e tha t mere pretence, or ot her more psychologic a l ploys, cannot substi tut e for comp l ete prepa r a tion in nuclea r deterrence. too sophistica t ed for bluff alone to Military succeed: t here preparatJon for wa r accompanyin g the t h rea t s involved in t he ot her hand , has to is now be serious deterr ence . But, on c omplet e prepara tion does not imply that what i s prepared for wi l l be attempted other than condi tona lly: imply attemp t ed X. c omplete preparatio n for X does not It does however 1.nvolve a conditional undertaki ng to proc eed with wha l is prcpa·ed whell1er intelligenc e for under c ertain conditio ns. Comple te preparation , for a we dding or murder or wha tevcr, wo uld be po int les s otherwise, so a (proclaimed ) comm itment to proceed under given circumstanc es c an be taken of connecting for granted . Principle C2 principles . is part way not the line in a series pr inciple of the same sort that is hig he r in the series is that A con necting X with a tt empted X: perh,ps down if Xis wrong then attempted Xis wrong as bad ) , whether X succeeds or not . But the se ries ends ; off well before th e l ower limits of i nte ns ionalit y, contrary to the (thoug h it cuts claims of various religious pos i tio ns. For example, it does not foll ow that if Xis wrong then X the co n temp l ati on con sidcra t Jon of of is wrong carrying out Xis wrong. or that non-action- oriented The point ap plies equally to sexual fant asie s, power fan tasies, and nuclear nightmares . no Lhing mere In particular, there is wrong with contemplatin g nuclear war, or reflecting upon it, as we are: nuclear wars, even lf their horrors don't be ar thinki.ng on, a re not unthinkable , and in some senses are all too thinka ble. Indeed one of the reas on s why the connecting principles appeal is that each common ly involves lt connects with. decidedl y increased pro ab ility of the wrongdoing or outcome Accompanyin g the increased probability are certain r eprehensibl e atti tud e s tied t o the ac tion t he evil outcome involves; nol I ho:a· of mere pas s ! vc .o nt emµ l at f on I,, 1 '. Howev er oll the sets of these are connectl.ng n prL nc lple s invoked except Cl ho l d, where the y do, ~, a n when the proba bi lity of wrongdo i ng ev e ntuating is not inc r eased. c ho:;c n One rea son for th1s is that the means o r epre hensible end s may be ineffica cious, for instance intendin g to do s omeo ne harm using witchcr aft . The inc r eased prohabi llty of an evil out come o l.mply makcB things worse . Nu clear deter r ence involves not only war pre parat ion, but thi s accompa nied by threats and a threaten ing posture . pot e ntial e nemy, has to be sui tably frighten ed or moved, announce ment For some pa rty , th e if deterr e nce s ucce ed : the threat must be recognis ed as s uch and be cr edible . n uc 1 L' i1 r deterren ce yie l ds a further conne cting princip le: CJ. of is to This aspect of if Xis wrong the n serious threat ening of X und er gi ven conditio ns is also wr o ng ; or , in br ief, If Xis wrong then conditio nal thre a tening of Xis wro ng . The r ema in i ng connecti ng conditio ns invoked all take this general form CG . If Xis wrong so is a cond itional r eq uires some further ex planati on. the fo rm, ~ ( X if C), wl1ere of' • 4 3 thre ate ning ~ Apar t intensio n to A condit'o na l do intentio ns e . g. themselv es, 1 the t ha t ) . C to (or in pr opos iti onal ra ther than event style: the most cond i tion a l lnte1slo ns are conditio nal obligati ons where~ is the oblj gati on form a are not impossi ble claim in whnt or even remote or imp r obable: (spe c ifica lly those involvin g cornmitn e nt) for follows certain is tha t s ort s there of discusse d an it is obligato ry conditio ns the conditi ons typicall y conc e rn those specif ying a rtuclear st rike by a potentia l fund ame ntal cred1ble functor: To r emove complica tion it can b e ass umed hencefo rth that the involv ed whic h intensio n is a judgemen t of is some intensio nal functor, f rom X enemy . The are intensio nal funct ors threaten ing , intendin g , and whic h CG holds , and that these versions suffice to demonst rate the immoral ity 42 . There is plenty of scope for f ur ther elabora tion here. Passiv e s pectntor shJp of evil e vent s where one is in an appropr iate pos i tion to make a differen ce i s quite another thing, from contemp lation of other worlds where e vil oc curs . 43. The condi tionnl i.nt nsion, ~ ( X if C), whic h is an intensio n , should not be confused wit h the provisio nal form, 1f C then ~x. which is not . The Ame rfcnns nre t hr eatening the Russians with retaliat ory action If tl1ey strike : Lt is not that: if the Russians strike the American s will threaten them with reta l ia t ory action . Such confusi on has arisen because of the problems of formalis ing conditio nal obligati on given usual defectiv e theories of condi ti onality. of nuclear deterren ce. Natural ly again there are many 28 no11-;-1ction ·-oriented functors for whi ch ve r s ions c.ont. :•mplat J.on, t'1l nld.ng, dreaming, etc. of e.g . fail, those of The.r e is also a n interesting group of more borderline functors, those of hoping ( for) , expecting, awaiting and the like, for which CG is only dub:i.ously correct:. Connecting pri nciple C3 evolved from the simp ler pri~ciple, if X is then threatcn.ing X 1s also wrong, or, as f ormulated by Ramsay: is wrong to threaten .•• ' 44 The r e ason is that to do into prac tic e (e.g. if wrong 'What is wrong putting something committ ing rape) is wrong then so also is what goes into tlin•at<'nl ne t o pu t that lnto practice , in pn rti c ul ar the declflred intent to that into pract i ce. beginning as fo] lows: The point ca n if worlds where alternative ly X happens be are put argued semanti cal ly, exclude d then so are adjacent wo rlds where Xis poised to happen. The comp li cat lon of the simple form is required for two reasons. nuclear war obta i n. However t he required c onditional form can be derived form, is through only c onditionall y threatened , i.e . the f ollowing wh ic h is pe rf ectly general , X if argument:- c. should certain cond itions particular, (of §§3-4) LSN oppo si. tion has struck, or not , and so wrong when it wrong, 44. so a lso is simple if it weren't it wouldn't (The converse route fails arg uments the Observe, furthermore that if something Xis have b en wrong in the first place. ear lier from su bstitute for X in the simple form, wrong, it is a l so wrong under restrictive co nditions; by Firstly , threatening X if C, war has. of course.) In is wrong whether the Hence, where X is More generally, to e sta blish CG it is Ramsay's formula tion of simplified CJ is considered in Wal zer, p.272. It i s this principle especially that forces Ramsay, a Protestant theologian who is a nuclear hawk , int o the awkward position he ends in, whi c h as Walzer explains , really leaves no room to move. For in virtue of slmp li.f led CJ H must he allowed that the threatened wars are permissible to carry out. Ramsay tries to limit these to military exchanges. But to be effective as a deterrent, Lhe exchange permitted must both threaten and also, i.n view of CJ, not threaten nonmi.lit ary targets, collateral oon-cornbata nt populations . It appears that Ramsay's position, if worked out, wou1d be inconsi.sten t. S!mpllf1cd pri nclple CJ 1.£ nlso invok<'d by the US Catholic Bishops: se PL, p.316. They put the point both in terms of threat and of declared "i.ntent to use nuclenr we apons, which they pronounce morally wrong. Ho wever s implifi ed CJ is rejected by Hare and Joynt (pp.106-7), who want to nssess Lhe moral stntus of u threat by way of expected utility. This is open to Rll the objec tions to expected utility as a test of morality mentione d below. 29 enough to e sta blish the s i mpl e r If Xis wron g s o i s a n int e nsion t o do X. CG'. The s e cond com plic ation in C3, modifying the threat to ca us es more t roubl e . a serious threat, Some modi f ica tion a ppears required, because it is often contend e d tha t empt y t hrea t s or bluff a r e wa rranted on occasion even whe r e is t l1r e o.tene d what l . i s wrong , to prevent t,1c occ urrence o f som et h.1 ng worse .11 s A"n d 1.n f ac t one wny o f tr ying to vi ndica te de te rrence , a s morally permissible , has been by pre se nti ng de t er rence as lnvo lv ing thr eats which do not involve any i nt en tion at all to pr oceed t o action on plaus ible Lhrc a t s . removes i t the support bas i s for of threats. s i mpl i f ied CJ. Insofar A seri ous th r eat th e n, in the slJ ghtly t echnic a l. sense co nditi on s, is con s i de r a accide nt . intended, For the challenge grossly immo r al unconvincing, case wh e r e conduct under certain not and calls for moral double-think. ci rcum st ances th e result from improbable To bring this an intricat e Eithe r the threat is followed through, automatically (as ordered, by Doomsday Mac h in e c ircui try, etc.) or w1th further choice, or - somehow Eit her not . is in ef fect tha t it is perfectly morally permissible to issue serious thr ea t s to under t a ke out is Principle CJ is not ope n to the same c ha l lenges as sJmplified a nd unqualified CJ. says this Hence the shift to serious one tha t i s no t a pre t ence, empty or a blu ff , but credible. which as it is way the out c ome is morally wrong, in the first case obviously , in the s e c ond cas e be cause the intermedia te reconsideration makes it plain that the thr eat nor ought not to have been issued at a ll, be ing justifiable on neither mo r al more .. pra ctic al " rep r es e n t atives grounds. Further more, while states thei r and ma y accept moral double at t itudes, such as morally assenting to immor a l threa t s, les s corrupt agents cannot: it moral principled agents they ar e or take natu r es , to t he kinds of th emse l ves to be ( a s Benn exp lains). i nsignif i c ant mora lly would run For su c h agents , who may counter to comprise their a not proportion _ of the electorate of a nuclear state, principles such a s CJ are no t in doubt. The a r gum e nt agai nst nu c le a r deterr e nce using C3 is as follows:- Either th e --- ---- ---- - - -- - - For a di sc us s ion of threats whe r e the threatener has no intention of ca r r ying ou t t he threat, or inc e ntive to do so, see Schelling, p.JSff . The quest ion of t he mo r ality of th e s e threa ts, where the item threatened is i.m,-,, or a l , ca n be left ope n. 30 t.hrcnt involved then is it Ln deterren ce is ser .!. 1);..i1.. or l t is m 1 t, inadequ ate. s o deterren ce is no Lhen by CJ deterren ce depcn<l is wrong . The maintain ed. sub-argu ment on se ri ous threats is a practica l one: Lf it s no t seri ous Bu t if i t j s ser io us that nu c l ea r dete r re nce name l y , that if the t h rea t s were not serio us , but merely gave the lmpressi o n that they would be fo l lowed thro ugh , then the op posit ion would flnd out, in one way or a nother. could not be entlorseJ i.n an open or democra tic polit i ca l wi LhouL A policy of bluff system , f or examp l e, coining some discussi on, and so giving the game away to the oppos iti o n . Even i n close d non-demo cratic systems maintain ing such a po licy weapons , espec ially informa lion would clown during l i kel y times escape the of there would be ma jor di f fic u l t ies i.n chains of c ommand i nv olved wit h nuc l ear change through in gov e rn ing el i t es , a nd the op pos itio n i ntellige nce. But then , since t he bluff could be called, deterren ce wou ld no t ha ve su c ceede d . Ther e a re as we l l ot her argumen t s t hat the thr ats invo l ved mu st he s e r io u s. On e is t hat nucl e ar d terrcnce already faces a cred i bility probl em , namely tha t do ubts a bo ut the r ationa lity of carry i ng out t he big nuclea r t hre a t weak e n th e c r e di bil ity essentia l. to its effec t iven ess . To be effec tive then i t mu s t be s e r i ous ( c f. Benn). Meeting obj ec tions t o pri ncip l e C3 leads on t o two fur t he r ve r sions of one centred on intent io n , one on commitm ent. CG, Princ ip l e CJ is int1ma t e ly linke d with , and it some times co nside r ed bu t a variant upon , t he pr i ncipl e C4 . If Xis wrong then t o conditio nally intend to do X [kn owing it is wrong ] is n!so wr0ng. The' prJrcJpl cs arc intimate ly a ssoci at ed because a th ea t is, ac c ordi ng t o die tionarie s, etc . ' . of 'a d claratio r of intent to 1nfU.c t puni shment, l oss , injury, It i s their intercon nect i o n which lies a t the bo t t om of deter rence, which in tend ing to go to war . princip l e , th a t turn 0 11 C4 is s ome pa r a doxes the prob l em of c red ibly t hrea tening war wi thout Princ i ple C4 is j us t i f i e d th rough th e s i mplified inte ndi ng to do wrong j_s wr ong, a nd s o al s o i s i nte ndl ng to do wrong unl es s favoura b le circums tanc es f o r one' s p inc.iple some an ex tr emel y position prevail. Si mplif i ed wi del y assumed mora l thesis, 46 perhap s for the excellen t reason that it holds a nalytica lly. Its ela bo ra t io n C4 can be us e d to Jl agains t nuclear deterre nce , ea follows : argue siQ ~a pfoce eding to LSN war when the Qnemy duly misbeha ve s is wrong (by §§J-4) , by C4. intendi ng to go to LSN wa r when the enemy duly misbeh aves is also wrong . Nuclea r deterre nce involve s such an intenti on, all the availab le evidenc e shows. He nc e nuclear deter rence is wrong. But like virtua lly every utilita rian princip les utiJita rian grounds . deontic t hems e lv es , princip le , princ i ples For it is not difficu lt to except thos e flowing from CJ and C4 c a n be challe ng ed on outline str a tegic situati ons wher e mnxlrnum ex pected utility result s from a poli cy of nuclear det e rr ence. But on il s own this conces sion casts but little doub t upon C4. For it likewis e fs not princip les C3 difficu lt t o ou tli ne situati ons where the hanging oE innoce nt people , or other injusti ces , are sa nctio ne d or enjoine d by maximum expe cted a nd utility . pu rsuit Those who appeal to utilita rian assump tions try t o avoid suc h more obvious di fficult ies with .elianc e upon utilita rianism , scrappi ng the sp ots not by doctrin e, bu t by hedging app licatio ns of their princip les around with quall ficatio ns , whic h, they hope , will trou bl e of wit h utilit a riani sm. enable So .i. t them to evade the worst is with Kavka, whose work ni ce l y illustr ates that whatev er (little ) deterre nce has in its mo r al f avour depend s upon uti.lita rian ass umption s . Kavka 'bcgin[ s ] by no t ing that any reas ona ble system of fwbst,r ntial 1itil.ita ri a n e l ements ' (PD, p.287). consequ e n tia l elemen ts systems incl ud e must infiltr ate, an with the ' ass umption if Eve n observ atio n were correc t - it is nox, dep e nding f or one e thic s thing this upon must hav e astonis hing confla ting utilita rian - it would not follow that reasona bl e particu lar that assump tion produce s normat ive assump tio n involv e d is that t he a ct Kavka thereup on t ries the paradox es of · deterre nce'. wi t h maximum expecte d to The utility '( the most useful ac t) should be performe d whe never a very great deal of utility - - 46. ·•---- ---- - Ka vka , who labels simpli fie d C4 the Wr ongf ul Inte ntions Princip le (PD , p.289 ), attri butes th e princip le to Abela rd, Aquina s, Butler, Bentham , Kan t, Sldgwi. ck, Kenny and Narveso n. Ka vka also gi ves reasons as to why the pr i nciple ap pe ars 's o obviou sly tr ue'. Kenny and others apply C4 to argue, like the US Cathol ic Bishop s , that ' nuclea r deterre nce is immora l' (cf . Kavb p.29 1 ). It is the clas h of C4 with certain utJ li tarian princip les (espec iall y the maximi sation pr inc iple of p. 28 7) that directl y genera tes Kavka 's f irst paradox of dete rrenc e and l ies behind his other "parado xes'' : see PD. . , •" . 12 i.s s t. a ke ' ( p .Z87). :;t obj ec tions as This as s um p t io n is ope n to es s e n tia lly the same ba t c h ut il i taria nism i self: it is mainl y a mat t er o f i ncre a sing or vary! ,1g the s t okes i nvol ved s uf ficient l y in a y co unte r examp l e . usud l stratc ~y of of Kavka tries t he weakening a nd fudging the nor mative a s s umption to a voi d the ~o r sl pro bl e ms of distri butive i n justice , and t he like , t hat max i mising u t i lit y can mora l ly e njo i u. But the c ru cial defect in Ka vka ' s argume n t l ies fo l Low fr om t he normative ( p . 28 7) • 11 7 what ov erridde n by C4 s u ppo sed u t il i t a rian to a ssumptio ns ' Though Kavka tends t o a pply t he fudg ed normat iv e as sumption s in thi s way, as If it domina ted C/4 ( see e s pe c ia lly p , 29 0), wh a t and is assump t i on howeve r fudged, namely that ' t his mea ns o t he r mo r al ass ump t io ns a r e t h at .•. in produce , situa t i on s , are whe n moral c ombi ned dilemmas . in si tu a t i ons These are not s uc h th e f udg ed as sump ti on as special de t e rr e nt c a ses where one decnti c pr inc ipl e , tl1a t yie l ded by ut i l i t a r ian i sm , ove rrid e s o t hers, but wher e t he r e ar e c ompe ting, ev en c nt ra d ic tory de ont ic pr inc i p l e s , such a s tha t it int e nd right to to pro c eed to LS N war whe n t he e nemy mi sbe ha ves (on specious u til i tarian gr ound s ) and. also wrong to i n te nd to do s o ( by C4) . wr ong : that judg ement is not ov e rr i den. Nuc lear de t e rr e nce is also t he case is t hat in r emai ns Nor do es it in any way foll ow that C4 i s in 1eed of qu a lifica ti on as a r es ult (Ka vka' s a ssump t ion, what is th e~e s pe cial p.290) . situations, Howeve r , t her e ar e count e r vall i ng u t ili t arian cons i dera tions s ugge sti ng different imperatives . For .ln t he s e is wrong . s pe c i a l ci rcumst a nce s a greater uti l:lty can be realised by doing what Howe ver it is ha rdly ne ws, but a standing objection, that ut ili t a ri a nism some time s en joins wl1at is wron g . Spec ial s pons on s hip de t e rre nt may appea r s itua t i.on a, where under ntl lit a ri a n t o get a foot i n t he moral door, ar e very speci a l. char a c ter is ed by Ka vka , the y a r e s uch that t he 47 . deterrence de t e r r e nce is very likely As to Lacke y ' s utiljt a rian app ro ach r e s t s on o similar fallacy, that u ti litari a n cons iderations predom~n a te wher e s t a k es are larg e enough: see hi s argument f or the ;i pp ro nch in MM p. 192 . Wha · hap p n s i s not that importa n t c ons quenc es ov e rrid e moral principles, but tha t Applica t ion of one pr inc iple wit h important consequence s conflic t s with t hat of ano t he r pr inci pl e wi t h less s i gni f i cant consequence s, and in the we igh-·up of what t o do in t he pro blemat ic circumstanc es the principl e with impor ta nt con s eq uence pr evai l s . sucr<"£:d , and nothing else .i s likely tp lodc ed in a deep pr.obability-well. This is ve ry far removed from the real world su.:, ceed (see p . .2~16), i.e. si.tuat.J.on whe re nuc lear deterrence appears to be increasing the deterrence probabiU.ty is of LSN wRr, and where other procedures such as graduated nuclear disarmament are at least as J.ikely to succeed as deterrence . that <l1~ont <: principles sllbject Even if it were mistakenly to real-life d .1 .lcmmas should be qualified to avoid di.l mmas, there is little point in qualifying working such RS supposed de ontic principles C4, given the remoteness of the special deterrent situati ons. Instead of pul ling nuclear deterrence down though the immoral inte nt:lons it involves, it can be criticized more broadly throug h the commitments it equi. r es, by wa y of the following principle: CS. If Xis wrong then a conditional commltment to carry out Xis The reason is that the commitment is a commitment circumstances; and that commitment is to act itself wrong . lso wrong. wrongly in cer-tain Nuclear deterrence is however a poli cy which commits states to war under certain conditions . And as wi th conditional intention, so with conditional commitment, there is no doubt th a t su perstates and controlling commitmen t and their intention to use representatives nuclear weapons. did not occur) is enough to establish the relevant The dangerous strategy of launc h-on-warning (which could , for instanc e , result J n a thut have response to attacks the point, for which there is otherwise quite s ufficient factual evidence. Now the connecting principles suffice logically , but are nucl ar deterrence, for weighty principle would detachment from the by complete preparat i on fo r and Deterrence of this type is wrong. also reveals why the suggestion, that the morality of the whole deterrence trip depended on war itself never occurring, was so parad ox ical: det e rrence. ir self By case . i nstance conditi.onal comm.ltment to LSN war, is wrong. This sound wh n all are liable to be disputed, several defensible ones, ideally in concert, make for a principles one applied: it ou t the connections between and not be engaged in (unl ess i ts ha s appeared nuclear war and nuclear Nuclear deterrence should not be practised given that should chang ed, e.g . left bizarre nuclear war direct ion can be drastically at .least limited, per impossibile in the case of nucl ea r warfare, to purely mi l i t ary targe ts). Til e a rguments t hrou gh conn e cting pr i nc i. ple s, can be reinforced by different sort s of ar gument s agai ns t the mo ral c orre c t ne s s of nuclear deterrenc e . a n 1 a r g uments from lim i ted c~nv erge nc e of et h i cal t heori e s I There wh i ch start from the commonplace ob se r va ti o n that ~ All the ethi c al a t"gum ents in favou r of nuclear deterrence are broadl y ut ilitar i an. In f nct roost of the arguments i.n favour of de t e rrence, including many t hat inf iltra t ed hav e the e thi.c a l l i t erature , ar e those of ge ner., l ly drawn f rom game t heory, and primar :tly intere sted in the one playe r, t h r> USA. Utilitar ia nism , t hough s till looking of those expedie ncy -· advantage of basically at ~dva n tages , i n t e r es t s and ( t ypi ca lly ind i vidual) utilities, has to take a partisan pain of posi t io n, a nd consider [ or[eiti ng i ts claim t o mor a lity sup po r t t d by o t he r na tional i ties othe rwi s e . The as well, commonplace on less observation is the fa c t that such qual i fied moral support as deter rence obtains, dflrive s from ut il i tarianism. 118 Th e re a r e two d ir e c tions on to a gene ra l cla1m ag a i.nst de terrence, either by wa y of t h e pro- ut il itar i an theme Uti l ita r ianism properly a pplied also comes out against deterrence or, 1n o r e s t rongly, by way of the a nti- utilt t arion t heme , Utilita r la nism doe s not furnish satisfactory moral arg uments. The n , by t h e ;rnti. -utilitarian theme, there are no satisfactory in f av our d ir ec tion: 48 . of de terrence. moral arguments Na turally, it would be easy to strengthen the second a ft e r all it is widely thought that u tilitarianism is a false, Thu s t he hed g ed utilitarian defences of Kavka and of Hare and J oynt, and a l s o within th e broadly utilitarian r ange , of Gautier . Showing that cogent de f ence s of nuclear deterrence have to take a util i tarian r ou te would he a much t oug her ent e rprise. Though it is a reasonable conjecture that the e n te r pr i se c ould be carried through, much would depend on what was · cc oun t e d cogent. For ce rtainly biz ar re principles, e.g. obverses of the conne ct ing pr incip l es, · can be i ntroduc ed, which afford deontological routes t.o deterre nce . An,l, rl e spi t r some back sliding by bi s hop s , all other ethical positions can be m., d c to "' penk again s t deterrence and i. t s cont.l.nuntio n . • A deontological ~RRC ngnln At dctc rr c nc · , pr ima rily he way of <lcontic connecting pr i ncip l e s, has been a rgued i n some detail. In the light of these prlnciplcs , Lt i s not difficul t to s e e how c a ses from other ethical positi ons would go. After a ll C4 ha s been defended from a wide range of stanc es , e.g . contra c t ua l, natural law, utilitarian even. seriousl y as tray, or even shabby ethic~ ] pg&ition. pol it i ca l s yst em whic h depends in some uL l l lt:arJan a rgum e nts for its policieo. It hardly does measure then for a upon consensus , to rely on Yet with nuclear de.terrenc e just thnt appe;1rs to be happe ning, with readily ove rturned arguments at that. For whether even utilitari.a nism supports deterrenc e depends ess entia lly on: how it ls applied; with which maximisa tion recipes; along with what other r estrictiv e assum pti ons (such as those of a deep probabili ty-well); genc>rous arc utll i.ty· assignmen ts or upon With different (and · a rguably superior) va rying the guestimat ion methods, very differen t results emerge, oppo sing deterrenc e and favouring unilatera l nuclear disarmame nt. 49 basic reas on for this is straightfo rward (and like that ending §4). LSN war has a n extremely large negative utility. deterrenc e out to whi.c h increases th other recipes of feasible a how for such things as preservat l on of national sovereign ty , nationa l security, etc. assumptio ns , and on Any policy such The It is that as nuclear probabili ty of this, or even risks it , must los e alternati ves, conseque ntialist type whatever are initially applied (e.g. plausible decision Minimax, Dominance , Di.s as ter Avoidance , Expected Value) . The anti-ut ilitarian theme can be def ended either by a full-scal e criticism o[ ut j lltaria nlsm, beginning for instance with its well-know n justifica tion of l ocalised In justic e s , SO or else 11t i l i tarla ni sm when applied One obvi.ous dcflc iency is this: by to addressin g s ome of the inadequac ies of issues like that at hand, nuclear deterrenc e. on standard util itarianism , what to do , whether to proceed with deterrenc e, depends on the probabili ty of its success and on the improbabi l ity of other options working. deep, uti ~itarlanis m If the deterrenc e probabili ty-well is morally requires deterrenc e, otherwise not. 51 But what is morally required, or wrong, does not fluctuate with what outcomes are pro babl e. 49. Th e ins ab ility of utilitari anism is illustrate d by the discussio n inv olving KovkR, Lackey and Hardln, continued in Philosoph y and Public Affairs 12(3), 1983, where, on the basis of utilita r ianism, diametric ally opposed conclusio ns are reached. (Hardin 's approach tends however to expedienc y reasoning of the strategic type.) 50. Such wider critic isms of utilitaria nism, in all its forms, as an ethical theory are too well-know n to repeat. Some of the main defects are considere d in another article in this series, 'An expensive repair kit for utilit arl.an ism'. The point that util:Ltari anism gi ves no firm place to stand comes from L, Mirlin. 36 wheLh<'r deterrence i..s moraJ.ly wrong or not, i. s likPly to work or not. indepe nde nt deterrence are decidedly essentially nowhere i.s Moral princi p~s not are through expected Vf.llues, whether utilities or o th e rwis e - though how ba d :rnme outcome is ma y be . depend .Lt If nuclear deterrence is wrong wher e it increases the probablllty of war, the n ls it wrong, simpllclter . det:crmlne<l whcrhc r of upon firm to stand. Wor s e, si nce the expected utilities in the case uncertain, these a nd of the results util i ta r ianism delivers uncert ainty measures> util itari anism off ers In con t rast wi t h the soli.d deo nti c ground of principle , utilitariani sm provide s only shifting s and. The objections made apply esp eciall y aga ins t act uti l ita r ianism. (orm shows at special int e rests, such as conditions security (the of estimation rules are pulled in). probability- well state , have hi gh 1s deep , utilities, nat io n- s tat e and spe cial It does not yie ld a deterrence polici; ind eed hnrdly yields policies. tall (other than act utilitariani sm it s elf ). 11nd certain othe r diff i ulties may be avoided by considering instead a o[ act most that nuclear deter re nce is "wrong" a c c ordi ng to its l ig ht s under very il The acts. 52 But the method lacks sta bi lity; These seque nce di f fe r en t prescription s will res ult dependi11g upon how the sequence is se l ected, what is inc luded and what left (as also associa ted p obabilit i es depend crit ically on the sequence selected). No unequivocal rec ipe is delivered. selected out to To see this, suppose the sequence is include worst cases , for instance cases where deterrence fails a nd war breaks out. In this event it can hardl y be argued that deterrence is t he pol lcy that maximizes u til it y ov er the sequence. Along wit h the argument s, there are dissatisfac tion with nuc lear deterrence. other concom.itant conventiona l wa rs . f or Firstly, the peace it has provided 011l y nuclear pc~ce, or rather lack of nuclear war , as the re smaller-s cale reasons is no deep is s hort age of And the "peace " provided is a t best a tenuous pe3ce, which Is not stable , ~ut liable to upset at any stage by a r ange of 51.. Though this is to oversimplif y, the po int s made ar e not affected by the simplificat ion . In any case the simpl ifi ed picture reflects well enoug h the difference s between Kavka and Lacke y that matter in their debat e (ref rred to in footnote 49 ). 52. Whether thjs is rule util itarianism , or still act util i tariani sm the sequence can be construed as one long ac t, may be left open. becaus e - - - -- - -- - - - - - · - 37 fn,t_0 rs, lncl 11d1ng er rot· , both human and t ec lrn1 .:fl.1, j)C:lc (_~ , p 0:i It thofl not offer genu i ne of the sort re riuir e d fo r a stabl e intec nat.lo nal 1. 1. fe, but only o fragi l e ·e o f a sort" (PL , p.316 ). Secon dly, there enorm ous is cost, mora l -~!_p_po r_t_~.r~~ _: ___ cost of de.ter renc_ ':_, be cause expe nditu re on it exclu des othe r urgen t moral prio ritie s. The US Bisho ps put th is fami liar poin t, in a surpr ising ly Marx i st way, in terms of destr uctiv e capac i ty and what 'the ls contr a dic tion ne e ded f or betwe en what cons truct iv the is spent for devel opme nt' ( PL, p . 316) . §6. Prac tical , prude ntial and more mora l arg umen ts from natio nal dange rs nuclr•ar build -up of the supe rstat es , a nd the gene sis of nucle ar dilem mas. to Whil e there are argum ents to the immo ra lity of nucle ar war prepa ra ti on, there are also counr c ·-arg ument s, that have prove d rema rkabl y persu asive (espe ciall y to Amer I c;wi, ), to the mora l just:!.fiab ili ty of nucle ar war pr e para tion in the _p_!.c s':~- circu mstan c es. The unde rlyin g style of argum ent is simpl y an elabo ratio n, or state -upl ift, of Liw1- for the esca lnti on of weapo ns at the local leve l, for acqu iring a gun or f o r s to c king- tip the neig hbour hood armou ry - and every bit a r gu1r.e nt from local dang ers. dom inati on ; a nd dubio us fir st of all seco nd of nucle ar destr uctio 11 . atom ic s urren der and so avoid the destr uct io n' (Wal zer, p.273 ). prepa ratio n is suppo sed to guard again st more than these ; third eleme nt , name ly, loss of basic rig hts there with these . black mail of forei gn appea seme nt In fact nucle ar is ways a cruc ial of life This furth er set of elem ents is linke d to the dange r of forei gn domi natio n - which is reall y a separ at e eleme nt from risk of Thoug h and (free dom, equa lity, etc .) and fund amen tal value s (upho lding of truth , human dign ity, etc .) and int eg rat ed that The two go toget her, sinc e lf we dtcl not f ea r the black mail , we migh t adop t a polic y or as It is that nucle ar prepa ratJo n, 'so we have be en tol d , gua r ds again st the doub le dang er: forei gn as black mail. dom inntl on -need not imply the loss of most basic value s it does imply the loss of a t le a st of one , self- de te rmin ation , freed om to choos e vario us natio nal objec tives ; conv ersel y loss or erosi on or infri ngeme n t of basic value s can occur witho ut fo re ign demi. natio n, for insta nce, as is comm onpla ce in the "[ r •e " world, by internal change of go,wnmtent or irnvij,fnroenta l approach, through the iiicrc>nsed security and contro l a nti clcnr prepnratlon incr easi ngly nuclear risks, state demands, extensive etc. But what nuclear destruction, also involves loss of basic rights and values, through destruction ti, _ material of 53 of the cherJshed life-style. So nuclear preparation is hardly n c l earcut bnse me ans of guaranteeJng basic values. 51• fn other respe cts too t he argument from loss of lncku cogency an d rings ho 1 low, It is basic values and ri ghts hnrd to avoid th' f •cling r:hnt tl1c: oft-appealed-to basic values often function as something of a front, like ci tati.o n of religious values at politica l ceremonies; clean cover for economic consideration of one sort from demand s of the military-indus trial of private wealth and vnl \les appealed to category: in and anot he r, them having However arising to do with th e an argument isn't, or associations. And the rights and But not all the values commonly appealed to fall into particular nationalistic ones do not. And one of the main a l leged values of deterrence, the resistance to and containment or many are, most:ly, of the utmost importance, indeed fundamental, and worth much sacrifice . this of power. oughtn 't to be, defeated by lts unsavoury that t he argument 1.s a omplex , many concerned with foreign domJnatiun of other lesser states, and many conccut ·at:1.on pious of "communism" of "socialism ", can hardly be accounted fundamental, any more than retention of cnpi talism. communi.sm has What has been happened here confused with of course (the t o tal i tarianism, which does remove certain more freedoms (of opinion , association, is reality basic information, that ( the of) state values, etc., ideal socialist namely etc.), of) and certain so does derivative~ threaten basic values. One critical q uest i on, then, is whether extens ive nuclear LSN wa r, and indeed for rational way of preservtng nuclear those holocaust, fundamenmtal preparation for is a good or effective or even values, which we have left. 53. The converse obviously does not hold. Basic values and cherished life-style can be lost without nuclear destruction, or nuclear preparation, as when a more powerfuJ state imposes its values and way of life. 54 . The argument from freedom , advanced by Jaspers and repeatedly rolled out by state representatives , is further conside red early in Appendix 1. .... , 'lQ J, Simi la r ci. ue s tions dominntion and arJs e as regard s blackmail. argumeq;; H from er, e Justification danger which is itself open questioned (i n §8 ), both from the to ser i ous point foreign of the methods of extensi ve nuclear preparation depends essent i ally on an arrangement of hostil e structure of of question, v iew of nation and basic states, a i s subsequently valu s, such as freedom, and oth r wise. But whether ul tima tely jusU(ied or dangers are no t, t hese from natlonal those that have been taken to morally underwrite extensive nuclear prcpnration, and jus tific, tlon. have They been have par t of many people ' s accepted in moral by policy outlook. particular , that ex tens i ve nucle ar however , the makers as affording moral fact be e n wide ly accepte d, and undoubt e dly form Wi thi n frnmework the moral justification holds good . others, ar gumen t s arguments not a c onv entio nal Northern It i s within such a fram ewo rk, in preparatio n do such engenders establis h a moral fix. For the morality of extensive nuclear preparat ion, but only make a prudential case for such preparation. people not also face a nucl e ar dilemma, but, though evaluative in character, it ls specif ically moral one. ,1 impressed by And for ma ny other s again, who are who not so or as familiar wi th Soviet and American culture and ways of life, and thci.r r espec tive r ights and freedoms, there is no serious dilemma. peop)c Such live beyond For such the "beneficial" reach of t he supers t ates , prudenti al counter-arguments from national dang ers carry little weight, and the moral case against deterrence is not offset but stands unchallenged . Thls is the ge nesis of the argument fr om isolated people who live in people. Consi de r some a comparatively remote a rea, whose freedoms are not (yet) under threat from superpower expansionism, but whose lifestyle is put at risk by nucl~ar d ter r c nce (a s under pr inciple Cl). For such isolated people, who may ha ve little interes t i n the preservation of nuc lear states , there is no nucl ea r diJ emma , and nuclear lo cations may have problems problems people. as deterrence to natio nal is wro ng. dangers, genuine People in less fo r tu na te but in meeting these they are not entitled to impo se grave risks on the uninvolved isolated In doing so i mmorally; and f or through similar nuclea r reasons deterrence , superstates the are proceeding conventi onal No rthern framework is j_mpug rwd. conclusion can be al ter n ' tlvely -c t>rl c hc<l Tht'. same argument:: put a reflective i s olat e d pe rson, and check S! 11 ci> Amer ican the or- resulting by a substitution Russi.an 1n the position of such an asse ssment of nuclear deterrence. IL wor Jd be th e snm c as that of n reflecti ve isolated person, stripped o f m1p, rs lntc bins, moral ly opposed to de terr ence and not rnot·all.y transfixed, t h <~ c onventional framework fails t o sati sfy requirement s of morality. The outcome of the arguments fr om dang e rs is, the~ ver y different depending whc her on the arguments are appU.ed as rega rds a superstate or not. The superstate theme which emerges is, in brief, SST. Because o f multiple connected dang e rs from other states which have nuclear weapons, a state - any state that is too large to rely upon other states - is obllged to invest in at least matching nuclear weapons. Henc e, by detachment, a super- nation-stat e, such as USA, ought to have something Jn orde r t hP meet of the nuclear armoury that it has. Or, weakening the theme to ol.Jjecli on s concerning excess, "overkU.l" capacity, it retain i1 t l east solid a ou~ core of the nu c 1ear devices it has. (moretlly] to For su bs equent argumc~nt it can be left open whether the oblig-'¾tion involved is a moral one, for inst a nce be cause of the character the of pro r·c·c tcd, or only (as nrg ued a bove) one of g rou nds to those di. sa rmame nL supporting ag ainst a the dangerous SS reason 55• prudent:ial the me nuclea r Northern values supposedly being On similar it can be argued that unilateral opponent would be prudentiall y Jrralto nal. It will be fr ely admitted that what is prudentiall y or morally requir ed is a s11 hopLimal st rategy , li.ke the famili.a r strategies of the prisoners ' dilemma si tu a tions and of certain related competitive games . that a su peri or would be cooperative For expen sive , re source s, dr ai ning of such t he details are wel l- enoug h kno~1. 55. admitted arrangement s. Cooperation and be better not merely in removing the nuclear dilemma, but in a ra nge of other r espects . future be strategy for nuclear adversaries , if sufficient trust and the lik . could be achif?Ved , would agreeme nt So it should arrangement s would be much less risky , destructive of the environment , a nd so on; However for the present and the foreseeable the prospe cts of cooperation a ppear - so we are repeatedly told by state It can stil l, a nd presumably does, amount to more than mere local expedi e ncy, s ince the 'freedom of Europe' is part of what is at issue. rcprcscnlat lve s , who are (not always ~ ltt t~gly ) helpin~ unfortunate ly rather remote: only the ca make their polici es sure insurance is ex t e nsiv e nu c l ear preparntion and full preparednes s t o 3pply nuclear force. At least this is so where one is a superstate : proceed, largely unabated . nuclear preparation Where one is not a superstate , but a lesser state one must, the r e presentativ es continue, _t::_':l..l_ on a larger ally who has a one's a rsen a l, umbrella. nu c l ear pre paration , th e lA ck of trust d l splaye d, ,md for huddl es conf l.dencc in !ts and which under co ntrast s ncouragcd elsewhe r e . st·at (• , one whic h r.clics for i ts nuclear grrH1nd one anoth e r's But he r e a level of tr ust and coope ration is_ called for, by dep0 nd ent states, which is far from foolproof, with nu clear in s uranc e (which is pres umably not fre e ) is obtained indirectly thr oug h some supcrstate 's nuclear COVt!r super-· ally Does a "d epe nd ent" on a s 1pc r -a lly, rather tha n strangely have that exchange on its territory? mu ch Jt s ally's opponen t ? Confidence, for instanc e , that its ally will not r e nder i t a ta rget or nuclear must stag e a Given the pr ocliv i ty of states , especia ll y l arg0 states, to res ort to expediency, and give n the recen t histo ric al record of superstates and t heir leaders , too much fait h would be mi spl ace d . Thus, whatever th e l imited force of t he argume nt f or the superstat e it <loes theme , not extend t o the analogous them e for a dependent state, which d if fers f rom SST nnd end s as follows: DST. Because ... , a st a t e without adeq uate (or any) nuclear weapons is obliged to r e ly upo n a s u pe rstat e ally , and within that arrangement , to accommodate t he facilities and nuclear in stallations of the protecting ally . ln pa r t for reaso ns already given, principle DST is not very plausible (a nd same goes for mo re obvious variants upon it ). Nor do the arguments of f ered for SST t ranspose parti cularly well to direct arguments striking l y illu str ated by the case the for DST. 56 This is more of more remot e nuclear dependent states. Consider the a rgument from basic values, for instance , from the angle of nuclear dependent Australia. Basic values ln Australia are not threatened by, o r put in j eopardy through, the ac io ns or plans of the Sovi et Union. Nor ar e they thr eatened by the other superstate, t he USA, the only country with ' the physical 56. As ls widely known, inadmissi ble and usual l y much overrated considerat ions o f expediency frequently enter into reaso ns why states allow foreign nuc lea r facilit i e s upon th e ir territories , e. g. eco nomic consideratio ns such as trade or local revenue and short- term jobs. ca1 1acity to launc h mot j .ve Lo <.111y <l o look convincing . carries full scale invasion of Aust r alia ', but R wc .i ght. reasons In fact, the with a rgumen t from of For there arg ument t he only is qucstLonable non-n l lf~twd prnc.ticcs. of 58 domina tion In this way too) the from dang er of nuclear destruction could be nullified . such supe r state foreign li t tl e care, the pr e s e nt level of a economic and political dom i nati on could be much reduc e d. fore(• lack(ing] so , , so far . 5 7 CJ.ear ly the argumen t from basic values does nol For similar 1 it t le 'clearly danger because nuclear of umbrella, superstate dang er facilities and th e tha t would be removed wi th With 1 ess remot e dependent Europc 1rn states these sorts a rguments from nationa l dangers are only marginally more convincing , and may b e defeated along analogous lines . The differe nces in the situations of st ate s, and peoples, break theme the of a of monolithic West. differently situated This is a theme especially favoured by US and the Wes t European rep resentati ves, who present the West, its freedom, as t hr eatened by Soviet domin atio n. und i.ffrrentiatcd unit. dep1!nd0nL i;tntes with But this l eadi ng idea, NATO desig ne d powers , and In this the West is a single in and part to align lesser to justify pu tting them at nuclear rl sk is as muc h a my th as th e idea of the Golde n West. The West is not so monolithic, it ls not so comprehensive, some of it is not so free , much of it (i ncluding the Ant ipodes) is not thr eate ned by Soviet domination. Principle DST - li kewise what it dep ends upon , SST - is now coming unde r attack by Eu ropean disarmament groups , who c hallenge the core assumptions of the. und er lying retaliatory model that 0 Safety lies in weapons , More weapons i mply more. security59 , Cerlainly, for mo:ce :f.s ol ated states, such as New Zealand, safety from nuclear. a t ack l i es not in wea pons bu t in excluding nuclear facilities (including visit s from nuclear submar ines ) . Europe ans are ar guing in present of syslem is more a similar wa y, that the a ris k, indeed l ia bility, than a protection (e.g. 57. For t he quote d c laim, and some of th e Au stralia ' s Se curi ty , p .94 . 58 . The Jssuc is furt her pursued in Ap pendix 2. 59 . Sec, for exam ple, t he las t article in Thom pson. argument for it, s ee Threats to Thompson, p.251); envi s -1ged and thnt: w-ithou!: Lhcut.r e for a h\icJ. ,;,)ll'' instal1.st:!on1>i Europe cannot be limited nucle r wnr , in the way .l thf' is now seen by US ( ut not Soviet) strategists. Once the weapons assumptions are qu es tioned, other assumptions of the retaliatory model a nd its variants come up for examination, namely ci Whether the proper response to danger is armament, in particular o Whe th er tle proper response is through nuclear armament, as opposed , say, to other military responses, such as convent.ional arms, or, takin g off from the previ ous point, ~ Whcthrr military approaches and procedures (through ar e proper methods, armaments , etc.) or should be such dominant methods, of conflict resoLuti.on at the int er national level. It ls plausibly arg ued, against military procedures, that at no ordinary level do we sens5bly s et about meeting danger or settling disputes by acquiring lethal weapons and thr eatening to use them - except perhaps on an out-dated, and r e ally warranted, frontier ethics. This leads into the issue of alternative defence systems, a vital matter beginning to obtain the contemporary 60 and explana tion it deserves, questioning of the framework of but never one that already nation-states. While emphasis anticipates subsequent the state system is inrac · , force ls far from exceptional and military procedures are to be expe cted and are l LkcJ y ine vitnhl c. nation-state system ': For 'forc e has [a] permanent plac,~ in the thus Ramsay (on p.xv), who uses this as part of his very orthodox case for nuclear war arrangements. §7. Th resulting nuclear dilemmas for aligned st;:ites Ass~mbli.ng r eferred th~ to as themes the so far nuclear de v e lope d fix:- States war-deterrence, because (as argued in §J-§5 ) to engage jn war.-·deterrence , at l east 60. yields the both and their supporters. deontic dilemma. often ought not to engage in it is immoral, and also ought for prudential reasons (as Alternative defence systems were considered long ago in Mohists. For contemporary work on alter native systems , see su rvey in Sharp. There is in fact a considerable literature and social defence arrangemen ts, and a growing literature on i . e . convercd.on t o such arr angement s . argu ed using China by the especially the on non-violent transarmament, ·,,,,._ 44 SST and DST). tl w Th i s dilemma i.s no idle construction of virtues parac.onsisteot logic), but ( c onc octed 61 prod uced by war itself 62 , or at war and its version of the deon tic least war which spr.·eads beyond purely mjlitary la r gc ts, as larger wars in evi tably e . g. nuclear , a, wel l as bei ng virtu a lly ublqultous i.n nuclear war discu ssions. ThP nuclear fi.x 1s in part simply a mor e intense di 1 emma demonstrate a serious real-life dilemma, t he ouLJ.i n s of which are r e peatedly encountered i .n text s on asper.ts to do (since ra il t ra nsport , typically rely on ci.vilian ones) . military arrangeme nt s, The ma in dil emma arises from a combination of t he retaliat ory model with t he feat ures of war. War is requlr 0cl for defence of th e state and valu es it upholds (or pretend s to uphold); but war also invo lves imm oral ac ts and cv.tl co nseque nc es . war can undPr also ce rtain justified. be se e n as a t temp ting a rec onciliation by tryi ng t o show that ctrcumstanees Thus ' some these reall y ju tifications 0 evi l consequences Regis of war ' (Walls , p.260). accept ab l e than falla c ious ,symptotic are morally of war aim to show that a ctio ns deemed normally forbi dd en by moral ma nd ates are now pe rmissible the The doctrine of " ju st But this argume nts when perfo rmed under is no better or mor e morally for uti l itorianism as bein g corre c L \~hen the s takes are larg e . W;n· and preparedness for 61 . wa r als o gene rate s ubsidiary di.lemmas f or Thus Green, along with many others, ' find[s ] nucle a r deterrence the best of pra c tical policies available to us now •.. give n the realities of world politics ' bu t ' s till demur[ s ) because of mo ral qualms' (p . xii). Green also r e presents both Morgent hau a nd Halle as having 'rather agonisingly presented a • • . case for a deterrenc e strategy, even whil e asserting that the stra.tegy is morally indefensible according to the traditional et hical codes' (p.2 52 ). Walze r ends in a similar dil emma (he is committed to a str onge r a nd less qualif i ed form of it tha n he set s down): though it [deterrence ] is a bad way, there may well be no othe r tha t is practi cal in a world of sove reign and suspicious state s' (p.274) - an indictment of the state system that Walzer does not pur sue. Similar ly th e US Catho lic Bishops d :llemma; they s peak of ' th e dilemma of how to prev ent the use Fa s kius nn<l Dockrill and i n Benn terms of moral dilemmas. present the situation i n terms of a mora l political paradox of de terrence •.. the of nuclear weapons • .. ' (PL, p.3 13). In too the nuclear situation is pre s ent ed in Th e nuclear dilemma is of course not a dilemma for everyone, for those who think they have seen the clear admis sib i lity of deterrence, or differently for those who have seen through the argumen ts fr om nati onal dang e rs. But it i.s a dilemma for th ose locked into the conventional f r amework. 62. Situatior.s in war are als o a major so urce of moral dilemmas: see Routley and Plumwo od where several exampl es are gi ven. A general logic a l account of and theo r y of moral di.lemmas is elaborated therein. . ... inst;ince, a sevc t·e tensio n be tween freedom and difficult prohlcms au t ho f· t c y: 'one of th e ~0s t o[ war involv es defending a free society witho u t destroying the values that g ive it meaning and vali dity' (PL, p.324). The problems are greatly enhanced by modern nuclear arra ng emen ts. The nuclear fix not onl y i nt ensifies a nd complicates other d-Lle rnm:-is induc ed by t he co ntemporary s ov ere i gn s t at~ 63 , in particula r the dee p tension c betwee n national security and the ope r at ion o f libera l-democrati c arrangement s (sucl1 a ., " lnd.lvidual li.herty , popular control of institution s, etc) . othe>r more persona l subsidiary d i l emmas , ( poll U ca l) obl lgations to s for example (the question the extent of one' s a nuclea r stat e, and ro le-induced d Uemmas such as one's conf licting obligatio ns as a docto r or a nuclear res c•archer It also accentuates of politic a l obligation s armame nt s and processor or eva sion is their considered f urther in Appendix 2). At the more personal level, tha t of individual and group ac tion, the re several ques Ions to 'Wh, t. should my sta t e be disen tangled - questions di ffere nt from the key issu e be doing and influence, d epending on who one is. I do? 1 one Jives, - do?', on whi c h one may exert influences, i.e. in what l it tle There is not only the question 'What shou ld a question whi c h will have a quite different force de pending a nd ar e on whe re sort of stat e, where one wo rks, what one contr ols or on who on e ls and one ' s role s - but also the questions ' What sort of person do I wan t to be ?', 'What am I prepared to answer for morally?'. 64 Answe rs to thes e latter char a cter questions will feed back to influence those t o act ion-or ien t ed questions . Each of thos e questions c an , in gi ven situations, induce subsidiary dilemmas . The essential fea t ure of a deontic dil emma is that both A and the of A are wrong (or di ffe rently, pursu ing a nuclear def ence policy. obliga tory), negation for some suitable A, such as The place and essential role of deontic and 63. The nuclear dilemma is not alo ne re sponsibl e fo r these other dilemmas. T.arg -sca l e nuclear power generation, a nd other types of warfare and security ar rangements, also contribute. But a conflict of freedom and autho rity is already an outcome of the la rge central state. 64. For gro up formula t i on of t he que stio ns rep l ace 'I' by 'my group', etc. The l mpo rtnn ce of distilling ouL th e se qu•s t ions, and the moral und es ir a bility of r!Pt0rrr,n~0 fn terms of whnt: Lt docs to p oplc morally, are brought out Ln Benn , where however the issues a r e made t o l ook somewhat more separate than they are . moral d il emmas ure not l i t.t>r;,Lure f, !., • widely or well und er stood, p...." t'ticular]y __ e 1-1 ~ 1i in ca .1 Thi s l s par t ly be c a us e c urre ntly domin a nt e thic a l positlons lik e utilitarlnnism "annot at al l e asil y accommod a t e moral dilemmas or the data which giv•s to rise them but the n such positions do not r eally offer reporti ve acco11nU; of wr on~ an d obli ga_~_:!:_on anyw.-1 y. d i lemma doe Cont r ary t o utilitarian per ce pt:Lons a not neces s arily have any mo ral s olution , though there may be better a nd worse ways By 01t . wh c h assessments, contr a st f orm the with basis s uc h e thical theories , preanalytical oE se n s itive theories, do recognise mor a l dil~mmaa and reflect t he i r f e a tur e s. Reactions an f rom the res ponse s t hat a re c ha r ac t e ristic of deonti.c dilemmas fix. nuclear The r e 1<• an un s t end iness, an uncertainty a s to whnt to <lo , whJ.ch wny tu pr.occed , whl c h pr ind pl •n i n wa ter e d- down for m to temporary Thus , crutch . for as world' GG , that b st" j ethical RU;l1 ,)ps wt-o way a of neve r exerci s ing "mora lly ou r s J. n a morally-str a pped wor ld . fu nctor s peak moral A similar th e 'strictly mor;il Dete r r ence ha s a strlc tly temporary role but de t e er e nc: e th e c i rc um s t a nce s. de ter r .nc e, is be in a fallen to " second a acceptability ' object mus t cert ainly one str ictly and wrong, is of from th e conditional be to move beyond det er r ence, 'towards a optlon as to of what the to nucl ear do in Thus Wal z er, for example, s t r ugg les t o the conclusion though a "morally try to escape 'the paradox of deterrence', i.e. world free o f the threat of deterrence' (PL, p.317), out And can shift 'moral c ond i tional ' while a ccepta bi U.ty , good", responsibility d~t c rrcnce fix. ·s (as from good to a c ceptable) is made by the US Catholic of we gra s p examp l e , th e Bishop of London contends t hat the possession of nuclear wea pons 'whil e acceptable'' emerge neverthel e ss the policy to fix. awkward that war in the pursu e circumstances ( p .274) . 6 7 Howe ver as more than a n immediate stepping stone to a 65. There are exce pt i ons of course, e .g . i n the Catholic educated such as Sar t re; a nd Na ge l's f i nal example i s very instructive. For a fuller t h e or y of mo r a l dil emma s s ee howe ve r Routl e y and Plumwood. 66. Repo r ted in The Ec onoml s t; re pr i nted i n 1983, We ekend Magazin e p.2. 6 7. As a response to a moral dil e mma , Walz er ' s approach is perfectly in order logtcal ly. Tho se who, l i k e Be n n , ' f lnd i t ne ither coherent nor cceptable' hnvl! no t gras ped t he logic of mo r al di l emma s . The Australian, February 12-13 !i '.rnp erior pol Ley ~ nsscrabled (in sufficien tly it is §5-§6), a dt! cidetlly reasons of ·1 }-toor the opti_ n, sort reasons i'o r that are decisive already for those, outside the conventio nal Northern f r amework, who find no genuine of nuc le ar nuclear dilemma. To make matters worse the nuclear fix ls, furthermo re, stal1.:s' own mald.n&_. fix a It is not somethi ng they blundered into, by accident. initial nuclear jnvolveme nt was deli berat e l y c hosen, primarily by the Lhc escaJAtio n of In these respects the situation is like peop.1 e who deliberat ely let themselve s be invo lved in two incompati ble relations hips , and build up though and U.:, A, has by and large also be en deliberat ely chos e n, again mainly by the USA and the USSR in in teractio n. th:1 t The one there by. It is build-up. The fact i programme is t o be in addition to existing ( which are to Sovi et that the USA initiated nuclear armament, and has frequentl y l ed escalatio n, and apparentl y still does. esources myth, a some currency, that adoption of nuclear weaponry, an d nuclear in North Amerlca occurred on a defensive basj_s in response bui ld·-up, nucl~a · with onflJctin g obligatio ns generally agr eed The recent (1980) United to States' strategic be already in excess of Russia ' s , and which always have been so ) (Thompson , p.21) . The present dilemma , that many people fe e l acute ly, state policy, allies, and Naturally not the USSR policies. indicates especiall y that merely route by a taken advanced response to capita list t he nations, Soviets (or of USA and its NATO state socialism ). would not have been feasible without compleme nting And independe nt evidence, t l1 ere is then a direct outcome suc h as Soviet-Si no confronta tion, is a strong internal military dynamic in state socialist n.:.iti.ons . There is a t wo-way co nn ecti on between world political arrangeme nts nation-st.' .ltes and the nuclear f ix . arrangeme nts are an evident source of the nuclear situation is increa singly present wo rld polJU.cal structure . is widely promulgat ed .'.lrrangcm ents : it .is' seen On the dil emma as one hand, with t he these result through political that the i nd icat ing the inadequac y of the Indeed it is no longer a radical theme but that: the source of the nucl ear problem comes from state n world of sovereign states . • . which brought the wo.ld to the prese n t dangerous situation' ( PL, p,JlJ). nucJ.e11r fix tends to lo':.~ political arrangements into On th e other hand, th e the statist form, into arrangemen ts of an increas ing ly authoritarian and centralist cast. stutlst espoused purpose of nuclear weapons may be to kee p the and security, to defend national inter est s , reasons such as perpetuating the system advantageous of confrontation, st ate to (!), provid e but underneath there ore other sovereign st a tes and frame work the rlnd peace The military-indus t rial in ter ests, dependent state explo itation, and polit i cally favoured of inequa l ity it supports . The ~merg ing t heme is t he n that the ve ry nuc l ea r s i tuatio n arising from th e statist arrangements a nd interr e lations ( conomic ideologies , etc.) tends to , and is used to, lock a rr nngcme nl.s of s overeign where the pa ttern world states And zones of inter e st . t heme is a pi ecemea l pr a cti cal one . side the rivalries, into conflict i ng the present The argument to th1. s Consider first, the matter from the Soviet of nati ona l control and progressive military-economic reorientation common to all nuclear states is clearer . The threat from the West, whether it exi.sts or not (and in Soviet perception it certainly does) , has become a necessary legitimatio n for the power of the ruling elites , an excuse for their many ec onomic a nd social fa i lures , and an argument to isolate and silence critics within their own bo rders. In the West we have ••. care fully con trolled and se l ec tive release of 'offi c ial information ' (Thompson, p.20 ) . "We" in the West, e specially the Americans, also integrated with state appara tus, have, in forms increasingly the military-industrial complex, which is a major. benefi c iary a nd promoter of the nu c l eR r. arms race . 68 Secondly, there i s evidence of entrenchmen t of the arrangements, by th ing s S llCh as the SALT negotiation s ; shown there are f i xed s uperpower s an d a (growing) nucle ar club of nations all governed by a rule , partly held in place by deterrence . as flimsy negotiated set Connected with this , there are cases rev ea ling the fixing of zones of interest, such as the Afghanistan example. Soviet US i s 68 . of The invasion is not regarded as threatening US "vital interests", and so th e not over.duly worried about Afghanistan and its people. What was The role of the military-industrial complex in present US escalation is sketched i.n Cox. Marxists, with their dogma of economic determinism , would assign even more weight to this point. As some of them would free ly concede, a similar complex has figured prominently in USSR escalation. diff~rent, what it was worried a bout a nd made ~uc]d a r threat~ adj~c ~nt ~estcrn oil supp li es : concerning, were these lay within the US zone of interest (cf . th e d Lscuss ion in Sche ll, p.212). §8 . Ways out of nuclear dilemmas: results. in itia l political fall-out from the ethical Virtual ly all the ways are wa ys of limitat:i.on , and they all invol ve in one way or another limitations on nuclear arms or the way they are deployed, and limJt~tions on the thu s inevitable. and more or power s of states. Limitations on national sovere~.EX _~re The limitations may be reache d by agreement and negotiation , less voluntarily agre ed to 69 , or they may be imposed, or possibly worst of all, they may eme rg e from an ini.t i. al war. As with other fixes produced by there are suggested ways the structural ar rangements of states, ou t which do not interfere with these ac-rangemen ts, inter.stR-te approache s, and there a r.e ways which do seriously alter the struct ure nnd power ·elations extrastate approaches . of state s (and, in the limit, remove t hem altogether) , All the familiar , allegedly "practical" and "realistic" , attempt~ to resolve the nuclear problem, for instance disarmament by mutual arms limitations , etc . , are interstate ; sovereign state . The s ame goes (graduated) unilate ral disarmament . about the nation- state; they do not tamper with that sacred cow, the for les s "realistic" But in fact there is proposals, nothing or empi rical fact , is it part icula r ly a stable one. nor, and its replacement by alternat.ive arrangement s. as a We are certainly free - Jn more libera l states, it should be eve rywhere - to theorise a s demise sacred it is not a particularl y well justified political form; it js 1ot even a very long-standin g form of political arrangement ; matter very such as to its And nuclear dilemmas s houl d have e nc ouraged such reflection. 69. In principle it would be relatively easy for sta tes to agree to settlement of their disputes by less damaging a nd expensive contests than military ones, e.g. by contests of selected rep re sentatives, and not just through fiB l1Llng ln some form, but by contests of footballers , singers, da ncers, lawyers , or etc . In prac ti c e, however, such more civilized alternative s are never much consldered in thes e days of superstates . Animals, by conLrast, are smart enough to settle dis pute s by means much more like these . Even the a nci en t Greeks - though they had a clear appreciatio n of limits, which has been lost by post-Enligh tenment leaders regarded the institution of war as fi nal ( al l egedly inevitable ) means of arbitration between city-st a t es , not seeing its social, structurally -emergent, characte r. 50 approaches take one of Extrnstr1te ittlernat ional of slate s. r.ol two rou tes, way ~Ile to l~, ge nuine power, or the way down, throt1gh fractio nation or deunionisat lon 7 0 The ways up and down are by no means one and the same; ,10ccss;1rily incompatibl e . but they are Some of the impo rt ant machinery, for a way up to world governmen t, is alre ady there in the international law-courts. Wer e the courts ns signed suf fi cien t authorit y and po we r, the remedy , namely through legal acl ion, that· medie val principle theo ri. t s saw to all disputes, could in be rxtended to in t ers ta te disput es , and th e just war between states S and T supersed ed by the just ~ase of S versLs T. given intrastate s n fflcienl least jilitial]y) But if the law courts were power then their a uthority and efficacy would likely rely (a t upon war deterrence , though not by military means. perhaps Law courts, as usually conceived, are not effective without police and jails or their and equiva l ent supcr-statist back-up eq uivalent for of economic other penalties; and the either wi l l involve the capacity to inflict quite substi'.tntial amounts of damage on "delinquents" -· which, bec ause delinquents will typicnlJy be organisations, will also involve damage to innocent, and perhaps dissent 'ng , participants in those organisations, as well as to other In pa rt i es. repC'ilt uninvolved short t such an approach does not resolve the problem but tends to rt . Tl1 • Way Up is one more stnt i s t, legali stic , authoritarian way of trying ec:t t. n gri.ps with the nuclear though mostly 1n passing to be to problem, and accordi ngly is often men tioned, dismi ss ed 71 , in orthodox strategic texts on -·--------- - - - -- -70. Am e ricans, for example, tend to forget that their state (like the US SR) is a union, of fairly recen t orig in, and that a differ e ntly-oriented State of the Union message could well consi der dissolution of the uni on. Regional movements in USA unfortunately lack much popular s upport at present. By contras t, the re are signif i cant se para ti on movemen ts , some deserving aid and e ncouragement, which affect most other nuclear states, especially USSR , UK and France . The USSR already has tr oub le in holding its (supposedly voluntarily integrated) satellite em pire together; and the one recent attempted add ition right on its frontier is proving extremely recalcitrant. Nor s ho uld powerful political unions under centralised state apparatus be f no t c rcd c l ocwhc r e . The some appli es to state empire expansion, ns .illustrated in contemporary Indonesia. Mos t important, the reunification of Germany should be resi sted; instead a more rational regional deuni fication than the p resent East-·West division of post-war Germany sho uld be oought , al ong wlth removal of nuclear weapons from the border regio n, and so on. 71 . Thus for example, Ka hn, where such a "solution" is quickly dismissed as, impractical , etc. Hardly ne ces sary to s a y the Way Up has won most favour wllh the 1 ga l f r a ternity , and from more Authoritaria n organi s ations. 5l thermonuclear war . By contrast, the Way Down, thoug h like the new, is sca rcely mentioned in the orthodox discussions; means an appcara nc Q (a comeback) in some more radi ca l discussions, combined with the Way Up (in "world ord e r" mode.ls: unl i ke t he Way Down, i.s considered however beginning to be cf. Way and is more sometimes The Way Up, sympatheti cally by those who take a moral rather than strategic viewpoint. a r e newed emphasis on world order, in rea c hing inte rna tiona l system'; and 'the 'towards a no but lt is making Galtung). much by Up mora lly There is integrated missing element of world order today is the absence of a properly constitu ted political authority' (PL, p . 320). A main argume nt for the Way Up is just a repetition of that which is commonly supposed to underpin sta.tist arrangements in the first place, namely an argument fr om ( gene rous) variations upon the Prisoners' Tragedy of t he Commons. traditionally, ecological order. not herdsmen as best solutions regards to problems as the of organisation, public order and, more rec ently, as to So with the "tragedy of nation-states") where the players are but nation·-states , and one of the prospects is destruction of a r,ood parl of th e commons by rwclear wa r, the solution is now sort such It is that authorlty and coerc ion - in the form of the state - a r e r equired to ensure espe cially, Dilemma, of superstnt e. said to be some Of course, this begins to undermine an earlier application of the "traged y" argument, since states will lose their sovereignty and some of thcjr be order-imposing corr espo, dingly weakened. ar gum ent s are role, and But all political this is obligation to There a re, then, many problems through these A further theoretical with h:1.tch the is Way that Up, a both "tragedy" theoretical and the Way Up merely repeats arrangements. It is contingency, of there being no rival intelligent civilisations nearby, that the probl ems of interstate relations are not repeated 72 . will 72. stalist arrangements at a level up, by way of superstate only that states good ones in the first place, when in fact they are not, but are only sound under quite restrictive assumptions. prac t ical. assume to See further loutley and Routley especially Griffin. and material referred to a level therein, up and The rea reas ons for th e state are of course very different from the thf!oretic::il c:ov er such argume nts af ord. Among other things, the state enables and guarant ees the accumulntlon of power, privilege and capital. again . The maj or pra ctical hi tch is that there h no prospect at all of getting su ·ha "solution " t o work in tim e t o Aerve 5.ts intended purpose. Tn rc:,1.li l y , we ar e no ne arer a world gove rnment than we were a century ago , In fact, it is even arguable t hat since World War II we have moved furthe r a way from a world government than we were before Wo rld War TI. The disint e gration of empires has mul tiplied soverei g ntles . I t ia true that we hav e s omething called t he United Nations, but eve n the United Nations has decline d in power as it has grown in memb e rship. By the beg i nni ng of the 1970' s the United Nations ha d bec ome, in some ways, a l e ss powerful and e ven less influen tial organisati o n than it wa s a t the end of the 1950's (Hazrui, pp.2-3 ). The reaso n s for thj s Mazr ui goes on to o u t line . future For t he foreseeable nuclea r ideologica l d i ff e r e n ces be t we e n s tates , including especia l ly differenc e s as to how politica l arr angeme nts shoul d be e ff e cted, exclude any prospect of opcrnt l vc world governmen t or a worl d legal s ystem capable of resolving nuclear hostlllt i es . extre~ely I n some ways, this is just as well. monol ithic, woul d World gov ernme n t would cer t ainly , whatever it s ( g ray?) politic al colour, {~xplo l tatJ v e eco nomic sys tem whi ch would do i mmens e impose damage on to It undesira b le l eve l Ideological, r equ1 site the world an many remaining of inde e d u nity political and parad 'gmatic , cannot be and, e c o nomi c sepa r atio n expect e d in some crucial respects, unity. of Moreover , give n Northern main within nuclea r dea dlines. swee ping more sovereig nty , c o ul d blockages and agr ~ements, be negotiated? dea dl ocks i1 the involving genuine There an way is When not even endless of of that state series of s uch state reconciliation. a pp lies to int e rst a te arrang eme nts, whi .h ma y make limited us e the of The s ame Way Up nego tia tions or other conc i liation pr ocedu r es within a fram ewo rk arranged • - through the Unit ed Nations); 73. it limitations almost the cultures, nuc l ear weapon s li mitations can be worked out, how much less l ikely is (e .g . would systems. 7 3 The Way Up thu s presupposes an unlike ly much be f ost e r e conomism, would ent r ench bureaucracy with all l t s damaging f ea tur e s, a nd could e asil y tend to totalitarianism. ·1 n .:ltur.:iL an 7 11 Fo r a mor e de tailed (bu t decidedly mediocre) critique of the idea of a world gov e rnment, see Galtung. Naturall y the objections to world gov •rnmcnt , 11nd dlffl c ult lca in the woy of oht in i ng 1t, do not extend to mo r e f l ex ible world arrangements, such a world federation ofcultu res (cf . Ma zrui ). Such a plura l lstic ana rchlstic Way Up can be genuinely s yn thesized with the Way Down. jJ There is arrnrgemant s regrettably and als o conventions much are e~ tdert ce frequ ently concerning war and human rights 75), a nd are scntJments signed does slide smoothly that not not 1nce rnational observed (especially those worth into despicable dee d s . bode well ever be rcc1chcd. ln <'nnv,•11t f< n any great deal: openly violated. I ndeed there:.> already appears to he at least one fon·C!, of lofty It for nuclear arms limitations , s hould suffl c i en t ag reemen t wl 1I C'h tn nl1 the following intEirna t i ona l i1P mtljor 11u clc•nr sL 1t:es ore slgnnt:o r l.en, w!1fc:h w11uld rule ·11t LSN war and nuclc11r cl ic• rcnc includes a Even agreements states have are oft e n enough disre ga rd ed, sklrted ar ound, or not tr ea tie s , 1 , t h ton genocide. Genoc i de ac.ts commit ted, in time of peace or war, with inl ~nt to destroy in whole or part a natural, e thical, racinl or rel igio us group as such: ki.11:lng members of the group, causi.ng serious bodily or me ntal harm to the members of the group , d e llbcrately inflicting condittons of life to bring about physical destruction i.n who l e or i n pa rt. f ollowing associated a ct s are also punishabl e : dJrcct and public shall Beside genoc ide th e c onspira cy to commit be Persons committing genocide o r any of punl.shed , whether they are the othe r act s responsible rul er s, priva te individuals or public officials. 76 It is not diffi cult to argue nucl~ar genocide, inc itement to commit ge no ci de , attempts to comm.it ge nocid e , complf.ci.ty i.n genoci de. mentioned ca lculat ed that a larg er st rike (such as det e r rence policy requires as a ba ck-up respon se ) would almost cer t ainl y consti tute an act of genocide, through what minority groups. conspir acy repr:esentati .v 'S does to some But then, by virtue of connecting principles like CS, nuclear deterrence stands indicted pa r ticular it of the and as involving i.ncitement . nuclea r s t a tes acts ass oci a ted with genocide, in Some wel.i - known political and military would thus ap pear to be li.able to indictment . and punishment und er internation al law . 7L1. Even Dahl itz, who gi.ves a detailed and s ympathetic accoun t of nuclear arms control at t empts and lost opportuniti es, is by no means confident th a t suitable arrangement s onn now be achieved (se e pp. 210- 13). Reasons include technologic al advance s now taki.ng place, and the renewed America n drlvc f or strategic super ior ity . 75. See Brownlie, Kuper, and Amnesty Int e rnat ional reports. in t his paragraph were sugg est ed by c. Pigden. 76. The accow1t of genocide given is taken directly f rom the Genocide Convention, whic h is reproduced i n Kuper, p . 210ff . Most of the points text of the The nuclear fi.x cmergi.ng fr om nat.io ,,-stnte arran!_1, 111 ~nz:s - c ombin ed wi th the appare11t I mpot ence interstate relations to alleviate the situati on , indeed of with the apparent ability only to push the world further into the situation ne:.rer to nuclear the " brink" is now taken to ind ica te contemporary angle) the inad equacy of natio n-state po litica l tias gi v en new impetus sovereignty the best-seller and to co nsiderat ion of other extrastate r es olut ions . The According to can reorganise the radical namely n iclear in Sc.hell ' s 1 unsatis factoriness situat .l on The should the foundations of politic c l thought' pollllcal t.iicy opvrate •. , the indicates inst itutions Fate lead political of to req u i red a t he Earth . ' ful l-sca le to make 't he co n sonant with t he g lobal reality in which and in ' work [ lng] out the practicnl s teps by which mankind ... its political li fe' (p.219). However Schell himself tri e s to avoid the se ' awesome urgen t tasks, which , imposed on us by the of the present system of nati on stat e s has even reach ed stands, Schell reexaminatio n o f world ' c and book a new a rrangements, thesis that the nuc l ear problem national ( f r om and work of our age' else overimpressed by political t he oris ts. the 7 Z history, c onstitute So, no t feeling th e pressures of history or real ities of (unstable) nation-states , do most But there i s no good r eason to av oid the task of politic al rea ssessmen t, made so much more urgent by the nuclea r situation. There i.s li.tt l e doub t bu t t ha t we live ( too 11nthinklngly) with an an tiquated s ystem many present state arrangements, representative century communications •ery different condition; in a 77. when and the mai n outlines of the mod ern totalitari a n state and its mauifold defic i en cies recogni sed, even ea rl ier. of ( a llegedly 17th we re willing ly , The feat ures go vernme nt: , were largel y fashi oned in t he especially , us even of poli t ical a rrangements which t he nuclear impasse , among others, calls in to q 1est ion . best of even dem ocratic) techno log y, more were t he and primit i v e d iscerned, In the br iefs prese nt ed A similar theme , similarly qu estioning 'such sacred tradi tions as a bs olut e national so ve reignty', was p r essed by Bradley, a significant US g enera l ( sec Co x , p. 225). Sch 11. (like Bradley) does not mak e it entirely clear whether he is thi nking of the Way Up or t h e Way Down, but the names he drops suggest the Way Up. So does the mai n t hrus t of what he says, e.g. ' Thus the pe ril of extinction is the price that the world pays not f or "safet y" or "survival " bu t for ito [sic !] insistence on co ntinui ng to divide itse l f up into sovereign nations' (p.210), as if the natural or original st ate were an undivided one ? On Schell's position , see further Append ix 1. for political a r rangements such as repr~nontat ive government, the excessive siz an,! compl ex ity of modern states was not envisaged . But such systems con tinue to opcrn Lc , i ns ufflciently questloned, though tl1el r justificato ry bas es und c r mi ne<l. prese nt Nuclear problems rep r esentative have political emphasized have been several other defici encies in arrangement s. In particular, they have rcv cn l ed how governments can thwart popular opinion, and act against the evident will of t he people on an issue , for instance in installing US missiles Euro pe a n countri es. cen tury ca s e for r e pr e sentative proced ires is dissolved. issues, ~ i s sues. The least, be reduced. reduced excessive power back at dev e lopme nts , pro cedures, But the route down through issue-regul ated large i mposes and complex other modern requirement s. states What lnl t .t1-1.l s maller a s iL ls to inf or med citizens gro uping than approx i mate of a g lant satisfa ctory good will. As the re .1 r c se riou s dcfic encies .f.n the l.nf ormation by are stn tes, government recent tec hnologic al called for a re smaller Firstly, in present information and democratic progressive procedure, of control, nation-stat es, channels, and so f o r.th. ncc e ptable the from These upon nuclear problems have again made patent, even ·release the and distributio n distortion r estrictive of most liberal of them (and Aga in, especi a lly with new and less systems , there is little excuse for thls. information , upward depends But there ar e e vi dently vest ed i.nterests whi c h stand to benefit from the limited pub} l t:1 y and Secondly , democracy, insofar political rela t ed clcfi c i ncies as regards educati.on). flow major li ke many other social arrangement s, appear to function better with lnt egraLJon of groups by principles of federation. a nd on of governments would, to that ex tent at grou p.i.ng s , information flo w, communicati on and education. cx pe n,, ive lea st governmenta l power to more participato ry democratic forms, a rout e mad e poss ibl e ev en in mu ch elected wny that is thoroughly ambiguous on most issues ) are not given an almost f r ee hand on eve ry issue, but are required to answer polic:y th e It is past time for mor e is sue-control led d mocratic procedures , where governments once (i n some Now that modern communicati ons a nd info r mati on-processin g make i t fe a si bl e to dete rmine the mi.x of public positions on major 19tl1 in of data featu res in have a vailab ility major communicati on helped in making present delib e rat e ly fostered pattern of nation-stat e 56 co11frontatl on, and in establishin g the prisoner's nuclear superstates are often seen to be gJlemma type situation th e locked into (on which see, e.g., llardin1. A central a rgument, arising from the nuclear fix, for political questi oning current arrangement s and seriously considering their adjustment (in theory at le~sl), takes the following shape:• Political arrangement s shoul d answer ba c k to certain j,rnt iff.-.d 111 te1·ms of dolng ut .eas t where and are so. 78 The s<.i r e quir ements lnclude ,mch things ns en;,blJ ng good and meaningful and moral l lve s for those arrangement s, requirement s (as certainly in who operate under the muc h of the West) the basic mat e rial condit i ons for such lives are met . • l\ccaus c of the nuclear [ix, nation-stat ~ arrangement s have these requirement s. For guarnntce the prospect of arrangement s. nation-stat es, good meaningful lives those to under their yet ther e ls a non-negligi ble probability that person's morality is jeopardised if the person is obliged a meet at least in the North, can no longer such 1.lv •s may terminate, leas tl11rn fulfilled, 1.n this way. support to A life's meaningfuln ess ls certainly diminished if it ends before its 1,rimc inn nuclear d i~aster ; m.-iny and ceased s tate to Furthermore a acquiesc e in or engaged in nucl ear war preparation or nuclear deterrence (cf. Benn) . Th_erefore, nation-stat e arrangement s have should be amended . have their justificatio n, and Variations on this type of argument apply to many (though not all) natlon-stat es: natio n- s t ate f orfeited it ls not only because of the forfeited their mandate. nuclear Political fix that some obligations to such states a r e corr espo ndingly dissolv ed . There is enough evidence that power- brokers who control stght of, or worse have lost don't care about, t11e point of political arrangement s, of wha t justifies or is supposed to justify their sta tes. 78. states This applies both to How they answer back admits of expansion in various ways, depending on the irn lerlyi.ng politica l theory. Rawls, for example, puts it in familiar contract ual form: that the political order is 'a cooperative venture for mutual adva ntage' (p.4). Mao puts i.t in a standard democratic way: 'since Lhe purpose of all political processes is nothing but to serve the people and the i r interests, it is the people who should control in a meaningful way, the gove rnment' (see Soo, p. 68). r;7 rnnre powerful s tates nnd to lesser states, both c lai m popular Ln and mandate ag;iinsL the wllL of the pcopl(! , power~. put a value hi3 lier where, nlrea y illustrated milita ry situa ti ons: viol.1ted the 'IH' t:.1k er s on some have more often , they act without it or as The sit1.1at-ton has been reached sove reignty nation al survival. ' (Scliel1's conclu sion, p . 210; is -✓ hl.'lfe where than 'nuc l ear: they do on human for copio us evidence see Kupe r). Thi s by I srael, Vietnam and many other states in nonnuclear the principles of just warfare repeated ly, as hav e ma ny other pr i nciples. much of whn t c l .:i im they lv1d to externa l have been blatantJ.y Such states have forfeited respect or internal political obedienc e; so, on other grounds, have many other state s . It could just be, of course, as is oft en a lt er nat ives, that have been re s arc hlng glimpsed, though of world go vernment). dismissed, for s tirc withou very no possibly better alterna tives . but little As to whether all has such are no been expended on opportunity do to work, a nd not Appea r to give we alternative s w~y Down. There working tow ar d s the wea kening es pec .i.ally can be the may and ha ve been given know very little a bou t how humans suff icicnt org anisi ng and trying out alternative accessi ble alter natives instance as lacking feasibil ty , it is diff i cult to be enti r ely operate under su bstantially different arrangement s. But, t ime arrangemen t s, to even once again, proc eed thos e nuclear very far on of the mor e be time to pr oceed a l i ttle way ho wever , in breakdown of t he large r s uperunion s , which are the immedia te problem. ln valid to simp ly conclud e that alternative poli t ica l a nd while t here But alternat i ves the r e are, effor t toking the risk of being dogmati c; little d e ad ii ne[, tha t t1e r a nge of alte r na t ives or their features (except pe r haps for th e 0 op Li. on or insinuated , nuclear st a tes, Thus i t woul d be s oc i a l arrangemen t s, theoretic a lly feasible and certainly a l onge r- te rm goa l , do not present ly off er a part of t he practical response to the nuclear fi x. But there is no need to insist upon a s1 nglc-trac~ Way Out of dll emrna to th t: exclusion of all olh .rs: quite the contra r y . t he nuclear We can no t only afford to be fa:!.rly catholic about " second best " ap proache s and embra ce wha teve r seems to be working or looks like helpinJi • wUhin re c ogn i sed e thi c al ( and o t her ) con st rain ts ; Indeed, given the urge ncy, the direness of t he si tuat i on , we 58 :,hou1d ~s be fairly catholic and not lnflexibly co~mitt ed to narrow methods, such boRged rlown ( a nd v ery on a rms limitations ner,ot inti o n s m"thod::i should si~nifica nt be undemocratic perservered concessions unrepr•sentativ e) between main nuclear states. wi.th, from cert ai nly tJ nd and the attemp t s superstates, made to e.g . No-first···use declarat.lon, a ban on weapons in space, etc. But even s uch a wring further jointly signed The direction of most hope for progress has however come into view, a direction that is not especially new . The politica l means of the Way Out are what they have la rg e r eve r y liberal or huma nitarian been on issue that has matte r ed: from ou tside state governmental apparatus by organised pressure fr om within or nnd it ' by furnishing self ·- organising characte r is tically Bottom-Up famiL l ar cons i de rations are methods an alternatives practically wi t hout which never virtually upon bypass it , Top-Down. Such but part of the more general , and very effective, case agai nst relia nce upon states for a range of things they are now supposed to supply, but whic h effectively and [or can almost t hat invariably mnttcr le ss be obta i ned, where required, more e x pensive ly without them (and their monopo1 i.es) • In the case of security it i s states , with very few exceptions, impo sed , or acqulc s ced and nuclear weapons . frequently from time being , movement have in, milit a ry solutions involving nuclear installations The opposition to th e local a nd neighbourhood esca lating grou ps, nuclear fix has come some of them now feder a ted :1cr,;11s nntions ( " o the dir c cLion :!.a not rcnlly interstate). !we n rrnc:ccr-rn fu1 that These groups have in blo cki ng some nuclear ln s tal lat.tons and establishing, for the some a ga inst nuclear-free nu c le a r neighbourhoods . equipment The patchwo r k grass-roo ts is strongest in Europe, which is - as the mov emen t realised , and what gave it impetus - a leading thea tr e, on US strategic thinking, for a limited nuclear war not touching ext r eme ly doubtful th a t i~1crea i ng NATO and American Europe will E11 ropc wil l these mnke it a saf er place : American shores. nuclear r emoved installations in on the contrary it seems probable that bec nme much eafcr lf t he anti-nuclear movements installations It is succeed a nd Europe r e ndered nuclear-free. g ro ss ly lmmoral condu c t will ther e by also be conside1.·ably reduced. Ln having The chances of mrnt of the spectre of Soviet dc)tnl.11t\don, mil..ib:Jt:t, ideological and Exc:c•p l in the case of Eu ope, where th e inexcusable suppression of Eastern Eu ru pe a ll too ev iden tly persis ts, this is a n obvious fabrication . 8Cr i ou s ly And even ir Western Europe the spec tre is failing partly g iant fashioned military-in dustrial allianc e. inc r easJ. ngly dominated and largely domi na t ed financially ideo l ogically. much propped exaggerat ed. no t nnd c1d c quatcJJ and ec onomically some of and, in some mea sure, Indeed much of the "free" world countered as mil.itary by The means . i .," in basic any mode of mUitary . But mil itary, and associated poli tl c al, domtnatlon of We ste rn Europe by the Sovi e ts is a problem, t here are several ways other predomi na ntly American nuclear weapons to mi tigate it. on] y local def e nc e arrangement s - whethe r top·-down alternative is it domina ted economicall y , by the US A. doml na ti on to whic h nuclea r weapons are con s ide r e d relevant in sofa r a up by the NATO powers ' i s not ge ncraJ. ly considered so much of a problem (as it ts 79 ), and ls anyon' Since the l ast World War, Western Europ e ha s be e n polHlcally and ideologica lly , by the USA , c a1;e Does expect the united Soviets to absorb China, let alone take over Canad a or Brasil say? Th Rt other? social methods but also some and much r eliance on These should include not state-suppl ied social decentralis ation , regionalisa tion and devolution of orga nlsat{ons, than me thods, or r estructurin g, such as power to dispersed local mo r e cooperation and interchange with the Soviets and East e rn Europe. Part of the point of whether external or r es tructuring internal, so is especiall y situa tions, is to st a t e-contrived 79. break make any military takeover, much more difficult and pointless, and the rest o r ation of loca l control easier . 80 Part of int e rch1nge, to the point of cooperation and at the level of more ordinary people, in more ordinary down conditions of hostility and distrust and to s abotage the West-East confrontati ons, and thereby to remove For many pe opl es of the world , and in it s impact on the natural world, advanced corporate capitalism is an oppress ive and damaging doctrine. But, in contrast wit h a ustere Marxism-·Len i.nism whic h would i mprove the lot of some of Lhe oppressed world while even worsening the impact on the natural world, corpora t e capitalism admits a certain pluralism, and recognises many mo r e individual ri gh t s and libertie s. Ce rtainly Marxism-Len inism which appears to degene rat e in practice to an authoritari an and totalitarian position is a less welcome alternative . It is fortunate, then. that we need be saddled wi t h neither: there are s u per ior options. 60 ot.hC'r motl ves fo r, and Western popul ar suppor t Eu r ope , for f or, long j. much Uitary too adventures partial to and military advt'nturcs, sho uld now be hel ping i t se lf rath e r: than relying on a leaky Amer.lean nucl e ar umbrella for its defe nce . Moreover it ough t to be, at the ve ry least, 1ncomfortable about the risls of c a tastrophi ca lly damaging t he world in the i nterests of its own security . extensive parts of Nor should other "nuclear depende nt" states be prepared to ac qui esce in this not uncharacteristic European impositlon. There wo rl<l, wha t LS N war is no risks, enormous for virtue Western in sacrificing othe r parts of t he Europe, rn i. li t r1ry-base d dom ina tio n to other parts of the worl d. which has long exporte d There ar e better. options than clublou s and ris ky nuclea r shields for Europe. -·-·- ----- --·- . ·-- 80. Thus , for exampl e, t o the exte nt that lo cal defence groups a re integrated under more centralised direction, it would be a built-in principle th at s urre nder of the central directing sect i on absolved the federated groups fr om following suit or following further dir ec tions. That is, through devolution of power, surrender becomes structurally impossible (though individuals or baste groups may surrender). Moreover, the central section wnuld ho ld only limited informa t ion about the federated uni ts it in tegra t e d. The locally organised groups themselves, which would mer ge wilh local po pulati ons, would be train e d in tact ics of passiv e resist ance, sabotage, (nonviolent) guerilla warfare, et c. The net effect (as c. Pigden, who made most of these points , argues) would be to make the cost of militar y conq uest, occupations and exploit a tion prohibitively high. One reason why t he Japanese Army High Conunand decided aga inst invasion of Au s LraHa i n March 1942 was th e cha r acte r of Australi.ans and the fact th a t th ey 'wo uld resist to the end' ( Threa t s to Australia's Secu rity, p . 62). Ycl th 1 9 112 (wa r r edu ced ) Aust ralian populatton was substantI.nlly untrained a nd unorganised for loc ally-based defenc e . With such a defence r estruc t uring, Aus tralia wou· d not only much reduce its vulnerab ility to military adventures, but remove standard reaso ns for succumbing to threat s of outside military domination, blackmail, and the like. 81 . In par ti cular , with sufficient cooperation and trust, competitive prisoner's dilemma situations, which depend on the prisoners being kept separa te, are removed. So too a main mode l supporting deterrenc e policy would be undercut. And the arguments from national dangers would b e further co rroded. In the same direc t io n, i t is import a nt to extend cooperation between USA and USSR down below t he l e vel of state trade deals, e.g. in grai n and gas, to communicati on and coope r ation between people. For such commercial deal s there is suff ici e n t tr us t, even in periods of intensive confrontation: why should it not be so also a t more significa nt people-to-people levels? Many f ur ther Ror ts of lnt c r rclo tionshfp ore fe slble, nnd jnexpenaive by m:llltary st a ndards, e . g . sister cities, common clubs, worker exchanges, gi.( t pro Jee ts . If, for ins tnnce , 100 1 000 o r mo r e ord lnnry Americans wer e l i ving, working or holiday i ng in USSR ( and vice versa), Americans would feel less enthusiasm for hurling nuclea r missiles into Russ ia (or vic e versa ) . Only quite inadequate efforts have been made to build up mutual respect and trust; or the con tr ary , a l ot of resources have been expended to enco urage pr ecisely th e opposite a tt itudes, e.g. as part of the strnteg y of the "cold war". ~ 6J What th e anti-nucle a r movement s must press b,oa rl out1 i.nc; fof ::tccordingly i.ic> perceptive t r ansarmamen t, to i.e. conversion outer edges of graduat e d the movements, alternative social defence arrangements). Bu t t h e ar gume n t a lso makes it clearer how f a r this should go, t hrough in i n pa rt it i s what they hav e_ been pushing for, nuclear reduction an d rlisarmamen t ( a nd, on the more wa y clear namely all the disarmament 82 to total nuclear disarmament, unilateral c e rt a inl y to lo cal disarmame nt across progr e ssively larger parts of the planet's s ur t~cc , inc luding especially Europe. For once the state is demoted , its i mpo r t ance a nd t he necessity of its maintena nce properly downgraded and reliance on dec i s i on- making its diminished de ci s ion-making - once all that is happe n ) , one in duly favour of allowed more localised cont r ol and for (it does not need to major component in the nucle a r fix is removed, namely the problem o f red 11ction or even loss of state sove reignty . Ma'ntenance of that sovereign ty has been ass i gned a mistake n importance, which in turn acco un ts for the mistaken we ig ht ass i gned to the arguments from national dangers. What is important and wo rt h pres e r vi ng is not the sovereign state, but certain ways of life within the stn r- c . The na ti o n- state and dangers to it, and accompanying features s uch as mis p.l aced natl.onal J.sm, are the weakest links i.n the nuclear fix situation . On ce th e demise of the soverei.gn nation-state is allowed f or, the arguments fr om nat iona l conce rni ng part i cul a r. dangers .lndividual also and grou p rights and In their freedoms, by t he that nation- s tate . matter The are to arguments liberties in for t hem, as sma ller or exclusivel y nation-state is neith r sufficient for are disappearing, nor community arrangements can ensure them. But a r guments f r om lnd i vidual and group dangers remain , do they not? ri sks are civil necessarily th em , since i n inc r eas ingly many states the s e liberties nec e ss ary pl ace None of these require national sovereignty or even a national life. None o f ti e rights and freedoms g ua r a n te ed disintegrate. in div id11a ls 11nd groups r e maln: To be sure, th a t has always been so, 83 and ls not ---~------ ----82. The In i ti a l but impor ta nt st e ps are at zero cost as regards deterrence. Wer e det e r re nce re a lJ.y the pol icy there would be little case for more than a f r a c t io n of pr ese11t nuclear arsennJ.s. The ste ps to disarmament ;ire well-known , e.g. the scrapping of obs olete weapons, and an end t o modernisati on, the removal of nuclea . weapons in crucial theatres such as Euro pe, et c . 62 hci n1~ clwnged but only woH,f!ncd in thi. s age of moslly to wont be sure t hat nucle or arc othe r outsiders. People t hclr li v es will contlnue to run their course, i.denlly i n a flourishing fash ion , a nd wi ll not be Russ nns natlon- states. t controlle d by Amiirican s or Nucl e ar arrangeme nts which threaten t he ir lives not a rational rout e to these ends . In t he weigh-u p t hat should occur in char t.tri g a way dilemmas the as nuclear out of such deo ntic fix and its subsid i ary dilemmas, there ar e then much more i mport a n t elements than featut·es of the nat :ion-st:ate, namely E~-~ of things those the st at e is s uppos ed to safeguard, such as individual and local we lfare and a ut onomy; wc,1pons. but those th i ngs are bett e r ensured by The main reasons are fam il iar : threaten Lhe lo ss of basic values, such the removal nuclear of in particular, nuclear circumstanc es as welfare and autonomy, for many cr•ntures and reg ions, and the potential los s is in general much great er than in a nuclear-frcP si tuation ( even should another with nuclear weapons ). ideological party the o pportunity armed There are also well -kn own supplementa ry reasons; example, the production of nuclear weapons reduces both local of remain welfare for (because costs of wea pons manu fa cture) and autonomy (bec ause of th e accompanyin g sec urity measures). Thus the appropriate ly de vi ces and nuclea r fix limiting weapo ns is resolv ed , theoretical ly it can deploy, and how ), and rate, by by allowing for the But, although that is a reasonable Way Out , at little c ost in the circums tances , it will be s ince any sovereignty of the st ate (especially as to what nuclear con sidera bl e reduc tion of st a t e sovereignty . pra ctice , at strongly resisted in those who hold power hold it , in one way or another, unde r th e au s pices of the state. This is a main reason why people must organise and act aga i nsl the state . Again the resolution also lo ok s practicnl enough, since sovereignt y reduction in ne ed apply es s e nt ially only to the the production and deployment of nuclear weapons . 83. the Ind eed it could in principle be obtained by negotiated It will rema in so und er any satisfactor y political arrangement s. Until human s ocial arrangement s change substantial ly , there is no substitute for on-golng vigi lance to ensure or maintain political liberty. agreement ( at the top l e ve l s of s tat e) . to far with the superstates , the li mitations of s tate- powe r will likely ha ve to proceed further: for nuclear weapo nr y doc s no t stand in sp l endid isolation. i.nto both milita ry s yst ems - and ( c ivil) Rather it is industrial production of the states So, uns u r pr i s ingly, practica l- look ing resolu t ions are being concerned. ti ed solidly resisted by super states. Accordingly more popul a r (bottom up) act ion aga ins t nuclear-involved state s and espec i ally against the supe rstate s , af t e r all the stat e s causing the mo s t serious dilemmas, wil l have to be t aken much furth e r. variety of organ is ed forms. These in clud e a refusal to contribute to nuclear war preparatio n , e ithe r d i rectly or wld •l y, from such s t e ps ns Once again it will take a The indir ect l y. the forms of action range block adin g o f shipme nts of ur a nium, and the rc f1 1!:lal of suppJ 1, Qa a nd se rv i c es to sa i1or n o n nuc le ar ships and subma r i ne s, t he to withho lding or r ed i rect i on of t axes des t i ned for nuclear security purposes. They inc l ud e as we ll the whole r a ng e nuclea r facilities i nstal l a tions and of nonviolent (methods protest which method s against do exclude not i ncapaci t a t i on a nd decommissioning of equipment l and which do include new model . 8'~ resistance and de f e nce organisations). It is important to realise that petitioning of powe r state representat i ves and ho l d e rs, f or instance through letter campaigns, demonstrations and direct ap pea l, t s far f rom a complete strategy , a nd may be ine ffecti ve or ignored, th e r esul t s disco u r aging. and This is one reason why popular action should be based on a mor e com prehensive politi c al strategy, which also involves withdrawing s up po rt f r om prevailing state arrangements, and working out and partic ipati ng in alter nati v e a r r a ng emen ts, especially alternative defence forms. 85 Sufficient d etn' l s as t o what to do ar e already known, enough to make an immediate start. 84. For some imp r e ssion of the rang e of me thods, see aga i n Sharp. 85. For muc h mor e on all these points, s e e e .g. fu rt her Appe ndix 2. Martin . As to what to do, see 64 APPENDI X l. ON THE FATE or MANKIND AND THE EARTH, according to Sch e ll, and to Anders. A ncrtes of nucl cn r prophet s lw a pr odu c ed a EJ e r:les of ph ilosophj cal ly-·o riented works on nucl e ar war and the all e ged impl i.c c tions of l1 uman ex t inct io n . 1 The series is important for its dee pe r penetration into the nuclear d ilemma , down to metaphysical leve ls; i n this the series contrasts ith the transie nt s u pe rficialities of much o f the political commentary. The most wi de l y c i rc ul ated and influential text of the series is undoubtedly that of the s l ightest of t he ''prophets", Schell' s The Fate of the Ear th. This skillful piec e o f medi a -philo so phy uncannily redeploys some of the appar e ntly deep phenomcno]ogi cal themes of Anders . So, conveniently, main assumptions of Schell and And ers ca n often be considered together. To critic i se their a ssumptions is not of co u r s e t o belittle their wo rk. In pa rticular , Schell's little book, for a ll i.ts politic al shortcomings, is having a significant a nd much needed ef f ect j n sh i ft i.ng att: lt udes towards nuclear arrangements. It is especially valuable f or i ts vivid and horrifying scenarios of the aftermath of nuclear attack. Unfor t 1111,i t ely it: a lso exhibits, both phi losopld.cally and fac tually, sever e defects . Somr of it 1s simp ly ga rbage: to selec t one example , consider the claim that ' witho u t . . . a world-wide program of action for preserving th e [ human] spec i.es nothing else t hat we undertake together can make any pr a c t tea l or. moral sense (p.1 73, rearranged ). Th is s1ou l d cer t a inly be rejected phi losophica lly ; for ther e is no separate moral issue of s uch overwhelming importance that a ll other lssues become mor ally ne 11 t r al. Mo r a l issue s remain moral issues: they don 't cease to be so when compar ed wi t h more important moral issues ( as Schell effective ly acknowledge s el s ewhe r e, p . 130 ) . And the claim should a l so be junked on more f actual grounds. Humans fo rm a highl y resilient sped.es, like r abbit s i n Australia a survivor spec i es, unl i kely t o be exterminated unde r presently a rrang ed nuclear ho l oca usts . l. The di.st i ng ui shing term i s from Foley's Nuclear Prophets, wher e many of th e l eadi ng prophets are assessed. One well-known pro ph et not so consider e d there i s Jas pers , presumably because hJs ma in work (which might equally we ll ha ve been translated as The Fa te of Mankind) comes out in entirely th e wrong direction. For it gives heavy philosophi c al attire to the be tt e r -d e ad -than-red abomination, A ma ln argument agai nst Jaspers so presented i s simple. Howeve r bad being r d mig h t be come ( at present it is debatably worse than living under some of Lh e tot a l i tarian regimes th e free We st props u p), it still gives human s a fu rth e r chance for good lives , since r e gimes fall or can be topp led: bu t t o t al a nnihil a tion removes that all-important oppor t unity . But J as pe r s does not pr e sent his po s ition so simply . Rather his con t e nti on i s t hat there a re circum st a nc e s whe re a nd princ ip les for which a person or group of per sons ought .to s acri f ic e even their lives . Freedom is such: a l i f e worth living i s a fr e e life. But the latter pint can be granted w!. 1:liout conceding tha t s a c rlf1cc is a possible means to it , While the sai:rifice of one or a f e w l i ve s may be a possible ( if dub i ously effec tiv e) w~y t o fr • . l ivc D for oth e r s , c er t a inl y the sacrifi c e of all l ives is not a poss i ble rout e to fr e e llve s for a l l, s ince no human l i.ves r ·emain. To thi s rx Le nt Sche ll l s ri g h t (on p . 131) i n a ccusing Jasper s of an ea ch to all f al l Rcy. J aspe r 1 s i dea that "the f r ee life that they try to save by all po s s ibl e mea ns is mor e th a n me r e lif e or lives'' breaks down when applied to al l participating pe ople. None c a n ga in free live s by extinction of all: t hat is not a possibl e route to l ife e ve1. was selected howev e .· b1?ca,.1se it 1eads i0to, lndeed presupposes, two of the major defec tive assumptiono in the work ot Mchell and And ers: Sl. Nuclear w,n· will ellroinate life, humnn li.fe r1t least, on arth (the 2x~_~nc:Uon assumption); and S2. 111 the absence of humans, very many notions, not only those of morality a nd value, but t hose of time and space for example, make no sense ; or, to put it into a more sympathetic philosophical form, these notions depend for their s nse on a n act ua l human context ( the ext ravagant a nthropocentric assumptlon). It is appli cations of S2 which giv Anders' and Schell 's work 2 some of its apparent phllosophical depth, and certainly induce much philosophical puzzlement through the paradoxica l propositions generated. B11t the frequ ent applications of S2 depend esse ntially on Sl. For without total extinction there will he humans abo ut, to make past and future, good and evil, go on making sense! Th ·-- exDmp l e Granled the factual assumpti on Sl is by no means ruled out as a real po ssibilit y; granted the technological means are now available to make it true, to render Homo sapiens extinct; 3 granted the prospect of nuclear war does t hreaten leacfing centres of Western c .i vilizat ion witb obliteration. Even so Sl appea r s unlikely in the light of present - admittedly inadequate - information. Even in Ca nada, which lies on the pol ar route of Soviet missiles, human li fe should be able to continue in certain northern areas (according to Canadian medi cal studies) . Sche l l's argument to Sl is extremely flimsy. It depends, for example, on an unjustified extrapolation from the Northern to the Southern Hem i s ph ere , but for the most part it does that very North American thing , of con tracting the world to North Arner.lea . (All that matters, all worthwhile civili zati on, i.s in USA, or at least, to be more char.itable, in North Ameri cA and Europe, which will also be wiped out, i.e. its human population will be eliminated in the nuclear holocaust.) Some of the data Schell relies upon , for example the effect of nuclear explosions on the ozone layer, is significant l y out of <late. Other effects than ozone destruction apparently transfer even less we ll f rom Nortl1 to South. A factually superior study of nuclear disaster than Schel l's, by Preddey and others, indicates that parts of the Southern Hemisp here , New Zealand and southern latitudes of Africa a nd Latin America could escape relatively unscathed from even most massive northern exchanges. 4 Roth Anders a nd Schell remark on the "impossibility of unlearning" th e mean s of manufacturing nuclear bombs. It would seem that extinction, which they both foresee as at least a live possibilit y, would furnish a good medium for unl e 3rning nuclear technolog y (something very like this emerges from van Daniken's theor y of an earlier "high" technology). In v i rtue of S2, they would however 0xc lud e such a possibility as a case of unlearning, contending wrongly 2. For a deta iled comparison of Schell and Anders' remarkably similar versions o( S2 , se Foley JS. 3. Thus the Las t Man argument, important in environmental ethics, is no longer merely hypothetical, awaiting the remote death of the Sun, but assumes new ur gt'ncy. It is this sort of argumen t: that connects environmental et hic s and nucl ear ethics, at a deeper metaphysical level. The Bomb and Bulld oz er are out of the s ame technological Pandora's box . Nuclear technology is not the only route to human extinction, nor the only Pando ra's box. Biological and chemical mea ns are perhaps even more effective, and ce rtain l y can be more selective in what gets extinguished. 4. Howev er, new modellifig~ and estimates, none so far very reliable, keep appearing, and amending the picture. On the basis of one recent scenario, generated by a computer modelling of a 5000 megaton nuclear exchange, th e immuni.ty of the Southern Hemisphere to the dire consequences of a northern LSN war has been questioned . In particular, Sagan, no doubt overreaching the evidence , has 'warn[ed] that the nuclear blasts would create enormous diff e rences in temperature between south and north, shifting normal wind pa tt e rns and carrying smoke and radioactivity south' (Newsweek, November 7 1983, p .56). Some sections of the environmental and peace movements have a vested interest in exaggerating the probable effects of nuclear holocaust for life on earth, much as many stotesmen have an interest in minimizing t'r""l . 66 th n t lhc notion no long er rnnde sense. But what tlh•y s(H'm t.o want to s uggest wi. Lh th e impo ssi bility-of-unle a rning mes sage is th "' inevitability of the de velopment and event ual use of the technology - as if having learnt th e means ull else was dete rmi ned , and manufac tur e and use ceased to be a matter of c hoi ce. Certainly such vie ws have been flo ated 5• But: they are no t t e na bl e . Ther e are man y examples of technological advances that have not been t ak en adva nt r1gc of, and there are even cases of tec hnological developme nts that have be en mRnufact u rcd but not marke ted or used. The re is not something ve ry special a bo ut n11 c l ear appa ratus that puts it beyond the scope of such· generalis;<1 tio ns . Both Schell a nd Anders do claim tha t the re are very special things about nu clear wea pon s , in particular that they do not allow "expe riments ". Even if thi s were tru e - i. t is certainly not of smal ler weapons i t would not tell aga .inr,t the pr e v.lous argument: against the ine vitability of nuclear weapons. And in fac t Anders and (e ven) Schell hedge thejr claims a bout testing , and the limits to nuclear sc..ient if i c work , to large-scale weapons and independent experiments which do not interfere w.ith tl1 e observers and those outside the " J.abnrn t.ories". Again they have latched ont o major po i nts: in parti c ular, we hnv e at present no way of testing the c umul a tive effe cts of large nuclea r weapons in concer t, e . g . for more holistic effe cts such as fireballs or firestorms , e le ct romagnet ic puls e or ozone destruct ion. Sho r t of an LSN war, and l ike ly eno ugh with it, these crucial effects must rema in largely untested and lypothelical in chara ct er. The penetrat.ion of human chauvini sm , a s in S2 , is not something peculiar to Sch e ll, but is a product of Western ph ilosop hy, European philoso phy especially. This cl,auvinism is unfortuna tely alive and sti ll well, Anders' ve rsi on of S2 being ju s t on e striking illustration ( c:f . AA p . 252ff . ) . It ha s a lso deeply penetra ted Anglo- Amer i can phi.losophy, and has recently been extended by Wittgenslein ' s wo rk , where even the necessary t ruths of mathematics are taken to be a pro duct of I um:rn co nv enti ons , and would va nish w.lth bumnnsl Such ar e all eged imp lications of ex tinction ; but the fact is that the truths of arithm PLlc a r e in no way dependent on the existence of humans or humano ids or of gods or g iraffes . In Sche ll, human c hauvinis m is dished up in a particularly powerfu l and obnoxious Kant ian form. Th oug ht s and proposit ion s, time and tens e s, history and memories , values and morality, al l depend on the life- giving pres e nce nf human being s - past or fu ture or me rely potential humans are not e nough , persons t hat are not humans are cer t ai nly not enough. Thus, a ccording to Sc hell (p.1 40 , e .g. ), ' ... t he thought "Humanity is now extinct" i s an impo ssi ble one for a rati onal person, because as soon as it is, we are not. In imagining a ny ot her event , we l ook ahead to a moment that is still within the strea m of huma n t.ime, The thought is howeve r perfectly possible for huma ns; we can have it right now. Though we no doubt have it falsely, a later ratl onal creature may well be able to hav e it tr uly. Schell erroneously denies that: t here is no "later" ' . . . outside th e human tens es of past, pres en t, and futur e (p . 14 0) 6 • Human ext inc t ion eliminates ' the creature that divide s time into past, presen t and f uture ' : so anni h ilati on canno t 'come t o pass' (p. lli3) . But it: is simply false that the tenses are human; the tens e s depend on a local time ordering (per ce ptible to many creature s ot her than humans, but no t depending at all on that perceptibilit y f or its via bil ity) relating other time s to the present , to now (a l so a huma n-independent location, evident t o other cr eatures, an d borne witness to by suc h sequences as the passing seasons). And nnn ih llntion may als o too easily come to pa ss , for ma ny humans in the Nort h at l e ast, as it came to pa ss in recent ge ologic al times that human s began to exist upon earth. Bef ore t hat ther e was a time befor there were any human beings. - •••-- - - H•--- - --- - - - - - S. Not merely by technologica l determinists of marxist persuasion. Hackworth, a form e r US general , a r gues by straight induction, that if the US mili ta ry ha s a wea pon it will u se it. 6. Th e ap palling theme that humans c reat e past, present and future repeated e l s ewhere , e . g . p .1 73. (etc.) is Anders ' arg um ent for the demise of time, that 'what has been will no .Longer even what has been', is also explicitl y and narrowly verificat ioni.st: 'for wrwl wo u ld t he d iffer e nce be betwe en what. ha s only been and what has never been, if the r e J s no one t o r emember the things that have been' (AA p.245). Ther e would st l ll remai n ma ny sorts of differenc e; for one, the history record ed i n mm1y other org anisms would be differe n t. Temporal themes do not la c k ' legl lma y be ca use not regist e red [or verified] by anyone'; truth, signl Eica nc e , sti l l less meaning, are not matters of human verificat ion. be Here , a s e ls e where, the human cha uv i nism is mixed with other distortin g metapl1ysi ca l assumptio ns of our Western he ritage , in particula r, verificati onism and on t ol og ical assumptio ns (to the effect that there are severe difficult ies in talki ng ab out what does not exist). Thus, for example, Schell takes over dub I.o ns metaphys ic s from Freud, according to whom "it is indeed impossibl e to i magi ne our own death; and whenever we a ttempt to do so, we can perceive that we are i n f a ct s till present as spectator s" (p.138). The second clause goes a good dJ e l a ncc t owards refutjng the first. In fact there is no g r eet dlfficult y in descri bing coun terfactua l s ituations which undermJne both Freud's claims. The same go e s for Schell ' s extension s of human chauvinism into one of i t s main tr a<l 1 ti o nal str ong holds, value theory: the simple and basic fact [si c!] th at befor e t here can be good or evil, service or harm, lamenting or rejoici.ng there must be li f e' , human life ( p. 171) . These are no facts, but deeply entrenche d philo sophical dogmas whi c h have been exposed and criticise d elsewhere 7. Natura l ly s ome t hi ng s will disappear with the extinctio n of humans: trivial l y t here wi l l be no mor e humans (unless humans re-evolve or are rec eated ) , and t hus no mor e human ins ti tutions, human activitie s, huma n emo ti on s , and so forth. But it is a lready going too far to suggest, as Anders does, that t he r e will a c cord i ngly be 'no thought, no love, no struggle, no pain, no hope , no comf ort, no sa crifice, no imag e, no song ... '. For there are, and may eontlnue to exist, othe r creatures th a n humans with emotion, struggles , songs , Nor will the endJng of all such human Vf?ntures, if it comes to p3ss, show that nl l past huma n ve ntu res have be en 'all in vain', meaningle ss , and already so Lo say dead. The decay of t he s olar system, or the heat-deat h of the uni.ve r s,~ cv~n, wi l l no t s how t hat worthwhil e human activitie s were not worthwhi. le. 8 Sev er.a l of tbe other notions and themes common to Schell and Anders derive from t he i r shared assumptio ns Sl and S2. It is these that underlie the biblical no t io n (in Re vela tions ) of a Second Death , redeploye d by both. 'The death of mankind ', und e r Sl, is reckon d a ' second death', because by S2 end Sl remaining lJ fe i.s r e nder ed mean.lngle ss and already ' seems to be dead' (AA p .244, S p.166) a nd Ls already 'overhung with death' (S p.166). Thus, too, more trivially , a per son f a ··es ' a s econd death ', not merely one's own but in addition that greater de ath of the spe c ies and all future generatio ns (S p.166, p . 115). However even if nu c l e ar ext inction came to pass, the stronger notion would not be vindicate d, becau s e it de pe nds on the fallaciou s inference to the meaningle ssness of prec edi ng lif e and on the very questiona ble represent ation of this mea ni ng l ess nes s as a sort of death. There is no Second Death: creatures die just once , pe rh a ps all at about the same ti me . The idea of a Second Death lacks even a s o li d met aphys i cal bas e . From Sl , t og ether with the minor pr inciple that extinctio n being an absolu t e does n ' t d i ff er in deg ree, come s the universa lity of peril them e that ' we are al l exposed to pe r il in t he same degree', which is according ly 'd isguised' a nd 'diff ic ul t to rec ogni s e', be cause there is no contrast (AE p.61+; S p.15 0 ) . Thi s th eme fall s with Sl. In a ny event, not all peoples are equally i mperilled by t he nuclea r situation , th e Indians of southern Patagonia being 7. See , e .g ., ' ll uma n chauvi ni s m a nd env .l r onmental ethics', in Environm ental Ph i l oso n~ (ed i ted D. Mann.ison and other s )) Research School of Social Sciences , Aue trallnn Na tio na l Univ er0 l t y 1 1980. 8. Anders is here ( AA pp .244-5) r e l yi ng upon a ve rs i on of the argument from 68 rnLher betlcr pJac d than the Germans of northern gu , e . 1 011 Nor are all pe opl e C<JuaJJy locked in to the situation or inca pacitated by it; as exp l.aine d, th e po s ition is different in different countries a nd placeR. Nor, --- 1 i ke wise , are all people equally res ponsible, an obnoxious theme, (in co ntrast to Anders) r-c pc a tedly infiltrates . This is the Po go theme, ,iccord ing to which -S3.- · Responsibi lit y for t he pre sent nuclear si.tuation (fiasco, really) distributes onto e verybody, it be longs to very human in the world . 9 B11t there is 3lso , mixed in, a weaker more plausible claim that gives lie to the stronger one , namely that we have some responsi bil i ty (the Nazi situation is compared). An es peci ally blatant example of the Pogo theme 10 runs as follows: ' t he world's political leaders ... though they now menace the earth with nucl cnr wcapo nG, do so only with our permis si on, and even at our bidding. At least, this is true for democracies ' (pp .229- 30) . The theme is elaborated e l sewhere : we are the authors of that extinc tion. (For the populati ons of the super powe rs this is true in a positive sense, since we pay for extinction and support the governments that pose th e t hrea t of it, while for the peoples of t he non-nuc lear-armed world it is true only in the negative sense that they fail to try to do anythi ng about the danger)' (p . 152) . But this is more of an argt1ment indicting r epresentati ve government, by revealing its insensitiv ity and unr es pon s iveness to many of the populace they alleged ly govern, not to mention those affec t ed by its activJties who are not represented at all (namely ioreigne t-s ). But Schell convenient ly neglects all such points: we are pote n tial mass ki llers. The moral cost of nuclear a r maments is that it makes of all of us underwri. ters of t he slaughter of hundreds of m.lllions ' ( p .152). And again '[ as] perpe trators we co nvey t he steady message that life not only is not sacred but is worthless; that it had bee n judg ed acceptable fo r ever yone to be killed' (p.153) . Little of this is true . Those who campaign against nucl ear a rrangements , vote against nu c lear- committed parties so far as is possible , a nd the like, are certainly not the authors of potential des t r uction, and responsibi lity .for the nuclear situation does not simply dist r ibute onto them. Nor does responsibil ity - or the unlikely opinions as to worth Schell tl l eg itima ely attributes to everyone - fall on those who have don e less . Responslbil ity for de cisi ons taken in "liberal democracies " even by representat i ves (in the unlikely event of this happening in the case of anything as important as defence) cannot be traced back to those represented , since among wi ll c :1 Schell --- ·------·---- - - - 9. An inter•stJng converse of thls t heme is sometimes advanced , that no one is responsi bl e , the whole thing is out of control. The technologit al vers i on of this no-responsi bi l ity the me is dis cus sed s hort ly. More satisfactory is the theme that nuclear arrangement s are ou t of political cont ro l , but fo r re aso ns, in terms of vested interests in keeping nuclea r things goi ng, whic h enable respons ibility to be distributed . The vested interests , wh i ch bear considerabl e responsibil ity, include the mi li tary weapons i ndustry, a nd r e sea r ch and a cademic commurd.t.ies , Under pressure s for re-election especiall y, politicians give in to these powerf ul groups, so losing contro l o f pol itic a l. processes. The argument fai l s at it s final stag e. For many politicians either belong to or represent vested interests . Thus polit ic al processes tend rather to reflect vested interests than to run ou t of political control . 10. Another example of spreading the responsibil ity runs as follows: 'The self-extinc tion of our species is not an act that anyone describes as sa ne or sens ible; neverthel ess, it is an ac t that, without qu ite admitting it to ourselves, we pla.n in certain circumstanc e s to commit' (p . 186). Ev en for most of the plnnners, ex tinction is presumably not part of "the plan", but an 1ninte nd ed consequenc ; and most of us have little or no role in the pl a nning, enough of us even campaig n agai nst the planning . Fur ther 't he world chose the course of attemp ting to refashion the system of sovereignty to acconm1oda te nuclear weapons ' ( p . 194): the world'? This connec ts of course with the ideological argument from defence of fuodamental s, e .g. for libe rty, for the (USA ) nation, and against soc inli.sm. In the' .nurse of th:fA argument yet Rn o thm: fallR 1011s assumption is rolled out: ' The means to the end are not limited , for the end itself ~ets the limits in each case' (p,189 ) . mnny otller th1.ngs, a representative .LH only represf.ltiJ:ai:ive of a p· rty which offers a complex and often ill-characteris ed package of policies, and a voter may vote for ze ro or more policies of this package. Only in the (uncommon) event of a clear single issue referendum, which is adopted, can respo n s i bility, st .Ill of a qualified sort, be sheeted home, to those who voted for it, not to e ve ry one in the community. While S3 is false, there is an important refated th eme that is much more plausible; namely that the present nucl ear situation generates responsibilitie s for every social ly involved person (thi s theme is discussed in Appendix 2). When moreover the Pogo assumption is disentangled from accompanying theme s, part of what r es ults is decidedly along the right lines; namely S4. The controllers (not to be confused, in Schell's fashion, with all of us] have failed to change our pre-nuclear institutions. The sovereign system is out f step with the nuclear age , the one-earth system, etc. (the whole ea r th theme ). Thoug h Schell remains relatively clear about the serious defects of the state and the frequently immoral purpo es for which the state is us ed, unfortunat el y he often loses sight of this i mportant theme (indicated pp.187-8). Yet S4 forms part of Schell's critique of the state which is, by and large, scatter ed and fragmentary. As observed (in §8) , Schell arrives at the conclusion t hat the nation-state has outlasted its usefulness, and that new pol iLlcal institutions more 'consonant with t he global reality' are required as a matter of urgency. But he evades what he admits is the major task, making out viable alternative s. At mos t he makes some passing gestures, some pointing towards the Wa y Up. So l utions to the nuclear dilemma come, if not easily, in a similar simpllstlc way, from the Top Down; tho se who can must appeal to the Top (cf. p.230). Schell places his hope in treaties for arms reduction and pmitat io ns ( such as SALT) and in worl d government ( as with the United Nations) . 1 Given the r ec ord of these organisations and treaties, the negotiations a nd regulators, it is by now a pathetic fai th. Nor is a serious need felt for further analysis of the nuclear situation, to investigate the origins of nuclear technology, to explore the roots of nuclear blindness, to consider effective changes to military-indus trial organisation and ways of life . But some of the requisite deeper analysis of the nuclear situation a nd , more generally, of t he roots of war can be found elsewhere. 12 The roots of the nuclear fix are not confi ned to the ideologically-a ligned arrangements of nation-slates , but penetrate also into key components of those states, their mjlit.ary, their controlli.ng classes, and their supporting bureaucracies . And both within the arrangements of states, what accounts in part for th e a rrangements, and in key components of the states , a con spicuous and crucial feature Ls the drive for power and domination . 13 Thus the push for [nuclear] supe r iority by the super-states, to be achie ved through military-orient ed science and technology, which involves a nd enables domination, in seve r al inter.related forms. The main power-base is the large nation-state, where enough surplus product can be accumulated (from at home and from abroad, and bled from nature) to proceed wlth military and bureaucratic ambitions and to found t he h.lgh-te)~nology research and devel opment means to ever more expendable power and energy. In changin g t he structural arrangements to eliminate the prospect of nucl e ar war, it is not ultimately enough just to downgrade the mai n power·-base, the natlon-stat0.; it ls also Important to alter key component s of the state, and, mor e swe epingly, to ·remove trouble-maki.ng patterns embedded in all these social and political arrangements , namely pat tern s of domina tion, patterns anife sted not only in state political organisation, but in white-coloured relations, ma le- female re l ations, human-animal relations, human-nature relations; to remove, in short , chauvinistic relations . However not everything 11. Sec p.225ff. 12. In Anders and el-borated in Foley, and more straightforward ly, in Martin. The inco1iplete list of items given ab ove, to be investigated in a deep er analysis of the ruclear situation, paraphrases Foley JS p,164. and especially p.227, bottom paragraph . j nee ds to be accompl ished at once; and the clus~~ - of damaging power and do1nlnaL l on relatlons tied into war can be tackled separately. And there the probl e ms can largely be narrowed to certain problems of states and certain key components of sta tes. [n ~1at analysis he does offer of the problem with states, Schell repeats th<• familiar false contrast of state cxpedie.ncy with morality, as a c ontra st between "raison d'etat" and the Socratic-Ch ristian ethics. The teaching that 'tl1e end justifies the means j_s the basi s on which governments , in all times, ha ve li. ccnsed themselves to commit cr::imes of every sort' (p.134). So 'stat es may do virtually anything whatever in the name of [their] survival ' . Schel l then argues however, that extinction nullifies end-means justificatio n by destroying e very end; but again the argument is far from sound, a nd depends on human chauvinism (as under S2) combined with ontological assumptions . Even if all humans were extinguishe d (as under Sl) ends could remain, for instance for nonhumans such as animal s and extraterres trials , actual or not. The e nds-mea ns argument can however be repaired to remove such objections : instead i t is 13. These motivating drives form pa rt of a larger int egrated packag e, compris ing maximisatio n drives for power, knowledge, control, wealth, ('TI C" rgy, sp ecr, sat:f.sfnctto n, . • . • for the newer Enlightenme nt (but Faustian ) vlr tues. Frequently there are attempts (the human failing for excessiv e neatness nod implic1ty manifested ) to reduce th package to one main component, prefer e nce-satisfa c tion for 1nstance, or ut .i lity. And the type of drive ls justified (especially for those who have it, but worry abo11t i t) not 01ly as virtuous, which it is not, but also as rational, which agai.n it is not. Rationality , the deeply entrenched myth has it, consists in maximisatio n, of the virtues . Maxjmisatio n of the objects of the drives runs, however, into limitation theorems and associated paradoxes. The maximisatio n of power, as with the Christian-I slamic God, encounters the paradox of omnipotence , the parallel maximls ation of knowledge paradoxes of omniscience . There are no consistent objects which are omnipotent or omniscient. The drive for ma x i mum consistency , often taken to be the epit ome of rationality , also l e nd s to inconsisten cy in the case of more important theor i es, s uch as arithmetic and set theory (Godel's theorem and associated limitative t heo rems). IL, . R & D, though directed by military requirement s and the arms race, also drives the a rms race. Its role .is partly disguJsed by the myth of neu tral science. There have been a tt empts, not only by those committed to technologic al dcterminlsm , to involve technology more dee ply as the main, or single, source of t he nucle a r fix . It is technology, th e mega- machine, running out of control , that has brought us to this pred cament, the nuclear abyss. Sometimes t his serves to exonerate states and thei.r key components and those who control them, for they are simply caught up by this out-of-cont rol machine; but sometimes the s tate itself is se en as a machine also running out of control. But technologic al determinism , like other varieties of stronger (nonana lytic) determinism , is false . Nuclear technology was selected and proceeded with, after a well-known po l itical dispu te involv:i.ng distingu1.sh ed scientists ; it was deliberated , fund ed and promoted , while other alternative s were not. Damag ing technologie s of th e nuclear age were not inevitable, but dellbcra el y chosen by certain components of the large nation-sta tes. And murh as they need not have been chosen, so they do not have to be persisted with. The fashionable inevitability /determi.nis m themes admit not only of refutation by bringing out the many choices made in persisting with often recalcitran t technologie s. They also admit of being made t o look r idic ulous. If the Bomb is determined, as part of human evolut ion, then if it fu nctions (as it p ·obably will , a matter also determined ), it will serve as a human population control device, a matter also determined. That is, the Bomb has its fixed evolutionar y place in human population regulation. 7l claimed tha t ext inction null i fies ends-me ans justlft&A~ion by frustrating the r a J iqntion of ev ery re levant end - me a ning by ' r e levant', in this context, t hose end,, the rea li sa tion of which th e stat e appeals t o in justification of its n uc l ear pol i cies . 15 An LSN-war, even without human extinction but with severe c no1 1gh 1 sses , would undoubt e dly frustrat e the realisation of relevant state ends. So eve n f rom an ex pediency perspective, superstate policies are open to severe c r i t icism , for exampl e a s motivationa lly irrational. As to th~~ pa r. t of the st a te and (state) sovereignty tn war, Schell leave s us i n no do ub t . A s ov e r e ign state is virtually defin ed as one that enjoys the right and powe r to go to wa r ln defenc e or pursuit of its intet"ests (p,187). Wa r ari s es fro m how thi ngs are; from the a rrangement of politic a l affairs via jealous na t i o n stat es (p.188). Ind e ed th e r e is a two-way linkage betwe e n having s~:".'_E:_r~}:_f;;22.._~ a n d _ca pad 1:.7 t o wage war. On the one side, sovereignty is, Schell c o11Lends , nec e ss a r y f o r people to org a ni se fo r war. On the other side, withou t war it is impossibl e t o preserve s overeignty. Neither of these c ontentions i s t r Rnsparen t l y c lea r a s the y stand. The f l rst is damaged by civil war and the like, t h e s eco nd by t he per sistence of sma ll nonmilitary states. Now that the mac r o-state s ystem is e ntrenched, it is however easy for conservatives (in pci r ticu l ar ) t o a rgue from t he "'real:1.ti e s"' of international life, which include sel f··i n terest , agg r ,~ss i on, f em.· , ha tred. It is on this basis th a t peace ar r angeme nts are r e adi ly d ismissed as un rea listic, utopian, even (amu s ingly) as •xtrcmlsl (c f . p . 185). Schell's f ur ther th eme that nuclear "wa r"' is not war threatens, however, to undermine hi s ca s e a ga inst the s overeign state; for example, his ends-means arg11m nt and t he a rgument based on its nucl e ar war-maki ng capacity. Fortunately th e nol-wa r t heme needs much qualifi c ation, and starts out from an erroneous c ha rac t e r i s ati on of wa r as 'a violent mea ns employed by a nation to achieve an end' ( p .189 ): but--this is neither ne c e s s a ry nor sufficient for war. What is ri ght ( s o it i s a rgued in §1) is that nuclear wars are very different. from ea r lie r c onvent i onal wars. Schell goes on to claim that war requires an end whic h nuc l ear "' va r" does not have. But nuc l ear attacks can certainly have ends ( ev en if LSN war s cannot be won in the older sense: but not all wars or games a r e wo n). It is a lso cla imed that war depends on weakness; on one side being defeated on a de cision by arms. But in nuclear "war" thi.s doesn't happen, ' no o ne's st r e ng t h fa ils until both sides have been annihilated' (p.190). But what t hese sorts o f considerations contribute to showing is again not that nuclear wa r s a r e not wa r s, but that they are not wars of certain s o rts, e.g., not just wa r s (be cause they fall on such criteria a s reasonable prospect of successand improveme n t ), not rational wars (in a good sense), and so on. That conve n tional war s have pe rs isted into nuclear times does damage to Schell's argument that nu r:10,1r we a po ns h av also ru i ned " c onventio nal"' wars, and his connected theme t hat t he demise of war has left no me a ns to finally settle di.sputes between na t lo ns, f or th e final court of appeal has been removed (pp.192- 193 ) . The theme d epend s on the mistaken proposition concerning the demise of conventional war a nd t he mi s t ak e n proposition that war of some sort has to be the final "court of a ppea l'' betwe e n nations (for, as observed, there are other types of contests tha t coul d s e rv e , and there is also th e possibility of more cooperative behaviour, e . g. joint refer e nda) . The theme also imports the social-Darwinia n assum ption of Clausewicz (the "logic of wa r" theme criticised in §2) that war has to pr oc eed to the t e c hnological li mit as if war and violence were thoroughly nat 1 r a l actlvitLes independ e nt of recognised social settings (for winni ng, su r rende r, etc.) a nd rul e -less activities. On the contrary, wars are pa r asitic on s oc i a l organisations such as sta t es and are governed by a range of understandl ngs , conventions and rules . The y are a social phenomenon, with a rule structure, if no t a logic . Huch ca pital has bee n ma de not me rely from "the logic of war" but from what i s now cal l ed "'the logic of deterrenc e " a nd the "'logic of nuclear [strategic] plann lng'". The me ssage that is usually supposed to emerge is that the massive n uc l cnr 11rr.1 ngemc nt a t he wo d<l l s now en ll ng 1. ed in a rc perfectly loglcnl, sotmd, 15. Thi s re for mu lation was proposed by N. Griffin, who suggested that the main qual ificat ion can be inferred from Sche ll's context. - j 72 rcnGonab.le, rational. However thJs represents li l i:. le more than a cheap semn nti.cal trJ.ck . Logic in no way justifies the present arrangement s, or nnythiu g 1·ke them , or renders them reasonable. There is a logic of deci.sion (as presented , e .g., in Jeffrey) which ca n be appUed in strat eg ic. planning; but it does not yield s pecific results without desirabilit y measures being assigned to alternative outcomes, that is without values being pumped in, extraloglca lly. There are various ways these va lue assignments may be determined, to meet moral requirement s or not; but in nuclear s tr ~tegic planning they have invariably been set tled on the bas iG of expediency. l& In fact, 'logic of' tends to be used very gener ously, as a word of general commendatio n, to cover something like 'rational consideratio ns ente r ing into t he policy or strategy of '. In these terms, S hell, who like o thers enjoys pl.e ying with the term 'logic of', should write o f ' the il logi c of deterrence' , f or he emµlic1size~~ (p.21.J) tlP disparity bct:wc11n the supposed rati.onali ty o f t:hret1t~nl.ng 11se of nuclear weapons and the irrational i ty ( even from a national i n te r e s i viewpoint) of act ually using th m should the threat fail: 17 ~ the success of deterrence doctrine depends on the c redibili ty of the threat of thi s unjustifiab le and irrati onal use. I nd eed Schell wants to go sti l l further a nd locate a contradict ion in deterrence (e. g . pp.201-2): but the argume nt depends on an interesting conf uaion of cont:radictl on with cancell at ion , 18 along with the Rss •mption that deterrence invo lves cancellatio n . Nucl ear deterrence ma y wel l be irrational, i.t is immoral, but it is not inconsisten t . 16. Selecting the 11sual came theory scttlng sees to th is almost automaticnl ly; for it is then assumed that each player plays to ma ximiz e his or her own ndvantagc. Thus too th e presumption Jn Walze r, p .277, that 'the logi c of deterrence' is based on eye-for-eye and toot h- for-tooth as sumptions . 17. Even the irrationali ty of the use hac been contested, e . g . it wishful]y thought that America will rise l ike a phoe nix radioactiv ~ ashes . has be en f rom th e The r e is moreover a simple solution to Schell's problem of th e mis sing mo..!_ivc for retaliating to a first strike (p.204), namely, not a r etributiv e one, but a n ideological one: eliminate t he prospe ct of the f uture dominance of the riva i deo l ogy . 18. An anal ogous confusion of negation with cancel lation or obliteratio n appears in recent US " st a r war" thinking, where US missiles are supposed to "'negate" incoming USSR missiles . Moral paradoxes of deterrence take a diffe re nt dire ction; although involving negation t hey dep end upon perhaps questionabl e i nterconnexi ons of intensional func t ors. One type of paradox (consider ed in §5) derives from a policy of credibly threatening LSN war without however intending to proc eed to LSN war, though credible th reats ( ap pear to) imply an intention to proceed. Another s tyle derives from acclaimed intention to reduce the number of nuclear missiles when t he persis tent pract ice, which impl ies an intention, is to increase th e number. This paradox is technically r emov ed how satisfactor ily in another matter by a dis ti nction between longer- term ai.ms and :1.mmediate practic e , a time-ho noured method of removing .PPENDIX 2. On the Matter of Collt>,.•Uyr,, and Indiyi,hli1 1 Responsi bility and on Regional ~~rategie ~ What one do e s depend s , naturally , on where one lives and what mea ns one hns , AS we ll as on wha t one should do and what sort of person one seeks to be . So too what s tr a t egy a stat e should adopt depends on where it is located and what sort of power it is , on national as we ll as on moral co nsi de r ations . In presen t circumsta nces states have an evident responsib il tty to work ouc th~lt• pol te l. cs . The r e nre however some pcrs uua iv • argum ents that this is where uLl r espo ns i bi l i ty ends : t he se major re sponsibi lities accrue entirely to states, a nd ther e is no individua l, or (smal le r scale) c oll ec tive, responsib ilit y to work out a pol i cy or stance on such matters as nuclear ar rangement s and still l ess to ac t, perh a ps against a state, on the basis of such a stance. While such a no-respon sibi l ity or ~-out posit ion no doubt suits many people many for th emsel ve s, s ome (especial ly mor e a u thoritari an power-hol ders) on behalf of othe s - it do e s involve i nadmissib ly opting out of moral responsib il itie s, r e spon si bil it i e s ac quired by vir t ue of being a person wHhin the fr amework of ce r tain soci al a r r angements . Now the r e is no doubt that individua ls a nd groups can do t his, c an opt ou t. They ca n neglect t he:tr moral re sponsibi liti e s; b ut they are not ju stified tn doing so. Against th i s clai.m, whi ch is bas ed ultimatel y upo n each person's being set i n a we b of respons i bj_lity-- induci.ng social r elat ions, whether they like it or no t so long a s they choose to liv e with others, there are some neat arguments which a ppear to pe r mi t , or even wa rrant, opting out. One influenti a l argument take s t he following lin es: 1. The (o r dina ry) ind i vidual, or group, ha s no poss ibil ity of making a d i fference t o wha t happens. Theref ore 2. Such ind ivid ua ls, or grou ps, have no obligatio n to try to make a differenc e . Hence 3. Suc h i ndivid uals, or groups, are not mor a lly responsib le , f or instance when thint s go wr ong. There are two mai n a ssumption s in this a rgument , both of which should be resiste d: fir stly, in gett i ng from l to 2, a varia n t of the "ought implies can " t heme 1 , and se condly, the ass1mptio n tha t individua ls can't make a differenc e . While it is true tha t individua ls cannot accomplis h much on their own, together th ey can. Wha t a n individua l can achieve depe nd s on what suff ic ien tly many other i. nd lvidua ls do. In highly competiti ve communi ties, full of hopeful f r ee- riders, a pe rson may encounter a familiar impasse: that he or she acts in ma nner M (e.g. morally, against nuclear arrangeme nt s , r a tio nally), at con si de r a ble pe r s onal cost , with no gua ra ntee that othe rs wil l also ac t M-ly. Suc h nn impasse no long e r faces so many in the West, at least as regards initi al s t eps agai nst nuclear a rrangemen ts. The individua l can cooperate with others in ways t hat do make a differenc e. An i ndividual is not exonerate d from r e s ponslb1.l ity by the argument . While ind iv iduals can re s pond by joining organisat ions whose activitie s are di rected a t mak i ng some differenc e , many individua ls a l so have the option of more indi vldu All st i c action in such forms as boycotts , go slows, po l itical di s obedi enc e. An important form of individua l resistanc e, a lready adopted in Canada and nor t h··we stern USA, is refusa l to pay income taxes directed towards defenc e or v·r ious pa r t s thereof ( e.g. nuc lear weapons productio n and de plo yment ), or a l ternat ively redirec t ion of such taxes , for instance to peace fun ds, Evi de n tl y, however) all these more indivi dualistic forms of political act ivi ty wo r k mo re ef fe ct iv~ly if individua ls integrate their activitie s, since th e i mpac t s aggregate ( a nd appear aft e r a certain stage to exponenti ate). As we l l co l lective action he lps in distribut ing the impact of retributio n or puni ti ve ac t io n by st a te aut horities. 1. Any sat i s f a c t ory d _ontic th e ory which t akes mora l dilemmas with du e se r io usn e ss is bound to r eject th i s theme. There are als o independe nt g rounds for j e ttisoning this Kantian theme : see Routley a nd Plurowood. - II .,I<,' Th 0 re are, furthermo re, arguments of some weight that individua ls are under Ro1ne sort of moral obligati on to t a ke political ac t ion to disaffili ate tlwm,, l' lves f rom wlrnt contribut es to the prospects of nuclear war. What type of ac t ion Lhjs is depends on the sort of state one resides in, for instance, whether i l is a nuclea r power, whether it provides nuclear bases or facilitie s, etc., and o such complicat ing issues as what kind of preventiv e action the state iN l ikely to take in return. (Any state seriously practis ing deterrenc e Js bound to take some action against effective protest, or ri sk losing cred ibi l ity ; but there are limits to the amount of state coercion any one individua l need bear.) One a rgumen t - it is one of a type that can be varied from making nuclear wea pon s to, fo example, providing fac ili ties for them - proceeds from th e wron g ness of nu c lear war to the pos'ition that it is not right to be making the we~pons for such war. The argument here appli.es connectin g principle s (like those of §5), while appealing to such backgroun d informati on as that the manuf act ure and de ployment of such weapons j_ncreases the risk of s uch war. But j f it is not morally righ t to be making s uch weapons t hen those who live in a state that is doing so ought to d isaffilia te themselve s from such defence productio n, an1 disaffili ation includes not paying for such prodtictio n through d e fence taxes . The argument is not without substanti ve as sumption, but the a s sumptions appear morally reasonabl e and defensi ble. Another effective argument proceeds from the question of the type of moral person one wants to be : Does one want to le, or effective ly to be seen as, the kind of person who goes along with the nuclear destructi on of human populatio ns? Or with making c red i bl e a threat to do so, or th e like? What follows applies primarily to people wh o do not want to be, or be seen as, such people . Arguments like hese not only put opt-outer s and do-nothin gers on the spot insofar as they contribut e to national objective s; they also raise questions , perhaps eve n dil emmas, as to pol:L ti cal obligatio n fo r those who would take act ion, ev en limited action such as redirectio n of taxes 3. For are there not political obligatio ns to the state, such as paying due taxes and supportin g the national defenc e effort? It i.s usually assumed that there are. However, no dile mma occurs under a theory which, properly, takes political obligatio ns to be re gulated in some fashion by moral obligatio ns ; for in this case moral obli ga t i ons ov_rride political obligatio ns. In fact political obligatio ns are alread y significa ntly limited by moral constrain ts. The nuclear situation does not so muc h bring out new limits on political obligatio n, as em phasize the respects in which those obligatio ns are already limited, and introduce further moral considera tions against sponsorsh ip of national defence arrangeme nts. \n obligatio n to try 4 to dissociat e oneself from preparati on for nuclear war or from nuclear-d eterrence , for instance by not spending part of one' s working life contribut ing indirectl y to it, does not commit one to more t ha n this: to an obligatio n, for example, to work for an alternativ e nat ional defenc e policy which avoids nuclear elements. But no doubt this wou ld be a good thing to try to contribut e towards. Once again, what one attempts depends on wher e one lives, the level of one ' s commitme nts, e.g . to nonviolen ce, and so forth. For not only are different types of policy reorienta tion appropria te for different nations and regions, but there are more superfici al and deeper rcori ntations that can be worked out and promoted, e . g. schemes that leave 2. An argument of this type was deployed by Bishop Hunthauss en of s upport of his refusal to pay defense taxes. 3. This dilemma and op ti on is now removed in practice for most wage earners by Pay As You Earn taxation schemes - schemes ap parently introduce d to give t he state interest on gross earnings, bu t obviously very effective in remov .i ng taxation power from most workers, and so in further transferr ing ower from ind ividuals to the state. 4. Given the power of institutio ns and the state one may be able to do little more than .!:El_, without giving up one's work and thereby one's abili.ty to contribut e to other deserving causes. For example, it may be v ir tua lly mpossiblc for one to avoid contribut ing to a superannu ation fund which is Seattle in "co nven ti on,'.11" warf a re a pparatus more that ch:ing,.. tha t . H T ~~ s intact, and deeper (ecological ) sch emes Th<:! US Bisho p , f or examplet pr esent R rather shallow set of goals for a su pe rp owe r s uc h as the USA, which includes such objectives as preventing the d e velo pmP n t a nd deployment of destabilizin g nuclear weapons systems and 1o1orking for better co nt r 1 of already operational systems (see PL, p.317). The nuclear s i t ua t i on a ffords an import ant opportunity to press however for a much deeper se t of cha nge s in the superstates . For those whose very limited political i nfluence is exe rted in cons i derably less powerful states, even the shallow goa ] ma y look quite different: there are no nuclear weapons (except perhaps t ho se of a nother power stationed on local territory) to redeploy or to bett er c ontr ol . The vi ew from the very minor powers in the Antipodes i s furthermor e diffe r e nt from that of the medium powers in Europe. There is some prospect ln much of the Antipodes of avoid.i.ng the more immediate effects of an LSN war, whi le t her e is Little such prospect in Europe (cf. Preddey and o thers). There i s ac cordingly some obligation - an obligation little considered and not grasped by the powe r holders - on those in the Antipodes to make some effort to preserve th e r e in the South elements of what is valuable in world civilizatio n. Local a nd re g ional self-intere st would also suggest substantial steps towards s e l f-p r e s e r va tion that (foolishly) have not been initiated. Wha t i s broadly required in the Antipodes is not difficult to discern once th e gonls are gli.mpsed. Steps include wlthdrawal from the American alliance, wh jch i s in an y case of questionabl e merit since its main advantages lie with the US a nd J.t affords no guarantee of local defence; 5 c losur e of American bases and wi t hd r awa l of Ame r ican a cess ri.ghts for. nuclear-car ryi ng equipment to por ts , a ir bas e s and other facilities, espe cially so as to remove local nuclear ta rget s; pursu i t of a mor e evenhanded policy of nonalignmen t (something quite s mal l powe rs elsewher e have managed to achieve ). That much is easy, in pri nci pl e ; and justified. It is justified because local commitment to th e Am e r ica n mi lit a ry operations in the r egion lacks a solid f oundation; it is preml s s ed prim a rily on t e acceptance of deterrence, which, so it has been a r r, ue <l ( in §5ff.), lacks justificatj_ · n. That Australian commitment to joint Aus t r al ian-US f acilities and to US military operations in the region is e x pl i citly bas e d on acceptance of deterrence emerges from several recent s t a t eme nt s of gov e rnm e nt policy. The jolnt fAcilities are 'part of a system of d e t erre nc e ' • 6 More dif f icult to e nsure, at least without much preparation , is that economi c and cultural collapse does not follow an LSN war in the North. Se condly, then, the building of increased socio-ec onomic independenc e in th e Antipod e s is r e quired. It is not enough to make the region a nuclear- free zone not wo rth targeting militarily: the regio n must also have a sustainabl e life of 1.ts own. For a small region, thcit lo oks a very costly exercise unless combined with other desirable objectives; for example, in Preddey and others it is estimated that a substantial portion of GDP would have to be diverted to build up New Zealand' s economic independenc e. 7 For a larger region whi ch included Aus t ra l ia, the costs would be less. They would compare favourably with many Northe rn military budgets, and l1ave the advantage that much of the expenditure is genuinely productive. If furthermore - what seems unlikely - the structu r al readjustmen t were combined with t he .independen tly desirable aims of moving th e 5. Se e the dJ s cussion in Ball, chapter 13, especially pp.14O-1. How slight t he commitments are, under the ANZUS treaty in particular, has been e mpha si ze d again in recent defence discussions between Australia and the USA . Of cour s e, the ANZUS Treaty is only one, and a comparative ly minor one , of he many mi.litary treaties that should be terminated: from a Eu rop ean nnd world viewpoint the winding down of NATO and the Warsaw Pact ar r a ngeme n t s , and the r moval of American and Russian forces from Europe ( a nd el s ewhere ), are very much more important. A ful l e r d i scussion of Austr.alia's defence phil osophy will appe nr in a subsequent publication in this series . and alternative s, 76 whole reg i on towa rd s a multi- c u ltural conserver societ y and perha ps even dh,r ,, r t i ng "d e fence " spend i ng to conne cted self-managem ent and soci al dt'!f ence gon l s, the costs would be very considerabl y lessened . They only appear so g r eat in th e s e tting of a consumer-s atellite soci ety. In any case, wher e lif e and c ul tu r e themselv e s are conce rned , the cos t s do not appear excessive. I n sum, Southern countries s ho uld be s e vering their milita ry linkages with Northern nuclear powers 8 , a nd s hould be preparing now, socia lly and e conom i cally, for the time af t er the LSN war, the g reat No rth ern war. Howev er ther e are serious blockages in the way of such th ngs in the Ant ipodes) and inde e d impeding an y substantial attempts to lessen the impact of LSN war. Some of the blockages derive agai n from the f act that present nuc l ear arrangement s favour man y of the power holders and s u it strong cor porate interests which wield poli t i c al powe r . But the main blockages to mo r e popular action a r e sl og a nis ed r.n the false dlchotomy: "either it won't hnppc.n or we ' re all dead a n}•wayj so why bot he r". One reason for blocka ge is then the extinction assumption ( S l of Appendi x 1), the unwarr · nted a doption of which is excessively nihil is tic . A mor e i mportan t reaso n is that most people, and most of the ir political re pres entatives, do not bel ieve that majo r repercussio ns of LSN war are going t o bcf;1l l th e m. These are e vents which , .l i. ke starvntion and tortur e , happen to o th ~r ( r mot) pe o ple , not them. It is no t tha t LSN war i s unthinkabl e : rather i t is that i t seems unb,~llev a hl e t ha t it should make any d ifference . Most people in t he Antipodes ~eal l y do not believe that thei r lives are likely to be shattered by nuclear. war. Wa king up and mo bi lis ing t hese peo ple is a major part of the problem in 6. Se e th e letter by R.G. Hawke, Prime Min1.ster , replying to a symposium on conseque nces of nuclear war, Canberra Times, Saturday July 23, l.9 83. The point is also made by the Fore ig n Minister in his Evat t Memor ial Lecture , as Hawke~ notes. The point is softe ne d by r e pr ese nting the fac i li ties as also having a role i n verificatio n, as well a s dete rr ence, 'that mak es arms c o nt rol and reduction feasi ble': the known role of the facilities in war fighting i s not alluded t o , and nor i s t he fact that any verificatio n role can be alte rnat iv ely a ccomplished us i ng satellites. However the matter is not in any do u bt: 'successive Australian governments . • . have taken the vi e w that our primary conce rn should be to suppo rt the effectivene ss of th e Uni ted States deterrent to war itself' (D.J. Killen, Minister for De fe nc e; quoted in Threats to Aust ralia ' s Sc ur.lty, p.17). Government representat ives (e. g . Hawke ) conc ed e that the joint facilities put Austr a lia at nucl ea r risk. ' Howev e r it is t he judgement of t hi s Government that the benef.its to Australia in terms of its immediate int e rest and globa l st r a tegic consideratio n outweigh potential risks'. A prope r de cision-t heoretic analysis would not sup port Hawke's claim: since Australia is known to be a nuclenr t arget because of American bas es (c f . Ball, pp.130-8 ), the pot e n t ial risks given that an LSN war has a non-ne gligible probability far outweigh a ny i mme diate benefit s . Since Australia has only a r egiona°i strategic role, the global st r ategic consideratio ns are , as could be othe rwi s e i nferred, primarily those of the ma in user of t he facilities , the USA. The Governme nt is prepare d to put Australia , its peoples and e cosystems , a t what is decide dly serious risk .for i.mmediate and Ame r ica n i.nt ere st s . A worthwhile re presenta tive government docs not hold its people s hostage for such re asons . Not only i s tha t short-sighte d expediency decision maki ng: it seems virtually cer tain t ha t the <letai l s of the decision mak ing, were they ever. revealed, would not justify the policy in the longer term even on the basis of expediency, bu t wou l d turn on s uch things as present trade advanta ges and short-term co mme r c ial considerati ons. 7. As to the e c onomic and so cial problems Aus tralia would face in t he event of a n LSN wa r, see Coombs fo r a preliminary as s es sment. 8. Id e ally the removal of s igni f icant nuclear targets should t a ke pl c e nc ro as the whole Sou thern Hemisphere , because this is the zone that is r e latively insulated, a t mosph e rically, from the Northern Hemisphe r e. 77 achie ving requ isi te social and politi e Rl ~djustmen t. -yen those who believe tha t LSN war ls no t improbabl e (but may well not be totally destructi v e of life) do little to reo r ganise their lives in a way that would reflect their assessmen t: . 9 Richard Routle y* 9. Aga in , for some of what to do, for some ways to reorg a nise, see e.g. Mart in . There is als o much in teJ.J.ec tual work to be undert ake n, for example , searching out details of alternati ve arrangeme nts, and al so dJ.scredit ing establis hment experts, especiall y economist s and poli.tical scienti s ts , who intellect ually underwrit e present nucl e ar arrangeme nts . * The tex t has bee n much improved as a result of detailed commen t s by C. Pigden , R. Good in, N. Gri ff in t B. Martin and L. Mirlin, and through cor r espondenc e with G. Fo ley. J. Norma n has helped in its final organisat ion. The initia l outlines of the pa pe r were worked out in Victoria , Canada; and an early version was read a t Simon Fraser Universit y in 1982 . REFERENCES c;. Anders, Die __Ant_~q •i erthe!.t des Menschen, C.H. Beck, Munchen, 1956; to a$ A/i,. G. And0rs, Endzeitan d Zeitenend e : Gedanken zur atomaren Munc hen;--Pfi2 ; referred to as AE. Situation , referred c.u. Beck, T. Brownlie , e d., Basic Documents on Human Ri.ghts, Oxford, 19 71. D. Bnl.1, A su i.table. piece of real estate. American installttt ions Hale & Iremonger , Sydney, 1980. in Australia , J. Barnes, 'The just war' in N. Kretzmann , A. Kenny and J . Pinborg (eds). The Cambridge Histo r y of La ter Medieval Philosoph y, Carnbri.dge Universit y Press, 1982, pp . 771-784. R.J. Barnett, Real Security, Simon s. & Schuster , New York, 1981 . Benn, 'Deterren ce or appeaseme nt? Or, on trying to be rational about war', Appl led Philosoph y, to appear. nuclear P. Berg, Re!:._1::habitlng a Sepa_rate Countr.y, Pl anet Drum, San Francisco , 1979. M, Cohen, T. Nagel and T. Scanlan Pr inceton, Princeton UP, 19 74. (eds.), War and H.C. Coombs, 'The ec onomi c and social consequen ces of (Septembe r 1983) 8-9. Moral nuclear Responsi bility, Natuni war ', 5 A.i'!. Cox, Russian Roulette: the Superpowe r Game , Times Books, London, 1982 . J. Dahlltz, Nuclear Arms Control: with McPhec Gribble, Melbourne , 1983. effective internati onal G. Foley, ' Jonathan Schell : Genius - Phi losop her - Rewrite Brisbane, 1982; referred to as JS. Man ', agreemen ts. t ypescript , G. Foley, Nucl ea r Prophets. The True and the False_, typescrip t, Bri sbane, 1983. J. Galtung, The True Worlds, Free Press, New Yo r k, 1981. D, Gautier, 'Deterren ce, maximisa tion , and rationali ty ' , in The Security Gamble: Deterrenc e Dilemmas in the Nuclear Age, (ed. D. MacLean), Rowman and Littlefie ld , To t owa, N.J ., to appear ; also f ort hcoming in Et hics, April 198/¼. R.E . Goodin, 'Disarmin g nuclear apo l ogists', typescr i pt , 1982 . R.E. Goodin, 'Disarmam ent as a moral certainty ', Et_l2ics 95 ( 1984 ) , to appear. P(hilip) Green, Deadly Logic : The Theory Universit y Press, Columbus, 1966. of Nuclear Deterrenc e, Ohio State N. Griffi n, ' Lifeboat USA', Discussio n Papers in Environme ntal Philosoph y fi8, Research School of SociRl Sciences, Australia n National Universit y , 1983. Grou nd Ze ro Orgnnisat ion, Nuclear War: What's lo It For York, 1982. You? Pocke t Books , New R. Bardin, 'Unilater al vers us mutual disarmame nt', Philosoph y and Public Affairs 12 (1983) 236-54. J.E. Hare nnd C.B. Joynt, Ethi c s and Internati onal Affairs, 1982. Macmillan , London , 79 R.M. ll;,r.e, Applicati ons o[ Moral Philosop ~, M&Q1t1illan, l,~rn,hin , 1972. R. Jeffrey, The Logic of Decis~on, McGraw-H ill, York, 1965. New H. Kahn, On Thermonu clear War, Princeton Universit y Press , 1960. G.S . Kavka, 'Some paradoxeG of deterrenc e', Journal 285-302; referred to as PD. of Philosol?.!"1y G.S. K.-ivka, 'Deterren ce, utility and rational choice', Theory (1980) 41-60; referred to as RC . and 75 (1978) Decision 12 G,S. Kavkn, 'Doubts about unilatera l nuclear disarmame nt ' , Philosoph y and Public Affairs 12 ( 1983) 255-60; referred to as DU. L. Kuper, Genoclde: its Eoli~ical use Jn the Twentieth Century, Yale UP, 1982 . D,P. Lackey, 'Ethics and nuclear deterrenc e', Rachels), Harper and Row, New York, 1979. in Moral Problems (ed. James D.P. Lackey, 'Missiles and morals: a utilitaria n look at nuclea r det e rren ce' , Philosoph y and Public Affai.rs 11 (1982) 189-231; referred to as MM. D.P. Lackey, 'Disarmam ent revisited : A reply to Kavka and Public Affairs 12 (1 983) 261-64. a nd Har de n', Phil osopl'l_ B. MarU.n , Grass Roots Strategy Against War, Freedom Pr ess , Nottingha m, 1984 , to appear. A.A. Mazrui , A World Federatio n of Cultures: An African Pe rspective , Free Press, New York , 1976. J.C. Murray, Morality and Modern War, Affairs , New York, 1959. Cou ncil on Reli.gi on and Inte r nati onal T. Nagel, 'War and Massacre ', in Cohen et al, pp.3-24. J. Narveson, 'Vlolence and War ', i n Regan, pp.109 -146. National Conferenc e of Catholic Bishops, Committee on Wa r and Peace, ' The challenge of peace: God's promise and our re s ponse' , Origins 12 (20) (1982) 306-328; refer red to as PL, for 'New Draft of Pastoral Letter '. Oxford E_i~~lish Dictionar y, Oxford, 1971; referred to as QED. B. Paski.ns and M. Dockrill, The Ethics of War, Duckworth , London, 1979. G.F. Preddey and others, Future Contingen cies 4. Nuclear Disasters , A Rep o rt to the Comn1issio n for the Future, Governmen t Printer, Wel lington, New Zealand, 1982. P. Ramsay, The Just War : force and political responsib il itt, Scribner, New York, 1968. J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard Universit y Press, Cambridge Ma ss., 1971 . T. Regan (ed.), Matters of Life and Deat h, Random Hous e , New York , 1980. R. Routley and N, Griffin, 'Unrave l ling the meanings of life' , Discussio n Papers in Env i ronmental Philosoph y 113, Aust ralian Natio na l Universit y, Canberra, 1982. R. Routley and V. Routley , 'The Alternati ves 2 (1982), 23-8. irrefutab ility of ana rchism' , Social 80 R. Rou tl ey ~nd V. Plumwood, 'Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions' in Paracons i stent Logic (ed. G. Priest, and others~ Philosop hia Verlag, 1984. R. Scheer , Wi t h Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, Random House, York, 1982. New J . Sche l l, 'Refle ctions (Nuclea r Arms - Parts I-III) ', The New Yorker, February 48- 109, and 45-10 7, respecti vely. This P.<>rinr; , trnh tl t lcd Th£> Fat e of th Enrth, hfls now appcnred as a hook wlth t hat tit l e (Knopf, New York, 1982). Referenc es in the t ex t are to the book. 1, 8, and 15, 1982, pp.47-11 3, T.C. Sche lling, The St rategy of Conflic t , Ha rvard Univers ity Press, 1980 . G. Sharp, Explo ri ng Nonvio l ent Alterna tives, Boston, 1971. D. and R. Smith , The Economi cs of Militari sm, Pluto, London, 1983. F . Soo, ' Mao's vision for China', in ContemP?_rary Chinese Philosop hy Adelm ann ) Nijhof f , The Hague , 1982, pp.62-80 . T . Taylo r, Nurembu r g and V:letnam: An 19 72. American Tr agedy, Times (ed. Books, F.T. London, E . P. Thompson and D. Smith , Prot est and Survive , Monthly Review Press, New York, 198 1. Threats to Aus tr alia's Security . The ir na ture and Gove r nmen t Publishi ng Service , Ca nb erra , 1981. probabi lity, Austral ian R. W. Tuc ker , The J ust W r, John Hopkins Pr ess, Baltimo re, 1960. M.M. Wakin (ed.), War, Morality and the Mil i tary Professi .on, Westview , Colorado . 1979. Boulder , t M. Wa l ze r, Ju st and Unjust Wars , Basic Books, New York, 1977. R. A. Wasse rstr om ( ed.) War and Morality , Wadswor th, Belmont , Cal i forni a , 1970. B. Will.lams , ' How to t hink sceptic ally about t he bomb', New 1982). Society S. Zuck.e rma nn, Nuc lea r Illus :l.on and Reality, Collins , Lo ndon, 1982. ( Nov . 18,  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 59, Item 1894: Draft of On the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and nuclear deterrence and the political fall-out Subject The topic of the resource Typescript (photocopy) draft. Paper published, Routley R (1984) 'War and peace. 1: on the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and nuclear deterrence and the political fall-out', Discussion papers in environmental philosophy, 5. Dept. of Philosophy, Australian National University. 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> 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 59, Item 1894 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>. 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource iii, [80] leaves. 43.93 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:7122938">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:7122938</a> https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/ad201336c70df57d8530257a28f9c7e9.pdf 2cf05c0cc5f0c0bbaa9c9eaf56116252 PDF Text Text �������������� 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  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 60, Item 1883: Draft of Metaphysical fallout from the nuclear predicament Subject The topic of the resource Typescript draft, with handwritten emendations and annotations. Paper published, Routley R (1984) 'metaphysical fallout from the nuclear predicament', Philosophy & Social Criticism, 10(3-4):19-34, https://doi.org/10.1177/019145378401000303. Description An account of the resource Draft paper housed in blue folder of large bundle of older papers on various topics. Note, one of two papers digitised from item 1883. 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> 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 60, Item 1883 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>. 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [12] leaves. 21.61 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:78f73ce">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:78f73ce</a> Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Far Bookshelf > Second Bay > Top Shelf > Pile 3 Box 59: Nuclear https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/81ee8015160149176a29c6e7277d4166.pdf f8dbfafa04f175a0e96dc872f5237aae PDF Text Text ��������� 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  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 60, Item 1883: My engagement with social and political theory Subject The topic of the resource Typescript (photocopy). Description An account of the resource Draft paper housed in blue folder of large bundle of older papers on various topics. Note, one of two papers digitised from item 1883. 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> 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 60, Item 1883 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>. 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [9] leaves. 10.13 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:a549cf5">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:a549cf5</a> Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Far Bookshelf > Second Bay > Top Shelf > Pile 3 Box 60: Ethics and Theoretical Ethics https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/da79e877dfd528d678ba527ad6c2d477.pdf b61884f3fdbb2ccbdfb99fd2eead7fd1 PDF Text Text BRIEF CORRECTION VERSION THE END OF THE WORLD of the grandest philosophical problems are formulated In terms of the Hany way of the world, how the world Is, what there Is In the world - using, that vs, an uncritical and pre-analytic notion of the world. Thus It Is with questcons as to the nature the world, the basic stuff and components of the world, the of arguments for realism, the Issue of universals and categories, of the objectivity and of ethics (e.g. whether values and directives are In the world); values thus It Is especially with the foundations semantics of supposedly (meaning being determined through what Is In or corresponds In the world); and so on. But the under dissolves notion critical Investigation, and therewith many grand problems - often pressing on always on-going reductionist agendas such of empiricism - are. the The world one God, as that If not resolved, at least relocated. goes the the way of the good life, the meaning of life, the Bomb, one 1?^ ... theory, (a)<^ . For there are many worlds, a whole lattice of worlds, bottoming on the null world Into which all the apparent richness encountered Is worlds projected, allegedly ascending through the austere of the nominalism and empiricism, through the richer world of Platonism, to the very rich worlds of romanticism and Hegelianism, as lllustrated:- Lattlce of putatively actual worlds (p-actuaI worIds) Rn example of an austere world Is Smart's world, the world Smart would see for adequate Individuals science composed by (which Is set-theoretic all that upon to a world of certain counts), operations Uke them, but with no properties or relations (except set membership), no propositions, no beliefs, no lntent(s )lons, categories, no values, consciousness, nothing Insofar else. unlikely null world everything else - values, as It matters, reduces; the rest comprises constructions, projections, and the like. Rs apparently For where well everything -1- as the bottom world, the Is somehow fabricated from �nothing (even extreme Idealists contractions start projections), and with batch some Ideas of their tor Is a top world, but a trivial one which there Includes everything, all properties true and false and other, all objects both as existing and not, etc. Before details proceed very far, then, distinctions are usually Introduced, belongs In a world, to Its domain or one of Its domains, and what what between holds In It In one way or another ordinance, the In outlined type slgnlfleantly, (truly, Imperatively or by This refinement leads to a more complex theory of worlds (of etc.). which Integrates the apparently separate worlds of JB) Wittgenstein’s Tractalus, “the" world that comprises the domain of objects with “the" world as everything that Is the case, the totality of true propositions or of facts. But the salient point Is that after this Integrating there remain many worlds, many not merely possible and Impossible worlds, but many candidates for "the" actual world, wang actual worlds1. For Instance, whatever physically adequate worlds are contained In the selected actual world of a theory will also be actual. If Incomplete. These If that s what they are, do not prevent us re levatIons, distressing speaking as we normally do, sensibly and significantly, of and about the any than more fact that there are several sorts and styles of meaningful the Ilves along with a variety of modern lifestyles that are logical particles (Imp I les, not, every, most very not all at or us from thinking and talking about the meaning of life. Like stops meaningful, world, ...), the world Is a determinable, with the worlds of the refined lattice Its determinates. this By protested, that's ways and rendering of the world we unique enough?! we share’, empiricists philosophers, pretty mad, and ready to especially, are usually objections earlier, stage,or the world burst In and realists with a unique. Surely, suitably though perhaps narrowing the class of determinates under us, the world But descriptions like the world we live In , are still far from uniquely discriminating. It s and around live In, the world we share, out there of range the world , That Is to forget about culture for one thing; much depends on who we are, which subculture belong we to. Tribal will find themselves In a spIrIt-saturated landscape, where Qulneans aborigines live In a highly Impoverished '‘land". (But the aborigines mistake. But mistake or not, either can be what Is but about spoken Is a primitive those by speaking about the world In which they dwell. ) There’s unless we re something phenomenologlstIc something else. That, the theories, there, out which theories, though Is there Idealistic), objection what Is has a Isn't there? Something or other (we grant, but continues, Is uniquely to determining jA Is conflate worlds with been going on here all along. No worlds are not partial Isomorphism. But worlds too have a multiplicity, [to elaborate] What Is neglected Is that ’world’ Itself Is -2- a theoretical term, not an �observational one, there are Important observational components In any though determination of this or that world. There can be well as one (actual) world theory, since theories multiple world theories as Indeed not merely as well as but better than, data commonsense match multiple better, and only defective ontological themes force retreat to one world theories. to save the world, from radical fragmentat Ion, Ua Ismann Perhaps levels of descriptions and Ryle talked doubt, a given sizeable enough thick bag high enough, successful of of thin and thick talked of No descriptions. enough level of worlds? or corresponding reductions, this sort of trick will work, [explain trick] But It Is not how we do commonly talk. Ue talk - and this Just two world sort of talk was what the levels of description theory was designed to get of - of the physicists' (or Eddington's) world and the commonsense (or rid StebbIngs') world, find descriptions do describe, look we when at what correspond Ing the levels of It Is these different worlds. i i i » If a determinate world Is not given, what guides selection Is the choice of base for world 3nd semantical philosophical Investigations. As for theory choice, a range of factors do so. But there Is considerable virtue In taking the object-theoretic minimizing direction, which Is dlametrIcally opposed the to main directIonof empirical and positivistic philosophy, namely the way of richness, diversity ecologies I-type and features, complexity. subject The recipe Is: Satlslze those on naturally to common-sens lea I constraints on what exists and what Is true. Richard Sy Ivan NOTES 1. At least on 3 pluralist view of things, such as Is taken In PPP. Of course any non-trlvlal theory will rule some rivals centrally true from Its stance. For Instance Platonic out as not object-theory true so or not rules out worlds with their existent universals and Lewis s theory wtth Its Implausible existent counterpart worlds. (These other theories are at best plural1stIcally-true). 2. While Ualsmann's levels or strata are discrete, Ryle s account appears to- allow for a continuous alternative. Ryle s suggestions are explained and applied In Ceertz, p.Bff. 3. Hence the max ImIzIng of reductions? which has great technical appeal. I*. As will be explained In a later version of this paper, the theory of worlds 3- �given has very little In common with Goodman s ways of world Making. Indeed Goodman’s fletlonallsm-cum-conventlonallsm will be severely criticised. REFERENCES C. Geertz, The InterpretatIon of Cultures, Basic Books, Hew York, 1373. N. GoodMan, Problems and Projects, BObbs-Merrlll, New York, N. GoodMan, Ways of Uorldmaklng, Harvester, Sussex, R. Rout ley, 1372. 1378. Exploring Melnong's Jungle and Beyond, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1380; referred to as JB. 6. Ryle, Collected Papers, Volume 2 the relevant essays are J Thinking and reflecting and The thinking of thoughts ’ . R. Sylvan, Philosophy, politics and pluralism: relevant modellings and arguments , Research Series In Logic and Metaphysics #2, Research bchool of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1385; referred to as PPP. A. F. Ualsmann, Flew)/Serles , Blackwell, Oxford, -4- � 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 BRIEF CORRECTION VERSION THE END OF THE WORLD of the grandest philosophical problems are formulated In terms of the Hany way of the world, how the world Is, what there Is In the world - using, that vs, an uncritical and pre-analytic notion of the world. Thus It Is with questcons as to the nature the world, the basic stuff and components of the world, the of arguments for realism, the Issue of universals and categories, of the objectivity and of ethics (e.g. whether values and directives are In the world); values thus It Is especially with the foundations semantics of supposedly (meaning being determined through what Is In or corresponds In the world); and so on. But the under dissolves notion critical Investigation, and therewith many grand problems - often pressing on always on-going reductionist agendas such of empiricism - are. the The world one God, as that If not resolved, at least relocated. goes the the way of the good life, the meaning of life, the Bomb, one 1?^ ... theory, (a)<^ . For there are many worlds, a whole lattice of worlds, bottoming on the null world Into which all the apparent richness encountered Is worlds projected, allegedly ascending through the austere of the nominalism and empiricism, through the richer world of Platonism, to the very rich worlds of romanticism and Hegelianism, as lllustrated:- Lattlce of putatively actual worlds (p-actuaI worIds) Rn example of an austere world Is Smart's world, the world Smart would see for adequate Individuals science composed by (which Is set-theoretic all that upon to a world of certain counts), operations Uke them, but with no properties or relations (except set membership), no propositions, no beliefs, no lntent(s )lons, categories, no values, consciousness, nothing Insofar else. unlikely null world everything else - values, as It matters, reduces; the rest comprises constructions, projections, and the like. Rs apparently For where well everything -1- as the bottom world, the Is somehow fabricated from nothing (even extreme Idealists contractions start projections), and with batch some Ideas of their tor Is a top world, but a trivial one which there Includes everything, all properties true and false and other, all objects both as existing and not, etc. Before details proceed very far, then, distinctions are usually Introduced, belongs In a world, to Its domain or one of Its domains, and what what between holds In It In one way or another ordinance, the In outlined type slgnlfleantly, (truly, Imperatively or by This refinement leads to a more complex theory of worlds (of etc.). which Integrates the apparently separate worlds of JB) Wittgenstein’s Tractalus, “the" world that comprises the domain of objects with “the" world as everything that Is the case, the totality of true propositions or of facts. But the salient point Is that after this Integrating there remain many worlds, many not merely possible and Impossible worlds, but many candidates for "the" actual world, wang actual worlds1. For Instance, whatever physically adequate worlds are contained In the selected actual world of a theory will also be actual. If Incomplete. These If that s what they are, do not prevent us re levatIons, distressing speaking as we normally do, sensibly and significantly, of and about the any than more fact that there are several sorts and styles of meaningful the Ilves along with a variety of modern lifestyles that are logical particles (Imp I les, not, every, most very not all at or us from thinking and talking about the meaning of life. Like stops meaningful, world, ...), the world Is a determinable, with the worlds of the refined lattice Its determinates. this By protested, that's ways and rendering of the world we unique enough?! we share’, empiricists philosophers, pretty mad, and ready to especially, are usually objections earlier, stage,or the world burst In and realists with a unique. Surely, suitably though perhaps narrowing the class of determinates under us, the world But descriptions like the world we live In , are still far from uniquely discriminating. It s and around live In, the world we share, out there of range the world , That Is to forget about culture for one thing; much depends on who we are, which subculture belong we to. Tribal will find themselves In a spIrIt-saturated landscape, where Qulneans aborigines live In a highly Impoverished '‘land". (But the aborigines mistake. But mistake or not, either can be what Is but about spoken Is a primitive those by speaking about the world In which they dwell. ) There’s unless we re something phenomenologlstIc something else. That, the theories, there, out which theories, though Is there Idealistic), objection what Is has a Isn't there? Something or other (we grant, but continues, Is uniquely to determining jA Is conflate worlds with been going on here all along. No worlds are not partial Isomorphism. But worlds too have a multiplicity, [to elaborate] What Is neglected Is that ’world’ Itself Is -2- a theoretical term, not an observational one, there are Important observational components In any though determination of this or that world. There can be well as one (actual) world theory, since theories multiple world theories as Indeed not merely as well as but better than, data commonsense match multiple better, and only defective ontological themes force retreat to one world theories. to save the world, from radical fragmentat Ion, Ua Ismann Perhaps levels of descriptions and Ryle talked doubt, a given sizeable enough thick bag high enough, successful of of thin and thick talked of No descriptions. enough level of worlds? or corresponding reductions, this sort of trick will work, [explain trick] But It Is not how we do commonly talk. Ue talk - and this Just two world sort of talk was what the levels of description theory was designed to get of - of the physicists' (or Eddington's) world and the commonsense (or rid StebbIngs') world, find descriptions do describe, look we when at what correspond Ing the levels of It Is these different worlds. i i i » If a determinate world Is not given, what guides selection Is the choice of base for world 3nd semantical philosophical Investigations. As for theory choice, a range of factors do so. But there Is considerable virtue In taking the object-theoretic minimizing direction, which Is dlametrIcally opposed the to main directIonof empirical and positivistic philosophy, namely the way of richness, diversity ecologies I-type and features, complexity. subject The recipe Is: Satlslze those on naturally to common-sens lea I constraints on what exists and what Is true. Richard Sy Ivan NOTES 1. At least on 3 pluralist view of things, such as Is taken In PPP. Of course any non-trlvlal theory will rule some rivals centrally true from Its stance. For Instance Platonic out as not object-theory true so or not rules out worlds with their existent universals and Lewis s theory wtth Its Implausible existent counterpart worlds. (These other theories are at best plural1stIcally-true). 2. While Ualsmann's levels or strata are discrete, Ryle s account appears to- allow for a continuous alternative. Ryle s suggestions are explained and applied In Ceertz, p.Bff. 3. Hence the max ImIzIng of reductions? which has great technical appeal. I*. As will be explained In a later version of this paper, the theory of worlds 3- given has very little In common with Goodman s ways of world Making. Indeed Goodman’s fletlonallsm-cum-conventlonallsm will be severely criticised. REFERENCES C. Geertz, The InterpretatIon of Cultures, Basic Books, Hew York, 1373. N. GoodMan, Problems and Projects, BObbs-Merrlll, New York, N. GoodMan, Ways of Uorldmaklng, Harvester, Sussex, R. Rout ley, 1372. 1378. Exploring Melnong's Jungle and Beyond, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1380; referred to as JB. 6. Ryle, Collected Papers, Volume 2 the relevant essays are J Thinking and reflecting and The thinking of thoughts ’ . R. Sylvan, Philosophy, politics and pluralism: relevant modellings and arguments , Research Series In Logic and Metaphysics #2, Research bchool of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1385; referred to as PPP. A. F. Ualsmann, Flew)/Serles , Blackwell, Oxford, -4-  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 69, Item 3: Draft, brief correction version of The end of the world Subject The topic of the resource Typescript draft, with handwritten emendations. 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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> 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 69, Item 3 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>. 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [4] leaves. 2.8 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:957e4c8">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:957e4c8</a> Box 69: Unlisted and Untitled Boxes https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/67b27de117524030d45b6db0a625bad2.pdf a92ad477704fdf667fdab4a346c2f0f2 PDF Text Text WORKING DRAFT CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND APPROACHES TO THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT Many of you know that Canberra was originally Griffin. This talk is dedicated by designed simply not an key elements of the Western industrial paradigm, especially making Servant the Nature of Man, 'land to ... be the accorded He rejected 'concentration discerned instead elements of a and His approach was holistic, and different 'consciousness' (the word is his). took the and architect designer but one of Australia’s early deeper ecologists. landscape Burley You may not know that Griffin, an to him. American who migrated to Australia in 1913, was on Walter respect he due to a highly developed and perfected living organism not to be exterminated or treated as dead material, or as mere section of a map’. a Canberra, now no mere section of map, is perhaps the best approximation anywhere to a deeper ecological city; but it is not only removed from Griffin’s original conception but far from deep ecological ideals. * * * * * The objective of the larger investigation, of which this is part, to gauge the extent to Australian which contrasted with American culture, contains developable will underpin under which many a sketches a culture, especially as elements (seeds) which different political framework from the bastardised capitalism people presently labour and local environment frequently It is not necessary to see the present political arrangements and the suffers. political course interested in charted as environmentally alternative structures: or socially disastrous to be it is enough, for example, to view them as far from satisfactory, or very far from worlds, talk those of the best of attainable to be interested in the prospects of turning things around somewhat, to �increasing ecological resistance [negative action j against environment like^and ecological construction [direct positive action]. the and vandalism^/ There are several distinctive features of Australian culture that for the especially hope, damage^?, grounds give remarkable level of environmental activism that has It is worth trying to pull together somehow emerged among the people. some of these features of the culture, to look at ways of furthering the valuable parts, and increasing the level of concern and activism. Without doubt attitudes different towards practices, and cultures have the approaches, different different Indeed appreciation of, environment. practices towards, and respect for the natural environment are highly culturally dependent: for compare, American Jews and American Indians. instance, Most nonimperial cultures had ~ and where they still survive uncorrupted still havi. less much exploitative industrial and to not practices whose North, exploitation approaches the merely environmental control lost their of local typically under the missionary, colonial or imperial domination. in But occasionally, notably retained gross permit the of those than but to a marked extent depend upon such practices. vandalism Mostly these more benign cultures have however environments, environment sufficient autonomy the to adjacent Pacific, regional cultures have slow or even halt environmental destruction. Thus, for example, rainforest damaging projects have been delayed or blocked in Melanesia largely through Melanesian attitudes to the land. One important way then to try to slow environmental degradation, especially in the South, is to foster both sweepingly, regional cultural autonomy; socialism and indigenous certain for cultural instance land rights movements. differences to support way of Melanesian For, where the cultures have not been excessively corrupted by Northern influences, this is rapid and, more a comparatively activating alternative paradigms to the dominant Northern social �The question arises whether paradigms. elsewhere the in also can differences serve Antipodes, in particular in Australia, to at least assist in transition to different less environmentally social exploitative paradigms. transition is unlikely to occur unless it is based on the culture. a Such cultural Can features of the culture and the social life be used to foster and make requisite differences? In the case of Australia, a basis is there both the / land in </* U culture, and things and the <L- appear sufficiently different from that in the cultures A of the industrialised North to allow (some hope) for Of the for change, at least if the natural environment is to retain some need semblance of integrity, there is little doubt. that is, there differentiation. cultural in is It platitudinous becoming the longer run not much prospect for the integrity of many local natural environments and ecosystems unless the in we Antipodes break from the damaging cultural assumptions and practice of the industrialised loose work North and towards establishment of a elements of regionalism in the North, despite a in some parts, rising tide war. of For despite environmental the industrialised North still appears in the grip of established forces and unlikely to budge in time - short of nuclear environmentally culture, towards a certain regional cultural autonomy. destructive concern less different disaster, such Though we who seek change can count on some support from minority movements in the North, nonetheless if we are to achieve changes, we must go largely alone as Nor is it task of paradigm transition entirely hopeless in the Australia because as well as the advantage of the ground and its southern KJ and seeds of cultural difference are already there and growing. But A like, most] new and more fragile developments they need attention and^if speedy location, careful cultivation Such a task is rendered urgent also by other matters of 0 environmental and human concern, not but colossal biological losses st the gathering signs of nuclear ykthrough rapid destruction of, e.g. r 3 war, tropical �rainforests, indeed, mounting evidence of environmental decline almost everywhere humans now establish. How does philosophy fit into the strategy of harnessing regional culture to & A ; alter approaches to the environment? As i/ the title of the ^lk it operates in organising principles L okr the dynamic linkage in a good suspension bridge^which lifts the the middle, not as an idle middleman, but more like and design environmental way on the ropes of regional links A culture. working picture that the main components of the discussion together - a picture that also like most images of the more abstract distorts across the is that of a bridge suspension the gap often separating people from the natural environment. There are people, and the environment, and approaches by bridges to the environment, like so (Of course people may be part of the natural environment: exclude ' -hew that important overlap.) The different sorts, ranging from rustic bridges the picture doesn’t connecting bridges may be of very good for careful foot traffic, �through the monumental suspension bridge at Middle Harbour, to modern high-tech bridges able to carry nuclear tanks and bulldozers over large spans. the But it is structure of all these types of bridges carrying the approaches that matter The spans are carried by the ropes of culture, and the pylons particularly. ot culture if you will. So different witii different cultures, carrying bridges see the,component in the middle d philosophy, but it might almost as well be sociology - not as part of approaches. It is better different to the nuts and bolts and rivets of the bridges, but rather as the design and engineering of the structures. types, computing It has its analytical parts, looking at the the loads stresses and on them; them - the social paradigms embedded in the cultures. select substructures Philosophy, the link subject is then the architecture and engineering of the business. 5 their and it also has its more holistic elements, considering the bridges themselves and of components, �philosophy figuratively, Less assumptions that is, to be considered for deep ecology, asks deeper of assumptions assumptions replacement, and deeper questions, of example free fundamenta] the other subjects and assembling the intellectual assumptions all paradigms. for extracting embodied in a culture or social way or life, i.e. social operative Philosophy, especially metaphysics and not or marxist philosophies. enterprise the assembles ancl culture applied in environmental practices, the assumptions, a of isolates In what are sometimes called the tills respect philosophy - which includes much more than conceptual analysis - is first among the intellectual subjects, logic, as the science of reasoning, is the first among the sciences, investigating the form of arguments and methodology of all other sciences. philosophical investigation 1'he assumptions deeper such when put together yield a philosophy in extracts, ci c^y the more popular sense (as e.g. in philosophy of life or , the free enterprise 4 philosophy): any in case the will be a philosophical theory or the result rudiments of a philosophical paradigm, depending on how it is done. By largely philosophical investigation then, of assumptions the techniques we try with contrasted operative test to apparent we trij.ce Northern social paradigms; the adequacy social of and especially as alternatives with some environmental support So much has already been accomplished, in a rough and ready way, and some base. results are illustrated in diagram^ • J. s. Details of other positions, the old /and culture positions (as typically offer environmental a projected), transition alternative And from are left and the counter included in the diagram the while new the dominant it may Wester/l paradigm appear to indeed is - a long political way from the dominant paradigm to the environmental alternative, of the and by sociological assemblage, the organise the intermediate steps is not so great; each and the steps can, and have, been �To illustrate the way transitions can taken one at a time. of the first line (row) in macro-economic form. details construed components package typically includes environmient , as this to minimal quality life of But the and with subtractions for externalities such as noise and and pollution, perhaps *--- —, M with additions for non-material features excluded in dominant consciousness. this way we arrive si Mew left thinking with the objective subject to considerable reservations, X(RR). of material goes back philosophy; Greek to In growth The real break however comes with members of the counterculture, the hippies and Yippiesy for example, though idea the objective functin to be maximized gets much complicated, A the so such in a rough way stanadard of living. representing as consider The dominant objective is to maximize some economic package of goods and services being made, be the namely, the abandonment of growth and maximization objectives altogether, for less material nonmaximizing goals At the macroeconopic level, the idea gets^represented by the goal of a steady-state or sustain able economy, though the alternative environmental objective will be for something much less inflexible and ^rationalistic than economists have so tar sketched. I In fact the "emerging steady-state paradigm", which Daly/ ' for example^/advocates, affords only a shallow alternative to the dominant paradigm, differing only as to growth and paradigms would include steady state position; remove the transition. convenient reserves themes. But a fuller diagram of among others such advanced corporate capitalism - the so it would involve a JI simplification over higher-dimensional diagram, and of the two dimensional left-right However, the high" dimensional diagram indicates how a better argued A transition ,can be made; essentially by combining steady-state arguments against 0 macroeconomic growth and stocks assumptions with the Left -yocialist case against Even so, even with the combin/catioms, which does touch themes. Cl human relations , ^anthropocentric framework would not have been left behind, microeconomic T deeper environmental concern would have only began to enter 7 G-fiP �Reaching behind the dominant Western paradigm so outlined to the underlying model takes us towards the following familiar picture: social society consists of a set of individual humans of decidedly impoverished type, e.g. they are not genuinely interrelated, so they are isolated, and, though they are the only sort of items that have intensional (mental) features, they have (e.g. certain a to ability few but of these At bottom, these individuals have calculate). utilities, reflecting preferences or self-interests, which they aim to maximize; and competitive (by virtue of scarcity). are they so that they are possessive, and possess capital. The distinctive the means Their other feature is production, of to this about self-interested Features There is nothing compulsory, or Individuals picture. this are individuals competing these approximating matter of particularly nurture, abstract nature. not of the American economic archtype are a matter of culture, a result oi training, not human nature, as a comparison where their To ensure the initial argument, on this model, for the coercive is apparatus of the (minimal) state. natural, land, of the American model is of course is that feature individuals can separately accumulate the means of production. entitlement e.g. individuals are like not helps this, individuals embody rationality either: with othei' show. traditional cultures, lior do these archtypal only a question-begging argument leads to the American model as something naturally required. The transitions to the left already go beyond the American model. introduces certain The relations. human chauvinistic (anthropocentric) but they do not left omit models are social The left still human relations: the further big step to the environmental alternative is to widen these relations to full community relations, independent value. That recognising is a creatures and nonhuman things as of bigger step, a step that no Western political institutions make requisite allowance for, Western value theories do not accommodate. 8 and that mainstream underpinning �The arguments from traditional cultures can also be illustrated the and paradigms cultures such as those models Melanesia of them. underlie that and directed Polynesia, the In traditional of many against the operative assumptions of the Northern social paradigms are, very reasonably, not accepted. Where these cultures still prevail with some measure of regional autonomy, there is good prospect more thwarting of destructive practices. environmentally Features of the local culture can be immediately harnessed. But much of the inhabited and there are already observable features distinctive unscathed World in questioned, let alone overthrown, especially among the managerial other, even or lesser, of features not exhaust features of the accompanying out leave There are cultures significant as artistic and intellectual to icing. be This discerned, sure, does affords European culture This alternatives. a have an somewhat as that in romanticism and a significant feature of American Indian gives the basis of the aesthetic route to environmental But there are as well more important omissions and discrepancies In particular, the dominant American paradigm religion; but Northern features. precarious foothold for an aesthetic approach to the environment, such evidenced So conspicuous other usually cultural industrial culture, though economically dominated accompanying classes The incomplete social paradigms outlined do cultural features to be considered surprisingly Although the cultures will have to be invoked if change in approach is to be hastened in this way. rather now cultures, World New is Northern paradigms have hardly been sufficiently dominant the less environmentally peoples of predominantly European stock. by governed of assumptions and New also neglected are many prominent values of American culture. 9 omits reference to established of the connected older and formerly more �The American search tor environmentally acceptable has alternatives regularly turned to these omitted features of American culture, and religious or Indeed the primary attempts to spiritual elements, and associated past values . "the gospel of ecology" and displace the dominant paradigm have taken establish a spiritual route, a quasi-religious way. and sample (For example, Nash provides a list of the books he considers important in the rise of the representative virtually all that proceed beyond ecology new environmentalism: depend on an appeal to religious elements, to divine or sacred features of natural things.) In the context of American culture the appeal something to be said for it. to proportion do act in accordance and, unlike with response. And, secondly, religious values do clash with dominant Northern paradigm. has features For, firstly, a high proportion of the American population profess some active religious commitment; substantial religious This sort of that conflict the was Australia, socially precepts approved of perceived, considerable puzzlement, by colonised cultures, as Lini reports in the a case the with of Melanesian society (p.9): The fabric of this society, with its inherent communal discipline was ... torn by the arrival of European commercial practices which carried with it the message of materialism, together with the creed of enlightened self-interest. Both aspects were a direct contradiction of Melanesian values and priorities. The introduction to Melanesia of Christianity added a further element of division and confusion in the minds of the people. While the Christian religion was widely compatible with the ethics and principles of Melanesian communalism, with its emphasis on mutuality, compassion and caring for one another, it was a practice that very few of the Europeans appeared to follow. It ran also contrary to the religion of individualism and self-interest, which not just (had) more important exponents, but was followed by the majority of Europeans ... It is something a a puzzle how the assimilation of elements of the dominant Northern paradigm with prospects of Christianity is pulled off, though achieved it certainly is in a great many Northerners, and too many Antipodeans. a partial answer: compartmentalisation. 10 There is Religion tor most is a separate thing �fitted into a Sunday morning box, important elements of which do not upset the business standard week. such as human poverty: to Thus for most believers religion does not Only for a minority does it directly penetrate deep. escape touch immediate matters why should we expect it to work for the Environment? Nonetheless widespread real adoption of religious perceptions the within American population, and^reflected in the Administration, would presumably alter things. but even if some of the effects of a religious return would beneficial, and domination nature were be negative Religion could be more of a drawback than an asset. with any depth to it appears most unlikely. scientific world Unless moreover the position abandoned in favour of one of the lesser religious traditions the environmental effects would "the view". scientific (as for the case for its much virtue front-end-in. shape. trying in It return to the There is world view in such great is not just that there is much that this sort of view leaves out or social it is that this perspective, a paradigm, paradigm. So incorporates it is far from uniquely determined. more intellectually satisfactory rivals (e.g. view). rival view with these sorts of weaknesses But nor is the so called scientific cannot account for; dominant to the Consider, for instance, the matter of the existence of God, the fallaciousness of the arguments involved, etc. no testifies). Religion in America has lost out to In part it failed deservedly: view could explain. Watt In any case such a reversal world view was seriously deficient and it did not account more highly be welcomed, it is also true that some of the effects of a to narrow fundamentalism would be highly undesirable. of be a richer intensional the There are scientific These rivals allow for value and wonder in natural things without taking a theological way. 11 �There is a set second quasi-religious character reasons of of some not tor sort, a These the on turn irreligious character of the culture, where an appeal through religion success. is unlikely to have much understood as (the a barely relevant generally impose Pantheistic or Jewish, Christian, whatever, on deeper environmental approaches in Australia. strongly to endeavouring first) ’. irreligious Australia, post-Christian has it society, in which religion (is) Even if that formulation character of understanding much else about the culture, the e.g. an is the exaggeration is a fact and is the society the ’best is said, been curious to extent the state’s protrusion into Australian social life. If an approach through religion is accordingly ruled out as a main approach to hastened j paradigm transition - and a related approach through mysticism or transcen f1 ism excluded for analogous reasons and because of the the earthiness There are other significant features culture - what alternatives are open? of the culture running against major elements of the dominant Western which can be perhaps applied approaches to turn matters features of the culture around. to more much detach effectively indicate To of from than quasi-religious prospects the paradigms, dominant paradigm, of applying consider how Australian culture contrasts with American. Australian mainstream culture transition from the dominant is already American political left has much stronger support in difficult to some culture. Australia way along the leftward is not merely that the It than USA. It is not indicate features of the Australian cultural situation which show its left—displacement from the dominant Western paradigm. some elements of the contrast:- 12 The next table lists �TABLE 2. CONTRASTING ELEMENTS IN AUSTRALIAN AND AMERICAN CULTURE —-- —> SCALE OF INCREASE individualistic ethos inacceptability of socialist institutions inegalitarian attitudes POSITIVE inegalitarian practices ITEMS (PER level of consumerism CAPITA maximization quest WHERE imperialist drive relevant) extent of violence police and military commitment high technology involvement functional rationality environmental inactivism USA AUSTRALIA SCALE OF INCREASE level of urbanisation legal obstacles to environmental action NEGATIVE {practices, such as dedication of wilderness ITEMS administrative delays in implementing environmental practices, such as pollution requirements, recycling, etc. Thus there are some offsetting negative items as well as positive items 13 in the �contrast. themes Since, however, most of these contrasting elements bear on first for opposed to American, it appears that prospects indeed This better. important environmental spectators the applying culture are theme requires ela^boration and confirmation. The task can profitably be combined with others: for the rival paradigms in a way favourable to Australian culture as of diagram in an with there is much work empirical here both and for environmental bent activists. A first task is to separate out what is known, what requires and their eommund'B, distinguishing theses: / Let us focus on transition theses, ought to be done (ideologically) what and normative and factual transition factual transition thesis, that Western (European) culture is weak A firstly confirmation, ^/undergoing a transition away from the dominant confirmed by several Northern sociologists (e.g. better results could be obtained in Australia; paradigm, social has been Presumably similar or Marsh). but appropriate samplings of the community have not been done, analysed and so on - environmental sociology being a neglected undoubtedly field in Another Australia. weak transition factual thesis holds, namely that since 1960 a significant percentage of the also ertreii human community in specifiable advanced Western countries such as Australia have to adopt main assumptions of the alternative environmental paradigm, come but again comparative—figures sociological work are entirely of data to Though impressionistic tells us that environmental activism is greater in Australia than OSA - indeed more intensive than piece lacking. anywhere else, an immensely build upon - we lack solid confirmation. sociogeographers to do. 14 important There is much for �Throughout, as you may have noticed, a normative transition thesis has been largely taken granted, for that generally, l&ght to^undergoing Western and paradigms an towards and to rguments. the repeat furthermore alternative. environmental thesis is argued for in environmental philosophy, and time dominant from away variations (such as those of advocated corporate their capitalism an.d of the post-industrial society) , transitivity* shift, paradigm major a culture, indeed Western culture Australian to ought be complex normative That isn’t there fortunately It is also argued against there, but> to sum up the opposition case, unconvincingly. Given then that the transition is going on, and to ought going be on, ought then to be going on with greater rapidity, how is it hastened, how indeed do environmental activists emerging are enough. clear it encourage in Australia. Preliminary answers Not only should activists be continuing with what I they are directing doing organisations the and environmental and those like, to supposed action (public) further them, of industrial prluwryprimarily, regulate not merely by membership drives and environmental influence to and swing the should education. be dominant^ regional culture , for the w potential appears to be there for a considerably greater change been achieved. sources They should also be aiming to increase their support bases , but organisations. endeavouring the against than has thus/ There are two major parts to this further practice which can run in tandem, a more negative and a more positive part: 0 More negatively.it z involves curring down and countering the flow propaganda in favour of the dominant paradigms both locally but especiall the North. That is important in reversing the extent It includes Northern from co-^option a range of activities some with solid bases in local culture, such as gently lopping anti-American of of off the tall poppies and anti-Nor them activities. 15 pedalling the stuff, and careful The latter practices (which should �not of course reduce merely to personally directed antagonism) fit in well aims, such as independent and nonaligned defence environmental regional other with policies • More positively, it consists in promoting and adapting other despised features It alternative paradigms commonly is intellectuals Northern are, of course, like those nonmaximizing making-do socialistic ones, of appreciation natural local The features to tye Lawrence). cultural characters are held (e.g I the egalitarian, along environments. with the consider the effects of these, decently applied, in or antiauthoritarian, A rapidly increasing taken to things, conomics, in local As for mateship, sure it could use widening, a pain problem being its I hra/sv restriction in communities promoted in Fair go and Enough* s with egalitarian methods as combines markets. cultural Nonmaximizing, for example, is reflected in the She’ll be right and It'11 do approach dften enough: and note, that are responsible for the low repute in which some of the ambassadors, and commonly culture that work directly towards themes of Australian of also to male relationships: (including cultural transformation: nonhumans). but encourage its extension So, to conclude, the potential is^for we must help to realise it FOOTNOTES 1. The term ’approaches’ is intended to include both theory and practice, espoused ideology and behaviour. 2. They did not go under because of the weakness of their intellectual positions. At bottom their religious beliefs, for example, were no more ridiculous than those of Christianity. Typically they were much weakened by new diseases, and overwhelmed by new technology often applied in violent fashion. 3. Another past philosophical basis for environmental philosophy, American naturalism, seems to have been little developed, despite the promise some have seen in it. 16 both �4. By integrity is meant much more than retaining representative samples of this and that system or species; not representative southern sassafras, parma wallabies and Torres Strait Islanders, but sufficiently many. 17 �P X c 3 & X O P P x X 3 C P HX X 5 O 3 P4 Hrt CD P P4 H* CD X P H CD X p. P X O SS CD X CD X H> CJ4 F—1 CD Hi CD Qu Hp CD CD p X H P P H« P CD 3 nJ P4 P X C H CD . 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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 WORKING DRAFT CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND APPROACHES TO THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT Many of you know that Canberra was originally Griffin. This talk is dedicated by designed simply not an key elements of the Western industrial paradigm, especially making Servant the Nature of Man, 'land to ... be the accorded He rejected 'concentration discerned instead elements of a and His approach was holistic, and different 'consciousness' (the word is his). took the and architect designer but one of Australia’s early deeper ecologists. landscape Burley You may not know that Griffin, an to him. American who migrated to Australia in 1913, was on Walter respect he due to a highly developed and perfected living organism not to be exterminated or treated as dead material, or as mere section of a map’. a Canberra, now no mere section of map, is perhaps the best approximation anywhere to a deeper ecological city; but it is not only removed from Griffin’s original conception but far from deep ecological ideals. * * * * * The objective of the larger investigation, of which this is part, to gauge the extent to Australian which contrasted with American culture, contains developable will underpin under which many a sketches a culture, especially as elements (seeds) which different political framework from the bastardised capitalism people presently labour and local environment frequently It is not necessary to see the present political arrangements and the suffers. political course interested in charted as environmentally alternative structures: or socially disastrous to be it is enough, for example, to view them as far from satisfactory, or very far from worlds, talk those of the best of attainable to be interested in the prospects of turning things around somewhat, to increasing ecological resistance [negative action j against environment like^and ecological construction [direct positive action]. the and vandalism^/ There are several distinctive features of Australian culture that for the especially hope, damage^?, grounds give remarkable level of environmental activism that has It is worth trying to pull together somehow emerged among the people. some of these features of the culture, to look at ways of furthering the valuable parts, and increasing the level of concern and activism. Without doubt attitudes different towards practices, and cultures have the approaches, different different Indeed appreciation of, environment. practices towards, and respect for the natural environment are highly culturally dependent: for compare, American Jews and American Indians. instance, Most nonimperial cultures had ~ and where they still survive uncorrupted still havi. less much exploitative industrial and to not practices whose North, exploitation approaches the merely environmental control lost their of local typically under the missionary, colonial or imperial domination. in But occasionally, notably retained gross permit the of those than but to a marked extent depend upon such practices. vandalism Mostly these more benign cultures have however environments, environment sufficient autonomy the to adjacent Pacific, regional cultures have slow or even halt environmental destruction. Thus, for example, rainforest damaging projects have been delayed or blocked in Melanesia largely through Melanesian attitudes to the land. One important way then to try to slow environmental degradation, especially in the South, is to foster both sweepingly, regional cultural autonomy; socialism and indigenous certain for cultural instance land rights movements. differences to support way of Melanesian For, where the cultures have not been excessively corrupted by Northern influences, this is rapid and, more a comparatively activating alternative paradigms to the dominant Northern social The question arises whether paradigms. elsewhere the in also can differences serve Antipodes, in particular in Australia, to at least assist in transition to different less environmentally social exploitative paradigms. transition is unlikely to occur unless it is based on the culture. a Such cultural Can features of the culture and the social life be used to foster and make requisite differences? In the case of Australia, a basis is there both the / land in </* U culture, and things and the <L- appear sufficiently different from that in the cultures A of the industrialised North to allow (some hope) for Of the for change, at least if the natural environment is to retain some need semblance of integrity, there is little doubt. that is, there differentiation. cultural in is It platitudinous becoming the longer run not much prospect for the integrity of many local natural environments and ecosystems unless the in we Antipodes break from the damaging cultural assumptions and practice of the industrialised loose work North and towards establishment of a elements of regionalism in the North, despite a in some parts, rising tide war. of For despite environmental the industrialised North still appears in the grip of established forces and unlikely to budge in time - short of nuclear environmentally culture, towards a certain regional cultural autonomy. destructive concern less different disaster, such Though we who seek change can count on some support from minority movements in the North, nonetheless if we are to achieve changes, we must go largely alone as Nor is it task of paradigm transition entirely hopeless in the Australia because as well as the advantage of the ground and its southern KJ and seeds of cultural difference are already there and growing. But A like, most] new and more fragile developments they need attention and^if speedy location, careful cultivation Such a task is rendered urgent also by other matters of 0 environmental and human concern, not but colossal biological losses st the gathering signs of nuclear ykthrough rapid destruction of, e.g. r 3 war, tropical rainforests, indeed, mounting evidence of environmental decline almost everywhere humans now establish. How does philosophy fit into the strategy of harnessing regional culture to & A ; alter approaches to the environment? As i/ the title of the ^lk it operates in organising principles L okr the dynamic linkage in a good suspension bridge^which lifts the the middle, not as an idle middleman, but more like and design environmental way on the ropes of regional links A culture. working picture that the main components of the discussion together - a picture that also like most images of the more abstract distorts across the is that of a bridge suspension the gap often separating people from the natural environment. There are people, and the environment, and approaches by bridges to the environment, like so (Of course people may be part of the natural environment: exclude ' -hew that important overlap.) The different sorts, ranging from rustic bridges the picture doesn’t connecting bridges may be of very good for careful foot traffic, through the monumental suspension bridge at Middle Harbour, to modern high-tech bridges able to carry nuclear tanks and bulldozers over large spans. the But it is structure of all these types of bridges carrying the approaches that matter The spans are carried by the ropes of culture, and the pylons particularly. ot culture if you will. So different witii different cultures, carrying bridges see the,component in the middle d philosophy, but it might almost as well be sociology - not as part of approaches. It is better different to the nuts and bolts and rivets of the bridges, but rather as the design and engineering of the structures. types, computing It has its analytical parts, looking at the the loads stresses and on them; them - the social paradigms embedded in the cultures. select substructures Philosophy, the link subject is then the architecture and engineering of the business. 5 their and it also has its more holistic elements, considering the bridges themselves and of components, philosophy figuratively, Less assumptions that is, to be considered for deep ecology, asks deeper of assumptions assumptions replacement, and deeper questions, of example free fundamenta] the other subjects and assembling the intellectual assumptions all paradigms. for extracting embodied in a culture or social way or life, i.e. social operative Philosophy, especially metaphysics and not or marxist philosophies. enterprise the assembles ancl culture applied in environmental practices, the assumptions, a of isolates In what are sometimes called the tills respect philosophy - which includes much more than conceptual analysis - is first among the intellectual subjects, logic, as the science of reasoning, is the first among the sciences, investigating the form of arguments and methodology of all other sciences. philosophical investigation 1'he assumptions deeper such when put together yield a philosophy in extracts, ci c^y the more popular sense (as e.g. in philosophy of life or , the free enterprise 4 philosophy): any in case the will be a philosophical theory or the result rudiments of a philosophical paradigm, depending on how it is done. By largely philosophical investigation then, of assumptions the techniques we try with contrasted operative test to apparent we trij.ce Northern social paradigms; the adequacy social of and especially as alternatives with some environmental support So much has already been accomplished, in a rough and ready way, and some base. results are illustrated in diagram^ • J. s. Details of other positions, the old /and culture positions (as typically offer environmental a projected), transition alternative And from are left and the counter included in the diagram the while new the dominant it may Wester/l paradigm appear to indeed is - a long political way from the dominant paradigm to the environmental alternative, of the and by sociological assemblage, the organise the intermediate steps is not so great; each and the steps can, and have, been To illustrate the way transitions can taken one at a time. of the first line (row) in macro-economic form. details construed components package typically includes environmient , as this to minimal quality life of But the and with subtractions for externalities such as noise and and pollution, perhaps *--- —, M with additions for non-material features excluded in dominant consciousness. this way we arrive si Mew left thinking with the objective subject to considerable reservations, X(RR). of material goes back philosophy; Greek to In growth The real break however comes with members of the counterculture, the hippies and Yippiesy for example, though idea the objective functin to be maximized gets much complicated, A the so such in a rough way stanadard of living. representing as consider The dominant objective is to maximize some economic package of goods and services being made, be the namely, the abandonment of growth and maximization objectives altogether, for less material nonmaximizing goals At the macroeconopic level, the idea gets^represented by the goal of a steady-state or sustain able economy, though the alternative environmental objective will be for something much less inflexible and ^rationalistic than economists have so tar sketched. I In fact the "emerging steady-state paradigm", which Daly/ ' for example^/advocates, affords only a shallow alternative to the dominant paradigm, differing only as to growth and paradigms would include steady state position; remove the transition. convenient reserves themes. But a fuller diagram of among others such advanced corporate capitalism - the so it would involve a JI simplification over higher-dimensional diagram, and of the two dimensional left-right However, the high" dimensional diagram indicates how a better argued A transition ,can be made; essentially by combining steady-state arguments against 0 macroeconomic growth and stocks assumptions with the Left -yocialist case against Even so, even with the combin/catioms, which does touch themes. Cl human relations , ^anthropocentric framework would not have been left behind, microeconomic T deeper environmental concern would have only began to enter 7 G-fiP Reaching behind the dominant Western paradigm so outlined to the underlying model takes us towards the following familiar picture: social society consists of a set of individual humans of decidedly impoverished type, e.g. they are not genuinely interrelated, so they are isolated, and, though they are the only sort of items that have intensional (mental) features, they have (e.g. certain a to ability few but of these At bottom, these individuals have calculate). utilities, reflecting preferences or self-interests, which they aim to maximize; and competitive (by virtue of scarcity). are they so that they are possessive, and possess capital. The distinctive the means Their other feature is production, of to this about self-interested Features There is nothing compulsory, or Individuals picture. this are individuals competing these approximating matter of particularly nurture, abstract nature. not of the American economic archtype are a matter of culture, a result oi training, not human nature, as a comparison where their To ensure the initial argument, on this model, for the coercive is apparatus of the (minimal) state. natural, land, of the American model is of course is that feature individuals can separately accumulate the means of production. entitlement e.g. individuals are like not helps this, individuals embody rationality either: with othei' show. traditional cultures, lior do these archtypal only a question-begging argument leads to the American model as something naturally required. The transitions to the left already go beyond the American model. introduces certain The relations. human chauvinistic (anthropocentric) but they do not left omit models are social The left still human relations: the further big step to the environmental alternative is to widen these relations to full community relations, independent value. That recognising is a creatures and nonhuman things as of bigger step, a step that no Western political institutions make requisite allowance for, Western value theories do not accommodate. 8 and that mainstream underpinning The arguments from traditional cultures can also be illustrated the and paradigms cultures such as those models Melanesia of them. underlie that and directed Polynesia, the In traditional of many against the operative assumptions of the Northern social paradigms are, very reasonably, not accepted. Where these cultures still prevail with some measure of regional autonomy, there is good prospect more thwarting of destructive practices. environmentally Features of the local culture can be immediately harnessed. But much of the inhabited and there are already observable features distinctive unscathed World in questioned, let alone overthrown, especially among the managerial other, even or lesser, of features not exhaust features of the accompanying out leave There are cultures significant as artistic and intellectual to icing. be This discerned, sure, does affords European culture This alternatives. a have an somewhat as that in romanticism and a significant feature of American Indian gives the basis of the aesthetic route to environmental But there are as well more important omissions and discrepancies In particular, the dominant American paradigm religion; but Northern features. precarious foothold for an aesthetic approach to the environment, such evidenced So conspicuous other usually cultural industrial culture, though economically dominated accompanying classes The incomplete social paradigms outlined do cultural features to be considered surprisingly Although the cultures will have to be invoked if change in approach is to be hastened in this way. rather now cultures, World New is Northern paradigms have hardly been sufficiently dominant the less environmentally peoples of predominantly European stock. by governed of assumptions and New also neglected are many prominent values of American culture. 9 omits reference to established of the connected older and formerly more The American search tor environmentally acceptable has alternatives regularly turned to these omitted features of American culture, and religious or Indeed the primary attempts to spiritual elements, and associated past values . "the gospel of ecology" and displace the dominant paradigm have taken establish a spiritual route, a quasi-religious way. and sample (For example, Nash provides a list of the books he considers important in the rise of the representative virtually all that proceed beyond ecology new environmentalism: depend on an appeal to religious elements, to divine or sacred features of natural things.) In the context of American culture the appeal something to be said for it. to proportion do act in accordance and, unlike with response. And, secondly, religious values do clash with dominant Northern paradigm. has features For, firstly, a high proportion of the American population profess some active religious commitment; substantial religious This sort of that conflict the was Australia, socially precepts approved of perceived, considerable puzzlement, by colonised cultures, as Lini reports in the a case the with of Melanesian society (p.9): The fabric of this society, with its inherent communal discipline was ... torn by the arrival of European commercial practices which carried with it the message of materialism, together with the creed of enlightened self-interest. Both aspects were a direct contradiction of Melanesian values and priorities. The introduction to Melanesia of Christianity added a further element of division and confusion in the minds of the people. While the Christian religion was widely compatible with the ethics and principles of Melanesian communalism, with its emphasis on mutuality, compassion and caring for one another, it was a practice that very few of the Europeans appeared to follow. It ran also contrary to the religion of individualism and self-interest, which not just (had) more important exponents, but was followed by the majority of Europeans ... It is something a a puzzle how the assimilation of elements of the dominant Northern paradigm with prospects of Christianity is pulled off, though achieved it certainly is in a great many Northerners, and too many Antipodeans. a partial answer: compartmentalisation. 10 There is Religion tor most is a separate thing fitted into a Sunday morning box, important elements of which do not upset the business standard week. such as human poverty: to Thus for most believers religion does not Only for a minority does it directly penetrate deep. escape touch immediate matters why should we expect it to work for the Environment? Nonetheless widespread real adoption of religious perceptions the within American population, and^reflected in the Administration, would presumably alter things. but even if some of the effects of a religious return would beneficial, and domination nature were be negative Religion could be more of a drawback than an asset. with any depth to it appears most unlikely. scientific world Unless moreover the position abandoned in favour of one of the lesser religious traditions the environmental effects would "the view". scientific (as for the case for its much virtue front-end-in. shape. trying in It return to the There is world view in such great is not just that there is much that this sort of view leaves out or social it is that this perspective, a paradigm, paradigm. So incorporates it is far from uniquely determined. more intellectually satisfactory rivals (e.g. view). rival view with these sorts of weaknesses But nor is the so called scientific cannot account for; dominant to the Consider, for instance, the matter of the existence of God, the fallaciousness of the arguments involved, etc. no testifies). Religion in America has lost out to In part it failed deservedly: view could explain. Watt In any case such a reversal world view was seriously deficient and it did not account more highly be welcomed, it is also true that some of the effects of a to narrow fundamentalism would be highly undesirable. of be a richer intensional the There are scientific These rivals allow for value and wonder in natural things without taking a theological way. 11 There is a set second quasi-religious character reasons of of some not tor sort, a These the on turn irreligious character of the culture, where an appeal through religion success. is unlikely to have much understood as (the a barely relevant generally impose Pantheistic or Jewish, Christian, whatever, on deeper environmental approaches in Australia. strongly to endeavouring first) ’. irreligious Australia, post-Christian has it society, in which religion (is) Even if that formulation character of understanding much else about the culture, the e.g. an is the exaggeration is a fact and is the society the ’best is said, been curious to extent the state’s protrusion into Australian social life. If an approach through religion is accordingly ruled out as a main approach to hastened j paradigm transition - and a related approach through mysticism or transcen f1 ism excluded for analogous reasons and because of the the earthiness There are other significant features culture - what alternatives are open? of the culture running against major elements of the dominant Western which can be perhaps applied approaches to turn matters features of the culture around. to more much detach effectively indicate To of from than quasi-religious prospects the paradigms, dominant paradigm, of applying consider how Australian culture contrasts with American. Australian mainstream culture transition from the dominant is already American political left has much stronger support in difficult to some culture. Australia way along the leftward is not merely that the It than USA. It is not indicate features of the Australian cultural situation which show its left—displacement from the dominant Western paradigm. some elements of the contrast:- 12 The next table lists TABLE 2. CONTRASTING ELEMENTS IN AUSTRALIAN AND AMERICAN CULTURE —-- —> SCALE OF INCREASE individualistic ethos inacceptability of socialist institutions inegalitarian attitudes POSITIVE inegalitarian practices ITEMS (PER level of consumerism CAPITA maximization quest WHERE imperialist drive relevant) extent of violence police and military commitment high technology involvement functional rationality environmental inactivism USA AUSTRALIA SCALE OF INCREASE level of urbanisation legal obstacles to environmental action NEGATIVE {practices, such as dedication of wilderness ITEMS administrative delays in implementing environmental practices, such as pollution requirements, recycling, etc. Thus there are some offsetting negative items as well as positive items 13 in the contrast. themes Since, however, most of these contrasting elements bear on first for opposed to American, it appears that prospects indeed This better. important environmental spectators the applying culture are theme requires ela^boration and confirmation. The task can profitably be combined with others: for the rival paradigms in a way favourable to Australian culture as of diagram in an with there is much work empirical here both and for environmental bent activists. A first task is to separate out what is known, what requires and their eommund'B, distinguishing theses: / Let us focus on transition theses, ought to be done (ideologically) what and normative and factual transition factual transition thesis, that Western (European) culture is weak A firstly confirmation, ^/undergoing a transition away from the dominant confirmed by several Northern sociologists (e.g. better results could be obtained in Australia; paradigm, social has been Presumably similar or Marsh). but appropriate samplings of the community have not been done, analysed and so on - environmental sociology being a neglected undoubtedly field in Another Australia. weak transition factual thesis holds, namely that since 1960 a significant percentage of the also ertreii human community in specifiable advanced Western countries such as Australia have to adopt main assumptions of the alternative environmental paradigm, come but again comparative—figures sociological work are entirely of data to Though impressionistic tells us that environmental activism is greater in Australia than OSA - indeed more intensive than piece lacking. anywhere else, an immensely build upon - we lack solid confirmation. sociogeographers to do. 14 important There is much for Throughout, as you may have noticed, a normative transition thesis has been largely taken granted, for that generally, l&ght to^undergoing Western and paradigms an towards and to rguments. the repeat furthermore alternative. environmental thesis is argued for in environmental philosophy, and time dominant from away variations (such as those of advocated corporate their capitalism an.d of the post-industrial society) , transitivity* shift, paradigm major a culture, indeed Western culture Australian to ought be complex normative That isn’t there fortunately It is also argued against there, but> to sum up the opposition case, unconvincingly. Given then that the transition is going on, and to ought going be on, ought then to be going on with greater rapidity, how is it hastened, how indeed do environmental activists emerging are enough. clear it encourage in Australia. Preliminary answers Not only should activists be continuing with what I they are directing doing organisations the and environmental and those like, to supposed action (public) further them, of industrial prluwryprimarily, regulate not merely by membership drives and environmental influence to and swing the should education. be dominant^ regional culture , for the w potential appears to be there for a considerably greater change been achieved. sources They should also be aiming to increase their support bases , but organisations. endeavouring the against than has thus/ There are two major parts to this further practice which can run in tandem, a more negative and a more positive part: 0 More negatively.it z involves curring down and countering the flow propaganda in favour of the dominant paradigms both locally but especiall the North. That is important in reversing the extent It includes Northern from co-^option a range of activities some with solid bases in local culture, such as gently lopping anti-American of of off the tall poppies and anti-Nor them activities. 15 pedalling the stuff, and careful The latter practices (which should not of course reduce merely to personally directed antagonism) fit in well aims, such as independent and nonaligned defence environmental regional other with policies • More positively, it consists in promoting and adapting other despised features It alternative paradigms commonly is intellectuals Northern are, of course, like those nonmaximizing making-do socialistic ones, of appreciation natural local The features to tye Lawrence). cultural characters are held (e.g I the egalitarian, along environments. with the consider the effects of these, decently applied, in or antiauthoritarian, A rapidly increasing taken to things, conomics, in local As for mateship, sure it could use widening, a pain problem being its I hra/sv restriction in communities promoted in Fair go and Enough* s with egalitarian methods as combines markets. cultural Nonmaximizing, for example, is reflected in the She’ll be right and It'11 do approach dften enough: and note, that are responsible for the low repute in which some of the ambassadors, and commonly culture that work directly towards themes of Australian of also to male relationships: (including cultural transformation: nonhumans). but encourage its extension So, to conclude, the potential is^for we must help to realise it FOOTNOTES 1. The term ’approaches’ is intended to include both theory and practice, espoused ideology and behaviour. 2. They did not go under because of the weakness of their intellectual positions. At bottom their religious beliefs, for example, were no more ridiculous than those of Christianity. Typically they were much weakened by new diseases, and overwhelmed by new technology often applied in violent fashion. 3. Another past philosophical basis for environmental philosophy, American naturalism, seems to have been little developed, despite the promise some have seen in it. 16 both 4. By integrity is meant much more than retaining representative samples of this and that system or species; not representative southern sassafras, parma wallabies and Torres Strait Islanders, but sufficiently many. 17 P X c 3 & X O P P x X 3 C P HX X 5 O 3 P4 Hrt CD P P4 H* CD X P H CD X p. P X O SS CD X CD X H> CJ4 F—1 CD Hi CD Qu Hp CD CD p X H P P H« P CD 3 nJ P4 P X C H CD . 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For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 71, Item 2: Working draft of Culture, philosophy, and approaches to the natural environment Subject The topic of the resource Typescript draft, with handwritten emendations. Description An account of the resource Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff. 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> 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 71, Item 2 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>. 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [19] leaves. 12.25 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:32ab889">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:32ab889</a> Box 71: Unlisted and Untitled Boxes