Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 20:11:27 +0000
From: Iain McKay <iain.mckay-AT-zetnet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: primitivism and anarchism


hello all

Chuck0 wrote:
> >>No, they were not. The anarcho-communists you were talking about were
> >>arguing for a return to a decentralised, peasant based economy within
> >>the context of a predominately peasant based economy.
> 
> I'm sticking by my charaterization of that debate between Japanese
> anarchists as being a precursor to the primitivists. If their arguments
> read to me like primitivists, then I think it's safe to say that
> primitivist arguments have a long pedigree in anarchism.

having read summaries of these debates, I have to say that I think
the opposite. They had nothing to do with "primitivism". Rather they
express a debate on how to organise anarcho-communism in a peasant
society using the benefits of technology and industry. For example:

"We are completely opposite to the medievalists. We seek to use
machines as means of production and, indeed, hope for the
invention of yet more ingenious machines." (Hatta)

"the village will cease to be a mere communist agricultural village
and become a cooperative society which is a fusion of agriculture
and industry" (Miyazaki)

They also believed in organisation, including labour unions (they
disagree with syndicalism for a few reasons, but they supported
anarchist unions). Plus the class struggle, aiming for "city workers
and village workers" to join forces.

This is all far from primitivism. Plus, of course, there is the
context. The Japanese anarchists were working within a society
which was predominantly peasant based. As such, their ideas
cannot be primitivist as they aimed for transforming *existing*
villages into a mixture of agricultural and industrial work.
As such, there ideas were immensely practical and reflected the
society they lived in. 

Primitivists, on the other hand, are urging a return to some
kind of "hunter gatherer" culture for societies which are 
predominatly industrial and whose populations cannot be mantained
on such a "primitive" economic foundation. Given that "primitivists"
habitually dismiss workers control, federalism, delegates and
so on as "governance" they preclude any form of transition 
society which would primitivism possible without mass starvation.
Unless, of course, by the term "the collapse of civilisation"
they mean something else...

So, in a nutshell, the arguments of the Japanese anarchists do
*not* read to me as precursors of primitivism. Since when did
"primitivists" argue for "a fusion of agriculture and industry"?
They definitely hate the latter and many are against the former
as well. rather, the japanese anarchists pushed anarcho-communism
into new, interesting, directions while retaining the basic ideas
of Kropotkin and Bakunin.

Iain