From: swilbur-AT-wcnet.org
Subject: [postanarchism] re: Autonomous Liberalism vs. Autonomous Marxism
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 20:25:02 US/Eastern



> "J.M. Adams" <ringfingers-AT-yahoo.com> writes:

> Actually, Kline is completely wrong, Brown does come
> out in opposition to liberalism which is clear to
> anyone who has read the book. 

Yes, Jason. I read the book. Did you read the message you're responding 
to? I wrote: 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"Actually, Wm. Gary Kline, in what is among the weakest accounts of 
individualist anarchism, decides that it involves no great break with 
liberalism, and Brown just goes along with it."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Brown cites Kline, who is not "completely wrong" about individualist 
anarchism, but is less right than some other folks. And, unfortunately for 
Brown's study, he is less concerned than others about the very significant 
feminist elements in the early individualist movement. Like a fair number 
of anarchists, Brown "rejects" individualism on what appears to be pretty 
insubstantial and uninformed grounds. That's a shame. 

Of course, a historically adequate account of the relationships 
between "liberalism" and "anarchism" - two conflicted, developing 
traditions - would have been a much more complicated, messy affair. I'm 
all for messiness when a better understanding of our history comes with 
it, but i'm aware that not everyone shares my tastes in this regard...

> As for essentialism, I think it is clear that you are
> coming from a very typically pro-reason / rationality
> / science perspective and that we do not agree on this
> question. 

When folks want to dismiss you they call you "typical." 

But, honestly, as for "essentialism," all of the very specific questions i 
have asked (and you have not answered) come from questions i have about 
exactly what "essentialism" means to you, and others on the list. My 
understanding of the usual academic context for "anti-essentialism" is the 
debates within feminism where biologically-related views of "female 
essence" were opposed to "constructivist" notions. In those debates, i 
have always come down *more* on the side of "construction," but certainly 
not in a way which denies that even if "biology is not destiny" it is also 
not something we can ignore. The kinds of constructivism that imagine us 
simply remaking ourselves in any way we choose seem naive, and closer to a 
kind of subjectivism than to anything else. 

As to "reason," i am probably anything but typical. There's a lot of 
Bergson (and more than a bit of some odder ducks) in my thinking on the 
subject. My experience of being in the world, making choices, trying 
to "think straight," etc, suggests to me that certain kinds of 
philosophical approaches (rationalism, for example, but not solely) that 
want to posit a "sole source" of knowledge or truth are probably not 
adequate. One of the ways that "reason" has been understood is that it is 
the coordinating principle that allows us to bring together sense, logic, 
experience, etc - but even the provisional separation doesn't jive with my 
felt experience of the matter. If "reason" has to be opposed to "emotion" 
or some such, then i'll say i'm in favor of both as sources of knowledge 
and truth. I've always opposed the narrow rationalism that makes 
propositions the only representation of reason. I'm a poet and a musician, 
as much as a philosopher, and the poem always seems as "reasonable" to me 
as the well-crafted argument. 

And, honestly, it's hard to take seriously the "charge" of being "pro-
reason." Maybe Zerzan or someone else who claims to regret we can use 
language is actually "anti-reason," but i'm not even sure i buy that. When 
the charge comes from someone who *also* charges me with: 

* misreading a book which is otherwise "obvious" in its meaning
* being "uncritical" 

etc, it's hard to make out what criteria are being applied to my own 
position *other than* those of reason. 

If there is some alternative i'm missing here, please clue me in.

> What it boils down to for me is that I am
> opposed to any argument that denies our ability to
> recreate ourselves as we may choose, which is the
> existential argument introduced by Sartre's "existence
> precedes essence". 

I'm concerned that the "existent" becomes pretty insubstantial in your 
hands. Again (and again and again, i am not arguing that there is a 
preexisting essence. My own inclinations are largely existentialist. But 
how do you bring the material, substantial, singular "existent" into the 
picture, if you put down all the tools of "reason / rationality / 
science" - a trio one should not confuse with things like "rationalism" 
or "scientism"? 

> But I do think that there is a
> difference between what our "nature" is in regard to
> the form our bodies tend to take and what goes on
> inside these bodies. 

Can you explain further?

>> Actually, Chomsky probably shows what a sweet, old
>> fashioned sort he is 
>> by still being concerned with "human nature," when so
>> many in the human 
>> sciences have simply fixated on "behaviors"... ; )

> Actually, Chomsky says that we dont know much about
> human nature and that it is dangerous to pretend that
> we do. 

If you didn't like the joke, just say so. But the concern with not saying 
more than we know if hardly something separate from standards 
like "scholarly rigor" and the various principles by which science defends 
itself (sometime for better and sometimes for worse) from wild speculation 
and mis-application. Look at Chomsky's own record of speaking "truths" 
regardless of the potential misuses of them. I'm not sure he can be 
consistently advocating anything more than the usual care *coupled* with a 
concern for knowledge and truth. 

> As for "left wing Eugenics" and the planned
> breeding of stirpiculture I guess I will leave that
> sort of thing to you to celebrate, as I find it
> absolutely and repulsively instrumentalist.

Hey, Jason. Hold up a second, and show me where i "celebrate" anything 
here. You're very prone to attributing more to those you oppose than they 
say. It's an ugly habit. 

> Essentialism and the Eugenics which grew out of it is
> indeed very much bound up with the background of
> Auschwitz, 

Apparently "essentialism" involves for you any speculation about lawful 
behavior of species capable of thought. Honestly, i'm forced to guess 
here, since generally you don't respond to even the simplest direct 
requests for clarification. I gather from past exchanges that you 
see "physical laws," such as gravity, and tendencies of the body, such as 
hunger, in a different light. This poses some problems of classification, 
i think, but i'll try to follow the thread here. 

That still leaves us with propositions like this: 

< IF you claim that human beings have a natural propensity for 
cooperation, THEN you invite genocide. >

or 

< Kropotkin paves the way toward Auschwitz. >

> try reading Zygmunt Baumann's "Modernity
> and the Holocaust" 

No matter how many times you repeat the suggestion, or i read the work, 
Baumann does not convincingly make the case, methinks. 

> or Paul Virilio for instance, one
> of your favorite writers from what I gather - 

I'm actually in the midst of catching up with Virilio's more recent work. 
_Strategy of Deception_ has some very striking bits in it. On the whole, 
however, i think my ardor is cooling, as Virilio's self-proclaimed role of 
Cassandra gets a bit old. Having pressed unpopular positions in the past, 
i understand the pleasures of the jeremiad, but i'm not really convinced 
that Virilio is as alone "crying out in the wilderness" as he thinks he 
is. Like Baudrillard, he has to admit that he is exaggerating a bit, that 
<gasp> he really doesn't hate technology, that he believes that some sort 
of supercession of technology by technology is necessary, even if we don't 
want to call it "progress" too glibly, etc. 

> he has
> stated this more forcefully than most in fact. 

Is there a particular place where Virilio makes the kind of sweeping 
condemnation of "science" that you do? Something that would support the 
propositions above? I certainly haven't run across it, and would be a 
little surprised to see it. 

We can speculate about what the *accidents* of "reason" are (an old game, 
of course, at which perhaps Blake is my favorite player). At present, 
however, we might be more concerned about the "accident" 
of "postmodernism" or the "philosophies of difference." 

To return to the question of "eugenics," it would seem to me that much 
more than just "essentialism" is needed (however we wish to construe 
that). Eugenics is a discourse of "health" and "purity." Its practical 
application seems to require a strong concern about such things, about, 
for example, "the health of the race." But constructions such as "the 
health of the race" open onto a variety of social visions. I mention 
the "left wing eugenicists" because they are proof *both* that those 
social visions could be as diverse as forced sterilization and reform of 
the divorce laws, *and* that BOTH sorts of options were eventually pursued 
by folks who started within the anarchist movement. There is a great deal 
to be unpacked from a history we've just gesturing towards. 

The present potential urgency of such an attention and unpacking is that, 
even (and sometimes particularly) among those who oppose "essentialism," 
there is a pronounced concern for "purity" - for knowing, for instance, 
whether this or that is "properly anarchist." I've suggested before than 
the manichaean tendency Saul Newman points to in "classical anarchism" is 
as much a reflection of our own present tendencies as it is of those of 
late-19th and early 20th-century radicals. That concerns me much more than 
many of the other "enlightenment tendencies" so frequently decried. 

> You are
> very convinced of the powers of observation in
> unveiling the "laws" of science and human nature, I
> find this highly uncritical personally. 

Well, that's sweet of you. Thanks. 

"Highly uncritical" - on what grounds, other than an appeal to the 
authority of the Frankfurt School? If you "down tools" even in the realm 
of experience, you don't have much room to criticize. 

What can i say? We all go about our business, recognizing patterns, 
learning (often slowly and painfully) what we can and can't expect. 
Poststructuralism is *one* of a number of schools of thought that leads us 
to believe that our grasp of things will never be as firm or complete as 
some of us might wish. "Thinking straight" is HARD, maybe "impossible," 
depending on what you're asking of "thinking." My "faith" in observation, 
pattern recognition, the actions of whatever faculties we might have, the 
limits (and shortcuts and minor automatisms) represented by "habit" 
and "instinct," and in those "faster" forms of interaction with the world 
like Bergsonian "intuition" - my faith in the whole kit and kaboodle is 
just that, yes, it serves us pretty well. We manage to cross streets, and 
write poems, and make love, and make a variety of other useless or useful 
things, with some degree of success. 

The cautions of poststructuralism, which might, i think, be boiled down to 
the general sense that all of our representations and "limited economies" 
are bought at the cost of exclusions and abjections, and ultimately 
threatened by the pressure of "general economy," don't change the game all 
that much. 

They rob us of our innocence, and ought to reduce our smugness. If we were 
careful, caring people, they might lead us to pick and choose the 
constituitive violences we can't help but be a part of, minimizing them 
where we can. 

> My criticism
> is rooted in what Adorno called "the dialectic of
> Enlightenment" - this is why Kropotkin and Darwin
> ultimately reinforce one another in my opinion,

I'm not convinced that Adorno's work supports this position. You keep 
speaking of Kropotkin as "reversing" Darwin, but that isn't the case, as 
he does not reject natural selection or the role of competition, as much 
as he disagrees with the social darwinists about their relative 
importance. 

> Kropotkin's assumptions about human nature can easily
> develop into its opposite. 

It's all well and good to say this, but can you support the argument? 
Certainly, people can change their minds, sometimes violently. But you 
seem to be pointing to some general, structural truth or "dialectic." Can 
you explain it to us? 

> Why not just accept that we
> can existentially create ourselves as we wish, that we
> can choose to be cooperative and that because of this,
> a liberated society is indeed possible, 

I accept that we can make choices within a web of constraints or network 
of power relations. I don't believe we can "existentially create ourselves 
as we wish," if by that you mean without taking into account the power 
relations be are implicated in. If you mean we can ignore those 
constraints, then i don't think you're actually concerned with 
poststructuralism at all. I'm not sure even Stirner gives you much 
support. 

> rather than
> relying on antiquated notions of what human nature is
> or is not (notions that not even Chomsky succumbs to).

For someone critical of "progress," you're sure hard on old stuff. Notions 
may be "antiquated" or not, for all i care. My only real concern is 
whether they appear to correspond with what exists in the world of which i 
am a part. I have a sort of perverse affection for some of the more 
interesting of "antique" theories, to be sure - all the "minor sciences" 
of socialism in particular. But that's part of my general orientation 
towards anarchist tradition and the question of how to inherit that 
tradition. At the very least, i would like to know what i have to choose 
from, and am hardly going to settle for just the ones everyone knows about 
or that seem most sensible by present, hegemonic standards. History is 
good to think with, and sometimes odd history is the best. 

In any event, my observations suggest that cooperation - however yoked to 
the dominant values of capitalist societies - continues to be a 
predominant factor in everyday human affairs. Seeing that, and being able 
to articulate what i see to others, seems a useful set of abilities for an 
anarchist. As does being concerned with truth and clear headed thinking. 
What else do we have to bring against the lies and irrationalisms of 
present systems? 

Seriously...how can we *not* want to bring concern for truth and reason to 
bear against the rotten stupidities of Guantanamo Bay, the Patriot Act, 
the export processing zones, the war on terrorism, etc...?

-shawn


Jason



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