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Against Mass Society
from Green Anarchy #6
Many people desire an existence free of coercive
authority, where all are at liberty to shape their own lives as they
choose for the sake of their own personal needs, values, and desires. For
such freedom to be possible, no individual person can extend his or her
sphere of control upon the lives of others without their choosing. Many
who challenge oppression in the modern world strive toward their
conception of a “free society” by attempting to merely reform the most
powerful and coercive institutions of today, or to replace them with
“directly democratic” governments, community-controlled municipalities,
worker-owned industrial federations, etc. Those who prioritize the values
of personal autonomy or wild existence have reason to oppose and reject
all large-scale organizations and societies on the grounds that they
necessitate imperialism, slavery and hierarchy, regardless of the purposes
they may be designed for.
Humans are naturally sociable, but are selective about who they wish to
associate with. For companionship and mutual support, people naturally
develop relationships with those they share an affinity with. However,
only in recent times have people organized themselves in large-scale
groupings composed of strangers who share little of relevance in common
with each other. For over 99% of human history, humans lived within small
and egalitarian extended family arrangements, while drawing their
subsistence directly from the land. The foraging bands and shifting
horticultural communities of past and present are known to have enjoyed
extensive leisure time, and have rarely required more than 2-4 hours daily
on average to satisfy subsistence needs. Famine and war are extremely rare
in these societies. Additionally, physical health, dental quality and the
average lifespan of small-scale communities are markedly higher than that
of agricultural and early industrial societies. If leaders exist, they are
usually temporary, and hold no power beyond their ability to persuade.
While hunting/gathering and slash-and-burn gardening do indeed alter local
environments and are sometimes wasteful, they have proven themselves to be
ecologically stable adaptations. Foraging served humanity for 3 million
years, while horticulture has been relied upon by many societies in the
Amazon basin for approximately 9,000 years. The small-scale cultures that
remain today generally prefer their traditional way of life, and many are
currently waging impressive political resistance against corporations and
governments who wish to forcibly assimilate them so that their land and
labor may be exploited. People rarely enter mass organizations without
being coerced, as they lead to a decline of freedom and health.
The rise of civilization was made possible through compulsory mass
production. When certain societies began to prioritize agricultural
productivity as their highest value, they began to forcibly subject all
life within reach of their cities to that purpose. Communities of people
who wished to forage or garden on the land for subsistence would be
mercilessly slaughtered or enslaved, and the ecosystems they inhabited
would be converted to farmland to feed the cities. Those engaged in the
full-time facilitation of crop and animal production would reside in the
nearby countryside, while public officials, merchants, engineers, military
personnel, servants, and prisoners would inhabit the cities. The task of
creating a surplus to feed a growing specialist class caused the duties of
the food producers to intensify, while simultaneously creating the need
for more land, both for agriculture and for the extraction of materials
for construction and fuel. Humans were forced into servitude for the
benefit of their culture’s institutions of production as a prerequisite
for continued survival, and non-human life was either harnessed or
eliminated for the sake of completing human projects. To occupy land, one
would be mandated to continuously pay tribute in the form of a tax or
tithe (or and more recently, in the form of rent or mortgage), hence
requiring one to devote most of one’s time and energy to a politically
accepted mode of employment. Upon being required to satisfy the demands of
landholders or employers in exchange for personal space and commodities,
it becomes impossible for people to make their living through subsistence
hunting or gardening. Although small-scale self-sufficient communities
would resist or flee the intrusion of military and commercial forces,
those that failed would be assimilated. Subsequently, they would quickly
forget their cultural practices, causing them to become dependent upon
their oppressors for survival.
Capitalism is civilization’s current dominant manifestation. The
capitalist economy is controlled mainly by state-chartered corporations;
these organizations are owned by stockholders who are free to make
business decisions without being held personally accountable for the
consequences. Legally, corporations enjoy the status of individuals, and
thus an injured party can only target the assets of the company in a court
case, not the possessions or property of the individual shareholders.
Those employed by corporations are legally required to pursue profit above
all other possible concerns (e.g., ecological sustainability, worker
safety, community health, etc.), and can be fired, sued, or prosecuted if
they do otherwise. As a technologically advanced form of civilization,
capitalism encroaches upon and utilizes even greater territory, causing
further reduction of the space available for life to freely flourish for
its own purposes. Like civilization, capitalism conscripts both human and
non-human life into servitude if regarded as useful, and disposes of it if
regarded as otherwise. Under capitalism, most people spend the majority of
each conscious day (typically 8-12 hours) engaged in meaningless,
monotonous, regimented, and often physically and mentally injurious labor
to obtain basic necessities. Privileged individuals also tend to work
intensively and extensively, but typically to respond to social pressure
or to satisfy an addiction to commodified goods and services. Because of
the dullness, alienation, and disempowerment that characterizes the
average daily experience, our culture exhibits high rates of depression,
mental illness, suicide, drug addiction, and dysfunctional and abusive
relationships, along with numerous vicarious modes of existence (e.g.,
through television, movies, pornography, video games, etc).
Civilization, not capitalism per se, was the genesis of systemic
authoritarianism, compulsory servitude and social isolation. Hence, an
attack upon capitalism that fails to target civilization can never abolish
the institutionalized coercion that fuels society. To attempt to
collectivize industry for the purpose of democratizing it is to fail to
recognize that all large-scale organizations adopt a direction and form
that is independent of its members’ intentions. If an association is too
large for a face-to-face relationship between members to be possible, it
becomes necessary to delegate decision-making responsibilities to
representatives and specialists in order to achieve the organization’s
goals. Even if delegates are elected by consensus or by majority vote, the
group’s members cannot supervise every action of the delegates unless the
organization is small enough for everybody to monitor each other on a
regular basis. Delegated leaders or specialists cannot be held accountable
to mandates, nor can they be recalled for irresponsible or coercive
behavior, unless held subject to frequent supervision by a broad
cross-section of the group. Such is impossible in an economy based upon a
highly stratified division of labor where no given individual can focus
upon or even view the actions of the rest. Additionally, elected delegates
are allotted more time and resources to prepare and present a case for
their objectives, and are thus more likely to gain further power through
deception and manipulation. Even if the group at large determines all
policies and procedures (which is itself impossible when specialized
knowledge is required), and delegates are only assigned the duties of
enforcing them, they will still act independently when they disagree with
the rules and are confident that they can escape punishment for ignoring
them. Democracy is necessarily representative, not direct, when practiced
on a large scale - it is incapable of creating organization without
hierarchy and control.
Because mass organizations must increase production to maintain their
existence and to expand, they tend to imperialistically extend their scope
of influence. Because cities and industries rely upon outside inputs, they
aim to seize the surrounding areas for agricultural and industrial use,
rendering it inhospitable to both non-human ecosystems and self-sufficient
human communities. This area will expand in relation to any increase in
population or specialization of labor that the city experiences. One could
argue that industrial production could be maintained and yet scaled down,
leaving ecosystems and non-industrial peoples some room to co-exist.
Firstly, this proposal invites the question of why civilization should
determine its own boundaries, instead of the victims of its predation.
Secondly, there are no historical examples of production economies that do
not expand, mainly because they must expand after depleting the resources
available to them at any given time.
The structural complexity and hierarchy of civilization must be refused,
along with the political and ecological imperialism that it propagates
across the globe. Hierarchical institutions, territorial expansion, and
the mechanization of life are all required for the administration and
process of mass production to occur. Only small communities of
self-sufficient individuals can coexist with other beings, human or not,
without imposing their authority upon them.
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