In his book, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future, Murray Bookchin argues, against the idea that humans "need to 'obey' the 'laws of nature' and "to 'humbly subjugate ourselves to nature's commands,' that this kind of talk shares 'the vocabulary of domination and subjugation' with views that promote the ruthless control of nature in man's own image.[p.8] "The fact that humanity, together with nature, were being locked into a common destiny based on domination by a hierarchical mentality and society" eludes those who take the 'natural law' view, he claims. This way of thinking, he argues, "serves to deflect our attention from the role society plays in producing ecological breakdown." [p.9] And, "in this way, the social roots of ecological problems are shrewdly obscured." [p.lO] It is not 'humanity' per se which is responsible, Bookchin wants us to keep in mind, but a certain institutionalized corporate sector of it. The deep ecology movement is a reckless blend of spiritual traditions which appease the formless American mind which apparently, in Bookchin's view, cannot sort the sense from the nonsense. He takes this view to make the poor and impoverished expendable, and to play to the need for a new theistic spirituality which leaves all of us vulnerable to new hierarchies of priests and gods. Bookchin wants to avert this depreciation of spirituality, and to argue that "ecology alone, firmly rooted in social criticism and a vision of social reconstruction, can provide us with the means for remaking society in a way that will benefit nature and humanity." [p.13] "Social ecology has made the understanding of hierarchy--its rise, scope, and impact--the centerpiece of its message of a liberating, rational, and ecological society. Any agenda that contains less than these imperatives is obscure at best and grossly misleading at worst." [p.61] (This makes sense, of course, but one could make the argument that his attack on deep ecology on these grounds is itself an act of hierarchy, in that it participates in a competition to be the dominant theory.)
"Only a surprisingly small part of humanity developed societies that were structured overwhelmingly around hierarchies, classes, and the State."[p.64] "Hierarchies, classes, and states warp the creative powers of humanity. They decide whether humanity's ecological creativity will be placed in the service of life or in the service of power and privilege."[p.72] "And hierarchy will not disappear until we change these roots of daily life radically, not only economically, with the removal of class society. "[p.65] Also of interest (to Plato too), "a community that does develop along hierarchical, class, and statist lines has a profound impact upon all the communities around it that continue to follow an egalitarian direction." [p.64] It compels neighboring communities to create their own hierarchical military arrangements in self-defense.
I think Bookchin has a point about those who would overlook the corporate component of ecological destruction, and I think he is right to emphasize that the exorbitant business profits have nothing to do with the 'course of nature'. But I think he is wrong to equate all who hold the 'natural law' view with this mentality; it may very well be some people's understanding of deep ecology, but it certainly does not follow necessarily from that view. To assert that human beings are subject to natural laws is not to throw up one's hands, despairing of human self-direction or responsibility. To cooperate with nature is not to be dominated by it, but to admit dependence on it, a condition we cannot escape, and this we would do well to recognize. This view does not make human beings interchangeable with rodents or ants, as Bookchin seems to read it. It only suggests that we are not justified in the superiority we assume. I think most interpreters of deep ecology would agree with Bookchin that "No ecological society, however communal or benign in its ideals, can ever remove the 'goal' of dominating the natural world until it has radically eliminated the domination of human by human, or, in essence, the entire hierarchical structure within society in which the very notion of domination rests." [p.60]
Bookchin also includes some very interesting discussion of the relation between sexism and ageism... but first things first. [pp.54-62]
Introduction
For many years, Murray Bookchin has made a very strong case for what he terms
'social ecology', the view that "the harmonization of nature cannot be achieved without the harmonization of human with human;"(RS,p.171] in other words, "that major ecological problems have their roots in social problems." [RS,p.l54] In this paper, I will examine some of the strengths and weaknesses of Bookchin's analysis, to the conclusion that, despite his brilliant dialectics and the insights they reveal, Bookchin undercuts the strength of his own argument to a large degree by his petty denial of what he takes to be competing approaches to social change.
If I thought it was going to be easy to shoot down Bookchin's argument...! was wrong. I understand better now, after reading his book Remaking Society, why Bookchin is so frustrated with the 'new left'--composed as it has been of a student left which disappeared into the corporate world as soon as the war was over, and an academic mindset that recognizes only what is published in certain professional joumals ...even when the ideas that presented there have extracted without acknowledgment from other more radical publications. Still, we are not all so easily pegged as Bookchin would make it seem (are we?) and I think some of us deserve more credit than Bookchin is willing to give.
Strengths and Weaknesses I think perhaps the strongest, most surprising, quality of Bookchin's work is its emphasis on and use of organic dialectical reasoning. "The notion that there is only one kind of reason," he says "is utterly false." [RS,p.108] In dialectical form, "reason imparts a sense of history, development, and process to thinking, not 'linear', propositional, and syllogistic means and analysis." [RS,p.109] Aristotle himself used organic, dialectical reason, which stresses growth, potentiality, and "fluid eduction of ever-differentiated phenomena from generalized, nascent, indeed seed-like, beginnings into richly developed wholes rather than the schematic deduction of fixed conclusions based on rigidly stated premises." [p.108] In this way of thinking, "all aspects of experience play a complementary role in making a richly differentiated whole." [RS,p.llO]
Bookchin uses this dialectical reasoning to explore the historical roots of the revolutionary project, and to show that, and how, it served "a commitment to reconciling the duality's of mind, body, and society that pitted reason against sensuality, work against play, town against country, and humanity against nature. Utopian and anarchist thought, at its best, saw these contradictions clearly and tried to overcome them with an ideal of freedom based on complementary, the irreducible minimum, and the equality of unequals."[RS,p.125]1 "It is one of the great truths of dialectical wisdom," says Bookchin, "that all great ideas, limited as they may seem to their own time and inadequate as they may appear in ours, lose their relativity when they are viewed as part of an ever differentiating whole." [RS,pp.ll0-111]
This approach allows Bookchin to focus on key turning points in history, none of which are necessary, each being the spontaneous emergence of self-conscious social change, the result of a "striving or nisis" in human development,[p.199] which exhibits this no less than any other aspect of nature, all of which shows "a tendency toward its own self-directed evolution...toward a more conscious development in which choice, however
dim, reveals that biotic evolution contains a potential for freedom." [p.201]2 Bookchin calls this "'participatory evolution"',[p.201] a process through which nature exercises its "purposiveness, will, and intentionality"[p.200] Every aspect of nature IS "engaged m immanently preserving it's identity,"[p.200] in a process Hegel called 'the actualization of potentialities'. [p.203] This gives all of nature, including human nature, a "tendency toward ever-greater subjectivity and flexibility"[p.199]--and this, according to Bookchin, is our best hope.
A central insight of Bookchin's theory is that it is over-simplistic to reduce complex social problems to a single hierarchy, e.g. class, patriarchy, or to any other single group of oppressors. It is hierarchy itself, Bookchin insists, rather any particular power structure, which we must come to understand and thus eliminate. The goal, he says, is the "abolition of hierarchy in all its forms,"[RS,p.189] and so we have a universal interest in understanding it, as such,[RS,p.156]--"a general interest that outweighs the particularized interests of hierarchy, class, gender, ethnic backgrounds, and the state. The precondition for a harmonious relationship with nature is social: a harmonious relationship between human and human."[RS,p.l89]
A first key turning point in history which sheds light on the dynamics of hierarchy was the shift from matricentric to patricentric ways--a "fork in the road" at which point
human culture turned away from nonhierarchical ways, such as gardening, simple tools, usufruct*, the irreducible minimum, complementarity, and so-called feminine values of care and nurturing",[p.77] and toward "warrior values of combat, class domination, and state rule."[p.77] Rule by the elderly almost certainly preceded patriarchy, he thinks, as dependence of the young on their elders naturally precedes dependence of the group on "big men" as protectors. In turn, the decline of power which accompanies age and increases the dependence of the aged upon the young gave elders great incentive to promote gerontocracy, deity worship, and other practices which reinforce their status, and hierarchy itself.
While many contemporary ecologists are eager to return to tribal and village ways, Bookchin notes that this view has some very troubling features; for instance, the conservatism which is inherent to hierarchy and which mythopoeic peoples struggled against. "Ecological mystics" like to push this as the view of the oppressed, he says, but it is important to remember that it was not theirs only, for it was advanced by the oppressors in priestly manipulation of controlled rituals, according to their own interests in keeping people passive and ineffective, and thus channeling off discontent and anger that might otherwise have made for dramatic insurrection. There is much incentive for those who sit atop hierarchies to foster the power structures that uplift them, such as by discouraging writing that would empower the people.[RS,p.79] The effect of this would be a monopoly of knowledge, which would keep people dependent and vulnerable to hierarchical control. [RS,p.79] The myth of 'the golden age' was also used to justify tyranny; teaching that it was the 'fall from grace' which caused human misery amounts to the claim that it is people's own fault if they are miserable, and that they somehow deserve such conditions, which effectively deflects attention from the formation and maintenance of hierarchies of property, state, and ruling elites--the true cause of widespread suffering. [RS,p.104] In this way, "tyranny has been immersed in the authority of divinity and the claims of monarchs to divine sanction." [RS,p.l05] "Innocence, intuition, and atavistic* longings--our own modern mystics to the contrary--are not strong barriers to manipulation." [RS,p.l09]3
My experience teaching political philosophy to undergraduates shows evidence of this tendency. The reluctance of those with Christian upbringing to question the good and justified intentions of the modern, or even the medieval church is apparent; most are generally much more willing to blame instead the vague notion of 'human nature' for our social and ecological problems than to question the motivation behind the rule of religion. It is thus difficult to deny Bookchin's claim that religion can have this effect. I
is too easy for religious elites to threaten 'unruly humanity' into obedience since they have them, so to speak, by the salvation. [RS,p.104]
However, the question remains, are deep ecologists and feminists guilty of this? Surely, to cooperate with nature is not necessarily to be dominated by it, but only to admit dependence on it--a condition we cannot escape, and most ecologists agree we would do well to recognize. Can recognizing this be tantamount to throwing up our hands and giving up on human goodness and self-direction? As far as I can see, vulnerability to hierarchical oppression is not inherent to a proper respect for nature's laws, but only to an improper deference to authority. This reverence certainly can be used by those who would control others with it, but it is for this very reason, Plato would argue, that we need to understand natural law and justice, i.e. so as not to be vulnerable to the injustice of others or likely to pass it on.4 I think feminism, at least, being a view which renders hierarchy so concrete, is unlikely to be so easily duped as Bookchin worries.s
Bookchin's view on this betrays what I take to be a chief weakness in Bookchin's work (and perhaps in Biehl's too) i.e. that they seem to be operating on a stereotyped or, as Rick called it last week, "essentialist" conception of deep ecologists and some feminists--a conception which paints us all to be rather 'mystified' by the "cosmic oneness" of it all, bewildered by wood nymphs and goddesses, our reason subverted by 'pop' moralizing,[RS,p.lOl] "mentally numb",[RS,p.106] allowing ourselves to be sedated and thus forgetful,[Rs,p.102] unable to recognize or act on our own good in freedom, and incapacitated to recognize and resist domination. In short, he considers us to be "mindless".[Rs,p.102] He reduces us all to the silliest and most artificial among us. Does he think that there are no deep ecologists who can recognize artificiality for what it is? Or that the deepest ecologists do not recognize the shallower, who nonetheless call themselves 'deep'? Or does Bookchin think that there simply are no genuine feminists or deep ecologists at all? That it's all just an act'? If so, Bookchin commits the same sin that right-wingers do when they think they have discredited the entire left by labeling it "PC", as if all leftist activity is artificial, merely wanna-be behavior masquerading as real commitment. I dare say, this is only wishful thinking on the part of the right. What is it for Bookchin? He calls the mythic fantasy of lost harmony which he attributes to such ecologists "a libel on human beings as a whole,[RS,p.102] and yet it seems that it is Bookchin himself who has such low expectations of human beings that he thinks anyone who tries to understand natural law is likely to go off the 'deep' end.
Anyone who has genuinely struggled with these issues of self-actualization has
good reason to resent Bookchin's assumptions which reduce deep ecologists and feminists to the silliest elements. The discussion is properly followed to deeper, more subtle levels to which Bookchin is apparently deaf. In all fairness to deep ecology, Bookchin should remember his own words: "Revolutionary commitment is not only a calling that seeks to change the world; it is also an inward imperative to save one's own identity and individuality from a corruptive society that degrades one's very personality with the lure of cheap emoluments and the promise of status in a totally meaningless world. "[RS,p.l90]6
For whatever else it is, deep ecology is not "supernatural rubbish" ;[p.162] it's not an attempt to turn ecology into a religion,[p.162] nor is it a "retreat back into myth", which
"obliges us to forget history and the wealth of experience it has to offer", and which leads from mysticism to a "dangerous quietism". If it were, how would we account for earth
firster, Dave Foreman, who is anything but quiet?7
One might argue, against Bookchin, that it is a fundamental strength, rather than a weakness, of deep ecology that it appeals to the ancient wisdom of many peoples in search of the common thread which integrates all life to all other. With this as its foundation, deep ecology has the theoretical ability to answer many of the questions to which a social theory must speak. In as much as deep ecology moves us in the direction of dialogue between apparently conflicting traditions, it helps us learn to tum our ear toward much that we might otherwise ignore, not just to hear the voice of other forms of life, but to hear other perspectives on our own life as well.
Unfortunately, while deep ecology can appeal to 'one mind', it can not always speak with one voice, and this makes for much confusion. Perhaps this accounts for deep ecologists failure to answer to charges against it, and (its worse mistake) to let those who do not sufficiently understand its principles to speak for it (which has been a problem throughout human history). We might rightly wonder how fair it is to take the word of a few followers to speak for the masters. Foreman's views on population control seem in blatant conflict with deep-ecology's commitment to non interference with nature's cycles--so the last word is hardly in on what we should do about the world's population problem.s Certainly a policy of mass population reduction would lead some to interpret deep ecology to be "human-hating"--but, as far as I can see, all deep ecology espouses, despite Foreman's interpretation, is that all relevant voices/perspectives be taken into consideration when developing such policies, and that we are not justified in the superiority we have traditionally assumed for ourselves. This is not to be anti-human, but merely to be inclusive of more than humans; to see natural interests to be in conflict with human interests is to posit a false and dangerous dichotomy, one which even Bookchin, at times, seems to want to get beyond.
In his stereotype of new left radicals, Bookchin attempts to reduce many of his fellow ecologists and some of the worlds greatest thinkers and activists to mindlessness. And yet, H. A. Frankfurt, whom Bookchin himself cites, argues persuasivelythat what has been lost with our turning away from mythopoeic thinking is our ability to understand phenomena--including human social relations--from the inside-looking-out--the only view which can counter and balance our pervasive contemporary imbalance toward the outside looking-in view and our tendency to make everything only an 'it', and never a 'thou•.9 Such empathic understanding may indeed make us innocent, trusting, and perhaps even more vulnerable to deceit, but this is no reason to think that we will be less capable of sorting the baby from the bathwater. Indeed, the argument could be made that this empathic ability is exactly what we need in order to recognize social injustice when we see it. Frankfurt raises the important point, at least, that a little more empathic consideration is a step in the right direction toward both justice and freedom--even archist freedom--that is, freedom of the mind to think for itself. Clearly, some effects of myth go beyond social control by elites.
Bookchin admits that, despite the myths and myth builders, "peasants and artisans fought valiantly in chronic insurrections [across Europe] to retain their communal, guild, and localist rights ...and gave to freedom a moral meaning that it has lost in our own era." [RS,p.107] This too is a strength in his work, I think, i.e. his analysis of the history of 'the revolutionary project'. "Peasant radicalism dates back almost to the beginnings of settled village life." [RS,p. 130] And the 'Age of Revolutions' reinforced the idea that "the oppressed had to act if they wished to free themselves ...The oppressed had to reason." As opposed to a "marvelous dispensation ...of a being other than themselves who bestowed the giftofplentyupon them in the form of a 'promised land'," now, "There was no appeal to powers other than their own minds." [RS,p.ll8]
Another major turning point which follows this development, according to Bookchin, is the "emergence and development of the city."[RS,p.80] Many, including Salon of Athens, invited outsiders to bring skills to their city. The convergence of different kinds of people from different places with different ethnic backgrounds made for many new human associations, and a corresponding shift from a focus on difference to a focus on likeness.[RS,p.81] Whereas tribal life had been marked by a tendency toward "exclusion of the stranger" ,[RS,p.78] cities brought the 'outsider' inside, where he would be protected by the diversity and anonymity of the city from abuse from 'insiders'. [RS,p.81] A new emphasis on choice in changing one's conditions brought accelerated cultural developments and gave rise to an assembly form of decision making. Though Perikles had abandoned Salon's openness, giving citizenship only to Athenian men, Bookchin credits Athenian polis with being a "highly self-conscious ethical entity,"[RS,p.l80] the basis of the assembly being friendship, and the goal being, not consensus, which can become coercive in that it "tends to subvert individuality in the name of community and dissent in the name of solidarity,"[RS,176] but to educate all concerned by voicing competing views that foster dialectical discussion and promote political competence, the Greek ideal of roundedness, toward the 'many-sided person'. [RS,p.172] "Self-restraint, dignity, courtesy, and a strong commitment to civic decorum were part of the psychological attributes that many precapitalist cities, structured around assemblies, actually translated into institutions in a system of checks that fostered harmony, however tentative they may seem." [RS,p.178] Politics was a process of character building for the Greeks (paidaia), in which some, i.e. those who made the general interest of the community their primary interest,[RS,p.l79] proved themselves to be the best citizens for being self-governing themselves.
"The anarchic vision of decentralized communities, united in free confederations or
networks for coordinating the communities of a region, reflect the traditional ideals of a
participatory democracy in modern radical context." [p.181] But we might rightly wonder then, without this process of paidaia, whether the anarchists point of departure--namely, that "every normal human being is competent to manage the affairs of society and, more specifically, the community in which he or she is a member" [RS,p.l74]--is a fair claim. There are many who wsorry, perhaps rightly, that if we allow conditioned-egoists to go free, they will simply use their freedom to limit the freedom of others. In cities, "communal ownership...gave way to private ownership ...[and] classes...crystallized out of more traditional status hierarchies into economic ones." [RS,p.83) The potential mobility inherent to economic hierarchies, as opposed to the fixed nature of earlier status groups, made for much incentive to join into the climbing game. In this way, according to Bookchin, "hierarchy...became embedded in the human unconscious," as "the young, women, the sons and the common masses of people began to enter unthinkingly into complicity with their own domination by elites," [RS,p.83) while status groups were taken for granted as the natural state of affairs, and classes came into the foreground as central to "the social question".[RS,p.84]
Today we confuse cities with urban belts, which blurs the distinction between citizen and constituent, between politics and statecraft. [RS,p.182] But the upside to cities, according to Bookchin, is that they "sought to bring rationality, a measure of impartial justice, cosmopolitan culture, and greater individuality to a world that was permeated by mysticism, arbitrary power, parochialism*, and the subordination of the individual to the command of aristocratic and religious elites." [RS,p.82] However, this was admittedly "not achieved without the loss of many profoundly important attributes of tribal and early villagelife,"[RS,p.83] and, of course, it is these which many ecologists today lament the loss of, e.g. the deeply set values of usufruct, complementarity, and the irreducible minimum.* [RS,p.84]
Bookchin locates the third turning point at the "co-jointly developing phenomena" of the nation state and capitalism.[RS,p.85] Despite myths to the contrary, he says, the nation state was not formed by the bourgeoisie.[RS,p.86] In the twelfth century, the nation had begun to subsume local power from the top down. While interference was generally minimal, justice was often arbitrary. Compared to the whimsical rule of nobles, who often made their own law, the king's justice seemed something of a relief and a promise.[RS,pp.85-86] But even then there was "mounting resistance to encroachments by the centralized nation-state on the prerogatives of the towns and cities." [RS,p.88] "Lusty utopias" were "actively explored" [RS,p.109] as the human body was rediscovered and it's knowledge and pleasure reconsidered. "The Renaissance provided a voice for richly speculative and critical ideas," the best of which "are amazingly all sided." [RS,p.llO]
Another key strength of Bookchin's analysis, as I see it, is his emphasis on how history can turn, almost literally, on a dime--or, at any rate, on a well or poorly written word. The knife cuts both ways, and at any given point in time it might have gone the other way. These developments are clearly not preordained by history. [RS,p.89] In fact, "Europe genuinely vacillated for a time between these two alternatives, [RS,p.88] Bookchin insists, emphasizing choice over the determination of law. He takes this position, against Marx, who saw social change as a unilinear advance from stage to stage, and whose emphasis on social laws undermined the anarchist emphasis on choice,[p.l68] which, according to Bookchin, effectively silenced all other revolutionary voices. [p.l69] 1°
It was, he argues, this emphasis on social laws in Marx which undermined the anarchist emphasis on choice and spontaneous emergence,[RS,p.l68] which would have been a radically new point of departure for political theory.[RS,p.ll9] This is a point emphasized by many anarchist thinkers, who are given strong voice in Bookchin. Thinkers such as Peter Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist who explored alternatives to capitalism, emphasized the value of work, and argued that the domination of nature stemmed from domination of human by human," [RS,p.l54] and Mikhail Bakunin, who Marx blasted out of the dialogues of his day, were effectively ignored by their socialist successors. Whereas anarchist thinkers emphasized the importance of spontaneity in organization,[RS,p.l91] Marx, to our detriment, removed the "essential element of spontaneity ...choice played a very insignificant role in social evolution." [RS,p.l34]
Bookchin does give Marx credit for a "masterful" critique of bourgeois economy, including his psychology of how commodities become "all corrosive forces", fetishes which alienate humanity, generate artificial wants, and a profound sense of scarcity. [RS,p.l37] Whereas, in a free society, "human beings would develop meaningful wants that were not distorted by the mystified economic world ...and other self-indulgent lures of the arcane." [RS, p.l37] "Such an individual," according to Bookchin, who echoes Plato and Marx here, would be "free of a particularistic interest in a community where each contributes to the whole to the best of his or her ability and takes from the common fund of produce what he or she needs, would give citizenship a broad, indeed unprecedented, materially solidity that goes beyond the private ownership of property." [RS,p.l95]
Bookchin thinks we need to remember this revolutionary tradition for what it still has to teach us.[RS,p.lll] Not a 'primitivistic' yearning for the past... but recognition of past possibilities that remain unfulfilled." [RS,p.l20] Like his predecessors, Bookchin shares that sense of urgency which stems from the "desperate insight...that a historic moment...was being lost...they rightly saw their time as one that demanded immediate human emancipation, not as one 'stage' among many in the long history of human evolution. "[RS,p.l26] "What is immediately striking about their work," he says, "is their acute sense of the alternatives to the abuses of their day and to the abuses of our own. "[RS,p.117] "Anarchist thinkers and libertarian utopists were deeply sensitive to choices", and thus, "raised the far-reaching questions of whether community and individuality could be brought into harmony with each other; whether the nation was the necessary, indeed, the ethical, successor to the community or commune; ...whether the communal use of resources had to be supplanted by private ownership...and whether ethics had to give way to statecraft."[RS,p.ll7] Could material security be acquired only by subordination of the individual to state authority? Marx, or at any rate, Marxists apparently thought so. But, unlike Marx and his followers, anarchist radicals recognized and struggled with the "evil" of hierarchy and its sources,[RS,p.84] rather than giving up on community for the sake of state.!!
Anarchists explored the expanding ideal of freedom--"progress in its truly authentic sense"--as distinct from the ideal of justice, which places different demands on systems of authority. Demands for justice lead to mere reform, Bookchin claims, i.e. "the inequality of equals", while demands for freedom lead to fundamental changes, toward "the equality of unequals" .[RS,p.99] "Past revolutions were largely struggles for justice, not for freedom."[RS,p.l73] Justice, as Bookchin conceives it, is often tied to religious or supernatural commandments. [RS,p.lOO] Whereas freedom involves 'freely' realizing one's potentials. [RS,p.99] Anarchists have paid attention to individual autonomy, rather than freedom in the tradition of liberalism, which involved free-enterprise, not freedom to actualize one's highest potentials through the proper use of reason and work. Anarchists want freedom to be ethical, not just freedom to be egoists. [RS,p.119] They want freedom of individuality, not of individualism. "The individual is, indeed, truly free and attains true individuality when he or she is guided by a rational, humane, and high-minded notion of the social and communal good...the world as it should be." [RS,p.l20]
The normative statement of Bookchin's ideal seems to be captured in the claim that to deny need is "more than 'theft'...it's outright homicide."[RS,p.187] "No one has a right to own property on which the lives of others depend--either morally, socially, or ecologically. Nor does anyone have a right to design, employ, or impose privately owned technological equiptment on society that damages human health and the health of the planet. "[RSp.l87]12
For anarchists, a call for justice assumes that such a thing is possible within hierarchy, a concession Bookchin, at least, is not willing to make. Plato and Aristotle were not so sure though ...because anything can have either a proper for a perverted function. Just as families, which involve natural hierarchical relationships of dependence and responsibility, can go either way, so any hierarchical structure has either potential, i.e. it can fulfill the function which gives rise to it (in the case of families, the care of children) either well or poorly. And since the fact is that humans find it efficient, if not wise, to organize themselves in such a way as to make the few responsible for the many in practically every human endeavor, from families to fire fighting, it would seem wise for us, rather than to condemn hierarchy out of hand, to aim at trying to understand the dynamics and function of it so to steer it, as Aristotle would suggest, toward its proper, if not perfect function. We need to understand how power flows between us, I think, how strength and force interact, in order to have any real power toward resolving our ecological problems at all. The relationship between those in different positions in a hierarch is an interactive one, which is to say, what goes around, comes around. The problem is, in an interdependent reality, things often come around to some other than those who sent them going around, which is to say, some pay the consequences for the other's actions. This is the trouble with hierarchy, for while it has its proper function in the natural world, it tends toward the trickle down of consequences which balances the trickle up of benefits. This happens because we let it, but we needn't. The fact that humans attribute superior value to those who are at what we take to be the 'top' of certain hierarchies does not follow inevitably from the nature of hierarchy itself. In fact, there is no 'top'...but for the perspective we take, the assumption of superiority we make, and the value we attribute to those with power by 'looking up' to them. Hierarchies might as easily be conceptualized to be horizontal or diagonal, such as friendships, networks, and symphonies are organized. Perhaps the vertical condition only follows when those who are responsible stand on the backs of those who depend upon them. If we better understood the great philosophers, we might better see some of these as hierarchies of respect, responsibility, and strength, not power, privilege, and domination. Perhaps domination only occurs when authority is abused, and since it is unlikely that all authority is abusive (at least to the extent that some authority may well find its locus of control in the needs and concerns of the dependent) we might agree that it is possible to exercise proper authority (such as a parent who knows where their proper responsibility lies, or a timpanist who must know and take responsibility for his or her few notes in the movement underway).
This is why an understanding of justice is needed, despite Bookchin's claims to the contrary, and why it is necessary to the proper function of all other endeavors. We have a right to author consequences that effect others only to the extent that we can do so fairly. To Plato's brilliant and near-just Republic, Aristotle adds the (sometimes less than gentle) reminder that (almost) nothing stays the same; change is the nature of (almost) all things, and so we cannot simply set up an apparently just system and expect it to stay that way. The reality of change will move anything either toward or away from its best function, making both proper and perverted potentials possible. And so learning how to steer change toward justice is our proper task, especially with regard to social hierarchy, which is strictly artifice, and thus our responsibility to improve by the deliberation of all participants. Like Aristotle, anarchists emphasize how deeply the locus of choice is founded in individual organisms, each in its complex association with all the others, sometimes dependent, sometimes responsible, and often, if not always, hierarchically organized. Aristotle reinforces and developed Plato's natural divisions of labor into a theory of natural associations, and he did this because he was sensitive to change, change which Socrates and Plato took for granted ...if only because it is so difficult to talk about. Difficult yes, Aristotle admits, but imperative, for it is through these changing appearances that we come to understand what is underlying appearances. To sum up, I think social ecology has many strengths, but its chief weakness, and the point at which any theory looses meaning for me, is when its advocates contemptuously attack what it takes to be its opponents--who, in this case, take a view which I think, properly understood, leads to the very same conclusions as social ecology, albeit indirectly, through revolution in the human soul. Critics charge that such fundi-spiritualism will not get us quickly to what is needed, i.e. overhaul of institutions. But it seems clear that there is much to be said for building communal harmony by balance in individual souls. With Plato, I tend to feel that the effects of individual people doing what they perceive to be their part in the overall movement toward social change is the on!y way to bring about the kind of deep transformation which is essential to 'real' change--beyond surface PC measures. Despite Bookchin's claim that the ranks of deep ecologists hide "barely disguised racists, survivalists, macho Daniel Boones, and outright social reactionaries who use the word 'ecology' to express their views, "(p.12) I think these are merely the most vocal among deep ecologists ...hardly representative of the truest.
To be fair, I think deep ecology deserves a better defense. It is a very shallow and unforgiving reading that would allow us to jump to the conclusion that deep ecology is the "same kind of crude eco-brutalism (that) led Hitler to fashion theories of blood and soil that led to ... murder camps like Auschwitz." One might put one's faith into deep ecology precisely because of it's potential, in theory, for interactive dialogue and perhaps even for conflict resolution between traditions--and yet be forced to admit that, in practice, deep ecology is maddeningly silent to charges made against it.l3 But I feel the question which deep ecology compels us to ask is not what Foreman, Devall, or Sessions would say, but what would a Native American, a Taoist, a Buddhist, or Thoreau say? And by extension, what does our own soul tell us? The fact that a misrepresented ethic can be used as an "excuse" does not discredit its "reason." While Bookchin claims these traditions often have "nothing in common with each other," I think it's the failure to see the common denominator which allows Bookchin and even Foreman to miss the point of deep ecology, and the common ground between it and social ecology. 14
Unlike Bookchin, who feels that deep ecology "has no real sense that our ecological problems have their roots in society and in social problems", I feel that it has a very real sense of this -- it simply locates the locus of society within the individual human spirit. This spiritualism does not "replace the need for social and economic analysis," it simply precedes it IS While social ecology would have us all approach environmental problems politically, deep ecology holds that deep personal psychological development leads naturally to social justice, and this is a view I share. This pluralism is not "sinister" but rather respectful of diversity and individuality, as well as of the ignorance inherent in some parts of the process of growth toward our highest potential. The fact that deep ecology does not elaborate on social injustice does not mean it evades it, it simply means it does not prescribe that every individual should see it from the same view at the same time. Rather, deep ecology calls for individuals to examine themselves morally and in terms of their own process with respect to their relationship to others and to the social whole and to find their own best function. It is true that deep ecology is less apt to point fingers at those responsible, say rich white males, and is more likely to talk about what Bookchin calls "undifferentiated humanity," but this approach does not, as he claims, mean that deep ecology considers all "people of color ... equitable with whites, women with men, the third world with the rich, the exploited with their exploiters." Certainly respectable differences between people exists, for we are not all the same person, not coming from the same history, social, psychological or biological, and not all best suited to the same ends. Individuals play different roles in social change and need to find their own place in the movement for ecological justice; I myself and deep ecologists think they are entitled to as much.
Likewise, deep ecology's concept of self-in-Self does not claim that humans are not different from grizzly bears, rain forests, and microbes, only that we are not justified in considering themselves superior.
Deep ecology has at its heart the broadening of the human mind toward the fullest understanding of the relationship between self and others, all others. And out of this common and interactive identity, or what some Native American traditions call "one mind", comes answers to questions of action with regard to social injustice and freedom, for as humans cannot claim superior right over nature, neither can they claim superiority or unjust authority over another, an idea which is fundamentally decentralists. Despite Bookchin's interpretation, deep ecology does not deindividuate and pacify, it simply de-egoizes. The goal of self-realization in deep ecology is exactly what Bookchin claims the goal of social ecology to be, "for the individual self ... to discover its own capacities and uniqueness, and acquire a sense of personality, of self-control and self-direction -- all traits indispensable for the achievement of freedom." 16 It is an ethic which allows and encourages Murry Bookchin to be the best Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman to be the best Dave Foreman -- with all the reaches and limitations that may involve.
As I read them, all the goals of social ecology are inherent in the goals of deep ecology, including the elimination of injustice in all of its forms -- social and ecological - and one who cannot see how this is so is apparently reading one or the other with an axe to grind. Deep ecologists see domination in any form, even that which arises in the competition to be the dominant theorist, as growing out of an underdeveloped spirituality. It seems likely that deep ecology hit a raw nerve in Bookchin, one which seems to have compelled him to protest too much in his own defense.
Social ecology rightly claims -- and I think wrongly accuses deep ecology of having no interest in the fact -- that "the emergence of hierarchy out of society, of classes out of hierarchy, of the state out of classes ... are at the roots of the ecological problem. "(SEvsDE,p.18) Contrary to his perspective, rather than ignoring social injustice, deep ecology, like social ecology, actually emphasizes "the social bases of our ecological problems and the role of the human species in the evolutionary scheme of things. "(p.21) Deep ecology simply allows each to find their own place in the movement for social and ecological justice and freedom, and that, as I see it, is how it should be.
Conclusion In conclusion, I think we would be right to remember the point that social can still and always to either way. The new left broke with ideas of the past, according to Bookchin, when it took on the motto, "Don't trust anyone over thirty". Now, "we have never been in greater need of theoretical insight and study than we are today, when political illiteracy has reached appalling proportions and action has become a fetish as an end in itself." [RS,p.189] "Our foremost need is to create a general human interest that can unify humanity as a whole."[RS,p.171] And here I think Bookchin would be wise to take his own advice. The ecological message is the Greek ideal of unity in diversity, not merely diversity which degenerates to conflict.[p.172] Ecology is, or could be, a transhierarchy issue,[RS,p.173] and the new left could speak for a generalized human interest--and must- or we will degenerate into the same reformist particularism which Bookchin condemns, even as he himself does it. Perhaps he should have kept in mind all along what he finally admits in his debate with Dave Foreman: that the differences between deep and social ecology are complementary, and that they are different aspects of a single movement.[DEBH, p.lll]
*Parts of this paper have been revised from an earlier paper on a related subject.
1 In fact, such thinkers recognized "no contradictions ...between human artifice and natural fecundity*, anymore than there was between body and mind, play and work, freedom and order, unity and diversity. "[RS,p.124]
2 As we have heard mention in these past weeks, this view is consistent with theories emerging in the philosophy of science, (e.g. hierarchy theory, along with other systems, chaos, and fractal theories, etc..
3 Janet Biehl claims a certaio myth-ridden form of eco-feminism is gnilty of reviving this tendency in the view that the natural world is sacred, which she fears can bring us to attribute mystical qnalities to social oppression. [RS,p.l05] Bookchin attributes this 'dangerous' view to deep ecologists as well, whose claim to 'hiocentric equality' Bookchin takes to betray misanthropy. I think it simply reflects the recognition that we are not superior, not, as Bookchin fears, that we are inferior. That is for individual humans to prove one way or another.
4 putfootnote on justice and freedom
5 Oris his worry that female-oriented myths may replace male-oriented ones?(p.163] Perhaps Bookchin wouldn't like this much...but would it be unfair? He complains that the idea that 'the personal is political' is stretched by the new left so that how one speaks appears to be more important than what one has to say, eloquence is described as 'manipulative', and moral outrage is taken to represent 'aggressiveness' and 'male behavior.'(pp.163-164] This is certainly all too true in some circles, but partly due to approaches like Bookcbiu's.
6 Bookcbiu unwittingly affirms deep ecology when he says, "Sensibility, ethics, ways of viewing reality, and selfuood have to be changed by educational means, by a politics of reasoned discourse, experimentation, and the expectation of repeated failures from which we have to learn, if humanity is to achieve the self consciousness it needs to fmally engage in self-management. "[RS,p.189]
7 Or, for that matter, for the Hebrew activists who struck the pyramid bnilders with such horror? Or the "monks like Joachim of Floris who were to lay the bases for more lasting libertarian tendencies" in his reworking of the trinity into a radical chronology from the Father of old, to the Son of new, toward "the Third Kingdom" yet to come, a world without masters, in which people would live in harmony, inespective of their religious beliefs, and a bountiful nature would supply the means of life for all. "[RS,pp.106-107]
8 As one who feels aligned in many ways with the principles of both social and deep ecology (despite the view of Dave Foreman types, whose view makes these seem incompatible). there is no doubt in my mind that "hunger has its origins not in 'natural' shortages of food or population growth, but in social and cultural dislocation. "(p.24) I certainly agree with Bookcbiu's view that a critical social analysis is needed to resolve the many interrelated social and ecological problems we face, for it is clear to me, and I think to anyone else who really thinks it through (which perhaps some so-called deep ecologists have not, yet) that it is the overindulgence of the few which causes the underprivilege and suffering of the many, including those within the large biotic community. Seeing this, any deep ecologist who is worthy of the name would agree with the social ecologist who thinks that we need "an ethics and a politics which recognizes that the global ecology is increasingly shaped by human societies. "(p.ll)
9 [footnote Frankfurt*]
10 Marx was certainly right that capitalism always existed in the ancient and medieval world,[RS,p.90] but it was by no means "necessary". In fact, it stood at odds with most traditional values of pre-capitalist societies,[RS,pp.89-91] he says, especially in its emphasis on competition, accumulation, and economic growth, which went against the long-standing Greek value of restraint and limit, i.e. Aristotle's 'golden mean."[RS,p.90] Precapitalist societies, according to Bookchin, had "certain powerful moral constraints", lacking appetite for luxmies. [RS,p.138]
11 They showed how: "Capitalism divided the human species against itself as sharply and brutally as it divided society against natnre. Competition began to permeate every level of society, not only to throw capitalist against capitalist for control of the marketplace. It pitted buyer against seller, need against greed, and individual against individual on the most elementary levels of human encounters. In the marketplace, one individual faced another with a snarl, even as working people, each seeking, as a matter of sheer survival, to get the better of the other...rivalry at the most molecular base of society is a bourgeois law of life, in the literal sense of the word 'life.' Accumulation to undermine, buy out, or otherwise absorb or outwit a competitor is a condition for existence in a capitalist economic order."[RS,p.93]. ..*
12 On the other hand, Bookchin warns against taking a reactionary view of Enlightenment goals, which denigrates reason, technology, and science as bourgeois goals.[RS,p.167] We have a real problem, he says, when we blame ecological problems on technics instead of corporate greed and state institntions.[RS,p.167]
"Technics, when divested of any moral constraint, can also become demonic under capitalism," and not just accidentally so, but probably.[RS,p.188] In a breech of Greek ideals, the capitalist does not look at technics as an ethical relationship, seeing no ethical responsibility between producer and consumer as he or she might.[RS,p.l88] But the anarchists, by contrast, believes that reason, science, and technics--if not reduced to instrumental means to achieve other ends--could be creative forces for remaking society.[RS,p.l25]
13 Certainly it is brutal to ignore the economic injustice and exploitation that has played such a large part in bringing us to our current eco-dilemmas, and granted, Devall and Session's lack of response does seem to give implicit support to such an interpretation.
14 Despite Bookchin's claim that radically different assumptions about the ontological status of nature make them incompatible, both social and deep ecology "challenge society's vast hierarchical, sexist, class ruled, statist. and militaristic apparatus."
15 The difference, as Bookchin himself notes, is in ''how [they] propose to change society and by what means."
16 I think it could only do the ecology movement good to focus the similarity of ends among groups who use different means, to reduce the infighting and competition between methods does not reduce the diversity and complexity of those involved toward a common end. It's true that most, say, Buddhist traditions do not explicitly aim at changing society, per se, but neither do they allow or justify the participation in injustice that causes "ethical problems within human communities, such as poverty, racism. social hierarchies, etc.." As for environmental ethics, these issues and one's relationship to them are deep concerns for any good Buddhist, as for any good deep ecologist; they simply are not the only concerns. How to live? is the more fundamental question here, which may lead to How to parent? How to teach? How to do one's work? or How to treat one's fellows? These are all questions which precede but lead directly to the question of how to change the world so as to eliminate the injustice of poverty, sexism, racism, and all the other social isms which plague us. This approach takes seriously one's own part in forming and reforming the social world, rather than viewing themselves as some social ecologists seem to, as outside-looking-in on the causes of social justice.
"Only a surprisingly small part of humanity developed societies that were structured overwhelmingly around hierarchies, classes, and the State."[p.64] "Hierarchies, classes, and states warp the creative powers of humanity. They decide whether humanity's ecological creativity will be placed in the service of life or in the service of power and privilege."[p.72] "And hierarchy will not disappear until we change these roots of daily life radically, not only economically, with the removal of class society. "[p.65] Also of interest (to Plato too), "a community that does develop along hierarchical, class, and statist lines has a profound impact upon all the communities around it that continue to follow an egalitarian direction." [p.64] It compels neighboring communities to create their own hierarchical military arrangements in self-defense.
I think Bookchin has a point about those who would overlook the corporate component of ecological destruction, and I think he is right to emphasize that the exorbitant business profits have nothing to do with the 'course of nature'. But I think he is wrong to equate all who hold the 'natural law' view with this mentality; it may very well be some people's understanding of deep ecology, but it certainly does not follow necessarily from that view. To assert that human beings are subject to natural laws is not to throw up one's hands, despairing of human self-direction or responsibility. To cooperate with nature is not to be dominated by it, but to admit dependence on it, a condition we cannot escape, and this we would do well to recognize. This view does not make human beings interchangeable with rodents or ants, as Bookchin seems to read it. It only suggests that we are not justified in the superiority we assume. I think most interpreters of deep ecology would agree with Bookchin that "No ecological society, however communal or benign in its ideals, can ever remove the 'goal' of dominating the natural world until it has radically eliminated the domination of human by human, or, in essence, the entire hierarchical structure within society in which the very notion of domination rests." [p.60]
Bookchin also includes some very interesting discussion of the relation between sexism and ageism... but first things first. [pp.54-62]
Introduction
For many years, Murray Bookchin has made a very strong case for what he terms
'social ecology', the view that "the harmonization of nature cannot be achieved without the harmonization of human with human;"(RS,p.171] in other words, "that major ecological problems have their roots in social problems." [RS,p.l54] In this paper, I will examine some of the strengths and weaknesses of Bookchin's analysis, to the conclusion that, despite his brilliant dialectics and the insights they reveal, Bookchin undercuts the strength of his own argument to a large degree by his petty denial of what he takes to be competing approaches to social change.
If I thought it was going to be easy to shoot down Bookchin's argument...! was wrong. I understand better now, after reading his book Remaking Society, why Bookchin is so frustrated with the 'new left'--composed as it has been of a student left which disappeared into the corporate world as soon as the war was over, and an academic mindset that recognizes only what is published in certain professional joumals ...even when the ideas that presented there have extracted without acknowledgment from other more radical publications. Still, we are not all so easily pegged as Bookchin would make it seem (are we?) and I think some of us deserve more credit than Bookchin is willing to give.
Strengths and Weaknesses I think perhaps the strongest, most surprising, quality of Bookchin's work is its emphasis on and use of organic dialectical reasoning. "The notion that there is only one kind of reason," he says "is utterly false." [RS,p.108] In dialectical form, "reason imparts a sense of history, development, and process to thinking, not 'linear', propositional, and syllogistic means and analysis." [RS,p.109] Aristotle himself used organic, dialectical reason, which stresses growth, potentiality, and "fluid eduction of ever-differentiated phenomena from generalized, nascent, indeed seed-like, beginnings into richly developed wholes rather than the schematic deduction of fixed conclusions based on rigidly stated premises." [p.108] In this way of thinking, "all aspects of experience play a complementary role in making a richly differentiated whole." [RS,p.llO]
Bookchin uses this dialectical reasoning to explore the historical roots of the revolutionary project, and to show that, and how, it served "a commitment to reconciling the duality's of mind, body, and society that pitted reason against sensuality, work against play, town against country, and humanity against nature. Utopian and anarchist thought, at its best, saw these contradictions clearly and tried to overcome them with an ideal of freedom based on complementary, the irreducible minimum, and the equality of unequals."[RS,p.125]1 "It is one of the great truths of dialectical wisdom," says Bookchin, "that all great ideas, limited as they may seem to their own time and inadequate as they may appear in ours, lose their relativity when they are viewed as part of an ever differentiating whole." [RS,pp.ll0-111]
This approach allows Bookchin to focus on key turning points in history, none of which are necessary, each being the spontaneous emergence of self-conscious social change, the result of a "striving or nisis" in human development,[p.199] which exhibits this no less than any other aspect of nature, all of which shows "a tendency toward its own self-directed evolution...toward a more conscious development in which choice, however
dim, reveals that biotic evolution contains a potential for freedom." [p.201]2 Bookchin calls this "'participatory evolution"',[p.201] a process through which nature exercises its "purposiveness, will, and intentionality"[p.200] Every aspect of nature IS "engaged m immanently preserving it's identity,"[p.200] in a process Hegel called 'the actualization of potentialities'. [p.203] This gives all of nature, including human nature, a "tendency toward ever-greater subjectivity and flexibility"[p.199]--and this, according to Bookchin, is our best hope.
A central insight of Bookchin's theory is that it is over-simplistic to reduce complex social problems to a single hierarchy, e.g. class, patriarchy, or to any other single group of oppressors. It is hierarchy itself, Bookchin insists, rather any particular power structure, which we must come to understand and thus eliminate. The goal, he says, is the "abolition of hierarchy in all its forms,"[RS,p.189] and so we have a universal interest in understanding it, as such,[RS,p.156]--"a general interest that outweighs the particularized interests of hierarchy, class, gender, ethnic backgrounds, and the state. The precondition for a harmonious relationship with nature is social: a harmonious relationship between human and human."[RS,p.l89]
A first key turning point in history which sheds light on the dynamics of hierarchy was the shift from matricentric to patricentric ways--a "fork in the road" at which point
human culture turned away from nonhierarchical ways, such as gardening, simple tools, usufruct*, the irreducible minimum, complementarity, and so-called feminine values of care and nurturing",[p.77] and toward "warrior values of combat, class domination, and state rule."[p.77] Rule by the elderly almost certainly preceded patriarchy, he thinks, as dependence of the young on their elders naturally precedes dependence of the group on "big men" as protectors. In turn, the decline of power which accompanies age and increases the dependence of the aged upon the young gave elders great incentive to promote gerontocracy, deity worship, and other practices which reinforce their status, and hierarchy itself.
While many contemporary ecologists are eager to return to tribal and village ways, Bookchin notes that this view has some very troubling features; for instance, the conservatism which is inherent to hierarchy and which mythopoeic peoples struggled against. "Ecological mystics" like to push this as the view of the oppressed, he says, but it is important to remember that it was not theirs only, for it was advanced by the oppressors in priestly manipulation of controlled rituals, according to their own interests in keeping people passive and ineffective, and thus channeling off discontent and anger that might otherwise have made for dramatic insurrection. There is much incentive for those who sit atop hierarchies to foster the power structures that uplift them, such as by discouraging writing that would empower the people.[RS,p.79] The effect of this would be a monopoly of knowledge, which would keep people dependent and vulnerable to hierarchical control. [RS,p.79] The myth of 'the golden age' was also used to justify tyranny; teaching that it was the 'fall from grace' which caused human misery amounts to the claim that it is people's own fault if they are miserable, and that they somehow deserve such conditions, which effectively deflects attention from the formation and maintenance of hierarchies of property, state, and ruling elites--the true cause of widespread suffering. [RS,p.104] In this way, "tyranny has been immersed in the authority of divinity and the claims of monarchs to divine sanction." [RS,p.l05] "Innocence, intuition, and atavistic* longings--our own modern mystics to the contrary--are not strong barriers to manipulation." [RS,p.l09]3
My experience teaching political philosophy to undergraduates shows evidence of this tendency. The reluctance of those with Christian upbringing to question the good and justified intentions of the modern, or even the medieval church is apparent; most are generally much more willing to blame instead the vague notion of 'human nature' for our social and ecological problems than to question the motivation behind the rule of religion. It is thus difficult to deny Bookchin's claim that religion can have this effect. I
is too easy for religious elites to threaten 'unruly humanity' into obedience since they have them, so to speak, by the salvation. [RS,p.104]
However, the question remains, are deep ecologists and feminists guilty of this? Surely, to cooperate with nature is not necessarily to be dominated by it, but only to admit dependence on it--a condition we cannot escape, and most ecologists agree we would do well to recognize. Can recognizing this be tantamount to throwing up our hands and giving up on human goodness and self-direction? As far as I can see, vulnerability to hierarchical oppression is not inherent to a proper respect for nature's laws, but only to an improper deference to authority. This reverence certainly can be used by those who would control others with it, but it is for this very reason, Plato would argue, that we need to understand natural law and justice, i.e. so as not to be vulnerable to the injustice of others or likely to pass it on.4 I think feminism, at least, being a view which renders hierarchy so concrete, is unlikely to be so easily duped as Bookchin worries.s
Bookchin's view on this betrays what I take to be a chief weakness in Bookchin's work (and perhaps in Biehl's too) i.e. that they seem to be operating on a stereotyped or, as Rick called it last week, "essentialist" conception of deep ecologists and some feminists--a conception which paints us all to be rather 'mystified' by the "cosmic oneness" of it all, bewildered by wood nymphs and goddesses, our reason subverted by 'pop' moralizing,[RS,p.lOl] "mentally numb",[RS,p.106] allowing ourselves to be sedated and thus forgetful,[Rs,p.102] unable to recognize or act on our own good in freedom, and incapacitated to recognize and resist domination. In short, he considers us to be "mindless".[Rs,p.102] He reduces us all to the silliest and most artificial among us. Does he think that there are no deep ecologists who can recognize artificiality for what it is? Or that the deepest ecologists do not recognize the shallower, who nonetheless call themselves 'deep'? Or does Bookchin think that there simply are no genuine feminists or deep ecologists at all? That it's all just an act'? If so, Bookchin commits the same sin that right-wingers do when they think they have discredited the entire left by labeling it "PC", as if all leftist activity is artificial, merely wanna-be behavior masquerading as real commitment. I dare say, this is only wishful thinking on the part of the right. What is it for Bookchin? He calls the mythic fantasy of lost harmony which he attributes to such ecologists "a libel on human beings as a whole,[RS,p.102] and yet it seems that it is Bookchin himself who has such low expectations of human beings that he thinks anyone who tries to understand natural law is likely to go off the 'deep' end.
Anyone who has genuinely struggled with these issues of self-actualization has
good reason to resent Bookchin's assumptions which reduce deep ecologists and feminists to the silliest elements. The discussion is properly followed to deeper, more subtle levels to which Bookchin is apparently deaf. In all fairness to deep ecology, Bookchin should remember his own words: "Revolutionary commitment is not only a calling that seeks to change the world; it is also an inward imperative to save one's own identity and individuality from a corruptive society that degrades one's very personality with the lure of cheap emoluments and the promise of status in a totally meaningless world. "[RS,p.l90]6
For whatever else it is, deep ecology is not "supernatural rubbish" ;[p.162] it's not an attempt to turn ecology into a religion,[p.162] nor is it a "retreat back into myth", which
"obliges us to forget history and the wealth of experience it has to offer", and which leads from mysticism to a "dangerous quietism". If it were, how would we account for earth
firster, Dave Foreman, who is anything but quiet?7
One might argue, against Bookchin, that it is a fundamental strength, rather than a weakness, of deep ecology that it appeals to the ancient wisdom of many peoples in search of the common thread which integrates all life to all other. With this as its foundation, deep ecology has the theoretical ability to answer many of the questions to which a social theory must speak. In as much as deep ecology moves us in the direction of dialogue between apparently conflicting traditions, it helps us learn to tum our ear toward much that we might otherwise ignore, not just to hear the voice of other forms of life, but to hear other perspectives on our own life as well.
Unfortunately, while deep ecology can appeal to 'one mind', it can not always speak with one voice, and this makes for much confusion. Perhaps this accounts for deep ecologists failure to answer to charges against it, and (its worse mistake) to let those who do not sufficiently understand its principles to speak for it (which has been a problem throughout human history). We might rightly wonder how fair it is to take the word of a few followers to speak for the masters. Foreman's views on population control seem in blatant conflict with deep-ecology's commitment to non interference with nature's cycles--so the last word is hardly in on what we should do about the world's population problem.s Certainly a policy of mass population reduction would lead some to interpret deep ecology to be "human-hating"--but, as far as I can see, all deep ecology espouses, despite Foreman's interpretation, is that all relevant voices/perspectives be taken into consideration when developing such policies, and that we are not justified in the superiority we have traditionally assumed for ourselves. This is not to be anti-human, but merely to be inclusive of more than humans; to see natural interests to be in conflict with human interests is to posit a false and dangerous dichotomy, one which even Bookchin, at times, seems to want to get beyond.
In his stereotype of new left radicals, Bookchin attempts to reduce many of his fellow ecologists and some of the worlds greatest thinkers and activists to mindlessness. And yet, H. A. Frankfurt, whom Bookchin himself cites, argues persuasivelythat what has been lost with our turning away from mythopoeic thinking is our ability to understand phenomena--including human social relations--from the inside-looking-out--the only view which can counter and balance our pervasive contemporary imbalance toward the outside looking-in view and our tendency to make everything only an 'it', and never a 'thou•.9 Such empathic understanding may indeed make us innocent, trusting, and perhaps even more vulnerable to deceit, but this is no reason to think that we will be less capable of sorting the baby from the bathwater. Indeed, the argument could be made that this empathic ability is exactly what we need in order to recognize social injustice when we see it. Frankfurt raises the important point, at least, that a little more empathic consideration is a step in the right direction toward both justice and freedom--even archist freedom--that is, freedom of the mind to think for itself. Clearly, some effects of myth go beyond social control by elites.
Bookchin admits that, despite the myths and myth builders, "peasants and artisans fought valiantly in chronic insurrections [across Europe] to retain their communal, guild, and localist rights ...and gave to freedom a moral meaning that it has lost in our own era." [RS,p.107] This too is a strength in his work, I think, i.e. his analysis of the history of 'the revolutionary project'. "Peasant radicalism dates back almost to the beginnings of settled village life." [RS,p. 130] And the 'Age of Revolutions' reinforced the idea that "the oppressed had to act if they wished to free themselves ...The oppressed had to reason." As opposed to a "marvelous dispensation ...of a being other than themselves who bestowed the giftofplentyupon them in the form of a 'promised land'," now, "There was no appeal to powers other than their own minds." [RS,p.ll8]
Another major turning point which follows this development, according to Bookchin, is the "emergence and development of the city."[RS,p.80] Many, including Salon of Athens, invited outsiders to bring skills to their city. The convergence of different kinds of people from different places with different ethnic backgrounds made for many new human associations, and a corresponding shift from a focus on difference to a focus on likeness.[RS,p.81] Whereas tribal life had been marked by a tendency toward "exclusion of the stranger" ,[RS,p.78] cities brought the 'outsider' inside, where he would be protected by the diversity and anonymity of the city from abuse from 'insiders'. [RS,p.81] A new emphasis on choice in changing one's conditions brought accelerated cultural developments and gave rise to an assembly form of decision making. Though Perikles had abandoned Salon's openness, giving citizenship only to Athenian men, Bookchin credits Athenian polis with being a "highly self-conscious ethical entity,"[RS,p.l80] the basis of the assembly being friendship, and the goal being, not consensus, which can become coercive in that it "tends to subvert individuality in the name of community and dissent in the name of solidarity,"[RS,176] but to educate all concerned by voicing competing views that foster dialectical discussion and promote political competence, the Greek ideal of roundedness, toward the 'many-sided person'. [RS,p.172] "Self-restraint, dignity, courtesy, and a strong commitment to civic decorum were part of the psychological attributes that many precapitalist cities, structured around assemblies, actually translated into institutions in a system of checks that fostered harmony, however tentative they may seem." [RS,p.178] Politics was a process of character building for the Greeks (paidaia), in which some, i.e. those who made the general interest of the community their primary interest,[RS,p.l79] proved themselves to be the best citizens for being self-governing themselves.
"The anarchic vision of decentralized communities, united in free confederations or
networks for coordinating the communities of a region, reflect the traditional ideals of a
participatory democracy in modern radical context." [p.181] But we might rightly wonder then, without this process of paidaia, whether the anarchists point of departure--namely, that "every normal human being is competent to manage the affairs of society and, more specifically, the community in which he or she is a member" [RS,p.l74]--is a fair claim. There are many who wsorry, perhaps rightly, that if we allow conditioned-egoists to go free, they will simply use their freedom to limit the freedom of others. In cities, "communal ownership...gave way to private ownership ...[and] classes...crystallized out of more traditional status hierarchies into economic ones." [RS,p.83) The potential mobility inherent to economic hierarchies, as opposed to the fixed nature of earlier status groups, made for much incentive to join into the climbing game. In this way, according to Bookchin, "hierarchy...became embedded in the human unconscious," as "the young, women, the sons and the common masses of people began to enter unthinkingly into complicity with their own domination by elites," [RS,p.83) while status groups were taken for granted as the natural state of affairs, and classes came into the foreground as central to "the social question".[RS,p.84]
Today we confuse cities with urban belts, which blurs the distinction between citizen and constituent, between politics and statecraft. [RS,p.182] But the upside to cities, according to Bookchin, is that they "sought to bring rationality, a measure of impartial justice, cosmopolitan culture, and greater individuality to a world that was permeated by mysticism, arbitrary power, parochialism*, and the subordination of the individual to the command of aristocratic and religious elites." [RS,p.82] However, this was admittedly "not achieved without the loss of many profoundly important attributes of tribal and early villagelife,"[RS,p.83] and, of course, it is these which many ecologists today lament the loss of, e.g. the deeply set values of usufruct, complementarity, and the irreducible minimum.* [RS,p.84]
Bookchin locates the third turning point at the "co-jointly developing phenomena" of the nation state and capitalism.[RS,p.85] Despite myths to the contrary, he says, the nation state was not formed by the bourgeoisie.[RS,p.86] In the twelfth century, the nation had begun to subsume local power from the top down. While interference was generally minimal, justice was often arbitrary. Compared to the whimsical rule of nobles, who often made their own law, the king's justice seemed something of a relief and a promise.[RS,pp.85-86] But even then there was "mounting resistance to encroachments by the centralized nation-state on the prerogatives of the towns and cities." [RS,p.88] "Lusty utopias" were "actively explored" [RS,p.109] as the human body was rediscovered and it's knowledge and pleasure reconsidered. "The Renaissance provided a voice for richly speculative and critical ideas," the best of which "are amazingly all sided." [RS,p.llO]
Another key strength of Bookchin's analysis, as I see it, is his emphasis on how history can turn, almost literally, on a dime--or, at any rate, on a well or poorly written word. The knife cuts both ways, and at any given point in time it might have gone the other way. These developments are clearly not preordained by history. [RS,p.89] In fact, "Europe genuinely vacillated for a time between these two alternatives, [RS,p.88] Bookchin insists, emphasizing choice over the determination of law. He takes this position, against Marx, who saw social change as a unilinear advance from stage to stage, and whose emphasis on social laws undermined the anarchist emphasis on choice,[p.l68] which, according to Bookchin, effectively silenced all other revolutionary voices. [p.l69] 1°
It was, he argues, this emphasis on social laws in Marx which undermined the anarchist emphasis on choice and spontaneous emergence,[RS,p.l68] which would have been a radically new point of departure for political theory.[RS,p.ll9] This is a point emphasized by many anarchist thinkers, who are given strong voice in Bookchin. Thinkers such as Peter Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist who explored alternatives to capitalism, emphasized the value of work, and argued that the domination of nature stemmed from domination of human by human," [RS,p.l54] and Mikhail Bakunin, who Marx blasted out of the dialogues of his day, were effectively ignored by their socialist successors. Whereas anarchist thinkers emphasized the importance of spontaneity in organization,[RS,p.l91] Marx, to our detriment, removed the "essential element of spontaneity ...choice played a very insignificant role in social evolution." [RS,p.l34]
Bookchin does give Marx credit for a "masterful" critique of bourgeois economy, including his psychology of how commodities become "all corrosive forces", fetishes which alienate humanity, generate artificial wants, and a profound sense of scarcity. [RS,p.l37] Whereas, in a free society, "human beings would develop meaningful wants that were not distorted by the mystified economic world ...and other self-indulgent lures of the arcane." [RS, p.l37] "Such an individual," according to Bookchin, who echoes Plato and Marx here, would be "free of a particularistic interest in a community where each contributes to the whole to the best of his or her ability and takes from the common fund of produce what he or she needs, would give citizenship a broad, indeed unprecedented, materially solidity that goes beyond the private ownership of property." [RS,p.l95]
Bookchin thinks we need to remember this revolutionary tradition for what it still has to teach us.[RS,p.lll] Not a 'primitivistic' yearning for the past... but recognition of past possibilities that remain unfulfilled." [RS,p.l20] Like his predecessors, Bookchin shares that sense of urgency which stems from the "desperate insight...that a historic moment...was being lost...they rightly saw their time as one that demanded immediate human emancipation, not as one 'stage' among many in the long history of human evolution. "[RS,p.l26] "What is immediately striking about their work," he says, "is their acute sense of the alternatives to the abuses of their day and to the abuses of our own. "[RS,p.117] "Anarchist thinkers and libertarian utopists were deeply sensitive to choices", and thus, "raised the far-reaching questions of whether community and individuality could be brought into harmony with each other; whether the nation was the necessary, indeed, the ethical, successor to the community or commune; ...whether the communal use of resources had to be supplanted by private ownership...and whether ethics had to give way to statecraft."[RS,p.ll7] Could material security be acquired only by subordination of the individual to state authority? Marx, or at any rate, Marxists apparently thought so. But, unlike Marx and his followers, anarchist radicals recognized and struggled with the "evil" of hierarchy and its sources,[RS,p.84] rather than giving up on community for the sake of state.!!
Anarchists explored the expanding ideal of freedom--"progress in its truly authentic sense"--as distinct from the ideal of justice, which places different demands on systems of authority. Demands for justice lead to mere reform, Bookchin claims, i.e. "the inequality of equals", while demands for freedom lead to fundamental changes, toward "the equality of unequals" .[RS,p.99] "Past revolutions were largely struggles for justice, not for freedom."[RS,p.l73] Justice, as Bookchin conceives it, is often tied to religious or supernatural commandments. [RS,p.lOO] Whereas freedom involves 'freely' realizing one's potentials. [RS,p.99] Anarchists have paid attention to individual autonomy, rather than freedom in the tradition of liberalism, which involved free-enterprise, not freedom to actualize one's highest potentials through the proper use of reason and work. Anarchists want freedom to be ethical, not just freedom to be egoists. [RS,p.119] They want freedom of individuality, not of individualism. "The individual is, indeed, truly free and attains true individuality when he or she is guided by a rational, humane, and high-minded notion of the social and communal good...the world as it should be." [RS,p.l20]
The normative statement of Bookchin's ideal seems to be captured in the claim that to deny need is "more than 'theft'...it's outright homicide."[RS,p.187] "No one has a right to own property on which the lives of others depend--either morally, socially, or ecologically. Nor does anyone have a right to design, employ, or impose privately owned technological equiptment on society that damages human health and the health of the planet. "[RSp.l87]12
For anarchists, a call for justice assumes that such a thing is possible within hierarchy, a concession Bookchin, at least, is not willing to make. Plato and Aristotle were not so sure though ...because anything can have either a proper for a perverted function. Just as families, which involve natural hierarchical relationships of dependence and responsibility, can go either way, so any hierarchical structure has either potential, i.e. it can fulfill the function which gives rise to it (in the case of families, the care of children) either well or poorly. And since the fact is that humans find it efficient, if not wise, to organize themselves in such a way as to make the few responsible for the many in practically every human endeavor, from families to fire fighting, it would seem wise for us, rather than to condemn hierarchy out of hand, to aim at trying to understand the dynamics and function of it so to steer it, as Aristotle would suggest, toward its proper, if not perfect function. We need to understand how power flows between us, I think, how strength and force interact, in order to have any real power toward resolving our ecological problems at all. The relationship between those in different positions in a hierarch is an interactive one, which is to say, what goes around, comes around. The problem is, in an interdependent reality, things often come around to some other than those who sent them going around, which is to say, some pay the consequences for the other's actions. This is the trouble with hierarchy, for while it has its proper function in the natural world, it tends toward the trickle down of consequences which balances the trickle up of benefits. This happens because we let it, but we needn't. The fact that humans attribute superior value to those who are at what we take to be the 'top' of certain hierarchies does not follow inevitably from the nature of hierarchy itself. In fact, there is no 'top'...but for the perspective we take, the assumption of superiority we make, and the value we attribute to those with power by 'looking up' to them. Hierarchies might as easily be conceptualized to be horizontal or diagonal, such as friendships, networks, and symphonies are organized. Perhaps the vertical condition only follows when those who are responsible stand on the backs of those who depend upon them. If we better understood the great philosophers, we might better see some of these as hierarchies of respect, responsibility, and strength, not power, privilege, and domination. Perhaps domination only occurs when authority is abused, and since it is unlikely that all authority is abusive (at least to the extent that some authority may well find its locus of control in the needs and concerns of the dependent) we might agree that it is possible to exercise proper authority (such as a parent who knows where their proper responsibility lies, or a timpanist who must know and take responsibility for his or her few notes in the movement underway).
This is why an understanding of justice is needed, despite Bookchin's claims to the contrary, and why it is necessary to the proper function of all other endeavors. We have a right to author consequences that effect others only to the extent that we can do so fairly. To Plato's brilliant and near-just Republic, Aristotle adds the (sometimes less than gentle) reminder that (almost) nothing stays the same; change is the nature of (almost) all things, and so we cannot simply set up an apparently just system and expect it to stay that way. The reality of change will move anything either toward or away from its best function, making both proper and perverted potentials possible. And so learning how to steer change toward justice is our proper task, especially with regard to social hierarchy, which is strictly artifice, and thus our responsibility to improve by the deliberation of all participants. Like Aristotle, anarchists emphasize how deeply the locus of choice is founded in individual organisms, each in its complex association with all the others, sometimes dependent, sometimes responsible, and often, if not always, hierarchically organized. Aristotle reinforces and developed Plato's natural divisions of labor into a theory of natural associations, and he did this because he was sensitive to change, change which Socrates and Plato took for granted ...if only because it is so difficult to talk about. Difficult yes, Aristotle admits, but imperative, for it is through these changing appearances that we come to understand what is underlying appearances. To sum up, I think social ecology has many strengths, but its chief weakness, and the point at which any theory looses meaning for me, is when its advocates contemptuously attack what it takes to be its opponents--who, in this case, take a view which I think, properly understood, leads to the very same conclusions as social ecology, albeit indirectly, through revolution in the human soul. Critics charge that such fundi-spiritualism will not get us quickly to what is needed, i.e. overhaul of institutions. But it seems clear that there is much to be said for building communal harmony by balance in individual souls. With Plato, I tend to feel that the effects of individual people doing what they perceive to be their part in the overall movement toward social change is the on!y way to bring about the kind of deep transformation which is essential to 'real' change--beyond surface PC measures. Despite Bookchin's claim that the ranks of deep ecologists hide "barely disguised racists, survivalists, macho Daniel Boones, and outright social reactionaries who use the word 'ecology' to express their views, "(p.12) I think these are merely the most vocal among deep ecologists ...hardly representative of the truest.
To be fair, I think deep ecology deserves a better defense. It is a very shallow and unforgiving reading that would allow us to jump to the conclusion that deep ecology is the "same kind of crude eco-brutalism (that) led Hitler to fashion theories of blood and soil that led to ... murder camps like Auschwitz." One might put one's faith into deep ecology precisely because of it's potential, in theory, for interactive dialogue and perhaps even for conflict resolution between traditions--and yet be forced to admit that, in practice, deep ecology is maddeningly silent to charges made against it.l3 But I feel the question which deep ecology compels us to ask is not what Foreman, Devall, or Sessions would say, but what would a Native American, a Taoist, a Buddhist, or Thoreau say? And by extension, what does our own soul tell us? The fact that a misrepresented ethic can be used as an "excuse" does not discredit its "reason." While Bookchin claims these traditions often have "nothing in common with each other," I think it's the failure to see the common denominator which allows Bookchin and even Foreman to miss the point of deep ecology, and the common ground between it and social ecology. 14
Unlike Bookchin, who feels that deep ecology "has no real sense that our ecological problems have their roots in society and in social problems", I feel that it has a very real sense of this -- it simply locates the locus of society within the individual human spirit. This spiritualism does not "replace the need for social and economic analysis," it simply precedes it IS While social ecology would have us all approach environmental problems politically, deep ecology holds that deep personal psychological development leads naturally to social justice, and this is a view I share. This pluralism is not "sinister" but rather respectful of diversity and individuality, as well as of the ignorance inherent in some parts of the process of growth toward our highest potential. The fact that deep ecology does not elaborate on social injustice does not mean it evades it, it simply means it does not prescribe that every individual should see it from the same view at the same time. Rather, deep ecology calls for individuals to examine themselves morally and in terms of their own process with respect to their relationship to others and to the social whole and to find their own best function. It is true that deep ecology is less apt to point fingers at those responsible, say rich white males, and is more likely to talk about what Bookchin calls "undifferentiated humanity," but this approach does not, as he claims, mean that deep ecology considers all "people of color ... equitable with whites, women with men, the third world with the rich, the exploited with their exploiters." Certainly respectable differences between people exists, for we are not all the same person, not coming from the same history, social, psychological or biological, and not all best suited to the same ends. Individuals play different roles in social change and need to find their own place in the movement for ecological justice; I myself and deep ecologists think they are entitled to as much.
Likewise, deep ecology's concept of self-in-Self does not claim that humans are not different from grizzly bears, rain forests, and microbes, only that we are not justified in considering themselves superior.
Deep ecology has at its heart the broadening of the human mind toward the fullest understanding of the relationship between self and others, all others. And out of this common and interactive identity, or what some Native American traditions call "one mind", comes answers to questions of action with regard to social injustice and freedom, for as humans cannot claim superior right over nature, neither can they claim superiority or unjust authority over another, an idea which is fundamentally decentralists. Despite Bookchin's interpretation, deep ecology does not deindividuate and pacify, it simply de-egoizes. The goal of self-realization in deep ecology is exactly what Bookchin claims the goal of social ecology to be, "for the individual self ... to discover its own capacities and uniqueness, and acquire a sense of personality, of self-control and self-direction -- all traits indispensable for the achievement of freedom." 16 It is an ethic which allows and encourages Murry Bookchin to be the best Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman to be the best Dave Foreman -- with all the reaches and limitations that may involve.
As I read them, all the goals of social ecology are inherent in the goals of deep ecology, including the elimination of injustice in all of its forms -- social and ecological - and one who cannot see how this is so is apparently reading one or the other with an axe to grind. Deep ecologists see domination in any form, even that which arises in the competition to be the dominant theorist, as growing out of an underdeveloped spirituality. It seems likely that deep ecology hit a raw nerve in Bookchin, one which seems to have compelled him to protest too much in his own defense.
Social ecology rightly claims -- and I think wrongly accuses deep ecology of having no interest in the fact -- that "the emergence of hierarchy out of society, of classes out of hierarchy, of the state out of classes ... are at the roots of the ecological problem. "(SEvsDE,p.18) Contrary to his perspective, rather than ignoring social injustice, deep ecology, like social ecology, actually emphasizes "the social bases of our ecological problems and the role of the human species in the evolutionary scheme of things. "(p.21) Deep ecology simply allows each to find their own place in the movement for social and ecological justice and freedom, and that, as I see it, is how it should be.
Conclusion In conclusion, I think we would be right to remember the point that social can still and always to either way. The new left broke with ideas of the past, according to Bookchin, when it took on the motto, "Don't trust anyone over thirty". Now, "we have never been in greater need of theoretical insight and study than we are today, when political illiteracy has reached appalling proportions and action has become a fetish as an end in itself." [RS,p.189] "Our foremost need is to create a general human interest that can unify humanity as a whole."[RS,p.171] And here I think Bookchin would be wise to take his own advice. The ecological message is the Greek ideal of unity in diversity, not merely diversity which degenerates to conflict.[p.172] Ecology is, or could be, a transhierarchy issue,[RS,p.173] and the new left could speak for a generalized human interest--and must- or we will degenerate into the same reformist particularism which Bookchin condemns, even as he himself does it. Perhaps he should have kept in mind all along what he finally admits in his debate with Dave Foreman: that the differences between deep and social ecology are complementary, and that they are different aspects of a single movement.[DEBH, p.lll]
*Parts of this paper have been revised from an earlier paper on a related subject.
1 In fact, such thinkers recognized "no contradictions ...between human artifice and natural fecundity*, anymore than there was between body and mind, play and work, freedom and order, unity and diversity. "[RS,p.124]
2 As we have heard mention in these past weeks, this view is consistent with theories emerging in the philosophy of science, (e.g. hierarchy theory, along with other systems, chaos, and fractal theories, etc..
3 Janet Biehl claims a certaio myth-ridden form of eco-feminism is gnilty of reviving this tendency in the view that the natural world is sacred, which she fears can bring us to attribute mystical qnalities to social oppression. [RS,p.l05] Bookchin attributes this 'dangerous' view to deep ecologists as well, whose claim to 'hiocentric equality' Bookchin takes to betray misanthropy. I think it simply reflects the recognition that we are not superior, not, as Bookchin fears, that we are inferior. That is for individual humans to prove one way or another.
4 putfootnote on justice and freedom
5 Oris his worry that female-oriented myths may replace male-oriented ones?(p.163] Perhaps Bookchin wouldn't like this much...but would it be unfair? He complains that the idea that 'the personal is political' is stretched by the new left so that how one speaks appears to be more important than what one has to say, eloquence is described as 'manipulative', and moral outrage is taken to represent 'aggressiveness' and 'male behavior.'(pp.163-164] This is certainly all too true in some circles, but partly due to approaches like Bookcbiu's.
6 Bookcbiu unwittingly affirms deep ecology when he says, "Sensibility, ethics, ways of viewing reality, and selfuood have to be changed by educational means, by a politics of reasoned discourse, experimentation, and the expectation of repeated failures from which we have to learn, if humanity is to achieve the self consciousness it needs to fmally engage in self-management. "[RS,p.189]
7 Or, for that matter, for the Hebrew activists who struck the pyramid bnilders with such horror? Or the "monks like Joachim of Floris who were to lay the bases for more lasting libertarian tendencies" in his reworking of the trinity into a radical chronology from the Father of old, to the Son of new, toward "the Third Kingdom" yet to come, a world without masters, in which people would live in harmony, inespective of their religious beliefs, and a bountiful nature would supply the means of life for all. "[RS,pp.106-107]
8 As one who feels aligned in many ways with the principles of both social and deep ecology (despite the view of Dave Foreman types, whose view makes these seem incompatible). there is no doubt in my mind that "hunger has its origins not in 'natural' shortages of food or population growth, but in social and cultural dislocation. "(p.24) I certainly agree with Bookcbiu's view that a critical social analysis is needed to resolve the many interrelated social and ecological problems we face, for it is clear to me, and I think to anyone else who really thinks it through (which perhaps some so-called deep ecologists have not, yet) that it is the overindulgence of the few which causes the underprivilege and suffering of the many, including those within the large biotic community. Seeing this, any deep ecologist who is worthy of the name would agree with the social ecologist who thinks that we need "an ethics and a politics which recognizes that the global ecology is increasingly shaped by human societies. "(p.ll)
9 [footnote Frankfurt*]
10 Marx was certainly right that capitalism always existed in the ancient and medieval world,[RS,p.90] but it was by no means "necessary". In fact, it stood at odds with most traditional values of pre-capitalist societies,[RS,pp.89-91] he says, especially in its emphasis on competition, accumulation, and economic growth, which went against the long-standing Greek value of restraint and limit, i.e. Aristotle's 'golden mean."[RS,p.90] Precapitalist societies, according to Bookchin, had "certain powerful moral constraints", lacking appetite for luxmies. [RS,p.138]
11 They showed how: "Capitalism divided the human species against itself as sharply and brutally as it divided society against natnre. Competition began to permeate every level of society, not only to throw capitalist against capitalist for control of the marketplace. It pitted buyer against seller, need against greed, and individual against individual on the most elementary levels of human encounters. In the marketplace, one individual faced another with a snarl, even as working people, each seeking, as a matter of sheer survival, to get the better of the other...rivalry at the most molecular base of society is a bourgeois law of life, in the literal sense of the word 'life.' Accumulation to undermine, buy out, or otherwise absorb or outwit a competitor is a condition for existence in a capitalist economic order."[RS,p.93]. ..*
12 On the other hand, Bookchin warns against taking a reactionary view of Enlightenment goals, which denigrates reason, technology, and science as bourgeois goals.[RS,p.167] We have a real problem, he says, when we blame ecological problems on technics instead of corporate greed and state institntions.[RS,p.167]
"Technics, when divested of any moral constraint, can also become demonic under capitalism," and not just accidentally so, but probably.[RS,p.188] In a breech of Greek ideals, the capitalist does not look at technics as an ethical relationship, seeing no ethical responsibility between producer and consumer as he or she might.[RS,p.l88] But the anarchists, by contrast, believes that reason, science, and technics--if not reduced to instrumental means to achieve other ends--could be creative forces for remaking society.[RS,p.l25]
13 Certainly it is brutal to ignore the economic injustice and exploitation that has played such a large part in bringing us to our current eco-dilemmas, and granted, Devall and Session's lack of response does seem to give implicit support to such an interpretation.
14 Despite Bookchin's claim that radically different assumptions about the ontological status of nature make them incompatible, both social and deep ecology "challenge society's vast hierarchical, sexist, class ruled, statist. and militaristic apparatus."
15 The difference, as Bookchin himself notes, is in ''how [they] propose to change society and by what means."
16 I think it could only do the ecology movement good to focus the similarity of ends among groups who use different means, to reduce the infighting and competition between methods does not reduce the diversity and complexity of those involved toward a common end. It's true that most, say, Buddhist traditions do not explicitly aim at changing society, per se, but neither do they allow or justify the participation in injustice that causes "ethical problems within human communities, such as poverty, racism. social hierarchies, etc.." As for environmental ethics, these issues and one's relationship to them are deep concerns for any good Buddhist, as for any good deep ecologist; they simply are not the only concerns. How to live? is the more fundamental question here, which may lead to How to parent? How to teach? How to do one's work? or How to treat one's fellows? These are all questions which precede but lead directly to the question of how to change the world so as to eliminate the injustice of poverty, sexism, racism, and all the other social isms which plague us. This approach takes seriously one's own part in forming and reforming the social world, rather than viewing themselves as some social ecologists seem to, as outside-looking-in on the causes of social justice.