From: swilbur-AT-wcnet.org
Subject: Re: [postanarchism] Demanding the Impossible?
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 12:15:36 US/Eastern


Rodrigo writes:
 
> That is a critical reading necessary even in most 'poststructuralist'
> work today.  

I'm not sure which "that" you're referring to. 

> What most of those thinkers see as necessary is, again, a more
> 'adequate' consideration of human nature, domination, empire, or
> whatever..

The poststructuralist thinkers? The issue of "adequacy" leaves open
the question of "adequate to what end or standard?" The question 
i'm trying to raise is really about what the standards of adequacy
ought to be. Specifically, because Morland is concerned with 
internal logical consistency and fitness of means to ends, i'm
wondering whether his at-least-apparent focus on consequences
meets even his own standards. 

> And this way "the world we actually live in" is secondary at best. 
> Knowledge becomes central again, to get to the "right" kind of 
> subject seems to be the task. 

Again, it strikes me that "rightness" if pretty elusive, apart
from analyses that address the material facts of our daily lives.
Our sense of the difficulties involved in that sort of address
don't, alas, do away with the need for it. In the message you're
responding to, i was questioning whether the notion of a "state"
or a "stateless society," when divorced from specific histories
and struggles, might not simply confuse important issues. Hopefully,
we are struggling against real conditions, real oppressions, rather
than against abstract ideas. 

> And this is not to discredit the 
> trials and errors of strategioc subjectivity.  Only that most
> "poststructuralist" thinkers, at least the ones that have had
> voice, have so often been preoccupied with describing subjectivity
> that they have reinstated it as primary - and not only important -
> to all efforts at resistance.  

Can you name names here? I'm curious to whom you are attributing
this, in order to see more clearly what the alternatives might be.

-shawn

> The task becomes again to
> "know".  Then we have to ask: "What is being done"?
> 
> Rodrigo
> 
> 
> > I've been working my way through David Morland's "Demanding the
> > Impossible?: Human Nature and Politics in 19th Century Social
> > Anarchism" (1997). It's an interesting example of "postanarchist"
> > work, rejecting, as it does, the reading of classical social
> > anarchism as essentially optimistic, but still maintaining that
> > classical anarchism has a theory of human nature that must be
> > replaced or overcome if anarchism is to develop in the present.
> > The "Booknews" review describes it in these terms:
> >
> > "Explores the relationship between anarchism's notion of human
> > nature and its vision of a future stateless society by way of
> > three great 19th-century social anarchists: Proudhon, Bakunin,
> > and Kropotkin. Demonstrates that social anarchism's assumption
> > of the existence of both egoism and sociability provides a
> > realistic assessment of human nature, but argues that this
> > conception of human nature is incompatible with establishing a
> > stateless society. Concludes by exploring the possibilities for
> > a reconceptualization of the anarchist conception of human nature
> > to further develop anarchist thought."
> >
> > I think that's a fair assessment of what Morland is up to. I'm
> > still checking the analysis against the text, and have some
> > fairly major reservations already, but i think that the *project*
> > is a very interesting one. Morland lays out three possible ways
> > of dealing with the connections between ideologies and theories
> > of human nature. He defines both terms fairly loosely. He argues
> > that maintaining *some* theory of "human nature" - drawing on
> > *some* mix of innate, social and environmental factors - is
> > useful, so "human nature" certainly need not mean, in his analyses,
> > the kind of fixed condition that is frequently objected to in our
> > circles. "Ideology" gets a similar treatment. I think he's fairly
> > consistent in his useage. In any event, the first way to talk about
> > the relationship is to ask whether a given ideology has a theory
> > of human nature that is verifiable and accurate. The second is to
> > ask whether a given theory of human nature is likely to lead to
> > desirable developments in ideology and practice. The third is to
> > ask whether a given ideology and its related theory of human nature
> > are consistent with one another. Morland doesn't show much interest
> > in the first approach, for a variety of reasons. He claims that his
> > analysis is of the third type, but may actually be driven more by
> > concerns of the second type.
> >
> > He focuses on "social anarchism" - specifically Proudhon, Bakunin,
> > and Kropotkin. "Individualist anarchism" is swept away in a sentence,
> > basically equated with classical liberalism. "Egoism" is a key term
> > in the analysis, but the self-identified "egoists" are likewise
> > pretty well left out. Morland sees Kropotkin as the best of the
> > bunch, sharing, i think, some of the common ambivalence about whether
> > Proudhon should be treated as a founder or precursor of anarchism
> > proper (which would be communist), so his lack of care in dealing
> > with the ways in which "individualist" and "social" anarchist forms
> > have been linked and frequently compatible is understandable, if not
> > exactly heartening. He tends to talk about anarchism as separate
> > from socialism as well, which at the very least reflects a particular
> > way of thinking about the anarchist tradition. Nobody here is going
> > to be surprised that i find the approach a little too "neat" to be
> > of much use as historical analysis. The *big* question, however, is
> > to what extent Morland's book is really about history anyway.
> >
> > As the review states, Morland finds classical social anarchism's
> > theory of human nature incompatible with the project of creating a
> > "stateless society." The theory of human nature, as he understands
> > it, claims that human beings are both "egoistic" and "sociable."
> > And right out of the gate he makes it clear that he considers this
> > incompatible with that project of creating a "stateless society."
> > The book is worth reading - and maybe rereading - for the explication
> > of social anarchist texts, where Morland keeps finding that all the
> > things social anarchists are presumably trying to abolish - state,
> > authority, "power" in certain senses, vested power - seem to keep
> > coming back as parts of anarchism. I'll let other folks determine
> > how convincing they think the argument is on those grounds, but
> > i'm curious about a couple of more general points.
> >
> > Morland eventually makes a fairly modest pitch for some sort of
> > "holistic," environmentally conscious revision of our theory of
> > human nature. It isn't entirely clear to me on what grounds he
> > makes his appeal for change, though i suspect it is rooted in
> > a sense, that many of us probably share, that such a theory might
> > lead towards more just social practices. What isn't at all clear
> > to me is that the sort of understanding of our place in the world
> > that seems desirable to Morland is incompatible with the mix of
> > "egoism" and "sociability" that he attributes to the classical
> > social anarchists. When i look in the mirror, i think i see
> > someone at once egoistic, sociable, environmentally conscious,
> > and desirous of a state society. The conception of human nature
> > as "naturally" prone to both social and potentially anti-social
> > acts - and to acts which are potentially "good" and "bad" in terms
> > of anarchist goals - seems supported by observation. I'm honestly
> > puzzled by the tendency to think of this mix as contradiction, or,
> > as seems to be the case in Morland, as a kind of imperfection that
> > will keep us from approaching the promised land of anarchism.
> >
> > I'm wondering, though, if the major difference between my view and
> > Morland's doesn't have to do with the way that we envision that
> > project of the "stateless society." My reading of Proudhon, in
> > "What Is Property," suggests that "anarchy" as he understood it
> > was a kind of most desirable limit state on his graph of political
> > possibilities. It's not clear to me that to be an "anarchist" in
> > the sense of Proudhon meant one believed that *all* vestiges of
> > state-like power and authority would ever be swept away. It's not
> > clear if such a thing is even desirable. Certainly, with the
> > subtle understanding of power available through folks like Foucault,
> > it seems obvious that we are more likely to see a transformation
> > of power relations that some sort of abolition. I suspect, too,
> > that it makes a difference whether we think anarchism should be a
> > kind of philosophically driven war "against all authority" or
> > whether we think of it in terms of the struggle against particular
> > sorts of actually existing relations. There's a difference, for
> > example, between being a foe of capitalism - in the sense of
> > historical, actually existing relations - and being against "wages"
> > or "markets" or "contracts" on more abstract grounds. I think
> > there's a fair amount of confusion within the anarchist movement
> > about what we're fighting for and against. It doesn't help when we
> > treat the history of the movement too simply, taking out much of
> > the specificity of what those who came before us were actually
> > struggling for and against. Kropotkin sounded like many activists
> > today when he emphasized that anarchism came from specific
> > struggles, rather than from the realm of ideas. Honestly, though
> > even much of our present "direct action" seems awfully abstract.
> >
> > I mentioned that Morland seems, in the end, to be arguing from
> > consequences, or fear of the consequences, of given theories of
> > human nature. Again, i'll leaave it to you all to decide whether
> > you think the sort of "nature" attributed to the classical social
> > anarchist is incompatible with anarchist aims. But i'm curious if
> > the whole *approach* of theorizing from consequences can escape
> > the sort of incompatibility that Morland fears. If we reason about
> > "human nature" from observation and introspection, obviously we run
> > the risk of naturalizing present conditions, seeing them as more
> > inevitable than perhaps they are. And we can always err in this
> > kind of social-scientific analysis. But at least careful practice
> > can act as a guard against certain kinds of error. And it seems
> > useful to know something about "how we are." In fact, it seems
> > unlikely we can theorize about consequences - a kind of "how
> > we'll be" question - of other theories of human nature without
> > running the same risks, plus all of those related to prediction.
> > It seems unlikely that, however we are presently constituted in
> > terms of our "nature," anarchism will ever come without the fairly
> > general *desire* for anarchism. It strikes me that it is that desire,
> > and the problem of informing and "arming" it, are most important
> > in promoting an anarchist future.
> >
> > Morland is ultimately concerned that anarchists will be ideologically
> > unconvincing because of a perceived mismatch between their conflicted
> > theory of human nature and their vision of a stateless society. I
> > wonder if the theory is really the problem of whether we have, perhaps,
> > distanced that vision a bit too much from the world we actually live
> > in...
> >
> > fwiw,
> >
> > -shawn


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