Subversion Reply:
There are many points raised in these letters. It's probably best to start with the
bits we agree with. GA are quite right when they talk about the dialectical relationship
between technology and society. For the benefit of the uninitiated, this means that technology and society don't develop independently of one another. Changes in technology
lead to changes in the way society is organised, equally changes in social organisation
lead to changes in the technology that society uses. The one influences the other and vice versa. Equally important, however, is the effect of class struggle on
social development. When our class struggles, social organisation and technology
change to meet the threat we pose - which of course means the working class has to
respond in a different way. It is our contention that it is this conflict which is the most
important. Our article 'Green Communism' tried to explore (in part) how struggles
that are labeled as 'green' or 'environmental' are often a part of our class's response
to capital's attacks.
Both letters accuse us of holding a stages theory of history. However, GA also seem
to do so. They talk about the stage of 'primitive' communism (an expression coined
by Marx and Engels), to describe a time in pre-history when people were 'free, equal
and self-determining'. We are not in a position to dispute this, neither are we in a position
to agree. Civilization came into being when social classes emerged. It represents
the domination and exploitation of the many by the few. There have been many examples of 'civilization' - all have represented different forms of class society. We have
no problems with JM's assertion that 'other forms of power preceded' capital and
state. Different civilizations have used different forms and combinations of domination:
patriarchy, democracy, religion, race, brute force and most recently the domination
of class by class through mindless toil enslaved to machines.
We do not hold the view that communism only became possible with the creation of modern
capitalism, we have had many idle discussions over pints of beer, arguing whether
it would have been possible in earlier social epochs. And broadly speaking we think
it could have been. But it was idle speculation for one simple reason. We do not live
in the era of the Peasants Revolt or of Spartacus. We live in 1997, in a time when
the only social system in the world (with maybe one or two insignificant exceptions
for a few thousand people), is capitalism. Capitalism uses any form of domination that
is useful to its own needs. So patriarchy remains (but watered down), religion remains
(but in the back seat), racism remains too, seemingly as strong as ever, but pre-eminent is the domination of people by machine - of living labour dominated by dead labour,
working to extract surplus value (profit) for the ruling class. We believe that by
destroying that relationship and the state which supports it and hence the domination
of the ruling class and its lackeys, that a genuine human society can be created -
an end to the 'civilization' that has dominated history for the past thousands of
years.
We believe that the result of the struggle against capitalism (the currently existing
form of civilization) could end in the creation of communism. GA seem, at a glance,
to want the same thing. But on closer examination what they actually appear to want
is a return to 'primitive' communism. As far as we can tell this is shared by other
primitivists. They believe that the time before civilization was a time of plenty
and ease. They approve of the idea of a society 'without even the individualist distinction
between Self and Other', an end to cities and in the case of JM 'the abolition of
production; not merely the existence of wage-labour, but the existence of labour
in any form...including work'
This does not fit into our views for a number of reasons. Firstly, we wonder where
all the billions of people in the world are going to live. We wonder where they are
going to find food, how they are going to feed themselves. We presume that neither
GA nor JM are advocating genocide as a way forward to the new society. That was why our
original article accepted that cities would survive in a future society - indeed
a view we have heard expressed by RTS activists who are also anarchist communists.
Just how things would develop as human history unfolds is, of course, a completely different
matter. We have only a limited idea what a communist society would look like at its
beginning, let alone after a hundred or two years. We would speculate that abominations
like London, Paris, Manchester would disappear.
Secondly, we are not at all against labour. It is our view that making things is fundamental
to human being. We are against working for others and being exploited. We are against
human labour being dominated by machinery. We want labour to be a creative activity, not a form of drudgery. It's an old expression, but we want to break down
the division between work and play. In the context of the modern class struggle we
see tendencies towards a 'refusal of (alienated) work' - a refusal to accept domination
by bosses and their right to screw more out of us at their will. To some this means struggle
at work, sabotage, not exerting themselves, not giving the bosses their creativity.
To others it means simply avoiding the labour process altogether. In either case
we support them.
Thirdly, we are not sure what GA mean by 'without even the individualist distinction
between Self and Other'. We are not herd animals. On one (apparently contradictory)
level this is exactly what capital and the state are aiming at for the majority of
society - it uses many ideologies which strengthen the 'nation', the 'community', 'democracy'
and so on. We would classify these as socially totalitarian ideals. As we said earlier,
we have no idea what a communist society would look like after a hundred years or so. However, we can predict that even in its early days the kind of individualist
competition prevalent today will die an unlamented death. However, communism will
be created by people as they already exist, not by some idealised form of humanity.
In that context many of the current limitations of people will carry forward. We debate
amongst ourselves just how much people will be individuals and how much they will
be social beings. We suspect that they will realise that a free society will allow
the free development of all. Individuals will be social beings - not atomised, isolated and
uncared for.
We finish by repeating GA's signing off, though we suspect that we mean something
fundamentally different.
For the destruction of civilization.
Subversion
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