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https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/7a9a113e9450d48a14c3453e40634d75.pdf
8b2ff607f479ab23bd89d5f3693348f9
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�The most notorious of these
(econstructions*are the social contract theories ^pf^ilg&bes, Rousseau,reccntly Rawls.
,
whereby individual members of a society fictitiously enter into an enforceable contract,
inescapable for themselves and all their descendants, setting up the state, primarily as a security
arrangement. In later versions4here is much negotiating and bargaining in contrived sifuations,
where humans lose many of their distinctive features and accoutrements (in a effort to ensure
some initial fairness).
A variant on contract theories, which justify some sort of state arrangements aj y they
arose in an ideal way, is retrojustification of the state as naturally arising, as a sort of super
insurance agency, from pre-state arrangements. For example, the minimal state evolves from a
competing set of state-like security agencies one of which somehow gains a monopoly, and is
retrojustified through insurance arguments (concerning risk and compensation).
Now modern states did not arise in any such "natural" or contractual way. Often they
we^^posed by conquest or through colonialisation, and with a few exceptions, using military
means^ra&*than Offering much sweetness and light and choic^Nor do the ideal constructions
(
or histories offer much justification for these resulting state power configurations. For the states
so delivered are very different from those most people presently toil under.
In any case, the arguments involved do not succeed. They are extraordinarily gappy by
contemporary logical standards, amd (hey depend upon some utterly implausible assumptions,
for example as to how vile conditions are in extra-state situations.
No doubt some of the gaps
Could be plugged by further, further contestable, assumptions, but such analytic work remains
,^V- Au
to be attempted and assessed. In fact it was ea^ realised that such arguments exhibit unlikely
and even paradoxical features. For example, in consenting to a state for security purposes,
'4
participants to the state contract proceed to establish an institution which is far more dangerous
to them than the power of others taken distribudvely. It would seem that those smart enough to
enter into a social contract for a state would be smart enough to foresee the problems of hiring a
monster, and to avoid the steer and stated along without it.
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'the state is necessary and that
' the state is superior to its absence, 1)ut w;, argument^as are presented depend upon a false
choice. For only two opdons are considered:
H, a horrible Hobbesian "state of nature" and
S, a well ordered(contructually-rea^e^Hobbesian state.
The argument, appealing to the vices of H and the virtues of S, has little trouble in concluding
* * S is better than H (or similarly, radial agents would select S over H, etc.)
The choice conveniently leaves out other options,
as anarchist ones.
Why should
anarchists want to line up with S? They can agree with proposition * *. They might also want
to assert that anarchistic arrangements Z are superior to S. Whereupon it is evident that neither
* nor * follows. For necessity all aggeRible alternatives have to be considered (by the
That has not been done. For superiority the superiority of S to Z and
semantics of
other altemadves has to be taken into account. That has not been done.
One alternative is Carter's -Society which produces 'the kind of individuals who have
strongly internalized values and can live cooperatively and freely without the threat of force ...'
(p-25).5
5
" Hobbe s
Bottom half: really a reranking.
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the arguments, ^even if somehow repaired, would not establish an institution with
anything approaching the power and complexity of the modem state. Arguments to the state
typically establish, only a rather minimal state, with certain protective and regulatory powers.
Such * minimal state, would not deliver many of the goods economists, still less socialists, have
come to expect of the state. The arguments certainly do not establish anything like the
oppressive paternal state with a panoply of powers that many citizens are forceably subject to,
powers states have accumulated by their own unjustified predatory activity. In this respect too,
arguments to the state resemble arguments to God. Deistic arguments characteristically establish
(insofar as they establish anything) only a quite minimal fAtzr w/hcA, a first cause, a most perfect
object, a universal designer, "clockmaker" or the like. They do nothing to establish many of the
powers or properties ascribed to God.
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There are great many problems, many of them getting worse rapidly. Though anarchist
arrangements played little part in producing these problems, many of them developing and
&
. .
—. getting out of central under free-enterprise capitalist and state-socialist arrangements, it is
sometimes outragously with an array of these problems, and fail/ as s...^.. Because it is unable
to do so. Why on earth should anarchism be presumed to do this?----- -,
One critic endowed with this level of 'gall' (one A. Werthei'per)
contends that anarchism is unable to successfully deal with four presently
existing world social conditions. These are: 1) that "the population of the
earth is (perhaps) too large, but increasing at a rapid rate with no prospect
for a serious reduction"; 2) that "in much of the world, basic human needs
are not being satisfied"; 3) that "the world's natural and human resources
are not evenly distributed ac%ross the globe"; and finally 4) that "the
present level of subsistence is based on a high level of social and
economic interdependence among various regions of the world and within
the regions themselves". In addition/?^., anarchism is unable to cope
with conflicts between individual self-interest and social needs,
particularly as relates to... defense (Clark p.142).
The short response is So what? Firstly, insofar as these conditions constitute problems
("condition " 3) is more a fact than a "problem"^ no political theory is coping successfully, only
bn all-conquering ideology would pretend to be able to cope. Democratic capitalism has had
(important isolated pockets excepted) little impact in limiting India's gross population; Maorist
socialism has done only a little better in China. Part of the problem in almost all such
overpopulated regions lies in getting the problem recognised as a problem. ^.Secondly,
prospects of success for anarchism are primarily regional, But a region can hardly be expected
to handle, rather than make limited contributions towards, world problems. Suppose, for
instance, Niue became (or reverted to) an anarchist society, a successful one locally. It would
be no detraction from its local success that it made no impact upon demilitarizing the USA or
halting the world's resource drain to thereto, or that its success was scarcely known aboutthere.
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00948
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The most notorious of these
(econstructions*are the social contract theories ^pf^ilg&bes, Rousseau,reccntly Rawls.
,
whereby individual members of a society fictitiously enter into an enforceable contract,
inescapable for themselves and all their descendants, setting up the state, primarily as a security
arrangement. In later versions4here is much negotiating and bargaining in contrived sifuations,
where humans lose many of their distinctive features and accoutrements (in a effort to ensure
some initial fairness).
A variant on contract theories, which justify some sort of state arrangements aj y they
arose in an ideal way, is retrojustification of the state as naturally arising, as a sort of super
insurance agency, from pre-state arrangements. For example, the minimal state evolves from a
competing set of state-like security agencies one of which somehow gains a monopoly, and is
retrojustified through insurance arguments (concerning risk and compensation).
Now modern states did not arise in any such "natural" or contractual way. Often they
we^^posed by conquest or through colonialisation, and with a few exceptions, using military
means^ra&*than Offering much sweetness and light and choic^Nor do the ideal constructions
(
or histories offer much justification for these resulting state power configurations. For the states
so delivered are very different from those most people presently toil under.
In any case, the arguments involved do not succeed. They are extraordinarily gappy by
contemporary logical standards, amd (hey depend upon some utterly implausible assumptions,
for example as to how vile conditions are in extra-state situations.
No doubt some of the gaps
Could be plugged by further, further contestable, assumptions, but such analytic work remains
,^V- Au
to be attempted and assessed. In fact it was ea^ realised that such arguments exhibit unlikely
and even paradoxical features. For example, in consenting to a state for security purposes,
'4
participants to the state contract proceed to establish an institution which is far more dangerous
to them than the power of others taken distribudvely. It would seem that those smart enough to
enter into a social contract for a state would be smart enough to foresee the problems of hiring a
monster, and to avoid the steer and stated along without it.
WA s
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____j ^<9C/<3/ co/trract arguments Ms^that-ofTiobbes areScon jobs.) ^uch argument, aim to
show
/
'the state is necessary and that
' the state is superior to its absence, 1)ut w;, argument^as are presented depend upon a false
choice. For only two opdons are considered:
H, a horrible Hobbesian "state of nature" and
S, a well ordered(contructually-rea^e^Hobbesian state.
The argument, appealing to the vices of H and the virtues of S, has little trouble in concluding
* * S is better than H (or similarly, radial agents would select S over H, etc.)
The choice conveniently leaves out other options,
as anarchist ones.
Why should
anarchists want to line up with S? They can agree with proposition * *. They might also want
to assert that anarchistic arrangements Z are superior to S. Whereupon it is evident that neither
* nor * follows. For necessity all aggeRible alternatives have to be considered (by the
That has not been done. For superiority the superiority of S to Z and
semantics of
other altemadves has to be taken into account. That has not been done.
One alternative is Carter's -Society which produces 'the kind of individuals who have
strongly internalized values and can live cooperatively and freely without the threat of force ...'
(p-25).5
5
" Hobbe s
Bottom half: really a reranking.
ryn<
\C
/)<te<ft^j A. /t"^**',
the arguments, ^even if somehow repaired, would not establish an institution with
anything approaching the power and complexity of the modem state. Arguments to the state
typically establish, only a rather minimal state, with certain protective and regulatory powers.
Such * minimal state, would not deliver many of the goods economists, still less socialists, have
come to expect of the state. The arguments certainly do not establish anything like the
oppressive paternal state with a panoply of powers that many citizens are forceably subject to,
powers states have accumulated by their own unjustified predatory activity. In this respect too,
arguments to the state resemble arguments to God. Deistic arguments characteristically establish
(insofar as they establish anything) only a quite minimal fAtzr w/hcA, a first cause, a most perfect
object, a universal designer, "clockmaker" or the like. They do nothing to establish many of the
powers or properties ascribed to God.
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^RORLEM& IN PRESENT WORLD SOCIAL AND-POLITICAL
There are great many problems, many of them getting worse rapidly. Though anarchist
arrangements played little part in producing these problems, many of them developing and
&
. .
—. getting out of central under free-enterprise capitalist and state-socialist arrangements, it is
sometimes outragously with an array of these problems, and fail/ as s...^.. Because it is unable
to do so. Why on earth should anarchism be presumed to do this?----- -,
One critic endowed with this level of 'gall' (one A. Werthei'per)
contends that anarchism is unable to successfully deal with four presently
existing world social conditions. These are: 1) that "the population of the
earth is (perhaps) too large, but increasing at a rapid rate with no prospect
for a serious reduction"; 2) that "in much of the world, basic human needs
are not being satisfied"; 3) that "the world's natural and human resources
are not evenly distributed ac%ross the globe"; and finally 4) that "the
present level of subsistence is based on a high level of social and
economic interdependence among various regions of the world and within
the regions themselves". In addition/?^., anarchism is unable to cope
with conflicts between individual self-interest and social needs,
particularly as relates to... defense (Clark p.142).
The short response is So what? Firstly, insofar as these conditions constitute problems
("condition " 3) is more a fact than a "problem"^ no political theory is coping successfully, only
bn all-conquering ideology would pretend to be able to cope. Democratic capitalism has had
(important isolated pockets excepted) little impact in limiting India's gross population; Maorist
socialism has done only a little better in China. Part of the problem in almost all such
overpopulated regions lies in getting the problem recognised as a problem. ^.Secondly,
prospects of success for anarchism are primarily regional, But a region can hardly be expected
to handle, rather than make limited contributions towards, world problems. Suppose, for
instance, Niue became (or reverted to) an anarchist society, a successful one locally. It would
be no detraction from its local success that it made no impact upon demilitarizing the USA or
halting the world's resource drain to thereto, or that its success was scarcely known aboutthere.
,,6
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Typescripts and handwritten chapters, with handwritten emendations and annotations. Title in collection finding aid: RS: Anarkism. Early Drafts + Finished Papers.
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Box 13: Green Projects in Progress
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1031
/&J
29.5.95
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental
problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not
be adequately addressed.
Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade,
impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why
the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More
immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep
enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More
thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question
entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread
problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly
recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper
paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers
lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow
band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more
satisfactory answer can be broached.
Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant
paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems,
and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the
problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers,
fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the
important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the
present investigation.
A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial
answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally
friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to
characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking:
philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental
news.
�2
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
of
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Broaching focal questions, and searching for deeper answers.
Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate
(liquidation of natural forest systems affords just one striking example). In modern times
humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system
degradation. Often in the past they would not have seen such transformation as mattering;
many remain so programmed, regarding transformation as increasing wealth (a presumption
encouraged under mainstream economics). More recently dominant human cultures have
developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through
need, tax impositions, pressure to engage in cash economies, and so on) and which weave
entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, councils, courts, educations, missions, and so
on).
Whence arises an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More
explicitly, why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their
environments, their own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a
long period, destroy their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps
in jeopardy through human enterprise^ For those eager to anticipate the main outcome, the
unremarkable answer to be eventually found to these focal questions is in essence this: because
too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, remain
committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigms, diverse paradigms but all
displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the
earth.
Parts of any answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental
impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring
through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies,
and so on.
While such answers are important, and often correct as far as they go in
combination, and while they may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are
nonetheless somewhat superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do
not explain why a community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or
why it is so resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes.
Less superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to
1
In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Contrary to other sources, such
as Marshall, humans are by no means the only biological species that proceed to degrade or
impoverish their own environments. Introduced “pest” species, such as rabbits and mynahs in
Antipodes, also do so; perhaps some botanical species contrive to as well.
�3
pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood
production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”, and market ideology
does economic practice, even so-called “environmental economics”.2
An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating
action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea
systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever.
Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect
termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are
opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an
elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes
of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are
also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social
paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent's
routing procedures.
Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding
Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also
correlatively give permission—as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new
topography on action space.
species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically
engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize. But paradigms do even more; they
facilitate explanation, above all they make understanding possible. In these regards, they may
work for better as well as for worse. Thus it is not a matter of getting rid of them, were this
even feasible, but of getting right paradigms.
The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures,
creeds, ideologies, pervasive myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a
technical sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of
humans are governed by background ideosystems.
It is in terms of these background
ideosystems that a great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments
can be explained, what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4
That explanation comes not however through a single paradigm, as has too often been
supposed in trying to answer focal questions, but through a bundle of somehow aligned
paradigms. Compare how a person may be represented, in social science, not through a single
2
3
4
For more on this style of explanation, see further RP.
It is not, going to be contended that religion—or a certain Abramic religion, such as
Christianity—is the main villain of the environmental piece. It is now well enough appreciated
that religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from ancient philosophies.
What will however, be suggested is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in
this regard.
Further, as logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to overlap.
How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or
superficial explanation, of them.
;
As well, positivistic theories show, though in an oversimplified way, how models, which
paradigms are, serve in explanation justification and understanding. See e.g. Hanson.
/.
/
�4
role or program, but by way of a set of interconnected roles. What has been regularly
overlooked in seeking deeper paradigmatic sources of environmental problems is systematic
plurality. In part this neglect of plurality can be explained through countervailing propensity to
seek single answers, and to try to locate uniqueness, where however causes and sources are
plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are
plural.
As to what is going on theoretically, there is a fairly complex story to be told, an easier
working image for which is appropriately ecological. That image focusses upon the structure of
a perhaps impenetrable thicket or tangle, such as a dense rainforest patch, or, itself simplified, a
fig or bamboo thicket. Below an emergent top layer representing the problems concerned,
those raised by the focal questions, there is the canopy layer, of interlinked proximate causes.
Below that again stands a plurality of stems, plural supports, which can be construed as
supporting sources, and below them again, ultimately sustaining the whole structure, a
multiplicity of intertwined roots, representing paradigmatic basics.
What is sought are ultimate sources, and roots, not immediate causes. The cause of local
pollution may be a factory that an agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be
the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for
such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea
structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and
sources. Nonetheless there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are “A
is source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated?
While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or
developments virtually none of it addresses the question of what is meant by the partially
buried metaphors of roots and sources . One striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful
introductory text, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism. Although this text presents itself
specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots
metaphor/which it turns. For that matter there is no direct account of what the roots of
environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental problems to which
environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much oblique material). It is
apparent also that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots metaphor, throwing it
into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to mean simply elements
(from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme of reconciliation of
freedom and authority’ (p.193). Such usage is unsound. Because rudiments of some idea make
an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may not have arrived at such an
idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where they did quite
independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or (genetic)
causal linkage into a mere temporal conjunction: post hoc, propter hoc.
Neither roots nor sources are mere beginnings or simply early occurrences; there have to
be continuing connections, with directional relationships such as supply or sustenance. But for
�5
roots and sources different connections and elaborations are to be expected. After all, the
metaphors, and likewise what they give rise to, are evidently different; more literally, plants
have roots, normally below them, springs and streams rise from sources, not roots, often above
them, and so on. Both differ from another popular basis-beginning buried metaphor, that of
foundations. Foundations bring in other features such as solidity, stability and comparative
permanency, while severing critical transmission features (for foundations may merely
passively support, not sustain supported superstructure).
So foundations, for all their
importance in epistemology and elsewhere iffoundationalism is correct, can be set aside.5
So far dictionaries do better than popular and philosophical texts. For instance, a short
listing for the figurature use of ‘root’ runs: ‘the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that
which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc.’ (Concise English Dictionary).
Such a two component account will serve nicely, for a start. However conjunctions should
substantially displace disjunctions, else roots could collapse to foundations or could collapse to
mere trace element supplements. Roots both give a basis and bottom binding into a substratum
and supply sustenance and means of development. Roots connections are richer as well as
more specific than sources, which may merely show from where an item comes or is obtained.
Further that place of derivation that may not be a basis or bottom, but for instance a source
book. With roots, like normal foundations, a basis or bottom is reached, whereas sources may
have further sources (hence the search for “deeper”, even ultimate, sources). Finally, root and
source connections carry explanations, at least genetic explanations—concerning how items got
to be what and the way they are—because roots and sources are characteristically that from
which items develop. Sometimes even more information, including a whole control system,
gets transmitted. As much happens where roots are paradigmatic, to return to that strange mix
of buried metaphors.
Reaching deeper roots is important. Without locating them, perhaps all the roots (should
they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly
locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at these, cutting them off or replacing them, will
also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. Such is the fate of many proposals concerning
environmental problems.
There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaborated—
including a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions,
and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal
questions. But we can be brief on these necessary preliminaries, because main details are
already in circulation and because they have been addressed elsewhere.
1. Problems and paradigms.
5
Despite a referee’s suggestion that discussion of “roots” ‘could be improved by a contrast of the
“roots” metaphor with the “foundations” metaphor, the fact is that we are decidedly not
concerned with foundations of environmental problems; to the contrary, we do not wish to see
them supported (if shoddily), established and so on. On the growing complexity and varying
interpretations offoundations, an emergent bog, see for instance Chisholm.
�6
Although these will be duly connected, with paradigms implicated in problems, they are
different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation.
la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions.
Definitions of ‘environmental problem’, and classifications of such problems, have already
been ventured.6 What problems emerge as environmental depends upon background value
framework. What counts as a major problem on deeper environmental perceptions may be but
a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such
indicator problems, ones here taken as serious problems, are those of
• sustaining biodiversity and
• maintaining significant wilderness.7
Even if the broad impact of human enterprise were sufficiently reduced to guarantee
comfortable survival of future humans, these desiderata may well not be guaranteed. There
would be outstanding problems.
In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are
(at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how
they might be resolved. Environmental impact equations, encountered in a more perceptive
classification of problems, reveal how they can be resolved. Namely, by altering relevant
impact parameters.
Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very
little spent, despite all the talk.8 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys
us, are not however satisfactory stopping points.
How is it, given so much scientific
information and expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially
destroying, their habitats.
To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on
offer or to be met in an extensive literative. As we will soon discover, most of these answers
are too simple; and taken, as intended, as comprehensive, they are wrong. Correct answers to
the questions are however important, because if we fail to get to bottom of the issues, there is
even less prospect of satisfactory action to turn around a difficult and deterioration situation^.
That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships, or how many devaluing
dollars uncaring humans can briefly stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of
habitats—these sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence)
derive from and are supported by particular ideologies.
lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on.
A paradigm can be explicated, technically, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.9
See for example GE, which duly details connections of the problems with impact equations and
proximate solutions.
As to the extent of the problem (even) in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The
Wildlands Project.
See e.g. The cost ofpast environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24.
See RP, where many environmentally relevant illustrations are given and explained.
ry)
�-
That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a
general system, i.e. semantical and other evaluations defined on an integrated relational
structure. Naturally it is required to be faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms,
scientific research programs, or whatever. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific
paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and action theory, the socio-political themes
and value judgements, is that of a social group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social
paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part
of the life-styles and life-forms of the community concerned. There are now many examples of
formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures;
from these, mostly sketchy formulations we can work back towards the underlying models.
The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a
complex universal10 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g.
metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen
that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists, historians and geographers have
repeated one another in vaguely discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures
under different categorisations: thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of
consciousness (Marx), of life (Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes (Conant), presuppositions
(Collingwood), discursive formations (Foucault), Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess),
traditions (MacIntyre), traditions of thought, cultures, perspectives, outlooks, ideologies,
programs,.... An ideology, for instance, in the nonderogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideasA
system, initially a propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative,
from which a paradigm can be discerned and elaborated.
Such models are typically presented in extremely truncated form, for example through a
tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example:
TABLE 1: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant
paradigm: an initial capsule formulation J1
Taoism
Deep Ecology
Dominant (Western)
Paradigm
Harmony with nature,
through Tao
Harmony with nature
Domination over nature
Nature valuable in itself;
“humanism” rejected
Natural environment
valued for itself
Nature a resource;
intrinsic value confined
to humans
It resembles a structured universal; compare e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex
ideas. Naturally there are differences between, for instance, traditions (of thought) which are
historically bound, cultures, which are geographically and otherewise connected, and conceptual
schemes (where a conceptual reduction is insinuated), but all are, at logical bottom, models of
paradigmatic sort.
This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly
expanded.
�8
Levelling of differences;
wide impartiality
Biocentric egalitarianism
Human supremacy
Supplies ample
Earth supplies limited
Ample resources with
substitutes
Following Tao-te
Spiritual goals,
especially self-realisation
Material economic growth
a predominant goal
Enlightenment
Self-realisation
Personal (material)
enrichment
Doing with enough
(recycling inappropriate)
Doing with enough;
recycling
Consumerism
Non-competitive lifestyle;
voluntary simplicity
Cooperative lifestyle
Competitive lifestyle
Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus
Decentralised/bioregional
/neighbourhood focus
Centralised/urban centred/
national focus
Hierarchy without
power structure;
anarchoid
Non-hierarchical/
grassroots democracy
Power structure
hierarchical
Limited technology
Appropriate technology
High technology
Considerable caution
Precautionary practice
Risking taking (verging
upon adventurism)
Paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; under an earlier analogy, red
and green lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations
and prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role
model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modern
ideologies, eschews deontic judgements.)
Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors'
worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world.
In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads (or rather
consciousnesses) have to be changed, not rolled.
2. Proposed answers to focal questions; a preliminary classification of inadequate answers
(7)
and suggested remedies.
Most of the extraordinary range of answers proposed supply but a single source, and are
accordingly defective for this reason, usually among other reasons. Indeed it is not much of an
exaggeration to assert that virtually everything proposed, in a now extensive literature, is
wrong.
TABLE 2. Main tabulation of answers and remedies, in three stages.
D. Defective
practice answers
Source
Remedy
Objections
7
�9
DI.
Ignorance
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2.
Unintended consequences
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2a
Faulty technique,
or technology
Repairs
Repairs already
made
D3
Deviation (from
theory, etc.)
Education (for failure
to limit deviance)
Adherence
D4.
Systemic lock-in
(through poverty,
ensnarement in
market forces, etc.)
Trap removal
a. Explains
only certain
cases, and
b. Due to
paradigmatic
features
D5.
Insensitivity or
insensibility
Problem
apprised
Remedy tried;
background
ideological
blockage
D3a
a. Deviation
uneliminable, or
b. Adherence
no remedy
When pursued, objections like those noted either force defective practice out as unsatisfactory,
or push it back to paradigmatic features.
Source single paradigm
Remedies proposed (among others)
Pl.
Christianity (mainstream
Catholicism)
Scientific enlightenment, or
alternative (Eastern) religion
Pla.
Protestantism and its ethic
P2.
P2a
Cartesianism
Dualism
P. Defective paradigm
answers
Monism
Anti-dualism
Modified holism
P2b
Mechanism
Substance metaphysics
P3.
P3a Possessive individualism
P3aa Personalism
Organicism
Process metaphysics
Non-reductionism
Transpersonalism
P4.
Capitalism
Socialism
P5.
Industrialism
Pre-industrialism (romanticism)
Post-industrialism
P5a Technocratic bureaucracy
P5aa. Transnational business
P6.
Enlightenment
Anti-enlightenment
Anti-materialism
�10
P6a
Materialism
Spiritualism
P8.
P9
Patriarchy, andocentrism
Human domination
of humans
Feminism
Anti-domination
(anti-hierarchy)
Observe that what some have proposed as remedies, others have been as sources; remedies
proposed tend to share defects of sources.
PS. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject
specific or partial) include:
Source
Platonism
Typical remedy suggested
New metaphysics
Leibnitzianism
New metaphysics
Kantianism
Anglo-American philosophy12
Consequentialism
Utilitarianism
Economism (economic imperialism as
Alternative ethics
Continental philosophy
New social science; ethics
contrasted with straight economic roots)
Contractarianism
Domination transfer
Consequentialism
Domination removal
Human nature (esp. aggression)
Adolescencism
Maturation
Infantilism (from Freudian physchology)
Maturation
And so on.
A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in
dominant Western thought. Then many—perhaps it is not excessive to say most—entries in
that list will have been nominated, likely separately, by someone as the source of the problems.
That list accordingly continues (even including, sometimes, entries like Taylorism, i.e.
reorganisation of industry along lines popularized by Taylor), but what is included is
representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other
allegedly nonparadigmatic answers however, varying from interesting to crazy, that should also
be taken into some account, for instance answers like Shepard's challenging answer. Although
Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false
cast. Strange answers include pushing it all back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard,
but also Fox, and Ehrlich and other gurus with insistence upon ‘mental maladaptation’).
The mainstream form, analytic philosophy, appears to comprise empiricism-cum-utilitarianism
in Britain, tempered in America by pragmatism.
/s
'
�11
Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick
—in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, along psychological
routes, that are to be resisted. One slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not
physically usually, it must be mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad. But
the sources of mental sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide
continues to: what we have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No
doubt there is something toyheme that dominant societies, USA especially (which now
influences so much in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive
adolescence.13 No doubt, too, that maturity—but an environmental maturity—is desirable,
even mandatory.
Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put
into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society,
to spend their money through tourism, on new compact housing, in those most wasteful of
modem institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth.
3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources.
Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat
perfunctory, tending here and there towards notes. Of course there are excuses. While whole
theses could be spun out on several of these topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a
prime objective here is different from usual: neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to
partially implicate most items cited in the main tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of
the usually accredited sources:
• Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems,
‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and
specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over
nature’, was repeated in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.14
One helpful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows:
Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity
has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological
crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology
developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the
scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the
democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to
produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development,
however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to
nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns ,
namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the
animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and
destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress,
13
14
It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as
preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in the Appendix .
White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian
apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole
area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall,
snowed.
�12
a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action,
not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an
extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation
worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will.
Because today's attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it
‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.15
What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was
the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse
the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or
isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some
such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable
development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more
sensitive and telling criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer
for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.16 Similar responses are
apposite for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy.
Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should
undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that
philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ...
responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection
today.... Religion ... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played
a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in
Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.17
• Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1)
prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the
aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of
reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not
impossible.18
More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course
accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies.
• Cartesian philosophy. The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes
15
16
17
18
Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of
Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue
continuejto be debated; for an older survey of traditions see Passmore, for a challenging recent
contribution to the debate see Callicott.
Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms: Ask,
not merely what they say, but what they do, and would do. For an outline of just such a telling
criticism of mainstream Christianity, see Singer esp. pp.265-8.
Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to
preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced
back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help
expose.
Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really,
while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted. There is a
much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of
the very different roles and impacts of Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with
his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans, and of neo-Platonists. For a modest
beginning, see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and
Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands.
[S
�13
denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes,
upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of
the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.19
While Descartes was undoubtedly
extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is
accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such.
Evidently it substantially overlaps other modern ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment,
widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems.
• Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others
(some potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is
presented is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly
exhibiting a heavy Heideggerean influence:
The roots of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For
metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode
(sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the
absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present,
the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability
of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a
“natural resource” —and people become “human resources”. The sources of
anthropocentricism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can
all be traced back to metaphysics.
Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no
going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness
overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and
metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering,
exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as
vestigial traSces. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native
healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system.
We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the
Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms
of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually
ensconced technocratic rationalism.20
An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining
b
rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics,
characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions
or mere Western seeds.
Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western
metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or
plenum metaphysics.21
For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising
Drengson’s exposition, see RP, table 5. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the
environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely
maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in
keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy.
Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘rejecting] in its entirety
mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmental]
problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies’ (thus Bellett). This
charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep
Ecology (now included in UTD).
For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic
relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews.
�14
• Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’
(e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those
of modern mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and
theistic scholastic hang-overs).
• Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social
evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were
revealed), can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism
for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a
matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the
theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to
subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a
means of production.22
But, as observed, a main embedded theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the
idea of nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ‘Now if nature
makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all
animals for the sake of man’.23 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species.
The theme was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in
shallower Stoicism.
But the subjection of everything to utility, no doubt a relative of
capitalism, appears to be a distinctively modem contribution.
•
Modern industrial society or industrialism. Modern industrialism (‘the smooth
superhighway of industrial progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme:
‘... the root causes of the present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial
paradigm’.24 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of
modern industrial society’25 Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found
in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed’26 The
popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial
technology can without any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as,
It should not be overlooked that some of those who nominated metaphysics meant thereby
paradigm or paradigms or an equivalent. But what they may gain thereby in verisimilitude, they
tend to lose in confusion.
Grundrisse p.409f.
Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further
Hargrove p.25.
M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature’”, a paper
presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a
managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and
more broadly the environment itself’ (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip
side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the
evident problem.
Gabriel ibid. Similarly industrialism is assumed as the source throughout McLaughlin (the
theme pervades his book) and as the root of the modern problem in Marshall (p.5ff). While
seriously astray as to roots and sources, those critical of industrialism have a significant case.
For, as well as functioning as a major inflator of intact problems, industrialism has helped
generate side problems of its own, as with new types of chemical and nuclear pollution.
Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2.
�15
less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes,
what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice.
• Economic growth or economic development. ‘According to a common and currently
influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots
One
widespread misconception is that economic growth is the source of environmental problems.
The assumption is astray for several reasons. For one, growth is at best a proximate cause,
itself in need of explanation. More importantly, growth may occur in sectors of an economy,
such as information technology or religious or artistic services, which have little or no
environmental impact. Also conversely, an economy which fails to grow, but is desperately
trying to survive, may exact heavy environmental costs (e.g. the forests are clear-felled to pay
for continuing employment). No doubt though, stock economic growth is intimately intricated
with proximate causes of environmental problems (through environmental impact equations).
Similar considerations tell against the familiar proposition that the source of the problems
is economic development itself or, what is different, the entrenched model of economic
development. While it is no doubt correct, and important to emphasize, that ‘the Western
model of economic development, far from being the solution to’ environmental and social
problems, is ‘actually fuelling’ them, it is not the sole or distinguished source of the
problems.27
28
• Human nature. "... the roots of our ecologic crisis reach beyond the variable topsoil of
intellectual history, whether Eastern or Western, into the common substrata of human nature
itself.’29 What such “nature” amounts to and how it functions as roots, both commonly left
obscure, turns upon background hypotheses as to the nature of this nature. Different false
27
28
29
Goodin, p.573. While not contesting the theme, Goodin does continue: ‘the problem is not just
that there are too many people, or even that they are enjoying too high a standard of living. All
that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental
despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives as they pursue their various goals’
(p.573). That too will be seen to be seriously astray, though it contains large grains of truth; it
presumes unchanged the prevailing economically-skewed dominant social paradigm.
Both socialists and other opponents of capitalistic conspicuous consumption tend to select the
living-standard component of the main environmental impact equation as the source of the crisis.
Thus Cuban luminary, Castro, in a recent stunningly succinct speech: ‘Less luxury, less wastage.
Otherwise it will be too late’.
Quoting claims of E. Goldsmith, advanced in an interview in Forest and Bird 273 (August 1994)
pp.46-7. The need for emphasis will persist while locally prominent political figures like the
present Prime Minister of Australia travel around the Earth with the hackneyed message that
only economic growth will solve environmental problems.
Seeing growth as the problem affords only a superficial analysis, like that of pointing to
overconsumption with which growth is interconnected. As deeper inquiry reveals, underlying
both issues of economic growth, employment and consumption, and alternatives taken, are
models, paradigmatic models. Growth is but a means to objectives assumed in the dominant
paradigm. A deeper analysis shows too why more growth will not ultimately solve relevant
problems.
Callicott and Ames, ‘Epilogue: On the relation of idea and action’ p.282 (see also p.281), in a
desperate and apparently unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the claim (repeatedly advanced in
their book) that Asian traditions of thought can make a significant contribution to much
improved treatment for natural and built environments, with ‘the deplorable environmental
conditions prevailing in contemporary Asia’ (p.280).
�16
hypotheses, that humans are invariably driven by aggression, sexual or reproductive
imperatives, economic needs, yield different defective accounts. 0
• Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of
women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.30
‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.31 One sample linkage statement runs as
follows:
... there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both
historically and ... presently] and ... this?the same energy that, turned against
the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly destroying
the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that consume the
Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches and I believe
that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless we
simultaneously address our gender issues.32
A 15
Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes:
• Human domination and exploitation of humans'.
It is an extraordinarily widespread
assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or
creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or
classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the
solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety
of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over
from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or
being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from
Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend-setters, including Marcuse, Illich, Passmore,
Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social
ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from
deep-seated social problems’.33 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a
prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus:
all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an
extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and
Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology.
Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships
—domination of nature thus following from human domination’. ... It follows
that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in
small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a
30
31
32
33
/n
Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a
more critical assessment see the sequel to GE.
See Seed, quoted in the sequel to GE; also Salleh (e.g. in EP3).
John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91.
Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to
transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often
reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along
with unrelational property claims.
Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But
he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination
of nature always results from humans’ domination of other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346).
The text EP3 contains a sizeable section providing a useful introduction to social ecology.
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harmonious man-nature relationship.34
Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of
dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the
dominated.
• A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected
ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.35
• Modern educational systems'. Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems.
Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in
educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for
instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as,
so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.36 Therewith we are
transported full circle back to defective practice answers.
4. A selective commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers
A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the
main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two
stages reflecting a major division in the main tabulation.
ad D. Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in
possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them.
(Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical
theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.)
Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time,
perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed
off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While “consequences” or outputs such
things as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying
‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and
unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste
watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of
their industry. That should now be a rotten joke, itself with serious consequences.
Accordingly new ecological economics insists that we dig deeper—without however
exceeding economic settings or a shifting dominant paradigm—to discover why markets may
foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.37 Where they
Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given
humans could so socially organise, that they could settle into harmonious small-scale
communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments.
Such a proposition obtains a much fuller elaboration within Plumwood. In an interesting way,
such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion reached below that a set of defective
paradigms ifl at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by a set
of them in each case, somewhat as numbers can be represented in binary terms, generated from a
basic two-oneness duality.
Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see GE
Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24.
�18
usually arrive, travelling within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics
before ecological, at better regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of
plans and incentives, controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do
not reach very deep, or tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources.
But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard
economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure,
environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries; namely
that true, or authentic, Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been,
environmental consequences would be little better, given the heavy industrial commitments and
environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.38 Differently, enlightenment liberals like
Passmore try to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in
mainstream theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence
to these “well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains
of its wilderness and remarkable diversity.
Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting
(collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be
correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts
like Topsoil and Civilization and Agricultural Origins and Dispersal) of degradation of prime
agricultural lands by imposed farming practices, where at least early on (before damage became
visible) ignorance and unintended consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most
historical cases we do not have enough information to be able to say with much assurance that
agriculture proceeded until effective collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because
practices were locked-in in one way or another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know
more about present agricultural practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia,
concerning both irrigated and dry-land agriculture. Many of these practices are undoubtedly
sharply degrading lands, and the consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend
ignorance, are sufficiently appreciated. But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a
sweep of subsidies or concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim
that they are locked into bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their
control such as financial pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the
need to make a living. But some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make
no such claims or excuses, nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place,
and similar. Their obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not
deviation from theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm.
ad P and PS. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed,
38
It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The
Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and
transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have their property
confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who
made those points, also observed).
�19
business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few broad themes:
1.
Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental
impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps
social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example,
substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same
might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently
made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and
so forth).
To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not,
on its own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges, link
principles, from metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy
operates.
Thus subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of
environmental problems which take them as derived from metaphysics of one sort or another.
Such a criticism does not however extend to more comprehensive paradigms which connect
appropriately with practice.
2.
While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right
circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on39)—none are
necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different
paradigms;
for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms,
Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism.
At this stage in dialectic, green history and the like—bio-history, eco-history, and related
virtual histories (concerning what would have happened)—enter decisively. For instance,
Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and ecological
fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also conveniently
documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological degradation or
collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms.40 An important example (much less
speculative than some of the numerous other examples because of a comparative wealth of
primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under
Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples—Polynesian, Mayan, Sumerian and
others—also reveal is that no very high level of technology is needed to inflict serious
environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological project (with nothing directly to
do with basic needs) will suffice.
Other cultures did wreak, or would (given the technology and numbers, both of which
While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly
environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to
the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to
have the means, and so on.
Ponting’s valuable/ though rather simple/ book is but one of several bleak texts. Another is
Hillel’s, and there is a succession of earlier classic works by geographers: Lowdermilk, Dale,
Mallory, Thorp and others. In general however, geographers and historian do not dig deep
enough, to paradigmatic roots.
/3
�20
some were gaining) have wreaked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination,
megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established, and expanding, before (or effectively
outside) the rise of modern Western paradigms, or in extensive regions outside their influence.
3.
The list of paradigms, as so far assembled, is substantially Western in orientation.
Moreover environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources — wrongly. For non
Western paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the
technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness
again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism
incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese
chauvinism).41 Or consider Islam, with its reach across the Middle East and beyond.
The main tabulation (of table 2) should accordingly be extended to take due account of
non-Western paradigms, including for example:
Other Abrahamic religions
Islam
Judaism
Confucianism
Shintoism
Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island.
What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There
is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their
intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts
are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic.
Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in, or
encouraged by, religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent.
4.
All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are
less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be
encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms.
While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often
they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often
criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements,
such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines
criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism—though Descartes, for all
his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.)
Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modern rationalism
and much else.
5.
A general method of showing the inadequacy of all the paradigmatic answers tabulated,
and others, is familiar from logical theory: namely, the method of counter-models, of which the
41
Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large
fauna worldwide.
�21
counter-examples (under head 2) provide special cases. A presently important illustration
concerns patriarchy as a source of environmental woes. Counter-models reveal the substantial
independence of mistreatment of women and mistreatment of environmental items such as
animals or ecosystems. One the one hand, it is easy to envisage situations, not far from the
actual in some regions, where the lot of women is significantly improved, but the lot of
environmental items is not (e.g. men change their behaviour and attitudes relevantly as regards
women, are forced to change, or whatever); just such an outcome would accord with persisting
human chauvinism. More relevant, on the other, there are situations where the position of
environmental items is much improved, for instance under much more careful husbandry, but
that of women is not, for one reason or another (e.g. they remain other, different, second class,
etc.). It follows from the elaboration of such counter-models that patriarchy is not the source of
environmental problems, as there can be continuing patriarchy without the present range of
environmental problems (problems can dry up while patriarchy continues to operate). There is
no need to deny that patriarchy as (contingently) practised, with its sweeping supremacist
attitudes which make no due distinctions between inferior items, may be a major contributing
factor in present problems. Such slack contingent conjunctions do not convert to roots or
sources. Similarly with other social roots of environmental problems, for instance with human
domination of humans as^supposed source of all problems.
5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation.
Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one
paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious
paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or
sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in
requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite
circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within
that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences—in
calibre, in environmental friendliness. For example, Cartesianism which regards animals as
mere automata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life
forms and their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience.
The family is not exclusively Western, nor somewhat more plausibly Northern, even
though as a result of forces like migration, colonialism and cultural imperialism, paradigms of
these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and of third world
communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally
and regionally.
Nor are major inflators of environmental problems essentially Western. Industrialization
and technological advance—neither intrinsically Western, both manifested in varying degrees
in other cultures—are, without much doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from
rather localised ones, damaging for instance islands and river catchments, to grander and even
global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems, generating thereby spin
�22
off problems as well. But, once again, they are not deeper sources, but only means. (For again
push questioning deeper, and ask: why bother or persist with industry, the effort and dirt and
mess involved?) Nor, however, did they run on their own, nor do they continue on their own.
Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.42 They evolved
primarily in the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could
have occurred, and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as
state socialism or post-imperial Confucianism. Now however these engines have been rendered
more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transformed to run
in less favourable settings.
Thus inflation can escalate from a multiplicity of prepared sources, thereby intensifying
problems and spreading them to larger regions. The intensification and spread is much
facilitated by the joint transfer of technology, industry and coupled problems from region to
region. As a result of transfer, inflation can occur within settings of quite different paradigms.
Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into
history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other
enthusiastic cultures. For instance, the West could in theory collapse through protracted war,
through pollution and congestion, or climate change and agriculture failure (there are many
unexcludible routes to catastrophic decline, outlined in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could
differentially impact on the West). Degradation would now continue however; there would be
only temporary respite from environmental crises.
While most of the conspicuous problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary
environmental crises, are accelerated by—what connects them—contemporary industrial
society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. However, too many of the
other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by
products or similar of the main generators. Thus, in the illustration, the peasants displaced by
agribusiness or absentee wealth-holders, arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the
forests, and often wrecked this damage using industrial machinery.
An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types
of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant
cultures, Western or non-Western. A friendly paradigm would not only ensure much more
selectivity and care, but would sharply limit impacts of damaging technology and
industrialization. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack
Lacking favourable ideological settings, earlier technological “break throughs” were not duly
developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, dyes, gunpowder, etc. Western cultures did not
enjoy a monopoly upon technology powerful enough, when massed, to induce global crises.
The picture of development of large-scale environmental problems being sketched bears
superficial resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where, to
achieve presumed size, a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by huge inflationary
phenomena. Naturally the resemblance has limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not
terrestrially replicable in the way industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf,
pollution problems and all, with a big price tag).
�Ti
sophisticated contemporary elaboration and they may be flawed in other respects. Examples of
more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems
and crises conditions, include those now tabulated:
TABLE 3: Examples, some flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms.
Oriental ideologies:
Taoism (classical)
recessive traditions,
now with tiny
followings and little
political influence.
Jainism
Indigenous cultures:
Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda)
Amazonian Indians.
Western philosophies:
under certain
favourable
interpretations
old
Stoicism
new
Deep-green theories, such as deep ecology.
Given the remoteness of most of these examples from predominant contemporary life, and
difficulties with their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new
paradigms need to be worked out soon. Much much more intellectual effort should be devoted
to such enterprise.
One upshot, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two families, the second
large: environmentally friendly, and unfriendly. No doubt there is a small fuzzy residue class43
lying between major unfriendly and friendly divisions.
Environmental friendliness means more or less what it appear, to mean, what a functional
break-down into components would yield: friendliness in approaches, practices and attitudes, to
environments, especially more natural environments, with friendliness including, as usual,
goodwill and kindliness towards (and substantially displaceable by these). As indicated, such
friendliness concerns not merely actual practices, but also attitudes held, as reflected in what
would be done in certain other sorts of situations.
Certainly a culture that manifests
unfriendliness, as a sweep of Northern cultures do, is unfriendly. But, as well, various
“primitive” cultures, whose practices are not hostile, for example because they lack means or
resources, energy or health, may nonetheless be unfriendly; for instance all members of a
culture hold thoroughly negative attiudes which they are in fact unable to put into practice.
It is not too difficult to explain in outline which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or
religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse.
In logical terms neither, perhaps as well as another residue class, both.
Certain family
�24
characteristics, of unfriendly paradigms are worth elaborating:
* Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism.
More
generally, direct impact is illustrated by any idea-system which attributes little or no value to
natural items, and typically much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite)
projects, and whose themes are linked to practice. So it is with Confucianism, which is entirely
human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as his goal
the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’44 The outside
world, the natural environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only instrumentally,
to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex machinery.
‘The exception is [mind, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation language: this
alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to assert a
fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts’”.45 The remaining world, the
natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral significance.
It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose to confer or
project upon it, typically little or none.
Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans has no thoughts,
purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could hardly matter what happens to it.
It could be regarded and treated, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans.
Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive, by one route or another from
Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went
further than some others. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were ‘aimed at
making men the masters and possessors of nature’.46
Untowards effects result through linkage of ideological theory to heavy practice. Link
principles, reminiscent of “correspondence rules” used in explaining applications of scientific
theories and normally included in comprehensive paradigms, connect the theoretic level to
practice, they also serve to activate otherwise inoperative or uncoupled paradigms. Such
principles may take the form of directives; familiar examples include maximization directives,
such as maximize personal fun, tribal utility, national interest, or state GNP.
* Indirect combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which yield satisfaction
of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive
impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz’s
fragmentary ideology. Leibnitz was substantially committed to all of human population
growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption,47 in short, to
Reese p.102 For much more on the geographic impact of Confucianism, as also compared with
other (Asian) paradigms, see Tuan’s investigations.
Cottingham p.15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument (reported in Cottingham) to this
divide is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no
such status divides—just as flamboyant forms of deep ecology maintain.
See Descartes, Discourse VI.
For requisite details, see Aiton. The case against Leibnitzianism is developed in a sequel.
�25
precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts
upon environments. However neutral Leibnitz’s metaphysics, his monadology, may have
been—by contrast with Plato’s or Descartes’, both of which explicitly devalued much or all of
the natural world—Leibnitz’s wider ideology is linked indirectly, through impact equations, to
damaging effects.
Some imagine that this oblique formalistic detailing, through direct and indirect classes,
can be simply cut through, retaining plurality and so forth. Surely environmental friendliness is
nothing but environmental depth? While the suggestion points in the right sort of direction (for
the relevant sort of depth) it too is astray.48 Depth is neither necessary nor sufficient. Take the
move plausible sufficiency half, plausible because depth helps, no end. Nonetheless depth can
be achieved in macho ways (as ecofeminism has emphasized against deep ecology), ways
which may not be altogether friendly to less favoured species, groups or habitats. For example,
depth can be satisfied through due selection and support of some super species and magnificent
habitats—requisite environmental impartiality (and reflected justice), critical for friendliness as
intended, being neglected.49 Still less in depth necessary. For kindliness can, both in principle
and in practice, extend far beyond humans, still ranked top, to much more of “creation”. Such
extensive kindliness, observed in some humanistic humans, appears to be exhibited in some
sects and tribes not committed to depth, and it could well be considerably more widespread,
under changed but not deepened ideological conditions. Naturally, however, deepening would
afford an obvious, and excellent, reason for change.
As friendliness is not tantamount to depth, nor similarly is a prime part of what explains
depth, recognition of intrinsic value in nature outside humans. Some animal liberationists who
display high regard for creatures with capacity to suffer, show little goodwill towards forests
largely unpopulated by such creatures. Conversely, though shifting ground, an environmentally
friendly society may hold that value is but an anthropocentric construct, merely projected onto a
basically neutral world.
All the same, aspects of depth are normally reliable indicators of environmental
sensitivity and friendliness, and inversely, aspects of shallowness (as investigated in authentic
deep ecology) marks of unfriendliness.
Shallowness will work out satisfactorily
environmentally only with what is now rare (given ideological dominance), a right mix of
humans; and its any longer working widely is implausible. These reliable marks include such
familiar features as
* short-term framework.
* devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting
As to the relevant sort of depth, see GE. Other accounts of depth are also preferred in deep
ecology, some of which relate to the present exercise. In particular deep questioning should lead
to paradigmatic roots, to Naess’s “total views”.
Herein lies another reason why something like biospecies egalitarianism is essential in deep
ecology; such a requirement needs, not dilution away (as has happened in American and
transpersonal deep ecology), but rectification.
�26
human chauvinism); and, as a corollary of heavy devaluation,
* entitlement to domination, dominion over nature;
* appropriation of nature, its conversion to property.
* maximization assumptions concerning personal or societal aggrandizement, utility and size,
coupled with grand projects.
* technofix approach to environmental problems.
Friendly paradigms will tend to invert these features. An environmentally friendly
paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as the following
samples:
* an end to degrading primary production; instead ecological forestry and ecological
agriculture will come to prevail.
* a strong selectivity regarding industrialization, which weeds out damaging forms.
* a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural
environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new
mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep
of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of unfriendly technology can go a very long way.
As unfriendly paradigms are decidedly plural, so likewise are answers to questions as to
why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Some of
the diverse answers match answers already encountered in the main tabulation. Reasons are
psychological, social and cultural (with a familiar circularity here encountered), and include
considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have
always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed;
because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought;
because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on.
A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because, in one way or
another, most agents are bound to—locked into, committed to, captured by, or just passively go
along with—environmentally unfriendly paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the
rest of environments does not matter, or matter enough.
6. Glimpsing an entertaining corollary: an unfavourable report upon dominant
philosophy.
It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to
Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms.
Stripped of metaphor, there are
environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet. In an
environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the
humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to
satisfactory environmental outcomes. Predominant philosophy, not just Western philosophy,
has by and large been bad environmental news.
It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental
practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to
�27
such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon
enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly
under-estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even
govern action and practice, especially reflective and rational action. The substantial point is not
therefore removed through any alleged practical impotence of philosophy.
Mainstream philosophy has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, dominant
unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be
trashed, as even defective enterprises or evil projects may include decent part or worthwhile
features; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping
there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be
made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness),
there are brash new alternatives such as authentic deep ecology, and there are recessive
paradigms and neglected traditions to peruse for suggestions, for inspiration, and perhaps to
rehabilitate.
Richard Sylvan*
APPENDIX. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions.
A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard’s
intriguing books. In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the
stock responses to focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in
earlier work), such as lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political
inertia, change to agriculture and settlement,50... . He would (and should, for his eliminative
argument) have also dismissed industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on.
More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’—
similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human
behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism.
But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feel
no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as
accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended
target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an
ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the
An earlier, even rougher version of this article was presented at the Environmental Paradigms
Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 1993. It would not have been written
without its solicitation for the Conference; also it might well not been thought through in
fashionable but confining and perhaps misleading paradigmatic terms.
A subsequent working draft has benefitted, slightly, from comments from very unimpressed
reviewers. Thanks certainly to Holmes Rolston for helpful comments.
No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement zs simplistic:
that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on
to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and
towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from
factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes.
�28
facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of
causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through
an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example
of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation
through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made
and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it
acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here.
Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often
hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making
information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of
like together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing
conservation, and so on.
Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question
that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and
solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as
causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps
to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal
explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians,
representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial
societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so
redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots51) that having certain
ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”.
So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of
childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive
attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic
dislocations at the root of modern society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the
centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas
originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15).
Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages,
Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of th'e alleged sickness.52 It supposedly
arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is
manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destructive
adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and
For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us.
Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing)
practices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not
leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus,
Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests
rather than masters' (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy.
‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the
third page of the main text.
�29
person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There
is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile
culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority
figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and
vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly
satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole
social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.53 A superior explanation to widespread
individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial humans
are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies, without
coming to know or properly experience alternatives.
The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound,
resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal
growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.54 They are not
exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature
mixed communities.
Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be
decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments
and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health.
Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness ‘small-
group, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings. ... there is the rub—... for us,
now, that world no longer exists’ (p. 14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no
longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural
surrounding can even now be restored.
In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a
certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading
to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about
for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing
erosion of life-support systems.
REFERENCES
E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985.
53
54
A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological
terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the
following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument:
‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of
' society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the
hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to
domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery’ (p. 16).
But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or
between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms.
Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep
ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in
‘taking mothers off to work’ (p. 15)!
�30
R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics
13(1991) 127-137.
R. Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of Georgia Press,
Athens, 1991.
A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental
Questions Papers, No.2, CRES, Australian National University, 1990.
J.B. Callicott and R.T. Ames (eds), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, SUNY Press,
Albany NY., 1989.
J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ ReVision 12(3) (1990) 31-41.
R. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, Harvester Press, Sussex, 1982.
J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.
C. Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, Revised edition by V.G. Carter, University of Oklahama
Press, Norman, 1974.
A Dobson (ed.), Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991?
A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10.
R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992.
W. Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology, Shambala, Boston, 1990.
A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bungendore, 1993.
C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967.
R. Goodin, ‘Selling environmental indulgences’, Kyklos 47(1994) 573-596.
N. R. Hanson, Patterns of discovery: an inquiry into conceptual foundations of science,
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E. C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989.
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K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy, Harmondsworth,
England 1973.
F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991.
A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology , SUNY Press, Albany
N. Y., 1993.
P. Marshall, Nature’s Web, in two editions, Simon and Schuster, 1992 and 1993.
A. Naess and D. Rothenberg, Ecology, community and Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1989.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974.
D. Pearce and others, Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989.
D. Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H.
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�31
R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion
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�
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/&J
29.5.95
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental
problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not
be adequately addressed.
Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade,
impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why
the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More
immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep
enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More
thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question
entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread
problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly
recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper
paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers
lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow
band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more
satisfactory answer can be broached.
Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant
paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems,
and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the
problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers,
fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the
important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the
present investigation.
A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial
answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally
friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to
characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking:
philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental
news.
2
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
of
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Broaching focal questions, and searching for deeper answers.
Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate
(liquidation of natural forest systems affords just one striking example). In modern times
humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system
degradation. Often in the past they would not have seen such transformation as mattering;
many remain so programmed, regarding transformation as increasing wealth (a presumption
encouraged under mainstream economics). More recently dominant human cultures have
developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through
need, tax impositions, pressure to engage in cash economies, and so on) and which weave
entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, councils, courts, educations, missions, and so
on).
Whence arises an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More
explicitly, why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their
environments, their own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a
long period, destroy their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps
in jeopardy through human enterprise^ For those eager to anticipate the main outcome, the
unremarkable answer to be eventually found to these focal questions is in essence this: because
too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, remain
committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigms, diverse paradigms but all
displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the
earth.
Parts of any answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental
impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring
through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies,
and so on.
While such answers are important, and often correct as far as they go in
combination, and while they may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are
nonetheless somewhat superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do
not explain why a community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or
why it is so resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes.
Less superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to
1
In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Contrary to other sources, such
as Marshall, humans are by no means the only biological species that proceed to degrade or
impoverish their own environments. Introduced “pest” species, such as rabbits and mynahs in
Antipodes, also do so; perhaps some botanical species contrive to as well.
3
pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood
production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”, and market ideology
does economic practice, even so-called “environmental economics”.2
An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating
action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea
systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever.
Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect
termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are
opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an
elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes
of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are
also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social
paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent's
routing procedures.
Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding
Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also
correlatively give permission—as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new
topography on action space.
species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically
engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize. But paradigms do even more; they
facilitate explanation, above all they make understanding possible. In these regards, they may
work for better as well as for worse. Thus it is not a matter of getting rid of them, were this
even feasible, but of getting right paradigms.
The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures,
creeds, ideologies, pervasive myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a
technical sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of
humans are governed by background ideosystems.
It is in terms of these background
ideosystems that a great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments
can be explained, what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4
That explanation comes not however through a single paradigm, as has too often been
supposed in trying to answer focal questions, but through a bundle of somehow aligned
paradigms. Compare how a person may be represented, in social science, not through a single
2
3
4
For more on this style of explanation, see further RP.
It is not, going to be contended that religion—or a certain Abramic religion, such as
Christianity—is the main villain of the environmental piece. It is now well enough appreciated
that religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from ancient philosophies.
What will however, be suggested is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in
this regard.
Further, as logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to overlap.
How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or
superficial explanation, of them.
;
As well, positivistic theories show, though in an oversimplified way, how models, which
paradigms are, serve in explanation justification and understanding. See e.g. Hanson.
/.
/
4
role or program, but by way of a set of interconnected roles. What has been regularly
overlooked in seeking deeper paradigmatic sources of environmental problems is systematic
plurality. In part this neglect of plurality can be explained through countervailing propensity to
seek single answers, and to try to locate uniqueness, where however causes and sources are
plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are
plural.
As to what is going on theoretically, there is a fairly complex story to be told, an easier
working image for which is appropriately ecological. That image focusses upon the structure of
a perhaps impenetrable thicket or tangle, such as a dense rainforest patch, or, itself simplified, a
fig or bamboo thicket. Below an emergent top layer representing the problems concerned,
those raised by the focal questions, there is the canopy layer, of interlinked proximate causes.
Below that again stands a plurality of stems, plural supports, which can be construed as
supporting sources, and below them again, ultimately sustaining the whole structure, a
multiplicity of intertwined roots, representing paradigmatic basics.
What is sought are ultimate sources, and roots, not immediate causes. The cause of local
pollution may be a factory that an agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be
the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for
such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea
structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and
sources. Nonetheless there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are “A
is source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated?
While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or
developments virtually none of it addresses the question of what is meant by the partially
buried metaphors of roots and sources . One striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful
introductory text, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism. Although this text presents itself
specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots
metaphor/which it turns. For that matter there is no direct account of what the roots of
environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental problems to which
environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much oblique material). It is
apparent also that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots metaphor, throwing it
into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to mean simply elements
(from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme of reconciliation of
freedom and authority’ (p.193). Such usage is unsound. Because rudiments of some idea make
an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may not have arrived at such an
idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where they did quite
independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or (genetic)
causal linkage into a mere temporal conjunction: post hoc, propter hoc.
Neither roots nor sources are mere beginnings or simply early occurrences; there have to
be continuing connections, with directional relationships such as supply or sustenance. But for
5
roots and sources different connections and elaborations are to be expected. After all, the
metaphors, and likewise what they give rise to, are evidently different; more literally, plants
have roots, normally below them, springs and streams rise from sources, not roots, often above
them, and so on. Both differ from another popular basis-beginning buried metaphor, that of
foundations. Foundations bring in other features such as solidity, stability and comparative
permanency, while severing critical transmission features (for foundations may merely
passively support, not sustain supported superstructure).
So foundations, for all their
importance in epistemology and elsewhere iffoundationalism is correct, can be set aside.5
So far dictionaries do better than popular and philosophical texts. For instance, a short
listing for the figurature use of ‘root’ runs: ‘the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that
which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc.’ (Concise English Dictionary).
Such a two component account will serve nicely, for a start. However conjunctions should
substantially displace disjunctions, else roots could collapse to foundations or could collapse to
mere trace element supplements. Roots both give a basis and bottom binding into a substratum
and supply sustenance and means of development. Roots connections are richer as well as
more specific than sources, which may merely show from where an item comes or is obtained.
Further that place of derivation that may not be a basis or bottom, but for instance a source
book. With roots, like normal foundations, a basis or bottom is reached, whereas sources may
have further sources (hence the search for “deeper”, even ultimate, sources). Finally, root and
source connections carry explanations, at least genetic explanations—concerning how items got
to be what and the way they are—because roots and sources are characteristically that from
which items develop. Sometimes even more information, including a whole control system,
gets transmitted. As much happens where roots are paradigmatic, to return to that strange mix
of buried metaphors.
Reaching deeper roots is important. Without locating them, perhaps all the roots (should
they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly
locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at these, cutting them off or replacing them, will
also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. Such is the fate of many proposals concerning
environmental problems.
There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaborated—
including a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions,
and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal
questions. But we can be brief on these necessary preliminaries, because main details are
already in circulation and because they have been addressed elsewhere.
1. Problems and paradigms.
5
Despite a referee’s suggestion that discussion of “roots” ‘could be improved by a contrast of the
“roots” metaphor with the “foundations” metaphor, the fact is that we are decidedly not
concerned with foundations of environmental problems; to the contrary, we do not wish to see
them supported (if shoddily), established and so on. On the growing complexity and varying
interpretations offoundations, an emergent bog, see for instance Chisholm.
6
Although these will be duly connected, with paradigms implicated in problems, they are
different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation.
la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions.
Definitions of ‘environmental problem’, and classifications of such problems, have already
been ventured.6 What problems emerge as environmental depends upon background value
framework. What counts as a major problem on deeper environmental perceptions may be but
a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such
indicator problems, ones here taken as serious problems, are those of
• sustaining biodiversity and
• maintaining significant wilderness.7
Even if the broad impact of human enterprise were sufficiently reduced to guarantee
comfortable survival of future humans, these desiderata may well not be guaranteed. There
would be outstanding problems.
In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are
(at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how
they might be resolved. Environmental impact equations, encountered in a more perceptive
classification of problems, reveal how they can be resolved. Namely, by altering relevant
impact parameters.
Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very
little spent, despite all the talk.8 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys
us, are not however satisfactory stopping points.
How is it, given so much scientific
information and expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially
destroying, their habitats.
To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on
offer or to be met in an extensive literative. As we will soon discover, most of these answers
are too simple; and taken, as intended, as comprehensive, they are wrong. Correct answers to
the questions are however important, because if we fail to get to bottom of the issues, there is
even less prospect of satisfactory action to turn around a difficult and deterioration situation^.
That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships, or how many devaluing
dollars uncaring humans can briefly stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of
habitats—these sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence)
derive from and are supported by particular ideologies.
lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on.
A paradigm can be explicated, technically, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.9
See for example GE, which duly details connections of the problems with impact equations and
proximate solutions.
As to the extent of the problem (even) in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The
Wildlands Project.
See e.g. The cost ofpast environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24.
See RP, where many environmentally relevant illustrations are given and explained.
ry)
-
That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a
general system, i.e. semantical and other evaluations defined on an integrated relational
structure. Naturally it is required to be faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms,
scientific research programs, or whatever. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific
paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and action theory, the socio-political themes
and value judgements, is that of a social group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social
paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part
of the life-styles and life-forms of the community concerned. There are now many examples of
formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures;
from these, mostly sketchy formulations we can work back towards the underlying models.
The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a
complex universal10 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g.
metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen
that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists, historians and geographers have
repeated one another in vaguely discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures
under different categorisations: thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of
consciousness (Marx), of life (Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes (Conant), presuppositions
(Collingwood), discursive formations (Foucault), Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess),
traditions (MacIntyre), traditions of thought, cultures, perspectives, outlooks, ideologies,
programs,.... An ideology, for instance, in the nonderogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideasA
system, initially a propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative,
from which a paradigm can be discerned and elaborated.
Such models are typically presented in extremely truncated form, for example through a
tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example:
TABLE 1: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant
paradigm: an initial capsule formulation J1
Taoism
Deep Ecology
Dominant (Western)
Paradigm
Harmony with nature,
through Tao
Harmony with nature
Domination over nature
Nature valuable in itself;
“humanism” rejected
Natural environment
valued for itself
Nature a resource;
intrinsic value confined
to humans
It resembles a structured universal; compare e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex
ideas. Naturally there are differences between, for instance, traditions (of thought) which are
historically bound, cultures, which are geographically and otherewise connected, and conceptual
schemes (where a conceptual reduction is insinuated), but all are, at logical bottom, models of
paradigmatic sort.
This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly
expanded.
8
Levelling of differences;
wide impartiality
Biocentric egalitarianism
Human supremacy
Supplies ample
Earth supplies limited
Ample resources with
substitutes
Following Tao-te
Spiritual goals,
especially self-realisation
Material economic growth
a predominant goal
Enlightenment
Self-realisation
Personal (material)
enrichment
Doing with enough
(recycling inappropriate)
Doing with enough;
recycling
Consumerism
Non-competitive lifestyle;
voluntary simplicity
Cooperative lifestyle
Competitive lifestyle
Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus
Decentralised/bioregional
/neighbourhood focus
Centralised/urban centred/
national focus
Hierarchy without
power structure;
anarchoid
Non-hierarchical/
grassroots democracy
Power structure
hierarchical
Limited technology
Appropriate technology
High technology
Considerable caution
Precautionary practice
Risking taking (verging
upon adventurism)
Paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; under an earlier analogy, red
and green lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations
and prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role
model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modern
ideologies, eschews deontic judgements.)
Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors'
worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world.
In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads (or rather
consciousnesses) have to be changed, not rolled.
2. Proposed answers to focal questions; a preliminary classification of inadequate answers
(7)
and suggested remedies.
Most of the extraordinary range of answers proposed supply but a single source, and are
accordingly defective for this reason, usually among other reasons. Indeed it is not much of an
exaggeration to assert that virtually everything proposed, in a now extensive literature, is
wrong.
TABLE 2. Main tabulation of answers and remedies, in three stages.
D. Defective
practice answers
Source
Remedy
Objections
7
9
DI.
Ignorance
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2.
Unintended consequences
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2a
Faulty technique,
or technology
Repairs
Repairs already
made
D3
Deviation (from
theory, etc.)
Education (for failure
to limit deviance)
Adherence
D4.
Systemic lock-in
(through poverty,
ensnarement in
market forces, etc.)
Trap removal
a. Explains
only certain
cases, and
b. Due to
paradigmatic
features
D5.
Insensitivity or
insensibility
Problem
apprised
Remedy tried;
background
ideological
blockage
D3a
a. Deviation
uneliminable, or
b. Adherence
no remedy
When pursued, objections like those noted either force defective practice out as unsatisfactory,
or push it back to paradigmatic features.
Source single paradigm
Remedies proposed (among others)
Pl.
Christianity (mainstream
Catholicism)
Scientific enlightenment, or
alternative (Eastern) religion
Pla.
Protestantism and its ethic
P2.
P2a
Cartesianism
Dualism
P. Defective paradigm
answers
Monism
Anti-dualism
Modified holism
P2b
Mechanism
Substance metaphysics
P3.
P3a Possessive individualism
P3aa Personalism
Organicism
Process metaphysics
Non-reductionism
Transpersonalism
P4.
Capitalism
Socialism
P5.
Industrialism
Pre-industrialism (romanticism)
Post-industrialism
P5a Technocratic bureaucracy
P5aa. Transnational business
P6.
Enlightenment
Anti-enlightenment
Anti-materialism
10
P6a
Materialism
Spiritualism
P8.
P9
Patriarchy, andocentrism
Human domination
of humans
Feminism
Anti-domination
(anti-hierarchy)
Observe that what some have proposed as remedies, others have been as sources; remedies
proposed tend to share defects of sources.
PS. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject
specific or partial) include:
Source
Platonism
Typical remedy suggested
New metaphysics
Leibnitzianism
New metaphysics
Kantianism
Anglo-American philosophy12
Consequentialism
Utilitarianism
Economism (economic imperialism as
Alternative ethics
Continental philosophy
New social science; ethics
contrasted with straight economic roots)
Contractarianism
Domination transfer
Consequentialism
Domination removal
Human nature (esp. aggression)
Adolescencism
Maturation
Infantilism (from Freudian physchology)
Maturation
And so on.
A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in
dominant Western thought. Then many—perhaps it is not excessive to say most—entries in
that list will have been nominated, likely separately, by someone as the source of the problems.
That list accordingly continues (even including, sometimes, entries like Taylorism, i.e.
reorganisation of industry along lines popularized by Taylor), but what is included is
representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other
allegedly nonparadigmatic answers however, varying from interesting to crazy, that should also
be taken into some account, for instance answers like Shepard's challenging answer. Although
Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false
cast. Strange answers include pushing it all back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard,
but also Fox, and Ehrlich and other gurus with insistence upon ‘mental maladaptation’).
The mainstream form, analytic philosophy, appears to comprise empiricism-cum-utilitarianism
in Britain, tempered in America by pragmatism.
/s
'
11
Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick
—in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, along psychological
routes, that are to be resisted. One slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not
physically usually, it must be mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad. But
the sources of mental sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide
continues to: what we have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No
doubt there is something toyheme that dominant societies, USA especially (which now
influences so much in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive
adolescence.13 No doubt, too, that maturity—but an environmental maturity—is desirable,
even mandatory.
Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put
into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society,
to spend their money through tourism, on new compact housing, in those most wasteful of
modem institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth.
3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources.
Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat
perfunctory, tending here and there towards notes. Of course there are excuses. While whole
theses could be spun out on several of these topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a
prime objective here is different from usual: neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to
partially implicate most items cited in the main tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of
the usually accredited sources:
• Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems,
‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and
specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over
nature’, was repeated in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.14
One helpful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows:
Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity
has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological
crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology
developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the
scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the
democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to
produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development,
however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to
nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns ,
namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the
animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and
destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress,
13
14
It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as
preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in the Appendix .
White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian
apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole
area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall,
snowed.
12
a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action,
not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an
extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation
worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will.
Because today's attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it
‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.15
What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was
the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse
the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or
isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some
such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable
development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more
sensitive and telling criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer
for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.16 Similar responses are
apposite for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy.
Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should
undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that
philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ...
responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection
today.... Religion ... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played
a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in
Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.17
• Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1)
prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the
aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of
reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not
impossible.18
More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course
accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies.
• Cartesian philosophy. The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes
15
16
17
18
Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of
Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue
continuejto be debated; for an older survey of traditions see Passmore, for a challenging recent
contribution to the debate see Callicott.
Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms: Ask,
not merely what they say, but what they do, and would do. For an outline of just such a telling
criticism of mainstream Christianity, see Singer esp. pp.265-8.
Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to
preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced
back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help
expose.
Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really,
while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted. There is a
much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of
the very different roles and impacts of Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with
his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans, and of neo-Platonists. For a modest
beginning, see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and
Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands.
[S
13
denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes,
upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of
the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.19
While Descartes was undoubtedly
extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is
accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such.
Evidently it substantially overlaps other modern ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment,
widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems.
• Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others
(some potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is
presented is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly
exhibiting a heavy Heideggerean influence:
The roots of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For
metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode
(sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the
absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present,
the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability
of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a
“natural resource” —and people become “human resources”. The sources of
anthropocentricism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can
all be traced back to metaphysics.
Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no
going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness
overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and
metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering,
exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as
vestigial traSces. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native
healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system.
We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the
Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms
of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually
ensconced technocratic rationalism.20
An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining
b
rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics,
characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions
or mere Western seeds.
Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western
metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or
plenum metaphysics.21
For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising
Drengson’s exposition, see RP, table 5. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the
environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely
maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in
keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy.
Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘rejecting] in its entirety
mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmental]
problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies’ (thus Bellett). This
charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep
Ecology (now included in UTD).
For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic
relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews.
14
• Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’
(e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those
of modern mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and
theistic scholastic hang-overs).
• Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social
evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were
revealed), can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism
for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a
matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the
theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to
subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a
means of production.22
But, as observed, a main embedded theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the
idea of nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ‘Now if nature
makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all
animals for the sake of man’.23 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species.
The theme was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in
shallower Stoicism.
But the subjection of everything to utility, no doubt a relative of
capitalism, appears to be a distinctively modem contribution.
•
Modern industrial society or industrialism. Modern industrialism (‘the smooth
superhighway of industrial progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme:
‘... the root causes of the present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial
paradigm’.24 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of
modern industrial society’25 Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found
in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed’26 The
popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial
technology can without any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as,
It should not be overlooked that some of those who nominated metaphysics meant thereby
paradigm or paradigms or an equivalent. But what they may gain thereby in verisimilitude, they
tend to lose in confusion.
Grundrisse p.409f.
Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further
Hargrove p.25.
M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature’”, a paper
presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a
managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and
more broadly the environment itself’ (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip
side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the
evident problem.
Gabriel ibid. Similarly industrialism is assumed as the source throughout McLaughlin (the
theme pervades his book) and as the root of the modern problem in Marshall (p.5ff). While
seriously astray as to roots and sources, those critical of industrialism have a significant case.
For, as well as functioning as a major inflator of intact problems, industrialism has helped
generate side problems of its own, as with new types of chemical and nuclear pollution.
Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2.
15
less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes,
what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice.
• Economic growth or economic development. ‘According to a common and currently
influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots
One
widespread misconception is that economic growth is the source of environmental problems.
The assumption is astray for several reasons. For one, growth is at best a proximate cause,
itself in need of explanation. More importantly, growth may occur in sectors of an economy,
such as information technology or religious or artistic services, which have little or no
environmental impact. Also conversely, an economy which fails to grow, but is desperately
trying to survive, may exact heavy environmental costs (e.g. the forests are clear-felled to pay
for continuing employment). No doubt though, stock economic growth is intimately intricated
with proximate causes of environmental problems (through environmental impact equations).
Similar considerations tell against the familiar proposition that the source of the problems
is economic development itself or, what is different, the entrenched model of economic
development. While it is no doubt correct, and important to emphasize, that ‘the Western
model of economic development, far from being the solution to’ environmental and social
problems, is ‘actually fuelling’ them, it is not the sole or distinguished source of the
problems.27
28
• Human nature. "... the roots of our ecologic crisis reach beyond the variable topsoil of
intellectual history, whether Eastern or Western, into the common substrata of human nature
itself.’29 What such “nature” amounts to and how it functions as roots, both commonly left
obscure, turns upon background hypotheses as to the nature of this nature. Different false
27
28
29
Goodin, p.573. While not contesting the theme, Goodin does continue: ‘the problem is not just
that there are too many people, or even that they are enjoying too high a standard of living. All
that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental
despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives as they pursue their various goals’
(p.573). That too will be seen to be seriously astray, though it contains large grains of truth; it
presumes unchanged the prevailing economically-skewed dominant social paradigm.
Both socialists and other opponents of capitalistic conspicuous consumption tend to select the
living-standard component of the main environmental impact equation as the source of the crisis.
Thus Cuban luminary, Castro, in a recent stunningly succinct speech: ‘Less luxury, less wastage.
Otherwise it will be too late’.
Quoting claims of E. Goldsmith, advanced in an interview in Forest and Bird 273 (August 1994)
pp.46-7. The need for emphasis will persist while locally prominent political figures like the
present Prime Minister of Australia travel around the Earth with the hackneyed message that
only economic growth will solve environmental problems.
Seeing growth as the problem affords only a superficial analysis, like that of pointing to
overconsumption with which growth is interconnected. As deeper inquiry reveals, underlying
both issues of economic growth, employment and consumption, and alternatives taken, are
models, paradigmatic models. Growth is but a means to objectives assumed in the dominant
paradigm. A deeper analysis shows too why more growth will not ultimately solve relevant
problems.
Callicott and Ames, ‘Epilogue: On the relation of idea and action’ p.282 (see also p.281), in a
desperate and apparently unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the claim (repeatedly advanced in
their book) that Asian traditions of thought can make a significant contribution to much
improved treatment for natural and built environments, with ‘the deplorable environmental
conditions prevailing in contemporary Asia’ (p.280).
16
hypotheses, that humans are invariably driven by aggression, sexual or reproductive
imperatives, economic needs, yield different defective accounts. 0
• Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of
women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.30
‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.31 One sample linkage statement runs as
follows:
... there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both
historically and ... presently] and ... this?the same energy that, turned against
the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly destroying
the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that consume the
Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches and I believe
that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless we
simultaneously address our gender issues.32
A 15
Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes:
• Human domination and exploitation of humans'.
It is an extraordinarily widespread
assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or
creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or
classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the
solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety
of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over
from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or
being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from
Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend-setters, including Marcuse, Illich, Passmore,
Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social
ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from
deep-seated social problems’.33 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a
prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus:
all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an
extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and
Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology.
Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships
—domination of nature thus following from human domination’. ... It follows
that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in
small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a
30
31
32
33
/n
Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a
more critical assessment see the sequel to GE.
See Seed, quoted in the sequel to GE; also Salleh (e.g. in EP3).
John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91.
Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to
transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often
reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along
with unrelational property claims.
Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But
he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination
of nature always results from humans’ domination of other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346).
The text EP3 contains a sizeable section providing a useful introduction to social ecology.
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17
harmonious man-nature relationship.34
Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of
dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the
dominated.
• A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected
ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.35
• Modern educational systems'. Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems.
Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in
educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for
instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as,
so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.36 Therewith we are
transported full circle back to defective practice answers.
4. A selective commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers
A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the
main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two
stages reflecting a major division in the main tabulation.
ad D. Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in
possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them.
(Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical
theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.)
Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time,
perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed
off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While “consequences” or outputs such
things as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying
‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and
unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste
watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of
their industry. That should now be a rotten joke, itself with serious consequences.
Accordingly new ecological economics insists that we dig deeper—without however
exceeding economic settings or a shifting dominant paradigm—to discover why markets may
foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.37 Where they
Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given
humans could so socially organise, that they could settle into harmonious small-scale
communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments.
Such a proposition obtains a much fuller elaboration within Plumwood. In an interesting way,
such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion reached below that a set of defective
paradigms ifl at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by a set
of them in each case, somewhat as numbers can be represented in binary terms, generated from a
basic two-oneness duality.
Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see GE
Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24.
18
usually arrive, travelling within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics
before ecological, at better regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of
plans and incentives, controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do
not reach very deep, or tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources.
But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard
economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure,
environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries; namely
that true, or authentic, Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been,
environmental consequences would be little better, given the heavy industrial commitments and
environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.38 Differently, enlightenment liberals like
Passmore try to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in
mainstream theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence
to these “well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains
of its wilderness and remarkable diversity.
Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting
(collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be
correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts
like Topsoil and Civilization and Agricultural Origins and Dispersal) of degradation of prime
agricultural lands by imposed farming practices, where at least early on (before damage became
visible) ignorance and unintended consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most
historical cases we do not have enough information to be able to say with much assurance that
agriculture proceeded until effective collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because
practices were locked-in in one way or another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know
more about present agricultural practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia,
concerning both irrigated and dry-land agriculture. Many of these practices are undoubtedly
sharply degrading lands, and the consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend
ignorance, are sufficiently appreciated. But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a
sweep of subsidies or concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim
that they are locked into bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their
control such as financial pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the
need to make a living. But some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make
no such claims or excuses, nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place,
and similar. Their obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not
deviation from theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm.
ad P and PS. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed,
38
It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The
Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and
transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have their property
confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who
made those points, also observed).
19
business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few broad themes:
1.
Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental
impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps
social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example,
substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same
might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently
made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and
so forth).
To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not,
on its own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges, link
principles, from metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy
operates.
Thus subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of
environmental problems which take them as derived from metaphysics of one sort or another.
Such a criticism does not however extend to more comprehensive paradigms which connect
appropriately with practice.
2.
While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right
circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on39)—none are
necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different
paradigms;
for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms,
Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism.
At this stage in dialectic, green history and the like—bio-history, eco-history, and related
virtual histories (concerning what would have happened)—enter decisively. For instance,
Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and ecological
fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also conveniently
documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological degradation or
collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms.40 An important example (much less
speculative than some of the numerous other examples because of a comparative wealth of
primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under
Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples—Polynesian, Mayan, Sumerian and
others—also reveal is that no very high level of technology is needed to inflict serious
environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological project (with nothing directly to
do with basic needs) will suffice.
Other cultures did wreak, or would (given the technology and numbers, both of which
While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly
environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to
the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to
have the means, and so on.
Ponting’s valuable/ though rather simple/ book is but one of several bleak texts. Another is
Hillel’s, and there is a succession of earlier classic works by geographers: Lowdermilk, Dale,
Mallory, Thorp and others. In general however, geographers and historian do not dig deep
enough, to paradigmatic roots.
/3
20
some were gaining) have wreaked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination,
megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established, and expanding, before (or effectively
outside) the rise of modern Western paradigms, or in extensive regions outside their influence.
3.
The list of paradigms, as so far assembled, is substantially Western in orientation.
Moreover environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources — wrongly. For non
Western paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the
technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness
again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism
incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese
chauvinism).41 Or consider Islam, with its reach across the Middle East and beyond.
The main tabulation (of table 2) should accordingly be extended to take due account of
non-Western paradigms, including for example:
Other Abrahamic religions
Islam
Judaism
Confucianism
Shintoism
Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island.
What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There
is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their
intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts
are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic.
Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in, or
encouraged by, religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent.
4.
All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are
less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be
encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms.
While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often
they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often
criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements,
such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines
criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism—though Descartes, for all
his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.)
Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modern rationalism
and much else.
5.
A general method of showing the inadequacy of all the paradigmatic answers tabulated,
and others, is familiar from logical theory: namely, the method of counter-models, of which the
41
Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large
fauna worldwide.
21
counter-examples (under head 2) provide special cases. A presently important illustration
concerns patriarchy as a source of environmental woes. Counter-models reveal the substantial
independence of mistreatment of women and mistreatment of environmental items such as
animals or ecosystems. One the one hand, it is easy to envisage situations, not far from the
actual in some regions, where the lot of women is significantly improved, but the lot of
environmental items is not (e.g. men change their behaviour and attitudes relevantly as regards
women, are forced to change, or whatever); just such an outcome would accord with persisting
human chauvinism. More relevant, on the other, there are situations where the position of
environmental items is much improved, for instance under much more careful husbandry, but
that of women is not, for one reason or another (e.g. they remain other, different, second class,
etc.). It follows from the elaboration of such counter-models that patriarchy is not the source of
environmental problems, as there can be continuing patriarchy without the present range of
environmental problems (problems can dry up while patriarchy continues to operate). There is
no need to deny that patriarchy as (contingently) practised, with its sweeping supremacist
attitudes which make no due distinctions between inferior items, may be a major contributing
factor in present problems. Such slack contingent conjunctions do not convert to roots or
sources. Similarly with other social roots of environmental problems, for instance with human
domination of humans as^supposed source of all problems.
5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation.
Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one
paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious
paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or
sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in
requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite
circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within
that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences—in
calibre, in environmental friendliness. For example, Cartesianism which regards animals as
mere automata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life
forms and their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience.
The family is not exclusively Western, nor somewhat more plausibly Northern, even
though as a result of forces like migration, colonialism and cultural imperialism, paradigms of
these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and of third world
communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally
and regionally.
Nor are major inflators of environmental problems essentially Western. Industrialization
and technological advance—neither intrinsically Western, both manifested in varying degrees
in other cultures—are, without much doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from
rather localised ones, damaging for instance islands and river catchments, to grander and even
global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems, generating thereby spin
22
off problems as well. But, once again, they are not deeper sources, but only means. (For again
push questioning deeper, and ask: why bother or persist with industry, the effort and dirt and
mess involved?) Nor, however, did they run on their own, nor do they continue on their own.
Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.42 They evolved
primarily in the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could
have occurred, and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as
state socialism or post-imperial Confucianism. Now however these engines have been rendered
more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transformed to run
in less favourable settings.
Thus inflation can escalate from a multiplicity of prepared sources, thereby intensifying
problems and spreading them to larger regions. The intensification and spread is much
facilitated by the joint transfer of technology, industry and coupled problems from region to
region. As a result of transfer, inflation can occur within settings of quite different paradigms.
Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into
history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other
enthusiastic cultures. For instance, the West could in theory collapse through protracted war,
through pollution and congestion, or climate change and agriculture failure (there are many
unexcludible routes to catastrophic decline, outlined in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could
differentially impact on the West). Degradation would now continue however; there would be
only temporary respite from environmental crises.
While most of the conspicuous problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary
environmental crises, are accelerated by—what connects them—contemporary industrial
society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. However, too many of the
other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by
products or similar of the main generators. Thus, in the illustration, the peasants displaced by
agribusiness or absentee wealth-holders, arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the
forests, and often wrecked this damage using industrial machinery.
An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types
of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant
cultures, Western or non-Western. A friendly paradigm would not only ensure much more
selectivity and care, but would sharply limit impacts of damaging technology and
industrialization. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack
Lacking favourable ideological settings, earlier technological “break throughs” were not duly
developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, dyes, gunpowder, etc. Western cultures did not
enjoy a monopoly upon technology powerful enough, when massed, to induce global crises.
The picture of development of large-scale environmental problems being sketched bears
superficial resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where, to
achieve presumed size, a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by huge inflationary
phenomena. Naturally the resemblance has limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not
terrestrially replicable in the way industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf,
pollution problems and all, with a big price tag).
Ti
sophisticated contemporary elaboration and they may be flawed in other respects. Examples of
more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems
and crises conditions, include those now tabulated:
TABLE 3: Examples, some flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms.
Oriental ideologies:
Taoism (classical)
recessive traditions,
now with tiny
followings and little
political influence.
Jainism
Indigenous cultures:
Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda)
Amazonian Indians.
Western philosophies:
under certain
favourable
interpretations
old
Stoicism
new
Deep-green theories, such as deep ecology.
Given the remoteness of most of these examples from predominant contemporary life, and
difficulties with their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new
paradigms need to be worked out soon. Much much more intellectual effort should be devoted
to such enterprise.
One upshot, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two families, the second
large: environmentally friendly, and unfriendly. No doubt there is a small fuzzy residue class43
lying between major unfriendly and friendly divisions.
Environmental friendliness means more or less what it appear, to mean, what a functional
break-down into components would yield: friendliness in approaches, practices and attitudes, to
environments, especially more natural environments, with friendliness including, as usual,
goodwill and kindliness towards (and substantially displaceable by these). As indicated, such
friendliness concerns not merely actual practices, but also attitudes held, as reflected in what
would be done in certain other sorts of situations.
Certainly a culture that manifests
unfriendliness, as a sweep of Northern cultures do, is unfriendly. But, as well, various
“primitive” cultures, whose practices are not hostile, for example because they lack means or
resources, energy or health, may nonetheless be unfriendly; for instance all members of a
culture hold thoroughly negative attiudes which they are in fact unable to put into practice.
It is not too difficult to explain in outline which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or
religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse.
In logical terms neither, perhaps as well as another residue class, both.
Certain family
24
characteristics, of unfriendly paradigms are worth elaborating:
* Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism.
More
generally, direct impact is illustrated by any idea-system which attributes little or no value to
natural items, and typically much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite)
projects, and whose themes are linked to practice. So it is with Confucianism, which is entirely
human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as his goal
the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’44 The outside
world, the natural environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only instrumentally,
to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex machinery.
‘The exception is [mind, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation language: this
alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to assert a
fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts’”.45 The remaining world, the
natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral significance.
It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose to confer or
project upon it, typically little or none.
Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans has no thoughts,
purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could hardly matter what happens to it.
It could be regarded and treated, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans.
Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive, by one route or another from
Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went
further than some others. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were ‘aimed at
making men the masters and possessors of nature’.46
Untowards effects result through linkage of ideological theory to heavy practice. Link
principles, reminiscent of “correspondence rules” used in explaining applications of scientific
theories and normally included in comprehensive paradigms, connect the theoretic level to
practice, they also serve to activate otherwise inoperative or uncoupled paradigms. Such
principles may take the form of directives; familiar examples include maximization directives,
such as maximize personal fun, tribal utility, national interest, or state GNP.
* Indirect combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which yield satisfaction
of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive
impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz’s
fragmentary ideology. Leibnitz was substantially committed to all of human population
growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption,47 in short, to
Reese p.102 For much more on the geographic impact of Confucianism, as also compared with
other (Asian) paradigms, see Tuan’s investigations.
Cottingham p.15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument (reported in Cottingham) to this
divide is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no
such status divides—just as flamboyant forms of deep ecology maintain.
See Descartes, Discourse VI.
For requisite details, see Aiton. The case against Leibnitzianism is developed in a sequel.
25
precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts
upon environments. However neutral Leibnitz’s metaphysics, his monadology, may have
been—by contrast with Plato’s or Descartes’, both of which explicitly devalued much or all of
the natural world—Leibnitz’s wider ideology is linked indirectly, through impact equations, to
damaging effects.
Some imagine that this oblique formalistic detailing, through direct and indirect classes,
can be simply cut through, retaining plurality and so forth. Surely environmental friendliness is
nothing but environmental depth? While the suggestion points in the right sort of direction (for
the relevant sort of depth) it too is astray.48 Depth is neither necessary nor sufficient. Take the
move plausible sufficiency half, plausible because depth helps, no end. Nonetheless depth can
be achieved in macho ways (as ecofeminism has emphasized against deep ecology), ways
which may not be altogether friendly to less favoured species, groups or habitats. For example,
depth can be satisfied through due selection and support of some super species and magnificent
habitats—requisite environmental impartiality (and reflected justice), critical for friendliness as
intended, being neglected.49 Still less in depth necessary. For kindliness can, both in principle
and in practice, extend far beyond humans, still ranked top, to much more of “creation”. Such
extensive kindliness, observed in some humanistic humans, appears to be exhibited in some
sects and tribes not committed to depth, and it could well be considerably more widespread,
under changed but not deepened ideological conditions. Naturally, however, deepening would
afford an obvious, and excellent, reason for change.
As friendliness is not tantamount to depth, nor similarly is a prime part of what explains
depth, recognition of intrinsic value in nature outside humans. Some animal liberationists who
display high regard for creatures with capacity to suffer, show little goodwill towards forests
largely unpopulated by such creatures. Conversely, though shifting ground, an environmentally
friendly society may hold that value is but an anthropocentric construct, merely projected onto a
basically neutral world.
All the same, aspects of depth are normally reliable indicators of environmental
sensitivity and friendliness, and inversely, aspects of shallowness (as investigated in authentic
deep ecology) marks of unfriendliness.
Shallowness will work out satisfactorily
environmentally only with what is now rare (given ideological dominance), a right mix of
humans; and its any longer working widely is implausible. These reliable marks include such
familiar features as
* short-term framework.
* devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting
As to the relevant sort of depth, see GE. Other accounts of depth are also preferred in deep
ecology, some of which relate to the present exercise. In particular deep questioning should lead
to paradigmatic roots, to Naess’s “total views”.
Herein lies another reason why something like biospecies egalitarianism is essential in deep
ecology; such a requirement needs, not dilution away (as has happened in American and
transpersonal deep ecology), but rectification.
26
human chauvinism); and, as a corollary of heavy devaluation,
* entitlement to domination, dominion over nature;
* appropriation of nature, its conversion to property.
* maximization assumptions concerning personal or societal aggrandizement, utility and size,
coupled with grand projects.
* technofix approach to environmental problems.
Friendly paradigms will tend to invert these features. An environmentally friendly
paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as the following
samples:
* an end to degrading primary production; instead ecological forestry and ecological
agriculture will come to prevail.
* a strong selectivity regarding industrialization, which weeds out damaging forms.
* a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural
environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new
mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep
of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of unfriendly technology can go a very long way.
As unfriendly paradigms are decidedly plural, so likewise are answers to questions as to
why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Some of
the diverse answers match answers already encountered in the main tabulation. Reasons are
psychological, social and cultural (with a familiar circularity here encountered), and include
considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have
always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed;
because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought;
because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on.
A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because, in one way or
another, most agents are bound to—locked into, committed to, captured by, or just passively go
along with—environmentally unfriendly paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the
rest of environments does not matter, or matter enough.
6. Glimpsing an entertaining corollary: an unfavourable report upon dominant
philosophy.
It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to
Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms.
Stripped of metaphor, there are
environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet. In an
environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the
humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to
satisfactory environmental outcomes. Predominant philosophy, not just Western philosophy,
has by and large been bad environmental news.
It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental
practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to
27
such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon
enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly
under-estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even
govern action and practice, especially reflective and rational action. The substantial point is not
therefore removed through any alleged practical impotence of philosophy.
Mainstream philosophy has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, dominant
unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be
trashed, as even defective enterprises or evil projects may include decent part or worthwhile
features; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping
there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be
made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness),
there are brash new alternatives such as authentic deep ecology, and there are recessive
paradigms and neglected traditions to peruse for suggestions, for inspiration, and perhaps to
rehabilitate.
Richard Sylvan*
APPENDIX. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions.
A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard’s
intriguing books. In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the
stock responses to focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in
earlier work), such as lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political
inertia, change to agriculture and settlement,50... . He would (and should, for his eliminative
argument) have also dismissed industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on.
More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’—
similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human
behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism.
But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feel
no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as
accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended
target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an
ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the
An earlier, even rougher version of this article was presented at the Environmental Paradigms
Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 1993. It would not have been written
without its solicitation for the Conference; also it might well not been thought through in
fashionable but confining and perhaps misleading paradigmatic terms.
A subsequent working draft has benefitted, slightly, from comments from very unimpressed
reviewers. Thanks certainly to Holmes Rolston for helpful comments.
No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement zs simplistic:
that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on
to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and
towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from
factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes.
28
facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of
causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through
an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example
of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation
through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made
and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it
acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here.
Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often
hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making
information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of
like together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing
conservation, and so on.
Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question
that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and
solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as
causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps
to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal
explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians,
representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial
societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so
redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots51) that having certain
ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”.
So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of
childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive
attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic
dislocations at the root of modern society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the
centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas
originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15).
Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages,
Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of th'e alleged sickness.52 It supposedly
arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is
manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destructive
adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and
For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us.
Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing)
practices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not
leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus,
Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests
rather than masters' (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy.
‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the
third page of the main text.
29
person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There
is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile
culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority
figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and
vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly
satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole
social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.53 A superior explanation to widespread
individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial humans
are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies, without
coming to know or properly experience alternatives.
The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound,
resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal
growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.54 They are not
exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature
mixed communities.
Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be
decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments
and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health.
Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness ‘small-
group, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings. ... there is the rub—... for us,
now, that world no longer exists’ (p. 14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no
longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural
surrounding can even now be restored.
In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a
certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading
to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about
for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing
erosion of life-support systems.
REFERENCES
E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985.
53
54
A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological
terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the
following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument:
‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of
' society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the
hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to
domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery’ (p. 16).
But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or
between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms.
Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep
ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in
‘taking mothers off to work’ (p. 15)!
30
R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics
13(1991) 127-137.
R. Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of Georgia Press,
Athens, 1991.
A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental
Questions Papers, No.2, CRES, Australian National University, 1990.
J.B. Callicott and R.T. Ames (eds), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, SUNY Press,
Albany NY., 1989.
J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ ReVision 12(3) (1990) 31-41.
R. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, Harvester Press, Sussex, 1982.
J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.
C. Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, Revised edition by V.G. Carter, University of Oklahama
Press, Norman, 1974.
A Dobson (ed.), Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991?
A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10.
R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992.
W. Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology, Shambala, Boston, 1990.
A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bungendore, 1993.
C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967.
R. Goodin, ‘Selling environmental indulgences’, Kyklos 47(1994) 573-596.
N. R. Hanson, Patterns of discovery: an inquiry into conceptual foundations of science,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1958.
E. C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989.
D Hillel, Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil., Free Press, Macmillan, 1991.
M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991.
K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy, Harmondsworth,
England 1973.
F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991.
A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology , SUNY Press, Albany
N. Y., 1993.
P. Marshall, Nature’s Web, in two editions, Simon and Schuster, 1992 and 1993.
A. Naess and D. Rothenberg, Ecology, community and Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1989.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974.
D. Pearce and others, Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989.
D. Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H.
Croom Helm 1984.
V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993.
C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991.
31
R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion
papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982; also,
modified, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. R. Elliot and A. Gare), University of Queensland
Press, Brisbane, 1983; referred to as RP.
C. O. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersal, American Geographical Society, New York,
1952.
P. Singer, Practical Ethics, expanded edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.
P. Shepard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982.
R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994;
referred to as GE.
R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS
Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD.
The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993.
Y.F. Tuan, ‘Discrepancies between environmental attitude and behaviour: examples from
Europe and China’, The Canadian Geographer 12(1968) 176-91.
S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982.
L. White Jr., ‘Historic roots of our ecologic crisis’, Science 155(1967) 1203-7.
J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Blackwell, Oxford, 1953.
M. Zimmerman and others (eds.), Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1993; referred
to as EP3.
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Lake George - Desk Pile 1: Theories for Everything
Box 15: Green Projects in Progress
Lake George House
Lake George House > Desk Pile 1: Theories for Everything
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https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/f6748caa77d394f98064c95f59219565.pdf
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BEHIND LEFT AND RIGHT:
ENVIRONMENTAL ANARCHISM.
There are forms of anarchism which represent a new political
^dimension outside the lineal left-right classification.
Of course
these forms of anarchism have features in common with rightist
positions (forms of capitalism and "free" enterprise) and with
of
leftist positions (formsXsocialism and communism) and currently
with both.
But they reject crucial features of both, and, more
to the point, assumptions upon which the classification of the
conventional right-left political spectrum is based.These are
assumptions of central control of a state, of control of the means
of production
(on the one side by private individuals and on the
other side by the people or a committee supposedly representing
them), of ownership of property (privately versus publicly) , and
overarching all these the familiar assumptions of human chauvinism
(e.g. those discussed in [1], such as that all of value resides in
humankind or answers back to human interests).
There are forms
of anarchism - especially environmental anarchisms, the working
out of the character of which is one of the main objectives - which
reject, or importantly qualify, all these assumptions.
There has been a concerted, but intellectually fradulent,
attempt by statements of both right and left to absorb anarchism
as theirs.
For example, Nozick [2] and others to the right try
to represent anarchism as fitting into their libertarian scheme.
Nozick (in his final chapter) outlines a framework for utopias, a
generous framework which would include most anarchist options;
but
1 As might be expected the right-left classification is not a single
thing, but a bundle of different, and not mutually consistent,
classifications.
In the sense in which 'right' means 'conservative
for example, in contrast to 'left' as 'non-conservative', the
dichotomy is exhaustive, but then the distinction is a different
one from that under discussion and attack. The origin of the
classification would hardly lead one to anticipate completeness.
The members of continental parliaments who sat on the right or the
left hardly exhausted the range of political positions, especially
those in opposition to such a centralised state mechanism of
cont..
�1.1
control and concentration of power.
In the end the right
left 'distinction' is to be left behind: it is only some
thing to hang an introduction on.
From a philosophical viewpoint there is hardly a more
interesting word in English than 'right' with 24 headings
in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, several of major philosophical
importance, and by no means all of the senses there are
untangled.
�2.
he goes on, without any discernible argument,to claim - what
certainly seems false
that the framework for utopias is nothing
but his minimal state.
Both this minimal state and the arguments
for it are, however, decidedly objectionable at least from
anarchist viewpoints not to the right, in particular which reject
the propertarians or chauvinistic assumptions slipped into the
bottom of Nozick's position.
(The criticism of Nozick is so far
no more than a set of memos:
it will have to be spelled out.)
The attempted take-over bid by the left is sometimes if
anything, even cruder.
Consider, for example, Guerin's argument
from meaning for his inclusion thesis that every anarchist is a
([1], p.12).
socialist
It is this:-
Anarchism is really a synonym
for socialism.
The anarchist is primarly a socialist whose aim
is to abolish the exploitation of man by man.
Anarchism is only one of the streams of socialist
thought, that stream whose main components are
concern for liberty and haste to abolish the State.
This is inconsistent:
for if anarchism is really a synonym for
then anarchism is no sub-variety of socialism,
socialism,/but identical with it.
In fact the terms are far from
synonymous, as perusal of a better dictionary would have revealed,
and neither includes the other in meaning:
that is all.
there is overlap, and
An environmental anarchist's aims extend further than
abolishing the exploitation of man by man, it also includes ending
the exploitation of other things, natural items
by man.
in particular,
This is, of course, by not the only respect in which
anarchism may differ from socialism;
for it may well reject the
collectiv-istassumptions of socialism, the public ownership of all
the means of productions, etc.
Guerin not only relies on the
synonymy claim but goes so far as to say that 'today the terms
"anarchist" and "libertarian" have become interchangeable'.
By
transitivity then, "libertarian" and "socialist" are interchangeable
so Nozick, also is a libertarian, is a socialist:
this would come
�as a surprise to Nozick.
Chomsky's argument that the consistent anarchist is a
socialist (in his Introduction to [1], p.XO) is more elaborate
and devious but equally invalid.
Chomsky's moves begin with
several appeals to authority, to the anarchist historian Rocker
(first introduced as an anarchist, and then as a socialist), to
Fischer (who simply asserted a version of the thesis in need of
defence) and to Bakunin
(who simply laid down the principle
that each member must be, to begin with, a socialist' in his
"anarchist manifesto",something which only reflects Bakunin's
narrowness, that he was only prepared to
admit
certain approved
types of anarchists to his projected revolutionary fraternity.
The appeal to authority can be no better than the arguments of the
authority, and unfortunately for Chomsky the remaining authority,
Rocker, does not deliver the arguments.
himself to modern
For a start he restricts
anarchism, thereby excluding such counter
examples to the inclusion thesis as Thoreau.
Secondly Rocker's
argument from the 'realities of capitalist economic
forms'
and the resulting 'exploitation of man by man' does not show that
'anarchism is necessarily anti-capitalist', but only that it is
opposed to the tried forms of large-scale capitalism.
Small-scale
capitalism, for example with appropriate technology, is not
ruled out thereby;
and nor are anarchist's who would incorporate
such features into their theory.
Thirdly, Rocker simply assumes
in his view that modern anarchism is the confluence of socialism
and liberalism, that it must be one or the other (it is not the
one he thinks, so by Disjunctive Syllogism, it must be the other):
but the dichotomy is a false one, as we have already seen.
�Chomsky's direct argument for his qualified**" inclusion
thesis begins thus:
Any consistent anarchist must oppose private
ownership of the means of production and the
wage-slavery which is a component of this system,
as incompatible with the principle that labor
must be freely undertaken and under the control
of the producer
(p.xiii).
Libertarian anarchists would deny this.
'The means of
production' is ambiguous as between 'some means (or methods)
of production; and 'all means of production'.
1 Need we wonder what becomes of the inconsistent anarchist?
�The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Letter, Fred to Richard Sylvan re: Interested in draft paper ‘Behind left and right’ by
Sylvan. (1 leaf)
2. Photocopy of eight pages from Moore B (1972) Reflections on the causes of human
misery and upon certain proposals to eliminate them, Allen Lane. (4 leaves)
����The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Annotated photocopy of four pages from Russell B (1935) In praise of idleness and other
essays, Allen & Unwin. (2 leaves)
2. Annotated photocopy of two pages from unidentified publication. (1 leaf)
�lf)f)%Racvch^ paper
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Photocopy of four pages from unidentified publication. (2 leaves)
��The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
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�/
cases.
.
themselves.
BIEDENKOPF IGNORED
Although the symposium was entitled
Multinationals in
Muller (American University, Washington D.C.) had thrown
few heretical thoughts into the discussion - but they were
ignored.
on trust
bevond question", said Biedenkopf,
"that in the new economic order? which is characterized above
all by confrontation ^tween industrial ^ates^an^_^ey^^^„
countries, the role of private prope^ y
<ri ^i-,a T-d^rivitv of the concept of property
Biedenkopf compared the relati
y
German industry,
with that of patent Paction. As long a=,ue
in the last century, lagged
J?^fa Q^y ^hen German
consistently against paten
j_ ^<g Bismarck became an
industry had caught up with England s,
advocate of patent protection.
Biedenkopf said that claims to
^gyg^iimited in time;
than patent claims, since P^^^J^^tess
"Should the
holdi^g^of^private ^stments in developing countries^not^
allow the most important industrial and
be in foreign hands.
�WHAT IS THE " BERNE DECLARATION "
"Berne Declaration":
development policy.
theologians.
original name of a manifesto on Swiss
Published in 1968 on the initiative of some
The Declaration was signed by over 10,000 persons, who thus
made a financial and political commitment (e.g. to giving
up 1-3%'oftheir income to development aid for three years).
An organisation sprung from it which combines information
on the relationship between Switzerland and the Third World
with social and political action:
e.g. coffee campaign, meat renunciation campaign, evaluation
of school materials and children's books, campaign against arms
exports, etc.
No fund raising for projects abroad, financially independent and
not linked to any political party.
Membership:
Over 10,000 signatories of the original Declaration,
including about 1,200 members of the Association "For Development
in Solidarity".
For further reading on this topic we recommend:
Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Muller.
Global Reach:
The Power of the Multinational Corporations
Published by Simon & Schuster, New York 1974 (US$ 11.95)
�The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Annotated photocopy of two pages from unidentified publication. (1 leaf)
2. Letter, [?], Philosophy Department, University of Queensland to Richard, 2 Jul 1993 re
update on review of the Word Society and Kaldor tax. (1 leaf)
�,,
Democracy within
ANARCHY,
and
'
.--7 '^;' '2
DEMANARCHY
Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game
between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with
each other their patronage and cites/br the acclaimed right to govern.
Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be
governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other
elite team.
For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected not
controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative.
By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see
Burnheim).
are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as/a//
. satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent.
B argues that they are not
1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote.
2. only structural, not material issu^to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for
instance, not capital punishment, not abortion.
has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It
the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or govemnorj; a popular
government. The municipal body of a modem Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises
no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply,
however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving
��The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Flyer, Australian National University Centre for Resource and Environment Studies Seminar,
Resource development dilemmas in Indochina by Dr Philip Hirsh, 24 Oct 1991. With
handwritten annotations. (1 leaf)
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�ism? I take
; ___
Why does democracy entai 1 anarchy and social
The
democracy to be government of the people by the people.
not
is
It
'Which people are we talking about?",
question is:
democratic,
I presume, for the people of Sydney to be deciding
'minding
whether or not Melbourne has trams. They would not be
I
assume
their own business" as we say. So for these reasons
by
affected
that the people are those people who are primarily
perhaps
the decision. OK, -some are affected more than others and
by an?/
everyone is affected a little bit, albeit unnoticeably,
or if you like
So that"s why I say 'primarily'
decision,
There will be difficulty in many cases in knowing
'mostly".
the
someone is affected sufficently to get into
whether
By and
electorate, but we needn"t get too up tight about that.
large people will be the best judge of that themselves.
Now if society operated in some such way, there could be no
laws in the common sense of 'law". For a law is a decision to the
effect that everyone of a certain type will be constrained to
behave in a certain fashion. But the people who are primarily
affected by the people of that type being constrained in that way
will vary from time to time, so that, in a democracy, such a law
could be deemed to be operative only for as long as the people
primarily affected by it (a) remained the same and (b) had no
wish to change their behaviour - and that, for anything a lawyer
would call a law would be to all intents and purposes no time! at
Dead
all.
Hence the truly democratic society will be lawless,
people are no longer affected by social decisions they helped to
make.
So any such social decisions must be remade by the new
electorate.
/
y
/
/
k<
i -
Similarly, democracy entails socialism, where by socialism I
mean the public control of the means of production, distribution
Producing, distributing and exchanging are all
and exchange.
acts, which, if made democratically, are made publicly - by those
Those
members of the public that are primarily affected.
primarily affected will be those who are required to do the work,
those who receive the goods or services produced, and those who
e.g.
suffer the negative effects of the industrial decision,
deprivation of wealth or income, unemployment or pollution.
Democracy does not entail optimum freedom, if that means
optimum satisfaction. However, on the assumption that people will
want to maximise their satisfaction, they should prefer optimally
satisfying decision procedures in the democratic decision making
processes. Given that they are rational in this regard, they will
therefore opt for rational conflict resolution procedures rather
than merely counting heads, hands or ballot papers.
I take it that you don"t need counterexamples to show the
invalidity of arguing from anarchy or socialism to democracy.
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Affairs publication. Article 'The church in a liberal society' has handwritten annotations. (1 leaf)
��The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
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CHARACTERISING ANARCHISM: reaching the core of anarchism
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------------------------
�The present situation can be summarised in terms of certainties
and uncertainties.
The certainties are:
There are limits to the absorptive capacity (of technological
waste products and toxic substances), resilience, and
adaptability of biological systems - a principle which
applies as much to the biosphere as a whole as it does
to local ecosystems and to individual organisms.
1.
,______________________rin
2.
The present pattern of increasing per capita
resources, discharge of technological wastes and use of
J__ 2.3 is
ecologically unsustainable:
energy in human ___
society
if it is 1not
-- brought under control through' deliberate
-- as
— a
societal action, it will come to an end either
consequence of depletion of mineral resources or, more
nf
seriously, as the result of irreversible damage to the
biosphere caused by technological waste products.
The uncertainties are:
1 How much longer the biosphere can continue to P^^ *
suitable habitat tor humanity given the present pattern of
industrial productivity.
Which particular culturally-induced environmental changes
2.
represent the greatest threat to the integrity o the
biosphere.
Which cultural phenomena are the most critical m causing
undesirable change in the biosphere .
3.
t
For example, social goals, patterns of investment, favoured
technologies, modes of decision-making, loci of power J
�use of machines powered by extrasomatic energy (e.g. fossil
fuels). As a consequence of these developments, the ecological
impact of the human species (as expressed in terms of energy use)
is now about 15,000 times greater than it was at the time of the
domestic transition.
98 percent of this increase has occurred
since 1800 AD, and 80 percent in the last 50 years.
It is certain that the biosphere, as a dynamic system capable of
supporting the human species, will not be able to tolerate this
continuing intensification of technometabolism (i.e. use of
energy and resources and discharge of technological wastes by the
human population) indefinitely.
.
* . -t
ecologically sustainable.
*
Phase Four human society is not
�/^e^/ dyx-^7
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If humans are to continue to exist in the biosphere, they must
devise a nee societal system (or systems) , such that their needs
can be satisfied with a more modest rate of resource and energy
use than that which at present prevails in the high-energy
societies.
Certain essential characteristics, or biosocral imperatives of
^t^-new societal system are clear .
.
rhe additional ecological load now imposed
on the biosphere by human society is, in energy terms, equivalent
to about 5 percent of the total ecological load imposed by all
other animals and plants put together.
If the technometabolism
of human society as a whole continues to intensify at the same
rate as it has over the past 20 years, by the year 2100 human
beings will be using as much energy, and consequently having as
much impact on the biosphere, as all other existing forms of
life. In fact, it is highly unlikely that the biosphere would be
able to tolerate this eventuality.
Moreover, many authors are of
the opinion that the biosphere would not be able to withstand an
intensification of technometabolism in the developing countries
of the world such that it reached the present level of intensity
characteristic of the modern high-energy societies^-J:t^t^is, 5
times the present global level of technometabolism)Indeed,-^
7^533= *=^ady mentionetA i
is clear that the biosphere will not be
able to tolerate indefinitely even the present pattern of
technometabolism.
�Four important biosocial imperatives can be stated as follows:
*
1.
The si2e of the Auman population must be stable.
2.
The overall rate of resource and energy use and of
technological waste production by society fi.e. the intensity
of technometabolism? must be steady for decreasing?.
This
rate must be considerably lower than that characteristic of
the high-energy societies at the present time.
3.
The organisation of society and the economic system must be
such that human health, well-being and enjoyment of life do
not depend on continually increasing per capita use of
resources and energy and production of technological wastes.
4.
The organisation of society and the economic system must be
such that high rates of employment* are not dependent on
increasing consumption of the products of resource—intensive
anc? ener^ry-in tensive industry.
distribution of natural resources, should be an essential aim of
society at both regional and global levels.
Moreover, it is also
assumed that all societal activities that threaten the integrity
of the biosphere must cease — including the manufacture, storage
and deployment of nuclear weapons.
It is self-evident that these biosocial imperatives raise some
important questions about the future of human society.
The FQP
is based on the view that consideration of these questions is an
urgent matter, and that serious thought should now be given to
the design of a new society which, for an indefinite period,
satisfies the health and well-being needs both of the biosphere^-
*
**
The actual size of this sustainable stable population will
depend on its pattern of resource and energy use. The higher
the intensity of technometabolism, the smaller the
sustainable human population.
For the purposes of this Program, 25 percent of the present
per capita intensity of technometabolism in the high-energy
societies will be taken initially as a reasonable societal
objective.
*** The word employment is used here in a broad sense to include
all direct or indirect subsistence activities that are
associated with a sense of personal involvement and purpose.
(Indirect subsistence activities are those which are aimed at
providing subsistence but which do not involve the direct
acquisition of food from its place of origin. Working for
wages with which to procure food and shelter is thus an
indirect subsistence activity).
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��WORLD ORDER, CULTURAL CONVERGENCE
AND REGIONAL CULTURAL AUTONOMY
The success of Australia's relations with the Pacific Island States
will be based upon the practical and sustained recognition that no one
culture is basically superior to another, -that each and every
[traditional]
culture, together with its social, polLtical and
economic ingredients, have a measuring and value
...
that our new
found freedoms [and independence] were fought so that to a significant
degree a renaissance of Melanesian values, principles and expectations
can take place (Lini, p.ll and p.6).
World order with regional cultural autonomy is a highly desirable goal.
It
is an objective not only of political leaders such as Lini but also of ambitious
proposals such as Mazrui's world federation of cultures J But there is
evidence
that, despite its prime facte plausibility and appeal, it is an impossible goal.
There are various routes to this most unwelcome conclusion.
Mazrui admits that tris 'approach
Consider first Mazrui's cultural paradox.
to
appears
have
But it is worse than that:
contradictory aims' (M p.9).
approach is contradictory, almost as it stands, and Mazrui
way out.
to
the
next premiss:
calculations.
reform
as
a
problem of building up
on
'To get mankind to agree to a new world system [one with
social
reasoning
and
Consensus behind three or four values will need consensus
behind many more supporting values and perspectives.
world
clear
In Mazrui's terms, which leal
order], we need to give mankind that shared framework of
social
no
The argument proceeds as follows:
World order implies a certain consensus.
Pl.
indicates
the
problem
of
supporting
mobilizing
values;
...
consensus;
and
we
see
In
summary,
w*
s <e
we see consensus as a
this
latter
as
an
outgrowth of cultural convergence' (M p.l).
P2.
Such consensus implies [substantial]
cultural
convergence.
In
Mazrui's
'World order...': as mentioned before, I think you should take into account
the world order writings of people such as Richard Falk (A Study of Future Worlds,
etc.) and Johan Galtung (The True Worlds, etc.).
�'Consensus
formulation,
behind much-needed world reforms is impossible without
substantial cultural convergence on a global scale' (M p.9).
[Substantial]
P3.
Mazrul's
cultural
formulation:
'the
convergence
In
which the world has so far
convergence
cultural
dependence.
cultural
implies
attained carries with it the evil of dependency'.
P4.
Cultural dependence is incompatible with regional cultural autonomy.
Hence, by P1-P4, world order is incompatible with
and
world order with such regional autonomy is impossible.
hence
is valid, but some of the premisses can
of P2 with Pl.
produce
cultural
regional
be
certainly
shaken,
autonomy,
The argument
the
especially
Even so, no matter how hard they are shaken the problem
cannot be entirely removed.
*****
There is no general solution to the
cultural
regional
This
autonomy.
problem
result
of
world
order
maintaining
is an application of a generalised
Arrow's Theorem.in the application, world options or courses-of-action are the
regional cultures are the factors.
and
alternatives,
Then the factor rankings
are different cultural rankings of the world options.
that
is
there
no
dominant
culture,
no
cultural dictator.
conditions can be assumed satisfied, or satisfied by
result
Regional autonomy implies
Since the other
adjustments 3,
the
dismal
given that world order it taken to require overall rankings of
follows,
world options.
Although a general solution is impossible, a solution
possible
confront.
however
for
all
the
choices
world
a
federation
Given the environmental and economic
that
seems
increasingly
unlikely:
choices
more
may
be
nonetheless
cultures ever has to
of
that
and
are
more,
being
made
because
environmental dependence, choices made by one culture spill over into others.
2
of
�The resolutions hitherto have primarily been
cultural
assimilation.
the
And
by
cultural
arsenal of defences, ranging from explicit claims of cultural
claims
through
down
superiority
of democratic cultural adjustment .(tribal voting with the feet)
tn the face of technological superiority and improved "standards of living"
least
registered
as
imported
by
e.g.
relatively easy to shatter;
dominant
culture
ranked
highly,
concerning local environments);
etc.
economics).
the
of
Many
superiority
is
these
only
(at
defences are
in
the
things
not in other matters (such as discrimination
the improved "standards of living" often enough
from leisurely lives of primitive affluence to "wage slaves",
people
converted
and
been backed up by
has
domination
cultural
domination
Some of the evangelical defences are harder to break.
While it is easy in
hindsight to see that there was little justification for imposing religions like
various forms of Christianity in the way they were imposed on other
gentler
or
militarily weaker cultures, the same is not seen in regard to ideologies such as
positivistic science of mainstream economics.
Perhaps most
more
that
dangerous
than
pretentious
the
idea
main Western culture is the
guardian of the truth, is the idea that it has a special
Rationality
is
tool
a
all,
of
dangerous
hold
on
rationality.
that can be applied to justify convergence to orthodox
Western norms.
A world federation of cultures - an Integrated world culture, so almost
to
say - appears to afford a viable alternative to world government, as a source of
world order in particular.
firstly,
it
is
a
what
'we
it
less remote prospect:
than we were a century ago;
Secondly,
Moreover,
should
is
preferable
alternative,
-'we are no nearer a world government
but we are much nearer to world culture'
be
since,
(t
p.2).
aiming for are internalised controls [those of
�culture], based on new human inclinations,
rather
organisational mechanisms [government]' (M p.2).
than
external
not.
governmental,
typically
by
Thirdly, cultural controls and
liaisons permit flexibility, regional autonomy, and so on,
rigid
controls
in
ways
that
more
authoritive and externally imposed, controls do
There is evidence, furthermore, from a
range
of
indigenous
cultures
-
Melanesian cultures are ]ust one group of examples - that culture can substitute
Hie vision of a well-ordered
for government.
cultures
government
without
it
anarchists;
especially
is
goes
of
federation
back,
of
course,
prominent
in
the
organisations
to
the
century
and
of
convergence
to
Bakunin
of
work
19th
or
Kroprotkin.
To make the vision work does not however require
the
Mazrui
extent
imagines;
it
does not require a single shared culture
essence, a single characterising feature
is wanted
in
the
rope
strands [the regional cultures
need
as
sought
where a family resemblance is what
A model for a world federation is given Wittgenstein s rope picture.
strands
Various
erroneously
Mazrui has
shared cultural universe, or one world culture
an
cultura1
overlap and criss-cross
It is this overlap of
that give the rope its strength
usually does, run through the length of the rope.
But no
strand
So similarly there
need be no shared or common culture for a world federation, or rope, of culttires
to have strength, and to ensure thereby world order.
regional cultures overlap one another suitably.
it
will
not
follow
that
It is enough that adjacent
Nor is overlap transitive;
there must be something shared.
so
This rope model of
cultures may be alternatively described in other family ways , e.g
in terms
of
a network of cultures.
FOOTNOTES
1.
For these objectives see Mazrui's Introduction, p.l ff. Here as elsewhere in
text, author's names double as references.
�2.
On the generalisation see Routley.
3.
For methods of adjustment, e.g. completing rankings, see again Routley.
REFERENCES
O. Lint, 'Keynote Address', Australia and the South Pacific,
Proceedings on a
Conference
held
at the Australian National University, Centre for
Continuing Education, Canberra, 1982.
A.A. Mazrui, A World Federation of Cultures: An African Perspective, Free Press,
New York" 1*976. All page references prefixed M are to this work.
R. Routley, 'On the impossibility of an orthodox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmental problems', Logique et Analyse 23 (1980)
145-166.
K. Lehrer and C. Wagner, Rational consensus
Rolland, 1981.
Science
in
and
Society,
Re Idel,
1. It is widely assumed that cultural convergence is a good thing, to
NOTES
promoted.
This
is the operational assumption in Lehrer and Wanner, who want to
see the conditions for
everywhere
their
(fortunately,
fail for important real
excessive
be
cultural
Markov
convergence
theorem
applying
virtually
of course, the conditions are pretty restrictive, and
life
cases).
convergence
is
There
not
are
good
reasons
for
thinking
a good thing. Certainly some cases of
convergence are undecidable.
Experimental testing of convergence (Defi groups) showed that
when
convergence,
occurred, tended to confirm the status quo. Methods of convergence are
it
essentially conservative. Both locally and on a larger scene such methods can be
damaging,
in several respects. They undercut the perhaps otherwise positions of
minorities. And they can reinforce the posltLon of dangerous power triggers.
Consider what would happen - what appears to be happening -
scene
the
world
where we have, in some measure, "enforced convergence". What we would be
headed for - what we are headed for ts imposition
western
in
paradigm,
with
its
economism,
5
everywhere
violence
of
and
the
dominant
environmental
�* "
destructiveness. Lower cultures are progressively undermined.
buddhism,
which
stand
opposed
to
main
afford just one conspicuous example. (The
useful
working
example.)
Buddhism
is
Those
practicing
directions of the dominant paradigm,
American
right
out
impact
of-
on
step
Thailand
with
is
a
economism,
encouraging as it does removal of consumerist ambitions, and it is dianetrically
opposed
to
violence and like destructive practices. (Thus to pull Buddhism out
of the educational curriculum, as in the fairly recent American-inspired,
constitution,
their
is not the enlightened step it is usually seen as: to be sure, it
is "progressive" enough, but in a direction more of us should not be headed.)
2. Total consensus represents a limit of convergence. Consensus also
its serious limitations then.
6
has
�WORLD ORDER, CULTURAL CONVERGENCE
AND REGIONAL CULTURAL AUTONOMY
The success of Australia's relations with the Pacific Island States
will be based upon the practical and sustained recognition that no one
culture is basically superior to another, that each and every
[traditional]
culture, together with its social, political and
economic ingredients, have a measuring and value ...
that our new
found freedoms [and independence] were fought so that to a significant
degree a renaissance of Melanesian values, principles and expectations
can take place (Lini, p.ll and p.6).
World order with regional cultural autonomy is a highly desirable goal.
It
is an objective not only of political leaders such as Lini but also of ambitious
proposals such as Mazrui's world federation of cultures.But there is
evidence
that, despite its prima facie plausibility and appeal, it is an impossible goal.
There are various routes to this most unwelcome conclusion.
Consider first Mazrui's cultural paradox.
appears
to
have
Mazrui admits that his 'approach
But it is worse than that:
contradictory aims' (M p.9).
approach is contradictory, almost as it stands, and Mazrui
way out.
to
the
next premiss:
calculations.
reform
as
a
problem of building up
on
'To get mankind to agree to a new world system [one with
social
reasoning
and
Consensus behind three or four values will need consensus
behind many more supporting values and perspectives.
world
clear
In Mazrui's terms, which lead
order], we need to give mankind that shared framework of
social
no
The argument proceeds as follows:
World order implies a certain consensus.
Pl.
indicates
the
problem
of
supporting
mobilizing
values;
...
consensus;
and
we
see
In
summary,
we
see
we see consensus as a
this
latter
as
an
outgrowth of cultural convergence' (M p.l).
P2.
Such consensus implies [substantial]
cultural
convergence.
In
Mazrui's
�formulation,
'Consensus
behind much-needed world reforms is impossible without
substantial cultural convergence on a global scale' (M p.9).
[Substantial]
P3.
cultural
formulation:
Mazrui's
'the
implies
convergence
cultural
dependence.
cultural
In
which the world has so far
convergence
attained carries with it the evil of dependency'.
P4.
Cultural dependence is incompatible with regional cultural autonomy.
Hence, by P1-P4, world order is incompatible with
and
cultural
world order with such regional autonomy is impossible.
hence
is valid, but some of the premisses can
of P2 with Pl.
produce
regional
certainly
shaken,
be
autonomy,
The argument
especially
the
Even so, no matter how hard they are shaken the problem
cannot be entirely removed.
*****
problem
There is no general solution to the
regional
This
autonomy.
cultural
result
of
order
world
maintaining
is an application of a generalised
Arrow's Theorem.in the application, world options or courses-of-action are the
alternatives,
regional cultures are the factors.
and
Then the factor rankings
are different cultural rankings of the world options.
that
is
there
no
dominant
culture,
no
cultural dictator.
conditions can be assumed satisfied, or satisfied by
result
Regional autonomy implies
Since the other
adjustments 3,
the
dismal
given that world order it taken to require overall rankings of
follows,
world options.
Although a general solution is impossible, a solution
possible
confront.
however
for
all
the
choices
world
a
federation
Given the environmental and economic
that
seems
increasingly
unlikely:
choices
more
may
be
nonetheless
cultures ever has to
of
that
and
are
more,
being
made
because
environmental dependence, choices made by one culture spill over into others.
2
of
�The resolutions hitherto have primarily been
cultural
the
And
assimilation.
cultural
by
cultural
arsenal of defences, ranging from explicit claims of cultural
claims
through
down
superiority
of democratic cultural adjustment (tribal voting with the feet)
in the face of technological superiority and improved "standards of living"
least
registered
as
ranked
culture
e.g.
people
converted
etc.
the
superiority
of
is
these
only
(at
defences are
in
things
the
not in other matters (such as discrimination
highly,
concerning local environments);
Many
economics).
imported
by
relatively easy to shatter;
dominant
and
been backed up by
has
domination
domination
the improved "standards of living" often enough
from leisurely lives of primitive affluence to "wage slaves",
Some of the evangelical defences are harder to break.
While it is easy in
hindsight to see that there was little justification for imposing religions like
various forms of Christianity in the way they were imposed on other
gentler
or
militarily weaker cultures, the same is not seen in regard to ideologies such as
positivistic science of mainstream economics.
more
dangerous
than
pretentious
the
idea
Perhaps most
that
is
tool
a
all,
main Western culture is the
guardian of the truth, is the idea that it has a special
Rationality
of
dangerous
hold
on
rationality.
that can be applied to justify convergence to orthodox
Western norms.
A world federation of cultures - an integrated world culture, so almost
to
say - appears to afford a viable alternative to world government, as a source of
world order in particular.
firstly,
it
is
a
what
'we
it
less remote prospect:
than we were a century ago;
Secondly,
Moreover,
should
is
preferable
alternative,
'we are no nearer a world government
but we are much nearer to world culture'
be
since,
(M
p.2).
aiming for are internalised controls [those of
3
�culture], based on new human inclinations,
than
rather
organisational mechanisms [government]' (M p.2).
typically
governmental,
in
ways
more
that
authoritive and externally imposed, controls do
There is evidence, furthermore, from a
not.
by
Thirdly, cultural controls and
liaisons permit flexibility, regional autonomy, and so on,
rigid
controls
external
range
of
indigenous
cultures
-
Melanesian cultures are just one group of examples — that culture can substitute
The vision of a well-ordered
for government.
government
without
cultures
it
anarchists;
especially
is
back,
of
course,
prominent
in
the
goes
organisations
of
federation
the
to
century
and
of
convergence
to
Bakunin
of
work
19th
or
Kroprotkin.
To make the vision work does not however require
Mazrui
extent
the
imagines;
does not require a single shared culture , a
it
shared cultural universe, or one world culture.
an
cultural
erroneously
Mazrui has
sought
essence, a single characterising feature, where a family resemblance is what
is wanted.
Various
A model for a world federation is given Wittgenstein's rope picture.
strands
in
the
rope
overlap and criss-cross.
It is this overlap of
strands [the regional cultures] that give the rope its strength.
need,
as
usually does, run through the length of the rope.
But no
strand
So similarly there
need be no shared or common culture for a world federation, or rope, of cultures
to have strength, and to ensure thereby world order.
regional cultures overlap one another suitably.
it
will
not
follow
that
It is enough that adjacent
Nor is overlap transitive;
there must be something shared.
so
This rope model of
cultures may be alternatively described in other family ways, e.g.
in terms
of
a network of cultures.
FOOTNOTES
1.
For these objectives see Mazrui's Introduction, p.l ff. Here as elsewhere in
text, author's names double as references.
4
�2.
On the generalisation see Routley.
3.
For methods of adjustment, e.g. completing rankings, see again Routley.
REFERENCES
W. Lini, 'Keynote Address', Australia and the South Pacific, Proceedings on a
Conference
held
at the Australian National University, Centre for
Continuing Education, Canberra, 1982.
A.A. Mazrui, A World Federation of Cultures: An African Perspective, Free Press,
New York, 1976. All page references prefixed M are to this work.
R. Routley, 'On the impossibility of an orthodox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmental problems', Logique et Analyse 23 (1980)
145-166.
K. Lehrer and C. Wagner, Rational consensus
in
Science
and
Society,
Reidel,
Holland, 1981.
1. It is widely assumed that cultural convergence is a good thing, to
NOTES
promoted.
This
is the operational assumption in Lehrer and Wagner, who want to
see the conditions for
everywhere
their
(fortunately,
fail for important real
excessive
be
cultural
Markov
convergence
theorem
applying
virtually
of course, the conditions are pretty restrictive, and
life
cases).
convergence
is
There
not
are
good
reasons
for
thinking
a good thing. Certainly some cases of
convergence are undecidable.
Experimental testing of convergence (Defi groups) showed that
occurred, tended to confirm the status quo. Methods of convergence are
it
when
convergence,
essentially conservative. Both locally and on a larger scene such methods can be
damaging,
in several respects. They undercut the perhaps otherwise positions of
minorities. And they can reinforce the position of dangerous power triggers.
Consider what would happen - what appears to be happening -
scene,
the
world
where we have, in some measure, "enforced convergence". What we would be
headed for - what we are headed for is imposition
western
in
paradigm,
with
its
economism,
5
everywhere
violence
of
and
the
dominant
environmental
�destructiveness. Lower cultures are progressively undermined.
which
Buddhism,
stand
opposed
to
main
afford just one conspicuous example. (The
useful
working
example.)
Buddhism
is
Those
practicing
directions of the dominant paradigm,
American
right
out
impact
of
on
step
Thailand
with
is
a
economism,
encouraging as it does removal of consumerist ambitions, and it is dianetrically
opposed
to
violence and like destructive practices. (Thus to pull Buddhism out
of the educational curriculum, as in the fairly recent American-inspired,
constitution,
their
is not the enlightened step it is usually seen as: to be sure, it
is "progressive" enough, but in a direction more of us should not be headed.)
2. Total consensus represents a limit of convergence. Consensus also
its serious limitations then
has
��
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Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia
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The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Annotated cutting (photocopy) of two pages from Sears PB (1965) 'Utopia and the living
landscape', Daedalus, 94:474–486. (1 leaf)
Z^7b
r.
,
x^L.
BEHIND LEFT AND RIGHT:
ENVIRONMENTAL ANARCHISM.
There are forms of anarchism which represent a new political
^dimension outside the lineal left-right classification.
Of course
these forms of anarchism have features in common with rightist
positions (forms of capitalism and "free" enterprise) and with
of
leftist positions (formsXsocialism and communism) and currently
with both.
But they reject crucial features of both, and, more
to the point, assumptions upon which the classification of the
conventional right-left political spectrum is based.These are
assumptions of central control of a state, of control of the means
of production
(on the one side by private individuals and on the
other side by the people or a committee supposedly representing
them), of ownership of property (privately versus publicly) , and
overarching all these the familiar assumptions of human chauvinism
(e.g. those discussed in [1], such as that all of value resides in
humankind or answers back to human interests).
There are forms
of anarchism - especially environmental anarchisms, the working
out of the character of which is one of the main objectives - which
reject, or importantly qualify, all these assumptions.
There has been a concerted, but intellectually fradulent,
attempt by statements of both right and left to absorb anarchism
as theirs.
For example, Nozick [2] and others to the right try
to represent anarchism as fitting into their libertarian scheme.
Nozick (in his final chapter) outlines a framework for utopias, a
generous framework which would include most anarchist options;
but
1 As might be expected the right-left classification is not a single
thing, but a bundle of different, and not mutually consistent,
classifications.
In the sense in which 'right' means 'conservative
for example, in contrast to 'left' as 'non-conservative', the
dichotomy is exhaustive, but then the distinction is a different
one from that under discussion and attack. The origin of the
classification would hardly lead one to anticipate completeness.
The members of continental parliaments who sat on the right or the
left hardly exhausted the range of political positions, especially
those in opposition to such a centralised state mechanism of
cont..
1.1
control and concentration of power.
In the end the right
left 'distinction' is to be left behind: it is only some
thing to hang an introduction on.
From a philosophical viewpoint there is hardly a more
interesting word in English than 'right' with 24 headings
in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, several of major philosophical
importance, and by no means all of the senses there are
untangled.
2.
he goes on, without any discernible argument,to claim - what
certainly seems false
that the framework for utopias is nothing
but his minimal state.
Both this minimal state and the arguments
for it are, however, decidedly objectionable at least from
anarchist viewpoints not to the right, in particular which reject
the propertarians or chauvinistic assumptions slipped into the
bottom of Nozick's position.
(The criticism of Nozick is so far
no more than a set of memos:
it will have to be spelled out.)
The attempted take-over bid by the left is sometimes if
anything, even cruder.
Consider, for example, Guerin's argument
from meaning for his inclusion thesis that every anarchist is a
([1], p.12).
socialist
It is this:-
Anarchism is really a synonym
for socialism.
The anarchist is primarly a socialist whose aim
is to abolish the exploitation of man by man.
Anarchism is only one of the streams of socialist
thought, that stream whose main components are
concern for liberty and haste to abolish the State.
This is inconsistent:
for if anarchism is really a synonym for
then anarchism is no sub-variety of socialism,
socialism,/but identical with it.
In fact the terms are far from
synonymous, as perusal of a better dictionary would have revealed,
and neither includes the other in meaning:
that is all.
there is overlap, and
An environmental anarchist's aims extend further than
abolishing the exploitation of man by man, it also includes ending
the exploitation of other things, natural items
by man.
in particular,
This is, of course, by not the only respect in which
anarchism may differ from socialism;
for it may well reject the
collectiv-istassumptions of socialism, the public ownership of all
the means of productions, etc.
Guerin not only relies on the
synonymy claim but goes so far as to say that 'today the terms
"anarchist" and "libertarian" have become interchangeable'.
By
transitivity then, "libertarian" and "socialist" are interchangeable
so Nozick, also is a libertarian, is a socialist:
this would come
as a surprise to Nozick.
Chomsky's argument that the consistent anarchist is a
socialist (in his Introduction to [1], p.XO) is more elaborate
and devious but equally invalid.
Chomsky's moves begin with
several appeals to authority, to the anarchist historian Rocker
(first introduced as an anarchist, and then as a socialist), to
Fischer (who simply asserted a version of the thesis in need of
defence) and to Bakunin
(who simply laid down the principle
that each member must be, to begin with, a socialist' in his
"anarchist manifesto",something which only reflects Bakunin's
narrowness, that he was only prepared to
admit
certain approved
types of anarchists to his projected revolutionary fraternity.
The appeal to authority can be no better than the arguments of the
authority, and unfortunately for Chomsky the remaining authority,
Rocker, does not deliver the arguments.
himself to modern
For a start he restricts
anarchism, thereby excluding such counter
examples to the inclusion thesis as Thoreau.
Secondly Rocker's
argument from the 'realities of capitalist economic
forms'
and the resulting 'exploitation of man by man' does not show that
'anarchism is necessarily anti-capitalist', but only that it is
opposed to the tried forms of large-scale capitalism.
Small-scale
capitalism, for example with appropriate technology, is not
ruled out thereby;
and nor are anarchist's who would incorporate
such features into their theory.
Thirdly, Rocker simply assumes
in his view that modern anarchism is the confluence of socialism
and liberalism, that it must be one or the other (it is not the
one he thinks, so by Disjunctive Syllogism, it must be the other):
but the dichotomy is a false one, as we have already seen.
Chomsky's direct argument for his qualified**" inclusion
thesis begins thus:
Any consistent anarchist must oppose private
ownership of the means of production and the
wage-slavery which is a component of this system,
as incompatible with the principle that labor
must be freely undertaken and under the control
of the producer
(p.xiii).
Libertarian anarchists would deny this.
'The means of
production' is ambiguous as between 'some means (or methods)
of production; and 'all means of production'.
1 Need we wonder what becomes of the inconsistent anarchist?
The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Letter, Fred to Richard Sylvan re: Interested in draft paper ‘Behind left and right’ by
Sylvan. (1 leaf)
2. Photocopy of eight pages from Moore B (1972) Reflections on the causes of human
misery and upon certain proposals to eliminate them, Allen Lane. (4 leaves)
The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Annotated photocopy of four pages from Russell B (1935) In praise of idleness and other
essays, Allen & Unwin. (2 leaves)
2. Annotated photocopy of two pages from unidentified publication. (1 leaf)
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228 81
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Photocopy of four pages from unidentified publication. (2 leaves)
The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Annotated photocopy of two pages from unidentified publication by Hobbes? (1 leaf)
/
cases.
.
themselves.
BIEDENKOPF IGNORED
Although the symposium was entitled
Multinationals in
Muller (American University, Washington D.C.) had thrown
few heretical thoughts into the discussion - but they were
ignored.
on trust
bevond question", said Biedenkopf,
"that in the new economic order? which is characterized above
all by confrontation ^tween industrial ^ates^an^_^ey^^^„
countries, the role of private prope^ y
<ri ^i-,a T-d^rivitv of the concept of property
Biedenkopf compared the relati
y
German industry,
with that of patent Paction. As long a=,ue
in the last century, lagged
J?^fa Q^y ^hen German
consistently against paten
j_ ^<g Bismarck became an
industry had caught up with England s,
advocate of patent protection.
Biedenkopf said that claims to
^gyg^iimited in time;
than patent claims, since P^^^J^^tess
"Should the
holdi^g^of^private ^stments in developing countries^not^
allow the most important industrial and
be in foreign hands.
WHAT IS THE " BERNE DECLARATION "
"Berne Declaration":
development policy.
theologians.
original name of a manifesto on Swiss
Published in 1968 on the initiative of some
The Declaration was signed by over 10,000 persons, who thus
made a financial and political commitment (e.g. to giving
up 1-3%'oftheir income to development aid for three years).
An organisation sprung from it which combines information
on the relationship between Switzerland and the Third World
with social and political action:
e.g. coffee campaign, meat renunciation campaign, evaluation
of school materials and children's books, campaign against arms
exports, etc.
No fund raising for projects abroad, financially independent and
not linked to any political party.
Membership:
Over 10,000 signatories of the original Declaration,
including about 1,200 members of the Association "For Development
in Solidarity".
For further reading on this topic we recommend:
Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Muller.
Global Reach:
The Power of the Multinational Corporations
Published by Simon & Schuster, New York 1974 (US$ 11.95)
The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Annotated photocopy of two pages from unidentified publication. (1 leaf)
2. Letter, [?], Philosophy Department, University of Queensland to Richard, 2 Jul 1993 re
update on review of the Word Society and Kaldor tax. (1 leaf)
,,
Democracy within
ANARCHY,
and
'
.--7 '^;' '2
DEMANARCHY
Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game
between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with
each other their patronage and cites/br the acclaimed right to govern.
Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be
governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other
elite team.
For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected not
controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative.
By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see
Burnheim).
are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as/a//
. satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent.
B argues that they are not
1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote.
2. only structural, not material issu^to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for
instance, not capital punishment, not abortion.
has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It
the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or govemnorj; a popular
government. The municipal body of a modem Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises
no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply,
however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving
The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Flyer, Australian National University Centre for Resource and Environment Studies Seminar,
Resource development dilemmas in Indochina by Dr Philip Hirsh, 24 Oct 1991. With
handwritten annotations. (1 leaf)
/
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Z
—z
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ism? I take
; ___
Why does democracy entai 1 anarchy and social
The
democracy to be government of the people by the people.
not
is
It
'Which people are we talking about?",
question is:
democratic,
I presume, for the people of Sydney to be deciding
'minding
whether or not Melbourne has trams. They would not be
I
assume
their own business" as we say. So for these reasons
by
affected
that the people are those people who are primarily
perhaps
the decision. OK, -some are affected more than others and
by an?/
everyone is affected a little bit, albeit unnoticeably,
or if you like
So that"s why I say 'primarily'
decision,
There will be difficulty in many cases in knowing
'mostly".
the
someone is affected sufficently to get into
whether
By and
electorate, but we needn"t get too up tight about that.
large people will be the best judge of that themselves.
Now if society operated in some such way, there could be no
laws in the common sense of 'law". For a law is a decision to the
effect that everyone of a certain type will be constrained to
behave in a certain fashion. But the people who are primarily
affected by the people of that type being constrained in that way
will vary from time to time, so that, in a democracy, such a law
could be deemed to be operative only for as long as the people
primarily affected by it (a) remained the same and (b) had no
wish to change their behaviour - and that, for anything a lawyer
would call a law would be to all intents and purposes no time! at
Dead
all.
Hence the truly democratic society will be lawless,
people are no longer affected by social decisions they helped to
make.
So any such social decisions must be remade by the new
electorate.
/
y
/
/
k<
i -
Similarly, democracy entails socialism, where by socialism I
mean the public control of the means of production, distribution
Producing, distributing and exchanging are all
and exchange.
acts, which, if made democratically, are made publicly - by those
Those
members of the public that are primarily affected.
primarily affected will be those who are required to do the work,
those who receive the goods or services produced, and those who
e.g.
suffer the negative effects of the industrial decision,
deprivation of wealth or income, unemployment or pollution.
Democracy does not entail optimum freedom, if that means
optimum satisfaction. However, on the assumption that people will
want to maximise their satisfaction, they should prefer optimally
satisfying decision procedures in the democratic decision making
processes. Given that they are rational in this regard, they will
therefore opt for rational conflict resolution procedures rather
than merely counting heads, hands or ballot papers.
I take it that you don"t need counterexamples to show the
invalidity of arguing from anarchy or socialism to democracy.
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The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
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CHARACTERISING ANARCHISM: reaching the core of anarchism
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The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Annotated photocopy of two pages from unidentified publication. (1 leaf)
2. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of Jacobs, M (August 1989) 'Green blues in Europe',
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-------------------------------
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CP-228-81 GTO
... - ----
!
DATE DUE
DATE/^O 4p
'
------------------------
The present situation can be summarised in terms of certainties
and uncertainties.
The certainties are:
There are limits to the absorptive capacity (of technological
waste products and toxic substances), resilience, and
adaptability of biological systems - a principle which
applies as much to the biosphere as a whole as it does
to local ecosystems and to individual organisms.
1.
,______________________rin
2.
The present pattern of increasing per capita
resources, discharge of technological wastes and use of
J__ 2.3 is
ecologically unsustainable:
energy in human ___
society
if it is 1not
-- brought under control through' deliberate
-- as
— a
societal action, it will come to an end either
consequence of depletion of mineral resources or, more
nf
seriously, as the result of irreversible damage to the
biosphere caused by technological waste products.
The uncertainties are:
1 How much longer the biosphere can continue to P^^ *
suitable habitat tor humanity given the present pattern of
industrial productivity.
Which particular culturally-induced environmental changes
2.
represent the greatest threat to the integrity o the
biosphere.
Which cultural phenomena are the most critical m causing
undesirable change in the biosphere .
3.
t
For example, social goals, patterns of investment, favoured
technologies, modes of decision-making, loci of power J
use of machines powered by extrasomatic energy (e.g. fossil
fuels). As a consequence of these developments, the ecological
impact of the human species (as expressed in terms of energy use)
is now about 15,000 times greater than it was at the time of the
domestic transition.
98 percent of this increase has occurred
since 1800 AD, and 80 percent in the last 50 years.
It is certain that the biosphere, as a dynamic system capable of
supporting the human species, will not be able to tolerate this
continuing intensification of technometabolism (i.e. use of
energy and resources and discharge of technological wastes by the
human population) indefinitely.
.
* . -t
ecologically sustainable.
*
Phase Four human society is not
/^e^/ dyx-^7
'' '
If humans are to continue to exist in the biosphere, they must
devise a nee societal system (or systems) , such that their needs
can be satisfied with a more modest rate of resource and energy
use than that which at present prevails in the high-energy
societies.
Certain essential characteristics, or biosocral imperatives of
^t^-new societal system are clear .
.
rhe additional ecological load now imposed
on the biosphere by human society is, in energy terms, equivalent
to about 5 percent of the total ecological load imposed by all
other animals and plants put together.
If the technometabolism
of human society as a whole continues to intensify at the same
rate as it has over the past 20 years, by the year 2100 human
beings will be using as much energy, and consequently having as
much impact on the biosphere, as all other existing forms of
life. In fact, it is highly unlikely that the biosphere would be
able to tolerate this eventuality.
Moreover, many authors are of
the opinion that the biosphere would not be able to withstand an
intensification of technometabolism in the developing countries
of the world such that it reached the present level of intensity
characteristic of the modern high-energy societies^-J:t^t^is, 5
times the present global level of technometabolism)Indeed,-^
7^533= *=^ady mentionetA i
is clear that the biosphere will not be
able to tolerate indefinitely even the present pattern of
technometabolism.
Four important biosocial imperatives can be stated as follows:
*
1.
The si2e of the Auman population must be stable.
2.
The overall rate of resource and energy use and of
technological waste production by society fi.e. the intensity
of technometabolism? must be steady for decreasing?.
This
rate must be considerably lower than that characteristic of
the high-energy societies at the present time.
3.
The organisation of society and the economic system must be
such that human health, well-being and enjoyment of life do
not depend on continually increasing per capita use of
resources and energy and production of technological wastes.
4.
The organisation of society and the economic system must be
such that high rates of employment* are not dependent on
increasing consumption of the products of resource—intensive
anc? ener^ry-in tensive industry.
distribution of natural resources, should be an essential aim of
society at both regional and global levels.
Moreover, it is also
assumed that all societal activities that threaten the integrity
of the biosphere must cease — including the manufacture, storage
and deployment of nuclear weapons.
It is self-evident that these biosocial imperatives raise some
important questions about the future of human society.
The FQP
is based on the view that consideration of these questions is an
urgent matter, and that serious thought should now be given to
the design of a new society which, for an indefinite period,
satisfies the health and well-being needs both of the biosphere^-
*
**
The actual size of this sustainable stable population will
depend on its pattern of resource and energy use. The higher
the intensity of technometabolism, the smaller the
sustainable human population.
For the purposes of this Program, 25 percent of the present
per capita intensity of technometabolism in the high-energy
societies will be taken initially as a reasonable societal
objective.
*** The word employment is used here in a broad sense to include
all direct or indirect subsistence activities that are
associated with a sense of personal involvement and purpose.
(Indirect subsistence activities are those which are aimed at
providing subsistence but which do not involve the direct
acquisition of food from its place of origin. Working for
wages with which to procure food and shelter is thus an
indirect subsistence activity).
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The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Annotated photocopy of six pages from Bahro R (1982) Socialism and survival : (articles, essays,
and talks, 1979-1982), Heretic Books. (3 leaves)
A
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r
WORLD ORDER, CULTURAL CONVERGENCE
AND REGIONAL CULTURAL AUTONOMY
The success of Australia's relations with the Pacific Island States
will be based upon the practical and sustained recognition that no one
culture is basically superior to another, -that each and every
[traditional]
culture, together with its social, polLtical and
economic ingredients, have a measuring and value
...
that our new
found freedoms [and independence] were fought so that to a significant
degree a renaissance of Melanesian values, principles and expectations
can take place (Lini, p.ll and p.6).
World order with regional cultural autonomy is a highly desirable goal.
It
is an objective not only of political leaders such as Lini but also of ambitious
proposals such as Mazrui's world federation of cultures J But there is
evidence
that, despite its prime facte plausibility and appeal, it is an impossible goal.
There are various routes to this most unwelcome conclusion.
Mazrui admits that tris 'approach
Consider first Mazrui's cultural paradox.
to
appears
have
But it is worse than that:
contradictory aims' (M p.9).
approach is contradictory, almost as it stands, and Mazrui
way out.
to
the
next premiss:
calculations.
reform
as
a
problem of building up
on
'To get mankind to agree to a new world system [one with
social
reasoning
and
Consensus behind three or four values will need consensus
behind many more supporting values and perspectives.
world
clear
In Mazrui's terms, which leal
order], we need to give mankind that shared framework of
social
no
The argument proceeds as follows:
World order implies a certain consensus.
Pl.
indicates
the
problem
of
supporting
mobilizing
values;
...
consensus;
and
we
see
In
summary,
w*
s <e
we see consensus as a
this
latter
as
an
outgrowth of cultural convergence' (M p.l).
P2.
Such consensus implies [substantial]
cultural
convergence.
In
Mazrui's
'World order...': as mentioned before, I think you should take into account
the world order writings of people such as Richard Falk (A Study of Future Worlds,
etc.) and Johan Galtung (The True Worlds, etc.).
'Consensus
formulation,
behind much-needed world reforms is impossible without
substantial cultural convergence on a global scale' (M p.9).
[Substantial]
P3.
Mazrul's
cultural
formulation:
'the
convergence
In
which the world has so far
convergence
cultural
dependence.
cultural
implies
attained carries with it the evil of dependency'.
P4.
Cultural dependence is incompatible with regional cultural autonomy.
Hence, by P1-P4, world order is incompatible with
and
world order with such regional autonomy is impossible.
hence
is valid, but some of the premisses can
of P2 with Pl.
produce
cultural
regional
be
certainly
shaken,
autonomy,
The argument
the
especially
Even so, no matter how hard they are shaken the problem
cannot be entirely removed.
*****
There is no general solution to the
cultural
regional
This
autonomy.
problem
result
of
world
order
maintaining
is an application of a generalised
Arrow's Theorem.in the application, world options or courses-of-action are the
regional cultures are the factors.
and
alternatives,
Then the factor rankings
are different cultural rankings of the world options.
that
is
there
no
dominant
culture,
no
cultural dictator.
conditions can be assumed satisfied, or satisfied by
result
Regional autonomy implies
Since the other
adjustments 3,
the
dismal
given that world order it taken to require overall rankings of
follows,
world options.
Although a general solution is impossible, a solution
possible
confront.
however
for
all
the
choices
world
a
federation
Given the environmental and economic
that
seems
increasingly
unlikely:
choices
more
may
be
nonetheless
cultures ever has to
of
that
and
are
more,
being
made
because
environmental dependence, choices made by one culture spill over into others.
2
of
The resolutions hitherto have primarily been
cultural
assimilation.
the
And
by
cultural
arsenal of defences, ranging from explicit claims of cultural
claims
through
down
superiority
of democratic cultural adjustment .(tribal voting with the feet)
tn the face of technological superiority and improved "standards of living"
least
registered
as
imported
by
e.g.
relatively easy to shatter;
dominant
culture
ranked
highly,
concerning local environments);
etc.
economics).
the
of
Many
superiority
is
these
only
(at
defences are
in
the
things
not in other matters (such as discrimination
the improved "standards of living" often enough
from leisurely lives of primitive affluence to "wage slaves",
people
converted
and
been backed up by
has
domination
cultural
domination
Some of the evangelical defences are harder to break.
While it is easy in
hindsight to see that there was little justification for imposing religions like
various forms of Christianity in the way they were imposed on other
gentler
or
militarily weaker cultures, the same is not seen in regard to ideologies such as
positivistic science of mainstream economics.
Perhaps most
more
that
dangerous
than
pretentious
the
idea
main Western culture is the
guardian of the truth, is the idea that it has a special
Rationality
is
tool
a
all,
of
dangerous
hold
on
rationality.
that can be applied to justify convergence to orthodox
Western norms.
A world federation of cultures - an Integrated world culture, so almost
to
say - appears to afford a viable alternative to world government, as a source of
world order in particular.
firstly,
it
is
a
what
'we
it
less remote prospect:
than we were a century ago;
Secondly,
Moreover,
should
is
preferable
alternative,
-'we are no nearer a world government
but we are much nearer to world culture'
be
since,
(t
p.2).
aiming for are internalised controls [those of
culture], based on new human inclinations,
rather
organisational mechanisms [government]' (M p.2).
than
external
not.
governmental,
typically
by
Thirdly, cultural controls and
liaisons permit flexibility, regional autonomy, and so on,
rigid
controls
in
ways
that
more
authoritive and externally imposed, controls do
There is evidence, furthermore, from a
range
of
indigenous
cultures
-
Melanesian cultures are ]ust one group of examples - that culture can substitute
Hie vision of a well-ordered
for government.
cultures
government
without
it
anarchists;
especially
is
goes
of
federation
back,
of
course,
prominent
in
the
organisations
to
the
century
and
of
convergence
to
Bakunin
of
work
19th
or
Kroprotkin.
To make the vision work does not however require
the
Mazrui
extent
imagines;
it
does not require a single shared culture
essence, a single characterising feature
is wanted
in
the
rope
strands [the regional cultures
need
as
sought
where a family resemblance is what
A model for a world federation is given Wittgenstein s rope picture.
strands
Various
erroneously
Mazrui has
shared cultural universe, or one world culture
an
cultura1
overlap and criss-cross
It is this overlap of
that give the rope its strength
usually does, run through the length of the rope.
But no
strand
So similarly there
need be no shared or common culture for a world federation, or rope, of culttires
to have strength, and to ensure thereby world order.
regional cultures overlap one another suitably.
it
will
not
follow
that
It is enough that adjacent
Nor is overlap transitive;
there must be something shared.
so
This rope model of
cultures may be alternatively described in other family ways , e.g
in terms
of
a network of cultures.
FOOTNOTES
1.
For these objectives see Mazrui's Introduction, p.l ff. Here as elsewhere in
text, author's names double as references.
2.
On the generalisation see Routley.
3.
For methods of adjustment, e.g. completing rankings, see again Routley.
REFERENCES
O. Lint, 'Keynote Address', Australia and the South Pacific,
Proceedings on a
Conference
held
at the Australian National University, Centre for
Continuing Education, Canberra, 1982.
A.A. Mazrui, A World Federation of Cultures: An African Perspective, Free Press,
New York" 1*976. All page references prefixed M are to this work.
R. Routley, 'On the impossibility of an orthodox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmental problems', Logique et Analyse 23 (1980)
145-166.
K. Lehrer and C. Wagner, Rational consensus
Rolland, 1981.
Science
in
and
Society,
Re Idel,
1. It is widely assumed that cultural convergence is a good thing, to
NOTES
promoted.
This
is the operational assumption in Lehrer and Wanner, who want to
see the conditions for
everywhere
their
(fortunately,
fail for important real
excessive
be
cultural
Markov
convergence
theorem
applying
virtually
of course, the conditions are pretty restrictive, and
life
cases).
convergence
is
There
not
are
good
reasons
for
thinking
a good thing. Certainly some cases of
convergence are undecidable.
Experimental testing of convergence (Defi groups) showed that
when
convergence,
occurred, tended to confirm the status quo. Methods of convergence are
it
essentially conservative. Both locally and on a larger scene such methods can be
damaging,
in several respects. They undercut the perhaps otherwise positions of
minorities. And they can reinforce the posltLon of dangerous power triggers.
Consider what would happen - what appears to be happening -
scene
the
world
where we have, in some measure, "enforced convergence". What we would be
headed for - what we are headed for ts imposition
western
in
paradigm,
with
its
economism,
5
everywhere
violence
of
and
the
dominant
environmental
* "
destructiveness. Lower cultures are progressively undermined.
buddhism,
which
stand
opposed
to
main
afford just one conspicuous example. (The
useful
working
example.)
Buddhism
is
Those
practicing
directions of the dominant paradigm,
American
right
out
impact
of-
on
step
Thailand
with
is
a
economism,
encouraging as it does removal of consumerist ambitions, and it is dianetrically
opposed
to
violence and like destructive practices. (Thus to pull Buddhism out
of the educational curriculum, as in the fairly recent American-inspired,
constitution,
their
is not the enlightened step it is usually seen as: to be sure, it
is "progressive" enough, but in a direction more of us should not be headed.)
2. Total consensus represents a limit of convergence. Consensus also
its serious limitations then.
6
has
WORLD ORDER, CULTURAL CONVERGENCE
AND REGIONAL CULTURAL AUTONOMY
The success of Australia's relations with the Pacific Island States
will be based upon the practical and sustained recognition that no one
culture is basically superior to another, that each and every
[traditional]
culture, together with its social, political and
economic ingredients, have a measuring and value ...
that our new
found freedoms [and independence] were fought so that to a significant
degree a renaissance of Melanesian values, principles and expectations
can take place (Lini, p.ll and p.6).
World order with regional cultural autonomy is a highly desirable goal.
It
is an objective not only of political leaders such as Lini but also of ambitious
proposals such as Mazrui's world federation of cultures.But there is
evidence
that, despite its prima facie plausibility and appeal, it is an impossible goal.
There are various routes to this most unwelcome conclusion.
Consider first Mazrui's cultural paradox.
appears
to
have
Mazrui admits that his 'approach
But it is worse than that:
contradictory aims' (M p.9).
approach is contradictory, almost as it stands, and Mazrui
way out.
to
the
next premiss:
calculations.
reform
as
a
problem of building up
on
'To get mankind to agree to a new world system [one with
social
reasoning
and
Consensus behind three or four values will need consensus
behind many more supporting values and perspectives.
world
clear
In Mazrui's terms, which lead
order], we need to give mankind that shared framework of
social
no
The argument proceeds as follows:
World order implies a certain consensus.
Pl.
indicates
the
problem
of
supporting
mobilizing
values;
...
consensus;
and
we
see
In
summary,
we
see
we see consensus as a
this
latter
as
an
outgrowth of cultural convergence' (M p.l).
P2.
Such consensus implies [substantial]
cultural
convergence.
In
Mazrui's
formulation,
'Consensus
behind much-needed world reforms is impossible without
substantial cultural convergence on a global scale' (M p.9).
[Substantial]
P3.
cultural
formulation:
Mazrui's
'the
implies
convergence
cultural
dependence.
cultural
In
which the world has so far
convergence
attained carries with it the evil of dependency'.
P4.
Cultural dependence is incompatible with regional cultural autonomy.
Hence, by P1-P4, world order is incompatible with
and
cultural
world order with such regional autonomy is impossible.
hence
is valid, but some of the premisses can
of P2 with Pl.
produce
regional
certainly
shaken,
be
autonomy,
The argument
especially
the
Even so, no matter how hard they are shaken the problem
cannot be entirely removed.
*****
problem
There is no general solution to the
regional
This
autonomy.
cultural
result
of
order
world
maintaining
is an application of a generalised
Arrow's Theorem.in the application, world options or courses-of-action are the
alternatives,
regional cultures are the factors.
and
Then the factor rankings
are different cultural rankings of the world options.
that
is
there
no
dominant
culture,
no
cultural dictator.
conditions can be assumed satisfied, or satisfied by
result
Regional autonomy implies
Since the other
adjustments 3,
the
dismal
given that world order it taken to require overall rankings of
follows,
world options.
Although a general solution is impossible, a solution
possible
confront.
however
for
all
the
choices
world
a
federation
Given the environmental and economic
that
seems
increasingly
unlikely:
choices
more
may
be
nonetheless
cultures ever has to
of
that
and
are
more,
being
made
because
environmental dependence, choices made by one culture spill over into others.
2
of
The resolutions hitherto have primarily been
cultural
the
And
assimilation.
cultural
by
cultural
arsenal of defences, ranging from explicit claims of cultural
claims
through
down
superiority
of democratic cultural adjustment (tribal voting with the feet)
in the face of technological superiority and improved "standards of living"
least
registered
as
ranked
culture
e.g.
people
converted
etc.
the
superiority
of
is
these
only
(at
defences are
in
things
the
not in other matters (such as discrimination
highly,
concerning local environments);
Many
economics).
imported
by
relatively easy to shatter;
dominant
and
been backed up by
has
domination
domination
the improved "standards of living" often enough
from leisurely lives of primitive affluence to "wage slaves",
Some of the evangelical defences are harder to break.
While it is easy in
hindsight to see that there was little justification for imposing religions like
various forms of Christianity in the way they were imposed on other
gentler
or
militarily weaker cultures, the same is not seen in regard to ideologies such as
positivistic science of mainstream economics.
more
dangerous
than
pretentious
the
idea
Perhaps most
that
is
tool
a
all,
main Western culture is the
guardian of the truth, is the idea that it has a special
Rationality
of
dangerous
hold
on
rationality.
that can be applied to justify convergence to orthodox
Western norms.
A world federation of cultures - an integrated world culture, so almost
to
say - appears to afford a viable alternative to world government, as a source of
world order in particular.
firstly,
it
is
a
what
'we
it
less remote prospect:
than we were a century ago;
Secondly,
Moreover,
should
is
preferable
alternative,
'we are no nearer a world government
but we are much nearer to world culture'
be
since,
(M
p.2).
aiming for are internalised controls [those of
3
culture], based on new human inclinations,
than
rather
organisational mechanisms [government]' (M p.2).
typically
governmental,
in
ways
more
that
authoritive and externally imposed, controls do
There is evidence, furthermore, from a
not.
by
Thirdly, cultural controls and
liaisons permit flexibility, regional autonomy, and so on,
rigid
controls
external
range
of
indigenous
cultures
-
Melanesian cultures are just one group of examples — that culture can substitute
The vision of a well-ordered
for government.
government
without
cultures
it
anarchists;
especially
is
back,
of
course,
prominent
in
the
goes
organisations
of
federation
the
to
century
and
of
convergence
to
Bakunin
of
work
19th
or
Kroprotkin.
To make the vision work does not however require
Mazrui
extent
the
imagines;
does not require a single shared culture , a
it
shared cultural universe, or one world culture.
an
cultural
erroneously
Mazrui has
sought
essence, a single characterising feature, where a family resemblance is what
is wanted.
Various
A model for a world federation is given Wittgenstein's rope picture.
strands
in
the
rope
overlap and criss-cross.
It is this overlap of
strands [the regional cultures] that give the rope its strength.
need,
as
usually does, run through the length of the rope.
But no
strand
So similarly there
need be no shared or common culture for a world federation, or rope, of cultures
to have strength, and to ensure thereby world order.
regional cultures overlap one another suitably.
it
will
not
follow
that
It is enough that adjacent
Nor is overlap transitive;
there must be something shared.
so
This rope model of
cultures may be alternatively described in other family ways, e.g.
in terms
of
a network of cultures.
FOOTNOTES
1.
For these objectives see Mazrui's Introduction, p.l ff. Here as elsewhere in
text, author's names double as references.
4
2.
On the generalisation see Routley.
3.
For methods of adjustment, e.g. completing rankings, see again Routley.
REFERENCES
W. Lini, 'Keynote Address', Australia and the South Pacific, Proceedings on a
Conference
held
at the Australian National University, Centre for
Continuing Education, Canberra, 1982.
A.A. Mazrui, A World Federation of Cultures: An African Perspective, Free Press,
New York, 1976. All page references prefixed M are to this work.
R. Routley, 'On the impossibility of an orthodox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmental problems', Logique et Analyse 23 (1980)
145-166.
K. Lehrer and C. Wagner, Rational consensus
in
Science
and
Society,
Reidel,
Holland, 1981.
1. It is widely assumed that cultural convergence is a good thing, to
NOTES
promoted.
This
is the operational assumption in Lehrer and Wagner, who want to
see the conditions for
everywhere
their
(fortunately,
fail for important real
excessive
be
cultural
Markov
convergence
theorem
applying
virtually
of course, the conditions are pretty restrictive, and
life
cases).
convergence
is
There
not
are
good
reasons
for
thinking
a good thing. Certainly some cases of
convergence are undecidable.
Experimental testing of convergence (Defi groups) showed that
occurred, tended to confirm the status quo. Methods of convergence are
it
when
convergence,
essentially conservative. Both locally and on a larger scene such methods can be
damaging,
in several respects. They undercut the perhaps otherwise positions of
minorities. And they can reinforce the position of dangerous power triggers.
Consider what would happen - what appears to be happening -
scene,
the
world
where we have, in some measure, "enforced convergence". What we would be
headed for - what we are headed for is imposition
western
in
paradigm,
with
its
economism,
5
everywhere
violence
of
and
the
dominant
environmental
destructiveness. Lower cultures are progressively undermined.
which
Buddhism,
stand
opposed
to
main
afford just one conspicuous example. (The
useful
working
example.)
Buddhism
is
Those
practicing
directions of the dominant paradigm,
American
right
out
impact
of
on
step
Thailand
with
is
a
economism,
encouraging as it does removal of consumerist ambitions, and it is dianetrically
opposed
to
violence and like destructive practices. (Thus to pull Buddhism out
of the educational curriculum, as in the fairly recent American-inspired,
constitution,
their
is not the enlightened step it is usually seen as: to be sure, it
is "progressive" enough, but in a direction more of us should not be headed.)
2. Total consensus represents a limit of convergence. Consensus also
its serious limitations then
has
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L 7/^ Loc^^an
The strategy of the first section of the book is to see where we might
fnd up if we began with a state of nature as described by Locke and
ttuck within the constraints of the Lockean "laws of nature". We "focus
a nonstate situation in which peopie generally satisfy moral conuratnts and generally act as they ought. Such an assumption is not wildly
'Wmistic... Yet it is the best anarchic situation one could reasonably ! )
for... If one could show that the State would be superior event to
most favored situation of anarchy... it would justify the state." (5)
J
why should we do this? Presumably Locke and before him
painted their pictures of the state of nature as they did because
thought that's the way people really were. Nozick doesn't seem to
that, thought he also seems to think that Hobbes' characterization
^mptjusibte or unreliable. But if truth to fact isn't the motive, then what
there is. in short, the question of how we are to
the alternatives
. *hat ^nteria of superiority one is going to use. And here lies the rub.
^jrcty Locke and Hobbes were trying to paint a picture of the "state
^*!urc which wou!d not only provide a point of comparison but also
-2993>
�<M-C
avC-
��3.
In §2 introduce contrast between left-leaning and right-leaning anarchisms.
In the enlarged version will carry both of these through the arguments, comparing
The main initial, and striking, differences concern replace
and contrasting them.
ment.
The following, for example, is how mere right-leaning replacement will tend
to look:[A ?irst complication of the simulation argument:-
A properly democratic
state can be simulated, in that all it accomplishes that is considered
worthwhile can be duplicated.
The argument is as before for services for
which the means can be obtained.
_ ___ ___ __
.
Otherwise let S'
be a service for which
s^L-Lici. und.it cnjmpu_L so ry caxarion Or tLie
, -
But if it is in the collective interest then it will obtain the means, e.g. it
generates these by its own operation, as a telephone service does, or it raises
the equivalent of subscriptions as a community television station or magazine may.
Then however the network n may be replaced by a network n* of relations of operators
who choose to do the work without state directives and n' accomplishes a service
s^ which duplicates s.^
Given the means, which the collective interest assumed,
state authority is nowhere required for such a service, as is evident from examples
where community or private services grow up alongside state services where permitted
to do so.
Often anarchists have such services will be performed better than the
A
H
state services they replace.
Note that the left-leaning argument does not assume
that organisation is unnecessary or that people
in their 0^1 interest.
It assumes
will always and inevi/j&6 ly act
that people themselves,
and net some power
ful elite in charge, are best placed to determine what is in their
and to pMcfe it
though VcJunhiry
04M interest
organisation and cooperation.
However people will do things themselves in an organised way, instead of
being, as often now, passive recipients of welfare.
Beneficial services, such as community-access radio and television stations,
and also welfare arrangements, would in general be reorganised so that all the
necessary infrastructure became community owned, and those wishing to use the
service would
and^ to operate it, would carry out much of the operation
themselves - taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the
passive recipients of good things metered out to them by powerful agencies or
professionals who take it upon themselves to judge what is in their [best!]
interests.
�3.^
the means are not forthcoming.
Then the state would not be able to
supply means either unless it exceeded its democratic mandate.]
Let service s, e.g. a telephone or postal or transport service, be some state
activity which is in the collective interest, and let it be accomplished by network
n which will include a system of operators standing in various relations.
Picture
the network that makes up a state postal system or a local radio station.
Such a
system does not require the authority of the state of operate:
what it may require
is means to operate acquired by methods other than compulsory taxation or the like.
But if it is in the collective interest then it will obtain the means, e.g. it
generates these by its own operation, as a telephone service does, or it raises
the equivalent of subscriptions as a community television station or magazine may.
Then however the network n may be replaced by a network n of relations of operators
who choose to do the work without state directives and n' accomplishes a service
s^ which duplicates s.^
Given the means, which the collective interest assumed,
state authority is nowhere required for such a service, as is evident from examples
where community or private services grow up alongside state services where permitted
to do so.
/a?
Often anarchists have such services will be performed better than the
n
A
state services they replace.
Note that the left-leaning argument does not assume
that organisation is unnecessary or that people
in their 0^1 interest.
It assumes
will always and inevi/a.bly act
that people themselves,
and not some power
ful elite in charge, are best placed to determine what is in their
and to pn?$qe it
tliough V<7?un?ary
OMH interest
organisation and cooperation.
However people will do things themselves in an organised way, instead of
being, as often now, passive recipients of welfare.
Beneficial services, such as community—access radio and television stations,
and also welfare arrangements, would in general be reorganised so that all the
necessary infrastructure became community owned, and those wishing to use the
service would
and^to operate it, would carry out much of the operation
themselves - taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the
passive recipients of good things metered out to them by powerful agencies or
professionals who take it upon themselves to judge what is in their [best!]
interests.
�7^
Arguments from freedom, autonomy and personhood.
Re §8:
Observe that these
arguments do not require the rejection of society or of voluntary cooperation:
it is the (claim to supreme) authority of the State that is essential to the
Nor do the arguments depend on individualistic assumptions, such as
argument.
that persons stand in isolation and are not intensionally inter-related to one
another:
all that is supposed is that responsibility for actions can be (largely)
individually assigned.^
8.
Re §9:
It is likely to be objected that most of the experience is of pre
industrial societies.
experience.
First, this is not true:
there is now lots of local
Secondly, insofar as it is true regarding large-scale industrial
societies, it is not damaging.
For it is precisely the structures of these
societies that the aim is to change.
Etc.
Re §10.
The replacement (or substitution) argument when duly followed through
i)
that is elaborated in requisite detail for each component of State actually that
9.
is in the collective interest, shows that the State is not necessary.
There are finitely many components which can be readily enumerated.
In the
case of each component anarchist replacements or alternatives have already been
worked out, often in some detail;
Put alternatively,
see especially Kropotkin's work.
the replacements enable the construction of a model
which reveals a society functioning without the State, the design of,
what can be arrived at in other less constructive ways, a practically
possible stateless world;
(practically) necessary.
and this shows that the State is not
But it can always be claimed that the modelling
procedure has left out some critical feature of real world circumstances
especially as to human psychology, that makes the model inapplicable to
real world circumstances.
This is a further point where^ appeal to the argument fjc/pi experience,
that at various times and places anarchism has worked.
Examples of
Were the argument to depend on individualistic assumptions, it could be re-presented in an interesting reductio form, beginning: Suppose, as arguments for the
State do, that persons are individuals (of the following cast; purely selfinterested, competing, ...). Then ...
�10.
such organisation with.a State suffice to show that critical real-
world features have not been omitted.
Criticism of Undirected Happening, and Anarchism with^Organistion
In §10.
10.
In particular, the Roszak position of an undirected change just happening is
inadequate.
The conditions for change have to be determined in some detail at
least, and nurtured.
No more satisfactory than the Let's Leave Everything Open,
and so excessively to chance, is the Blueprint for the Future idea which tries to
set everything into place.
For example, how untried arrangements will work is
uncertain, and in future possibilities may arise which have not yet been clearly
envisaged.
A much
more flexible model is wanted:
model is intended to provide.
(See also 13).
Beware of arguments concering organisation based &n efficiency (as usually
11.
Need replacement for efficiency as for several other organis
defined E = 0/1).
ational values.
Similarly for economic terms
:
optimum quantity of as defined in economic terms.
quantities of nuclear power.
12.
this the forest succession
e.g.
(in §3) be
This may
i of
eid^e.g.^to optimum
Point same as with respect to efficiency.
Although the forest succession model (pp.11-13) is attractive, you do not
seem to have provided any gripping arguments for its superiority, which might run
along the lines of the moral value of anarchist means reflecting anarchist ends,
or more concretely in terms of a political analysis of contemporary society (e.g.
as done by Dennis Altman).
as a relevant one.
In short, the model needs to be justified in some way
More generally, the basic thrust of the paper is on the
superiority of anarchism as an end state.
The part on strategy opens up a vast
new area, including for example the tactics of anarchists in relation to elections,
to mass uprisings, to opportunities opened by social cataclysms (e.g. Germany
after WWI), to heavily authoritarian governments, etc. - which you don't treat
so far.
13.
Re
6:
The Tragedy of Commons issues arise again between States, e.g. over
fisheries, air pollution, etc., as well as war (cf. also Sinking Ark, p.105).
�11.
14.
In footnote 14.
Th^s Bakunin urged a revolution everywhere at once:
other
wise there remained a continual risk and worry of State colonisation of adjacent
areas, as of State imperialism.
In footnote 12:
There are steps towards locally managed legal arrangements,
on which see Stone in Nemos XIX.
15.
2)
On self-managed medicine, see Illych.
Footnotes not fully taken up (through some overlap):
A detailed argument to this conclusion is presented in Taylor, who also points
out how the "Tragedy of the Commons" is the same general type.
In fact Taylor
Contends that arguments of the type -represent 'the strongest ca$e which can be made
for the desirability of the State'
5)
The small f^rms of economic
(p.9), and that they are wanting.
theory and the natipn states of political theory
also, of course, satisfy the independence requirements.
An independence require
ment is retained in Hobbes' theory, though an individual's payoff is supposed to
depend as well on the individual's eminence.
[Marxists on social determinism?]
Such organisations could in any case be valuable, not only in improving the
Some.
e/*
eV"
lot of those $*tuck in dilemma situations, but in providing ^situations, a matter
8)
?)
about which there is increasing speculations and argument.
9)
We don't of course wish to suggest that working within the system is just a
waste of time, and we should watch it all go while we sit back and wait for the
revolution.
But in each urgent battle it's easy to lose sight of fact that each
hard won victory is only temporary, to lose sight of the urgent necessity to
begin constructing the sort of society in which they will not be so temporary.
This is not and cannot be a matter of imposing some sort of Boy Scout 'Conservation
Ethic' or minor changes in the direction of energy saving on a society which
produces environmental degradation as a matter of its fundamental structure.
12)
It also overlooks the extent to which the structure generates its own style
of politicians and its own self-supporting procedures and mechanisms.
16.
Opposition to the theoretical in Australian intellectual life runs right up
through the universities even to research institutes, e.g. the Research School of
Social Sciences at the Australian National University.
�12.
17.
None of the ways are original, all being found in at least rudimentary form
in 19th century anarchist writings.
original.
18.
But no more were the ways of Aquinas
[Ties with several footnotes.]
Re detailed replacement:
In the contemporary situations of privatisation
of wealth and resources (by State distribution and enforcement thereof) nonstatist
public and community organisations all struggle, even given a supply of voluntary
labour, for want of community infrastructure, which under alternative social
arrangements would be provided.
Because under (&. g.) left-leaning (communal)
forms of anarchism, wealth, resources, etc., are held or controlled by the
community, there is no need to apply coercion to wrest these from often unwilling
privatised individuals in order to /^rnisA infrastructure, etc.
The situation in right-leaning anarchism is very different.
19.
The extent to which States operate in the public good is vastly exaggerated.
The situation as regards wealth, large corporations, etc, are only some examples.
Cities are another:
they are not designed so that they operate in the interests
of people, of all those who dwell in them or visit them, but are dominated at
present by the interests of commerce.
Compare also modern metropolitan, where
cities dominate life of the countrysides.
20.
Serious defects in Wolff's arguments:
a) reasons on p.78 are quite inadequate,
b) false dichotomy between voluntary/constracts.
21.
Conclusion:
the State has
the myth of legitimacy.
no legitimacy.
Weber has material (essay?) on
This should be compared with Edelman's material on bogus
legitimacy obtained by symbolic means.
The transformation of the State is through the State;
the removal of the
State is by the State.
22.
Rewiode!:
(1)
In some of these things alternative groups work with the
State or its representatives (as rainforest patches grow within a eucalypt
forest).
This does not imply recognition of the State as legitimate, as a power
de jure;
but its de facto power is hard to avoid, and like the judo expert
alternative groups will try to take advantage of the power of the operation.
points OK:
reeXD/-e$$*. ]
[Seme
�13.
(2)
An appropriate natural evolution model exonerates us from the difficult -
and unnecessary - task of setting down a blueprint for change, or for trying to
predict how things should go.
false dichotomy.
23.
It shows that revolution/evolution presents a
In between is, e.g. Encouraged of speeded-up evolution
Further questions.
Re §1:
a) All current States are evil,
but is even
the best State attainable seriously flawed? While ideal states with ideal
citizens are not evil (as model worlds will show), the ideal is unattainable?
Otherwise, where is the necessity (of evil)?
one-world necessity, virtually:
Also "necessity" contracts to
in all worlds like the real one is having states,
there are states, so "necessarily" there are states,
b)
of upturns to individuals is over intensional features.
The reduction failure
The point deserves
expanding.
Re §10:
The extent to which the new organisations permit punishment, or
a)
constraints, or rely upon it, is a ticklish issue, especially given the
argument,
b)
Generally there are various ways of changing or regulating an
organisation, e.g. external/internal.
For instance, outside, state,regulation
is replaced by group regulation, e.g. worker-consumer, which is an intery)a^*eA&Mrn<t/
mix.
24.
How
useful is this distinction?
An important prerequisite for directed (i.e. unaimless) change is an alter
native view, such as the Alternative Paradigm affords, the rudiments of theory,
where some goals are indicated.
Once such a view is obtained, in rough outline,
efforts can be made to further it, e.g. to put into practice with, for example,
more people attempting to introduce changes into their own lives.
In the energy case, to take a major example, the goals are clear enough:
maih"T.y to lead less energy consumptive lives. Ways to do this are well enough
known, e.g. to wear sweaters instead of switching on radiators, to reduce motor
commuting by living nearer one's work and friends or going less frequently or
using alternative transport, e.g. public or bicycle.
But— though most Australians
�14.
(e.g.) are in favour of energy conservation, in principle - social arrangements
are so structured that some of the alternatives are impossibly difficult or are
arduous, e.g. a may may have little option but to commute long distances when
the factory at which he works moves to an outer industrial suburb, and all his
commitments lie in the areas to which he is mortgaged.
Similarly packaging is
increasingly difficult if not impossible to avoid, even in essential purchases
and those designed to lead the good life.
Thus an effective change is often
going to have to be part of a more far-reaching change.
For a working example - reforming and restructuring forest services - see
Anarchism letter, p.3 ff.
Further Arguments for the State, not already taken up explicitly:-
25.
The argument from efficiency, growth, etc:
(1)
isation !
really the argument from organ
Efficiency is little double edged as e.g. in efficiency ys employment:
There is a trade-off.
(Griffin
on 6?ff,C4C7tcyof smaM-scale argiculture).
itarian states more efficient, etc. (disputed).
Total
Maximization of efficiency is not
that the game is about - antifreedom, antidemocratic, anti-good-life, and what is
valuable.
Also reward for initiative in terms of grossly inequitable distrib
ution of wealth is not required.
Work is often undesirable.
No way in which the
the upper<$ worth the salaries they get.
The argument from political possiblity, "reality".
(2)
argument from the status quo, from^Old Paradigm.
invalidity.
realistic" or
The argument is really an
An historical comparison shows
Life without the Church would no doubt have been dismissed as "un
impossible" by many of those who lived in the Middle
Ages.
More generally different economies are extar)t and many more are possible.
Supply demand theory and theory of historic market will work without profit
maxim assumption, but instead e.g. certain satisfactions (satisfying).
is needed is an assu_jnption of rea SO/) able return.
All that
A range of other assumptions.
However, marginal (calculus) theory builds in assumption of profit op* return
�15.
Maximisation.
There are several Myths concerning the Market to dispose of here:
a) it s historic
b) it's efficient: depends how assess:
e.g. net
of new technology.
Paradigm differences, deep differences in what is considered valuable, begin
to emerge rather quickly in arguments for the State, once discussion of their
the Dominant Paradigm organisational goals of
In particular,
adequacy begins.
efficiency and growth (on which see Scott), instead of being taken for granted as
formerly, are up for debate and overturning.
Is it possible to obtain an exhaustive diversification of arguments for
26.
the State?
It is doubtful that theoretical classifications so far are of nh/cA
merit.
Classification Scheme 1:-
Empiricist (pragmatist)
*Non empiricist
( ?
Idealist
*Nonidealist
Classification 2:-
?
?
*Non-u^itarian
?
?
Empirical survey gives
Contract
U^.ity
economic
Idealist
Don't often
get State, but only
Society,as e.g. in Green.
And it is important to distinguish these: for anarchism admits Society.
27.
a)
Russell, History of \N. Phil, makes some useful points:
Glorification of the State begins, so far as modern times are concerned, with
the Reformation.
In the Roman Empire, The Emperor was defied, and the State
�/
16.
thereby acquired a sacred character;
but the philosophers of the Middle Ages,
with few exceptions, were ecclesiastical, and therefore put the Church before
the State.
Luther began the opposite practice ... Hobbes ... developed the
doctrine of the supremacy of the State, and Spinoza, on the whole, agreed with
him.
u.
Rosseau ... thought that the State should not tolerate other political
organisations.
Hegel ... goes to lengths which are astonishing (p.739).
that these are all protestants that are cited.)
(Note
On p.742 there is a goodish
page on Hegel's doctrine of State including:
' If shj} follow
from Hegel's principles that every interested which
is not Aatmftll ^the community and which can be promoted by cooperation,
have its appropriate organisation ... 'jjhere is also some good stuff in
Russell on holism (trad, logic) ett. on pp.744-5 and p.732 bettei^J
�Comment on collectivism
"Collectivism -the doctrine that the means of production
should be collectively owned - is,
like many other
features of radical dogma, the bastard child of
capitalist parents.
Collectivism is the doctrine of
people who imagine production as taking place in large
collectively operated units - it's a factory or production-line
picture.
Historically it arose after the industrial
revolution had driven people off the land and created
workers for the large-scale factory enterprises set up
by capitalists for their own profit.
The class which
supported it were the urban workers in such enterprises,
not the peasants, and others in self-directed employment,
such as craftspeople, carpenters and shoemakers - the
latter group were mostly mutualists, later anarchists.
This is why Marxism, which lays heavy stress on collectivism,
also emphasises the role of the urban proletariat at the
expense of other non-capitalist groups, and also stresses
the idiocy of rural life, the blessings of progress,
technology, and industrialism generally.
Collectivism essentially buys the large-scale, mass-producticn
technology-dependent character of capitalist economic
organisation.
It does not see that if one does not have
such a structure, collectivism amounts to an otiose,
damaging and unjustifiable restriction on possible forms
of non-capitalist social and economic organisation, ruling
out particularly the self-directed type of option for
production and various combination cooperative forms."- Richard
Routley and Vai Routley
�The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Cutting of Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'The irrefutability of anarchism', Social
Alternatives, 2(3):23-29. (9 leaves)
2. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of Grofman B (1980) 'Review, Taylor, Michael, Anarchy
and Cooperation, John Wiley and Sons, London, 1976', Theory and decision, 12(1):107114, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00154661. (5 leaves)
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�. * The state is necessary ybr this or that, for the optimal provision of public goods (including,
but not merely, preservation of public order). Notice that this important type of argument need
/ot presume to establish necessity. It is obvious, from the operation of nastier states, that
' societies can function not only without optimal provision of public goods, but indeed with very
little
provision of any such goods. It would, moreover, be a rash archist who pretended
that modern states deliver anything remotely approaching optimal allocations of public goods.
Competition for anarchistic alternatives is accordingly not with opdmal allocations, but perhaps
only a matter of exceeding rather poor provision. More generally, it is enough that these
alternatives do well enough, satisize not maximize.
Most of the arguments from provision of public good depend not only upon maximization
assumptions, just rejected, but also upon, what flows from individualism, a false private/public
dichotomy, with the private delivered by individuals or individual firms, and the public by the
state. In between, however, lie many social groupings: clubs, communities, unions, societies,
clans, tribes, and so on. Such groups can deliver social goods.
As the modern state developed more or less at the time of the rise of individualism in its
extreme modem forms, it is hardly surprising that there is a heavy individualistic setting
presumed in most arguments to the state. An important group of the arguments alluded to
(variations upon Prisoners' Dilemma, Tragedy of the Commons,...) take the following broad
form:- individuals operating on their own, in a certain prearranged settings which involve
relations to other individuals also operating independently, will make seriously suboptimal
�18
decisions or follow suboptimal practices - unless brought into line by an outside authority,
swiftly presumed to be a surrogate of the state. It should be evident, even without proper details
of the arguments, that the state is neither sufficient nor necessary for resolution of the problems
that issue from independent individual operations and from individual competition. It is not
sufficient because commons' tragedies, such as the overexploitation of commons' resources by
individual competing firms, can proceed apace in the presence of the state and may even be
encouraged through state activity. It is not necessary because the dependence-relations of
individuals in dilemma or tragedy situations can be exposed, and restored, in a variety of ways
into which the state does not enter; for example, by establishing communication linkages, by
social activity or arbitration by engaged societies, special groups, and so on. (Commonly such
relations are, in any case, evident in analogous real-life situations before the state becomes
involved, or can be persuaded or pushed into being involved.) Also indicated thereby is how
anarchism can resolve such dilemmas as need to be resolved in the absence of the state, namely
by having alternative arrangements and organisation in place which will serve instead.
One of the major deceits of modern political theory hides in the persistent theme that the
state, with a centralised monopoly of force, is necessary in order to assure adequate public
goods, including public order. But the most that appears required, the most that arguments
would deliver, are specific organisations that look after specific kinds of goods. There is no
inherent reason why societies should not institute and regulate specialised bodies, coordinated
among themselves by negotiation, or failing that by recognised arbitrators, to ensure the
adequate maintenance or production of various types of public goods, including control of
damaging crime. Each such institution would gain community standing from its support base,
for instance through possessing fairly general democratically-generated recognition. Such an
institution would aim to secure execution of its recommendations and decisions by sanctions and
like means, and for this it could mobilize in co-operation with other recognised institutions.
spheres
postal and communication arrangements (Kropotkin's favourite examples) to sport.
Each major sport has its international [organisation] that regulates a variety
of matters ranging from the rules of the game to the administration of
competitions. Such bodies are, of course, open to schisms and rivalries,
but these are rarely a major problem, in spite of the fact that they have no
sanctions to enforce their authority other than excluding competitors from
participation in the events they organise (Burnheim p.221, whom the
whole preceding paragraph paraphrases).
�* An apparently powerful argument for the state, again from public order concerns, advances
the following claim:- The state is required to control and limit such social evils as crime and
corruption. Observe, it is not supposed these features of life are eliminated under the state; so
questions arise about tolerable levels, cost-benefit ratios upon varying levels of controls (down
to the point of any controls at all), and so on. Observe again that the typical state, so far from
limiting corruption and crime, is itself a major source of them. The state structure, by virtue of
its power, expanse and character, indMcay much of the evil it is supposed to remove, such as the
extent of crime. There are several different reasons for this. For one, the state tends to become
the guardian of a partisan morality, and tried to prosecute what, outside a "moral minority", are
not offences at all, are victimless "crimes", and so on. Thus a range of medical, sexual and
drug "offences". For another, the state acts to protect its questionable monopolies, whence a
range of banking, gambling, gaming and other offences. Differently, state-supported or
sponsored social outcomes, such as gross inequalities, and privatization of wealth and
resources, encourage property crime.
Anarchists agree that the major background source of these crimes, the state and its legion
of "law and order" officers, should be removed. Over what, if anything, replaces this extensive
apparatus, they differ. Different forms of anarchism are bound to offer different suggestions.
For example, under communist forms, where an extensive institution of private property
vanishes, property crimes will therewith disappear also; but under individualistic forms which
sanction unlimited accumulation of property, some procedures for safeguarding property will
need to be provided. There are again many ways, much less demanding than resort to the state
to achieve some requisite protection of property. One is what effectively operates in many
places that also waste their finances paying for police protection, namely insurance. Another is
private, neighbourhood, or community security.
�n/Q^-
--T'-
;
��Sojustified or not, there is no practical aiternative to the state. A/^e .f ika
* Anarchism has not worked in practice, and is unworkable.^ Meiiher is true. Before the
modern era of states it seemed to work well enough in some places, for instance in parts of the
Americas and of the Pacific. Since the modem advent of states, it has been afforded but little
opportunity to work at the national level, but it remains operative - a most striking example - at
the transnational level.
According to a condescending pragmatic argument, simple primitive societies may have
been able to struggle along without state structure or organisation, but it is entirely out of the
question for the practical operation for modem industrial societies. No recent anarchist societies
have worked. A short response is that but few have had an opportunity to succeed. There is
extroardinarily little room for social experiment in modem state dominated societies. Moreover,
where anarchist societies have had some chance to flourish, as briefly in Spain before they were
�4^^
// c
�20
suppressed, they appear to have functioned moderately well.
At the international level, anarchy has operated for many generations, although few would
wish to argue that the arrangements, though they
though successful in a sense, are
particularly satisfactory. The international order is anarchistic, because there is no coercive
government or authoritiative political body, with the authority backed by enforcing power.
International order is instead a prime example of anarchy (not a wonderful example, but then nor
are many states terrific examples of archy). And it affords a conspicuous counterexample to
stock arguments, like that of Hobbes, to some sort of well-ordering authority such as the state.
Granted, then, international order leaves much to be desired (though it is not significantly
worse than order in some states); so there are repeated calls for new world orders of one sort or
another. It has been persuasively argued (through a sort of top-down argument against states)
that international order is as bad as it is because of the power and intransigence of states. One
way to an improved world order is through the erosion of states, diminution of state
sovereignty.
As for real testing in practice, there is now no experimental space outside states. There
used to be some room in the world for sizeable political experimentation, for testing different
arrangements. We are now locked into large, overpopulated states with little room to move, let
alone experiment without states. There is however space w/r/un more liberal states for limited
experimentation, and there is increasing scope for simulation and modellings as computer power
and versatility grow. Most of the experimentation has been with small commune arrangements.
[What practice has shown, about all it has shown negatively, is that communistic arrangements
do not tend to work well for long with present humans, unless they are committed to an
authoritarian ideology.]
*
As some stage as the dialectic advances, argument merges, as here, with responses to
criticism. But before criticisms are considered in more detail, it is important to examine
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��The prob!em of cont robing the
power of the state and preventing
the State once established from
usurping further power to the
State in the mandate, is oniy
satisfactorily solved by not ceding
power to the State in the first
place.
�
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The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Annotated cutting (photocopy) of Meyers DT (1981) 'The inevitability of the state', Analysis,
41:46-47, https://doi.org/10.2307/3327871. (3 leaves)
The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
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and Wang. (2 leaves)
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The strategy of the first section of the book is to see where we might
fnd up if we began with a state of nature as described by Locke and
ttuck within the constraints of the Lockean "laws of nature". We "focus
a nonstate situation in which peopie generally satisfy moral conuratnts and generally act as they ought. Such an assumption is not wildly
'Wmistic... Yet it is the best anarchic situation one could reasonably ! )
for... If one could show that the State would be superior event to
most favored situation of anarchy... it would justify the state." (5)
J
why should we do this? Presumably Locke and before him
painted their pictures of the state of nature as they did because
thought that's the way people really were. Nozick doesn't seem to
that, thought he also seems to think that Hobbes' characterization
^mptjusibte or unreliable. But if truth to fact isn't the motive, then what
there is. in short, the question of how we are to
the alternatives
. *hat ^nteria of superiority one is going to use. And here lies the rub.
^jrcty Locke and Hobbes were trying to paint a picture of the "state
^*!urc which wou!d not only provide a point of comparison but also
-2993>
<M-C
avC-
3.
In §2 introduce contrast between left-leaning and right-leaning anarchisms.
In the enlarged version will carry both of these through the arguments, comparing
The main initial, and striking, differences concern replace
and contrasting them.
ment.
The following, for example, is how mere right-leaning replacement will tend
to look:[A ?irst complication of the simulation argument:-
A properly democratic
state can be simulated, in that all it accomplishes that is considered
worthwhile can be duplicated.
The argument is as before for services for
which the means can be obtained.
_ ___ ___ __
.
Otherwise let S'
be a service for which
s^L-Lici. und.it cnjmpu_L so ry caxarion Or tLie
, -
But if it is in the collective interest then it will obtain the means, e.g. it
generates these by its own operation, as a telephone service does, or it raises
the equivalent of subscriptions as a community television station or magazine may.
Then however the network n may be replaced by a network n* of relations of operators
who choose to do the work without state directives and n' accomplishes a service
s^ which duplicates s.^
Given the means, which the collective interest assumed,
state authority is nowhere required for such a service, as is evident from examples
where community or private services grow up alongside state services where permitted
to do so.
Often anarchists have such services will be performed better than the
A
H
state services they replace.
Note that the left-leaning argument does not assume
that organisation is unnecessary or that people
in their 0^1 interest.
It assumes
will always and inevi/j&6 ly act
that people themselves,
and net some power
ful elite in charge, are best placed to determine what is in their
and to pMcfe it
though VcJunhiry
04M interest
organisation and cooperation.
However people will do things themselves in an organised way, instead of
being, as often now, passive recipients of welfare.
Beneficial services, such as community-access radio and television stations,
and also welfare arrangements, would in general be reorganised so that all the
necessary infrastructure became community owned, and those wishing to use the
service would
and^ to operate it, would carry out much of the operation
themselves - taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the
passive recipients of good things metered out to them by powerful agencies or
professionals who take it upon themselves to judge what is in their [best!]
interests.
3.^
the means are not forthcoming.
Then the state would not be able to
supply means either unless it exceeded its democratic mandate.]
Let service s, e.g. a telephone or postal or transport service, be some state
activity which is in the collective interest, and let it be accomplished by network
n which will include a system of operators standing in various relations.
Picture
the network that makes up a state postal system or a local radio station.
Such a
system does not require the authority of the state of operate:
what it may require
is means to operate acquired by methods other than compulsory taxation or the like.
But if it is in the collective interest then it will obtain the means, e.g. it
generates these by its own operation, as a telephone service does, or it raises
the equivalent of subscriptions as a community television station or magazine may.
Then however the network n may be replaced by a network n of relations of operators
who choose to do the work without state directives and n' accomplishes a service
s^ which duplicates s.^
Given the means, which the collective interest assumed,
state authority is nowhere required for such a service, as is evident from examples
where community or private services grow up alongside state services where permitted
to do so.
/a?
Often anarchists have such services will be performed better than the
n
A
state services they replace.
Note that the left-leaning argument does not assume
that organisation is unnecessary or that people
in their 0^1 interest.
It assumes
will always and inevi/a.bly act
that people themselves,
and not some power
ful elite in charge, are best placed to determine what is in their
and to pn?$qe it
tliough V<7?un?ary
OMH interest
organisation and cooperation.
However people will do things themselves in an organised way, instead of
being, as often now, passive recipients of welfare.
Beneficial services, such as community—access radio and television stations,
and also welfare arrangements, would in general be reorganised so that all the
necessary infrastructure became community owned, and those wishing to use the
service would
and^to operate it, would carry out much of the operation
themselves - taking the operation into their own hands instead of being the
passive recipients of good things metered out to them by powerful agencies or
professionals who take it upon themselves to judge what is in their [best!]
interests.
7^
Arguments from freedom, autonomy and personhood.
Re §8:
Observe that these
arguments do not require the rejection of society or of voluntary cooperation:
it is the (claim to supreme) authority of the State that is essential to the
Nor do the arguments depend on individualistic assumptions, such as
argument.
that persons stand in isolation and are not intensionally inter-related to one
another:
all that is supposed is that responsibility for actions can be (largely)
individually assigned.^
8.
Re §9:
It is likely to be objected that most of the experience is of pre
industrial societies.
experience.
First, this is not true:
there is now lots of local
Secondly, insofar as it is true regarding large-scale industrial
societies, it is not damaging.
For it is precisely the structures of these
societies that the aim is to change.
Etc.
Re §10.
The replacement (or substitution) argument when duly followed through
i)
that is elaborated in requisite detail for each component of State actually that
9.
is in the collective interest, shows that the State is not necessary.
There are finitely many components which can be readily enumerated.
In the
case of each component anarchist replacements or alternatives have already been
worked out, often in some detail;
Put alternatively,
see especially Kropotkin's work.
the replacements enable the construction of a model
which reveals a society functioning without the State, the design of,
what can be arrived at in other less constructive ways, a practically
possible stateless world;
(practically) necessary.
and this shows that the State is not
But it can always be claimed that the modelling
procedure has left out some critical feature of real world circumstances
especially as to human psychology, that makes the model inapplicable to
real world circumstances.
This is a further point where^ appeal to the argument fjc/pi experience,
that at various times and places anarchism has worked.
Examples of
Were the argument to depend on individualistic assumptions, it could be re-presented in an interesting reductio form, beginning: Suppose, as arguments for the
State do, that persons are individuals (of the following cast; purely selfinterested, competing, ...). Then ...
10.
such organisation with.a State suffice to show that critical real-
world features have not been omitted.
Criticism of Undirected Happening, and Anarchism with^Organistion
In §10.
10.
In particular, the Roszak position of an undirected change just happening is
inadequate.
The conditions for change have to be determined in some detail at
least, and nurtured.
No more satisfactory than the Let's Leave Everything Open,
and so excessively to chance, is the Blueprint for the Future idea which tries to
set everything into place.
For example, how untried arrangements will work is
uncertain, and in future possibilities may arise which have not yet been clearly
envisaged.
A much
more flexible model is wanted:
model is intended to provide.
(See also 13).
Beware of arguments concering organisation based &n efficiency (as usually
11.
Need replacement for efficiency as for several other organis
defined E = 0/1).
ational values.
Similarly for economic terms
:
optimum quantity of as defined in economic terms.
quantities of nuclear power.
12.
this the forest succession
e.g.
(in §3) be
This may
i of
eid^e.g.^to optimum
Point same as with respect to efficiency.
Although the forest succession model (pp.11-13) is attractive, you do not
seem to have provided any gripping arguments for its superiority, which might run
along the lines of the moral value of anarchist means reflecting anarchist ends,
or more concretely in terms of a political analysis of contemporary society (e.g.
as done by Dennis Altman).
as a relevant one.
In short, the model needs to be justified in some way
More generally, the basic thrust of the paper is on the
superiority of anarchism as an end state.
The part on strategy opens up a vast
new area, including for example the tactics of anarchists in relation to elections,
to mass uprisings, to opportunities opened by social cataclysms (e.g. Germany
after WWI), to heavily authoritarian governments, etc. - which you don't treat
so far.
13.
Re
6:
The Tragedy of Commons issues arise again between States, e.g. over
fisheries, air pollution, etc., as well as war (cf. also Sinking Ark, p.105).
11.
14.
In footnote 14.
Th^s Bakunin urged a revolution everywhere at once:
other
wise there remained a continual risk and worry of State colonisation of adjacent
areas, as of State imperialism.
In footnote 12:
There are steps towards locally managed legal arrangements,
on which see Stone in Nemos XIX.
15.
2)
On self-managed medicine, see Illych.
Footnotes not fully taken up (through some overlap):
A detailed argument to this conclusion is presented in Taylor, who also points
out how the "Tragedy of the Commons" is the same general type.
In fact Taylor
Contends that arguments of the type -represent 'the strongest ca$e which can be made
for the desirability of the State'
5)
The small f^rms of economic
(p.9), and that they are wanting.
theory and the natipn states of political theory
also, of course, satisfy the independence requirements.
An independence require
ment is retained in Hobbes' theory, though an individual's payoff is supposed to
depend as well on the individual's eminence.
[Marxists on social determinism?]
Such organisations could in any case be valuable, not only in improving the
Some.
e/*
eV"
lot of those $*tuck in dilemma situations, but in providing ^situations, a matter
8)
?)
about which there is increasing speculations and argument.
9)
We don't of course wish to suggest that working within the system is just a
waste of time, and we should watch it all go while we sit back and wait for the
revolution.
But in each urgent battle it's easy to lose sight of fact that each
hard won victory is only temporary, to lose sight of the urgent necessity to
begin constructing the sort of society in which they will not be so temporary.
This is not and cannot be a matter of imposing some sort of Boy Scout 'Conservation
Ethic' or minor changes in the direction of energy saving on a society which
produces environmental degradation as a matter of its fundamental structure.
12)
It also overlooks the extent to which the structure generates its own style
of politicians and its own self-supporting procedures and mechanisms.
16.
Opposition to the theoretical in Australian intellectual life runs right up
through the universities even to research institutes, e.g. the Research School of
Social Sciences at the Australian National University.
12.
17.
None of the ways are original, all being found in at least rudimentary form
in 19th century anarchist writings.
original.
18.
But no more were the ways of Aquinas
[Ties with several footnotes.]
Re detailed replacement:
In the contemporary situations of privatisation
of wealth and resources (by State distribution and enforcement thereof) nonstatist
public and community organisations all struggle, even given a supply of voluntary
labour, for want of community infrastructure, which under alternative social
arrangements would be provided.
Because under (&. g.) left-leaning (communal)
forms of anarchism, wealth, resources, etc., are held or controlled by the
community, there is no need to apply coercion to wrest these from often unwilling
privatised individuals in order to /^rnisA infrastructure, etc.
The situation in right-leaning anarchism is very different.
19.
The extent to which States operate in the public good is vastly exaggerated.
The situation as regards wealth, large corporations, etc, are only some examples.
Cities are another:
they are not designed so that they operate in the interests
of people, of all those who dwell in them or visit them, but are dominated at
present by the interests of commerce.
Compare also modern metropolitan, where
cities dominate life of the countrysides.
20.
Serious defects in Wolff's arguments:
a) reasons on p.78 are quite inadequate,
b) false dichotomy between voluntary/constracts.
21.
Conclusion:
the State has
the myth of legitimacy.
no legitimacy.
Weber has material (essay?) on
This should be compared with Edelman's material on bogus
legitimacy obtained by symbolic means.
The transformation of the State is through the State;
the removal of the
State is by the State.
22.
Rewiode!:
(1)
In some of these things alternative groups work with the
State or its representatives (as rainforest patches grow within a eucalypt
forest).
This does not imply recognition of the State as legitimate, as a power
de jure;
but its de facto power is hard to avoid, and like the judo expert
alternative groups will try to take advantage of the power of the operation.
points OK:
reeXD/-e$$*. ]
[Seme
13.
(2)
An appropriate natural evolution model exonerates us from the difficult -
and unnecessary - task of setting down a blueprint for change, or for trying to
predict how things should go.
false dichotomy.
23.
It shows that revolution/evolution presents a
In between is, e.g. Encouraged of speeded-up evolution
Further questions.
Re §1:
a) All current States are evil,
but is even
the best State attainable seriously flawed? While ideal states with ideal
citizens are not evil (as model worlds will show), the ideal is unattainable?
Otherwise, where is the necessity (of evil)?
one-world necessity, virtually:
Also "necessity" contracts to
in all worlds like the real one is having states,
there are states, so "necessarily" there are states,
b)
of upturns to individuals is over intensional features.
The reduction failure
The point deserves
expanding.
Re §10:
The extent to which the new organisations permit punishment, or
a)
constraints, or rely upon it, is a ticklish issue, especially given the
argument,
b)
Generally there are various ways of changing or regulating an
organisation, e.g. external/internal.
For instance, outside, state,regulation
is replaced by group regulation, e.g. worker-consumer, which is an intery)a^*eA&Mrn<t/
mix.
24.
How
useful is this distinction?
An important prerequisite for directed (i.e. unaimless) change is an alter
native view, such as the Alternative Paradigm affords, the rudiments of theory,
where some goals are indicated.
Once such a view is obtained, in rough outline,
efforts can be made to further it, e.g. to put into practice with, for example,
more people attempting to introduce changes into their own lives.
In the energy case, to take a major example, the goals are clear enough:
maih"T.y to lead less energy consumptive lives. Ways to do this are well enough
known, e.g. to wear sweaters instead of switching on radiators, to reduce motor
commuting by living nearer one's work and friends or going less frequently or
using alternative transport, e.g. public or bicycle.
But— though most Australians
14.
(e.g.) are in favour of energy conservation, in principle - social arrangements
are so structured that some of the alternatives are impossibly difficult or are
arduous, e.g. a may may have little option but to commute long distances when
the factory at which he works moves to an outer industrial suburb, and all his
commitments lie in the areas to which he is mortgaged.
Similarly packaging is
increasingly difficult if not impossible to avoid, even in essential purchases
and those designed to lead the good life.
Thus an effective change is often
going to have to be part of a more far-reaching change.
For a working example - reforming and restructuring forest services - see
Anarchism letter, p.3 ff.
Further Arguments for the State, not already taken up explicitly:-
25.
The argument from efficiency, growth, etc:
(1)
isation !
really the argument from organ
Efficiency is little double edged as e.g. in efficiency ys employment:
There is a trade-off.
(Griffin
on 6?ff,C4C7tcyof smaM-scale argiculture).
itarian states more efficient, etc. (disputed).
Total
Maximization of efficiency is not
that the game is about - antifreedom, antidemocratic, anti-good-life, and what is
valuable.
Also reward for initiative in terms of grossly inequitable distrib
ution of wealth is not required.
Work is often undesirable.
No way in which the
the upper<$ worth the salaries they get.
The argument from political possiblity, "reality".
(2)
argument from the status quo, from^Old Paradigm.
invalidity.
realistic" or
The argument is really an
An historical comparison shows
Life without the Church would no doubt have been dismissed as "un
impossible" by many of those who lived in the Middle
Ages.
More generally different economies are extar)t and many more are possible.
Supply demand theory and theory of historic market will work without profit
maxim assumption, but instead e.g. certain satisfactions (satisfying).
is needed is an assu_jnption of rea SO/) able return.
All that
A range of other assumptions.
However, marginal (calculus) theory builds in assumption of profit op* return
15.
Maximisation.
There are several Myths concerning the Market to dispose of here:
a) it s historic
b) it's efficient: depends how assess:
e.g. net
of new technology.
Paradigm differences, deep differences in what is considered valuable, begin
to emerge rather quickly in arguments for the State, once discussion of their
the Dominant Paradigm organisational goals of
In particular,
adequacy begins.
efficiency and growth (on which see Scott), instead of being taken for granted as
formerly, are up for debate and overturning.
Is it possible to obtain an exhaustive diversification of arguments for
26.
the State?
It is doubtful that theoretical classifications so far are of nh/cA
merit.
Classification Scheme 1:-
Empiricist (pragmatist)
*Non empiricist
( ?
Idealist
*Nonidealist
Classification 2:-
?
?
*Non-u^itarian
?
?
Empirical survey gives
Contract
U^.ity
economic
Idealist
Don't often
get State, but only
Society,as e.g. in Green.
And it is important to distinguish these: for anarchism admits Society.
27.
a)
Russell, History of \N. Phil, makes some useful points:
Glorification of the State begins, so far as modern times are concerned, with
the Reformation.
In the Roman Empire, The Emperor was defied, and the State
/
16.
thereby acquired a sacred character;
but the philosophers of the Middle Ages,
with few exceptions, were ecclesiastical, and therefore put the Church before
the State.
Luther began the opposite practice ... Hobbes ... developed the
doctrine of the supremacy of the State, and Spinoza, on the whole, agreed with
him.
u.
Rosseau ... thought that the State should not tolerate other political
organisations.
Hegel ... goes to lengths which are astonishing (p.739).
that these are all protestants that are cited.)
(Note
On p.742 there is a goodish
page on Hegel's doctrine of State including:
' If shj} follow
from Hegel's principles that every interested which
is not Aatmftll ^the community and which can be promoted by cooperation,
have its appropriate organisation ... 'jjhere is also some good stuff in
Russell on holism (trad, logic) ett. on pp.744-5 and p.732 bettei^J
Comment on collectivism
"Collectivism -the doctrine that the means of production
should be collectively owned - is,
like many other
features of radical dogma, the bastard child of
capitalist parents.
Collectivism is the doctrine of
people who imagine production as taking place in large
collectively operated units - it's a factory or production-line
picture.
Historically it arose after the industrial
revolution had driven people off the land and created
workers for the large-scale factory enterprises set up
by capitalists for their own profit.
The class which
supported it were the urban workers in such enterprises,
not the peasants, and others in self-directed employment,
such as craftspeople, carpenters and shoemakers - the
latter group were mostly mutualists, later anarchists.
This is why Marxism, which lays heavy stress on collectivism,
also emphasises the role of the urban proletariat at the
expense of other non-capitalist groups, and also stresses
the idiocy of rural life, the blessings of progress,
technology, and industrialism generally.
Collectivism essentially buys the large-scale, mass-producticn
technology-dependent character of capitalist economic
organisation.
It does not see that if one does not have
such a structure, collectivism amounts to an otiose,
damaging and unjustifiable restriction on possible forms
of non-capitalist social and economic organisation, ruling
out particularly the self-directed type of option for
production and various combination cooperative forms."- Richard
Routley and Vai Routley
The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Cutting of Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'The irrefutability of anarchism', Social
Alternatives, 2(3):23-29. (9 leaves)
2. Annotated cutting (photocopy) of Grofman B (1980) 'Review, Taylor, Michael, Anarchy
and Cooperation, John Wiley and Sons, London, 1976', Theory and decision, 12(1):107114, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00154661. (5 leaves)
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. * The state is necessary ybr this or that, for the optimal provision of public goods (including,
but not merely, preservation of public order). Notice that this important type of argument need
/ot presume to establish necessity. It is obvious, from the operation of nastier states, that
' societies can function not only without optimal provision of public goods, but indeed with very
little
provision of any such goods. It would, moreover, be a rash archist who pretended
that modern states deliver anything remotely approaching optimal allocations of public goods.
Competition for anarchistic alternatives is accordingly not with opdmal allocations, but perhaps
only a matter of exceeding rather poor provision. More generally, it is enough that these
alternatives do well enough, satisize not maximize.
Most of the arguments from provision of public good depend not only upon maximization
assumptions, just rejected, but also upon, what flows from individualism, a false private/public
dichotomy, with the private delivered by individuals or individual firms, and the public by the
state. In between, however, lie many social groupings: clubs, communities, unions, societies,
clans, tribes, and so on. Such groups can deliver social goods.
As the modern state developed more or less at the time of the rise of individualism in its
extreme modem forms, it is hardly surprising that there is a heavy individualistic setting
presumed in most arguments to the state. An important group of the arguments alluded to
(variations upon Prisoners' Dilemma, Tragedy of the Commons,...) take the following broad
form:- individuals operating on their own, in a certain prearranged settings which involve
relations to other individuals also operating independently, will make seriously suboptimal
18
decisions or follow suboptimal practices - unless brought into line by an outside authority,
swiftly presumed to be a surrogate of the state. It should be evident, even without proper details
of the arguments, that the state is neither sufficient nor necessary for resolution of the problems
that issue from independent individual operations and from individual competition. It is not
sufficient because commons' tragedies, such as the overexploitation of commons' resources by
individual competing firms, can proceed apace in the presence of the state and may even be
encouraged through state activity. It is not necessary because the dependence-relations of
individuals in dilemma or tragedy situations can be exposed, and restored, in a variety of ways
into which the state does not enter; for example, by establishing communication linkages, by
social activity or arbitration by engaged societies, special groups, and so on. (Commonly such
relations are, in any case, evident in analogous real-life situations before the state becomes
involved, or can be persuaded or pushed into being involved.) Also indicated thereby is how
anarchism can resolve such dilemmas as need to be resolved in the absence of the state, namely
by having alternative arrangements and organisation in place which will serve instead.
One of the major deceits of modern political theory hides in the persistent theme that the
state, with a centralised monopoly of force, is necessary in order to assure adequate public
goods, including public order. But the most that appears required, the most that arguments
would deliver, are specific organisations that look after specific kinds of goods. There is no
inherent reason why societies should not institute and regulate specialised bodies, coordinated
among themselves by negotiation, or failing that by recognised arbitrators, to ensure the
adequate maintenance or production of various types of public goods, including control of
damaging crime. Each such institution would gain community standing from its support base,
for instance through possessing fairly general democratically-generated recognition. Such an
institution would aim to secure execution of its recommendations and decisions by sanctions and
like means, and for this it could mobilize in co-operation with other recognised institutions.
spheres
postal and communication arrangements (Kropotkin's favourite examples) to sport.
Each major sport has its international [organisation] that regulates a variety
of matters ranging from the rules of the game to the administration of
competitions. Such bodies are, of course, open to schisms and rivalries,
but these are rarely a major problem, in spite of the fact that they have no
sanctions to enforce their authority other than excluding competitors from
participation in the events they organise (Burnheim p.221, whom the
whole preceding paragraph paraphrases).
* An apparently powerful argument for the state, again from public order concerns, advances
the following claim:- The state is required to control and limit such social evils as crime and
corruption. Observe, it is not supposed these features of life are eliminated under the state; so
questions arise about tolerable levels, cost-benefit ratios upon varying levels of controls (down
to the point of any controls at all), and so on. Observe again that the typical state, so far from
limiting corruption and crime, is itself a major source of them. The state structure, by virtue of
its power, expanse and character, indMcay much of the evil it is supposed to remove, such as the
extent of crime. There are several different reasons for this. For one, the state tends to become
the guardian of a partisan morality, and tried to prosecute what, outside a "moral minority", are
not offences at all, are victimless "crimes", and so on. Thus a range of medical, sexual and
drug "offences". For another, the state acts to protect its questionable monopolies, whence a
range of banking, gambling, gaming and other offences. Differently, state-supported or
sponsored social outcomes, such as gross inequalities, and privatization of wealth and
resources, encourage property crime.
Anarchists agree that the major background source of these crimes, the state and its legion
of "law and order" officers, should be removed. Over what, if anything, replaces this extensive
apparatus, they differ. Different forms of anarchism are bound to offer different suggestions.
For example, under communist forms, where an extensive institution of private property
vanishes, property crimes will therewith disappear also; but under individualistic forms which
sanction unlimited accumulation of property, some procedures for safeguarding property will
need to be provided. There are again many ways, much less demanding than resort to the state
to achieve some requisite protection of property. One is what effectively operates in many
places that also waste their finances paying for police protection, namely insurance. Another is
private, neighbourhood, or community security.
n/Q^-
--T'-
;
Sojustified or not, there is no practical aiternative to the state. A/^e .f ika
* Anarchism has not worked in practice, and is unworkable.^ Meiiher is true. Before the
modern era of states it seemed to work well enough in some places, for instance in parts of the
Americas and of the Pacific. Since the modem advent of states, it has been afforded but little
opportunity to work at the national level, but it remains operative - a most striking example - at
the transnational level.
According to a condescending pragmatic argument, simple primitive societies may have
been able to struggle along without state structure or organisation, but it is entirely out of the
question for the practical operation for modem industrial societies. No recent anarchist societies
have worked. A short response is that but few have had an opportunity to succeed. There is
extroardinarily little room for social experiment in modem state dominated societies. Moreover,
where anarchist societies have had some chance to flourish, as briefly in Spain before they were
4^^
// c
20
suppressed, they appear to have functioned moderately well.
At the international level, anarchy has operated for many generations, although few would
wish to argue that the arrangements, though they
though successful in a sense, are
particularly satisfactory. The international order is anarchistic, because there is no coercive
government or authoritiative political body, with the authority backed by enforcing power.
International order is instead a prime example of anarchy (not a wonderful example, but then nor
are many states terrific examples of archy). And it affords a conspicuous counterexample to
stock arguments, like that of Hobbes, to some sort of well-ordering authority such as the state.
Granted, then, international order leaves much to be desired (though it is not significantly
worse than order in some states); so there are repeated calls for new world orders of one sort or
another. It has been persuasively argued (through a sort of top-down argument against states)
that international order is as bad as it is because of the power and intransigence of states. One
way to an improved world order is through the erosion of states, diminution of state
sovereignty.
As for real testing in practice, there is now no experimental space outside states. There
used to be some room in the world for sizeable political experimentation, for testing different
arrangements. We are now locked into large, overpopulated states with little room to move, let
alone experiment without states. There is however space w/r/un more liberal states for limited
experimentation, and there is increasing scope for simulation and modellings as computer power
and versatility grow. Most of the experimentation has been with small commune arrangements.
[What practice has shown, about all it has shown negatively, is that communistic arrangements
do not tend to work well for long with present humans, unless they are committed to an
authoritarian ideology.]
*
As some stage as the dialectic advances, argument merges, as here, with responses to
criticism. But before criticisms are considered in more detail, it is important to examine
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The prob!em of cont robing the
power of the state and preventing
the State once established from
usurping further power to the
State in the mandate, is oniy
satisfactorily solved by not ceding
power to the State in the first
place.
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Box 13: Green Projects in Progress
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Annotated photocopy of 'State' from Dictionary of Philosophy, 300-301. Publisher and
publication not identified. (1 leaf)
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Title
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Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia
Description
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In one obituary, Sylvan's handwriting was said to have "looked like the oscilloscope for a patient in intensive care", and thus "not for the timid".
Text
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00959
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The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Annotated photocopy of 'State' from Dictionary of Philosophy, 300-301. Publisher and
publication not identified. (1 leaf)
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Box 13, item 959: Miscellaneous notes on the state
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a>
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For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.
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Handwritten notes and photocopy of Dictionary of Philosophy entry of State.
Description
An account of the resource
Published work redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. Title in collection finding aid: Clipping of misc notes on the state.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&pageSize=20&sortBy=score&sortDirection=Desc&searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span><span>,</span> Box 13, item 959
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[11] leaves. 14.76 MB.
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<a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:4b2597f" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:4b2597f</a>
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Lake George - Floor - Pile 6
Box 13: Green Projects in Progress
Lake George House
Lake George House > Floor > Pile 6
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/ea5584898451dfadd5c2086d5089f315.pdf
1802ee4e30bd63b1dd432df2e71defea
PDF Text
Text
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when;inhis Q a'cyr-ce-i?ac /a
have been by Pierre Joseph Proudh
an anarchist
propricie ? (WAat is properry?,
ris, 1840), he described himself
be replaced b; /
because he believed that politic<d organization based on Authority sho
ement (Woodcoci t
social
economic organisation based on voluntary con
p.lll).
/
According to a rival encyclopaedia, however,
The world "anarchy" described a stateless society was for the
st time by Louis
Armand de Labort_ in his iVoreveMMS vogage^ dans /' Amer/iya^cptentr/ena/e
(1703), describing thb\Indians living in a society without state, laws, pilons, priests?
private property, in sho in anarchy" (Lehiing p.71).
A glance at the OED reveals the falsityx?f these interesting contentions [detail]^
]^rimary works
x"
Drigina/ and esposifary worEs
Secondary works^
H/s/ories and Ais/or/
o/ ideas
Textbooks
textbook anarchism, which takes a jauhdiccd-view-ofit^--
REFERENCES
J. Bumheim, 'Democracy, nation states and the world system', in NFD pp.218-239.
D. Heid, and C. Pollitt, New Forms o/Democracy, Sage, London 1986; referred to as NFD.
J.W. Gough, 77ie Soria/ Conlraci: a critical study of its development, Oxford, Claredon Press,
1936.
A Gramsci, 'The intellectuals' and 'The modern prison' in Se/ections /rom die Prison
NoieAooAs (ed. Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith), International Publishers, New York, 1971.
D. Mannison and others (eds.), Environment/ PAi/o^opAy, Research School of Social Science,
Australian National University, 1980; referred to as EP.
D. Miller, AnarcA/sm, J.M. Dent and Sons, London, 1984; referred to as M.
D. Mitrany, TAeEnnctiona/ TAeory o/*Po/il/cs, Martin Robertson, London, 1975.
A. Naess and associates, Democracy, /deo/ogy and Oh/'ecdv/ly, Oslo University Press,
Norway, 1956.
R. and V. Routley, 'The irrefutability of anarchism', Soc/a/ A/ternat/vcs,
R. and V. Routley, 'Social theories, self-management and environmental problems', in EP;
referred to as SM.
�29
R. Sylvan, and D. Bennett, 'On Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology',
Z^apgry in
ZTnvAvnnt^nta/ PAi/oyopAy, #19, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National
University, 1990.
R.P. Wolff, Zn De/ence o/*AnarcAM?n, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
P. Nursey-Bray, an Annotate BiAAograpAy o/*AnarcAtynt , Greenwood Press, 1992.
�REFERENCES
J. Bumheim, 'Democracy, nation states and the world system", in NFD pp.218-239.
D. Held, and C. Pollitt, New Forms <9/Democracy, Sage, London 1986; referred to as NFD.
J.W. Gough, TAe Social Contract a critical study of its development, Oxford, Claredon Press,
1936.
A Gramsci, The intellectuals' and 'The modern prison' in Se/eczAms /ram tAe Prison
AoteAooAs (ed. Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith), International Publishers, New York, 1971.
D. Mannison and others (eds.), Fnvironmenra/ PAdosopAy, Research School of Social Science,
Australian National University, 1980; referred to as EP.
D. Miller, AnarcAism, J.M. Dent and Sons, London, 1984; referred to as M.
D. Mitrany, TAe Functional TAeory o/Po/itics, Martin Robertson, London, 1975.
A. Naess and associates, Democracy, /deo/ogy and OAyectivity, Oslo University Press,
Primary works
Original and espositary worAs
Secondary works
#istories and Ais/ories o/ ideas
Textbooks
Textbook anarchism, which takes a jaundiced view of it.?
J
�Norway, 1956.
R. and V. Routley, 'The irrefutability of anarchism', 5acta/ A/ternahvey,
R. and V. Routley, 'Social theories, self-management and environmental problems', in EP;
referred to as SM.
R. Sylvan, and D. Bennett, 'On Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology', Dtycayytan Papery tn
jEnvtronmenfa/ P/w/ayapAy, #19, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National
University, 1990, rc
R.P. Wolff, /n De/ence p/Anarc/ny/n, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
P. Nursey-Bray, an AnnotareJPtbPograpAy o/AnarcAiy/n , Greenwood Press, 1992.
�The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Photocopy of four pages from Ritter A (1980) Anarchism : a theoretical analysis, Cambridge
University Press. (2 leaves)
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia
Description
An account of the resource
In one obituary, Sylvan's handwriting was said to have "looked like the oscilloscope for a patient in intensive care", and thus "not for the timid".
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
00988
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of
^VT
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'
^ )<^^F^^v47cyy X
A//?7**<r^ ,tA .
GORMACK GRAPH PAPERS : CHR!STCHURCHN.Z.
C051Y
18 cm x 25 cm x 2 mm
-
"TT
—-------r-1—T-i---------------------------------------------- r-l-'-T—
T
J . L-LZZ±^" ""tt.. Z""t±L.-.-.±E'
%
7 ^7
/<-yj
*
AZ-
(New
Gardner ^^ek^Ihe_J^5 of a Philosophical Scrivener
ork: Qmll, 198^).
Quill is a branch of Wm. Morrow.
_<^i-—
/7
1
Toward an Fco/ogica/ Society
28
when;inhis Q a'cyr-ce-i?ac /a
have been by Pierre Joseph Proudh
an anarchist
propricie ? (WAat is properry?,
ris, 1840), he described himself
be replaced b; /
because he believed that politic<d organization based on Authority sho
ement (Woodcoci t
social
economic organisation based on voluntary con
p.lll).
/
According to a rival encyclopaedia, however,
The world "anarchy" described a stateless society was for the
st time by Louis
Armand de Labort_ in his iVoreveMMS vogage^ dans /' Amer/iya^cptentr/ena/e
(1703), describing thb\Indians living in a society without state, laws, pilons, priests?
private property, in sho in anarchy" (Lehiing p.71).
A glance at the OED reveals the falsityx?f these interesting contentions [detail]^
]^rimary works
x"
Drigina/ and esposifary worEs
Secondary works^
H/s/ories and Ais/or/
o/ ideas
Textbooks
textbook anarchism, which takes a jauhdiccd-view-ofit^--
REFERENCES
J. Bumheim, 'Democracy, nation states and the world system', in NFD pp.218-239.
D. Heid, and C. Pollitt, New Forms o/Democracy, Sage, London 1986; referred to as NFD.
J.W. Gough, 77ie Soria/ Conlraci: a critical study of its development, Oxford, Claredon Press,
1936.
A Gramsci, 'The intellectuals' and 'The modern prison' in Se/ections /rom die Prison
NoieAooAs (ed. Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith), International Publishers, New York, 1971.
D. Mannison and others (eds.), Environment/ PAi/o^opAy, Research School of Social Science,
Australian National University, 1980; referred to as EP.
D. Miller, AnarcA/sm, J.M. Dent and Sons, London, 1984; referred to as M.
D. Mitrany, TAeEnnctiona/ TAeory o/*Po/il/cs, Martin Robertson, London, 1975.
A. Naess and associates, Democracy, /deo/ogy and Oh/'ecdv/ly, Oslo University Press,
Norway, 1956.
R. and V. Routley, 'The irrefutability of anarchism', Soc/a/ A/ternat/vcs,
R. and V. Routley, 'Social theories, self-management and environmental problems', in EP;
referred to as SM.
29
R. Sylvan, and D. Bennett, 'On Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology',
Z^apgry in
ZTnvAvnnt^nta/ PAi/oyopAy, #19, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National
University, 1990.
R.P. Wolff, Zn De/ence o/*AnarcAM?n, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
P. Nursey-Bray, an Annotate BiAAograpAy o/*AnarcAtynt , Greenwood Press, 1992.
REFERENCES
J. Bumheim, 'Democracy, nation states and the world system", in NFD pp.218-239.
D. Held, and C. Pollitt, New Forms <9/Democracy, Sage, London 1986; referred to as NFD.
J.W. Gough, TAe Social Contract a critical study of its development, Oxford, Claredon Press,
1936.
A Gramsci, The intellectuals' and 'The modern prison' in Se/eczAms /ram tAe Prison
AoteAooAs (ed. Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith), International Publishers, New York, 1971.
D. Mannison and others (eds.), Fnvironmenra/ PAdosopAy, Research School of Social Science,
Australian National University, 1980; referred to as EP.
D. Miller, AnarcAism, J.M. Dent and Sons, London, 1984; referred to as M.
D. Mitrany, TAe Functional TAeory o/Po/itics, Martin Robertson, London, 1975.
A. Naess and associates, Democracy, /deo/ogy and OAyectivity, Oslo University Press,
Primary works
Original and espositary worAs
Secondary works
#istories and Ais/ories o/ ideas
Textbooks
Textbook anarchism, which takes a jaundiced view of it.?
J
Norway, 1956.
R. and V. Routley, 'The irrefutability of anarchism', 5acta/ A/ternahvey,
R. and V. Routley, 'Social theories, self-management and environmental problems', in EP;
referred to as SM.
R. Sylvan, and D. Bennett, 'On Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology', Dtycayytan Papery tn
jEnvtronmenfa/ P/w/ayapAy, #19, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National
University, 1990, rc
R.P. Wolff, /n De/ence p/Anarc/ny/n, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
P. Nursey-Bray, an AnnotareJPtbPograpAy o/AnarcAiy/n , Greenwood Press, 1992.
The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Photocopy of four pages from Ritter A (1980) Anarchism : a theoretical analysis, Cambridge
University Press. (2 leaves)
J(Z( b
x/y
/-)/? / / c j
x
y^'4 y/yrA* ZJ
ZZZrW
/^C/t/c/v/C
<f &-r^ r^ZT
/ 'eZ/V76^-.
/^ZCc/r47y ,
; /?r^cx^<.y
7^?<?4'y y^f /yr^Tj .
?v/
X'/Tc/^^V ^<^C4.^A^
X^^Uf/7 /77t^.^7'7-w
^ZZ^c^v<b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Box 13, item 986: Notes and cuttings on residue of anarchism
Type
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Manuscript
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript and handwritten chapters. Includes photocopy of pages from Ritter A (1980) Anarchism : a theoretical analysis, Cambridge University Press. Published work redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. Title in collection finding aid: Bundle of notes and cuttings - marked 'Residue of Anarkism file'.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&pageSize=20&sortBy=score&sortDirection=Desc&searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span><span>,</span> Box 13, item 986
Format
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[22] leaves. 42.71 MB.
Identifier
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<a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:a0d77e1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:a0d77e1</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Lake George - Floor - Pile 7
Box 13: Green Projects in Progress
Lake George House
Lake George House > Floor > Pile 7
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/4838f6129c5578fba61fb73907484c27.pdf
cdc1de9a0d69c4e1adca96862b2a9ea6
PDF Text
Text
009S8
���r
�The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Typescript (photocopy) of Martin B (1993) ‘Anarchist science policy’, 1-14. (7 leaves)
Draft of article for The Raven, this version dated 19 November 1993. Published 1994, Martin B
(1994) 'Anarchist science policy', The Raven, 7(2):136-153.
2. Cuttings from The Reporter (1993, November 24), 3-6. (2 leaves)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia
Description
An account of the resource
In one obituary, Sylvan's handwriting was said to have "looked like the oscilloscope for a patient in intensive care", and thus "not for the timid".
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
009S8
r
The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
1. Typescript (photocopy) of Martin B (1993) ‘Anarchist science policy’, 1-14. (7 leaves)
Draft of article for The Raven, this version dated 19 November 1993. Published 1994, Martin B
(1994) 'Anarchist science policy', The Raven, 7(2):136-153.
2. Cuttings from The Reporter (1993, November 24), 3-6. (2 leaves)
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Box 13, item 988: Notes and cuttings on green anarchism
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Manuscript
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.
Description
An account of the resource
Handwritten notes. Includes typescript of 'Anarchist science policy' by Brian Martin (1993), and clippings from The Reporter (1993, November 24). Works by other authors, including published works redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. Title in collection finding aid: Bundle notes and clippings - marked 'Green Anark'.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&pageSize=20&sortBy=score&sortDirection=Desc&searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span><span>,</span> Box 13, item 988
Format
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[13] leaves. 6.9 MB.
Identifier
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<a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:8b0db18" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:8b0db18</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/6bab0d18beee166ea031a307db35fde6.pdf
8d1d1523a5c6a5d9d27993a547fd14f8
PDF Text
Text
1161
• I
3.7.95
GRAND PHILOSOPHIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES:
an initial report.1
Much of what follows is organised around the following anti-mainstream thesis, which it
aims to further, to sharpen and to support:
mainstream Western philosophy is dismal environmental news,
or still more colloquially and generally, mainstream philosophy continues to be bad socio-
environmental news. Presumably that expands, in turn, to something like: grander mainstream
Western philosophy continues to be a significant factor in the ideologies (or paradigms) that
inform destructive social and environmental practices. There are some striking corollaries,
among them that, like dialectical material in Eastern Europe, such Western philosophy should
be substantially abandoned, its furthering and frequent celebration in the schools and
universities discontinued, its place taken by more benign humble alternatives.
Sharpening the anti-mainstream thesis.
All the qualifications prove to be important. Mainstream, because there are lesser or
recessive traditions that are comparatively benign. Grander, because small-scale analytic
philosophy for example, while likely operating within a damaging paradigm, may have little or
no impact on its own (consider the impact of a philosopher who spends all research time on the
unexpected examination problem). Western, because classical Taoism affords a counter
example to the anti-mainstream thesis, virtually however it is sharpened.2 However the
qualification Western is decidedly narrower than need be, and moreover gives a misleading
impression. For conspicuous non-Westem philosophy, such as Confucianism and Islam, is
also dismal news. Other major philosophies can, and do, drive environmental destruction as
well. Accordingly too what uniqueness there is to the Western role has to be differently made
out, in terms of its special (though perhaps inessential) linkage to industrialization.
Although it is expositionally advantageous to highlight present serious predicaments in
terms of crises, one thing should be clarified at the outset. It is not essential, or even critical, to
the main arguments outlined that there should be environmental or other crises. It is enough
that severe degradation or the like is occurring. Some sort of responsibility for this will afford
a solid basis for criticism of a doctrine or practice.
1
The main title evolved from that of Caldera, Philosophy and Crisis, who was searching (rather
unsuccessfully) for a Latin-American philosophy. Some of this report was thought through in
Brasil, under the partial support of FASPEC.
2
See, for instance, the explication of Taoism in UTD.
�2
But, as it happens, conditions for crises are satisfied.3 There are crises conditions in
many places in many regards (some of which we will simply allude to, as there is copious
documentation). Elsewhere, where crises have not yet broken, there are often near crises
conditions.
Many there are, of course, conspicuously politicians and economists, still labouring
under the impression that the current dominant ideology and its development model is not
obsolete, that all is more or less well. They imagine ‘that we are passing through an unusually
severe but still cyclical crisis. That all we have to do is stimulate demand through public
investment and build up enough business confidence so that there is a recovery of private
investment and production. Then we can afford to resume efforts to control environmental and
social problems.4 They have misread the signs. The problems are not merely cyclic or
temporary; they are intensifying (if in a wavelike pattern, with deterioration surging in, then
ebbing somewhat before the next bigger wave).
Nor are larger ideological cycles quite the same, though much of the rhetoric is similar
from cycle to cycle. No longer is it imagined that social or environmental problems can be
substantially resolved next times around business cycles (though the illusion that most of us
will be ‘better off persists, conveniently buttressed by loaded statistics).
Comparisons, features and pedigree.
Of course European civilization has more to answer for than its environmental practice,
and its extraordinarily destructive impact on natural systems, especially non-European systems.
It has to answer also for its impact upon humans, in particular classes, cultures or races marked
out as inferior (persisting prominently into this century, emanating from sources of high
Western culture). But for many of these human impacts Western philosophy does not have to
answer, by contrast with other impacts.
Indicative of dominant environmental attitudes are attitudes towards and treatment of what
were, and often still are, seen as lesser humans: slaves, blacks, women, yokels, children, or so
on. Take women.
Among significant philosophers, virtually the only exception before
contemporary times is J.S. Mill, who, under feminine influence, deplored the subjection of
women. Unfortunately, for all the brilliant and oft-quoted Millean anti-mainstream passages,
Mill himself did not swim far out of the mainstream. Most notably he did not amend his
utilitarianism in the direction already contemplated by Bentham, to take passing account of the
3
For definitional details, see GE. For one of numerous summaries of present dire circumstances, see
Paleocrassas.
4
Paleocrassas p. 12: one among many voices.
�3
interests and sufferings of other animals. Human chauvinism survived, relatively unscathed,
for all that Mill deplored loss of flowers and habitats, throughout his works.
Features of the anti-mainstream thesis, its justification and relevant qualifications, can be
brought out by considering its pedigree. Partial versions of, or variations upon, an anti
mainstream thesis can be found in several sources; for instance in the deeper-environmental and
rival-paradigms productions of the 70s. Consider the following examples:
• the contrast of the Cartesian technocratic paradigm with the person planetary paradigm, where
destructive environmental attitudes and practices are ascribed to adherence to the CartesianEnlightenment analytic-reductionist mind-set.5
Similar related clusters of contrasts appeared across social sciences, in political science,
sociology and economics. For example
• the dominant modern paradigm, essentially the same as the Cartesian technocratic paradigm
was contrasted, by Rodman, with a benign classical paradigm.
• the dominant social paradigm, another version of the same environmentally oppressive
schema, was contrasted, by Cotgrove and Duff, with the alternative environmental paradigm.
All these and other similar examples were duly elaborated in work on the roles (and limits) of
paradigms in environmental thought and action.6 A critical point is that what social scientists
were digging up (and reditching) was pretty much what mainstream philosophy was espousing
or assuming (and, despite the new global wave of environmentalism, not that much has
changed philosophically).
It is worth recording that restricted versions of these contrasts (which do not touch basic
shallow utilitarian assumptions) are now being presented and considered not only by academic
theorists but by bureaucrats and working politicians and economists. Thus for example
• a new development model, as contrasted with the current development model, outlined by a
member of the European Commission (I. Paleocrassus)—who incidently devotes much space to
documenting the present environmental crises {environment construed in a wide sense, to
encompass decaying and dangerous urban environments often unfit for human habitation).
Many features of the crisis are attributed to a faulty development model, portrayed as once
perhaps appropriate, but no longer so.7 But there is more, much more to it than that.
5
Just such a contrast was elaborated by Drengson, drawing heavily upon Roszak.
documentation then, see their work.
6
Thus Routley in an exercise with just that title. Needless to add, paradigms are rough and uneven.
Some components of them have much more to answer for than others. For example, possessive
individualism with its self-interest hypothesis, has been a particularly damaging part of dominant social
ideology.
7
Curiously, though his entire discussion circulates around ‘the current development model’, what
went wrong with it and what might replace it, Paleocrassus never bothers to explain that model or
For
�4
The current ubiquitous development model did not derive from nothing, but is, in main,
an Enlightenment parcel, fuelled by ideals of material progress and the like, which is duly
underpinned by the dominant social paradigm.8 It is not enough to simply change the
development model; what drives it has also to be changed, namely the supporting philosophy.
Development of anti-mainstreamism in recent critical philosophy.
Differently, impacts of thorough-going (deep) environmental ethics, and of deep ecology,
on philosophy and social theory were being assessed. It was observed that very much in
mainstream philosophy would have to be jettisoned or substantially modified.9 Heavily
targetted were forms of idealism, including phenomenalism and existentialism, and forms of
empiricism. But the criticism swept much further, to prevailing metaphysics and ‘the limiting
ideological principles of both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment’. In effect the criticisms
extended to mainstream Western civilization.
But no doubt claims here are technically different, because, for all the merits of deep
positions, it is not usually being suggested that environmental storms could not be weathered to
some extent under shallow cover,10 or that duly environmental but shallow philosophies are in
some way responsible for gathering environmental crises.
More sweeping anti-mainstream theses have been stated however by Hargrove, by Gare,
and by others, including famous philosophers in their latter days.11 To the late Heidegger we
appear to owe a rather interesting (if abominable) argument, which runs as follows:
Western philosophy
— or some such, with
-*
technological mastery (supremacy, dominance)
-»
environmental destruction
’ symbolising leads to, or yields (granted leads to faces a validity
issue).
to supply its components. But what can be gleaned indicates that it is a submodel of the dominant
social paradigm. For instance, we are informed that natural resources are treated as ‘expendable raw
materials or even worse as free goods’ (p.24), in effect as without initial value.
8
For details see DP, and in condensed form Sylvan 95.
9
Notably at the end of EE, pp. 188-9.
10
Deep positions divide significantly on this issue. For it is now widely argued that shallow environmentalism
coupled with heavy technofix— a common position among scientists—is not going to succeed.
11
See Hargrove and Gare, and the ensuing discussion below in the text.
It is a little tempting to suggest that Hargrove presents his thesis as it were by accident, given how
little he actually does to defend it. In the main, Hargrove looks as if he is repeating Roszak and
Drengson rather than proceeding to a larger sounder claim.
�5
If something like this enjoyed plausibility, it would support a different thesis: Western
philosophy should end.12 That argument is by contraposition, and then should transmission
from an evident premiss. (Thatcherites and Wittgensteinians and others of a decidedly mixed
company, reached a similar conclusion, that philosophy should end, by entirely different, very
dubious by-roads.) There are several problems with the Heidegger schema. For one thing, the
argument leaves out other critical components of an important environmental impact equation:
notably excess human population and excess human consumption.
In any event, Heidegger certainly thought that philosophy—as distinct from a quasimystical “thought”—should end. But he exaggerated the importance of such an outcome by
exaggerating, in characteristic German style, the importance of philosophy, the importance of
German philosophy above all. For example he supposed that modern German philosophy
influenced the rise of industrialism and all it brought in train. It can be plausibly contended,
however, in characteristic disparaging British style, that philosophy had comparatively little
influence in such ultimately damaging development as European agricultural and industrial
revolutions (for example, technology, but not philosophy, played a role in the invention of
artificial dyes, a development which can be seen as setting European industrialization in train:)
But such examples do not penetrate deep enough to the conditions of and preparation for
change.
There are myriad ways in which philosophy has shaped historical developments: through
its major input into (other) ideologies such as religions, through its place in politics and law.
With Protestant philosophy, in particular, basic ground for industrialism was prepared: the
further development of highly exploitative Christian attitudes to nature (and to pagans) and of
appropriate attitudes to technology, disciplined education and inculcation of a work ethic, and
so on. Or consider, for instance, the fairly direct role of philosophy in the formulation of
modern appropriation theories of property (notably by Locke), which enabled dispossession
and displacement of native peoples in colonized lands, and are now ceding undue power to
exploitative corporations.
Consider its less direct role in the preparing ground for
industrialization, the presumption that the earth, its habitats and other inhabitants, its natural
landforms and its matter were and are of no value, but of value only as transformed by
industrial activity, that entrepreneurs were free to do whatever they liked with them. No doubt
12
The form of the argument is extracted from Passmore’s end-of-philosophy address (thanks to
Passmore too for further comments). The argument is much harder to find in Heidegger’s later
work. But rudiments are present. The first linkage of philosophy and technology is managed by an
extraordinary redefinition of technology (see p. 17?). For the second linkage, Heidegger was
presumably reflecting upon high destructive technology of war, nuclear weapons and so on. Note
however that the middle term has changed; so the argument fails, courtesy of the ancient fallacy of
equivocation.
�6
many untoward things would have happened without much philosophy, where for instance
philosophy had little influence (as with habitat destruction by excessive populations of animals).
Unfortunately such examples are exceptions; as a rule, noticed philosophy appears to have
helped in underwriting, shaping and even fostering dominant practices. It could regularly have
been different: wherever theory operated to influence practice, philosophy could have served
negatively, as a prime element of resistance.13 That too could be a significant role for
philosophy today.
Whatever the extent—arguably, then, very substantial—to which they actually impinge,
main philosophical traditions and ideologies do have very negative implications for
environmental theory and practice. So much has been argued or alleged, in one fashion or
another, in several contemporary sources.14 For example, Hargrove has recently investigated,
in uneven detail, negative implications of mainstream philosophy for three environmental
reaches: environmental attitudes concerned with nature and creature preservation, with nature
appreciation, and with development of a proper ecological perspective. However Hargrove has
ventured some of his particularly challenging themes in insufficiently careful form, thereby
leaving himself unnecessarily vulnerable to criticism and counter-claims. These include the
criticisms assembled by Attfield, who, though not unsympathetic to Hargrove’s case, has
excessively weakened the themes. For example, what Attfield presents as ‘substantially
correct’ is Hargrove’s ‘verdict that the history of philosophy has discouraged preservationist
attitudes’, vastly less than Hargrove’s actual negative verdict which comprehended considerably
more than just “preservationist attitudes”, and recorded a situation conspicuously worse than
mere “discouragement” of nature and creature preservation, as well as much else. Indeed it is
worse than Hargrove has charged; Hargrove’s indictment of mainstream philosophy is itself
weaker than that here ventured, which takes mainstream philosophy as thoroughly implicated in
the present escalating environmental mess, through its roles as a major source and supplier of
operative ideas and paradigms.
There is a single qualification, invoked incidentally by Attfield himself, that would
remove much of Attfield’s criticism: a restriction to mainstream philosophy (or differently, to
dominant philosophy in a region). Consider Attfield’s exceptions to ‘the adverse impacts of
Western philosophy’, those alleged ‘philosophical traditions that have encouraged taking nature
seriously’:Firstly, insofar as the Church Fathers, medieval Christians and others that Attfield alludes to are
13
On the place in philosophy, and in environmental thought in particular, of resistance, see the
discussion of Rodman’s preferred fourth ideal type, Ecological Resistance, in EE, p,146ff.
14
For example, see Hargrove, p.21.
�7
philosophers at all, they are entirely minor figures, unlikely to be known to many philosophers,
and but rarely or never referred to in regular philosophy courses; they do not form part of
mainstream philosophy. Consider the sorts of exceptions:
• minor philosophers, many of whom we know very little about, outside gossip and
speculation, such as Theophrastus, early Stoics, and lesser Epicureans.
• figures who are only secondarily or marginally philosophers, such as Hooke, Boyle, Ray and
Evelyn.
• medieval and early modem Christians, who typically are not significant philosophers, and in
fact were usually not committed to nature preservation and the like, but to nature management
or perfection.
Secondly, these minor figures do not afford the clear support for his claims that Attfield has
regularly assumed.15 Many of the statements supposed to offer support are ambivalent, or
environmentally dubious, supporting some form of managerialism (e.g. perfectionism or
stewardship). And in any case they have to be set against the remainder of what a figure says
and does (so far as that can be ascertained), often telling against substantial environmental
sensitivity and concern.
As regards the latter matter, there are, inversely, isolated claims in major philosophers
(Plato is regularly cited in this regard) which may make them appear environmentally aware and
even sympathetic.
Although Plato’s philosophy generally suggests that he neither knew or
cared about environmental problems, one passage in the Critias shows that
he was very much aware of at least one problem: the effect of deforestation
on soil quality in Greece during his own lifetime.16
Unfortunately Hargrove does but a comparatively poor job in accounting for what he alleges,
Plato’s indifference and lack of ecological concern.17
The reasons for Plato’s indifference to serious ecological degradation of forests and soils
in Greece can be ascribed to a combination of several elements of Plato’s philosophy (a natural
world-dismissive ideology) including: elevation of transcendental forms as what was truly real
and really of value; denigration and dismissal of the everyday natural world as utterly inferior,
of entirely lower existence or even illusory, and certainly not of rational concern. This dualistic
15
In work referred to on p. 127. The main historical claims, many of them based on secondary sources,
are stated in his The Ethics of Environmental Concern. A more detailed criticism of these claims
will be attempted elsewhere.
16
Hargrove, p.29.
17
This sort of problem arises not merely in regard to Plato, as Attfield observes, with decided relish.
There is little doubt but that what Attfield pronounces as Hargrove’s historical “excess” needs to be
sharpened and much elaborated, and, in some critical areas, rectified.
�8
ontology and axiology—a wonderfully valuable world of forms standing in complete contrast
with the illusory material world of perception—was supplemented and reinforced by a
corresponding epistemology. Under a tripartite theory of mind, the higher rational part, which
gave epistemic access to the forms, a part exhibited only by humans and more elevated beings,
was sharply separated from the two lower animal parts. Thus under Plato’s conception of the
human, humans and especially the important rational component of the human, stood in
opposition to nature; the distinctively human task is completely separate from nature and
concerned with control of it and its unruly elements. It is because what really has value—
rational selves cavorting among the forms—is separate from nature, transcending it, with nature
at best comprising very inferior copies, of lower existence, that it does not matter what happens
to the earth and earthly things, to mere matter. That is a matter of indifference.18
A significantly better critical exercise, as regards not merely Plato, but the extensive and
important neo-Platonic tradition, is effected by Gare, who also advances however an
insufficiently specified version of the anti-mainstream thesis. In fact Gare tends to slide back
and forth from Western civilization and metaphysics, both of which are too wide, to
mechanistic materialism (and social Darwinism), which is much too narrow, particularly if
social Darwinism is included (about which Gare vacillates). The latter leaves out such
damaging sources as Cartesianism and contemporary idealism; the former would include the
recessive Western metaphysical tradition Gare wants to refurbish, what has grown into
“process” philosophy. So while there is a great deal of worthwhile historical documentation to
be found in Gare, the target thesis has so far eluded his critical exercise.
While the restriction of the anti-mainstream thesis to Western doctrine is both somewhat
misleading and more confining than need be, that to mainstream is different. Something of the
sort is essential.
But it itself raises other difficulties, beginning with: what counts as
mainstream! How is the image cashed out? A contextual explication is conveniently
straightforward, an abstract definition of ‘mainstream’ in terms of the principal course or flow
less helpful.
By mainstream Western Philosophy—Western philosophy providing the
context—is meant the principal movements in that philosophy, the chief philosophers and
schools and their relevant philosophical interrelations. And who and what these are gets
shown, nearly ostensively in some cases (with portraits and diagrams), in histories of Western
philosophy.19 Shorter and less encyclopaedia histories in fact tend to portray just the sought
For requisite
18
On this classical polarisation of nature and higher humanity, see Plumwood.
elaboration, see Gare.
19
One admirable example in this regard is B. Russell’s Wisdom of the West, a popular work with a
title that should be viewed henceforth, given that Russell was serious, with some incredulity.
�9
mainstream (that they differ somewhat in coverage does not matter, but emphasizes, in a supervaluational fashion, the blurred edges of this typically vague mainstream). Long histories
usually indicate the mainstream both by the way they apportion their space, and also in their
judgements as to what is important, which were principal movements, and so on.
The essential qualification, to mainstream or similar, is independently grasped by Singer
. in his account of the dominant Western paradigm and his brief but pointed criticism of
Aristotelianism and mainstream Hebrew and Christian philosophy.
The biblical story of creation, in Genesis, makes clear the Hebrew view of
the special place of human beings in the divine plan:
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of
the air, and over the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth
upon the earth.
And God blessed them, and God said upon them, Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion
over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over every
living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Today Christians debate the meaning of this grant of ‘dominion’; and those
concerned about the environment claim that it should be regarded not as a license
to do as we will with other living things, but rather as a directive to look after
them on God’s behalf, and be answerable to God for the way in which we treat
them. There is, however, little justification in the text itself for such an
interpretation; and given the example God set when he drowned almost every
animal on earth in order to punish human beings for their wickedness, it is no
wonder that people should think the flooding of a single river valley is nothing
worth worrying about. After the flood there is a repetition of the grant of
dominion in more ominous language:
And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of
the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon
the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they
delivered.
The implication is clear: to act in a way that causes fear and dread to everything
that moves on the earth is not improper; it is, in fact, in accordance with a God
given decree.
The most influential early Christian thinkers had no doubts about how man’s
dominion was to be understood. ‘Doth God care for oxen?’ asked Paul, in the
course of a discussion of an Old Testament command to rest one’s ox on the
sabbath, but it was only a rhetorical question—he took it for granted that the
answer must be negative, and the command was to be explained in terms of
some benefit to humans. Augustine shared this line of thought; referring to
stories in the New Testament in which Jesus destroyed a fig tree and caused a
herd of pigs to drown, Augustine explained these puzzling incidents as intended
to teach us that ‘to refrain from the killing of animals and the destroying of
plants is the height of superstition’.
It is a little surprising, too, that the usual uncritical apriorism about the natural world and its other
inhabitants, should pervade Russell’s work. But consider, to take just one example, the inaccurate
and demeaning comparison of animals with humans that fires up his neglected analysis Power.
�10
When Christianity prevailed in the Roman Empire, it also absorbed elements of
the ancient Greek attitude to the natural world. The Greek influence was
entrenched in Christian philosophy by the greatest of the medieval scholastics,
Thomas Aquinas, whose life work was the melding of Christian theology with
the thought of Aristotle. Aristotle regarded nature as a hierarchy in which those
with less reasoning ability exist for the sake of those with more:
Plants exist for the sake of animals, and brute beasts for the sake of
man—domestic animals for his use and food, wild ones (or at any
rate most of them) for food and other accessories of life, such as
clothing and various tools.
Since nature makes nothing purposeless or in vain, it is undeniably
true that she has made all animals for sake of man.
In his own major work, the Summa Theologica, Aquinas followed this passage
from Aristotle almost word for word, adding that the position accords with
God’s command, as given in Genesis. In his classification of sins, Aquinas has
room only for sins against God, ourselves, or our neighbours. There is no
possibility of sinning against non-human animals, or against the natural world.
This was the thinking of mainstream Christianity for at least its first eighteen
centuries. There were gentler spirits, certainly, like Basil, John Chrysostom,
and Francis of Assisi, but for most of Christian history they have had no
significant impact on the dominant tradition. It is therefore worth emphasising
... major features of this dominant Western tradition, because these features can
serve as a point of comparison when we discuss different views of the natural
environment.
According to the dominant Western tradition, the natural world exists for the
benefit of human beings. God gave human beings dominion over the natural
world, and God does not care how we treat it. Human beings are the only
morally important members of this world. Nature itself is of no intrinsic value,
and the destruction of plants and animals cannot be sinful, unless by this
destruction we harm humans beings.20
Singer goes on to labour the familiar point that anthropocentrism of this harsh tradition
need not exclude some concern for the preservation of nature. But for most of recorded history
it has not included much concern. Moreover, lesser Christian alternatives, notably stewardship
and perfectionism, while they lessen some of the brutal impact of domination upon the natural
world, offer little improvement upon longer term invidious environmental erosion, or as regards
retention of now emphasized desiderata: retention of wilderness, and maintenance and
enhancement of biodiversity.
As disturbingly, the rival humanist paradigm of modem times, running from the French
enlightenment through 20th century Anglo-American empiricism, as exemplified in Russell,
Ayer and Quine among many other luminaries, differs from mainstream Christianity only in
leaving God out of the account (as He does not exist, He is utterly impotent, so to illicitly say).
Exceptional human features themselves, naturalistically achieved, justify dominion and
domination.
20
Singer pp.265-8, itals added. Singer prefers tradition discourse to the substantially equivalent
(historical linkage diminished) paradigm discourse.
�11
Outline of a main argument
Detailed argument for the anti-mainstream thesis, as refined, is, so to say, case by case,
through cases in the mainstream history, considering main philosophers and main schools.
Some of this hard piecemeal work, some already illustrated, has been carried out, in more or
less detail by others: Drengson, Gare, Hargrove, Heidegger and Passmore, among many
others. But, within that uneven treatment, there remain conspicuous gaps. For example,
among the principal 17th century rationalists, while there is much material upon Descartes
(along now with a conservative back-lash defending Descartes), and some increasingly divisive
material upon Spinoza, there is little at all on Leibnitz.
As there is no prospect here of reworking the dismal history of Western philosophy, case
by case, let us consider a few illustrative examples, which help plug some obvious gaps. Take
again the distinguished early modern rationalists—Descartes, Leibnitz and Spinoza— as
examples. Descartes’ significant negative contribution is now well-known, so much so that
Descartes is sometimes represented as the main villain of the environmental piece.21 Owing to
the premature enthusiasm of various deep ecologists for Spinoza’s contribution, the blacker
environmental feature of Spinoza’s theory have been enthusiastically exposed to view by a
jubilant opposition. As a result, some deep ecologists have back-tracked, but only a little:
Some Spinoza scholars have recently claimed that an ecological interpretation
of Spinozism is not justified. There are notes in the Ethics where Spinoza
says that we can treat other animals in any way which best suits us. [These
authors] have argued that although the metaphysics is nonanthropocentric,
the ethics is rightfully anthropocentric. Schopenhauer, who was steeped in
Eastern philosophy, was quick to pick up on the anomolous attitude of
Spinoza toward other animals: “Spinoza’s contempt for animals, as mere
things for our use, and declared by him to be without right, is thoroughly
Jewish, and in conjunction with pantheism is at the same time absurd and
abominable.” Arne Naess and I agree that Schopenhauer was correct in his
criticism of Spinoza. Naess admits that although Spinoza himself was what
we would now call a “speciesist”, his system is not speciesist.22
If Spinoza’s system includes his anthropocentric ethics (and is not illegitimately restricted to an
ecologically convenient selection from his holistic metaphysics), then it seems Naess is astray.
The negative character of Spinoza’s contribution was rediscovered by Bookchin (unversed in
basic deep ecological texts), who applies this finding to lambast deep ecology regarding ‘double
standards’ in its
one-sided treatment of philosophers and philosophical traditions. Spinoza,
for example is cast frequently as a nouveau Taoist and is interpreted more in
the romantic tradition than in the scholastic one to which he has more
affinities, despite his many differences with medieval thinkers. That this
great thinker was militantly anthropocentric is consistently ignored by deep
21
Thus for example by Drengson.
22
Session, in Appendix D to Devall and Sessions, p.240.
�12
ecologists, as far as I have been able to ascertain. I have yet to encounter
any attempt to explain Spinoza’s extraordinary statement: “Besides man, we
know of no particular thing in nature in whose mind we may rejoice, and
whom we can associate with ourselves in friendship or any sort of
fellowship; therefore, whatsoever there be in nature besides man, a regard
for our advantage does not call on us to preserve, but to preserve or destroy
according to its various capabilities, and to adapt to our use as best we
may.”23
So much for sensitive treatment of natural environments and their other inhabitants! Spinoza
appears to have irreparably damaged any claim to exceptional positive standing.
So far the third of the great rationalist trio, Leibnitz, appears to have escaped critical re
appraisal (in an overdue green history of philosophy). Yet, as it happens, Leibnitz’s position
can be applied to illustrate features of considerable green generality. In brief, any philosophy is
liable to be environmentally unfriendly that guarantees satisfaction of all or enough elements of
the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive impacts. Leibnitz’s overall
position does just that. Consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz
(though Leibnitz's fragmentary work did not initiate any genuine historic school). Leibnitz was
heavily committed to all of human population growth, unfettered technological advance, and
human lifestyles of consumption, in short, to precisely those factors that combine in the familiar
impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts upon environments. There is fair evidence
for these contentions. First, Leibnitz was an early exponent of utilitarianism, indeed he was all
round an enthusiastic maximizer. From his formulation of utilitarianism, he drew an immediate
obvious corollary: the directive to increase human population (maximizing on aggregate human
pleasure is most obviously achieved by production of more happy humans, other aspects of
which technology and affluence can assure).24 Secondly, Leibnitz was a technology enthusiast;
he was heavily committed to the development and use of scientific technology, for which he had
all sorts of schemes (e.g. not only the characteristica universalis intended to encapsulate all of
knowledge in an accessible useable form, a complete calculus duly mechanised, but as well
numerous technological projects.25). Thirdly, he was committed to an affluent lifestyle for
himself and (through symmetry and basic assumptions of utilitarianism) for others. For his
own part, he abandoned an academic career at an obscure German university ‘in favour of the
23
Bookchin, p.261. The quotation from Spinoza’s Ethics is fully cited in Bookchin.
24
For Leibnitz’s anticipation of utilitarianism, see Hruschka. For Leibnitz’s immediate application
of the principle, to support human population increase, see p.172.
25
‘Leibnitz’s interest in machinery is illustrated by his complicated plan to drain the Harz mines,
which involved the construction of a new type of windmill, and a virtually friction-free pump’,
Cottingham p. 193. For a detailed account of Leibnitz’s extensive entrepreneurial and technological
activities, see Aiton.
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more active and lucrative pursuits of the courtier and diplomat’ and, so it turned out, the bright
lights of major European cities and grand tours of Europe.26
No doubt Leibnitz’s lifestyle
commitments need not (and may not) be reflected in his philosophy, which may have
independent environmental merit, for example as stimulation or input for later developments.
There is unfortunately little evidence that that is so. Nonetheless, substantial fragments of
Leibnitz’s philosophy—of a different unauthentic subphilosophy—do admit environmental
bending and adaptation, in a way that Descartes’ philosophy does not at all easily.
Leibnitz has sometimes been accounted environmentally friendly. Some of that apparent
friendliness appears due rather to scholastic conservativism.
Thus he was opposed to
mechanism; he was sympathetic to the organic and teleological, which did not contract to
isolated human and superhuman loci. His metaphysical theory of monads, which are centres of
living energy, effectively distributed life everywhere, though not equally. Harmony and order
too prevailed throughout the universe, though under God's maximizing management, the
presence of which they duly established! But even this life-expanding harmonious order,
variants of which are now familiar from Whiteheadian and deep ecological quarters, was not as
benign as it has superficially appeared.
Leibnitz supposed that, by virtue of pre-established harmony and final causes governing
inevitable progress, humans would not go wrong in the longer term in their environmental
activities, that they could not ‘cumulatively make undesirable changes in nature’.27 Leibnitz
joyfully foresaw more and more of the Earth coming under cultivation, and its long-term
advancement to a complete intensive garden, even if there were occasional relapses where parts
deteriorated back temporarily towards wild state. Leibnitz even criticised Cartesianism, now
widely regarded as prime villain of the environmental piece, as failing ‘to provide the modal
stimulus ... to the control of nature’ ... ‘to scientific advance’. The idea of control, advancing
to total control, total management, is prophesized in Leibnitz (in a sort of chauvinistic Gaia
hypothesis). He saw ‘order as progressively increasing, with the help of man [as] a finisher of
nature. He boldly applauded the idea of progress to the earth as a unit, assuming both an
orderliness on earth and an orderliness in the changes it had undergone by man’.28
An important corollary does emerge: that a promising new partial metaphysics is no
panacea for improved environmental performance or paradigms.
Not merely neutral
26
Cottingham p.24, p.26.
27
Glacken p.478. As he remarks, these bold assumptions made by Leibnitz have proved wrong. The
preposterous infallibility-in-practice assumption has resurfaced recently in a less attractive aspect of
the Gaia hypothesis as peddled by Lovelock.
28
Glacken p.506.
�14
metaphysics, but even positive metaphysics, such as certain organic and process theories, are
compatible with, and can be coupled with, damaging philosophies, social theories and life
styles. It is almost enough to consider the theories and practices, commitments and lifestyles of
Aristotle, Leibnitz and Whitehead.29
Things even deteriorated on many fronts under the main philosophical movements that
succeeded Leibnitz in Germany, and overwhelmed European and much of Western philosophy
for more than a century, namely Kantianism and subsequent German idealism. Virtually all the
prominent positions in this philosophical galaxy, in the main strongly supportive of a
supposedly enlightened Protestantism, presumed and imposed a blanketing human chauvinism
and associated social reductionism. For example, the universal universe of Kantian ethics
comprosed the circle of humans (and perhaps super humans) only; nothing else counted, and
even the proper treatment of animals (which was at least not entirely neglected) was supposed
reduced to that of interhuman relations. Regrettably human chauvinistic assumptions also
underlay and handicapped more benign reccessive alternatives in Germany, such as those
afforded by Herder and through the much heralded nature romanticism movement. As is
widely appreciated now, later parts of the broad German mainstream flowing on from Kant
were much more deleterious, neglecting Enlightenment advances and sponsoring elements of
Aryan or super-race chauvinism.
Things were certainly rather different off the Continent in modem England, but in most
environmental respects hardly better.
But no doubt a different example is furnished by
mainstream British philosophy, a philosophy which has influenced most of the English
speaking world for the worse, environmentally and also otherwise. This philosophy is highly
empiricist in orientation, a reductionistic ideas, impressions or sense-data empiricism
characteristically sharing the anthropocentrism of idealism,. Worse, this empiricism normally
expands through ethics and social theory in the form of utilitarianism, typically a possessive
individualistic human chauvinistic utilitarianism.30
Despite appearances and propaganda, there has been comparatively little improvement in
recent times. For positivism and its irrationalist successors, all ecologically shallow, all
committed to technofix and for the most part to social engineering, have been prime
29
Leibnitz’s standing in the history of philosophy is somewhat curious. His main achievement,
setting aside his reputation as an intellectual wizard with lots of ideas, appears to be spasmodic
work upon a beautiful ruin, an incomplete (and incomputable) metaphysics, of which only
tantalizing fragmentary structures were ever available. It is not even as if there is a surviving
supply of challenging bad arguments that can be put before baffled students, as with Descartes and
Berkeley for instance.
30
For elaboration and defence of these stark claims, see Sylvan 94.
�15
philosophical inputs into the physical sciences and also into mainstream economics. Shallow
utilitarianism persists as the main philosophical informant of and input into social sciences,
including fashionable new areas such as ecological economics, public choice theory, and so on.
Incidentally, not much is to be expected in the way of deeper change from contemporary
universities and research institutions from where these new fashions emanate. For these places
are, by and large, part of the advanced industrial problematic; they are, almost without
exception, urbanocentric conjectural-information factories. Unfortunately, the other main
movements in Anglo-American philosophy are even more conservative, for example analytic
philosophy and its variants, such as conceptual analysis, and Wittgensteinianism. For they
leave almost everything as it is, as environmentally unsatisfactory as it is.31
Nor is recent Continental philosophy, a main contrast class, any better, but in many
respects worse.
Anthropocentric emphases remain heavy in both French and German
philosophy, which are the predominant forms. Both existentialism and phenomenalism, as well
as passe-isms such as Marxism, are mired in human chauvinism. Social criticism, which has at
least seriously addressed wider environmental problems, remains shallow. For example, the
communicational theory of Habermas is heavily biassed in favour of articulate humans, and
excludes other animals and the rest of creation from any but very secondary roles.
Modest out-fall.
No doubt the anti-mainstream thesis is not the sort of proposition that most philosophers
care to encounter. For one reason, it may seem like offering free ammunition to those who
would like to put an end to philosophy, for political or ideological purposes. But it does not:
not without a serious confusion of change—or end in present dominant form—with end, end
period. Similarly, it may appear to give reinforcement to those who, with scant justification,
have prematurely pronounced the end of philosophy.32 But this makes a similar confusion.
Spectacular conclusions such as those that have sometimes been drawn from
considerations like those assembled—such as, again, the end of philosophy, the demise of
grand philosophy, the deconstruction of metaphysics— do not then emerge. For one reason, it
is not philosophy that leads to disaster, but only certain sorts of grand philosophy, gray and
brown sorts, which accordingly are liable to critical rejection. No end is implied to less grand
and greener regional philosophies, recessive metaphysics, or the like.
31
Such a theme is developed, though poorly and in a social setting, by Gellner. His case applies,
with even more force, to environmental matters.
32
Later authors tend to appeal back to earlier false prophets, notably Heidegger, who really had no
viable arguments for his floated claims. There are other, quite different, equally poor, arguments to
an end to philosophy, for instance those to an end of ideology, from the fall of one awful
alternative, soviet “communism”. And so on; see also above.
�16
Development of some recessive alternative or other—different ones—is now a favoured
alternative idea (thus Gare and others advocating elaboration of process philosophy,
environmentalists favouring ecological paradigms, etc.). But a more effective course, duly
pluralistic, looks to locally and regionally based philosophies, with worthwhile linkages with
local aspirations and regional cultures.33
Once again, there are philosophies and
philosophies—and appalling regional philosophies (e.g. business philosophies, as promoted by
local chambers of commerce; fundamentalist philosophies stoked by organised religions).
Ways out, if they can be found, lie not through reproduction of dominant destructive ideologies
at local levels, but through less damaging alternatives, fitted to ecoregional circumstances.
Some broad corollaries of the anti-mainstream thesis are accordingly evident. Philosophy
teaching and practice should be drastically reorganised, almost everywhere. Many features of
historical approaches would be transformed. “Great thinker” and like series would vanish.
Celebratory aspects of philosophy approached through its history would be abandoned: both the
mainstream historic emphasis and the celebration. Grand but invariably flawed figures from
history would no longer be revered, or celebrated in the same way, even if some of their
arguments are retained for exhibition or criticism. There would be new histories of philosophy,
different in different regions, with their own pantheons ofprominent philosophers, pantheons
not set in stone. Nor would systematic philosophy remain unscathed. For its usual operational
framework is that of the dominant social paradigm. It would be relocated and reoriented.
There would be an end to the transfer of inappropriate models, technology (including
logical) and practices (as of temperate agriculture to tropical regions). There would be a
reduction in borrowing and unseemly imitations. Borrowed philosophy is inappropriate for
Latin America, or elsewhere in the South. Consider French philosophy, which along with
Catholicism and Marxism, still tends to swamp what little happens in Latin America. The
mileau in which French philosophy occurs is not established, the infrastucture is not in place,
namely a variety of literary criticism and like mags, an active cafe society, and so on. French
philosophy does not export that well and, by and large, should not be imported, for all its
flashy fashionability.
Regions should try to do their own appropriate intellectual things, importing only what
they really need. Regional philosophies do not, after all, have to start from nothing or
nowhere; they can draw upon and adapt what already has some local basis, perhaps a strong
base. What is more, they can be directly applied to prevent or delay outside destructive
incursions. For illustration, consider the place of tribally recognised values of forests in
delaying grand pulpwood and integrated forestry [integrated destruction] projects. Through a
33
No doubt this is an intended idea in Caldera, for all that it is scarcely articulated or developed.
Similarly in other productions on Latin-American philosophy.
�17
regional network, a mesh of constraints can be introduced, controlling intrusions of unregulated
or prejudically regulated international capitalism. Compare a promising strategy for trying to
achieve a nuclear free world, building up by free or freed regions.
Nor does a case for ideological regionalism have to start from nothing. Some of the
arguments for regionalism in organisation also support or suggest regionalization in reaches of
ideas, including philosophy. For example, many of the advantages of subsidizarization
transfer. Naturalism regionalism does not preclude global linkages; what it should resist are
forms of imperialism.34
None of this will be easy, or achieved without effort. Change is generally hard to achieve
against inertia. And most intellectuals, for all their craving to be first in little approved ideas,
are resistant to extensive change. Moreover the changes modestly proposed will not be simple;
there is not, and cannot be, a simple uniform alternative. What is needed is fragmentation,
pluralisation, regionalisation—unpopular, unfashionable ideas.
References
Aiton, E.J., Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985.
Attfield, R., ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’, Environmental
Ethics 13(1991) 127-137.
Attfield, R., The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of
Georgia Press, Athens, 1991.
Bookchin, M., ‘Rediscovering evolution’, Environmental Ethics 12(1990) c.261.
Caldera, A.J., Filosofia e Crise, Pela filosofia iatino-americana, Editora Vozes,
Petropolis, Brasil, 1984.
Devall, B., and Sessions G., Deep Ecology, Salt Lake City, Utah 1985.
Drengson, A, Beyond Environmental Crisis: from Techocratic to Planetary
Person, Peter Lang, New York, 1989.
Gare, A., Nihilism Incorporated, Eco-logical Press, Bungendore N.S.W., 1993.
Gellner, E., Words & Things: a critical account of linguistic philosophy and a
study of ideology, V. Gollancz, London, 1959.
Glacken, C.J., Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley,
1967.
Hargrove, E., Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1989.
Heidegger, M., The End of Philosophy, Harper & Row, New York, 1973.
34
Fortunately we have not yet ascended to an edified world philosophy, any more than the world car
(despite American efforts at globalization, including Solomon and Higgins), but the number of
mainstream models is now rather small, and almost all so far are noisy and polluting.
�Hruschka, J., ‘The greatest happiness principle and other early German anticipations of
utilitarian theory’, Utilitas 3(2)(1991) 165-177.
Passmore, J., ‘The end of philosophy’, address on the occasion of his 80th birthday,
Australian National University, 1994.
Paleocrassas, Y., Environmental crime and
punishment.
Towards a new
development model, Austemb, Brussells, 1994.
Plumwood, V., Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993.
Roszak, T., Where the Wasteland Ends, Doubleday, Garden City New York, 1972.
Russell, B., Wisdom of the West: a historical survey of western philosophy in its
social and political setting, Ed. P. Foulkes, MacDonald, London, 1959.
Routley, R., ‘Roles and limits ofparadigms in environmental thought and action ’,Green Series
#1, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University, 1982.
Solomon, R., and Higgins, K., (eds.), From Africa to Zen, An Invitation to World
Philosophy, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Maryland, 1993.
Sylvan, R., ‘Dominant British ideology, with relevant environmental corollaries’, typescript,
Canberra, 1994.
Sylvan, R., ‘Impact of alternative systems on the Enlightenment Project’, typescript, Canberra,
1995.
Sylvan, R., Deep Plurallism, typescript, Canberra, 1992: referred to as DP.
Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., The Greening of Ethics, White Horse, Cambridge, 1994:
referred to as GE.
Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., ‘Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology’, Green Series #19, Research
School of Social Science Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD.
�
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1161
• I
3.7.95
GRAND PHILOSOPHIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES:
an initial report.1
Much of what follows is organised around the following anti-mainstream thesis, which it
aims to further, to sharpen and to support:
mainstream Western philosophy is dismal environmental news,
or still more colloquially and generally, mainstream philosophy continues to be bad socio-
environmental news. Presumably that expands, in turn, to something like: grander mainstream
Western philosophy continues to be a significant factor in the ideologies (or paradigms) that
inform destructive social and environmental practices. There are some striking corollaries,
among them that, like dialectical material in Eastern Europe, such Western philosophy should
be substantially abandoned, its furthering and frequent celebration in the schools and
universities discontinued, its place taken by more benign humble alternatives.
Sharpening the anti-mainstream thesis.
All the qualifications prove to be important. Mainstream, because there are lesser or
recessive traditions that are comparatively benign. Grander, because small-scale analytic
philosophy for example, while likely operating within a damaging paradigm, may have little or
no impact on its own (consider the impact of a philosopher who spends all research time on the
unexpected examination problem). Western, because classical Taoism affords a counter
example to the anti-mainstream thesis, virtually however it is sharpened.2 However the
qualification Western is decidedly narrower than need be, and moreover gives a misleading
impression. For conspicuous non-Westem philosophy, such as Confucianism and Islam, is
also dismal news. Other major philosophies can, and do, drive environmental destruction as
well. Accordingly too what uniqueness there is to the Western role has to be differently made
out, in terms of its special (though perhaps inessential) linkage to industrialization.
Although it is expositionally advantageous to highlight present serious predicaments in
terms of crises, one thing should be clarified at the outset. It is not essential, or even critical, to
the main arguments outlined that there should be environmental or other crises. It is enough
that severe degradation or the like is occurring. Some sort of responsibility for this will afford
a solid basis for criticism of a doctrine or practice.
1
The main title evolved from that of Caldera, Philosophy and Crisis, who was searching (rather
unsuccessfully) for a Latin-American philosophy. Some of this report was thought through in
Brasil, under the partial support of FASPEC.
2
See, for instance, the explication of Taoism in UTD.
2
But, as it happens, conditions for crises are satisfied.3 There are crises conditions in
many places in many regards (some of which we will simply allude to, as there is copious
documentation). Elsewhere, where crises have not yet broken, there are often near crises
conditions.
Many there are, of course, conspicuously politicians and economists, still labouring
under the impression that the current dominant ideology and its development model is not
obsolete, that all is more or less well. They imagine ‘that we are passing through an unusually
severe but still cyclical crisis. That all we have to do is stimulate demand through public
investment and build up enough business confidence so that there is a recovery of private
investment and production. Then we can afford to resume efforts to control environmental and
social problems.4 They have misread the signs. The problems are not merely cyclic or
temporary; they are intensifying (if in a wavelike pattern, with deterioration surging in, then
ebbing somewhat before the next bigger wave).
Nor are larger ideological cycles quite the same, though much of the rhetoric is similar
from cycle to cycle. No longer is it imagined that social or environmental problems can be
substantially resolved next times around business cycles (though the illusion that most of us
will be ‘better off persists, conveniently buttressed by loaded statistics).
Comparisons, features and pedigree.
Of course European civilization has more to answer for than its environmental practice,
and its extraordinarily destructive impact on natural systems, especially non-European systems.
It has to answer also for its impact upon humans, in particular classes, cultures or races marked
out as inferior (persisting prominently into this century, emanating from sources of high
Western culture). But for many of these human impacts Western philosophy does not have to
answer, by contrast with other impacts.
Indicative of dominant environmental attitudes are attitudes towards and treatment of what
were, and often still are, seen as lesser humans: slaves, blacks, women, yokels, children, or so
on. Take women.
Among significant philosophers, virtually the only exception before
contemporary times is J.S. Mill, who, under feminine influence, deplored the subjection of
women. Unfortunately, for all the brilliant and oft-quoted Millean anti-mainstream passages,
Mill himself did not swim far out of the mainstream. Most notably he did not amend his
utilitarianism in the direction already contemplated by Bentham, to take passing account of the
3
For definitional details, see GE. For one of numerous summaries of present dire circumstances, see
Paleocrassas.
4
Paleocrassas p. 12: one among many voices.
3
interests and sufferings of other animals. Human chauvinism survived, relatively unscathed,
for all that Mill deplored loss of flowers and habitats, throughout his works.
Features of the anti-mainstream thesis, its justification and relevant qualifications, can be
brought out by considering its pedigree. Partial versions of, or variations upon, an anti
mainstream thesis can be found in several sources; for instance in the deeper-environmental and
rival-paradigms productions of the 70s. Consider the following examples:
• the contrast of the Cartesian technocratic paradigm with the person planetary paradigm, where
destructive environmental attitudes and practices are ascribed to adherence to the CartesianEnlightenment analytic-reductionist mind-set.5
Similar related clusters of contrasts appeared across social sciences, in political science,
sociology and economics. For example
• the dominant modern paradigm, essentially the same as the Cartesian technocratic paradigm
was contrasted, by Rodman, with a benign classical paradigm.
• the dominant social paradigm, another version of the same environmentally oppressive
schema, was contrasted, by Cotgrove and Duff, with the alternative environmental paradigm.
All these and other similar examples were duly elaborated in work on the roles (and limits) of
paradigms in environmental thought and action.6 A critical point is that what social scientists
were digging up (and reditching) was pretty much what mainstream philosophy was espousing
or assuming (and, despite the new global wave of environmentalism, not that much has
changed philosophically).
It is worth recording that restricted versions of these contrasts (which do not touch basic
shallow utilitarian assumptions) are now being presented and considered not only by academic
theorists but by bureaucrats and working politicians and economists. Thus for example
• a new development model, as contrasted with the current development model, outlined by a
member of the European Commission (I. Paleocrassus)—who incidently devotes much space to
documenting the present environmental crises {environment construed in a wide sense, to
encompass decaying and dangerous urban environments often unfit for human habitation).
Many features of the crisis are attributed to a faulty development model, portrayed as once
perhaps appropriate, but no longer so.7 But there is more, much more to it than that.
5
Just such a contrast was elaborated by Drengson, drawing heavily upon Roszak.
documentation then, see their work.
6
Thus Routley in an exercise with just that title. Needless to add, paradigms are rough and uneven.
Some components of them have much more to answer for than others. For example, possessive
individualism with its self-interest hypothesis, has been a particularly damaging part of dominant social
ideology.
7
Curiously, though his entire discussion circulates around ‘the current development model’, what
went wrong with it and what might replace it, Paleocrassus never bothers to explain that model or
For
4
The current ubiquitous development model did not derive from nothing, but is, in main,
an Enlightenment parcel, fuelled by ideals of material progress and the like, which is duly
underpinned by the dominant social paradigm.8 It is not enough to simply change the
development model; what drives it has also to be changed, namely the supporting philosophy.
Development of anti-mainstreamism in recent critical philosophy.
Differently, impacts of thorough-going (deep) environmental ethics, and of deep ecology,
on philosophy and social theory were being assessed. It was observed that very much in
mainstream philosophy would have to be jettisoned or substantially modified.9 Heavily
targetted were forms of idealism, including phenomenalism and existentialism, and forms of
empiricism. But the criticism swept much further, to prevailing metaphysics and ‘the limiting
ideological principles of both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment’. In effect the criticisms
extended to mainstream Western civilization.
But no doubt claims here are technically different, because, for all the merits of deep
positions, it is not usually being suggested that environmental storms could not be weathered to
some extent under shallow cover,10 or that duly environmental but shallow philosophies are in
some way responsible for gathering environmental crises.
More sweeping anti-mainstream theses have been stated however by Hargrove, by Gare,
and by others, including famous philosophers in their latter days.11 To the late Heidegger we
appear to owe a rather interesting (if abominable) argument, which runs as follows:
Western philosophy
— or some such, with
-*
technological mastery (supremacy, dominance)
-»
environmental destruction
’ symbolising leads to, or yields (granted leads to faces a validity
issue).
to supply its components. But what can be gleaned indicates that it is a submodel of the dominant
social paradigm. For instance, we are informed that natural resources are treated as ‘expendable raw
materials or even worse as free goods’ (p.24), in effect as without initial value.
8
For details see DP, and in condensed form Sylvan 95.
9
Notably at the end of EE, pp. 188-9.
10
Deep positions divide significantly on this issue. For it is now widely argued that shallow environmentalism
coupled with heavy technofix— a common position among scientists—is not going to succeed.
11
See Hargrove and Gare, and the ensuing discussion below in the text.
It is a little tempting to suggest that Hargrove presents his thesis as it were by accident, given how
little he actually does to defend it. In the main, Hargrove looks as if he is repeating Roszak and
Drengson rather than proceeding to a larger sounder claim.
5
If something like this enjoyed plausibility, it would support a different thesis: Western
philosophy should end.12 That argument is by contraposition, and then should transmission
from an evident premiss. (Thatcherites and Wittgensteinians and others of a decidedly mixed
company, reached a similar conclusion, that philosophy should end, by entirely different, very
dubious by-roads.) There are several problems with the Heidegger schema. For one thing, the
argument leaves out other critical components of an important environmental impact equation:
notably excess human population and excess human consumption.
In any event, Heidegger certainly thought that philosophy—as distinct from a quasimystical “thought”—should end. But he exaggerated the importance of such an outcome by
exaggerating, in characteristic German style, the importance of philosophy, the importance of
German philosophy above all. For example he supposed that modern German philosophy
influenced the rise of industrialism and all it brought in train. It can be plausibly contended,
however, in characteristic disparaging British style, that philosophy had comparatively little
influence in such ultimately damaging development as European agricultural and industrial
revolutions (for example, technology, but not philosophy, played a role in the invention of
artificial dyes, a development which can be seen as setting European industrialization in train:)
But such examples do not penetrate deep enough to the conditions of and preparation for
change.
There are myriad ways in which philosophy has shaped historical developments: through
its major input into (other) ideologies such as religions, through its place in politics and law.
With Protestant philosophy, in particular, basic ground for industrialism was prepared: the
further development of highly exploitative Christian attitudes to nature (and to pagans) and of
appropriate attitudes to technology, disciplined education and inculcation of a work ethic, and
so on. Or consider, for instance, the fairly direct role of philosophy in the formulation of
modern appropriation theories of property (notably by Locke), which enabled dispossession
and displacement of native peoples in colonized lands, and are now ceding undue power to
exploitative corporations.
Consider its less direct role in the preparing ground for
industrialization, the presumption that the earth, its habitats and other inhabitants, its natural
landforms and its matter were and are of no value, but of value only as transformed by
industrial activity, that entrepreneurs were free to do whatever they liked with them. No doubt
12
The form of the argument is extracted from Passmore’s end-of-philosophy address (thanks to
Passmore too for further comments). The argument is much harder to find in Heidegger’s later
work. But rudiments are present. The first linkage of philosophy and technology is managed by an
extraordinary redefinition of technology (see p. 17?). For the second linkage, Heidegger was
presumably reflecting upon high destructive technology of war, nuclear weapons and so on. Note
however that the middle term has changed; so the argument fails, courtesy of the ancient fallacy of
equivocation.
6
many untoward things would have happened without much philosophy, where for instance
philosophy had little influence (as with habitat destruction by excessive populations of animals).
Unfortunately such examples are exceptions; as a rule, noticed philosophy appears to have
helped in underwriting, shaping and even fostering dominant practices. It could regularly have
been different: wherever theory operated to influence practice, philosophy could have served
negatively, as a prime element of resistance.13 That too could be a significant role for
philosophy today.
Whatever the extent—arguably, then, very substantial—to which they actually impinge,
main philosophical traditions and ideologies do have very negative implications for
environmental theory and practice. So much has been argued or alleged, in one fashion or
another, in several contemporary sources.14 For example, Hargrove has recently investigated,
in uneven detail, negative implications of mainstream philosophy for three environmental
reaches: environmental attitudes concerned with nature and creature preservation, with nature
appreciation, and with development of a proper ecological perspective. However Hargrove has
ventured some of his particularly challenging themes in insufficiently careful form, thereby
leaving himself unnecessarily vulnerable to criticism and counter-claims. These include the
criticisms assembled by Attfield, who, though not unsympathetic to Hargrove’s case, has
excessively weakened the themes. For example, what Attfield presents as ‘substantially
correct’ is Hargrove’s ‘verdict that the history of philosophy has discouraged preservationist
attitudes’, vastly less than Hargrove’s actual negative verdict which comprehended considerably
more than just “preservationist attitudes”, and recorded a situation conspicuously worse than
mere “discouragement” of nature and creature preservation, as well as much else. Indeed it is
worse than Hargrove has charged; Hargrove’s indictment of mainstream philosophy is itself
weaker than that here ventured, which takes mainstream philosophy as thoroughly implicated in
the present escalating environmental mess, through its roles as a major source and supplier of
operative ideas and paradigms.
There is a single qualification, invoked incidentally by Attfield himself, that would
remove much of Attfield’s criticism: a restriction to mainstream philosophy (or differently, to
dominant philosophy in a region). Consider Attfield’s exceptions to ‘the adverse impacts of
Western philosophy’, those alleged ‘philosophical traditions that have encouraged taking nature
seriously’:Firstly, insofar as the Church Fathers, medieval Christians and others that Attfield alludes to are
13
On the place in philosophy, and in environmental thought in particular, of resistance, see the
discussion of Rodman’s preferred fourth ideal type, Ecological Resistance, in EE, p,146ff.
14
For example, see Hargrove, p.21.
7
philosophers at all, they are entirely minor figures, unlikely to be known to many philosophers,
and but rarely or never referred to in regular philosophy courses; they do not form part of
mainstream philosophy. Consider the sorts of exceptions:
• minor philosophers, many of whom we know very little about, outside gossip and
speculation, such as Theophrastus, early Stoics, and lesser Epicureans.
• figures who are only secondarily or marginally philosophers, such as Hooke, Boyle, Ray and
Evelyn.
• medieval and early modem Christians, who typically are not significant philosophers, and in
fact were usually not committed to nature preservation and the like, but to nature management
or perfection.
Secondly, these minor figures do not afford the clear support for his claims that Attfield has
regularly assumed.15 Many of the statements supposed to offer support are ambivalent, or
environmentally dubious, supporting some form of managerialism (e.g. perfectionism or
stewardship). And in any case they have to be set against the remainder of what a figure says
and does (so far as that can be ascertained), often telling against substantial environmental
sensitivity and concern.
As regards the latter matter, there are, inversely, isolated claims in major philosophers
(Plato is regularly cited in this regard) which may make them appear environmentally aware and
even sympathetic.
Although Plato’s philosophy generally suggests that he neither knew or
cared about environmental problems, one passage in the Critias shows that
he was very much aware of at least one problem: the effect of deforestation
on soil quality in Greece during his own lifetime.16
Unfortunately Hargrove does but a comparatively poor job in accounting for what he alleges,
Plato’s indifference and lack of ecological concern.17
The reasons for Plato’s indifference to serious ecological degradation of forests and soils
in Greece can be ascribed to a combination of several elements of Plato’s philosophy (a natural
world-dismissive ideology) including: elevation of transcendental forms as what was truly real
and really of value; denigration and dismissal of the everyday natural world as utterly inferior,
of entirely lower existence or even illusory, and certainly not of rational concern. This dualistic
15
In work referred to on p. 127. The main historical claims, many of them based on secondary sources,
are stated in his The Ethics of Environmental Concern. A more detailed criticism of these claims
will be attempted elsewhere.
16
Hargrove, p.29.
17
This sort of problem arises not merely in regard to Plato, as Attfield observes, with decided relish.
There is little doubt but that what Attfield pronounces as Hargrove’s historical “excess” needs to be
sharpened and much elaborated, and, in some critical areas, rectified.
8
ontology and axiology—a wonderfully valuable world of forms standing in complete contrast
with the illusory material world of perception—was supplemented and reinforced by a
corresponding epistemology. Under a tripartite theory of mind, the higher rational part, which
gave epistemic access to the forms, a part exhibited only by humans and more elevated beings,
was sharply separated from the two lower animal parts. Thus under Plato’s conception of the
human, humans and especially the important rational component of the human, stood in
opposition to nature; the distinctively human task is completely separate from nature and
concerned with control of it and its unruly elements. It is because what really has value—
rational selves cavorting among the forms—is separate from nature, transcending it, with nature
at best comprising very inferior copies, of lower existence, that it does not matter what happens
to the earth and earthly things, to mere matter. That is a matter of indifference.18
A significantly better critical exercise, as regards not merely Plato, but the extensive and
important neo-Platonic tradition, is effected by Gare, who also advances however an
insufficiently specified version of the anti-mainstream thesis. In fact Gare tends to slide back
and forth from Western civilization and metaphysics, both of which are too wide, to
mechanistic materialism (and social Darwinism), which is much too narrow, particularly if
social Darwinism is included (about which Gare vacillates). The latter leaves out such
damaging sources as Cartesianism and contemporary idealism; the former would include the
recessive Western metaphysical tradition Gare wants to refurbish, what has grown into
“process” philosophy. So while there is a great deal of worthwhile historical documentation to
be found in Gare, the target thesis has so far eluded his critical exercise.
While the restriction of the anti-mainstream thesis to Western doctrine is both somewhat
misleading and more confining than need be, that to mainstream is different. Something of the
sort is essential.
But it itself raises other difficulties, beginning with: what counts as
mainstream! How is the image cashed out? A contextual explication is conveniently
straightforward, an abstract definition of ‘mainstream’ in terms of the principal course or flow
less helpful.
By mainstream Western Philosophy—Western philosophy providing the
context—is meant the principal movements in that philosophy, the chief philosophers and
schools and their relevant philosophical interrelations. And who and what these are gets
shown, nearly ostensively in some cases (with portraits and diagrams), in histories of Western
philosophy.19 Shorter and less encyclopaedia histories in fact tend to portray just the sought
For requisite
18
On this classical polarisation of nature and higher humanity, see Plumwood.
elaboration, see Gare.
19
One admirable example in this regard is B. Russell’s Wisdom of the West, a popular work with a
title that should be viewed henceforth, given that Russell was serious, with some incredulity.
9
mainstream (that they differ somewhat in coverage does not matter, but emphasizes, in a supervaluational fashion, the blurred edges of this typically vague mainstream). Long histories
usually indicate the mainstream both by the way they apportion their space, and also in their
judgements as to what is important, which were principal movements, and so on.
The essential qualification, to mainstream or similar, is independently grasped by Singer
. in his account of the dominant Western paradigm and his brief but pointed criticism of
Aristotelianism and mainstream Hebrew and Christian philosophy.
The biblical story of creation, in Genesis, makes clear the Hebrew view of
the special place of human beings in the divine plan:
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of
the air, and over the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth
upon the earth.
And God blessed them, and God said upon them, Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion
over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over every
living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Today Christians debate the meaning of this grant of ‘dominion’; and those
concerned about the environment claim that it should be regarded not as a license
to do as we will with other living things, but rather as a directive to look after
them on God’s behalf, and be answerable to God for the way in which we treat
them. There is, however, little justification in the text itself for such an
interpretation; and given the example God set when he drowned almost every
animal on earth in order to punish human beings for their wickedness, it is no
wonder that people should think the flooding of a single river valley is nothing
worth worrying about. After the flood there is a repetition of the grant of
dominion in more ominous language:
And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of
the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon
the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they
delivered.
The implication is clear: to act in a way that causes fear and dread to everything
that moves on the earth is not improper; it is, in fact, in accordance with a God
given decree.
The most influential early Christian thinkers had no doubts about how man’s
dominion was to be understood. ‘Doth God care for oxen?’ asked Paul, in the
course of a discussion of an Old Testament command to rest one’s ox on the
sabbath, but it was only a rhetorical question—he took it for granted that the
answer must be negative, and the command was to be explained in terms of
some benefit to humans. Augustine shared this line of thought; referring to
stories in the New Testament in which Jesus destroyed a fig tree and caused a
herd of pigs to drown, Augustine explained these puzzling incidents as intended
to teach us that ‘to refrain from the killing of animals and the destroying of
plants is the height of superstition’.
It is a little surprising, too, that the usual uncritical apriorism about the natural world and its other
inhabitants, should pervade Russell’s work. But consider, to take just one example, the inaccurate
and demeaning comparison of animals with humans that fires up his neglected analysis Power.
10
When Christianity prevailed in the Roman Empire, it also absorbed elements of
the ancient Greek attitude to the natural world. The Greek influence was
entrenched in Christian philosophy by the greatest of the medieval scholastics,
Thomas Aquinas, whose life work was the melding of Christian theology with
the thought of Aristotle. Aristotle regarded nature as a hierarchy in which those
with less reasoning ability exist for the sake of those with more:
Plants exist for the sake of animals, and brute beasts for the sake of
man—domestic animals for his use and food, wild ones (or at any
rate most of them) for food and other accessories of life, such as
clothing and various tools.
Since nature makes nothing purposeless or in vain, it is undeniably
true that she has made all animals for sake of man.
In his own major work, the Summa Theologica, Aquinas followed this passage
from Aristotle almost word for word, adding that the position accords with
God’s command, as given in Genesis. In his classification of sins, Aquinas has
room only for sins against God, ourselves, or our neighbours. There is no
possibility of sinning against non-human animals, or against the natural world.
This was the thinking of mainstream Christianity for at least its first eighteen
centuries. There were gentler spirits, certainly, like Basil, John Chrysostom,
and Francis of Assisi, but for most of Christian history they have had no
significant impact on the dominant tradition. It is therefore worth emphasising
... major features of this dominant Western tradition, because these features can
serve as a point of comparison when we discuss different views of the natural
environment.
According to the dominant Western tradition, the natural world exists for the
benefit of human beings. God gave human beings dominion over the natural
world, and God does not care how we treat it. Human beings are the only
morally important members of this world. Nature itself is of no intrinsic value,
and the destruction of plants and animals cannot be sinful, unless by this
destruction we harm humans beings.20
Singer goes on to labour the familiar point that anthropocentrism of this harsh tradition
need not exclude some concern for the preservation of nature. But for most of recorded history
it has not included much concern. Moreover, lesser Christian alternatives, notably stewardship
and perfectionism, while they lessen some of the brutal impact of domination upon the natural
world, offer little improvement upon longer term invidious environmental erosion, or as regards
retention of now emphasized desiderata: retention of wilderness, and maintenance and
enhancement of biodiversity.
As disturbingly, the rival humanist paradigm of modem times, running from the French
enlightenment through 20th century Anglo-American empiricism, as exemplified in Russell,
Ayer and Quine among many other luminaries, differs from mainstream Christianity only in
leaving God out of the account (as He does not exist, He is utterly impotent, so to illicitly say).
Exceptional human features themselves, naturalistically achieved, justify dominion and
domination.
20
Singer pp.265-8, itals added. Singer prefers tradition discourse to the substantially equivalent
(historical linkage diminished) paradigm discourse.
11
Outline of a main argument
Detailed argument for the anti-mainstream thesis, as refined, is, so to say, case by case,
through cases in the mainstream history, considering main philosophers and main schools.
Some of this hard piecemeal work, some already illustrated, has been carried out, in more or
less detail by others: Drengson, Gare, Hargrove, Heidegger and Passmore, among many
others. But, within that uneven treatment, there remain conspicuous gaps. For example,
among the principal 17th century rationalists, while there is much material upon Descartes
(along now with a conservative back-lash defending Descartes), and some increasingly divisive
material upon Spinoza, there is little at all on Leibnitz.
As there is no prospect here of reworking the dismal history of Western philosophy, case
by case, let us consider a few illustrative examples, which help plug some obvious gaps. Take
again the distinguished early modern rationalists—Descartes, Leibnitz and Spinoza— as
examples. Descartes’ significant negative contribution is now well-known, so much so that
Descartes is sometimes represented as the main villain of the environmental piece.21 Owing to
the premature enthusiasm of various deep ecologists for Spinoza’s contribution, the blacker
environmental feature of Spinoza’s theory have been enthusiastically exposed to view by a
jubilant opposition. As a result, some deep ecologists have back-tracked, but only a little:
Some Spinoza scholars have recently claimed that an ecological interpretation
of Spinozism is not justified. There are notes in the Ethics where Spinoza
says that we can treat other animals in any way which best suits us. [These
authors] have argued that although the metaphysics is nonanthropocentric,
the ethics is rightfully anthropocentric. Schopenhauer, who was steeped in
Eastern philosophy, was quick to pick up on the anomolous attitude of
Spinoza toward other animals: “Spinoza’s contempt for animals, as mere
things for our use, and declared by him to be without right, is thoroughly
Jewish, and in conjunction with pantheism is at the same time absurd and
abominable.” Arne Naess and I agree that Schopenhauer was correct in his
criticism of Spinoza. Naess admits that although Spinoza himself was what
we would now call a “speciesist”, his system is not speciesist.22
If Spinoza’s system includes his anthropocentric ethics (and is not illegitimately restricted to an
ecologically convenient selection from his holistic metaphysics), then it seems Naess is astray.
The negative character of Spinoza’s contribution was rediscovered by Bookchin (unversed in
basic deep ecological texts), who applies this finding to lambast deep ecology regarding ‘double
standards’ in its
one-sided treatment of philosophers and philosophical traditions. Spinoza,
for example is cast frequently as a nouveau Taoist and is interpreted more in
the romantic tradition than in the scholastic one to which he has more
affinities, despite his many differences with medieval thinkers. That this
great thinker was militantly anthropocentric is consistently ignored by deep
21
Thus for example by Drengson.
22
Session, in Appendix D to Devall and Sessions, p.240.
12
ecologists, as far as I have been able to ascertain. I have yet to encounter
any attempt to explain Spinoza’s extraordinary statement: “Besides man, we
know of no particular thing in nature in whose mind we may rejoice, and
whom we can associate with ourselves in friendship or any sort of
fellowship; therefore, whatsoever there be in nature besides man, a regard
for our advantage does not call on us to preserve, but to preserve or destroy
according to its various capabilities, and to adapt to our use as best we
may.”23
So much for sensitive treatment of natural environments and their other inhabitants! Spinoza
appears to have irreparably damaged any claim to exceptional positive standing.
So far the third of the great rationalist trio, Leibnitz, appears to have escaped critical re
appraisal (in an overdue green history of philosophy). Yet, as it happens, Leibnitz’s position
can be applied to illustrate features of considerable green generality. In brief, any philosophy is
liable to be environmentally unfriendly that guarantees satisfaction of all or enough elements of
the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive impacts. Leibnitz’s overall
position does just that. Consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz
(though Leibnitz's fragmentary work did not initiate any genuine historic school). Leibnitz was
heavily committed to all of human population growth, unfettered technological advance, and
human lifestyles of consumption, in short, to precisely those factors that combine in the familiar
impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts upon environments. There is fair evidence
for these contentions. First, Leibnitz was an early exponent of utilitarianism, indeed he was all
round an enthusiastic maximizer. From his formulation of utilitarianism, he drew an immediate
obvious corollary: the directive to increase human population (maximizing on aggregate human
pleasure is most obviously achieved by production of more happy humans, other aspects of
which technology and affluence can assure).24 Secondly, Leibnitz was a technology enthusiast;
he was heavily committed to the development and use of scientific technology, for which he had
all sorts of schemes (e.g. not only the characteristica universalis intended to encapsulate all of
knowledge in an accessible useable form, a complete calculus duly mechanised, but as well
numerous technological projects.25). Thirdly, he was committed to an affluent lifestyle for
himself and (through symmetry and basic assumptions of utilitarianism) for others. For his
own part, he abandoned an academic career at an obscure German university ‘in favour of the
23
Bookchin, p.261. The quotation from Spinoza’s Ethics is fully cited in Bookchin.
24
For Leibnitz’s anticipation of utilitarianism, see Hruschka. For Leibnitz’s immediate application
of the principle, to support human population increase, see p.172.
25
‘Leibnitz’s interest in machinery is illustrated by his complicated plan to drain the Harz mines,
which involved the construction of a new type of windmill, and a virtually friction-free pump’,
Cottingham p. 193. For a detailed account of Leibnitz’s extensive entrepreneurial and technological
activities, see Aiton.
13
more active and lucrative pursuits of the courtier and diplomat’ and, so it turned out, the bright
lights of major European cities and grand tours of Europe.26
No doubt Leibnitz’s lifestyle
commitments need not (and may not) be reflected in his philosophy, which may have
independent environmental merit, for example as stimulation or input for later developments.
There is unfortunately little evidence that that is so. Nonetheless, substantial fragments of
Leibnitz’s philosophy—of a different unauthentic subphilosophy—do admit environmental
bending and adaptation, in a way that Descartes’ philosophy does not at all easily.
Leibnitz has sometimes been accounted environmentally friendly. Some of that apparent
friendliness appears due rather to scholastic conservativism.
Thus he was opposed to
mechanism; he was sympathetic to the organic and teleological, which did not contract to
isolated human and superhuman loci. His metaphysical theory of monads, which are centres of
living energy, effectively distributed life everywhere, though not equally. Harmony and order
too prevailed throughout the universe, though under God's maximizing management, the
presence of which they duly established! But even this life-expanding harmonious order,
variants of which are now familiar from Whiteheadian and deep ecological quarters, was not as
benign as it has superficially appeared.
Leibnitz supposed that, by virtue of pre-established harmony and final causes governing
inevitable progress, humans would not go wrong in the longer term in their environmental
activities, that they could not ‘cumulatively make undesirable changes in nature’.27 Leibnitz
joyfully foresaw more and more of the Earth coming under cultivation, and its long-term
advancement to a complete intensive garden, even if there were occasional relapses where parts
deteriorated back temporarily towards wild state. Leibnitz even criticised Cartesianism, now
widely regarded as prime villain of the environmental piece, as failing ‘to provide the modal
stimulus ... to the control of nature’ ... ‘to scientific advance’. The idea of control, advancing
to total control, total management, is prophesized in Leibnitz (in a sort of chauvinistic Gaia
hypothesis). He saw ‘order as progressively increasing, with the help of man [as] a finisher of
nature. He boldly applauded the idea of progress to the earth as a unit, assuming both an
orderliness on earth and an orderliness in the changes it had undergone by man’.28
An important corollary does emerge: that a promising new partial metaphysics is no
panacea for improved environmental performance or paradigms.
Not merely neutral
26
Cottingham p.24, p.26.
27
Glacken p.478. As he remarks, these bold assumptions made by Leibnitz have proved wrong. The
preposterous infallibility-in-practice assumption has resurfaced recently in a less attractive aspect of
the Gaia hypothesis as peddled by Lovelock.
28
Glacken p.506.
14
metaphysics, but even positive metaphysics, such as certain organic and process theories, are
compatible with, and can be coupled with, damaging philosophies, social theories and life
styles. It is almost enough to consider the theories and practices, commitments and lifestyles of
Aristotle, Leibnitz and Whitehead.29
Things even deteriorated on many fronts under the main philosophical movements that
succeeded Leibnitz in Germany, and overwhelmed European and much of Western philosophy
for more than a century, namely Kantianism and subsequent German idealism. Virtually all the
prominent positions in this philosophical galaxy, in the main strongly supportive of a
supposedly enlightened Protestantism, presumed and imposed a blanketing human chauvinism
and associated social reductionism. For example, the universal universe of Kantian ethics
comprosed the circle of humans (and perhaps super humans) only; nothing else counted, and
even the proper treatment of animals (which was at least not entirely neglected) was supposed
reduced to that of interhuman relations. Regrettably human chauvinistic assumptions also
underlay and handicapped more benign reccessive alternatives in Germany, such as those
afforded by Herder and through the much heralded nature romanticism movement. As is
widely appreciated now, later parts of the broad German mainstream flowing on from Kant
were much more deleterious, neglecting Enlightenment advances and sponsoring elements of
Aryan or super-race chauvinism.
Things were certainly rather different off the Continent in modem England, but in most
environmental respects hardly better.
But no doubt a different example is furnished by
mainstream British philosophy, a philosophy which has influenced most of the English
speaking world for the worse, environmentally and also otherwise. This philosophy is highly
empiricist in orientation, a reductionistic ideas, impressions or sense-data empiricism
characteristically sharing the anthropocentrism of idealism,. Worse, this empiricism normally
expands through ethics and social theory in the form of utilitarianism, typically a possessive
individualistic human chauvinistic utilitarianism.30
Despite appearances and propaganda, there has been comparatively little improvement in
recent times. For positivism and its irrationalist successors, all ecologically shallow, all
committed to technofix and for the most part to social engineering, have been prime
29
Leibnitz’s standing in the history of philosophy is somewhat curious. His main achievement,
setting aside his reputation as an intellectual wizard with lots of ideas, appears to be spasmodic
work upon a beautiful ruin, an incomplete (and incomputable) metaphysics, of which only
tantalizing fragmentary structures were ever available. It is not even as if there is a surviving
supply of challenging bad arguments that can be put before baffled students, as with Descartes and
Berkeley for instance.
30
For elaboration and defence of these stark claims, see Sylvan 94.
15
philosophical inputs into the physical sciences and also into mainstream economics. Shallow
utilitarianism persists as the main philosophical informant of and input into social sciences,
including fashionable new areas such as ecological economics, public choice theory, and so on.
Incidentally, not much is to be expected in the way of deeper change from contemporary
universities and research institutions from where these new fashions emanate. For these places
are, by and large, part of the advanced industrial problematic; they are, almost without
exception, urbanocentric conjectural-information factories. Unfortunately, the other main
movements in Anglo-American philosophy are even more conservative, for example analytic
philosophy and its variants, such as conceptual analysis, and Wittgensteinianism. For they
leave almost everything as it is, as environmentally unsatisfactory as it is.31
Nor is recent Continental philosophy, a main contrast class, any better, but in many
respects worse.
Anthropocentric emphases remain heavy in both French and German
philosophy, which are the predominant forms. Both existentialism and phenomenalism, as well
as passe-isms such as Marxism, are mired in human chauvinism. Social criticism, which has at
least seriously addressed wider environmental problems, remains shallow. For example, the
communicational theory of Habermas is heavily biassed in favour of articulate humans, and
excludes other animals and the rest of creation from any but very secondary roles.
Modest out-fall.
No doubt the anti-mainstream thesis is not the sort of proposition that most philosophers
care to encounter. For one reason, it may seem like offering free ammunition to those who
would like to put an end to philosophy, for political or ideological purposes. But it does not:
not without a serious confusion of change—or end in present dominant form—with end, end
period. Similarly, it may appear to give reinforcement to those who, with scant justification,
have prematurely pronounced the end of philosophy.32 But this makes a similar confusion.
Spectacular conclusions such as those that have sometimes been drawn from
considerations like those assembled—such as, again, the end of philosophy, the demise of
grand philosophy, the deconstruction of metaphysics— do not then emerge. For one reason, it
is not philosophy that leads to disaster, but only certain sorts of grand philosophy, gray and
brown sorts, which accordingly are liable to critical rejection. No end is implied to less grand
and greener regional philosophies, recessive metaphysics, or the like.
31
Such a theme is developed, though poorly and in a social setting, by Gellner. His case applies,
with even more force, to environmental matters.
32
Later authors tend to appeal back to earlier false prophets, notably Heidegger, who really had no
viable arguments for his floated claims. There are other, quite different, equally poor, arguments to
an end to philosophy, for instance those to an end of ideology, from the fall of one awful
alternative, soviet “communism”. And so on; see also above.
16
Development of some recessive alternative or other—different ones—is now a favoured
alternative idea (thus Gare and others advocating elaboration of process philosophy,
environmentalists favouring ecological paradigms, etc.). But a more effective course, duly
pluralistic, looks to locally and regionally based philosophies, with worthwhile linkages with
local aspirations and regional cultures.33
Once again, there are philosophies and
philosophies—and appalling regional philosophies (e.g. business philosophies, as promoted by
local chambers of commerce; fundamentalist philosophies stoked by organised religions).
Ways out, if they can be found, lie not through reproduction of dominant destructive ideologies
at local levels, but through less damaging alternatives, fitted to ecoregional circumstances.
Some broad corollaries of the anti-mainstream thesis are accordingly evident. Philosophy
teaching and practice should be drastically reorganised, almost everywhere. Many features of
historical approaches would be transformed. “Great thinker” and like series would vanish.
Celebratory aspects of philosophy approached through its history would be abandoned: both the
mainstream historic emphasis and the celebration. Grand but invariably flawed figures from
history would no longer be revered, or celebrated in the same way, even if some of their
arguments are retained for exhibition or criticism. There would be new histories of philosophy,
different in different regions, with their own pantheons ofprominent philosophers, pantheons
not set in stone. Nor would systematic philosophy remain unscathed. For its usual operational
framework is that of the dominant social paradigm. It would be relocated and reoriented.
There would be an end to the transfer of inappropriate models, technology (including
logical) and practices (as of temperate agriculture to tropical regions). There would be a
reduction in borrowing and unseemly imitations. Borrowed philosophy is inappropriate for
Latin America, or elsewhere in the South. Consider French philosophy, which along with
Catholicism and Marxism, still tends to swamp what little happens in Latin America. The
mileau in which French philosophy occurs is not established, the infrastucture is not in place,
namely a variety of literary criticism and like mags, an active cafe society, and so on. French
philosophy does not export that well and, by and large, should not be imported, for all its
flashy fashionability.
Regions should try to do their own appropriate intellectual things, importing only what
they really need. Regional philosophies do not, after all, have to start from nothing or
nowhere; they can draw upon and adapt what already has some local basis, perhaps a strong
base. What is more, they can be directly applied to prevent or delay outside destructive
incursions. For illustration, consider the place of tribally recognised values of forests in
delaying grand pulpwood and integrated forestry [integrated destruction] projects. Through a
33
No doubt this is an intended idea in Caldera, for all that it is scarcely articulated or developed.
Similarly in other productions on Latin-American philosophy.
17
regional network, a mesh of constraints can be introduced, controlling intrusions of unregulated
or prejudically regulated international capitalism. Compare a promising strategy for trying to
achieve a nuclear free world, building up by free or freed regions.
Nor does a case for ideological regionalism have to start from nothing. Some of the
arguments for regionalism in organisation also support or suggest regionalization in reaches of
ideas, including philosophy. For example, many of the advantages of subsidizarization
transfer. Naturalism regionalism does not preclude global linkages; what it should resist are
forms of imperialism.34
None of this will be easy, or achieved without effort. Change is generally hard to achieve
against inertia. And most intellectuals, for all their craving to be first in little approved ideas,
are resistant to extensive change. Moreover the changes modestly proposed will not be simple;
there is not, and cannot be, a simple uniform alternative. What is needed is fragmentation,
pluralisation, regionalisation—unpopular, unfashionable ideas.
References
Aiton, E.J., Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985.
Attfield, R., ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’, Environmental
Ethics 13(1991) 127-137.
Attfield, R., The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of
Georgia Press, Athens, 1991.
Bookchin, M., ‘Rediscovering evolution’, Environmental Ethics 12(1990) c.261.
Caldera, A.J., Filosofia e Crise, Pela filosofia iatino-americana, Editora Vozes,
Petropolis, Brasil, 1984.
Devall, B., and Sessions G., Deep Ecology, Salt Lake City, Utah 1985.
Drengson, A, Beyond Environmental Crisis: from Techocratic to Planetary
Person, Peter Lang, New York, 1989.
Gare, A., Nihilism Incorporated, Eco-logical Press, Bungendore N.S.W., 1993.
Gellner, E., Words & Things: a critical account of linguistic philosophy and a
study of ideology, V. Gollancz, London, 1959.
Glacken, C.J., Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley,
1967.
Hargrove, E., Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1989.
Heidegger, M., The End of Philosophy, Harper & Row, New York, 1973.
34
Fortunately we have not yet ascended to an edified world philosophy, any more than the world car
(despite American efforts at globalization, including Solomon and Higgins), but the number of
mainstream models is now rather small, and almost all so far are noisy and polluting.
Hruschka, J., ‘The greatest happiness principle and other early German anticipations of
utilitarian theory’, Utilitas 3(2)(1991) 165-177.
Passmore, J., ‘The end of philosophy’, address on the occasion of his 80th birthday,
Australian National University, 1994.
Paleocrassas, Y., Environmental crime and
punishment.
Towards a new
development model, Austemb, Brussells, 1994.
Plumwood, V., Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993.
Roszak, T., Where the Wasteland Ends, Doubleday, Garden City New York, 1972.
Russell, B., Wisdom of the West: a historical survey of western philosophy in its
social and political setting, Ed. P. Foulkes, MacDonald, London, 1959.
Routley, R., ‘Roles and limits ofparadigms in environmental thought and action ’,Green Series
#1, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University, 1982.
Solomon, R., and Higgins, K., (eds.), From Africa to Zen, An Invitation to World
Philosophy, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Maryland, 1993.
Sylvan, R., ‘Dominant British ideology, with relevant environmental corollaries’, typescript,
Canberra, 1994.
Sylvan, R., ‘Impact of alternative systems on the Enlightenment Project’, typescript, Canberra,
1995.
Sylvan, R., Deep Plurallism, typescript, Canberra, 1992: referred to as DP.
Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., The Greening of Ethics, White Horse, Cambridge, 1994:
referred to as GE.
Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., ‘Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology’, Green Series #19, Research
School of Social Science Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD.
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1165
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental
problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not
be adequately addressed.
Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade,
impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why
the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More
immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep
enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More
thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question
entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread
problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly
recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper
paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers
lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow
band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more
satisfactory answer can be broached.
Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant
paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems,
and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the
problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers,
fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the
important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the
present investigation.
. . .
A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial
answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally
friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to
characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking,
philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental
news.
3.7.95
�2
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
of
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Broaching focal questions, and searching for deeper answers.
Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate
(liquidation of natural forest systems affords just one striking example). In modem times
humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system
degradation.
Often in the past they would not have seen such transformation as mattering,
many remain so programmed, regarding transformation as increasing wealth (a presumption
encouraged under mainstream economics). More recently dominant human cultures have
developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through
need, tax impositions, pressure to engage in cash economies, and so on) and which weave
entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, councils, courts, educations, missions, and so
on).
Whence arises an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More
explicitly, why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their
environments, their own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a
long period, destroy their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps
in jeopardy through human enterprise? For those eager to anticipate the main outcome, the
unremarkable answer to be eventually found to these focal questions is in essence this: because
too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, remain
committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigm?, diverse paradigms but all
displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the
earth.
Parts of any answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental
impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring
through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies,
and so on.
While such answers are important, and often correct as far as they go in
combination, and while they may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are
nonetheless somewhat superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do
not explain why a community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or
why it is so resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes.
Less superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to
1
In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Contrary to other sources, such
as Marshall, humans are by no means the only biological species that proceed to degrade or
impoverish their own environments. Introduced “pest” species, such as rabbits and mynahs in
the Antipodes, also do so; perhaps some botanical species contrive to as well.
�3
pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood
production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”, and market ideology
does economic practice, even so-called “environmental economics”.2
An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating
action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea
systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever.
Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect
termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are
opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an
elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes
of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are
also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social
paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent s
routing procedures.
Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding
topography on action space.
Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also
correlatively give permission—as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new
species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically
engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize. But paradigms do even more; they
facilitate explanation, above all they make understanding possible. In these regards, they may
work for better as well as for worse. Thus it is not a matter of getting rid of them, were this
even feasible, but of getting right paradigms.
The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures,
creeds, ideologies, pervasive myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a
technical sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of
humans are governed by background ideosystems.
It is in terms of these background
ideosystems that a great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments
can be explained, what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4
That explanation comes not however through a single paradigm, as has too often been
supposed in trying to answer focal questions, but through a bundle of somehow aligned
paradigms. Compare how a person may be represented, in social science, not through a single
2
3
4
For more on this style of explanation, see further RP.
It is not, going to be contended that religion—or a certain Abramic religion, such as
Christianity—is the main villain of the environmental piece. It is now well enough appreciated
that religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from ancient philosophies.
What will however, be suggested is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in
this regard.
Further, as logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to overlap.
How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or
superficial explanation, of them.
As well, positivistic theories show, though in an oversimplified way, how models, which
paradigms are, serve in explanation justification and understanding. See e.g. Hanson.
�4
role or program, but by way of a set of interconnected roles. What has been regularly
overlooked in seeking deeper paradigmatic sources of environmental problems is systematic
plurality. In part this neglect of plurality can be explained through countervailing propensity to
seek single answers, and to try to locate uniqueness, where however causes and sources are
plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are
plural.
As to what is going on theoretically, there is a fairly complex story to be told, an easier
working image for which is appropriately ecological. That image focusses upon the structure of
a perhaps impenetrable thicket or tangle, such as a dense rainforest patch, or, itself simplified, a
fig or bamboo thicket. Below an emergent top layer representing the problems concerned,
those raised by the focal questions, there is the canopy layer, of interlinked proximate causes.
Below that again stands a plurality of stems, plural supports, which can be construed as
supporting sources, and below them again, ultimately sustaining the whole structure, a
multiplicity of intertwined roots, representing paradigmatic basics.
What is sought are ultimate sources, and roots, not immediate causes. The cause of local
pollution may be a factory that an agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be
the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for
such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea
structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and
sources. Nonetheless there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are ‘‘A
is source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated?
While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or
developments virtually none of it addresses the question of what is meant by the partially
buried metaphors of roots and sources . One striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful
introductory text, The Roots of Modem Environmentalism. Although this text presents itself
specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots
metaphor on which it turns. For that matter there is no direct account of what the roots of
environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental problems to which
environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much oblique material). It is
apparent also that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots metaphor, throwing it
into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to mean simply elements
(from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme of reconciliation of
freedom and authority’ (p. 193). Such usage is unsound. Because rudiments of some idea make
an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may not have arrived at such an
idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where they did quite
independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or (genetic)
causal linkage into a mere temporal conjunction: post hoc, propter hoc.
Neither roots nor sources are mere beginnings or simply early occurrences; there have to
be continuing connections, with directional relationships such as supply or sustenance. But for
�5
roots and sources different connections and elaborations are to be expected. After all, the
metaphors, and likewise what they give rise to, are evidently different; more literally, plants
have roots, normally below them, springs and streams rise from sources, not roots, often above
them, and so on. Both differ from another popular basis-beginning buried metaphor, that of
foundations. Foundations bring in other features such as solidity, stability and comparative
permanency, while severing critical transmission features (for foundations may merely
passively support, not sustain supported superstructure).
So foundations, for all their
importance in epistemology and elsewhere if foundationalism is correct, can be set aside.
So far dictionaries do better than popular and philosophical texts. For instance, a short
listing for the figurature use of ‘root’ runs: ‘the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that
which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc. (Concise English Dictionary).
Such a two component account will serve nicely, for a start. However conjunctions should
substantially displace disjunctions, else roots could collapse to foundations or could collapse to
mere trace element supplements. Roots both give a basis and bottom binding into a substratum
and supply sustenance and means of development. Roots connections are richer as well as
more specific than sources, which may merely show from where an item comes or is obtained.
Further that place of derivation that may not be a basis or bottom, but for instance a source
book. With roots, like normal foundations, a basis or bottom is reached, whereas sources may
have further sources (hence the search for ’‘deeper”, even ultimate, sources). Finally, root and
source connections carry explanations, at least genetic explanations—concerning how items got
to be what and the way they are—because roots and sources are characteristically that from
which items develop. Sometimes even more information, including a whole control system,
gets transmitted. As much happens where roots are paradigmatic, to return to that strange mix
of buried metaphors.
Reaching deeper roots is important. Without locating them, perhaps all the roots (should
they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly
locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at these, cutting them off or replacing them, will
also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. Such is the fate of many proposals concerning
environmental problems.
There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaboratedincluding a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions,
and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal
questions. But we can be brief on these necessary preliminaries, because main details are
already in circulation and because they have been addressed elsewhere.
1. Problems and paradigms.
5
Despite a referee’s suggestion that discussion of “roots” ‘could be improved by a contrast of the
“roots” metaphor with the “foundations” metaphor, the fact is that we are decidedly not
concerned with foundations of environmental problems; to the contrary, we do not wish to see
them supported (if shoddily), established and so on. On the growing complexity and varying
interpretations offoundations, an emergent bog, see for instance Chisholm.
�6
Although these will be duly connected, with paradigms implicated in problems, they are
different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation.
la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions.
Definitions of ‘environmental problem’, and classifications of such problems, have already
been ventured.6 What problems emerge as environmental depends upon background value
framework. What counts as a major problem on deeper environmental perceptions may be but
a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such
indicator problems, ones here taken as serious problems, are those of
• sustaining biodiversity and
• maintaining significant wilderness.7
Even if the broad impact of human enterprise were sufficiently reduced to guarantee
comfortable survival of future humans, these desiderata may well not be guaranteed. There
would be outstanding problems.
In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are
(at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how
they might be resolved. Environmental impact equations, encountered in a more perceptive
classification of problems, reveal how they can be resolved. Namely, by altering relevant
impact parameters.
Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very
little spent, despite all the talk.8 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys
us, are not however satisfactory stopping points.
How is it, given so much scientific
information and expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially
destroying, their habitats.
To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on
offer or to be met in an extensive literative. As we will soon discover, most of these answers
are too simple; and taken, as intended, as comprehensive, they are wrong. Correct answers to
the questions are however important, because if we fail to get to the bottom of the issues, there
is even less prospect of satisfactory action to mm around a difficult and deteriorating situation.
That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships, or how many devaluing
dollars uncaring humans can briefly stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of
habitats—these sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence)
derive from and are supported by particular ideologies.
lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on.
A paradigm can be explicated, technically, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.9
6
7
8
9
See for example GE, which duly details connections of the problems with impact equations and
proximate solutions.
As to the extent of the problem (even) in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The
Wildlands Project.
See e.g. The cost of past environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24.
See RP, where many environmentally relevant illustrations are given and explained.
�7
That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a
general system, i.e. semantical and other evaluations defined on an integrated relational
structure. Naturally it is required to be faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms,
scientific research programs, or whatever. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific
paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and action theory, the socio-political themes
and value judgements, is that of a social group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social
paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part
of the life-styles and life-forms of the community concerned. There are now many examples of
formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures;
from these, mostly sketchy formulations we can work back towards the underlying models.
The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a
complex universal10 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g.
metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen
that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists, historians and geographers have
repeated one another in vaguely discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures
under different categorisations: thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of
consciousness (Marx), of life (Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes (Conant), presuppositions
(Collingwood), discursive formations (Foucault), Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess),
traditions (MacIntyre), traditions of thought, cultures, perspectives, outlooks, ideologies,
programs, .... An ideology, for instance, in the non-derogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideas-
system, initially a propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative,
from which a paradigm can be discerned and elaborated.
Such models are typically presented in extremely truncated form, for example through a
tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example:
TABLE 1: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant
paradigm: an initial capsule formulation -11
Taoism
Deep Ecology
Dominant (Western)
Paradigm
Harmony with nature,
through Tao
Harmony with nature
Domination over nature
Nature valuable in itself;
“humanism” rejected
Natural environment
valued for itself
Nature a resource;
intrinsic value confined
to humans
10
11
It resembles a structured universal; compare e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex
ideas. Naturally there are differences between, for instance, traditions (of thought) which are
historically bound, cultures, which are geographically and otherewise connected, and conceptual
schemes (where a conceptual reduction is insinuated), but all are, at logical bottom, models of
paradigmatic sort.
This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly
expanded.
�8
Levelling of differences;
wide impartiality
Biocentric egalitarianism
Human supremacy
Supplies ample
Earth supplies limited
Ample resources with
substitutes
Following Tao-te
Spiritual goals,
especially self-realisation
Material economic growth
a predominant goal
Enlightenment
Self-realisation
Personal (material)
enrichment
Doing with enough
(recycling inappropriate)
Doing with enough;
recycling
Consumerism
Non-competitive lifestyle;
voluntary simplicity
Cooperative lifestyle
Competitive lifestyle
Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus
Decentralised/bioregional
/neighbourhood focus
Centralised/urban centred/
national focus
Hierarchy without
power structure;
anarchoid
Non-hierarchical/
grassroots democracy
Power structure
hierarchical
Limited technology
Appropriate technology
High technology
Considerable caution
Precautionary practice
Risking taking (verging
upon adventurism)
Paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; under an earlier analogy, red
and green lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations
and prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role
model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modem
ideologies, eschews deontic judgements.)
Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors'
worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world.
In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads (or rather
consciousnesses) have to be changed, not rolled.
2. Proposed answers to focal questions: a preliminary classification of inadequate answers
and suggested remedies.
Most of the extraordinary range of answers proposed supply but a single source, and are
accordingly defective for this reason, usually among other reasons. Indeed it is not much of an
exaggeration to assert that virtually everything proposed, in a now extensive literature, is
wrong.
TABLE 2. Main tabulation of answers and remedies , in three stages.
D. Defective
practice answers
Source
Remedy
Objections
�9
DI.
Ignorance
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2.
Unintended consequences
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2a
Faulty technique,
or technology
Repairs
Repairs already
made
D3
Deviation (from
theory, etc.)
Education (for failure
to limit deviance)
Adherence
a. Deviation
uneliminable, or
b. Adherence
no remedy
D4.
Systemic lock-in
(through poverty,
ensnarement in
market forces, etc.)
Trap removal
a. Explains
only certain
cases, and
b. Due to
paradigmatic
features
D5.
Insensitivity or
insensibility
Problem
apprised
Remedy tried;
background
ideological
blockage
D3a
When pursued, objections like those noted either force defective practice out as unsatisfactory,
or push it back to paradigmatic features.
Source single paradigm
Remedies proposed (among others)
Pl.
Christianity (mainstream
Catholicism)
Scientific enlightenment, or
alternative (Eastern) religion
Pla.
Protestantism and its ethic
P2.
P2a
Cartesianism
Dualism
Anti-dualism
P2b
Mechanism
Organicism
P. Defective paradigm
answers
Substance metaphysics
P3.
P3a Possessive individualism
P3aa Personalism
Monism
Modified holism
Process metaphysics
Non-reductionism
Transpersonalism
P4.
Capitalism
Socialism
P5.
Industrialism
Pre-industrialism (romanticism)
Post-industrialism
P5a Technocratic bureaucracy
P5aa. Transnational business
P6.
Enlightenment
Anti-enlightenment
Anti-materialism
�10
P6a
Materialism
Spiritualism
P8.
P9
Patriarchy, andocentrism
Human domination
of humans
Feminism
Anti-domination
(anti-hierarchy)
Observe that what some have proposed as remedies, others have seen as sources; remedies
proposed tend to share defects of sources.
PS. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject
specific or partial) include:
Typical remedy suggested
Source
Platonism
Leibnitzianism
Kantianism
Anglo-American philosophy12
Utilitarianism
Economism (economic imperialism as
New metaphysics
New metaphysics
Consequentialism
Continental philosophy
Alternative ethics
New social science; ethics
contrasted with straight economic roots)
Contractarianism
Consequentialism
Domination transfer
Domination removal
Human nature (esp. aggression)
Adolescencism
Infantilism (from Freudian physchology)
Maturation
Maturation
And so on.
A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in
dominant Western thought. Then many—perhaps it is not excessive to say most—entries in
that list will have been nominated, likely separately, by someone as the source of the problems.
That list accordingly continues (even including, sometimes, entries like Taylorism, i.e.
reorganisation of industry along lines popularized by Taylor), but what is included is
representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other
allegedly nonparadigmatic answers however, varying from interesting to crazy, that should also
be taken into some account, for instance answers like Shepard’s challenging answer. Although
Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false
cast. Strange answers include pushing it all back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard,
but also Fox, and Ehrlich and other gurus with insistence upon ‘mental maladaptation’).
12
The mainstream form, analytic philosophy, appears to comprise empiricism-cum-utilitarianism
in Britain, tempered in America by pragmatism.
�11
Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick
—in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, along psychological
routes, that are to be resisted. One slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not
physically usually, it must be mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad. But
the sources of mental sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide
continues to: what we have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No
doubt there is something to the theme that dominant societies, USA especially (which now
influences so much in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive
adolescence.13 No doubt, too, that maturity—but an environmental maturity—is desirable,
even mandatory.
Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put
into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society,
to spend their money through tourism, on new compact housing, in those most wasteful of
modem institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth.
3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources.
Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat
perfunctory, tending here and there towards notes. Of course there are excuses. While whole
theses could be spun out on several of these topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a
prime objective here is different from usual: neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to
partially implicate most items cited in the main tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of
the usually accredited sources:
• Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems,
‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and
specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over
nature’, was repeated in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.14
One helpful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows:
Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity
has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological
crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology
developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the
scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the
democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to
produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development,
however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to
nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns’,
namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the
animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and
destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress,
13
14
It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as
preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in the Appendix .
White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian
apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole
area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall,
snowed.
�12
a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action,
not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an
extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation
worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will.
Because today's attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it
‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.15
What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was
the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse
the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or
isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some
such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable
development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more
sensitive and telling criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer
for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.16 Similar responses are
apposite for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy.
Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should
undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that
philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ...
responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection
today. ... Religion ... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played
a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in
Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.17
• Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1)
prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the
aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of
reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not
impossible.18
More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course
accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies.
• Cartesian philosophy.
15
16
17
18
The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes
Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of
Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue
continues to be debated; for an older survey of traditions see Passmore, for a challenging recent
contribution to the debate see Callicott.
Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms: Ask,
not merely what they say, but what they do, and would do. For an outline of just such a telling
criticism of mainstream Christianity, see Singer esp. pp.265-8.
Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to
preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced
back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help
expose.
Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really,
while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted. There is a
much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of
the very different roles and impacts of Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with
his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans, and of neo-Platonists. For a modest
beginning, see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and
Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands.
�13
denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes,
upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of
the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.19 While Descartes was undoubtedly
extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is
accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such.
Evidently it substantially overlaps other modem ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment,
widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems.
• Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others
(some potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is
presented is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly
exhibiting a heavy Heideggerean influence:
.
The roots of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For
metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode
(sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the
absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present,
the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability
of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a
“natural resource” —and people become “human resources . The sources of
anthropocentricism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can
all be traced back to metaphysics.
Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no
going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness
overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and
metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering,
exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as
vestigial traces. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native
healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system.
We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the
Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms
of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually
ensconced technocratic rationalism.20
An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining
rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics,
characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions
or mere Western seeds.
Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western
metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or
plenum metaphysics.21
19
20
21
For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising
Drengson’s exposition, see RP, table 5. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the
environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely
maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in
keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy.
Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘rejecting] in its entirety
mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmcntalj
problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies’ (thus Bellett). This
charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep
Ecology (now included in UTD).
For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic
relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews.
�14
• Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’
(e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those
of modern mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and
theistic scholastic hang-overs).
• Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social
evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were
revealed), can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism
for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a
matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the
theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to
subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a
means of production.22
But, as observed, a main embedded theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the
idea of nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ’Now if nature
makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all
animals for the sake of man’.23 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species.
The theme was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in
shallower Stoicism. But the subjection of everything to utility, no doubt a relative of
capitalism, appears to be a distinctively modem contribution.
•
Modern industrial society or industrialism. Modem industrialism (‘the smooth
superhighway of industrial progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme:
‘... the root causes of the present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial
paradigm’.24 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of
modem industrial society’.2526Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found
in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed
The
popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial
technology can without any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as,
22
23
24
25
26
It should not be overlooked that some of those who nominated metaphysics meant thereby
paradigm or paradigms or an equivalent. But what they may gain thereby in verisimilitude, they
tend to lose in confusion.
Grundrisse p.409f.
Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further
Hargrove p.25.
M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature”’, a paper
presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a
managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and
more broadly the environment itself (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip
side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the
evident problem.
Gabriel ibid. Similarly industrialism is assumed as the source throughout McLaughlin (the
theme pervades his book) and as the root of the modem problem in Marshall (p.5ff). While
seriously astray as to roots and sources, those critical of industrialism have a significant case.
For, as well as functioning as a major inflator of intact problems, industrialism has helped
generate side problems of its own, as with new types of chemical and nuclear pollution.
Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2.
�15
less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes,
what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice.
• Economic growth or economic development. ‘According to a common and currently
influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots’.27 One
widespread misconception is that economic growth is the source of environmental problems.
The assumption is astray for several reasons. For one, growth is at best a proximate cause,
itself in need of explanation. More importantly, growth may occur in sectors of an economy,
such as information technology or religious or artistic services, which have little or no
environmental impact. Also conversely, an economy which fails to grow, but is desperately
trying to survive, may exact heavy environmental costs (e.g. the forests are clear-felled to pay
for continuing employment). No doubt though, stock economic growth is intimately intricated
with proximate causes of environmental problems (through environmental impact equations).
Similar considerations tell against the familiar proposition that the source of the problems
is economic development itself or, what is different, the entrenched model of economic
development. While it is no doubt correct, and important to emphasize, that ‘the Western
model of economic development, far from being the solution to’ environmental and social
problems, is ‘actually fuelling’ them, it is not the sole or distinguished source of the
problems.28
• Human nature. "... the roots of our ecologic crisis reach beyond the variable topsoil of
intellectual history, whether Eastern or Western, into the common substrata of human nature
itself.’29 What such “nature” amounts to and how it functions as roots, both commonly left
obscure, turns upon background hypotheses as to the nature of this nature. Different false
27
28
29
Goodin, p.573. While not contesting the theme, Goodin does continue: ‘the problem is not just
that there are too many people, or even that they are enjoying too high a standard of living. All
that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental
despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives as they pursue their various goals’
(p.573). That too will be seen to be seriously astray, though it contains large grains of truth; it
presumes unchanged the prevailing economically-skewed dominant social paradigm.
Both socialists and other opponents of capitalistic conspicuous consumption tend to select the
living-standard component of the main environmental impact equation as the source of the crisis.
Thus Cuban luminary, Castro, in a recent stunningly succinct speech: ‘Less luxury, less wastage.
Otherwise it will be too late’.
Quoting claims of E. Goldsmith, advanced in an interview in Forest and Bird 273 (August 1994)
pp.46-7. The need for emphasis will persist while locally prominent political figures like the
present Prime Minister of Australia travel around the Earth with the hackneyed message that
only economic growth will solve environmental problems.
Seeing growth as the problem affords only a superficial analysis, like that of pointing to
overconsumption with which growth is interconnected. As deeper inquiry reveals, underlying
both issues of economic growth, employment and consumption, and alternatives taken, are
models, paradigmatic models. Growth is but a means to objectives assumed in the dominant
paradigm. A deeper analysis shows too why more growth will not ultimately solve relevant
problems.
Callicott and Ames, ‘Epilogue: On the relation of idea and action’ p.282 (see also p.281), in a
desperate and apparently unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the claim (repeatedly advanced in
their book) that Asian traditions of thought can make a significant contribution to much
improved treatment for natural and built environments, with ‘the deplorable environmental
conditions prevailing in contemporary Asia’ (p.280).
�16
hypotheses, that humans are invariably driven by aggression, sexual or reproductive
imperatives, economic needs, yield different defective accounts. In Catholic orthodoxy such a
source, human nature, comes burdened with original sin; the source of a sweep of problems,
including now environmental ones, is “man’s fallen nature”. That astonishing source also
comes contaminated, as for instance gender biassed.
• Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of
women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.30
‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.31 One sample linkage statement runs as
follows:
there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both
historically and ... presently] and ... this is the same energy that, turned
against the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly
destroying the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that
consume the Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches
and I believe that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless
we simultaneously address our gender issues.32
Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes:
• Human domination and exploitation of humans'. It is an extraordinarily widespread
assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or
creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or
classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the
solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety
of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over
from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or
being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from
Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend-setters, including Marcuse, Illich, Passmore,
Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social
ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from
deep-seated social problems’.33 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a
prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus:
all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an
extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and
Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology.
Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships
30
31
32
33
Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a
more critical assessment see the sequel to GE.
See Seed, quoted in the sequel to GE; also Salleh (e.g. in EP3).
John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91.
Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to
transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often
reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along
with unrelational property claims.
Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But
he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination
of nature always results from humans’ domination of other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346).
The text EP3 contains a sizeable section providing a useful introduction to social ecology.
�17
—domination of nature thus following from human domination’.... It follows
that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in
small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a
harmonious man-nature relationship.34
Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of
dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the
dominated.
• A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected
ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.35
• Modern educational systems: Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems.
Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in
educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for
instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as,
so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.36 Therewith we are
transported full circle back to defective practice answers.
4. A selective commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers
A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the
main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two
stages reflecting a major division in the main tabulation.
ad D. Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in
possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them.
(Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical
theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.)
Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time,
perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed
off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While “consequences” or outputs such
things as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying
‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and
unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste
watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of
their industry. That should now be a rotten joke, itself with serious consequences.
Accordingly new ecological economics insists that we dig deeper—without however
exceeding economic settings or a shifting dominant paradigm—to discover why markets may
34
35
36
Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given
humans could so socially organise, that they could settle into harmonious small-scale
communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments.
Such a proposition obtains a much fuller elaboration within Plumwood. In an interesting way,
such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion reached below that a set of defective
paradigms is at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by a set
of them in each case, somewhat as numbers can be represented in binary terms, generated from a
basic two-oneness duality.
Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see GE
�18
foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.3738Where they
usually arrive, travelling within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics
before ecological, at better regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of
plans and incentives, controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do
not reach very deep, or tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources.
But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard
economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure,
environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries, namely
that true, or authentic, Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been,
environmental consequences would be little better, given the heavy industrial commitments and
environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.3^ Differently, enlightenment liberals like
Passmore try to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in
mainstream theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence
to these “well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains
of its wilderness and remarkable diversity.
Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting
(collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be
correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts
like Topsoil and Civilization and Agricultural Origins and Dispersal) of degradation of prime
agricultural lands by imposed farming practices, where at least early on (before damage became
visible) ignorance and unintended consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most
historical cases we do not have enough information to be able to say with much assurance that
agriculture proceeded until effective collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because
practices were locked-in in one way or another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know
more about present agricultural practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia,
concerning both irrigated and dry-land agriculture. Many of these practices are undoubtedly
sharply degrading lands, and the consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend
ignorance, are sufficiently appreciated. But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a
sweep of subsidies or concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim
that they are locked into bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their
control such as financial pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the
need to make a living. But some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make
no such claims or excuses, nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place,
and similar. Their obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not
37
38
Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24.
It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The
Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and
transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have their property
confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who
made those points, also observed).
�19
deviation from theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm.
ad P and PS. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed,
business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few broad themes:
1.
Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental
impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps
social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example,
substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same
might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently
made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and
so forth).
To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not,
on its own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges, link
principles, from metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy
operates.
Thus subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of
environmental problems which take them as derived from metaphysics of one sort or another.
Such a criticism does not however extend to more comprehensive paradigms which connect
appropriately with practice.
2.
While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right
circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on39)—none are
necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different
paradigms;
for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms,
Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism.
At this stage in dialectic, green history and the like—bio-history, eco-history, and related
virtual histories (concerning what would have happened)—enter decisively. For instance,
Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and ecological
fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also conveniently
documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological degradation or
collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms.40 An important example (much less
speculative than some of the numerous other examples because of a comparative wealth of
primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under
Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples—Polynesian, Mayan, Sumerian and
others—also reveal is that no very high level of technology is needed to inflict serious
environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological project (with nothing directly to
39
40
While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly
environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to
the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to
have the means, and so on.
Ponting’s valuable though rather simple book is but one of several bleak texts. Another is
Hillel’s, and there is a succession of earlier classic works by geographers: Lowdermilk, Dale,
Mallory, Thorp and others. In general however, geographers and historians do not dig deep
enough, to paradigmatic roots.
�20
do with basic needs) will suffice.
Other cultures did wreak, or would (given the technology and numbers, both of which
some were gaining) have wreaked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination,
megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established, and expanding, before (or effectively
outside) the rise of modem Western paradigms, or in extensive regions outside their influence.
3.
The list of paradigms, as so far assembled, is substantially Western in orientation.
Moreover environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources
wrongly. For nonWestem paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the
technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness
again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism
incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese
chauvinism).41 Or consider Islam, with its reach across the Middle East and beyond.
The main tabulation (of table 2) should accordingly be extended to take due account of
non-Westem paradigms, including for example:
Other Abrahamic religions
Islam
Judaism
Confucianism
Shintoism
Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island.
What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There
is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their
intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts
are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic.
Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in, or
encouraged by, religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent.
4.
All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are
less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be
encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms.
While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often
they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often
criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements,
such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines
criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism
though Descartes, for all
his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.)
Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modem rationalism
and much else.
41
Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large
fauna worldwide.
�5.
A general method of showing the inadequacy of all the paradigmatic answers tabulated,
and others, is familiar from logical theory: namely, the method of counter-models, of which the
counter-examples (under head 2) provide special cases. A presently important illustration
concerns patriarchy as a source of environmental woes. Counter-models reveal the substantial
independence of mistreatment of women and mistreatment of environmental items such as
animals or ecosystems. One the one hand, it is easy to envisage situations, not far from the
actual in some regions, where the lot of women is significantly improved, but the lot of
environmental items is not (e.g. men change their behaviour and attitudes relevantly as regards
women, are forced to change, or whatever); just such an outcome would accord with persisting
human chauvinism. More relevant, on the other, there are situations where the position of
environmental items is much improved, for instance under much more careful husbandry, but
that of women is not, for one reason or another (e.g. they remain other, different, second class,
etc.). It follows from the elaboration of such counter-models that patriarchy is not the source of
environmental problems, as there can be continuing patriarchy without the present range of
environmental problems (problems can dry up while patriarchy continues to operate). There is
no need to deny that patriarchy as (contingently) practised, with its sweeping supremacist
attitudes which make no due distinctions between inferior items, may be a major contributing
factor in present problems. Such slack contingent conjunctions do not convert to roots or
sources. Similarly with other social roots of environmental problems, for instance with human
domination of humans as the supposed source of all problems.
5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation.
Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one
paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious
paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or
sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in
requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite
circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within
that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences
in
calibre, in environmental friendliness. For example, Cartesianism which regards animals as
mere automata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life
forms and their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience.
The family is not exclusively Western, nor somewhat more plausibly Northern, even
though as a result of forces like migration, colonialism and cultural imperialism, paradigms of
these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and of third world
communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally
and regionally.
Nor are major inflators of environmental problems essentially Western. Industrialization
and technological advance—neither intrinsically Western, both manifested in varying degrees
in other cultures—are, without much doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from
�22
rather localised ones, damaging for instance islands and river catchments, to grander and even
global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems, generating thereby spin
off problems as well. But, once again, they are not deeper sources, but only means. (For again
push questioning deeper, and ask: why bother or persist with industry, the effort and dirt and
mess involved?) Nor, however, did they run on their own, nor do they continue on their own.
Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.42 They evolved
primarily in the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could
have occurred, and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as
state socialism or post-imperial Confucianism. Now however these engines have been rendered
more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transformed to run
in less favourable settings.
Thus inflation can escalate from a multiplicity of prepared sources, thereby intensifying
problems and spreading them to larger regions. The intensification and spread is much
facilitated by the joint transfer of technology, industry and coupled problems from region to
region. As a result of transfer, inflation can occur within settings of quite different paradigms.
Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into
history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other
enthusiastic cultures. For instance, the West could in theory collapse through protracted war,
through pollution and congestion, or climate change and agriculture failure (there are many
unexcludible routes to catastrophic decline, outlined in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could
differentially impact on the West). Degradation would now continue however; there would be
only temporary respite from environmental crises.
While most of the conspicuous problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary
environmental crises, are accelerated by—what connects them—contemporary industrial
society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. However, too many of the
other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by
products or similar of the main generators. Thus, in the illustration, the peasants displaced by
agribusiness or absentee wealth-holders, arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the
forests, and often wrecked this damage using industrial machinery.
An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types
of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant
cultures, Western or non-Westem. A friendly paradigm would not only ensure much more
Lacking favourable ideological settings, earlier technological “break throughs” were not duly
developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, dyes, gunpowder, etc. Western cultures did not
enjoy a monopoly upon technology powerful enough, when massed, to induce global crises.
The pictuie of development of large-scale environmental problems being sketched bears
superficial resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where, to
achieve presumed size, a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by huge inflationary
phenomena. Naturally the resemblance has limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not
terrestrially replicable in the way industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf,
pollution problems and all, with a big price tag).
�23
selectivity and care, but would sharply limit impacts of damaging technology and
industrialization. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack
sophisticated contemporary elaboration and they may be flawed in other respects. Examples of
more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems
and crises conditions, include those now tabulated:
TABLE 3: Examples, some flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms.
Oriental ideologies:
Taoism (classical)
recessive traditions,
now with tiny
followings and little
political influence.
Jainism
Indigenous cultures:
Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda)
Amazonian Indians.
Western philosophies:
under certain
favourable
interpretations
old
Stoicism
new
Deep-green theories, such as deep ecology.
Given the remoteness of most of these examples from predominant contemporary life, and
difficulties with their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new
paradigms need to be worked out soon. Much much more intellectual effort should be devoted
to such enterprise.
One upshot, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two families, the second
large: environmentally friendly, and unfriendly. No doubt there is a small fuzzy residue class
lying between major unfriendly and friendly divisions.
Environmental friendliness means more or less what it appears to mean, what a functional
break-down into components would yield: friendliness in approaches, practices and attitudes, to
environments, especially more natural environments, with friendliness including, as usual,
goodwill and kindliness towards (and substantially displaceable by these). As indicated, such
friendliness concerns not merely actual practices, but also attitudes held, as reflected in what
would be done in certain other sorts of situations.
Certainly a culture that manifests
unfriendliness, as a sweep of Northern cultures do, is unfriendly. But, as well, various
“primitive” cultures, whose practices are not hostile, for example because they lack means or
resources, energy or health, may nonetheless be unfriendly; for instance all members of a
culture hold thoroughly negative attiudes which they are in fact unable to put into practice.
43
In logical terms neither, perhaps as well as another residue class, both.
�24
It is not too difficult to explain in outline which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or
religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse.
Certain family
characteristics, of unfriendly paradigms are worth elaborating:
* Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism.
More
generally, direct impact is illustrated by any idea-system which attributes little or no value to
natural items, and typically much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite)
projects, and whose themes are linked to practice. So it is with Confucianism, which is entirely
human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as his goal
the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’44 The outside
world, the natural environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only instrumentally,
to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex machinery.
‘The exception is [znznJ, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation language: this
alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to assert a
fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts’”.45 The remaining world, the
natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral significance.
It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose to confer or
project upon it, typically little or none.
Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans has no thoughts,
purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could hardly matter what happens to it.
It could be regarded and treated, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans.
Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive, by one route or another from
Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went
further than some others. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were aimed at
making men the masters and possessors of nature’ .46
Untowards effects result through linkage of ideological theory to heavy practice. Link
principles, reminiscent of “correspondence rules” used in explaining applications of scientific
theories and normally included in comprehensive paradigms, connect the theoretic level to
practice, they also serve to activate otherwise inoperative or uncoupled paradigms. Such
principles may take the form of directives; familiar examples include maximization directives,
such as maximize personal fun, tribal utility, national interest, or state GNP.
* Indirect combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which yield satisfaction
of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive
impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz’s
fragmentary ideology. Leibnitz was substantially committed to all of human population
44
45
46
Reese p.102 For much more on the geographic impact of Confucianism, as also compared with
other (Asian) paradigms, see Tuan’s investigations.
Cottingham p. 15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument (reported in Cottingham) to this
divide is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no
such status divides—-just as flamboyant forms of deep ecology maintain.
See Descartes, Discourse VI.
�25
growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption,47 in short, to
precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts
upon environments. However neutral Leibnitz’s metaphysics, his monadology, may have
been—by contrast with Plato’s or Descartes’, both of which explicitly devalued much or all of
the natural world—Leibnitz’s wider ideology is linked indirectly, through impact equations, to
damaging effects.
Some imagine that this oblique formalistic detailing, through direct and indirect classes,
can be simply cut through, retaining plurality and so forth. Surely environmental friendliness is
nothing but environmental depth? While the suggestion points in the right sort of direction (for
the relevant sort of depth) it too is astray.48 Depth is neither necessary nor sufficient. Take the
move plausible sufficiency half, plausible because depth helps, no end. Nonetheless depth can
be achieved in macho ways (as ecofeminism has emphasized against deep ecology), ways
which may not be altogether friendly to less favoured species, groups or habitats. For example,
depth can be satisfied through due selection and support of some super species and magnificent
habitats—requisite environmental impartiality (and reflected justice), critical for friendliness as
intended, being neglected.49 Still less in depth necessary. For kindliness can, both in principle
and in practice, extend far beyond humans, still ranked top, to much more of “creation . Such
extensive kindliness, observed in some humanistic humans, appears to be exhibited in some
sects and tribes not committed to depth, and it could well be considerably more widespread,
under changed but not deepened ideological conditions. Naturally, however, deepening would
afford an obvious, and excellent, reason for change.
As friendliness is not tantamount to depth, nor similarly is a prime part of what explains
depth, recognition of intrinsic value in nature outside humans. Some animal liberationists who
display high regard for creatures with capacity to suffer, show little goodwill towards forests
largely unpopulated by such creatures. Conversely, though shifting ground, an environmentally
friendly society may hold that value is but an anthropocentric construct, merely projected onto a
basically neutral world.
All the same, aspects of depth are normally reliable indicators of environmental
sensitivity and friendliness, and inversely, aspects of shallowness (as investigated in authentic
deep ecology) marks of unfriendliness.
Shallowness will work out satisfactorily
environmentally only with what is now rare (given ideological dominance), a right mix of
humans; and its any longer working widely is implausible. These reliable marks include such
familiar features as
47
48
49
For requisite details, see Aiton. The case against Leibnitzianism is developed in a sequel.
As to the relevant sort of depth, see GE. Other accounts of depth are also preferred in deep
ecology, some of which relate to the present exercise. In particular deep questioning should lead
to paradigmatic roots, to Naess’s “total views”.
Herein lies another reason why something like biospecies egalitarianism is essential in deep
ecology; such a requirement needs, not dilution away (as has happened in American and
transpersonal deep ecology), but rectification.
�26
* short-term framework.
* devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting
human chauvinism); and, as a corollary of heavy devaluation,
* entitlement to domination, dominion ove’r nature;
* appropriation of nature, its conversion to property.
* maximization assumptions concerning personal or societal aggrandizement, utility and size,
coupled with grand projects.
* technofix approach to environmental problems.
Friendly paradigms will tend to invert these features. An environmentally friendly
paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as the following
samples:
* an end to degrading primary production; instead ecological forestry and ecological
agriculture will come to prevail.
* a strong selectivity regarding industrialization, which weeds out damaging forms.
* a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural
environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new
mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep
of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of unfriendly technology can go a very long way.
As unfriendly paradigms are decidedly plural, so likewise are answers to questions as to
why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Some of
the diverse answers match answers already encountered in the main tabulation. Reasons are
psychological, social and cultural (with a familiar circularity here encountered), and include
considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have
always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed;
because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought;
because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on.
A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because, in one way or
another, most agents are bound to—locked into, committed to, captured by, or just passively go
along with—environmentally unfriendly paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the
rest of environments does not matter, or matter enough.
6. Glimpsing an entertaining corollary: an unfavourable report upon dominant
philosophy.
It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to
Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms.
Stripped of metaphor, there are
environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet. In an
environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the
humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to
satisfactory environmental outcomes. Predominant philosophy, not just Western philosophy,
has by and large been bad environmental news.
�27
It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental
practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to
such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon
enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly
under-estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even
govern action and practice, especially reflective and rational action. The substantial point is not
therefore removed through any alleged practical impotence of philosophy.
Mainstream philosophy has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, dominant
unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be
trashed, as even defective enterprises or evil projects may include decent part or worthwhile
features; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping
there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be
made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness),
there are brash new alternatives such as authentic deep ecology, and there are recessive
paradigms and neglected traditions to peruse for suggestions, for inspiration, and perhaps to
rehabilitate.
Richard Sylvan*
APPENDIX. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions.
A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard s
intriguing books. In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the
stock responses to focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in
earlier work), such as lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political
inertia, change to agriculture and settlement, 5<\.. . He would (and should, for his eliminative
argument) have also dismissed industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on.
More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’—
similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human
behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism.
But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feel
no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as
accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended
An earlier, even rougher version of this article was presented at the Environmental Paradigms
Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 1993. It would not have been written
without its solicitation for the Conference; also it might well not been thought through in
fashionable but confining and perhaps misleading paradigmatic terms.
A subsequent working draft has benefitted, slightly, from comments from very unimpressed
reviewers. Thanks certainly to Holmes Rolston for helpful comments.
No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement is simplistic:
that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on
to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and
towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from
factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes.
�28
target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an
ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the
facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of
causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through
an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example
of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation
through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made
and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it
acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here.
Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often
hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making
information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of life
together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing
conservation, and so on.
Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question
that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and
solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as
causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps
to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal
explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians,
representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial
societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so
redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots51) that having certain
ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”.
So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of
childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive
attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic
dislocations at the root of modem society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the
centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas
originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15).
Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages,
Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of the alleged sickness.52 It supposedly
arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is
51
52
For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us.
Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing)
piactices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not
leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus,
Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests
rather than masters' (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy.
‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the
third page of the main text.
�29
manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destructive
adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and
person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There
is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile
culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority
figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and
vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly
satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole
social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.55 A superior explanation to widespread
individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial humans
are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies, without
coming to know or properly experience alternatives.
The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound,
resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal
growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.*
54 They are not
exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature
mixed communities.
Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be
decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments
and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health.
Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness smallgroup, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings. ... there is the rub—... for us,
now, that world no longer exists’ (p.14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no
longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural
surrounding can even now be restored.
In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a
certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading
to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about
for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing
erosion of life-support systems.
55
54
A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological
terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the
following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument:
. ‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of
society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the
hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to
domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery (p.16).
But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or
between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms.
Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep
ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in
‘taking mothers off to work’ (p. 15)!
�30
REFERENCES
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R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics
13(1991) 127-137.
R. Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of Georgia Press,
Athens, 1991.
A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental
Questions Papers, No.2, CRES, Australian National University, 1990.
J.B. Callicott and R.T. Ames (eds), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, SUNY Press,
Albany NY., 1989.
J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ ReVision 12(3) (1990) 31-41.
R. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, Harvester Press, Sussex, 1982.
J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.
C. Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, Revised edition by V.G. Carter, University of Oklahama
Press, Norman, 1974.
A Dobson (ed.), Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991?
A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10.
R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992.
W. Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology, Shambala, Boston, 1990.
A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bungendore, 1993.
C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967.
R. Goodin, ‘Selling environmental indulgences’, Kyklos 47(1994) 573-596.
N. R. Hanson, Patterns of discovery: an inquiry into conceptual foundations of science,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1958.
E. C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989.
D Hillel, Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil., Free Press, Macmillan, 1991.
M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991.
K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy, Harmondsworth,
England 1973.
F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991.
A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology , SUNY Press, Albany
N. Y., 1993.
P. Marshall, Nature’s Web, in two editions, Simon and Schuster, 1992 and 1993.
A. Naess and D. Rothenberg, Ecology, community and Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1989.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974.
D. Pearce and others, Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989.
D. Pepper, The Roots of Modem Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H.
Croom Helm 1984.
�31
V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993.
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�
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1165
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental
problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not
be adequately addressed.
Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade,
impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why
the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More
immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep
enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More
thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question
entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread
problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly
recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper
paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers
lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow
band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more
satisfactory answer can be broached.
Background busywork includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant
paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems,
and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the
problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers,
fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the
important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the
present investigation.
. . .
A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial
answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally
friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to
characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking,
philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental
news.
3.7.95
2
PARADIGMATIC ROOTS
of
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
Broaching focal questions, and searching for deeper answers.
Human activity is now degrading terrestrial eco-systems at an extraordinarily rapid rate
(liquidation of natural forest systems affords just one striking example). In modem times
humans have devised sophisticated and sophistical idea-systems which justify such system
degradation.
Often in the past they would not have seen such transformation as mattering,
many remain so programmed, regarding transformation as increasing wealth (a presumption
encouraged under mainstream economics). More recently dominant human cultures have
developed social systems which induct most humans into degradation procedures (through
need, tax impositions, pressure to engage in cash economies, and so on) and which weave
entrapping justificatory webs (through agencies, councils, courts, educations, missions, and so
on).
Whence arises an increasingly broached question1: Why is this happening? More
explicitly, why do human communities so frequently degrade and impoverish their
environments, their own habitats? Indeed why do they sometimes, persistently, perhaps over a
long period, destroy their own habitats? More sweepingly, why is the whole earth now perhaps
in jeopardy through human enterprise? For those eager to anticipate the main outcome, the
unremarkable answer to be eventually found to these focal questions is in essence this: because
too many humans, especially those in control of environmentally impacting enterprises, remain
committed to or caught within environmentally unfriendly paradigm?, diverse paradigms but all
displaying quite insufficient regard for the health and well-being of relevant habitats and of the
earth.
Parts of any answers to such focal questions come immediately through environmental
impact equations, conservation laws, and such like. For example, degradation is occurring
through the impact of overpopulation, excessive pollution, damaging or faulty technologies,
and so on.
While such answers are important, and often correct as far as they go in
combination, and while they may correctly indicate what has to be changed somehow, they are
nonetheless somewhat superficial, and they leave much to be explained. For example, they do
not explain why a community persisted upon a course that deliberately led to such problems, or
why it is so resistant to changes that might reduce impacts and pull it out of its problem-holes.
Less superficial answers look to ideologically entrenched attitudes and commitments, to
1
In sources as diverse as Shepard (first page) and Jacobs (p.23). Contrary to other sources, such
as Marshall, humans are by no means the only biological species that proceed to degrade or
impoverish their own environments. Introduced “pest” species, such as rabbits and mynahs in
the Antipodes, also do so; perhaps some botanical species contrive to as well.
3
pervasive paradigms that underwrite anti-environmental practices, as for instance the wood
production ideology does forestry practice, even so-called “new forestry”, and market ideology
does economic practice, even so-called “environmental economics”.2
An illustrative example which reveals the power of paradigms in blocking or facilitating
action will shortcut a more elaborate argument, through action theory, to the efficacy of idea
systems. Consider an unwanted pregnancy, resulting despite due precautions or whatever.
Observe that, more and more there are comparatively safe technologies available to effect
termination and seemingly solve the immediate problem. Ask: why so many people are
opposed to choice of abortion? A very common answer is: because they are operating under an
elaborate paradigm, typically organised religion (bureaucratic Christianity in the West), themes
of which, the creeds of which, prohibit such choices.3 Of course pro-choice considerations are
also paradigmatically embedded, for instance in forms of liberalism. Picturesquely, a social
paradigm imposes controls on action, a system of red and green lights on a captured agent s
routing procedures.
Or with a different picture, paradigms project a steeply impeding
topography on action space.
Paradigms not only guide, control and limit; they also
correlatively give permission—as, for instance, space to play god, freedom to release a new
species or variety which may or has proved a pest or noxious or has been biologically
engineered, liberty to neglect or degrade or vandalize. But paradigms do even more; they
facilitate explanation, above all they make understanding possible. In these regards, they may
work for better as well as for worse. Thus it is not a matter of getting rid of them, were this
even feasible, but of getting right paradigms.
The settings in terms of which agents such as humans act and operate, even down-toearth everyday agents, invariably include, not far in the background, paradigms, cultures,
creeds, ideologies, pervasive myths or the like, all idea-systems, all involving models (in a
technical sense) of one sort or another. Even the most practical (and vociferously practical) of
humans are governed by background ideosystems.
It is in terms of these background
ideosystems that a great deal concerning human practices with respect to natural environments
can be explained, what would otherwise lack satisfactory explanation.4
That explanation comes not however through a single paradigm, as has too often been
supposed in trying to answer focal questions, but through a bundle of somehow aligned
paradigms. Compare how a person may be represented, in social science, not through a single
2
3
4
For more on this style of explanation, see further RP.
It is not, going to be contended that religion—or a certain Abramic religion, such as
Christianity—is the main villain of the environmental piece. It is now well enough appreciated
that religions in general borrowed much in their damaging articles from ancient philosophies.
What will however, be suggested is that dominant philosophies do have much to answer for in
this regard.
Further, as logical positivists observed, explanation and justification patterns tend to overlap.
How people justify their practices offers an explanation, though perhaps a misleading or
superficial explanation, of them.
As well, positivistic theories show, though in an oversimplified way, how models, which
paradigms are, serve in explanation justification and understanding. See e.g. Hanson.
4
role or program, but by way of a set of interconnected roles. What has been regularly
overlooked in seeking deeper paradigmatic sources of environmental problems is systematic
plurality. In part this neglect of plurality can be explained through countervailing propensity to
seek single answers, and to try to locate uniqueness, where however causes and sources are
plural. So it is with paradigmatic sources and roots of environmental problems. They are
plural.
As to what is going on theoretically, there is a fairly complex story to be told, an easier
working image for which is appropriately ecological. That image focusses upon the structure of
a perhaps impenetrable thicket or tangle, such as a dense rainforest patch, or, itself simplified, a
fig or bamboo thicket. Below an emergent top layer representing the problems concerned,
those raised by the focal questions, there is the canopy layer, of interlinked proximate causes.
Below that again stands a plurality of stems, plural supports, which can be construed as
supporting sources, and below them again, ultimately sustaining the whole structure, a
multiplicity of intertwined roots, representing paradigmatic basics.
What is sought are ultimate sources, and roots, not immediate causes. The cause of local
pollution may be a factory that an agent installed, to produce more flim-flam. That too may be
the physical source of the immediate problem. But deeper questioning seeks the reasons for
such production and such factories. While there may be problems with ideas and idea
structures as causes, as causally efficacious, these problems do not transfer to reasons and
sources. Nonetheless there are buried metaphors, and linkages, to be unscrambled: how are ‘‘A
is source of B” and “A is a root of B” to be explicated?
While there is much written on roots and sources of environmental problems or
developments virtually none of it addresses the question of what is meant by the partially
buried metaphors of roots and sources . One striking example is supplied by Pepper's useful
introductory text, The Roots of Modem Environmentalism. Although this text presents itself
specifically as concerning roots, there is in fact no explication offered of the crucial roots
metaphor on which it turns. For that matter there is no direct account of what the roots of
environmentalism—still less, though quite different, of environmental problems to which
environmentalism answers—are supposed to be (granted there is much oblique material). It is
apparent also that Pepper has become rather carried away with the roots metaphor, throwing it
into several chapter headings and applying it pretty indiscriminately to mean simply elements
(from some earlier occurrence); thus for instance, ‘the roots of the theme of reconciliation of
freedom and authority’ (p. 193). Such usage is unsound. Because rudiments of some idea make
an earlier appearance in some authority or work, later workers may not have arrived at such an
idea by expanding on these rudiments; they may have arrived where they did quite
independently or by a different route. The mistake is that of reading a source or (genetic)
causal linkage into a mere temporal conjunction: post hoc, propter hoc.
Neither roots nor sources are mere beginnings or simply early occurrences; there have to
be continuing connections, with directional relationships such as supply or sustenance. But for
5
roots and sources different connections and elaborations are to be expected. After all, the
metaphors, and likewise what they give rise to, are evidently different; more literally, plants
have roots, normally below them, springs and streams rise from sources, not roots, often above
them, and so on. Both differ from another popular basis-beginning buried metaphor, that of
foundations. Foundations bring in other features such as solidity, stability and comparative
permanency, while severing critical transmission features (for foundations may merely
passively support, not sustain supported superstructure).
So foundations, for all their
importance in epistemology and elsewhere if foundationalism is correct, can be set aside.
So far dictionaries do better than popular and philosophical texts. For instance, a short
listing for the figurature use of ‘root’ runs: ‘the basis, bottom, the fundamental part, or that
which supplies origin, sustenance, means of development, etc. (Concise English Dictionary).
Such a two component account will serve nicely, for a start. However conjunctions should
substantially displace disjunctions, else roots could collapse to foundations or could collapse to
mere trace element supplements. Roots both give a basis and bottom binding into a substratum
and supply sustenance and means of development. Roots connections are richer as well as
more specific than sources, which may merely show from where an item comes or is obtained.
Further that place of derivation that may not be a basis or bottom, but for instance a source
book. With roots, like normal foundations, a basis or bottom is reached, whereas sources may
have further sources (hence the search for ’‘deeper”, even ultimate, sources). Finally, root and
source connections carry explanations, at least genetic explanations—concerning how items got
to be what and the way they are—because roots and sources are characteristically that from
which items develop. Sometimes even more information, including a whole control system,
gets transmitted. As much happens where roots are paradigmatic, to return to that strange mix
of buried metaphors.
Reaching deeper roots is important. Without locating them, perhaps all the roots (should
they resemble blackberry), problems may not get properly addressed. Should we wrongly
locate roots, then proposed resolutions directed at these, cutting them off or replacing them, will
also go astray, wrongly directed or whatever. Such is the fate of many proposals concerning
environmental problems.
There are several parts to the approach sketched, if it is to be properly elaboratedincluding a working classification of environmental problems and their proximate solutions,
and an account of paradigms and their roles—before getting to paradigmatic answers to focal
questions. But we can be brief on these necessary preliminaries, because main details are
already in circulation and because they have been addressed elsewhere.
1. Problems and paradigms.
5
Despite a referee’s suggestion that discussion of “roots” ‘could be improved by a contrast of the
“roots” metaphor with the “foundations” metaphor, the fact is that we are decidedly not
concerned with foundations of environmental problems; to the contrary, we do not wish to see
them supported (if shoddily), established and so on. On the growing complexity and varying
interpretations offoundations, an emergent bog, see for instance Chisholm.
6
Although these will be duly connected, with paradigms implicated in problems, they are
different components, and admit and deserve separate explanation.
la. Environmental problems and proximate solutions.
Definitions of ‘environmental problem’, and classifications of such problems, have already
been ventured.6 What problems emerge as environmental depends upon background value
framework. What counts as a major problem on deeper environmental perceptions may be but
a minor problem, or written off as not a problem at all, on shallower perspectives. Among such
indicator problems, ones here taken as serious problems, are those of
• sustaining biodiversity and
• maintaining significant wilderness.7
Even if the broad impact of human enterprise were sufficiently reduced to guarantee
comfortable survival of future humans, these desiderata may well not be guaranteed. There
would be outstanding problems.
In any event, it is not too difficult to say more or less what environmental problems are
(at worst by furnishing familiar lists), and in many cases to indicate at least in principle how
they might be resolved. Environmental impact equations, encountered in a more perceptive
classification of problems, reveal how they can be resolved. Namely, by altering relevant
impact parameters.
Given this why are they proving so intractable? Why is so little done? Why is so very
little spent, despite all the talk.8 Proximate solutions, about as far as positive science conveys
us, are not however satisfactory stopping points.
How is it, given so much scientific
information and expertise, that humans are continuing to sharply degrade, and risk substantially
destroying, their habitats.
To these, the focal questions of this exercise, there is an array of competing answers on
offer or to be met in an extensive literative. As we will soon discover, most of these answers
are too simple; and taken, as intended, as comprehensive, they are wrong. Correct answers to
the questions are however important, because if we fail to get to the bottom of the issues, there
is even less prospect of satisfactory action to mm around a difficult and deteriorating situation.
That these issues do not matter, that casual human relationships, or how many devaluing
dollars uncaring humans can briefly stuff in their pockets, matter more than whole islands of
habitats—these sorts of value judgements (after all matter is a value term par excellence)
derive from and are supported by particular ideologies.
lb. Model-like objects: paradigms, ideologies, cultures ,and so on.
A paradigm can be explicated, technically, as a model in precisely a generous logical sense.9
6
7
8
9
See for example GE, which duly details connections of the problems with impact equations and
proximate solutions.
As to the extent of the problem (even) in North America, and a proposed remedy, see The
Wildlands Project.
See e.g. The cost of past environmental policy in OECD countries, Box 1.7, in Pearce et al, p.24.
See RP, where many environmentally relevant illustrations are given and explained.
7
That is, a paradigm amounts to a structure supplied by an elaborate interpretation function on a
general system, i.e. semantical and other evaluations defined on an integrated relational
structure. Naturally it is required to be faithful to what it models, the social forms and norms,
scientific research programs, or whatever. A social paradigm, in contrast to a scientific
paradigm, is a paradigm where the propositional and action theory, the socio-political themes
and value judgements, is that of a social group. A pure culture is but a comprehensive social
paradigm, where by “comprehensive” is meant that it covers a sufficiently comprehensive part
of the life-styles and life-forms of the community concerned. There are now many examples of
formulations of the themes delivered under rival social paradigms and under different cultures;
from these, mostly sketchy formulations we can work back towards the underlying models.
The basic vehicle, a situations or worlds model, is a semantical object, an item like a
complex universal10 similarly open to a range of construals and reduction attempts, e.g.
metaphysical, conceptual, epistemic, linguistic and so on. Once this is realised, it can be seen
that successive cohorts of philosophers and sociologists, historians and geographers have
repeated one another in vaguely discerning essentially the same sorts of underlying structures
under different categorisations: thus, for instance, forms of understanding (Kant), of
consciousness (Marx), of life (Wittgenstein), conceptual schemes (Conant), presuppositions
(Collingwood), discursive formations (Foucault), Weltanschauungs, total views (Naess),
traditions (MacIntyre), traditions of thought, cultures, perspectives, outlooks, ideologies,
programs, .... An ideology, for instance, in the non-derogatory (non-Marxist) sense is an ideas-
system, initially a propositional system or theory with a relevant domain of ideas operative,
from which a paradigm can be discerned and elaborated.
Such models are typically presented in extremely truncated form, for example through a
tabulation of capsule themes. Here is a combination example:
TABLE 1: Elements of Taoism as contrasted with Deep Ecology and with the dominant
paradigm: an initial capsule formulation -11
Taoism
Deep Ecology
Dominant (Western)
Paradigm
Harmony with nature,
through Tao
Harmony with nature
Domination over nature
Nature valuable in itself;
“humanism” rejected
Natural environment
valued for itself
Nature a resource;
intrinsic value confined
to humans
10
11
It resembles a structured universal; compare e.g. Plato’s system of forms, Locke’s of complex
ideas. Naturally there are differences between, for instance, traditions (of thought) which are
historically bound, cultures, which are geographically and otherewise connected, and conceptual
schemes (where a conceptual reduction is insinuated), but all are, at logical bottom, models of
paradigmatic sort.
This tripartite example is adapted from UTD, where capsule elements of Taoism are duly
expanded.
8
Levelling of differences;
wide impartiality
Biocentric egalitarianism
Human supremacy
Supplies ample
Earth supplies limited
Ample resources with
substitutes
Following Tao-te
Spiritual goals,
especially self-realisation
Material economic growth
a predominant goal
Enlightenment
Self-realisation
Personal (material)
enrichment
Doing with enough
(recycling inappropriate)
Doing with enough;
recycling
Consumerism
Non-competitive lifestyle;
voluntary simplicity
Cooperative lifestyle
Competitive lifestyle
Decentralised/neighbourhood and village focus
Decentralised/bioregional
/neighbourhood focus
Centralised/urban centred/
national focus
Hierarchy without
power structure;
anarchoid
Non-hierarchical/
grassroots democracy
Power structure
hierarchical
Limited technology
Appropriate technology
High technology
Considerable caution
Precautionary practice
Risking taking (verging
upon adventurism)
Paradigms control action space by some equivalent of directives; under an earlier analogy, red
and green lights duly interpreted. They may not supply direct commands, general obligations
and prohibitions, but may operate more indirectly. For instance an enlightened person, a role
model, a person following Tao, would act this way, not that. (Taoism, like certain modem
ideologies, eschews deontic judgements.)
Paradigms are absorbed and they guide practice. They commonly form part of actors'
worlds; they are certainly part of actors' programs for practice and considered action in a world.
In a sense then, they are things, programs actors carry round in their heads; so heads (or rather
consciousnesses) have to be changed, not rolled.
2. Proposed answers to focal questions: a preliminary classification of inadequate answers
and suggested remedies.
Most of the extraordinary range of answers proposed supply but a single source, and are
accordingly defective for this reason, usually among other reasons. Indeed it is not much of an
exaggeration to assert that virtually everything proposed, in a now extensive literature, is
wrong.
TABLE 2. Main tabulation of answers and remedies , in three stages.
D. Defective
practice answers
Source
Remedy
Objections
9
DI.
Ignorance
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2.
Unintended consequences
Relevant
information
Information
now available
D2a
Faulty technique,
or technology
Repairs
Repairs already
made
D3
Deviation (from
theory, etc.)
Education (for failure
to limit deviance)
Adherence
a. Deviation
uneliminable, or
b. Adherence
no remedy
D4.
Systemic lock-in
(through poverty,
ensnarement in
market forces, etc.)
Trap removal
a. Explains
only certain
cases, and
b. Due to
paradigmatic
features
D5.
Insensitivity or
insensibility
Problem
apprised
Remedy tried;
background
ideological
blockage
D3a
When pursued, objections like those noted either force defective practice out as unsatisfactory,
or push it back to paradigmatic features.
Source single paradigm
Remedies proposed (among others)
Pl.
Christianity (mainstream
Catholicism)
Scientific enlightenment, or
alternative (Eastern) religion
Pla.
Protestantism and its ethic
P2.
P2a
Cartesianism
Dualism
Anti-dualism
P2b
Mechanism
Organicism
P. Defective paradigm
answers
Substance metaphysics
P3.
P3a Possessive individualism
P3aa Personalism
Monism
Modified holism
Process metaphysics
Non-reductionism
Transpersonalism
P4.
Capitalism
Socialism
P5.
Industrialism
Pre-industrialism (romanticism)
Post-industrialism
P5a Technocratic bureaucracy
P5aa. Transnational business
P6.
Enlightenment
Anti-enlightenment
Anti-materialism
10
P6a
Materialism
Spiritualism
P8.
P9
Patriarchy, andocentrism
Human domination
of humans
Feminism
Anti-domination
(anti-hierarchy)
Observe that what some have proposed as remedies, others have seen as sources; remedies
proposed tend to share defects of sources.
PS. Further sample listings of this paradigmatic sort (but with the paradigms often subject
specific or partial) include:
Typical remedy suggested
Source
Platonism
Leibnitzianism
Kantianism
Anglo-American philosophy12
Utilitarianism
Economism (economic imperialism as
New metaphysics
New metaphysics
Consequentialism
Continental philosophy
Alternative ethics
New social science; ethics
contrasted with straight economic roots)
Contractarianism
Consequentialism
Domination transfer
Domination removal
Human nature (esp. aggression)
Adolescencism
Infantilism (from Freudian physchology)
Maturation
Maturation
And so on.
A very rough recipe runs as follows: draw up a potted list of major movements and factors in
dominant Western thought. Then many—perhaps it is not excessive to say most—entries in
that list will have been nominated, likely separately, by someone as the source of the problems.
That list accordingly continues (even including, sometimes, entries like Taylorism, i.e.
reorganisation of industry along lines popularized by Taylor), but what is included is
representative of the important and more interesting answers to be encountered. There are other
allegedly nonparadigmatic answers however, varying from interesting to crazy, that should also
be taken into some account, for instance answers like Shepard’s challenging answer. Although
Shepard dismisses ideologies, what he offers is a further ideosystem, of similar dubious or false
cast. Strange answers include pushing it all back to human psychology (thus not only Shepard,
but also Fox, and Ehrlich and other gurus with insistence upon ‘mental maladaptation’).
12
The mainstream form, analytic philosophy, appears to comprise empiricism-cum-utilitarianism
in Britain, tempered in America by pragmatism.
11
Basically, there is something wrong with a society that does that to its habitat. It is sick
—in a popular sense, yes, it is sick. It is the slides that follow, however, along psychological
routes, that are to be resisted. One slide begins invitingly: As it is not literally sick, well not
physically usually, it must be mentally sick; that is, sliding further and fast, insane or mad. But
the sources of mental sickness lie in childhood (as Freudianism erroneously insists). The slide
continues to: what we have are immature societies, frozen at an early stage of development. No
doubt there is something to the theme that dominant societies, USA especially (which now
influences so much in other cultures), are locked into youth culture, a sort of late consumptive
adolescence.13 No doubt, too, that maturity—but an environmental maturity—is desirable,
even mandatory.
Meanwhile, immaturity is fostered right through human life. Considerable effort is put
into trying to induct older people, who are often marginalised, into active consumptive society,
to spend their money through tourism, on new compact housing, in those most wasteful of
modem institutions such as airliners and hotels, hospitals and old-age homes, and so forth.
3. Documentation as to some of the acclaimed purer sources.
Like the lists of proposals and intricated paradigms, the documentation too is somewhat
perfunctory, tending here and there towards notes. Of course there are excuses. While whole
theses could be spun out on several of these topics, already beginning to elicit such treatment, a
prime objective here is different from usual: neither to convict, nor to clear or excuse, but to
partially implicate most items cited in the main tabulation above. Consider, in brief, some of
the usually accredited sources:
• Western religion, above all Christianity. The theme that the source of ecological problems,
‘the historical roots of our ecological crisis’, are to be found in Western religion, and
specifically in ‘the Judaeo-Christian belief that mankind was created to have dominion over
nature’, was repeated in a particularly pointed and subsequently influential way by White.14
One helpful summary of White's line of argument runs as follows:
Allied with technological and scientific developments, orthodox Christianity
has produced arrogant exploitation of nature, and a contemporary ecological
crisis. White's thesis is that the West's successful science and technology
developed between the 8th and 12th centuries — it is much older than the
scientific revolution though it was not until about 1850 — following the
democratic revolutions — that the science and technology were combined to
produce truly immense powers to change nature. The early development,
however, was paralleled by the development of exploitative attitudes to
nature which seemed to be ‘in harmony with larger intellectual patterns’,
namely the victory of Christianity over paganism. This destroyed the
animistic beliefs whereby men thought twice before they plundered and
destroyed natural objects. It substituted instead a faith in perpetual progress,
13
14
It interestingly matches the locking of primary production systems into pioneering stages such as
preclimax formations. Shepard’s dialectic is investigated in more detail in the Appendix .
White's article has generated an enormous defensive literature, primarily from Christian
apologists, but also from softer environmentalists and from testy historians of ideas. The whole
area looks in danger of disappearing from intellectual view under a heavy blanketing snowfall,
snowed.
12
a belief that God designed nature for man's benefit and rule, and that action,
not contemplation, was the correct Christian behaviour. Science formed an
extension of theology (for to know God you had to find out how his creation
worked), and technology provided the active means to carry out God's will.
Because today's attitudes are essentially inherited from Christianity, then it
‘bears the burden of guilt’ for contemporary ecological disruption.15
What has happened with the divisive charge, advanced by White, that Christianity was
the prime source of environmental problems, is particularly instructive. In an attempt to diffuse
the charge Christian apologists pointed to, what there undoubtedly were, recessive strands or
isolated seeds in Christianity which were much more environmentally benign (though some
such as stewardship, which has evolved toward total managerialism and sustainable
development, have proved increasingly problematic). That does little or nothing to meet a more
sensitive and telling criticism that mainstream (or dominant) Christianity has much to answer
for as regards destruction and degradation of natural environments.16 Similar responses are
apposite for attempts to exonerate their wider sources, such as Western philosophy.
Against the sheeting of responsibility to religion, dominant forms of which should
undoubtedly cop some heavy criticism, it has been contended that
philosophy ... is the primary source of most Western ideas [and] is ...
responsible for the ideas and attitudes that inhibit environmental protection
today. ... Religion ... though often criticized ... as the chief culprit, has played
a much less fundamental role. Most of the environmentally offensive ideas in
Western religion originated not in religion but in Western philosophy.17
• Classical Greek philosophy, above all the peak philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Greek philosophers approached natural phenomena in a way that (1)
prevented the development of an ecological perspective, (2) discouraged the
aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, and (3) promoted a conception of
reality that made the idea of nature preservation conceptually difficult, if not
impossible.18
More sweepingly, they set Western philosophy on a ruinous environmental course, a course
accentuated with the appearance of modem rationalist and empiricist philosophies.
• Cartesian philosophy.
15
16
17
18
The dominant modern environmental approach is sometimes
Pepper pp.44-5. Pepper then embarks upon the murky story of alternative interpretations of
Biblical data and the Christian tradition, dredged up by a series of White's critiques. The issue
continues to be debated; for an older survey of traditions see Passmore, for a challenging recent
contribution to the debate see Callicott.
Each religion is multistranded. But we should look hardest at dominant operative forms: Ask,
not merely what they say, but what they do, and would do. For an outline of just such a telling
criticism of mainstream Christianity, see Singer esp. pp.265-8.
Hargrove p.15. Certainly the sort of message that Pentecostal missionaries even now try to
preach to resistant Australian Aboriginals, that the earth is just filth, mere rubbish, can be traced
back in direct line to Plato’s attitude to the land, an attitude Hargrove and Plumwood help
expose.
Hargrove p.21. Hargrove’s claims may appear to have been confuted by Attfield, but really,
while they have been subject to minor qualification, they have been highlighted. There is a
much fuller story still to be told about classical Greek philosophy reassessed environmentally, of
the very different roles and impacts of Plato (with his unearthly philosophy), of Aristotle (with
his earthier chauvinism), of Stoics and of Epicureans, and of neo-Platonists. For a modest
beginning, see Plumwood on Plato, Toulmin on Stoics as contrasted with Epicureans, and
Glacken on lesser or lost Greek strands.
13
denominated Cartesianism, or the Cartesian Technocratic paradigm, in honour of Descartes,
upon whom (as a conveniently select individual from a swag of like-minded people) several of
the leading themes and ideas can be pinned.19 While Descartes was undoubtedly
extraordinarily influential, so were others; Newton for one, Locke for another. The paradigm is
accordingly better denominated the Atomist-Empiricist-Technocratic paradigm, or some such.
Evidently it substantially overlaps other modem ideologies, such as that of the Enlightenment,
widely implicated as major sources of environmental problems.
• Western metaphysics. While some conglomeration of the preceding sources and others
(some potted history of Western metaphysics, so to say) may be offered, more often what is
presented is some selection of Western metaphysical elements. Here is one example, plainly
exhibiting a heavy Heideggerean influence:
.
The roots of our environmental problems lie in Western metaphysics. For
metaphysics, Being is presencing; no allowance is made for any other mode
(sheltering, declining, concealing). Once metaphysics has established the
absolute dominion of the present over the not-present or no-longer-present,
the way is paved for the scientific method, with its emphasis on replicability
of results, predicability, quantification, and control. Nature becomes a
“natural resource” —and people become “human resources . The sources of
anthropocentricism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and consumerism can
all be traced back to metaphysics.
Western metaphysics has more or less conquered the world, and there is no
going back. Western metaphysics is more than simply a false consciousness
overlaid on top of “authentic” experience. Being changes historically, and
metaphysics is the index of that change... Metaphysics has a conquering,
exclusive imperative, ... and different [former] modes now exist only as
vestigial traces. They cannot be resurrected through ancient wisdom, native
healing, goddess worship, or any other supposedly intact, dormant system.
We cannot create a “new order”. That would simply be another form of the
Will to Power... We can—and must—turn away from the dominant rhythms
of western metaphysics if we are to avoid the nihilism of a perpetually
ensconced technocratic rationalism.20
An alternative to turning entirely away from Western metaphysics, consists in combining
rejection of standard Western metaphysics (or, less sweepingly, of dominant metaphysics,
characteristically individualistic and atomistic) in favour of development of recessive traditions
or mere Western seeds.
Such a more sophisticated approach, also critical of Western
metaphysics, with atomism a main villain, is pursued by those who promote instead process or
plenum metaphysics.21
19
20
21
For encapsulation of the Cartesianism paradigm (a dominant dualistic form), summarising
Drengson’s exposition, see RP, table 5. Drengson, for one, has helped portray Descartes as the
environmentally evil genius (or demiurge). That some orthodox philosophers, not merely
maverick philosophers, are now rushing to the defence of Descartes should be seen as entirely in
keeping with the character and roles of Western philosophy.
Undisclosed source. Amusingly, I have seen myself accused of ‘rejecting] in its entirety
mainstream western philosophy and science, ... seen as the cause of the [environmcntalj
problem’ and instead basing my ‘ecocentric values on Eastern philosophies’ (thus Bellett). This
charge was levelled on the strength of a peripheral exercise on classical Taoism and Deep
Ecology (now included in UTD).
For the first process option, see Gare; for the second, where the plenum is that of a holistic
relativity theory (more exactly holistic relativistic geometrodynamics), see Mathews.
14
• Enlightenment. The source of problems lies in ‘the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment’
(e.g. Dobson). Of course the main doctrines of the Enlightenment substantially overlap those
of modern mainstream philosophy and of Descartes’ philosophy (but they shed dualistic and
theistic scholastic hang-overs).
• Capitalism. The assumption that capitalism is responsible for environmental as well as social
evils, widespread until recently in state-socialist countries (when their own records were
revealed), can be traced back to Marx. According to Marx, with capitalism
for the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a
matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the
theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to
subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a
means of production.22
But, as observed, a main embedded theme had appeared in earlier philosophy; for instance, the
idea of nature as purely an object for humankind, was advanced in Aristotle: ’Now if nature
makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all
animals for the sake of man’.23 Aristotle adopted a similar stance on nature as on other species.
The theme was to be oft repeated in subsequent Aristotelianism, and reiterated apparently in
shallower Stoicism. But the subjection of everything to utility, no doubt a relative of
capitalism, appears to be a distinctively modem contribution.
•
Modern industrial society or industrialism. Modem industrialism (‘the smooth
superhighway of industrial progress’) is the source, such is an extraordinarily popular theme:
‘... the root causes of the present crisis lie deep with the very foundations of the industrial
paradigm’.24 Similarly ‘roots [of] the environment crisis ... go deeper to the foundations of
modem industrial society’.2526Again, ‘the structural roots of the environmental crises [are found
in] industrialism, in commoditization, in commercialism, and in competition and greed
The
popular theme, that industrialism is the source, tends to confuse mere means— industrial
technology can without any doubt at all vastly facilitate environmental degradation (as well as,
22
23
24
25
26
It should not be overlooked that some of those who nominated metaphysics meant thereby
paradigm or paradigms or an equivalent. But what they may gain thereby in verisimilitude, they
tend to lose in confusion.
Grundrisse p.409f.
Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, ch.8. What an inference, you might well exclaim. See further
Hargrove p.25.
M. Gabriel, ‘How “attitudes and implements” have brought us to “the end of nature”’, a paper
presented at UNE Environmental Paradigms Conference, April 1993. Gabriel proposes a
managerial resolution: ‘for us to learn to manage both our relationship to our environment, and
more broadly the environment itself (quotes from abstract of paper). This amounts to the flip
side of an old problematic record. For the “solution” derives from the same defective box as the
evident problem.
Gabriel ibid. Similarly industrialism is assumed as the source throughout McLaughlin (the
theme pervades his book) and as the root of the modem problem in Marshall (p.5ff). While
seriously astray as to roots and sources, those critical of industrialism have a significant case.
For, as well as functioning as a major inflator of intact problems, industrialism has helped
generate side problems of its own, as with new types of chemical and nuclear pollution.
Editorial in The Ecologist, Jan-Feb 1992, p.2.
15
less satisfactorily, subsequent clean-up and environmental repair)— with sources and causes,
what directs and powers those uses of industrial technique and practice.
• Economic growth or economic development. ‘According to a common and currently
influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots’.27 One
widespread misconception is that economic growth is the source of environmental problems.
The assumption is astray for several reasons. For one, growth is at best a proximate cause,
itself in need of explanation. More importantly, growth may occur in sectors of an economy,
such as information technology or religious or artistic services, which have little or no
environmental impact. Also conversely, an economy which fails to grow, but is desperately
trying to survive, may exact heavy environmental costs (e.g. the forests are clear-felled to pay
for continuing employment). No doubt though, stock economic growth is intimately intricated
with proximate causes of environmental problems (through environmental impact equations).
Similar considerations tell against the familiar proposition that the source of the problems
is economic development itself or, what is different, the entrenched model of economic
development. While it is no doubt correct, and important to emphasize, that ‘the Western
model of economic development, far from being the solution to’ environmental and social
problems, is ‘actually fuelling’ them, it is not the sole or distinguished source of the
problems.28
• Human nature. "... the roots of our ecologic crisis reach beyond the variable topsoil of
intellectual history, whether Eastern or Western, into the common substrata of human nature
itself.’29 What such “nature” amounts to and how it functions as roots, both commonly left
obscure, turns upon background hypotheses as to the nature of this nature. Different false
27
28
29
Goodin, p.573. While not contesting the theme, Goodin does continue: ‘the problem is not just
that there are too many people, or even that they are enjoying too high a standard of living. All
that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental
despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives as they pursue their various goals’
(p.573). That too will be seen to be seriously astray, though it contains large grains of truth; it
presumes unchanged the prevailing economically-skewed dominant social paradigm.
Both socialists and other opponents of capitalistic conspicuous consumption tend to select the
living-standard component of the main environmental impact equation as the source of the crisis.
Thus Cuban luminary, Castro, in a recent stunningly succinct speech: ‘Less luxury, less wastage.
Otherwise it will be too late’.
Quoting claims of E. Goldsmith, advanced in an interview in Forest and Bird 273 (August 1994)
pp.46-7. The need for emphasis will persist while locally prominent political figures like the
present Prime Minister of Australia travel around the Earth with the hackneyed message that
only economic growth will solve environmental problems.
Seeing growth as the problem affords only a superficial analysis, like that of pointing to
overconsumption with which growth is interconnected. As deeper inquiry reveals, underlying
both issues of economic growth, employment and consumption, and alternatives taken, are
models, paradigmatic models. Growth is but a means to objectives assumed in the dominant
paradigm. A deeper analysis shows too why more growth will not ultimately solve relevant
problems.
Callicott and Ames, ‘Epilogue: On the relation of idea and action’ p.282 (see also p.281), in a
desperate and apparently unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the claim (repeatedly advanced in
their book) that Asian traditions of thought can make a significant contribution to much
improved treatment for natural and built environments, with ‘the deplorable environmental
conditions prevailing in contemporary Asia’ (p.280).
16
hypotheses, that humans are invariably driven by aggression, sexual or reproductive
imperatives, economic needs, yield different defective accounts. In Catholic orthodoxy such a
source, human nature, comes burdened with original sin; the source of a sweep of problems,
including now environmental ones, is “man’s fallen nature”. That astonishing source also
comes contaminated, as for instance gender biassed.
• Patriarchy. The source is patriarchy, and androgyny; problems derive from mistreatment of
women. ‘Our troubles begin with the invention of male deities located off the planet’.30
‘patriarchy is the source of the environmental crisis’.31 One sample linkage statement runs as
follows:
there is a huge denial ... of the violence perpetrated on women both
historically and ... presently] and ... this is the same energy that, turned
against the Earth, is destroying the very life-support systems and rapidly
destroying the conditions that makes complex life possible. The fires that
consume the Amazon are the very same fires that burned 9 million witches
and I believe that there can be no solution of our ecological problems unless
we simultaneously address our gender issues.32
Patriarchy, as source, is evidently a special case of long invoked domination transfer themes:
• Human domination and exploitation of humans'. It is an extraordinarily widespread
assumption that the impact of humans (or, until recently, of Man!) on the environment, or
creatures or things in it, is a product of that of humans with each other, typically of groups or
classes. In misleadingly brief form, the source is social: Man’s inhumanity to Man; and the
solution correspondingly is social. Unremarkably, this unlikely assumption comes in a variety
of different forms: early, concerning the mistreatment of animals as an (inevitable) spill-over
from mistreatment of humans, recently concerning maltreatment of nature spilling over from, or
being one with, that of women. The fashionable assumption runs, in one form or another, from
Aquinas through Kant to a range of recent trend-setters, including Marcuse, Illich, Passmore,
Bookchin ... and some leading feminists. In particular, it is part of the very meaning of social
ecology, an ideology shaped and championed by Bookchin: ‘ecological problems arise from
deep-seated social problems’.33 On this theme among others, Bookchin simply follows a
prominent trend in social anarchism set by Kropotkin and his contemporary Reclus:
all see that the domination and exploitation of nature by man is but an
extension of the domination of man by man. Thus, ‘Both Kropotkin and
Reclus ... laid the foundations of a radical theory of human ecology.
Ecological despoliation was seen to reflect imbalances in human relationships
30
31
32
33
Quoted in Eckersley p.64, who develops and begins to assess patriarchical source themes. For a
more critical assessment see the sequel to GE.
See Seed, quoted in the sequel to GE; also Salleh (e.g. in EP3).
John Seed’s Workshop Schedule 1992, Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, 12. 12.91.
Seed’s extravagant identity claims are but a dramatic extension of that popular tendency to
transform comparison and similarity statements into identity claims. Indeed reductionism often
reaches further, with attempted conversion of all relational statements into identity ones, along
with unrelational property claims.
Bookchin sometimes qualifies this central claim, with ‘nearly all present’, e.g. EP3 p.354. But
he is not strictly entitled to any such qualification, given his invariant theme that the domination
of nature always results from humans’ domination of other humans (see e.g. Clark EP3, p.346).
The text EP3 contains a sizeable section providing a useful introduction to social ecology.
17
—domination of nature thus following from human domination’.... It follows
that if domineering and exploitative human relationships can be avoided in
small-scale decentralised societies then such societies are also best for a
harmonious man-nature relationship.34
Domination and exploitation of one division by another can in turn be seen as a case of
dualism at work, between the one, the dominator or dominating class, and the other, the
dominated.
• A snare of dualisms. Environmental problems derive from operation of a set of connected
ideologically-entrenched and defective dualisms.35
• Modern educational systems: Roots of environmental problems lie in educational systems.
Or if roots don't, solutions do. However, roots of environmental or social problems do not lie in
educational systems. Parts of their solutions may however. For education is critical, for
instance, in correcting insufficient adherence to established satisfactory arrangements, such as,
so it is claimed, Enlightenment ideals or traditional ethical systems.36 Therewith we are
transported full circle back to defective practice answers.
4. A selective commentary on, and objections to, proposed answers
A main part of this exercise consists in a detailed critical commentary on the entries in the
main tabulation, and on proposals like them. Small beginnings are made on the exercise, in two
stages reflecting a major division in the main tabulation.
ad D. Defective practice answers tend to come from those who presume we are already in
possession of adequate theories, or what approximates them or supplies main elements of them.
(Such answers are also more liable to emanate from conservatives, opposed to new or radical
theories, advanced on the basis of inadequacy of prevailing theories in practice.)
Defective practice answers are especially popular in economic reaches. There was a time,
perhaps not past yet, when all market failures in the shape of negative externalities were passed
off as unintended consequences of economic activity. While “consequences” or outputs such
things as pollution certainly are, unintended they mostly are not now, without emptying
‘unintended’ of its normal sense. For example, industrialists, apprised of conservation laws and
unsurprised by polluted wastes, who dump their waste where and when regulators and waste
watchers are not looking, can hardly pretend that that output is an unintended consequence of
their industry. That should now be a rotten joke, itself with serious consequences.
Accordingly new ecological economics insists that we dig deeper—without however
exceeding economic settings or a shifting dominant paradigm—to discover why markets may
34
35
36
Pepper p.192, with internal quotation from Breitbart. Unfortunately it is all too evident, given
humans could so socially organise, that they could settle into harmonious small-scale
communities which retained but little of pristine natural environments.
Such a proposition obtains a much fuller elaboration within Plumwood. In an interesting way,
such a proposal can hardly be wrong, given the conclusion reached below that a set of defective
paradigms is at work. For evidently paradigms can be covered by dualisms, represented by a set
of them in each case, somewhat as numbers can be represented in binary terms, generated from a
basic two-oneness duality.
Thus Passmore, Attfield, and others. For a critical assessment of education, see GE
18
foreseeably fail and why environmentally rectifying technology is not delivered.3738Where they
usually arrive, travelling within such unduly confined settings, is, like welfare economics
before ecological, at better regulated markets, with business set as before within frameworks of
plans and incentives, controls and penalties. Environmentally, however, such approaches do
not reach very deep, or tap into underlying paradigmatic problem-sources.
But these sorts of defective practice answers do not always derive from standard
economic sources. A deviation-style answer is much favoured by Marxists to explain failure,
environmental and other, of the former Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries, namely
that true, or authentic, Marxism was not practiced. Unfortunately, even if it had been,
environmental consequences would be little better, given the heavy industrial commitments and
environmental shallowness, at best, of true Marxism.3^ Differently, enlightenment liberals like
Passmore try to ascribe failures in Western environmental practice, not to any deficiencies in
mainstream theory, but to deviation from well established principles. Unfortunately adherence
to these “well established principles” is just one way in which the Earth will lose what remains
of its wilderness and remarkable diversity.
Now there are no doubt cases, past especially but also present, some resulting
(collectively) in extensive environmental degradation, where defective practice answers may be
correct. For example, there is harrowing case after harrowing case (brought together in texts
like Topsoil and Civilization and Agricultural Origins and Dispersal) of degradation of prime
agricultural lands by imposed farming practices, where at least early on (before damage became
visible) ignorance and unintended consequences could be legitimately claimed. In most
historical cases we do not have enough information to be able to say with much assurance that
agriculture proceeded until effective collapse because of continuing ignorance, or because
practices were locked-in in one way or another, or because of sheer obduracy. But we do know
more about present agricultural practices, for example in more arid parts of Australia,
concerning both irrigated and dry-land agriculture. Many of these practices are undoubtedly
sharply degrading lands, and the consequences of the practices, which cannot plead or pretend
ignorance, are sufficiently appreciated. But the practices persist, and are encouraged by a
sweep of subsidies or concessions. No doubt some of the practitioners can reasonably claim
that they are locked into bad practices through circumstance, circumstances now beyond their
control such as financial pressures, unfavourable terms-of-trade, and so on, coupled with the
need to make a living. But some, such as companies controlling large tracts of land, can make
no such claims or excuses, nor can claim such things as family precedence, attachment to place,
and similar. Their obdurate practice has to be attributed to something else, most obviously not
37
38
Thus e.g. Jacobs, p.24.
It is surprising how much of the practice of later Socialist states is prefigured in texts like The
Communist Manifesto. Thus “industrial armies” are to be set up; credit, communications and
transport are to become state monopolies; “migrants and rebels” are to have their property
confiscated; and so on. All this runs contrary to much Marxist apologetics (as A. Urquhart, who
made those points, also observed).
19
deviation from theory, but commitment to an environmentally defective paradigm.
ad P and PS. Dealing with defective paradigm answers is an even more complex, and vexed,
business. Let us try to condense main matters to a few broad themes:
1.
Many of the (incomplete) paradigms listed are not even sufficient for environmental
impasses. They may be seriously mistaken, they may have undesirable intellectual and perhaps
social effects, but a society could persist sustainably with those drawbacks. Thus, for example,
substance metaphysics (under modified Spinozism), dualisms, even patriarchy. The same
might even hold for materialism and mechanism, (assuming these practices can be coherently
made out, that depending on how differentiated ideologies and values are accommodated, and
so forth).
To illustrate: a metaphysics, of any sort, cannot be the whole story, because it does not,
on its own, account for action, anti-environmental or other. Without special bridges, link
principles, from metaphysics to value-intricating action theory, a sort of naturalistic fallacy
operates.
Thus subverted, in essentially Hume’s way, are all the vulgar sources of
environmental problems which take them as derived from metaphysics of one sort or another.
Such a criticism does not however extend to more comprehensive paradigms which connect
appropriately with practice.
2.
While several—not just one—of the paradigms listed are sufficient—in the right
circumstances (given long historical development, accumulation, and so on39)—none are
necessary. Similar impasses could arise, and locally have arisen, given significantly different
paradigms;
for example given, instead of main Western trouble-making paradigms,
Confucianism or advanced Polynesianism.
At this stage in dialectic, green history and the like—bio-history, eco-history, and related
virtual histories (concerning what would have happened)—enter decisively. For instance,
Ponting's Green History of the World begins with a graphic account of the rise and ecological
fall of Easter Island under the impact of Polynesian projects. The work also conveniently
documents many other examples, well-known to biohistorians, of ecological degradation or
collapse, far from the influence of Western paradigms.40 An important example (much less
speculative than some of the numerous other examples because of a comparative wealth of
primary documentation) outlines the destruction of accessible Chinese ecosystems under
Confucian dynasties. What several of these examples—Polynesian, Mayan, Sumerian and
others—also reveal is that no very high level of technology is needed to inflict serious
environmental damage; persistence in pursuit of an ideological project (with nothing directly to
39
40
While it is easy to imagine ineffectual or incompetent tribes which live benignly
environmentally, by just muddling along, under even the worst of paradigms, that is not really to
the point. A pertinent tribe needs to have developed the structure which leads to problems, to
have the means, and so on.
Ponting’s valuable though rather simple book is but one of several bleak texts. Another is
Hillel’s, and there is a succession of earlier classic works by geographers: Lowdermilk, Dale,
Mallory, Thorp and others. In general however, geographers and historians do not dig deep
enough, to paradigmatic roots.
20
do with basic needs) will suffice.
Other cultures did wreak, or would (given the technology and numbers, both of which
some were gaining) have wreaked similar damage. For instance, deforestation, salination,
megafaunal elimination, and so on, were well established, and expanding, before (or effectively
outside) the rise of modem Western paradigms, or in extensive regions outside their influence.
3.
The list of paradigms, as so far assembled, is substantially Western in orientation.
Moreover environmental woes are regularly ascribed to Western sources
wrongly. For nonWestem paradigms have led, or would lead given the opportunities (including access to the
technologies), to outcomes as undesirable as under dominant Western paradigm. Witness
again Confucianism, for instance, and its role and influence in Asian regions. Confucianism
incorporates human chauvinism par excellence (as well as, some might say, Chinese
chauvinism).41 Or consider Islam, with its reach across the Middle East and beyond.
The main tabulation (of table 2) should accordingly be extended to take due account of
non-Westem paradigms, including for example:
Other Abrahamic religions
Islam
Judaism
Confucianism
Shintoism
Polynesianism, at least in advanced forms as on Easter Island.
What is “Western” is tending to blur also. Is Judaism Western, how western, or Islam? There
is also a tendency to suppose that more Western religions, Abrahamic religions, with their
intense monotheism, are significantly ideologically worse than non-Westem. But the contrasts
are different and much more complex than that. A better divide is into monistic and pluralistic.
Even so, many undesirable social and environmental features are incorporated in, or
encouraged by, religious pluralisms from the Indian subcontinent.
4.
All the single paradigm answers are inadequate, all are too simple. Even so some are
less inadequate than others. It is the same, more or less, for the combined answers, often to be
encountered. For generally they represent but one thin cross-section of Western paradigms.
While all the single one-source one-shot paradigmatic answers, occur on their own, often
they are combined. For instance, although Descartes is often cited as a villain, more often
criticism of Cartesianism is combined with criticism of other concurrent ideological elements,
such as Baconian empiricism (less incompatibly, Drengson, for one, regularly combines
criticism of the technocratic paradigm with criticism of Cartesianism
though Descartes, for all
his rich and appalling thought, contributed little to the rise of technocratic organisation.)
Similarly Hargrove combines Greek philosophy, as original source, with modem rationalism
and much else.
41
Its net of effects extends widely. Consider, e.g., the role of Chinese medicine in decline of large
fauna worldwide.
5.
A general method of showing the inadequacy of all the paradigmatic answers tabulated,
and others, is familiar from logical theory: namely, the method of counter-models, of which the
counter-examples (under head 2) provide special cases. A presently important illustration
concerns patriarchy as a source of environmental woes. Counter-models reveal the substantial
independence of mistreatment of women and mistreatment of environmental items such as
animals or ecosystems. One the one hand, it is easy to envisage situations, not far from the
actual in some regions, where the lot of women is significantly improved, but the lot of
environmental items is not (e.g. men change their behaviour and attitudes relevantly as regards
women, are forced to change, or whatever); just such an outcome would accord with persisting
human chauvinism. More relevant, on the other, there are situations where the position of
environmental items is much improved, for instance under much more careful husbandry, but
that of women is not, for one reason or another (e.g. they remain other, different, second class,
etc.). It follows from the elaboration of such counter-models that patriarchy is not the source of
environmental problems, as there can be continuing patriarchy without the present range of
environmental problems (problems can dry up while patriarchy continues to operate). There is
no need to deny that patriarchy as (contingently) practised, with its sweeping supremacist
attitudes which make no due distinctions between inferior items, may be a major contributing
factor in present problems. Such slack contingent conjunctions do not convert to roots or
sources. Similarly with other social roots of environmental problems, for instance with human
domination of humans as the supposed source of all problems.
5. Towards a more satisfactory explanation.
Not only are the paradigmatic roots seriously intertangled (because of connections of one
paradigm with another, because for instance of heavy philosophical inputs into religious
paradigms), but further there is not a single defective paradigm. Rather there is a family or
sheaf of paradigms, commitment to any of which, or any suitable combination of which, in
requisite circumstances, appears to have yielded environmentally untoward outcomes (requisite
circumstances including availability of technology, extent of social support, and so on). Within
that plurality there are of course gradations—and not only gradations but major differences
in
calibre, in environmental friendliness. For example, Cartesianism which regards animals as
mere automata incapable of feeling genuine pain, is significantly worse as regards other life
forms and their decent treatment than a utilitarianism which positively values animal sentience.
The family is not exclusively Western, nor somewhat more plausibly Northern, even
though as a result of forces like migration, colonialism and cultural imperialism, paradigms of
these sorts now predominate. Paradigms and cultures of less “advanced” and of third world
communities have also operated to enhance environmental vandalism and degradation locally
and regionally.
Nor are major inflators of environmental problems essentially Western. Industrialization
and technological advance—neither intrinsically Western, both manifested in varying degrees
in other cultures—are, without much doubt, what have inflated environmental problems from
22
rather localised ones, damaging for instance islands and river catchments, to grander and even
global ones. They are the engines, powerhouses, of major problems, generating thereby spin
off problems as well. But, once again, they are not deeper sources, but only means. (For again
push questioning deeper, and ask: why bother or persist with industry, the effort and dirt and
mess involved?) Nor, however, did they run on their own, nor do they continue on their own.
Such engines were not designed and built, fuelled and tended, independently.42 They evolved
primarily in the specially favoured culture of capitalism, though parallel developments could
have occurred, and later did, in other prepared and heavily controlled surroundings, such as
state socialism or post-imperial Confucianism. Now however these engines have been rendered
more reliable and less dependent on careful cultural support, and have been transformed to run
in less favourable settings.
Thus inflation can escalate from a multiplicity of prepared sources, thereby intensifying
problems and spreading them to larger regions. The intensification and spread is much
facilitated by the joint transfer of technology, industry and coupled problems from region to
region. As a result of transfer, inflation can occur within settings of quite different paradigms.
Even if the whole “West” went into a terminal decline, and its paradigms disappeared into
history, serious environmental exploitation and degradation would continue, driven by other
enthusiastic cultures. For instance, the West could in theory collapse through protracted war,
through pollution and congestion, or climate change and agriculture failure (there are many
unexcludible routes to catastrophic decline, outlined in “Limits to Growth” scenarios, that could
differentially impact on the West). Degradation would now continue however; there would be
only temporary respite from environmental crises.
While most of the conspicuous problems, awfully aggregated in contemporary
environmental crises, are accelerated by—what connects them—contemporary industrial
society, not all environmental problems are or have been of this sort. However, too many of the
other problems, such as destruction of rainforests by itinerant peasants, can be seen as by
products or similar of the main generators. Thus, in the illustration, the peasants displaced by
agribusiness or absentee wealth-holders, arrived there on industrially-made roads opening the
forests, and often wrecked this damage using industrial machinery.
An environmental friendly culture has to be much more critical concerning certain types
of industrialization, and much more selective regarding technology than present dominant
cultures, Western or non-Westem. A friendly paradigm would not only ensure much more
Lacking favourable ideological settings, earlier technological “break throughs” were not duly
developed: thus early wheels, steam engines, dyes, gunpowder, etc. Western cultures did not
enjoy a monopoly upon technology powerful enough, when massed, to induce global crises.
The pictuie of development of large-scale environmental problems being sketched bears
superficial resemblance to that now tendered for development of the early Universe, where, to
achieve presumed size, a source event, the Big Bang, was followed by huge inflationary
phenomena. Naturally the resemblance has limitations; for instance, universe inflation is not
terrestrially replicable in the way industrialization now is (hired or delivered off the shelf,
pollution problems and all, with a big price tag).
23
selectivity and care, but would sharply limit impacts of damaging technology and
industrialization. While there are such paradigms, on the ideas market, they mostly lack
sophisticated contemporary elaboration and they may be flawed in other respects. Examples of
more friendly paradigms, that do not lead of themselves to massive environmental problems
and crises conditions, include those now tabulated:
TABLE 3: Examples, some flawed, of environmentally friendly paradigms.
Oriental ideologies:
Taoism (classical)
recessive traditions,
now with tiny
followings and little
political influence.
Jainism
Indigenous cultures:
Australian Aboriginals (e.g. Aranda)
Amazonian Indians.
Western philosophies:
under certain
favourable
interpretations
old
Stoicism
new
Deep-green theories, such as deep ecology.
Given the remoteness of most of these examples from predominant contemporary life, and
difficulties with their wide adaptability, it is a short step to a familiar conclusion that new
paradigms need to be worked out soon. Much much more intellectual effort should be devoted
to such enterprise.
One upshot, then, is a rough classification of paradigms into two families, the second
large: environmentally friendly, and unfriendly. No doubt there is a small fuzzy residue class
lying between major unfriendly and friendly divisions.
Environmental friendliness means more or less what it appears to mean, what a functional
break-down into components would yield: friendliness in approaches, practices and attitudes, to
environments, especially more natural environments, with friendliness including, as usual,
goodwill and kindliness towards (and substantially displaceable by these). As indicated, such
friendliness concerns not merely actual practices, but also attitudes held, as reflected in what
would be done in certain other sorts of situations.
Certainly a culture that manifests
unfriendliness, as a sweep of Northern cultures do, is unfriendly. But, as well, various
“primitive” cultures, whose practices are not hostile, for example because they lack means or
resources, energy or health, may nonetheless be unfriendly; for instance all members of a
culture hold thoroughly negative attiudes which they are in fact unable to put into practice.
43
In logical terms neither, perhaps as well as another residue class, both.
24
It is not too difficult to explain in outline which paradigms will, if duly, diligently or
religiously practiced, lead to environmental problems and impasse.
Certain family
characteristics, of unfriendly paradigms are worth elaborating:
* Direct untoward effects, illustrated through Cartesianism and Confucianism.
More
generally, direct impact is illustrated by any idea-system which attributes little or no value to
natural items, and typically much value to nature transforming or interfering human (or elite)
projects, and whose themes are linked to practice. So it is with Confucianism, which is entirely
human focussed. ‘Centering his attention on man in his present life, Confucius had as his goal
the achievement of a good society characterized by harmonious social relations.’44 The outside
world, the natural environment, was of no moral significance. It mattered only instrumentally,
to humans. Descartes went further. Human bodies too were automata, complex machinery.
‘The exception is [znznJ, or specifically] thought, and its external manifestation language: this
alone cannot be explained mechanistically—a thesis which leads Descartes to assert a
fundamental divide between human beings and “the beasts’”.45 The remaining world, the
natural environment—lacking humanity, thought, mind—was again of no moral significance.
It possessed derivatively only what value and meaning humans, or minds, chose to confer or
project upon it, typically little or none.
Since, either way, any way, a natural environment devoid of humans has no thoughts,
purposes or interests, no value or meaning of its own, it could hardly matter what happens to it.
It could be regarded and treated, justifiably, as nothing but a reservoir of resources for humans.
Cartesians drew just such conclusions; similar conclusions derive, by one route or another from
Platonism and Pentecostalism, and are implicit at least in Confucianism. Descartes again went
further than some others. His practices and methods, like those of Bacon, were aimed at
making men the masters and possessors of nature’ .46
Untowards effects result through linkage of ideological theory to heavy practice. Link
principles, reminiscent of “correspondence rules” used in explaining applications of scientific
theories and normally included in comprehensive paradigms, connect the theoretic level to
practice, they also serve to activate otherwise inoperative or uncoupled paradigms. Such
principles may take the form of directives; familiar examples include maximization directives,
such as maximize personal fun, tribal utility, national interest, or state GNP.
* Indirect combination effects, illustrated through Leibnitzianism. Any which yield satisfaction
of all or enough elements of the consumption impact equation, and so would generate excessive
impacts. To illustrate, consider what might be called Leibnitzianism, in honour of Leibnitz’s
fragmentary ideology. Leibnitz was substantially committed to all of human population
44
45
46
Reese p.102 For much more on the geographic impact of Confucianism, as also compared with
other (Asian) paradigms, see Tuan’s investigations.
Cottingham p. 15. The utter invalidity of Descartes' argument (reported in Cottingham) to this
divide is now comparatively easy to expose, given almost 400 years of hindsight. There are no
such status divides—-just as flamboyant forms of deep ecology maintain.
See Descartes, Discourse VI.
25
growth, unfettered technological advance, and human lifestyles of consumption,47 in short, to
precisely those factors that combine in the impact recipe to produce excessive human impacts
upon environments. However neutral Leibnitz’s metaphysics, his monadology, may have
been—by contrast with Plato’s or Descartes’, both of which explicitly devalued much or all of
the natural world—Leibnitz’s wider ideology is linked indirectly, through impact equations, to
damaging effects.
Some imagine that this oblique formalistic detailing, through direct and indirect classes,
can be simply cut through, retaining plurality and so forth. Surely environmental friendliness is
nothing but environmental depth? While the suggestion points in the right sort of direction (for
the relevant sort of depth) it too is astray.48 Depth is neither necessary nor sufficient. Take the
move plausible sufficiency half, plausible because depth helps, no end. Nonetheless depth can
be achieved in macho ways (as ecofeminism has emphasized against deep ecology), ways
which may not be altogether friendly to less favoured species, groups or habitats. For example,
depth can be satisfied through due selection and support of some super species and magnificent
habitats—requisite environmental impartiality (and reflected justice), critical for friendliness as
intended, being neglected.49 Still less in depth necessary. For kindliness can, both in principle
and in practice, extend far beyond humans, still ranked top, to much more of “creation . Such
extensive kindliness, observed in some humanistic humans, appears to be exhibited in some
sects and tribes not committed to depth, and it could well be considerably more widespread,
under changed but not deepened ideological conditions. Naturally, however, deepening would
afford an obvious, and excellent, reason for change.
As friendliness is not tantamount to depth, nor similarly is a prime part of what explains
depth, recognition of intrinsic value in nature outside humans. Some animal liberationists who
display high regard for creatures with capacity to suffer, show little goodwill towards forests
largely unpopulated by such creatures. Conversely, though shifting ground, an environmentally
friendly society may hold that value is but an anthropocentric construct, merely projected onto a
basically neutral world.
All the same, aspects of depth are normally reliable indicators of environmental
sensitivity and friendliness, and inversely, aspects of shallowness (as investigated in authentic
deep ecology) marks of unfriendliness.
Shallowness will work out satisfactorily
environmentally only with what is now rare (given ideological dominance), a right mix of
humans; and its any longer working widely is implausible. These reliable marks include such
familiar features as
47
48
49
For requisite details, see Aiton. The case against Leibnitzianism is developed in a sequel.
As to the relevant sort of depth, see GE. Other accounts of depth are also preferred in deep
ecology, some of which relate to the present exercise. In particular deep questioning should lead
to paradigmatic roots, to Naess’s “total views”.
Herein lies another reason why something like biospecies egalitarianism is essential in deep
ecology; such a requirement needs, not dilution away (as has happened in American and
transpersonal deep ecology), but rectification.
26
* short-term framework.
* devaluation of natural items as against human elements or artefacts (typically exhibiting
human chauvinism); and, as a corollary of heavy devaluation,
* entitlement to domination, dominion ove’r nature;
* appropriation of nature, its conversion to property.
* maximization assumptions concerning personal or societal aggrandizement, utility and size,
coupled with grand projects.
* technofix approach to environmental problems.
Friendly paradigms will tend to invert these features. An environmentally friendly
paradigm can be expected to yield environmentally significant corollaries, such as the following
samples:
* an end to degrading primary production; instead ecological forestry and ecological
agriculture will come to prevail.
* a strong selectivity regarding industrialization, which weeds out damaging forms.
* a calling off of grand ideologically-grounded projects, interfering with or damaging natural
environments, such as major dams, river diversions, demolished islands (e.g. for airports), new
mountains, terraforming, extensive rainmaking, climatic interference, and generally the sweep
of “playing God” projects. A little of this sort of unfriendly technology can go a very long way.
As unfriendly paradigms are decidedly plural, so likewise are answers to questions as to
why agents adhere, or continue to adhere, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms. Some of
the diverse answers match answers already encountered in the main tabulation. Reasons are
psychological, social and cultural (with a familiar circularity here encountered), and include
considerations of the following sorts and others: because that is how things are done, or have
always been done; because needs can be met, perhaps only met, in that way, so it is believed;
because there are no alternatives, or none seen, perhaps because none have been sought;
because negative outcomes can be overcome, or do not really matter; and so on.
A short answer can now be ventured to the focal questions: Because, in one way or
another, most agents are bound to—locked into, committed to, captured by, or just passively go
along with—environmentally unfriendly paradigms. As a result the (long-term) health of the
rest of environments does not matter, or matter enough.
6. Glimpsing an entertaining corollary: an unfavourable report upon dominant
philosophy.
It will hardly have escaped notice that virtually all dominant philosophical roads lead to
Rome, to environmentally unfriendly paradigms.
Stripped of metaphor, there are
environmental conditions of adequacy, which most philosophical systems fail to meet. In an
environmentally friendly new world, most philosophy that is remembered, indeed most of the
humanities, is destined for scrapping. Prevailing philosophy is a serious impediment to
satisfactory environmental outcomes. Predominant philosophy, not just Western philosophy,
has by and large been bad environmental news.
27
It may be insisted that philosophy can make no difference, for instance to environmental
practice. It is not an expression of basic needs, or of any such practical matters. Exceptions to
such practical bravado have however to be recognised almost immediately; philosophy soon
enters for organizational, justificatory and explanatory ends. That concession still grossly
under-estimates the extent to which ideas, and more generally paradigms, influence and even
govern action and practice, especially reflective and rational action. The substantial point is not
therefore removed through any alleged practical impotence of philosophy.
Mainstream philosophy has supplied, or mightily assisted in supplying, dominant
unfriendly paradigms under which environments labour. Of course not everything has to be
trashed, as even defective enterprises or evil projects may include decent part or worthwhile
features; much can be salvaged, arguments, subtheories and so on (and with intellectual tipping
there need be little material waste). Nor therefore is it as if an entirely fresh start has to be
made. As well as salvaged bits and pieces (which need to be carefully tested for soundness),
there are brash new alternatives such as authentic deep ecology, and there are recessive
paradigms and neglected traditions to peruse for suggestions, for inspiration, and perhaps to
rehabilitate.
Richard Sylvan*
APPENDIX. On Shepard’s approach to focal questions.
A remarkably sustained investigation of the focal questions is found in Shepard s
intriguing books. In his Nature and Madness, he considers and quickly dismisses many of the
stock responses to focal questions suggested by contemporary luminaries (or by himself in
earlier work), such as lack of information, faulty technique, insensibility, greed, political
inertia, change to agriculture and settlement, 5<\.. . He would (and should, for his eliminative
argument) have also dismissed industrialization, state and corporate control, and so on.
More disconcertingly, for present purposes, Shepard claims that ‘a history of ideas’—
similarly no doubt a story of paradigms—will not serve; for it ‘is not enough to explain human
behaviour’ (p.3), it ‘seems too easy and academic’ (p.3), itself an easy and superficial criticism.
But if, for instance, the ‘dictum that nature should serve man’ and ‘insistence that animals feel
no pain’ should become widely entrenched, then they may well impact heavily on practice, as
accordingly appears to be the case. His slight further argument appears to miss the intended
An earlier, even rougher version of this article was presented at the Environmental Paradigms
Conference, University of New England, Armidale, April 1993. It would not have been written
without its solicitation for the Conference; also it might well not been thought through in
fashionable but confining and perhaps misleading paradigmatic terms.
A subsequent working draft has benefitted, slightly, from comments from very unimpressed
reviewers. Thanks certainly to Holmes Rolston for helpful comments.
No doubt a popular picture of human social changes with agriculture and settlement is simplistic:
that before societies lived in harmony, afterwards they did not. But it is also too simple to go on
to claim, as Shepard does, that ‘the economic and material demands of growing villages and
towns are ... not causes but results of this change’ (p.3). Some demands appear to derive from
factors, such as population pressures, which were among causes of the changes.
28
target: ‘The meticulous analysis of these philosophies and the discovery that they articulate an
ethos beg the question’ (p.3). How, it can reasonably be inquired? What is offered is but the
facile, false, ‘ideas are impotent’ consideration, fostered by thinking and operating in terms of
causes (e.g. lower p.3), rather than reasons and (rational) explanation, and encouraged through
an attempted move to (what is explanatorily inadequate) pure behaviour. For a simple example
of the familiar explanatory roles of ideas and paradigms, consider an alternative explanation
through them. The admittedly bizarre (“crazy”) ‘turning everything into something man-made
and [or] man-used’ (p.5) is readily explained through dominant paradigms: that is the way it
acquires value, otherwise it is worthless. There is no need at all for psychopathology here.
Correspondingly Shepard briefly reviews and rejects several of the very partial, and often
hopeless, solutions suggested under stock responses to focal questions such as making
information, or better information, more widely available, bringing people from all walks of life
together, encouraging conviviality, hitting problems with smart technology, practicing
conservation, and so on.
Shepard’s own resolution is more readily reached from a further (meta-focal) question
that he proceeds to ask: why do humans persist in degrading their habitats once sources and
solutions are made transparent? He effectively argues by elimination: other sources (read as
causes) do not succeed in providing an answer; but ‘the idea of a sick society’ (which he leaps
to, without argument, p.4) does. Wrong on both counts: On the first because a non-causal
explanation in terms of ideological wiring can provide answers (listen to politicians,
representative of the people, again, just a little time). On the second because some industrial
societies are not sick in a normal sense (though some may be), rather sickness has to be so
redefined (such low redefinitions are among underlying subplots51) that having certain
ideological commitments that are carried into practice counts as “sickness”.
So it is that Shepard arrives at his theme of ‘general, culturally-ratified distortions of
childhood, of massive disablement of ontogeny as the basis of irrational and self-destructive
attitudes towards the natural environment’ (p.ix). Succinctly, ‘there are profound psychic
dislocations at the root of modem society’ (p.xii). Psychic disorders have evolved: ‘over the
centuries major institutions and metaphysics might finally celebrate attitudes and ideas
originating in the normal context of immaturity [or]... adolescence ...’ (p. 15).
Having glided easily and invalidly to the idea of sick societies, in a mere three pages,
Shepard proceeds to diagnose in more detail the nature of the alleged sickness.52 It supposedly
arises, like other psychopathy with which it is immediately associated, in infancy, and is
51
52
For trickery through redefinition of sickness and madness, Wisdom has already prepared us.
Observe that Shepard’s redefinition of sickness to include sick (i.e. debasing and devaluing)
piactices with regard to natural habitats (and conjoined therewith, to, older people) does not
leave no contrast classes. For there remain benign ‘relic tribal’ societies, such as the Manus,
Crow and Comanche, Aranda and !Kung San (p.xii), ‘people who feel themselves to be guests
rather than masters' (p.6 empasis added)—an elegant analogy.
‘The idea of a sick society’, which as Shepard confesses (on p.4) is hardly new, is reached on the
third page of the main text.
29
manifest in life-long immaturity, with whole societies stuck in a kind of destructive
adolescence. No doubt there is something to some of what Shepard describes in child and
person development (not the ‘private demons’ and so on) or might well have described. There
is evidently, conspicuously in “new world” societies, wide commitment to a shallow juvenile
culture, adulation or imitation of immature media and sport models and flawed authority
figures, marginalization of the elderly, and so on, coupled with hyper-activity, violence and
vandalism. But, like political commitment to extensive economic activity, this is hardly
satisfactorily accounted for through psychopathological reduction, concentrating the whole
social problematic in the ontogeny of individuals.55 A superior explanation to widespread
individual psychic disorder proceeds through ideological commitment, that industrial humans
are raised and educated in, inducted into and committed to, defective ideologies, without
coming to know or properly experience alternatives.
The ‘portraits of maturity’ alluded to likewise appear individualistic and culture-bound,
resembling those of deep ecology, directed at embroidery of person and self, through personal
growth and identity, wider identification and relatedness, self-realization.*
54 They are not
exactly those of older and ecologically wiser societies. They do not reveal ecologically mature
mixed communities.
Furthermore, comparisons with relic tribal societies, which are important, can be
decoupled from psychopathological analysis and reduction. Different lifeways, commitments
and ideologies, are what they are and do not all reduce to matters of mental health.
Undoubtedly we can learn of and from these different societies. We can still witness smallgroup, leisured, foraging life-ways with[in] natural surroundings. ... there is the rub—... for us,
now, that world no longer exists’ (p.14 rearranged). Nor is it really true that such a world is no
longer accessible to most of us; more leisured small-group ways can be retrieved, some natural
surrounding can even now be restored.
In a curious fashion, Shepard has managed to invert likely causal relations. While a
certain interaction can no doubt be conceded, it is not so much human ill-health that is leading
to environmental degradation, but rather environmental degradation, generally brought about
for other reasons, that is increasingly leading to human ill-health, and in the longer term causing
erosion of life-support systems.
55
54
A psychopathic reduction is in part made plausible by reexpression in medical or psychological
terms of what would better be otherwise expressed. Consider, for instance the language of the
following clever paragraph, which infiltrates much with no argument:
. ‘The person himself is, of course, caught between his inner calendar and the surgeries of
society. His momentum for further growth may be twisted or amputated according to the
hostilities, fears, or fantasies required of him, as his retardation is silently engineered to
domesticate his integrity or to allow him to share in the collective dream of mastery (p.16).
But the trapping of agents between inner directives and social conditions and demands, or
between rival ideologies, can be retold in different, less medical and metaphorical terms.
Cf pp.12-14. Likewise there is a conservative underlay, more oppressive than that of deep
ecology: insistence on ‘one particular mother’ (p.7) even suggestion of unsatisfactoriness in
‘taking mothers off to work’ (p. 15)!
30
REFERENCES
E.J. Aiton, Leibnitz A Biography, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1985.
R. Attfield, ‘Has the history of philosophy ruined the environment?’ Environmental Ethics
13(1991) 127-137.
R. Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, Second edition, University of Georgia Press,
Athens, 1991.
A. Bellett, ‘The evaluation of values compatible with ecological sustainability’, Fundamental
Questions Papers, No.2, CRES, Australian National University, 1990.
J.B. Callicott and R.T. Ames (eds), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, SUNY Press,
Albany NY., 1989.
J. Callicott, ‘Genesis and John Muir’ ReVision 12(3) (1990) 31-41.
R. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing, Harvester Press, Sussex, 1982.
J. Cottingham, The Rationalists, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.
C. Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, Revised edition by V.G. Carter, University of Oklahama
Press, Norman, 1974.
A Dobson (ed.), Green Reader, Routledge, London, 1991?
A. Drengson, ‘Ecosophy’, Positive Vibrations, (1990?) 8-10.
R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory, UCL Press, London, 1992.
W. Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology, Shambala, Boston, 1990.
A. Gare, Beyond European Civilization, Eco-logical Press, Bungendore, 1993.
C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967.
R. Goodin, ‘Selling environmental indulgences’, Kyklos 47(1994) 573-596.
N. R. Hanson, Patterns of discovery: an inquiry into conceptual foundations of science,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1958.
E. C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1989.
D Hillel, Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil., Free Press, Macmillan, 1991.
M. Jacobs, The Green Economy, Pluto, London, 1991.
K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy, Harmondsworth,
England 1973.
F. Mathews, The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991.
A. McLaughlin, Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology , SUNY Press, Albany
N. Y., 1993.
P. Marshall, Nature’s Web, in two editions, Simon and Schuster, 1992 and 1993.
A. Naess and D. Rothenberg, Ecology, community and Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1989.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974.
D. Pearce and others, Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan Publications, London, 1989.
D. Pepper, The Roots of Modem Environmentalism, Ed: Tom Colveson London; Dover N.H.
Croom Helm 1984.
31
V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge, London, 1993.
C. Ponting, A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991.
R. Routley, ‘Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action’, Discussion
papers in environmental philosophy #1, RSSS, Australian National University, 1982; also,
modified, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. R. Elliot and A. Gare), University of Queensland
Press, Brisbane, 1983; referred to as RP.
C. O. Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersal, American Geographical Society, New York,
1952.
P. Singer, Practical Ethics, expanded edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.
P. Shepard, Nature and Madness, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1982.
R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994;
referred to as GE.
R. Sylvan with D. Bennett, Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series #19, RSSS
Australian National University, 1990; referred to as UTD.
The Wildlands Project, World Earth, special issue, Canton NY, 1993.
Y.F. Tuan, ‘Discrepancies between environmental attitude and behaviour: examples from
Europe and China’, The Canadian Geographer 12(1968) 176-91.
S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982.
L. White Jr., ‘Historic roots of our ecologic crisis’, Science 155(1967) 1203-7.
J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Blackwell, Oxford, 1953.
M. Zimmerman and others (eds.), Environmental Philosophy, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1993; referred
to as EP3.
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IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW, AN ENVIRONMENTAL, ETHIC?
Richard Routley (Australia)
§ 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new
ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's relations to the natural environ
ment, in Leopold’s words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and
plants which grow upon it' (| 1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling ethics do not deal
with man’s relation to nature: they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as
he pleases, i.e. his relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect others, are not subject
to moral censure. Thus assertions such as ‘Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees’ are
significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with
others, they are false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.1 It is to
this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex
ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing
views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is
beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void. If Leopold is right in his criticism of prevailing conduct
what is required is a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations. For as matters stand,
as he himself-explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not
taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the
woods ofTa 75% slope, turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into
the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society.’ (UJ), p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be
accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a
new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing it is none too clear what is
going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics
counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics
may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a
1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits
2 To the consternation nodoubt of Quineans But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary
systems the identity of which may be indeterminate
205
�single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilisation: on many issues, and especially on
controversial issues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin
ciples. Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a
uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
Indeed Passmore (in [21) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfcctor. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is
another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according
to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the
mainstream Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental
ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious
backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference,
whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth’s surface should be preserv
ed from substantial human interference, whether of the “improving” sort or not. Both traditions
would in fact prefer to see the earth’s land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and com
fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man’s proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature — all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; while on
the stewardship view man’s role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his
efforts though not by means that will deliberately degrade its resources. Although these positions
both depart from the dominant position in a way which enables the incorporation of some
evaluations of an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible farmer, they
do not go far enough: for in the present situation of expanding populations confined to finite
natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a
principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used3 for
human ends, “humanized”.
As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that
such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so
straightforward; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is not
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such
proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assump
tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have
supplanted the dominant position; and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further
towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer’s polluting of a community stream may
be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream. Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory
returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the
sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The posi
tion may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa
tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted.
2. -A^ we noticed-(an) ethic is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a specific ethic,
and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S
3 If ‘use’ is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least
as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use principle is tied to the resource view of nature
4 A meta-ethic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions
206
�'^"es
- a( SeS’a,Pr0pos^r th«>ry whlch in.
is, near enough, a proposit1or ., ~"f'm (1.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in--.:ludes ( like individuals of a th• . a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set
° of general
or to‘other
he^er conduct.
to verselytypically
to its of
thers
obligatory,
or isonf
? applypermissible
n’ untableand wrong,
what
concern,n~
evaluativeOnjudgements
of what are rights, what is valued, and !>O forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a
principle; and certainly if systems S, and S2 contain _different principles, then they are different
systems. It follows that any en\llnnmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlined. Moreover if environmental ethic5 lifTer from Western ethical systems on some core principle
embedded in Western systems, then ,hese systems differ from the Western super ethic (assurring,
what seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environmental
ethic is needed t!ien a new ethic is wanted It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environmental count,·r examples to 1t.
It 1s commonly assumed that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western ethical
systems. principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed
in the Golden Ruk I w ,des one example. Directly relevant here. as a good stab at a core principle.
is the com111unli, formulated liberal principle 0f the moqified flominan"-,~siti on..A recent for-""•..._ ,/c,.,.M,....,,, ~ lo/,'/
mulation~ runs a, follows ( 131, p. 58}:
'The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that one should be able to do what he
wishes, providing ( I) that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not hkel 1 to harm himself
irreparably.'
Let us call this prmciple basic (/Funan) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people,
come fir~t and everything else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom
principle because it gives perm1ss10n to perform a wide range of actions (including actions which
mess up the environment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to
cunningly shift the onus of proof to others. It is wortti remarking that harming others in the restriction is narrower than a rc,tnction tu the I usual) interests of others; it is not enough that 1t is in my
interests, because I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being
anywa~ because 1t does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to e~actly what counts
as harm or interference. Moreover the width of the pnnciple is so far obscure because 'other' ma~
be filled out in significantly diffen:nt 11, ays. it makes a difference to the e,itent, and pri, ilege, of the
chauvinism whether 'other' expands to ·other human' - which is too restrictive - or to 'other'peradequacy
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others,
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It ysK" ^nled in des<gning anaJ ).
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« u,,, ,k 1 -1/.'l;· nr
semantical
workable, and it is generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others.
,(
.,
■ „di examples to basic chauvinist principles, that a
It is taken for granted in designing counter
·~ .....-<;,_
semantical analysis of permissibility and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations , ... ~#...
ideal
some
in
(which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds
situation, what is obligatory in every id.:al situation, and what is wrong is excluded in every ideal
situation. But the mam point to grasp for the counter example\ that follow, is that ethical principles
if correct are universal and are assessed over the class of ideal situations.
-(i) The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system
lays about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if
you like, as a• the best abattoirs). What he doc~ 1s quite permissible according to ba 1c chauvinism,
but on environmental ground~ what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to regard Mr Last Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that raof corresponding
in' advance
dical thinking and values have shifted in an environmental
usurne direction ’’
^""oplos
shifts in the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles}.
(ii) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example.
We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation
effects have blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rul!! out
«rcorre
p„
that what these people do harms or somehow physically interferes with later people.
the spossibility
Otherwise one could as well 1..ons1der science fiction cases where peoole arrive at a new planet and
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207
207
WIMI iWlliMMW-l-i
�destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild
animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation,
and all remaining forests disappear in favour of quarries or plantations, and so on. They may give
various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they
are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or
occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an en
vironmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; they have simplified and largely destroyed
all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wreck
ed place. But this conduct may conform with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the
principles enjoined by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or co
operation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the
basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last
people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons”, the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and
farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable
and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture
and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of
course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is
improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since he
much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur’s behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better off’.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this ex
ample to the industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours.
(iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic pic
ture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up
set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist: nor need whale hun
ting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the
blue whale example are provided by cases where a species is eliminated or threatened through
destruction of its habitat by man’s activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The behaviour of the whalers in
eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite permissible-at least according to
basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not. However the free-market mechanism will
not cease allocating whale^ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics
would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the
blue whale population is no longer viable—if that point has not already been passed.
In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment is more narrowly
circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren’t en
vironmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respected in
dustrialists, fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading ac
tivities of the sort described, in a morally impermissible way ? No. what these people do is to a
greater or lesser extent evil, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible. For example, insofar
as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who stand in the way of an industrial
development is morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is the slaughter of the last remain
ing blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvinism as a satisfactory
6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in 131
�2^°;™ pn"c,p e ls 3 morc d,flku11 matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be
made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by
the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude speciepide. It may be
preferable, m view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof, simply to scrap it
altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct, as in a bill of rights.
rei2tsArhadRaJ change-ri" a ^eory some,,mcs forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which
jects the Reference Theory tn 4 thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for
logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a
meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmen
tally important notions, such as conservation, pollution, growth and preservation, for meta-ethical
analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such
characteristic actions as natural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and per
missibility to rights; it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as
\alue and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejec
tion of many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a verv
brie! examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some
major positions,7
Hart (in |5|) accepts, subject to defeating conditions which are here irrelevant, the classical
doctrine of natural rights according to which, among other things, ‘any adult human ... capable of
choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons’. But this sufficient condition for a
human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an environmental
ethic rejects, since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the definition of a natural
right adopted by classical theorists and accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes
the same defective principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right, a far from straight forward matter now that human rights with
respect to animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect to slaves not all that
long ago, undergoing major re-evaluation.
An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees
have rights (though such a view is occasionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since
artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object
do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or
piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right not to be
mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with
mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and
so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever
has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has in
terests. Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can
(significantly) have rights, and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have
rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth, to practically
anything at all.
r
J
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of
conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions
typica ly employ a single criterion p. such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum;
characteristically each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps including
future humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of afTairs, of
the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual prankings, and what is best or ought to be done is determined either directly, as
in act-utilitarianism under the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism,
in terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking. The species bias is
transparent from the selection of the base class. And even if the base class is extended to embrace
persons, or even some animals (at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
P°’ntS arC deVdOped by thOSC protcstin« about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays
�testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that the whole of the base class may
be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust principles. For example if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes’ behaviour, then by the Pareto
ranking test the collective ranking will rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly,
from which it will generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the evaluation of
most Australian farmers anyway). Likewise it would just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective
demand (horizontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy with blue
whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in
the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
‘‘rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the
blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi
sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for
deciding on what is environmentally desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not alone in their species chauvinism; much the
same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer
some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a
matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the base class; on a social justice picture rights
and obligations spring from the application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the
~^^base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on a Kantian position which has some
* v^gue obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the base class, persons. In each case
if members of the base class happen to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class then that is
too bad for them: that is (rough) justice.
REFERENCES
1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966).
2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished).
3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the
Problem, New York (1972).
4. S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), Animals, Men and Morals. An enquiry into the maltreatment
of non-humans, London (1971).
5. H.L.A.Hart, ‘Are there any natural rights?’, reprinted in A.Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy, Oxford
(1967).
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IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW, AN ENVIRONMENTAL, ETHIC?
Richard Routley (Australia)
§ 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new
ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's relations to the natural environ
ment, in Leopold's words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and
plants which grow upon it’ ([1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling ethics do not deal
with man's relation to nature: they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as
he pleases, i.e. his relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect others, are not subject
to moral censure. Thus assertions such as ‘Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees’ are
significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with
others, they are false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.1 It is to
this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex
ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing
views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is
beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void. If Leopold is right in his criticism of prevailing conduct
what is required is a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations. For as matters stand,
as he himself explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not
taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the
woods off a 75% slope,turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall,rocks, andsoil into
the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society.’ ([1]), p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be
accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a
new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing it is none too clear what is
going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics
counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics
may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a
1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits
2 To the consternation .nodoubt of Quineans. But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary
systems the identity of which may be indeterminate
205
�is, near enough: ~ propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which includes ( like md1v1duals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general
evaluative Ju~gements co~cermng conduct, typically of what is obligatory, permissible and wrong
of_ what ~re rights, what _is valued, and so forth. A ~eneral or lawlike proposition of a system is ~
prmc1ple, and certainly 1f syst~ms S, and S2 contam different principles, then they are different
systems. It foll?ws t~at any environmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlined. Moreo~er 1f environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principle
embedded m Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming
wh~t _seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environm~ntai
eth1_c 1s needed then a new ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environmental counter examples to it.
It is com_monly assu_med that_ there are. what amount to, core principles of Western ethical
~ystems, principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed
~n the Golden Rule provides o~e example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core principle,
ts the . commonly formulated hberal pnnc1ple of the modified dominance position .. A recent for: · " • "'• ,;, /'' /,'. /
~·- - ·· ..._
mulation 5 runs as follows ( [ 3 I, p. 58):
. 'The liberal philosophy of the Wes tern world holds that one should be able to do what he
wishes, prov1dmg ( 1) that he d0es not harm orhers and (2) that he is not likely to harm himself
irreparably.'
Let us call this principle basic (human) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people.
co_me_ first and everyt_hmg else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom
pnnc1ple becaus~ 1t gives perm1ss1on to perform a wide range of actions (including actio.ns which
mess_ up the ~nv1ronment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to
c_unn_mgly shift the onus of pro?fto others. It is worth remarking that harming others in the restrict10n 1s narrower than a restnct1on to the (usual) interests of others; it is not enough that it is in my
mterests, because. I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being
anyway, because 1t does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to exactly what counts
as harm or mter_ference. Mor~over the width of the principle is so far obscure because 'other' may
be fill~d. out m s1gmficantly different ways: it makes a difference to the e~tent, and privilege, of the
cha~vm1s~ whe~her '.other' _ex~ands to 'other human' - which is too restrictive - or to 'other'person or to _other sent1~nt be1~g ; and 1t mak~s a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its economic apphcab1hty, to which class of others it is intended to apply whether to
future as well as to present others, whether to remote future others or only to non-discountable
future others, a?d. whether to possible others. The latter would make the principle completely unworkable, and 1t 1s generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others. ' //4-_ ItIt_ is taken for granted. in_ d_e_signing counter examples to basic chauvinist principles, that a ....,. /..~..., . (
sem_antical analysis of perm1ss1b1hty and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations r.,.·-=-"'t.. :.;1 -c.:
, · ~/:_
(".~-htch may be mcon:iplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some ideal
ideal
every
in
s1tuat10n, what 1s obl_1gato_ry in every ideal situation, and what is wrong is excluded
~1tuat10n. But the_mam pomt to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles
· t·
1f correct are umversal and are assessed over the class of I·deal s1tua
ions.
(') Th z
collapse of the world system
the
1
_survi~ing
perso~)
(or
man
e as_t ma~ e~a~ple. The last
lays ~bout him, ehmmatmg, ~s far as he can, e~ery !tvmg th_mg, animal or plant (but painlessly if
iou hke, a~ at the best abattoirs). What he does 1s qmte permissible according to basic chauvinism
ut on envir?nmental grounds what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be commit~
~~d \o e~ot~nc values to regard M'.. Las_t Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that ra~cfa th mkmg a nd val~es have shifted m an environmental direction in advance of corresponding
s .. 1 ts m the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
(u) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example.
We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation
effects h_a~~ blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rule out
~e pos~1b1hty that what these pe~ple d~ harms or somehow physically interferes with later people.
therwise one could as well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet and
single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on
controversial issues such as infanticide, women's rights and drugs, there are competing sets of principles. Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a
uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
Indeed Passmore (in [2]) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man's relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is
another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according
to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the
mainstream Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental
ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious
backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference,
whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserved from substantial human interference, whether of the "improving" sort or not. Both traditions
would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and comfortable north-Europea n small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man's proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; while on
the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his
efforts though not by means that will deliberately degrade its resources. Although these positions
both depart from the dominant position in a way which enables the incorporation of some
evaluations of an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible farmer, they
do not go far enough: for in the present situation of expanding populations confined to finite
natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a
3
principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used for
human ends, "humanized".
As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that
such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so
straightforwa rd; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is riot
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such
proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assumption). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for m~ny thinkers, to have
supplanted the dominant position; and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further
towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer's polluting of a community stream may
be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream. Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory
returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the
sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The position may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situation excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted.
a ~pecific ethic,
/§ 2. -As. we noticed----(a~ ethic is ambi~uous, as bet_ween a specifi~ ethical system,
and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S
./
3 If 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least
as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use p1 inciple is tied to the resource view of nature
4-A meta-elhic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions
5 A related principle is that (modified) free c.1tcrprise can operate
I
il
11 ,·thi'n
s· -1 1- •
1m1 ar 1m11s
207
�destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild
ar,imal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation,
and all ~emaining forests disappear in favour of quarries or plantations, and so on. They may give
various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they
are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or
occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an environmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; they have simplified and largely destroyed
all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wrecked place. But this conduct may conform with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the
principles enjoined ·by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or cooperation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the
basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last
people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of reasons", the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and
farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable
and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture
and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of
course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is
improving outpJt to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since h~
much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being "better off'.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this example to the industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours.
(iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic picture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hunting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the
blue whale example are provided by cases where a species is eliminated or threatened through
destruction of its habitat by man's activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The l?ehaviour of the whalers in
eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accqrdingly quite permissible-at least according to
basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not. However the free-market mechanism will
not cease allocating whal~[~ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental econo_mics
would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the
blue whale population is no longer viable-if that point has not already been passed.
In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment _is more narrowly
circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren't environmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respe~ted industrialists fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of ;he sort described, in a morally impermissible way~ No, what these people do _is to a
greater or lesser extent evil, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible. For exampl_e, mso~ar
as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who stand in the way of an mdustnal
development is morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is _the slau~hter of the last_ remaining blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvm1sm as a satisfactory
6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in [31
freedom principle is a more difficult matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be
made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by
the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude specieside. It may be
preferable , in view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof. simply to scrap it
altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct. as in a bill of rights.
§ 3. A radical change in a {eory sometimes forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which
rejects the Reference Theory in a thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for
logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a
meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmentally important notions, such as conservation, pollu1io11, growth and presen•atio11,for meta-ethical
analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such
characteristic actions as na1ural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and permissibility to rights: it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as
i-alue and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejection o [ many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a very
brief examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some
major positions. 7
Hart (in I 5]) accepts. subject to defeating conditions which are here irrelevant, the classical
doctrine of natural rights according to which. among other things, 'any adult human . .. capable of
choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons'. But this sufficient condition for a
human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an em iron mental
ethic rt::jects, since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the deflni1io11 of a natural
right adopted by classical theorists and accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes
the same defective principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right. a far from straight forward matter now that human rights with
rcspc:ct to animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect to slaves not all that
lon g ago, undergoing major re-evaluation.
An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees
have rights (though such a view is occa~ionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since
artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object
do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or
piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right n_ot to _be
mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with
mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and
so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever
has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has interests . Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can
(significantly) have rights. and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have
rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth. to practically
anything at all.
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of
conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions
typically employ a single criterion p, such as preference or happiness, as a summ.um_ bonu_m;
characteristically each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps mcludmg
future humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, 6f
the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual prankings, and what is best or ought to be done is determined either_ ~ire~tl~, as
in act-utilitarianism under the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, asin rule-ut1lttanantsm,
in terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking. The species bias is
transparent from the selection of the base class. And even if the base class is extended to embr~ce
persons. or even some animals (at the cost. like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
1 Some of thes< points arc developed by those protesting about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays
collec!ed in I 4 I
9
~
iii
208
WJ 6
14
209
�testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that the whole of the base class may
be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust principles. For example if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes’ behaviour, then by the Pareto
ranking test the collective ranking will rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly,
from which it will generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the evaluation of
most Australian farmers anyway). Likewise it would just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective
demand (horizontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy with blue
whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in
the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
“rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the
blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi
sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for
deciding on what is environmentally desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not alone in their species chauvinism; much the
same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer
some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a
matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the base class; on a social justice picture rights
and obligations spring from the application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the
_base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on a Kantian position which has some
v v^gue obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the base class, persons. In each case
if members of the base class happen to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class then that is
too bad for them: that is (rough) justice.
REFERENCES
1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966).
2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished).
3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the
Problem, New York (1972).
4. S. and R.Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), A nimals, Men and Morals. An enquiry into the maltreatment
of non-humans, London (1971).
5. H.L.A.Hart, ‘Are there any natural rights?’, reprinted in A.Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy, Oxford
(1967).
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it is none loo clear what is
going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics
counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or al all well worked out. so that the application of identity criteria foi ethics
may remain obscure. Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical sy stems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christen ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two,.other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethicszor that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the /?<rf
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single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on
ckd«°T^a *ssues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin
S’ T.
? nCW e^h‘C and Prevai,ln8 ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a
uniformity that prevathng ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
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Indeed Passmore (in |2|) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is
another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.-31
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The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according
to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the
mainstream Stoic^— Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental
ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious
backdrop is removeej, eg. vv/zo is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with a ^environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference,
whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth’s surface should be presen
ed from substantial human interference, whether of the “improving” sort or not. Both traditions
would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and com
fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man’s proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect galiye - all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being
^usefulness for.human purposes: while on
the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his
efforts though not by means that will deliberately degrade its resources./ '7Zu^ /fate-
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principle of total use,imping that every r-turJl X
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<»e pr , pie is tied to the resource view of nature ,
�such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or’romantic, would be new aljigjiu The matter is r
straightforward: for the dominant.ethic has been substantial!v uuaiitle^y the n&er that one is not
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically int^Tes \0tn peers'.
7
> proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the Goiyuuterference assump
tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have
supplanted the dominant position: and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further
'* towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer's polluting of a community stream may
be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream. Likewise business enterprises which, destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory
returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the
sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [31) that blends with the modified position;
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. may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa
tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I ^vall
A new ethic is wanted,
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is, near‘enough, a propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in
dudes (like individuals of a theory > a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general
evaluative judgements concerning conduct, typically of what is obligators permissible and wrong.'x* !
of what are rights, what is valued, and so forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a \
principle; and certamlv if systems S, and S2contain different principles, then they are different
systems. It follows that anv en onmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlin
ed. Moreover if environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principlaJL
embedded in Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming. I
what seems to be so. that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environmental
ethic /s needed then a new- ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environ mental counter examples to it z
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are' w^at amount to, core principles of Western ethicaSR
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m the Golden Rule provides one example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core^&iple '
is the commonly formulated liberal principle
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wh,chu’s t0° r^<ttive or Mother per
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future as well as present other" whether to r '55 ,° r°therS “?
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obhgatio/falementsjstretc^. out over ideal mInations•
(which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some idefl^fe
situation, what is obligatory in every ideal situation, and what is wrong is excluded in every ideal ' ■
situation. But the main point to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles
if correct are universal and are assessed over the class of ideal situations. ZSl ezn^Tfez-
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(i) ’ The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system
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eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if
you like, as at the best abattoirs). What he does is quite permissible according to
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but on environmental grounds what he does is wrong. Moreover pne d^gsjtot have to Ke commit
ted to esoteric values to regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly, (the reason l^eing^crhapsthatra
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(ii) The last people example. The last man example can be
. to the last people example.
We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation
effects have blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rule out
the possibility that what these people do harms or somehow physically interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet and
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�destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild
animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, "
and all remaining forests disappear in favour ofpatfuM or plantations, and so on. They may give
various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they
are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or
occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an en
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they have simplified and largely destroyed
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effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last
people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons’", the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and
farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable
and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture
and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of
course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is
improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since he
much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better ofT’.
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on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up
set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hun
ting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the
blue w'hale example are provided by cases where a speues is eliminated or threatened through
destruction of its habitat by man’s activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The behaviour of the whalers in
eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite permissible-at least according to
basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not However the free-market mechanism will
not cease allocating whale$ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics I
would; instead the market r
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IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW, AN ENVIRONMENTAL, ETHIC?
Richard Routley (Australia)
§ 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new
ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's relations to the natural environ
ment, in Leopold’s words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and
plants which grow upon it' (| 1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling ethics do not deal
with man’s relation to nature: they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as
he pleases, i.e. his relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect others, are not subject
to moral censure. Thus assertions such as ‘Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees’ are
significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with
others, they are false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.1 It is to
this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex
ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing
views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is
beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void. If Leopold is right in his criticism of prevailing conduct
what is required is a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations. For as matters stand,
as he himself-explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not
taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the
woods ofTa 75% slope, turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into
the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society.’ (UJ), p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be
accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a
new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing it is none too clear what is
going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics
counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics
may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a
1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits
2 To the consternation nodoubt of Quineans But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary
systems the identity of which may be indeterminate
205
single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilisation: on many issues, and especially on
controversial issues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin
ciples. Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a
uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
Indeed Passmore (in [21) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfcctor. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is
another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according
to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the
mainstream Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental
ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious
backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference,
whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth’s surface should be preserv
ed from substantial human interference, whether of the “improving” sort or not. Both traditions
would in fact prefer to see the earth’s land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and com
fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man’s proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature — all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; while on
the stewardship view man’s role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his
efforts though not by means that will deliberately degrade its resources. Although these positions
both depart from the dominant position in a way which enables the incorporation of some
evaluations of an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible farmer, they
do not go far enough: for in the present situation of expanding populations confined to finite
natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a
principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used3 for
human ends, “humanized”.
As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that
such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so
straightforward; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is not
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such
proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assump
tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have
supplanted the dominant position; and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further
towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer’s polluting of a community stream may
be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream. Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory
returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the
sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The posi
tion may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa
tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted.
2. -A^ we noticed-(an) ethic is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a specific ethic,
and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S
3 If ‘use’ is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least
as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use principle is tied to the resource view of nature
4 A meta-ethic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions
206
'^"es
- a( SeS’a,Pr0pos^r th«>ry whlch in.
is, near enough, a proposit1or ., ~"f'm (1.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in--.:ludes ( like individuals of a th• . a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set
° of general
or to‘other
he^er conduct.
to verselytypically
to its of
thers
obligatory,
or isonf
? applypermissible
n’ untableand wrong,
what
concern,n~
evaluativeOnjudgements
of what are rights, what is valued, and !>O forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a
principle; and certainly if systems S, and S2 contain _different principles, then they are different
systems. It follows that any en\llnnmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlined. Moreover if environmental ethic5 lifTer from Western ethical systems on some core principle
embedded in Western systems, then ,hese systems differ from the Western super ethic (assurring,
what seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environmental
ethic is needed t!ien a new ethic is wanted It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environmental count,·r examples to 1t.
It 1s commonly assumed that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western ethical
systems. principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed
in the Golden Ruk I w ,des one example. Directly relevant here. as a good stab at a core principle.
is the com111unli, formulated liberal principle 0f the moqified flominan"-,~siti on..A recent for-""•..._ ,/c,.,.M,....,,, ~ lo/,'/
mulation~ runs a, follows ( 131, p. 58}:
'The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that one should be able to do what he
wishes, providing ( I) that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not hkel 1 to harm himself
irreparably.'
Let us call this prmciple basic (/Funan) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people,
come fir~t and everything else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom
principle because it gives perm1ss10n to perform a wide range of actions (including actions which
mess up the environment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to
cunningly shift the onus of proof to others. It is wortti remarking that harming others in the restriction is narrower than a rc,tnction tu the I usual) interests of others; it is not enough that 1t is in my
interests, because I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being
anywa~ because 1t does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to e~actly what counts
as harm or interference. Moreover the width of the pnnciple is so far obscure because 'other' ma~
be filled out in significantly diffen:nt 11, ays. it makes a difference to the e,itent, and pri, ilege, of the
chauvinism whether 'other' expands to ·other human' - which is too restrictive - or to 'other'peradequacy
toCthe
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others,
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semantical
workable, and it is generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others.
,(
.,
■ „di examples to basic chauvinist principles, that a
It is taken for granted in designing counter
·~ .....-<;,_
semantical analysis of permissibility and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations , ... ~#...
ideal
some
in
(which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds
situation, what is obligatory in every id.:al situation, and what is wrong is excluded in every ideal
situation. But the mam point to grasp for the counter example\ that follow, is that ethical principles
if correct are universal and are assessed over the class of ideal situations.
-(i) The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system
lays about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if
you like, as a• the best abattoirs). What he doc~ 1s quite permissible according to ba 1c chauvinism,
but on environmental ground~ what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to regard Mr Last Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that raof corresponding
in' advance
dical thinking and values have shifted in an environmental
usurne direction ’’
^""oplos
shifts in the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles}.
(ii) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example.
We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation
effects have blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rul!! out
«rcorre
p„
that what these people do harms or somehow physically interferes with later people.
the spossibility
Otherwise one could as well 1..ons1der science fiction cases where peoole arrive at a new planet and
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207
207
WIMI iWlliMMW-l-i
destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild
animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation,
and all remaining forests disappear in favour of quarries or plantations, and so on. They may give
various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they
are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or
occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an en
vironmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; they have simplified and largely destroyed
all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wreck
ed place. But this conduct may conform with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the
principles enjoined by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or co
operation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the
basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last
people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons”, the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and
farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable
and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture
and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of
course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is
improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since he
much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur’s behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better off’.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this ex
ample to the industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours.
(iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic pic
ture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up
set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist: nor need whale hun
ting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the
blue whale example are provided by cases where a species is eliminated or threatened through
destruction of its habitat by man’s activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The behaviour of the whalers in
eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite permissible-at least according to
basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not. However the free-market mechanism will
not cease allocating whale^ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics
would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the
blue whale population is no longer viable—if that point has not already been passed.
In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment is more narrowly
circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren’t en
vironmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respected in
dustrialists, fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading ac
tivities of the sort described, in a morally impermissible way ? No. what these people do is to a
greater or lesser extent evil, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible. For example, insofar
as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who stand in the way of an industrial
development is morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is the slaughter of the last remain
ing blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvinism as a satisfactory
6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in 131
2^°;™ pn"c,p e ls 3 morc d,flku11 matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be
made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by
the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude speciepide. It may be
preferable, m view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof, simply to scrap it
altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct, as in a bill of rights.
rei2tsArhadRaJ change-ri" a ^eory some,,mcs forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which
jects the Reference Theory tn 4 thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for
logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a
meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmen
tally important notions, such as conservation, pollution, growth and preservation, for meta-ethical
analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such
characteristic actions as natural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and per
missibility to rights; it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as
\alue and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejec
tion of many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a verv
brie! examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some
major positions,7
Hart (in |5|) accepts, subject to defeating conditions which are here irrelevant, the classical
doctrine of natural rights according to which, among other things, ‘any adult human ... capable of
choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons’. But this sufficient condition for a
human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an environmental
ethic rejects, since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the definition of a natural
right adopted by classical theorists and accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes
the same defective principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right, a far from straight forward matter now that human rights with
respect to animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect to slaves not all that
long ago, undergoing major re-evaluation.
An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees
have rights (though such a view is occasionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since
artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object
do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or
piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right not to be
mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with
mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and
so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever
has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has in
terests. Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can
(significantly) have rights, and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have
rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth, to practically
anything at all.
r
J
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of
conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions
typica ly employ a single criterion p. such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum;
characteristically each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps including
future humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of afTairs, of
the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual prankings, and what is best or ought to be done is determined either directly, as
in act-utilitarianism under the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism,
in terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking. The species bias is
transparent from the selection of the base class. And even if the base class is extended to embrace
persons, or even some animals (at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
P°’ntS arC deVdOped by thOSC protcstin« about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays
testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that the whole of the base class may
be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust principles. For example if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes’ behaviour, then by the Pareto
ranking test the collective ranking will rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly,
from which it will generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the evaluation of
most Australian farmers anyway). Likewise it would just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective
demand (horizontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy with blue
whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in
the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
‘‘rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the
blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi
sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for
deciding on what is environmentally desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not alone in their species chauvinism; much the
same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer
some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a
matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the base class; on a social justice picture rights
and obligations spring from the application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the
~^^base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on a Kantian position which has some
* v^gue obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the base class, persons. In each case
if members of the base class happen to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class then that is
too bad for them: that is (rough) justice.
REFERENCES
1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966).
2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished).
3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the
Problem, New York (1972).
4. S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), Animals, Men and Morals. An enquiry into the maltreatment
of non-humans, London (1971).
5. H.L.A.Hart, ‘Are there any natural rights?’, reprinted in A.Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy, Oxford
(1967).
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IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW, AN ENVIRONMENTAL, ETHIC?
Richard Routley (Australia)
§ 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new
ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's relations to the natural environ
ment, in Leopold's words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and
plants which grow upon it’ ([1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling ethics do not deal
with man's relation to nature: they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as
he pleases, i.e. his relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect others, are not subject
to moral censure. Thus assertions such as ‘Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees’ are
significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with
others, they are false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.1 It is to
this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex
ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing
views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is
beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void. If Leopold is right in his criticism of prevailing conduct
what is required is a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations. For as matters stand,
as he himself explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not
taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the
woods off a 75% slope,turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall,rocks, andsoil into
the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society.’ ([1]), p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be
accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a
new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing it is none too clear what is
going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics
counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics
may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a
1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits
2 To the consternation .nodoubt of Quineans. But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary
systems the identity of which may be indeterminate
205
is, near enough: ~ propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which includes ( like md1v1duals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general
evaluative Ju~gements co~cermng conduct, typically of what is obligatory, permissible and wrong
of_ what ~re rights, what _is valued, and so forth. A ~eneral or lawlike proposition of a system is ~
prmc1ple, and certainly 1f syst~ms S, and S2 contam different principles, then they are different
systems. It foll?ws t~at any environmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlined. Moreo~er 1f environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principle
embedded m Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming
wh~t _seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environm~ntai
eth1_c 1s needed then a new ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environmental counter examples to it.
It is com_monly assu_med that_ there are. what amount to, core principles of Western ethical
~ystems, principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed
~n the Golden Rule provides o~e example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core principle,
ts the . commonly formulated hberal pnnc1ple of the modified dominance position .. A recent for: · " • "'• ,;, /'' /,'. /
~·- - ·· ..._
mulation 5 runs as follows ( [ 3 I, p. 58):
. 'The liberal philosophy of the Wes tern world holds that one should be able to do what he
wishes, prov1dmg ( 1) that he d0es not harm orhers and (2) that he is not likely to harm himself
irreparably.'
Let us call this principle basic (human) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people.
co_me_ first and everyt_hmg else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom
pnnc1ple becaus~ 1t gives perm1ss1on to perform a wide range of actions (including actio.ns which
mess_ up the ~nv1ronment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to
c_unn_mgly shift the onus of pro?fto others. It is worth remarking that harming others in the restrict10n 1s narrower than a restnct1on to the (usual) interests of others; it is not enough that it is in my
mterests, because. I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being
anyway, because 1t does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to exactly what counts
as harm or mter_ference. Mor~over the width of the principle is so far obscure because 'other' may
be fill~d. out m s1gmficantly different ways: it makes a difference to the e~tent, and privilege, of the
cha~vm1s~ whe~her '.other' _ex~ands to 'other human' - which is too restrictive - or to 'other'person or to _other sent1~nt be1~g ; and 1t mak~s a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its economic apphcab1hty, to which class of others it is intended to apply whether to
future as well as to present others, whether to remote future others or only to non-discountable
future others, a?d. whether to possible others. The latter would make the principle completely unworkable, and 1t 1s generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others. ' //4-_ ItIt_ is taken for granted. in_ d_e_signing counter examples to basic chauvinist principles, that a ....,. /..~..., . (
sem_antical analysis of perm1ss1b1hty and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations r.,.·-=-"'t.. :.;1 -c.:
, · ~/:_
(".~-htch may be mcon:iplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some ideal
ideal
every
in
s1tuat10n, what 1s obl_1gato_ry in every ideal situation, and what is wrong is excluded
~1tuat10n. But the_mam pomt to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles
· t·
1f correct are umversal and are assessed over the class of I·deal s1tua
ions.
(') Th z
collapse of the world system
the
1
_survi~ing
perso~)
(or
man
e as_t ma~ e~a~ple. The last
lays ~bout him, ehmmatmg, ~s far as he can, e~ery !tvmg th_mg, animal or plant (but painlessly if
iou hke, a~ at the best abattoirs). What he does 1s qmte permissible according to basic chauvinism
ut on envir?nmental grounds what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be commit~
~~d \o e~ot~nc values to regard M'.. Las_t Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that ra~cfa th mkmg a nd val~es have shifted m an environmental direction in advance of corresponding
s .. 1 ts m the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
(u) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example.
We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation
effects h_a~~ blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rule out
~e pos~1b1hty that what these pe~ple d~ harms or somehow physically interferes with later people.
therwise one could as well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet and
single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on
controversial issues such as infanticide, women's rights and drugs, there are competing sets of principles. Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a
uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
Indeed Passmore (in [2]) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man's relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is
another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according
to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the
mainstream Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental
ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious
backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference,
whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserved from substantial human interference, whether of the "improving" sort or not. Both traditions
would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and comfortable north-Europea n small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man's proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; while on
the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his
efforts though not by means that will deliberately degrade its resources. Although these positions
both depart from the dominant position in a way which enables the incorporation of some
evaluations of an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible farmer, they
do not go far enough: for in the present situation of expanding populations confined to finite
natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a
3
principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used for
human ends, "humanized".
As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that
such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so
straightforwa rd; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is riot
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such
proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assumption). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for m~ny thinkers, to have
supplanted the dominant position; and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further
towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer's polluting of a community stream may
be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream. Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory
returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the
sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The position may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situation excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted.
a ~pecific ethic,
/§ 2. -As. we noticed----(a~ ethic is ambi~uous, as bet_ween a specifi~ ethical system,
and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S
./
3 If 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least
as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use p1 inciple is tied to the resource view of nature
4-A meta-elhic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions
5 A related principle is that (modified) free c.1tcrprise can operate
I
il
11 ,·thi'n
s· -1 1- •
1m1 ar 1m11s
207
destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild
ar,imal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation,
and all ~emaining forests disappear in favour of quarries or plantations, and so on. They may give
various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they
are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or
occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an environmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; they have simplified and largely destroyed
all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wrecked place. But this conduct may conform with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the
principles enjoined ·by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or cooperation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the
basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last
people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of reasons", the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and
farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable
and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture
and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of
course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is
improving outpJt to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since h~
much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being "better off'.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this example to the industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours.
(iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic picture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hunting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the
blue whale example are provided by cases where a species is eliminated or threatened through
destruction of its habitat by man's activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The l?ehaviour of the whalers in
eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accqrdingly quite permissible-at least according to
basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not. However the free-market mechanism will
not cease allocating whal~[~ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental econo_mics
would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the
blue whale population is no longer viable-if that point has not already been passed.
In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment _is more narrowly
circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren't environmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respe~ted industrialists fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of ;he sort described, in a morally impermissible way~ No, what these people do _is to a
greater or lesser extent evil, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible. For exampl_e, mso~ar
as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who stand in the way of an mdustnal
development is morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is _the slau~hter of the last_ remaining blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvm1sm as a satisfactory
6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in [31
freedom principle is a more difficult matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be
made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by
the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude specieside. It may be
preferable , in view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof. simply to scrap it
altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct. as in a bill of rights.
§ 3. A radical change in a {eory sometimes forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which
rejects the Reference Theory in a thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for
logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a
meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmentally important notions, such as conservation, pollu1io11, growth and presen•atio11,for meta-ethical
analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such
characteristic actions as na1ural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and permissibility to rights: it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as
i-alue and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejection o [ many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a very
brief examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some
major positions. 7
Hart (in I 5]) accepts. subject to defeating conditions which are here irrelevant, the classical
doctrine of natural rights according to which. among other things, 'any adult human . .. capable of
choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons'. But this sufficient condition for a
human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an em iron mental
ethic rt::jects, since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the deflni1io11 of a natural
right adopted by classical theorists and accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes
the same defective principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right. a far from straight forward matter now that human rights with
rcspc:ct to animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect to slaves not all that
lon g ago, undergoing major re-evaluation.
An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees
have rights (though such a view is occa~ionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since
artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object
do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or
piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right n_ot to _be
mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with
mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and
so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever
has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has interests . Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can
(significantly) have rights. and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have
rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth. to practically
anything at all.
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of
conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions
typically employ a single criterion p, such as preference or happiness, as a summ.um_ bonu_m;
characteristically each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps mcludmg
future humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, 6f
the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual prankings, and what is best or ought to be done is determined either_ ~ire~tl~, as
in act-utilitarianism under the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, asin rule-ut1lttanantsm,
in terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking. The species bias is
transparent from the selection of the base class. And even if the base class is extended to embr~ce
persons. or even some animals (at the cost. like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
1 Some of thes< points arc developed by those protesting about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays
collec!ed in I 4 I
9
~
iii
208
WJ 6
14
209
testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that the whole of the base class may
be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust principles. For example if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes’ behaviour, then by the Pareto
ranking test the collective ranking will rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly,
from which it will generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the evaluation of
most Australian farmers anyway). Likewise it would just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective
demand (horizontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy with blue
whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in
the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
“rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the
blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi
sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for
deciding on what is environmentally desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not alone in their species chauvinism; much the
same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer
some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a
matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the base class; on a social justice picture rights
and obligations spring from the application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the
_base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on a Kantian position which has some
v v^gue obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the base class, persons. In each case
if members of the base class happen to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class then that is
too bad for them: that is (rough) justice.
REFERENCES
1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966).
2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished).
3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the
Problem, New York (1972).
4. S. and R.Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), A nimals, Men and Morals. An enquiry into the maltreatment
of non-humans, London (1971).
5. H.L.A.Hart, ‘Are there any natural rights?’, reprinted in A.Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy, Oxford
(1967).
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it is none loo clear what is
going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics
counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or al all well worked out. so that the application of identity criteria foi ethics
may remain obscure. Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical sy stems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christen ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two,.other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethicszor that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
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single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on
ckd«°T^a *ssues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin
S’ T.
? nCW e^h‘C and Prevai,ln8 ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a
uniformity that prevathng ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
- r. .
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Indeed Passmore (in |2|) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is
another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.-31
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The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according
to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the
mainstream Stoic^— Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental
ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious
backdrop is removeej, eg. vv/zo is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with a ^environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference,
whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth’s surface should be presen
ed from substantial human interference, whether of the “improving” sort or not. Both traditions
would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and com
fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man’s proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect galiye - all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being
^usefulness for.human purposes: while on
the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his
efforts though not by means that will deliberately degrade its resources./ '7Zu^ /fate-
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principle of total use,imping that every r-turJl X
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<»e pr , pie is tied to the resource view of nature ,
such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or’romantic, would be new aljigjiu The matter is r
straightforward: for the dominant.ethic has been substantial!v uuaiitle^y the n&er that one is not
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically int^Tes \0tn peers'.
7
> proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the Goiyuuterference assump
tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have
supplanted the dominant position: and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further
'* towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer's polluting of a community stream may
be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream. Likewise business enterprises which, destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory
returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the
sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [31) that blends with the modified position;
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. may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa
tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I ^vall
A new ethic is wanted,
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is, near‘enough, a propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in
dudes (like individuals of a theory > a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general
evaluative judgements concerning conduct, typically of what is obligators permissible and wrong.'x* !
of what are rights, what is valued, and so forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a \
principle; and certamlv if systems S, and S2contain different principles, then they are different
systems. It follows that anv en onmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlin
ed. Moreover if environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principlaJL
embedded in Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming. I
what seems to be so. that it can be uniquely characterised) - in which case if an environmental
ethic /s needed then a new- ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environ mental counter examples to it z
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(which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some idefl^fe
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situation. But the main point to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles
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(i) ’ The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system
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eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if
you like, as at the best abattoirs). What he does is quite permissible according to
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but on environmental grounds what he does is wrong. Moreover pne d^gsjtot have to Ke commit
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(ii) The last people example. The last man example can be
. to the last people example.
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effects have blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rule out
the possibility that what these people do harms or somehow physically interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet and
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destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild
animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, "
and all remaining forests disappear in favour ofpatfuM or plantations, and so on. They may give
various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they
are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or
occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an en
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effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last
people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons’", the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and
farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable
and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture
and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of
course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is
improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since he
much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better ofT’.
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on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up
set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hun
ting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the
blue w'hale example are provided by cases where a speues is eliminated or threatened through
destruction of its habitat by man’s activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The behaviour of the whalers in
eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite permissible-at least according to
basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not However the free-market mechanism will
not cease allocating whale$ to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics I
would; instead the market r
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dustrialists, fishermen and farmers arc behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading ac
tivities of the sort described, in a morally impermissible way? No, what these people do is to a
5 greater or lesser extent eviitand hence in serious vases morally impermissible. For example, insofar
as the killing or forced displacement of primiioe peoples who stand in the way of an industrial
development is morally indefensible and-^r* permissible, so also is the slaughter ol the last remain
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does not commit one to the view
that natural objects such as trees have rights
is occasionally held, e.g. by pantheists.
since artefacts are not alive).
(though such a view
But pantheism is false
For moral prohibitions forbidding
certain actions with respect to an object do^riot award that object
a correlative right.
That it would be wrong to mutilate a given
tree or piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of
property has a correlative right not to be mutilated (without
seriously stretching the notion of a right).
Environmental views
can stick with,jmainstrean» theses according to which rights
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coupled with corresponding responsibilities and so with bearing
obligations, and with corresponding interests and concerns; i.e.,
at least, whatever, has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever^has a right has^interests
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Box 15: Green Projects in Progress
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�f
Chapter 10
_
CRITICS OF ANARCHISM AND FURTHER CRITICISM.
..
One of the regular obstacles almost any innovative ideology encounters is hardened
dogfpMdwi. Hardened dogmatism characteristically sees little scope for movement from some
established status quo. There are many hardened dogmatists who see no alternative to the
modern state. In this they join company with a huge and motley crew of political "realists":
'There simply is no way an advanced industrial state can cope with technological complexities,
can minimize waste and misery and the danger of revolutions without strong government
controls' (Gardner!, our sample dcifnatist, selected^because he has ranted^at verbose length,on
his anti-anarchist disposition). We can grant that there is no viable state without requisite
government controls, no state without a state. The question is rather whether such objectives as
reduction of waste and misery and control of technology even he accomplished, perhaps
significantly better without the state, which tends to wagnt/y the problems concerned.
A feature of dogmatism is that assertion, reiterated assertion, replaces argument. So it is
with^state dogmatism: 'As things are, there simply is no way a modem industrial society can
flourish without a strong government to enforce the law' (p.123). international industrial
society flourishes, after a fashion ^without such a government. Analogous functional ways in
which regional industrial societies can operate, way implicit in historic anarchism, have been
explained. 'It is not just the necessity of a state to preserve law and order that makes the
anarchist dream so hopeless' (p.124). Order requires only a certain organisation^, for which the
state is quite unnecessary. As for law, the necessity is but analytic on the law being state-law.
But a wide network of conventions and regulations can operate without a state; there are many
examples, beginning with stateless societies, continuing through a range of voluntary
organisations.
Why 'so hopeless'?
,,
Even if small communities [observe the limitation on anarchism
immediately slippst in]... found a way to police themselves, there is no way
they could maintain, let alone establish, an industrial society. Small selfgoverning groups are incapable of building reservoirs to bring them clean
water, or roads to connect cities, or dynamos to supply electricity, or cars,
or printing presses, or modem hospitals, or anything else that is a product of
an advanced technology. Big tasks can be done only by big corporations
that are either state-owned or state-controlled, or that operate as vast
independent oligarches within the state (p.124).
eV
As well as intellectually lazy, this is hopelessly astray: there resides the hopelessness. In some
regions, pioneer societies and industrial society developed more or less regardless of the state.
Even small f^rm communities built themselves reservoirs for stock and household water
supplies, built their local roads, and so on (in Australia, USA, and elsewhere). They still do.
Electricity generates and printing presses can be manufactured in fairly unsophisticated
i
.
Martin Gardner
776-7SS.
e
W7ry.y i?/
*#
/
ch.7
Aafe.- WTry 7 owi
an
'
�workshops, where the state need be nowhere in evidence. As for big tasks, international
organisations (for construction, forestry, dam building, oil-well sinking,^ substantially
independent of particular states can, and do, perform the work. They may presently be required
to have a state location, but that is strictly unnecessary for accomplishing the tasks; they are
certainly not state-owned, or state-controlled, nor do they, in any real sense, operate within the
states'. Furthermore, regions investing in large works beyond their capacities can set up their
own specialized structures, to oversee such big tasks, to monitor activities and ensure
accountability, and to exclude cowboy operations. It is simply false that the advancement and
application of science and technology requires the state, as much history reveals. In a similar
way, it is simply misleading that 'if we want to enjoy the benefits of science and technology,
the ideals of an archism are as irrelevant as the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount' (p.124). By
contrast with the ideals of the Sermon, the impact of which are quite indirect, much anarchist
output concerns science and technology, their promotion and qualified benefits, proper place
and appropriateness.
Next our philosophical scrivener turns to pulling down anarchism by a superficial
comparison with and sen^up of the American 'counter culture scene of the sixties' (pp. 1244-5).
As technology is not condemned by one bad result, nor is anarchism shown impracticable by
one presumed form wht^e merit remain a matter of controversy. In any case, m^re accurate
comparisons are available than Gardner's prejudical poQ)ourL These set anarchist elements of
the counterculture substantially witli^th&\merican individual, pro-violence form of anarchism.
Hardened dogmatists are almost invariably crt^ss critics. They do not ever get at close
quaters^et alon^ inside, what they are criticising; so they do not achieve a good view, still less
adequate
sympathetic view, of what they ^/are criticising. Fortunately there are less cr^ss
critics, most of them with heavy commitments to democratic states (Gardner, though he makes
obeisant gestures towards democracy, is underneath it committed to the strong tech,o-cratic
state.) It should be plain that any critic with heavy commit^nts to democracy would have to
take anarchism more seriously as an option; for the demos may chose, or rule, to remove their
state. (Quite constitutional means may, and should, permit this.) The point, though elementary,
has escaped apparently more sympathetic opponents of anarchism such as Dahl, who premisses
his critique of anarchism upon the incompatibility of anarchism with democracy. He appears to
manage this yhnx
by mistakenly equating democracy with the democratic state. Certainly
anarchism is incompatible with the democratic state, as with any state, but it does not follow,
except through a variant of the mistaken equation, that it is incompatible with democracy. And
it should be evident that this latter incompatibility is contested. For the^e have many proposals
for combining anarchism with m^re participatory democracy (ul^minating on enterprises like
Burgheim's quest fortrue democracy^ which arrives at a dilute anarchism).
Dahl begins his criticism of anarchism by asserting that anarchist (and guardianship)
'objections to democracy aare so fundamental that unless they can be satisfactorily met any
further explanations of the democratic idea would be futile' (p.37).
Given the heavy
�commitment of much anarchism to democratic processes, this assertion faces evident
rejoinders. And Dahl himself quickly shifts ground (though a page later he shifts back,
assuming that his archetypal democrat and anarchist are opposed as archist and anarchist):
'Because democracy might well be the most des^be process for governing [anarchist
v^lu^ttpry]
it might also be the prevented form of government in an anarchist society.
But i^ the anarchist view democracy cannot redeem a state
*
(p.37, two paragraphs down).
Since nothing can redeem the state, ergo neither gods nor people nor democracy can. Yet Dahl
begins his cri^tism with this curious twist: since the state^coercism, and coercisaa is
intrinsically bad, can the democratic process somehow make it good?
*
(p.37). This problem for
archism, which Dahl assumes, is no problem at all for anarchism. Instead of addressing the
question posed, Dahl switches focus, by challenging the coherence and consistency of
anarchism. But all his exhibition of divWity/shows is that anarchism is a family-resemblance
notion, like many Wittgenstein pointed outigbwc, warAewatic.?, and so on. It is a family
resemblance notion with certain key features (as being played, is of a game), namely rejection
of archie authority, ^percion and the state; beyond that there is a plurality of forms. Once the
pluralistic conceptualisation is appreciated, there need be no incoherence; it all fits together.
^^Many of the criticisms of anarchism turn on the issue of
especially how
economic activity such asf marketing, distribution, and so on, is to be organised in the absence
of a central state authority. Meeting these criticisms in appropriate detail is no mean feat,
requiring the elaboration of substantially new economic theory (except for excessively
individualistic anarchists like Rothbart, but sketchy details and hints have been offered by
anarchist theorists). While economic criticisms bulk large in recent criticism of anarchism, the
state having assumed the role of grand macro-economic organiser, these by no means exhaust
criticisms. There are serious issues also concerning political and cultural organisation,
concerning the presumed enemies of organisation and order.
In many criticisms it is simply assumed that anarchistic organisation will have to take
over the arrangements of present mega-states and somehow substitute for those, without mega
states. The assumption is astray. Mega-states are mostly recent undesirable constructions,
obtained by conquest or war dealings, and held together coercive means and other devices of
state. These would, would be allowed to, fragment into regional components. Thus the
problem of organisation is a substantially smaller problem than that of organisation of mega
states; namely, that of organisation of regions. The regions would naturally be grouped
together, by principles of federation. (The new Europe provides a partial, suggestive example.)
No strand of anarchism 'has developed an adequate economic theory. The individualists
are stymied by the public goods problem, the communists by the problems of coordination.
[Even more plausible intermediate positions] require the support of the state at a number of
critical points' (M p.172). How the state is presumed to provide its benign supportative role is
well illustrated in the case of more individualistic anarchism, where the familiar problem of
public goods is also taken to manifest itself.
�4
A cynic might well observe that no strand of capitalism or of socialism has developed an
adequate economic theory. But theories there no doubt are, in certain narrow reaches in
abundance.
*
Anarchism assumes the benefits of autonomous
operations, indeed the
individualistic ideal is one of personal sovereignty in the market place', but 'is not the state an
indispensible prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy?' (M p.169). There are two
parts to a response. First, markets functioned before states, and function outside states, for
example internationally. Second, whatever institutions are required for the operation of
markets can be supplied regionally under anarchistic fragmentation of the state.
How much background structure do markets depend upon, which might presuppose
apparatus of state. A market has a place of transactions, which can be common or waste
ground, a supply of goods or services to be exchanged there for other goods or services (barter)
or currency (in a money economy). Buyers and sellers enter the market to effect exchanges.
No doubt presupposed are at least limited entitlements (leasehold or property rights, so a seller
is entitled to dispose of, to a new user, holder or owner, what is offered for sale), contractual
arrangements, and in a money economy, some recognised currency. Also presumed, normally
where markets operate, are certain levels of safety, for instance protection against invasion,
assault and theft. But these are normal expectations for much of social life, for even conducting
a conversation. As for the rest, except perhaps for currency, it is a mere pretence that a state is
required for their assurance: customary or tribal arrangements will ensure both property in
transportable goods and recognition of verbal contracts or undertakings. An appropriate
currency too can develop in the absence of states, as exemplified in the shell currencies of
Melanesia and the bank notes of early America. Bank notes are not fully public goods; for a
bank which can profit from their circulation or issue has an incentive to supply them. (And
banks themselves do not require a sponsoring state, even if sometimes that helps, as in bailing
them out.)
It is worth observing that much of the conventional apparatus presumed for markets is
already presupposed
for the fictional covenant by which the state is supposedly
established. Namely, meeting in relative safety, entering into contractual arrangements (in the
case of the state of a very sophisticated sophistical sort).
* Anarchism has not met the 'intractable ... problem of co-ordinating the activities of many
independent social units without recourse to central authority' (M p.181). But there are many
examples, most notably at an international level again, where such coordination has been
achieved (e.g. IUCO). Examples are increasing with new networking arrangements (e.g.
Pegasus network).
Where substantially self-managing arrangements, such as traditional
markets are allowed to flourish, there are no such intractable problems. Certainly, however,
with anarcho-communist structures which aim to suppress such self-managing arrangements,
there are problems: namely those of
* co-ordinating productive activity, aligning production with the needs of consumers without
�5
markets or central planning.
Key approach: localising production, face-to-face.
How can this work in an advanced industrial economy, where a high degree of specialization
and much division of labour. Suggestion CAN'T!
* motivating people to work.
Pressure, sanctions, rewards. While this is a problem in any setting, it is caAaaccJ since certain
personal rewards removed.
*
a central agency seems necessary to maintain any society-wide distribution of resources'
(p.172). W/nc/i resources? Where markets operate, many resources will be distributed without
any role for a central agency, which would often serve as a serious blockage. WAat
distribution? What was intended was: a
distribution of resources, so the blatant inequalities
now observed in even the wealthist societies are mitigated and the conditions of the worst-off
are alleviated. That is drawing upon experience of capitalism: anarchism would not start out
from such an invidious position. Further, it is assumed that there are only two ways of righting
such (capitalistic) maldistribution: through purely private means or by a centralised state means.
So presented it represents an extremely familiar false dichotomy, private or state, in which
society is either equated with the state or else drops out, and all other public means disappear.
For socially-inclined anarchists there is no disputing that there need to be safety nets in
place for the poor and disadvantaged. What is in question is how those nets are placed and
administered, and whether the state has an essential role or is rather a less efficient more
officious nuisance. One option is an exposed tithing system, where members of society are
offered a choice of schemes to contribute to, and expected to contribute to these, and
encouraged to make their contribution open to public inspection. Those who tried to evade
contribution and closed their books would be subject to a range of social pressures.
It is further claimed that while smaller anarchist communities, especially those of a
collectivistic or communistic bent, may be able to resolve inequitable distribution problems,
'there are major difficulties' in attempting to realise some distributive ideal 'between
communities' (p.173). There may be major difficulties, there are now, but that is scarcely an
argument for a central authority. Some redistribution and a small transfer of wealth occurs
intentionally without a central authority. There is not even decisive evidence that a central
authority helps, so far from making matters worse.
* AaarcA/sw
no
/or /aw.
Anarchism cannot traffic in law - at least in the initial and prominent sense of /aw
(ventured e.g. in the OED), namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by
authority and characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent
counter balancing this prognostication is a second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific
and philosophical uses' from which likewise anarchism is not debarred): namely 'without
reference to an external commanding authority'. Thus as the term gavcrawcar is variably
determinable, so also is /aw. Under the main determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism.
�6
But under a different determinate, there is no incompatibility. Anarchism could operate with
such a derminate (as with appropriate notions of moral law, and similar). Law, however,
deservedly has a tarnished reputation, in anarchism as elsewhere. Most of it is arcane,
administered by an expensive oligopolistic priesthood. Too often it is an oppressive tool of the
state.
While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatible with heavy authoritarian law, it
is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely assented to sorts, and so
on. These can substitute.
The state has other less conspicuous roles than law and order, war and defence, and
managing the economy.
* The state serves as representative of national identity, which people crave. Anarchism does
not cater for this basic human need. This is pretty dubious stuff. Such a need is by no means
ubiquitous, and is, if not manufactured, certainly exaggerated in convenient cases, by state
devices. But let us concede a need hypothesis (there is nothing basic about it). Is it true that
The anarchist does nothing to replace the notion; his ideal society is devoid of any features
which might serve as a focus of identity' (M p.180)? No. The components in terms of which
an anarchistic society is structured — the local community, the local region, the regional
federations,... - offer foci for identification, bases for sporting teams, and so on. But, in any
event, nothing excludes national organisations, fielding cultural groups, artistic troupes,
sporting teams, and so on. The present structure of national sporting bodies, only loosely
affiliated with states, and coordinated in model anarchist fashion, provides in fact a worthwhile
example of anarchism in action (Burnheim again).
Do such concessions to features of nationhood 'naturally lead to a demand for self
government', and thence for a nation-state (p.181)? They may (as with the Basques) or may
not (as with the Cornish), and if so more likely the former than the latter? Further these
demands may come only from a small minority of nationals, or may be ill-founded. A demand
on its own demonstates comparatively
of merit, for all that modem economics would have
us imagine.
A repeated criticism of anarchism is that 'with the state removed, the system has no
ultimate guarantor ...'. So it used to be said in favour of God. But who guarantees the
guarantor? (A state may underwrite a bank, but a state itself can fail, despite support of other
states.) There is no ultimate guarantor. There are other issues also, such as the character of the
guarantor. While it is seen to in theology, as a matter of further (illicit) characterisation, that
God has the right features, nothing guarantees that an "ultimate guarantor" is not, rather like
most states, corrupt, unfair, heavy handed and incompetent.^ Even if an ultimate guarantee was
needed, none could be provided. But lesser assurances can be offered. For example, a bank's
2
If a guarantee cannot be obtained without violence, it is most unlikely that a satisfactory one
will be obtained with it.
�7
books can be open to public scrutiny and assessment, so that it can be seen that it is trading in a
responsible and viable fashion. (It is better that a person's healthy state be assured by
observation that the person is functioning well, than by maintaining the person as a closed
system and relying on the doctor's guarantee of the person's health.)
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S
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product of
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an advanced
advanced technology.
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�Many of the criticisms of anarchism turn on the issue of orgam.Mric'K, especially how
gconcwHC activity such as: marketing, distribution, and so on, is to be organised in the absence
of a central state authority. Meeting these criticisms in appropriate detail is no mean feat,
requiring the elaboration of substantially new economic theory (except for excessively
individualistic anarchists like Rothbart, but sketchy details and hints have been offered by
anarchist theorists). While economic criticisms bulk large in recent criticism of anarchism, the
state having assumed the role of grand macro-economic organiser, these by no means exhaust
criticisms. There are serious issues also concerning political and cultural organisation,
concerning the presumed enemies of organisation and order.
In many criticisms it is simply assumed that anarchistic organisation will have to take over
�the arrangements of present mega-states and somehow substitute for those, without mega-states.
The assumption is astray. Mega-states are mostly recent undesirable constructions, obtained by
conquest or war dealings, and held together coercive means and other devices of state. These
would, would be allowed to, fragment into regional components. Thus the problem of
organisation is a substantially smaller problem than that of organisation of mega-states; namely,
that of organisation of regions. The regions would naturally be grouped together, by principles
of federation. (The new Europe provides a partial, suggestive example.)
J
*
No strand of anarchism 'has developed an adequate economic theory.
The
individualists are stymied by the public goods problem, the communists by the problems of
coordination. [Even more plausible intermediate positions] require the support of the state at a
number of critical points' (M p.172). How the state is presumed to provide its benign
supportative role is well illustrated in the case of more individualistic anarchism, where the
familiar problem of public goods is also taken to manifest itself.
A cynic might well observe that no strand of capitalism or of socialism has developed an
adequate economic theory. But theories there no doubt are, in certain narrow reaches in
abundance.
* Anarchism assumes the benefits of autonomous market operations, indeed The individualistic
ideal is one of personal sovereignty in the market place', but 'is not the state an indispensible
prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy?' (M p.169). There are two parts to a
response. First, markets functioned before states, and function outside states, for example
internationally. Second, whatever institutions are required for the operation of markets can be
supplied regionally under anarchistic fragmentation of the state.
How much background structure do markets depend upon, which might presuppose
apparatus of state. A market has a place of transactions, which can be common or waste
ground, a supply of goods or services to be exchanged there for other goods or services (barter)
or currency (in a money economy). Buyers and sellers enter the market to effect exchanges.
No doubt presupposed are at least limited entitlement (leasehold or property rights, so a seller is
entitled to dispose of, to a new user, holder or owner, what is offered for sale), contractual
arrangements, and in a money economy, some recognised currency. Also presumed, normally
where markets operate, are certain levels of safety, for instance protection against invasion,
assault and theft. But these are normal expectations for much of social life, for even conducting
a conversation. As for the rest, except perhaps for currency, it is a mere pretence that a state is
required for their assurance: custom^ or tribal arrangements will ensure both property in
transportable goods and recognition of verbal contracts or undertakings. An appropriate
currency too can develop in the absence of states, as exemplified in the shell currencies of
Melanesia and the bank notes of early America. Bank notes are not fully public goods; for a
bank which can profit from their circulation or issue has an incentive to supply them. (And
�32
banks themselves do not require a sponsoring state, even if sometimes that helps, as in bailing
them out.)
It is worth observing that much of the conventional apparatus presumed for markets is
already presupposed prg-sMfe for the fictional covenant by which the state is supposedly
established. Namely, meeting in relative safety, entering into contractual arrangements (in the
case of the state of a very sophisticated sophistical sort).
* Anarchism has not met the 'intractable ... problem of co-ordinating the activities of many
examples, most notably at an international level again, where such coordination has been
achieved (e.g. IUCO). Examples are increasing with new networking arrangements (e.g.
Pegasus network). Where substantially self-managing arrangements, such as traditional
markets are allowed to flourish, there are no such intractable problems. Certainly, however,
with anarcho-communist structures which aim to suppress such self-managing arrangements,
there are problems:
* ^o-ordinating productive activity, aligning production with
*needs
of
consumers without markets <?r central planning.
Key approach: localising production, face-to-face.
How can this work in an advanced industrial economy, where a high degree of specialization
and much division of labour. Suggestion CAN'T!
* motivating people to work.
Pressure, sanctions, rewards.
in any setting, but
rewards removed.
since certain personal
* '... a central agency seems necessary to maintain any society-tide distribution of resources'
(p.172). WTu'cA resources? Where markets operate, many resources will be distributed without
any role for a central agency, which would often serve as a serious blockage.
What
distribution? What was intended was: ayMst distribution of resources, so the blatant inequalities
now observed in even the wealthist societies are mitigated and the conditions of the worst-off
are alleviated. That is drawing upon experience of capitalism: anarchism would not start out
from such an invidious position. Further, it is assumed that there are only two ways of righting
such (capitalistic) maldistribution: through purely private means or by a centralised state means.
So presented it represents an extremely familiar false dichotomy, private or state, in which
society is either equated with the state or else drops out, and all other public means disappear.
For socially-inclined anarchists there is no disputing that there need to be safety nets in
place for the poor and disadvantaged. What is in question is how those nets are placed and
administered, and whether the state has an essential role or is rather a less efficient more
officious nuisance. One option is an exposed tithing system, where members of society are
/v
�33
offered a choice of schemes to contribute to, and expected to contribute to these, and encouraged
to make their contribution open to public inspection. Those who tried to evade contribution and
closed their books would be subject to a range of social pressures.
It is further claimed that while smaller anarchist communities, especially those of a
collectivistic or communistic bent, may be able to resolve inequitable distribution problems,
'there are major difficulties' in attempting to realise some distributive ideal
communities' (p.173). There may be major difficulties, there are now, but that is scarcely an
argument for a central authority. Some redistribution and a small transfer of wealth occurs
intentionally without a central authority. There is not even decisive evidence that a central
authority helps, so far from making matters worse.
The state has other less conspicuous roles than law and order, war and defence, and
managing the economy.
* The state serves as representative of national identity, which people crave. Anarchism does
not cater for this basic human need. This is pretty dubious stuff. Such a need is by no means
ubiquitous, and is, if not manufactured, certainly exaggerated in convenient cases, by state
devices. But let us concede a need hypothesis? Is it true that 'the anarchist does nothing to
replace the notion; his ideal society is devoid of any features which might serve as a focus of
identity' (M p.180)? No. The components in terms of which an anarchistic society is structured
- the local community, the local region, the regional federations, ... — offer foci for
identification, bases for sporting teams, and so on. But, in any event, nothing excludes national
organisations, fielding cultural groups, artistic troupes, sporting teams, and so on. The present
structure of national sporting bodies, only loosely affiliated with states, and coordinated in
model anarchist fashion, provides in fact a worthwhile example of anarchism in action
(Bumheim again).
Do such concessions to features of nationhood 'naturally lead to a demand for self
government', and thence for a nation-state (p.181)? They may (as with the Basques) or may not
(as with the Cornish), and if so more likely the former than the latter? Further these demands
may come only from a small minority of nationals, or may be ill-founded. A demand on its own
demonstates comparatively ZZrr/e of merit, for all that modern economics would have us imagine.
A repeated criticism of anarchism is that 'with the state removed, the system has no
ultimate guarantor ...'. So it used to be said in favour of God. But who guarantees the
guarantor? (A state may underwrite a bank, but a state itself can fail, despite support of other
states.) There is no ultimate guarantor. There are other issues also, such as the character of the
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determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. But under a different determinate, there is no
( incmpatibiHty.
--------------- —----------------- ------------------------------ ------ L_
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Anarchism cannot traffic in law, in the initial and prominent sense of /<2w(offered in the
OEE^, namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and
characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter^teducing this
prognostication is a second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical
-
uses'): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'.
^aw deservedly has a tarnished reputation^ m anarchism. Most of it is arcane,
administered by an expensive, priesthood. Too often it is an oppression tool of the state.
While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatable with heavy authoritarian law, it
is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely assented to Kats, and so
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�guarantor. While it is seen to in theology, as a matter of further (illicit) characterisation, that
God has the right features, nothing guarantees that an "ultimate guarantor" is not, rather like
most states, corrupt, unfair, heavy handed and incompetent? Even if an ultimate guarantee was
needed, none could be provided. But lesser assurances can be offered. For example, a bank's
books can be open to public scrutiny and assessment, so that it can be seen that it is trading in a
responsible and viable fashion. (It is better that a person's healthy state be assured by
observation that the person is functioning well, than by maintaining the person as a closed
system and relying on the doctor's guarantee of the person s health.)
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A DEEP RIFT ON PROPERTY
A main element in the major divide between right and left anarchism, as between left and
right, is property. Other elements in the divide, such as the accumulation of capital essential to
capitalism, depend upon property, because it in it as a transferable commodity that capital is held.
It is unremarkable then that property balks large, as an institution to be defended and even extended
(with new rights to address environmental issues) in right-leaving political theory and, what heavily
overlaps that g^ave. American anarchism. At the opposing end of the right-left tug of war, state,
.social or common ownership of property used to be all the go: but left coalitions are presently
down-playing such ideals and aspirations.
Reflective green theory once again moves off the right-left axis, questioning aspects of the
strong ownership and control relations presumed in the tug-of war. Prope^tarian relations are all
based upon older domination and control ideologies, but diluted in kinder stewardship approaches,
not removed. For, while the idea of land as a mere commodity subject to the $hims of present
owners is softened, the steward normally but manages and controls for some higher master, god or
humanity. Reflect further on what both private owners and state owners may do to the
environments and habitats they "own".
Green reflection le^ds then towards the modification of entrenched institutions of private and
state property.
Green anarchism automatically eliminates certain types of ownership, namely state ownership
which has to depart with the state. The demise of the state should at least suggest that associated
institutions such as property and the law may be in some trouble. So it proves, to an interesting
extent. For, much as arguments to the state are, like those to the Master, Dominus, fatally flawed,
so are those to strong and established systems of property subject to lethal objections. Further,
much as the unwarranted state may be substituted for less dominating justifiable institutions, so
property and its adjuncts may be replaced by alternative less dominating arrangements, such as use
hold, leasehold, and the like.
A central claim, argued^ detail, will be that none of the arguments for property as justified,
as an entitlement as right, succeeds,?!// that the whole run of arguments supports is the need, or
desirability for some lesser arrangements. It is advantageous to have some terminology to cover
both property anJ lesser arrangements, <7aa.n-proper?y so to say, or gua/efty as will be said.
'The concept of property is fundamental to our [U.S.] society, probably to any workable
society' (Friedman p.3). The second claim is soon strengthened, and a third insupportable claim
added: '... property is a central economic institution of any society, and private property is the
central institution of a free society' (p.4). The onus of proof strictly lies with those who claim
property, property rights, etc. For outside certain far from universal social conditions there is no
such property as is claimed. Considering the way the onus falls, the situation is remarkable. 77?ere
are no JecM/ve argawenM, so far as I can ascertain,/or such an institution as property. That
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situation, if confirmed, raises important questions, such as how and w/ry the institution is in place?
But first the arguments, such as they are.
The main argument preferred by Friedman in support of his grand claims takes off from the
problem of the distribution of scarce material resources among competing parties who seek access
or use.
The usual solution is for the use of each t/ung to be decided by a person or
some group of persons organised under some
o/
Such t/ungs are
called property. If each thing is controlled by an individual who has the
power to transfer that control to any other individual, we call the institution
private property (p.4).
Firstly, all the distribution of resources problem points to is some allocation of uses, or some
sharing thereof. For such purposes many arrangements far short of property will serve; for
instance, lease, limited use rights, and so on. Secondly, what immediately stands out, an attempt is
made to close the chasm between what is so far delivered and what the claims concerning property
require through an appallingly low redefinition of 'property'. What one gets to use under some set
of rules may not be property at all (e.g. a cove, a sea passage,...). Property requires much more:
ownership in a nonv^cuous sense, coupled with a high level of potential control. Nor, thirdly, is
the characterisation of private property satisfactory, as transferable leasehold will meet the
conditions given. It may be argued that leasehold itself requires owne^h^ip; it will be argued that it
does not. But it certainly does not require private property, nor does proprietorship transfer across
leasehold arrangements.
That is^ it. Friedman proceeds, on the quite unwarranted assumption that all is property, to
argue the respective merits of private property and demerits of what is not private, public property
so it is supposed. 'Under public property, the values of the public as a whole are imposed on the
individuals who require the use of that property to accomplish their ends' (p.7). Something
remotely
that may hold for the example Friedman is discussing, the inordinately dull broadcast
media of the USA; but it certainly does not hold generally given the remainder way in which 'public
property' is characterised, so that no values whatsoever may be imposed.
What subjects hold property rights (if any) or like rights? The standard chauvinistic
assumption is that the class of such subjects comprises humans, or competent humans, or humans
who have competent guardians. But why should other creatures not hold and maintain territories,
as many appear to do? And if incompetent or disqualified humans can hold property managed by
guardians, trustees and the like, and if legal persons such as corporations can do likewise, why
should not a range of nonhumans (for instance, those that are credited with interests) do something
similar?
Given that many nonhumans can (and do) have proprietory rights, there can be a head-on
conflict between human rights and property rights (in opposition to Friedman p.3).
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Anarchistic societies of any complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised
organisation, or a federation of these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but
beyond that set up according to issue, role or function. Thus they will include what might well
be accounted
Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as
decentralised, will accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need,
�for instance. The organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be
forced to join. Typically they will be voluntary arrangements.
A critical question is to how these organisations, substituting for the operation of state,
are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In such favoured democratic structures control is
usually remarkably indirect. A populace weakly selects a central parliament, which exercises
through other bodies some control of state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to
dissolve or substitute for central parliaments. It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic
control of state-substituting organisations. A simple way of achieving this is through sortition:
the membership of the governing component of each organisation is chosen randomly from
those of the regional community who volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may
require accessible qualifications, and disqualifications (e.g. by having served before, by some
disqualifying record). Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be
represented, e.g. disable, minorities, then it is a matter of arranging random selection of the
required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of statistical democracy
dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public officials were
sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's Po/m'cy). Nowadays it
is called dwxirc/ty (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its anarchistic form it will
be alluded to under the ecologism dewa/tarcAy.
Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing an expensive duplication,
government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and
corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of parliamentary
government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is
duly removed - as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are
eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, no centre, which is
directly linked to functional organisation.
Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as
those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre
and its command structure, no longer there to capture.^ Community defence is thereby
rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who controls the
controllers: partly because control is so diffused, and prartly because a main controller is the
community (one of the advantages of democracy).
Appropriate institutions take care of the day-to-day running of community affairs; but
what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure. These can be accomplished
3
For there is no command or control structure that could be taken by an invador or internal
insurrection.
�from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the iike (organised through a suitably
independent college), rather than in present top-down inflexible fashion. (These methods, of
which there is worthwhile experience in parts of Europe, are investigated in Wolff.)
A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed wirAoM? coecive
mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure
could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It should be observed,
in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is persued for
reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms
or individuals, where in a more equitible community much of the funding would derive from
(by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* Mt/cA less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and
least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of
central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard
military forces and defense establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison
establishment and expensive courts.
Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for
some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements).
* Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import
organisation they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns
taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or
redistribution powers.
* Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate
royalties and the like), rental taxes on property, gift and gains taxes, and through auctions (of
previously inherited goods), how this would work depends upon community arrangements.
Consider however a preferred anarchistic arrangement where that problematic item, private
property, has not been instituted or has been oblished (as with most European anarchism, by
contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable with stealing
for sale in present systems) will be rented instead of bought. Learnchold systems can be
operated very like private property (as the land system in A.C.T. reveals) fruit-feting market
operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance environmentally, they enable
the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a rental, and they can be of
finite terms and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is excluded. In place of the
�customery land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision for types of durables
would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described.^
4
Here as with rcfcraHs, computing fasiiibiies remove many previous obstacles to each arguments.
Organisation can move with new technology.
��,.
—--
-------------------------
^4^
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A
����CHAPTER
ROADS TO ANARCHY: OLD ROUTES AND NEW INPUTS
STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETIES,
AND AFTER.
As there is a plurality of anarchistic positions and end-states, so, but not in a directly
corresponding way, there is a plurality of routes to anarchism. As the positions vary very
considerably in quality, so do the routes, some of them risky, all of them difficult.
Anarchism, even though theoretical viable, undoubtedly looks /iard to obtain on any scale.
For states are now extremely well entrenched - in furthermore a mutually supportive exclusive
club of states. There is now immense resistance to their removal, deriving from several sources.
In particular, state actors and power-brokers are most unlikely to modify statist arrangements in
ways inadvantageous to themselves, to relinquish any power, still less to step down easily. Such
actors will often take desperate steps to retain institutional power; it is very difficult to persuade
most political human to relinquish power simply and gracefully.
Nonetheless opportunities arise for overthrowing or superseding states (for instance, in most
of Eastern Europe and much of Western Asia in the early 1990s). Periods of crises or "power
vacuum", in particular, afford opportunities, which should be seized as they may not arise often in
more stable states (most recently in 1974 in Australia). A well-prepared anarchist movement will
organise, then, and when the moment arrives, pounce (a partial model is feline hunting practice).
But such opportunistic and risky revolutionary routes are only one way to change, as the following
diagram, designed to survey the possibility field, should reveal.
Diagram 5.7 Ways /a poZiWca/ change.
WAYS
Intra-State:
within State
setting
EVOLUTIONARY
1. typically slow or incremental
REVOLUTIONARY
]
'
operations through received
political channels
2.
t
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j
typically rapid
operations circuiting
established channels:
coups, insurrections, etc.
)
Extra-State
3. operations establishing
alternative organisations
bypassing or substituting
for statist arrangements, or
functioning within the
interstices of the state
!
*
4. operations comprising
j)
.
'
]
external inference or
intervention: by negotiation,
military means, sanctions,
examples, etc.
�0
2
Pluralistic anarchist practice will pursue each and every one of these ways and means, so far
as resources indicate and permit, subject to constraints. For example, a nonviolent movement will
not adopt violent means (unless it insists upon a strange separation of ends and means). There is
nothing distinctively anarchist about these ways, except for 3; all otherwise are ways of changing
state arrangements, 2 of trading one sort of state for another, 3 of imposing state control and
discipline where it is lapsing from "approved" form or where there may have been none (as with
colonial adventures).
As there have been many attempts to narrowly delimit anarchism, so there have been
repeated attempts to restrict roads and byways to anarchism. Exposing these attempts will at the
same time show what is open.
J, Deploying and making wore
sZads/ po/f/fcaf arrange/ncnis
Use of orthodox political channels is not excluded. Pluralistic anarchism is not obliged to
dismiss political routes to anarchism or to anarchist objectives. Parliamentary and other
constitutional routes (such as through referenda) to an anarchist end-state are perfectly possible, if
difficult because of the tendency of state apparatus to endeavour to perpetuate itself. (As a related
example, a main successful party in the multi-party Australian Capital Territory government was
organised and supported by those opposed to such a government.) A main difficulty confronting
change through conventional political procedure is simply that, w/tere it does occur, it is usually
extraordinarily slow and limited, it is almost invariably small change at the margins.
It may take a little lateral reasoning to see the advantages, or occasionally practical necessity,
of working through or within a system or even strengthening it first in order to demolish it
(strengthening does not imply endorsing forever, but nothing more "counterintuitive" than appears
in a battery of stock psychological tests or clever martial arts). Authentic Marxism, for example,
which is ultimately anarchistic, is committed to very much such a circuitous route: the circuit goes
through a rejuvenated super-productive state, which in old age withers away.
A main reason why it has been imagined that use of established political channels is
excluded, in anarchist practice, is not because of the slow evolutionary nature of the process, but
because of a doctrine of means-ends congruence, which is given too circumscribed a construal.
This over-strong congruence doctrine requires more than what coherence seems to demand,
namely that the means should be compatible with comprehensive ends sought (thus precluding, for
example, violent means to achieve non-violent ends). It further requires that in anarchist action,
particularly the revolution, the end of a stateless society should be "prefigured", not some
intervening non-congruent objective. Even if the geometric metaphor were duly clarified, few
reasons have been advanced for accepting the crippling doctrine, which is not self-evident.
�3
Frankly, anarchism does not need to give itself unnecessary handicaps; it faces enough real-world
obstacles without dubious doctrinaire additions from well-intentioned friends.
An anarchist organisation is plainly not a contradiction in terms; nor therefore is an anarchist
coalition or party, committed for instance to removing coercive institutions. Pursuing this tack, an
anarchist can vote for a party which comes closer to realising immediate anarchist objectives than
other parties, or, very differently, for a party which will assist long-term anarchist objectives (for
instance, by wreaking the national economy and thereby helping green objectives and generating
appropriate political discontent and dissent), without any commitment to the parties concerned, and
without endorsing the political system within which they operate. Strategic voting is not
precluded; strategic anarchist voters may well (unlike totalitarian voters) support (preferential)
democratic procedures.
While the state is to be dis-established, meanwhile there are more benign and less benign
states, in relevant respects, apart from how decently they treat their citizens and noncitizens and
aliens. It is no longer altogether accurate to insist, as anarchists used to a century ago, that 'every
state is an agency whereby a ruling minority exploits and oppresses a majority' (M p.87). Many in
majorities may do very nicely, thank you, while some in the elite minority may be grindstoned.
Moreover, the mass of people is generally not only resistant to change, but highly reluctant to force
changed unless there is very considerable dis-ease, which in most developed states there is not.
These are some of a mix of reasons why a revolution is so remote in comfortable countries; no
longer the incendiary states kindled for the anarchist match that 19th century anarchists imagined.
Despite mass lethargy, dissatisfaction with the state is extensive and comes from right across
the conventional political spectrum. There is widespread popular sentiment to the effect that "the
state has become our master instead of our servant", a reversal of roles that should not surprise
Hegelians. Libertarians interpret this in terms of a much reduced state, a much leaner and
hopefully much less hungry state - a route to anarchism if dismantling went in a right direction and
far enough. Right-thinking socialists interpret it in terms of a much transformed state, a helping
but unobtrusive rather than a commanding busybody state. A familiar view of the state from a
section of Green Movement represents a turn on the old anarcho-socialist view:
The ... state and the corporate sector are in alliance for the sake of "development".... We
try to wean people away from the belief that the state will act in the interest of the cidzens.
So we believe the ... state is best viewed as an oppressor (Orton, Response to Dwandik
Quesdons, p.6).
Orton argues on the basis of this for not trying 'to "use" the state' and 'not seeking government
funds'. But if the funds largely represent social wealth, why not judicious use? And if the state is
1
Social psychology appears to show as much.
�4
the only legal means of requisite change? And so on.. In fact Orton himself proposes to make
changes through the state by mobilizing the people.
A state may also be more benign in other significant respects: for instance, in that it facilitates
minority political representation, including green anarchist groups, and in that it does not
significantly impede anarchist political and practical activity or render paths significantly more
difficult. Overlapping that, more benign less domineering states may leave substantial room for
significant anarchist practice both in lifestyle and in building organisational structures and (as it
were) alternatives to archist arrangements (such as peoples' books, time stores, etc.) What are in
important respects anarchist communities can operate within, as well as be modelled within, less
intrusive states (the limits to this quasi-anarchism, elaborated in Nozick, are explained in UT).
States that better meet anarchist (and green socialist) criteria for benignness can conveniently be
disdnguished as more .sywparico states.
Committed anarchists can quite well also be committed, as an intermediate goal among
others, to achieving more sympatico states, which may involve conventional (as well as
unconventional) political activity. No doubt engagement in conventional political activity carries a
risk of co-option; but there are obvious way of reducing that risk, of avoiding the 'slide into
collaboration with the bourgeoisie [and] ... willingness to play the game of parliamentary
politics'.2 For example, precautionary strategies include: engagement also in unconventional
political activity, anarchist or communal practice, consciousness-raising exercises, and use of time
limits, interruption tactics, rotations of leaders, and so on. Green party activities and procedures
can serve as a useful model here?.
Apart from the real dangers of co-option and state collaboration, there are other intertwined
objections standardly made to attempting political roads to anarchism and socialism. One objection
is that any attempt to use the state 'unavoidably reproduces all the features of that institution', such
as exploitation by a ruling or elite minority, and oppression of the majority. Few, it is continued,
will escape from effective control, or, when if offers, be able to resist using the immense powers
of the state. New people, new power-holders, will be transformed (by the usual devices, such as
being made to feel important, given an exaggerated impression of their own worth). It should be
evident that the objection has drifted from "reproduction of the state" to variants of "power
corrupts". Both are overstated, and there are strategies for overcoming both. Sometimes the state
c/tang&y, perhaps for the better; the British state has altered significantly in the last 300 years,
seemingly for better.
Corresponding the power of certain power-holders has declined
significantly, from monarchs and aristocracy down.
2
3
M p.89, see also Goodin in Green Politics.
See Spretnak and Capra 86 for details.
�5
Another objection is better focussed. It is that use of the state leads the wrong ways,
through organisation by centralization and hierarchy, and action by legislation. As a result state
routes will not lead to decentralization, distribution of power and wealth downwards, and so on.
While state practices are commonly antipathetic to the sort of constructive objectives indicated, they
are not always, and they do not /Mvg to be. States, like large corporations, can reorganise, and
occasionally attempt to (thus reform and restructuring of bureaucracies, or even of whole public
services, etc.). Although unlikely for reasons indirected, state reorganisation can in principle
proceed by decentralization and devolution of power. Nor is there any lethal objection to achieving
action by legislation, so long as that legislation is not enforced by inadmissible coercive methods.
In sum, what the objection reemphasizes is that considerable care has to be exercised in using the
state, as with any major source of power. Further it shows again that transition can only proceed
so far through the state; the state route only leads so far, after which other means of transport need
to be taken or considered.
There are other ways of amending statist political arrangements than political approaches,
notably legal means, through courts. There is little anarchist precedence for such activity; mostly
anarchists have had heavy legal apparatus used against them. However, once again environmental
practice serves as a valuable exemplar, with many worthwhile results achieved (especially in
American courts) through litigation. In principle there is much that could be achieved in this way,
in state and international courts, to reduce the power of states and their instrumentalities. For
example, in Australia there are very many statues and laws which unjustifiably limit freedoms and
restrict individual and group action: examples include not only little activated but appalling
legislation on sedition, assembly, and similar, but a sweeping range of actively used and
opportunistically exploited legislation concerning defamation and freedom of speech, victimless
crimes, paternalism, restrictive trade and banking, sheltered professions, compulsory voting, and
so on, and on.
There is also much room for variation and experimentation within prevailing political and
legal arrangements. For example, applying procedures of statistical democracy to a few greater
range of activities than (adjusted) jury servicing to the organisation of municipal services, public
companies, and so on.
alternative structures and the forest succession model.
A main strategy for transition, emerging from the arguments for the viability of anarchism, is
that of replacement: transition to a new anarchist social order proceeds by replacement or
adaptation of the more satisfactory State organisations and structures by organisations and
structures of a more anarchistic cast, and by removal or phasing out of remaining no longer
necessary or unsatisfactory State arrangements.
Replacement and supersession suggest a biological model, of such change and succession,
as occurs where one forest type succeeds another; and such a model is in turn very suggestive. To
<?,
�6
make the model more definite, and to give it some local colour, consider forest succession where a
sub-tropical rainforest replaces a eucalypt forest, as analogous to the case where anarchism
replaces a Statist society. There is certainly a marked change in structure, typically from a tall
forest with a fairly open canopy to a more compact closed forest with more layers of vegetation,
much more local diversity and a richer variety of life forms, especially floral forms. A forest is not
merely a set of trees, but trees in structural arrangement and interdependence, not merely on one
another but on other life forms such as pollinating insects, seed-carrying birds and animals, and so
on; and the changes in structure include changes in microclimate, in soil moisture levels and humus
and bacterial content.
The change of forest type may be by evolution, by hastened or induced evolution, or by
catastrophe (revolution) as when a eucalypt forest is clearfelled and artificially succeeded by
planted rainforest. (Strictly, there is a spectrum of practices and replacement strategies between
evolutionary and revolutionary and various different revolutionary strategies; and the standard
evolutionary-revolutionary contrast presents a false dichotomy.)
Even reliance on predominantly evolutionary methods, which tend to be very slow by human
time scales, way require some (management) practices, else evolution towards rainforest will not
begin or continue. For example, seeds for rainforest species may not be available if adjoining
areas have been stripped of suitable seed trees, e.g. by clearing or eucalypt conversion, in which
case it will be necessary to introduce seeds (of anarchist ideas, methods, arrangements, etc.). And
rainforest evolution may not be able to continue because the area is burnt occasionally, e.g. by
State officers, in which case protection against fire will be required: for with burning (and the
suppression) regimes rainforest seedlings are killed and eucalypt dominance perpetuated.
Furthermore, evolution can be hastened or induced by introducing seeds, or planting rainforest
trees in poorly seeded areas (i.e. setting up alternative social arrangements) under the eucalypt
overstorey, or even by some careful culling of eucalypts. But even without culling there will be
much for anarchist management to do.
As the rainforest cover begins to grow up through the eucalypt forest, the forest begins to
change structurally. Younger eucalypt poles die, and their replacement by eucalypts is generally
precluded owing to low light intensities near the forest floor (in something the same way
conditions for political entrepreneurs to flourish are excluded in an emerging anarchist society).
Gradually, as the rainforest grows, only scattered giant eucalypts protrude through the canopy,
and in time these fall to the forest floor, to rot and not to be replaced - unless the climax rainforest
is subject to catastrophe, such as fire or cyclone.
Catastrophic methods, such as clearfelling the eucalypt forest, replanting with rainforest,
protecting the new forest, and removing eucalyptus regrowth, are wocA more problematic. To be
applied they require either a large workforce or much mechanical power (so it is with violent
revolutions which need a large support basis not generally available in advanced capitalist and state
�7
socialist countries, or else access to means of perpetrating violence comparable to that of the State).
There are often similar requirements for success; otherwise the area may be choked by rapidly
growing weeds or the rainforest plants may be suppressed by eucalypt seedlings and a pioneer
eucalypt stage recur. Moreover, a eucalypt overstorey can sometimes afford good conditions for
rainforest growth, e.g. plant protection from excessive sun, from occasional frosts, and from
drying winds, better moisture retention conditions, and so on. Similarly anarchist social
organisations may sometimes be able to
the environment afforded by the State to get started.
Thus not all forms of the State are necessarily equally inimical, and some may provide much more
favourable conditions for the development of anarchist social organisation than others.^
The forest model (together with preceding arguments) helps to illustrate why violent and
catastrophic methods are not congruent witty the goals of an anarchist society and why there is an
intimate connection between these goals and a strong preference for nonmilitaristic and non-violent
methods of achieving change. Replacement involves a (normally gradual) process of developing
alternative institutions and forms of social organisation and the growth of the new form of society
within the old, and is not a catastrophic single event conceived of as outside the normal order of
things, and for whose advent all other action for change is held suspended. And just as methods
of change such as clearfelling are likely to perpetuate the eucalypt cycle and are unlikely to favour
the development of the rainforest, so the use of catastrophic and especially militaristic methods is
likely to perpetuate an authoritarian social order and unlikely to favour the development of a co
operative, non-violent and non-coercive one.
* applying the forest succession model.
How to apply the model is not difficult to appreciate at least in broad outline. As well many
of the further details have been filled out by work that can be described as indicating how
allegiance can be shifted in practice from where we mostly are to alternative social arrangements
and lifestyles built on self-management and mutual aid.$ The seeds of anarchism should be
broadcast or planted, anarchist (non-Statist) arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts
made to replace or modify vulnerable Statist arrangements, e.g. by democratisation of present
institutions and development of nonstatist and noncapitalist alternatives. Some of the practices are
familiar: anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist)
cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc. Others are slightly less
familiar: avoidance of State influence by arrangements beyond State reach such as costless (or
alternative currency) interchanges of goods and services, barter, black-green economies, and so
on, action directed at removing decision-making from State departments, such as forest services,
and into citizen hands, and ultimately, to decentralized interested communities. In this sort of way,
4
5
This has an important bearing on strategies for achieving change: see D. Altman, ReAearsaAs ybr CAange,
Fontana, Melbourne. 1980.
As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley, p.284 ff.,SM.
�8
worthwhile State arrangements can be replaced, and power can be progressively transferred from
the State, and returned to the communities and to people more directly involved.
Formation of networks of anarchistic communities and neighbourhoods, functioning within
the interstices of the state and state bureaucracies, would represent a significant stage in
succession. Something like this is beginning to develop in Australia (by contrast with the USA
where the commune movement appears to have gone into decline).^
3. Types of individual and small group actions
While strategies proceeding through movements are social in character, a variety of
individna/ action can also be highly effective if widely enough separately undertaken. Naturally if
there is some solidarity, some coordination of individuals, such action will be both fostered and
enhanced. Witness the practice of early Christians, which combined individual action and
consciousness change, within a support and solidarity network. But Christianity misleadingly
promised more than anarchism and environmentalism can, not merely future better lives, but after
lives in splendour, a bogus transcendentalism which however was, and still is, widely believed, a
damaging transcendentalism too, in that satisfactory lives in real space-time can be foregone, in
favour of virtual after-lives.
*
fran-y/br/nano/M. There are a range of proposals for comprehensive personal
change, but they all share fundamentals, which are personal improvement and enhanced personal
relationships. It is because of these shared fundamentals that religious change, such as that offered
under new Testament Christianity shades into the quasi-spiritualism of sects linked to Deep
Ecology (such as Council of All-Beings, Homage to Gaia, Earth Empowerment, etc.) which in
tum shades into Californian personal therapy fashions. Proposals for transformation do not
however have to hang^ out on the fringes of religion; hardheads like Passmore (in direct descent^
from 18th century sympathy-based ethics) have emphasized both personal relationships, love for
others, and moral improvement, better adherence to tested moral principles. Put together, these
individual changes would lead us, it is optimistically imagined, out of the environmental morass
and to a socially and environmentally better world. While it is not that simple, while the problems
lie deeper, some thought it was simpler still. Either the Beatles in their famous lines 'All you need
is love', reflecting an extremely popular sentiment, only saw one part of what was recognised, or
they erroneously supposed that part would yield the remainder. Love slobs are one sort of
counterexample; they achieve love and just wallow in that, not seeking any sort of improvement,
moral or other.
Let us not diminish the relevance of these proposals: the more rounded people among the
thin paper-mache economic and political men focussed only upon maximizing their own self-
interested utility in material consumer goods the better, the better for many concerns, including no
6
Refs
�9
doubt prospects for anarchism. But let us not delude ourselves that herein lies the way out or
forward. Many of those proposals have been around for rather long time, and suggested again and
again, with no conspicuous results. A lot of it is to found in Spinoza, whence it has percolated
through both to Deep Ecology and Freudian therapy. The Deep Ecological emphasis on self
realisation goes back at leas a century, to Humboldt and Mill, with Self already expanded in
German and British idealists. German and British industrial development did not lose a beat.
A mental revolution, in some people's minds, is no doubt essential for a properly planned
revolution. But mental transformations have to be translated into action, to practices that make a
material difference. And consciousness transformations may not translate into appropriate action;
many such transformations are politically very conservative, and lead to no relevant action or effort
for structural change.
Much of what is said of consciousness transformation applies also to
*
a route to change recommended by reformers and radicals for at least a century, from
Mill through Bookchin. Education, appropriately undertaken, can amend ideology, change
consciousness. But at its best it is very slow in operation, very partial because it has to compete
against other sources of propaganda (such as media, dominant society, etc.). And it is more likely
to carry dominant messages, and reinforce dominant attitudes. There is a major problem in getting
alternative messages appropriately delivered and action undertaken.
* c^pting oat (so far as this is possible or even now possible).
To be effective, this has to be focussed, not merely a dropping out parasitic on the state system. It
has to be focussed in way^which challenge the state systems, it inevitability, decidability, etc., in
Redirect
*-F
ways which withdraw contributions to it and ^.... activity elsewhere^creating an atwojpaere, of
expectation and of belief (perhaps even if false). .
If you or your group produce the impression that there is going to be a continuing recession
or a revolution, if your spread the conviction that there is widespread dissatisfaction, that society is
sick or rotten to the core and is about to decline further or collapse, then you are taking a
significant step towards such outcomes, towards decline or fall? If these efforts to develop an
atmosphere are widely orchestrated then they are likely to be so much the more effective. It is
appreciated in business and advertising circles how much psychological atmosphere counts; a
Pint
,
*
Al
r
climate of confidence is
important ^for climbing out of a recession. A climate of
revolutionary expectation can set the scene for revolution events.
While it is dishonest to create an impression of imminent decline and disaster knowing full
well that such scenarios are utterly unlikely, informed greens and anarchists are not in any such
compromised situation. Environmental decline, continuing extensive unemployment, persisting
7
To adapt Joll p.222.
v /s
�10
periodic recession, and in due course collapse, are likely futures under present capitalist state
trajectories.
Anarchists can assist in producing an atmosphere of gloom and depression and pessimism
about capitalist economic circumstances and prospects. But they will aim to generate a quite
different impression of the stability of capitalistic arrangements.
4. Widening operations to exceed standard political and legal arrangements.
Unorthodox political ways and means, a prominent part of historical anarchist activity, are
much more extensive than political textbooks would suggest (or have impressionable readers
believe). These have been restored to contemporary prominence through civil disobedience
practices, and peace and environmental actions. Methods have also been modified (for instance to
exclude pointless personal violence) and substantially expanded. Practical tactics include protests,
occupations, blockades, parades demonstrations, theatre, civil disobedience, refusals, boycotts,
tax and financial withholdings, plant disobilizations, monkey wrenching, and so on.8 Such
methods, more accurately active applications of those tactics, are grouped under Jirec? action, a
vague appellation sometimes taken or extended to include forms of guerrilla warfare on the one
side and more indirect pressure group activity (lobbying, petitioning, public meetings, etc) on the
other. (Such tactics substantially improve upon, and rechannel, the often misguided and rather illfated "deeds" and "acts of propaganda" of late 19th C anarchists.) Such tactics can be both shorttermed and sustained. Important among sustained practices are resistance movements and
organised refusals (preferably without conspicuous leaders). While individuals can be selectively
picked off, enough people well organised cannot. Mass social actions and Grand Refusals could
constitute significant political happenings. Such strategies can be pursued both for specific
objectives (to preserve a forest here, a building there) and for much more general objectives, up to
and including dislodging an unpopular governing party, or overturning a state.
For more general and dramatic results to be achieved, there are some important preliminary
desiderata to be satisfied. These include
* establishment of a movement, to carry out actions, and subsequently to participate in the
supersession of the state.
* a certain amount of planning, of how to proceed, to direct limited resources. Subsequently, as
supersession of the state becomes a live issue, much planning of the transition and of post-state
arrangements is important, if a successful outcome, or even a good attempt, is to be achieved.
Proper preparation is critical. Once again, planning and organisation of anarchist activity is
certainly not excluded, in revolutionary movements or elsewhere. The rival spontaneity view, still
fashionable in anarchist circles, is underpinned by a confused picture of freedom;^ is inconsistent
8
9
See Coover et al, B. Martin, Changing t/te %bgs, G Sharp.
Duly criticised in "Hot immigration".
�11
with the coupled congruence doctrine where end-states are prefigured; and issues in poor decision
making, choice deliberately uninformed by available information. But naturally planning is not,
and cannot be, total; and it should not be too inflexible, but allow for contingencies, extraordinary
happenings, even spontaneous redirection (e.g. though a range of flexible ranked options).
Initiating an anarchist movement virtually from a zero base (the present situation in most
developed states), would be a slow difficult and no doubt frustrating task. Fortunately there are
attractive alternatives, such as integration with already effective movements, notably those already
engaged and experienced in direct action.
Declared or self-conscious anarchists are now few in number, and lacking in power.
Contemporary anarchists live like the counterculture did, around the margins or in the interstices of
contemporary dominant statist societies, rarely seen in the boardrooms of top companies or at the
clubs of power brokers. Accordingly, transitions to anarchism are most unlikely to proceed at all
directly, either upwards by democratic or popular procedures or downwards through constitutional
procedures invoked by controlling elites. Anarchist strategies, in order to work, will need to be
indirect and smarter. There is much scope for such strategies.
For direct action along the lines sketched to amount to anything, an anarchist movement with
considerable organisational capabilities is needed. The most promising way of fast-tracking such a
movement is to mobilize already established movements, namely, once again, green and peace and
like movements. The idea, in brief, to form an active anarchist movement within the union of
green and peace movements. It will have to be wif/un these movements. For not all those
affiliated with those loose movements are opposed to statist political arrangements or
anarchistically inclined. Many of the leaders and prominent spokespeople among
environmentalists for instance, have a cosy relationship with state political figures and bureaucrats.
Indeed these days many of these state-intricated people, who may well have genuine environmental
commitments, account themselves green, but they are generally unlikely to consider rocking the
ship of state. Nor do these state people generally participate in extended or vigorous protest
operations, of which there are increasing many. An anarchist movement will link into the
extensive more radical end of green and peace movements. There is already considerable linkage,
and considerable scope for expansion of linkage. Many radical greens are vaguely aware of the
anarchist character of several of their own proposals for change.
More radical greens are mostly already aware of the extent of state involvement in
environmental degradation, and of state connections with, and encouragement of, large
corporations engaged in environmentally destructive enterprises. Nor will they be long bought off
by (what threatens to split the green movement) attempts at reconciliation, most recently under the
ambiguous banner of "sustainable development". It is becoming clear to more radical greens that
this normally means sustaining economic development, that is capitalistic business and
macroeconomic growth largely as usual, not sustaining the already developed environmental
heritage. More radical peace activists are even more keenly aware of the intrication of states in
�12
activities hostile to peace such as military activity, weapons production, support of repressive
states and client army/armies funding of counter-insurgency, terrorist and destabilization operators,
and so on. There is evidently much common ground to build upon, from which to organise.
Correladvely, mobilization through loose green and peace movements effects the character of
the activated anarchism, shaping and limiting its forms. It will be an ecosocial anarchism of pacific
slant: ESP anarchism for short (for ecosociopacific anarchism). There is no similar prospect of
mobilizing most other forms of anarchism, in particular robustly individualistic varieties. For the
natural allies of the latter varieties, economic rationalist and libertarianians are overwhelmingly
committed to a minimalistic state to guarantee, coercively, the fundamentals of market capitalism
(private property, constitu^onal and contract law, etc.).
Until a movement is organised there is little chance of a satisfactory revolution. While a few
people may be able to gain control, briefly, of some states, without a larger movement requisite
restructuring of state functions cannot be carried through.
A viable anarchism further supposes some alternative fairly detailed organisational and social
arrangements. If such a system is to come to pass and to persist, then its prospects are
exceedingly poor if it is a do-nothing set of arrangements spontaneously arising out of a
revolution. But the state as it grows tends to undermine or eliminate such alternative arrangements;
and simultaneously people come more and more to expect the government to do what they might
formerly have done, or banded together to do, themselves. The state again proceeds, like other
persistent systems and ecosystems, to establish conditions for its own survival: to be needed for
social and even individual activities.
Formation q/ movements wMwn movements.
There is presently very little in the way of organised anarchist activity anywhere in the
world, and no real movements. There is, for instance, Liberty Foundation in USA which supports
anarchist productions, but it does not discriminate in what it supports between anarchism and
minimal statism and economic rationalism. There are other organisations that do or could play a
creative role in anarchist movements (such as Black Rose publicadons in Montreal, and the small
Institute of Social Ecology in Vermont). As it takes some time, and much effort, to establish a
viable movement, the situation for anarchistic change may look bleak. But there is no reason why
anarchism need form an independent movement; it can hitch to already established movements.
There are obvious movements, of very sympathetic character, to join (this is no inHitration or
annexation): namely the green movement and the peace movement. In both these overlapping
movements there is wide appreciation that states themselves are major sources of the issues they
are concerned with; for states are the main cause of wars, major participants in nuclear industries,
major sources of the issues they are concerned with; for states are the main cause of wars, major
participants in nuclear industries, major proponents of economic growth and its concomitant
pollution and waste. (Despite the definite descriptions, these "movement" are really loose
A
�13
c
coalitions, often not even organised in one group in individual countries.) Development of
anarchist groundswells within green organisations and among green sympathizers appears
particularly promising. For many greens are beginning to recognise that they are getting nowhere
much, or even going backwards, through state support and state-directed appeals and activity.
Turning enough of these doubtful or disillusional greens in positive anarchist directions looks a
genuine prospect, io
There are very great advantages in mobilizing relevant parts of green and peace movements
(
in anarchistic direcdons. Not only are there substantially concordant ideologies and goods; further
the
to these ends lie available and quite well developed. Readily to be drawn upon is much
knowledge of and experience in direct action methods, nonviolent resistance and sabotage, civil
(and state) disobedience, and similar.n While several of these methods and procedures derive
from earlier anarchist, resistance and civil disobedience practices (and many are common currency
of direct oppositional organisations everywhere), they have been brought to a new level of
refinement. Further, some extremely important restrictions are recognised. By contrast with
methods deployed by "illegal" armies, guerillas, insurgents and the like, paramilitary techniques
are out. Such paramilitary organisations are, in any case, operating within the statist paradigm,
normally aiming to replace some state arrangements by others. Methods applied are expected to be
nonviolent, and to inflict no serious damage upon living creatures.^
What is foreshadowed, then, is formation and development, in each region, of a radical
change movement, a radwienf or
Ideal radments in different regions are in
communication and loosely federated. A radment proceeds to undertake both reformist action and
radical action, marginally political and extra-political action, up to and including revolutionary
action. Much action is undertaken by smaller groups within the radment, vands (to choose a heady
combination of "band" and "van").^ Vands undertake specific projects, of a wide variety of sorts.
So far much of their activity has been directed to halting or redirecting specific vandalistic activities
of governments, governmental authorities or government-licensed corporations, such as logging,
whaling, sealing, polluting, transporting hazardous waste,... The simple proposal is that the range
10
11
12
13
Experiences or processes of change involved do not amount to conversion; for there is no adoption of a
faith. Anarchism resembles atheism, a loss of faith, rather than a religion. Rather there is a comingdown-to-earth, a realisation that institutions in which trust and hope had been placed did not warrant those
investments and were without justificatory clothes.
There is now an array of texts documenting methods, explaining how they are applied, how they can be
taught (e.g. through enactments, drama, practice, etc), and so on. See (as above).
There are some controversial procedures, such as the tree spiking used by Earth-Firsters and MonkeyWrenchers. Those may do minor damage to some trees spiked, and serious damage to loggers and
sawmillers who proceed to mill spiked trees, (a careful formulation of admissible procedures and practices
is required.)
Vands may include wanderers and wanderlebeners, but they are not vandals. Environmental vandalism is
one of the major practices they oppose.
�14
of vand activity should be expanded, to include revolutionary action. Such action would include
counter-option, taking over the administrations of organisations that are being specifically
combated or targeted. Experience could be gained on organisations like universities, though the
ultimate target is naturally the state.
Designing a s/nari revo/afton.'
and revo/MZfonary achion.
If the state were justified, if it had a moral right to be there, the action, revolutionary or
other, by ethically guided anarchists to dislodge or remove it would be excluded. But it is not. So
action, including revolutionary action against it, is not thereby excluded.
Perhaps the richest literature on rapid transformation of society, on revolution, falls within
the orbit of marxism. There is much to be learnt from this literature, and much from it can be
adopted. Some of the elements for textual adaptation are simple. Replace 'the working class' or
'workers' appropriately (unfortunately the replacement is not uniform). For example, substitute
'people's councils' for 'workers councils'; replace 'vanguard class' by 'revolutionary coalition',
etc. Not only does marxism presume a vanguard class; more difficult it presumes violence as an
inevitable component of revolutionary action. Here the direct and other action methods already
alluded to substitute for marxist methods.
But while much can be learnt form Marxist socialists, there are fundamental differences as to
the point and character of revolution. While the Marxist objective is to siege power and use it, the
anarchist objective is not to seize power, and then remove it or relinquish it, a dubious and risky
indirect route, but rather to neutralize and remove power directly.
There are said to be classic problems confronting any revolutionary movement. One of these
is the alleged stability of states, in the West at least. This stability, which does not extend far east,
or even into Central Europe, is considerably exaggerated; belief in this stability, which was shaken
by the events in Paris in 1968, can be undermined, by an appropriate subversive campaign, so that
belief no longer constitutes such an intellectual obstacle to revolutionary activity. Another classic
problem turns upon the issue of revolutionary organisation. Some of these organisation^ problems,
practices in green and peace movements, especially in groups like Greenpeace, have already
effectively solved.[detail].
Z/te ZransMon.
Like stages before the transition, stages q/fer transitions to post-state societies will not be
easy. There is a commonplace anarchist sentiment that removal of the state, its burden and
oppressiveness, a real incubus, will release an enormous amount of energy, with great scope for
spontaneity, fulfilment of human potentialities, and so on. Although this sentiment is widely
reiterated, very little evidence for the sentiment is ever assembled. My own sentiment is that the
commonplace sentiment, and what is taken to ensue from it, is largely moonshine, because, for
one thing, there is a countermodel that is at least as plausible. Those who are released from an
�15
immense burden, or very hard oppressive forced labour, simply stop, relax and do very little, or
little more than is necessary for life and limb.
For similar reasons the common anarchist proposition that productivity will rise enormously
after the state is stripped away is very doubtful. If the state is like some sort of slave-driver, post
state productivity will presumably fall. The flood of goods and the end of scarcity, with the
demise of the state and its well-published appropriation of the surplus, looks unlikely (not to say
environmentally undesirable because the impact of the "goods"). Wishful thinking appears to have
gained control in much anarchist literature. There are other important reasons why parts of post
state productivity will decline considerably. Much too much of present production, fostered by the
state, involves erosion of biological capital, and should be wound down accordingly, and
alternatives sought.
In a similar way, anarchists often look far too optimistic about the rapid regeneration of
supportative societies destroyed by, and through machinations of the state. Some of those
supportative arrangements, developed in ages of suppression are gone, perhaps forever; others
will take much tiwg to repair. Social healing is sometimes very slow.
As with post-war reconstruction, living and social arrangements could be very difficult for
some for some considerable time. There will need to be, for instance,
* intermediate support structures put in place to ease the transition for some;
* much flexibility, and some preparedness to experiment to see what works;
* vigilance to ensure that old forces of state do not remerge on the back of social discontent.
Intelligent anarchist arrangements will have flexible plans, enabling anticipation of main problem
areas and sensitive coping with them.
5. External interference
�Chapter 11
FEASIBLE ANARCHIST CONTRIBUTIONS
TO
GLOBAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL PROBLEMS
Heavy criticisms of anarchism, driving in strongly from socialist and marxist quarters,
include these: that anarchism offers no worthwhile practice for and offers no useful
contributions far coping with global problems^ meaning problems in present social and political
conditions (not usually problems concerning world environments). Among the problems
alluded to, which it is alleged anarchism does not and cannot address, are human proverty,
human malnutrition, inequitable distribution of resources, human (over-)population, and so on.
Granted, there are great many problems, many of them getting worse rapidly. Though
anarchist arrangements played little or no part in producing these problems — many of them
o
developing and getting out of control under free-enterprise capitalist and state-socialist
arrangements — it is sometimes outrageously claimed that anarchism should be able to deal
successfully with an array of these problems. To add to the insult, it is said to fail as a theory
because it is unable to do so. Why on earth should anarchism be presumed to do this? One
critic endowed with this level of 'gall' (one A. Wertheimer)
contends that anarchism is unable to successfully deal with four
presently existing world social conditions. These are: 1) that "the
population of the earth is (perhaps) too large, but increasing at a
rapid rate with no prospect for a serious reduction"; 2) that "in much
of the world, basic human needs are not being satisfied"; 3) that "the
world's natural and human resources are not evenly distributed
across the globe"; and finally 4) that "the present level of subsistence
is based on a high level of social and economic interdependence
among various regions of the world and within the regions
themselves". In addition [5)J... anarchism is unable to cope with
conflicts between individual self-interest and social needs,
particularly as relates to ... defense (Clark p.142).
The short response is, So what? Anarchism is not really saddled with the global legacies
of p^archist practice. A longer response begins thus:- Firstly, insofar as these conditions
constitute problems ("condition " 3) is more a "fact" than a "problem"), no political theory is
coping successfully, only an all-conquering ideology would pretend to be able to cope.
Democratic capitalism has had (important isolated pockets excepted) little impact in limiting
India's gross population; Maoist socialism^' has de^ only a little better in China. Part of the
problem in almost all such overpopulated regions lies in getting the problem recognised as a
problem, and making appropriate adjustments; as with education and adjustment concerning the
hazards of pollution and smoking, this is largely because of remiss state practice. Part of the
problem, the present resolutions will have ethically inadmissible outcomes or by-products.
—------------ .------------------ ——___
�2
Only for the future is there some glimmer of hope, but not under present archist arrangements.
Secondly, prospects of success for anarchism are primarily regional, not global. But a region
can hardly be expected to handle, rather than make limited contributions towards, world
problems. Suppose, for instance, Niue became (or reverted to) an anarchist society, a
successful one locally. It would be no detraction from its local success that it made no impact
upon demilitarizing the USA or in halting the world's resource drain te thereto, or that its
success was (through standard US media practice) scarcely known about there.
*
iMMM. As we have already noticed, it is often asserted that anarchism cannot work
in regions of large populations or with high population densities. That anarchy only has
prospects of success in small, and perhaps technologically unsophisticated, communities is a
widely espoused thesis? These kinds of assertion have already been criticised.
What do not work are stock archist procedures, e.g. expanding \m out-of-touch
bureaucracy. Poly-archic arrangements cannot handle tough decisions. By contrast, sortition
allows them to be taken (Burgheim). This is important as wide range of decisions: transport
systems, restructuring urban systems, and so on, as well as population and immigration
policies. As there is a range of lobbies (ethnics, etc.) in favour of population increase: hard for
party systems to ignor these lobbies, because of voting system.
* Deliberate social reorganisation, which undercuts reasons for large families, namely old-age
care, cheap labour in fields, etc. (Seeams as successor (technology here)?
* Scarcity is re/aftw to wants and presumed needs. Similarly abundance: it depends
on extent to which materialism, consumerism, ete, prevail. When wants are large, perhaps
insatiable, there will always be scarcity. Wants are not a given; needs, through culturally
dependent, can be. Whan needs are set high (e.g. to include domestic ref^rgeaati^s), then too
there will be scarcity for the foreseeable future?
No doubt there is a rough band of minimal sustenance and shelter requirement for keeping
humans (why are we back to this) alive, for bare sustenance. Even if they could be met,
satisfactory lives would not result.
* Creation of needs (Marx). Industrial revolution under capitalism aggravated
of scarcity
and toil.
* Anarchists have a bad track-record on scarcity. They have tended to assume abundance. A
vast increase once the shades of the state are removed.
A
Following Kropotkin's proposals they have taken for granted enormous productivity from
labour-intensive garden plots, a sort of anarchist green revolution, neglecting the extensive
*
3
4
Even so, oneway to resolve/is by building up from local and regional solutions. Compare
nuclear freedom, peace, etc.(
Thus both sympathetic and unsympathetic commentators; Taylor, Wertheimer etc.
n frequently claimed that we know more or less how to meet population problems. Only
political structures and vested interests stand in way of doing so. But it is not quite that simple
and easy.
Arguments that wants/needs distinction cannot be drawn.
//'
�3
inputs required to make this feasible, (water, energy, manure, pesticides, etc.). [Thus e.g. Clark
p.148.)
* There are some sharp limits on the extent of growth to cater for human populations and their
"needs". An important limitation can be seen by tracking energy, which is limited, more
abundant production of which encounters other limits (pollution, nasty works production, etc.)
D&triZwHon,
q/T&Kmrcgs.
. 4.
* Necessity is regularly exaggerated. Often this done to enable capitalist routes to be taken,
access to foreign business provided etc.
*
'Necessity
becomes part of imperialistic exploitation. Contrast the equally unsatisfactory
Marxist line: distribution is one with production. What is required is a change in technological
systems and productive relations. Undesirable patterns of production result in maldistribution.
'... the entire problematic of "redistribution" is bared jn the questionable assumption of the
feasibility of seeking a solution to the problem while continuing a technological system
founded ^n dependency and disproperti%s in economic power
*
(Clark p.154).
* The Aid record of present liberal democratic states is dismal.
* As regards more basic provisioning, mutual aid through free federation. Example of
Spanish collective ((^ebal ref 19 pp. 184-5).
Argument that anarchist approach could succeed, from socio-psychological assumption:
'unless humans develop patterns of life and values based on mutual aid at level of small groups
and local communities, one cannot expect them to go very far in the practice of mutual aid at
any other level of social organisation
*
(Clark p.154).
But really heeds the convert: when have no developed, can be suspected to deliver aid.
Present arrangement for human living are not made on the basis of
quality of life for the livers, but all too often to suit the needs of industry J returns to capitalism,
etc. The results are everywhere conspicuous, especially in contemporary cities — which
characteristically dominate whole regions.
Many major local problems derive from the environmental states and living conditions of
cities. An anarchist resolution involves restructuring cities. This would include development
of network cities and restoration of community.
�4. Appendix:
ON SELECTION OF COMMITTEES
For how committees should be comprised, look at what they are supposed to accomplish, what
sorts of decisions deliver, and so on.
For example, the basis of decision for allocating public money has to be: 'attempting to balance
all legitimate claims on the basis of need and public benefit in accordance with recognised
moral values and principles'.^
Evidently such committees should not be composed of
1. members of competing constitutions seeking funds (i.e. anti-model is premiers conference)
2. power traders (i.e. anti-model is /...... or typical bureaucratic committee).
What appears to be required are candidates who are
* impartial (without chauvinistic or other prejudices)
* varied in evolutionary complex claims
* informed of.... moral values and principles, and committed to some such.
H
<3-.
After that try statically for spread of attitudes from conservative to radical.
Such committees according directly violate (Burheim) relevant interests criteria. In general
however for lower level committees relevance criteria obtain.
5. Demanarchoid ecodesigns for Australia
�Chapter 5.1
THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM:
VARIETIES AND OPTIONS
The arguments outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the
options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State and for transition to a
stateless Society, and so on. For example, spontaneous anarchism - according to which
organisation is unnecessary and social arrangements will arise spontaneously and will be
ushered in during the revolution without any prior organisation - is a position which is not
viable and could not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which
durable supersession of the State depends. The sort of anarchist society which these theoretical
arguments delineate will certainly be organised, but the organisation will not be compulsory,
and will eschew authoritarian measures (and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition
by any strengthening of the centralised State), relying heavily no doubt on voluntary co
operation and direct democracy.
The society which emerges may be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes pictured
it, or it may not. It may well be based on smaller-scale decentralised communities: for
otherwise such arrangements as community replacements of State welfare arrangements,
control of their environment, removal of Prisoners" Dilemmas, and participatory democracy,
will work less satisfactorily. Communities may well be federated and control will be bottomup, not merely by representation and subject to a downward system of command. Within each
community there will, under such social anarchism, not be great discrepancies in the
distribution of wealth and property, and no highly concentrated economic power. Under social
anarchism, a community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
communally owned or not owned at all.
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and also economic
arrangements, they are very far from determining them completely; they offer no detailed
blueprint. Accordingly what emerges is not a particular from of anarchism, for instance
anarchist communism, but a more experimental and
anarchism, such as was broadly
instituted in the Spanish collectives.
There are several recognised varieties of anarchism, among the more common:
individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarchosyndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms, and now eco-anarchisms.
These
varieties are not particularly well-characterised. They are by no means at all exclusive. They
certainly do not exhaust the interesting possibilities. So far indeed a satisfactory classification
is lacking. Usually something of a ragbag is offered: textbooks single out a very few varieties,
and look at them. Invariably they leave out important varieties.
�2
But it is not difficult to discern some of the more independent dimensions^ along which
variation occurs, and which accordingly are relevant to an improved multi-dimensional tabular
classification:
Part-w/to/e dimension:
atomism pole O
<—
individual social---------- communal
—O total holism
This is a most important dimension of variation among organisational arrangements (for
analysis see SM). It accounts for a major bifurcation between European anarchisms, which tend
to be socially oriented, and American anarchisms, which are usually highly individualistic
(religious communities and some European transplants excepted). For markedly holistic
arrangements to persist, some strong ideological relational glue appears required, such as an
immersing spiritual ideology.
Property spectrum:
Although this can be compressed into two dimensional form, it is better presented three
dimensionally as follows:
full
O <individualistic ---privatization
communalistic
-> O full public
(tribal) ownership
diminished
ownership
no ownership
This spectrum evidently connects with the preceding holistic dimension, and both contribute to
what was the old right-left political division (a sort of crude super-position), and to what should
be superseding it, three-colour political spectrum:
(old right) blue
<-
red (old left)
green (new environmental)
and electoral spectrum:
Gronp
fully
O <- bottom up
— democratic — oligopolistic — top down
participatory
O fully
dictatorial
Change proceJnre dimensions:
violent
non-constitutional
constitutional <pacific
1
Some of these "dimensions" are not really linear in the way strictly required. That they are not,
and that they are not fully independent, does not impede a much improved classification.
�3
C/tangg wufMfors: vanguard group or class;
<Lumpen-proletariat-workers' syndicates
bottom
"the people"
-----------------business
political
companies
parties
ruling elites
top
greens
alternative
coalitions
And so on. The schema presented are clearly far from exhaustive; nothing has been directly
included concerning distribution methods (market vs command, open vs closed storehouses,
etc.), admissible technology, or work-leisure arrangements, to take three important examples.
More pieces will be picked up as we proceed (the approximate number of dimensions is
computationally small), and some of the rather schematic sketches ventured above, elements of
which should be familiar, will receive some development in what follows.
Once the (n) dimensions are duly elaborated an anarc/tAm can be located and classified
(pigeon-holed in n-space) by placement in each dimension. For instance, the form of anarchism
preferred by me (see SM for an early presentation), is located as follows: it is social (with a
significantly qualified communistic safety net: each according to her or his basic needs), local
market-oriented but non-capitalistic, with diminished ownership, democratic but without
politicians and with alternative electoral arrangements, pacific but not bound by "constitutional"
procedures, utilizing modest safe technologies,.... But it is but one sort never to be instituted
everywhere, from a rich variety of alternatives
There are then MMny anarchisms, a rich variety of different forms, some of them scarcely
investigated or known. That anarchism comprises such a plurality has proved puzzling to those
(for example of one name-one thing persuasion) who assumed it must be a single ideology,
either individual or collective,.... Indeed the pluralist character of anarchism has led even more
apparently sympathetic critics, to 'wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or
merely a jumble of beliefs ...' (M. p.3). Of course the impression that anarchism 'is amorphous
and full of paradoxes and contradictions' is marvellously assisted by conflating degenarchism
with anarchism, chaos with order, and by combining the variant forms, individualism with
socialism and communism.
By properly regarding anarchism as a sheaf of overlapping
positions assembled around a core characterisation, a standard model for pluralism, the
problematic elements of anarchism as an ideology disappear. No doubt it is not an ideology
like Marxism, but then Marxism is atypical in its set of paradigmatic texts, concentrated in the
works of the master. Other ideologies such as liberalism or environmentalism afford better
comparisons. While anarchism is an ideology (in both good and bad senses), it is not really a
movement. There is not, anywhere really, such a movement, in the way there have been a
succession of liberation movements or there is a green movement and within it a deep ecology
movement.
�4
As anarchisms are plural, so by similar arguments are green, and deep-green, anarchisms.
Certainly green effect a select among their cluse of anarchism; it excludes, for example, the run
of individualistic anarchisms peddial in USA, because these admit much anti-environmental
activity, manifested for instance through "externalities" and market failure (some of these could
be very pale green). But selection does not, even for deep-green tend to a singleton, but still to
a wide pluralism.
These pluralisms are not merely descriptive, but normative. Insofar as any anarchism is
duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it should be
* pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who
want to organise differently than its preferred way.
It should also be
* non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatible with broad-based non
coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like.2
That is, there is a doublish standard on vio/encg: It is alright to apply violence against state
(and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this can
be justified through
namely it is OK for me to do violence to you bot not OK for you to
apply violence to me. Accordingly a
conc/MMon is: A moral anarchism will not be a
form committed to violence (except unavoidable forms etc.).
Such pluralism does not enjoy a strong historic track-record, and does not go unopposed.
Standard anarchist positions, sketching of which was mainly a nineteenth century preoccupation
(but extending into twentieth century science fiction and utopian literature), shied away from
pluralism in the direction of monistic forms, towards insistence upon particular structure,
organisation and distributional methods. Such monistic rigidity led to much intense, often
fruitless discussion and friction between anarchists committed to different arrangements.
Certainly there was a doctrine of spontaneity — according to which in a state-overthrowing
revolution (in the very heat of the revolution!) the masses world spontaneously decide upon
new arrangements — which makes it appear that any structures at all were open for
consideration; but it was also assumed that certain arrangements would be selected, towards
which active anarchists would provide guidance.
It is not difficult to indicate some of the broad features of emergent arrangements features
that flow from the character of anarchism. But anarchists, over-attracted like others to monistic
schemes, have regularly attempted to advance their own schemes, introducing many further
postulates, that reach far beyond what flows from the basic characterisation, and that need not
2
There are serious pro&Anw for anarchism that accept coercive methods: why not aiso
accept the state then? Such positions tend to be forced back towards an organised
individualism.
But how then do they stop voluntary organisation arising (legitimately)?
�5
be adopted by genuine anarchistics (some further examples of optional and rejectable extras
from a recent manifesto: ... direct democracy, destruction of all hierarchies, maximization of
freedom, total Revolution, no ends-means distinction, no leaders, optimism about an anarchist
future,...).
Because of the expansive pluralism of anarchism, it overlaps many other ideologies,
indeed virtually all that do not include as a theme unmitigated commitment to a state or like
central authority. Thus while anarchism excludes fascism and is incompatible with state
capitalism, anarchism overlaps liberalism, democracy, and even Marxism, since Marxism
affords a long-term anarchism. There has been much confusion about these interrelations.
Take democracy. Anarchism does not entail democracy, as is sometimes claimed. Advice of a
select minority or of a single sage could regularly be adopted, though the advice did not reflect
the will of the people and its source was not elected or appointed by the people. Nor does
anarchism entail undemocratic procedures. There are, in the plurality, democratic forms, of
various sorts, and undemocratic forms. Democratic forms may have a better prospect of
enabling genuine democracy than life under the state. For as some have argued, 'both the
nation state and electoral democracy are inadequate as vehicles for democracy under modern
conditions' (Bumheim p.218).
Is its goal individual freedom or communal solidarity? Sometimes one, sometimes the
other, sometimes neither, sometimes both (a typical four-valued logical structure). A pluralistic
anarchism offers several different sorts of communities, not just one kind: for instance,
independent individuals, perhaps interrelated and organised through contracts, solidaristic
groups working freely together and sharing according to need, and various attractive
intermediaries, where there may be more individual-oriented market arrangements but there are
also safety nets ensuring distribution according to basic needs.
It is not difficult in theory to devise structures that allow a wide variety of kinds. For
example, in simple cases this can be accomplished through regional patterning, as illustrated in
the following
with 6 varieties.
2
1
5
3
6
4
(Such a modelling for political pluralism is further elaborated in UT.) The brief interlude of
anarchism in Spain afforded a small-scale example of regional patterning at work
The kinds of anarchistic societies are bound to be of very variable quality, both
theoretically and in practice. Some will only work with rather special sorts of people, for
instance certain communes with members with strong religious or ideological commitments;
some will not succeed at all. Some verge on incoherence, for instance those against coercive
organisation that approve group terrorist tactics. But while some kinds of anarchism are
entangled in serious problems, others are not. Anarchists generally have no obligation to
�6
defend defective kinds; yet many criticisms of anarchism are directed at just such defective
forms.
Although there is a rich variety of anarchistic end-states (virtually uninstantiated
possibilities), there are same common or overlapping organisational and structural features.
Such family-resemblance features are what hold the plurality together, and include noncoercive
versions of those arrangements essential to a functioning society: for instance, broad features of
arrangements for production and distribution, for arbitration and reconciliation, and so on, and
on. But although each such anarchist society will have some such organizational features, they
will differ in detail. For example, a main distributional feature of a simple communist society
may comprise a common storehouse from which members take according to need, whereas in
individualist societies distribution will normally proceed through some sort of exchange in
market systems. More generally different types of anarchism will offer different economic
theories. Those with stronger individualistic component will tend to rely upon not merely
market or allied exchange arrangements, but upon capitalistic organisation. The type of
anarchism favoured here strikes an intermediate route: markets without capitalism.
How is such complex organisation to be achieved without a state? Does not such
organisation and government require a state? To remove that familiar assumption and
associated blockages — encouraged by too much life under states and no experience of
alternatives - take a wider look around. Look at how many activities and procedures are
organised without states or essential participation of states. By voluntary arrangements.
Prominent examples are again sporting organisations, labour unions and business corporations
of various sorts. In short, organisation can be accomplished through a range of appropriate
institutions.
Such examples also provide the appropriate key unlocking the door as to how more
extensive organisation can be achieved in the absence of the state, namely through appropriate
institutions. The state dissolves into functioning components, a set of appropriate institutions,
and at bottom into its relevant minimization. It fragments into compartments — in two
interconnected ways: into regional parts and into capacities, functional parts.
There are other valuable clues to stateless reorganisation. What happens within the more
self-regulating state can also happen without it. As Gramsci emphasized,
the ability to govern without overt coercion depends largely on the ability
of those in power to exploit systems of belief that the larger population
shares. The nature of that system of belief is to some extent determinable
by policy makers, since in the modern state they possess a significant
ability to propagandize for their view. Yet.... (p.63).
Recent empirical investigations tend to yield similar results. People tend to follow rules and
obey laws they regard as moral or otherwise satisfactory. There are important messages for
anarchistic organisation here also, for arrangements without coercion, overt or other.
�7
Anarchistic rules will try to go with the prevailing flow, and will only vary (as over vindictive
punishment) where an evidently satisfactory justification can be given. More generally, smarter
anarchistic arrangements will aim to include desirable self-regulating systems, such as small-
scale markets.
Though there are many different strands that can be interwoven through the pluralistic
out-fall from the basic characterisation, there are some broad tendencies of anarchistic
arrangement which include:
* reliance on self-regulatory methods of organisation that require little or no intervention, as
opposed to highly regulated procedures, perhaps tending towards centralism or paternalism.
This is one reason why markets are often favoured, analogues of centralised control and
coercive legal systems are not.
* emphasis on voluntary methods, in place of imposed methods — coercive methods are of
course excluded by virtue of basic characterisation. Certainly de facto power may remain, but it
will be without justification.
* favouring of decentralisation and deconcentration rather than centralised or concentrated
structures.
That does not imply there can be no downward relations. Of course under federal arrangements
there will be, and sideways natural relations as well (a full control system).
* discouragement of empowerment, encouragement of depowerment.
* opposition to oppression is a corollary.
There are too many alternatives in the pluralistic basket to look at all of them. Let us
consider only some of them, with however preferred features. (An example that does not rank
highly and will not be further assessed is Stimer's individualism.) Anarchistic societies of any
complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisations, or a federation of
these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue,
role or function.
Thus they will include what might well be accounted gcorggiowuZ
/hnctiona/iym. Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will
accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The
organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join.
Typically they will be voluntary arrangements.
A critical question concerns how these organisations, substituting for the operation of
state, are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In much favoured democratic structures, such
as electoral bureaucracies, control is usually weak and remarkably mJirgct. A populace weakly
selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bureaucratic bodies some control of
state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments.
It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A
simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component
of each organisation is chosen randomly from those qualified of the regional community who
volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications (e.g.
�8
having served before at a lower level), and avoid disqualifications (e.g. having acquired a
disqualifying record).^ Where the community decides that certain categories of people should
be represented, for instance disabled, minorities, and so forth, then it is a matter of arranging
random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of
statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where
public officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's
Po/t/fc^). Nowadays it is called Je/narchy (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in
its anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the neologism JewMwiarc/ty.
Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing a most expensive duplication,
government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and
corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of central parliamentary
government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is
duly removed - as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are
eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, itself no centre,
which is directly linked to functional organisation.
Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as
those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre
and its command structure, no longer there to capture (for there is no command or control
structure that could be taken by an invader or with internal insurrection). Community defence
is thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who
controls the controllers: partly because control is so diffused, partly because also gone are
legions of soldiers and security forces, and partly because a main controller is the community
(one of the advantages of more direct democracy).
Appropriate institutions take care then of the day-to-day running of community affairs.
But what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure?
These can be
accomplished from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the like (with public
assessment organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down
inflexible fashion. (Some of these methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of
Europe, are investigated in Wolff.)
A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed
coercive mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the
overall structure could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It
3
People can serve their administrative apprenticeship at iocal or group levels. One when they are
adjudged to have exhibited sufficient competence here are they entitled to nominate for selection
at grander levels. That is, there is a tiered structure for administralive careers, which would no
longer be full-time or working life long. This is one reasonable way of obtained some quality
control in selection of administrators. (Note these/evefy do not provide a vicious hierarchy.)
�9
should be observed, in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the
target is pursued for
reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from
wealthy corporations, firms or individuals, from where in a more equitable community much of
the funding would derive (by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a
satisfactory answer:* Muc/t less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and
least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of
central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard
military forces and defence establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison
establishment and expensive courts.
*
Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance,
include smaller substitutes for some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence
arrangements).
* Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import
organisations they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns
taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or
redistribution powers.
* Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate
royalties and the like), rental taxes on property or leases, gift and gains taxes, and through
auctions (of previously inherited goods). How this would work depends upon community
arrangements.
Consider for instance anarchistic arrangements where that problematic item, private
property, has not been instituted or has been abolished (as under main examples of European
anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable
worth stealing for sale in present systems) will be
instead of bought. Leasehold systems
can be operated very like private property (as the land system in the Australian Capital Territory
reveals) thus facilitating market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for
instance environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected,
through a rental, and they can be of finite term and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer
is excluded.
In place of the customary land titles office a larger durables office with
subdivision for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked
or described. Here, as with referenda, computing facilities remove many previous obstacles to
such developments. Organisation can move with newer technologies.
Leasehold arrangements are readily applied to prevent the accumulation ol scarce
property resources, such as urban land, which is a major feature of capitalism. For leases of
scarce commodities can be allocated according to need and ability to use, not merely through a
4
The costs are enormous. A minute component, a singie federai election in Australia, now costs
about $54 million to arrange.
�10
historically rooted market distribution as with private property. It is private property, not a
market system of distribution, that is really distinctive of capitalism, since it not only provides a
place to park and increase capital, but it enables transmission of accumulated wealth (e.g.
within a family or dynasty) and control of the means of production.
Where can anarchism work — satisfactively: on stock presumptions of community and
smallness.
Even proponents of the state have allowed that anarchy can work, indeed their position
often depends upon it. The horrible alternative to their, or their friends' or patrons', splendid
state and statecraft, is that a region should lapse into anarchy (a regular fear of the US
administration). Anarchism, that is, works, but works very nastily, like that presumed in "states
of nature", like that many in fact encounter in the encampments, slums or ghettos of terrorist or
other states.
But it now fairly widely appreciated, outside those intellectually incarcerated in the allencompassing realm of states, that anarchism can work rather satisfactorily, and did in may pre
state societies.
Concurrent anthropological findings concerning small communities and collective action
results concerning small collective have demolished the assumption that anarchy is impossible,
either in practice or techno-logically. Since then it has become fashionable to concede that
anarchy is possible but on/y where there is a suitable small community. This sort of anarchimin-the-small is commonly conceded by socialists, but dismissively. While anarchism may, it is
allowed, work well enough in small, isolated or primitive communities, it cannot work in large
industrial or urban societies such as now predominate globally. Anarchism is accordingly but a
marginal possibility, unworthly any longer of much serious political concern. Such dismissals
tend to be strong on claims and unfavourable judgements but excessingly weak on supporting
argument, where socialist handwaving takes over (obviously this widespread phenomenon is
not confined to socialism, or even to political debate). Confidence that anarchism cannot
succeed seems to be largely founded on the erroneous assumption that anarchism cannot supply
any but a primitive organisational structure.
By contrast, a sort of anarchism-in-the-small has been forcefully pursued, with due
argument, by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations
between people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (-.166).
That is: '... community is nec&wary — if people are to live without the state' (p.3).
The argument to community that Taylor offers reduces a modified Hobbesianism; social
order can only be maintained, without the state and in the small, if the relations between
individuals are those of community (cf. p.2). Insofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably broken-
down argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal justification of the state' — from
the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperated to provide themselves
without requisite collective goods — breaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its
�1
11
argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply
of such goods (p.59).
It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred
is that, if public goods are to be provided,
means must be found of getting people to do
their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of
ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The
argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order
cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are
unfortunately far from decisive. That leaves the state for public larger than communities, and
communitarian anarchism as an extra-terrestrial possibility for small communities (because
communities in the vicinity of states do not, it is claimed, survive). For all the talk about
anarchism, it looks like another triumph for the state.
But the argument is unsound, because there are
methods than those Taylor locates.
Non-statist organisation, which comes in a range of forms — functional, regional and others —
is not a combination of the pure methods considered. As a broad type of method it is hardly
"unproposed", or without precedents or examples (e.g. medieval orders and present
international order).
While there is no need to dispute that prospects for anarchism tend to be enhanced in
smaller communities, or in conglomerates that can be arranged in networks of smaller
communities, anarchism can work, if less satisfactorily, in modem mass society. Such is one of
the large themes being advanced.
�777E EA7FFG//VG
OF
/LV1/?C77/.SM: ^/<^r
cipy?^s
,
i
The
arguments
outlined,
predominancy theoretical, inform the
practical, revealing the options open for
anarchism, courses of action in superan
nuating the State and for transition to a
stateless Society, and so on. For exam
ple, spontaneous anarchism — accor
ding to which organisation is un
necessary and social arrangements will
arise spontaneously and will be ushered
in during the revolution without any
prior organisation — is a position which
is not viable and could not endure,
because it makes none of the requisite
replacements upon which durable supersession of the State depends. The sort of
anarchist society which these theoretical
arguments delineate will certainly be
organised, but the organisation will not
be compulsory, and will eschew
authoritarian measures (and, by the
overshoot argument, will reject transi
tion by any strengthening oj^he cen
tralised State), relying heavil\^on volun
tary co-operation and direct democracy.
^ The society which emerges mciy be much
. ..as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes
piAuredH^lt /9^be based on smallerscale decentralised communities? for
otherwise such arrangements as com
munity replacement of State welfare ar
rangements, control of their environ
ment, removal of Prisoners' Dilemmas,
and participatory democracy, will w(?rk
less satisfactorily. Communities
.be
federated and control will be bottom-up,
not merely by representation and subject
to a downward system of command.__
Within each community there will hot be
great discrepancies in the distribution of
weakh and property, ar^p hi^^ycom
centrated economic powercommum
ty win be a rather equaiitarian group,
sharing in much that is communally
owned or not owned at a!i.
White theoretical arguments heip
outtine the generat shape of social, ami
aiso economic arrangements,they
determine^them compietety; they offer
no detaited btueprint. Accordingty what
emerges is not a particular form of anar
chism, for instance anarchist com
munism, but a more experinienta^an.^
p/ura/bhc anarchism, such as was^tnstituted in the Spanish cokectives.
traced/
\^^There are several recognised varieties of anarchism among the more common:
individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarcho-
syndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms, and now eco-anarchisms. These
varieties are not particularly well-characterised, /hey are by no means at all exclusive. So far
indeed a satisfactory classification is lacking. Usually something of a ragbag is offered:
textbooks single out a very few varieties, and look at them. Invariably they leave out important
varieties.
��But it is not difficult to discern some of the more independent dimensions^ along which
variation occurs, and which accordingly are relevant to an improved multi-dimensional tabular
classification:
Parf-w/zo/g/ dimension:
atomism pole O <— individual ----
social
----
communal
—> O total holism
This is a most important dimension of variation among organisational arrangements (for
analysis see SM). It accounts for a major bifpriation between European anarchisms, which tend
...
.
1
'S^
to be socially oriented, and American anarchism^ which are usually highly individual (religious
communities^ some European transplants/ excepted). For markedly holistic arrangements to
persist, some strong ideological relational glue appears required, such as an immersing spiritual
ideology.
Properly spectrum:
Although this can be compressed into two dimensional form, it is better presented three
dimensionally as follows:
full
privatization
—> O full public
(tribal) ownership
no ownership
This spectrum evidently connects with the preceding holistic dimension, and both contribute to
what was the old right-left political division (a sort of crude super-position), and to what should
be superseding it, three-colour political spectrum:
(old right) blue
<------------------------ .--------------------------- >
red (old left)
green (new environmental)
Group Jectwon and electoral spectrum:
fully
O <- bottom up — democratic —y oligopolistic — top down
participatory
C/umge procedure dimensions:
^violent
-*
O fully
dictatorial
constitutional <------------------------- —---------------------------------- > non-constitutional
pacific
5
Some of these "dimensions" are not really h'wear in the way strictly required. That they are not, and that
they are not fully independent, does not impede a much improved classification.
�22
CTtangc mmai/ors': vanguard group or class;
<—
Lumpen-proletariat—workers
*
syndicates
bottom
"the people"
political
parties
business ---companies
top
alternative
ccylitions
a/
And so on. The schema presented are clearly far from exhaustive; nothing has been directly
included concerning distribution methods (market vs command, open vs closed storehouses,
etc.), admissible technology, or work-leisure arrangements, to take three important examples.
More pieces will be picked up as we proceed (the approximate number of dimensions is
computationally small), and some of the rather schematic sketches ventured above, elements of
which should be familiar, will receive some development in what follows^ Once the (n)
dimensions are duly elaborated an anarchism can be located and classified (pidgeon-holed in n-
space) by placement in sach dimension. For instance, the form of anarchism preferred by me
(s<$SM for an early presentation),[But one sort never to be^instituted everywhere/rom a riciT'
<L. variety of altematie^s located as follows: it is social (with a significantly qualified communistic
safety net: each according to her or his basic needs),' market-oriented but non-capitalistic, with
diminished ownership, democratic but without politicians and with alternative electoral
arrangements, pacific but not bound by "constitutional" procedures, utilizing modest safe
technologies, ....
There are then many anarchisms, a rich variety of different forms, some of them scarcely
investigated or known. That anarchism comprises such a plurality has proved puzzling to those
(for example of one name-one thing persuasion) who assumed it must be a single ideology,
either individual or collective,.... Indeed the pluralist character of anarchism has led even more
apparently sympathetic critics, to 'wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or
merely a jumble of beliefs
(M, p.3). Of course the impression that anarchism 'is amorphous
and full of paradoxes and contradictions' is marvellously assisted by conflating degenarchism
with anarchism, chaos with order, and by combining the variant forms, individualism with
socialism and communism. By properly regarding anarchism as a sheaf of overlapping
positions assembled around a core characterisation, a standard model for pluralism, the
problematic elements of anarchism as an ideology disappear. No doubt it is not an ideology like
Marxism, but then Marxism is atypical in its set of paradigmatic texts, concentrated in the works
of the master. Other ideologies such as liberalism or environmentalism afford better
comparisons. While anarchism is an ideology (in both good and bad senses), it is not really a
movement. There is not, anywhere really, such a movement, in the way there have been a
succession of liberation movements or there is a green ^deep ecology^movement.
9
2 : . /
A
/f
7
�z^4-v^-
/i
cY&v-e, Insofar a^ anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it
should be
* pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who
want to organise differently thatiits preferred way.
* non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatible with broad-based non
coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like/
That is, there is a doublish standard on violence: It is alright to apply violence against
state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt
this can be justified through cgoLwr namely OK for me to do violence to you but not OK for
you to apply violence to me. Accordingly tentative conc/MMon is: A moral anarchism will not
be a form committed to violence Except unavoidable forms etc.
Such pluralism does not enjoy a strong historic track-record, and does not go
unopposed. Standard anarchist positions, sketching of which was mainly a nineteenth
century preoccupation (but extending into twentieth century science fiction and utopian
literature), shied away from pluralism in the direction of monistic forms, towards
insistence upon particular structure, organisation and distributional methods. Such
monistic rigidity led to much intense, often fruitless discussion and friction between
anarchists committed to different arrangements. Certainly there was a doctrine of
spontaneity — according to which in a state-overthrowing revolution (in the very heat of
the revolution!) the masses world spontaneously decide upon new arrangements — which
makes it appear that any structures at all were open for consideration; but it was also
assumed that certain arrangements would be selected, towards which active anarchists
would provide guidance.
It is not difficult to indicate some of the broad features of emergent arrangemens
features that flow from the character of anarchism. But anarchists, over-attracted like
others to monistic schemes, have regularly attempted to advance their own schemes,
introducing many further postulates, that reach far beyond what flows from the basic
characterisation, and that need not be adopted by genuine anarchistics (some further
examples of optional and rejectable extras from a recent manifesto:... direct democracy,
destruction of all hierarchies, maximization of freedom, total Revolution, no ends-means
distinction, no leaders, optimism about an anarchist future,...).
�23
Because of the expansive pluralism of anarchism, it overlaps many other ideologies,
indeed all that do not include as a theme unmitigated commitment to a state or like central
authority. Thus while anarchism excludes fascism and is incompatible with state capitalism,
anarchism overlaps liberalism, democracy, and even Marxism, since Marxism affords a long
term anarchism. There has been much confusion about these interrelations. Take democracy.
Anarchism does not entail democracy, as is sometimes claimed. Advice of a select minority or
of a^sage could regularly be adopted, though the advice did not reflect the will of the people and
its source was not elected or appointed by the people. Nor does anarchism entail undemocratic
procedures. There are, in the plurality, democratic forms, of various sorts, and undemocratic
forms. Democratic forms may have a better prospect of enabling genuine democracy than life
under the state. For as some have argued, 'both the nation state and electoral democracy are
inadequate as vehicles for democracy under modem conditions' (Bumheim p.218).
Is its goal individual freedom or communal solidarity? Sometimes one, sometimes the
other, sometimes neither, sometimes both (a typical four-valued logical structure). A pluralistic
anarchism offers several different sorts of communities, not just one kind: for instance,
independent individuals, perhaps interrelated and organised through contracts, solidaristic
groups working freely together and sharing according to need, and various attractive
intermediaries, where there may be more individual-oriented market arrangements but there are
also safety nets ensuring distribution according to basic needs.
It is not difficult in theory to devise structures that allow a wide variety of kinds. For
example, in simple cases this can be accomplished through regional patterning, as illustrated
with 6 varieties.
(Such a modelling for political pluralism is further elaborated in UT.) The brief interlude of
anarchism in Spain afforded a small-scale example of regional patterning at work
The kinds of anarchistic societies are bound to be of very variable quality, both
theoretically and in practice. Some will only work with rather special sorts of people, for
instance certain Answers with members with strong religious or ideological commitments; some
will not succeed at all. Some verge on incoherence, for instance those against coercive
organistions that approve group terrqist tactics. But while some kinds of anarchism are
entangled in serious problems, others are not. Anarchists generally have no obligation to
defend defective kinds; yet many criticisms of anarchism are directed at just such defective
forms.
Although there is a rich variety of anarchistic end-states (virtually uninstantiated
) f
/-I'y e
�24
or
1^-
*rc!
n
possibilities), there are^ common organisational and structural features. Such cluster features are
A
J
what hold the plurality together, and include noncoercive versions of those arrangements
essential to a functioning society: for instance, broad features of arrangements for production
and distribution, for arbitration and reconciliation, and so on, and on. But although each such
anarchist society will have such organizational features, they will differ in detail. For example,
a main distributional feature of a simple communist society may comprise a common
storehouse from which members take according to need, whereas in individualist societies
distribution will normally proceed through some sort of exchange in market systems. MoK
(
generally different types of anarchism will offer different economic theories. Those with
stronger individualistic component will tend to rely upon not merely market or allied exchange
arrangements, but upon capitalistic organisation. The type of anarchism favoured here strikes
an intermediate route: markets without capitalism.
How is such complex organisation to be achieved without a state? Does not such
organisation and government require a state? To remove that familiar assumption and
associated blockages - encouraged by too much life under states and no experience of
alternatives - take a wider look around. Look at how many activities and procedures are
organised without states or essential participation of states. By voluntary arrangements.
Prominent examples are again sporting organisations, labour unions and business corporations
of various sorts. In short, organisation can be accomplished through a range of appropriate
institutions.
Such examples also provide the appropriate key unlocking the door as to how more
extensive organisation can be achieved in the absence of the state, namely through appropriate
institutions. The state dissolves into functioning components, a set of appropriate institutions,
and at bottom into its relevant minimization. It fragments into compartments - in two
interconnected ways: into regional parts and into capacities, functional parts.
There are other valuable clues to stateless reorganisation. What happens within the more
self-regulating state can also happen without it. As Gramsci emphasized,
the ability to govern without overt coercion depends largely on the ability of
those in power to exploit systems of belief that the larger population shares.
The nature of that system of belief is to some extent determinable by policy
makers, since in the modern state they possess a significant ability to
propagandize for their view. Yet.... (p.63).
Recent empirical investigations tend to yield similar results. People tend to follow rules and
obey laws they regard as moral or otherwise satisfactory. There are important messages for
anarchistic organisation here also, for arrangements without coercion, overt or other.
Anarchistic rules will try to go with the prevailing flow, and will only vary (as over vindictive
punishment) where an evidently satisfactory justification can be given. More generally, smarter
anarchistic arrangements will aim to include desirable self-regulating systems, such as small-
/<?
�25
scale markets.
t
There are too many alternatives in the pluralistic basket to look at all of them. Let us
consider only some of them, with however preferred features. (An example that does not rank
highly and will not be further assessed is Stirner's individualism.) Anarchistic societies of any
complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisations, or a federation of
these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue,
role or function.
Thus they will include what might well be accounted ecoregiona/
Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will
accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The
organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join.
Typically they will be voluntary arrangements.
A critical question is-to how these organisations, substitudng for the operation of state, are
to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In much favoured democratic structures, such as
electoral bureaucracies, control is usually weak and remarkably tnJtrecf. A populace weakly
selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bureaucratic bodies some control of
state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments.
It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A
simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component
of each organisation is chosen randomly from those qualified of the regional community who
volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications (e.g.
having served before at a lower level), and avoid disqualifications (e.g. having acquired a
disqualifying record).6 Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be
represented, for instance disabled, minorities, and so forth, then it is a matter of arranging
random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of
statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public
officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's P<?/iric.y).
Nowadays it is called t/gwarcAy (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its
anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the neologism dewanarcAy.
Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing a most expensive duplication,
government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and
corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of central parliamentary
6
People can serve their administrative apprenticeship at local or group levels. One when they are adjudged
to have exhibited sufficient competence here are they entitled to nominate for selection at grander levels.
This is one reasonable way of obtained some quality control in selection of administrators. (Note /gve/^ do
not provide a vicious hierarchy.)
A""
�—H
Though there are many different strands that can be interwoven through the
pluralistic out-fall from the basic characterisation, there are some broad tendencies of
anarchistic arrangement which include:
*
reliance on self-regulatory methods of organisation that require little or no
intervention, as opposed to highly regulated procedures, perhaps tending towards
centralism
or
paternalism.
This is one reason why markets are favoured, analogues of centralised control and
coercive legal systems are not.
* emphasis on voluntary methods, in place of imposed methods - coercive methods are
of course excluded by virtue of basic characterisation. Certainly de facto power may
remain, but it will be without justification.
* favouring of decentralisation and deconcentration rather than centralised or
concentrated structures.
That does not imply there can be no downward relations. Of course under federal
arrangements there will be, and sideways natural relations as well (a full control
system).
* discouragement of empowerment, encouragement of depowerment.
* opposition to oppression is a corollary.
�26
government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is
duly removed — as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are
.
....
eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, no centre, which is
directly linked to functional organisation.
Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as
those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre
and its command structure, no longer there to capture (for there is no command or control
structure that could be taken by an invador or with internal insurrection). Community defence is
thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who
controller is the community (one of the advantages of more direct democracy).
Appropriate institutions take care then of the day-to-day running of community affairs.
But what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure? These can be
accomplished from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the like (with public
assessment organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down
inflexible fashion. (Some of these methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of
Europe, are investigated in Wolff.)
A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed
coecive
mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure
could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It should be observed,
in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is pursued for otAgr
reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms or
individuals, from where in a more equitable community much of the funding would derive (by
contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* AfMcA less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and
least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of
central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard
military forces and defense establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison
establishment and expensive courts. -—
Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for some of
the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements).
* Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import
organisation^ they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns
taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or
redistribution powers.
* Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate
�royalties and the like), rental taxes on property or leases, gift and gains taxes, and through
auctions (of previously inherited goods). How this would work depends upon community
arrangements.
Consider for instance anarchistic arrangements where that problematic item, private
property, has not been instituted or has been abolished (as under main examples of European
anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable
worth stealing for sale in present systems) will be renfed instead of bought. Leasehold systems
can be operated very like private property (as the land system in the Australian Capital Territory
reveals)^facilitating market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance
environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a
rental, and they can be of finite term and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is
excluded. In place of the customary land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision
for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described.
(Here, as with referenda, computing facililies remove many previous obstacles to such
developments. Organisation can move with newer technologies.
Leasehold arrangements are readily applied to prevent the accumulation of scarce property
resources, such as urban land, which is a major feature of capitalism. For leases of scarce
commodities can be allocated according to need and ability to use, not merely through a
historically rooted market distribution as with private property. It is private property, not a
market system of distribution, that is really distinctive of capitalism, since it not only provides a
place to park and increase capital, but it enables transmission of accumulated wealth (e.g. within
a family or dynasty) and control of the means of production.
CZ
�4^? y
and SwiaMness
7^4
,^.
y?e
A^.V<
c. 4^^
*
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r4A
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xA.A^
z^^-^-xxAA/
Aa A ^//x/---?
-—
/^c
�has become fashionable/^ince th^oncurrent anthropological findings concerning
small communities and the collective action results concerning small collectives demolished the
assumption that anarchy
impossible, t& concede that anarchy is possible but only where
there is a suitable small community.
/Az'
-
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�a—
- sort of anarchism in-the-small has been forcefully
pursued by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between
people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (p.166). That is:
... community is necawa/y — if people are to live without the state' (p.3).
The argument to community that Taylor offers reduces a modified Hobbesipnism; social
order can oly be maintained, without the state and in the small, if the relations between
individuals are those of community (cf p.2). Insofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably brokeddown argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal justification of the state' - from
the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves without
requisite collective goods - breaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its
argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the
supply of such goods (p.59).
It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred
is that, if public goods are to be provided, jowc means must be found of getting people to do
their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of
ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The
argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order
cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are far
from decisive. That leaves the state for public larger than communities, and communitarian
anarchism as an extra-terrestial possibility for small communities (because communities in the
vicinity of states do not, it is claimed, survive). For all the talk about anarchism^it looks like
another triumph for the state.
&t the argument is unsound, because there are other methods than those Taylor locates.
Non-statist organisation, which comes in a range of forms^ is not a combination of the pure
methods considered. As a broad type of method it is hardly "unproposed", or without
precedents or examples (e.g. medieval orders and present international order).
7^
A
er
C
4
�!/V
[1] p.3O Important among these practices are resistance movements and organised
refusals (preferably without conspicuous leaders). While individuals can be selectively picked
off, enough people well organsed cannot. As a result grand refusals could be significant
political happenings.
[3] p.4? The practice of anarchism, generously construed, naturally includes the state of
being in anarchist conditions, of living under anarchism (though perhaps unaware). There is
cope for anarchism without doctrine. Many primitive societies thus qualify on anarchistic; they
practice, or practiced, anarchism though unaware (somewhat as wild animals practice hygine).
Further, no doubt now stretching 'practice' beyond its assumed anthropic context, many animal
communities practice anarchism. Many attracted ^anarchism, an anarchism without name
even, long for analogous pure practice.^ Th^ hope that whatever it is ill operate, perhps even
materilize, without any heave-
ithouteness or e
any intellectualizing, perhaps
without even thought or much ef
on their part. In contemporary circumstances they would
thave to be extrordinary lucky (a paternal state with caring elements, such as safe jobs and
spoon-fed indoctrinal education for all citizens, does not relinquish its control voluntarily).
[4] #awan Harare. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious
/refprious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to
force various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones (including defence focus,
standing armies, survellience etc.)
[5] about p.20 (connector^
Present minolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which
they are not competent, ffom some of wlpdrihey are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as
impartial referees by ^h^r/businessjsofnmitments). Because the centre tries to do and control
too much, as a consequenc$4tdoes very much unsatisifactorily. Improved arrangements would
separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power.
[6] p.30. As^?ovemmenr is variably determinable, so also is /aw. Under the main
determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. But under a different determinate, there is no
incompatibility.
Anarchism cannot traffic in law, in the initial and prominent sense of /aw offered in the
OED, namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and
characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter reducing this
prognastication is a'second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical
uses'): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'.
�Law deservedly has a tarnished reputation in anarchism.
Most of it is arcane,
administered by an expensive priesthood. Too often it is an oppression tool of the state.
While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatable with heavy authoritarian law, it
is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely asserted to lists, and so
on.
[7] Democracy within ANARCHY, and DEMANARCHY
Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game
between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with
each other their patronage and cites/br the acclaimed right to govern.
Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be
governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other
elite team.
For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected, not
controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative.
By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see
Burnheim).
are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as /a// bacty. B argues that they are not
satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent.
Mows 1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote.
2. only structural, not material issues to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for
instance, not capital punishment, not abortion.
Dgwarc/ty has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It
means 'the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or governnorj; a popular
government. The municipal body of a modern Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises
no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply,
however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving Jcwa/MrAy.
[8] [after authority, coercion.
To coerce is maintain or change state, normaliy of another creature, by force.
�Re Chap 4) Insofar as anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it
should be
* pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who
want to organise differently that its preferred way.
* non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatibile with broad-based non
coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like.
That is, there is a doublish standard on vio/ence: It is alright to apply violence against
state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this
can be justified through ggoi-sw: namely OK for me to do violence to you but not OK for you to
apply violence to me. Accordingly afentadve
is: A moral anarchism will not be a
form committed to violence - except unavoidable forms etc.
[9]
anJ Smallness
It has become fashionable, since the concurrent anthropological finalings concerning
small communities and the collective action results concerning small collectiyes demolisted the
assumption that anarchy was impossible, to concede that anarchy is possible but only where
there is a suitable small community. This sort of anarchism in-the-small has been forcefully
pursued by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between
people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (p.166). That is:
... community is necessary - if people are to live without the state' (p.3).
The argument to community that Taylor offeysreduces a modified Hobbesionism; social
order can oly be maintained, without the st^te and in the small, if the relations between
individuals are those of community (cf p.2L lnsofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably brokeddown argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal jusdfication of the state' - from
the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves without
requisite collective goods - brdaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its
argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply
of such goods (p.59).
It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred
is that, if public goods are to be provided, some means must be found of getting people to do
their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of
ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The
argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order cannot
satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are far from
�14
e
OF
/
7
One
appalling
mes from a Russi
icrionary
that is hostile to all
-bourgeours socio-political tr
authority a
e, and counterpasses ' intere^s of petty private
ownersbib and small
ant economy to
progress of^ociety based on
large-scale production
v, 2nd revision
s, Progress,
bsever, 1989).
^nether-dismal-eharaeterisati
[4]
scientistIfApter).
narurg. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious
reforious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to
.v(0
force various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones [including defence focus,
standing armies, survellience etc.)
*[5FabouFpT2O-(G0miect0f)
Present\p^nolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which
they are not co
etent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as
KHLI Ut
impartial referees by\[ieir business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and epntro
too much, as a conseque
it does very much unsatisifactofily. Improve
tents wouldl
.separate these roles, deconcen^ating and decentralizing power.
[7] Democracy within ANARCHY, and DEMANARCHY
Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game
between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with
each other their patronage and citesybr the acclaimed right to govern.
Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be
governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other
elite team.
For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected, not
controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative.
By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see
Burnheim).
o
�— /^W/
6'J
n /
/I
15
7?^/<?rc/!^Az are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as /<
*/// /?ocA.s'. B argues that they are not
satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent.
Moray 1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote.
2. only structural, not material issues to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for
instance, not capital punishment, not abortion.
Z)^marc/ty has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It
means the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or govemnor]; a popular
government. The municipal body of a modem Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises
no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply,
however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving
IM) A
�*
*
��Chapter 8A
ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THEORY
AND OF A PREFERRED THEORY
There are many preliminaries. One, like preparing a badly used building site, consists in
removing the rubbish. That of course is but the beginning of philosophy, not the sole content
and end, as some zealous followers of Lockejhave supposed.
1. Issues in appalling methodology.
Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political philosophy, i Bad
practices abound; anarchism has suffered particularly as a result.
Redefinitions, and
redefinitional stratagems to try to close gappy arguments, abound. Large assumptions are
imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often any awareness: particularly
pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly
needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally unfriendly, at best.
False
dichotomies abound. And so on. Among the deleterious practices, several deserve special
mention:
* 7%#/
o/
There is a deeply embedded in modern
mainstream intellectual activity and strikingly manifest in political theory. A general feature of
contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and practice, is that of over
powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in contemporary mainstream
logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles more powerful than reason
can justify, is dis-assessed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant logic, in RLR). Some of
the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant consistency and maximization,
reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly claimed, to all rational practice,
including political decision-making and institutional arrangements (see MR).
Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For
example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal
conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on.
Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing
arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is
enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are
1
One reason is that much of it is done by political
thinking.
with no adequate grounding tn logic or
�/'
m we/Ttoi/o/ogy. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political
*
philosophy.
Redefinitions, and redefinitional otologies to try to close gappy arguments,
abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often
any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of
thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally
unfriendly, at best.
P/tcno/ncnon o/
* excessive strength. There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream
intellectual activity and strikingly manifest in political theory.
A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and
practice, is that of over-powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in
contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles
more powerful than reason can justify, is disassesed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant
logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant
consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly
claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision making and obstitutional
arrangements (see MR).
Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For
example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal
conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on.
Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing
arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is
enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are
achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic
institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in
Prisimers Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flowed from the
very outset, and should be set aside.
A central time in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess
phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions.
Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not
arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument
and practice appear,to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have
1
One reason is that much of it is done by poiiticai szds with no adequate grounding in logic or critical
thinking.
�tried, rather......... to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on
societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state besereft of adequate
justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire.
So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and
argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined
"property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state
legal systems.
ON DEFINING ANARCHISM DEFINITIONS OF ANARCHISM
One characterisation that is utterly appalling comes from a Russian Dictionary of
PAi/<9^o/?Ay:
'Anarc&i.wn, a petty-bourgeours socio-political trend that is hostile to all
authority and the state, and counterpasses the interests of petty private
ownership and small peasant economy to the progress of society based on
large-scale production' (ed I. Frolov, 2nd revision eds, Progress,
Plosever, 1989).
Another dismal characterisation comes from an American political scientist (Apter).
Defective definitions of anarchism abound, many supplied by high profile anarchists
(whereupon they assume a certain air of authority, a bogus air). A few examples will be
considered, mostly drawn from a large list of similarly defective definitions included in Clark,
p.ll8ff., who is out to show that any definition which attempts to do justice to anarchism
through an assentialistic definition deploying one simple idea is bound to fail, abysmally.
AnarcAy does not "mean literally "without government'" contrary to Caster p.14. It does
however imply without governments of prevailing cuts which is what the immediately proceeds
to: 'and the lowerst common demominstor of anarchist thought is the conviction that existing
forms of government are productive of wars, internal violence, repression and misery' (p.14).
Right on!
The very short characterisation of anarc/iAy/?? (and redition of anarc/taj) as 'no *
government'is defective because of the elosticity, and slippiness of 'government'. For
example, according to one dictionary (Dniverya/ E/tg/Bh) govern/ytenr means '... system of
polity in a state; territory ruled by a governor ...' in which case it fy incompatible with
Thus, e.g. Carter, Websters (?).
�2
achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic
institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in
Prisoners Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flawed from the
very outset, and should be set aside.
A central issue in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess
phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions.
Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not
arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument
and practice appear to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have
tried, rather deviously, to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states
on societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state bereft of adequate
justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire.
So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and
argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined
"property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state
legal systems.
* Htg/t anJ low
Wolffs little book, billed as "a defence of anarchism" is a
small treasury of these. Virtually all the characterisations proposed at the beginning of this
book, of state, sovereignty, authority, power, actomomy, are defective, often by virtue of
definitional features. Consider Wolffs opening:
'Politics is the exercise of the power of the state, or the attempt to influence that exercise.
Political philosophy is therefore ... the philosophy of the state' (p.3 also p.ll). Politics went
on before the rise of the state, and with some good fortune, will persist often its demise.
Again, consider: 'the state is a group of persons who have or exercise suppose authority within
a given territory' (p3; repeated p.5). This shows the fallacy of redirectionism. For a state
normally does not change when those who exercise power do. On the de facto state Wolff is
also astray: 'a & Jacio state is simply a state whose subjects believe it to be ligitimate (i.e. really
to have the authority it claims for itself)' (p.10). Many subjects may nor believe that, but be
intimidated through state power. Very fashionable in removing anarchism are low redefinitions
of Ftare, where there is a state given any positional components in society, such as political
specialisation or division of labour (see Taylor on anthopoligical efforts on societies without
states). As a result there can be effortessly be both anarchy and "state"; any complex anarchist
society is a state!
Another rich source of redefinitions is founded by Taylor's books on anarchism.
Examples include: a fairly hopeless definition of gooJ.' it is desired (p.45). Most interesting is a
�3
disgustingly low redefinition of property.- 'Property' is here a shorthand for a variety of
entilements or use rights (Taylor 82 p.44). So as I am entitled to use the byway or to bathe in
the stream, they are my property, so I run them? Another example concerns coercion: In the
claim that to avoid the Hobbesian prisoners' dilemma 'every man must be coerced', Taylor
continues (87 p. 145), 'by which I mean simply that he must be made to behave differently than
he otherwise would (... (i.e.) would "ovlantarily" in the state of nature).' But such a difference
may be effectively achieved, depending on the subject, by noncoercive means, such as
persassion, sanctions, and so forth. Furthermore it would not guarantee what Taylor and
Hobbes appear to expect, authority and sovereignty.
Among the most pernicious of redefinitions, constraints, and elides are those concerning
interests and preferences - often reduction bases for gooJ and other value qualities, often
quickly converted from interest to self-interest (thus Taylor)^ Examples from within this circle
include harmony and cooperation.
For instance.'Harmony requires complete identity of
interests' (in Ope, p.226). It hardly requires comment. Again '...cooperation occurs when
actors adjust their behaviour to the actual or anticipated preferences of others (in Ope p.226).
But suppose creatures simply work or act together (what 'cooperation' means).
psychological accounts are seriously astray.
* ZHc%#%MnoMS
or ctf^cr-or-M/n.
Such
Humans are extraordinarily addicted to
flawed dichotomous reasoning, again powerfully exhibited with regard to anarchism and the
state? For example, the alternative to the state is presumed to be anarchism which is equated
with disorder; so it is either the state or disorder. Again, the only alternative to a market system
of government is central control - market or control - and the market has won out decisively
now (one of the presumed reasons for the prematurely announced "end to ideology").
Other objectionable methodological assumptions include
'..Po.w&Mh'g mJzvo/aa/LSW (after McP p.3)
'Its possessive quality is its conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own
person or capacities, owning nothing to society for them. The individual (is not)... part of a
larger..... whole, but... surer of himself.'
As a result:
'Society consists of relations of exchange between proprietors. Political socieity becomes a
celebrated device for the protection of this property and for the maintenance of an orderly
relation of exchange.'
2
3
The fallacious shifts are dealt with in 'Aquinst,
A famous Australian example is the truculent stance of its richest mum, Packer, in a parliamentary
inquiry: Either you believe me or call be a liar. Reflect on how far "call me a liar" goes beyond "you
do not believe me".
,
„
There should be some eodness^ that we are now trying to build machines in our own inadequate
image. (Many examples in SM).
�4
(a prime example in economics: the data of extremality).
* /tM/nan
* g/fwn o/va/ne, or reduction of value to preference.
All of these have been crically assessed elsewhere. But some features deserve further
elaboration:
* f/tg
tAgo/y
With rule and compass techniques it is wn/MM.n&Zg to trirect angle. Of course by measuring it is
rather easy.
Similarly with rationality: wider means can do what state was supposed to be necessary for.
Put differently, the theoretical state is an artifact on a certain ultra-thin theory of rationality.
The thin theory of rationality is an extraordinarily widespread ideological....... among
Anglo-American social theorists (many of whom feel obliged to make public dealeraatous of
faith). But that it is 'almost universally taken for granted by economists' does nothing to show
its correctness, unless an argument from expectise has required a new validity. What it reveals
rather is something about the ideological commitments,...........of economists.
The thing theory of rationality is almost invariably coupled with individualism,
methodological individualism as it is usually cleverly called (after Popper's theorizing).^
Many of these objectionabl assumption are melted together in theories of /mman nafnrg.
Mafnrg, CM/tMrg anJconfro/.
Part of the intellectual aim of a theory of human nature is to achieve an account of hum^n
/motivation. But a uniform story of motivation is scarcely more likely drawn as uniform account
of human nature.^ Motivations are no doubt important; but they are many and various.
It is still fashionable to assert, as if it was a truism, that 'all political philosophies ... base
themselves upon a conception of human nature' (Wolff Povgrty p. 140, pluralised). That is no
longer so (certainly, since Foucault) is that the notion of //n/nnn nnturg is not well defined, and
never was except under high redefinitions.
Work in decqtralized artificial intelligence readily suggests that communities of robots
could operate without statist arrangements (nor need outiside imput be state bound). That
suggests in tum that it is something about humans, as many humans, that leads to development
or imposition of states. That something has been ascribed, rather too quickly, to human nature,
or to human culture, or to some mix of human genetypic and phenotypic features, features that
other creatures or artificial intelligences do not share. It is something peculiarly pertaining to
and special to humans, their nature or culture, that amends institutional control. But has never
been satisfactorily explained what these special features are or how they operate. There is much
space for total scepticism about such justificatory or apologetic approaches.
4
5
Taylor has a dreadful argumejpj (892 p.57) that people are agents, because otherewise default to
understand why so many goods and supplied (also 87 p.109).
The usual uniform story depends upon self inferey/, which is widened into mteresM under pressure.
�5
2. Aa/Mrc, CM/tMro, awJ contra/.
A major function of culture is to regulate and control changed Political change in the
South Pacific, and political divergence from the industrial North, can, in principle then, be
grounded in and powered by features of local and regional culture. One organising theme, a
corollary of the argument, facilitates the transition from principle to practice:- It is that the
requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality is there, for the South Pacific
region (and Australia in particular) to proceed in a very different social political direction from
the North (and from the USA in particular). Given the radical unsatisfactoriness of the
American arrangements, in many frequently exposed respects,7 such a different direction is
worth taking — if it can be.
But a serious problem in the way of change is imposition of political arrangements, from
outside or from above. And, since imposition shades into political pressure, this is only one of
the obstacles impeding change in the South Pacific and elsewhere. Another forcing more and
more peoples, no longer sheltered by geographical isolation, into the same type of socio
political arrangements is supposed to derive from human nature itself. Free people are
economic people, in pretty much the American mould, so it is claimed. By this route, economic
imperialism can replace political imperialism.
A key question in political theory — one to which we are said to have no satisfactory
answer in the absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) — is
supposedly this:To what extent does human nature allow for alternative political and social arrangements? Or,
to tum the question around:- What restrictions are imposed in virtue of the nature of humans on
the broad range of political possibilities? How does that "nature" reduce the organisational
options?
A much-promoted Anglo-American answer, directly descended from the
Enlightenment, is that once /rcc/Y from systems of myths, taboos and tribal controls, from
superstition, people are essentially (and will generally become) self-centred individuals,
(properly) concerned with maximising their own gain or interests; that is, but for their shortage
of information (including technical know-how), free people are basically economic peopled
As ought now to be evident, that is to replace one ideology by another. But the Enlightenment
ideology is no longer so evident^: what recommends it? Under pressure of this sort, the AngloAmerican answer gets transformed to the theme that the economic picture of human nature is
superior, and fitting of rational creatures. That 'self-appointed West European superiority' has
6
7
8
9
Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30. These sections are drawn from Cu/turc onJ rAc RooM of Political
Divergence.' a SowtA Pacific perspective.
For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers.
These people are also picked out under various alternative (but not strictly equivalent) descriptions,
e g. as acquisitive individuals, possessive individuals.
See e g. DP, chapter 10.
�6
in turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and the Romantics.^ Fortunately, however,
the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided.
For all these questions and answers presuppose, to begin with, a certain misplaced
essentialism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human beings, which exactly
separates humans from other creatures. Attempts to specify such an essence, suitably constant
and invariant and given by necessary and sufficient conditions,^ are legion. They are
a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. All ment are the same
because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and avoidance of pain].
These drives will operate independently of any location.
Chief among those drives was that towards self-preservation — Holbach,
for instance, stipulates:
we shall call nafare in man the collection of properties and qualities
which constitute him what he is, which are inherent to his species, which
distinguish him from other animal species or which he as in common with
them ... every man feels, things, acts and seeks his own well-being at all
times; these are the qualities and properties that constitute human nature
12
But this attempt at essentialist definition of /mman naA/re fails, in a quite characteristic way. As
it stands, the definition is inadequate; for not all humans seek just their own well-being always;
some are "stupid", some are altruistic, some have other commitments. However, suppose we
avoid such familiar counter-instances to egoism, by replacing 'well-being' by say 'broad well-
being', thus rendering such internal egoism analytic. And suppose to avoid other counter
expales (such as human vegetables, morons and the like), we normalise the definition, replacing
'every man' by 'every normal human'. But then the definition is again inadequate; for it fails to
distinguish humans from, for example, dolphins. It applies equally to Jo/p/un natMrg or, for
that matter, to gon/Z# natMrg.
10
11
12
See Berry, p.30ff., from whom the quote is taken. It is worth spelling out a little the extent of
agreement and disagreement with Herder. What is applauded is
1. 'Herder's dismissal of the Enlightenment's conception of human nature as static, acultural and
ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but nor
*1. Herder's cultural relativism, that 'each culture ... should be treated on its own merits and not
judged by some faulty perspective such as Io bel/e nature' (p.30), or from any other perspective. In
the pluralistic framework of the text (which presuppoes PPP), a good many cross-cultural judgements
ate made and defended.
*2. Herder's relativisation of human nature to culture, and embodiment of it in culture; for example,
'it is through language that human nature can be seen to be .spect/iicaPy embodied in culture' (p.32).
With relativisation the notion loses its original theoretical point; but while failing in this role,
cultural nature is open to many of the same sorts of objections as human nature. Nor can language
bear the weight Herder loads upon it.
*3. Herder's human chauvinism: '... it is speech and with that reason and freedom, that differentiates
man. Man can choose, man is king' (p.36). Wild animals are free, can choose, communicate, solve
puzzles, and carry out elementary reasoning; in these respects they surpass children and many other
humans. Furthermore, *
*3 gets Herder into serious trouble, not to say inconsistency, with 1.
Abraham, drawing on Wittgenstein, presents just these conditions for an essence, p.23ff.
Berry p.17. Berry supplies several other similar examples.
�7
Of course the definition can again be patched, by appealing to the anatomical cluster of
features that separate humans from other mammals or to the biological specification of /tomo
But the resulting normalised definition, with its analytical egoism, does little more
than such biological definitions of An/nan: it does not supply a natnrg, it does not deliver
-ynp^rbiological features of political relevance. The notion of human nature thus fragments: into
the satisfactory enough biological notion of human, and an unsatisfactory superbiological (or
sociobiological) addition: that of human nature or essence. What is this further, problematic
nature? The Romantics can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from
culture, only /oca/ nature (Herder's term) which coincides with culture. Peeling off cultural
excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves, like Wittgenstein's artichoke,
nothing. Just nothing.
The notion of human nature is a theoretical item, introduced to provide stability amid
cultural variability, a constant bulwark against relativism, but designed as well to justify — as
natural or, failing that as superior — a porr/cn/or type of political economy, state and legislature,
and its imposition everywhere else. 13 But its application is even grander: Human nature is a
theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious nefarious, social and political purposes.
Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to justify or enforce various restrictive types
of social arrangements, statist ones (including defence forces, standing armies, survellience —
arrangements, and so on). Human nature is a highly resilient notion which has been widely
applied in such fashions; it is not so easily dissolved, certainly not through one illustration.
However the fact that the notion is written large in much political theory, and is received, does
not show that it or the embedding theory is sound. And it is not, but is defective, and in its
socio-political selectivity it is, as the illustration reveals, virtually of a piece with human
chauvinism (which would assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the
ecological scheme of things).
Most conveniently, the superbiological notion of human nature begins to dissolve under
any attempt to set it down, in mmuch the way that attempts supporting human chauvinism to set
down something ethically special about humans disintegrate.
*^
13
14
The notion of human nature —
Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western culture everywhere, later
emphasised by Bentham. 'The Legislator, Knowing that human nature is ever the same [different
countries do not have different catalogues of pleasure and pain], can reform the laws and even
transplant them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18).
This claim concerning human chauvinism is argued in detail in EE. But the claim concerning human
nature is only sketchily defended in the text. For the alleged social-arrangement-dictating features of
human nature, like similar alleged features of economic or technological determinism, are rather
major obstacles to be removed — especially insofar as they supposedly severely and inevitably
restrict the character of future societies — than the main business of the present enterprise.
Fortunately then the claim, that the superbiological notion of human nature is a defective theoretical
one which dissolves, is defended elsewhere: not only, in effect, in work of Romantics from Herder
�8
a nature or essence for a// and on/y humans (some special classes of humans excepted perhaps)
— presuppoes that there are some stable or constant social features holding for all peoples,
across different cultures, which are furthermore distinctively human features.
The
presupposition fails, because once cultural variation between peoples is fully taken into account,
only some rather trivial shared characteristics remain, which furthermore are shared by various
animal cultures, such as those of primates.
Consider, first, such products or tools of more literary cultures as books, or of
contemporary cultures as telephones and computers. Since most historical cultures lacked such
items, their possession or distribution obviously cannot figure as part of what marks out human
nature. Consider next, then, what are commonly taken to be key components of (human)
nature, certain basic human needs, such as food and shelter. These requirements are far from
free of cultural and environmental determinants. For look at what is regarded as required in the
way of shelter, and how it varies from culture to culture, place to place. (And even what is
taken as basic can often be met in a myriad of ways, though acceptably in some cultures only in
a few fixed ways.) The common denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort of
shelter under more extreme conditions — a requirement also of wombats. The situation with
food, sex, and so on, is hardly better. Dietary requirements vary considerably from race to
race, Europeans for example being very inefficient by many tribal standards and unable to
survive satisfactorily where tribal people flourish. 1$ Again the somewhat trivial lowest
common denominator applies also to various groups of animals. Nor are attempts to mark out
the human nature by some more complex list of jointly necessary and sufficient conditions, or
more loosely by a cluster of natural features, much more successful, or of direct political
application without the importation of what is culturally at issue — values. In any case, such
vague and general lists as emerge^ impose little constraint at all on a political direction, since a
variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings.
15
16
on, but also in significant recent literature. Foucault, for example, can be read as saying that human
nature is an invention of the Enlightenment which dissolves: 'his much discussed ... di&MdMhon of
mon is nothing more, or less, than the claim that the attempt to establish order upon a scientific
understanding of human nature is both profoundly mistaken and profoundly unstable' (Philp, p.15,
italics added).
The converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight on European diets. At another
level, consider the Maori attitude to, and underlying revulsion by, cooked food: see Alpers, p.7-9.
For one such list, which however requires pruning and adjustment, see Wilson, p.22. As it happens,
Wilson does not make anything much of this list (which does not supply necessary conditions),
immediately presents a parallel list for insect societies — a list which does considerable damage to
more traditional claims about human nature — and then proceeds in effect to demolish main criteria
that have been used to separate humans from animals and to restrict cultures to human societies (e.g.
p.39).
�9
Accordingly, human nature as such is not an important constraint on political theory, or a
theory of human nature a key ingredient in endeavours to work out a political philosophy or
political directions. *7 The reason is like the reason that determining the conditions for the good
life would not impose a satisfactory constraint on a political theory, namely presupposition
failure. Like the meaning of life
*s,
the good life fails to demarcate a single thing; there are
many styles of good lives. So too there is human nature and human nature, depending on the
culture or social paradigm and on the setting. Nature, both human and not, varies with culture
and environment. Because of this two-way dependence, there is no unique stable
superbiological human nature.
A corollary of the dissolution of the notion of human nature is the rejection also, as
misleading, of the usual picture of nature as given, as a stable notion across races and tribes,
with culture as a variable on top. There is no such culturally invariant division: culture affects
local nature. The picture is flawed in much the same way, then, as the familiar picture of
perception, as consisting of given uninterpreted sense data, stable across (normal) perceivers,
with interpretation imposed on the neutral data.
Nor therefore is culture something that can be creamed off the top, so to speak, to find
real human features or basic nature underneath. Certainly, cultures can be destroyed; however
what results from removal by destruction of a culture is not something closer to real people, but
people with a destroyed culture. So it is also with attempts like Hobbes or Rawls to peel
political organisation off the the top, in order to locate in a quasi-analytical or quasi-historical
way, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised state or other. A flawed picture,
derived from mistaken or questionable presuppositions, is assumed.
What will be found underneath, or in the original (natural) state, is, it is usually
conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the view to be developed — with the right values very
fortunately in-built. Given that what is to be explained or justified is something like present
socio-political arrangements and the privileged position of some status quo — as well as a
dominant culture's image of itself, and elements of the dominant Northern social paradigm —
underlying human nature turns out to be, hardly surprisingly, that of fully competitive
possessive individualism (much the same model, that is, which serves for economic man, for
Enlightenment man, for the "rational person", etc.) The myth of unique human nature
17
18
For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human nature for social and
political ends, see Appendix 2.
Which is perhaps as well, since we still have so little reliable and unprejudiced information as to
what "human nature" amounts to, what its variational possibilities, in different environments, might
be, or of the possibilities beyond past terrestrial selections of cultures.
On which see Routley and Griffin.
�10
functions, like many other myths, to perpetuate or instil particular social arrangements and
special privilege.
Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths, the myths of
all (normal) humans as aggressive individuals and as predominantly self-interested maximizers
(at least insofar as they are rational) — to bring in some of the myths bound up with the image
of contemporary urban-industrial humans. As there is no underlying hard ground, no firm
starting point in human nature, so there is none in these associated myths. The South Pacific
was, and remains, rich in cultures which upset these associated myths. Non of the
Melanesians, Polynesians or Australian aboriginal peoples comprised societies of individuallyoriented maximizers; indeed their strongly communal lifestyles and preparedness to stop, work
especially, after a low sufficiency threshold had been reached, was a major and repeated source
of criticism from the European cultures that came to dominate the region.
Even forms and types of aggressiveness, and approaches to war, often taken to be solid
ground, are culture and environment dependent, and vary with both parameters. 19
Aggressiveness is often supposed to impose hugh constraints on political arrangements. But
there is little substance to the claim that humans are naturally aggressive independently of social
or cultural setting. The most that appears clear is that circumstances can be arranged, for
instance through crowding or provocation or cultural relocation, where peoples of more familiar
cultures will become aggressive^ — and perhaps people of other cultures will not, but will just
give up, as people often do in the face of immense brutality. Certainly some arrangements are
required to cope with or suitably isolate aggression, but these can be of a wide range of
alternative types. Once again, what is normally accounted human nature depends upon and
varies with culture and environment, which people often shortsightedly see as fixed: certainly,
such components as selfishness, cooperativeness, individuality do.
What is often much more important than either culture or nature in determining social
arrangements is another factor: namely, outside control or imposition. Whatever social
arrangements have evolved in a region (through local "nature and culture") can be overridden,
A striking illustration of environmental variation is afforded by the differences between savannah
dwelling and forest dwelling tribes of baboons. For a local illustration, consider Maori approaches to
war (like war conventions, a social phenomenon), before European corruption. Thus Best reports
that 'an individual, or a whole clan, might decline to take part in an engagement on account of some
evil omen, and such an action would be approved of (p.15). There are several, apparently reliable,
stories of Maoris engaged in war supplying the opposition with equipment or ammunition, or
temporarily abandoning their fighting effort to help out the other (British) side, so the battle could
proceed properly.
20Wilson's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an invalid move: he looks at the
behaviour of Semai men when 'taken out of their nonviolent society' by recruitment in a British
colonial army (p.100)! As well, Wilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of innateness, and a
low redefinition of aggressiveness to take in form of mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.99-100).
19
�11
and new arrangements imposed, in one way or another. With long-standing arrangements,
imposition is almost invariably from without, and the changes in arrangements typically involve
either violence in their adaption or mass migration of people or both. In the last two hundred
years, especially, the South Pacific has, like much of the newer world, been drastically so
affected, in a complex way. And the changes, still flowing strongly from the North, continue.
We are in the last days of the destruction of old cultures, and the destruction is now to a
considerable extend by more subtle cultural, economic and technological means than the cruder
methods of slightly earlier times. Outside control can be exercised, or occur, in many ways less
blatant than direct intervention of one sort or another, such as through introduction of new
technologies, economic sanctions, monetary and loan policies, etc., as well as through
exchange and training programs, textbooks, advertising and magazines, film and television (i.e.
through physical exemplifications of culture). European peoples in the South pacific are often
unwittingly, part of this quieter process of cultural conversion and erosion; but many of us are
now victimes as well as, or rather than, perpetrators (cf. Crough and Wheelwright).
Human communities have been — and many still are — as insensitive to other human
cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness American and their allies in Vietnam).
Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed, or pushed beyond redemption. This is
sufficiently well-known. Yet the creation of political disaster areas proceeds apace — in blatant
cases typically by disruption of culture and lifestyle using violence^ There is furthermore,
where recovery is possible at all, a long recovery period, perhaps sometimes of the order of
human generations. Yet there is increasing production of these politically contaminated regions,
especially through imperialism, e.g. USA in Central America, Israel in Lebanon, Russia in
Afghanistan, Indonesia in East Timor and West papua, etc.
In the south Pacific, there are many quieter Northern influences at work, but the strongest
now is unquestionably the American. American companies, businessmen, academics, tourists
and warships, their technology and patents, films and television programs, are the most evident
and influential. There can be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the newer
cultural and economic imperialism, behind endeavours such as the American to install their "free
enterprise" philosophy and practice everywhere. 22 Granted it mostly contributes to American
economic supremacy, to American business23 and to the transfer of substantial regional wealth
and surplus value to the USA. But national economic reasons are not the only sort of reasons
21
22
23
These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off like those infected by communicable disease, but
from continuing disruptive, outside interference.
What is said about American cultural and political imperialism applies, with adaption, in a lesser
way, to imperialism and colonialism by other nation-states such as USSR, Britian, France and
Indonesia. USA has no monopoly on imperialism. US imerialism in the third world is in part
documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman.
Though not invariably as the experience with the Japanese motor industry has indicated.
�12
such policies are pursued; apart from the side-issue of integrity, that many Americans really do
believe in the optimality of their local ideals to the exclusion of other arrangements, there are
deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological reasons as well.
The imperialistic endeavours can be underpinned by a J^cripftve assumption that all
human nature is at bottom really like American human nature, for instance highly economically
oriented. Thus, but for political distortions (a political analogue of economic externalities) and
lack of technological means, other peoples would choose the American (political and economic)
way: they simply have not really been given the opportunity or means. For many peoples this
is simply not true; for most other cultures let us hope, or pray, that this is not the case.
Alternatively, or as well, a more arrogant prescriptive assumption may be at work, that all
human nature ought to be like American nature at its best, because America not only has the best
way of life in the world and mostly the best ways of doing things^, but has a special hold on
rationality. The free-enterprise system (perhaps with representative democracy American-style
tackedon) is the rational enterprise embodied. Certainly the system is sometimes peddled, by
genuine believers in the American way, with the same evangelism as Christianity, which was
often seen and presented as the rational religion, at least before science got at it. Well, science
hasn't got at the free-enterprise religion yet, but on the contrary now has a social division
heavily devoted to its justification and furtherance.^ However some philosophy has got at the
system, sufficiently to reveal that it is no unique embodiment of rationality — there is none such
— but is a decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances. Thus, it is especially irrational if
local goals are to preserve local environments and cultures, as much experience helps attest.
It is aspects of the false descriptive assumption, and what can emerge with its rejection,
that are a main focus in what follows (though various of the reasons for rejecting the
prescriptive assumption will also emerge or get recorded). An important underlying theme will
24
25
Thus, for example, American agricultural textbooks and agricultural spokespeople are fond of
announcing that American agriculture is the best in the world; similarly for environmental
protection, forestry, technology, university education, and so on. But since they are the best, it is
evident that these American ways should be exported, isn't it? Even granting the large assumptions,
No, firstly, because that is to neglect important regional and local variations and differences, and
secondly because these ways may interfere with other significant features of reginal life or culture.
It has not passed unremarked that the high standard of material life in USA depends in part on a very
fortunate inheritance (e g. some of the best and deepest soils) and in part, as in Europe, on a lower
standard of life and conditions elsewhere, upon siphoning off wealth and especially resources (US
currently uses about one-fifth of world resources and 30% of world energy) from other regions. To be
sure, economic apologetics proffer other explanations of American transcendence, e.g. ingenious
constuctions like that of Olson, built on a sandy logic of economic actors collectively locked into
economically determined arrangements, substantially independent of the resource base.
In elaborating on how modem societies control their citizens, Foucaul has explained various
extensive types of social control exercised and licensed through received social sciences, by way of
approved standards of normality, health, stability, adequacy, rationality, etc.: See Phil p.15.
�13
continue to be that neither broader nor basic human nature is a single stable thing, but varies
substantially in ways that are highly political relevant — relevant to the sort of political
framework a society adopts. In freer societies, less imposed upon from outside or above, the
variation can be largely accounted for through cultural variation (which in tum depends on
environment, etc.). The alternative assumptions, are then, those of cultural pluralism, that
culture is part of "nature", shaping in particular local human nature. Of course once again
"human nature" can be pared back and back to try to remove cultural variations; but in this way
what are taken to be important superbiological features of human nature for political theory are
also excised (e.g. features that make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies come out
one way rather than another).
Just as different cultures can mean different social arrangements, so in a larger setting
they can imply different political organisation and different political directions. Where requisite
differences do not occur, because incongrous arrangements have been imposed, ca/tMra/
can
a powcr/hZ /brcc ybr change. Likewise developing elements of cultural
difference can be a potent base for social change — or resistance to imposed change —
(especially, in communities where other more orthodox bases for change, such as economic
incentives or penalties, have become inoperative or failed, or are not available.
Culture is however a double-edged instrument, not only to be used, but resisted. For
example, though leading [valuable] features of indigenous Pacific cultures are to be reactivated,
as forces for change, some features of these cultures are to be resisted (such as male
domination), along with many features of modern Western cultures. Features of culture are
thus used to resist and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sorces of culture; such as,
inequitable political arrangements, excessive consumerism, persuasive advertising media and
loaded news systems, hollow suburbia, alienating job structures, etc. It is important not only to
build and design alternatives — for which elements of local culture afford a solid foundation —
but also to dismantle, and build up resistance against, prime sources of antagonistic culture.
This is as true for American culture as Antipodean. One of the chief reasons why mainstream
American culture is so individualistic, so competitive, so violent, and so forth, is that
movements offering or encouraging alternatives have been repressed by the dominant
corporations and the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein).
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/ssues fa wef/todo/ogy. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in
political philosophy.; Redefinitions, and redefinitional -otolJgies to try to close gappy
arguments, abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice,
or too often any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and
of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally
unfriendly, at best,
w,
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* /%&1L ^p&enoMienon o/ excessive sfrengt/i. There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream
intellectual aedvity and strikingly manifest in polidcal theory.
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One reason is that much of it is done by poiitical 6,..Is with no adequate grounding in logic or critical
thinking.
�A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and
practice, is that of over-powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in
contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles
more powerful than reason can justify, is dis^assesed elsewhere (from the perspective of
relevant logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant
consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly
claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision-making and obstitutional
arrangements (see MR).
Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For
example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal
conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on.
Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing
arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is
enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are
achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic
institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in
Prisoners Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flowed from the
very outset, and should be set aside.
A central time in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess
phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions.
Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not
arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument
and practice appear to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have
tried, rather ^".^..^to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on
societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state be^ereft of adequate
justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire.
So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and
argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined
"property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and
state legal systems.
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�NQRK4-N&-5RAFT
CULTURE AND THE ROOTS OF POLITICAL DIVERGENCE:
a South Pacific perspective
the Austral ian/American contrast
major
A
Political
change
industrial
of
-Function
in
in
regulate
and
control
and political divergence
principle then,
features of local and regional culture.
the
to
is
the South Pacific,
can,
North,
culture
be grounded in and
change. 1
from
the
powered
by
One organising theme, a corollary of
facilitates the transition from principle to practice:- It
argument,
is
that the requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality
is
for
there,
South Pacific region (and Australia
the
particular)
in
to
proceed in a very different social and political direction from the North (and
from
USA in particular).
the
American arrangements,
unsatisfactoriness of
the
2
in many frequently exposed respects , such a different
Given the radical
direction is worth taking - if it can be.
serious problem in the nay of
a
But
arrangements,
from outside or from above.
change is imposition of
And,
political
since imposition shades into
this is
only one of the obstacles impeding change in the
South Pacific and elsewhere.
Another forcing more and more peoples, no longer
political pressure,
sheltered
by geographical isolation,
arrangements
of
socio-political
is supposed to derive from human nature itself.
Free people are
economic people,
into the same type
in pretty much the American mould,
this route, economic imperialism can replace political
1.
Nature,
theory
- one
culture,
to
which
and control.
so it
is
By
claimed.
imperialism.
A supposedly,key question in political
we are said to have no satisfactory'' answer
in
the
absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) - is .his:
1.
Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30.
2.
For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers.
1
*
7%-
�To
extent does human nature allow tor alternative political and
what
arrangements? Or, to turn the question around:-
in
virtue
of
the
nature
of
possibilities?
How does that
much-promoted
Anglo-American
Enlightenment,
is
controls,
become)
from
or
superstition,
answer,
people
broad
range
directly
taboos and
(and
6
from
descended
are essentially
but for their
will
the
tribal
generally
shortage
information
of
free people are basically economic
people.
that is to replace one ideology by another.
ideology is no longer so
Enlightenment
political
of
(properly) concerned with maximising their
that is,
interests;
As ought now to be evident,
the
the
that once freed from systems of myths,
technical know-how),
(including
on
What restrictions are imposed
"nature" reduce the organisational options?
self-centred individuals,
gain
own
humans
social
evident:
what
But
recommends
it?
Under pressure of this sort, the Anglo-American answer gets transformed to the
that the economic picture of human nature is superior,
theme
rational
creatures.
and fitting
That 'self-appointed West European superiority
*
turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and the Romantics.
has
of
in
Fortunately,
however, the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided
For all
these questions and answers presuppose, to begin
with, a certain
misplaced essential ism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human
beings,
which
such
exactly
separates humans from other
creatures.
suitably constant and invariant
5
necessary and sufficient conditions , are legion. They are
specify
an
essence,
Attempts
and
given
to
by
a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. All men are the same
because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and the avoidance of
pain). These drives will operate independently of any location.
Chief among those drives was that towards self-preservation - Holbach,
for instance, stipulates:
we .shall
call
nature in man the collection of properties and
qualities which constitute him what he is, which are inherent
.o
his species, which distinguish him from other animal
species ur
which he has in common with them ... every man feels,
thinks,
3.
These people are also picked out under various alternative (but
strictly equivalent)
descriptions, e.g. as acquisitive m i?i ua s,
possessive individuals.
�acts and seeks his own well-being at all times,
these are^
kilties and property thet constitute human nature ... o.
But th,, attempt at essenti.list defin.ti.n of human nature fail,,
in a quite
A, -t stands, th. d.dtniti.n is inadequate; tor net a!)
*c
yo<
/
humans seek just their o<an ujeii-being always; .ssome ar. altruistic, s<xne have
characterrst-c ^y.
other commitment,.
to
ego-sm,
by
replacing
rendering such internal
examples
suppose
Hoover,
uell-being-
egoism analytic.
(such a, human vegetables,
definition,
replacing
every
definition 1, again inadequate;
example,
avoid such tamtl.ar counter.ostance,
by
say
broad
m.ll-being',
And suppose to avoid other counter
morons and th. like),
man' by
thus
every normal human'.
^normalise
the
then
the
But
tor it fails to distinguish humans from, for
It applies equally to dolphin nature or, for that matter,
dolphins.
to aori11 a nature.
Of
4.
course
the
definition can again be patched,
by
appealing
to
the
(From previous page)
See Berry, p.30ff., from whom the quote is taken,
It
is worth spelling out a little the extent of agreement and
disagreement with Herder. Nhat is applauded is
1.
'Herder's dismissal
dismissal of
of the
the Enlightenment's
Enlightenment's conception
conception of human nature
as static, acultural and ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but no^
that 'each culture
... should be
31.
Herder's cultural relativism,
t judged by some faulty perspective such
treated on its own merits and no! .
"nature' (p.30), or from any other perspective.
In the
as
la belle
p.u,77^^k
of th. text ("huh presupposes PPP),
a good many
pluralistic cross-cultural judgements are made and defended.
Order's relativisation of human nature to culture,
and embodiment
32.
Herder s relafivisatio
through language that human nature
of it in culture; for example,
it is
Mi th
* 32).
(p
can be seen to be specifically embodied in culture'
but
theoretical
point;
relativisation the notion loses its original
same
cultural nature is open to many of the
ojhile failing in this role,
Nor can language bear the weight
sorts of objections as human nature.
Herder loads upon it.
A
it is speech and with that reason
Herder's human chauvinism:
33.
Man can choose, man
is king'
that differentiates man.
and freedom,
can choose, communicate, solve puzzles,
<
<=Hrn^^s
(p.36).
1Wild animals are free, ---- -----) out elementary reasoning;
m these ^^=-7
;
and carryand many other humans. Furthermore, 33 gets Herder into serious
chi 1dren
trouble, not to say inconsistency, with 1.
5.
6.
drying on Nittg.nste.n,
Abraham,
essence, p.23ff.
Berry p.17.
Berry supplies severa
pre^nt, Just these condition, for an
1 other similar examples.
�cluster of -features that separate humans from other mammals or
anatomical
the
biological specification of homo sapiens.
But the resulting
to
normalised
definition,
with its analytical egoism, does little more than such biological
definitions
of
human:
it does not supply a nature,
deliver
not
does
it
The notion of human
superbiological
features of political relevance.
thus fragments:
into the satisfactory enough biological notion of human,
an
unsatisfactory
superbiological (or sociobiological)
and
of
that
addition^
The Romantics
What is this further, problematic, nature?
nature or essence.
nature
can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from culture,
cultural
off
Peeling
only local nature (Herder's term) which coincides with culture.
excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves,
liKe
Wittgenstein's artichoke, nothing.
of human nature is a theoretical item,
The notion
cultural variability,
amid
stabi1i ty
but designed as wel 1
particular
type
everywhere
else.
of
7
fashionj;
fact
and
that
received,
not,
the
introduced to
a constant bulwark against
to justify ^as natural or, failing that,
political
economy and legislature, and
provide
relativism,
as superior^
its
imposi t i on
such
Tlsf?s resilient notion has been widely applied in
i
is not so easily dissolved,
notion
by one illustration.
is wri tten large in much
political
but is defective,
3
However the
theory,
the embedding theory is sound.
does not show that it or
a
and
is
Hnd it is
and in its socio-political selectivity it is,
as the
a piece with human chauvinism (which would
assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the ecological
scheme
of things).
under
7.
. the superbiological notion of human nature begins to dissol\
*
A
any attempt to set it down,
in much the way that attempts supporting
Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western cultur^
everywhere,
later emphasised by Bentham. 'The Legislator, lowing t
human nature is ever the same [different countries do not have
catalogues of pleasure and pain], can reform the laws and even transplan
them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18).
namrg. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious
reforious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort toy
i
.7"& $ 11T
A
enforce various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones (including defence foc^s,
�to
chauvinism
human
humans
that
there
ethically
something
about
special
humans
The notion of human nature - a nature or essence for alj_
disintegrate.
only
down
set
(some special classes of humans excepted perhaps)
are
stable or constant social
some
- presupposes
holding
features
and
for
all
across different cultures, which are furthermore distinctively human
peoples,
features.
peoples
The
is
presupposition fails,
fully
characteristics
taken
remain,
because once cultural variation between
into account,
which
some
only
furthermore
are
rather
shared
by
trivial
shared
various
animal
cultures, such as those of primates.
Consider,
books,
or
historical
first,
such
products or tools of more literary cultures as
of contemporary cultures as telephones and computers.
cultures
lacked
such items,
their
possession
or
Since
most
distribution
obviously cannot figure as part of what marks out human nature. Consider next,
what are commonly taken to be key components of (human) nature, certain
then,
basic human needs,
such as food and shelter.
free of cultural and environmental
as required in the way of shelter,
place to place.
of
ways,
common
under
8.
These requirements are far from
determinants.
For look at what is regarded
and how it varies from culture to culture,
(And even what is taken as basic can often be met in a myriad
though acceptably in some cultures only in a few fixed
ways.)
denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort of
more extreme conditions - a requirement also of wombats.
The
shelter
The situation
This claim concerning human chauvinism is argued in detail in EE. But the
claim concerning human nature is only sketchily defended in the ex -or
the alleged social-arrangement-dictating features of human nature,
like
similar alleged features of economic or technological
determinism, are
rather major obstacles to be removed - especially insofar as they
supposedly severely and inevitably restrict the character of
u ure
societies - than the main business of the present enterprise.
Fortunately then the claim,
that the superbiological notion of human
nature is a defective theoretical one which dissolves,
is defende
elsewhere: not only, in effect, in work of Romantics from Herder on, but
also in significant recent literature. Foucault, for example, can be read
as saying
*
that human nature is an invention of the Enlightenment which
dissolves: "his much discussed ... dissolution of man is nothing more, or
less,
than the claim that
the attempt to establish order upon a
scientific understanding of human nature is both profoundly mistaken an
profoundly unstable" (Philp, p.15, italics added).
5
�with
1-ood,
sex,
and
so on,
considerably from race to race,
by
many
people
is hardly better.
vary
Europeans for example being very inefficient
tribal standards and unable to survive satisfactorily where tribal
9
flourish.
figain the somewhat
trivial
lowest common denominator
applies also to various groups of animals.
human
requirements
Dietary
by some more complex list of jointly necessary
nature
conditions,
Nor are attempts to mark out
more
or
loosely
by a cluster of natural
and
features,
the
sufficient
more
much
successful, or of direct political application without the importation of what
is culturally at issue - values.
In any case, such vague and general
impose little constraint at all on apolitical
emerge
direction,
lists as
since
a
variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings.
Accordingly,
political
theory,
human
nature
as such is not an
important
constraint
on
or a theory of human nature a key ingredient in endeavours
11
work out a political philosophy or political directions
to
.
The reason is
the reason that determining the conditions for the good life would
like
not
impose a satisfactory constraint on a political theory, namely presupposition
12
failure.
Like the meaning of life ,
the good life fails to demarcate a
single
'?.
thing;
there
are many styles of good lives.
So too there
is
human
The
converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight
on European diets. At another level, consider the Maori attitude to, and
underlying revulsion by, cooked food: see Alpers, p.7-9.
10. For one such list, which however requires pruning and adjustment, see
Nilson, p.22. As it happens, Wilson does not make anything much of this
list (which does not supply necessary conditions), immediately presents a
parallel
list for insect societies - a list which does considerable
damage to more traditional claims about human nature - and then proceeds
in effect
to demolish main criteria that have been used to separate
humans from animals and to restrict cultures to human societies <e.a.
p. 39) .
For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human
nature for social and political ends, see Appendix 2.
11.
Which is perhaps as well, since we still have so little reliable and
unprejudiced information as to what "human nature" amounts to, what its
variational possibilities, in different environments, might be, or of the
possibilities beyond past terrestrial selections of cultures.
12.
On which see Routley and Griffin.
�and human nature,
nature
depending on the culture or social paradigm and
on
Nature, both human and not, varies with culture and environment.
the setting.
there is no unique stable superbiological
Because of this two-way dependence,
human nature.
of
corollary
6
rejection also,
across races and tribes,
The picture is flawed in much the same way,
the
on
top.
culture affects local nature.
as the familiar picture of
then,
consisting of given uninterpreted sense data,
as
is
with culture as a variable
There is no such culturally invariant division:
perception,
nature
of the usual picture of nature as given, as a
as misleading,
notion
stable
the dissolution of the notion of human
stable
across
(normal) perceivers, with interpretation imposed on the neutral data.
Nor therefore is culture something that can be creamed off the top, so to
find real human features or basic nature
to
speak,
Certainly,
underneath.
cultures can be destroyed; however what results from removal by destruction of
a culture is not something closer to real people,
culture.
So
organisation
but people with a destroyed
it is also with attempts like Hobbes or Rawls to peel
off
in order to locate in a
the the top,
political
quasi-analytical
or
quasi-historical way, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised
state
or
other.
A
flawed picture,
derived from mistaken
or
questionable
presuppositions, is assumed.
Nhat will be found underneath, or in the original
(natural) state, is, it
is usually conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the view to be developed
with the
explained
the
and
culture's
right values very fortunately in-built.
is
privileged
image
position of some
of itself,
and
status quo -
elements of the
as well
dominant
as
a
Northern
be
serves
for
economic man,
7
dominant
social
hardly surprisingly, that
fully competitive possessive individualism (much the same model,
which
to
or justified is something like present socio-political arrangements
paradigm - underlying human nature turns out to be,
of
Given that what
for Enlightenment man,
for
the
that is,
rational
�myths,
The myth of unique human nature functions,
etc.)
person",
perpetuate
to
other
tike many
or instit particular social arrangements
special
and
pr ivi1ege.
Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths,
myths
the
predominantly
rational)
all
of
humans
(normal)
self-interested
- to
bring
maximizers
no firm starting point in human nature,
myths.
aggressive
(at
least
some of the myths bound
in
urban-industrial humans.
contemporary
as
individuals
as
they
are
Mi th
the
image
of
up
As there is no underlying hard ground,
associated
so there is none in these
The South Pacific Mas, and remains, rich in cultures Mhich upset these
of
the
Melanesians,
Polynesians
None
aboriginal
peoples
comprised societies of individually-oriented
after
especially,
lifestyles and
strongly communal
their
to
a loM sufficiency threshold had been reached,
source of criticism from the
repeated
preparedness
European cultures
Australian
or
myths.
and
as
insofar
associated
indeed
and
maximizers;
Mork
stop,
Mas a major
that
came
to
dominate the region.
forms and types of
Even
aggressiveness,
and approaches to
Mar,
often
taken to be solid ground, are culture and environment dependent, and vary Mi th
13
both
parameters .
Aggressiveness is often supposed to impose
huge
constraints
on political
arrangements.
But there is little substance to the
claim that humans are naturally aggressive independently of social or cultural
setting.
for
13.
The most that appears
instance
clear is that circumstances can be
through croMding or provocation or cultural
arranged,
relocation,
Mhere
A striking illustration of environmental variation is afforded by the
differences betMeen savannah dMelling and forest dMelling tribes of
baboons.
For a local illustration, consider Maori approaches to Mar
(like Mar conventions, a social phenomenon), before European corruption.
Thus Best reports that 'an individual, or a Mhole clan, might decline to
take part in an engagement on account of some evil omen,
and such an
action Mould be approved of' (p.15).
There are several, apparently
reliable, stories of Maoris engaged in Mar supplying the opposition Mith
equipment or ammunition, or temporarily abandoning their fighting effort
to help out the other (British) side, so the battle could proceed
properly.
8
�14
of
peoples
cultures will become aggressive
familiar
more
but Mill just give up,
people of other cultures Mill not,
in the face of immense brutality.
types.
depends
upbn
Once
shortsightedly
again,
as fixed:
see
as people often do
but these can be of a Mide range of
Mhat is normally
accounted
varies Mi th culture and environment,
and
perhaps
Certainly some arrangements are required to
cope Mi th or suitably isolate aggression,
alternative
- and
certainly,
such
nature
people
Mhich
components
human
as
often
selfishness,
cooperativeness, individuality do.
What
much more important than either culture or nature
is
determining social arrangements is another factor:
social
Whatever
imposition.
one
May or another.
from
invariably
namely, outside control or
arrangements have evolved in a
local^nature and cultureican be overridden,
through
region
and neM arrangements imposed,
With long-standing arrangements,
Mithout,
imposition
is
and the changes in arrangements typically
the South Pacific has,
especially,
in
almost
involve
either violence in their adaption or mass migration of people or both.
last tMO hundred years,
in
In the
like much of the
been drastically so affected, in a complex May. And the changes,
neMer world,
still flowing strongly from the North, continue.
We
are
in the last days of the destruction of
old
and
cultures,
destruction is now to a considerable extent by more subtle cultural,
and
technological
Outside
direct
control can be exercised,
economic sanctions,
film
and
television (i.e.
economic
earlier
times.
in many ways less blatant
such as through introduction
monetary and loan policies,
as through exchange and training programs,
magazines,
14.
or occur,
intervention of one sort or another,
new technologies,
well
means than the cruder methods of slightly
textbooks,
through physical
the
etc.,
advertising
than
of
as
and
exemplifications of
Wilson's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an
invalid move: he looks at the behaviour of Semai men when taken out of
their nonviolent society'' by recruitment in a British colonial
army
(p.100)!
As well, Wilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of
innateness, and a low redefinition of aggressiveness to take in forms of
mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.99-100).
9
�process of cultural conversion and erosion;
this quieter
are
unwittingly, part
European peoples in the South Pacific are often
culture).
or rather than,
victims as well as,
now
but many of
perpetrators (cf.
US
and
Crough
Wheelwright).
Human
communities
have been
and many still are
as
to
insensiti
other human cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness Americans
Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed,
and their allies in Vietnam).
pushed
creation
political
of
typically
This is
beyond redemption.
disaster
sufficiently
apace
areas proceeds
where
is possible at all,
recovery
a
sometimes of the order of human generations.
production
of
imperial ism,
- in
these politically
e.g.
USA
in
contaminated
Central America,
long
blatant
cases
There
recovery
is
period,
Yet there is increasing
regions,
Israel
the
Yet
disruption of cultu-e and lifestyle using violence.
by
-fur thermore,
perhaps
well-known.
in
especially
Lebanon,
through
Russia
in
Afghanistan, Indonesia in East Timor and West Papua, etc.
In the South Pacific, there are
but
the
strongest now is unquestionably the
businessmen,
films
can
many quieter Northern influences at work,
academics,
American.
American
companies,
tourists and warships, their technology and patents,
are the most evident and influential.
and television programs,
be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the
newer
There
cultural
behind endeavours such as the American
16
Granted it
everywhere
.
their "free enterprise
*
philosophy and practice
17
to American business
and
mostly contributes to American economic supremacy,
and
economic imperialism,
These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off li.e
by communicable disease,
but from continuing disruptive,
infec ted
outside
in ter-ference.
What is said about American cultural and political imperialism applies,
with adaption,
in a lesser way,
to imperialism and colonialism by other
nation-states such as USSR, Britain, France and Indonesia.. USA
L.. has no
in
the
third
world
is in part
monopoly on imperialism. US imperialism i......... documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman.
Though
not md.riaMy a. th. experience "ith the Japanese ctor industry
has indicated.
10
�to
the transfer of substantia! regional wealth and surplus value to the
But
national economic reasons &re not the only sort of reasons such
are
pursued;
apart
from the side-issue of integrity,
really do believe in the optimality of their local
USA.
policies
Americans
that many
ideals to the exclusion
of
other arrangements, there are deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological
reasons as Mel 1.
imperialistic
The
assumption
that
(a
distortions
technological
economic)
means.
can
be
underpinned
all human nature is at bottom really
instance highly economically oriented.
for
nature,
endeavours
political
means,
May:
they
by
American
like
Thus,
descr i pt ive
a
human
but for political
analogue of economic externalities)
and
lack
other peoples Mould choose the American (political
simply have not really been given the
For many peoples this is simply not true;
of
and
opportunity
or
for most other cultures let
us hope, or pray, that this is not the case. Alternatively, or as Mell, a more
arrogant
prescriptive assumption may be at Mork,
that all human nature ought
to be like American nature at its
best, because America not only has the best
18
May of life in the Morld and mostly the best Mays of doing things
, but has
a
special
hold
on rationality.
The free-enterprise
representative democracy American-style tacked on)
18.
system
(perhaps
is the rational
Mith
enterprise
Thus, for example, American agricultural textbooks and agricultural
spokespeople are fond of announcing that American agriculture is the best
in the Morld;
similarly for environmental
protection,
forestry,
technology, university education, and so on.
But since they are the
best,
it is evident that these American Mays should be exported,
isn't
it? Even granting the large assumptions, No, firstly, because that is to
neglect important regional and local variations and differences,
and
secondly because these Mays may interfere Mith other significant features
of regional life or culture.
It has not passed unremarked that the high standard of material life in
USA depends in part on a very fortunate inheritance (e.g. some of
the
best and deepest soils) and in part, as in Europe, on a loMer standard of
life and conditions elseMhere, upon siphoning off Meal th and especially
resources (US currently uses about one-fifth of Morld resources and 30 X
of Morld energy) from other regions.
To be sure, economic apologetics
proffer other explanations of American transcendence, e.g.
ingenious
constructions like that of Olson, built on a sandy logic of economic
actors collectively
locked into economically determined arrangements,
substantially independent of the resource base.
�by genuine believers in
bridled
Certainly the system is sometimes peddl
,
embodied.
which Mas often
with the same evangelism as Christianity,
American way,
the
at least before science got at
rational
religion,
as the
seen and presented
yet, but on the
got at the free-enterprise religion
hasn't
i t. MeH, science
justification and
division heavily devoted to its
contrary now has a social
sufficiently to
19
philosophy has got at the system,
furtherance.
However some
_
tp,t it is no unique embodiment of rationality - there -s none sue
reveal
decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances.
is
but
a
preserve local
environments
end
if local goals are to
irrational
especial ly
Thus,
cultures, as much experience helps attest.
is aspects of
tt
with
false descriptive
and what can
assumption,
.what follows (though various of
are a main focus in
rejection,that
th. prescripts, assumption Mill .'so -.rg. °r 9^
its
the reasons for rejecting
underlying theme Mil! continue to be
An
recorded).
nor
broader
emerge
basic
human
.
nature
is
a
single
in
substantially
sort of political framework a society adopts. In
outside
cultural
nei ther
important
ways that are highly political
upon *from
that
or above, the variation can be
variation
<Mhich
turn
in
depends
stable
thing,
varies
but
the
to
relevant - relevant
freer societies, less imposed
largely accounted for through
The
environment,etc).
on
those of cuitura! pluralism, that culture
alternative
assumptions,
are then,
..cal human nature. Of course once
is part of "nature",
"human nature"
again
^nations-,
but
shaping in particular
can be pared back and back to try to
m this way what are taken to be
remove
important
superbi ologi c a
*
matures of human nature for political theory are also excised (e.g
that
make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies
cu1tura'
feature
one way
rathe
than another).
1?.
in
elaborating on h.M
has
explained
^"soc'ial"control
various extensile typ
p. 15.
12
exercised
py^.y of approved
�Just as dttterent cultures can.mean different social arrangements,
so tn
, larger setting they can imply different political organisation and different
directions.
political
incongrous
Where
requisite differences
had.
arrangements
been imposed,
do
not
occur,
because
cultural differences can
b.^.
nnuerful force for change. Lihemse d^.loping elements of cultural difference
can
a potent base for social change - or resistance to imposed
be
in communities inhere other more orthodox
(especially)
a, economic mcertioes or penalties,
have
bases for change,
become inoperative or
-
change
such
tailed,
or
used,
but
are not avaitable.
Culture is hotter a double-edged instrument,
For
resisted.
though
example,
leading
not only to be
of
[valuable] features
indigenous
Pacific cultures are to be reactivated, as forces for change, some features of
these cultures are to be resisted (such as male domination),
features
modern Western cultures.
of
along mth
used
Features of culture are thus
and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sources
resist
many
to
culture;
of
such as, inequitable political arrangements, excessive consumerism, persuasive
advertising
media and loaded news systems,
structures,
etc.
for
culture.
chief
build
and
competi tive
encouraging
culture afford a solid foundation - but also
prime sources of
up resistance against,
is as true for American culture as Antipodean.
This
reasons
alienating
^hy
so
job
build and design alternatives
It is important not only to
which elements of local
dismantle,
holloa suburbia,
mainstream American culture
violent,
and
so
forth,
is
is
that
so
to
antagonistic
One
of
the
ndividualistlc,
so
offering
or
movements
alternatives have been repressed by the dominant corporations and
the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein).
2.
The
Why work with such an unfavourable contrast case as Australian—^iety^
regional and environmental orientation.
cultural variation and their force for change,
contrast
than
US
In defence of theme.
for instance Melanesian culture.
13
g
it Mould no doubt be easier to
culture with some other culture which diverges
Australian culture,
<_on-_
more
Or,
strikingly
differe
y,
�ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL PLURALLISM
*
Let us begin by sketching, in summary form, what political pluralism was, and then
explaining what it becomes under contemporary plurallism, ecopluralism in particular. These
new pluralisms, while they differ markedly from former political pluralsm, undoubtedly can
build upon it
Political pluralism used to be a theory viewing social life in terms of groups, which were
said to be the priwMry .s*oc/o/
On this theory, an individual's primary allegiance is not to
any abstract government but to groups, unions, clubs, churches. Thus there is no absolute
necessity for a highly unified political or legal order - whence developed a critical stance
towards the state and towards sovereignty among somg pluralists and so elements of anarchistic
pluralism.
There was, however, no systematic theory of political pluralism (a further anarchistic
feature). The position (and both British and American pluralism, however different) were
unified not by any doctrine but by crinco/ response to growth of the state.
A major theme was, and remains, moderate
(as further explained in EP). Humans
are neither isolated atoms, nor components of centralised states, but social creatures who
function in crisscrossing groups of their own choice. Moreover, groups are genuine objects
with choices, capacities, purposes, etc.
Pluralist society respects and tries to reconcile diverse interests of humans without
thwarting them. Groups communicate via negotiation and the like; their operations are not
delegative from some higher authority.
Contemporary ecological pluralism takes over most of these scene setting features, but
emphasizes the communitarian bases, and expands the scope of communities and groups to
include
communities, which include creatures and systems other than humans. Perhaps
the best known example of such a mixed community is that, introduced by Naess and
elaborated by Devall (in 89) of a Norwegian community of bears and wolves, sheep and
humans (but earlier Leopold and other had offered examples of expanded communities). A
problem which group theory hides, perhaps deliberately, but which such communities at once
expose, is that of internal conflict. Conflict cannot be avoided even by going right down to
families or individuals; for as much conflict may be bottled up in a family or even in one
*
Early versions of the first section of these notes drew heavily on Vincent, TAeonej of
ytote. The text takes up the working draft of 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism: II.
Anarchistic pluralism'.
�2
individual as in a small group. That is, there are no pure conflict-free atoms from which to
build up group or community structure.
Conflict within individuals is strikingly exhibited in certain sorts of schizopherenia. But
it happens also in many humans. On conflict issues, in dilemmatic situations, and similar, one
part of a person pulls in one direction, another part in another. Or, more accurately, because
often no such neat separation into directional components can be affected, there are inconsistent
allegiances, derives, drives. Under orthodox theory, it is presumed that such conflicts,
personal inconsistency, can be removed by artificial fragmentation. What happens in orthodox
social theory is that individuals are effectively broken down and whittled down, not without
significant.... . into iJca/ components — classical individuals — with properly organised
(duly transitive, etc.) preferences and coherent desires. While such idealization is alright for
limited theoretical purposes, let us not falsey imagine that it is adequate for a satisfactory social
theory. Let us not pretend that such thin classical individuals offer a saatisfactory model for
rich actual individuals.
Ecopluralism not only extends the group basis; like gontc contemporary pluralism, the
variety of positions and practices is also much expanded. Early political pluralism (so-called)
was far from advocating a plural variety. (Figgin, an early British pluralist, would have been
shocked at such a supposition: Vincent p.182.) A fairly narrow normative consensus was
assumed, e.g. Christian morality in British "pluralism", American political arrangements in
American "pluralism". Indeed several American "pluralists", political scientists from Bentley
on, erroneously "saw pluralism as a description of the American political system. In this usage,
pluralism moves into the area of interest group and pressure group theory' (Vincent p.183).
Herein lies the route to
p/ura/hwn: While the state may remain discredited as a unitary
order, it is now seen a complex multiple entity, which tried to incorporate and theorize diversity
of group life. In the American version, groups are seen as interested in reaching some kind of
bargain. Government policy is the outcome of group pressures. Government is alleged to seek
out some abstract national interest.
Public police is ...' the equilibrium reached in this struggle at any given
moment' .... Today's loser, it is blithely assumed, will be tomorrow's
winner.
Most American pluralists of this ilk assume that the contest between
groups will be fair and that there is some kind of lurking normative
consensus in the background. Certain types of behaviour are
presumably un-American. Practical politics, therefore, for the American
pluralist is about bargaining, compromise and trade-offs. There is no
normative appraisal of the State, but rather an gjtp/anation anJ partial/y %
yn^ti/icarion o/ wAat t/tgy ta%g to
actaa//y tAg ca^g in tAg qo/irica/
qrocc.y^g.y of the USA. Government is not an impartial umpire. It
reflects the dominant coalition on a particular policy — although it will
try to maintain some balance. ... In American pluralism a group is
simply a collection or aggregation of individuals acting in specific roles.
�3
Most significantly the American pluralists were not concerned with any
normative account of the State as an institution or practice. They were
far more interested in examing, empirically, the effects of group
pressures on the actual activity of government (Vincent p.190 emphasis
added).
In even more degenerate Eastern European forms, pluralism comes down to some sort of
multi-party electoral arrangements;
plurality just amounts to many parties. Political
arrangements can however remain highly paternalistic and authoritarian. Because we are
interested in genuine free pluralisms, we shall leave these desperate terms behind.
EXTRA SPACE
Now consider the organisational possibilities for the Earth, i The Earth divides variously
into (geographical) regions; under ecological organisation the decomposition will be into
ecoregions. Those regions that are occupied will be occupied by structures of (mixed)
communities. The assumption that each occupied region is occupied by a single community is
too simple to account even for the present impoverished arrangements offering on Earth. Some
regions are occupied by communities of communities,
community structure so to
say.2 It seems unlikely that on Earth, given a suitable choice of regions, it is necessary to
ascend beyond communities of communities to third-order community structures. Thus for
each region it is appropriate to begin with the ancient ideal of a community of communities.
But of course there will be higher-order structure involved, such as regional federations of
regions, and federations of these federations, and so on and up. Call this organisational
structure, the Earth frame. This frame is not of course unique; there are many other ways, of
varying levels of adequacy, of unscrambling an organisational grid.
1
Off the Earth, in free logical space, case arrangements are wry much greater. Not only
can many terrestrial limitations be transcended, for instance with wiser creatures than
humans, and many fairer regions, but the interaction of regions can be avoided, so that,
for example, an intense dense industrial society need not transmit its pollution outside
its own borders, indeed in the right circumstances it need not be polluting at all. A
beginning is made in investigating this richer structure by Nozick, but even his useful
beginnings leave much to be desired, as brought out in UT.
2
Whether communities of communities amount just to communities will depend upon
the final characterisation of community, or what sort of members they can have and
the extent and character of the interrelations of their members. If communities were
mere set-like objects, it would be a matter of the transitivity of membership; but
obviously communities are more than mere sets, internal relations counting for much.
�4
The frame selected is in fact intimately tied to real mundane arrangements. For the short
time that they survived state interference, the Spanish anarchistic communities coexisted and
coevolved in genuine pluralistic fashion (as Dolgoffs sympathetic description has revealed).
That is by no means the only occasion on which the old ideal of a community of communities
(communitas communitatorum) has achieved partial realisation, but is one of the better known
recent examples involving anarchistic communities in a limited geographic region - at a time in
world history when state domination of social life continues to break up communities and
impose a grey uniformity across former community diversity. But the concern here is not with
what is, with present depressing (but temporary) political realities, but with how things might
well be, with different and - no difficult feat - superior political arrangements, in particular
pluralist arrangements.
A recent picture of pluralistic political arrangements by Nozick supposedly allows for
virtually anarchistic communities within an overarching minarchic framework. It would seem a
simple matter to vary this picture, in particular, to weaken or strengthen the overarching
framework; and that indeed the system of Spanish communities (which of course did not
persist) weakened the minimum state arrangements in true anarchistic fashion to zero. Nozick
has however a complex (and also seriously flawed) argument that variations are without
justification, that political possibilities which can be justified are omc/t tighter than the wide
range of the logical possibilities would suggest.
A crucial early question once an Earth frame is untangled is, for each structural level:
what are the broad organising principles? Consider a more important case, the regional level.
Will the same broad principles reappear for each region? Only in a very tenuous fashion, if
such desiderata as regional diversity are to be given appropriate play. Naturally these had better
be included some procedure or other for conflict resolution where conflict is severe, but there is
a wide variety of procedures of very varying merit; some procedures or other for the numerous
issues that have to be dealt with to keep communities functioning, such as to take a sample of
issues, burying the dead, taking care of the indigent.
*
A crucial question, for each structural level,is: what are the broad organisational
principles? One working idea is that in the sort of organisational framework sought will enable
a mix of desiderata to be pushed over some far out natural thresholds. The comy desiderata
include liberal and environmental objectives, such as those of freedom, liberation. Life, liberty,
pursuit of happiness, etc.
3
Levels of organisation, by geographical region (functional with a that), local, small
ecoregion, large ecoregion, ... (old large state), continent - federations, world federation.
�Direction of world reorganisation: to a plurality of possibilities, with different possibilities
in different regions. Cities for those who like them in the substantially ecologically destroyed
urban land recipes of the North. Etc.
Diversity is a prime desideratum. We should rgjoicc in Jhw-yity where it recurs, and
encourage ir where it does not, subject as always to certain constraints. In particular, then,
attempt to impose fashionable ideologies everywhere should be strongly resisted; this includes
religious faith and other gospels such as those of market capitalism and state socialism. Such
drives to unity and conformity, and intellectual monoculture, should be derailed. Evidently in
an interlinked system such as the Earth form, federal organisation should include arrangements
to block imposition of ideologies by expansive neighbours on other regions. (Included herein
are states; here is yet another reason for the abolition of states.)
Not to be encouraged, but opposed, are mc.MMnic ging/c-way movements, such as
messianic catholism, messianic communism, and messianic capitalism. These come with a
amvcrya/Mtic perspectic, and a single, allegedly universal set of values: they do not, unless
severely cut down in size, fit into a generous plurallism. Needless to say, these universalistic
(one-tuming) movements cannot rationally justify their practices. It can no more be established
that there is only one god with such and such properties (e.g. those ascribed to Allah under
Islam) than it can be established that there is only one logic; indeed the justificatory situation is
considerably worse (imagine the faithful chanting each day, facing one Cambridge or other,
"There is no logic but classical logic ..."; of course most Anglo-American philosophers are
committed to something like this in their philosophical practice, but they rarely recognise the
character of the commitment).
Note: Many of the economic objectives presented as absolute, are not merely dubious. They
are not intrinsic values, but merely instrumental, and instrumental to goals that a community
may not have. Leading examples of such objectives are efficiency, production.
Out of the same stable as broad monoculturalism, with its uniform urban systems,
universities, etc., is the method of consensus (or
one opinion, as it might as well
have been called). Consensus — unless severely limited, as for instance to argument on a
pluralistic structure — is anti-pluralistic. Nonetheless there can be consensus of a sort at one
remove, metaconsensus on one story, "agreement" to differ.
Limited agreement does however have its virtues in conflict resolution.
* To be sure, cases where have to resolve what is to be done, how to act. Many ways to go:
single uniform recipe approach too absolutist. On the other hand, it is not entirely situational.
Set of recognised decent procedures.
�6
The problematicness of conflict, and need for its removal, is much exaggerated. The
drive for conflict-free conditions is like, and linked to, the drive for consistency. But conflict is
not always undesirable, but often advantageous (and perhaps, as Heracleitus claimed,
necessary). Often conflict should just be allowed to stand; it does not require resolution.
Political and social arrangements should allow for it and be able to absorb it. Where removal is
required, it is often by achieved by distancing, regionalisations etc.
APPENDICES
1. On Walzer's p/ara/Mm there is a plurality of distributive systems. From Plato onwards it is
suggested that only one distributive arrangement that can be justified, (p.5). Walzer suggests
the Rawlsian picture of reeled strand choosers provides
modern arrangements. But
'Justice is a human construction, and it is doubtful that it can be made in only one way' (p.5).
Thus there is a plurality also of distributive justice. While the argument is plausible, its
construction prescription is not. Walzers' 7%Mt'.? (p.6) is: 'the principles of justice are
themselves pluralistic in form [whatever that means); that different social goods ought to be
distributed for different reasons, in accordance with different procedures, by different agents;
and that all these differences derive from different understandings of the social goods
themselves — the inevitable product of historical and cultural particularism'.
There is also a theory of goods, and f/teir distribution. In the usual form, people
distribute goods to people. The basic relation is a proc^Jarg. In fact there are many
procedures: given, allocating, exchanging, selling, etc. Walzer wants to claim: People
conceived create goods, which they then distribute among themselves. This is really a
Concatenation of two procedures. His iJea is to split goods into quaser sphere, and to have
different dibtributive criteria for different spheres. This is said to be complex e^aa/ity (p. 18)!
According to Walzer, there are sp/tereg/ or regions of competition, etc. For example, in
Pascal: strength, beauty, intelligence, devoteness;
but it could be: rugby, soccer, rules, horse racing, mountain climbing, etc.
However there are divisions, barriers between these — but they compete for key items e.g.
money, fields, etc. [so population growth is a total menance for a easily pluralistic society.)
1] 'Personal qualities and social goods have their own spheres of operation, where they work
their effects freely, spontaneously legitimately' (p.19) wAat does this seem: work? by
legitimally? etc.
2] Disregard of those sepaate spheres is tyranny; Attempting to convert one good in one place
to another in another is ruled out.
Meaning of "complex equality" (nothing much of equality about it): 'no citizens' standing in
one sphere or with regard to one social good can be undercut by his standing in some other
�sphere, with regard to one other good' (p.19). Thus political advantage does not confer
advantage in other spheres, e.g. health care, advoting, etc.
W 'open-ended distributive principle' (p.20): 'no social good x should be distributed to nea
.... who possess some other good y merely because they possess y and without regard to the
meaning of x'.
�*^-V
^T)/ ^/'
y-a-y^,
C-V
?^^-<-
,
ece/."*
y4^^y
Z—r
'^/?^'
A// g)Z
y
ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL PLURALLISM^
Political pluralism was a theory viewing social life in terms of groups, which were
said to be the primary social objects. Further an individual's primary allegiance is not to
any abstract government but to groups, unions, clubs, churches. Thus there is no absolute
necessity for a highly unified political or legal order - whence developed a critical stance
towards the state and towards sovereignty among yomg pluralist^and so elements of
anarchistic pluralism.
There was, however, no systematic theory of political pluralism (a further anarchistic
feature.) The position (and both British and American pluralism, however different) were
unified not by any doctrine but by crit/ca/ response to growth of the state.
A major theme wa^aadd^a^ay&M^ one (as/in EP)t humans are neither isolated atoms,
nor components of centralised states, but social creatures who^werkedin crisscrossing
groups of their own choice. Moreover, groups are genuine objects with choices, capacities,
purposes, etc.
Pluralist society respects and tries to reconcile diverse interests of humans without
,
.
,
—
.
.
.
thwarting them. Groups communicate via negotiation etc.; their operations are not
delegadve from some higher authority.
Contemporary ecological pluralism takes over most of these scene setting features, but
emphasizes the communitarian bases, and expands the scope of communities and groups to
include
communities, which include creatures and systems other than humans.
Perhaps the best known example of such a mixed community is the exampley-^givaa by
Naess and elaborated by Devall (89^dhapter-^3)^of a Norwegian community of bears and
wolves, sheep and humans'. A problem which group theory hides, perhaps deliberately, but
which such communities at once expose, is that of internal conflict. Conflict cannot be
avoided even by going right down to familiar or individuals; for as much conflict may be
Early versions of the first section of these notes drew heavily on Vincent, TAcorier <?f
The text takes up the working drift of 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism: II.
Anarchistic pluralism',, and thus completes (so far as it can presently be taken) a series
on this generous topic
*.
; TW J
�^4?
^c
A
/^T
%T
j
f iSj
!^3
Ph..
r
t>
", ',
P
*
<r
'*^
c
e \y—Z
,
")"WMnm reached In d.i, Hn<wk at aav'tiv'en
m..n<„, <l<AS,p. 31,). Today', loser, i, I, bh.hol, a,,u,„ed. wdl ho
tomorrow s wmner.
Most American pluralists of this ilk assume that the contest
tween groups wtll be fhir and that there is some kind of lurking
normative consensus in the background. Certain types of behaviour
are presumably un-American. Practical politics, therefore, fbr the
mertcan p urahst is about bargaining, compromise and trade-ofls
lore is no normative appraisal of the State, but rather an
of what they take to be
acm^
processesTnhXUSA
Gov
*
. dm^c^updTe^J^a
"——------ -R—-±A1 1 PLl^uSses^oi
the USA. Government
is
not an impartial umpire. It reflects
reflects the
the domii.^
dominant coalition on a
particular policy - although it will try to maintain some balance
*
I'.--D.
D. Roosevelt remarked, 'The
'
science of politics, indeed, mav
properly be said to be m large part the science of the adjustment of
conflicting group interests' (quoted in Nicholls, 1974, p. 2). This aim
is contrary to that of the English pluralists, who would have been
deeply critical of the idea that the State becomes a focal point for
group pressure, also that policy should emanate from dominant
coalitions of groups via the State apparatus. Individuals, in English
pluralism, pursue their goals within groups. The State should not be
inked to any such partial interests. Each of theSe groups is
recognized as a moral person with a legal status. In American
pluralism a group is simply a collection or aggregation of individuals
acting m specific roles. Most significantly the American pluralists
were not concerned with any normative account of the State as an
institution or practice. They were fhr more interested in examining
empirically, the effects of group pressures on the actual activity of
government,
th^y ^in not
cltscnsswn.
�7bottled up in a family or even in one individual as in a small group. That is, there are no
<*/o
pure conflict-free it^ms from which to build up group or community structure.
'
@
Ecopluralism not only extends the group basis; like
contemporary pluralism, the
variety of positions and practices is much expanded. Early political pluralism (so-called)
was far from advocating a plural variety. (Figgin, an early British pluralist, would have
been shocked at such a supposition: Vincent p.182.) A fairly narrow normative consensus
was assumed, e.g. Christian morality in British "pluralism", American political
arrangements in American "pluralism". Indeed several American "pluralists", political
scientists from Bentley Erroneously on^'saw pluralism as a description of the American
political system. In this usage, pluralism moves into the area of interest group and pressure
group theory" (Vincent p.183). Herein lies the route to
While the state jLSxiiscredited as a unitary ordef} it is now seen a complex
multiple entity, which tried to incorporate and theorize diversity of group life. In the
American version, groups are seen as interested in reaching some kind of bargain.
Government policy is the outcome of group pressures. Government is alleged to seek out
some abstract national interest^In even more degenerate Eastern European forms, pluralism
comes down to some sort of multiparty electoral arrangements; plurality just amounts to
many parties. Political arrangements can however remain highly paternalistic and
. Because we are interested in genuine free pluralisms, we shall leave these
desperate ^rms behind.
/^copyV^ncent-l$0, on US pluraKstsof this sort]
/)^onsider the organisational possibilities for the Earth.i The Earth divides variously
into (geographical) rggto/ts; under ecological organisation the decomposition will be into
jporegions. Those regions that are occupied will be occupied by structures of (mixed)
communities. The assumption that each occupied region is occupied by a single community
is too simple to account even for the present impoverished arrangements offering on Earth.
Some regions are occupied by communities of communities,
community
structure so to say.z It seems unlikely that Earth, given a suitable choice of regions, it is
_
.
cm
1
Off the Earth, in free logicat space, case arrangements are very much greater. Not only
can many terrestrial iimiations be transcended, (widi for instance wiscr creatures than
humans, and many fairer regions, but the interaction of regions can be avoided, so that,
for example, an intense dense industrial society need not transmit its pollution outside
its own borders, indeed in the right circumstances it need not be polluting at all. A
beginning is made in investigating this richer structure by Nozick, but even his
beginnings leave much to be desired?
*.
4/7
2
Whether communities of communities amount just to communities will depend upon
the final characterisation of comwMnhy, or what sort of members they can have and
c?
/-
�3
necessary to ascend beyond communities of communities to third-order community
structures. Thus for each region it is appropriate to begin with the ancient ideal of a
community of communities. But of course there will be higher-order structure involved,
such as regional federations of regions, and federations of these federations, and so on and
up. Call this organisational structure, the Earth frame. This frame is not of course unique;
there are many other ways, of varying levels of adequacy, of unscrambling an
organisational grid.
The frame selected is in fact intimately tied to real mundane arrangements. For the
short time that they survived state interference, the Spanish anarchistic communities
coexisted and coevolved in genuine pluralistic fashion (as Dolgoff s sympathetic description
has revealed). That is by no means the only occasion on which the old ideal of a
community of communities (communitas communitatorum) has achieved partial realisation,
but is one of the better known recent examples involving anarchistic communities in a
limited geographic region - at a time in world history when state domination of social life
continues to break up communities and impose a grey uniformity across former community
diversity. But the concern here is not with what is, with present depressing (but temporary)
political realities, but with how things might well be, with different and - no difficult feat superior political arrangements, in particular pluralist arrangements.
A recent picture of pluralistic political arrangements by Nozick supposedly allows for
virtually anarchistic communities within an overarching minarchic framework. It would
seem a simple matter to vary this picture, in particular, to weaken or strengthen the
overarching framework; and that indeed the system of Spanish communities (which of
course did not persist) weakened the minimum state arrangements in true anarchisdc fashion
to zero. Nozick has however a complex (and also seriously flawed) argument that
variations are without justification, that political possibilities which can be justified are mMc/z
tighter than the wide range of the logical possibilities would suggest.
A crucial early question once an Earth frame is untangled is, for each structural level:
what are the broad organising principles? Consider a more important case, the regional
level. Will the same broad principles reappear for each region? Only in a very tenu/ous
fashion, if such desiderate as regional diversity are to be given appropriate play. Naturally
the extent and character of the interrelations of their members. If communities were
mere set-like objects, it would be a matter of the transitivity of membership; but
obviously communities are more than mere sets, internal relations counting for much.
*j
�these had better be some procedure or other for conflict resolution where conflict is severe,
but there is a wide variety of procedures of very varying merit; some procedures or other for
the numerous issues that have to be dealt with to keep communities functioning, such as to
take a sample of issues, burying the dead, taking care of the indigent.
A crucial question, for each structural level, is: what are the broad organisational
principles?
.
The working idea is that in the sort of organisational framework sought will enable a
mix of desiderata to be pushed over some far out natural thresholds. The, desiderata include
liberal and environmental objectives, each as those of freedom, liberation. Life liberty,
pursuit of happiness^etc.
Direction of world reorganisation: to a plurality of possibilities, with different
possibilities in different regions. Cities for those who like them in the substantially
ecologically destroyed urban land recipes of the North. Etc.
Diversity is a prime desideratum. We should re/'ozce in JivgrHfy where it recurs, and
if where it does not, subject as always to certain constraints. In particular, then,
attempts to impose fashionable ideologies everywhere should be strongly resisted; this
includes religious faith and other gospels such as those of market capitalism and state
socialism. Such drives to unity and conformity, and intellectualm^njt culture, should be
derailed. Evidently in an interlinked system such as the Earth form; federal organisation
should include arrangements to block imposition of ideologies by expansive neighbours on
other regions. (Included herein are states; here is yet another reason for the ahabition of
states.)
Not to be encouraged, but opposed, are
sing/c-way movements, such as
messianic catholism, messianic communism, and messianic capitalism. These come with a
M/uvcrM/Af/c perspectic, and a single, allegedly universal set of values: they do not, unless
severely cut down in size, fit into a generous plurallism. Needless to say, these
universalistic (one-turning) movements cannot rationally justify their practices. It can no
more be established that there is only one god with such and such properties (e.g. thvse
ascribed to Allah under Islam) than it can be established that there is only one logic; indeed
the justificatory situation is considerably worse (imagine the faithful chanting each day,
facing one Cambridge or other, "There is no logic but classical logic
of course most
Anglo-American philosophers are committed to something like this in their philosophical
practice, but they rarely recognise the character of the commitment).
�Note: Many of the economic objectives presented as absolute, are not merely dubious.
They are not intrinsic values, but merely instrumental, and instrumental to %^that a
community may not have. Leading examples of such objectives are efficiency, production.
Out of the same stable as broad monoculturalism, with its uniform urban systems,
universities, etc., is the method of consensus (or
one opinion, as it might as well
have been called). Consensus - unless severely limited, as for instance to argument on a
pluralistic structure - is anti-pluralistic. Nonetheless there can be consensus of a sort at one
remove, metacon^ensus on^ one story, "agreement" to differ.
Limited agreement does however have its virtues in conflict resolution.
* To be sure, cases where have to resolve what is to be down, how to act. Many ways to
go: -si^i uniform recipe approach too absolutist. On the other hand act entirely situational.
Last of recognised decent procedures.
The problematicness of conflict, and need for its removal, is much exaggerated. The
drive for conflict-free conditions is like, and linked to, the drive for consistency. But
conflict is not always undesirable, but often advantageous (read perhaps, as Heracleitus
claimed, necessary). Often conflict should just be allowed to stand; it does not require
resolution. Political and social arrangements should allow for it and be able to absorb it.
��C**------ -
�
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f
Chapter 10
_
CRITICS OF ANARCHISM AND FURTHER CRITICISM.
..
One of the regular obstacles almost any innovative ideology encounters is hardened
dogfpMdwi. Hardened dogmatism characteristically sees little scope for movement from some
established status quo. There are many hardened dogmatists who see no alternative to the
modern state. In this they join company with a huge and motley crew of political "realists":
'There simply is no way an advanced industrial state can cope with technological complexities,
can minimize waste and misery and the danger of revolutions without strong government
controls' (Gardner!, our sample dcifnatist, selected^because he has ranted^at verbose length,on
his anti-anarchist disposition). We can grant that there is no viable state without requisite
government controls, no state without a state. The question is rather whether such objectives as
reduction of waste and misery and control of technology even he accomplished, perhaps
significantly better without the state, which tends to wagnt/y the problems concerned.
A feature of dogmatism is that assertion, reiterated assertion, replaces argument. So it is
with^state dogmatism: 'As things are, there simply is no way a modem industrial society can
flourish without a strong government to enforce the law' (p.123). international industrial
society flourishes, after a fashion ^without such a government. Analogous functional ways in
which regional industrial societies can operate, way implicit in historic anarchism, have been
explained. 'It is not just the necessity of a state to preserve law and order that makes the
anarchist dream so hopeless' (p.124). Order requires only a certain organisation^, for which the
state is quite unnecessary. As for law, the necessity is but analytic on the law being state-law.
But a wide network of conventions and regulations can operate without a state; there are many
examples, beginning with stateless societies, continuing through a range of voluntary
organisations.
Why 'so hopeless'?
,,
Even if small communities [observe the limitation on anarchism
immediately slippst in]... found a way to police themselves, there is no way
they could maintain, let alone establish, an industrial society. Small selfgoverning groups are incapable of building reservoirs to bring them clean
water, or roads to connect cities, or dynamos to supply electricity, or cars,
or printing presses, or modem hospitals, or anything else that is a product of
an advanced technology. Big tasks can be done only by big corporations
that are either state-owned or state-controlled, or that operate as vast
independent oligarches within the state (p.124).
eV
As well as intellectually lazy, this is hopelessly astray: there resides the hopelessness. In some
regions, pioneer societies and industrial society developed more or less regardless of the state.
Even small f^rm communities built themselves reservoirs for stock and household water
supplies, built their local roads, and so on (in Australia, USA, and elsewhere). They still do.
Electricity generates and printing presses can be manufactured in fairly unsophisticated
i
.
Martin Gardner
776-7SS.
e
W7ry.y i?/
*#
/
ch.7
Aafe.- WTry 7 owi
an
'
workshops, where the state need be nowhere in evidence. As for big tasks, international
organisations (for construction, forestry, dam building, oil-well sinking,^ substantially
independent of particular states can, and do, perform the work. They may presently be required
to have a state location, but that is strictly unnecessary for accomplishing the tasks; they are
certainly not state-owned, or state-controlled, nor do they, in any real sense, operate within the
states'. Furthermore, regions investing in large works beyond their capacities can set up their
own specialized structures, to oversee such big tasks, to monitor activities and ensure
accountability, and to exclude cowboy operations. It is simply false that the advancement and
application of science and technology requires the state, as much history reveals. In a similar
way, it is simply misleading that 'if we want to enjoy the benefits of science and technology,
the ideals of an archism are as irrelevant as the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount' (p.124). By
contrast with the ideals of the Sermon, the impact of which are quite indirect, much anarchist
output concerns science and technology, their promotion and qualified benefits, proper place
and appropriateness.
Next our philosophical scrivener turns to pulling down anarchism by a superficial
comparison with and sen^up of the American 'counter culture scene of the sixties' (pp. 1244-5).
As technology is not condemned by one bad result, nor is anarchism shown impracticable by
one presumed form wht^e merit remain a matter of controversy. In any case, m^re accurate
comparisons are available than Gardner's prejudical poQ)ourL These set anarchist elements of
the counterculture substantially witli^th&\merican individual, pro-violence form of anarchism.
Hardened dogmatists are almost invariably crt^ss critics. They do not ever get at close
quaters^et alon^ inside, what they are criticising; so they do not achieve a good view, still less
adequate
sympathetic view, of what they ^/are criticising. Fortunately there are less cr^ss
critics, most of them with heavy commitments to democratic states (Gardner, though he makes
obeisant gestures towards democracy, is underneath it committed to the strong tech,o-cratic
state.) It should be plain that any critic with heavy commit^nts to democracy would have to
take anarchism more seriously as an option; for the demos may chose, or rule, to remove their
state. (Quite constitutional means may, and should, permit this.) The point, though elementary,
has escaped apparently more sympathetic opponents of anarchism such as Dahl, who premisses
his critique of anarchism upon the incompatibility of anarchism with democracy. He appears to
manage this yhnx
by mistakenly equating democracy with the democratic state. Certainly
anarchism is incompatible with the democratic state, as with any state, but it does not follow,
except through a variant of the mistaken equation, that it is incompatible with democracy. And
it should be evident that this latter incompatibility is contested. For the^e have many proposals
for combining anarchism with m^re participatory democracy (ul^minating on enterprises like
Burgheim's quest fortrue democracy^ which arrives at a dilute anarchism).
Dahl begins his criticism of anarchism by asserting that anarchist (and guardianship)
'objections to democracy aare so fundamental that unless they can be satisfactorily met any
further explanations of the democratic idea would be futile' (p.37).
Given the heavy
commitment of much anarchism to democratic processes, this assertion faces evident
rejoinders. And Dahl himself quickly shifts ground (though a page later he shifts back,
assuming that his archetypal democrat and anarchist are opposed as archist and anarchist):
'Because democracy might well be the most des^be process for governing [anarchist
v^lu^ttpry]
it might also be the prevented form of government in an anarchist society.
But i^ the anarchist view democracy cannot redeem a state
*
(p.37, two paragraphs down).
Since nothing can redeem the state, ergo neither gods nor people nor democracy can. Yet Dahl
begins his cri^tism with this curious twist: since the state^coercism, and coercisaa is
intrinsically bad, can the democratic process somehow make it good?
*
(p.37). This problem for
archism, which Dahl assumes, is no problem at all for anarchism. Instead of addressing the
question posed, Dahl switches focus, by challenging the coherence and consistency of
anarchism. But all his exhibition of divWity/shows is that anarchism is a family-resemblance
notion, like many Wittgenstein pointed outigbwc, warAewatic.?, and so on. It is a family
resemblance notion with certain key features (as being played, is of a game), namely rejection
of archie authority, ^percion and the state; beyond that there is a plurality of forms. Once the
pluralistic conceptualisation is appreciated, there need be no incoherence; it all fits together.
^^Many of the criticisms of anarchism turn on the issue of
especially how
economic activity such asf marketing, distribution, and so on, is to be organised in the absence
of a central state authority. Meeting these criticisms in appropriate detail is no mean feat,
requiring the elaboration of substantially new economic theory (except for excessively
individualistic anarchists like Rothbart, but sketchy details and hints have been offered by
anarchist theorists). While economic criticisms bulk large in recent criticism of anarchism, the
state having assumed the role of grand macro-economic organiser, these by no means exhaust
criticisms. There are serious issues also concerning political and cultural organisation,
concerning the presumed enemies of organisation and order.
In many criticisms it is simply assumed that anarchistic organisation will have to take
over the arrangements of present mega-states and somehow substitute for those, without mega
states. The assumption is astray. Mega-states are mostly recent undesirable constructions,
obtained by conquest or war dealings, and held together coercive means and other devices of
state. These would, would be allowed to, fragment into regional components. Thus the
problem of organisation is a substantially smaller problem than that of organisation of mega
states; namely, that of organisation of regions. The regions would naturally be grouped
together, by principles of federation. (The new Europe provides a partial, suggestive example.)
No strand of anarchism 'has developed an adequate economic theory. The individualists
are stymied by the public goods problem, the communists by the problems of coordination.
[Even more plausible intermediate positions] require the support of the state at a number of
critical points' (M p.172). How the state is presumed to provide its benign supportative role is
well illustrated in the case of more individualistic anarchism, where the familiar problem of
public goods is also taken to manifest itself.
4
A cynic might well observe that no strand of capitalism or of socialism has developed an
adequate economic theory. But theories there no doubt are, in certain narrow reaches in
abundance.
*
Anarchism assumes the benefits of autonomous
operations, indeed the
individualistic ideal is one of personal sovereignty in the market place', but 'is not the state an
indispensible prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy?' (M p.169). There are two
parts to a response. First, markets functioned before states, and function outside states, for
example internationally. Second, whatever institutions are required for the operation of
markets can be supplied regionally under anarchistic fragmentation of the state.
How much background structure do markets depend upon, which might presuppose
apparatus of state. A market has a place of transactions, which can be common or waste
ground, a supply of goods or services to be exchanged there for other goods or services (barter)
or currency (in a money economy). Buyers and sellers enter the market to effect exchanges.
No doubt presupposed are at least limited entitlements (leasehold or property rights, so a seller
is entitled to dispose of, to a new user, holder or owner, what is offered for sale), contractual
arrangements, and in a money economy, some recognised currency. Also presumed, normally
where markets operate, are certain levels of safety, for instance protection against invasion,
assault and theft. But these are normal expectations for much of social life, for even conducting
a conversation. As for the rest, except perhaps for currency, it is a mere pretence that a state is
required for their assurance: customary or tribal arrangements will ensure both property in
transportable goods and recognition of verbal contracts or undertakings. An appropriate
currency too can develop in the absence of states, as exemplified in the shell currencies of
Melanesia and the bank notes of early America. Bank notes are not fully public goods; for a
bank which can profit from their circulation or issue has an incentive to supply them. (And
banks themselves do not require a sponsoring state, even if sometimes that helps, as in bailing
them out.)
It is worth observing that much of the conventional apparatus presumed for markets is
already presupposed
for the fictional covenant by which the state is supposedly
established. Namely, meeting in relative safety, entering into contractual arrangements (in the
case of the state of a very sophisticated sophistical sort).
* Anarchism has not met the 'intractable ... problem of co-ordinating the activities of many
independent social units without recourse to central authority' (M p.181). But there are many
examples, most notably at an international level again, where such coordination has been
achieved (e.g. IUCO). Examples are increasing with new networking arrangements (e.g.
Pegasus network).
Where substantially self-managing arrangements, such as traditional
markets are allowed to flourish, there are no such intractable problems. Certainly, however,
with anarcho-communist structures which aim to suppress such self-managing arrangements,
there are problems: namely those of
* co-ordinating productive activity, aligning production with the needs of consumers without
5
markets or central planning.
Key approach: localising production, face-to-face.
How can this work in an advanced industrial economy, where a high degree of specialization
and much division of labour. Suggestion CAN'T!
* motivating people to work.
Pressure, sanctions, rewards. While this is a problem in any setting, it is caAaaccJ since certain
personal rewards removed.
*
a central agency seems necessary to maintain any society-wide distribution of resources'
(p.172). W/nc/i resources? Where markets operate, many resources will be distributed without
any role for a central agency, which would often serve as a serious blockage. WAat
distribution? What was intended was: a
distribution of resources, so the blatant inequalities
now observed in even the wealthist societies are mitigated and the conditions of the worst-off
are alleviated. That is drawing upon experience of capitalism: anarchism would not start out
from such an invidious position. Further, it is assumed that there are only two ways of righting
such (capitalistic) maldistribution: through purely private means or by a centralised state means.
So presented it represents an extremely familiar false dichotomy, private or state, in which
society is either equated with the state or else drops out, and all other public means disappear.
For socially-inclined anarchists there is no disputing that there need to be safety nets in
place for the poor and disadvantaged. What is in question is how those nets are placed and
administered, and whether the state has an essential role or is rather a less efficient more
officious nuisance. One option is an exposed tithing system, where members of society are
offered a choice of schemes to contribute to, and expected to contribute to these, and
encouraged to make their contribution open to public inspection. Those who tried to evade
contribution and closed their books would be subject to a range of social pressures.
It is further claimed that while smaller anarchist communities, especially those of a
collectivistic or communistic bent, may be able to resolve inequitable distribution problems,
'there are major difficulties' in attempting to realise some distributive ideal 'between
communities' (p.173). There may be major difficulties, there are now, but that is scarcely an
argument for a central authority. Some redistribution and a small transfer of wealth occurs
intentionally without a central authority. There is not even decisive evidence that a central
authority helps, so far from making matters worse.
* AaarcA/sw
no
/or /aw.
Anarchism cannot traffic in law - at least in the initial and prominent sense of /aw
(ventured e.g. in the OED), namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by
authority and characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent
counter balancing this prognostication is a second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific
and philosophical uses' from which likewise anarchism is not debarred): namely 'without
reference to an external commanding authority'. Thus as the term gavcrawcar is variably
determinable, so also is /aw. Under the main determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism.
6
But under a different determinate, there is no incompatibility. Anarchism could operate with
such a derminate (as with appropriate notions of moral law, and similar). Law, however,
deservedly has a tarnished reputation, in anarchism as elsewhere. Most of it is arcane,
administered by an expensive oligopolistic priesthood. Too often it is an oppressive tool of the
state.
While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatible with heavy authoritarian law, it
is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely assented to sorts, and so
on. These can substitute.
The state has other less conspicuous roles than law and order, war and defence, and
managing the economy.
* The state serves as representative of national identity, which people crave. Anarchism does
not cater for this basic human need. This is pretty dubious stuff. Such a need is by no means
ubiquitous, and is, if not manufactured, certainly exaggerated in convenient cases, by state
devices. But let us concede a need hypothesis (there is nothing basic about it). Is it true that
The anarchist does nothing to replace the notion; his ideal society is devoid of any features
which might serve as a focus of identity' (M p.180)? No. The components in terms of which
an anarchistic society is structured — the local community, the local region, the regional
federations,... - offer foci for identification, bases for sporting teams, and so on. But, in any
event, nothing excludes national organisations, fielding cultural groups, artistic troupes,
sporting teams, and so on. The present structure of national sporting bodies, only loosely
affiliated with states, and coordinated in model anarchist fashion, provides in fact a worthwhile
example of anarchism in action (Burnheim again).
Do such concessions to features of nationhood 'naturally lead to a demand for self
government', and thence for a nation-state (p.181)? They may (as with the Basques) or may
not (as with the Cornish), and if so more likely the former than the latter? Further these
demands may come only from a small minority of nationals, or may be ill-founded. A demand
on its own demonstates comparatively
of merit, for all that modem economics would have
us imagine.
A repeated criticism of anarchism is that 'with the state removed, the system has no
ultimate guarantor ...'. So it used to be said in favour of God. But who guarantees the
guarantor? (A state may underwrite a bank, but a state itself can fail, despite support of other
states.) There is no ultimate guarantor. There are other issues also, such as the character of the
guarantor. While it is seen to in theology, as a matter of further (illicit) characterisation, that
God has the right features, nothing guarantees that an "ultimate guarantor" is not, rather like
most states, corrupt, unfair, heavy handed and incompetent.^ Even if an ultimate guarantee was
needed, none could be provided. But lesser assurances can be offered. For example, a bank's
2
If a guarantee cannot be obtained without violence, it is most unlikely that a satisfactory one
will be obtained with it.
7
books can be open to public scrutiny and assessment, so that it can be seen that it is trading in a
responsible and viable fashion. (It is better that a person's healthy state be assured by
observation that the person is functioning well, than by maintaining the person as a closed
system and relying on the doctor's guarantee of the person's health.)
^/^ w:
C^^cj
/#
o^=
C/f'77C/J'^
J*
yy"
"7
%?
'4%y /<^ 4^7^
z%^-/^3
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L__ found a way to police themselves,
f
there is no way they could maintain, let alone establish, an industrial
\
society. Small self-governing groups are incapable of building reser1
voirs to bring them clean water, or roads to connect cities, or dynamos
S
to supply electricity, or cars, or printing presses, or modern hospitals, '
product of
ofan
an advanced
advanced technology.
technology. Btg
Big tasks
tasks i,
1
or anything else that is a product
can be done only by big corporations tha^are either state-owned or
state-controlled, or that operate as vast independent oligarchies wtthm
;
the stated/2^-),
^..
rcT/
T. —.
,^y
T^,
TA
7./^
/c-
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7'^-
!
Many of the criticisms of anarchism turn on the issue of orgam.Mric'K, especially how
gconcwHC activity such as: marketing, distribution, and so on, is to be organised in the absence
of a central state authority. Meeting these criticisms in appropriate detail is no mean feat,
requiring the elaboration of substantially new economic theory (except for excessively
individualistic anarchists like Rothbart, but sketchy details and hints have been offered by
anarchist theorists). While economic criticisms bulk large in recent criticism of anarchism, the
state having assumed the role of grand macro-economic organiser, these by no means exhaust
criticisms. There are serious issues also concerning political and cultural organisation,
concerning the presumed enemies of organisation and order.
In many criticisms it is simply assumed that anarchistic organisation will have to take over
the arrangements of present mega-states and somehow substitute for those, without mega-states.
The assumption is astray. Mega-states are mostly recent undesirable constructions, obtained by
conquest or war dealings, and held together coercive means and other devices of state. These
would, would be allowed to, fragment into regional components. Thus the problem of
organisation is a substantially smaller problem than that of organisation of mega-states; namely,
that of organisation of regions. The regions would naturally be grouped together, by principles
of federation. (The new Europe provides a partial, suggestive example.)
J
*
No strand of anarchism 'has developed an adequate economic theory.
The
individualists are stymied by the public goods problem, the communists by the problems of
coordination. [Even more plausible intermediate positions] require the support of the state at a
number of critical points' (M p.172). How the state is presumed to provide its benign
supportative role is well illustrated in the case of more individualistic anarchism, where the
familiar problem of public goods is also taken to manifest itself.
A cynic might well observe that no strand of capitalism or of socialism has developed an
adequate economic theory. But theories there no doubt are, in certain narrow reaches in
abundance.
* Anarchism assumes the benefits of autonomous market operations, indeed The individualistic
ideal is one of personal sovereignty in the market place', but 'is not the state an indispensible
prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy?' (M p.169). There are two parts to a
response. First, markets functioned before states, and function outside states, for example
internationally. Second, whatever institutions are required for the operation of markets can be
supplied regionally under anarchistic fragmentation of the state.
How much background structure do markets depend upon, which might presuppose
apparatus of state. A market has a place of transactions, which can be common or waste
ground, a supply of goods or services to be exchanged there for other goods or services (barter)
or currency (in a money economy). Buyers and sellers enter the market to effect exchanges.
No doubt presupposed are at least limited entitlement (leasehold or property rights, so a seller is
entitled to dispose of, to a new user, holder or owner, what is offered for sale), contractual
arrangements, and in a money economy, some recognised currency. Also presumed, normally
where markets operate, are certain levels of safety, for instance protection against invasion,
assault and theft. But these are normal expectations for much of social life, for even conducting
a conversation. As for the rest, except perhaps for currency, it is a mere pretence that a state is
required for their assurance: custom^ or tribal arrangements will ensure both property in
transportable goods and recognition of verbal contracts or undertakings. An appropriate
currency too can develop in the absence of states, as exemplified in the shell currencies of
Melanesia and the bank notes of early America. Bank notes are not fully public goods; for a
bank which can profit from their circulation or issue has an incentive to supply them. (And
32
banks themselves do not require a sponsoring state, even if sometimes that helps, as in bailing
them out.)
It is worth observing that much of the conventional apparatus presumed for markets is
already presupposed prg-sMfe for the fictional covenant by which the state is supposedly
established. Namely, meeting in relative safety, entering into contractual arrangements (in the
case of the state of a very sophisticated sophistical sort).
* Anarchism has not met the 'intractable ... problem of co-ordinating the activities of many
examples, most notably at an international level again, where such coordination has been
achieved (e.g. IUCO). Examples are increasing with new networking arrangements (e.g.
Pegasus network). Where substantially self-managing arrangements, such as traditional
markets are allowed to flourish, there are no such intractable problems. Certainly, however,
with anarcho-communist structures which aim to suppress such self-managing arrangements,
there are problems:
* ^o-ordinating productive activity, aligning production with
*needs
of
consumers without markets <?r central planning.
Key approach: localising production, face-to-face.
How can this work in an advanced industrial economy, where a high degree of specialization
and much division of labour. Suggestion CAN'T!
* motivating people to work.
Pressure, sanctions, rewards.
in any setting, but
rewards removed.
since certain personal
* '... a central agency seems necessary to maintain any society-tide distribution of resources'
(p.172). WTu'cA resources? Where markets operate, many resources will be distributed without
any role for a central agency, which would often serve as a serious blockage.
What
distribution? What was intended was: ayMst distribution of resources, so the blatant inequalities
now observed in even the wealthist societies are mitigated and the conditions of the worst-off
are alleviated. That is drawing upon experience of capitalism: anarchism would not start out
from such an invidious position. Further, it is assumed that there are only two ways of righting
such (capitalistic) maldistribution: through purely private means or by a centralised state means.
So presented it represents an extremely familiar false dichotomy, private or state, in which
society is either equated with the state or else drops out, and all other public means disappear.
For socially-inclined anarchists there is no disputing that there need to be safety nets in
place for the poor and disadvantaged. What is in question is how those nets are placed and
administered, and whether the state has an essential role or is rather a less efficient more
officious nuisance. One option is an exposed tithing system, where members of society are
/v
33
offered a choice of schemes to contribute to, and expected to contribute to these, and encouraged
to make their contribution open to public inspection. Those who tried to evade contribution and
closed their books would be subject to a range of social pressures.
It is further claimed that while smaller anarchist communities, especially those of a
collectivistic or communistic bent, may be able to resolve inequitable distribution problems,
'there are major difficulties' in attempting to realise some distributive ideal
communities' (p.173). There may be major difficulties, there are now, but that is scarcely an
argument for a central authority. Some redistribution and a small transfer of wealth occurs
intentionally without a central authority. There is not even decisive evidence that a central
authority helps, so far from making matters worse.
The state has other less conspicuous roles than law and order, war and defence, and
managing the economy.
* The state serves as representative of national identity, which people crave. Anarchism does
not cater for this basic human need. This is pretty dubious stuff. Such a need is by no means
ubiquitous, and is, if not manufactured, certainly exaggerated in convenient cases, by state
devices. But let us concede a need hypothesis? Is it true that 'the anarchist does nothing to
replace the notion; his ideal society is devoid of any features which might serve as a focus of
identity' (M p.180)? No. The components in terms of which an anarchistic society is structured
- the local community, the local region, the regional federations, ... — offer foci for
identification, bases for sporting teams, and so on. But, in any event, nothing excludes national
organisations, fielding cultural groups, artistic troupes, sporting teams, and so on. The present
structure of national sporting bodies, only loosely affiliated with states, and coordinated in
model anarchist fashion, provides in fact a worthwhile example of anarchism in action
(Bumheim again).
Do such concessions to features of nationhood 'naturally lead to a demand for self
government', and thence for a nation-state (p.181)? They may (as with the Basques) or may not
(as with the Cornish), and if so more likely the former than the latter? Further these demands
may come only from a small minority of nationals, or may be ill-founded. A demand on its own
demonstates comparatively ZZrr/e of merit, for all that modern economics would have us imagine.
A repeated criticism of anarchism is that 'with the state removed, the system has no
ultimate guarantor ...'. So it used to be said in favour of God. But who guarantees the
guarantor? (A state may underwrite a bank, but a state itself can fail, despite support of other
states.) There is no ultimate guarantor. There are other issues also, such as the character of the
s
[Jj[government is variably determinable, so also is /ow. Under the mam
a JS/'
/A%>
determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. But under a different determinate, there is no
( incmpatibiHty.
--------------- —----------------- ------------------------------ ------ L_
--- Cjy.
Anarchism cannot traffic in law, in the initial and prominent sense of /<2w(offered in the
OEE^, namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and
characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter^teducing this
prognostication is a second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical
-
uses'): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'.
^aw deservedly has a tarnished reputation^ m anarchism. Most of it is arcane,
administered by an expensive, priesthood. Too often it is an oppression tool of the state.
While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatable with heavy authoritarian law, it
is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely assented to Kats, and so
On.
can
t
?
guarantor. While it is seen to in theology, as a matter of further (illicit) characterisation, that
God has the right features, nothing guarantees that an "ultimate guarantor" is not, rather like
most states, corrupt, unfair, heavy handed and incompetent? Even if an ultimate guarantee was
needed, none could be provided. But lesser assurances can be offered. For example, a bank's
books can be open to public scrutiny and assessment, so that it can be seen that it is trading in a
responsible and viable fashion. (It is better that a person's healthy state be assured by
observation that the person is functioning well, than by maintaining the person as a closed
system and relying on the doctor's guarantee of the person s health.)
6^/77///^ ,^7c-.
_ y
^L
/^/
"
A-^-'
<)
/
4<cc^<
/
8(^
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V
z^_,
/c
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r*
r^.
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7^
/t
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/(^? /^l
.
(
1
A DEEP RIFT ON PROPERTY
A main element in the major divide between right and left anarchism, as between left and
right, is property. Other elements in the divide, such as the accumulation of capital essential to
capitalism, depend upon property, because it in it as a transferable commodity that capital is held.
It is unremarkable then that property balks large, as an institution to be defended and even extended
(with new rights to address environmental issues) in right-leaving political theory and, what heavily
overlaps that g^ave. American anarchism. At the opposing end of the right-left tug of war, state,
.social or common ownership of property used to be all the go: but left coalitions are presently
down-playing such ideals and aspirations.
Reflective green theory once again moves off the right-left axis, questioning aspects of the
strong ownership and control relations presumed in the tug-of war. Prope^tarian relations are all
based upon older domination and control ideologies, but diluted in kinder stewardship approaches,
not removed. For, while the idea of land as a mere commodity subject to the $hims of present
owners is softened, the steward normally but manages and controls for some higher master, god or
humanity. Reflect further on what both private owners and state owners may do to the
environments and habitats they "own".
Green reflection le^ds then towards the modification of entrenched institutions of private and
state property.
Green anarchism automatically eliminates certain types of ownership, namely state ownership
which has to depart with the state. The demise of the state should at least suggest that associated
institutions such as property and the law may be in some trouble. So it proves, to an interesting
extent. For, much as arguments to the state are, like those to the Master, Dominus, fatally flawed,
so are those to strong and established systems of property subject to lethal objections. Further,
much as the unwarranted state may be substituted for less dominating justifiable institutions, so
property and its adjuncts may be replaced by alternative less dominating arrangements, such as use
hold, leasehold, and the like.
A central claim, argued^ detail, will be that none of the arguments for property as justified,
as an entitlement as right, succeeds,?!// that the whole run of arguments supports is the need, or
desirability for some lesser arrangements. It is advantageous to have some terminology to cover
both property anJ lesser arrangements, <7aa.n-proper?y so to say, or gua/efty as will be said.
'The concept of property is fundamental to our [U.S.] society, probably to any workable
society' (Friedman p.3). The second claim is soon strengthened, and a third insupportable claim
added: '... property is a central economic institution of any society, and private property is the
central institution of a free society' (p.4). The onus of proof strictly lies with those who claim
property, property rights, etc. For outside certain far from universal social conditions there is no
such property as is claimed. Considering the way the onus falls, the situation is remarkable. 77?ere
are no JecM/ve argawenM, so far as I can ascertain,/or such an institution as property. That
/r
<t
2
situation, if confirmed, raises important questions, such as how and w/ry the institution is in place?
But first the arguments, such as they are.
The main argument preferred by Friedman in support of his grand claims takes off from the
problem of the distribution of scarce material resources among competing parties who seek access
or use.
The usual solution is for the use of each t/ung to be decided by a person or
some group of persons organised under some
o/
Such t/ungs are
called property. If each thing is controlled by an individual who has the
power to transfer that control to any other individual, we call the institution
private property (p.4).
Firstly, all the distribution of resources problem points to is some allocation of uses, or some
sharing thereof. For such purposes many arrangements far short of property will serve; for
instance, lease, limited use rights, and so on. Secondly, what immediately stands out, an attempt is
made to close the chasm between what is so far delivered and what the claims concerning property
require through an appallingly low redefinition of 'property'. What one gets to use under some set
of rules may not be property at all (e.g. a cove, a sea passage,...). Property requires much more:
ownership in a nonv^cuous sense, coupled with a high level of potential control. Nor, thirdly, is
the characterisation of private property satisfactory, as transferable leasehold will meet the
conditions given. It may be argued that leasehold itself requires owne^h^ip; it will be argued that it
does not. But it certainly does not require private property, nor does proprietorship transfer across
leasehold arrangements.
That is^ it. Friedman proceeds, on the quite unwarranted assumption that all is property, to
argue the respective merits of private property and demerits of what is not private, public property
so it is supposed. 'Under public property, the values of the public as a whole are imposed on the
individuals who require the use of that property to accomplish their ends' (p.7). Something
remotely
that may hold for the example Friedman is discussing, the inordinately dull broadcast
media of the USA; but it certainly does not hold generally given the remainder way in which 'public
property' is characterised, so that no values whatsoever may be imposed.
What subjects hold property rights (if any) or like rights? The standard chauvinistic
assumption is that the class of such subjects comprises humans, or competent humans, or humans
who have competent guardians. But why should other creatures not hold and maintain territories,
as many appear to do? And if incompetent or disqualified humans can hold property managed by
guardians, trustees and the like, and if legal persons such as corporations can do likewise, why
should not a range of nonhumans (for instance, those that are credited with interests) do something
similar?
Given that many nonhumans can (and do) have proprietory rights, there can be a head-on
conflict between human rights and property rights (in opposition to Friedman p.3).
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Anarchistic societies of any complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised
organisation, or a federation of these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but
beyond that set up according to issue, role or function. Thus they will include what might well
be accounted
Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as
decentralised, will accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need,
for instance. The organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be
forced to join. Typically they will be voluntary arrangements.
A critical question is to how these organisations, substituting for the operation of state,
are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In such favoured democratic structures control is
usually remarkably indirect. A populace weakly selects a central parliament, which exercises
through other bodies some control of state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to
dissolve or substitute for central parliaments. It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic
control of state-substituting organisations. A simple way of achieving this is through sortition:
the membership of the governing component of each organisation is chosen randomly from
those of the regional community who volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may
require accessible qualifications, and disqualifications (e.g. by having served before, by some
disqualifying record). Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be
represented, e.g. disable, minorities, then it is a matter of arranging random selection of the
required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of statistical democracy
dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public officials were
sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's Po/m'cy). Nowadays it
is called dwxirc/ty (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its anarchistic form it will
be alluded to under the ecologism dewa/tarcAy.
Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing an expensive duplication,
government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and
corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of parliamentary
government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is
duly removed - as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are
eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, no centre, which is
directly linked to functional organisation.
Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as
those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre
and its command structure, no longer there to capture.^ Community defence is thereby
rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who controls the
controllers: partly because control is so diffused, and prartly because a main controller is the
community (one of the advantages of democracy).
Appropriate institutions take care of the day-to-day running of community affairs; but
what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure. These can be accomplished
3
For there is no command or control structure that could be taken by an invador or internal
insurrection.
from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the iike (organised through a suitably
independent college), rather than in present top-down inflexible fashion. (These methods, of
which there is worthwhile experience in parts of Europe, are investigated in Wolff.)
A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed wirAoM? coecive
mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure
could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It should be observed,
in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is persued for
reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms
or individuals, where in a more equitible community much of the funding would derive from
(by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* Mt/cA less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and
least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of
central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard
military forces and defense establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison
establishment and expensive courts.
Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for
some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements).
* Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import
organisation they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns
taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or
redistribution powers.
* Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate
royalties and the like), rental taxes on property, gift and gains taxes, and through auctions (of
previously inherited goods), how this would work depends upon community arrangements.
Consider however a preferred anarchistic arrangement where that problematic item, private
property, has not been instituted or has been oblished (as with most European anarchism, by
contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable with stealing
for sale in present systems) will be rented instead of bought. Learnchold systems can be
operated very like private property (as the land system in A.C.T. reveals) fruit-feting market
operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance environmentally, they enable
the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a rental, and they can be of
finite terms and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is excluded. In place of the
customery land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision for types of durables
would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described.^
4
Here as with rcfcraHs, computing fasiiibiies remove many previous obstacles to each arguments.
Organisation can move with new technology.
,.
—--
-------------------------
^4^
/
A
CHAPTER
ROADS TO ANARCHY: OLD ROUTES AND NEW INPUTS
STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETIES,
AND AFTER.
As there is a plurality of anarchistic positions and end-states, so, but not in a directly
corresponding way, there is a plurality of routes to anarchism. As the positions vary very
considerably in quality, so do the routes, some of them risky, all of them difficult.
Anarchism, even though theoretical viable, undoubtedly looks /iard to obtain on any scale.
For states are now extremely well entrenched - in furthermore a mutually supportive exclusive
club of states. There is now immense resistance to their removal, deriving from several sources.
In particular, state actors and power-brokers are most unlikely to modify statist arrangements in
ways inadvantageous to themselves, to relinquish any power, still less to step down easily. Such
actors will often take desperate steps to retain institutional power; it is very difficult to persuade
most political human to relinquish power simply and gracefully.
Nonetheless opportunities arise for overthrowing or superseding states (for instance, in most
of Eastern Europe and much of Western Asia in the early 1990s). Periods of crises or "power
vacuum", in particular, afford opportunities, which should be seized as they may not arise often in
more stable states (most recently in 1974 in Australia). A well-prepared anarchist movement will
organise, then, and when the moment arrives, pounce (a partial model is feline hunting practice).
But such opportunistic and risky revolutionary routes are only one way to change, as the following
diagram, designed to survey the possibility field, should reveal.
Diagram 5.7 Ways /a poZiWca/ change.
WAYS
Intra-State:
within State
setting
EVOLUTIONARY
1. typically slow or incremental
REVOLUTIONARY
]
'
operations through received
political channels
2.
t
<
j
typically rapid
operations circuiting
established channels:
coups, insurrections, etc.
)
Extra-State
3. operations establishing
alternative organisations
bypassing or substituting
for statist arrangements, or
functioning within the
interstices of the state
!
*
4. operations comprising
j)
.
'
]
external inference or
intervention: by negotiation,
military means, sanctions,
examples, etc.
0
2
Pluralistic anarchist practice will pursue each and every one of these ways and means, so far
as resources indicate and permit, subject to constraints. For example, a nonviolent movement will
not adopt violent means (unless it insists upon a strange separation of ends and means). There is
nothing distinctively anarchist about these ways, except for 3; all otherwise are ways of changing
state arrangements, 2 of trading one sort of state for another, 3 of imposing state control and
discipline where it is lapsing from "approved" form or where there may have been none (as with
colonial adventures).
As there have been many attempts to narrowly delimit anarchism, so there have been
repeated attempts to restrict roads and byways to anarchism. Exposing these attempts will at the
same time show what is open.
J, Deploying and making wore
sZads/ po/f/fcaf arrange/ncnis
Use of orthodox political channels is not excluded. Pluralistic anarchism is not obliged to
dismiss political routes to anarchism or to anarchist objectives. Parliamentary and other
constitutional routes (such as through referenda) to an anarchist end-state are perfectly possible, if
difficult because of the tendency of state apparatus to endeavour to perpetuate itself. (As a related
example, a main successful party in the multi-party Australian Capital Territory government was
organised and supported by those opposed to such a government.) A main difficulty confronting
change through conventional political procedure is simply that, w/tere it does occur, it is usually
extraordinarily slow and limited, it is almost invariably small change at the margins.
It may take a little lateral reasoning to see the advantages, or occasionally practical necessity,
of working through or within a system or even strengthening it first in order to demolish it
(strengthening does not imply endorsing forever, but nothing more "counterintuitive" than appears
in a battery of stock psychological tests or clever martial arts). Authentic Marxism, for example,
which is ultimately anarchistic, is committed to very much such a circuitous route: the circuit goes
through a rejuvenated super-productive state, which in old age withers away.
A main reason why it has been imagined that use of established political channels is
excluded, in anarchist practice, is not because of the slow evolutionary nature of the process, but
because of a doctrine of means-ends congruence, which is given too circumscribed a construal.
This over-strong congruence doctrine requires more than what coherence seems to demand,
namely that the means should be compatible with comprehensive ends sought (thus precluding, for
example, violent means to achieve non-violent ends). It further requires that in anarchist action,
particularly the revolution, the end of a stateless society should be "prefigured", not some
intervening non-congruent objective. Even if the geometric metaphor were duly clarified, few
reasons have been advanced for accepting the crippling doctrine, which is not self-evident.
3
Frankly, anarchism does not need to give itself unnecessary handicaps; it faces enough real-world
obstacles without dubious doctrinaire additions from well-intentioned friends.
An anarchist organisation is plainly not a contradiction in terms; nor therefore is an anarchist
coalition or party, committed for instance to removing coercive institutions. Pursuing this tack, an
anarchist can vote for a party which comes closer to realising immediate anarchist objectives than
other parties, or, very differently, for a party which will assist long-term anarchist objectives (for
instance, by wreaking the national economy and thereby helping green objectives and generating
appropriate political discontent and dissent), without any commitment to the parties concerned, and
without endorsing the political system within which they operate. Strategic voting is not
precluded; strategic anarchist voters may well (unlike totalitarian voters) support (preferential)
democratic procedures.
While the state is to be dis-established, meanwhile there are more benign and less benign
states, in relevant respects, apart from how decently they treat their citizens and noncitizens and
aliens. It is no longer altogether accurate to insist, as anarchists used to a century ago, that 'every
state is an agency whereby a ruling minority exploits and oppresses a majority' (M p.87). Many in
majorities may do very nicely, thank you, while some in the elite minority may be grindstoned.
Moreover, the mass of people is generally not only resistant to change, but highly reluctant to force
changed unless there is very considerable dis-ease, which in most developed states there is not.
These are some of a mix of reasons why a revolution is so remote in comfortable countries; no
longer the incendiary states kindled for the anarchist match that 19th century anarchists imagined.
Despite mass lethargy, dissatisfaction with the state is extensive and comes from right across
the conventional political spectrum. There is widespread popular sentiment to the effect that "the
state has become our master instead of our servant", a reversal of roles that should not surprise
Hegelians. Libertarians interpret this in terms of a much reduced state, a much leaner and
hopefully much less hungry state - a route to anarchism if dismantling went in a right direction and
far enough. Right-thinking socialists interpret it in terms of a much transformed state, a helping
but unobtrusive rather than a commanding busybody state. A familiar view of the state from a
section of Green Movement represents a turn on the old anarcho-socialist view:
The ... state and the corporate sector are in alliance for the sake of "development".... We
try to wean people away from the belief that the state will act in the interest of the cidzens.
So we believe the ... state is best viewed as an oppressor (Orton, Response to Dwandik
Quesdons, p.6).
Orton argues on the basis of this for not trying 'to "use" the state' and 'not seeking government
funds'. But if the funds largely represent social wealth, why not judicious use? And if the state is
1
Social psychology appears to show as much.
4
the only legal means of requisite change? And so on.. In fact Orton himself proposes to make
changes through the state by mobilizing the people.
A state may also be more benign in other significant respects: for instance, in that it facilitates
minority political representation, including green anarchist groups, and in that it does not
significantly impede anarchist political and practical activity or render paths significantly more
difficult. Overlapping that, more benign less domineering states may leave substantial room for
significant anarchist practice both in lifestyle and in building organisational structures and (as it
were) alternatives to archist arrangements (such as peoples' books, time stores, etc.) What are in
important respects anarchist communities can operate within, as well as be modelled within, less
intrusive states (the limits to this quasi-anarchism, elaborated in Nozick, are explained in UT).
States that better meet anarchist (and green socialist) criteria for benignness can conveniently be
disdnguished as more .sywparico states.
Committed anarchists can quite well also be committed, as an intermediate goal among
others, to achieving more sympatico states, which may involve conventional (as well as
unconventional) political activity. No doubt engagement in conventional political activity carries a
risk of co-option; but there are obvious way of reducing that risk, of avoiding the 'slide into
collaboration with the bourgeoisie [and] ... willingness to play the game of parliamentary
politics'.2 For example, precautionary strategies include: engagement also in unconventional
political activity, anarchist or communal practice, consciousness-raising exercises, and use of time
limits, interruption tactics, rotations of leaders, and so on. Green party activities and procedures
can serve as a useful model here?.
Apart from the real dangers of co-option and state collaboration, there are other intertwined
objections standardly made to attempting political roads to anarchism and socialism. One objection
is that any attempt to use the state 'unavoidably reproduces all the features of that institution', such
as exploitation by a ruling or elite minority, and oppression of the majority. Few, it is continued,
will escape from effective control, or, when if offers, be able to resist using the immense powers
of the state. New people, new power-holders, will be transformed (by the usual devices, such as
being made to feel important, given an exaggerated impression of their own worth). It should be
evident that the objection has drifted from "reproduction of the state" to variants of "power
corrupts". Both are overstated, and there are strategies for overcoming both. Sometimes the state
c/tang&y, perhaps for the better; the British state has altered significantly in the last 300 years,
seemingly for better.
Corresponding the power of certain power-holders has declined
significantly, from monarchs and aristocracy down.
2
3
M p.89, see also Goodin in Green Politics.
See Spretnak and Capra 86 for details.
5
Another objection is better focussed. It is that use of the state leads the wrong ways,
through organisation by centralization and hierarchy, and action by legislation. As a result state
routes will not lead to decentralization, distribution of power and wealth downwards, and so on.
While state practices are commonly antipathetic to the sort of constructive objectives indicated, they
are not always, and they do not /Mvg to be. States, like large corporations, can reorganise, and
occasionally attempt to (thus reform and restructuring of bureaucracies, or even of whole public
services, etc.). Although unlikely for reasons indirected, state reorganisation can in principle
proceed by decentralization and devolution of power. Nor is there any lethal objection to achieving
action by legislation, so long as that legislation is not enforced by inadmissible coercive methods.
In sum, what the objection reemphasizes is that considerable care has to be exercised in using the
state, as with any major source of power. Further it shows again that transition can only proceed
so far through the state; the state route only leads so far, after which other means of transport need
to be taken or considered.
There are other ways of amending statist political arrangements than political approaches,
notably legal means, through courts. There is little anarchist precedence for such activity; mostly
anarchists have had heavy legal apparatus used against them. However, once again environmental
practice serves as a valuable exemplar, with many worthwhile results achieved (especially in
American courts) through litigation. In principle there is much that could be achieved in this way,
in state and international courts, to reduce the power of states and their instrumentalities. For
example, in Australia there are very many statues and laws which unjustifiably limit freedoms and
restrict individual and group action: examples include not only little activated but appalling
legislation on sedition, assembly, and similar, but a sweeping range of actively used and
opportunistically exploited legislation concerning defamation and freedom of speech, victimless
crimes, paternalism, restrictive trade and banking, sheltered professions, compulsory voting, and
so on, and on.
There is also much room for variation and experimentation within prevailing political and
legal arrangements. For example, applying procedures of statistical democracy to a few greater
range of activities than (adjusted) jury servicing to the organisation of municipal services, public
companies, and so on.
alternative structures and the forest succession model.
A main strategy for transition, emerging from the arguments for the viability of anarchism, is
that of replacement: transition to a new anarchist social order proceeds by replacement or
adaptation of the more satisfactory State organisations and structures by organisations and
structures of a more anarchistic cast, and by removal or phasing out of remaining no longer
necessary or unsatisfactory State arrangements.
Replacement and supersession suggest a biological model, of such change and succession,
as occurs where one forest type succeeds another; and such a model is in turn very suggestive. To
<?,
6
make the model more definite, and to give it some local colour, consider forest succession where a
sub-tropical rainforest replaces a eucalypt forest, as analogous to the case where anarchism
replaces a Statist society. There is certainly a marked change in structure, typically from a tall
forest with a fairly open canopy to a more compact closed forest with more layers of vegetation,
much more local diversity and a richer variety of life forms, especially floral forms. A forest is not
merely a set of trees, but trees in structural arrangement and interdependence, not merely on one
another but on other life forms such as pollinating insects, seed-carrying birds and animals, and so
on; and the changes in structure include changes in microclimate, in soil moisture levels and humus
and bacterial content.
The change of forest type may be by evolution, by hastened or induced evolution, or by
catastrophe (revolution) as when a eucalypt forest is clearfelled and artificially succeeded by
planted rainforest. (Strictly, there is a spectrum of practices and replacement strategies between
evolutionary and revolutionary and various different revolutionary strategies; and the standard
evolutionary-revolutionary contrast presents a false dichotomy.)
Even reliance on predominantly evolutionary methods, which tend to be very slow by human
time scales, way require some (management) practices, else evolution towards rainforest will not
begin or continue. For example, seeds for rainforest species may not be available if adjoining
areas have been stripped of suitable seed trees, e.g. by clearing or eucalypt conversion, in which
case it will be necessary to introduce seeds (of anarchist ideas, methods, arrangements, etc.). And
rainforest evolution may not be able to continue because the area is burnt occasionally, e.g. by
State officers, in which case protection against fire will be required: for with burning (and the
suppression) regimes rainforest seedlings are killed and eucalypt dominance perpetuated.
Furthermore, evolution can be hastened or induced by introducing seeds, or planting rainforest
trees in poorly seeded areas (i.e. setting up alternative social arrangements) under the eucalypt
overstorey, or even by some careful culling of eucalypts. But even without culling there will be
much for anarchist management to do.
As the rainforest cover begins to grow up through the eucalypt forest, the forest begins to
change structurally. Younger eucalypt poles die, and their replacement by eucalypts is generally
precluded owing to low light intensities near the forest floor (in something the same way
conditions for political entrepreneurs to flourish are excluded in an emerging anarchist society).
Gradually, as the rainforest grows, only scattered giant eucalypts protrude through the canopy,
and in time these fall to the forest floor, to rot and not to be replaced - unless the climax rainforest
is subject to catastrophe, such as fire or cyclone.
Catastrophic methods, such as clearfelling the eucalypt forest, replanting with rainforest,
protecting the new forest, and removing eucalyptus regrowth, are wocA more problematic. To be
applied they require either a large workforce or much mechanical power (so it is with violent
revolutions which need a large support basis not generally available in advanced capitalist and state
7
socialist countries, or else access to means of perpetrating violence comparable to that of the State).
There are often similar requirements for success; otherwise the area may be choked by rapidly
growing weeds or the rainforest plants may be suppressed by eucalypt seedlings and a pioneer
eucalypt stage recur. Moreover, a eucalypt overstorey can sometimes afford good conditions for
rainforest growth, e.g. plant protection from excessive sun, from occasional frosts, and from
drying winds, better moisture retention conditions, and so on. Similarly anarchist social
organisations may sometimes be able to
the environment afforded by the State to get started.
Thus not all forms of the State are necessarily equally inimical, and some may provide much more
favourable conditions for the development of anarchist social organisation than others.^
The forest model (together with preceding arguments) helps to illustrate why violent and
catastrophic methods are not congruent witty the goals of an anarchist society and why there is an
intimate connection between these goals and a strong preference for nonmilitaristic and non-violent
methods of achieving change. Replacement involves a (normally gradual) process of developing
alternative institutions and forms of social organisation and the growth of the new form of society
within the old, and is not a catastrophic single event conceived of as outside the normal order of
things, and for whose advent all other action for change is held suspended. And just as methods
of change such as clearfelling are likely to perpetuate the eucalypt cycle and are unlikely to favour
the development of the rainforest, so the use of catastrophic and especially militaristic methods is
likely to perpetuate an authoritarian social order and unlikely to favour the development of a co
operative, non-violent and non-coercive one.
* applying the forest succession model.
How to apply the model is not difficult to appreciate at least in broad outline. As well many
of the further details have been filled out by work that can be described as indicating how
allegiance can be shifted in practice from where we mostly are to alternative social arrangements
and lifestyles built on self-management and mutual aid.$ The seeds of anarchism should be
broadcast or planted, anarchist (non-Statist) arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts
made to replace or modify vulnerable Statist arrangements, e.g. by democratisation of present
institutions and development of nonstatist and noncapitalist alternatives. Some of the practices are
familiar: anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist)
cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc. Others are slightly less
familiar: avoidance of State influence by arrangements beyond State reach such as costless (or
alternative currency) interchanges of goods and services, barter, black-green economies, and so
on, action directed at removing decision-making from State departments, such as forest services,
and into citizen hands, and ultimately, to decentralized interested communities. In this sort of way,
4
5
This has an important bearing on strategies for achieving change: see D. Altman, ReAearsaAs ybr CAange,
Fontana, Melbourne. 1980.
As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley, p.284 ff.,SM.
8
worthwhile State arrangements can be replaced, and power can be progressively transferred from
the State, and returned to the communities and to people more directly involved.
Formation of networks of anarchistic communities and neighbourhoods, functioning within
the interstices of the state and state bureaucracies, would represent a significant stage in
succession. Something like this is beginning to develop in Australia (by contrast with the USA
where the commune movement appears to have gone into decline).^
3. Types of individual and small group actions
While strategies proceeding through movements are social in character, a variety of
individna/ action can also be highly effective if widely enough separately undertaken. Naturally if
there is some solidarity, some coordination of individuals, such action will be both fostered and
enhanced. Witness the practice of early Christians, which combined individual action and
consciousness change, within a support and solidarity network. But Christianity misleadingly
promised more than anarchism and environmentalism can, not merely future better lives, but after
lives in splendour, a bogus transcendentalism which however was, and still is, widely believed, a
damaging transcendentalism too, in that satisfactory lives in real space-time can be foregone, in
favour of virtual after-lives.
*
fran-y/br/nano/M. There are a range of proposals for comprehensive personal
change, but they all share fundamentals, which are personal improvement and enhanced personal
relationships. It is because of these shared fundamentals that religious change, such as that offered
under new Testament Christianity shades into the quasi-spiritualism of sects linked to Deep
Ecology (such as Council of All-Beings, Homage to Gaia, Earth Empowerment, etc.) which in
tum shades into Californian personal therapy fashions. Proposals for transformation do not
however have to hang^ out on the fringes of religion; hardheads like Passmore (in direct descent^
from 18th century sympathy-based ethics) have emphasized both personal relationships, love for
others, and moral improvement, better adherence to tested moral principles. Put together, these
individual changes would lead us, it is optimistically imagined, out of the environmental morass
and to a socially and environmentally better world. While it is not that simple, while the problems
lie deeper, some thought it was simpler still. Either the Beatles in their famous lines 'All you need
is love', reflecting an extremely popular sentiment, only saw one part of what was recognised, or
they erroneously supposed that part would yield the remainder. Love slobs are one sort of
counterexample; they achieve love and just wallow in that, not seeking any sort of improvement,
moral or other.
Let us not diminish the relevance of these proposals: the more rounded people among the
thin paper-mache economic and political men focussed only upon maximizing their own self-
interested utility in material consumer goods the better, the better for many concerns, including no
6
Refs
9
doubt prospects for anarchism. But let us not delude ourselves that herein lies the way out or
forward. Many of those proposals have been around for rather long time, and suggested again and
again, with no conspicuous results. A lot of it is to found in Spinoza, whence it has percolated
through both to Deep Ecology and Freudian therapy. The Deep Ecological emphasis on self
realisation goes back at leas a century, to Humboldt and Mill, with Self already expanded in
German and British idealists. German and British industrial development did not lose a beat.
A mental revolution, in some people's minds, is no doubt essential for a properly planned
revolution. But mental transformations have to be translated into action, to practices that make a
material difference. And consciousness transformations may not translate into appropriate action;
many such transformations are politically very conservative, and lead to no relevant action or effort
for structural change.
Much of what is said of consciousness transformation applies also to
*
a route to change recommended by reformers and radicals for at least a century, from
Mill through Bookchin. Education, appropriately undertaken, can amend ideology, change
consciousness. But at its best it is very slow in operation, very partial because it has to compete
against other sources of propaganda (such as media, dominant society, etc.). And it is more likely
to carry dominant messages, and reinforce dominant attitudes. There is a major problem in getting
alternative messages appropriately delivered and action undertaken.
* c^pting oat (so far as this is possible or even now possible).
To be effective, this has to be focussed, not merely a dropping out parasitic on the state system. It
has to be focussed in way^which challenge the state systems, it inevitability, decidability, etc., in
Redirect
*-F
ways which withdraw contributions to it and ^.... activity elsewhere^creating an atwojpaere, of
expectation and of belief (perhaps even if false). .
If you or your group produce the impression that there is going to be a continuing recession
or a revolution, if your spread the conviction that there is widespread dissatisfaction, that society is
sick or rotten to the core and is about to decline further or collapse, then you are taking a
significant step towards such outcomes, towards decline or fall? If these efforts to develop an
atmosphere are widely orchestrated then they are likely to be so much the more effective. It is
appreciated in business and advertising circles how much psychological atmosphere counts; a
Pint
,
*
Al
r
climate of confidence is
important ^for climbing out of a recession. A climate of
revolutionary expectation can set the scene for revolution events.
While it is dishonest to create an impression of imminent decline and disaster knowing full
well that such scenarios are utterly unlikely, informed greens and anarchists are not in any such
compromised situation. Environmental decline, continuing extensive unemployment, persisting
7
To adapt Joll p.222.
v /s
10
periodic recession, and in due course collapse, are likely futures under present capitalist state
trajectories.
Anarchists can assist in producing an atmosphere of gloom and depression and pessimism
about capitalist economic circumstances and prospects. But they will aim to generate a quite
different impression of the stability of capitalistic arrangements.
4. Widening operations to exceed standard political and legal arrangements.
Unorthodox political ways and means, a prominent part of historical anarchist activity, are
much more extensive than political textbooks would suggest (or have impressionable readers
believe). These have been restored to contemporary prominence through civil disobedience
practices, and peace and environmental actions. Methods have also been modified (for instance to
exclude pointless personal violence) and substantially expanded. Practical tactics include protests,
occupations, blockades, parades demonstrations, theatre, civil disobedience, refusals, boycotts,
tax and financial withholdings, plant disobilizations, monkey wrenching, and so on.8 Such
methods, more accurately active applications of those tactics, are grouped under Jirec? action, a
vague appellation sometimes taken or extended to include forms of guerrilla warfare on the one
side and more indirect pressure group activity (lobbying, petitioning, public meetings, etc) on the
other. (Such tactics substantially improve upon, and rechannel, the often misguided and rather illfated "deeds" and "acts of propaganda" of late 19th C anarchists.) Such tactics can be both shorttermed and sustained. Important among sustained practices are resistance movements and
organised refusals (preferably without conspicuous leaders). While individuals can be selectively
picked off, enough people well organised cannot. Mass social actions and Grand Refusals could
constitute significant political happenings. Such strategies can be pursued both for specific
objectives (to preserve a forest here, a building there) and for much more general objectives, up to
and including dislodging an unpopular governing party, or overturning a state.
For more general and dramatic results to be achieved, there are some important preliminary
desiderata to be satisfied. These include
* establishment of a movement, to carry out actions, and subsequently to participate in the
supersession of the state.
* a certain amount of planning, of how to proceed, to direct limited resources. Subsequently, as
supersession of the state becomes a live issue, much planning of the transition and of post-state
arrangements is important, if a successful outcome, or even a good attempt, is to be achieved.
Proper preparation is critical. Once again, planning and organisation of anarchist activity is
certainly not excluded, in revolutionary movements or elsewhere. The rival spontaneity view, still
fashionable in anarchist circles, is underpinned by a confused picture of freedom;^ is inconsistent
8
9
See Coover et al, B. Martin, Changing t/te %bgs, G Sharp.
Duly criticised in "Hot immigration".
11
with the coupled congruence doctrine where end-states are prefigured; and issues in poor decision
making, choice deliberately uninformed by available information. But naturally planning is not,
and cannot be, total; and it should not be too inflexible, but allow for contingencies, extraordinary
happenings, even spontaneous redirection (e.g. though a range of flexible ranked options).
Initiating an anarchist movement virtually from a zero base (the present situation in most
developed states), would be a slow difficult and no doubt frustrating task. Fortunately there are
attractive alternatives, such as integration with already effective movements, notably those already
engaged and experienced in direct action.
Declared or self-conscious anarchists are now few in number, and lacking in power.
Contemporary anarchists live like the counterculture did, around the margins or in the interstices of
contemporary dominant statist societies, rarely seen in the boardrooms of top companies or at the
clubs of power brokers. Accordingly, transitions to anarchism are most unlikely to proceed at all
directly, either upwards by democratic or popular procedures or downwards through constitutional
procedures invoked by controlling elites. Anarchist strategies, in order to work, will need to be
indirect and smarter. There is much scope for such strategies.
For direct action along the lines sketched to amount to anything, an anarchist movement with
considerable organisational capabilities is needed. The most promising way of fast-tracking such a
movement is to mobilize already established movements, namely, once again, green and peace and
like movements. The idea, in brief, to form an active anarchist movement within the union of
green and peace movements. It will have to be wif/un these movements. For not all those
affiliated with those loose movements are opposed to statist political arrangements or
anarchistically inclined. Many of the leaders and prominent spokespeople among
environmentalists for instance, have a cosy relationship with state political figures and bureaucrats.
Indeed these days many of these state-intricated people, who may well have genuine environmental
commitments, account themselves green, but they are generally unlikely to consider rocking the
ship of state. Nor do these state people generally participate in extended or vigorous protest
operations, of which there are increasing many. An anarchist movement will link into the
extensive more radical end of green and peace movements. There is already considerable linkage,
and considerable scope for expansion of linkage. Many radical greens are vaguely aware of the
anarchist character of several of their own proposals for change.
More radical greens are mostly already aware of the extent of state involvement in
environmental degradation, and of state connections with, and encouragement of, large
corporations engaged in environmentally destructive enterprises. Nor will they be long bought off
by (what threatens to split the green movement) attempts at reconciliation, most recently under the
ambiguous banner of "sustainable development". It is becoming clear to more radical greens that
this normally means sustaining economic development, that is capitalistic business and
macroeconomic growth largely as usual, not sustaining the already developed environmental
heritage. More radical peace activists are even more keenly aware of the intrication of states in
12
activities hostile to peace such as military activity, weapons production, support of repressive
states and client army/armies funding of counter-insurgency, terrorist and destabilization operators,
and so on. There is evidently much common ground to build upon, from which to organise.
Correladvely, mobilization through loose green and peace movements effects the character of
the activated anarchism, shaping and limiting its forms. It will be an ecosocial anarchism of pacific
slant: ESP anarchism for short (for ecosociopacific anarchism). There is no similar prospect of
mobilizing most other forms of anarchism, in particular robustly individualistic varieties. For the
natural allies of the latter varieties, economic rationalist and libertarianians are overwhelmingly
committed to a minimalistic state to guarantee, coercively, the fundamentals of market capitalism
(private property, constitu^onal and contract law, etc.).
Until a movement is organised there is little chance of a satisfactory revolution. While a few
people may be able to gain control, briefly, of some states, without a larger movement requisite
restructuring of state functions cannot be carried through.
A viable anarchism further supposes some alternative fairly detailed organisational and social
arrangements. If such a system is to come to pass and to persist, then its prospects are
exceedingly poor if it is a do-nothing set of arrangements spontaneously arising out of a
revolution. But the state as it grows tends to undermine or eliminate such alternative arrangements;
and simultaneously people come more and more to expect the government to do what they might
formerly have done, or banded together to do, themselves. The state again proceeds, like other
persistent systems and ecosystems, to establish conditions for its own survival: to be needed for
social and even individual activities.
Formation q/ movements wMwn movements.
There is presently very little in the way of organised anarchist activity anywhere in the
world, and no real movements. There is, for instance, Liberty Foundation in USA which supports
anarchist productions, but it does not discriminate in what it supports between anarchism and
minimal statism and economic rationalism. There are other organisations that do or could play a
creative role in anarchist movements (such as Black Rose publicadons in Montreal, and the small
Institute of Social Ecology in Vermont). As it takes some time, and much effort, to establish a
viable movement, the situation for anarchistic change may look bleak. But there is no reason why
anarchism need form an independent movement; it can hitch to already established movements.
There are obvious movements, of very sympathetic character, to join (this is no inHitration or
annexation): namely the green movement and the peace movement. In both these overlapping
movements there is wide appreciation that states themselves are major sources of the issues they
are concerned with; for states are the main cause of wars, major participants in nuclear industries,
major sources of the issues they are concerned with; for states are the main cause of wars, major
participants in nuclear industries, major proponents of economic growth and its concomitant
pollution and waste. (Despite the definite descriptions, these "movement" are really loose
A
13
c
coalitions, often not even organised in one group in individual countries.) Development of
anarchist groundswells within green organisations and among green sympathizers appears
particularly promising. For many greens are beginning to recognise that they are getting nowhere
much, or even going backwards, through state support and state-directed appeals and activity.
Turning enough of these doubtful or disillusional greens in positive anarchist directions looks a
genuine prospect, io
There are very great advantages in mobilizing relevant parts of green and peace movements
(
in anarchistic direcdons. Not only are there substantially concordant ideologies and goods; further
the
to these ends lie available and quite well developed. Readily to be drawn upon is much
knowledge of and experience in direct action methods, nonviolent resistance and sabotage, civil
(and state) disobedience, and similar.n While several of these methods and procedures derive
from earlier anarchist, resistance and civil disobedience practices (and many are common currency
of direct oppositional organisations everywhere), they have been brought to a new level of
refinement. Further, some extremely important restrictions are recognised. By contrast with
methods deployed by "illegal" armies, guerillas, insurgents and the like, paramilitary techniques
are out. Such paramilitary organisations are, in any case, operating within the statist paradigm,
normally aiming to replace some state arrangements by others. Methods applied are expected to be
nonviolent, and to inflict no serious damage upon living creatures.^
What is foreshadowed, then, is formation and development, in each region, of a radical
change movement, a radwienf or
Ideal radments in different regions are in
communication and loosely federated. A radment proceeds to undertake both reformist action and
radical action, marginally political and extra-political action, up to and including revolutionary
action. Much action is undertaken by smaller groups within the radment, vands (to choose a heady
combination of "band" and "van").^ Vands undertake specific projects, of a wide variety of sorts.
So far much of their activity has been directed to halting or redirecting specific vandalistic activities
of governments, governmental authorities or government-licensed corporations, such as logging,
whaling, sealing, polluting, transporting hazardous waste,... The simple proposal is that the range
10
11
12
13
Experiences or processes of change involved do not amount to conversion; for there is no adoption of a
faith. Anarchism resembles atheism, a loss of faith, rather than a religion. Rather there is a comingdown-to-earth, a realisation that institutions in which trust and hope had been placed did not warrant those
investments and were without justificatory clothes.
There is now an array of texts documenting methods, explaining how they are applied, how they can be
taught (e.g. through enactments, drama, practice, etc), and so on. See (as above).
There are some controversial procedures, such as the tree spiking used by Earth-Firsters and MonkeyWrenchers. Those may do minor damage to some trees spiked, and serious damage to loggers and
sawmillers who proceed to mill spiked trees, (a careful formulation of admissible procedures and practices
is required.)
Vands may include wanderers and wanderlebeners, but they are not vandals. Environmental vandalism is
one of the major practices they oppose.
14
of vand activity should be expanded, to include revolutionary action. Such action would include
counter-option, taking over the administrations of organisations that are being specifically
combated or targeted. Experience could be gained on organisations like universities, though the
ultimate target is naturally the state.
Designing a s/nari revo/afton.'
and revo/MZfonary achion.
If the state were justified, if it had a moral right to be there, the action, revolutionary or
other, by ethically guided anarchists to dislodge or remove it would be excluded. But it is not. So
action, including revolutionary action against it, is not thereby excluded.
Perhaps the richest literature on rapid transformation of society, on revolution, falls within
the orbit of marxism. There is much to be learnt from this literature, and much from it can be
adopted. Some of the elements for textual adaptation are simple. Replace 'the working class' or
'workers' appropriately (unfortunately the replacement is not uniform). For example, substitute
'people's councils' for 'workers councils'; replace 'vanguard class' by 'revolutionary coalition',
etc. Not only does marxism presume a vanguard class; more difficult it presumes violence as an
inevitable component of revolutionary action. Here the direct and other action methods already
alluded to substitute for marxist methods.
But while much can be learnt form Marxist socialists, there are fundamental differences as to
the point and character of revolution. While the Marxist objective is to siege power and use it, the
anarchist objective is not to seize power, and then remove it or relinquish it, a dubious and risky
indirect route, but rather to neutralize and remove power directly.
There are said to be classic problems confronting any revolutionary movement. One of these
is the alleged stability of states, in the West at least. This stability, which does not extend far east,
or even into Central Europe, is considerably exaggerated; belief in this stability, which was shaken
by the events in Paris in 1968, can be undermined, by an appropriate subversive campaign, so that
belief no longer constitutes such an intellectual obstacle to revolutionary activity. Another classic
problem turns upon the issue of revolutionary organisation. Some of these organisation^ problems,
practices in green and peace movements, especially in groups like Greenpeace, have already
effectively solved.[detail].
Z/te ZransMon.
Like stages before the transition, stages q/fer transitions to post-state societies will not be
easy. There is a commonplace anarchist sentiment that removal of the state, its burden and
oppressiveness, a real incubus, will release an enormous amount of energy, with great scope for
spontaneity, fulfilment of human potentialities, and so on. Although this sentiment is widely
reiterated, very little evidence for the sentiment is ever assembled. My own sentiment is that the
commonplace sentiment, and what is taken to ensue from it, is largely moonshine, because, for
one thing, there is a countermodel that is at least as plausible. Those who are released from an
15
immense burden, or very hard oppressive forced labour, simply stop, relax and do very little, or
little more than is necessary for life and limb.
For similar reasons the common anarchist proposition that productivity will rise enormously
after the state is stripped away is very doubtful. If the state is like some sort of slave-driver, post
state productivity will presumably fall. The flood of goods and the end of scarcity, with the
demise of the state and its well-published appropriation of the surplus, looks unlikely (not to say
environmentally undesirable because the impact of the "goods"). Wishful thinking appears to have
gained control in much anarchist literature. There are other important reasons why parts of post
state productivity will decline considerably. Much too much of present production, fostered by the
state, involves erosion of biological capital, and should be wound down accordingly, and
alternatives sought.
In a similar way, anarchists often look far too optimistic about the rapid regeneration of
supportative societies destroyed by, and through machinations of the state. Some of those
supportative arrangements, developed in ages of suppression are gone, perhaps forever; others
will take much tiwg to repair. Social healing is sometimes very slow.
As with post-war reconstruction, living and social arrangements could be very difficult for
some for some considerable time. There will need to be, for instance,
* intermediate support structures put in place to ease the transition for some;
* much flexibility, and some preparedness to experiment to see what works;
* vigilance to ensure that old forces of state do not remerge on the back of social discontent.
Intelligent anarchist arrangements will have flexible plans, enabling anticipation of main problem
areas and sensitive coping with them.
5. External interference
Chapter 11
FEASIBLE ANARCHIST CONTRIBUTIONS
TO
GLOBAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL PROBLEMS
Heavy criticisms of anarchism, driving in strongly from socialist and marxist quarters,
include these: that anarchism offers no worthwhile practice for and offers no useful
contributions far coping with global problems^ meaning problems in present social and political
conditions (not usually problems concerning world environments). Among the problems
alluded to, which it is alleged anarchism does not and cannot address, are human proverty,
human malnutrition, inequitable distribution of resources, human (over-)population, and so on.
Granted, there are great many problems, many of them getting worse rapidly. Though
anarchist arrangements played little or no part in producing these problems — many of them
o
developing and getting out of control under free-enterprise capitalist and state-socialist
arrangements — it is sometimes outrageously claimed that anarchism should be able to deal
successfully with an array of these problems. To add to the insult, it is said to fail as a theory
because it is unable to do so. Why on earth should anarchism be presumed to do this? One
critic endowed with this level of 'gall' (one A. Wertheimer)
contends that anarchism is unable to successfully deal with four
presently existing world social conditions. These are: 1) that "the
population of the earth is (perhaps) too large, but increasing at a
rapid rate with no prospect for a serious reduction"; 2) that "in much
of the world, basic human needs are not being satisfied"; 3) that "the
world's natural and human resources are not evenly distributed
across the globe"; and finally 4) that "the present level of subsistence
is based on a high level of social and economic interdependence
among various regions of the world and within the regions
themselves". In addition [5)J... anarchism is unable to cope with
conflicts between individual self-interest and social needs,
particularly as relates to ... defense (Clark p.142).
The short response is, So what? Anarchism is not really saddled with the global legacies
of p^archist practice. A longer response begins thus:- Firstly, insofar as these conditions
constitute problems ("condition " 3) is more a "fact" than a "problem"), no political theory is
coping successfully, only an all-conquering ideology would pretend to be able to cope.
Democratic capitalism has had (important isolated pockets excepted) little impact in limiting
India's gross population; Maoist socialism^' has de^ only a little better in China. Part of the
problem in almost all such overpopulated regions lies in getting the problem recognised as a
problem, and making appropriate adjustments; as with education and adjustment concerning the
hazards of pollution and smoking, this is largely because of remiss state practice. Part of the
problem, the present resolutions will have ethically inadmissible outcomes or by-products.
—------------ .------------------ ——___
2
Only for the future is there some glimmer of hope, but not under present archist arrangements.
Secondly, prospects of success for anarchism are primarily regional, not global. But a region
can hardly be expected to handle, rather than make limited contributions towards, world
problems. Suppose, for instance, Niue became (or reverted to) an anarchist society, a
successful one locally. It would be no detraction from its local success that it made no impact
upon demilitarizing the USA or in halting the world's resource drain te thereto, or that its
success was (through standard US media practice) scarcely known about there.
*
iMMM. As we have already noticed, it is often asserted that anarchism cannot work
in regions of large populations or with high population densities. That anarchy only has
prospects of success in small, and perhaps technologically unsophisticated, communities is a
widely espoused thesis? These kinds of assertion have already been criticised.
What do not work are stock archist procedures, e.g. expanding \m out-of-touch
bureaucracy. Poly-archic arrangements cannot handle tough decisions. By contrast, sortition
allows them to be taken (Burgheim). This is important as wide range of decisions: transport
systems, restructuring urban systems, and so on, as well as population and immigration
policies. As there is a range of lobbies (ethnics, etc.) in favour of population increase: hard for
party systems to ignor these lobbies, because of voting system.
* Deliberate social reorganisation, which undercuts reasons for large families, namely old-age
care, cheap labour in fields, etc. (Seeams as successor (technology here)?
* Scarcity is re/aftw to wants and presumed needs. Similarly abundance: it depends
on extent to which materialism, consumerism, ete, prevail. When wants are large, perhaps
insatiable, there will always be scarcity. Wants are not a given; needs, through culturally
dependent, can be. Whan needs are set high (e.g. to include domestic ref^rgeaati^s), then too
there will be scarcity for the foreseeable future?
No doubt there is a rough band of minimal sustenance and shelter requirement for keeping
humans (why are we back to this) alive, for bare sustenance. Even if they could be met,
satisfactory lives would not result.
* Creation of needs (Marx). Industrial revolution under capitalism aggravated
of scarcity
and toil.
* Anarchists have a bad track-record on scarcity. They have tended to assume abundance. A
vast increase once the shades of the state are removed.
A
Following Kropotkin's proposals they have taken for granted enormous productivity from
labour-intensive garden plots, a sort of anarchist green revolution, neglecting the extensive
*
3
4
Even so, oneway to resolve/is by building up from local and regional solutions. Compare
nuclear freedom, peace, etc.(
Thus both sympathetic and unsympathetic commentators; Taylor, Wertheimer etc.
n frequently claimed that we know more or less how to meet population problems. Only
political structures and vested interests stand in way of doing so. But it is not quite that simple
and easy.
Arguments that wants/needs distinction cannot be drawn.
//'
3
inputs required to make this feasible, (water, energy, manure, pesticides, etc.). [Thus e.g. Clark
p.148.)
* There are some sharp limits on the extent of growth to cater for human populations and their
"needs". An important limitation can be seen by tracking energy, which is limited, more
abundant production of which encounters other limits (pollution, nasty works production, etc.)
D&triZwHon,
q/T&Kmrcgs.
. 4.
* Necessity is regularly exaggerated. Often this done to enable capitalist routes to be taken,
access to foreign business provided etc.
*
'Necessity
becomes part of imperialistic exploitation. Contrast the equally unsatisfactory
Marxist line: distribution is one with production. What is required is a change in technological
systems and productive relations. Undesirable patterns of production result in maldistribution.
'... the entire problematic of "redistribution" is bared jn the questionable assumption of the
feasibility of seeking a solution to the problem while continuing a technological system
founded ^n dependency and disproperti%s in economic power
*
(Clark p.154).
* The Aid record of present liberal democratic states is dismal.
* As regards more basic provisioning, mutual aid through free federation. Example of
Spanish collective ((^ebal ref 19 pp. 184-5).
Argument that anarchist approach could succeed, from socio-psychological assumption:
'unless humans develop patterns of life and values based on mutual aid at level of small groups
and local communities, one cannot expect them to go very far in the practice of mutual aid at
any other level of social organisation
*
(Clark p.154).
But really heeds the convert: when have no developed, can be suspected to deliver aid.
Present arrangement for human living are not made on the basis of
quality of life for the livers, but all too often to suit the needs of industry J returns to capitalism,
etc. The results are everywhere conspicuous, especially in contemporary cities — which
characteristically dominate whole regions.
Many major local problems derive from the environmental states and living conditions of
cities. An anarchist resolution involves restructuring cities. This would include development
of network cities and restoration of community.
4. Appendix:
ON SELECTION OF COMMITTEES
For how committees should be comprised, look at what they are supposed to accomplish, what
sorts of decisions deliver, and so on.
For example, the basis of decision for allocating public money has to be: 'attempting to balance
all legitimate claims on the basis of need and public benefit in accordance with recognised
moral values and principles'.^
Evidently such committees should not be composed of
1. members of competing constitutions seeking funds (i.e. anti-model is premiers conference)
2. power traders (i.e. anti-model is /...... or typical bureaucratic committee).
What appears to be required are candidates who are
* impartial (without chauvinistic or other prejudices)
* varied in evolutionary complex claims
* informed of.... moral values and principles, and committed to some such.
H
<3-.
After that try statically for spread of attitudes from conservative to radical.
Such committees according directly violate (Burheim) relevant interests criteria. In general
however for lower level committees relevance criteria obtain.
5. Demanarchoid ecodesigns for Australia
Chapter 5.1
THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM:
VARIETIES AND OPTIONS
The arguments outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the
options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State and for transition to a
stateless Society, and so on. For example, spontaneous anarchism - according to which
organisation is unnecessary and social arrangements will arise spontaneously and will be
ushered in during the revolution without any prior organisation - is a position which is not
viable and could not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which
durable supersession of the State depends. The sort of anarchist society which these theoretical
arguments delineate will certainly be organised, but the organisation will not be compulsory,
and will eschew authoritarian measures (and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition
by any strengthening of the centralised State), relying heavily no doubt on voluntary co
operation and direct democracy.
The society which emerges may be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes pictured
it, or it may not. It may well be based on smaller-scale decentralised communities: for
otherwise such arrangements as community replacements of State welfare arrangements,
control of their environment, removal of Prisoners" Dilemmas, and participatory democracy,
will work less satisfactorily. Communities may well be federated and control will be bottomup, not merely by representation and subject to a downward system of command. Within each
community there will, under such social anarchism, not be great discrepancies in the
distribution of wealth and property, and no highly concentrated economic power. Under social
anarchism, a community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
communally owned or not owned at all.
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and also economic
arrangements, they are very far from determining them completely; they offer no detailed
blueprint. Accordingly what emerges is not a particular from of anarchism, for instance
anarchist communism, but a more experimental and
anarchism, such as was broadly
instituted in the Spanish collectives.
There are several recognised varieties of anarchism, among the more common:
individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarchosyndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms, and now eco-anarchisms.
These
varieties are not particularly well-characterised. They are by no means at all exclusive. They
certainly do not exhaust the interesting possibilities. So far indeed a satisfactory classification
is lacking. Usually something of a ragbag is offered: textbooks single out a very few varieties,
and look at them. Invariably they leave out important varieties.
2
But it is not difficult to discern some of the more independent dimensions^ along which
variation occurs, and which accordingly are relevant to an improved multi-dimensional tabular
classification:
Part-w/to/e dimension:
atomism pole O
<—
individual social---------- communal
—O total holism
This is a most important dimension of variation among organisational arrangements (for
analysis see SM). It accounts for a major bifurcation between European anarchisms, which tend
to be socially oriented, and American anarchisms, which are usually highly individualistic
(religious communities and some European transplants excepted). For markedly holistic
arrangements to persist, some strong ideological relational glue appears required, such as an
immersing spiritual ideology.
Property spectrum:
Although this can be compressed into two dimensional form, it is better presented three
dimensionally as follows:
full
O <individualistic ---privatization
communalistic
-> O full public
(tribal) ownership
diminished
ownership
no ownership
This spectrum evidently connects with the preceding holistic dimension, and both contribute to
what was the old right-left political division (a sort of crude super-position), and to what should
be superseding it, three-colour political spectrum:
(old right) blue
<-
red (old left)
green (new environmental)
and electoral spectrum:
Gronp
fully
O <- bottom up
— democratic — oligopolistic — top down
participatory
O fully
dictatorial
Change proceJnre dimensions:
violent
non-constitutional
constitutional <pacific
1
Some of these "dimensions" are not really linear in the way strictly required. That they are not,
and that they are not fully independent, does not impede a much improved classification.
3
C/tangg wufMfors: vanguard group or class;
<Lumpen-proletariat-workers' syndicates
bottom
"the people"
-----------------business
political
companies
parties
ruling elites
top
greens
alternative
coalitions
And so on. The schema presented are clearly far from exhaustive; nothing has been directly
included concerning distribution methods (market vs command, open vs closed storehouses,
etc.), admissible technology, or work-leisure arrangements, to take three important examples.
More pieces will be picked up as we proceed (the approximate number of dimensions is
computationally small), and some of the rather schematic sketches ventured above, elements of
which should be familiar, will receive some development in what follows.
Once the (n) dimensions are duly elaborated an anarc/tAm can be located and classified
(pigeon-holed in n-space) by placement in each dimension. For instance, the form of anarchism
preferred by me (see SM for an early presentation), is located as follows: it is social (with a
significantly qualified communistic safety net: each according to her or his basic needs), local
market-oriented but non-capitalistic, with diminished ownership, democratic but without
politicians and with alternative electoral arrangements, pacific but not bound by "constitutional"
procedures, utilizing modest safe technologies,.... But it is but one sort never to be instituted
everywhere, from a rich variety of alternatives
There are then MMny anarchisms, a rich variety of different forms, some of them scarcely
investigated or known. That anarchism comprises such a plurality has proved puzzling to those
(for example of one name-one thing persuasion) who assumed it must be a single ideology,
either individual or collective,.... Indeed the pluralist character of anarchism has led even more
apparently sympathetic critics, to 'wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or
merely a jumble of beliefs ...' (M. p.3). Of course the impression that anarchism 'is amorphous
and full of paradoxes and contradictions' is marvellously assisted by conflating degenarchism
with anarchism, chaos with order, and by combining the variant forms, individualism with
socialism and communism.
By properly regarding anarchism as a sheaf of overlapping
positions assembled around a core characterisation, a standard model for pluralism, the
problematic elements of anarchism as an ideology disappear. No doubt it is not an ideology
like Marxism, but then Marxism is atypical in its set of paradigmatic texts, concentrated in the
works of the master. Other ideologies such as liberalism or environmentalism afford better
comparisons. While anarchism is an ideology (in both good and bad senses), it is not really a
movement. There is not, anywhere really, such a movement, in the way there have been a
succession of liberation movements or there is a green movement and within it a deep ecology
movement.
4
As anarchisms are plural, so by similar arguments are green, and deep-green, anarchisms.
Certainly green effect a select among their cluse of anarchism; it excludes, for example, the run
of individualistic anarchisms peddial in USA, because these admit much anti-environmental
activity, manifested for instance through "externalities" and market failure (some of these could
be very pale green). But selection does not, even for deep-green tend to a singleton, but still to
a wide pluralism.
These pluralisms are not merely descriptive, but normative. Insofar as any anarchism is
duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it should be
* pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who
want to organise differently than its preferred way.
It should also be
* non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatible with broad-based non
coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like.2
That is, there is a doublish standard on vio/encg: It is alright to apply violence against state
(and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this can
be justified through
namely it is OK for me to do violence to you bot not OK for you to
apply violence to me. Accordingly a
conc/MMon is: A moral anarchism will not be a
form committed to violence (except unavoidable forms etc.).
Such pluralism does not enjoy a strong historic track-record, and does not go unopposed.
Standard anarchist positions, sketching of which was mainly a nineteenth century preoccupation
(but extending into twentieth century science fiction and utopian literature), shied away from
pluralism in the direction of monistic forms, towards insistence upon particular structure,
organisation and distributional methods. Such monistic rigidity led to much intense, often
fruitless discussion and friction between anarchists committed to different arrangements.
Certainly there was a doctrine of spontaneity — according to which in a state-overthrowing
revolution (in the very heat of the revolution!) the masses world spontaneously decide upon
new arrangements — which makes it appear that any structures at all were open for
consideration; but it was also assumed that certain arrangements would be selected, towards
which active anarchists would provide guidance.
It is not difficult to indicate some of the broad features of emergent arrangements features
that flow from the character of anarchism. But anarchists, over-attracted like others to monistic
schemes, have regularly attempted to advance their own schemes, introducing many further
postulates, that reach far beyond what flows from the basic characterisation, and that need not
2
There are serious pro&Anw for anarchism that accept coercive methods: why not aiso
accept the state then? Such positions tend to be forced back towards an organised
individualism.
But how then do they stop voluntary organisation arising (legitimately)?
5
be adopted by genuine anarchistics (some further examples of optional and rejectable extras
from a recent manifesto: ... direct democracy, destruction of all hierarchies, maximization of
freedom, total Revolution, no ends-means distinction, no leaders, optimism about an anarchist
future,...).
Because of the expansive pluralism of anarchism, it overlaps many other ideologies,
indeed virtually all that do not include as a theme unmitigated commitment to a state or like
central authority. Thus while anarchism excludes fascism and is incompatible with state
capitalism, anarchism overlaps liberalism, democracy, and even Marxism, since Marxism
affords a long-term anarchism. There has been much confusion about these interrelations.
Take democracy. Anarchism does not entail democracy, as is sometimes claimed. Advice of a
select minority or of a single sage could regularly be adopted, though the advice did not reflect
the will of the people and its source was not elected or appointed by the people. Nor does
anarchism entail undemocratic procedures. There are, in the plurality, democratic forms, of
various sorts, and undemocratic forms. Democratic forms may have a better prospect of
enabling genuine democracy than life under the state. For as some have argued, 'both the
nation state and electoral democracy are inadequate as vehicles for democracy under modern
conditions' (Bumheim p.218).
Is its goal individual freedom or communal solidarity? Sometimes one, sometimes the
other, sometimes neither, sometimes both (a typical four-valued logical structure). A pluralistic
anarchism offers several different sorts of communities, not just one kind: for instance,
independent individuals, perhaps interrelated and organised through contracts, solidaristic
groups working freely together and sharing according to need, and various attractive
intermediaries, where there may be more individual-oriented market arrangements but there are
also safety nets ensuring distribution according to basic needs.
It is not difficult in theory to devise structures that allow a wide variety of kinds. For
example, in simple cases this can be accomplished through regional patterning, as illustrated in
the following
with 6 varieties.
2
1
5
3
6
4
(Such a modelling for political pluralism is further elaborated in UT.) The brief interlude of
anarchism in Spain afforded a small-scale example of regional patterning at work
The kinds of anarchistic societies are bound to be of very variable quality, both
theoretically and in practice. Some will only work with rather special sorts of people, for
instance certain communes with members with strong religious or ideological commitments;
some will not succeed at all. Some verge on incoherence, for instance those against coercive
organisation that approve group terrorist tactics. But while some kinds of anarchism are
entangled in serious problems, others are not. Anarchists generally have no obligation to
6
defend defective kinds; yet many criticisms of anarchism are directed at just such defective
forms.
Although there is a rich variety of anarchistic end-states (virtually uninstantiated
possibilities), there are same common or overlapping organisational and structural features.
Such family-resemblance features are what hold the plurality together, and include noncoercive
versions of those arrangements essential to a functioning society: for instance, broad features of
arrangements for production and distribution, for arbitration and reconciliation, and so on, and
on. But although each such anarchist society will have some such organizational features, they
will differ in detail. For example, a main distributional feature of a simple communist society
may comprise a common storehouse from which members take according to need, whereas in
individualist societies distribution will normally proceed through some sort of exchange in
market systems. More generally different types of anarchism will offer different economic
theories. Those with stronger individualistic component will tend to rely upon not merely
market or allied exchange arrangements, but upon capitalistic organisation. The type of
anarchism favoured here strikes an intermediate route: markets without capitalism.
How is such complex organisation to be achieved without a state? Does not such
organisation and government require a state? To remove that familiar assumption and
associated blockages — encouraged by too much life under states and no experience of
alternatives - take a wider look around. Look at how many activities and procedures are
organised without states or essential participation of states. By voluntary arrangements.
Prominent examples are again sporting organisations, labour unions and business corporations
of various sorts. In short, organisation can be accomplished through a range of appropriate
institutions.
Such examples also provide the appropriate key unlocking the door as to how more
extensive organisation can be achieved in the absence of the state, namely through appropriate
institutions. The state dissolves into functioning components, a set of appropriate institutions,
and at bottom into its relevant minimization. It fragments into compartments — in two
interconnected ways: into regional parts and into capacities, functional parts.
There are other valuable clues to stateless reorganisation. What happens within the more
self-regulating state can also happen without it. As Gramsci emphasized,
the ability to govern without overt coercion depends largely on the ability
of those in power to exploit systems of belief that the larger population
shares. The nature of that system of belief is to some extent determinable
by policy makers, since in the modern state they possess a significant
ability to propagandize for their view. Yet.... (p.63).
Recent empirical investigations tend to yield similar results. People tend to follow rules and
obey laws they regard as moral or otherwise satisfactory. There are important messages for
anarchistic organisation here also, for arrangements without coercion, overt or other.
7
Anarchistic rules will try to go with the prevailing flow, and will only vary (as over vindictive
punishment) where an evidently satisfactory justification can be given. More generally, smarter
anarchistic arrangements will aim to include desirable self-regulating systems, such as small-
scale markets.
Though there are many different strands that can be interwoven through the pluralistic
out-fall from the basic characterisation, there are some broad tendencies of anarchistic
arrangement which include:
* reliance on self-regulatory methods of organisation that require little or no intervention, as
opposed to highly regulated procedures, perhaps tending towards centralism or paternalism.
This is one reason why markets are often favoured, analogues of centralised control and
coercive legal systems are not.
* emphasis on voluntary methods, in place of imposed methods — coercive methods are of
course excluded by virtue of basic characterisation. Certainly de facto power may remain, but it
will be without justification.
* favouring of decentralisation and deconcentration rather than centralised or concentrated
structures.
That does not imply there can be no downward relations. Of course under federal arrangements
there will be, and sideways natural relations as well (a full control system).
* discouragement of empowerment, encouragement of depowerment.
* opposition to oppression is a corollary.
There are too many alternatives in the pluralistic basket to look at all of them. Let us
consider only some of them, with however preferred features. (An example that does not rank
highly and will not be further assessed is Stimer's individualism.) Anarchistic societies of any
complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisations, or a federation of
these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue,
role or function.
Thus they will include what might well be accounted gcorggiowuZ
/hnctiona/iym. Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will
accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The
organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join.
Typically they will be voluntary arrangements.
A critical question concerns how these organisations, substituting for the operation of
state, are to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In much favoured democratic structures, such
as electoral bureaucracies, control is usually weak and remarkably mJirgct. A populace weakly
selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bureaucratic bodies some control of
state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments.
It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A
simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component
of each organisation is chosen randomly from those qualified of the regional community who
volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications (e.g.
8
having served before at a lower level), and avoid disqualifications (e.g. having acquired a
disqualifying record).^ Where the community decides that certain categories of people should
be represented, for instance disabled, minorities, and so forth, then it is a matter of arranging
random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of
statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where
public officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's
Po/t/fc^). Nowadays it is called Je/narchy (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in
its anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the neologism JewMwiarc/ty.
Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing a most expensive duplication,
government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and
corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of central parliamentary
government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is
duly removed - as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are
eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, itself no centre,
which is directly linked to functional organisation.
Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as
those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre
and its command structure, no longer there to capture (for there is no command or control
structure that could be taken by an invader or with internal insurrection). Community defence
is thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who
controls the controllers: partly because control is so diffused, partly because also gone are
legions of soldiers and security forces, and partly because a main controller is the community
(one of the advantages of more direct democracy).
Appropriate institutions take care then of the day-to-day running of community affairs.
But what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure?
These can be
accomplished from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the like (with public
assessment organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down
inflexible fashion. (Some of these methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of
Europe, are investigated in Wolff.)
A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed
coercive mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the
overall structure could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It
3
People can serve their administrative apprenticeship at iocal or group levels. One when they are
adjudged to have exhibited sufficient competence here are they entitled to nominate for selection
at grander levels. That is, there is a tiered structure for administralive careers, which would no
longer be full-time or working life long. This is one reasonable way of obtained some quality
control in selection of administrators. (Note these/evefy do not provide a vicious hierarchy.)
9
should be observed, in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the
target is pursued for
reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from
wealthy corporations, firms or individuals, from where in a more equitable community much of
the funding would derive (by contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a
satisfactory answer:* Muc/t less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and
least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of
central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard
military forces and defence establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison
establishment and expensive courts.
*
Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance,
include smaller substitutes for some of the abolished structures (e.g. social defence
arrangements).
* Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import
organisations they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns
taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or
redistribution powers.
* Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate
royalties and the like), rental taxes on property or leases, gift and gains taxes, and through
auctions (of previously inherited goods). How this would work depends upon community
arrangements.
Consider for instance anarchistic arrangements where that problematic item, private
property, has not been instituted or has been abolished (as under main examples of European
anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable
worth stealing for sale in present systems) will be
instead of bought. Leasehold systems
can be operated very like private property (as the land system in the Australian Capital Territory
reveals) thus facilitating market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for
instance environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected,
through a rental, and they can be of finite term and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer
is excluded.
In place of the customary land titles office a larger durables office with
subdivision for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked
or described. Here, as with referenda, computing facilities remove many previous obstacles to
such developments. Organisation can move with newer technologies.
Leasehold arrangements are readily applied to prevent the accumulation ol scarce
property resources, such as urban land, which is a major feature of capitalism. For leases of
scarce commodities can be allocated according to need and ability to use, not merely through a
4
The costs are enormous. A minute component, a singie federai election in Australia, now costs
about $54 million to arrange.
10
historically rooted market distribution as with private property. It is private property, not a
market system of distribution, that is really distinctive of capitalism, since it not only provides a
place to park and increase capital, but it enables transmission of accumulated wealth (e.g.
within a family or dynasty) and control of the means of production.
Where can anarchism work — satisfactively: on stock presumptions of community and
smallness.
Even proponents of the state have allowed that anarchy can work, indeed their position
often depends upon it. The horrible alternative to their, or their friends' or patrons', splendid
state and statecraft, is that a region should lapse into anarchy (a regular fear of the US
administration). Anarchism, that is, works, but works very nastily, like that presumed in "states
of nature", like that many in fact encounter in the encampments, slums or ghettos of terrorist or
other states.
But it now fairly widely appreciated, outside those intellectually incarcerated in the allencompassing realm of states, that anarchism can work rather satisfactorily, and did in may pre
state societies.
Concurrent anthropological findings concerning small communities and collective action
results concerning small collective have demolished the assumption that anarchy is impossible,
either in practice or techno-logically. Since then it has become fashionable to concede that
anarchy is possible but on/y where there is a suitable small community. This sort of anarchimin-the-small is commonly conceded by socialists, but dismissively. While anarchism may, it is
allowed, work well enough in small, isolated or primitive communities, it cannot work in large
industrial or urban societies such as now predominate globally. Anarchism is accordingly but a
marginal possibility, unworthly any longer of much serious political concern. Such dismissals
tend to be strong on claims and unfavourable judgements but excessingly weak on supporting
argument, where socialist handwaving takes over (obviously this widespread phenomenon is
not confined to socialism, or even to political debate). Confidence that anarchism cannot
succeed seems to be largely founded on the erroneous assumption that anarchism cannot supply
any but a primitive organisational structure.
By contrast, a sort of anarchism-in-the-small has been forcefully pursued, with due
argument, by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations
between people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (-.166).
That is: '... community is nec&wary — if people are to live without the state' (p.3).
The argument to community that Taylor offers reduces a modified Hobbesianism; social
order can only be maintained, without the state and in the small, if the relations between
individuals are those of community (cf. p.2). Insofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably broken-
down argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal justification of the state' — from
the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperated to provide themselves
without requisite collective goods — breaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its
1
11
argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply
of such goods (p.59).
It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred
is that, if public goods are to be provided,
means must be found of getting people to do
their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of
ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The
argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order
cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are
unfortunately far from decisive. That leaves the state for public larger than communities, and
communitarian anarchism as an extra-terrestrial possibility for small communities (because
communities in the vicinity of states do not, it is claimed, survive). For all the talk about
anarchism, it looks like another triumph for the state.
But the argument is unsound, because there are
methods than those Taylor locates.
Non-statist organisation, which comes in a range of forms — functional, regional and others —
is not a combination of the pure methods considered. As a broad type of method it is hardly
"unproposed", or without precedents or examples (e.g. medieval orders and present
international order).
While there is no need to dispute that prospects for anarchism tend to be enhanced in
smaller communities, or in conglomerates that can be arranged in networks of smaller
communities, anarchism can work, if less satisfactorily, in modem mass society. Such is one of
the large themes being advanced.
777E EA7FFG//VG
OF
/LV1/?C77/.SM: ^/<^r
cipy?^s
,
i
The
arguments
outlined,
predominancy theoretical, inform the
practical, revealing the options open for
anarchism, courses of action in superan
nuating the State and for transition to a
stateless Society, and so on. For exam
ple, spontaneous anarchism — accor
ding to which organisation is un
necessary and social arrangements will
arise spontaneously and will be ushered
in during the revolution without any
prior organisation — is a position which
is not viable and could not endure,
because it makes none of the requisite
replacements upon which durable supersession of the State depends. The sort of
anarchist society which these theoretical
arguments delineate will certainly be
organised, but the organisation will not
be compulsory, and will eschew
authoritarian measures (and, by the
overshoot argument, will reject transi
tion by any strengthening oj^he cen
tralised State), relying heavil\^on volun
tary co-operation and direct democracy.
^ The society which emerges mciy be much
. ..as Bakunin and Kropotkin sometimes
piAuredH^lt /9^be based on smallerscale decentralised communities? for
otherwise such arrangements as com
munity replacement of State welfare ar
rangements, control of their environ
ment, removal of Prisoners' Dilemmas,
and participatory democracy, will w(?rk
less satisfactorily. Communities
.be
federated and control will be bottom-up,
not merely by representation and subject
to a downward system of command.__
Within each community there will hot be
great discrepancies in the distribution of
weakh and property, ar^p hi^^ycom
centrated economic powercommum
ty win be a rather equaiitarian group,
sharing in much that is communally
owned or not owned at a!i.
White theoretical arguments heip
outtine the generat shape of social, ami
aiso economic arrangements,they
determine^them compietety; they offer
no detaited btueprint. Accordingty what
emerges is not a particular form of anar
chism, for instance anarchist com
munism, but a more experinienta^an.^
p/ura/bhc anarchism, such as was^tnstituted in the Spanish cokectives.
traced/
\^^There are several recognised varieties of anarchism among the more common:
individualistic anarchisms, anarcho-capitalisms, anarcho-communisms, mutualisms, anarcho-
syndicalisms, libertarian socialisms, social anarchisms, and now eco-anarchisms. These
varieties are not particularly well-characterised, /hey are by no means at all exclusive. So far
indeed a satisfactory classification is lacking. Usually something of a ragbag is offered:
textbooks single out a very few varieties, and look at them. Invariably they leave out important
varieties.
But it is not difficult to discern some of the more independent dimensions^ along which
variation occurs, and which accordingly are relevant to an improved multi-dimensional tabular
classification:
Parf-w/zo/g/ dimension:
atomism pole O <— individual ----
social
----
communal
—> O total holism
This is a most important dimension of variation among organisational arrangements (for
analysis see SM). It accounts for a major bifpriation between European anarchisms, which tend
...
.
1
'S^
to be socially oriented, and American anarchism^ which are usually highly individual (religious
communities^ some European transplants/ excepted). For markedly holistic arrangements to
persist, some strong ideological relational glue appears required, such as an immersing spiritual
ideology.
Properly spectrum:
Although this can be compressed into two dimensional form, it is better presented three
dimensionally as follows:
full
privatization
—> O full public
(tribal) ownership
no ownership
This spectrum evidently connects with the preceding holistic dimension, and both contribute to
what was the old right-left political division (a sort of crude super-position), and to what should
be superseding it, three-colour political spectrum:
(old right) blue
<------------------------ .--------------------------- >
red (old left)
green (new environmental)
Group Jectwon and electoral spectrum:
fully
O <- bottom up — democratic —y oligopolistic — top down
participatory
C/umge procedure dimensions:
^violent
-*
O fully
dictatorial
constitutional <------------------------- —---------------------------------- > non-constitutional
pacific
5
Some of these "dimensions" are not really h'wear in the way strictly required. That they are not, and that
they are not fully independent, does not impede a much improved classification.
22
CTtangc mmai/ors': vanguard group or class;
<—
Lumpen-proletariat—workers
*
syndicates
bottom
"the people"
political
parties
business ---companies
top
alternative
ccylitions
a/
And so on. The schema presented are clearly far from exhaustive; nothing has been directly
included concerning distribution methods (market vs command, open vs closed storehouses,
etc.), admissible technology, or work-leisure arrangements, to take three important examples.
More pieces will be picked up as we proceed (the approximate number of dimensions is
computationally small), and some of the rather schematic sketches ventured above, elements of
which should be familiar, will receive some development in what follows^ Once the (n)
dimensions are duly elaborated an anarchism can be located and classified (pidgeon-holed in n-
space) by placement in sach dimension. For instance, the form of anarchism preferred by me
(s<$SM for an early presentation),[But one sort never to be^instituted everywhere/rom a riciT'
<L. variety of altematie^s located as follows: it is social (with a significantly qualified communistic
safety net: each according to her or his basic needs),' market-oriented but non-capitalistic, with
diminished ownership, democratic but without politicians and with alternative electoral
arrangements, pacific but not bound by "constitutional" procedures, utilizing modest safe
technologies, ....
There are then many anarchisms, a rich variety of different forms, some of them scarcely
investigated or known. That anarchism comprises such a plurality has proved puzzling to those
(for example of one name-one thing persuasion) who assumed it must be a single ideology,
either individual or collective,.... Indeed the pluralist character of anarchism has led even more
apparently sympathetic critics, to 'wonder whether anarchism is really an ideology at all, or
merely a jumble of beliefs
(M, p.3). Of course the impression that anarchism 'is amorphous
and full of paradoxes and contradictions' is marvellously assisted by conflating degenarchism
with anarchism, chaos with order, and by combining the variant forms, individualism with
socialism and communism. By properly regarding anarchism as a sheaf of overlapping
positions assembled around a core characterisation, a standard model for pluralism, the
problematic elements of anarchism as an ideology disappear. No doubt it is not an ideology like
Marxism, but then Marxism is atypical in its set of paradigmatic texts, concentrated in the works
of the master. Other ideologies such as liberalism or environmentalism afford better
comparisons. While anarchism is an ideology (in both good and bad senses), it is not really a
movement. There is not, anywhere really, such a movement, in the way there have been a
succession of liberation movements or there is a green ^deep ecology^movement.
9
2 : . /
A
/f
7
z^4-v^-
/i
cY&v-e, Insofar a^ anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it
should be
* pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who
want to organise differently thatiits preferred way.
* non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatible with broad-based non
coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like/
That is, there is a doublish standard on violence: It is alright to apply violence against
state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt
this can be justified through cgoLwr namely OK for me to do violence to you but not OK for
you to apply violence to me. Accordingly tentative conc/MMon is: A moral anarchism will not
be a form committed to violence Except unavoidable forms etc.
Such pluralism does not enjoy a strong historic track-record, and does not go
unopposed. Standard anarchist positions, sketching of which was mainly a nineteenth
century preoccupation (but extending into twentieth century science fiction and utopian
literature), shied away from pluralism in the direction of monistic forms, towards
insistence upon particular structure, organisation and distributional methods. Such
monistic rigidity led to much intense, often fruitless discussion and friction between
anarchists committed to different arrangements. Certainly there was a doctrine of
spontaneity — according to which in a state-overthrowing revolution (in the very heat of
the revolution!) the masses world spontaneously decide upon new arrangements — which
makes it appear that any structures at all were open for consideration; but it was also
assumed that certain arrangements would be selected, towards which active anarchists
would provide guidance.
It is not difficult to indicate some of the broad features of emergent arrangemens
features that flow from the character of anarchism. But anarchists, over-attracted like
others to monistic schemes, have regularly attempted to advance their own schemes,
introducing many further postulates, that reach far beyond what flows from the basic
characterisation, and that need not be adopted by genuine anarchistics (some further
examples of optional and rejectable extras from a recent manifesto:... direct democracy,
destruction of all hierarchies, maximization of freedom, total Revolution, no ends-means
distinction, no leaders, optimism about an anarchist future,...).
23
Because of the expansive pluralism of anarchism, it overlaps many other ideologies,
indeed all that do not include as a theme unmitigated commitment to a state or like central
authority. Thus while anarchism excludes fascism and is incompatible with state capitalism,
anarchism overlaps liberalism, democracy, and even Marxism, since Marxism affords a long
term anarchism. There has been much confusion about these interrelations. Take democracy.
Anarchism does not entail democracy, as is sometimes claimed. Advice of a select minority or
of a^sage could regularly be adopted, though the advice did not reflect the will of the people and
its source was not elected or appointed by the people. Nor does anarchism entail undemocratic
procedures. There are, in the plurality, democratic forms, of various sorts, and undemocratic
forms. Democratic forms may have a better prospect of enabling genuine democracy than life
under the state. For as some have argued, 'both the nation state and electoral democracy are
inadequate as vehicles for democracy under modem conditions' (Bumheim p.218).
Is its goal individual freedom or communal solidarity? Sometimes one, sometimes the
other, sometimes neither, sometimes both (a typical four-valued logical structure). A pluralistic
anarchism offers several different sorts of communities, not just one kind: for instance,
independent individuals, perhaps interrelated and organised through contracts, solidaristic
groups working freely together and sharing according to need, and various attractive
intermediaries, where there may be more individual-oriented market arrangements but there are
also safety nets ensuring distribution according to basic needs.
It is not difficult in theory to devise structures that allow a wide variety of kinds. For
example, in simple cases this can be accomplished through regional patterning, as illustrated
with 6 varieties.
(Such a modelling for political pluralism is further elaborated in UT.) The brief interlude of
anarchism in Spain afforded a small-scale example of regional patterning at work
The kinds of anarchistic societies are bound to be of very variable quality, both
theoretically and in practice. Some will only work with rather special sorts of people, for
instance certain Answers with members with strong religious or ideological commitments; some
will not succeed at all. Some verge on incoherence, for instance those against coercive
organistions that approve group terrqist tactics. But while some kinds of anarchism are
entangled in serious problems, others are not. Anarchists generally have no obligation to
defend defective kinds; yet many criticisms of anarchism are directed at just such defective
forms.
Although there is a rich variety of anarchistic end-states (virtually uninstantiated
) f
/-I'y e
24
or
1^-
*rc!
n
possibilities), there are^ common organisational and structural features. Such cluster features are
A
J
what hold the plurality together, and include noncoercive versions of those arrangements
essential to a functioning society: for instance, broad features of arrangements for production
and distribution, for arbitration and reconciliation, and so on, and on. But although each such
anarchist society will have such organizational features, they will differ in detail. For example,
a main distributional feature of a simple communist society may comprise a common
storehouse from which members take according to need, whereas in individualist societies
distribution will normally proceed through some sort of exchange in market systems. MoK
(
generally different types of anarchism will offer different economic theories. Those with
stronger individualistic component will tend to rely upon not merely market or allied exchange
arrangements, but upon capitalistic organisation. The type of anarchism favoured here strikes
an intermediate route: markets without capitalism.
How is such complex organisation to be achieved without a state? Does not such
organisation and government require a state? To remove that familiar assumption and
associated blockages - encouraged by too much life under states and no experience of
alternatives - take a wider look around. Look at how many activities and procedures are
organised without states or essential participation of states. By voluntary arrangements.
Prominent examples are again sporting organisations, labour unions and business corporations
of various sorts. In short, organisation can be accomplished through a range of appropriate
institutions.
Such examples also provide the appropriate key unlocking the door as to how more
extensive organisation can be achieved in the absence of the state, namely through appropriate
institutions. The state dissolves into functioning components, a set of appropriate institutions,
and at bottom into its relevant minimization. It fragments into compartments - in two
interconnected ways: into regional parts and into capacities, functional parts.
There are other valuable clues to stateless reorganisation. What happens within the more
self-regulating state can also happen without it. As Gramsci emphasized,
the ability to govern without overt coercion depends largely on the ability of
those in power to exploit systems of belief that the larger population shares.
The nature of that system of belief is to some extent determinable by policy
makers, since in the modern state they possess a significant ability to
propagandize for their view. Yet.... (p.63).
Recent empirical investigations tend to yield similar results. People tend to follow rules and
obey laws they regard as moral or otherwise satisfactory. There are important messages for
anarchistic organisation here also, for arrangements without coercion, overt or other.
Anarchistic rules will try to go with the prevailing flow, and will only vary (as over vindictive
punishment) where an evidently satisfactory justification can be given. More generally, smarter
anarchistic arrangements will aim to include desirable self-regulating systems, such as small-
/<?
25
scale markets.
t
There are too many alternatives in the pluralistic basket to look at all of them. Let us
consider only some of them, with however preferred features. (An example that does not rank
highly and will not be further assessed is Stirner's individualism.) Anarchistic societies of any
complexity will typically consist of a network of decentralised organisations, or a federation of
these (etc.). The organisations will thus be regional, but beyond that set up according to issue,
role or function.
Thus they will include what might well be accounted ecoregiona/
Many of the stock features of political functionalism, as decentralised, will
accordingly recur, separation of powers, tailoring of administration to need, for instance. The
organisations will furthermore be noncoercive; no individual or group will be forced to join.
Typically they will be voluntary arrangements.
A critical question is-to how these organisations, substitudng for the operation of state, are
to be controlled, regulated, and so on. In much favoured democratic structures, such as
electoral bureaucracies, control is usually weak and remarkably tnJtrecf. A populace weakly
selects a central parliament, which exercises through other bureaucratic bodies some control of
state organisations. A full anarchism is obliged to dissolve or substitute for central parliaments.
It has a obvious option, namely direct democratic control of state-substituting organisations. A
simple way of achieving this is through sortition: the membership of the governing component
of each organisation is chosen randomly from those qualified of the regional community who
volunteer to be on it. In some cases volunteers may require accessible qualifications (e.g.
having served before at a lower level), and avoid disqualifications (e.g. having acquired a
disqualifying record).6 Where the community decides that certain categories of people should be
represented, for instance disabled, minorities, and so forth, then it is a matter of arranging
random selection of the required fraction of group numbers from these categories. This style of
statistical democracy dates back at least to original democracies of Greek city states where public
officials were sometimes selected by lot (it is discussed under democracy in Aristotle's P<?/iric.y).
Nowadays it is called t/gwarcAy (a term with an unfortunate prior meaning); here in its
anarchistic form it will be alluded to under the neologism dewanarcAy.
Such demanarchy has the immediate virtue of removing a most expensive duplication,
government ministers and their departmental counterparts (e.g. finance ministers and
corresponding appointed treasury officials). Indeed, the whole charade of central parliamentary
6
People can serve their administrative apprenticeship at local or group levels. One when they are adjudged
to have exhibited sufficient competence here are they entitled to nominate for selection at grander levels.
This is one reasonable way of obtained some quality control in selection of administrators. (Note /gve/^ do
not provide a vicious hierarchy.)
A""
—H
Though there are many different strands that can be interwoven through the
pluralistic out-fall from the basic characterisation, there are some broad tendencies of
anarchistic arrangement which include:
*
reliance on self-regulatory methods of organisation that require little or no
intervention, as opposed to highly regulated procedures, perhaps tending towards
centralism
or
paternalism.
This is one reason why markets are favoured, analogues of centralised control and
coercive legal systems are not.
* emphasis on voluntary methods, in place of imposed methods - coercive methods are
of course excluded by virtue of basic characterisation. Certainly de facto power may
remain, but it will be without justification.
* favouring of decentralisation and deconcentration rather than centralised or
concentrated structures.
That does not imply there can be no downward relations. Of course under federal
arrangements there will be, and sideways natural relations as well (a full control
system).
* discouragement of empowerment, encouragement of depowerment.
* opposition to oppression is a corollary.
26
government, ministers and hordes of minders, governments and replicating opposition teams, is
duly removed — as it has to be under non-centralization. Such parliamentary centres are
.
....
eliminated; insofar as anything replaces them, it is the dispersed community, no centre, which is
directly linked to functional organisation.
Gone with the centre, or seriously reduced, are several standard political worries, such as
those of coup or take-over, insurrection or invasion. These usually involve capturing the centre
and its command structure, no longer there to capture (for there is no command or control
structure that could be taken by an invador or with internal insurrection). Community defence is
thereby rendered much easier. Also considerably reduced is the standard problem of who
controller is the community (one of the advantages of more direct democracy).
Appropriate institutions take care then of the day-to-day running of community affairs.
But what of major issue decisions, changes of direction or structure? These can be
accomplished from the bottom, through referenda, propositions and the like (with public
assessment organised through a suitably independent college), rather than in present top-down
inflexible fashion. (Some of these methods, of which there is worthwhile experience in parts of
Europe, are investigated in Wolff.)
A regular early question is how such a stateless structure is to be financed
coecive
mechanisms available. Of course if coercive institutions were in place, then the overall structure
could be financed in the sorts of ways that states are presently financed. It should be observed,
in any case, that coercive means are very rarely resorted to (unless the target is pursued for otAgr
reasons, such as crime) in order to obtain revenue payments from wealthy corporations, firms or
individuals, from where in a more equitable community much of the funding would derive (by
contrast with most present states). There are several parts to a satisfactory answer:* AfMcA less public revenue would be required because the most expensive, most wasteful, and
least productive components of state have been excised. These include the whole apparatus of
central government and electoral politics, and the associated system of coercion, standard
military forces and defense establishment, espionage framework, and police forces, prison
establishment and expensive courts. -—
Nonetheless there remain many institutions to finance, include smaller substitutes for some of
the abolished structures (e.g. social defence arrangements).
* Many institutions can be largely or entirely self-financing, because like customs and import
organisation^ they collect revenue, or through fair user-pays principles. Reasonable returns
taken can be channelled to an independent revenue office with no outside spending or
redistribution powers.
* Much, if not all, further social revenue could be raised through resources taxation (adequate
royalties and the like), rental taxes on property or leases, gift and gains taxes, and through
auctions (of previously inherited goods). How this would work depends upon community
arrangements.
Consider for instance anarchistic arrangements where that problematic item, private
property, has not been instituted or has been abolished (as under main examples of European
anarchism, by contrast with North American forms). Valuable durables (roughly, any durable
worth stealing for sale in present systems) will be renfed instead of bought. Leasehold systems
can be operated very like private property (as the land system in the Australian Capital Territory
reveals)^facilitating market operations, but they offer significantly better control, for instance
environmentally, they enable the social component of generated wealth to be reflected, through a
rental, and they can be of finite term and to a given individual, so inheritance transfer is
excluded. In place of the customary land titles office a larger durables office with subdivision
for types of durables would be instituted, with each durable now indelibly marked or described.
(Here, as with referenda, computing facililies remove many previous obstacles to such
developments. Organisation can move with newer technologies.
Leasehold arrangements are readily applied to prevent the accumulation of scarce property
resources, such as urban land, which is a major feature of capitalism. For leases of scarce
commodities can be allocated according to need and ability to use, not merely through a
historically rooted market distribution as with private property. It is private property, not a
market system of distribution, that is really distinctive of capitalism, since it not only provides a
place to park and increase capital, but it enables transmission of accumulated wealth (e.g. within
a family or dynasty) and control of the means of production.
CZ
4^? y
and SwiaMness
7^4
,^.
y?e
A^.V<
c. 4^^
*
^AAv^A
A^
r4A
7^?/-
/
z-
yy^fA,
^Tz- A y
. yy
r/At- Ac
x' 4- z A^.
A^
^-A.
AzA
/A^'A
xA.A^
z^^-^-xxAA/
Aa A ^//x/---?
-—
/^c
has become fashionable/^ince th^oncurrent anthropological findings concerning
small communities and the collective action results concerning small collectives demolished the
assumption that anarchy
impossible, t& concede that anarchy is possible but only where
there is a suitable small community.
/Az'
-
A
//
/X
<_y
'
y
'A,,'
'
/
//
^
y
/
.
/
,y,
.. .
^_
—y/-
Zf
..J.
/
/z,
y
y-
7
/
a—
- sort of anarchism in-the-small has been forcefully
pursued by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between
people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (p.166). That is:
... community is necawa/y — if people are to live without the state' (p.3).
The argument to community that Taylor offers reduces a modified Hobbesipnism; social
order can oly be maintained, without the state and in the small, if the relations between
individuals are those of community (cf p.2). Insofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably brokeddown argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal justification of the state' - from
the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves without
requisite collective goods - breaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its
argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the
supply of such goods (p.59).
It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred
is that, if public goods are to be provided, jowc means must be found of getting people to do
their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of
ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The
argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order
cannot satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are far
from decisive. That leaves the state for public larger than communities, and communitarian
anarchism as an extra-terrestial possibility for small communities (because communities in the
vicinity of states do not, it is claimed, survive). For all the talk about anarchism^it looks like
another triumph for the state.
&t the argument is unsound, because there are other methods than those Taylor locates.
Non-statist organisation, which comes in a range of forms^ is not a combination of the pure
methods considered. As a broad type of method it is hardly "unproposed", or without
precedents or examples (e.g. medieval orders and present international order).
7^
A
er
C
4
!/V
[1] p.3O Important among these practices are resistance movements and organised
refusals (preferably without conspicuous leaders). While individuals can be selectively picked
off, enough people well organsed cannot. As a result grand refusals could be significant
political happenings.
[3] p.4? The practice of anarchism, generously construed, naturally includes the state of
being in anarchist conditions, of living under anarchism (though perhaps unaware). There is
cope for anarchism without doctrine. Many primitive societies thus qualify on anarchistic; they
practice, or practiced, anarchism though unaware (somewhat as wild animals practice hygine).
Further, no doubt now stretching 'practice' beyond its assumed anthropic context, many animal
communities practice anarchism. Many attracted ^anarchism, an anarchism without name
even, long for analogous pure practice.^ Th^ hope that whatever it is ill operate, perhps even
materilize, without any heave-
ithouteness or e
any intellectualizing, perhaps
without even thought or much ef
on their part. In contemporary circumstances they would
thave to be extrordinary lucky (a paternal state with caring elements, such as safe jobs and
spoon-fed indoctrinal education for all citizens, does not relinquish its control voluntarily).
[4] #awan Harare. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious
/refprious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to
force various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones (including defence focus,
standing armies, survellience etc.)
[5] about p.20 (connector^
Present minolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which
they are not competent, ffom some of wlpdrihey are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as
impartial referees by ^h^r/businessjsofnmitments). Because the centre tries to do and control
too much, as a consequenc$4tdoes very much unsatisifactorily. Improved arrangements would
separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power.
[6] p.30. As^?ovemmenr is variably determinable, so also is /aw. Under the main
determinate, law is incompatible with anarchism. But under a different determinate, there is no
incompatibility.
Anarchism cannot traffic in law, in the initial and prominent sense of /aw offered in the
OED, namely 'a rule of conduct imposed by authority', imposed by authority and
characteristically backed up by coercion, it may be added. To some extent counter reducing this
prognastication is a'second sense of 'law' (the third comprises 'scientific and philosophical
uses'): namely 'without reference to an external commanding authority'.
Law deservedly has a tarnished reputation in anarchism.
Most of it is arcane,
administered by an expensive priesthood. Too often it is an oppression tool of the state.
While anarchism is hostile to such law, and incompatable with heavy authoritarian law, it
is in no way opposed to rules, to regulations, to conventions of freely asserted to lists, and so
on.
[7] Democracy within ANARCHY, and DEMANARCHY
Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game
between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with
each other their patronage and cites/br the acclaimed right to govern.
Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be
governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other
elite team.
For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected, not
controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative.
By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see
Burnheim).
are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as /a// bacty. B argues that they are not
satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent.
Mows 1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote.
2. only structural, not material issues to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for
instance, not capital punishment, not abortion.
Dgwarc/ty has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It
means 'the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or governnorj; a popular
government. The municipal body of a modern Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises
no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply,
however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving Jcwa/MrAy.
[8] [after authority, coercion.
To coerce is maintain or change state, normaliy of another creature, by force.
Re Chap 4) Insofar as anarchism is duly based on removal of unacceptable means, it
should be
* pluralistic, because for example it cannot impose a single formulation on communities who
want to organise differently that its preferred way.
* non-violent. Terrorist forms of anarchism are strictly incompatibile with broad-based non
coercion. For terrorism typically involves coercion, stand-over tactics, and the like.
That is, there is a doublish standard on vio/ence: It is alright to apply violence against
state (and others) while not alright to have coercive state, which applies violence. No doubt this
can be justified through ggoi-sw: namely OK for me to do violence to you but not OK for you to
apply violence to me. Accordingly afentadve
is: A moral anarchism will not be a
form committed to violence - except unavoidable forms etc.
[9]
anJ Smallness
It has become fashionable, since the concurrent anthropological finalings concerning
small communities and the collective action results concerning small collectiyes demolisted the
assumption that anarchy was impossible, to concede that anarchy is possible but only where
there is a suitable small community. This sort of anarchism in-the-small has been forcefully
pursued by Taylor, who contends that 'anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between
people are those which are characteristic of community', a small community (p.166). That is:
... community is necessary - if people are to live without the state' (p.3).
The argument to community that Taylor offeysreduces a modified Hobbesionism; social
order can oly be maintained, without the st^te and in the small, if the relations between
individuals are those of community (cf p.2L lnsofar as it is detailed, it is a remarkably brokeddown argument. As Taylor himself helps to show, 'the liberal jusdfication of the state' - from
the failure of individuals in a large public to voluntarily cooperate to provide themselves without
requisite collective goods - brdaks down at every critical point, in its premisses, in its
argument, and in its concluding inference to the state was the on/y means of ensuring the supply
of such goods (p.59).
It is this final lacuna onto which Taylor latches. Granting the rest, 'all that can be inferred
is that, if public goods are to be provided, some means must be found of getting people to do
their part in providing them' (p.59). There are, Taylor swiftly finds, three pure methods of
ensuring provision of the goods in question: the state, the market, and the community. The
argument then proceeds by elimination, of the market. Taylor 'contends that social order cannot
satisfactorily be put on the market' (p.2), though his arguments to this contention are far from
14
e
OF
/
7
One
appalling
mes from a Russi
icrionary
that is hostile to all
-bourgeours socio-political tr
authority a
e, and counterpasses ' intere^s of petty private
ownersbib and small
ant economy to
progress of^ociety based on
large-scale production
v, 2nd revision
s, Progress,
bsever, 1989).
^nether-dismal-eharaeterisati
[4]
scientistIfApter).
narurg. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious
reforious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to
.v(0
force various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones [including defence focus,
standing armies, survellience etc.)
*[5FabouFpT2O-(G0miect0f)
Present\p^nolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which
they are not co
etent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as
KHLI Ut
impartial referees by\[ieir business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and epntro
too much, as a conseque
it does very much unsatisifactofily. Improve
tents wouldl
.separate these roles, deconcen^ating and decentralizing power.
[7] Democracy within ANARCHY, and DEMANARCHY
Present electoral arrangements offer what? What presently have is a competative game
between competating blocks of the ruling elite (with professional power-brokers who trade with
each other their patronage and citesybr the acclaimed right to govern.
Thus elections hardly represent a genuine expression of agreement by the populace to be
governed; rather they are occasions when the populace is duped into supporting one or other
elite team.
For the most part power is concentrated in organisations which are not elected, not
controlled by the people effected by their contractions and not representative.
By and large, satisfactory democratic arrangements will not be participatory (see
Burnheim).
o
— /^W/
6'J
n /
/I
15
7?^/<?rc/!^Az are valuable for limited purposes, viz. as /<
*/// /?ocA.s'. B argues that they are not
satisfactory in general (p.91). There is no need to dissent.
Moray 1. Encourage those without interest in, or not genuinely affected by issue not to vote.
2. only structural, not material issues to refs. Certainly not material moral issues, for
instance, not capital punishment, not abortion.
Z)^marc/ty has the wrong etymology and the wrong meaning for anarchist purposes. It
means the office of a demarch [a president, chief magistrate, major or govemnor]; a popular
government. The municipal body of a modem Greek commune' (OED). Anarchism recognises
no chiefs or leaders, even democratic ones or demogogues. What can be done very simply,
however, is to enlarge the word by a simple important syllable 'an', giving
IM) A
*
*
Chapter 8A
ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THEORY
AND OF A PREFERRED THEORY
There are many preliminaries. One, like preparing a badly used building site, consists in
removing the rubbish. That of course is but the beginning of philosophy, not the sole content
and end, as some zealous followers of Lockejhave supposed.
1. Issues in appalling methodology.
Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political philosophy, i Bad
practices abound; anarchism has suffered particularly as a result.
Redefinitions, and
redefinitional stratagems to try to close gappy arguments, abound. Large assumptions are
imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often any awareness: particularly
pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly
needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally unfriendly, at best.
False
dichotomies abound. And so on. Among the deleterious practices, several deserve special
mention:
* 7%#/
o/
There is a deeply embedded in modern
mainstream intellectual activity and strikingly manifest in political theory. A general feature of
contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and practice, is that of over
powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in contemporary mainstream
logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles more powerful than reason
can justify, is dis-assessed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant logic, in RLR). Some of
the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant consistency and maximization,
reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly claimed, to all rational practice,
including political decision-making and institutional arrangements (see MR).
Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For
example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal
conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on.
Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing
arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is
enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are
1
One reason is that much of it is done by political
thinking.
with no adequate grounding tn logic or
/'
m we/Ttoi/o/ogy. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in political
*
philosophy.
Redefinitions, and redefinitional otologies to try to close gappy arguments,
abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice, or too often
any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and of
thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally
unfriendly, at best.
P/tcno/ncnon o/
* excessive strength. There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream
intellectual activity and strikingly manifest in political theory.
A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and
practice, is that of over-powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in
contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles
more powerful than reason can justify, is disassesed elsewhere (from the perspective of relevant
logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant
consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly
claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision making and obstitutional
arrangements (see MR).
Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For
example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal
conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on.
Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing
arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is
enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are
achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic
institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in
Prisimers Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flowed from the
very outset, and should be set aside.
A central time in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess
phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions.
Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not
arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument
and practice appear,to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have
1
One reason is that much of it is done by poiiticai szds with no adequate grounding in logic or critical
thinking.
tried, rather......... to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on
societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state besereft of adequate
justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire.
So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and
argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined
"property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state
legal systems.
ON DEFINING ANARCHISM DEFINITIONS OF ANARCHISM
One characterisation that is utterly appalling comes from a Russian Dictionary of
PAi/<9^o/?Ay:
'Anarc&i.wn, a petty-bourgeours socio-political trend that is hostile to all
authority and the state, and counterpasses the interests of petty private
ownership and small peasant economy to the progress of society based on
large-scale production' (ed I. Frolov, 2nd revision eds, Progress,
Plosever, 1989).
Another dismal characterisation comes from an American political scientist (Apter).
Defective definitions of anarchism abound, many supplied by high profile anarchists
(whereupon they assume a certain air of authority, a bogus air). A few examples will be
considered, mostly drawn from a large list of similarly defective definitions included in Clark,
p.ll8ff., who is out to show that any definition which attempts to do justice to anarchism
through an assentialistic definition deploying one simple idea is bound to fail, abysmally.
AnarcAy does not "mean literally "without government'" contrary to Caster p.14. It does
however imply without governments of prevailing cuts which is what the immediately proceeds
to: 'and the lowerst common demominstor of anarchist thought is the conviction that existing
forms of government are productive of wars, internal violence, repression and misery' (p.14).
Right on!
The very short characterisation of anarc/iAy/?? (and redition of anarc/taj) as 'no *
government'is defective because of the elosticity, and slippiness of 'government'. For
example, according to one dictionary (Dniverya/ E/tg/Bh) govern/ytenr means '... system of
polity in a state; territory ruled by a governor ...' in which case it fy incompatible with
Thus, e.g. Carter, Websters (?).
2
achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic
institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in
Prisoners Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flawed from the
very outset, and should be set aside.
A central issue in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess
phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions.
Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not
arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument
and practice appear to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have
tried, rather deviously, to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states
on societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state bereft of adequate
justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire.
So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and
argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined
"property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and state
legal systems.
* Htg/t anJ low
Wolffs little book, billed as "a defence of anarchism" is a
small treasury of these. Virtually all the characterisations proposed at the beginning of this
book, of state, sovereignty, authority, power, actomomy, are defective, often by virtue of
definitional features. Consider Wolffs opening:
'Politics is the exercise of the power of the state, or the attempt to influence that exercise.
Political philosophy is therefore ... the philosophy of the state' (p.3 also p.ll). Politics went
on before the rise of the state, and with some good fortune, will persist often its demise.
Again, consider: 'the state is a group of persons who have or exercise suppose authority within
a given territory' (p3; repeated p.5). This shows the fallacy of redirectionism. For a state
normally does not change when those who exercise power do. On the de facto state Wolff is
also astray: 'a & Jacio state is simply a state whose subjects believe it to be ligitimate (i.e. really
to have the authority it claims for itself)' (p.10). Many subjects may nor believe that, but be
intimidated through state power. Very fashionable in removing anarchism are low redefinitions
of Ftare, where there is a state given any positional components in society, such as political
specialisation or division of labour (see Taylor on anthopoligical efforts on societies without
states). As a result there can be effortessly be both anarchy and "state"; any complex anarchist
society is a state!
Another rich source of redefinitions is founded by Taylor's books on anarchism.
Examples include: a fairly hopeless definition of gooJ.' it is desired (p.45). Most interesting is a
3
disgustingly low redefinition of property.- 'Property' is here a shorthand for a variety of
entilements or use rights (Taylor 82 p.44). So as I am entitled to use the byway or to bathe in
the stream, they are my property, so I run them? Another example concerns coercion: In the
claim that to avoid the Hobbesian prisoners' dilemma 'every man must be coerced', Taylor
continues (87 p. 145), 'by which I mean simply that he must be made to behave differently than
he otherwise would (... (i.e.) would "ovlantarily" in the state of nature).' But such a difference
may be effectively achieved, depending on the subject, by noncoercive means, such as
persassion, sanctions, and so forth. Furthermore it would not guarantee what Taylor and
Hobbes appear to expect, authority and sovereignty.
Among the most pernicious of redefinitions, constraints, and elides are those concerning
interests and preferences - often reduction bases for gooJ and other value qualities, often
quickly converted from interest to self-interest (thus Taylor)^ Examples from within this circle
include harmony and cooperation.
For instance.'Harmony requires complete identity of
interests' (in Ope, p.226). It hardly requires comment. Again '...cooperation occurs when
actors adjust their behaviour to the actual or anticipated preferences of others (in Ope p.226).
But suppose creatures simply work or act together (what 'cooperation' means).
psychological accounts are seriously astray.
* ZHc%#%MnoMS
or ctf^cr-or-M/n.
Such
Humans are extraordinarily addicted to
flawed dichotomous reasoning, again powerfully exhibited with regard to anarchism and the
state? For example, the alternative to the state is presumed to be anarchism which is equated
with disorder; so it is either the state or disorder. Again, the only alternative to a market system
of government is central control - market or control - and the market has won out decisively
now (one of the presumed reasons for the prematurely announced "end to ideology").
Other objectionable methodological assumptions include
'..Po.w&Mh'g mJzvo/aa/LSW (after McP p.3)
'Its possessive quality is its conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own
person or capacities, owning nothing to society for them. The individual (is not)... part of a
larger..... whole, but... surer of himself.'
As a result:
'Society consists of relations of exchange between proprietors. Political socieity becomes a
celebrated device for the protection of this property and for the maintenance of an orderly
relation of exchange.'
2
3
The fallacious shifts are dealt with in 'Aquinst,
A famous Australian example is the truculent stance of its richest mum, Packer, in a parliamentary
inquiry: Either you believe me or call be a liar. Reflect on how far "call me a liar" goes beyond "you
do not believe me".
,
„
There should be some eodness^ that we are now trying to build machines in our own inadequate
image. (Many examples in SM).
4
(a prime example in economics: the data of extremality).
* /tM/nan
* g/fwn o/va/ne, or reduction of value to preference.
All of these have been crically assessed elsewhere. But some features deserve further
elaboration:
* f/tg
tAgo/y
With rule and compass techniques it is wn/MM.n&Zg to trirect angle. Of course by measuring it is
rather easy.
Similarly with rationality: wider means can do what state was supposed to be necessary for.
Put differently, the theoretical state is an artifact on a certain ultra-thin theory of rationality.
The thin theory of rationality is an extraordinarily widespread ideological....... among
Anglo-American social theorists (many of whom feel obliged to make public dealeraatous of
faith). But that it is 'almost universally taken for granted by economists' does nothing to show
its correctness, unless an argument from expectise has required a new validity. What it reveals
rather is something about the ideological commitments,...........of economists.
The thing theory of rationality is almost invariably coupled with individualism,
methodological individualism as it is usually cleverly called (after Popper's theorizing).^
Many of these objectionabl assumption are melted together in theories of /mman nafnrg.
Mafnrg, CM/tMrg anJconfro/.
Part of the intellectual aim of a theory of human nature is to achieve an account of hum^n
/motivation. But a uniform story of motivation is scarcely more likely drawn as uniform account
of human nature.^ Motivations are no doubt important; but they are many and various.
It is still fashionable to assert, as if it was a truism, that 'all political philosophies ... base
themselves upon a conception of human nature' (Wolff Povgrty p. 140, pluralised). That is no
longer so (certainly, since Foucault) is that the notion of //n/nnn nnturg is not well defined, and
never was except under high redefinitions.
Work in decqtralized artificial intelligence readily suggests that communities of robots
could operate without statist arrangements (nor need outiside imput be state bound). That
suggests in tum that it is something about humans, as many humans, that leads to development
or imposition of states. That something has been ascribed, rather too quickly, to human nature,
or to human culture, or to some mix of human genetypic and phenotypic features, features that
other creatures or artificial intelligences do not share. It is something peculiarly pertaining to
and special to humans, their nature or culture, that amends institutional control. But has never
been satisfactorily explained what these special features are or how they operate. There is much
space for total scepticism about such justificatory or apologetic approaches.
4
5
Taylor has a dreadful argumejpj (892 p.57) that people are agents, because otherewise default to
understand why so many goods and supplied (also 87 p.109).
The usual uniform story depends upon self inferey/, which is widened into mteresM under pressure.
5
2. Aa/Mrc, CM/tMro, awJ contra/.
A major function of culture is to regulate and control changed Political change in the
South Pacific, and political divergence from the industrial North, can, in principle then, be
grounded in and powered by features of local and regional culture. One organising theme, a
corollary of the argument, facilitates the transition from principle to practice:- It is that the
requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality is there, for the South Pacific
region (and Australia in particular) to proceed in a very different social political direction from
the North (and from the USA in particular). Given the radical unsatisfactoriness of the
American arrangements, in many frequently exposed respects,7 such a different direction is
worth taking — if it can be.
But a serious problem in the way of change is imposition of political arrangements, from
outside or from above. And, since imposition shades into political pressure, this is only one of
the obstacles impeding change in the South Pacific and elsewhere. Another forcing more and
more peoples, no longer sheltered by geographical isolation, into the same type of socio
political arrangements is supposed to derive from human nature itself. Free people are
economic people, in pretty much the American mould, so it is claimed. By this route, economic
imperialism can replace political imperialism.
A key question in political theory — one to which we are said to have no satisfactory
answer in the absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) — is
supposedly this:To what extent does human nature allow for alternative political and social arrangements? Or,
to tum the question around:- What restrictions are imposed in virtue of the nature of humans on
the broad range of political possibilities? How does that "nature" reduce the organisational
options?
A much-promoted Anglo-American answer, directly descended from the
Enlightenment, is that once /rcc/Y from systems of myths, taboos and tribal controls, from
superstition, people are essentially (and will generally become) self-centred individuals,
(properly) concerned with maximising their own gain or interests; that is, but for their shortage
of information (including technical know-how), free people are basically economic peopled
As ought now to be evident, that is to replace one ideology by another. But the Enlightenment
ideology is no longer so evident^: what recommends it? Under pressure of this sort, the AngloAmerican answer gets transformed to the theme that the economic picture of human nature is
superior, and fitting of rational creatures. That 'self-appointed West European superiority' has
6
7
8
9
Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30. These sections are drawn from Cu/turc onJ rAc RooM of Political
Divergence.' a SowtA Pacific perspective.
For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers.
These people are also picked out under various alternative (but not strictly equivalent) descriptions,
e g. as acquisitive individuals, possessive individuals.
See e g. DP, chapter 10.
6
in turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and the Romantics.^ Fortunately, however,
the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided.
For all these questions and answers presuppose, to begin with, a certain misplaced
essentialism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human beings, which exactly
separates humans from other creatures. Attempts to specify such an essence, suitably constant
and invariant and given by necessary and sufficient conditions,^ are legion. They are
a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. All ment are the same
because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and avoidance of pain].
These drives will operate independently of any location.
Chief among those drives was that towards self-preservation — Holbach,
for instance, stipulates:
we shall call nafare in man the collection of properties and qualities
which constitute him what he is, which are inherent to his species, which
distinguish him from other animal species or which he as in common with
them ... every man feels, things, acts and seeks his own well-being at all
times; these are the qualities and properties that constitute human nature
12
But this attempt at essentialist definition of /mman naA/re fails, in a quite characteristic way. As
it stands, the definition is inadequate; for not all humans seek just their own well-being always;
some are "stupid", some are altruistic, some have other commitments. However, suppose we
avoid such familiar counter-instances to egoism, by replacing 'well-being' by say 'broad well-
being', thus rendering such internal egoism analytic. And suppose to avoid other counter
expales (such as human vegetables, morons and the like), we normalise the definition, replacing
'every man' by 'every normal human'. But then the definition is again inadequate; for it fails to
distinguish humans from, for example, dolphins. It applies equally to Jo/p/un natMrg or, for
that matter, to gon/Z# natMrg.
10
11
12
See Berry, p.30ff., from whom the quote is taken. It is worth spelling out a little the extent of
agreement and disagreement with Herder. What is applauded is
1. 'Herder's dismissal of the Enlightenment's conception of human nature as static, acultural and
ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but nor
*1. Herder's cultural relativism, that 'each culture ... should be treated on its own merits and not
judged by some faulty perspective such as Io bel/e nature' (p.30), or from any other perspective. In
the pluralistic framework of the text (which presuppoes PPP), a good many cross-cultural judgements
ate made and defended.
*2. Herder's relativisation of human nature to culture, and embodiment of it in culture; for example,
'it is through language that human nature can be seen to be .spect/iicaPy embodied in culture' (p.32).
With relativisation the notion loses its original theoretical point; but while failing in this role,
cultural nature is open to many of the same sorts of objections as human nature. Nor can language
bear the weight Herder loads upon it.
*3. Herder's human chauvinism: '... it is speech and with that reason and freedom, that differentiates
man. Man can choose, man is king' (p.36). Wild animals are free, can choose, communicate, solve
puzzles, and carry out elementary reasoning; in these respects they surpass children and many other
humans. Furthermore, *
*3 gets Herder into serious trouble, not to say inconsistency, with 1.
Abraham, drawing on Wittgenstein, presents just these conditions for an essence, p.23ff.
Berry p.17. Berry supplies several other similar examples.
7
Of course the definition can again be patched, by appealing to the anatomical cluster of
features that separate humans from other mammals or to the biological specification of /tomo
But the resulting normalised definition, with its analytical egoism, does little more
than such biological definitions of An/nan: it does not supply a natnrg, it does not deliver
-ynp^rbiological features of political relevance. The notion of human nature thus fragments: into
the satisfactory enough biological notion of human, and an unsatisfactory superbiological (or
sociobiological) addition: that of human nature or essence. What is this further, problematic
nature? The Romantics can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from
culture, only /oca/ nature (Herder's term) which coincides with culture. Peeling off cultural
excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves, like Wittgenstein's artichoke,
nothing. Just nothing.
The notion of human nature is a theoretical item, introduced to provide stability amid
cultural variability, a constant bulwark against relativism, but designed as well to justify — as
natural or, failing that as superior — a porr/cn/or type of political economy, state and legislature,
and its imposition everywhere else. 13 But its application is even grander: Human nature is a
theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious nefarious, social and political purposes.
Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort to justify or enforce various restrictive types
of social arrangements, statist ones (including defence forces, standing armies, survellience —
arrangements, and so on). Human nature is a highly resilient notion which has been widely
applied in such fashions; it is not so easily dissolved, certainly not through one illustration.
However the fact that the notion is written large in much political theory, and is received, does
not show that it or the embedding theory is sound. And it is not, but is defective, and in its
socio-political selectivity it is, as the illustration reveals, virtually of a piece with human
chauvinism (which would assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the
ecological scheme of things).
Most conveniently, the superbiological notion of human nature begins to dissolve under
any attempt to set it down, in mmuch the way that attempts supporting human chauvinism to set
down something ethically special about humans disintegrate.
*^
13
14
The notion of human nature —
Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western culture everywhere, later
emphasised by Bentham. 'The Legislator, Knowing that human nature is ever the same [different
countries do not have different catalogues of pleasure and pain], can reform the laws and even
transplant them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18).
This claim concerning human chauvinism is argued in detail in EE. But the claim concerning human
nature is only sketchily defended in the text. For the alleged social-arrangement-dictating features of
human nature, like similar alleged features of economic or technological determinism, are rather
major obstacles to be removed — especially insofar as they supposedly severely and inevitably
restrict the character of future societies — than the main business of the present enterprise.
Fortunately then the claim, that the superbiological notion of human nature is a defective theoretical
one which dissolves, is defended elsewhere: not only, in effect, in work of Romantics from Herder
8
a nature or essence for a// and on/y humans (some special classes of humans excepted perhaps)
— presuppoes that there are some stable or constant social features holding for all peoples,
across different cultures, which are furthermore distinctively human features.
The
presupposition fails, because once cultural variation between peoples is fully taken into account,
only some rather trivial shared characteristics remain, which furthermore are shared by various
animal cultures, such as those of primates.
Consider, first, such products or tools of more literary cultures as books, or of
contemporary cultures as telephones and computers. Since most historical cultures lacked such
items, their possession or distribution obviously cannot figure as part of what marks out human
nature. Consider next, then, what are commonly taken to be key components of (human)
nature, certain basic human needs, such as food and shelter. These requirements are far from
free of cultural and environmental determinants. For look at what is regarded as required in the
way of shelter, and how it varies from culture to culture, place to place. (And even what is
taken as basic can often be met in a myriad of ways, though acceptably in some cultures only in
a few fixed ways.) The common denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort of
shelter under more extreme conditions — a requirement also of wombats. The situation with
food, sex, and so on, is hardly better. Dietary requirements vary considerably from race to
race, Europeans for example being very inefficient by many tribal standards and unable to
survive satisfactorily where tribal people flourish. 1$ Again the somewhat trivial lowest
common denominator applies also to various groups of animals. Nor are attempts to mark out
the human nature by some more complex list of jointly necessary and sufficient conditions, or
more loosely by a cluster of natural features, much more successful, or of direct political
application without the importation of what is culturally at issue — values. In any case, such
vague and general lists as emerge^ impose little constraint at all on a political direction, since a
variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings.
15
16
on, but also in significant recent literature. Foucault, for example, can be read as saying that human
nature is an invention of the Enlightenment which dissolves: 'his much discussed ... di&MdMhon of
mon is nothing more, or less, than the claim that the attempt to establish order upon a scientific
understanding of human nature is both profoundly mistaken and profoundly unstable' (Philp, p.15,
italics added).
The converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight on European diets. At another
level, consider the Maori attitude to, and underlying revulsion by, cooked food: see Alpers, p.7-9.
For one such list, which however requires pruning and adjustment, see Wilson, p.22. As it happens,
Wilson does not make anything much of this list (which does not supply necessary conditions),
immediately presents a parallel list for insect societies — a list which does considerable damage to
more traditional claims about human nature — and then proceeds in effect to demolish main criteria
that have been used to separate humans from animals and to restrict cultures to human societies (e.g.
p.39).
9
Accordingly, human nature as such is not an important constraint on political theory, or a
theory of human nature a key ingredient in endeavours to work out a political philosophy or
political directions. *7 The reason is like the reason that determining the conditions for the good
life would not impose a satisfactory constraint on a political theory, namely presupposition
failure. Like the meaning of life
*s,
the good life fails to demarcate a single thing; there are
many styles of good lives. So too there is human nature and human nature, depending on the
culture or social paradigm and on the setting. Nature, both human and not, varies with culture
and environment. Because of this two-way dependence, there is no unique stable
superbiological human nature.
A corollary of the dissolution of the notion of human nature is the rejection also, as
misleading, of the usual picture of nature as given, as a stable notion across races and tribes,
with culture as a variable on top. There is no such culturally invariant division: culture affects
local nature. The picture is flawed in much the same way, then, as the familiar picture of
perception, as consisting of given uninterpreted sense data, stable across (normal) perceivers,
with interpretation imposed on the neutral data.
Nor therefore is culture something that can be creamed off the top, so to speak, to find
real human features or basic nature underneath. Certainly, cultures can be destroyed; however
what results from removal by destruction of a culture is not something closer to real people, but
people with a destroyed culture. So it is also with attempts like Hobbes or Rawls to peel
political organisation off the the top, in order to locate in a quasi-analytical or quasi-historical
way, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised state or other. A flawed picture,
derived from mistaken or questionable presuppositions, is assumed.
What will be found underneath, or in the original (natural) state, is, it is usually
conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the view to be developed — with the right values very
fortunately in-built. Given that what is to be explained or justified is something like present
socio-political arrangements and the privileged position of some status quo — as well as a
dominant culture's image of itself, and elements of the dominant Northern social paradigm —
underlying human nature turns out to be, hardly surprisingly, that of fully competitive
possessive individualism (much the same model, that is, which serves for economic man, for
Enlightenment man, for the "rational person", etc.) The myth of unique human nature
17
18
For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human nature for social and
political ends, see Appendix 2.
Which is perhaps as well, since we still have so little reliable and unprejudiced information as to
what "human nature" amounts to, what its variational possibilities, in different environments, might
be, or of the possibilities beyond past terrestrial selections of cultures.
On which see Routley and Griffin.
10
functions, like many other myths, to perpetuate or instil particular social arrangements and
special privilege.
Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths, the myths of
all (normal) humans as aggressive individuals and as predominantly self-interested maximizers
(at least insofar as they are rational) — to bring in some of the myths bound up with the image
of contemporary urban-industrial humans. As there is no underlying hard ground, no firm
starting point in human nature, so there is none in these associated myths. The South Pacific
was, and remains, rich in cultures which upset these associated myths. Non of the
Melanesians, Polynesians or Australian aboriginal peoples comprised societies of individuallyoriented maximizers; indeed their strongly communal lifestyles and preparedness to stop, work
especially, after a low sufficiency threshold had been reached, was a major and repeated source
of criticism from the European cultures that came to dominate the region.
Even forms and types of aggressiveness, and approaches to war, often taken to be solid
ground, are culture and environment dependent, and vary with both parameters. 19
Aggressiveness is often supposed to impose hugh constraints on political arrangements. But
there is little substance to the claim that humans are naturally aggressive independently of social
or cultural setting. The most that appears clear is that circumstances can be arranged, for
instance through crowding or provocation or cultural relocation, where peoples of more familiar
cultures will become aggressive^ — and perhaps people of other cultures will not, but will just
give up, as people often do in the face of immense brutality. Certainly some arrangements are
required to cope with or suitably isolate aggression, but these can be of a wide range of
alternative types. Once again, what is normally accounted human nature depends upon and
varies with culture and environment, which people often shortsightedly see as fixed: certainly,
such components as selfishness, cooperativeness, individuality do.
What is often much more important than either culture or nature in determining social
arrangements is another factor: namely, outside control or imposition. Whatever social
arrangements have evolved in a region (through local "nature and culture") can be overridden,
A striking illustration of environmental variation is afforded by the differences between savannah
dwelling and forest dwelling tribes of baboons. For a local illustration, consider Maori approaches to
war (like war conventions, a social phenomenon), before European corruption. Thus Best reports
that 'an individual, or a whole clan, might decline to take part in an engagement on account of some
evil omen, and such an action would be approved of (p.15). There are several, apparently reliable,
stories of Maoris engaged in war supplying the opposition with equipment or ammunition, or
temporarily abandoning their fighting effort to help out the other (British) side, so the battle could
proceed properly.
20Wilson's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an invalid move: he looks at the
behaviour of Semai men when 'taken out of their nonviolent society' by recruitment in a British
colonial army (p.100)! As well, Wilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of innateness, and a
low redefinition of aggressiveness to take in form of mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.99-100).
19
11
and new arrangements imposed, in one way or another. With long-standing arrangements,
imposition is almost invariably from without, and the changes in arrangements typically involve
either violence in their adaption or mass migration of people or both. In the last two hundred
years, especially, the South Pacific has, like much of the newer world, been drastically so
affected, in a complex way. And the changes, still flowing strongly from the North, continue.
We are in the last days of the destruction of old cultures, and the destruction is now to a
considerable extend by more subtle cultural, economic and technological means than the cruder
methods of slightly earlier times. Outside control can be exercised, or occur, in many ways less
blatant than direct intervention of one sort or another, such as through introduction of new
technologies, economic sanctions, monetary and loan policies, etc., as well as through
exchange and training programs, textbooks, advertising and magazines, film and television (i.e.
through physical exemplifications of culture). European peoples in the South pacific are often
unwittingly, part of this quieter process of cultural conversion and erosion; but many of us are
now victimes as well as, or rather than, perpetrators (cf. Crough and Wheelwright).
Human communities have been — and many still are — as insensitive to other human
cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness American and their allies in Vietnam).
Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed, or pushed beyond redemption. This is
sufficiently well-known. Yet the creation of political disaster areas proceeds apace — in blatant
cases typically by disruption of culture and lifestyle using violence^ There is furthermore,
where recovery is possible at all, a long recovery period, perhaps sometimes of the order of
human generations. Yet there is increasing production of these politically contaminated regions,
especially through imperialism, e.g. USA in Central America, Israel in Lebanon, Russia in
Afghanistan, Indonesia in East Timor and West papua, etc.
In the south Pacific, there are many quieter Northern influences at work, but the strongest
now is unquestionably the American. American companies, businessmen, academics, tourists
and warships, their technology and patents, films and television programs, are the most evident
and influential. There can be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the newer
cultural and economic imperialism, behind endeavours such as the American to install their "free
enterprise" philosophy and practice everywhere. 22 Granted it mostly contributes to American
economic supremacy, to American business23 and to the transfer of substantial regional wealth
and surplus value to the USA. But national economic reasons are not the only sort of reasons
21
22
23
These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off like those infected by communicable disease, but
from continuing disruptive, outside interference.
What is said about American cultural and political imperialism applies, with adaption, in a lesser
way, to imperialism and colonialism by other nation-states such as USSR, Britian, France and
Indonesia. USA has no monopoly on imperialism. US imerialism in the third world is in part
documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman.
Though not invariably as the experience with the Japanese motor industry has indicated.
12
such policies are pursued; apart from the side-issue of integrity, that many Americans really do
believe in the optimality of their local ideals to the exclusion of other arrangements, there are
deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological reasons as well.
The imperialistic endeavours can be underpinned by a J^cripftve assumption that all
human nature is at bottom really like American human nature, for instance highly economically
oriented. Thus, but for political distortions (a political analogue of economic externalities) and
lack of technological means, other peoples would choose the American (political and economic)
way: they simply have not really been given the opportunity or means. For many peoples this
is simply not true; for most other cultures let us hope, or pray, that this is not the case.
Alternatively, or as well, a more arrogant prescriptive assumption may be at work, that all
human nature ought to be like American nature at its best, because America not only has the best
way of life in the world and mostly the best ways of doing things^, but has a special hold on
rationality. The free-enterprise system (perhaps with representative democracy American-style
tackedon) is the rational enterprise embodied. Certainly the system is sometimes peddled, by
genuine believers in the American way, with the same evangelism as Christianity, which was
often seen and presented as the rational religion, at least before science got at it. Well, science
hasn't got at the free-enterprise religion yet, but on the contrary now has a social division
heavily devoted to its justification and furtherance.^ However some philosophy has got at the
system, sufficiently to reveal that it is no unique embodiment of rationality — there is none such
— but is a decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances. Thus, it is especially irrational if
local goals are to preserve local environments and cultures, as much experience helps attest.
It is aspects of the false descriptive assumption, and what can emerge with its rejection,
that are a main focus in what follows (though various of the reasons for rejecting the
prescriptive assumption will also emerge or get recorded). An important underlying theme will
24
25
Thus, for example, American agricultural textbooks and agricultural spokespeople are fond of
announcing that American agriculture is the best in the world; similarly for environmental
protection, forestry, technology, university education, and so on. But since they are the best, it is
evident that these American ways should be exported, isn't it? Even granting the large assumptions,
No, firstly, because that is to neglect important regional and local variations and differences, and
secondly because these ways may interfere with other significant features of reginal life or culture.
It has not passed unremarked that the high standard of material life in USA depends in part on a very
fortunate inheritance (e g. some of the best and deepest soils) and in part, as in Europe, on a lower
standard of life and conditions elsewhere, upon siphoning off wealth and especially resources (US
currently uses about one-fifth of world resources and 30% of world energy) from other regions. To be
sure, economic apologetics proffer other explanations of American transcendence, e.g. ingenious
constuctions like that of Olson, built on a sandy logic of economic actors collectively locked into
economically determined arrangements, substantially independent of the resource base.
In elaborating on how modem societies control their citizens, Foucaul has explained various
extensive types of social control exercised and licensed through received social sciences, by way of
approved standards of normality, health, stability, adequacy, rationality, etc.: See Phil p.15.
13
continue to be that neither broader nor basic human nature is a single stable thing, but varies
substantially in ways that are highly political relevant — relevant to the sort of political
framework a society adopts. In freer societies, less imposed upon from outside or above, the
variation can be largely accounted for through cultural variation (which in tum depends on
environment, etc.). The alternative assumptions, are then, those of cultural pluralism, that
culture is part of "nature", shaping in particular local human nature. Of course once again
"human nature" can be pared back and back to try to remove cultural variations; but in this way
what are taken to be important superbiological features of human nature for political theory are
also excised (e.g. features that make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies come out
one way rather than another).
Just as different cultures can mean different social arrangements, so in a larger setting
they can imply different political organisation and different political directions. Where requisite
differences do not occur, because incongrous arrangements have been imposed, ca/tMra/
can
a powcr/hZ /brcc ybr change. Likewise developing elements of cultural
difference can be a potent base for social change — or resistance to imposed change —
(especially, in communities where other more orthodox bases for change, such as economic
incentives or penalties, have become inoperative or failed, or are not available.
Culture is however a double-edged instrument, not only to be used, but resisted. For
example, though leading [valuable] features of indigenous Pacific cultures are to be reactivated,
as forces for change, some features of these cultures are to be resisted (such as male
domination), along with many features of modern Western cultures. Features of culture are
thus used to resist and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sorces of culture; such as,
inequitable political arrangements, excessive consumerism, persuasive advertising media and
loaded news systems, hollow suburbia, alienating job structures, etc. It is important not only to
build and design alternatives — for which elements of local culture afford a solid foundation —
but also to dismantle, and build up resistance against, prime sources of antagonistic culture.
This is as true for American culture as Antipodean. One of the chief reasons why mainstream
American culture is so individualistic, so competitive, so violent, and so forth, is that
movements offering or encouraging alternatives have been repressed by the dominant
corporations and the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein).
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/ssues fa wef/todo/ogy. Many of the prevailing sins of philosophy are writ large in
political philosophy.; Redefinitions, and redefinitional -otolJgies to try to close gappy
arguments, abound. Large assumptions are imported and regularly used, without due notice,
or too often any awareness: particularly pernicious are those of individualism and atomism, and
of thoroughgoing egoism. It hardly needs stressing that such assumptions are environmentally
unfriendly, at best,
w,
—-— —
* /%&1L ^p&enoMienon o/ excessive sfrengt/i. There is a deeply embedded in modern mainstream
intellectual aedvity and strikingly manifest in polidcal theory.
2
y"
;
''r&c-r/KA *
One reason is that much of it is done by poiitical 6,..Is with no adequate grounding in logic or critical
thinking.
A general feature of contemporary thought, as of much contemporary technology and
practice, is that of over-powering or of excessive strength. The phenomenon, as exhibited in
contemporary mainstream logic, where it shows up in excessive assumptions, and principles
more powerful than reason can justify, is dis^assesed elsewhere (from the perspective of
relevant logic, in RLR). Some of the same unwarranted assumptions, notably those of invariant
consistency and maximization, reach far beyond stock logical theory to apply, so it is regularly
claimed, to all rational practice, including political decision-making and obstitutional
arrangements (see MR).
Analogous features are incorporated in many of the arguments against anarchism. For
example, it is argued that anarchism cannot realise optimal delivery of public goods, ideal
conditions for this or that (e.g. free market functioning, capital formation and flow), and so on.
Not only do other alternatives not measure up to these standards (certainly prevailing
arrangements fall very far short), the standards themselves are quite excessive. Instead it is
enough that certain sorts of adequacy standards are met, that reasonable thresholds are
achieved. There is a most important corollary: that arguments against anarchism or anarchistic
institutional arrangement which assume maximizing principles or the like (as are presumed in
Prisoners Dilemma arguments, game theory, mainstream economics, etc.) are flowed from the
very outset, and should be set aside.
A central time in anarchism offers a somewhat different display of the excess
phenomenon. The issue concerns alleged justifications of the state, or state-like institutions.
Here all that reason and argument appear to warrant are much less powerful institutions, not
arrangements with the excessive powers of the state. To close the gap between what argument
and practice appear to justify and what the state claims, some opportunistic intellectuals have
tried, rather ^".^..^to redefine the state. But such low redefinitions, while imposing states on
societies that operated without them, leaves the contemporary state be^ereft of adequate
justification. In brief, such intellectual strategies lead from the frying pan to the fire.
So it is similarly with institutions within the state, such as property and law. Reason and
argument do not justify state property arrangements, only an opportunistically redefined
"property" which does not fulfil the same state and capitalistic role. Similarly with law and
state legal systems.
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NQRK4-N&-5RAFT
CULTURE AND THE ROOTS OF POLITICAL DIVERGENCE:
a South Pacific perspective
the Austral ian/American contrast
major
A
Political
change
industrial
of
-Function
in
in
regulate
and
control
and political divergence
principle then,
features of local and regional culture.
the
to
is
the South Pacific,
can,
North,
culture
be grounded in and
change. 1
from
the
powered
by
One organising theme, a corollary of
facilitates the transition from principle to practice:- It
argument,
is
that the requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality
is
for
there,
South Pacific region (and Australia
the
particular)
in
to
proceed in a very different social and political direction from the North (and
from
USA in particular).
the
American arrangements,
unsatisfactoriness of
the
2
in many frequently exposed respects , such a different
Given the radical
direction is worth taking - if it can be.
serious problem in the nay of
a
But
arrangements,
from outside or from above.
change is imposition of
And,
political
since imposition shades into
this is
only one of the obstacles impeding change in the
South Pacific and elsewhere.
Another forcing more and more peoples, no longer
political pressure,
sheltered
by geographical isolation,
arrangements
of
socio-political
is supposed to derive from human nature itself.
Free people are
economic people,
into the same type
in pretty much the American mould,
this route, economic imperialism can replace political
1.
Nature,
theory
- one
culture,
to
which
and control.
so it
is
By
claimed.
imperialism.
A supposedly,key question in political
we are said to have no satisfactory'' answer
in
the
absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) - is .his:
1.
Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30.
2.
For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers.
1
*
7%-
To
extent does human nature allow tor alternative political and
what
arrangements? Or, to turn the question around:-
in
virtue
of
the
nature
of
possibilities?
How does that
much-promoted
Anglo-American
Enlightenment,
is
controls,
become)
from
or
superstition,
answer,
people
broad
range
directly
taboos and
(and
6
from
descended
are essentially
but for their
will
the
tribal
generally
shortage
information
of
free people are basically economic
people.
that is to replace one ideology by another.
ideology is no longer so
Enlightenment
political
of
(properly) concerned with maximising their
that is,
interests;
As ought now to be evident,
the
the
that once freed from systems of myths,
technical know-how),
(including
on
What restrictions are imposed
"nature" reduce the organisational options?
self-centred individuals,
gain
own
humans
social
evident:
what
But
recommends
it?
Under pressure of this sort, the Anglo-American answer gets transformed to the
that the economic picture of human nature is superior,
theme
rational
creatures.
and fitting
That 'self-appointed West European superiority
*
turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and the Romantics.
has
of
in
Fortunately,
however, the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided
For all
these questions and answers presuppose, to begin
with, a certain
misplaced essential ism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human
beings,
which
such
exactly
separates humans from other
creatures.
suitably constant and invariant
5
necessary and sufficient conditions , are legion. They are
specify
an
essence,
Attempts
and
given
to
by
a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. All men are the same
because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and the avoidance of
pain). These drives will operate independently of any location.
Chief among those drives was that towards self-preservation - Holbach,
for instance, stipulates:
we .shall
call
nature in man the collection of properties and
qualities which constitute him what he is, which are inherent
.o
his species, which distinguish him from other animal
species ur
which he has in common with them ... every man feels,
thinks,
3.
These people are also picked out under various alternative (but
strictly equivalent)
descriptions, e.g. as acquisitive m i?i ua s,
possessive individuals.
acts and seeks his own well-being at all times,
these are^
kilties and property thet constitute human nature ... o.
But th,, attempt at essenti.list defin.ti.n of human nature fail,,
in a quite
A, -t stands, th. d.dtniti.n is inadequate; tor net a!)
*c
yo<
/
humans seek just their o<an ujeii-being always; .ssome ar. altruistic, s<xne have
characterrst-c ^y.
other commitment,.
to
ego-sm,
by
replacing
rendering such internal
examples
suppose
Hoover,
uell-being-
egoism analytic.
(such a, human vegetables,
definition,
replacing
every
definition 1, again inadequate;
example,
avoid such tamtl.ar counter.ostance,
by
say
broad
m.ll-being',
And suppose to avoid other counter
morons and th. like),
man' by
thus
every normal human'.
^normalise
the
then
the
But
tor it fails to distinguish humans from, for
It applies equally to dolphin nature or, for that matter,
dolphins.
to aori11 a nature.
Of
4.
course
the
definition can again be patched,
by
appealing
to
the
(From previous page)
See Berry, p.30ff., from whom the quote is taken,
It
is worth spelling out a little the extent of agreement and
disagreement with Herder. Nhat is applauded is
1.
'Herder's dismissal
dismissal of
of the
the Enlightenment's
Enlightenment's conception
conception of human nature
as static, acultural and ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but no^
that 'each culture
... should be
31.
Herder's cultural relativism,
t judged by some faulty perspective such
treated on its own merits and no! .
"nature' (p.30), or from any other perspective.
In the
as
la belle
p.u,77^^k
of th. text ("huh presupposes PPP),
a good many
pluralistic cross-cultural judgements are made and defended.
Order's relativisation of human nature to culture,
and embodiment
32.
Herder s relafivisatio
through language that human nature
of it in culture; for example,
it is
Mi th
* 32).
(p
can be seen to be specifically embodied in culture'
but
theoretical
point;
relativisation the notion loses its original
same
cultural nature is open to many of the
ojhile failing in this role,
Nor can language bear the weight
sorts of objections as human nature.
Herder loads upon it.
A
it is speech and with that reason
Herder's human chauvinism:
33.
Man can choose, man
is king'
that differentiates man.
and freedom,
can choose, communicate, solve puzzles,
<
<=Hrn^^s
(p.36).
1Wild animals are free, ---- -----) out elementary reasoning;
m these ^^=-7
;
and carryand many other humans. Furthermore, 33 gets Herder into serious
chi 1dren
trouble, not to say inconsistency, with 1.
5.
6.
drying on Nittg.nste.n,
Abraham,
essence, p.23ff.
Berry p.17.
Berry supplies severa
pre^nt, Just these condition, for an
1 other similar examples.
cluster of -features that separate humans from other mammals or
anatomical
the
biological specification of homo sapiens.
But the resulting
to
normalised
definition,
with its analytical egoism, does little more than such biological
definitions
of
human:
it does not supply a nature,
deliver
not
does
it
The notion of human
superbiological
features of political relevance.
thus fragments:
into the satisfactory enough biological notion of human,
an
unsatisfactory
superbiological (or sociobiological)
and
of
that
addition^
The Romantics
What is this further, problematic, nature?
nature or essence.
nature
can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from culture,
cultural
off
Peeling
only local nature (Herder's term) which coincides with culture.
excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves,
liKe
Wittgenstein's artichoke, nothing.
of human nature is a theoretical item,
The notion
cultural variability,
amid
stabi1i ty
but designed as wel 1
particular
type
everywhere
else.
of
7
fashionj;
fact
and
that
received,
not,
the
introduced to
a constant bulwark against
to justify ^as natural or, failing that,
political
economy and legislature, and
provide
relativism,
as superior^
its
imposi t i on
such
Tlsf?s resilient notion has been widely applied in
i
is not so easily dissolved,
notion
by one illustration.
is wri tten large in much
political
but is defective,
3
However the
theory,
the embedding theory is sound.
does not show that it or
a
and
is
Hnd it is
and in its socio-political selectivity it is,
as the
a piece with human chauvinism (which would
assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the ecological
scheme
of things).
under
7.
. the superbiological notion of human nature begins to dissol\
*
A
any attempt to set it down,
in much the way that attempts supporting
Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western cultur^
everywhere,
later emphasised by Bentham. 'The Legislator, lowing t
human nature is ever the same [different countries do not have
catalogues of pleasure and pain], can reform the laws and even transplan
them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18).
namrg. This is a theoretical notion which has been used for multifarious
reforious, social and political purposes. Typically the notion has been deployed in a effort toy
i
.7"& $ 11T
A
enforce various restrictive types of social arrangements, archie ones (including defence foc^s,
to
chauvinism
human
humans
that
there
ethically
something
about
special
humans
The notion of human nature - a nature or essence for alj_
disintegrate.
only
down
set
(some special classes of humans excepted perhaps)
are
stable or constant social
some
- presupposes
holding
features
and
for
all
across different cultures, which are furthermore distinctively human
peoples,
features.
peoples
The
is
presupposition fails,
fully
characteristics
taken
remain,
because once cultural variation between
into account,
which
some
only
furthermore
are
rather
shared
by
trivial
shared
various
animal
cultures, such as those of primates.
Consider,
books,
or
historical
first,
such
products or tools of more literary cultures as
of contemporary cultures as telephones and computers.
cultures
lacked
such items,
their
possession
or
Since
most
distribution
obviously cannot figure as part of what marks out human nature. Consider next,
what are commonly taken to be key components of (human) nature, certain
then,
basic human needs,
such as food and shelter.
free of cultural and environmental
as required in the way of shelter,
place to place.
of
ways,
common
under
8.
These requirements are far from
determinants.
For look at what is regarded
and how it varies from culture to culture,
(And even what is taken as basic can often be met in a myriad
though acceptably in some cultures only in a few fixed
ways.)
denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort of
more extreme conditions - a requirement also of wombats.
The
shelter
The situation
This claim concerning human chauvinism is argued in detail in EE. But the
claim concerning human nature is only sketchily defended in the ex -or
the alleged social-arrangement-dictating features of human nature,
like
similar alleged features of economic or technological
determinism, are
rather major obstacles to be removed - especially insofar as they
supposedly severely and inevitably restrict the character of
u ure
societies - than the main business of the present enterprise.
Fortunately then the claim,
that the superbiological notion of human
nature is a defective theoretical one which dissolves,
is defende
elsewhere: not only, in effect, in work of Romantics from Herder on, but
also in significant recent literature. Foucault, for example, can be read
as saying
*
that human nature is an invention of the Enlightenment which
dissolves: "his much discussed ... dissolution of man is nothing more, or
less,
than the claim that
the attempt to establish order upon a
scientific understanding of human nature is both profoundly mistaken an
profoundly unstable" (Philp, p.15, italics added).
5
with
1-ood,
sex,
and
so on,
considerably from race to race,
by
many
people
is hardly better.
vary
Europeans for example being very inefficient
tribal standards and unable to survive satisfactorily where tribal
9
flourish.
figain the somewhat
trivial
lowest common denominator
applies also to various groups of animals.
human
requirements
Dietary
by some more complex list of jointly necessary
nature
conditions,
Nor are attempts to mark out
more
or
loosely
by a cluster of natural
and
features,
the
sufficient
more
much
successful, or of direct political application without the importation of what
is culturally at issue - values.
In any case, such vague and general
impose little constraint at all on apolitical
emerge
direction,
lists as
since
a
variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings.
Accordingly,
political
theory,
human
nature
as such is not an
important
constraint
on
or a theory of human nature a key ingredient in endeavours
11
work out a political philosophy or political directions
to
.
The reason is
the reason that determining the conditions for the good life would
like
not
impose a satisfactory constraint on a political theory, namely presupposition
12
failure.
Like the meaning of life ,
the good life fails to demarcate a
single
'?.
thing;
there
are many styles of good lives.
So too there
is
human
The
converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight
on European diets. At another level, consider the Maori attitude to, and
underlying revulsion by, cooked food: see Alpers, p.7-9.
10. For one such list, which however requires pruning and adjustment, see
Nilson, p.22. As it happens, Wilson does not make anything much of this
list (which does not supply necessary conditions), immediately presents a
parallel
list for insect societies - a list which does considerable
damage to more traditional claims about human nature - and then proceeds
in effect
to demolish main criteria that have been used to separate
humans from animals and to restrict cultures to human societies <e.a.
p. 39) .
For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human
nature for social and political ends, see Appendix 2.
11.
Which is perhaps as well, since we still have so little reliable and
unprejudiced information as to what "human nature" amounts to, what its
variational possibilities, in different environments, might be, or of the
possibilities beyond past terrestrial selections of cultures.
12.
On which see Routley and Griffin.
and human nature,
nature
depending on the culture or social paradigm and
on
Nature, both human and not, varies with culture and environment.
the setting.
there is no unique stable superbiological
Because of this two-way dependence,
human nature.
of
corollary
6
rejection also,
across races and tribes,
The picture is flawed in much the same way,
the
on
top.
culture affects local nature.
as the familiar picture of
then,
consisting of given uninterpreted sense data,
as
is
with culture as a variable
There is no such culturally invariant division:
perception,
nature
of the usual picture of nature as given, as a
as misleading,
notion
stable
the dissolution of the notion of human
stable
across
(normal) perceivers, with interpretation imposed on the neutral data.
Nor therefore is culture something that can be creamed off the top, so to
find real human features or basic nature
to
speak,
Certainly,
underneath.
cultures can be destroyed; however what results from removal by destruction of
a culture is not something closer to real people,
culture.
So
organisation
but people with a destroyed
it is also with attempts like Hobbes or Rawls to peel
off
in order to locate in a
the the top,
political
quasi-analytical
or
quasi-historical way, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised
state
or
other.
A
flawed picture,
derived from mistaken
or
questionable
presuppositions, is assumed.
Nhat will be found underneath, or in the original
(natural) state, is, it
is usually conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the view to be developed
with the
explained
the
and
culture's
right values very fortunately in-built.
is
privileged
image
position of some
of itself,
and
status quo -
elements of the
as well
dominant
as
a
Northern
be
serves
for
economic man,
7
dominant
social
hardly surprisingly, that
fully competitive possessive individualism (much the same model,
which
to
or justified is something like present socio-political arrangements
paradigm - underlying human nature turns out to be,
of
Given that what
for Enlightenment man,
for
the
that is,
rational
myths,
The myth of unique human nature functions,
etc.)
person",
perpetuate
to
other
tike many
or instit particular social arrangements
special
and
pr ivi1ege.
Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths,
myths
the
predominantly
rational)
all
of
humans
(normal)
self-interested
- to
bring
maximizers
no firm starting point in human nature,
myths.
aggressive
(at
least
some of the myths bound
in
urban-industrial humans.
contemporary
as
individuals
as
they
are
Mi th
the
image
of
up
As there is no underlying hard ground,
associated
so there is none in these
The South Pacific Mas, and remains, rich in cultures Mhich upset these
of
the
Melanesians,
Polynesians
None
aboriginal
peoples
comprised societies of individually-oriented
after
especially,
lifestyles and
strongly communal
their
to
a loM sufficiency threshold had been reached,
source of criticism from the
repeated
preparedness
European cultures
Australian
or
myths.
and
as
insofar
associated
indeed
and
maximizers;
Mork
stop,
Mas a major
that
came
to
dominate the region.
forms and types of
Even
aggressiveness,
and approaches to
Mar,
often
taken to be solid ground, are culture and environment dependent, and vary Mi th
13
both
parameters .
Aggressiveness is often supposed to impose
huge
constraints
on political
arrangements.
But there is little substance to the
claim that humans are naturally aggressive independently of social or cultural
setting.
for
13.
The most that appears
instance
clear is that circumstances can be
through croMding or provocation or cultural
arranged,
relocation,
Mhere
A striking illustration of environmental variation is afforded by the
differences betMeen savannah dMelling and forest dMelling tribes of
baboons.
For a local illustration, consider Maori approaches to Mar
(like Mar conventions, a social phenomenon), before European corruption.
Thus Best reports that 'an individual, or a Mhole clan, might decline to
take part in an engagement on account of some evil omen,
and such an
action Mould be approved of' (p.15).
There are several, apparently
reliable, stories of Maoris engaged in Mar supplying the opposition Mith
equipment or ammunition, or temporarily abandoning their fighting effort
to help out the other (British) side, so the battle could proceed
properly.
8
14
of
peoples
cultures will become aggressive
familiar
more
but Mill just give up,
people of other cultures Mill not,
in the face of immense brutality.
types.
depends
upbn
Once
shortsightedly
again,
as fixed:
see
as people often do
but these can be of a Mide range of
Mhat is normally
accounted
varies Mi th culture and environment,
and
perhaps
Certainly some arrangements are required to
cope Mi th or suitably isolate aggression,
alternative
- and
certainly,
such
nature
people
Mhich
components
human
as
often
selfishness,
cooperativeness, individuality do.
What
much more important than either culture or nature
is
determining social arrangements is another factor:
social
Whatever
imposition.
one
May or another.
from
invariably
namely, outside control or
arrangements have evolved in a
local^nature and cultureican be overridden,
through
region
and neM arrangements imposed,
With long-standing arrangements,
Mithout,
imposition
is
and the changes in arrangements typically
the South Pacific has,
especially,
in
almost
involve
either violence in their adaption or mass migration of people or both.
last tMO hundred years,
in
In the
like much of the
been drastically so affected, in a complex May. And the changes,
neMer world,
still flowing strongly from the North, continue.
We
are
in the last days of the destruction of
old
and
cultures,
destruction is now to a considerable extent by more subtle cultural,
and
technological
Outside
direct
control can be exercised,
economic sanctions,
film
and
television (i.e.
economic
earlier
times.
in many ways less blatant
such as through introduction
monetary and loan policies,
as through exchange and training programs,
magazines,
14.
or occur,
intervention of one sort or another,
new technologies,
well
means than the cruder methods of slightly
textbooks,
through physical
the
etc.,
advertising
than
of
as
and
exemplifications of
Wilson's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an
invalid move: he looks at the behaviour of Semai men when taken out of
their nonviolent society'' by recruitment in a British colonial
army
(p.100)!
As well, Wilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of
innateness, and a low redefinition of aggressiveness to take in forms of
mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.99-100).
9
process of cultural conversion and erosion;
this quieter
are
unwittingly, part
European peoples in the South Pacific are often
culture).
or rather than,
victims as well as,
now
but many of
perpetrators (cf.
US
and
Crough
Wheelwright).
Human
communities
have been
and many still are
as
to
insensiti
other human cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness Americans
Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed,
and their allies in Vietnam).
pushed
creation
political
of
typically
This is
beyond redemption.
disaster
sufficiently
apace
areas proceeds
where
is possible at all,
recovery
a
sometimes of the order of human generations.
production
of
imperial ism,
- in
these politically
e.g.
USA
in
contaminated
Central America,
long
blatant
cases
There
recovery
is
period,
Yet there is increasing
regions,
Israel
the
Yet
disruption of cultu-e and lifestyle using violence.
by
-fur thermore,
perhaps
well-known.
in
especially
Lebanon,
through
Russia
in
Afghanistan, Indonesia in East Timor and West Papua, etc.
In the South Pacific, there are
but
the
strongest now is unquestionably the
businessmen,
films
can
many quieter Northern influences at work,
academics,
American.
American
companies,
tourists and warships, their technology and patents,
are the most evident and influential.
and television programs,
be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the
newer
There
cultural
behind endeavours such as the American
16
Granted it
everywhere
.
their "free enterprise
*
philosophy and practice
17
to American business
and
mostly contributes to American economic supremacy,
and
economic imperialism,
These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off li.e
by communicable disease,
but from continuing disruptive,
infec ted
outside
in ter-ference.
What is said about American cultural and political imperialism applies,
with adaption,
in a lesser way,
to imperialism and colonialism by other
nation-states such as USSR, Britain, France and Indonesia.. USA
L.. has no
in
the
third
world
is in part
monopoly on imperialism. US imperialism i......... documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman.
Though
not md.riaMy a. th. experience "ith the Japanese ctor industry
has indicated.
10
to
the transfer of substantia! regional wealth and surplus value to the
But
national economic reasons &re not the only sort of reasons such
are
pursued;
apart
from the side-issue of integrity,
really do believe in the optimality of their local
USA.
policies
Americans
that many
ideals to the exclusion
of
other arrangements, there are deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological
reasons as Mel 1.
imperialistic
The
assumption
that
(a
distortions
technological
economic)
means.
can
be
underpinned
all human nature is at bottom really
instance highly economically oriented.
for
nature,
endeavours
political
means,
May:
they
by
American
like
Thus,
descr i pt ive
a
human
but for political
analogue of economic externalities)
and
lack
other peoples Mould choose the American (political
simply have not really been given the
For many peoples this is simply not true;
of
and
opportunity
or
for most other cultures let
us hope, or pray, that this is not the case. Alternatively, or as Mell, a more
arrogant
prescriptive assumption may be at Mork,
that all human nature ought
to be like American nature at its
best, because America not only has the best
18
May of life in the Morld and mostly the best Mays of doing things
, but has
a
special
hold
on rationality.
The free-enterprise
representative democracy American-style tacked on)
18.
system
(perhaps
is the rational
Mith
enterprise
Thus, for example, American agricultural textbooks and agricultural
spokespeople are fond of announcing that American agriculture is the best
in the Morld;
similarly for environmental
protection,
forestry,
technology, university education, and so on.
But since they are the
best,
it is evident that these American Mays should be exported,
isn't
it? Even granting the large assumptions, No, firstly, because that is to
neglect important regional and local variations and differences,
and
secondly because these Mays may interfere Mith other significant features
of regional life or culture.
It has not passed unremarked that the high standard of material life in
USA depends in part on a very fortunate inheritance (e.g. some of
the
best and deepest soils) and in part, as in Europe, on a loMer standard of
life and conditions elseMhere, upon siphoning off Meal th and especially
resources (US currently uses about one-fifth of Morld resources and 30 X
of Morld energy) from other regions.
To be sure, economic apologetics
proffer other explanations of American transcendence, e.g.
ingenious
constructions like that of Olson, built on a sandy logic of economic
actors collectively
locked into economically determined arrangements,
substantially independent of the resource base.
by genuine believers in
bridled
Certainly the system is sometimes peddl
,
embodied.
which Mas often
with the same evangelism as Christianity,
American way,
the
at least before science got at
rational
religion,
as the
seen and presented
yet, but on the
got at the free-enterprise religion
hasn't
i t. MeH, science
justification and
division heavily devoted to its
contrary now has a social
sufficiently to
19
philosophy has got at the system,
furtherance.
However some
_
tp,t it is no unique embodiment of rationality - there -s none sue
reveal
decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances.
is
but
a
preserve local
environments
end
if local goals are to
irrational
especial ly
Thus,
cultures, as much experience helps attest.
is aspects of
tt
with
false descriptive
and what can
assumption,
.what follows (though various of
are a main focus in
rejection,that
th. prescripts, assumption Mill .'so -.rg. °r 9^
its
the reasons for rejecting
underlying theme Mil! continue to be
An
recorded).
nor
broader
emerge
basic
human
.
nature
is
a
single
in
substantially
sort of political framework a society adopts. In
outside
cultural
nei ther
important
ways that are highly political
upon *from
that
or above, the variation can be
variation
<Mhich
turn
in
depends
stable
thing,
varies
but
the
to
relevant - relevant
freer societies, less imposed
largely accounted for through
The
environment,etc).
on
those of cuitura! pluralism, that culture
alternative
assumptions,
are then,
..cal human nature. Of course once
is part of "nature",
"human nature"
again
^nations-,
but
shaping in particular
can be pared back and back to try to
m this way what are taken to be
remove
important
superbi ologi c a
*
matures of human nature for political theory are also excised (e.g
that
make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies
cu1tura'
feature
one way
rathe
than another).
1?.
in
elaborating on h.M
has
explained
^"soc'ial"control
various extensile typ
p. 15.
12
exercised
py^.y of approved
Just as dttterent cultures can.mean different social arrangements,
so tn
, larger setting they can imply different political organisation and different
directions.
political
incongrous
Where
requisite differences
had.
arrangements
been imposed,
do
not
occur,
because
cultural differences can
b.^.
nnuerful force for change. Lihemse d^.loping elements of cultural difference
can
a potent base for social change - or resistance to imposed
be
in communities inhere other more orthodox
(especially)
a, economic mcertioes or penalties,
have
bases for change,
become inoperative or
-
change
such
tailed,
or
used,
but
are not avaitable.
Culture is hotter a double-edged instrument,
For
resisted.
though
example,
leading
not only to be
of
[valuable] features
indigenous
Pacific cultures are to be reactivated, as forces for change, some features of
these cultures are to be resisted (such as male domination),
features
modern Western cultures.
of
along mth
used
Features of culture are thus
and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sources
resist
many
to
culture;
of
such as, inequitable political arrangements, excessive consumerism, persuasive
advertising
media and loaded news systems,
structures,
etc.
for
culture.
chief
build
and
competi tive
encouraging
culture afford a solid foundation - but also
prime sources of
up resistance against,
is as true for American culture as Antipodean.
This
reasons
alienating
^hy
so
job
build and design alternatives
It is important not only to
which elements of local
dismantle,
holloa suburbia,
mainstream American culture
violent,
and
so
forth,
is
is
that
so
to
antagonistic
One
of
the
ndividualistlc,
so
offering
or
movements
alternatives have been repressed by the dominant corporations and
the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein).
2.
The
Why work with such an unfavourable contrast case as Australian—^iety^
regional and environmental orientation.
cultural variation and their force for change,
contrast
than
US
In defence of theme.
for instance Melanesian culture.
13
g
it Mould no doubt be easier to
culture with some other culture which diverges
Australian culture,
<_on-_
more
Or,
strikingly
differe
y,
ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL PLURALLISM
*
Let us begin by sketching, in summary form, what political pluralism was, and then
explaining what it becomes under contemporary plurallism, ecopluralism in particular. These
new pluralisms, while they differ markedly from former political pluralsm, undoubtedly can
build upon it
Political pluralism used to be a theory viewing social life in terms of groups, which were
said to be the priwMry .s*oc/o/
On this theory, an individual's primary allegiance is not to
any abstract government but to groups, unions, clubs, churches. Thus there is no absolute
necessity for a highly unified political or legal order - whence developed a critical stance
towards the state and towards sovereignty among somg pluralists and so elements of anarchistic
pluralism.
There was, however, no systematic theory of political pluralism (a further anarchistic
feature). The position (and both British and American pluralism, however different) were
unified not by any doctrine but by crinco/ response to growth of the state.
A major theme was, and remains, moderate
(as further explained in EP). Humans
are neither isolated atoms, nor components of centralised states, but social creatures who
function in crisscrossing groups of their own choice. Moreover, groups are genuine objects
with choices, capacities, purposes, etc.
Pluralist society respects and tries to reconcile diverse interests of humans without
thwarting them. Groups communicate via negotiation and the like; their operations are not
delegative from some higher authority.
Contemporary ecological pluralism takes over most of these scene setting features, but
emphasizes the communitarian bases, and expands the scope of communities and groups to
include
communities, which include creatures and systems other than humans. Perhaps
the best known example of such a mixed community is that, introduced by Naess and
elaborated by Devall (in 89) of a Norwegian community of bears and wolves, sheep and
humans (but earlier Leopold and other had offered examples of expanded communities). A
problem which group theory hides, perhaps deliberately, but which such communities at once
expose, is that of internal conflict. Conflict cannot be avoided even by going right down to
families or individuals; for as much conflict may be bottled up in a family or even in one
*
Early versions of the first section of these notes drew heavily on Vincent, TAeonej of
ytote. The text takes up the working draft of 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism: II.
Anarchistic pluralism'.
2
individual as in a small group. That is, there are no pure conflict-free atoms from which to
build up group or community structure.
Conflict within individuals is strikingly exhibited in certain sorts of schizopherenia. But
it happens also in many humans. On conflict issues, in dilemmatic situations, and similar, one
part of a person pulls in one direction, another part in another. Or, more accurately, because
often no such neat separation into directional components can be affected, there are inconsistent
allegiances, derives, drives. Under orthodox theory, it is presumed that such conflicts,
personal inconsistency, can be removed by artificial fragmentation. What happens in orthodox
social theory is that individuals are effectively broken down and whittled down, not without
significant.... . into iJca/ components — classical individuals — with properly organised
(duly transitive, etc.) preferences and coherent desires. While such idealization is alright for
limited theoretical purposes, let us not falsey imagine that it is adequate for a satisfactory social
theory. Let us not pretend that such thin classical individuals offer a saatisfactory model for
rich actual individuals.
Ecopluralism not only extends the group basis; like gontc contemporary pluralism, the
variety of positions and practices is also much expanded. Early political pluralism (so-called)
was far from advocating a plural variety. (Figgin, an early British pluralist, would have been
shocked at such a supposition: Vincent p.182.) A fairly narrow normative consensus was
assumed, e.g. Christian morality in British "pluralism", American political arrangements in
American "pluralism". Indeed several American "pluralists", political scientists from Bentley
on, erroneously "saw pluralism as a description of the American political system. In this usage,
pluralism moves into the area of interest group and pressure group theory' (Vincent p.183).
Herein lies the route to
p/ura/hwn: While the state may remain discredited as a unitary
order, it is now seen a complex multiple entity, which tried to incorporate and theorize diversity
of group life. In the American version, groups are seen as interested in reaching some kind of
bargain. Government policy is the outcome of group pressures. Government is alleged to seek
out some abstract national interest.
Public police is ...' the equilibrium reached in this struggle at any given
moment' .... Today's loser, it is blithely assumed, will be tomorrow's
winner.
Most American pluralists of this ilk assume that the contest between
groups will be fair and that there is some kind of lurking normative
consensus in the background. Certain types of behaviour are
presumably un-American. Practical politics, therefore, for the American
pluralist is about bargaining, compromise and trade-offs. There is no
normative appraisal of the State, but rather an gjtp/anation anJ partial/y %
yn^ti/icarion o/ wAat t/tgy ta%g to
actaa//y tAg ca^g in tAg qo/irica/
qrocc.y^g.y of the USA. Government is not an impartial umpire. It
reflects the dominant coalition on a particular policy — although it will
try to maintain some balance. ... In American pluralism a group is
simply a collection or aggregation of individuals acting in specific roles.
3
Most significantly the American pluralists were not concerned with any
normative account of the State as an institution or practice. They were
far more interested in examing, empirically, the effects of group
pressures on the actual activity of government (Vincent p.190 emphasis
added).
In even more degenerate Eastern European forms, pluralism comes down to some sort of
multi-party electoral arrangements;
plurality just amounts to many parties. Political
arrangements can however remain highly paternalistic and authoritarian. Because we are
interested in genuine free pluralisms, we shall leave these desperate terms behind.
EXTRA SPACE
Now consider the organisational possibilities for the Earth, i The Earth divides variously
into (geographical) regions; under ecological organisation the decomposition will be into
ecoregions. Those regions that are occupied will be occupied by structures of (mixed)
communities. The assumption that each occupied region is occupied by a single community is
too simple to account even for the present impoverished arrangements offering on Earth. Some
regions are occupied by communities of communities,
community structure so to
say.2 It seems unlikely that on Earth, given a suitable choice of regions, it is necessary to
ascend beyond communities of communities to third-order community structures. Thus for
each region it is appropriate to begin with the ancient ideal of a community of communities.
But of course there will be higher-order structure involved, such as regional federations of
regions, and federations of these federations, and so on and up. Call this organisational
structure, the Earth frame. This frame is not of course unique; there are many other ways, of
varying levels of adequacy, of unscrambling an organisational grid.
1
Off the Earth, in free logical space, case arrangements are wry much greater. Not only
can many terrestrial limitations be transcended, for instance with wiser creatures than
humans, and many fairer regions, but the interaction of regions can be avoided, so that,
for example, an intense dense industrial society need not transmit its pollution outside
its own borders, indeed in the right circumstances it need not be polluting at all. A
beginning is made in investigating this richer structure by Nozick, but even his useful
beginnings leave much to be desired, as brought out in UT.
2
Whether communities of communities amount just to communities will depend upon
the final characterisation of community, or what sort of members they can have and
the extent and character of the interrelations of their members. If communities were
mere set-like objects, it would be a matter of the transitivity of membership; but
obviously communities are more than mere sets, internal relations counting for much.
4
The frame selected is in fact intimately tied to real mundane arrangements. For the short
time that they survived state interference, the Spanish anarchistic communities coexisted and
coevolved in genuine pluralistic fashion (as Dolgoffs sympathetic description has revealed).
That is by no means the only occasion on which the old ideal of a community of communities
(communitas communitatorum) has achieved partial realisation, but is one of the better known
recent examples involving anarchistic communities in a limited geographic region - at a time in
world history when state domination of social life continues to break up communities and
impose a grey uniformity across former community diversity. But the concern here is not with
what is, with present depressing (but temporary) political realities, but with how things might
well be, with different and - no difficult feat - superior political arrangements, in particular
pluralist arrangements.
A recent picture of pluralistic political arrangements by Nozick supposedly allows for
virtually anarchistic communities within an overarching minarchic framework. It would seem a
simple matter to vary this picture, in particular, to weaken or strengthen the overarching
framework; and that indeed the system of Spanish communities (which of course did not
persist) weakened the minimum state arrangements in true anarchistic fashion to zero. Nozick
has however a complex (and also seriously flawed) argument that variations are without
justification, that political possibilities which can be justified are omc/t tighter than the wide
range of the logical possibilities would suggest.
A crucial early question once an Earth frame is untangled is, for each structural level:
what are the broad organising principles? Consider a more important case, the regional level.
Will the same broad principles reappear for each region? Only in a very tenuous fashion, if
such desiderata as regional diversity are to be given appropriate play. Naturally these had better
be included some procedure or other for conflict resolution where conflict is severe, but there is
a wide variety of procedures of very varying merit; some procedures or other for the numerous
issues that have to be dealt with to keep communities functioning, such as to take a sample of
issues, burying the dead, taking care of the indigent.
*
A crucial question, for each structural level,is: what are the broad organisational
principles? One working idea is that in the sort of organisational framework sought will enable
a mix of desiderata to be pushed over some far out natural thresholds. The comy desiderata
include liberal and environmental objectives, such as those of freedom, liberation. Life, liberty,
pursuit of happiness, etc.
3
Levels of organisation, by geographical region (functional with a that), local, small
ecoregion, large ecoregion, ... (old large state), continent - federations, world federation.
Direction of world reorganisation: to a plurality of possibilities, with different possibilities
in different regions. Cities for those who like them in the substantially ecologically destroyed
urban land recipes of the North. Etc.
Diversity is a prime desideratum. We should rgjoicc in Jhw-yity where it recurs, and
encourage ir where it does not, subject as always to certain constraints. In particular, then,
attempt to impose fashionable ideologies everywhere should be strongly resisted; this includes
religious faith and other gospels such as those of market capitalism and state socialism. Such
drives to unity and conformity, and intellectual monoculture, should be derailed. Evidently in
an interlinked system such as the Earth form, federal organisation should include arrangements
to block imposition of ideologies by expansive neighbours on other regions. (Included herein
are states; here is yet another reason for the abolition of states.)
Not to be encouraged, but opposed, are mc.MMnic ging/c-way movements, such as
messianic catholism, messianic communism, and messianic capitalism. These come with a
amvcrya/Mtic perspectic, and a single, allegedly universal set of values: they do not, unless
severely cut down in size, fit into a generous plurallism. Needless to say, these universalistic
(one-tuming) movements cannot rationally justify their practices. It can no more be established
that there is only one god with such and such properties (e.g. those ascribed to Allah under
Islam) than it can be established that there is only one logic; indeed the justificatory situation is
considerably worse (imagine the faithful chanting each day, facing one Cambridge or other,
"There is no logic but classical logic ..."; of course most Anglo-American philosophers are
committed to something like this in their philosophical practice, but they rarely recognise the
character of the commitment).
Note: Many of the economic objectives presented as absolute, are not merely dubious. They
are not intrinsic values, but merely instrumental, and instrumental to goals that a community
may not have. Leading examples of such objectives are efficiency, production.
Out of the same stable as broad monoculturalism, with its uniform urban systems,
universities, etc., is the method of consensus (or
one opinion, as it might as well
have been called). Consensus — unless severely limited, as for instance to argument on a
pluralistic structure — is anti-pluralistic. Nonetheless there can be consensus of a sort at one
remove, metaconsensus on one story, "agreement" to differ.
Limited agreement does however have its virtues in conflict resolution.
* To be sure, cases where have to resolve what is to be done, how to act. Many ways to go:
single uniform recipe approach too absolutist. On the other hand, it is not entirely situational.
Set of recognised decent procedures.
6
The problematicness of conflict, and need for its removal, is much exaggerated. The
drive for conflict-free conditions is like, and linked to, the drive for consistency. But conflict is
not always undesirable, but often advantageous (and perhaps, as Heracleitus claimed,
necessary). Often conflict should just be allowed to stand; it does not require resolution.
Political and social arrangements should allow for it and be able to absorb it. Where removal is
required, it is often by achieved by distancing, regionalisations etc.
APPENDICES
1. On Walzer's p/ara/Mm there is a plurality of distributive systems. From Plato onwards it is
suggested that only one distributive arrangement that can be justified, (p.5). Walzer suggests
the Rawlsian picture of reeled strand choosers provides
modern arrangements. But
'Justice is a human construction, and it is doubtful that it can be made in only one way' (p.5).
Thus there is a plurality also of distributive justice. While the argument is plausible, its
construction prescription is not. Walzers' 7%Mt'.? (p.6) is: 'the principles of justice are
themselves pluralistic in form [whatever that means); that different social goods ought to be
distributed for different reasons, in accordance with different procedures, by different agents;
and that all these differences derive from different understandings of the social goods
themselves — the inevitable product of historical and cultural particularism'.
There is also a theory of goods, and f/teir distribution. In the usual form, people
distribute goods to people. The basic relation is a proc^Jarg. In fact there are many
procedures: given, allocating, exchanging, selling, etc. Walzer wants to claim: People
conceived create goods, which they then distribute among themselves. This is really a
Concatenation of two procedures. His iJea is to split goods into quaser sphere, and to have
different dibtributive criteria for different spheres. This is said to be complex e^aa/ity (p. 18)!
According to Walzer, there are sp/tereg/ or regions of competition, etc. For example, in
Pascal: strength, beauty, intelligence, devoteness;
but it could be: rugby, soccer, rules, horse racing, mountain climbing, etc.
However there are divisions, barriers between these — but they compete for key items e.g.
money, fields, etc. [so population growth is a total menance for a easily pluralistic society.)
1] 'Personal qualities and social goods have their own spheres of operation, where they work
their effects freely, spontaneously legitimately' (p.19) wAat does this seem: work? by
legitimally? etc.
2] Disregard of those sepaate spheres is tyranny; Attempting to convert one good in one place
to another in another is ruled out.
Meaning of "complex equality" (nothing much of equality about it): 'no citizens' standing in
one sphere or with regard to one social good can be undercut by his standing in some other
sphere, with regard to one other good' (p.19). Thus political advantage does not confer
advantage in other spheres, e.g. health care, advoting, etc.
W 'open-ended distributive principle' (p.20): 'no social good x should be distributed to nea
.... who possess some other good y merely because they possess y and without regard to the
meaning of x'.
*^-V
^T)/ ^/'
y-a-y^,
C-V
?^^-<-
,
ece/."*
y4^^y
Z—r
'^/?^'
A// g)Z
y
ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL PLURALLISM^
Political pluralism was a theory viewing social life in terms of groups, which were
said to be the primary social objects. Further an individual's primary allegiance is not to
any abstract government but to groups, unions, clubs, churches. Thus there is no absolute
necessity for a highly unified political or legal order - whence developed a critical stance
towards the state and towards sovereignty among yomg pluralist^and so elements of
anarchistic pluralism.
There was, however, no systematic theory of political pluralism (a further anarchistic
feature.) The position (and both British and American pluralism, however different) were
unified not by any doctrine but by crit/ca/ response to growth of the state.
A major theme wa^aadd^a^ay&M^ one (as/in EP)t humans are neither isolated atoms,
nor components of centralised states, but social creatures who^werkedin crisscrossing
groups of their own choice. Moreover, groups are genuine objects with choices, capacities,
purposes, etc.
Pluralist society respects and tries to reconcile diverse interests of humans without
,
.
,
—
.
.
.
thwarting them. Groups communicate via negotiation etc.; their operations are not
delegadve from some higher authority.
Contemporary ecological pluralism takes over most of these scene setting features, but
emphasizes the communitarian bases, and expands the scope of communities and groups to
include
communities, which include creatures and systems other than humans.
Perhaps the best known example of such a mixed community is the exampley-^givaa by
Naess and elaborated by Devall (89^dhapter-^3)^of a Norwegian community of bears and
wolves, sheep and humans'. A problem which group theory hides, perhaps deliberately, but
which such communities at once expose, is that of internal conflict. Conflict cannot be
avoided even by going right down to familiar or individuals; for as much conflict may be
Early versions of the first section of these notes drew heavily on Vincent, TAcorier <?f
The text takes up the working drift of 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism: II.
Anarchistic pluralism',, and thus completes (so far as it can presently be taken) a series
on this generous topic
*.
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m..n<„, <l<AS,p. 31,). Today', loser, i, I, bh.hol, a,,u,„ed. wdl ho
tomorrow s wmner.
Most American pluralists of this ilk assume that the contest
tween groups wtll be fhir and that there is some kind of lurking
normative consensus in the background. Certain types of behaviour
are presumably un-American. Practical politics, therefore, fbr the
mertcan p urahst is about bargaining, compromise and trade-ofls
lore is no normative appraisal of the State, but rather an
of what they take to be
acm^
processesTnhXUSA
Gov
*
. dm^c^updTe^J^a
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the USA. Government
is
not an impartial umpire. It reflects
reflects the
the domii.^
dominant coalition on a
particular policy - although it will try to maintain some balance
*
I'.--D.
D. Roosevelt remarked, 'The
'
science of politics, indeed, mav
properly be said to be m large part the science of the adjustment of
conflicting group interests' (quoted in Nicholls, 1974, p. 2). This aim
is contrary to that of the English pluralists, who would have been
deeply critical of the idea that the State becomes a focal point for
group pressure, also that policy should emanate from dominant
coalitions of groups via the State apparatus. Individuals, in English
pluralism, pursue their goals within groups. The State should not be
inked to any such partial interests. Each of theSe groups is
recognized as a moral person with a legal status. In American
pluralism a group is simply a collection or aggregation of individuals
acting m specific roles. Most significantly the American pluralists
were not concerned with any normative account of the State as an
institution or practice. They were fhr more interested in examining
empirically, the effects of group pressures on the actual activity of
government,
th^y ^in not
cltscnsswn.
7bottled up in a family or even in one individual as in a small group. That is, there are no
<*/o
pure conflict-free it^ms from which to build up group or community structure.
'
@
Ecopluralism not only extends the group basis; like
contemporary pluralism, the
variety of positions and practices is much expanded. Early political pluralism (so-called)
was far from advocating a plural variety. (Figgin, an early British pluralist, would have
been shocked at such a supposition: Vincent p.182.) A fairly narrow normative consensus
was assumed, e.g. Christian morality in British "pluralism", American political
arrangements in American "pluralism". Indeed several American "pluralists", political
scientists from Bentley Erroneously on^'saw pluralism as a description of the American
political system. In this usage, pluralism moves into the area of interest group and pressure
group theory" (Vincent p.183). Herein lies the route to
While the state jLSxiiscredited as a unitary ordef} it is now seen a complex
multiple entity, which tried to incorporate and theorize diversity of group life. In the
American version, groups are seen as interested in reaching some kind of bargain.
Government policy is the outcome of group pressures. Government is alleged to seek out
some abstract national interest^In even more degenerate Eastern European forms, pluralism
comes down to some sort of multiparty electoral arrangements; plurality just amounts to
many parties. Political arrangements can however remain highly paternalistic and
. Because we are interested in genuine free pluralisms, we shall leave these
desperate ^rms behind.
/^copyV^ncent-l$0, on US pluraKstsof this sort]
/)^onsider the organisational possibilities for the Earth.i The Earth divides variously
into (geographical) rggto/ts; under ecological organisation the decomposition will be into
jporegions. Those regions that are occupied will be occupied by structures of (mixed)
communities. The assumption that each occupied region is occupied by a single community
is too simple to account even for the present impoverished arrangements offering on Earth.
Some regions are occupied by communities of communities,
community
structure so to say.z It seems unlikely that Earth, given a suitable choice of regions, it is
_
.
cm
1
Off the Earth, in free logicat space, case arrangements are very much greater. Not only
can many terrestrial iimiations be transcended, (widi for instance wiscr creatures than
humans, and many fairer regions, but the interaction of regions can be avoided, so that,
for example, an intense dense industrial society need not transmit its pollution outside
its own borders, indeed in the right circumstances it need not be polluting at all. A
beginning is made in investigating this richer structure by Nozick, but even his
beginnings leave much to be desired?
*.
4/7
2
Whether communities of communities amount just to communities will depend upon
the final characterisation of comwMnhy, or what sort of members they can have and
c?
/-
3
necessary to ascend beyond communities of communities to third-order community
structures. Thus for each region it is appropriate to begin with the ancient ideal of a
community of communities. But of course there will be higher-order structure involved,
such as regional federations of regions, and federations of these federations, and so on and
up. Call this organisational structure, the Earth frame. This frame is not of course unique;
there are many other ways, of varying levels of adequacy, of unscrambling an
organisational grid.
The frame selected is in fact intimately tied to real mundane arrangements. For the
short time that they survived state interference, the Spanish anarchistic communities
coexisted and coevolved in genuine pluralistic fashion (as Dolgoff s sympathetic description
has revealed). That is by no means the only occasion on which the old ideal of a
community of communities (communitas communitatorum) has achieved partial realisation,
but is one of the better known recent examples involving anarchistic communities in a
limited geographic region - at a time in world history when state domination of social life
continues to break up communities and impose a grey uniformity across former community
diversity. But the concern here is not with what is, with present depressing (but temporary)
political realities, but with how things might well be, with different and - no difficult feat superior political arrangements, in particular pluralist arrangements.
A recent picture of pluralistic political arrangements by Nozick supposedly allows for
virtually anarchistic communities within an overarching minarchic framework. It would
seem a simple matter to vary this picture, in particular, to weaken or strengthen the
overarching framework; and that indeed the system of Spanish communities (which of
course did not persist) weakened the minimum state arrangements in true anarchisdc fashion
to zero. Nozick has however a complex (and also seriously flawed) argument that
variations are without justification, that political possibilities which can be justified are mMc/z
tighter than the wide range of the logical possibilities would suggest.
A crucial early question once an Earth frame is untangled is, for each structural level:
what are the broad organising principles? Consider a more important case, the regional
level. Will the same broad principles reappear for each region? Only in a very tenu/ous
fashion, if such desiderate as regional diversity are to be given appropriate play. Naturally
the extent and character of the interrelations of their members. If communities were
mere set-like objects, it would be a matter of the transitivity of membership; but
obviously communities are more than mere sets, internal relations counting for much.
*j
these had better be some procedure or other for conflict resolution where conflict is severe,
but there is a wide variety of procedures of very varying merit; some procedures or other for
the numerous issues that have to be dealt with to keep communities functioning, such as to
take a sample of issues, burying the dead, taking care of the indigent.
A crucial question, for each structural level, is: what are the broad organisational
principles?
.
The working idea is that in the sort of organisational framework sought will enable a
mix of desiderata to be pushed over some far out natural thresholds. The, desiderata include
liberal and environmental objectives, each as those of freedom, liberation. Life liberty,
pursuit of happiness^etc.
Direction of world reorganisation: to a plurality of possibilities, with different
possibilities in different regions. Cities for those who like them in the substantially
ecologically destroyed urban land recipes of the North. Etc.
Diversity is a prime desideratum. We should re/'ozce in JivgrHfy where it recurs, and
if where it does not, subject as always to certain constraints. In particular, then,
attempts to impose fashionable ideologies everywhere should be strongly resisted; this
includes religious faith and other gospels such as those of market capitalism and state
socialism. Such drives to unity and conformity, and intellectualm^njt culture, should be
derailed. Evidently in an interlinked system such as the Earth form; federal organisation
should include arrangements to block imposition of ideologies by expansive neighbours on
other regions. (Included herein are states; here is yet another reason for the ahabition of
states.)
Not to be encouraged, but opposed, are
sing/c-way movements, such as
messianic catholism, messianic communism, and messianic capitalism. These come with a
M/uvcrM/Af/c perspectic, and a single, allegedly universal set of values: they do not, unless
severely cut down in size, fit into a generous plurallism. Needless to say, these
universalistic (one-turning) movements cannot rationally justify their practices. It can no
more be established that there is only one god with such and such properties (e.g. thvse
ascribed to Allah under Islam) than it can be established that there is only one logic; indeed
the justificatory situation is considerably worse (imagine the faithful chanting each day,
facing one Cambridge or other, "There is no logic but classical logic
of course most
Anglo-American philosophers are committed to something like this in their philosophical
practice, but they rarely recognise the character of the commitment).
Note: Many of the economic objectives presented as absolute, are not merely dubious.
They are not intrinsic values, but merely instrumental, and instrumental to %^that a
community may not have. Leading examples of such objectives are efficiency, production.
Out of the same stable as broad monoculturalism, with its uniform urban systems,
universities, etc., is the method of consensus (or
one opinion, as it might as well
have been called). Consensus - unless severely limited, as for instance to argument on a
pluralistic structure - is anti-pluralistic. Nonetheless there can be consensus of a sort at one
remove, metacon^ensus on^ one story, "agreement" to differ.
Limited agreement does however have its virtues in conflict resolution.
* To be sure, cases where have to resolve what is to be down, how to act. Many ways to
go: -si^i uniform recipe approach too absolutist. On the other hand act entirely situational.
Last of recognised decent procedures.
The problematicness of conflict, and need for its removal, is much exaggerated. The
drive for conflict-free conditions is like, and linked to, the drive for consistency. But
conflict is not always undesirable, but often advantageous (read perhaps, as Heracleitus
claimed, necessary). Often conflict should just be allowed to stand; it does not require
resolution. Political and social arrangements should allow for it and be able to absorb it.
C**------ -
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Lake George - Floor - Pile 7
Box 13: Green Projects in Progress
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https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/df8de55a3ac9bb4d5b8436b004c5b43d.pdf
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at
b'l
2051THE IRREFUTABILITY of anarchism
1.
GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE.
The State is like God:
the
anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of what is
commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed.
The parallel,
drawn by Bakunin, has its weaknesses as well as its strengths.
While
the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe
that there are no states:
none are legitimate.
on the contrary, there are all too many, though
The important parallel is as to arguments.
The
agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed,
and so adopts a "neutral" stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe
that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence
sitting position.
Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not
only faulting the arguments for, but taking it for granted that there are
arguments, or at least solid considerations, against.
So it is with soundly
based anarchism, which can both fault arguments for the State
and produce
a case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again
emphasised by Bakunin^ is that of State and Church.
This institutional
comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised;
for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many
very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of
the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly an
organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually
answerable to its police and military; how it is of the same category as
business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent
threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church
used to, it has nominal support of most of its "subjects", though many of
them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have
come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but
as a necessary evil.
Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is unnecessary, so it will
be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove
that God exists.
Since the State is unnecessary, as well as
costly
and
typically at least evil in many of its practices and undesirable in other
respects, it should be superseded.
social arrangements.
And it can be succeeded, by alternative
�2
2. THE FIRST WAY OF SHOWING THAT THE STATE IS NOT REQUIRED : THE REPLACEMENT
ARGUMENT.
The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the
collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by
alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State
activity being dispensed with.
The argument is not a straight substitution
argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything
accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements.
There is much
the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, e.g. sponsorship
of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a great deal of typical State
activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, e.g. graft,
corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land
and other resources, and encouragement or protection of polluting or
environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should
not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and
subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forest
destructive pine planting and woodchip projects).
The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or
damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind.
This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism.
The argument, implicit
in the works of the classical anarchists, goes like this:- The functions of
the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest
and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions,
and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the
powerful groups the State tends to serve).
But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions
which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required.
For why should
people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their
collective interest?
Such functions can be performed, and performed better,
without the coercion which is the hallmark of of the State, and without the
accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance
of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it "serves".
The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case by case
2
form, considering each function in turn.
In each case the function is carried
out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary cooperation by the
people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements.
Consider, for
example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services or building
programs, or self managed welfare, housing or environment services, or community
access communications (e.g. radio)^ most of which are presently either starved
of infrastructure or hindered by the State.
Such beneficial services would in
general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally
�held, and those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the
operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of
being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals
and powerful agencies.
Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal
types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than
individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to
apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community
welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are
privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private
individuals.
As for the second type of functions, those which are not in the
collective interest, coercion will normally be required for the performance of
those functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation.
But
those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective
interest.
In this way, while the good part of the State's operation is
retained and improved upon, the bad part - especially the evils of brutality,
corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus is detached.
State services that are concerned with order, in the general sense, may
be similarly removed or replaced.
These services, which include reduction of
violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services,
security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to
make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it.
do not.
They
Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by
communities themselves without intervention by the State.
Secondly, a great
many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence
of which the State is the main purveyor .and which is often the outcome of
WAvditai 3
the State's propping up of gross
.
A community which seriously
A
limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
«//
gross inequities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for
many "welfare" services and the basis for a great many offences involving
violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and
many of those involving personal violence.
Such a left-leaning anarchism is
also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the
State, such as those from the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth
that is alleged to be achieved by State enforcement of redistribution.
As all
too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and
police inequitable distribution. 5? This then is the main classical argument
for anarchism.
The argument has however been challenged, both by historical
�and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot
act in their collective interest without coercion.
I
3.
THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE
LIKE.
The main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for
anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the
Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are important cases where
individuals will not agree or cooperate to provide themselves with (or to
maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as only the State can
furnish.In such "dilemma" situations each individual will hope to gain
advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others’
contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from
others' restraint).
The claim is that only the State with its backing
of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed.
A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type,
Including Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the "Tragedy of the
Commons" argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to
secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players.Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have
been separately imprisoned.
A State representative makes the following offers
separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while
his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while
the accomplice gets 8 years.
It so happens that if both prisoners remain
silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence.
if both confess they would each receive 4 years.
But
The "game" can be summarised
in the following "payoff" matrix:Prisoner 1
S(ilence)
C(onfess)
S
-1, -1
-8, 0
C
0, -8
S t rategies
-4, -4
The game is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free
at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma:- It is in
each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other
does : strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' "dominant" strategy (and also
in fact a minimax strategy).
For if 2, for example, remains silent, then 1 goes
free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by
confessing.
But if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain
an inferior outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously
called "cooperating", by their both remaining silent.
�5
4. FOILING THE PRISONERS'
DILEMMA ARGUMENT.
It is bizarre that a dilemma
alleged to show the necessity of the State - which is supposed to intervene,
forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners "cooperate" to obtain an
optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.Of course
the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemmas is
inessential, as is much else from the example.
But some features of the
prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption
that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate
or really cooperate.
Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation
assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are
dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in
their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests are opposed.
The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly
seriously limited.?
A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect
that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference.
It is claimed
that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to cooperate,
that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of
the other (Abrams, p. 193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement'
(Taylor, p. 5).
Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is
very often not so - and in a more cooperative social setting than the currently
encouraged privatisation
of life, the
extent of cooperation and trust would
o
undoubtedly be much higher.
The argument has to depend crucially then on
substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings,
e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large
measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people
were that unreliable and devious,tate arrangements involved in providing
public goods/-oueh as—taxatioa-y would not succeed either) .
That such assumptions
are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g., to bring out the
first.suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g., they are friends or they
are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours
and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical
scepticism,
involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the
other security against default, and so on.
The question of the character of human interests and preferences
and the
extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is
fundamental to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and
also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities.
A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated
political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a
preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count
�is an independent parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings
of others nor on the social context in which that human operates.
While the
individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy
the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural
pressure on consumers to conform (through advertising, education, popular
media), very many humans do not conform, and the extent of cultural pressure
towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence,
And, sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a small community
A
(which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social
influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners'
Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State.
5.
WHY THE DILEMMA ARGUMENTS CANNOT SUCCEED.
What the Dilemma-based case
for the State has to show - what never has been shown - is that there are
outs tanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also
o’wt foot
damaging if unresolved, lint ypsoHved by State intervention, and only so
g-
fa
(optimally) resolved, ami Finallythat in the course of so resolving these
Dilemma situations, worse situations than those that are resolved are not
thereby induced.
These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if they can be
satisfied at all, in a way that is not question begging.
For several of the
conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is important, damaging, optional,
worse) and involve considerations about whichf reasonable parties can differ.
/W/’
chuck
The selection of Dilemmas,provides an example: after all there are many such
A
A
Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of
.—t>n Vi o!-c h
family -fs*tds) which are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not
worthy of State attention.
There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be
satisfied at all.
For many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games,
Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's "Tragedy of the
Commons" for instance, turn out when properly formalised to consist not just
of a single game but of a sequence of such games, to be more adequately
represented by what is called a supergame.
But in many such sequential
Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming
separated players with purely egoistic interests/^ For what sequential
games permit that isolated games exclude, is that players' actions may be
dependent upon past performance of other players.
This dependence effectively
removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma
situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from
past social interaction.
In such supergames then, no intervention is required.
�7
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by "intervention", e.g. by allowing
the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that
they can really cooperate.
Equally important, and equally independent of the
State, is the matter of breaking down the adversary, or game, situation so
the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to cooperate J'1
Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has
a good record of adhering, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc.
A
Nor
is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal
strategies : a range of other inducements and incentives
they be required in recalcitrant cases), and
is known (should
is used even by the State, e.g.
But at no stage is the State
gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc.
required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners' Dilemmas
are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations
can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they
are not already catered for.
And in fact communal and cooperative organisation
did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in
the case of the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works.
There are no important Dilemma
situations, it seems, where the State is essential.
The State has been thought
to be essential because of certain influential false dichotomies; for example,
that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour
is uncommon, and "irrational"), that the only way of allocating goods, apart
from profit-directed markets - which tend to deal abysmally with collective
goods - is through State control.But it is quite evident that there are
other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional
markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by cooperatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve some Dilemma situations
/J
has very extensive effects, many of them negative, so that the gains made, if
any, in so resolving Dilemma^ situations, appear to be substantially outweighed
by the costs involved.
For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State
to put in the balance.
As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with
ty showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more
,
new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as/
/A
t * /<»
the working
differently with the State as a further player (since the State
may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.).
also to further arguments against the State.
These points lead
�9
to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to
those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation).
But institutional
checks which operate only insofar as a ^system*^ acceptable to the powerholders
is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those checked,^ are not really checks at all.
£
gand preventing
The problem of controlling the power of the State, 'ur
IA
the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its
mandate, is only satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the
first place.
The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the
anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation.
8.
THE FOURTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY.
responsible for actions deliberately undertaken.
A person is
This premiss can be derived,
if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent,
Taking responsibility
for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about
what to do on each occasion oneself; not acting simply on direction from outside,A
4
determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision
over to someone or something else. , It implies, that is, moral autonomy,
Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility requires, freedom.
For the
autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is not subject
to the will of another.
another so directs.
Even if it does what another directs, it is not because
In being free, not of constraints (both physical and
self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous
being is morally free.
A necessary feature of the State is authority over those in its territory
(under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon
them.
Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and
with freedom.
An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some
imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject
such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State.
7
s
In sum, being a person,
as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority
of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on
, ika.
/J
18
personhiood implies^anarchism.
V
It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated "State",
one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy.
But such a "State", with no
independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve
it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism,
On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
�10
9.
The replacement
THE FIFTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE.
argument enables construction of a model of a society functioning without the
State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State
is not necessary.
But it can always be claimed - even if the claim can seldom
or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of
real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable.
The gap may be closed by
appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various
times and places anarchism has been tested and has worked.
Examples of such
Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have
not been omitted.
There are many examples of nonindustrialised societies which were, or are,
19
anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,
and
there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic
20
arrangements within the State structure.
10. THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM AND ITS ORGANISATION.
The arguments
outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the
options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State
and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on.
For example, spontaneous
anarchism — according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrange
ments will arise spontaneously, and will be ushered in during the revolution
without any prior organisation — is a position which is not viable and could
not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which
durable supersession of the State depends.
which these theoretical arguments.
A
The sort of anarchist society
will certainly be organised, but the
organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures
(and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening
of the centralised State), relying heavily on voluntary cooperation and direct
democracy.
The society which emerges will be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin
sometimes pictured it.
It will be based on smaller-scale decentralised
communities, for otherwise such arrangements as community replacement of
State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of
Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily.
Communities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by
representation and subject to a downward system of command.
Within each
community there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth
and property, and no highly concentrated economic
power.
community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
communally owned or not owned at all.
A
�11
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and
also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely, they offer
no detailed blueprint.
Accordingly what emerges is not a particular form of
anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and
pluralistic anarchism, such as was instituted in the Spanish collectives.
11. STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETY ; THE FOREST SUCCESSION
MODEL OF REPLACEMENT BY AN ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURE.
The main strategy, emerging
from the First Way, is that of replacement : transition to a new anarchist
social order proceeds by replacement or addption of the more satisfactory State
organisations and structures by organisations and structures of a more
anarchistic cast, and by removal or phasing out of remaining no longer
necessary or unsatisfactory State arrangements.
Replacement and supersession suggest a biological model, of such change
and succession as occurs where one forest type succeeds another; and such
a model is in turn very suggestive.
To make the model more definite, and
to give it some local colour, consider forest succession where a sub-tropical
rainforest replaces a eucalypt forest, as analogous to the case where anarchism
replaces a Statist society.
There is certainly a marked change in structure,
typically from a tall forest with a fairly open canopy to a more compact
closed forest with more layers of vegetation, much more local diversity and
a richer variety of life forms, especially floral forms.
A forest is not
merely a set of trees, but trees in structural arrangement and interdependence,
not merely on one another but on other life forms such as pollinating insects,
seed-carrying birds and animals, and so on; and the changes in structure
include changes in microclimate, in soil moisture levels and humus and
bacterial content.
The change of forest type may be by evolution, by hastened or induced
evolution, or by catastrophe (revolution) as when a eucalypt forest is
clearfelled and artificially succeeded by planted rainforest.
(Strictly,
there is a spectrum of practices and replacement strategies between evolutionary
and revolutionary, and various different revolutionary strategies; and the
standard evolutionary-revolutionary contrast presents a false dichotomy.)
Even reliance on predominantly evolutionary methods, which tend to be
very slow by human time scales may require some (management) practices, else
evolution towards rainforest will not begin or continue.
For example, seeds
for rainforest species may not be available if adjoining areas have been
stripped of suitable seed trees, e.g. by clearing or eucalypt conversion,
in which case it will be necessary to introduce seeds (of anarchist ideas,
methods, arrangements, etc.).
And rainforest evolution may not be able to
�13
12. APPLYING THE FOREST SUCCESSION MODEL.
How to apply the model is not
difficult to see in broad outline, and many of the further details have
been filled out by work, that can be described as indicating how allegiance
can be shifted in practice from where we mostly are to alternative social
22.
arrangements and life-styles built on self-management and mutual aid.
The seeds of anarchism should be broadcast or planted, anarchist (nonStatist)
arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts made to replace or
vulnerable Statist arrangements.^ Some of the practices are familiar :
'anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist)
cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc.
Others
are slightly less familiar: avoidance of State influence by arrangements beyond
State reach such as costless (or alternative currency) interchanges of
goods and services, action directed at removing decision-making from State
departments, such as forest services, and into citizen hands, and ultimately, to
decentralized local communities.
In this sort of way worthwhile State arrangements
can be replaced, and power can be progressively transferred from the State, and
returned to the community and to people more directly involved.
"V-
ht)
�FOOTNOTES
1.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London,
especially p. 139.
1973,
Much else in this paper, e.g. the distinction
between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin.
2.
That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of
generally beneficial state activity - there is only a
(relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it
can be replaced in one way or another.
course uniquely determined.
Replacement is not of
Lines such replacements can take are
indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature,
consider especially, but not uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid.
New York University Press,
1972, and also his Fields, Factories and
Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and The Conquest
of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913.
3.
On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (edited
S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York,
1970, p. 206 ff. ; also
P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary .
For recent discussion
of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law
court procedures (but for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone,
'Some reflections on arbitrating our way to anarchy', A
Nomos / XIX^New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4.
V
4.
J-
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest
case that can be made for the desirability of the State'
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9).
(M. Taylor,
To cover all
arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants
of' and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of
Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations,
'Prisoner's
Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person
Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are
X
not merely e^gjistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such
games are iterated.
As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate,
there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of
the same logical form - those where people do not contribute to
supply themselves with, or with "optimum" quantities of, a
"collective good" (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where
people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain "optimum"
quantities of, some already available "collective good" (e.g. commons,
�2
unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness).
That received arguments
of all these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the
wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op. cit. and elsewhere.
An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also
surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter
of R. Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University
Press, New York,
5.
1980.
An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance
of population size in the arguments for the State.
But size is not
decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided
(or relocated) by organisation info
The figures
smaller communities.
given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which
suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p. 5.
6.
It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State
alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation,
when the State is (as on many theories) the result or reflection of
social cooperation.
7.
This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley,
Theories, Self Management, and
'Social
Environmental Problems' in
Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS,
Australian National University, 1980.
8.
As a result of G. Hardin's "Travesty of the Commons", historical evidence
has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's "Commons" diverges
from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, The Self-
Managing Environment, Allison & BUfsby, London, 1979, chapter 10,
but also Routley, op. cit., p. 285 and pp. 329-332.
Similar points
apply as regards many other Dilemma situations.
'In the. experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game
approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy
even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'.
Abrams, op. cit., p. 308.
9.
Cf.
the discussion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93.
�3
10. This important result is established in Taylor, op. cit., for a number of
critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p. 32 but especially
chapter 5.
11. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal
prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including
cases where the State is one of the "adversaries".
12. Both the false dichotomies cited are commonplace, not to say rife,
in modem economic and political theorising.
Both are to be
found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the firstJ^(with an
attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition^/
op. cit., p. 250 ff.
13. For instance, a certain social escapism : one escapes
one's social roles
erf
and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze.
Or so it may appear : for in reality anyone who works, works long and
often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover
the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity.
cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way
o/icA
14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op.
in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off
regions.
15. The question is in effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent
of his Third Man argument.
16. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II.
Fourth edition
(revised), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p. 129 and p. 127.
The (overshoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental
problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the
dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State1, 'upon which'
Marxists never had 'any well-considered view'
(p. 129).
17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and
Opposition 13 (1978), 199-217: see p. 209 and p.(^25jTP
18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. l/olff,
In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
No argument
is however without assumptions, which are open to dispute.
argument, for example^is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical
anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff.
Wolff's
i
nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining
�THE IRREFUTABILITY OF ANARCHISM
1.
GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE.
The State is like God:
the
anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of what is
commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed.
The parallel,
drawn by Bakunin, has its weaknesses as well as its strengths.
While
the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe
that there are no states:
none are legitimate.
on the contrary, there are all too many, though
The important parallel is as to arguments.
The
agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed,
and so adopts a "neutral" stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe
that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence
Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not
sit-ting position.
only faulting the arguments for, but taking it for granted that there are
arguments, or at least solid considerations, against.
So it is with soundly
,
nene.
based anarchism^ which can both faults arguments for the State^and
(ncisi'je.
X case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again
emphasised by Bakunin^- is that of State and Church.Clx This institutional
comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised;
for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many
very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of
the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly an
organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually
answerable to its police and military; how it is of the same category as
A
business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent
threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church
used to, it has nominal support of most of its "subjects", though many of
them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have
come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but
as a necessary evil
Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is unnecessary, so it will
be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove
that God exists.
Since the State is unnecessary, as well as
costly
and
typically at least evil in many of its practices and undesirable in other
respects, it should be superseded.
social arrangements.,^
And it can be succeeded, by alternative
�2. THE FIRST WAY OF SHOWING THAT THE STATE IS NOT REQUIRED : THE REPLACEMENT
ARGUMENT.
The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the
collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by
alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State
activity being dispensed with.
The argument is not a straight substitution
argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything
accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements.
There is much
the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, e.g. sponsorship
of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a great deal of typical State
activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, e.g. graft,
corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land
and other resources, and encouragement or protection of polluting or
environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should
not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and
subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forest
destructive pine planting and woodchip projects).
The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or
damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial J$ind.
This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism.
The argumertf:, implicit
in the works of the classical anarchists, goes like this:- The functions of
the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest
and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions,
and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the
powerful groups the State tends to serve).
But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions
which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required.
For why should
people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their
collective interest?
Such functions can be performed, and performed better,
without the coercion which is the hallmark of of the State, and without the
accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance
of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it "serves".
The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case by case
2
form, considering each function in turn.
In each case the function is carried
out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary cooperation by the
people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements.
Consider, for
example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services or building
programs, or self managed welfare, housing or environment services, or community
access communications (e.g. radio)^ most of which are presently either starved
of infrastructure or hindered by the State.
Such beneficial services would in
general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally
�3
held, and those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the
operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of
being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals
and powerful agencies.
Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal
types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than
individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to
apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community
welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are
privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private
individuals.
As for the second type of functions, those which are not in the
collective interest, coercion will normally be required for the performance of
those functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation.
But
those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective
interest.
In this way, while the good part of the State's operation is
retained and improved upon, the bad part - especially the evils of brutality,
corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus is detached.
State services that are concerned with order, in the general sense, may
be similarly removed or replaced.
These services, which include reduction of
violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services,
security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to
make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it.
do not.
They
Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by
communities themselves without intervention by the State.
Secondly, a great
many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence
of which the State is the main purveyor and which is often the outcome of
ol
3
the State's propping up of gross inequities.
A community which seriously
limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
a//
gross inequities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for
many "welfare" services and the basis for a great many offences involving
violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and
many of those involving personal violence.
Such a left-leaning anarchism is
also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the
State, such as those from the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth
that is alleged to be achieved by State enforcement of redistribution.
As all
too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and
police inequitable distributionThis then is the main classical argument
for anarchism.
The argument has however been challenged, both by historical
�and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot
act in their collective interest without coercion.
3.
THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE
LIKE.
The main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for
anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the
Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are important cases where
---------
(?)
individuals will not agree“or cooperate to provide themselves with (or to
maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as only the State can
4
furnish.
In such "dilemma" situations each individual will hope to gain
advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others'
contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from
others' restraint).
The claim is that only the State with its backing
of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed. (6J
A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type,
including Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the "Tragedy of the
Commons" argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to
secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players.Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have
been separately imprisoned.
A State representative makes the following offers
separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while
his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while
the accomplice gets 8 years.
It so happens that if both prisoners remain
silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence.
if both confess they would each receive 4 years.
But
The "game" can be summarised
in the following "payoff" matrix:-
Prisoner 2
The game is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free
at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma:- It is in
each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other
does : strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' "dominant" strategy (and also
in fact a minimax strategy).
For if 2, for example, remains silent, then 1 goes
free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by
confessing.
But if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain
an inferior outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously
called "cooperating", by their both remaining silent.
�5
4. FOILING THE PRISONERS'
DILEMMA ARGUMENT.
It is bizarre that a dilemma
alleged to show the necessity of the State - which is supposed to intervene,
forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners "cooperate" to obtain an
optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.Of course
the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemma£is
inessential, as is much else from the example.
But some features of the
prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption
that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate
or really cooperate.
Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation
assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are
dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in
their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests are opposed.
The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly
seriously limited.?
A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect
that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference.
It is claimed
that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to cooperate,
that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of
the other (Abrams, p. 193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement'
(Taylor, p. 5).
Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is
very often not so - and in a more cooperative social setting than the currently
encouraged privatisation
of life, the
extent of cooperation and trust would
o
undoubtedly be much higher.
The argument has to depend crucially then on
substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings,
e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large
measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people
were that unreliable and deviousState arrangements involved in providing
public goodsy such as taxation', would not succeed either).
That such assumptions
are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g., to bring out the
first,suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g., they are friends or they
are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours
and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical
scepticism,
involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the
other security against default, and so on.
The question of the character of human interests and preferences
and the
extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is
fundamental to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and
also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities.
A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated
political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a
preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count
�is an independent parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings
of others nor on the social context in which that human operates.
While the
individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy
the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural
pressure on consumers to conform (through advertising, education, popular
media), very many humans do not conform, and the extent of cultural pressure
towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence.
And^sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a small community
(which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social
influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners'
Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State.
5. WHY THE DILEMMA ARGUMENTS CANNOT SUCCEED.'
What the Dilemma-based case
for the State has to show - what never has been shown - is that there are
outstanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also
qaA'-fkc-l'
oft
damaging if unresolved,\but resolve^/by State intervention, and only so
A A- jZAz-zv
(optimally) resolved, and finally.that in the course of so resolving these
Dilemma situations, worse situation than those that are resolved are not
thereby induced.
These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if they can be
satisfied at all, in a way that is not question begging.
For several of the
conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is important, damaging, optional,
worse) and involve considerations about which reasonable parties can differ.
The selection of Dilemmas^provides an example^: after all there are many such
Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of
l/«o|on<c or
family, feuds) which are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not
worthy of State attention.
There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be
satisfied at all.
For many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games,
Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's "Tragedy of the
Commons" for instance, turn out when properly formalised to consist not just
of a single game but of a sequence of such games, to be more adequately
represented by what is called a supergame.
But in many such sequential
Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming
separated players with purely egoistic interests?^ For what sequential
games permit that isolated games exclude, is that players' actions may be
dependent upon past performance of other players.
This dependence effectively
removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma
situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from
past social interaction.
In such supergames then, no intervention is required.
�7
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by "intervention", e.g. by allowing
the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that
they can really cooperate.
Equally important, and equally independent of the
State, is the matter of breaking down the adversary, or game, situation so
the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to cooperate.
Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has
a good record of adhering, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc.
A
Nor
is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal
strategies : a range of other inducements and incentives
they be required in recalcitrant cases), and
is known (should
is used even by the State, e.g.
But at no stage is the State
gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc.
required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners’ Dilemmas
are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations
can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they
are not already catered for.
And in fact communal and cooperative organisation
did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in
the case of the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works.
There are no important Dilemma
situations, it seems, where the State is essential.
The State has been thought
to be essential because of certain influential false dichotomies; for example,
that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour
is uncommon, and "irrational"), that the only way of allocating goods, apart
from profit-directed markets - which tend to deal abysmally with collective
goods - is through State control.1-
But it is quite evident that there are
other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional
markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by cooperatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve some Dilemma situations
has very extensive effects', many of them negative, so that the gains made, if
any, in so resolving Dilemma1
situations, appear to be substantially outweighed
by the costs involved.
For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State
to put in the balance.
As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with
its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more
/A
of
important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as with the working
example, or differently with the State as a further player (since the State
may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.).
also to further arguments against the State.
These points lead
�8
6.
THE SECOND WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM PROBLEM RECURRENCE^/
The solution
by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more
dangerous form the very problems introduction of the State was designed to
solve, including new Dilemmas.
Suppose, for instance, the secular State really
were introduced in order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas - introduced as opposed
to inherited from the religious State and the Church, and maintained to prop
up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests -
then the array of States generates new Prisoners' Dilemmas, which there is no
Super-State to resolve by coercion.
Suppose, as the myth has it, the State
really were introduced in the interest of order and stability and to curb
violence; then the arrays of States resulting more than negates these advantages,
with instability, disorder and violence on a grander scale than before the
14
emergence of modem secular States.
7.
THE THIRD WAY : THE OVERSHOOT ARGUMENT,FROM THE INADEQUACY OF
INSTITUTIONAL CONTROLS ON STATE POWER.
Having ceded a monopoly on power to
the State, in order to resolve some dilemmas, some of them arising from an
oontrols or balances the power of the
inequitable distribution of power, what
State?
A Super-State.
And its power?
There is a
vicious infinite regress
if the reply to the question "What controls the controller?" is "a further
controller".^ The only promising way of avoiding this problem - other routes
lead (even more) directly to totalitarianism - is by having the first of these
controllers, the State, answer back to those in whose interests it is allegedly
established,
those of the society or group of communities it controls.
implies democratic methods of some kind.
Others go further:
This
'democracy Lis]
the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which
, 16
we can try to protect ourselves against the misuse of political power .
In this event, control has mostly failed.
Democracy is extremely attenuated,
even in those states that claim to practice it.
The exercise of power in modern
"democratic" states - much increased power reaching deep into peoples' lives,
power which has passed to certain political elites and is directed at the
attainment of such objectives as economic growth and material "progress" - is
often channelled through 'non-elected authority' and 'is not democratic in the
traditional meaning of the term'.In any case, indirect democratic and other
institutional checks are tenuous in as much as
they depend ultimately on the
toleration of those who have direct control of the forces of the State.
Experience seems to show that such toleration will only be shown so long as
democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are
broadly in accord with what those who control the coercive power are prepared
�9
to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to
those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation).
But institutional
/I
checks which operate only insofar as a "system" acceptable to the powerholders
is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those checked, are not really checks at all.
n.
? ’■
The problem of controlling the power of the State, u/surping and preventing
the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its
mandate, is only satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the
first place.
The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the
anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation.
8. THE FOURTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY.
responsible for actions deliberately undertaken.
A person is
This premiss can be derived,
if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent.
Taking responsibility
for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about
what to do on each occasion oneself; not acting simply on direction from outside,£»/
A
determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision
over to someone or something else.
It implies, that is, moral autonomy.
Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility requires, freedom.
For the
autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is not subject
to the will of another.
another so directs.
Even if it does what another directs, it is not because
In being free, not of constraints (both physical and
self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous
being is morally free.
A necessary feature of the State is authority over those in its territory
(under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon
them.
Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and
with freedom.
An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some
imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject
such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State.
In sum, being a person,
as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority
of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on
ike.
a
>18
personhood implies anarchism.
It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated "State",
one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy.
But such a "State", with no
independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve
it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism.
On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
�10
9.
THE FIFTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE.
The replacement
argument enables construction of a model of a society functioning without the
State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State
is not necessary.
But it can always be claimed - even if the claim can seldom
or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of
real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable.
The gap may be closed by
appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various
times and places anarchism has been tested and has worked.
Examples of such
Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have
not been omitted.
There are many examples of nonindustrialised societies which were, or are,
19
anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,
and
there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic
20
arrangements within the State structure.
10. THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM AND ITS ORGANISATION.
The arguments
outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the
options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State
and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on.
For example, spontaneous
anarchism — according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrange
ments will arise spontaneously, and will be ushered in during the revolution
without any prior organisation — is a position which is not viable and could
not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which
durable supersession of the State depends. The sort of anarchist society
deJintafe.
which these theoretical arguments
will certainly be organised, but the
A
organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures
(and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening
of the centralised State), relying heavily on voluntary cooperation and direct
democracy.
The society which emerges will be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin
sometimes pictured it.
It will be based on smaller-scale decentralised
communities, for otherwise such arrangements as community replacement of
State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of
Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily.
Communities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by
representation and subject to a downward system of command.
Within each
community there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth
Zand property, and no highly concentrated economic
power. A
community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
communally owned or not owned at all.
�FOOTNOTES
1.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973,
especially p. 139.
Much else in this paper, e.g. the distinction
between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin.
2.
That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of
generally beneficial state activity - there is only a
(relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it
can be replaced in one way or another.
course uniquely determined.
Replacement is not of
Lines such replacements can take are
indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature,
consider especially, but not uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid.
New York University Press,
1972, and also his Fields, Factories and
Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and The Conquest
of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913.
3.
On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (edited
S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York, 1970, p. 206 ff.; also
P.O. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary.
For recent discussion
of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law
court procedures (but for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone,
'Some reflections on arbitrating our way to anarchy', Anarchism(<y>»~7
Nomos, XIX), New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4.
4.
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest
case that can be made for the desirability of the State'
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9).
(M. Taylor,
To cover all
arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants
of' and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of
Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations,
'Prisoner's
Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person
Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are
not merely eristic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such
games are iterated.
As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate,
there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of
che same logical form - those where people do not contribute to
supply themselves with, or with "optimum" quantities of, a
"collective good" (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where
people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain "optimum
quantities of, some already available "collective good" (e.g. commons,
�2
unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness).
That received arguments
of all these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the
wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op. cit. and elsewhere.
An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also
surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter
of R. Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University
Press, New York,
5.
1980.
An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance
of population size in the arguments for the State.
But size is not
decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided
(or relocated) by organisation into
smaller communities.
The figures
given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which
suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p. 5.
6.
It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State
alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation,
when the State is (as on many theories) the result or reflection of
social cooperation.
7.
This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, 'Social
Theories, Self Management, and
Environmental Problems' in
Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS,
Australian National University, 1980.
8.
As a result of G. Hardin's "Travesty of the Commons", historical evidence
has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's "Commons" diverges
from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, The Self-
Managing Environment, Allison & Ba<sby, London, 1979, chapter 10,
<A./
but also Routley, op. cit., p. 285 and pp. 329-332.
Similar points
apply as regards many other Dilemma situations.
(
'
'In the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game
.
>
approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy
even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'.
Abrams, op. cit., p. 308.
).
Cf.
the discussion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93.
�10. This important result is established in Taylor, op. cit., for a number of
critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p. 32 but especially
chapter 5.
11. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal
prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including
cases where the State is one of the "adversaries".
12. Both the false dichotomies cited are commonplace, not to say rife,
in modern economic and political theorising.
Both are to be
found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first (with an
attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition)
in Taylor.
For a
further criticism of such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit.,pp.250
13. For instance, a certain social escapism : one escapes
one's social roles
and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze.
Or so it may appear : for in reality anyone who works, works long and
often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover
the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity.
14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op.
cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way
in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off
nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining
regions.
X
15. The question is in effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent
of his Third Man argument.
16. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II.
Fourth edition
(revised), Routledge and Regan Paul, London, 1962, p.
129 and p.
127.
The (overshoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental
problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the
dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State1,
Marxists never had 'any well-considered view'
'upon which'
(p. 129).
17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and
Opposition 13 ( 1978), 199-2 17: see p. 209 and p. 211 .
18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. Wolff,
In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
No argument
is however without assumptions, which are open to dispute.
Wolff's
argument, for example, is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical
anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff.
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and
also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely,
no detailed blueprint.
they offer
Accordingly what emerges is not a particular form of
anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and
pluralistic anarchism, such as was instituted in the Spanish collectives.
�19. Documented in The Anarchist Collectives (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions,
New York, 1974.
20. As B. Martin boldly asserts,
'The advantages of self-management and
alternative lifestyles are many and significant.
And these
alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of evidence and
experience to support
operates.
their superiority over the present way society
The obstacles to self-management and alternative life
styles are powerful vested interests and institutional resistance to
change', Changing the Cogs, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979,
p- 6.
21. As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley,
284 ff.
�
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b'l
2051THE IRREFUTABILITY of anarchism
1.
GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE.
The State is like God:
the
anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of what is
commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed.
The parallel,
drawn by Bakunin, has its weaknesses as well as its strengths.
While
the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe
that there are no states:
none are legitimate.
on the contrary, there are all too many, though
The important parallel is as to arguments.
The
agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed,
and so adopts a "neutral" stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe
that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence
sitting position.
Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not
only faulting the arguments for, but taking it for granted that there are
arguments, or at least solid considerations, against.
So it is with soundly
based anarchism, which can both fault arguments for the State
and produce
a case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again
emphasised by Bakunin^ is that of State and Church.
This institutional
comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised;
for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many
very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of
the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly an
organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually
answerable to its police and military; how it is of the same category as
business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent
threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church
used to, it has nominal support of most of its "subjects", though many of
them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have
come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but
as a necessary evil.
Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is unnecessary, so it will
be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove
that God exists.
Since the State is unnecessary, as well as
costly
and
typically at least evil in many of its practices and undesirable in other
respects, it should be superseded.
social arrangements.
And it can be succeeded, by alternative
2
2. THE FIRST WAY OF SHOWING THAT THE STATE IS NOT REQUIRED : THE REPLACEMENT
ARGUMENT.
The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the
collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by
alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State
activity being dispensed with.
The argument is not a straight substitution
argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything
accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements.
There is much
the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, e.g. sponsorship
of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a great deal of typical State
activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, e.g. graft,
corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land
and other resources, and encouragement or protection of polluting or
environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should
not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and
subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forest
destructive pine planting and woodchip projects).
The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or
damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind.
This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism.
The argument, implicit
in the works of the classical anarchists, goes like this:- The functions of
the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest
and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions,
and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the
powerful groups the State tends to serve).
But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions
which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required.
For why should
people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their
collective interest?
Such functions can be performed, and performed better,
without the coercion which is the hallmark of of the State, and without the
accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance
of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it "serves".
The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case by case
2
form, considering each function in turn.
In each case the function is carried
out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary cooperation by the
people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements.
Consider, for
example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services or building
programs, or self managed welfare, housing or environment services, or community
access communications (e.g. radio)^ most of which are presently either starved
of infrastructure or hindered by the State.
Such beneficial services would in
general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally
held, and those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the
operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of
being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals
and powerful agencies.
Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal
types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than
individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to
apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community
welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are
privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private
individuals.
As for the second type of functions, those which are not in the
collective interest, coercion will normally be required for the performance of
those functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation.
But
those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective
interest.
In this way, while the good part of the State's operation is
retained and improved upon, the bad part - especially the evils of brutality,
corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus is detached.
State services that are concerned with order, in the general sense, may
be similarly removed or replaced.
These services, which include reduction of
violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services,
security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to
make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it.
do not.
They
Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by
communities themselves without intervention by the State.
Secondly, a great
many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence
of which the State is the main purveyor .and which is often the outcome of
WAvditai 3
the State's propping up of gross
.
A community which seriously
A
limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
«//
gross inequities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for
many "welfare" services and the basis for a great many offences involving
violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and
many of those involving personal violence.
Such a left-leaning anarchism is
also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the
State, such as those from the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth
that is alleged to be achieved by State enforcement of redistribution.
As all
too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and
police inequitable distribution. 5? This then is the main classical argument
for anarchism.
The argument has however been challenged, both by historical
and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot
act in their collective interest without coercion.
I
3.
THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE
LIKE.
The main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for
anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the
Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are important cases where
individuals will not agree or cooperate to provide themselves with (or to
maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as only the State can
furnish.In such "dilemma" situations each individual will hope to gain
advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others’
contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from
others' restraint).
The claim is that only the State with its backing
of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed.
A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type,
Including Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the "Tragedy of the
Commons" argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to
secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players.Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have
been separately imprisoned.
A State representative makes the following offers
separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while
his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while
the accomplice gets 8 years.
It so happens that if both prisoners remain
silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence.
if both confess they would each receive 4 years.
But
The "game" can be summarised
in the following "payoff" matrix:Prisoner 1
S(ilence)
C(onfess)
S
-1, -1
-8, 0
C
0, -8
S t rategies
-4, -4
The game is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free
at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma:- It is in
each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other
does : strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' "dominant" strategy (and also
in fact a minimax strategy).
For if 2, for example, remains silent, then 1 goes
free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by
confessing.
But if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain
an inferior outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously
called "cooperating", by their both remaining silent.
5
4. FOILING THE PRISONERS'
DILEMMA ARGUMENT.
It is bizarre that a dilemma
alleged to show the necessity of the State - which is supposed to intervene,
forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners "cooperate" to obtain an
optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.Of course
the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemmas is
inessential, as is much else from the example.
But some features of the
prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption
that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate
or really cooperate.
Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation
assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are
dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in
their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests are opposed.
The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly
seriously limited.?
A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect
that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference.
It is claimed
that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to cooperate,
that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of
the other (Abrams, p. 193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement'
(Taylor, p. 5).
Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is
very often not so - and in a more cooperative social setting than the currently
encouraged privatisation
of life, the
extent of cooperation and trust would
o
undoubtedly be much higher.
The argument has to depend crucially then on
substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings,
e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large
measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people
were that unreliable and devious,tate arrangements involved in providing
public goods/-oueh as—taxatioa-y would not succeed either) .
That such assumptions
are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g., to bring out the
first.suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g., they are friends or they
are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours
and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical
scepticism,
involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the
other security against default, and so on.
The question of the character of human interests and preferences
and the
extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is
fundamental to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and
also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities.
A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated
political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a
preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count
is an independent parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings
of others nor on the social context in which that human operates.
While the
individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy
the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural
pressure on consumers to conform (through advertising, education, popular
media), very many humans do not conform, and the extent of cultural pressure
towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence,
And, sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a small community
A
(which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social
influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners'
Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State.
5.
WHY THE DILEMMA ARGUMENTS CANNOT SUCCEED.
What the Dilemma-based case
for the State has to show - what never has been shown - is that there are
outs tanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also
o’wt foot
damaging if unresolved, lint ypsoHved by State intervention, and only so
g-
fa
(optimally) resolved, ami Finallythat in the course of so resolving these
Dilemma situations, worse situations than those that are resolved are not
thereby induced.
These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if they can be
satisfied at all, in a way that is not question begging.
For several of the
conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is important, damaging, optional,
worse) and involve considerations about whichf reasonable parties can differ.
/W/’
chuck
The selection of Dilemmas,provides an example: after all there are many such
A
A
Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of
.—t>n Vi o!-c h
family -fs*tds) which are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not
worthy of State attention.
There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be
satisfied at all.
For many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games,
Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's "Tragedy of the
Commons" for instance, turn out when properly formalised to consist not just
of a single game but of a sequence of such games, to be more adequately
represented by what is called a supergame.
But in many such sequential
Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming
separated players with purely egoistic interests/^ For what sequential
games permit that isolated games exclude, is that players' actions may be
dependent upon past performance of other players.
This dependence effectively
removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma
situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from
past social interaction.
In such supergames then, no intervention is required.
7
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by "intervention", e.g. by allowing
the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that
they can really cooperate.
Equally important, and equally independent of the
State, is the matter of breaking down the adversary, or game, situation so
the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to cooperate J'1
Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has
a good record of adhering, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc.
A
Nor
is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal
strategies : a range of other inducements and incentives
they be required in recalcitrant cases), and
is known (should
is used even by the State, e.g.
But at no stage is the State
gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc.
required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners' Dilemmas
are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations
can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they
are not already catered for.
And in fact communal and cooperative organisation
did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in
the case of the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works.
There are no important Dilemma
situations, it seems, where the State is essential.
The State has been thought
to be essential because of certain influential false dichotomies; for example,
that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour
is uncommon, and "irrational"), that the only way of allocating goods, apart
from profit-directed markets - which tend to deal abysmally with collective
goods - is through State control.But it is quite evident that there are
other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional
markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by cooperatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve some Dilemma situations
/J
has very extensive effects, many of them negative, so that the gains made, if
any, in so resolving Dilemma^ situations, appear to be substantially outweighed
by the costs involved.
For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State
to put in the balance.
As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with
ty showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more
,
new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as/
/A
t * /<»
the working
differently with the State as a further player (since the State
may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.).
also to further arguments against the State.
These points lead
9
to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to
those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation).
But institutional
checks which operate only insofar as a ^system*^ acceptable to the powerholders
is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those checked,^ are not really checks at all.
£
gand preventing
The problem of controlling the power of the State, 'ur
IA
the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its
mandate, is only satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the
first place.
The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the
anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation.
8.
THE FOURTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY.
responsible for actions deliberately undertaken.
A person is
This premiss can be derived,
if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent,
Taking responsibility
for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about
what to do on each occasion oneself; not acting simply on direction from outside,A
4
determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision
over to someone or something else. , It implies, that is, moral autonomy,
Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility requires, freedom.
For the
autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is not subject
to the will of another.
another so directs.
Even if it does what another directs, it is not because
In being free, not of constraints (both physical and
self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous
being is morally free.
A necessary feature of the State is authority over those in its territory
(under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon
them.
Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and
with freedom.
An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some
imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject
such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State.
7
s
In sum, being a person,
as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority
of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on
, ika.
/J
18
personhiood implies^anarchism.
V
It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated "State",
one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy.
But such a "State", with no
independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve
it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism,
On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
10
9.
The replacement
THE FIFTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE.
argument enables construction of a model of a society functioning without the
State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State
is not necessary.
But it can always be claimed - even if the claim can seldom
or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of
real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable.
The gap may be closed by
appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various
times and places anarchism has been tested and has worked.
Examples of such
Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have
not been omitted.
There are many examples of nonindustrialised societies which were, or are,
19
anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,
and
there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic
20
arrangements within the State structure.
10. THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM AND ITS ORGANISATION.
The arguments
outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the
options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State
and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on.
For example, spontaneous
anarchism — according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrange
ments will arise spontaneously, and will be ushered in during the revolution
without any prior organisation — is a position which is not viable and could
not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which
durable supersession of the State depends.
which these theoretical arguments.
A
The sort of anarchist society
will certainly be organised, but the
organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures
(and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening
of the centralised State), relying heavily on voluntary cooperation and direct
democracy.
The society which emerges will be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin
sometimes pictured it.
It will be based on smaller-scale decentralised
communities, for otherwise such arrangements as community replacement of
State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of
Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily.
Communities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by
representation and subject to a downward system of command.
Within each
community there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth
and property, and no highly concentrated economic
power.
community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
communally owned or not owned at all.
A
11
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and
also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely, they offer
no detailed blueprint.
Accordingly what emerges is not a particular form of
anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and
pluralistic anarchism, such as was instituted in the Spanish collectives.
11. STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETY ; THE FOREST SUCCESSION
MODEL OF REPLACEMENT BY AN ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURE.
The main strategy, emerging
from the First Way, is that of replacement : transition to a new anarchist
social order proceeds by replacement or addption of the more satisfactory State
organisations and structures by organisations and structures of a more
anarchistic cast, and by removal or phasing out of remaining no longer
necessary or unsatisfactory State arrangements.
Replacement and supersession suggest a biological model, of such change
and succession as occurs where one forest type succeeds another; and such
a model is in turn very suggestive.
To make the model more definite, and
to give it some local colour, consider forest succession where a sub-tropical
rainforest replaces a eucalypt forest, as analogous to the case where anarchism
replaces a Statist society.
There is certainly a marked change in structure,
typically from a tall forest with a fairly open canopy to a more compact
closed forest with more layers of vegetation, much more local diversity and
a richer variety of life forms, especially floral forms.
A forest is not
merely a set of trees, but trees in structural arrangement and interdependence,
not merely on one another but on other life forms such as pollinating insects,
seed-carrying birds and animals, and so on; and the changes in structure
include changes in microclimate, in soil moisture levels and humus and
bacterial content.
The change of forest type may be by evolution, by hastened or induced
evolution, or by catastrophe (revolution) as when a eucalypt forest is
clearfelled and artificially succeeded by planted rainforest.
(Strictly,
there is a spectrum of practices and replacement strategies between evolutionary
and revolutionary, and various different revolutionary strategies; and the
standard evolutionary-revolutionary contrast presents a false dichotomy.)
Even reliance on predominantly evolutionary methods, which tend to be
very slow by human time scales may require some (management) practices, else
evolution towards rainforest will not begin or continue.
For example, seeds
for rainforest species may not be available if adjoining areas have been
stripped of suitable seed trees, e.g. by clearing or eucalypt conversion,
in which case it will be necessary to introduce seeds (of anarchist ideas,
methods, arrangements, etc.).
And rainforest evolution may not be able to
13
12. APPLYING THE FOREST SUCCESSION MODEL.
How to apply the model is not
difficult to see in broad outline, and many of the further details have
been filled out by work, that can be described as indicating how allegiance
can be shifted in practice from where we mostly are to alternative social
22.
arrangements and life-styles built on self-management and mutual aid.
The seeds of anarchism should be broadcast or planted, anarchist (nonStatist)
arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts made to replace or
vulnerable Statist arrangements.^ Some of the practices are familiar :
'anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist)
cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc.
Others
are slightly less familiar: avoidance of State influence by arrangements beyond
State reach such as costless (or alternative currency) interchanges of
goods and services, action directed at removing decision-making from State
departments, such as forest services, and into citizen hands, and ultimately, to
decentralized local communities.
In this sort of way worthwhile State arrangements
can be replaced, and power can be progressively transferred from the State, and
returned to the community and to people more directly involved.
"V-
ht)
FOOTNOTES
1.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London,
especially p. 139.
1973,
Much else in this paper, e.g. the distinction
between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin.
2.
That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of
generally beneficial state activity - there is only a
(relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it
can be replaced in one way or another.
course uniquely determined.
Replacement is not of
Lines such replacements can take are
indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature,
consider especially, but not uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid.
New York University Press,
1972, and also his Fields, Factories and
Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and The Conquest
of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913.
3.
On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (edited
S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York,
1970, p. 206 ff. ; also
P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary .
For recent discussion
of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law
court procedures (but for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone,
'Some reflections on arbitrating our way to anarchy', A
Nomos / XIX^New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4.
V
4.
J-
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest
case that can be made for the desirability of the State'
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9).
(M. Taylor,
To cover all
arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants
of' and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of
Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations,
'Prisoner's
Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person
Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are
X
not merely e^gjistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such
games are iterated.
As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate,
there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of
the same logical form - those where people do not contribute to
supply themselves with, or with "optimum" quantities of, a
"collective good" (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where
people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain "optimum"
quantities of, some already available "collective good" (e.g. commons,
2
unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness).
That received arguments
of all these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the
wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op. cit. and elsewhere.
An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also
surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter
of R. Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University
Press, New York,
5.
1980.
An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance
of population size in the arguments for the State.
But size is not
decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided
(or relocated) by organisation info
The figures
smaller communities.
given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which
suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p. 5.
6.
It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State
alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation,
when the State is (as on many theories) the result or reflection of
social cooperation.
7.
This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley,
Theories, Self Management, and
'Social
Environmental Problems' in
Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS,
Australian National University, 1980.
8.
As a result of G. Hardin's "Travesty of the Commons", historical evidence
has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's "Commons" diverges
from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, The Self-
Managing Environment, Allison & BUfsby, London, 1979, chapter 10,
but also Routley, op. cit., p. 285 and pp. 329-332.
Similar points
apply as regards many other Dilemma situations.
'In the. experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game
approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy
even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'.
Abrams, op. cit., p. 308.
9.
Cf.
the discussion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93.
3
10. This important result is established in Taylor, op. cit., for a number of
critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p. 32 but especially
chapter 5.
11. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal
prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including
cases where the State is one of the "adversaries".
12. Both the false dichotomies cited are commonplace, not to say rife,
in modem economic and political theorising.
Both are to be
found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the firstJ^(with an
attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition^/
op. cit., p. 250 ff.
13. For instance, a certain social escapism : one escapes
one's social roles
erf
and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze.
Or so it may appear : for in reality anyone who works, works long and
often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover
the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity.
cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way
o/icA
14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op.
in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off
regions.
15. The question is in effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent
of his Third Man argument.
16. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II.
Fourth edition
(revised), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p. 129 and p. 127.
The (overshoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental
problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the
dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State1, 'upon which'
Marxists never had 'any well-considered view'
(p. 129).
17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and
Opposition 13 (1978), 199-217: see p. 209 and p.(^25jTP
18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. l/olff,
In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
No argument
is however without assumptions, which are open to dispute.
argument, for example^is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical
anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff.
Wolff's
i
nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining
THE IRREFUTABILITY OF ANARCHISM
1.
GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE.
The State is like God:
the
anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of what is
commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed.
The parallel,
drawn by Bakunin, has its weaknesses as well as its strengths.
While
the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe
that there are no states:
none are legitimate.
on the contrary, there are all too many, though
The important parallel is as to arguments.
The
agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed,
and so adopts a "neutral" stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe
that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence
Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not
sit-ting position.
only faulting the arguments for, but taking it for granted that there are
arguments, or at least solid considerations, against.
So it is with soundly
,
nene.
based anarchism^ which can both faults arguments for the State^and
(ncisi'je.
X case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again
emphasised by Bakunin^- is that of State and Church.Clx This institutional
comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised;
for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many
very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of
the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly an
organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually
answerable to its police and military; how it is of the same category as
A
business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent
threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church
used to, it has nominal support of most of its "subjects", though many of
them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have
come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but
as a necessary evil
Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is unnecessary, so it will
be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove
that God exists.
Since the State is unnecessary, as well as
costly
and
typically at least evil in many of its practices and undesirable in other
respects, it should be superseded.
social arrangements.,^
And it can be succeeded, by alternative
2. THE FIRST WAY OF SHOWING THAT THE STATE IS NOT REQUIRED : THE REPLACEMENT
ARGUMENT.
The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the
collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by
alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State
activity being dispensed with.
The argument is not a straight substitution
argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything
accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements.
There is much
the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, e.g. sponsorship
of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a great deal of typical State
activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, e.g. graft,
corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land
and other resources, and encouragement or protection of polluting or
environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should
not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and
subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forest
destructive pine planting and woodchip projects).
The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or
damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial J$ind.
This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism.
The argumertf:, implicit
in the works of the classical anarchists, goes like this:- The functions of
the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest
and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions,
and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the
powerful groups the State tends to serve).
But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions
which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required.
For why should
people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their
collective interest?
Such functions can be performed, and performed better,
without the coercion which is the hallmark of of the State, and without the
accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance
of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it "serves".
The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case by case
2
form, considering each function in turn.
In each case the function is carried
out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary cooperation by the
people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements.
Consider, for
example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services or building
programs, or self managed welfare, housing or environment services, or community
access communications (e.g. radio)^ most of which are presently either starved
of infrastructure or hindered by the State.
Such beneficial services would in
general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally
3
held, and those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the
operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of
being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals
and powerful agencies.
Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal
types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than
individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to
apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community
welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are
privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private
individuals.
As for the second type of functions, those which are not in the
collective interest, coercion will normally be required for the performance of
those functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation.
But
those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective
interest.
In this way, while the good part of the State's operation is
retained and improved upon, the bad part - especially the evils of brutality,
corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus is detached.
State services that are concerned with order, in the general sense, may
be similarly removed or replaced.
These services, which include reduction of
violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services,
security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to
make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it.
do not.
They
Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by
communities themselves without intervention by the State.
Secondly, a great
many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence
of which the State is the main purveyor and which is often the outcome of
ol
3
the State's propping up of gross inequities.
A community which seriously
limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
a//
gross inequities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for
many "welfare" services and the basis for a great many offences involving
violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and
many of those involving personal violence.
Such a left-leaning anarchism is
also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the
State, such as those from the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth
that is alleged to be achieved by State enforcement of redistribution.
As all
too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and
police inequitable distributionThis then is the main classical argument
for anarchism.
The argument has however been challenged, both by historical
and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot
act in their collective interest without coercion.
3.
THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE
LIKE.
The main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for
anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the
Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are important cases where
---------
(?)
individuals will not agree“or cooperate to provide themselves with (or to
maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as only the State can
4
furnish.
In such "dilemma" situations each individual will hope to gain
advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others'
contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from
others' restraint).
The claim is that only the State with its backing
of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed. (6J
A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type,
including Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the "Tragedy of the
Commons" argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to
secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players.Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have
been separately imprisoned.
A State representative makes the following offers
separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while
his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while
the accomplice gets 8 years.
It so happens that if both prisoners remain
silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence.
if both confess they would each receive 4 years.
But
The "game" can be summarised
in the following "payoff" matrix:-
Prisoner 2
The game is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free
at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma:- It is in
each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other
does : strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' "dominant" strategy (and also
in fact a minimax strategy).
For if 2, for example, remains silent, then 1 goes
free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by
confessing.
But if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain
an inferior outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously
called "cooperating", by their both remaining silent.
5
4. FOILING THE PRISONERS'
DILEMMA ARGUMENT.
It is bizarre that a dilemma
alleged to show the necessity of the State - which is supposed to intervene,
forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners "cooperate" to obtain an
optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.Of course
the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemma£is
inessential, as is much else from the example.
But some features of the
prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption
that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate
or really cooperate.
Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation
assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are
dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in
their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests are opposed.
The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly
seriously limited.?
A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect
that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference.
It is claimed
that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to cooperate,
that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of
the other (Abrams, p. 193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement'
(Taylor, p. 5).
Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is
very often not so - and in a more cooperative social setting than the currently
encouraged privatisation
of life, the
extent of cooperation and trust would
o
undoubtedly be much higher.
The argument has to depend crucially then on
substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings,
e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large
measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people
were that unreliable and deviousState arrangements involved in providing
public goodsy such as taxation', would not succeed either).
That such assumptions
are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g., to bring out the
first,suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g., they are friends or they
are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours
and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical
scepticism,
involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the
other security against default, and so on.
The question of the character of human interests and preferences
and the
extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is
fundamental to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and
also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities.
A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated
political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a
preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count
is an independent parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings
of others nor on the social context in which that human operates.
While the
individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy
the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural
pressure on consumers to conform (through advertising, education, popular
media), very many humans do not conform, and the extent of cultural pressure
towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence.
And^sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a small community
(which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social
influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners'
Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State.
5. WHY THE DILEMMA ARGUMENTS CANNOT SUCCEED.'
What the Dilemma-based case
for the State has to show - what never has been shown - is that there are
outstanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also
qaA'-fkc-l'
oft
damaging if unresolved,\but resolve^/by State intervention, and only so
A A- jZAz-zv
(optimally) resolved, and finally.that in the course of so resolving these
Dilemma situations, worse situation than those that are resolved are not
thereby induced.
These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if they can be
satisfied at all, in a way that is not question begging.
For several of the
conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is important, damaging, optional,
worse) and involve considerations about which reasonable parties can differ.
The selection of Dilemmas^provides an example^: after all there are many such
Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of
l/«o|on<c or
family, feuds) which are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not
worthy of State attention.
There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be
satisfied at all.
For many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games,
Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's "Tragedy of the
Commons" for instance, turn out when properly formalised to consist not just
of a single game but of a sequence of such games, to be more adequately
represented by what is called a supergame.
But in many such sequential
Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming
separated players with purely egoistic interests?^ For what sequential
games permit that isolated games exclude, is that players' actions may be
dependent upon past performance of other players.
This dependence effectively
removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma
situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from
past social interaction.
In such supergames then, no intervention is required.
7
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by "intervention", e.g. by allowing
the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that
they can really cooperate.
Equally important, and equally independent of the
State, is the matter of breaking down the adversary, or game, situation so
the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to cooperate.
Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has
a good record of adhering, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc.
A
Nor
is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal
strategies : a range of other inducements and incentives
they be required in recalcitrant cases), and
is known (should
is used even by the State, e.g.
But at no stage is the State
gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc.
required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners’ Dilemmas
are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations
can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they
are not already catered for.
And in fact communal and cooperative organisation
did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in
the case of the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works.
There are no important Dilemma
situations, it seems, where the State is essential.
The State has been thought
to be essential because of certain influential false dichotomies; for example,
that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour
is uncommon, and "irrational"), that the only way of allocating goods, apart
from profit-directed markets - which tend to deal abysmally with collective
goods - is through State control.1-
But it is quite evident that there are
other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional
markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by cooperatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve some Dilemma situations
has very extensive effects', many of them negative, so that the gains made, if
any, in so resolving Dilemma1
situations, appear to be substantially outweighed
by the costs involved.
For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State
to put in the balance.
As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with
its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more
/A
of
important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as with the working
example, or differently with the State as a further player (since the State
may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.).
also to further arguments against the State.
These points lead
8
6.
THE SECOND WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM PROBLEM RECURRENCE^/
The solution
by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more
dangerous form the very problems introduction of the State was designed to
solve, including new Dilemmas.
Suppose, for instance, the secular State really
were introduced in order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas - introduced as opposed
to inherited from the religious State and the Church, and maintained to prop
up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests -
then the array of States generates new Prisoners' Dilemmas, which there is no
Super-State to resolve by coercion.
Suppose, as the myth has it, the State
really were introduced in the interest of order and stability and to curb
violence; then the arrays of States resulting more than negates these advantages,
with instability, disorder and violence on a grander scale than before the
14
emergence of modem secular States.
7.
THE THIRD WAY : THE OVERSHOOT ARGUMENT,FROM THE INADEQUACY OF
INSTITUTIONAL CONTROLS ON STATE POWER.
Having ceded a monopoly on power to
the State, in order to resolve some dilemmas, some of them arising from an
oontrols or balances the power of the
inequitable distribution of power, what
State?
A Super-State.
And its power?
There is a
vicious infinite regress
if the reply to the question "What controls the controller?" is "a further
controller".^ The only promising way of avoiding this problem - other routes
lead (even more) directly to totalitarianism - is by having the first of these
controllers, the State, answer back to those in whose interests it is allegedly
established,
those of the society or group of communities it controls.
implies democratic methods of some kind.
Others go further:
This
'democracy Lis]
the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which
, 16
we can try to protect ourselves against the misuse of political power .
In this event, control has mostly failed.
Democracy is extremely attenuated,
even in those states that claim to practice it.
The exercise of power in modern
"democratic" states - much increased power reaching deep into peoples' lives,
power which has passed to certain political elites and is directed at the
attainment of such objectives as economic growth and material "progress" - is
often channelled through 'non-elected authority' and 'is not democratic in the
traditional meaning of the term'.In any case, indirect democratic and other
institutional checks are tenuous in as much as
they depend ultimately on the
toleration of those who have direct control of the forces of the State.
Experience seems to show that such toleration will only be shown so long as
democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are
broadly in accord with what those who control the coercive power are prepared
9
to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to
those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation).
But institutional
/I
checks which operate only insofar as a "system" acceptable to the powerholders
is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those checked, are not really checks at all.
n.
? ’■
The problem of controlling the power of the State, u/surping and preventing
the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its
mandate, is only satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the
first place.
The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the
anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation.
8. THE FOURTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY.
responsible for actions deliberately undertaken.
A person is
This premiss can be derived,
if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent.
Taking responsibility
for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about
what to do on each occasion oneself; not acting simply on direction from outside,£»/
A
determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision
over to someone or something else.
It implies, that is, moral autonomy.
Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility requires, freedom.
For the
autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is not subject
to the will of another.
another so directs.
Even if it does what another directs, it is not because
In being free, not of constraints (both physical and
self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous
being is morally free.
A necessary feature of the State is authority over those in its territory
(under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon
them.
Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and
with freedom.
An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some
imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject
such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State.
In sum, being a person,
as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority
of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on
ike.
a
>18
personhood implies anarchism.
It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated "State",
one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy.
But such a "State", with no
independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve
it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism.
On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
10
9.
THE FIFTH WAY : THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE.
The replacement
argument enables construction of a model of a society functioning without the
State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State
is not necessary.
But it can always be claimed - even if the claim can seldom
or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of
real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable.
The gap may be closed by
appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various
times and places anarchism has been tested and has worked.
Examples of such
Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have
not been omitted.
There are many examples of nonindustrialised societies which were, or are,
19
anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,
and
there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic
20
arrangements within the State structure.
10. THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM AND ITS ORGANISATION.
The arguments
outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the
options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State
and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on.
For example, spontaneous
anarchism — according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrange
ments will arise spontaneously, and will be ushered in during the revolution
without any prior organisation — is a position which is not viable and could
not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which
durable supersession of the State depends. The sort of anarchist society
deJintafe.
which these theoretical arguments
will certainly be organised, but the
A
organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures
(and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening
of the centralised State), relying heavily on voluntary cooperation and direct
democracy.
The society which emerges will be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin
sometimes pictured it.
It will be based on smaller-scale decentralised
communities, for otherwise such arrangements as community replacement of
State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of
Prisoners' Dilemmas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily.
Communities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by
representation and subject to a downward system of command.
Within each
community there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth
Zand property, and no highly concentrated economic
power. A
community will be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
communally owned or not owned at all.
FOOTNOTES
1.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973,
especially p. 139.
Much else in this paper, e.g. the distinction
between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin.
2.
That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of
generally beneficial state activity - there is only a
(relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it
can be replaced in one way or another.
course uniquely determined.
Replacement is not of
Lines such replacements can take are
indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature,
consider especially, but not uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid.
New York University Press,
1972, and also his Fields, Factories and
Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and The Conquest
of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913.
3.
On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (edited
S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York, 1970, p. 206 ff.; also
P.O. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary.
For recent discussion
of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law
court procedures (but for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone,
'Some reflections on arbitrating our way to anarchy', Anarchism(<y>»~7
Nomos, XIX), New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4.
4.
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest
case that can be made for the desirability of the State'
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9).
(M. Taylor,
To cover all
arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants
of' and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of
Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations,
'Prisoner's
Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person
Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are
not merely eristic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such
games are iterated.
As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate,
there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of
che same logical form - those where people do not contribute to
supply themselves with, or with "optimum" quantities of, a
"collective good" (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where
people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain "optimum
quantities of, some already available "collective good" (e.g. commons,
2
unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness).
That received arguments
of all these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the
wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op. cit. and elsewhere.
An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also
surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter
of R. Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University
Press, New York,
5.
1980.
An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance
of population size in the arguments for the State.
But size is not
decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided
(or relocated) by organisation into
smaller communities.
The figures
given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which
suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p. 5.
6.
It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State
alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation,
when the State is (as on many theories) the result or reflection of
social cooperation.
7.
This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, 'Social
Theories, Self Management, and
Environmental Problems' in
Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS,
Australian National University, 1980.
8.
As a result of G. Hardin's "Travesty of the Commons", historical evidence
has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's "Commons" diverges
from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, The Self-
Managing Environment, Allison & Ba<sby, London, 1979, chapter 10,
<A./
but also Routley, op. cit., p. 285 and pp. 329-332.
Similar points
apply as regards many other Dilemma situations.
(
'
'In the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game
.
>
approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy
even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'.
Abrams, op. cit., p. 308.
).
Cf.
the discussion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93.
10. This important result is established in Taylor, op. cit., for a number of
critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p. 32 but especially
chapter 5.
11. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal
prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including
cases where the State is one of the "adversaries".
12. Both the false dichotomies cited are commonplace, not to say rife,
in modern economic and political theorising.
Both are to be
found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first (with an
attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition)
in Taylor.
For a
further criticism of such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit.,pp.250
13. For instance, a certain social escapism : one escapes
one's social roles
and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze.
Or so it may appear : for in reality anyone who works, works long and
often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover
the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity.
14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op.
cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way
in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off
nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining
regions.
X
15. The question is in effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent
of his Third Man argument.
16. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II.
Fourth edition
(revised), Routledge and Regan Paul, London, 1962, p.
129 and p.
127.
The (overshoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental
problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the
dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State1,
Marxists never had 'any well-considered view'
'upon which'
(p. 129).
17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and
Opposition 13 ( 1978), 199-2 17: see p. 209 and p. 211 .
18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. Wolff,
In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
No argument
is however without assumptions, which are open to dispute.
Wolff's
argument, for example, is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical
anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff.
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and
also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely,
no detailed blueprint.
they offer
Accordingly what emerges is not a particular form of
anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and
pluralistic anarchism, such as was instituted in the Spanish collectives.
19. Documented in The Anarchist Collectives (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions,
New York, 1974.
20. As B. Martin boldly asserts,
'The advantages of self-management and
alternative lifestyles are many and significant.
And these
alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of evidence and
experience to support
operates.
their superiority over the present way society
The obstacles to self-management and alternative life
styles are powerful vested interests and institutional resistance to
change', Changing the Cogs, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979,
p- 6.
21. As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley,
284 ff.
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Two copies of paper (typescript), with handwritten emendations and annotations. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'The irrefutability of anarchism', Social alternatives, 2(3): 23-29.
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CASE DISSOLVED:
critique of argumentsto and for the State
Over the centuries that humans have been stuck with states, many different attempts to
justify them, as in some way necessary or desirable (as more than an unfortunate accident of
history), have been attempted. None pf these arguments succeed (as much would perhaps be
quite widely conceded^).
/
/
There are various wayjs of showing that the arguments fail. One powerful way deploys,
indicates or develops, counterexamples; for instance modelling social arrangements without
states. Another more pedestrian but essential way consists in direct examination of the
arguments, not merely some of them or various classes of them, but, for completeness, each and
every one of them. Ultimately that calls for, what is attempted first in a first attempt fashion,
an exhaustive classification of the arguments „
A preliminary classification of these arguments can take the following form:
1. //i-yfonc or <?Ma,s7-/H,s'f(9rzc. These arguments divide in tum into two principal subclasses:
1.1 Daycrzpnve.*
/b/Zacy o/TAo
quo.
A first group of arguments^justification of the state, try to take advantage of the
descriptive features that states are entrenched almost everywhere as the dominant feature of the
political landscape. Helpful as it may be having states in avoiding hypothetical in injecting a
heavy element of realism oLesdisn, nonetheless fact is not per se justification: what is often
X
ought not to be. Bank robbers and robber barons are justified by their mere existence There
are similar problems<dth the argument from tradition. If some principle, practice or theory
stood for a good while it had something going for it. Some such consideration lies at the basis
of precedence in law; the idea of tradition as encapsulating past wisdom - or past folly. Among
the problems are that with authoritarian institutions come their antitheses, with the state the
anti-state. Many practices like barbarism and racism have stood for a very long tirne,^ many
organisations like mafia have been airound for a long time, so they have something going for
them? Such troubles, the evident gap between descriptive and normative, are among those that
plague
In s^prt without utterly questionable connecting assumptions,
such as that what is is necessary (a modal fallacy) or that what is is right (a deontic fallacyi),
such arguments fail to afford justification.
There are some important JMbtypes of descriptive (or quasi-descriptive) arguments,
namely
*
1
arguments. The state is not only established, it works. Immediate difficulties
This fallacy, heavily utilized by Hegel, is critically examined in NNL.
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with such arguments are obvious. The Mafia too/is well-established. It too works, often in
opposition the the State (as a sort of negative opposite, like the Devil to God). What sort of
standards of
is working
intended to meet? All sorts of awful political
arrangements have "worked", at least in persisting for as long as statist arrangements:
despotisms, dictatorships, tyrannies, ... . Still as pragmatic arguments enjoy considerable
popularity, especially in North America, they will have to be considered in more detail (than
they deserve).
*
arguments. The state has evolved through a long sequence of political forms.
It is tried and tested, and now selected, selected as best available. Such arguments afford
scientific clothing for the appalling Hegelian "what is is right". For what has evolved is
selected thereby as best, and what is selected as best is no doubt right (by a familiar utilitarian
deontic reduction). Slather evidently such arguments prove too much. Any form that in fact
emerges, no matter how achieved, though what dusta^dly Machievellian deeds, no matter how
awful, is thereby justified: empires and dictatorships of the worst sort, fa^ist and totalitarian
states, one and all, are justified, provided only they are established.^
this only for climax states, where some sort of evolutionary plutoniums have been achieved
have been achieved (otherwise bad means to select evolutionary ends may temporarily prevail).
But where is the evidence that the State is not another transitional stage, like feudalism before
it? As an evolutionary form it is very recent, and fortunately not yet established in evolutionary
time.
1.2 AfoK-J&pcripf/ve. Difficulties with descriptive arguments, including prescriptive
fallacies (deriving presciptive or evaluative conclusions from purely descriptive premisses), are
evaded/idealisation arguments, which include
These are genetic in justificatory character, relating the
mythological "historical" development of the State from an imaginary pre-state situation.^
These arguments are not sharply^p^rated from
* fdea/ /n,yfory arguments.
* MMagmary
and ideal reconjfrMcrfoK arguments. For the transactions, such as an
originating social contract, may be presented in a quasi-historic form. This important class of
arguments is broader than contractual arrangements, including all the following sorts of
imaginary transactions: negotiating, bargaining, experimenting, etc., in given (idealised)
conditions, perhaps issuing in an arrangement, agreement, contract, etc. One preliminary
That contemporary exponents and practitioniers of state craft are inclined to accept these^orts of
considerations, and to recognise any region that has gained (short-term) control over a territory
and its administration, does nothing for the considerations^ What it reveals rather is the moral
sickness of contemporary real-politics.
They include
(as opposed to
relocation arguments, where a group ("voting
with its feet ) relocates and forms a state (except of course these gorups, when there was room
for them, tended to aim for new societies, not states).
These arguments form a bridge between descriptive and ntunative. While voluntary contract
arguments are descripively implausible, voluntary relocation has, or did have, a little descriptive
�3
classification of these arguments divides them into
natural
quasi-theological, legalistic
invisible hand
evolutionary
consensual or equivalent.
artificial,
The most notorious of these reconstructions, or political thought-experiments, are the
social contract theories whereby individual members of a society fictitiously enter into an
enforceable contract, inescapable for themselves and all their descendants, setting up the state,
primarily as a security arrangement. In later versions which may involve other legalistic forms
than contracts, such as pa^cts, trusts, etc., there is much negotiating and bargaining in contrived
situations, where humans lose many of their distinctive features and accoutrements (in a effort
to ensure some initial fairness).
A variant on contract theories, which justify some sort of state arrangements
Z/* they
arose in an ideal way, is retrojustification of the state as naturally arising, as a sort of super
insurance agency, from pre-state arrangements. For example, the minimal state evolves from a
competing set of state-like security agencies one of which somehow gains a monopoly, and is
retrojustified through insurance arguments (concerning risk and compensation).
Such arguments are sometimes presented as replacing overall contractual arrangements
(through minor arrangements undoubtedly enter) with invisible hand mechanisms. Whereas
contractual arguments take the general segmented shape:
INITIAL STATE: INPUT
INTERMEDIATE STATES
prestate
negotiation followed by
situation:
draft contrad, assessment
"state of nature"
FINAL STATE: OUTPUT
state established
situation
followed by contract adoption
^in invisible hand arguments the intermediate steps, on route to the state, consist in formation of
organisations and their progressive amalgatiation to provide finally a state. For example, in
Nozick these organisations are taken to comprise protective agencies (though that is only one
statist function), and to ensure legitimacy for the final object, it is contended that each
intermediate state derives from the proceeding in a morally permissible way, namely preserves
% selected rights. Such arguments fail for two main classes of reasons: inadequacy in the
derivations of late and final stages from earlier ones, and unsatisfactoriness over the initial state
(in particular, what is assumed in it, such as proprietorial rights, and what is excluded, i$ the
way of more satisfactory alternatives).
In these forms the State arises through voZimfary actions and transactions. Whereas
anarchists and many socialists see anarchism as a post-state state, these transaction arguments
often assume anarchism, in very motly forms, as pre-state states. People voluntarily elect to
escape those pre-state form, "rushing" into the jaws of the State. But there are, as well,
versions, where the State is established through legalistic or religious means,
natural religion or the like. For example, the details of State organisation, or a recipe or
�4
commandments therefore, are received by or given to some powerful religious personage, who
implements the organisation under religious authority. The legalistic equivalent came about
through implementation, not of religious dictates, but what may be very similar in practical
affect and detail, natural law. Normally this law will be "seen", for, by some powerful
personages, who are in a position to convey, and have put into effect, their illumination. With
the decline of religion these sorts of arguments have lost much of their general appeal (they
should never have enjoyed much credibility). But many relics of these shattered arguments
remain, to be removed. A critical point is that such arguments should not gain independent
standing. Most law is mfra-state, state manufactured and state serving. What is independent of
states has to answer to standards, moral standards especially, that are independently justified.
Similarly for religious commandments. As a result, these arguments collapse back to
arguments for the State.
Now modern states did not arise in any such "natural" or contractual way. Often they
were imposed by conquest or through colonialisation, and with a few exceptions, using
military means rather than offering much sweetness and light and choice. There are a notable
discrepancies between typical justifications of the state (in which much is sweetness and light,
though it is far from a pareto-optimal object) and common explanations of the role of the state
(in which much is obviousness and intrigue). Nor do the ideal constructions or histories offer
much justification for these resulting state power configurations. For the states so delivered
are very different from those most people presently toil under.
In any case, the arguments involved do not succeed. They are extraordinarily gappy by
contemporary logical standards. They depend upon some utterly implausible assumptions,
for example as to how vile conditions are^n extra^state situations. These changes are easily
illustrated, and will be.) small immediate)^eana&14 example.
Underlying several of the imaginary transaction arguments to the state, are various c/zofcg
arguments of a thought-experiment cast. Commonly such arguments ambitiously aim to show
that
* the state is necessary, and that
* the state is superior to its absence.
But such arguments.like those embedcTin
confracf arguments .are little better than con
jobs.as are presented depend upon a false choice. For only two options are considered:
H, a horrible Hobbesian "state of nature" and
S, a well-ordered (contructually-reached) Hobbesian state.
The argument, appealing to the vices of H and the virtues of S, has little trouble in concluding
* * S is better than H (or similarly, rational agents would select S over H, etc.)
other options, such as anarchist ones. Why should
anarchists want to line up with S? They can agree with proposition * *. They might also want
The choice conveniently leaves
to assert that anarchistic arrangements Z are superior to S. Whereupon it is evident that neither
* nor * follows. For necessity all accessible alternatives have to be considered (by the
�semantics of
That has not been done. For superiority, the superiority of S to Z and
other alternatives has to be taken into account. That has not been done. — ,
-----------------------
alternative i^\Carter^^(?c^ry^which produces The kind of individuals who have
strongly internalized values and can live cooperatively and freely without the threat of force ...\
i^)(p.25).4 6V1C-
No doubt some of the gaps in the arguments could be plugged by further, further
contestable, assumptions, but such analytic work remains to be attempted and assessed, after
two millennia of such arguments. In fact it was long ago realised that such arguments exhibit
unlikely and even paradoxical features. For example, in consenting to a state for security
purposes, participants to the state contract proceed to establish an institution which is far
more dangerous to them than the power of others taken distributively. It would seem that
those smart enough to enter into a social contract for a state would be smart enough to foresee
the problems of hiring a monster, and to avoid the state and steer along without it. In
establishing a state, inhabitants set up an institution that is far more powerful and dangerous
to them than the power of other inhabitants taken singly or in groups.
This is to think that Men are so fulish that they tak care to avoid
what Mischiefs may be done then by PoZe-caM, or
but are
contra^ f^ay think it Safety, to be devoured by AZo/asA
These arguments, like others to follow, even if somehow repaired, would not establish an
institution with anything approaching the power and complexity of the modern state.
Arguments to the state typically establish, at best, only a rather minimal state, with certain
protective and regulatory powers. Such minimal states would not deliver many of the goods
economists, still less socialists, have come to expect of the state. The arguments certainly do
not establish anything like the oppressive paternal state with a panoply of powers that many
citizens are forceably subject to, power states have accumulated by their own unjustified
predatory activity. In this respect too, arguments to the state resemble arguments to God.
Deistic arguments characteristically establish (insofar as they establish anything) only a quite
minimal rAar w/zZc/t, a first cause, some existent, a most perfect object, a universal designer,
clockmaker or the like. They do nothing to establish many of the powers or properties
asciibed to God.
There is yet another resemblance a surplus of attributes are regularly ascribed to Gock so
much power, knowledge, andj^^like^that paradoxes of omnipotence, omniscience, and
jimilar, are quickly engendereb^aradoxes that a lesser God that merely satisized on virtue (and
could tolerate some production of evil) could easily escape)^ So too a surplus of power is
conceded to the State. The state carries ^far more power than is required for collective
organisation, a large "political surphis" which should be relinquished.
/4
^ reversmg Hobbes' argument,pottom halfl really a cranking.
$
Locke p.372.
——^Lesser Gods encounter ^other difficulties: their plurality, the fact that they can be exceeded by
other greater Gods, and their upstaging by ontological arguments.
�6
2(-l*) S*y^7?zayic. These arguments divide again into two principal subclasses, namely
2.1 Ana/yac and
2.2 M?K#K(2/y%c.
Further both subclasses may be subdivided in tum into individualistic and holistic subclasses,
for instance 2.1 into
2.1.1 Indiviualistic and
2.1.2 Non-individualistic.
Most recent investigation has been concentrated within subdivision 2.1.^1, upon game-theoretic
justifications of the State. Indeed, given prevailing methodological individualism, which
almost invariably takes analytic form, all acceptable justification reuced to this subdivision?
Certainly other systematic ways of endeavouring to justify the state tent
z to have
fallen by the wayside or been abandoned. However it is worth listing two further forms, one of
which remains significant:
* Holistic/brz/t considerations. The State is presented as the form, or even spirit, of Society,
much as the mind is the form of the corresponding body. Insofar as there is an argument, it is
analogical, from an increasingly dubious basis. Contemporary up-dating of the torm'ideas
would no doubt have the State as - what is even less plausible - the program, or the software,
of a corresponding Society.
* Mora/ considerations.
But there is little good reason to embrace individualism, methodological or other, because many
sorts of wholes, beginning with ^bstra&i, do not come down to individuals; it is poor
methodology to try to proceed as if they do. More on individualism elsewhere. See aM JB
�3VHATEVER3
2. Arguments in a game theory setting: Prrhners' Diiemma games and supergames.
What is widely regarded
as the most persuasive justification of the state [is] "the argument
that, without the state, people would not voluntarily cooperate to
provide themselves with certain public goods... ". This argument,
which is quite popular with contemporary academics, suggests
that, without the state, people would not be able to "act so as to
realise their
interests."*
.
So far, hewexEr, we have not encountered^an argument, but simply a very large claim. The
argument itself^is remarkably circuitous, circuiting through a range of examples drawn from
game theory, and, so it will emerge, as yet quite indecisive. Obtaining a view, a clear view, of
the whole argument, or rather the spectrum of potential arguments, matters for anarchism. For
that will help considerably in dispelling the myth that here, partly hidden, is a powerful
P3p*x
argument against
A
The
argument takes the form of a modal syllogism:
* The state is necessary for the optimal, or adequate, provision of collective (i.e. public)
goody (zzm/or premiss),
of*
'
* Collective goods are necessary for a satisfactory social life, (J%7M% premiss) .
the state is necessary for a satisfactory social life./Moreover, given that the latter, a
satisfactory social life (in a given region), is a certain desiderata, the state is to that extent
necessary (a
necessity is (^bolutized).
While the big argument takes thatybrm, it is subject to variation. Furthermore, some
variation is essential, else it, and one of the chief forms incorporated, is invalid. For the
argument displayed has a different, and an ambiguous, middle term. For requisite uniformity,
and validity, the middle term has to be either a) adequate provision of colective goods, or o)
optimal provision of collective goods. While little supporting argument get lavished on the
minor premiss, it being assumed obvious, that obviousness
selected. For a satisfactory social life may result when
when term o) is
than optimal provisioning of
collective goods occurs. Adequate lives only require adequate goods, perhaps even a modest
supply of goods for less consumptive societies, not optimal or maximal levels.
There is/a significant skating about, of justificatory relevance, in the "most persuasive
justification of the state", as normally slackly presented^between
(as in o), nomally explicated in terms of maximization;
erms of satisization);
of provisioning: opPma/
(as in a), have construed int
(unspecified, as in the quote above, or perhaps
specified as in Hobbes, e.g. defence and security of property).
Unfortunately for the argument, all that the game-theoretic arguments for the major
1
2
Grofman 80, p.108, quoting Taylor. For another similar statement, qualified to members of a
large public, see Taylor 82, p.53.
Thus, basic collective goods for a basic social life, as for instance in subsistence lifestyles.
��'
'
'
' /
premiss typically establish at best is failure of optima^ or certain large prov^pning, without the
state. They do not show failure to provision at all without the state, or failure to achieve
"basic" provision, or even adequate provisioning. Now anarchism can^granF that certain large
provisioning is improbable without the state; for example^ntercoiynental nuclear missiles, or
large output nuclear power plants. 3 But i^hardly matters! f&r such state-posessed goods are?
arguably antithetical to satisfactory social life. Nor need anarchism accede Rr optimality
requirements, thereby destroying usual game-theoretic arguments. For these arguments usually
show that more would be obtained under certain counter-individualistic cooperative strategies
than would otherwise be obtained, not that some or basic levels would not be achieved. To
put it bluntly, satisizing anarchists can throw out the challenge: what does it matter if a few
state prisoners defect (i.e. there are some not fully-paid-up rider^so long as enough goods are
still delivered? That challenge has not been met, even implicitly, as will appear. 5?
It is unreasonable, in any case, to demand optimal levels from non-statist societies,
because no extant stat^ measure up to such excessive requirements. Indeed most staites do
...
...........................................
,
. bd
not even meet utterly basic demands. Henceforth we shall be looking for
leads,
which %?.yo /hero cover basic demands.
The argument for the critical major premiss takes the following sort of route, involving
these components:
1. Assimilation of the problem of provision of collective goods (in the light of the minor
premiss it can be cast as a problem) to paradigmatic problems in game theory, initially the
Prisoners' Dilemma (PD for short). No doubt efforts at provision of public goods commonly
result in arrangements that can be represented formally as Prisoners' Dilemmas. But it is
sometimes claimed, what will be repudiated subsequently, that all such efforts result in PD
situations, that is that there is a universal linkage. Two connections are regularly assumed: a
universal representation of problems in game theory, and a more plausible less ambitious
connection with PD games. That is:
* all provisioning problems can be represented within game theory.
** these problems^requently)takePD form.
.
The first assumption, of game theory representation, is^severe. Each problem is transformed
into a game, with n independent players, normally individuals or individual units (such as an
"individual" family or firm in economics^)/ These players characteristically possess but limited
information, and almost invariably are allowed only extraordinarily narrow motivations and
objectives, am) as maximizing their own interests or pay-offs, in a rigid setting with fixed
predetermined moves.$
According to the more plausible, less ambitious collections,
3
4
5
So much is argued elsewhere (nuclear wo^k).
While in many politically relevant applications, such as the "tragedy of the common^' game,the
players may bedndividuals, in other applications the players may be communities, societies, or
even states, e.g\mtemational traaR and war games.
It is this sort of rigidity and limitation that/make^ parts of game-theory automatically tractable.
<?;
�3
* provisioning of public goods frequently yields prisoners' dilemma situations, Ahat is the
problem involved can be transformed into a typical PD game, comprising a perhaps interated
games among a public of n individuals.
2. Sometimes these games yield unfavourable results, that is not enough individuals cooperate
but instead defect, so the good in question will not be delivered.
3. On/y by intervention pf the state can cooperation be obtained, by coercion of individuals?
other devices, such a;
of the market, will notsucceed.
�4
3. THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE
buttress the State status quc^are based on variants of the prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that
there are imporran? cases where individuals will not agree^ or co-operate to provide them
selves with (or to maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as on/y the State can
furnish? In such 'dilemma' situations each individual will hope to gain advantage, without
contributing (or exercising restraint), from others' contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on
others (or profiting from others' restraint). The claim is that only the State with its backing of
force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed. In short,'certain
individual choice cannot replace state-covered choice.
important cases, coo<
There are (as the bracketed clauses indicate) two main types of case, those where people
do not conrri&M&.to
themselves with, or with optimum quantities of, a "collective
good", and those where people do not
themselves to
or maintain optimum
quantities of, some already available "collective good". The first type of case is taken to
include such traditional and modern concerns of the state and its subsidiary institutions as
order, security, defence, and perhaps private property, as well as sewerage schemes, water
supplies, waste services, public health, social security, etc. The second case is supposed to
include, as well as village commons, newer enviromental concerns such as clean air, unpolluted
streams and beaches, parks, rainforests, wilderness, whales, etc. But there is no sharp division
between the cases (security or parks could be of either type depending on the status quo), and
The case broken-backed right here: because if we don't ^o this^not going to agree to social
contract — which allegedly implies these things — either. Similarly,
jocia/ contract theory
&ro&cn-&ac%cJ.
The Tragedy of the Commons is set up so as to assume no collective methods have been
developed or can be developed without coercion. (Roberts).
The point of coercion is to retain the privatised individual. For the factor of coercion makes it in
intrests of private individual. So coercion makes the effect of relations to be got without
exceeding provatised individual picture. Coercion substitutes for relations in the context of
privatised individuals.
Privatised individuals are, of course, products, in large part, of the operation (and enforcement
and entrenchment) of a particular social theory, or ra/Zzcr jar/ ofsocial theory.
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest case that can be made for
the desirability of the State* (M. Taylor, Anarc/ty anJ Coap^raZiaa, Wiley, London, 1976, p.9).
To cover all arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants of and
disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners'
Dilemma situations, 'Prisoner's Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single nperson Prisoners' Dilemma games, but, for example, games where the payoffs are not merely
egoistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such games are iterated. As the bracketed
clauses in the text indicate, there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both the jawt^
Zagica/ /oral — those where people do not
to
themselves with, or with
'optimum' quantities of, a 'collective good' (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where
people do not refrain themselves to wainfam, or maintain 'optimum' quantities of, some alrca<
available 'collective good' (e.g. commons, unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness). That
received arguments of all these types involves Prisoners? Dilemma situations (in the wide sense)
is argued in effect, in Taylor, op.cif. and elsewhere. An easier introduction to the material
covered by Taylor, which also surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter of
R. Abrams, FoaaJan'aaj o/Po/aica/ Aaa/y^, Columbia University press, New York, 1980.
Z
y
�5
as arguments for state institution both have the same logical form, that of a Prisoners' Dilemma
or some finite sequence of Prisoners' Dilemma games (what are called Prisoners' Dilemma
&%?^rgames).
The arguments are not mere exercises in game theory since it is through arguments of this
type that political theorists such as Hobbes and Hume have attempted to demonstrate the
necessity of the State, so it is sometimes claimed (e.g. by Taylor). Furthermore, it is with
arguments of the same^form, the "Tragedy of the Commons", that Hardin and others have tried
to show that extensive, indeed draconian, state powers are required to resolve environmental
problems; without such powers no exploiter or polluter will exercise restraint, ra
c
.
Consider the single Prisoners' Dilemma game where each player, or prisoner, is assumed,
as is usual in these things, to be egoistic (sometime equated with "being rational"), to seek just
maximisation of his own private payoff, in the special case where there are just two players.
(The special case illustrates all the main points except one, the
c/size in making a
case for the state.)
<
. A basic ingredient^a.considerable variety of argumentfof this type, including Hobbes'
andlTragedy of the Commons' argument, and recent economic arguments for State
intervention to secure collective goods, i^/tne single prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players.s Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have been separately
imprisoned. A State representative makes the following offers separately to each: if the
prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while his or her accomplice remains silent, he
or she will be released at once while the accomplice gets 8 years. 3t so happens that if both
prisoners remain silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence. But if
both confess they would each receive 4 years. The 'game' can be summarised in the following
'payoff' matrix:
Prisoner 1
Strategies
S(ilence) C(onfess)
S
-1,-1
-8,0
C
0, -8
-4, -4
'—
Prisoner 2
The game is not intended to present a moral ^ilemma, that each can only go free at the cost of
the others' freedom, but the following dilemma: It is in each prisoner's private interest to
An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance of populations size
in the arguments for the State. But size is not decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue
can be avoided (or relocated) by organisation into smaller communities. The figures given in the
matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Tayor,
p.5.
�6
choose strategy C no matter what the other does: strategy C is, in the jargon, each players'
'dominant' strategy (and also in fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for example, remains silent,
the%l goes free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by
if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain an
outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously called 'co-operating', by
confessing.
their both remaining silent.
3.1 FOILING THE PRISONERS' DILEMMA ARGUMENT.
It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to show the necessity of the State — which is
supposed to intervene, forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners 'co-operate' to obtain an
optimal outcome — should be set up by the State's own operative.^ The case looks like an
inside job; and it M, though neither the operative, nor for that matter the prisoners on their own,
continue to play an essential role. The prisoners, in any finite number, can be members of a
community and payoffs quantities of some collective good. The claim is, that without
intervention (by the State), the community will only chase a subotimal quantity of the good if
any. Some features of the prisoners' relations are assumed to transfer however. Of course the
State's presence in arranging (of accentuating)
such dilemmas is inessential, as is much
else from the example. But some features of the Prisoner's relations are isolated, and so have
no opportunity to communicate or r^aZZy co-operate. Similarly, in the more general argument a
privatisation assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are
dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in their own narrowly
construed private interests and whose interests are opposed. The applicability of the dilemma
to the human condition is accordingly seriously limited, io
A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the segregation
of the priisoners makes no real difference. It is claimed that even if the prisoners could meet
and discuss and even agreed to co-operate, that would make no difference, since neither could
trust (the sincerity) of the other (Abrams, p.193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the
agreement' (Taylor, p.5). Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is very often
no so — and in a more co-operative social setting than currently encouraged privatisation of
life, the extent of co-operation and trust would undoubtedly be much higher n The argument
has to depend crucially then on substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities
It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State alone is said to be able to
arrange, but not mere social cooperation, when the State rv (as on many theories) the result of
reflection of social cooperation.
This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, &?cmZ 77^or^.y, S^Zf
aztrZ Envirownf/tfaZ Pro&Zewty in Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison
and others), RSSS, Australian national University, 1980.
As a result of G. Hardin's Tragedy
CoHWHonj, historical evidence has been assembled
which reveals how far Hardin's 'Commons' diverges from historic commons; see, inparticular,
A. Roberts, 77^ S^Zf-Managing
Allison & Busby, London, 1979, chapter 10, but
also Routley, op.cir., p.285 and ppp.329-332. Similar points apply as regards many other
Dilemma situations. Tn the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game approximately
half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy even when they know for certain that the
other player will cooperate'. Abrams, op.ciz., p.308.
�7
in various settings, e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large
measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people were Jia? unreliable
and devious, many State arrangements involved in providing public goods would not succeed
either). That such assumptions are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g. to
bring out the first, suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g. they are friends or they are
political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours and face a future in
the same community; to bring out the philosophical scepticism involved, suppose the prisoner
with a tarnished record offers the other security against default, and so on.
The question of the character of human interests and preferences %/iJ the extent of their
determination by the social context in which they occur is/MKJcwtcnhJ to the whole question of
social economic arrangements, and also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of
human propensities. A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and
associated political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a preference
ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count is an mJcpcnJcnr parameter,
which depends neither on the preference rankings of other nor on the social context in which
that human operates. Wh8ile the individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by
definition, satisfy the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural
pressure on consumers to conform (through advertising, education, popular media), vc/y many
Jo /io? cozi/briH, and the extent of cultural pressure towards privatisation itself belies
the naturalness of this independence. And having sufficiently many interest-interdependent
people in a small community (which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough,
given their social influence, to avoid or resolve by co-operation the types of Prisoners'
Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State.
3.2 Why the dilemma arguments cannot succeed.
What the Dilemma-based case for the State has to show — what never has been shown —
is that there are outstanding Dilemma situations which are relevant, important, and also
damaging if unresolved, and that they are resolvable by State intervention, and only so
(optimally) resolvable. Finally it has to be shown that in the course of so resolving these
Dilemma situations, worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced.
These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if they can be satisfied at all, in a way that is not
question begging. For several of the conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is important,
damaging, optimal, worse) and involve considerations about which resonable parties can differ.
The selection of Dilemmas itself provides an example of value dependence: after all there are
many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of over-exploitation, of family
violence or fueds) which are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not worthy of State
attention.
There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be satisfied at all. For
12
Cf. the disucssion in Taylor, op.ci/., p.93.
�8
many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for
the State and Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' for instance, turn out when
to consist not just of a single game but of a sequence of such games, to be more
adequately represented by what is called a
But in many such sequential Prisoners'
Dilemma games, rational 'co-operation' can occur, even assuming separated players with
purely egoistic interests. 13 For what sequential games permit that isolated games exclude, is
that players' actions may be dependent upon past performance of other players.
This
dependence effectively removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from
Dilemma situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from past social
interaction. In such sueprgames then, no intervention is required.
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by 'intervention', e.g. by allowing the
prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that they can really co-operate.
Euqally important, and equally independent of the State, is the matter of breaking down the
adverary, or game, situation so the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to co
operate.^ Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has a good
record of adhering to agreement, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. Nor is force or
threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal strategies: a range of other
inducements and incentives is known (shuld they be required in recalcitrant cases), and is used
even by the State, e.g. gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc. But at no stage is the State
required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved by
work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations can be formed to detect and deal
with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they are not already catered for. And in fact
communal and co-operative organisation did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations
historically, for example in the case of the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works. There are no important Dilemma situations, it
seems, where the State is essential. The State has been thought to be essential because of
certain influential flase dichotomies; for example, that all behaviour that is not egoistic is
altruistic (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon, and 'irrational'), that the only way of
allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets — which tend to deal abysmally with
collective goods — is through State control.^ But it is quite evident that there are
methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional markets, based on
supply costs) and social (e.g. by co-operatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve
13
14
15
Dilemma situations has very extensive
This important result is established in Taylor, op. ctf., for a number of critical cases, though not
generally; see, e.g. p.32 but especially chapter 5.
Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal prosecution, and in
eliminating courtroom procedures, including cases where the State is one of the 'adversaries'.
Both the false dichotomies cited are common-place, not to say rife, in modem economic and
political theorising. Both are to be found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first
(with an attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition) in Taylor. For a further criticism of
such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit., pp.250./ff
�9
effects, *6 many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma
situations, appear to be substantially outweighted by the costs involved. For there are the many
evil aspects of the typical State to put in the balance. As regards Dilemma situations, entry of
the State with its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and morre
important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as in the case of the prisoners, or
differently with the State as a further player (since the State may engage in whaling, have
access to a commons, etc.). These points lead also to further arguments against the State.
Suppose, to see the impact of the first reason for the failure of independence, the
prisoners are friends and their common interest is to be together. Then, if they are given the
opportunity to co-operate, and independence is not enforced by separation, they will, quite
rationally, choose a joint optimal strategy, and there is no dilemma.
Since the same
considerations will not apply where large numbers of strangers are involved, the question arises
as the extent and severity of Dilemma situations. The question is complicated by the second
double-edged reason for the failure of independence, namely that statist political arrangements
undoubtedly accentuate the extent and severity of Dilemma situations by discouraging
(providing negative incentives) for genuinely co-operative behaviour and mutual aid. This is
another respect in which statist arrangements (like some subclimax biological communities)
tend to be self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating.
Accordingly, what arguments for the State on such bases as Prisoners' Dilemma situations
have to show is not merely
1) that state coercion does suffice to resolve (sufficiently) many such (damaging) Dilemmas,
but also
2) that such coercion is the on/y way of doing so, and
3) that in doing so worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced.
These things have never been shown: nor can they be shown definitively, since firstly there are
various nonstatist arrangements for resolving wehat are taken to be damaging Dilemmas, and
secondly the overall assessment of what Dilemmas are
and what costs are worf/t
incurring in resolving them are ultimately evaluative and go back to rival, and presumably
coherent, value systems. Hence, when all this is spelled out, the irrefutability of anarchism.
To get some feel for the complexity of the issue and for the extent to which evaluative
matters do enter, several points relevant to 1) - 3) should be introduced. Firstly, there are many
Dilemma situations into which the State puts little or no effort and many others which are, or
were, considered as beyond the sphere of influence of the State or as not worthy of State
attention, for instance, cases of environmental degradation, overexploitation of a "resource",
personal or family fueds, etc., several of them aggravated by State arrangments such as
To take one lesser example, State intrusion often induces a certain social escapism: one escapes
one's social roles and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze. Or so it may
appear: for in reality anyone who works, works long and often alientated hours to pay for this
apparent escapism and to cover the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity.
�10
excessive privatisation of resources (e.g. enclosure of the commons). (7/* such Dilemmas can be
downgraded in importance to suit the Statist case so can other Dilemmas apparently favouring
State intervention.)
Many of these cases would not be helped at all by the entry of the State or its
representatives with their authority duly showing (thugh they might be assisted by sensitive
mediation, which does not call for a State, only rudiments of a society). Secondly, introduction
of the State to resolve
Prisoners' Dilemma situations is not without wide-ranging effects,
many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations have
to be weighed against costs involved in achieving these gains. Among the costs are new
Dilemmas, such as the very example considered in illustrating prisoner Dilemma games which
was initiated by State activity. Differently, new Dilemmas will result with the state as a further
player (since the State may have access to the commons, engage in whaling, etc.). Some of
these situations are interesting in theat they may lead to litigation and decision-making outside
of or largely independent of the State, the results of which the State is supposed to enforce
though it may be against its interests. But what ensures that if sticks to the findings. Nothing
does: it is simply assumed that the State will adhere to its role. But if that assumption is valid
with respect to the State (not known for its reliability) then it is good also for various other
parties. In short, agreement or decisions can be reached and adhered to without need for State
enforcement. So coercion is not always required.
Are there important Dilemmas where use the authority of the State is the (?H/y way?
Often behind the claim that is is, is a false (but very influential) dichotomy, that the only way
of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets which may deal abysmally with
collective goods, is through state control. But it is quite evident that there are other methods of
allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, based on costs involved) and social (e.g. club, co
operatives). [And a mixture of these methods can be applied to resolve any Prisoners' Dilemma
that matters, i.e. here too replacement works. An important initial move is, as was seen, to put
the prisoners in touch, so that they could cooperate: equally important is breaking down the ...]
Such organisations would not have nearly so much to do as statists would like us to
believe, especially once co-operative ways of doing things and mutual aid had become
established ways in contrast to competitive and privatised ways. For the extent of simple
Prisoners' Dilemma situations calling for intervention (of some sort) has been exaggerated and
many, probably, very many, of those that have been thought to require intervention do not
because the players (are prepared to) "cooperate" anyway. There are importantly different
reasons why the latter can happen:- Firstly, enough players operate with motives which are not
purely privatised for a sufficiently optimal outcome to result. This does not imply that these
players have altruistic motives: their interests may depend on those of other players in a range
of nonaltruistic ways. Secondly, many cases presented as if they were simple Prisoner's
Dilemma games turn out when properly analysed, in particular when time is duly taken account
of, to be Prisoners' Dilemma super-games.
Such, for instance, is the positions with the
�11
arguments of Hobbes, Hume and Hardin. But in such supergames rational "cooperation" often
occurs even assuming the players have the worst of privatised motives. In short, where the
correct analysis of a Prisoner's Dilemma game is as a supergame, statists are often beaten at
their own game. [Detail Taylor's partial results, anJ their problems.]
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to be accomplices in a crime, have been
separately imprisoned. A State represen
tative makes the following offers
separately to each: if the prisoner con
fesses and becomes a State's witness
while his or her accomplice remains
silent, he or she will be released at once
while the accomplice gets 8 years. It so
happens that if both prisoners remain
silent the State has only enough evidence
to impose a 1 year sentence. But if both
confess they would each receive 4 years.
The 'game' can be summarised in the
following 'payoff' matrix:
Prisoner 1
Strategies S(ilence) C(onfess)
S
-1, -1
-8, 0
C
0, -8
-4, -4
Prisoner 2
3. T7/E C/1SE z1G.4/MSE
AEFL.4 CEA^E^T ERCW
ER/5CWERS' D/EEA7AE1
tS77X/?177CW5
E/7E E/AE.
I he main arguments designed to rebut
the replacement argument for anarchism
and to buttress the State status quo, are
based on variants of the Prisoners'
Dilemma, to the effect that there are /wporftm/cases where individuals will not
agree^-or co-operate to provide them
selves with (or to maintain) collective
goods without coercion, such as cw/y the
State can furnish/ In such 'dilemma'
situations each individual will hope to
gain advantage, without contributing (or
exercising restraint), from others' contri
butions (or restraint), by freeloading on
others (or profiting from others'
restraint). The claim is that only the
State with its backing of force can
resolve such situations: anarchistic
replacement cannot succeed^
A basic ingredient of a considerable
variety of arguments of this type, in
cluding Hobbes' and Hume's arguments
for the State, the 'Tragedy of the Com
mons' argument, and recent economic
arguments for State intervention to
secure collective goods, is the single
Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players/ Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken
The game^ is not intended to present a
moral dilemma, that each can only go
free at the cost of the others' freedom,
but the following dilemma: It is in each
prisoner's private interest to choose
strategy C no matter what the other
docs: strategy C is, in the jargon, each
players' 'dominant' strategy (and also in
fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for ex
ample, remains silent, then 1 goes free
by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then
1 halves his or her sentence by confess
ing.
if both prisoners choose their
dominant strategy they obtain an m/er/or
outcome to that which would have
resulted by what is tendentiously called
'co-operating', by their both remaining
silent.
?./
It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to
show the necessity of the State — which
is supposed to intervene, forcibly if re
quired, to ensure that the prisoners 'co
operate' to obtain an optimal outcome
— should bg set up by the State's own
operative.^Of course the State's
presence in arranging (or accentuating)
such dilemmas is inessential, as is
much else from the example. But some
features of the prisoner's relations are
essential, in particular the separability
assumption that the prisoners are
isolated, and so have no opportunity to
communicate or rec/Zy co-operate.
Similarly, in the more general argument,
a privatisation assumption is smuggled
in in the way the dilemma is formulated,
that we are dealing with self contained
individuals who, like the prisoners, act
only in their own narrowly construed
private interests and whose interests are
opposed. The applicability of the dilem-
A
7
�ma to the human condition is accordingly
seriously limited/
A cursory aside is often added to the
Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the
segregation of the prisoners makes no
real difference. It is claimed that even if
the prisoners could meet and discuss and
even agreed to co-operate, that would
make no difference, since neither could
trust (the sincerity) of the other
(Abrams, p.193), 'neither has an incen
tive to keep the agreement' (Taylor, p.5).
Experimental and historical evidence in
dicates that this is very often not so —
and in a more co-operative social setting
than the currently encouraged privatisa
tion of life, the extent of co-operation
and trust would undoubtedly be much
higher/ The argument has to depend
crucially then on substantially mistaken
assumptions about human propensities
in various settings, e.g. that purely
egoistic interests are always pursued,
backed up by a large measure of scep
ticism about the reliability of other peo
ple (but if people were /Ar?/ unreliable
and devious, many State arrangements
involved in providing public goods
would not succeed either). That such
assumptionsareoperating can be seen by
elaborating the situation; e.g. to bring
out the first, suppose the prisoners have
a common bond, e.g. they are friends or
they are political prisoners with a shared
social commitment, or they are neigh
bours and face a future in the same com
munity; to bring out the philosophical
scepticism involved, suppose the
prisoner with a tarnished record offers
the other security against default, and so
on.
The question of the character of
human interests and preferences
the
extent of their determination by the
social context in which they occur is
/MnrArznrvna/ to the whole question of
social and economic arrangements, and
also accordingly to arguments for the
State on the basis of human propensities.
A major assumption underlying prevail
ing (non-Marxist) economics and
associated political theory, is that the in
terests and preferences, as summed up in
a preference ranking or utility function,
of each human that is taken to count is
an mc/e/zenr/enf parameter, which
depends neither on the preference rank
ings of others nor on the social context
in which that human operates. While the
individuals and firms of mainstream
economic theory do, by definition,
satisfy the independence requirements,
and while there is very substantial
cultural pressure on consumers to con
form (through advertising, education,
popular media),
wany
<7o
/?oz ccw/bfTn, and the extent of cultural
pressure towards privatisation itself
belies the naturalness of this indepen-
sequential games permit that isolated
games exclude, is that players' actions
may be dependent upon past perfor
mance of other players. This dependence
effectively removes one extremely
....a major functmn of the state is unrealistic self-containment assumption
to maintain and pohee inequitable from Dilemma situations, that in
dividuals act in totally isolated ways, not
distribution.
learning from past social interaction. In
such supergames then, no intervention is
required.
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are
Z/gtZ-f resolved by 'intervention', e.g. by allow
dence. And having sufficiently many/ ing the prisoners to get in touch so that
interest-interdependent people in a smali they find they are neighbours or that
community (which is not thoroughly im they can really co-operate. Equally im
poverished) is normally enough, given portant, and equally independent of the
State, is the matter of breaking down the
their social influence, to avoid or resolve
adversary, or game, situation so the
by co-operation the types of Prisoners'
prisoners do not act as competitors but
Dilemma situations that appear to count are
prepared to co-operate/' Informa
in favour of the State/
tional input may also be important, e.g.
news that each prisoner has a good
ff /yy 77/E /VLEA7A/.1
record of adhering to agreement, or if
not is prepared to stake collateral, etc.
Nor is force or threat of force required
SC/CC777)
as an incentive to guarantee optimal
What the Dilemma-based case for the strategies: a range of other inducements
State has to show — what never has been and incentives is known (should they be
shown — is that there are outstanding required in recalcitrant cases), and is
Dilemma situations which are relevant, used even by the State, e.g. gifts,
important, and also damaging if deprivation, social pressure, etc. But at
unresolved, and that they are resolvable no stage is the State required to make
by State intervention, and only so (op these arrangements: much as some real
timally) resolvable. Finally it has to be Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved by
shown that in the course of so resolving work of Amnesty International, so
these Dilemma situations, worse situa voluntary organisations can be formed
tions than those that are resolved are not to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilem
thereby induced. These complex condi ma situations where they are not already
tions cannot be satisfied, if they can be catered for. And in fact communal and
satisfied at all, in a way that is not ques co-operative organisation did resolve
tion begging. For several of the condi Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations
tions are value dependent (e.g. what is historically, for example in the case of
important, damaging, optional, worse) the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works.
and involve considerations about which
reasonable parties can differ. The selec There are no important Dilemma situa
tion of Dilemmas itself provides an ex tions, it seems, where the State is essen
ample of value dependence: after all tial. The State has been thought to be
there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to essential because of certain influential
environmental degradation, of over false dichotomies; for example, that all
exploitation, of family fcuds/or^violencQ) behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic
which are considered beyond the sphere (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon,
of the State or not worthy of State atten and 'irrational'), that the only way of
allocating goods, apart from profittion.
There are now grounds for concluding directed markets — which tend to deal
that the conditions cannot be satisfied at abysmally with collective goods — is
all. For many of the arguments using through State control.'^ But it is quite
Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' evident that there are o/Aer methods of
and Hume's arguments for the State and allocation, both economic (e.g. ex
Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' for change, through traditional markets,
instance, turn out when projver/y /or- based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by
to consist not just of a single co-operatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to
game but of a sequence of such games,
to be more adequately represented by resolve so/ne Dilemma situations has
what is called a
But in many very extensive effects/ many of them
such sequential Prisoners' Dilemma negative, so that the gains made, if any,
games, rational 'co-operation' can oc in so resolving Dilemma situations, ap
cur, even assuming separated players pear to be substantially outweighed by
with purely egoistic interests.'" For what the costs involved. For there are the
SOCIAL ALTERNA ! tVES Vet. 2 No. 3. )982
25
�many evi! aspects of the typicai State to
put in the baiance. As regards Dilemma
situations, entry of the State with its
authority showing may not help but may
worsen some situations, and more im
portant, new Dilemmas may be initiated
by State activity, as in the case of the
prisoners, or differently with the State as
a further player (since the State may
engage in whaling, have access to a com
mons, etc.). These points lead also to
further arguments against the State.
available 'collective good' (e.g. commons, un
polluted streams, whales, wilderness). That
received arguments of ail these types involves
Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the wide
sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op.cit.
and etsewhere. An easier introduction to the
material covered by Taylor, which also
surveys other Important literature, is given in
the final chapter of R Abrams, Foundations
of Political Analysis, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1980.
5.
An important matter the two player game
does not illustrate is the relevance of popula
tion size in the arguments for the State. But
size is not decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter
2), and the issue can be avoided (or relocated)
by organisation into smaller communities.
The figures given in the matrix are illustrative
only; for inequalities which suffice for a
Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p.5.
6.
It is similarly bizarre that there should be out
comes that the State alone is said to be able to
arrange, but not mere social cooperation,
when the State zs (as on many theories) the
result or reflection of social cooperation.
7.
This important point is much elaborated in V.
and R. Routley, Soc/af Theories, Se//
Management, and T'n wronwm'a/ ProAferru
in Environmental Philosophy (edited D
Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian
National University, 1980.
9.
10.
11.
12.
4.
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to
represent 'the strongest case that can be made
for the desirability of the State' (M. Taylor,
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London,
1976. p.9). To cover all arguments of the
type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase
'variants of' and disputes as to whether cer
tain arguments such as those of Hume and of
Olson involve Prisoners' Diiernnta situations,
Prisoner's Dilemma' is used in a wide sense
to include not merely single n-person
Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example,
games where the payoffs are not merely
egoistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and
where such games are iterated. As the
bracketed clauses in the text indicate, there
are two types of case, not sharply separated
and both of the same /ogtcaZ/orm — those
where people do not rwr/A/wfe to sup/r/y
themselves with, or with 'optimum' quantities
of, a 'collective good' (e.g. security, order,
sewage), and those where people do not
re.s/ram themselves to mam/am, or maintain
'optimum" quantities of, some already
13.
As a result of G. Hardin's Tragerh' o/ rhe
Commons, historical evidence has been
assembled which reveals how far Hardin's
'Commons' diverges from historic commons;
see, in particular, A. Roberts, 7'he Se/fManagmg TTiwonmenr, Allison & Busby.
London, 1979, chapter 10, but also Routley,
op.cit. p.285 and pp. 329-332. Similar points
apply as regards many other Dilemma situa
tions. 'In the experimental studies of the
prisoner's dilemma game approxtmately half
of the participants choose a cooperative
strategy even when they know for certain that
the other player will cooperate'. Abrams.
op.cit., p.3O8.
'
Cf. the discussion in Taylor, op.cit.. p.93.
This important result is established in
Taylor, op.cit, for a number of critical cases,
though not generally; see, e.g. p.32 but
especially chapter 5.
Such moves have proved valuable in reducing
the State's role in legal prosecution, and in
eliminating courtroom procedures, including
cases where the State is one of the 'adver
saries'.
Both the false dichotomies cited are common
place, not to say rife, in modern economic
and political theorising. Both are to be found
in Abram's final chapter, for example, and
the first (with an attempt to plaster over the
gap with a definition) in Taylor. For a further
criticism of such false dichotomies, see
Routley, op.cit., pp.25O ff.
To take one lesser example. State intrusion
often induces a certain social escapism: one
escapes one's social roles and is enabled to
concentrate on private affairs or just to laze.
Or so it may appear: for in reality anyone
who works, works long and often alienated
hours to pay for this apparent escapism and
to cover the high costs of frequently inade
quate State activity.
�of course. ]
5^
The case if broken-backed right here:
to agree
because if we don't to this not goint/
to social contract - which allegedly implies these things - either.
Similarly, the social contract theory is broken-backed.
G5;
. Alternative longer
at this point in §3:-
In shof^* in certain
important cases, cooperative individual choice cannot replace state-covered choice.
There are (as the bracketed clauses indicate) two main types of case, those
where people do not contribute to supply themselves with, or with optimum quant
ities of, a "collective good", and those where people do not restrain themselves
to maintain, or maintain optimum quantities of, some already available "collective
good".
The first type of case is taken to include such traditional and
modern
concerns of the state and its subsidiary institutions as order, security, defence,
and perhaps private property, as well as sewerage schemes, water supplies^.waste
services, public health, social security, etc.
The second case is supposed to
include, as well as village commons, newer environmental concerns such as clean
air, unpolluted streams and beaches, parks, rainforests, wilderness, wha les, etc.
But there is no sharp division between the cases (security or parks could be of
either type depending on the status quo), and as arguments for state institution
both have the same logical form, that of a Prisoners' Dilemma or some finite
sequence of Pri soners' Dilemma games (what are called Prisoners' Dilemma
The arguments are not mere exercises in game theory since it is through
arguments of this type that political theorists such as Hobbes and Hume have
�5.
attempted to demonstrate the necessity of the Stato4^
Furthermore, it is with
arguments of the same form, the "Tragedy of the Commons", that Hardia and others
have tried to show that extensive, indeed draconian, state powers are required
to resolve environmental problems;
without such powers no exploiter or polluter
will exercise restraint.
Consider the gj^le Prisoners' Dilemma game where each player, or prisoner,
is assuined, as is usual in these things, to be egoistic (sometime equated with
"being rational"), to seek just&axijnisation of his own private payoff, in the
special case where there are just two players.
(The special case illustrates all
the main points except one, the importance of size in making a case for the state.)
[Joins text again at fn.5 point.]
/* 4.
In §3:-
The Trac^ec[y of the Commons is set up so as to assume no collective
methods had [Teen developed or can be developed without coercion.
(Roberts).
The point of coercian is to ret^n the privatised individual.
$
For the factor
of coercion makes it in interests of private individualize coercion makes the
effect of relations to be got without exceeding privatised individual picture.
Coercion substitutes for relations in the context of privatised individuals.
Privatised individuals are, of course, products, in large part, of the
operation (and enforcement and entrenchment) of a particular social theory, or
rather sort of social theory.
^5^
In §4:-
The case looks like an inside job;
and it is, though neither
the operative, nor for that matter the prisoners ^n their own,
essential role.
play an
The prisoners, in any finite number, can be members of a
community and payoffs quantities of some collective good .
The claim is, that
without intervention (by thecate), the community will only corpse a subeyy^mo/
quantity of the good if any.
Some features of the prisoners' relations are
assumed to transfer however.
Suppose, to see the impact of the first reason for the
failure of independence, the prisoners are friends and their common interest is to
�6.
be together.
Then, if they are given the opportunity to cooperate, and independ
ence is not enforced by separation, they will, quite rationally, choose a joint
optimal strategy,and there is no dilemma.
Since the same considerations will not
apply where large numbers of strangers are involved, the question arises as the
extent and severity of Dilemma situations.
The question is complicated by the
second double-edged reason for the failure of independence, namely that statist
political arrangements undoubtedly accentuate the extent and severity of Dilemma
situations by discouraging (providing negative incentives) for genuinely cooper
ative behaviour and nmttAcd
aid.
This is another respect in which statist
arrangments (like some subclimax biological communities) tend to be self-reinforcing
and self-perpetuating.
[Transfer some experimental material to here?]
Accordingly, what arguments for the State on such b ases as Prisoners' Dilemma
situations have to show is not merely
1)
that state coercion does suffice to resolve (sufficiently^ many such (damaging)
Dilemmas, but also
2)
that such coercion is the only way of doing so, and
3)
that in doing so worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby
induced.
These things have never been shown:
nor can they be shown definitely, since firstly
4
there are various nonstatist arrangements for resolving what are taken to be
damaging Dilemmas, and secondly the overall assessment of what Dilemmas are damaging
and what costs are worth incurring in resolving them are ultimately evaluative and
go back to rival, and presumably coherent, value systems.
Hence, when all this is
spelled out, the irrefutability of anarchism.
To get some feel for the complexity of the
issue
and for the extent to
evolutive matters do enter, several points relevant to l)-3) should be introduced.
Firstly, there are many Dilemma situations into which the State puts little or no
effort and many others which are, or were, considered as beyond the sphere of
influence of the State or as not worthy of State attention, for instance, cases of
�7.
environmental degradation, overexploitation of a "resource", personal or family
feuds, etc., several of them aggravated by State arrangements such as excessive
privatisation of resources (e.g. enclosure of the commons).
(If such Dilemmas can
be downgraded in importance to suit the Statist case so can other Dilemmas appar
ently favouring State intervention.)
Many of these cases would not be helped at all by the entry of the State or
its representatives with their authority duly showing (though they might be
assisted by sensitive mediation, which does not call for a State, only rudiments
Secondly, introduction of the State tof&yolve some Prisoners'
of a society).
Dilemma situations is not without wide-ranging effects, many of them negative, so
that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations have to be
weighed against costs involved in achieving these gains.
Among the costs are
new Dilemmas, such as the very example considered in illustrating Prisoner Dilemma
games which was initiated by State activity.
Differently, new Dilemmas will
result with the state as a further player (since the State may have access to the
commons, engage in whaling, etc.).
Some of these situations are interesting in
that they may lead to litigation and decision-making outside of or
independ
ent of the State, the resultgof which the State is supposed to enforce though it
may be against its
d
Nothing does:
interests.
But what ensures that rt sticks to the findings.
it is simply assumed that the State will adhere to its role.
But
if that assumption is valid with respect to the State (not known for its reliability)
then it is good also for various other parties.
In short,agreement or decision!*
can be reached and adhered to without need for State enforcement.
So coercion is not
always required.
Are there important Dilemmas where use the authority of the State is the
only way?
Often behind the claim that is is, is a false (but very influential)
dichotomy, that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed
markets which may deal abysmally with collective goods, is through state control^'
�8.
But it is quite evident that there
are other methods of allocation, both
economic (e.g. exchange, based on costs involved) and social (e.g. clubs, cooper
[And a mixture of these methods can be applied to resolve any Prinsoners'
atives).
Dilemma that matters, i.e. here too replacement works.
An important initial move
is, as was seen, to put the prisoners in touch, so that they could cooperate:
equally important is breaking down the ...]
[Joins top of p.7]
Such organisations would not have nearly so much to do as statists would like
us to believe, especially once cooperative ways of doing things and mutual aid had
become established ways in contrast to competitive and privatised ways.
For the
extent of simple Prisoners' Dilemma situations calling for intervention (o^ some
sort) has been exaggerated and many, probably, very many, of those that have been
thought to require intervention do not because the players (are prepared to)
"cooperate" anyway.
happen:-
There are importantly different reasons why the latter can
Firstly, enough players operate with motives which are not purely priv
atised for a sufficiently optimal outcome to result.
these players have altruistic motives:
This does not imply that
their interests may depend on those of
other players in a range of nonaltruistic ways.
Secondly, many cases presented
as if they were simple Prisoner's Dilemma games turn out when properly analysed,
in particular when time is duly taken account of, to be Prisoners' Dilemma supergames.
Such, for instance, is the position with the arguments of Hobbes, Hume
and Hardin.
But in such supergames rational "cooperation" often occurs, even
assuming the players have the worst of privatised
correct analysis of a Prisoner's Dil&wima
often beaten at their own game.
problems.]
motives.
In short, where the
game is as a supergame, statists are
[Detail Taylor's partial results, and their
�Chapter 3
Con,v7i^c%y^ /)
CRITIQUE OF THE STATE
1. ARGUMENTS
The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state.
For therewith arguments against state-like institutions are also advanced. However further
ado is no doubt required to remove all other (unexplified) alternatives to anarchism.
A
Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes:
* States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification.
* Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes.
* Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of
social and environmental bungles or evils in their train.
In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils. The anarchist critique does not end
there, but typically includes, such further themes as :
* States have excessive power,
linkages to state power.
* Societies are not inductably saddled with states. States can be displaced or even decay
(though they are unlikely to just wither away).
(9
�1
Chapter 3
: CRITIQUE OF THE STATE
1. ARGUMENTS
The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state.
For therewith arguments against state-like institutions are also advanced. However further
ado is no doubt required to remove all other (unexplified) alternatives to anarchism.
/
Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes:
*
States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification.
e
Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes.
Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of
social and environmental bungles or evils in their train.
In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils. The anarchist critique does not end
there, but typically includes, such further themes as :
* States have excessive power.
* States are devices for channelling privilege and wealth to certain minorities with inside
linkages to state power.
* Societies are not ineluctably saddled with states. States can be displaced or even decay
(though they are unlikely to just wither away).
1. The state is an undesirable, or even downright evii, institution, for the following range
of reasons:-
* States entrench inequities, domination and exploitation. States are devices for the
protection of wealth, property and privilege, and usually for the redistribution upwards, and
often concentration, of wealth and privilege. A minor but popular illustration is offered by the
expensive conferences and other junkets that state employees or party officials organise for
themselves and manage to bill to state revenue, in turn sucked up from inequitable taxation.
Certainly a main historical outcome of the state has been domination of exploitation of certain
segments of society by others, and some see its main, and barely concealed, purpose as just
that: domination and exploitation.
* States are typically corrupt. For example, there are enquiries presently in train, or with
follow-through activities yet to be duly completed, in many states in Australia, enquires
which have revealed considerable corruption, and there are prima facie cases for similar
enquiries in most of the remainder. Nor is this a new phenomenon: these revelations often
resemble older or on-going scandals.
* States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources, and
accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden, but
�2
a main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over
remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that
many state operations are far from lean and efficient, but incorporate many duplications, drag
factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms, of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens,
weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organisation would be very
significantly reduced.
* The state is an incubus. States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive
and demanding. Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous
denouncement of state government:
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction,
noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed,
licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.
It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest,
to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized,
extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the
first world of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked,
abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot,
deported sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed,
outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its
morality (quoted in M p.6).
As a result, there are constant demands for the reduction of the cancerous state, for removing
parts of it through deregulation, selling off state enterprises and so on. There are two troubles
with such demands from anarchist standpoints: they never go far enough, to the complete
reduction of the state to zero, but characteristically retain parts supportive of or favourable to
bigger business, and they proceed in the wrong way, stripping away social safety nets rather
than ripping off business support nets (such as limited liability, strike limitation legislation,
etc.).
* States, for all that they have been promoted as delivering public goods, are mostly dismal
news for environmental protection and health and for social justice. Furthermore they are
liable to impose substantial hazards or risks upon subservient populations not merely through
military and like activities but, more insidious, through support and promotion of dangerous
industries, such as nuclear and giant chemical industries.
* States usually exert a heavy pressure to uniformity, they tend to eliminate plurality and
cultural differences. These pressures are exercised by a state in the alleged interests of
national unity, and against its enemies, external and internal. Even the most liberal of states
tend to give minorities more difficult lives in times of stress, such as war. They are always
espousing national values, state interests, and commonly assimilation and adoption of state
values (thus for example Canada, formerly and briefly a state toying with multiculturalism,
now insistent upon "Canadian values"). Such exercises are conspicuous, not only in citizen
ceremonies and other state rituals, such as national sporting and religious events, but more
important are virtually ubiquitous in elementary education (down to deference to the flag, and
�3
similar).
* States are a major source of wars, and the major source of major wars, undoubted evils
(however supposedly inevitable). They are major sources and suppliers of military
technology and weapons, the means of war. Roughly, the more powerful and "advanced" a
state, the further it is engaged in weapon production and export. Without states it is doubtful
that there would be any nuclear weapons, and accordingly there would be no prospect of
nuclear wars as there would be no weapons with which to fight them.
* States are a serious drag on a more satisfactory international order. That there are not
more, and more satisfactory, international regulatory organisations "is mainly a matter of the
reluctance of nation states to surrender their powers and the dangers of their being dominated
by very powerful states. If only nation states would be dissolved into specialized
[departments] there is every reason to believe that most world problems could be handled by
appropriate specialized [organisations]' (Bumheimp.221).
* States have excessive power, and are even accumulating or trying to accumulate more, for
instance through more centralization, further controls, additional licences, etc., etc. The
excessive power of the state is exhibited not only in the treatment of its citizens and foreigners
within its territory; it is exemplified also in its practices
its territory, through such
features as military pressures, including invasion, trade pressures, including sanitions, and in
treatment of its citizens everywhere.!
Obvious responses to excessive power are
regionalization of powers, separation of powers, achieved by decoupling and some
fragmentation, limitation of powers, and so on.
* Present monolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which they
are not competent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as impartial
referees by their business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and control foo much,
as a consequence it does very much unsatisfactorily. Improved arrangements would separate
these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power.
States thus appear far from a good bargain on a preliminary consideration of costs, and
very far from maximal or optimal. Especially bad states, the run of states, which engage in
politically-motivated inclination or torture of their citizens, and so on. Where are the
The issue tends to be avoided; it is contended that, contrary to
appearances, we cannot get along without state cossetting: states are necessary. But, given
that we can get along without them, would we really be significantly worse off without them?
cfr .
<r
,,^ven m thd better cases (not allowing for alternative nonstatist arrangements which states
have precluded or systems they have usurped)? But arguments for states are not usually so
directly utilitarian in character. Such arguments would make it look as if we might well opt
out of state organisation, and often be better off doing so.
1
A recent shocking example concerns the attempt of Eire to prevent an Irish women having an
abortion in England.
�4
These considerations divide into two groups: features that are
on normal,
normally bad, operations of states, and features that are normic on institution and operation of
states. The first group of criticisms are eliminated under good to ideal operation of states,
what officiandos of states characteristically unwarr^ntedly make. For the evidence seems to
be that in practice states will tend away from the ideal. There are arguments from low
efficiencies of complex mechanical structures that can be adopted to lend support to what
evidence reveals. Features that are normic, and perhaps inevitable upon institution of states
do however yield arguments against states that do not depend on ym*e contingencies of most
states, their
and so on.
/
2. Ways of demonstrating that the State is not Required: as for God and the Church, so
for the State.
There is a theological component in the presumption and theory of the State; that
theological component and therewith of the argMmenfa/ foundations for the State should be
fully exposed. By contrast, anarchism, ^ approached from an argument perspective, enjoys
nn
considerable strength requiring no leaps of faith.
The State is like God: the anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of
what is commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed. The
awn by
Bakunin, has as well as considerable strength certain weaknesses. While the atheist believes
that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe that there are no states: on the contrary,
there are all too many, though none are legitimate.^The important parallel is as to argM/n^n^.
The agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed, and so
adopts a 'neutral' stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe that the arguments for
the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence-sitting position. Soundly based atheism
goes further than agnosticism, not only faulting the argumentybr, but taking it for granted that
there are arguments, or at least solid considerations, <2g(?in.yL So it is with soundly based
anarchism; it both faults arguments for the State, showing none are generally viable, and
de ps an incisive case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again emphasised
by Bakunin,2 is that of State and Church. 'Of course Knever should have eventuated; several
bad political turnings were taken in the modern period following the Renaissance, t In several
respects the comparison is better than that of the State and God, since both belong to the same
category, institutions. Thus too both have looked to some philosophers as human inventions
or artifices, both have looked to others (reductionists) as objects that could be reduced to
features of the individuals involved in their organisation (but it is hard to see why such
fictions or logical constructions shuld be assigned the power and deference they are
2
Bakunin on Anap^hy-(gdited S. Dolgolff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973, especially p.139.
�5
accorded). This institutional comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be
emphasised; for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many very
extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of the main medium of
exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly on organised violence, all other internal
security arrangements being eventually answerable to its police, and thence to its officers and
military; how it is of the same category as business organisations such as multinationals,
which now to some extent threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the
Church used to, it has nominal support of most of its 'subjects', though many of them are
little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have come to see the State as in
many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but as a necessary evil. It is easy now, in
retrospect, to see how from being a compulsory feature of social life in many places, the
Church has become a voluntary, and fragmented one; such a parallel desirable transformation
of the State would eliminate it.
Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is
so it will be argued, in a
way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove that God exists. That is,
much as there are several ways of arguing to the existence of God, assembled by Aquinas into
the famous (but not exhaustive, and invariably invalid) Five Ways, as well as various less
famous but also important arguments against the existence of God, so in a parallel fashion
there are various arguments that the State is required, as well as, what comes later that is
especially relevant for anarchism, several ways of arguing against the necessity and
desirability of the State.
Since the State is unnecessary, as well as costly and typically at least evil in many of its
practices and
in other respects, it should be superseded. And it can be succeeded,
by alternative social arrangements. It can be superseded or replaced as the Churches to a
.9*1
large extent been supeyuated or replaced in many places. Just as the power of the ChurchAas
declined until it has lost its authority over parishioners, so authority of the State can be
undermined, and it can lose recognition and its claim to sovereignty over those in its territory,/A
But there is a crucial difference between State and Church: under those conditions the State
vanishes; for authority backed by coercive power is essential to the State but not (any longer)
to the Church. And where the State differs crucially from Society anarchistically organised is
as to the matter of coercion and of authority back^by force, such a Society relying basically on
voluntary cooperation where the State relies on authority backed by force. Furthermore, the
Church is justified through a religious theory, and is backed up ultimately by appeal to God's
authority. The modern secular State by contrast annexes itself authority (or has simply
inherited it) and, though it may claim to be justified by some political theory which confers
upon it legitimacy, makes no appeal back to a justifying or authorizing agent. So what
justifies it? Briefly, nothing does.
* The First Way of Showing that the State is not Required: t&e
Argument.
/
�6
The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the collective interest
accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by alternative arrangements such as
voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State activity being dispensed with. The argument is
not a straight substitution argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have
everything accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements. There is much
the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, for instance, sponsorship of pomp
and ceremony and of junkets by VIP's; and a great deal of typical State activity is positively
evil and not in the collective interest, for instance, graft, corruption, brutality, maintenance of
inequitable distribution of wealth, land and other resources, and encouragement; of protection^
of polluting or qvironmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should
not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and subsidization Australia
would not be burdened with its extensive forest-destructive pine planting and woodchip
projects).
The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or damaging ones,
functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind. This does not upset the
replacement argument for anarchism. The argument, implicit in the works of the classical
anarchists, goesjike this: The functions of the State can be divided into two types, those that
are in the collective interest and generally beneficial such as community welfare and
organisational functions, and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some
of the powerful groups the State tends to serve).
But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions which are in
the collecdve interest, no coercion is required. For why should people have to be coerced into
carrying out functions which are in their collective interest? Such functions can be
performed, and performed better, without the coercion which is the hallmark of the State, and
without the accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance
of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it 'serves'. The
detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case-by-case form considering
each function in turn.3 In each case the function is carried out through alternative
arrangements, such as voluntary co-operation by the people directly concerned, which replace
State arrangements. Consider, for example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical
services, or community access communications (e.g. radio), most of which are presently
either starved of infrastucture or hindered by the State. Such beneficial services would in
general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally held, and
That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of generally beneficial state activity
- there is only a (relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it can be replaced
in one way or another. Replacement is not of course uniquely determined. Lines such
replacements can take are indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature, consider
especially, but no, uncritically, P. Kropootkin, MMfMai Aid, New York University Press 1972,
and also his Fi^/dy, Faci<?rie.y and WorLyAo/w, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and 77te
Con<?Me.yf o/Brgad. Chapman and Hall, London, 1913.
�7
those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the operation themselves, taking
the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of favours meted out
to them by professionals and powerful agencies. Coercion is unnecessary because, in more
communal types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than
individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to apply coercion to
individuals to extract these resources needed for community welfare projects, as there is in
the situation where wealth and resources are privatised and coercion is required to wrest
resources from unwilling private individuals.
As for the second type of functions, those which are no? in the collective interest,
coercion will normally be required for the performance of
functions, and is thus an
essential part of the State's operation. But those functions are better dispensed with, since
they are not in the collective interest. In this way, while the good part of the state's operation
is retained and improved upon, the bad part — especially the evils of brutality, corruption and
other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus - is detached.
State services that are concerned with orr/gr, in the general sense, may be similarly
removed or replaced. These services, which include reduction of violence to persons and
redress for such violence, quarantine services, security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on,
have often been said to make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it. They
do not. Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by communities
themselves without intervention by the State. Secondly, a great many of these problems are
created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence of which the State is the main purveyor and
which is often the outcome of the State's propping up of gross inequalitiesA A community
which seriously limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for many "welfare
services and the basis for a great many offences involving violence: virtually all those
involving violence to private property and many of those involving personal violence. Such a
left-leaning anarchism is also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments
for the State, such as those based on the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth
allegedly achieved by State enforcement of redistribution. As all too many people are aware,
a major function of the State is to maintain and police inequitable distribution.
This then is the main classical argument for anarchism. The argument has however
been challenged, both by historical and more recent objections, which are designed to show
that people cannot act in their collective interest without coercion.
On these points see, e.g.
7?6wZMZz'a/zary Pawp/z/^tj (edited S. Baldwin), Kover
Publications, New York, 1970, p.206ff.; also P.J. Proudhon, Cazz/e^jza/M' a/* a R^va/azza/zary. For
recent discussion of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law court
procedures (Zzaz for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone, Sawg
<?H arhZzrazZag oar
way ra anarcAy, Anarchism (reprint of Nomos XIX) New York University Press, 1978, pp.213-
s
�8
It is from the simulation argument, in particular, that the corollary of the
q/
will follow? For, to overstate the case, anything the State can do that does
reflect sought collective interests,, cooperation and other techniques can also achieve in the
longer run, and mostly better.
* The Second Way: The argument from problem recurrence.
The solution by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more
dangerous form the very real problems introduction of the State was designed to solve,
including new Dilemmas. Suppose, for instance, the secular State really
introduced in
order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas, then the array of States so resulting generates new
Prisoners' Dilemmas (with States as 'prisoners'), which there is no Super-State to resolve by
coercion. In fact, as opposed to State-justifying mythology, the modem secular State was not
introduced (just as the original states were not initiated) for any such apparently intellectually
reputable reasons, but was largely inherited from the religious State (and the Church) and
maintained to prop up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests.
Or suppose, as the myth also has it, that the State really were introduced, or contracted, in the
interest of order and stability and to curb violence; then the array of States resulting more than
negates these advantages, with instability, disorder and violence (e.g. between States) on a
grander scale than before the emergence of modern secular States?
* The Third Way: The overshoot argument, from the inadequacy of institutional
controls on state power.
Having ceded a monopoly of power of the State in order to resolve some dilemmas,
some of them arising from an inequitable distribution of power, what controls or balances the
power of the State? A Super-State. And its power? There is a vicious infinite regress if the
reply to the question 'What controls the controller?' is 'a further controller'? The only
promising way of avoiding this problem — other routes lead (even more) directly to
totalitarianism — is by having the first of these controllers, the State, answer back to those in
whose interests it is allegedly established, those of the society or group of communities it
controls. This implies democratic methods of some kind. Others go further: 'democracy [is]
the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which we can try to
The title of a joint paper upon which several of these sections draw^.
The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op cif, chapter 7. A
related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way in which emergence of the State
compromises and even closes off nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in
adjoining regions. Several historical examples of this phenomenon are alluded to in M. Harris,
and Ajngj, Collins, London. 1978, where it is also revealed how little the actual origin
and rise of the State had to do with Dilemma situations, e.g. escaping a Hobbesian state of
nature. Indeed, it was (j^th the advent and development of the State that life became for many
what it had not apparently been in pre-State neolithic times, 'nasty, brutish and short'.
The question is in effect Plato's question and the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man
argument.
�9
protect ourselves against the misuse of political power'.R In this event, control has mostly
failed. Democracy is extremely attentuated, even in those states that claim to practice it. The
exercise of power in modem 'democratic' states is often channelled through 'non-elected
authority' and 'is not democratic in the traditional meaning of the term'.9 Moreover, the
much increased power in the modern State, which reaches deep into people's lives, has
passed, with no increase in legitimacy, to certain managerial elites who present the power as
directed at the attainment of 'generally accepted' objectives such as economic growth (but
through, e.g., increased military expenditure) or material 'progress' (but through, e.g.,
increased military expenditure) or material 'progress' (but through, e.g. subsidization of
environmentally destructive enterprises of off-shore companies), though the acceptability of
such particular objectives is never democratically tested.
In any case, indirect democratic and other institutional checks are
in as much as
they depend ultimately on the toleration of those who have direct control of the forces of the
State. Experience seems to show that such toleration will only be shown so long as
democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are broadly in accord
iwth what those who control the coercive power are prepared to accept. (Toleration of such a
tamed democracy then brings benefits to those who hold power, especially the cover of
legitimation). But institutional checks which operate only insofar as a system acceptable to
the powerholders is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those 'checked', are not really checks at all.
The problem of controlling the power of the State and preventing the State once
established from usurping further power and exceeding its mandate, is only
solved by not ceding power to the State in the first place. The best way of avoiding the evils
of accumulated power is the anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation.
* The Fourth Way: The argument from freedom and autonomy.
A person is responsible for actions deliberately undertaken. This premise can be
derived, if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent. Taking responsibility for
one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about what to do on each
such occasion oneself; not acting
on direction from outside, but determining how to
act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision over to someone or something
else. It implies, that is, moral autonomy. Autonomy in turn implies what responsibility
requires, freedom. For the autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is
K.R. Popper, 77ie (?/?<?/i 5*<9c;'<?ry and
Vol. II. Fourth edition (revised), Routledge and
Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p.129 and p.127. The (overshoot) problem is, according to Popper
'the most fundamental problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the dangerous
accumulation of power represented in teh State' 'upon which' Marxists never had 'any wellconsidered view' (p.129).
V. Lauber, Eco/ogy, po/ZzZcj and Zz&emZ ^efwocracy, Government and Opposition, 13 (1978),
199-217: seep.209 and p.211.
�10
not subject to the will of another. Even if it does what another directs, it is not
another so directs. In being free, nof of constraints (both physical and self-determined), but of
the constraints and will of others, an autonomous being is morally free.
A necessary feature of the State is (XMf/ionry over those in its territory (under its de facto
jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will uon them. Such authority backed by force is
incompatible with moral autonomy and with freedom. An autonomous being, though it may
act in accordance with some imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is
bound to reject such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State. In sum, being a person, as
also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority of the State, and so not
acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on personhood implies, if the argument is
sound, anarchism, io
It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated 'State', one based on
on-going unanimous direct democracy. But such a 'State', with no independent authority, is
not really a state, since any participant can dissolve it at any time, and so constitutes no threat
to anarchism. On the contrary, such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of
anarchistic organisation.
* The Fifth Way: The argument from anarchistic experience.
The replacement argument enables construction of a model of a society functioning
without the State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State is not
necessary. But it can always be
- even if the claim can seldom or ever be made good
- that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of real world circumstances, rendering it
inapplicable. The gap may be closed by appeal to the independently valuable argument from
experience, that at various times and places anarchism has been tested and has rworked.
Examples of such Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have
not been omitted.
There are many examples of non-industrialised societies which were, or are, anarchistic,
there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,n and there is much localised
experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic arrangements within the State
structure. 12
The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated, but in a very individualistic and
Kantian fashion, in R.P. Wolff, 7%
of A/iarc/H-sw, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
No argument is without assumptions, which are open to dispute. Wolffs argument, from
which the argument in the text is adapted, has its pitfalls, and is, for example, disputed by G.
Wall, P/uZo-yop/wcaZ
revi\yg<7, Anarchism, op.cit. p.273ff.
Documented in 77ze
1974.
Co/Zecfiv&y (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions New York
As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of self-management and alternative lifestyles
�11
The state is far from necessary and iacks adequate justification. The state is not a
self-justifying object. But none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A
familiar theme, conceding that the state is a problematic object, is that the state is a necessary
evil. 13 But, to the contrary, states, though generally evil, are hardly necessary.
It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak any necessity claimed has to be. For it is
becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical modellings and computer
simulations of other worlds, virtual states and the like, to envisage accessible worlds
organised without modern states. As such worlds, inhabited by humans or human-like
creatures are possible, states are not necessary.
No doubt then, the necessity has to be of some more
andpr^m^Jc sort, a
"social human necessity" for example appealing to emergent features of humans, kinks of
human nature, obtruding in unfavourable situations of high concentrations and extensive
scarcity (situations that states themselves have, like many survival systems, helped contrive).
Further the necessity has to be relative to certain organisational objectives, such as a
particular state delivery of collective goods and services. Remarkably, none of the extant
arguments to the state make it plain that such a weak pragmatic relative "necessity" is
indicated, though they would hardly establish more, and though they Jo make strong
(implausible) assumptions about the brutal situation outside states, in states-of-nature and so
on, and about human motivation and practice, its utterly selfish, self-interested and
acquisitive, and frequently debased character (i.e. what appears encouraged under economic
rationalism, and pretty much what many have come to expect under conditions of advanced
capitalism).
Mostly no effort is made any longer, outside a few abstruse texts, to justify the state.
Within contemporary institutional arrangement it is simply taken for granted (like Big
Science), as axiomatic, as God was under medieval arrangements. But unlike God, who was
good personified and therefore had a large problem with the extent of evil in the world, the
state is acknowledged as problematic and far from unimplicated in the evil of the world (but
directly engaged therein when the councils of the many Machievellis are heeded). Such a
problematic object cannot stand up as merely postulated. Nor is there a corresponding
ontological argument for the state, as that organisational structure than which nothing more
are many and significant. And these alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of
evidence and experience to support their superiority over the present way society operates.
The obstacles to self-management and alternative lifestyles are powerful vested interests and
institutional resistance to change', C/zanging f/x? C<%f, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979.
p.6.
13
The theme, enunciated for instance by Popper, that * state power must always remain a
dangerous though necessary evil' (II, p.30) is a commonplace one.
�12
perfect can exist. Outside the flawed imagination of German idealists there is no such Super
State; all actual states are manifestly highly imperfect, all humanly realisable ones are likely
similar.
As a result of the institutionalisation of the state itself, as a received and indeed central
part of modern political arrangements, the onus of proof has become curiously inverted.
Efforts to justify the state have become fairly ideal and academic, no longer a serious issue,
and onus transferred to anarchists to demonstrate that human social life could proceed well
and smoothly (as it now does, of course) without states. While anarchists are not absolved
from offering some account of operations of good social lives without states (for, except in
fairy tales, it does not all just emerge, unplanned, in the new stateless setting), neither are
archists absolved from justification of de facto statist arrangements, beginning with the state
itself.
�4
a ARCrpM&^S-.
The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state,
therewithal state-like institutions a/t? %/ro
/j
/< 7
) c /A—Zb
n X! ct
A<$
Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following
themes:
* States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification.
* Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes.
* Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of social
and environmental bungles or evils in their train.
In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils
The anarchist critique does not end
there, but typically includes.'further themes/ such as :
w States are devices for channelling privilege and wealth to certain minorities with inside
,
�The state is an undesirable, or even downright evii,
institution, for the following range of reasons:-
* States entrench inequities, domination and exploitation. States are devices for the protection
of wealth, property and privilege, and usually for the redistribution upwards, and often
concentration, of wealth and privilege. A minor but popular illustration is offered by the
expensive conferences and other junkets that state employees or party officials organise for
themselves and manage to bill to state revenue, in turn sucked up from inequitable taxation.
Certainly a main historical outcome of the state has been domination of exploitation of certain
segments of society by others, and some see its main, and barely concealed, purpose as just
that: domination and exploitation.
)
* States are typically corrupt. For example, there are enquiries presently in train, or with
follow-through activities yet to be duly completed, in many states in Australia, enquires which
have revealed considerable corruption, and there are prima facie cases for similar enquiries in
most of the remainder. Nor is this a new phenomenon: these revelations often resemble older or
on-going scandals.
* States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources, and
accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden, but a
main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over
remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that
many state operations are far from lean and efficient, but incorporate many duplications, drag
factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms, of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens,
weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organisation would be very
significantly reduced.
* States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive and demanding^. As a
Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous denouncement of state
government:
^1/7^
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled,
taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden,
reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the
general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized,
extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first world of
complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed,
choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown
all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is
its morality (quoted in M p.6).
�result, there are constant demands for the reduction of the cancerous state, for removing parts of
it through deregulation, selling off state enterprises and so on. There are two troubles with such
demands from anarchist standpoints: they never go far enough, to the complete reduction of the
state to zero, but characteristically retain parts supportive of or favourable to bigger business,
and they proceed in the wrong way, stripping away social safety nets rather than ripping off
business support nets (such as limited liability, strike limitation legislation, etc.).
* States, for all that they have been promoted as delivering public goods, are mostly dismal
news for environmental protection and health and for social justice. Furthermore they are liable
to impose substantial hazards or risks upon subservient populations not merely through military
and like activities but, more insidious, through support and promotion of dangerous industries,
such as nuclear and giant chemical industries.
* Statetusually exert a heavy pressure to uniformity, they tend to eliminate plurality and cultural
differences. These pressures are exercised by a state in the alleged interests of national unity,
and against its enemies, external and internal. Even the most liberal of states tend to give
minorities more difficult lives in times of stress, such as war. They are always espousing
national values, state interests, and commonly assimilation and adoption of state values (thus for
example Canada, formerly and briefly a state toying with multiculturalism, now insistent upon
"Canadian values"). Such exercises are conspicuous, not only in citizen ceremonies and other
state rituals, such as national sporting and religious events, but more important are virtually
ubiquitous in elementary education (down to deference to the f la , and similar).
* States are a major source of wars, and the major source of major wars, undoubted evils
(however supposedly inevitable). They are major sources and suppliers of military technology
and weapons, the means of war. Roughly, the more powerful and "advanced" a state, the
further it is engaged in weapon production and export. Without states it is doubtful that there
would be any nuclear weapons, and accordingly there would be no prospect of nuclear wars as
there would be no weapons with which to fight them.
* States are a serious drag on a more satisfactory international order. That there are not more,
and more satisfactory, international regulatory organisations 'is mainly a matter of the reluctance
of nation states to surrender their powers and the dangers of their being dominated by very
powerful states. If only nation states would be dissolved into specialized [departments] there is
every reason to believe that most world problems could be handled by appropriate specialized
�[organisations]' (Burnheimp.221).
* States have excessive power, and are even accumulating or trying to accumulate more, for
(hT)
instance through more centralization, further controls, additional licences, etc., etc. Obvious
responses to excessive power are separation of powers, achieved by decoupling and some
fragmentation, limitation of powers, and so on.
States thus appear farTrom a good bargain on a preliminary consideration of costs,
Especially bad states, the run of states, which engage in politically-motivated incun-ation or
t.ifure of their citizens, and so on. Where are the compensating benefits?' yven that we can get
along without them, would we really be significantly worse off without them? Even in the
better cases (not allowing for alternative nonstatist arrangements which states have precluded or
systems they have usurped)? But arguments for states are not usually so directly utilitarian in
character. Such arguments would make it look as if we might well opt out of state organisation,
and often be better off doing so. Mat it is contended that, contrary to appearances, we cannot
get along without state cossetting: states are necessary.
,
*?:
-
Present monolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which
they are not competent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as
impartial referees by their business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and control
top much, as a consequence it does very much unsatisfactorily. Improved arrangements would
separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power.
wcef-
�/%^2^
/\^^ 1 C
4
Z
Z^-^7
�W
GW, //?(? C/7//A /7,
jWr
f/7(? 3/(7/d
The State is like God: the anarchist is
like the atheist in disbelief and
nonrecognition of what is commonly
assumed, mostlv as a matter of faith, to
be needed. T)ie pafatlel,
BakummTtlibjat^weaknessessas well as Rs
strengt%^.''^Vhiie the atheist believes that
God does not exist, the anarchist does
not believe that there are no states: on
the contrary, there are all too many,
though none are legitimate. The impor
tant parallel is as to arguments. The
agnostic does not believe that the
arguments for the existence of God suc
ceed, and so adopts a 'neutral' stance;
similarly the State-agnostic does not
believe that the arguments for the State
work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence
sitting position. Soundly based atheism
goes further than agnosticism, not only
faulting the argumentsybr, but takingdt
for granted that there are arguments, or
at least solid considerations, rzgm/ry/. So
it is with soundly based anarchism;
<t
both fault) arguments for the
r" 3tatuce- a case against the
State.
A more obvious comparison, ap
preciated from Reformation on and
again emphasised bvBakunin,' is that of
State and Church^ This institutional
comparison enables several relevant
features of the State to be emphasised;
for example, how, as the Church used
to, the State assigns to itself many very
extensive powers, such as a monopoly on
the production and control of the main
medium of exchange, currency, and an
ultimate monopoly on organised
violence, all other internal security arrangernggt^)eing eventually answerable
to its pdhee and military^; how it is of the
same category as business organisations
such as multinationals, which now to
some extent threaten it but by and large
collaborate with it; how, as again the
Church used to, it has nominal support
of most of its 'subjects', though many of
them are little better than Sunday
believers, and an increasing number
have come to see the State as in many This does not upset the replacement
respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but argument for anarchism. The argument,
as a necessary evil.^)
implicit in the works of the classical
Whether the State is inevitably evil or anarchists, goes like this: The functions
not, it is M/mecas-wry, so it will be of the State can be divided into two
argued, in a wav parallelling the famous types, those that are in the collective in
jVquinas designed to prove terest and generally beneficial such as
that God exi^&^Since the State is un community welfare and organisational
necessary, as welt as costly and typically functions, and those that are not (but
at leas! evil in many of its practices and are, presumably, in the interests of some
undesirable in other respects, it should of the powerful groups the State tends to
be superseded. And it can be succeeded, serve).
by alternative social arrangements,
But as regards functions of the first
type, the generally beneficial functions
gg 77^ /7r.v/ IWj Q/ SbotWg which are in the collective interest, no
coercion is required. For why should
/r7t?/ //?C S/t//^ Ay ,76)/ 7?^T//7W.'
people have to be coerced into carrying
//!f /?e/)GcT/77^?7/ WRM/W7/.
out functions which are in their collec
tive interest? Such functions can be per
The core of the argument is simple formed, and performed better, without
and persuasive: everything in the collec- the coercion which is the hallmark of the
tive interest accomplished by the State State, and without the accompanying
can equally be accomplished by alterna tendency of the State to pervert such
tive arrangements such as voluntary co functions to the maintenance of privilege
operation, the remainder of State activi and inequality of power, and to remove
ty being dispensed with. The argument is power from those it 'serves'. The detail
not a straight substitution argument, for ed argument that such functions can be
it is not as if a rational person would performed takes a case by case form,
want to have everything accomplished considering each function in turn7 In
by the State replicated by alternative each case the function is carried out
arrangements. There is much the State through alternative arrangements, such
does or supports that is at best rather in
different, ^"'sponsorship of pomp and as voluntary co-operation by the people
directly concerned, which replace State
ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a arrangements. Consider, for example,
great deal of typical State activity is the operation of mutual aid or self help
positively evil and not in the collective medical services or building programs,
interest,'e^. gral^t, corruption, brutality, or self managed welfare, housing or en
maintenance of inequitable distribution vironment services, or community access
of wealth, land and other resources, and communications (e.g. radio), most of
encouragement of protection of
polluting or environmentally destructive
industries (e.g. without state sponsorship
we should not be well embarked on a
nuclear future, without state assistance
and subsidization Australia would not
be burdened with its extensive forest
destructive pine planting and woodchip
projects).
The modern State has however many
other functions than repressive or
damaging ones, functions of community
welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind.
�which are presently either starved of
infrastructure or hindered by the State.
Such beneficia! services would in genera!
be reorganised so that ah the relevant
infrastructure became communaHy heid,
and those wishing to arrange or use the
service wou!d manage the operation
themselves, taking the operation into
their own hands instead of being the
passive recipients of favours meted out
to them by professional and powerful
agencies. Coercion is unnecessary
because, in more communal types of
anarcnism, the basic infrastructure and
many resources (other than individual
labour) are already held by the com
munity, sdthereis no need to apply coer
cion to individuals to extract these
resources needed for community welfare
projects, as there is in the situation
where wealth and resources are privatis
ed and coercion is required to wrest
resources from unwilling private in
dividuals.
As for the second type of functions,
those which are /tor in the collective in
terest, coercion will normally be required
for the performance of //tew functions,
and is thus an essentia! part of the State's
operation. But those functions are better
dispensed with, since they are not in the
coHective interest. !n this way, while the
good part of the State's operation is re
tained and improved upon, the bad part
— especially the evils of brutality,
corruption and other abuses invariabty
associated with the coercive apparatus
— is detached.
State services that are concerned with
orjpr, in the genera! sense, may be
similarly removed or replaced. These
services, which include reduction of
violence to persons and redress for such
violence, quarantine services, security,
orderly operation of traffic, and so on,
have often been said to make for especial
difficulties for anarchism, or even to
refute it. They do not. Firstly, disputes
can be settled and offences dealt with
directly by communities themselves
without intervention by the State.
Secondly, a great many of these pro
blems are created or enhanced by the
State, e.g. violence of which the State is
the main purveyor and which is often the
outcome of the State's propping up of
gross inequalities? A community which
seriously limits (or dispenses with) the in
stitution of private property and
removes gross inequalities in the
distribution of wealth thereby removes
the need for many 'welfare' services and
the basis for a great many offences in
volving violence: virtually ail those in
volving violence to private property and
many of those involving personal
violence. Such a left-leaning anarchism
is also quite invulnerable to further
familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for
the State, such as those based on the
fairer distribution of land, property and
wealth allegedly achieved by State en
forcement of redistribution. As all too
many people are aware, a major func
tion of the State is to maintain and
police inequitable distribution.
This then is the main classical argu
ment for anarchism. The argument has
however been challenged, both by
historical and more recent objections,
which are designed to show that people
cannot act in their collective interest
without coercion.
�7./
NOTES
14.
[5.
16.
oK
!.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgofl),
Allen & LJnwin, London, (973, especially
p.139. Much else in this paper, eg. the
distinction between the State and Society, also
derives from Bakunin.
2.
That is, proper elaboration of this argument
takes each facet of generally beneficial state
activity — there is only a (relatively small)
finite number to consider — and shows how it
can be replaced in one way or another.
Replacement is not of course uniquely deter
mined. Lines such replacements can take are
indicated in much anarchist (and self
management) literature, consider especially,
but no/ uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual
Aid, New York University Press, 1972, and
also his Fields. Factories and Workshops,
second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and
the Conquest of Bread, Chapman and Hall,
London, 1913.
3.
On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin's Revolu
tionary Pamphlets (edited S. Baldwin), Dover
Publications, New York, 1970, p.206 ff.; also
P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolu
tionary. For recent discussion of, and practical
examples of, replacements for arbitration and
law court procedures (6td for right-leaning
anarchism), see C D. Stone, Some re/?ec//on.s
on o/Tn/rohng our way /o anarc/ty * Anarchism
(reprint of Nomos XIX) New York University
Press, 1978, pp.213^4.
The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is
elaborated a littic in Taylor, op.cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from
the way in which emergence of the State com
promises and even closes off nonstate solu
tions to problems of social organisation in ad
joining regions. Several historical examples of
this phenomenon are alluded to in M. Harris,
Cannibals and Kings, Collins, London. 1978.
where it is also revealed how little the actual
origin and rise of the State had to do with
Dilemma situations, e.g. escaping a Hobbesian
state of nature. Indeed, it was with the advent
and development of the State that life became
for many what it had not apparently been in
prc-State neolithic times, 'nasty, brutish and
short'.
The question is m effect Plato's question, and
the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man
argument.
K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its
Enemies. Yol.iL Fourth edition (revised),
Routledge and Kegan Paul. London. 1962,
p.129 and p.127. The (overshoot) problem ts.
according to Popper 'the most fundamental
problem of all politics: the control of the con
troller. of the dangerous accumulation of
power represented in the State' 'upon which'
Marxists never had
view' (p. 129).
'any well-considered
17.
V. Lauber. /co/o^y, po/t/tes an<7 hbera/
r/emocracv. Government and Opposition. 13
(1978), 199-217: see p.2O9 and p.211.
18.
The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much
elaborated, but tn a very individualistic and
Kantian fashion, tn R.P. Wolff, In Defense of
Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York. 1970.
No argument is without assumptions, which
are open to dispute. Wolff's argument, from
which the argument in the text is adapted, has
its pitfalls, and is, for example, disputed by
G. Wall. P/b/o.sop/hca/ awc/n.sw re row/,
Anarchism, op.cit. p.273ff.
19.
Documented in The Anarchist Cotiectives
(edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions, New
York. 1974.
20.
As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages
of self-management and alternative lifestyles
are many and significant. And these alter
natives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of
evidence and experience to support their
superiority over the present way society
operates. The obstacles to self-management
and alternative lifestyles are powerful vested
interests and institutional resistance to
change', ( hanging the Cogs, Friends of the
Earth, Canberra, 1979, p.6.
�ANARCHISM - ENLARGED j
____________ foundations*
There is a theological
component in the theory of the ^tate;.the weakness af^whieh should be brought out.
A
A
By contrast, anarchism ^.s approached from an argument pe^p^ctive, of considerable
streng
strength^
Since the &tate is an imposed structure that induces considerable costs,
the onus of proof is moreover on the State side.
(The State versus states:
r
instantiate the universal.)
2.
they
Circled numbers hereafter refer to insert places in elder working version.
In §1:-
(^
In several respects the comparison is better than that of the State and God,
since both belong to the same category, institutions.
/cc
Thus both have looked to
some philosophers as human inventions or artifices, both have looked to others
(reductionists) as objects that could be reduced to features of the individuals
involved in their organisation (but it is hard to see why such fictions or logical
constructions should be assigned the power and deference they are accorded).
0
It can be superseded, or replaced^ as the Church has to a large,
^in many places.
extent been
Just as the power of the Church has declined until it has lost
its authority over parishioners, so authority of the State can be undermined, and
it can lose recognition and its claim to jAu&h^rit^ over those in its territory.
But there is a crucial difference between State and Church:
under those condit
ions the State vanishes, for authority backs!by coercive power is essential to the
State but not (any longer) to the Church.
from
Society anarchistically organised
And where the State differs crucially
is as to the matter of coercion and of
authority backed by force, such a society relying basically on voluntary cooper
ation where the State relies on authority backed by force.
Furthermore, the
Church is justified through a religious theory, and is backed up ultimately by
appeal to God's authority.
The modern secular State by contrast annexes itself
J
�A
2.
itself authority (or has simply inherited it) and, though it may claim to be
justified by some political th(o^ry which confers upon it legitimacy, makes no
appeal back to a justifying or authorizing <3<^e.nt.
So what justifies it?
2^.^
These sorts of considerations prompt two connected complaints of the anarch-
ist, which have never been satisfactorily met, the agnostic's complaint that the
State has no adequate justification - the arguments for its imposition or certain
action fail - and the stronger complaint that the State is not necessary at all.
These complaints are backed by arguments and further arguments, namely an assess)
ment of arguments.
These arguments are important, not, or not merely, because
they will show, if unsuccessful, that anarchism j^s irrefutable, but because they
convey muqh information, e.g. as to the weak (to the point of vacuity) sense
in
which the State is "necessary", because they do much to determine the general
0^
logical shape of the anarchism that results, and because they indicate routes to
anarchism, not merely why but, to some extent, how the State can be superseded
by a Society anarchistically organised.
t
pfuch as there are several ways of arguing to the existence of God, assembled
by Aquinas into the famous (but not exhaustive, and invariably invalid) Five Ways,
and various less famous but also important arguments against the existence of God,
apcni&Igs
, (jAtb
so there are various arguments that the State is required, and^ especially
—-2
relevant for anarchism^, several ways of arguing against the necessity of the
State.
is from the simulation argument, in particular, that the irrefutibj.lity of
Ai)
anarchism will follow^ anything the State can do that does reflect the collective
interests
A/.
A74
cooperation.can also do in the long-run, and mostly better.
[Over-
i
��g T7/E SECOAD
X 777E
/1RGGA7EATFROM PROEEEM
RECGRREyVCE.
The solution by the State to problems
of social organisation repeats or
generates in more dangerous form the
very real problems introduction of the
State was designed to solve, inciuding
new Diiemmas. Suppose, for instance,
the secular State realty were introduced
in order to soive Prisoners' Dilemmas,
then the array of States so resulting
generates new Prisoners' Ditemmas
(with States as 'prisoners'), which there
is no Super-State to resotve by coercion.
In fact, as opposed to State-justifying
mythology, the modern secutar State
was not introduced (just as the originat
States were not initiated) for any such
apparentty intellectually reputable
reasons, but was targety inherited from
che religious State (and the Church) and
Jiaintained to prop up privitege and
foster objectives that are not in its com
munities' interests. Or suppose, as the
myth atso has it, that the State reaity
were introduced, or contracted, in the
interest of order and stability and to curb
violence; then the array of States
resuming more than negates these advan
tages, with instability, disorder and
viotence (e.g. between States) on a
grander scale than before the emergence
of modern secutar States."*
S 77/E 77//RD HA1 Y. RHE
(9 YERSEOGE /IRGt/MEAE
FROM EE/E /A/(/9E()G^CY
GE /AF77EG77GA74E
CGA7RGES GA A7MEE
PG^ER
Having ceded a monopoty of power
J) the State in order to resotve some
diiemmas, some of them arising from an
inequitable distribution of power, what
controts or batances the power of the
State? A Super-State. And its power?
There is a vicious infinite regress if the
repty to the question 'What controts the
controtter?' is 'a further controller'A
The onty promising way of avoiding this
problem — other routes tead (even
1
more) directty to totaiitarianism — is by
having the first of these controllers, the
State, answer back to those in whose in
terests it is aitegediy estabtished, those of
the society or group of communities it
controts. This implies democratic
methods of some kind. Others go fur
ther: 'democracy (is] the onty known
means to achieve this control, the onty
known device by which we can try to
protect oursetves against the misuse of
pohtica! power'.'* In this event, control
has mostty failed. Democracy is ex
tremely attenuated, even in those states
that claim to practice it. The exercise of
power in modern 'democratic' states is
often channelled through 'non-elected
authority' and 'is not democratic in the
traditional meaning of the term'E
Moreover, the much increased power in
the modern State, which reaches deep in
to people's lives, has passed, with no in
crease in legitimacy, to certain
managerial elites who present the power
as directed at the attainment of 'general
ly accepted' objectives such as economic
growth (but through, e.g.', increased
military expenditure) or materia! 'pro
gress' (but through, e.g. subsidization of
environmentally destructive enterprises
of off-shore companies), though the ac
ceptability of such particular objectives
is never democratically tested.
In any case, indirect democratic and
other institutional checks are /em/OMS in
as much as they depend uttimately on the
toleration of those who have direct con
trol of the forces of the State. Experience
seems to show that such toleration wit!
only be shown so long as democratic
procedures deliver results that are not
too disagreeable, that are broadly in ac
cord with what those who control the
coercive power are prepared to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy
then brings benefits to those who hold
power, especially the cover of legitima
tion). But institutional checks which
operate only insofar as a system accep
table to the powerholders is not seriously
challenged, and which depend ultimately
upon the toleration of those 'checked',
39 EE/E FGGR 777
Y. EE/E
ARGGMEA?^ FRGA7
EREEDGA7 ^lAD^l GEGAGAf Y.
A person is responsible for actions
deliberately undertaken. This premise
can be derived, if need be, from the
notion of a person as a moral agent.
Taking responsiblity for one's actions
implies, among other things, making the
final decision about what to do on each
such occasion oneself; not acting
on direction from outside, but determin
ing how to act, what ought to be done,
oneself; not handing that decision over
to someone or something else. It implies,
that is, moral autonomy. Autonomy in
turn implies, what responsibility re
quires, freedom. For the autonomous
being, endorsing its own decisions and
principles, is not subject to the will of
another. Even if it does what another
directs, it is not /yeemzse another so
directs. In being free, no/ of constraints
(both physical and self-determined), but
of the constraints and will of others, an
autonomous being is morally free.
A necesary feature of the State is
<7H//io,7/y over those in its territory
(under its de facto jurisdiction), the right
to rule and impose its will upon them.
Such authority backed by force is incom
patible with moral autonomy and with
freedom. An autonomous being, though
it may act in accordance with some im
peratives of the State, those it in
dependently endorses, is bound to reject
such (a claim to) authority, and
therewith the State. In sum, being a per
son, as also being autonomous and being
free, implies rejecting the authority of
the State, and so not acknowledging the
State; that is, each condition on per
sonhood implies, if the argument is
sound, anarchism.'*
It is possible to combine autonomy
with an extremely attenuated 'State', one
based on on-going unanimous direct
democracy. But such a 'State', with no
independent authority, is not really a
state, since any participant can dissolve
it at any time, and so constitutes no
threat to anarchism. On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part
of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
W E/7E E7E777 HA1Y. 777E
are not really checks at ali.
^RGGMEAEFRGM
The problem of controlling the power
of the State and preventing the State M
A91 RCA75&EAVER7EACE.
once established from usurping further
The replacement argument enables
power and exceeding its mandate, is only
construction
of a model of a society
w/cyAc/orr/y solved by not ceding power
functioning without the State, of a prac
to the State in the first place. The best
tically possible Stateless world; which
way of avoiding the evils of accumulated
shows that the State is not necessary. But
power is the anarchist way, of blocking
it can always be c/c/wer/ — even if the
its accumulation.
claim can seldom or ever be made good
— that the modelling leaves out some
crucial feature of real world circum
stances, rendering it inapplicable. The
gap may be closed by appeal to the inde
pendently valuable argument from ex
perience, that at various times and places
anarchism has been tested and has work
ed. Examples of such Stateless organisa
tion suffice to show that crucial real
world features have not been omitted.
^Yiere are many examples of nontndustrialised socieities which were, or
are, anarchistic, there is the rich experi
ence of the Spanish collectives,'" and
there is much localised experience of
seif-management and small-scale anar
chistic arrangements within the State
structure?"
�z
e
The state tacks adequate justification. The state is not a self-justifying object. But
none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A familiar theme, conceding that the
Al
state is a problematic object, is that the state is a necessary evil. But, to the contrary, states,
though generally evil, are hardly necessary^ It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak
necessity claimed has to be. For it is becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical!^
modellings and computer simulations of other worlds, virtual states and the like, to envisage
accessible worlds organised without modern states.
No doubt then, the necessity has to be of some more pragmatic sort, a "social human
necessity" for example appealing to emergent features of humans, kinks of human nature,
obtruding in unfavourable situations of high concentrations and extensive scarcity (situations
that states themselves have, like many survival systems, helped contrive).Remarkably, none of
the extant arguments to the state make it plain that such a weak pragmatic "necessity" is
intricated, though they would hardly establish more, and though they
make strong
(implausible) assumptions about the brutal situation outside states, in states-of-nature and so on,
and about human motivation and practice, its utterly selfish, self-interested and acquisitive, and
frequently debased character (i.e. what appears encouraged under economic rationalism, and
pretty much what many have come to expect under conditions of advanced capitalism).
Mostly no effort is made any longer, outside a few abstruse texts, to justify the state.
Within contemporary institutional arrangement it is simply taken for granted (like Big Science),
as axiomatic, as God was under medieval arrangements. But unlike God, who was good
personified and therefore had a large problem with the extent of evil in the world, the state is
acknowledged as problematic and far from unimplicated in the evil of the world (but directly
engaged therein when the councils of the many Machievellis are heeded). Such a problematic
Popper^s view that 'state power must always remain a dangerous though necess
ary evil'
(II, p.30) is a commonplace one.
�object cannot stand up as merely postulated. Nor is there a corresponding ontological argument
for the state, as that organisational structure than which nothing more perfect can exist. Outside
the flawed imagination of German idealists there is no such Super State; all actual states are
manifestly highly imperfect, all humanly realisable ones are likely similar.
As a result of the institutionalisation of the state itself, as a received and indeed central part
of modem political arrangements, the onus of proof has become curiously inverted. Efforts to
justify the state have become fairly ideal and academic, no longer a serious issue, and onus
transferred to anarchists to demonstrate that human social life could proceed well and smoothly
(as it now does, of course) without states. While anarchists are not absolved from offering
some account of operations of good social lives without states (for, except in fairy tales, it does
not all just emerge, unplanned, in the new stateless setting), neither are statists absolved from
justification of de facto statist arrangements, beginning with the state itself.
�
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CASE DISSOLVED:
critique of argumentsto and for the State
Over the centuries that humans have been stuck with states, many different attempts to
justify them, as in some way necessary or desirable (as more than an unfortunate accident of
history), have been attempted. None pf these arguments succeed (as much would perhaps be
quite widely conceded^).
/
/
There are various wayjs of showing that the arguments fail. One powerful way deploys,
indicates or develops, counterexamples; for instance modelling social arrangements without
states. Another more pedestrian but essential way consists in direct examination of the
arguments, not merely some of them or various classes of them, but, for completeness, each and
every one of them. Ultimately that calls for, what is attempted first in a first attempt fashion,
an exhaustive classification of the arguments „
A preliminary classification of these arguments can take the following form:
1. //i-yfonc or <?Ma,s7-/H,s'f(9rzc. These arguments divide in tum into two principal subclasses:
1.1 Daycrzpnve.*
/b/Zacy o/TAo
quo.
A first group of arguments^justification of the state, try to take advantage of the
descriptive features that states are entrenched almost everywhere as the dominant feature of the
political landscape. Helpful as it may be having states in avoiding hypothetical in injecting a
heavy element of realism oLesdisn, nonetheless fact is not per se justification: what is often
X
ought not to be. Bank robbers and robber barons are justified by their mere existence There
are similar problems<dth the argument from tradition. If some principle, practice or theory
stood for a good while it had something going for it. Some such consideration lies at the basis
of precedence in law; the idea of tradition as encapsulating past wisdom - or past folly. Among
the problems are that with authoritarian institutions come their antitheses, with the state the
anti-state. Many practices like barbarism and racism have stood for a very long tirne,^ many
organisations like mafia have been airound for a long time, so they have something going for
them? Such troubles, the evident gap between descriptive and normative, are among those that
plague
In s^prt without utterly questionable connecting assumptions,
such as that what is is necessary (a modal fallacy) or that what is is right (a deontic fallacyi),
such arguments fail to afford justification.
There are some important JMbtypes of descriptive (or quasi-descriptive) arguments,
namely
*
1
arguments. The state is not only established, it works. Immediate difficulties
This fallacy, heavily utilized by Hegel, is critically examined in NNL.
X
0
V-v
L^
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4^c AA-<s
A
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JA^?
(^A t
ACA
C.^y1k
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2.2-
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2
with such arguments are obvious. The Mafia too/is well-established. It too works, often in
opposition the the State (as a sort of negative opposite, like the Devil to God). What sort of
standards of
is working
intended to meet? All sorts of awful political
arrangements have "worked", at least in persisting for as long as statist arrangements:
despotisms, dictatorships, tyrannies, ... . Still as pragmatic arguments enjoy considerable
popularity, especially in North America, they will have to be considered in more detail (than
they deserve).
*
arguments. The state has evolved through a long sequence of political forms.
It is tried and tested, and now selected, selected as best available. Such arguments afford
scientific clothing for the appalling Hegelian "what is is right". For what has evolved is
selected thereby as best, and what is selected as best is no doubt right (by a familiar utilitarian
deontic reduction). Slather evidently such arguments prove too much. Any form that in fact
emerges, no matter how achieved, though what dusta^dly Machievellian deeds, no matter how
awful, is thereby justified: empires and dictatorships of the worst sort, fa^ist and totalitarian
states, one and all, are justified, provided only they are established.^
this only for climax states, where some sort of evolutionary plutoniums have been achieved
have been achieved (otherwise bad means to select evolutionary ends may temporarily prevail).
But where is the evidence that the State is not another transitional stage, like feudalism before
it? As an evolutionary form it is very recent, and fortunately not yet established in evolutionary
time.
1.2 AfoK-J&pcripf/ve. Difficulties with descriptive arguments, including prescriptive
fallacies (deriving presciptive or evaluative conclusions from purely descriptive premisses), are
evaded/idealisation arguments, which include
These are genetic in justificatory character, relating the
mythological "historical" development of the State from an imaginary pre-state situation.^
These arguments are not sharply^p^rated from
* fdea/ /n,yfory arguments.
* MMagmary
and ideal reconjfrMcrfoK arguments. For the transactions, such as an
originating social contract, may be presented in a quasi-historic form. This important class of
arguments is broader than contractual arrangements, including all the following sorts of
imaginary transactions: negotiating, bargaining, experimenting, etc., in given (idealised)
conditions, perhaps issuing in an arrangement, agreement, contract, etc. One preliminary
That contemporary exponents and practitioniers of state craft are inclined to accept these^orts of
considerations, and to recognise any region that has gained (short-term) control over a territory
and its administration, does nothing for the considerations^ What it reveals rather is the moral
sickness of contemporary real-politics.
They include
(as opposed to
relocation arguments, where a group ("voting
with its feet ) relocates and forms a state (except of course these gorups, when there was room
for them, tended to aim for new societies, not states).
These arguments form a bridge between descriptive and ntunative. While voluntary contract
arguments are descripively implausible, voluntary relocation has, or did have, a little descriptive
3
classification of these arguments divides them into
natural
quasi-theological, legalistic
invisible hand
evolutionary
consensual or equivalent.
artificial,
The most notorious of these reconstructions, or political thought-experiments, are the
social contract theories whereby individual members of a society fictitiously enter into an
enforceable contract, inescapable for themselves and all their descendants, setting up the state,
primarily as a security arrangement. In later versions which may involve other legalistic forms
than contracts, such as pa^cts, trusts, etc., there is much negotiating and bargaining in contrived
situations, where humans lose many of their distinctive features and accoutrements (in a effort
to ensure some initial fairness).
A variant on contract theories, which justify some sort of state arrangements
Z/* they
arose in an ideal way, is retrojustification of the state as naturally arising, as a sort of super
insurance agency, from pre-state arrangements. For example, the minimal state evolves from a
competing set of state-like security agencies one of which somehow gains a monopoly, and is
retrojustified through insurance arguments (concerning risk and compensation).
Such arguments are sometimes presented as replacing overall contractual arrangements
(through minor arrangements undoubtedly enter) with invisible hand mechanisms. Whereas
contractual arguments take the general segmented shape:
INITIAL STATE: INPUT
INTERMEDIATE STATES
prestate
negotiation followed by
situation:
draft contrad, assessment
"state of nature"
FINAL STATE: OUTPUT
state established
situation
followed by contract adoption
^in invisible hand arguments the intermediate steps, on route to the state, consist in formation of
organisations and their progressive amalgatiation to provide finally a state. For example, in
Nozick these organisations are taken to comprise protective agencies (though that is only one
statist function), and to ensure legitimacy for the final object, it is contended that each
intermediate state derives from the proceeding in a morally permissible way, namely preserves
% selected rights. Such arguments fail for two main classes of reasons: inadequacy in the
derivations of late and final stages from earlier ones, and unsatisfactoriness over the initial state
(in particular, what is assumed in it, such as proprietorial rights, and what is excluded, i$ the
way of more satisfactory alternatives).
In these forms the State arises through voZimfary actions and transactions. Whereas
anarchists and many socialists see anarchism as a post-state state, these transaction arguments
often assume anarchism, in very motly forms, as pre-state states. People voluntarily elect to
escape those pre-state form, "rushing" into the jaws of the State. But there are, as well,
versions, where the State is established through legalistic or religious means,
natural religion or the like. For example, the details of State organisation, or a recipe or
4
commandments therefore, are received by or given to some powerful religious personage, who
implements the organisation under religious authority. The legalistic equivalent came about
through implementation, not of religious dictates, but what may be very similar in practical
affect and detail, natural law. Normally this law will be "seen", for, by some powerful
personages, who are in a position to convey, and have put into effect, their illumination. With
the decline of religion these sorts of arguments have lost much of their general appeal (they
should never have enjoyed much credibility). But many relics of these shattered arguments
remain, to be removed. A critical point is that such arguments should not gain independent
standing. Most law is mfra-state, state manufactured and state serving. What is independent of
states has to answer to standards, moral standards especially, that are independently justified.
Similarly for religious commandments. As a result, these arguments collapse back to
arguments for the State.
Now modern states did not arise in any such "natural" or contractual way. Often they
were imposed by conquest or through colonialisation, and with a few exceptions, using
military means rather than offering much sweetness and light and choice. There are a notable
discrepancies between typical justifications of the state (in which much is sweetness and light,
though it is far from a pareto-optimal object) and common explanations of the role of the state
(in which much is obviousness and intrigue). Nor do the ideal constructions or histories offer
much justification for these resulting state power configurations. For the states so delivered
are very different from those most people presently toil under.
In any case, the arguments involved do not succeed. They are extraordinarily gappy by
contemporary logical standards. They depend upon some utterly implausible assumptions,
for example as to how vile conditions are^n extra^state situations. These changes are easily
illustrated, and will be.) small immediate)^eana&14 example.
Underlying several of the imaginary transaction arguments to the state, are various c/zofcg
arguments of a thought-experiment cast. Commonly such arguments ambitiously aim to show
that
* the state is necessary, and that
* the state is superior to its absence.
But such arguments.like those embedcTin
confracf arguments .are little better than con
jobs.as are presented depend upon a false choice. For only two options are considered:
H, a horrible Hobbesian "state of nature" and
S, a well-ordered (contructually-reached) Hobbesian state.
The argument, appealing to the vices of H and the virtues of S, has little trouble in concluding
* * S is better than H (or similarly, rational agents would select S over H, etc.)
other options, such as anarchist ones. Why should
anarchists want to line up with S? They can agree with proposition * *. They might also want
The choice conveniently leaves
to assert that anarchistic arrangements Z are superior to S. Whereupon it is evident that neither
* nor * follows. For necessity all accessible alternatives have to be considered (by the
semantics of
That has not been done. For superiority, the superiority of S to Z and
other alternatives has to be taken into account. That has not been done. — ,
-----------------------
alternative i^\Carter^^(?c^ry^which produces The kind of individuals who have
strongly internalized values and can live cooperatively and freely without the threat of force ...\
i^)(p.25).4 6V1C-
No doubt some of the gaps in the arguments could be plugged by further, further
contestable, assumptions, but such analytic work remains to be attempted and assessed, after
two millennia of such arguments. In fact it was long ago realised that such arguments exhibit
unlikely and even paradoxical features. For example, in consenting to a state for security
purposes, participants to the state contract proceed to establish an institution which is far
more dangerous to them than the power of others taken distributively. It would seem that
those smart enough to enter into a social contract for a state would be smart enough to foresee
the problems of hiring a monster, and to avoid the state and steer along without it. In
establishing a state, inhabitants set up an institution that is far more powerful and dangerous
to them than the power of other inhabitants taken singly or in groups.
This is to think that Men are so fulish that they tak care to avoid
what Mischiefs may be done then by PoZe-caM, or
but are
contra^ f^ay think it Safety, to be devoured by AZo/asA
These arguments, like others to follow, even if somehow repaired, would not establish an
institution with anything approaching the power and complexity of the modern state.
Arguments to the state typically establish, at best, only a rather minimal state, with certain
protective and regulatory powers. Such minimal states would not deliver many of the goods
economists, still less socialists, have come to expect of the state. The arguments certainly do
not establish anything like the oppressive paternal state with a panoply of powers that many
citizens are forceably subject to, power states have accumulated by their own unjustified
predatory activity. In this respect too, arguments to the state resemble arguments to God.
Deistic arguments characteristically establish (insofar as they establish anything) only a quite
minimal rAar w/zZc/t, a first cause, some existent, a most perfect object, a universal designer,
clockmaker or the like. They do nothing to establish many of the powers or properties
asciibed to God.
There is yet another resemblance a surplus of attributes are regularly ascribed to Gock so
much power, knowledge, andj^^like^that paradoxes of omnipotence, omniscience, and
jimilar, are quickly engendereb^aradoxes that a lesser God that merely satisized on virtue (and
could tolerate some production of evil) could easily escape)^ So too a surplus of power is
conceded to the State. The state carries ^far more power than is required for collective
organisation, a large "political surphis" which should be relinquished.
/4
^ reversmg Hobbes' argument,pottom halfl really a cranking.
$
Locke p.372.
——^Lesser Gods encounter ^other difficulties: their plurality, the fact that they can be exceeded by
other greater Gods, and their upstaging by ontological arguments.
6
2(-l*) S*y^7?zayic. These arguments divide again into two principal subclasses, namely
2.1 Ana/yac and
2.2 M?K#K(2/y%c.
Further both subclasses may be subdivided in tum into individualistic and holistic subclasses,
for instance 2.1 into
2.1.1 Indiviualistic and
2.1.2 Non-individualistic.
Most recent investigation has been concentrated within subdivision 2.1.^1, upon game-theoretic
justifications of the State. Indeed, given prevailing methodological individualism, which
almost invariably takes analytic form, all acceptable justification reuced to this subdivision?
Certainly other systematic ways of endeavouring to justify the state tent
z to have
fallen by the wayside or been abandoned. However it is worth listing two further forms, one of
which remains significant:
* Holistic/brz/t considerations. The State is presented as the form, or even spirit, of Society,
much as the mind is the form of the corresponding body. Insofar as there is an argument, it is
analogical, from an increasingly dubious basis. Contemporary up-dating of the torm'ideas
would no doubt have the State as - what is even less plausible - the program, or the software,
of a corresponding Society.
* Mora/ considerations.
But there is little good reason to embrace individualism, methodological or other, because many
sorts of wholes, beginning with ^bstra&i, do not come down to individuals; it is poor
methodology to try to proceed as if they do. More on individualism elsewhere. See aM JB
3VHATEVER3
2. Arguments in a game theory setting: Prrhners' Diiemma games and supergames.
What is widely regarded
as the most persuasive justification of the state [is] "the argument
that, without the state, people would not voluntarily cooperate to
provide themselves with certain public goods... ". This argument,
which is quite popular with contemporary academics, suggests
that, without the state, people would not be able to "act so as to
realise their
interests."*
.
So far, hewexEr, we have not encountered^an argument, but simply a very large claim. The
argument itself^is remarkably circuitous, circuiting through a range of examples drawn from
game theory, and, so it will emerge, as yet quite indecisive. Obtaining a view, a clear view, of
the whole argument, or rather the spectrum of potential arguments, matters for anarchism. For
that will help considerably in dispelling the myth that here, partly hidden, is a powerful
P3p*x
argument against
A
The
argument takes the form of a modal syllogism:
* The state is necessary for the optimal, or adequate, provision of collective (i.e. public)
goody (zzm/or premiss),
of*
'
* Collective goods are necessary for a satisfactory social life, (J%7M% premiss) .
the state is necessary for a satisfactory social life./Moreover, given that the latter, a
satisfactory social life (in a given region), is a certain desiderata, the state is to that extent
necessary (a
necessity is (^bolutized).
While the big argument takes thatybrm, it is subject to variation. Furthermore, some
variation is essential, else it, and one of the chief forms incorporated, is invalid. For the
argument displayed has a different, and an ambiguous, middle term. For requisite uniformity,
and validity, the middle term has to be either a) adequate provision of colective goods, or o)
optimal provision of collective goods. While little supporting argument get lavished on the
minor premiss, it being assumed obvious, that obviousness
selected. For a satisfactory social life may result when
when term o) is
than optimal provisioning of
collective goods occurs. Adequate lives only require adequate goods, perhaps even a modest
supply of goods for less consumptive societies, not optimal or maximal levels.
There is/a significant skating about, of justificatory relevance, in the "most persuasive
justification of the state", as normally slackly presented^between
(as in o), nomally explicated in terms of maximization;
erms of satisization);
of provisioning: opPma/
(as in a), have construed int
(unspecified, as in the quote above, or perhaps
specified as in Hobbes, e.g. defence and security of property).
Unfortunately for the argument, all that the game-theoretic arguments for the major
1
2
Grofman 80, p.108, quoting Taylor. For another similar statement, qualified to members of a
large public, see Taylor 82, p.53.
Thus, basic collective goods for a basic social life, as for instance in subsistence lifestyles.
'
'
'
' /
premiss typically establish at best is failure of optima^ or certain large prov^pning, without the
state. They do not show failure to provision at all without the state, or failure to achieve
"basic" provision, or even adequate provisioning. Now anarchism can^granF that certain large
provisioning is improbable without the state; for example^ntercoiynental nuclear missiles, or
large output nuclear power plants. 3 But i^hardly matters! f&r such state-posessed goods are?
arguably antithetical to satisfactory social life. Nor need anarchism accede Rr optimality
requirements, thereby destroying usual game-theoretic arguments. For these arguments usually
show that more would be obtained under certain counter-individualistic cooperative strategies
than would otherwise be obtained, not that some or basic levels would not be achieved. To
put it bluntly, satisizing anarchists can throw out the challenge: what does it matter if a few
state prisoners defect (i.e. there are some not fully-paid-up rider^so long as enough goods are
still delivered? That challenge has not been met, even implicitly, as will appear. 5?
It is unreasonable, in any case, to demand optimal levels from non-statist societies,
because no extant stat^ measure up to such excessive requirements. Indeed most staites do
...
...........................................
,
. bd
not even meet utterly basic demands. Henceforth we shall be looking for
leads,
which %?.yo /hero cover basic demands.
The argument for the critical major premiss takes the following sort of route, involving
these components:
1. Assimilation of the problem of provision of collective goods (in the light of the minor
premiss it can be cast as a problem) to paradigmatic problems in game theory, initially the
Prisoners' Dilemma (PD for short). No doubt efforts at provision of public goods commonly
result in arrangements that can be represented formally as Prisoners' Dilemmas. But it is
sometimes claimed, what will be repudiated subsequently, that all such efforts result in PD
situations, that is that there is a universal linkage. Two connections are regularly assumed: a
universal representation of problems in game theory, and a more plausible less ambitious
connection with PD games. That is:
* all provisioning problems can be represented within game theory.
** these problems^requently)takePD form.
.
The first assumption, of game theory representation, is^severe. Each problem is transformed
into a game, with n independent players, normally individuals or individual units (such as an
"individual" family or firm in economics^)/ These players characteristically possess but limited
information, and almost invariably are allowed only extraordinarily narrow motivations and
objectives, am) as maximizing their own interests or pay-offs, in a rigid setting with fixed
predetermined moves.$
According to the more plausible, less ambitious collections,
3
4
5
So much is argued elsewhere (nuclear wo^k).
While in many politically relevant applications, such as the "tragedy of the common^' game,the
players may bedndividuals, in other applications the players may be communities, societies, or
even states, e.g\mtemational traaR and war games.
It is this sort of rigidity and limitation that/make^ parts of game-theory automatically tractable.
<?;
3
* provisioning of public goods frequently yields prisoners' dilemma situations, Ahat is the
problem involved can be transformed into a typical PD game, comprising a perhaps interated
games among a public of n individuals.
2. Sometimes these games yield unfavourable results, that is not enough individuals cooperate
but instead defect, so the good in question will not be delivered.
3. On/y by intervention pf the state can cooperation be obtained, by coercion of individuals?
other devices, such a;
of the market, will notsucceed.
4
3. THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE
buttress the State status quc^are based on variants of the prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that
there are imporran? cases where individuals will not agree^ or co-operate to provide them
selves with (or to maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as on/y the State can
furnish? In such 'dilemma' situations each individual will hope to gain advantage, without
contributing (or exercising restraint), from others' contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on
others (or profiting from others' restraint). The claim is that only the State with its backing of
force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed. In short,'certain
individual choice cannot replace state-covered choice.
important cases, coo<
There are (as the bracketed clauses indicate) two main types of case, those where people
do not conrri&M&.to
themselves with, or with optimum quantities of, a "collective
good", and those where people do not
themselves to
or maintain optimum
quantities of, some already available "collective good". The first type of case is taken to
include such traditional and modern concerns of the state and its subsidiary institutions as
order, security, defence, and perhaps private property, as well as sewerage schemes, water
supplies, waste services, public health, social security, etc. The second case is supposed to
include, as well as village commons, newer enviromental concerns such as clean air, unpolluted
streams and beaches, parks, rainforests, wilderness, whales, etc. But there is no sharp division
between the cases (security or parks could be of either type depending on the status quo), and
The case broken-backed right here: because if we don't ^o this^not going to agree to social
contract — which allegedly implies these things — either. Similarly,
jocia/ contract theory
&ro&cn-&ac%cJ.
The Tragedy of the Commons is set up so as to assume no collective methods have been
developed or can be developed without coercion. (Roberts).
The point of coercion is to retain the privatised individual. For the factor of coercion makes it in
intrests of private individual. So coercion makes the effect of relations to be got without
exceeding provatised individual picture. Coercion substitutes for relations in the context of
privatised individuals.
Privatised individuals are, of course, products, in large part, of the operation (and enforcement
and entrenchment) of a particular social theory, or ra/Zzcr jar/ ofsocial theory.
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest case that can be made for
the desirability of the State* (M. Taylor, Anarc/ty anJ Coap^raZiaa, Wiley, London, 1976, p.9).
To cover all arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants of and
disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners'
Dilemma situations, 'Prisoner's Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single nperson Prisoners' Dilemma games, but, for example, games where the payoffs are not merely
egoistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such games are iterated. As the bracketed
clauses in the text indicate, there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both the jawt^
Zagica/ /oral — those where people do not
to
themselves with, or with
'optimum' quantities of, a 'collective good' (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where
people do not refrain themselves to wainfam, or maintain 'optimum' quantities of, some alrca<
available 'collective good' (e.g. commons, unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness). That
received arguments of all these types involves Prisoners? Dilemma situations (in the wide sense)
is argued in effect, in Taylor, op.cif. and elsewhere. An easier introduction to the material
covered by Taylor, which also surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter of
R. Abrams, FoaaJan'aaj o/Po/aica/ Aaa/y^, Columbia University press, New York, 1980.
Z
y
5
as arguments for state institution both have the same logical form, that of a Prisoners' Dilemma
or some finite sequence of Prisoners' Dilemma games (what are called Prisoners' Dilemma
&%?^rgames).
The arguments are not mere exercises in game theory since it is through arguments of this
type that political theorists such as Hobbes and Hume have attempted to demonstrate the
necessity of the State, so it is sometimes claimed (e.g. by Taylor). Furthermore, it is with
arguments of the same^form, the "Tragedy of the Commons", that Hardin and others have tried
to show that extensive, indeed draconian, state powers are required to resolve environmental
problems; without such powers no exploiter or polluter will exercise restraint, ra
c
.
Consider the single Prisoners' Dilemma game where each player, or prisoner, is assumed,
as is usual in these things, to be egoistic (sometime equated with "being rational"), to seek just
maximisation of his own private payoff, in the special case where there are just two players.
(The special case illustrates all the main points except one, the
c/size in making a
case for the state.)
<
. A basic ingredient^a.considerable variety of argumentfof this type, including Hobbes'
andlTragedy of the Commons' argument, and recent economic arguments for State
intervention to secure collective goods, i^/tne single prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players.s Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have been separately
imprisoned. A State representative makes the following offers separately to each: if the
prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while his or her accomplice remains silent, he
or she will be released at once while the accomplice gets 8 years. 3t so happens that if both
prisoners remain silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence. But if
both confess they would each receive 4 years. The 'game' can be summarised in the following
'payoff' matrix:
Prisoner 1
Strategies
S(ilence) C(onfess)
S
-1,-1
-8,0
C
0, -8
-4, -4
'—
Prisoner 2
The game is not intended to present a moral ^ilemma, that each can only go free at the cost of
the others' freedom, but the following dilemma: It is in each prisoner's private interest to
An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance of populations size
in the arguments for the State. But size is not decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue
can be avoided (or relocated) by organisation into smaller communities. The figures given in the
matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Tayor,
p.5.
6
choose strategy C no matter what the other does: strategy C is, in the jargon, each players'
'dominant' strategy (and also in fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for example, remains silent,
the%l goes free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by
if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain an
outcome to that which would have resulted by what is tendentiously called 'co-operating', by
confessing.
their both remaining silent.
3.1 FOILING THE PRISONERS' DILEMMA ARGUMENT.
It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to show the necessity of the State — which is
supposed to intervene, forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners 'co-operate' to obtain an
optimal outcome — should be set up by the State's own operative.^ The case looks like an
inside job; and it M, though neither the operative, nor for that matter the prisoners on their own,
continue to play an essential role. The prisoners, in any finite number, can be members of a
community and payoffs quantities of some collective good. The claim is, that without
intervention (by the State), the community will only chase a subotimal quantity of the good if
any. Some features of the prisoners' relations are assumed to transfer however. Of course the
State's presence in arranging (of accentuating)
such dilemmas is inessential, as is much
else from the example. But some features of the Prisoner's relations are isolated, and so have
no opportunity to communicate or r^aZZy co-operate. Similarly, in the more general argument a
privatisation assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are
dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in their own narrowly
construed private interests and whose interests are opposed. The applicability of the dilemma
to the human condition is accordingly seriously limited, io
A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the segregation
of the priisoners makes no real difference. It is claimed that even if the prisoners could meet
and discuss and even agreed to co-operate, that would make no difference, since neither could
trust (the sincerity) of the other (Abrams, p.193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the
agreement' (Taylor, p.5). Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is very often
no so — and in a more co-operative social setting than currently encouraged privatisation of
life, the extent of co-operation and trust would undoubtedly be much higher n The argument
has to depend crucially then on substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities
It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State alone is said to be able to
arrange, but not mere social cooperation, when the State rv (as on many theories) the result of
reflection of social cooperation.
This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, &?cmZ 77^or^.y, S^Zf
aztrZ Envirownf/tfaZ Pro&Zewty in Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison
and others), RSSS, Australian national University, 1980.
As a result of G. Hardin's Tragedy
CoHWHonj, historical evidence has been assembled
which reveals how far Hardin's 'Commons' diverges from historic commons; see, inparticular,
A. Roberts, 77^ S^Zf-Managing
Allison & Busby, London, 1979, chapter 10, but
also Routley, op.cir., p.285 and ppp.329-332. Similar points apply as regards many other
Dilemma situations. Tn the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game approximately
half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy even when they know for certain that the
other player will cooperate'. Abrams, op.ciz., p.308.
7
in various settings, e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large
measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people were Jia? unreliable
and devious, many State arrangements involved in providing public goods would not succeed
either). That such assumptions are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g. to
bring out the first, suppose the prisoners have a common bond, e.g. they are friends or they are
political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours and face a future in
the same community; to bring out the philosophical scepticism involved, suppose the prisoner
with a tarnished record offers the other security against default, and so on.
The question of the character of human interests and preferences %/iJ the extent of their
determination by the social context in which they occur is/MKJcwtcnhJ to the whole question of
social economic arrangements, and also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of
human propensities. A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and
associated political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a preference
ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count is an mJcpcnJcnr parameter,
which depends neither on the preference rankings of other nor on the social context in which
that human operates. Wh8ile the individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by
definition, satisfy the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural
pressure on consumers to conform (through advertising, education, popular media), vc/y many
Jo /io? cozi/briH, and the extent of cultural pressure towards privatisation itself belies
the naturalness of this independence. And having sufficiently many interest-interdependent
people in a small community (which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough,
given their social influence, to avoid or resolve by co-operation the types of Prisoners'
Dilemma situations that appear to count in favour of the State.
3.2 Why the dilemma arguments cannot succeed.
What the Dilemma-based case for the State has to show — what never has been shown —
is that there are outstanding Dilemma situations which are relevant, important, and also
damaging if unresolved, and that they are resolvable by State intervention, and only so
(optimally) resolvable. Finally it has to be shown that in the course of so resolving these
Dilemma situations, worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced.
These complex conditions cannot be satisfied, if they can be satisfied at all, in a way that is not
question begging. For several of the conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is important,
damaging, optimal, worse) and involve considerations about which resonable parties can differ.
The selection of Dilemmas itself provides an example of value dependence: after all there are
many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of over-exploitation, of family
violence or fueds) which are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not worthy of State
attention.
There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be satisfied at all. For
12
Cf. the disucssion in Taylor, op.ci/., p.93.
8
many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for
the State and Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' for instance, turn out when
to consist not just of a single game but of a sequence of such games, to be more
adequately represented by what is called a
But in many such sequential Prisoners'
Dilemma games, rational 'co-operation' can occur, even assuming separated players with
purely egoistic interests. 13 For what sequential games permit that isolated games exclude, is
that players' actions may be dependent upon past performance of other players.
This
dependence effectively removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from
Dilemma situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from past social
interaction. In such sueprgames then, no intervention is required.
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by 'intervention', e.g. by allowing the
prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that they can really co-operate.
Euqally important, and equally independent of the State, is the matter of breaking down the
adverary, or game, situation so the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to co
operate.^ Informational input may also be important, e.g. news that each prisoner has a good
record of adhering to agreement, or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. Nor is force or
threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal strategies: a range of other
inducements and incentives is known (shuld they be required in recalcitrant cases), and is used
even by the State, e.g. gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc. But at no stage is the State
required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved by
work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations can be formed to detect and deal
with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they are not already catered for. And in fact
communal and co-operative organisation did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations
historically, for example in the case of the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works. There are no important Dilemma situations, it
seems, where the State is essential. The State has been thought to be essential because of
certain influential flase dichotomies; for example, that all behaviour that is not egoistic is
altruistic (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon, and 'irrational'), that the only way of
allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets — which tend to deal abysmally with
collective goods — is through State control.^ But it is quite evident that there are
methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional markets, based on
supply costs) and social (e.g. by co-operatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve
13
14
15
Dilemma situations has very extensive
This important result is established in Taylor, op. ctf., for a number of critical cases, though not
generally; see, e.g. p.32 but especially chapter 5.
Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal prosecution, and in
eliminating courtroom procedures, including cases where the State is one of the 'adversaries'.
Both the false dichotomies cited are common-place, not to say rife, in modem economic and
political theorising. Both are to be found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first
(with an attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition) in Taylor. For a further criticism of
such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit., pp.250./ff
9
effects, *6 many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma
situations, appear to be substantially outweighted by the costs involved. For there are the many
evil aspects of the typical State to put in the balance. As regards Dilemma situations, entry of
the State with its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and morre
important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as in the case of the prisoners, or
differently with the State as a further player (since the State may engage in whaling, have
access to a commons, etc.). These points lead also to further arguments against the State.
Suppose, to see the impact of the first reason for the failure of independence, the
prisoners are friends and their common interest is to be together. Then, if they are given the
opportunity to co-operate, and independence is not enforced by separation, they will, quite
rationally, choose a joint optimal strategy, and there is no dilemma.
Since the same
considerations will not apply where large numbers of strangers are involved, the question arises
as the extent and severity of Dilemma situations. The question is complicated by the second
double-edged reason for the failure of independence, namely that statist political arrangements
undoubtedly accentuate the extent and severity of Dilemma situations by discouraging
(providing negative incentives) for genuinely co-operative behaviour and mutual aid. This is
another respect in which statist arrangements (like some subclimax biological communities)
tend to be self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating.
Accordingly, what arguments for the State on such bases as Prisoners' Dilemma situations
have to show is not merely
1) that state coercion does suffice to resolve (sufficiently) many such (damaging) Dilemmas,
but also
2) that such coercion is the on/y way of doing so, and
3) that in doing so worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby induced.
These things have never been shown: nor can they be shown definitively, since firstly there are
various nonstatist arrangements for resolving wehat are taken to be damaging Dilemmas, and
secondly the overall assessment of what Dilemmas are
and what costs are worf/t
incurring in resolving them are ultimately evaluative and go back to rival, and presumably
coherent, value systems. Hence, when all this is spelled out, the irrefutability of anarchism.
To get some feel for the complexity of the issue and for the extent to which evaluative
matters do enter, several points relevant to 1) - 3) should be introduced. Firstly, there are many
Dilemma situations into which the State puts little or no effort and many others which are, or
were, considered as beyond the sphere of influence of the State or as not worthy of State
attention, for instance, cases of environmental degradation, overexploitation of a "resource",
personal or family fueds, etc., several of them aggravated by State arrangments such as
To take one lesser example, State intrusion often induces a certain social escapism: one escapes
one's social roles and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze. Or so it may
appear: for in reality anyone who works, works long and often alientated hours to pay for this
apparent escapism and to cover the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity.
10
excessive privatisation of resources (e.g. enclosure of the commons). (7/* such Dilemmas can be
downgraded in importance to suit the Statist case so can other Dilemmas apparently favouring
State intervention.)
Many of these cases would not be helped at all by the entry of the State or its
representatives with their authority duly showing (thugh they might be assisted by sensitive
mediation, which does not call for a State, only rudiments of a society). Secondly, introduction
of the State to resolve
Prisoners' Dilemma situations is not without wide-ranging effects,
many of them negative, so that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations have
to be weighed against costs involved in achieving these gains. Among the costs are new
Dilemmas, such as the very example considered in illustrating prisoner Dilemma games which
was initiated by State activity. Differently, new Dilemmas will result with the state as a further
player (since the State may have access to the commons, engage in whaling, etc.). Some of
these situations are interesting in theat they may lead to litigation and decision-making outside
of or largely independent of the State, the results of which the State is supposed to enforce
though it may be against its interests. But what ensures that if sticks to the findings. Nothing
does: it is simply assumed that the State will adhere to its role. But if that assumption is valid
with respect to the State (not known for its reliability) then it is good also for various other
parties. In short, agreement or decisions can be reached and adhered to without need for State
enforcement. So coercion is not always required.
Are there important Dilemmas where use the authority of the State is the (?H/y way?
Often behind the claim that is is, is a false (but very influential) dichotomy, that the only way
of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed markets which may deal abysmally with
collective goods, is through state control. But it is quite evident that there are other methods of
allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, based on costs involved) and social (e.g. club, co
operatives). [And a mixture of these methods can be applied to resolve any Prisoners' Dilemma
that matters, i.e. here too replacement works. An important initial move is, as was seen, to put
the prisoners in touch, so that they could cooperate: equally important is breaking down the ...]
Such organisations would not have nearly so much to do as statists would like us to
believe, especially once co-operative ways of doing things and mutual aid had become
established ways in contrast to competitive and privatised ways. For the extent of simple
Prisoners' Dilemma situations calling for intervention (of some sort) has been exaggerated and
many, probably, very many, of those that have been thought to require intervention do not
because the players (are prepared to) "cooperate" anyway. There are importantly different
reasons why the latter can happen:- Firstly, enough players operate with motives which are not
purely privatised for a sufficiently optimal outcome to result. This does not imply that these
players have altruistic motives: their interests may depend on those of other players in a range
of nonaltruistic ways. Secondly, many cases presented as if they were simple Prisoner's
Dilemma games turn out when properly analysed, in particular when time is duly taken account
of, to be Prisoners' Dilemma super-games.
Such, for instance, is the positions with the
11
arguments of Hobbes, Hume and Hardin. But in such supergames rational "cooperation" often
occurs even assuming the players have the worst of privatised motives. In short, where the
correct analysis of a Prisoner's Dilemma game is as a supergame, statists are often beaten at
their own game. [Detail Taylor's partial results, anJ their problems.]
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to be accomplices in a crime, have been
separately imprisoned. A State represen
tative makes the following offers
separately to each: if the prisoner con
fesses and becomes a State's witness
while his or her accomplice remains
silent, he or she will be released at once
while the accomplice gets 8 years. It so
happens that if both prisoners remain
silent the State has only enough evidence
to impose a 1 year sentence. But if both
confess they would each receive 4 years.
The 'game' can be summarised in the
following 'payoff' matrix:
Prisoner 1
Strategies S(ilence) C(onfess)
S
-1, -1
-8, 0
C
0, -8
-4, -4
Prisoner 2
3. T7/E C/1SE z1G.4/MSE
AEFL.4 CEA^E^T ERCW
ER/5CWERS' D/EEA7AE1
tS77X/?177CW5
E/7E E/AE.
I he main arguments designed to rebut
the replacement argument for anarchism
and to buttress the State status quo, are
based on variants of the Prisoners'
Dilemma, to the effect that there are /wporftm/cases where individuals will not
agree^-or co-operate to provide them
selves with (or to maintain) collective
goods without coercion, such as cw/y the
State can furnish/ In such 'dilemma'
situations each individual will hope to
gain advantage, without contributing (or
exercising restraint), from others' contri
butions (or restraint), by freeloading on
others (or profiting from others'
restraint). The claim is that only the
State with its backing of force can
resolve such situations: anarchistic
replacement cannot succeed^
A basic ingredient of a considerable
variety of arguments of this type, in
cluding Hobbes' and Hume's arguments
for the State, the 'Tragedy of the Com
mons' argument, and recent economic
arguments for State intervention to
secure collective goods, is the single
Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players/ Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken
The game^ is not intended to present a
moral dilemma, that each can only go
free at the cost of the others' freedom,
but the following dilemma: It is in each
prisoner's private interest to choose
strategy C no matter what the other
docs: strategy C is, in the jargon, each
players' 'dominant' strategy (and also in
fact a minimax strategy). For if 2, for ex
ample, remains silent, then 1 goes free
by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then
1 halves his or her sentence by confess
ing.
if both prisoners choose their
dominant strategy they obtain an m/er/or
outcome to that which would have
resulted by what is tendentiously called
'co-operating', by their both remaining
silent.
?./
It is bizarre that a dilemma alleged to
show the necessity of the State — which
is supposed to intervene, forcibly if re
quired, to ensure that the prisoners 'co
operate' to obtain an optimal outcome
— should bg set up by the State's own
operative.^Of course the State's
presence in arranging (or accentuating)
such dilemmas is inessential, as is
much else from the example. But some
features of the prisoner's relations are
essential, in particular the separability
assumption that the prisoners are
isolated, and so have no opportunity to
communicate or rec/Zy co-operate.
Similarly, in the more general argument,
a privatisation assumption is smuggled
in in the way the dilemma is formulated,
that we are dealing with self contained
individuals who, like the prisoners, act
only in their own narrowly construed
private interests and whose interests are
opposed. The applicability of the dilem-
A
7
ma to the human condition is accordingly
seriously limited/
A cursory aside is often added to the
Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect that the
segregation of the prisoners makes no
real difference. It is claimed that even if
the prisoners could meet and discuss and
even agreed to co-operate, that would
make no difference, since neither could
trust (the sincerity) of the other
(Abrams, p.193), 'neither has an incen
tive to keep the agreement' (Taylor, p.5).
Experimental and historical evidence in
dicates that this is very often not so —
and in a more co-operative social setting
than the currently encouraged privatisa
tion of life, the extent of co-operation
and trust would undoubtedly be much
higher/ The argument has to depend
crucially then on substantially mistaken
assumptions about human propensities
in various settings, e.g. that purely
egoistic interests are always pursued,
backed up by a large measure of scep
ticism about the reliability of other peo
ple (but if people were /Ar?/ unreliable
and devious, many State arrangements
involved in providing public goods
would not succeed either). That such
assumptionsareoperating can be seen by
elaborating the situation; e.g. to bring
out the first, suppose the prisoners have
a common bond, e.g. they are friends or
they are political prisoners with a shared
social commitment, or they are neigh
bours and face a future in the same com
munity; to bring out the philosophical
scepticism involved, suppose the
prisoner with a tarnished record offers
the other security against default, and so
on.
The question of the character of
human interests and preferences
the
extent of their determination by the
social context in which they occur is
/MnrArznrvna/ to the whole question of
social and economic arrangements, and
also accordingly to arguments for the
State on the basis of human propensities.
A major assumption underlying prevail
ing (non-Marxist) economics and
associated political theory, is that the in
terests and preferences, as summed up in
a preference ranking or utility function,
of each human that is taken to count is
an mc/e/zenr/enf parameter, which
depends neither on the preference rank
ings of others nor on the social context
in which that human operates. While the
individuals and firms of mainstream
economic theory do, by definition,
satisfy the independence requirements,
and while there is very substantial
cultural pressure on consumers to con
form (through advertising, education,
popular media),
wany
<7o
/?oz ccw/bfTn, and the extent of cultural
pressure towards privatisation itself
belies the naturalness of this indepen-
sequential games permit that isolated
games exclude, is that players' actions
may be dependent upon past perfor
mance of other players. This dependence
effectively removes one extremely
....a major functmn of the state is unrealistic self-containment assumption
to maintain and pohee inequitable from Dilemma situations, that in
dividuals act in totally isolated ways, not
distribution.
learning from past social interaction. In
such supergames then, no intervention is
required.
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are
Z/gtZ-f resolved by 'intervention', e.g. by allow
dence. And having sufficiently many/ ing the prisoners to get in touch so that
interest-interdependent people in a smali they find they are neighbours or that
community (which is not thoroughly im they can really co-operate. Equally im
poverished) is normally enough, given portant, and equally independent of the
State, is the matter of breaking down the
their social influence, to avoid or resolve
adversary, or game, situation so the
by co-operation the types of Prisoners'
prisoners do not act as competitors but
Dilemma situations that appear to count are
prepared to co-operate/' Informa
in favour of the State/
tional input may also be important, e.g.
news that each prisoner has a good
ff /yy 77/E /VLEA7A/.1
record of adhering to agreement, or if
not is prepared to stake collateral, etc.
Nor is force or threat of force required
SC/CC777)
as an incentive to guarantee optimal
What the Dilemma-based case for the strategies: a range of other inducements
State has to show — what never has been and incentives is known (should they be
shown — is that there are outstanding required in recalcitrant cases), and is
Dilemma situations which are relevant, used even by the State, e.g. gifts,
important, and also damaging if deprivation, social pressure, etc. But at
unresolved, and that they are resolvable no stage is the State required to make
by State intervention, and only so (op these arrangements: much as some real
timally) resolvable. Finally it has to be Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved by
shown that in the course of so resolving work of Amnesty International, so
these Dilemma situations, worse situa voluntary organisations can be formed
tions than those that are resolved are not to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilem
thereby induced. These complex condi ma situations where they are not already
tions cannot be satisfied, if they can be catered for. And in fact communal and
satisfied at all, in a way that is not ques co-operative organisation did resolve
tion begging. For several of the condi Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations
tions are value dependent (e.g. what is historically, for example in the case of
important, damaging, optional, worse) the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works.
and involve considerations about which
reasonable parties can differ. The selec There are no important Dilemma situa
tion of Dilemmas itself provides an ex tions, it seems, where the State is essen
ample of value dependence: after all tial. The State has been thought to be
there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to essential because of certain influential
environmental degradation, of over false dichotomies; for example, that all
exploitation, of family fcuds/or^violencQ) behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic
which are considered beyond the sphere (but altruistic behaviour is uncommon,
of the State or not worthy of State atten and 'irrational'), that the only way of
allocating goods, apart from profittion.
There are now grounds for concluding directed markets — which tend to deal
that the conditions cannot be satisfied at abysmally with collective goods — is
all. For many of the arguments using through State control.'^ But it is quite
Prisoners' Dilemma games, Hobbes' evident that there are o/Aer methods of
and Hume's arguments for the State and allocation, both economic (e.g. ex
Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' for change, through traditional markets,
instance, turn out when projver/y /or- based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by
to consist not just of a single co-operatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to
game but of a sequence of such games,
to be more adequately represented by resolve so/ne Dilemma situations has
what is called a
But in many very extensive effects/ many of them
such sequential Prisoners' Dilemma negative, so that the gains made, if any,
games, rational 'co-operation' can oc in so resolving Dilemma situations, ap
cur, even assuming separated players pear to be substantially outweighed by
with purely egoistic interests.'" For what the costs involved. For there are the
SOCIAL ALTERNA ! tVES Vet. 2 No. 3. )982
25
many evi! aspects of the typicai State to
put in the baiance. As regards Dilemma
situations, entry of the State with its
authority showing may not help but may
worsen some situations, and more im
portant, new Dilemmas may be initiated
by State activity, as in the case of the
prisoners, or differently with the State as
a further player (since the State may
engage in whaling, have access to a com
mons, etc.). These points lead also to
further arguments against the State.
available 'collective good' (e.g. commons, un
polluted streams, whales, wilderness). That
received arguments of ail these types involves
Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the wide
sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op.cit.
and etsewhere. An easier introduction to the
material covered by Taylor, which also
surveys other Important literature, is given in
the final chapter of R Abrams, Foundations
of Political Analysis, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1980.
5.
An important matter the two player game
does not illustrate is the relevance of popula
tion size in the arguments for the State. But
size is not decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter
2), and the issue can be avoided (or relocated)
by organisation into smaller communities.
The figures given in the matrix are illustrative
only; for inequalities which suffice for a
Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p.5.
6.
It is similarly bizarre that there should be out
comes that the State alone is said to be able to
arrange, but not mere social cooperation,
when the State zs (as on many theories) the
result or reflection of social cooperation.
7.
This important point is much elaborated in V.
and R. Routley, Soc/af Theories, Se//
Management, and T'n wronwm'a/ ProAferru
in Environmental Philosophy (edited D
Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian
National University, 1980.
9.
10.
11.
12.
4.
Arguments of this type are sometimes said to
represent 'the strongest case that can be made
for the desirability of the State' (M. Taylor,
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London,
1976. p.9). To cover all arguments of the
type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase
'variants of' and disputes as to whether cer
tain arguments such as those of Hume and of
Olson involve Prisoners' Diiernnta situations,
Prisoner's Dilemma' is used in a wide sense
to include not merely single n-person
Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example,
games where the payoffs are not merely
egoistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and
where such games are iterated. As the
bracketed clauses in the text indicate, there
are two types of case, not sharply separated
and both of the same /ogtcaZ/orm — those
where people do not rwr/A/wfe to sup/r/y
themselves with, or with 'optimum' quantities
of, a 'collective good' (e.g. security, order,
sewage), and those where people do not
re.s/ram themselves to mam/am, or maintain
'optimum" quantities of, some already
13.
As a result of G. Hardin's Tragerh' o/ rhe
Commons, historical evidence has been
assembled which reveals how far Hardin's
'Commons' diverges from historic commons;
see, in particular, A. Roberts, 7'he Se/fManagmg TTiwonmenr, Allison & Busby.
London, 1979, chapter 10, but also Routley,
op.cit. p.285 and pp. 329-332. Similar points
apply as regards many other Dilemma situa
tions. 'In the experimental studies of the
prisoner's dilemma game approxtmately half
of the participants choose a cooperative
strategy even when they know for certain that
the other player will cooperate'. Abrams.
op.cit., p.3O8.
'
Cf. the discussion in Taylor, op.cit.. p.93.
This important result is established in
Taylor, op.cit, for a number of critical cases,
though not generally; see, e.g. p.32 but
especially chapter 5.
Such moves have proved valuable in reducing
the State's role in legal prosecution, and in
eliminating courtroom procedures, including
cases where the State is one of the 'adver
saries'.
Both the false dichotomies cited are common
place, not to say rife, in modern economic
and political theorising. Both are to be found
in Abram's final chapter, for example, and
the first (with an attempt to plaster over the
gap with a definition) in Taylor. For a further
criticism of such false dichotomies, see
Routley, op.cit., pp.25O ff.
To take one lesser example. State intrusion
often induces a certain social escapism: one
escapes one's social roles and is enabled to
concentrate on private affairs or just to laze.
Or so it may appear: for in reality anyone
who works, works long and often alienated
hours to pay for this apparent escapism and
to cover the high costs of frequently inade
quate State activity.
of course. ]
5^
The case if broken-backed right here:
to agree
because if we don't to this not goint/
to social contract - which allegedly implies these things - either.
Similarly, the social contract theory is broken-backed.
G5;
. Alternative longer
at this point in §3:-
In shof^* in certain
important cases, cooperative individual choice cannot replace state-covered choice.
There are (as the bracketed clauses indicate) two main types of case, those
where people do not contribute to supply themselves with, or with optimum quant
ities of, a "collective good", and those where people do not restrain themselves
to maintain, or maintain optimum quantities of, some already available "collective
good".
The first type of case is taken to include such traditional and
modern
concerns of the state and its subsidiary institutions as order, security, defence,
and perhaps private property, as well as sewerage schemes, water supplies^.waste
services, public health, social security, etc.
The second case is supposed to
include, as well as village commons, newer environmental concerns such as clean
air, unpolluted streams and beaches, parks, rainforests, wilderness, wha les, etc.
But there is no sharp division between the cases (security or parks could be of
either type depending on the status quo), and as arguments for state institution
both have the same logical form, that of a Prisoners' Dilemma or some finite
sequence of Pri soners' Dilemma games (what are called Prisoners' Dilemma
The arguments are not mere exercises in game theory since it is through
arguments of this type that political theorists such as Hobbes and Hume have
5.
attempted to demonstrate the necessity of the Stato4^
Furthermore, it is with
arguments of the same form, the "Tragedy of the Commons", that Hardia and others
have tried to show that extensive, indeed draconian, state powers are required
to resolve environmental problems;
without such powers no exploiter or polluter
will exercise restraint.
Consider the gj^le Prisoners' Dilemma game where each player, or prisoner,
is assuined, as is usual in these things, to be egoistic (sometime equated with
"being rational"), to seek just&axijnisation of his own private payoff, in the
special case where there are just two players.
(The special case illustrates all
the main points except one, the importance of size in making a case for the state.)
[Joins text again at fn.5 point.]
/* 4.
In §3:-
The Trac^ec[y of the Commons is set up so as to assume no collective
methods had [Teen developed or can be developed without coercion.
(Roberts).
The point of coercian is to ret^n the privatised individual.
$
For the factor
of coercion makes it in interests of private individualize coercion makes the
effect of relations to be got without exceeding privatised individual picture.
Coercion substitutes for relations in the context of privatised individuals.
Privatised individuals are, of course, products, in large part, of the
operation (and enforcement and entrenchment) of a particular social theory, or
rather sort of social theory.
^5^
In §4:-
The case looks like an inside job;
and it is, though neither
the operative, nor for that matter the prisoners ^n their own,
essential role.
play an
The prisoners, in any finite number, can be members of a
community and payoffs quantities of some collective good .
The claim is, that
without intervention (by thecate), the community will only corpse a subeyy^mo/
quantity of the good if any.
Some features of the prisoners' relations are
assumed to transfer however.
Suppose, to see the impact of the first reason for the
failure of independence, the prisoners are friends and their common interest is to
6.
be together.
Then, if they are given the opportunity to cooperate, and independ
ence is not enforced by separation, they will, quite rationally, choose a joint
optimal strategy,and there is no dilemma.
Since the same considerations will not
apply where large numbers of strangers are involved, the question arises as the
extent and severity of Dilemma situations.
The question is complicated by the
second double-edged reason for the failure of independence, namely that statist
political arrangements undoubtedly accentuate the extent and severity of Dilemma
situations by discouraging (providing negative incentives) for genuinely cooper
ative behaviour and nmttAcd
aid.
This is another respect in which statist
arrangments (like some subclimax biological communities) tend to be self-reinforcing
and self-perpetuating.
[Transfer some experimental material to here?]
Accordingly, what arguments for the State on such b ases as Prisoners' Dilemma
situations have to show is not merely
1)
that state coercion does suffice to resolve (sufficiently^ many such (damaging)
Dilemmas, but also
2)
that such coercion is the only way of doing so, and
3)
that in doing so worse situations than those that are resolved are not thereby
induced.
These things have never been shown:
nor can they be shown definitely, since firstly
4
there are various nonstatist arrangements for resolving what are taken to be
damaging Dilemmas, and secondly the overall assessment of what Dilemmas are damaging
and what costs are worth incurring in resolving them are ultimately evaluative and
go back to rival, and presumably coherent, value systems.
Hence, when all this is
spelled out, the irrefutability of anarchism.
To get some feel for the complexity of the
issue
and for the extent to
evolutive matters do enter, several points relevant to l)-3) should be introduced.
Firstly, there are many Dilemma situations into which the State puts little or no
effort and many others which are, or were, considered as beyond the sphere of
influence of the State or as not worthy of State attention, for instance, cases of
7.
environmental degradation, overexploitation of a "resource", personal or family
feuds, etc., several of them aggravated by State arrangements such as excessive
privatisation of resources (e.g. enclosure of the commons).
(If such Dilemmas can
be downgraded in importance to suit the Statist case so can other Dilemmas appar
ently favouring State intervention.)
Many of these cases would not be helped at all by the entry of the State or
its representatives with their authority duly showing (though they might be
assisted by sensitive mediation, which does not call for a State, only rudiments
Secondly, introduction of the State tof&yolve some Prisoners'
of a society).
Dilemma situations is not without wide-ranging effects, many of them negative, so
that the gains made, if any, in so resolving Dilemma situations have to be
weighed against costs involved in achieving these gains.
Among the costs are
new Dilemmas, such as the very example considered in illustrating Prisoner Dilemma
games which was initiated by State activity.
Differently, new Dilemmas will
result with the state as a further player (since the State may have access to the
commons, engage in whaling, etc.).
Some of these situations are interesting in
that they may lead to litigation and decision-making outside of or
independ
ent of the State, the resultgof which the State is supposed to enforce though it
may be against its
d
Nothing does:
interests.
But what ensures that rt sticks to the findings.
it is simply assumed that the State will adhere to its role.
But
if that assumption is valid with respect to the State (not known for its reliability)
then it is good also for various other parties.
In short,agreement or decision!*
can be reached and adhered to without need for State enforcement.
So coercion is not
always required.
Are there important Dilemmas where use the authority of the State is the
only way?
Often behind the claim that is is, is a false (but very influential)
dichotomy, that the only way of allocating goods, apart from profit-directed
markets which may deal abysmally with collective goods, is through state control^'
8.
But it is quite evident that there
are other methods of allocation, both
economic (e.g. exchange, based on costs involved) and social (e.g. clubs, cooper
[And a mixture of these methods can be applied to resolve any Prinsoners'
atives).
Dilemma that matters, i.e. here too replacement works.
An important initial move
is, as was seen, to put the prisoners in touch, so that they could cooperate:
equally important is breaking down the ...]
[Joins top of p.7]
Such organisations would not have nearly so much to do as statists would like
us to believe, especially once cooperative ways of doing things and mutual aid had
become established ways in contrast to competitive and privatised ways.
For the
extent of simple Prisoners' Dilemma situations calling for intervention (o^ some
sort) has been exaggerated and many, probably, very many, of those that have been
thought to require intervention do not because the players (are prepared to)
"cooperate" anyway.
happen:-
There are importantly different reasons why the latter can
Firstly, enough players operate with motives which are not purely priv
atised for a sufficiently optimal outcome to result.
these players have altruistic motives:
This does not imply that
their interests may depend on those of
other players in a range of nonaltruistic ways.
Secondly, many cases presented
as if they were simple Prisoner's Dilemma games turn out when properly analysed,
in particular when time is duly taken account of, to be Prisoners' Dilemma supergames.
Such, for instance, is the position with the arguments of Hobbes, Hume
and Hardin.
But in such supergames rational "cooperation" often occurs, even
assuming the players have the worst of privatised
correct analysis of a Prisoner's Dil&wima
often beaten at their own game.
problems.]
motives.
In short, where the
game is as a supergame, statists are
[Detail Taylor's partial results, and their
Chapter 3
Con,v7i^c%y^ /)
CRITIQUE OF THE STATE
1. ARGUMENTS
The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state.
For therewith arguments against state-like institutions are also advanced. However further
ado is no doubt required to remove all other (unexplified) alternatives to anarchism.
A
Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes:
* States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification.
* Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes.
* Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of
social and environmental bungles or evils in their train.
In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils. The anarchist critique does not end
there, but typically includes, such further themes as :
* States have excessive power,
linkages to state power.
* Societies are not inductably saddled with states. States can be displaced or even decay
(though they are unlikely to just wither away).
(9
1
Chapter 3
: CRITIQUE OF THE STATE
1. ARGUMENTS
The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state.
For therewith arguments against state-like institutions are also advanced. However further
ado is no doubt required to remove all other (unexplified) alternatives to anarchism.
/
Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following themes:
*
States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification.
e
Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes.
Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of
social and environmental bungles or evils in their train.
In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils. The anarchist critique does not end
there, but typically includes, such further themes as :
* States have excessive power.
* States are devices for channelling privilege and wealth to certain minorities with inside
linkages to state power.
* Societies are not ineluctably saddled with states. States can be displaced or even decay
(though they are unlikely to just wither away).
1. The state is an undesirable, or even downright evii, institution, for the following range
of reasons:-
* States entrench inequities, domination and exploitation. States are devices for the
protection of wealth, property and privilege, and usually for the redistribution upwards, and
often concentration, of wealth and privilege. A minor but popular illustration is offered by the
expensive conferences and other junkets that state employees or party officials organise for
themselves and manage to bill to state revenue, in turn sucked up from inequitable taxation.
Certainly a main historical outcome of the state has been domination of exploitation of certain
segments of society by others, and some see its main, and barely concealed, purpose as just
that: domination and exploitation.
* States are typically corrupt. For example, there are enquiries presently in train, or with
follow-through activities yet to be duly completed, in many states in Australia, enquires
which have revealed considerable corruption, and there are prima facie cases for similar
enquiries in most of the remainder. Nor is this a new phenomenon: these revelations often
resemble older or on-going scandals.
* States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources, and
accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden, but
2
a main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over
remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that
many state operations are far from lean and efficient, but incorporate many duplications, drag
factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms, of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens,
weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organisation would be very
significantly reduced.
* The state is an incubus. States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive
and demanding. Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous
denouncement of state government:
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction,
noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed,
licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.
It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest,
to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized,
extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the
first world of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked,
abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot,
deported sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed,
outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its
morality (quoted in M p.6).
As a result, there are constant demands for the reduction of the cancerous state, for removing
parts of it through deregulation, selling off state enterprises and so on. There are two troubles
with such demands from anarchist standpoints: they never go far enough, to the complete
reduction of the state to zero, but characteristically retain parts supportive of or favourable to
bigger business, and they proceed in the wrong way, stripping away social safety nets rather
than ripping off business support nets (such as limited liability, strike limitation legislation,
etc.).
* States, for all that they have been promoted as delivering public goods, are mostly dismal
news for environmental protection and health and for social justice. Furthermore they are
liable to impose substantial hazards or risks upon subservient populations not merely through
military and like activities but, more insidious, through support and promotion of dangerous
industries, such as nuclear and giant chemical industries.
* States usually exert a heavy pressure to uniformity, they tend to eliminate plurality and
cultural differences. These pressures are exercised by a state in the alleged interests of
national unity, and against its enemies, external and internal. Even the most liberal of states
tend to give minorities more difficult lives in times of stress, such as war. They are always
espousing national values, state interests, and commonly assimilation and adoption of state
values (thus for example Canada, formerly and briefly a state toying with multiculturalism,
now insistent upon "Canadian values"). Such exercises are conspicuous, not only in citizen
ceremonies and other state rituals, such as national sporting and religious events, but more
important are virtually ubiquitous in elementary education (down to deference to the flag, and
3
similar).
* States are a major source of wars, and the major source of major wars, undoubted evils
(however supposedly inevitable). They are major sources and suppliers of military
technology and weapons, the means of war. Roughly, the more powerful and "advanced" a
state, the further it is engaged in weapon production and export. Without states it is doubtful
that there would be any nuclear weapons, and accordingly there would be no prospect of
nuclear wars as there would be no weapons with which to fight them.
* States are a serious drag on a more satisfactory international order. That there are not
more, and more satisfactory, international regulatory organisations "is mainly a matter of the
reluctance of nation states to surrender their powers and the dangers of their being dominated
by very powerful states. If only nation states would be dissolved into specialized
[departments] there is every reason to believe that most world problems could be handled by
appropriate specialized [organisations]' (Bumheimp.221).
* States have excessive power, and are even accumulating or trying to accumulate more, for
instance through more centralization, further controls, additional licences, etc., etc. The
excessive power of the state is exhibited not only in the treatment of its citizens and foreigners
within its territory; it is exemplified also in its practices
its territory, through such
features as military pressures, including invasion, trade pressures, including sanitions, and in
treatment of its citizens everywhere.!
Obvious responses to excessive power are
regionalization of powers, separation of powers, achieved by decoupling and some
fragmentation, limitation of powers, and so on.
* Present monolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which they
are not competent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as impartial
referees by their business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and control foo much,
as a consequence it does very much unsatisfactorily. Improved arrangements would separate
these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power.
States thus appear far from a good bargain on a preliminary consideration of costs, and
very far from maximal or optimal. Especially bad states, the run of states, which engage in
politically-motivated inclination or torture of their citizens, and so on. Where are the
The issue tends to be avoided; it is contended that, contrary to
appearances, we cannot get along without state cossetting: states are necessary. But, given
that we can get along without them, would we really be significantly worse off without them?
cfr .
<r
,,^ven m thd better cases (not allowing for alternative nonstatist arrangements which states
have precluded or systems they have usurped)? But arguments for states are not usually so
directly utilitarian in character. Such arguments would make it look as if we might well opt
out of state organisation, and often be better off doing so.
1
A recent shocking example concerns the attempt of Eire to prevent an Irish women having an
abortion in England.
4
These considerations divide into two groups: features that are
on normal,
normally bad, operations of states, and features that are normic on institution and operation of
states. The first group of criticisms are eliminated under good to ideal operation of states,
what officiandos of states characteristically unwarr^ntedly make. For the evidence seems to
be that in practice states will tend away from the ideal. There are arguments from low
efficiencies of complex mechanical structures that can be adopted to lend support to what
evidence reveals. Features that are normic, and perhaps inevitable upon institution of states
do however yield arguments against states that do not depend on ym*e contingencies of most
states, their
and so on.
/
2. Ways of demonstrating that the State is not Required: as for God and the Church, so
for the State.
There is a theological component in the presumption and theory of the State; that
theological component and therewith of the argMmenfa/ foundations for the State should be
fully exposed. By contrast, anarchism, ^ approached from an argument perspective, enjoys
nn
considerable strength requiring no leaps of faith.
The State is like God: the anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and nonrecognition of
what is commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed. The
awn by
Bakunin, has as well as considerable strength certain weaknesses. While the atheist believes
that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe that there are no states: on the contrary,
there are all too many, though none are legitimate.^The important parallel is as to argM/n^n^.
The agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed, and so
adopts a 'neutral' stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe that the arguments for
the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence-sitting position. Soundly based atheism
goes further than agnosticism, not only faulting the argumentybr, but taking it for granted that
there are arguments, or at least solid considerations, <2g(?in.yL So it is with soundly based
anarchism; it both faults arguments for the State, showing none are generally viable, and
de ps an incisive case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again emphasised
by Bakunin,2 is that of State and Church. 'Of course Knever should have eventuated; several
bad political turnings were taken in the modern period following the Renaissance, t In several
respects the comparison is better than that of the State and God, since both belong to the same
category, institutions. Thus too both have looked to some philosophers as human inventions
or artifices, both have looked to others (reductionists) as objects that could be reduced to
features of the individuals involved in their organisation (but it is hard to see why such
fictions or logical constructions shuld be assigned the power and deference they are
2
Bakunin on Anap^hy-(gdited S. Dolgolff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973, especially p.139.
5
accorded). This institutional comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be
emphasised; for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many very
extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of the main medium of
exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly on organised violence, all other internal
security arrangements being eventually answerable to its police, and thence to its officers and
military; how it is of the same category as business organisations such as multinationals,
which now to some extent threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the
Church used to, it has nominal support of most of its 'subjects', though many of them are
little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have come to see the State as in
many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but as a necessary evil. It is easy now, in
retrospect, to see how from being a compulsory feature of social life in many places, the
Church has become a voluntary, and fragmented one; such a parallel desirable transformation
of the State would eliminate it.
Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is
so it will be argued, in a
way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove that God exists. That is,
much as there are several ways of arguing to the existence of God, assembled by Aquinas into
the famous (but not exhaustive, and invariably invalid) Five Ways, as well as various less
famous but also important arguments against the existence of God, so in a parallel fashion
there are various arguments that the State is required, as well as, what comes later that is
especially relevant for anarchism, several ways of arguing against the necessity and
desirability of the State.
Since the State is unnecessary, as well as costly and typically at least evil in many of its
practices and
in other respects, it should be superseded. And it can be succeeded,
by alternative social arrangements. It can be superseded or replaced as the Churches to a
.9*1
large extent been supeyuated or replaced in many places. Just as the power of the ChurchAas
declined until it has lost its authority over parishioners, so authority of the State can be
undermined, and it can lose recognition and its claim to sovereignty over those in its territory,/A
But there is a crucial difference between State and Church: under those conditions the State
vanishes; for authority backed by coercive power is essential to the State but not (any longer)
to the Church. And where the State differs crucially from Society anarchistically organised is
as to the matter of coercion and of authority back^by force, such a Society relying basically on
voluntary cooperation where the State relies on authority backed by force. Furthermore, the
Church is justified through a religious theory, and is backed up ultimately by appeal to God's
authority. The modern secular State by contrast annexes itself authority (or has simply
inherited it) and, though it may claim to be justified by some political theory which confers
upon it legitimacy, makes no appeal back to a justifying or authorizing agent. So what
justifies it? Briefly, nothing does.
* The First Way of Showing that the State is not Required: t&e
Argument.
/
6
The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the collective interest
accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by alternative arrangements such as
voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State activity being dispensed with. The argument is
not a straight substitution argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have
everything accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements. There is much
the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, for instance, sponsorship of pomp
and ceremony and of junkets by VIP's; and a great deal of typical State activity is positively
evil and not in the collective interest, for instance, graft, corruption, brutality, maintenance of
inequitable distribution of wealth, land and other resources, and encouragement; of protection^
of polluting or qvironmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should
not be well embarked on a nuclear future, without state assistance and subsidization Australia
would not be burdened with its extensive forest-destructive pine planting and woodchip
projects).
The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or damaging ones,
functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind. This does not upset the
replacement argument for anarchism. The argument, implicit in the works of the classical
anarchists, goesjike this: The functions of the State can be divided into two types, those that
are in the collective interest and generally beneficial such as community welfare and
organisational functions, and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some
of the powerful groups the State tends to serve).
But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions which are in
the collecdve interest, no coercion is required. For why should people have to be coerced into
carrying out functions which are in their collective interest? Such functions can be
performed, and performed better, without the coercion which is the hallmark of the State, and
without the accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance
of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it 'serves'. The
detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case-by-case form considering
each function in turn.3 In each case the function is carried out through alternative
arrangements, such as voluntary co-operation by the people directly concerned, which replace
State arrangements. Consider, for example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical
services, or community access communications (e.g. radio), most of which are presently
either starved of infrastucture or hindered by the State. Such beneficial services would in
general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally held, and
That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of generally beneficial state activity
- there is only a (relatively small) finite number to consider - and shows how it can be replaced
in one way or another. Replacement is not of course uniquely determined. Lines such
replacements can take are indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature, consider
especially, but no, uncritically, P. Kropootkin, MMfMai Aid, New York University Press 1972,
and also his Fi^/dy, Faci<?rie.y and WorLyAo/w, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and 77te
Con<?Me.yf o/Brgad. Chapman and Hall, London, 1913.
7
those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the operation themselves, taking
the operation into their own hands instead of being the passive recipients of favours meted out
to them by professionals and powerful agencies. Coercion is unnecessary because, in more
communal types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than
individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to apply coercion to
individuals to extract these resources needed for community welfare projects, as there is in
the situation where wealth and resources are privatised and coercion is required to wrest
resources from unwilling private individuals.
As for the second type of functions, those which are no? in the collective interest,
coercion will normally be required for the performance of
functions, and is thus an
essential part of the State's operation. But those functions are better dispensed with, since
they are not in the collective interest. In this way, while the good part of the state's operation
is retained and improved upon, the bad part — especially the evils of brutality, corruption and
other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus - is detached.
State services that are concerned with orr/gr, in the general sense, may be similarly
removed or replaced. These services, which include reduction of violence to persons and
redress for such violence, quarantine services, security, orderly operation of traffic, and so on,
have often been said to make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it. They
do not. Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by communities
themselves without intervention by the State. Secondly, a great many of these problems are
created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence of which the State is the main purveyor and
which is often the outcome of the State's propping up of gross inequalitiesA A community
which seriously limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for many "welfare
services and the basis for a great many offences involving violence: virtually all those
involving violence to private property and many of those involving personal violence. Such a
left-leaning anarchism is also quite invulnerable to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments
for the State, such as those based on the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth
allegedly achieved by State enforcement of redistribution. As all too many people are aware,
a major function of the State is to maintain and police inequitable distribution.
This then is the main classical argument for anarchism. The argument has however
been challenged, both by historical and more recent objections, which are designed to show
that people cannot act in their collective interest without coercion.
On these points see, e.g.
7?6wZMZz'a/zary Pawp/z/^tj (edited S. Baldwin), Kover
Publications, New York, 1970, p.206ff.; also P.J. Proudhon, Cazz/e^jza/M' a/* a R^va/azza/zary. For
recent discussion of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law court
procedures (Zzaz for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone, Sawg
<?H arhZzrazZag oar
way ra anarcAy, Anarchism (reprint of Nomos XIX) New York University Press, 1978, pp.213-
s
8
It is from the simulation argument, in particular, that the corollary of the
q/
will follow? For, to overstate the case, anything the State can do that does
reflect sought collective interests,, cooperation and other techniques can also achieve in the
longer run, and mostly better.
* The Second Way: The argument from problem recurrence.
The solution by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more
dangerous form the very real problems introduction of the State was designed to solve,
including new Dilemmas. Suppose, for instance, the secular State really
introduced in
order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas, then the array of States so resulting generates new
Prisoners' Dilemmas (with States as 'prisoners'), which there is no Super-State to resolve by
coercion. In fact, as opposed to State-justifying mythology, the modem secular State was not
introduced (just as the original states were not initiated) for any such apparently intellectually
reputable reasons, but was largely inherited from the religious State (and the Church) and
maintained to prop up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests.
Or suppose, as the myth also has it, that the State really were introduced, or contracted, in the
interest of order and stability and to curb violence; then the array of States resulting more than
negates these advantages, with instability, disorder and violence (e.g. between States) on a
grander scale than before the emergence of modern secular States?
* The Third Way: The overshoot argument, from the inadequacy of institutional
controls on state power.
Having ceded a monopoly of power of the State in order to resolve some dilemmas,
some of them arising from an inequitable distribution of power, what controls or balances the
power of the State? A Super-State. And its power? There is a vicious infinite regress if the
reply to the question 'What controls the controller?' is 'a further controller'? The only
promising way of avoiding this problem — other routes lead (even more) directly to
totalitarianism — is by having the first of these controllers, the State, answer back to those in
whose interests it is allegedly established, those of the society or group of communities it
controls. This implies democratic methods of some kind. Others go further: 'democracy [is]
the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which we can try to
The title of a joint paper upon which several of these sections draw^.
The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op cif, chapter 7. A
related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way in which emergence of the State
compromises and even closes off nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in
adjoining regions. Several historical examples of this phenomenon are alluded to in M. Harris,
and Ajngj, Collins, London. 1978, where it is also revealed how little the actual origin
and rise of the State had to do with Dilemma situations, e.g. escaping a Hobbesian state of
nature. Indeed, it was (j^th the advent and development of the State that life became for many
what it had not apparently been in pre-State neolithic times, 'nasty, brutish and short'.
The question is in effect Plato's question and the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man
argument.
9
protect ourselves against the misuse of political power'.R In this event, control has mostly
failed. Democracy is extremely attentuated, even in those states that claim to practice it. The
exercise of power in modem 'democratic' states is often channelled through 'non-elected
authority' and 'is not democratic in the traditional meaning of the term'.9 Moreover, the
much increased power in the modern State, which reaches deep into people's lives, has
passed, with no increase in legitimacy, to certain managerial elites who present the power as
directed at the attainment of 'generally accepted' objectives such as economic growth (but
through, e.g., increased military expenditure) or material 'progress' (but through, e.g.,
increased military expenditure) or material 'progress' (but through, e.g. subsidization of
environmentally destructive enterprises of off-shore companies), though the acceptability of
such particular objectives is never democratically tested.
In any case, indirect democratic and other institutional checks are
in as much as
they depend ultimately on the toleration of those who have direct control of the forces of the
State. Experience seems to show that such toleration will only be shown so long as
democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are broadly in accord
iwth what those who control the coercive power are prepared to accept. (Toleration of such a
tamed democracy then brings benefits to those who hold power, especially the cover of
legitimation). But institutional checks which operate only insofar as a system acceptable to
the powerholders is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those 'checked', are not really checks at all.
The problem of controlling the power of the State and preventing the State once
established from usurping further power and exceeding its mandate, is only
solved by not ceding power to the State in the first place. The best way of avoiding the evils
of accumulated power is the anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation.
* The Fourth Way: The argument from freedom and autonomy.
A person is responsible for actions deliberately undertaken. This premise can be
derived, if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent. Taking responsibility for
one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about what to do on each
such occasion oneself; not acting
on direction from outside, but determining how to
act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision over to someone or something
else. It implies, that is, moral autonomy. Autonomy in turn implies what responsibility
requires, freedom. For the autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles, is
K.R. Popper, 77ie (?/?<?/i 5*<9c;'<?ry and
Vol. II. Fourth edition (revised), Routledge and
Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p.129 and p.127. The (overshoot) problem is, according to Popper
'the most fundamental problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the dangerous
accumulation of power represented in teh State' 'upon which' Marxists never had 'any wellconsidered view' (p.129).
V. Lauber, Eco/ogy, po/ZzZcj and Zz&emZ ^efwocracy, Government and Opposition, 13 (1978),
199-217: seep.209 and p.211.
10
not subject to the will of another. Even if it does what another directs, it is not
another so directs. In being free, nof of constraints (both physical and self-determined), but of
the constraints and will of others, an autonomous being is morally free.
A necessary feature of the State is (XMf/ionry over those in its territory (under its de facto
jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will uon them. Such authority backed by force is
incompatible with moral autonomy and with freedom. An autonomous being, though it may
act in accordance with some imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is
bound to reject such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State. In sum, being a person, as
also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority of the State, and so not
acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on personhood implies, if the argument is
sound, anarchism, io
It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated 'State', one based on
on-going unanimous direct democracy. But such a 'State', with no independent authority, is
not really a state, since any participant can dissolve it at any time, and so constitutes no threat
to anarchism. On the contrary, such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of
anarchistic organisation.
* The Fifth Way: The argument from anarchistic experience.
The replacement argument enables construction of a model of a society functioning
without the State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State is not
necessary. But it can always be
- even if the claim can seldom or ever be made good
- that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of real world circumstances, rendering it
inapplicable. The gap may be closed by appeal to the independently valuable argument from
experience, that at various times and places anarchism has been tested and has rworked.
Examples of such Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have
not been omitted.
There are many examples of non-industrialised societies which were, or are, anarchistic,
there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,n and there is much localised
experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic arrangements within the State
structure. 12
The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated, but in a very individualistic and
Kantian fashion, in R.P. Wolff, 7%
of A/iarc/H-sw, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
No argument is without assumptions, which are open to dispute. Wolffs argument, from
which the argument in the text is adapted, has its pitfalls, and is, for example, disputed by G.
Wall, P/uZo-yop/wcaZ
revi\yg<7, Anarchism, op.cit. p.273ff.
Documented in 77ze
1974.
Co/Zecfiv&y (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions New York
As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of self-management and alternative lifestyles
11
The state is far from necessary and iacks adequate justification. The state is not a
self-justifying object. But none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A
familiar theme, conceding that the state is a problematic object, is that the state is a necessary
evil. 13 But, to the contrary, states, though generally evil, are hardly necessary.
It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak any necessity claimed has to be. For it is
becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical modellings and computer
simulations of other worlds, virtual states and the like, to envisage accessible worlds
organised without modern states. As such worlds, inhabited by humans or human-like
creatures are possible, states are not necessary.
No doubt then, the necessity has to be of some more
andpr^m^Jc sort, a
"social human necessity" for example appealing to emergent features of humans, kinks of
human nature, obtruding in unfavourable situations of high concentrations and extensive
scarcity (situations that states themselves have, like many survival systems, helped contrive).
Further the necessity has to be relative to certain organisational objectives, such as a
particular state delivery of collective goods and services. Remarkably, none of the extant
arguments to the state make it plain that such a weak pragmatic relative "necessity" is
indicated, though they would hardly establish more, and though they Jo make strong
(implausible) assumptions about the brutal situation outside states, in states-of-nature and so
on, and about human motivation and practice, its utterly selfish, self-interested and
acquisitive, and frequently debased character (i.e. what appears encouraged under economic
rationalism, and pretty much what many have come to expect under conditions of advanced
capitalism).
Mostly no effort is made any longer, outside a few abstruse texts, to justify the state.
Within contemporary institutional arrangement it is simply taken for granted (like Big
Science), as axiomatic, as God was under medieval arrangements. But unlike God, who was
good personified and therefore had a large problem with the extent of evil in the world, the
state is acknowledged as problematic and far from unimplicated in the evil of the world (but
directly engaged therein when the councils of the many Machievellis are heeded). Such a
problematic object cannot stand up as merely postulated. Nor is there a corresponding
ontological argument for the state, as that organisational structure than which nothing more
are many and significant. And these alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of
evidence and experience to support their superiority over the present way society operates.
The obstacles to self-management and alternative lifestyles are powerful vested interests and
institutional resistance to change', C/zanging f/x? C<%f, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979.
p.6.
13
The theme, enunciated for instance by Popper, that * state power must always remain a
dangerous though necessary evil' (II, p.30) is a commonplace one.
12
perfect can exist. Outside the flawed imagination of German idealists there is no such Super
State; all actual states are manifestly highly imperfect, all humanly realisable ones are likely
similar.
As a result of the institutionalisation of the state itself, as a received and indeed central
part of modern political arrangements, the onus of proof has become curiously inverted.
Efforts to justify the state have become fairly ideal and academic, no longer a serious issue,
and onus transferred to anarchists to demonstrate that human social life could proceed well
and smoothly (as it now does, of course) without states. While anarchists are not absolved
from offering some account of operations of good social lives without states (for, except in
fairy tales, it does not all just emerge, unplanned, in the new stateless setting), neither are
archists absolved from justification of de facto statist arrangements, beginning with the state
itself.
4
a ARCrpM&^S-.
The main argument for anarchism can be concentrated in a detailed critique of the state,
therewithal state-like institutions a/t? %/ro
/j
/< 7
) c /A—Zb
n X! ct
A<$
Anarchist critiques of the state advance the following
themes:
* States and state-like institutions are without satisfactory justification.
* Such institutions are not required for organisational purposes.
* Such institutions have most inharmonious consequences; they bring a whole series of social
and environmental bungles or evils in their train.
In brief, they are unnecessary unjustified evils
The anarchist critique does not end
there, but typically includes.'further themes/ such as :
w States are devices for channelling privilege and wealth to certain minorities with inside
,
The state is an undesirable, or even downright evii,
institution, for the following range of reasons:-
* States entrench inequities, domination and exploitation. States are devices for the protection
of wealth, property and privilege, and usually for the redistribution upwards, and often
concentration, of wealth and privilege. A minor but popular illustration is offered by the
expensive conferences and other junkets that state employees or party officials organise for
themselves and manage to bill to state revenue, in turn sucked up from inequitable taxation.
Certainly a main historical outcome of the state has been domination of exploitation of certain
segments of society by others, and some see its main, and barely concealed, purpose as just
that: domination and exploitation.
)
* States are typically corrupt. For example, there are enquiries presently in train, or with
follow-through activities yet to be duly completed, in many states in Australia, enquires which
have revealed considerable corruption, and there are prima facie cases for similar enquiries in
most of the remainder. Nor is this a new phenomenon: these revelations often resemble older or
on-going scandals.
* States are enormously expensive, and constitute a heavy drain upon regional resources, and
accordingly on local environments. In poorer regions they are not merely a heavy burden, but a
main cause of impoverishment. One reason for their voracious appetite is an excess of over
remunerated and often under-productive state employees. Another connected reason is that
many state operations are far from lean and efficient, but incorporate many duplications, drag
factors and dead weight. Under anarchisms, of all varieties, these heavy cost burdens,
weighing down subservient populaces, would be shed. Costs of organisation would be very
significantly reduced.
* States are major impositions on everyday life. They are intrusive and demanding^. As a
Never has this been more forcefully expressed than in Proudhon's famous denouncement of state
government:
^1/7^
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled,
taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden,
reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the
general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized,
extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first world of
complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed,
choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown
all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is
its morality (quoted in M p.6).
result, there are constant demands for the reduction of the cancerous state, for removing parts of
it through deregulation, selling off state enterprises and so on. There are two troubles with such
demands from anarchist standpoints: they never go far enough, to the complete reduction of the
state to zero, but characteristically retain parts supportive of or favourable to bigger business,
and they proceed in the wrong way, stripping away social safety nets rather than ripping off
business support nets (such as limited liability, strike limitation legislation, etc.).
* States, for all that they have been promoted as delivering public goods, are mostly dismal
news for environmental protection and health and for social justice. Furthermore they are liable
to impose substantial hazards or risks upon subservient populations not merely through military
and like activities but, more insidious, through support and promotion of dangerous industries,
such as nuclear and giant chemical industries.
* Statetusually exert a heavy pressure to uniformity, they tend to eliminate plurality and cultural
differences. These pressures are exercised by a state in the alleged interests of national unity,
and against its enemies, external and internal. Even the most liberal of states tend to give
minorities more difficult lives in times of stress, such as war. They are always espousing
national values, state interests, and commonly assimilation and adoption of state values (thus for
example Canada, formerly and briefly a state toying with multiculturalism, now insistent upon
"Canadian values"). Such exercises are conspicuous, not only in citizen ceremonies and other
state rituals, such as national sporting and religious events, but more important are virtually
ubiquitous in elementary education (down to deference to the f la , and similar).
* States are a major source of wars, and the major source of major wars, undoubted evils
(however supposedly inevitable). They are major sources and suppliers of military technology
and weapons, the means of war. Roughly, the more powerful and "advanced" a state, the
further it is engaged in weapon production and export. Without states it is doubtful that there
would be any nuclear weapons, and accordingly there would be no prospect of nuclear wars as
there would be no weapons with which to fight them.
* States are a serious drag on a more satisfactory international order. That there are not more,
and more satisfactory, international regulatory organisations 'is mainly a matter of the reluctance
of nation states to surrender their powers and the dangers of their being dominated by very
powerful states. If only nation states would be dissolved into specialized [departments] there is
every reason to believe that most world problems could be handled by appropriate specialized
[organisations]' (Burnheimp.221).
* States have excessive power, and are even accumulating or trying to accumulate more, for
(hT)
instance through more centralization, further controls, additional licences, etc., etc. Obvious
responses to excessive power are separation of powers, achieved by decoupling and some
fragmentation, limitation of powers, and so on.
States thus appear farTrom a good bargain on a preliminary consideration of costs,
Especially bad states, the run of states, which engage in politically-motivated incun-ation or
t.ifure of their citizens, and so on. Where are the compensating benefits?' yven that we can get
along without them, would we really be significantly worse off without them? Even in the
better cases (not allowing for alternative nonstatist arrangements which states have precluded or
systems they have usurped)? But arguments for states are not usually so directly utilitarian in
character. Such arguments would make it look as if we might well opt out of state organisation,
and often be better off doing so. Mat it is contended that, contrary to appearances, we cannot
get along without state cossetting: states are necessary.
,
*?:
-
Present monolithic governments have assumed far too many roles, for many of which
they are not competent, from some of which they are disqualified by other roles (e.g. as
impartial referees by their business commitments). Because the centre tries to do and control
top much, as a consequence it does very much unsatisfactorily. Improved arrangements would
separate these roles, deconcentrating and decentralizing power.
wcef-
/%^2^
/\^^ 1 C
4
Z
Z^-^7
W
GW, //?(? C/7//A /7,
jWr
f/7(? 3/(7/d
The State is like God: the anarchist is
like the atheist in disbelief and
nonrecognition of what is commonly
assumed, mostlv as a matter of faith, to
be needed. T)ie pafatlel,
BakummTtlibjat^weaknessessas well as Rs
strengt%^.''^Vhiie the atheist believes that
God does not exist, the anarchist does
not believe that there are no states: on
the contrary, there are all too many,
though none are legitimate. The impor
tant parallel is as to arguments. The
agnostic does not believe that the
arguments for the existence of God suc
ceed, and so adopts a 'neutral' stance;
similarly the State-agnostic does not
believe that the arguments for the State
work, and likewise tries to adopt a fence
sitting position. Soundly based atheism
goes further than agnosticism, not only
faulting the argumentsybr, but takingdt
for granted that there are arguments, or
at least solid considerations, rzgm/ry/. So
it is with soundly based anarchism;
<t
both fault) arguments for the
r" 3tatuce- a case against the
State.
A more obvious comparison, ap
preciated from Reformation on and
again emphasised bvBakunin,' is that of
State and Church^ This institutional
comparison enables several relevant
features of the State to be emphasised;
for example, how, as the Church used
to, the State assigns to itself many very
extensive powers, such as a monopoly on
the production and control of the main
medium of exchange, currency, and an
ultimate monopoly on organised
violence, all other internal security arrangernggt^)eing eventually answerable
to its pdhee and military^; how it is of the
same category as business organisations
such as multinationals, which now to
some extent threaten it but by and large
collaborate with it; how, as again the
Church used to, it has nominal support
of most of its 'subjects', though many of
them are little better than Sunday
believers, and an increasing number
have come to see the State as in many This does not upset the replacement
respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but argument for anarchism. The argument,
as a necessary evil.^)
implicit in the works of the classical
Whether the State is inevitably evil or anarchists, goes like this: The functions
not, it is M/mecas-wry, so it will be of the State can be divided into two
argued, in a wav parallelling the famous types, those that are in the collective in
jVquinas designed to prove terest and generally beneficial such as
that God exi^&^Since the State is un community welfare and organisational
necessary, as welt as costly and typically functions, and those that are not (but
at leas! evil in many of its practices and are, presumably, in the interests of some
undesirable in other respects, it should of the powerful groups the State tends to
be superseded. And it can be succeeded, serve).
by alternative social arrangements,
But as regards functions of the first
type, the generally beneficial functions
gg 77^ /7r.v/ IWj Q/ SbotWg which are in the collective interest, no
coercion is required. For why should
/r7t?/ //?C S/t//^ Ay ,76)/ 7?^T//7W.'
people have to be coerced into carrying
//!f /?e/)GcT/77^?7/ WRM/W7/.
out functions which are in their collec
tive interest? Such functions can be per
The core of the argument is simple formed, and performed better, without
and persuasive: everything in the collec- the coercion which is the hallmark of the
tive interest accomplished by the State State, and without the accompanying
can equally be accomplished by alterna tendency of the State to pervert such
tive arrangements such as voluntary co functions to the maintenance of privilege
operation, the remainder of State activi and inequality of power, and to remove
ty being dispensed with. The argument is power from those it 'serves'. The detail
not a straight substitution argument, for ed argument that such functions can be
it is not as if a rational person would performed takes a case by case form,
want to have everything accomplished considering each function in turn7 In
by the State replicated by alternative each case the function is carried out
arrangements. There is much the State through alternative arrangements, such
does or supports that is at best rather in
different, ^"'sponsorship of pomp and as voluntary co-operation by the people
directly concerned, which replace State
ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a arrangements. Consider, for example,
great deal of typical State activity is the operation of mutual aid or self help
positively evil and not in the collective medical services or building programs,
interest,'e^. gral^t, corruption, brutality, or self managed welfare, housing or en
maintenance of inequitable distribution vironment services, or community access
of wealth, land and other resources, and communications (e.g. radio), most of
encouragement of protection of
polluting or environmentally destructive
industries (e.g. without state sponsorship
we should not be well embarked on a
nuclear future, without state assistance
and subsidization Australia would not
be burdened with its extensive forest
destructive pine planting and woodchip
projects).
The modern State has however many
other functions than repressive or
damaging ones, functions of community
welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind.
which are presently either starved of
infrastructure or hindered by the State.
Such beneficia! services would in genera!
be reorganised so that ah the relevant
infrastructure became communaHy heid,
and those wishing to arrange or use the
service wou!d manage the operation
themselves, taking the operation into
their own hands instead of being the
passive recipients of favours meted out
to them by professional and powerful
agencies. Coercion is unnecessary
because, in more communal types of
anarcnism, the basic infrastructure and
many resources (other than individual
labour) are already held by the com
munity, sdthereis no need to apply coer
cion to individuals to extract these
resources needed for community welfare
projects, as there is in the situation
where wealth and resources are privatis
ed and coercion is required to wrest
resources from unwilling private in
dividuals.
As for the second type of functions,
those which are /tor in the collective in
terest, coercion will normally be required
for the performance of //tew functions,
and is thus an essentia! part of the State's
operation. But those functions are better
dispensed with, since they are not in the
coHective interest. !n this way, while the
good part of the State's operation is re
tained and improved upon, the bad part
— especially the evils of brutality,
corruption and other abuses invariabty
associated with the coercive apparatus
— is detached.
State services that are concerned with
orjpr, in the genera! sense, may be
similarly removed or replaced. These
services, which include reduction of
violence to persons and redress for such
violence, quarantine services, security,
orderly operation of traffic, and so on,
have often been said to make for especial
difficulties for anarchism, or even to
refute it. They do not. Firstly, disputes
can be settled and offences dealt with
directly by communities themselves
without intervention by the State.
Secondly, a great many of these pro
blems are created or enhanced by the
State, e.g. violence of which the State is
the main purveyor and which is often the
outcome of the State's propping up of
gross inequalities? A community which
seriously limits (or dispenses with) the in
stitution of private property and
removes gross inequalities in the
distribution of wealth thereby removes
the need for many 'welfare' services and
the basis for a great many offences in
volving violence: virtually ail those in
volving violence to private property and
many of those involving personal
violence. Such a left-leaning anarchism
is also quite invulnerable to further
familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for
the State, such as those based on the
fairer distribution of land, property and
wealth allegedly achieved by State en
forcement of redistribution. As all too
many people are aware, a major func
tion of the State is to maintain and
police inequitable distribution.
This then is the main classical argu
ment for anarchism. The argument has
however been challenged, both by
historical and more recent objections,
which are designed to show that people
cannot act in their collective interest
without coercion.
7./
NOTES
14.
[5.
16.
oK
!.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgofl),
Allen & LJnwin, London, (973, especially
p.139. Much else in this paper, eg. the
distinction between the State and Society, also
derives from Bakunin.
2.
That is, proper elaboration of this argument
takes each facet of generally beneficial state
activity — there is only a (relatively small)
finite number to consider — and shows how it
can be replaced in one way or another.
Replacement is not of course uniquely deter
mined. Lines such replacements can take are
indicated in much anarchist (and self
management) literature, consider especially,
but no/ uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual
Aid, New York University Press, 1972, and
also his Fields. Factories and Workshops,
second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and
the Conquest of Bread, Chapman and Hall,
London, 1913.
3.
On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin's Revolu
tionary Pamphlets (edited S. Baldwin), Dover
Publications, New York, 1970, p.206 ff.; also
P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolu
tionary. For recent discussion of, and practical
examples of, replacements for arbitration and
law court procedures (6td for right-leaning
anarchism), see C D. Stone, Some re/?ec//on.s
on o/Tn/rohng our way /o anarc/ty * Anarchism
(reprint of Nomos XIX) New York University
Press, 1978, pp.213^4.
The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is
elaborated a littic in Taylor, op.cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from
the way in which emergence of the State com
promises and even closes off nonstate solu
tions to problems of social organisation in ad
joining regions. Several historical examples of
this phenomenon are alluded to in M. Harris,
Cannibals and Kings, Collins, London. 1978.
where it is also revealed how little the actual
origin and rise of the State had to do with
Dilemma situations, e.g. escaping a Hobbesian
state of nature. Indeed, it was with the advent
and development of the State that life became
for many what it had not apparently been in
prc-State neolithic times, 'nasty, brutish and
short'.
The question is m effect Plato's question, and
the regress is reminiscent of his Third Man
argument.
K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its
Enemies. Yol.iL Fourth edition (revised),
Routledge and Kegan Paul. London. 1962,
p.129 and p.127. The (overshoot) problem ts.
according to Popper 'the most fundamental
problem of all politics: the control of the con
troller. of the dangerous accumulation of
power represented in the State' 'upon which'
Marxists never had
view' (p. 129).
'any well-considered
17.
V. Lauber. /co/o^y, po/t/tes an<7 hbera/
r/emocracv. Government and Opposition. 13
(1978), 199-217: see p.2O9 and p.211.
18.
The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much
elaborated, but tn a very individualistic and
Kantian fashion, tn R.P. Wolff, In Defense of
Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York. 1970.
No argument is without assumptions, which
are open to dispute. Wolff's argument, from
which the argument in the text is adapted, has
its pitfalls, and is, for example, disputed by
G. Wall. P/b/o.sop/hca/ awc/n.sw re row/,
Anarchism, op.cit. p.273ff.
19.
Documented in The Anarchist Cotiectives
(edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions, New
York. 1974.
20.
As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages
of self-management and alternative lifestyles
are many and significant. And these alter
natives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of
evidence and experience to support their
superiority over the present way society
operates. The obstacles to self-management
and alternative lifestyles are powerful vested
interests and institutional resistance to
change', ( hanging the Cogs, Friends of the
Earth, Canberra, 1979, p.6.
ANARCHISM - ENLARGED j
____________ foundations*
There is a theological
component in the theory of the ^tate;.the weakness af^whieh should be brought out.
A
A
By contrast, anarchism ^.s approached from an argument pe^p^ctive, of considerable
streng
strength^
Since the &tate is an imposed structure that induces considerable costs,
the onus of proof is moreover on the State side.
(The State versus states:
r
instantiate the universal.)
2.
they
Circled numbers hereafter refer to insert places in elder working version.
In §1:-
(^
In several respects the comparison is better than that of the State and God,
since both belong to the same category, institutions.
/cc
Thus both have looked to
some philosophers as human inventions or artifices, both have looked to others
(reductionists) as objects that could be reduced to features of the individuals
involved in their organisation (but it is hard to see why such fictions or logical
constructions should be assigned the power and deference they are accorded).
0
It can be superseded, or replaced^ as the Church has to a large,
^in many places.
extent been
Just as the power of the Church has declined until it has lost
its authority over parishioners, so authority of the State can be undermined, and
it can lose recognition and its claim to jAu&h^rit^ over those in its territory.
But there is a crucial difference between State and Church:
under those condit
ions the State vanishes, for authority backs!by coercive power is essential to the
State but not (any longer) to the Church.
from
Society anarchistically organised
And where the State differs crucially
is as to the matter of coercion and of
authority backed by force, such a society relying basically on voluntary cooper
ation where the State relies on authority backed by force.
Furthermore, the
Church is justified through a religious theory, and is backed up ultimately by
appeal to God's authority.
The modern secular State by contrast annexes itself
J
A
2.
itself authority (or has simply inherited it) and, though it may claim to be
justified by some political th(o^ry which confers upon it legitimacy, makes no
appeal back to a justifying or authorizing <3<^e.nt.
So what justifies it?
2^.^
These sorts of considerations prompt two connected complaints of the anarch-
ist, which have never been satisfactorily met, the agnostic's complaint that the
State has no adequate justification - the arguments for its imposition or certain
action fail - and the stronger complaint that the State is not necessary at all.
These complaints are backed by arguments and further arguments, namely an assess)
ment of arguments.
These arguments are important, not, or not merely, because
they will show, if unsuccessful, that anarchism j^s irrefutable, but because they
convey muqh information, e.g. as to the weak (to the point of vacuity) sense
in
which the State is "necessary", because they do much to determine the general
0^
logical shape of the anarchism that results, and because they indicate routes to
anarchism, not merely why but, to some extent, how the State can be superseded
by a Society anarchistically organised.
t
pfuch as there are several ways of arguing to the existence of God, assembled
by Aquinas into the famous (but not exhaustive, and invariably invalid) Five Ways,
and various less famous but also important arguments against the existence of God,
apcni&Igs
, (jAtb
so there are various arguments that the State is required, and^ especially
—-2
relevant for anarchism^, several ways of arguing against the necessity of the
State.
is from the simulation argument, in particular, that the irrefutibj.lity of
Ai)
anarchism will follow^ anything the State can do that does reflect the collective
interests
A/.
A74
cooperation.can also do in the long-run, and mostly better.
[Over-
i
g T7/E SECOAD
X 777E
/1RGGA7EATFROM PROEEEM
RECGRREyVCE.
The solution by the State to problems
of social organisation repeats or
generates in more dangerous form the
very real problems introduction of the
State was designed to solve, inciuding
new Diiemmas. Suppose, for instance,
the secular State realty were introduced
in order to soive Prisoners' Dilemmas,
then the array of States so resulting
generates new Prisoners' Ditemmas
(with States as 'prisoners'), which there
is no Super-State to resotve by coercion.
In fact, as opposed to State-justifying
mythology, the modern secutar State
was not introduced (just as the originat
States were not initiated) for any such
apparentty intellectually reputable
reasons, but was targety inherited from
che religious State (and the Church) and
Jiaintained to prop up privitege and
foster objectives that are not in its com
munities' interests. Or suppose, as the
myth atso has it, that the State reaity
were introduced, or contracted, in the
interest of order and stability and to curb
violence; then the array of States
resuming more than negates these advan
tages, with instability, disorder and
viotence (e.g. between States) on a
grander scale than before the emergence
of modern secutar States."*
S 77/E 77//RD HA1 Y. RHE
(9 YERSEOGE /IRGt/MEAE
FROM EE/E /A/(/9E()G^CY
GE /AF77EG77GA74E
CGA7RGES GA A7MEE
PG^ER
Having ceded a monopoty of power
J) the State in order to resotve some
diiemmas, some of them arising from an
inequitable distribution of power, what
controts or batances the power of the
State? A Super-State. And its power?
There is a vicious infinite regress if the
repty to the question 'What controts the
controtter?' is 'a further controller'A
The onty promising way of avoiding this
problem — other routes tead (even
1
more) directty to totaiitarianism — is by
having the first of these controllers, the
State, answer back to those in whose in
terests it is aitegediy estabtished, those of
the society or group of communities it
controts. This implies democratic
methods of some kind. Others go fur
ther: 'democracy (is] the onty known
means to achieve this control, the onty
known device by which we can try to
protect oursetves against the misuse of
pohtica! power'.'* In this event, control
has mostty failed. Democracy is ex
tremely attenuated, even in those states
that claim to practice it. The exercise of
power in modern 'democratic' states is
often channelled through 'non-elected
authority' and 'is not democratic in the
traditional meaning of the term'E
Moreover, the much increased power in
the modern State, which reaches deep in
to people's lives, has passed, with no in
crease in legitimacy, to certain
managerial elites who present the power
as directed at the attainment of 'general
ly accepted' objectives such as economic
growth (but through, e.g.', increased
military expenditure) or materia! 'pro
gress' (but through, e.g. subsidization of
environmentally destructive enterprises
of off-shore companies), though the ac
ceptability of such particular objectives
is never democratically tested.
In any case, indirect democratic and
other institutional checks are /em/OMS in
as much as they depend uttimately on the
toleration of those who have direct con
trol of the forces of the State. Experience
seems to show that such toleration wit!
only be shown so long as democratic
procedures deliver results that are not
too disagreeable, that are broadly in ac
cord with what those who control the
coercive power are prepared to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy
then brings benefits to those who hold
power, especially the cover of legitima
tion). But institutional checks which
operate only insofar as a system accep
table to the powerholders is not seriously
challenged, and which depend ultimately
upon the toleration of those 'checked',
39 EE/E FGGR 777
Y. EE/E
ARGGMEA?^ FRGA7
EREEDGA7 ^lAD^l GEGAGAf Y.
A person is responsible for actions
deliberately undertaken. This premise
can be derived, if need be, from the
notion of a person as a moral agent.
Taking responsiblity for one's actions
implies, among other things, making the
final decision about what to do on each
such occasion oneself; not acting
on direction from outside, but determin
ing how to act, what ought to be done,
oneself; not handing that decision over
to someone or something else. It implies,
that is, moral autonomy. Autonomy in
turn implies, what responsibility re
quires, freedom. For the autonomous
being, endorsing its own decisions and
principles, is not subject to the will of
another. Even if it does what another
directs, it is not /yeemzse another so
directs. In being free, no/ of constraints
(both physical and self-determined), but
of the constraints and will of others, an
autonomous being is morally free.
A necesary feature of the State is
<7H//io,7/y over those in its territory
(under its de facto jurisdiction), the right
to rule and impose its will upon them.
Such authority backed by force is incom
patible with moral autonomy and with
freedom. An autonomous being, though
it may act in accordance with some im
peratives of the State, those it in
dependently endorses, is bound to reject
such (a claim to) authority, and
therewith the State. In sum, being a per
son, as also being autonomous and being
free, implies rejecting the authority of
the State, and so not acknowledging the
State; that is, each condition on per
sonhood implies, if the argument is
sound, anarchism.'*
It is possible to combine autonomy
with an extremely attenuated 'State', one
based on on-going unanimous direct
democracy. But such a 'State', with no
independent authority, is not really a
state, since any participant can dissolve
it at any time, and so constitutes no
threat to anarchism. On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part
of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
W E/7E E7E777 HA1Y. 777E
are not really checks at ali.
^RGGMEAEFRGM
The problem of controlling the power
of the State and preventing the State M
A91 RCA75&EAVER7EACE.
once established from usurping further
The replacement argument enables
power and exceeding its mandate, is only
construction
of a model of a society
w/cyAc/orr/y solved by not ceding power
functioning without the State, of a prac
to the State in the first place. The best
tically possible Stateless world; which
way of avoiding the evils of accumulated
shows that the State is not necessary. But
power is the anarchist way, of blocking
it can always be c/c/wer/ — even if the
its accumulation.
claim can seldom or ever be made good
— that the modelling leaves out some
crucial feature of real world circum
stances, rendering it inapplicable. The
gap may be closed by appeal to the inde
pendently valuable argument from ex
perience, that at various times and places
anarchism has been tested and has work
ed. Examples of such Stateless organisa
tion suffice to show that crucial real
world features have not been omitted.
^Yiere are many examples of nontndustrialised socieities which were, or
are, anarchistic, there is the rich experi
ence of the Spanish collectives,'" and
there is much localised experience of
seif-management and small-scale anar
chistic arrangements within the State
structure?"
z
e
The state tacks adequate justification. The state is not a self-justifying object. But
none of the justificatory arguments to the state are cogent. A familiar theme, conceding that the
Al
state is a problematic object, is that the state is a necessary evil. But, to the contrary, states,
though generally evil, are hardly necessary^ It needs stressing, furthermore, how weak
necessity claimed has to be. For it is becoming increasingly easy, with the advances in logical!^
modellings and computer simulations of other worlds, virtual states and the like, to envisage
accessible worlds organised without modern states.
No doubt then, the necessity has to be of some more pragmatic sort, a "social human
necessity" for example appealing to emergent features of humans, kinks of human nature,
obtruding in unfavourable situations of high concentrations and extensive scarcity (situations
that states themselves have, like many survival systems, helped contrive).Remarkably, none of
the extant arguments to the state make it plain that such a weak pragmatic "necessity" is
intricated, though they would hardly establish more, and though they
make strong
(implausible) assumptions about the brutal situation outside states, in states-of-nature and so on,
and about human motivation and practice, its utterly selfish, self-interested and acquisitive, and
frequently debased character (i.e. what appears encouraged under economic rationalism, and
pretty much what many have come to expect under conditions of advanced capitalism).
Mostly no effort is made any longer, outside a few abstruse texts, to justify the state.
Within contemporary institutional arrangement it is simply taken for granted (like Big Science),
as axiomatic, as God was under medieval arrangements. But unlike God, who was good
personified and therefore had a large problem with the extent of evil in the world, the state is
acknowledged as problematic and far from unimplicated in the evil of the world (but directly
engaged therein when the councils of the many Machievellis are heeded). Such a problematic
Popper^s view that 'state power must always remain a dangerous though necess
ary evil'
(II, p.30) is a commonplace one.
object cannot stand up as merely postulated. Nor is there a corresponding ontological argument
for the state, as that organisational structure than which nothing more perfect can exist. Outside
the flawed imagination of German idealists there is no such Super State; all actual states are
manifestly highly imperfect, all humanly realisable ones are likely similar.
As a result of the institutionalisation of the state itself, as a received and indeed central part
of modem political arrangements, the onus of proof has become curiously inverted. Efforts to
justify the state have become fairly ideal and academic, no longer a serious issue, and onus
transferred to anarchists to demonstrate that human social life could proceed well and smoothly
(as it now does, of course) without states. While anarchists are not absolved from offering
some account of operations of good social lives without states (for, except in fairy tales, it does
not all just emerge, unplanned, in the new stateless setting), neither are statists absolved from
justification of de facto statist arrangements, beginning with the state itself.
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Richapd'Sylvan
/> << Ji
197d
p. I
WHAT IS WRONG WITH APPLIED ETHICS
Richard Sylvan
There is much that is wrong with and in applied ethics. Specifically, there are three comprehensive
counts where things are wrong with the commodity concerned, applied ethics, that is with applied
ethics so economically viewed.1 Namely on the following three counts:
•
extraneous, with the supply, delivery, consumption, and the like of applied ethics, AE. The
category prominently includes the delivery of applied ethics: what is done, taught and learnt,
by whom, and how qualified (e.g. whether taught by professionals, professional ethicists or
philosophers in particular). That has tended to presume that the commodity itself is more or
less in order, though the presumption lacks good pedigree, delivery of defective goods being
almost as ubiquitous as business enterprise.
The present focus is not however upon the delivery, or other features of the production and
consumption, packaging and marketing of the goods, but on features of the commodity itself, applied
ethics itself. Thus
•
intraneous counts, concerning the commodity itself, where a further two things are wrong:
••
the applied idea, and
•••
what the application is presumed to be made to, established - or, should it be,
establishment - ethics.
Because an implicit premiss in organising the Philosophy and Applied Ethics Re-examined1
Conference seems to have been that the issues to be addressed are predominantly extraneous, and
because most of the papers actually relevant to the Conference topic appear to focus on extraneous
issues, the present exercise, by contrast, concentrates upon intraneous problems, especially the third:
radical deficiencies in what is supposed to be applied, prevailing ethics, and some extensive repairs
thereto.
1.
The applied count
To begin with, there is something decidedly3 odd, not to say radically unsatisfactory, about the very
idea of applied ethics. To bring out the oddness, the conceptual inadequacy, it helps to consider the
dictionary senses and established usage of applied. The term in the only relevant sense (the other
obsolete sense is that offolded) means: ‘put to practical use; practical as distinguished from abstract
or theoretical' (OED, similarly Concise English). Relevant examples cited are: ‘the applied sciences’
(from Babbage 1832), ‘applied logic (as distinguished from pure)’ (from Thomson 1806).4
It may appear then, that "applied ethics" amounts to pleonasm, a popular tautology (and "pure ethics"
correspondingly to an oxymoron), because ethics itself is already practical, for instance much or all
of it being concerned with practical action and its qualities (such is Maclver s assumption: moral
philosophy is practical - in a way in which other branches of philosophy are not’, p.206). In this
respect "applied ethics", even more "applied morals", is rather like "applied motoring", "applied
nursing" or "applied housekeeping". Conceptual confusion would be considerably reduced by
removing the modifier ‘applied .5 Such a charge of confusion can however be mitigated by properly
I7
�18
What is wrong with applied ethics
distinguishing ethics, which includes philosophy and theory of morality, from morals, thereby
revealing, perhaps, elements of some theory apt for application. No doubt something like this is the
presupposition of those who preach or profit from practical ethics (similarly practical economics, but
doubtfully practical housekeeping): that standing in contrast is a suitably established theoretical ethics
(could it perchance be utilitarianism?) which can rather uncontroversiarbe used to guide practice.
But is there such a theory, apt for application, for translation into practice?
To appreciate what is required for adequacy, consider successful applied subjects. Let us compare
"applied ethics" with^long established applied discipline, namely applied mathematics, which often
boasts a separate department in universities (a discipline I was obliged to study as an undergraduate
in order to proceed further in pure mathematics). In the first place, applied mathematics contrasts with
pure mathematics, applied logic with pure. Where, a naive outsider may ask, is pure ethics that
similarly stands in contrast with applied ethics? Could there decently be separate departments of pure
and of applied ethics?
For the most part, applied mathematics applies to practice, in some wide sense, a body of pure
mathematics that is more or less correct, at least within the assumption framework and contextual
settings where it is applied. (The qualified formulation is given for pluralistic reasons; given the
dominant paradigm, the pure mathematics that is applied is correct without further qualification,
correct period.) A body of substantially correct theory ready for application is then the first of several
pertinent features of that relational object, applied mathematics, the first of several dubiously
matchable by "applied ethics". The proviso ‘for the most part’ (introducing the paragraph) signals
another discrepancy. There is a, presumably derivative, part of applied mathematics that investigates,
in essentially the manner of pure mathematics, theories, algebras, spaces and similar, selected through
postulates, principles or equational sets drawn from standard applied mathematics (thus e.g. Newtonian
theories where classical force laws are satisfied, Hilbert and phase spaces, and so on).6 Such
derivative applied mathematics need not compromise at all normal methodological requirements (such
as they are) of pure mathematics, for rigour, exactness, and similar.
Ordinary applied mathematics, in its quest, even haste, for practical results, does compromise, or
violate, pure mathematical methodology. For example, shortcuts are taken, simplifications made,
information shed, figures rounded, approximations adopted, and so. Science veers towards art. From
a pure perspective, dreadful things are often done to data or mathematical transformations of data.
Skilled practitioners tend to appreciate what they can get away with in this sort of regard. Again,
none of this, neither the body of information nor the kinds of skills, is really matched in ethics, in
putting ethical theory to practical work.
Next, the mathematics that is applied, a body of pure mathematics, is not thoroughly contested. Ethics
however is. There is nothing in ethics like arithmetic or elementary mechanics; the nearest thing
ethics can offer is some controversial development along axiomatic geometric lines. Mathematics has
its critics, both inside (e.g. intuitionists) and out (e.g., cultural relativists), but none (hard core sceptics
excepted) suggest changing all of it or tampering with most of what is applied. By contrast, in ethics,
there continues to be an array of competing theories, none of which has managed to win broad
allegiance. What pure theory is there to apply, to do dreadful things to? It might be said in response:
whichever of them is adopted!
Even that, a hollow compromise will not stand up for long. For deeper environmental ethics challenge
a broad range of pure theory that is alleged to be applied! What challenges a whole subject, that
would change it, can hardly be an application of it. The rise of such environmental ethics is one
reason why the modifier applied is a misnomer. For deeper environmental ethics is not any sort of
/
�Richard Sylvan
19
application of ethics; it instead challenges prevailing ethics. Nor is it, like stock "applied ethics", an
adaptation of ethics within an environmental context.
The label applied is substantially, if not entirely, a misnomer. Adjectives in modifier or attributive
roles, in the combination adjective-noun phrase, often enough do not signify application. The
assumption that all modification is application invokes a dubious, presumably false, theory of
adjectival attribution. Consider a few examples involving a relevant adjective, ‘medical’.
Combinations such as ‘medical student’, ‘medical book’, ‘medical trial’ do not signify applications.
A medical s is not normally an application of s to medical matters (of books or students in this
fashion); normally it is a type (an m type) of s.7 There are occasional exceptions, in which case
compounds are liable to be recorded in dictionaries, as with medical jurisprudence which is not a type
of jurisprudence, but ‘the legal knowledge required of a doctor’. There is good reason to think that
ethics induces no exception, that medical ethics, and similarly business ethics, follow the normal
pattern. Thus business ethics is a type of ethics, namely ethics within a specifically business setting,
and accordingly adapted thereto. Observe that such a preliminary account incorporates automatically
(what gives the applied presumption some problemsj^sce-^ppendix T) allowance for variations in
standards, that business corporations for example should not be expected to measure up to standards
set up for ordinary persons (any more than they should iw»t be expected to pay the same levels of
taxes)!
Given the manifold inadequacies of the label applied, amendment of terminology appears warranted.
Amendment, not abandonment. After all, what ‘applied ethics’ is supposed to comprehend, such as
medical ethics, business ethics, even environmental ethics, are not themselves in court, but presently
taken as viable fields. A superior label is field, for field-defined or field-restricted; another is type,
for type-delimited, another domain. Where others speak of "applied ethics", let us discourse about
field ethics. Investment ethics, for instance, is a field ethic, with field investment. An "institute for
applied ethics concentrating upon applications to business" is an institute for field ethics with main
field business. The "applied ethics" movement becomes effectively a field ethics movement.
Observe that professional ethics are field ethics, with the field in each case the profession concerned.
But professional ethics in sum form a quite proper subclass of field ethics; bio-ethics and ecological
ethics are plainly not professional ethics. Less obviously, more importantly, field ethics differs from
practical ethics (as usually poorly defined), with which "applied ethics" is regularly conflated. For,
on the one side, ordinary living and daily life, central to practical ethics, are not fields. On the other,
field ethics are not confined to practice, but may involve considerable theoretical material, particularly
from the fields concerned.
2.
The ethics count
Not only is the applied operation in trouble, ethics also is in deep trouble. Indeed, in a way, the main
problem lies here. There is not a fit, properly satisfactory subject, for some significant applications.
For some "applications" have to change and develop the subject! But, the problems do not vanish
when the amendment to field ethics is made. Satisfactory fieldwork, satisfactory outcomes in field
ethics are seriously hampered by long-standing troubles in ethics. For as field ethics involve ethics,
whatever is wrong with ethics affects field ethics.
To glimpse these troubles, consider recent ambivalence towards ethics. Is ethics even a good good.
There is a most curious contrast in later 20th century attitudes towards ethics. On the one side, there
are great expectations, for instance for what ethics can contribute, to social and professional lite
�20
What is -wrong with applied ethics
especially; but on the other there is serious disquiet, occasionally verging upon despair and into
nihilism, as to ethics, and its role. Virtually the whole spectrum from great expectations through no
expectations to substantial forebodings is selectively represented. A few examples:
•
Great expectations for ethics, beginning to re-emerge these days, tend to come from outside
professional philosophical ranks, from scientists and social scientists.8 Ethics is seen as taking
up again its grand legitimization and critical roles. It can indeed be used in this respect as
regards to a wide variety of practices, such as in business, economics, government, scientific
experimentation, and so on. Of course it cannot always succeed, because one ethics can be
pitted against another, and each and all challenged.
( p-— These expectations, a bit surprising after the drab days of analytic moral philosophy (where
I
philosophy could express no interesting moral opinions), contrast sharply with
' /•—•
heavy disquiet or worse as to present ethics. A recent example is afforded by
z
MacIntyre’s disturbing introduction to After Virtue', that ‘we have - very largely, if not
entirely - lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical of morality’ (p.2).
Some, like MacIntyre, promise a happy, even a great, outcome, should we return to
proper paths, to a virtue ethic in the tradition of Aristotle. Others are not so sanguine;
,
there is
1
•
no hope for ethics. There are divergent routes here. Either it can play no relevant
,
role any longer, or it can play only a negative or damaging role (thus e.g. Hinckfuss).
Though both these routes lead badly astray, present (merely classificatory) objectives
do not include showing as much.9
There is, furthermore, reason for at least serious disquiet. Should we care to look closely at, and try
to assess, the total ethical heritage, then what we find is not very promising.
•
What is on offer is mostly extremely sketchy and very piecemeal, much of it a hotchpotch.
There are extraordinarily few well-worked out and detailed ethics. Spinoza’s Ethics is perhaps
one rare example.
•
Most of what is on offer is seriously biassed or prejudiced, indeed from a deep environmental
perspective even unethical. Prime examples include
•
religious bias, heavily constraining or distorting creatures’ lives, and putting them to
work to serve imagined religious objectives.
•
spiritualistic distortion. Even where an explicit religion does not feature, as in
Platonism and neo-Platonism and in edified Buddhism, the whole of life may be
distorted through promise of an after-life or successor life or extra-material life, where
furthermore some system of rewards or punishments may be dished out for previous
performance. No doubt such biasses help in conferring upon ethics authority,
unwarranted authority (fulfil duties or be dammed, etc.).
•
humanistic distortion, summed up as human chauvinism. It is upon this prejudice,
critical for environmental ethics, that we concentrate.
A main matter that is wrong with ethics, and ipso facto its practice and its belated appearance in many
professional settings (when it$ should have been in evidence long ago), is its anthropic bias, its
considerable prejudice in favour of (present) humans.10 The matter is highly material in several fields,
most obviously in environmental ethics, but also in medical ethics, bio-ethics, agricultural and
vefinarian ethics, and similar.
It is widely assumed, however, that ethics is inevitably human biassed, that it has to be
anthropocentric. That is not so. Ethics can be repaired. So much is the substance of ethics without
humans. Both morals and ethics can be characterised, in substantially reportive ways, so as to free
�Richard Sylvan
21
them of anthropocentrism and the like.11 Furthermore, the whole superstructural theory can be
developed in a fashion that makes no essential reference to humans or any other biological species.12
These repairs represent, however, only the beginning of adjustment and change - of many changes if
a satisfactory deep-green ethics is to be reached. When repairing goods, there often comes a stage,
increasingly rapidly encountered those days, when it becomes a more attractive proposition to acquire
new items than to persist with repairs. So it may be, it is now suggested, with ethics. So increasingly
it has been suggested this century, with demands for new ethics, new moral philosophies. Those
making such proposals include Schweitzer, Maclver, Leopold, along with many others.13
Suppose we should arrive, through addressing different or new fields, at what amounts to a new ethics,
as many think we do (thus Maclver, p. 179 and many ecocentric philosophers). Then what emerges
is no "application" of a standard ethics, but something different, not an applied standard ethics at all.
Now something similar may appear to occur for normal applied subjects. A newly encountered group
of physical phenomena, for instance, leads not to the elevation of some dusty mathematical theory
buried in archives, what is mostly the case, but to elaboration of a new mathematical theory.
Normally in this event, the main body of pure mathematics would remain untouched; a new annex or
suburb would simply be added to it.14 With ethics, however, things are different. There are grounds
for contending that the green (environmental) revolution has shaken ethics to its (dubious) foundations
and core, and, as coupled with associated non domination themes (as emphasised especially in
ecofeminism), has left comparatively little untouched. The standard city of ethics is not left alone,
unscathed.
Much the same sort of points can be presented in the form of a dilemma, for standard ethics and a
proposed field, such as environmental issues. Either standard ethics will not cover the field (or cannot
be extended to do so because it (or its extension) does not apply, or through being forced upon the
field it twists or damages the data, for instance leaves an indelible anthropic bias. A homely carpentry
analogy may help: there is some cabinet work where delicate hammering would be appropriate, but
the only tool we have is a sledgehammer.15 Likewise, a standard chauvinistic ethic is the wrong tool
to try to use or extend for deeper environmental work.
Unremarkably, the three options emerging, namely (inappropriate) application, extension or adjustment,
and fashioning of something new or different, correspond more or less to the now familiar threefold
division of environmental positions, into shallow, intermediate and deep.16 As before, deep ethics are
not "applications", but near ethics.
3.
Extraneous issues
Among the many extraneous issues concerning field ethics, those that have come to exercise
philosophers do look distinctly partisan:17 namely, the role of philosophers, especially professionals;
the place of philosophy in field ethics; and the poor practice of these ethics, particularly from a
professional philosophical perspective. Here the main thesis to be advanced inclines towards these
professionally unsympathetic lines: insofar as these matters, philosophical extranalities, are of negatixe
impact for philosophy, philosophers have largely themselves to blame, for they are largely of their own
making (or, to sheet some of the responsibility more accurately, of the controlling power elite of the
profession}.18 Let us investigate some of the extraneous issues seriatim.
Because a field ethics concerns the field as well as (relevant parts of) ethics, its investigation, practice
and teaching, requires an intersection of capacities and skills, drawn from both ethics and the field.
�n
What is wrong with applied ethics
This simple observation enables an immediate response to such questions as: if not philosophers, then
who is to investigate, and teach, field ethics? That response is: those from one area or the other who
have acquired requisite knowledge and technique in the other, or less promising, those from outside
(but with some appropriate informational background) who acquire these prerequisites in both. In
medical ethics, where there is perhaps a larger pool of information concerning the field than there is
regarding ethics, a moral philosopher untrained in medicine may have more to learn than a medical
doctor unversed in ethics and lacking philosophical skills. (Really, neither should be let loose on
students before they are duly prepared in the intersection.) It is evident, then, that philosophy enjoys
no natural monopoly in field ethics. The place of philosophy is less exalted, and certainly is not
dominant - still less given recent proposed (but hardly well justified) decoupling of ethics from
philosophy.19
There are corollaries regarding the roles of philosophers on committees relating to field ethics, in
decision-making and so on on these topics. Philosophers do not have an automatic place. Unless they
are well-informed as to ethics (many philosophers are not) and as to the field, they do not deserve a
place at all (of course they still may gain a role for want of any better placed). Ousting of
under-informed or unenergetic philosophers is not always such a bad thing.
While the informational situation is now significantly better than in 1945 when Maclver was agonising
over the predicament of moral philosophy, it is still true that ‘academic moral philosophers are not
using ‘every opportunity to make themselves acquainted, so far as possible, with the real difficulties
of those [not merely present humans] who need the help of moral philosophy most... I ... confess that
I myself lack the factual knowledge which would be required to do this work well. I suspect that
many ethic philosophers are in the same position ...20 One of the reasons why philosophy has lost
prestige in recent years is that it has not kept pace’ (pp.204-205). One example Maclver incisively
develops concerns ‘discoveries associated with the name of Freud. The behaviour of philosophers in
this connection is particularly hard to excuse. At first they flatly denied the reality of the alleged
discoveries - maintained that the notion of "unconscious mind" was self contradictory, and so forth.
But all this has now been given up. ... Philosophers no longer dispute ... details of the Freudian
system - but disregard them. If they mention them at all, they talk as if they somehow concerned
none but medical men - as if the same propositions could be sene in medicine and false outside it.
In the light of the recognition of unconscious motives the whole traditional theory of moral
responsibility needs overhauling, but no moral philosopher undertakes this’ (p.205). The reason why
the corresponding philosophical debate (about whether unconscious desires are sometimes evil, whether
relevant moral predicates are restricted to conscious motives, and so forth) had not "by 1945, after 40
years of exposure to Freudian issues, Maclver attributed to the mass of psychological literature which
philosophers have not read and would have to read, reading that is obligatory if moral philosophy is
to be made ‘the subject which it ought to be’ (p.206).
There has been disappointment among some professional philosophers, those with expansionist .
instin^tions, that field ethics has not turned out to be quite the bonanza anticipated, that the expected /
boom in new opportunities and positions began to dissipate as field practitioners started to supply their
own "field ethicists".21 None of this should have been surprising, for broad inductive reasons.
Philosophy had long shed subjects and fields of overlap; and those professionals who have hung in
have become something different (economists instead of social philosophers, computer scientists
instead of logicians22) Nor have philosophers, especially those who have not changed or reskilled, all
the virtues assumed by professionals; e.g. they have little or no theory, they are too fuzzy, they are
indecisive, or vacillate, etc. (remember the sophists; these provide some of the reasons too why
philosophers are often not welcome on committees).
(
�Richard Sylvan
23
Some outside inputs into ethics, such as field studies or field workers may supply, would not go
astray. For there is theoretically little that is new or interesting on the standard ethics scene. Much
of it is 19th century revival, refinement of utilitarianism or Kantianism, and ornate additions (with
bells and whistles). One of the few "new" offerings is the revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics!
Nothing, however, stops outside inputs. Anyone is free to attempt philosophy. Professionals have no
exclusive rights over philosophy, still less over ethics; nor should they. There is a case for widening
practice of philosophy, and encouraging paraphilosophers. For critical problems emerging are not so
much those of philosophy itself (which could be very different from the way it is practised and
professionalised), but of philosophy as professionalised and as conducted. The immediate future does
not bode well for change in the latter, for several reasons; the prevailing materialistic technological
ethos (which dev^lyes pure intellectual activity), the consequent marginalisation of subjects like
philosophy and continuing narrowness of dominant philosophical activity.
Nor, moreover, have philosophers proceeded well, particularly in the Antipodes, in training and
"^pp^ing students who can readily adapt to become field ethicists. Philosophy has never been strongly
employment-market driven (but has tended to rely on a version of Say’s flawed law); indeed there are
features intrinsic to philosophy, such as its contemplative character, that renders it antithetical to the
veiy idea of responding to markets at all. There are other regional features that compound this sort
of problem: the conservative, and class, bias of philosophy (inherited from similar British
arrangements), which has meant that Australian philosophy has not been innovative in adapting its
topics and emphases to changing circumstances;23 and the heavy concentration, as in British
empiricism (still dominant in Australia), upon epistemology, with ethics and what went into moral
sciences and social philosophy still regarded as second class arenas and not what philosophy was really
about or what first class chaps would mainly concern themselves. These are major reasons why
philosophy lost out, and Reserved to lose.
It is for those latter sorts of reasons in particular, that environmental ethics and environmental
philosophy have been unable to gain more than occasional marginal status in philosophy curricula in
Australian universities. Fuller accounts of the predicament of environmental philosophy have been
given elsewhere.24 Its predicament tends to illustrate a general problem for field ethics, with bioethics
(with its own institutional settings) the only partial exception.
Now that field ethics is being lost to the fields in many cases, there are complaints about the calibre
of what is done and taught, the quality of the investigators and teachers, and so on. No doubt much
of this criticism is warranted; some similar criticism of ethics within philosophy would also be
warranted. Among the justified criticisms are these:
•
that field ethics as done from the field is divorced from ethical theory (from what theory has
so far been developed). Too much comprises mere case studies, as with business MBAs.
•
that the field practitioners are not trained in ethical theory, and are often ill-informed ethically
and lacking in analytic and critical skills crucial for satisfactory philosophy.
A different complaint, of importance, concerns the poor ethical practice, even the unethical practice
in some of the fields, despite the development of field ethics. Such a problem is particularly
conspicuous in the field of business.25 But this has been a long-standing problem for ethics itself;
how to get people to behave as they ought? Teaching agents ethics can certainly enable, and
encourage, them to be moral: but it cannot make them moral. Nor would it be proper for it to do so.
The field ethics movement, successor to the late AE movement, is both important and timely,
especially as regards getting ethics and axiology back into many fields that hard tried, erroneously it
now appears, to eliminate them. The movement will have to be carefully orchestrated however to
\
I
1
�24
What is wrong with applied ethics
avoid capture by the very power structures and disciplinary paradigms that it should transform. These
are certainly grounds for some cynicism about such movements: that they are easy targets for
co-option, that they can bemused to cover up abuses by power structures, and to authorise dubious
procedures, or worse,^with a rubber stamp of ethical approval from appropriate ethics’ committees and
inquiries. Such grounds for cynicism can be reasoned, however, and new hope inaugurated, given
more adequate formulation and development of relevant field ethics (exercises including considerable
theoretical work), along with independent and impartial administration of emerging codes and decision
methods, and with appropriate openness of the formerly abused procedures they are intended to
regulate fairly.
REFERENCES
Callicott, J.B., In Defense of the Land Ethic, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1989.
Edwards, J.C., Ethics without Philosophy, University Presses of Florida, Tampa, 1982.
Engel, J.R., Ethics of Environment and Development, Belhaven Press, 1990.
Hinkfuss, I., The Moral Society: Its Structure and Effects, Discussion papers in environmental
philosophy, no. 16, The Australian National University, 1987.
Leopold, A., A Sand Country Almanac, Oxford University Press, New York, 1949.
MacIntyre, A., After Virtue, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1981.
Maclver, A.M., "Towards anew moral philosophy", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, no. 46
(1945-6): 179-206.
Sylvan, R. "Prospects for regional philosophy in Australasia", Australasian Journal of Philosophy,
1986.
Sylvan, R., From Wisdom to Wowserism, typescript, 1991.
Sylvan, R., Deep-Green Ethics, typescript, 1993.
i
Sylvan, R. and Bennett, H., The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 199^.
Wilson, E.O. (ed.), Biodiversity, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1988.
NOTES
1. For such a treatment of items like ethics, as economic goods, see further Greening of Ethics.
2. The Conference, organised by the University of Newcastle in August 1993, where this paper was
presented.
3. Ethical theory has tended to borrow classifications from elsewhere, from apparently more successful
enterprises. Thus, for instance, the (normative) ethics/meta-ethics distinction lifted, none too adeptly,
�25
Richard Sylvan
from logical theory. Thus too the present pure/applied distinction, also purloined. By no means
everything that intelligent agents dream up and promote is entirely in order. Rather uncontroversially
colourless green ideas is one such combination, more controversially human nature, deep ecology and
post-modernism are such. Applied ethics appears to belong to this not-in-satisfactory-order or
out-of-order bunch.
4. ‘Applied. Practical, put to practical use. Applied science. Science of which the abstract principles
are put to practical use in the arts’ (Concise English').
‘2. Put to practical use; practical as distinguished from abstract or theoretical’ (OED). Though
we persevere with these dictionary explications, there are grounds for complaint; there are neglected
nuances. For example, the practical/theoretical contrast (just one of the muddy contrasts with
practical) differs from an applied/pure contrast. A theory can in principle be applied (a plying to, i.e.,
a mapping) in a non practical, or impractical, field. Different again is that concrete/abstract contrast.
And what exactly is practical?
5. The advance notices for the Conference (which look pretty confused, even mumbo jumbo), well
they add insult to injury by invoking talk of a theory of applied ethics. There is said to ‘appear to be
a significant gap between the theory of applied ethics and its practice’; this is said to be why
‘disillusionment has set in’ now. While there may be a theory of applications, talk of a "theory of
applied ethics" heaps confusion (‘theory of) upon confusion (‘applied ethics’). As for gaps (really,
between the theory and practice of ethics), there are two, as we shall see; there is an ambiguity in
‘gap’As for mumbo jumbo, try the following sentence:
‘The teaching and practice of applied ethics has grown rapidly and in an unruly manner across many
disciplines, with many practitioners now not possessing any depth of philosophical knowledge and
expertise and, because of difficulties experienced with the theory and practice given, in some cases
deciding that same is relevant.’ Its sequel is easily unscrambled:
‘We wish to hold a conference to explore this issue for the Australian community and its practical
consequences.’
6. Thus, too, there is a two way process. Application feeds back to inform theory and to enrich the
pure subject. With ethics, as we shall see, something similar or more dramatic happens. Field
developments not merely may inform and enlarge the ethical theory; some may alter it irrevocably.
7. Of course not all adjectives function in this way. butTor. instance without types of responded s.
Thus, e.g. possible, probable, alleged, putative,etc.
I
8. Examples include Wilson in Biodiversity, Engel.
9. We try to
show as much elsewherey-Routley and HTIF.
10. This is by no means all that is wrong with standard ethics. Another, important for field ethics,
is the lack of an adequate theory of ethical dilemmas, confronting which is a main engine of progress
in ethics.
11. See Greening of Ethics', also ‘Ethics without humans. Philosophy without humans', Observe that
^repairs are not unique.
<y :
»
12. As to how this is accomplished, see the annular theory, reiterated in Greening'.
X
�26
What is wrong with applied ethics
13. Maclver suggests ‘that all the old codes are out of date and a satisfactory new one has still to be
discovered. A lost moral code cannot be recovered, and a new one obtained, simply for the asking’
(p.201).
14. Nothing, no paradigm shift as revolution has effected the whole citadel of mathematics; none is
likely to (even dialethism, more threatening than much else, because central areas can be protected by /w roj
due qualification).
15. A different example: an isolated person has an extensive weeding tool in a weed invaded forest,
with the only techniques availabe a broad-acre chemical defoliant.
16. For a classification of environmental positions along the lines of the three options, see Callicott
Introduction, where attention is also drawn to shortcomings in the applied idea.
17. On extraneous issues in ethics, including especially field ethics such as environmental ethics, see
for a detailed treatment Greening of Ethics, part II/.
JJ
18. Among other things, philosophers did not act, did not respond to incipient demand, fast enough
in organising appropriate structures for delivery of field ethics.
<5?
19. See esp. Edwards, plhieswilhourPhilosophy^
20. Maclver continues ‘and for this reason this conception of the task of moral philosophy is unlikely
to be popular in the profession.’ There are two troubles with the tack: firstly, field ethics do not should not - exhaust ethics; secondly, field ethics are enjoying some popularity.
21. The proposition, from the circulated Conference announcement, that field ethics might rejuvenate
a flagging philosophy, that they had ‘given philosophy a rebirth’ can hardly be taken seriously (for
all that they may have given jaded philosophy departments a fillip). Concrete working examples and
dilemmas might stimulate ethical investigation, but would only exceptionally impact an ethical theory,
and moreover ethics itself has but rarely been a source of growth and development in philosophy.
Field practitioners, who often have their own expansionist and imperialist ambitions and
programs, are unlikely to let a service subject be supplied from elsewhere unless they cannot yet
manage the subject themselves and then only so long as times are good so they do not need the jobs
and can avoid chores involved.
22. Interestingly there has been no similar fuss from professionals regarding the attrition of logicians
within philosophy (for which some of them have responsibility), or the on-going loss of logic to
computing science and mathematics.
23. It is for this sort of reason that philosophy in Australia, unlike that in parts of USA^,missed the
field van.
24. See Sylvan 1986, The Greening of Ethics, From Wisdom to Wowserism.
iSrn-
25. A problem in fact exacerbated under prominent ethical positions, e.g., crude utilitarian fostering
"greed is good" notions, most social Darwinism encouraging cut-throat competition.
I'
�
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Richapd'Sylvan
/> << Ji
197d
p. I
WHAT IS WRONG WITH APPLIED ETHICS
Richard Sylvan
There is much that is wrong with and in applied ethics. Specifically, there are three comprehensive
counts where things are wrong with the commodity concerned, applied ethics, that is with applied
ethics so economically viewed.1 Namely on the following three counts:
•
extraneous, with the supply, delivery, consumption, and the like of applied ethics, AE. The
category prominently includes the delivery of applied ethics: what is done, taught and learnt,
by whom, and how qualified (e.g. whether taught by professionals, professional ethicists or
philosophers in particular). That has tended to presume that the commodity itself is more or
less in order, though the presumption lacks good pedigree, delivery of defective goods being
almost as ubiquitous as business enterprise.
The present focus is not however upon the delivery, or other features of the production and
consumption, packaging and marketing of the goods, but on features of the commodity itself, applied
ethics itself. Thus
•
intraneous counts, concerning the commodity itself, where a further two things are wrong:
••
the applied idea, and
•••
what the application is presumed to be made to, established - or, should it be,
establishment - ethics.
Because an implicit premiss in organising the Philosophy and Applied Ethics Re-examined1
Conference seems to have been that the issues to be addressed are predominantly extraneous, and
because most of the papers actually relevant to the Conference topic appear to focus on extraneous
issues, the present exercise, by contrast, concentrates upon intraneous problems, especially the third:
radical deficiencies in what is supposed to be applied, prevailing ethics, and some extensive repairs
thereto.
1.
The applied count
To begin with, there is something decidedly3 odd, not to say radically unsatisfactory, about the very
idea of applied ethics. To bring out the oddness, the conceptual inadequacy, it helps to consider the
dictionary senses and established usage of applied. The term in the only relevant sense (the other
obsolete sense is that offolded) means: ‘put to practical use; practical as distinguished from abstract
or theoretical' (OED, similarly Concise English). Relevant examples cited are: ‘the applied sciences’
(from Babbage 1832), ‘applied logic (as distinguished from pure)’ (from Thomson 1806).4
It may appear then, that "applied ethics" amounts to pleonasm, a popular tautology (and "pure ethics"
correspondingly to an oxymoron), because ethics itself is already practical, for instance much or all
of it being concerned with practical action and its qualities (such is Maclver s assumption: moral
philosophy is practical - in a way in which other branches of philosophy are not’, p.206). In this
respect "applied ethics", even more "applied morals", is rather like "applied motoring", "applied
nursing" or "applied housekeeping". Conceptual confusion would be considerably reduced by
removing the modifier ‘applied .5 Such a charge of confusion can however be mitigated by properly
I7
18
What is wrong with applied ethics
distinguishing ethics, which includes philosophy and theory of morality, from morals, thereby
revealing, perhaps, elements of some theory apt for application. No doubt something like this is the
presupposition of those who preach or profit from practical ethics (similarly practical economics, but
doubtfully practical housekeeping): that standing in contrast is a suitably established theoretical ethics
(could it perchance be utilitarianism?) which can rather uncontroversiarbe used to guide practice.
But is there such a theory, apt for application, for translation into practice?
To appreciate what is required for adequacy, consider successful applied subjects. Let us compare
"applied ethics" with^long established applied discipline, namely applied mathematics, which often
boasts a separate department in universities (a discipline I was obliged to study as an undergraduate
in order to proceed further in pure mathematics). In the first place, applied mathematics contrasts with
pure mathematics, applied logic with pure. Where, a naive outsider may ask, is pure ethics that
similarly stands in contrast with applied ethics? Could there decently be separate departments of pure
and of applied ethics?
For the most part, applied mathematics applies to practice, in some wide sense, a body of pure
mathematics that is more or less correct, at least within the assumption framework and contextual
settings where it is applied. (The qualified formulation is given for pluralistic reasons; given the
dominant paradigm, the pure mathematics that is applied is correct without further qualification,
correct period.) A body of substantially correct theory ready for application is then the first of several
pertinent features of that relational object, applied mathematics, the first of several dubiously
matchable by "applied ethics". The proviso ‘for the most part’ (introducing the paragraph) signals
another discrepancy. There is a, presumably derivative, part of applied mathematics that investigates,
in essentially the manner of pure mathematics, theories, algebras, spaces and similar, selected through
postulates, principles or equational sets drawn from standard applied mathematics (thus e.g. Newtonian
theories where classical force laws are satisfied, Hilbert and phase spaces, and so on).6 Such
derivative applied mathematics need not compromise at all normal methodological requirements (such
as they are) of pure mathematics, for rigour, exactness, and similar.
Ordinary applied mathematics, in its quest, even haste, for practical results, does compromise, or
violate, pure mathematical methodology. For example, shortcuts are taken, simplifications made,
information shed, figures rounded, approximations adopted, and so. Science veers towards art. From
a pure perspective, dreadful things are often done to data or mathematical transformations of data.
Skilled practitioners tend to appreciate what they can get away with in this sort of regard. Again,
none of this, neither the body of information nor the kinds of skills, is really matched in ethics, in
putting ethical theory to practical work.
Next, the mathematics that is applied, a body of pure mathematics, is not thoroughly contested. Ethics
however is. There is nothing in ethics like arithmetic or elementary mechanics; the nearest thing
ethics can offer is some controversial development along axiomatic geometric lines. Mathematics has
its critics, both inside (e.g. intuitionists) and out (e.g., cultural relativists), but none (hard core sceptics
excepted) suggest changing all of it or tampering with most of what is applied. By contrast, in ethics,
there continues to be an array of competing theories, none of which has managed to win broad
allegiance. What pure theory is there to apply, to do dreadful things to? It might be said in response:
whichever of them is adopted!
Even that, a hollow compromise will not stand up for long. For deeper environmental ethics challenge
a broad range of pure theory that is alleged to be applied! What challenges a whole subject, that
would change it, can hardly be an application of it. The rise of such environmental ethics is one
reason why the modifier applied is a misnomer. For deeper environmental ethics is not any sort of
/
Richard Sylvan
19
application of ethics; it instead challenges prevailing ethics. Nor is it, like stock "applied ethics", an
adaptation of ethics within an environmental context.
The label applied is substantially, if not entirely, a misnomer. Adjectives in modifier or attributive
roles, in the combination adjective-noun phrase, often enough do not signify application. The
assumption that all modification is application invokes a dubious, presumably false, theory of
adjectival attribution. Consider a few examples involving a relevant adjective, ‘medical’.
Combinations such as ‘medical student’, ‘medical book’, ‘medical trial’ do not signify applications.
A medical s is not normally an application of s to medical matters (of books or students in this
fashion); normally it is a type (an m type) of s.7 There are occasional exceptions, in which case
compounds are liable to be recorded in dictionaries, as with medical jurisprudence which is not a type
of jurisprudence, but ‘the legal knowledge required of a doctor’. There is good reason to think that
ethics induces no exception, that medical ethics, and similarly business ethics, follow the normal
pattern. Thus business ethics is a type of ethics, namely ethics within a specifically business setting,
and accordingly adapted thereto. Observe that such a preliminary account incorporates automatically
(what gives the applied presumption some problemsj^sce-^ppendix T) allowance for variations in
standards, that business corporations for example should not be expected to measure up to standards
set up for ordinary persons (any more than they should iw»t be expected to pay the same levels of
taxes)!
Given the manifold inadequacies of the label applied, amendment of terminology appears warranted.
Amendment, not abandonment. After all, what ‘applied ethics’ is supposed to comprehend, such as
medical ethics, business ethics, even environmental ethics, are not themselves in court, but presently
taken as viable fields. A superior label is field, for field-defined or field-restricted; another is type,
for type-delimited, another domain. Where others speak of "applied ethics", let us discourse about
field ethics. Investment ethics, for instance, is a field ethic, with field investment. An "institute for
applied ethics concentrating upon applications to business" is an institute for field ethics with main
field business. The "applied ethics" movement becomes effectively a field ethics movement.
Observe that professional ethics are field ethics, with the field in each case the profession concerned.
But professional ethics in sum form a quite proper subclass of field ethics; bio-ethics and ecological
ethics are plainly not professional ethics. Less obviously, more importantly, field ethics differs from
practical ethics (as usually poorly defined), with which "applied ethics" is regularly conflated. For,
on the one side, ordinary living and daily life, central to practical ethics, are not fields. On the other,
field ethics are not confined to practice, but may involve considerable theoretical material, particularly
from the fields concerned.
2.
The ethics count
Not only is the applied operation in trouble, ethics also is in deep trouble. Indeed, in a way, the main
problem lies here. There is not a fit, properly satisfactory subject, for some significant applications.
For some "applications" have to change and develop the subject! But, the problems do not vanish
when the amendment to field ethics is made. Satisfactory fieldwork, satisfactory outcomes in field
ethics are seriously hampered by long-standing troubles in ethics. For as field ethics involve ethics,
whatever is wrong with ethics affects field ethics.
To glimpse these troubles, consider recent ambivalence towards ethics. Is ethics even a good good.
There is a most curious contrast in later 20th century attitudes towards ethics. On the one side, there
are great expectations, for instance for what ethics can contribute, to social and professional lite
20
What is -wrong with applied ethics
especially; but on the other there is serious disquiet, occasionally verging upon despair and into
nihilism, as to ethics, and its role. Virtually the whole spectrum from great expectations through no
expectations to substantial forebodings is selectively represented. A few examples:
•
Great expectations for ethics, beginning to re-emerge these days, tend to come from outside
professional philosophical ranks, from scientists and social scientists.8 Ethics is seen as taking
up again its grand legitimization and critical roles. It can indeed be used in this respect as
regards to a wide variety of practices, such as in business, economics, government, scientific
experimentation, and so on. Of course it cannot always succeed, because one ethics can be
pitted against another, and each and all challenged.
( p-— These expectations, a bit surprising after the drab days of analytic moral philosophy (where
I
philosophy could express no interesting moral opinions), contrast sharply with
' /•—•
heavy disquiet or worse as to present ethics. A recent example is afforded by
z
MacIntyre’s disturbing introduction to After Virtue', that ‘we have - very largely, if not
entirely - lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical of morality’ (p.2).
Some, like MacIntyre, promise a happy, even a great, outcome, should we return to
proper paths, to a virtue ethic in the tradition of Aristotle. Others are not so sanguine;
,
there is
1
•
no hope for ethics. There are divergent routes here. Either it can play no relevant
,
role any longer, or it can play only a negative or damaging role (thus e.g. Hinckfuss).
Though both these routes lead badly astray, present (merely classificatory) objectives
do not include showing as much.9
There is, furthermore, reason for at least serious disquiet. Should we care to look closely at, and try
to assess, the total ethical heritage, then what we find is not very promising.
•
What is on offer is mostly extremely sketchy and very piecemeal, much of it a hotchpotch.
There are extraordinarily few well-worked out and detailed ethics. Spinoza’s Ethics is perhaps
one rare example.
•
Most of what is on offer is seriously biassed or prejudiced, indeed from a deep environmental
perspective even unethical. Prime examples include
•
religious bias, heavily constraining or distorting creatures’ lives, and putting them to
work to serve imagined religious objectives.
•
spiritualistic distortion. Even where an explicit religion does not feature, as in
Platonism and neo-Platonism and in edified Buddhism, the whole of life may be
distorted through promise of an after-life or successor life or extra-material life, where
furthermore some system of rewards or punishments may be dished out for previous
performance. No doubt such biasses help in conferring upon ethics authority,
unwarranted authority (fulfil duties or be dammed, etc.).
•
humanistic distortion, summed up as human chauvinism. It is upon this prejudice,
critical for environmental ethics, that we concentrate.
A main matter that is wrong with ethics, and ipso facto its practice and its belated appearance in many
professional settings (when it$ should have been in evidence long ago), is its anthropic bias, its
considerable prejudice in favour of (present) humans.10 The matter is highly material in several fields,
most obviously in environmental ethics, but also in medical ethics, bio-ethics, agricultural and
vefinarian ethics, and similar.
It is widely assumed, however, that ethics is inevitably human biassed, that it has to be
anthropocentric. That is not so. Ethics can be repaired. So much is the substance of ethics without
humans. Both morals and ethics can be characterised, in substantially reportive ways, so as to free
Richard Sylvan
21
them of anthropocentrism and the like.11 Furthermore, the whole superstructural theory can be
developed in a fashion that makes no essential reference to humans or any other biological species.12
These repairs represent, however, only the beginning of adjustment and change - of many changes if
a satisfactory deep-green ethics is to be reached. When repairing goods, there often comes a stage,
increasingly rapidly encountered those days, when it becomes a more attractive proposition to acquire
new items than to persist with repairs. So it may be, it is now suggested, with ethics. So increasingly
it has been suggested this century, with demands for new ethics, new moral philosophies. Those
making such proposals include Schweitzer, Maclver, Leopold, along with many others.13
Suppose we should arrive, through addressing different or new fields, at what amounts to a new ethics,
as many think we do (thus Maclver, p. 179 and many ecocentric philosophers). Then what emerges
is no "application" of a standard ethics, but something different, not an applied standard ethics at all.
Now something similar may appear to occur for normal applied subjects. A newly encountered group
of physical phenomena, for instance, leads not to the elevation of some dusty mathematical theory
buried in archives, what is mostly the case, but to elaboration of a new mathematical theory.
Normally in this event, the main body of pure mathematics would remain untouched; a new annex or
suburb would simply be added to it.14 With ethics, however, things are different. There are grounds
for contending that the green (environmental) revolution has shaken ethics to its (dubious) foundations
and core, and, as coupled with associated non domination themes (as emphasised especially in
ecofeminism), has left comparatively little untouched. The standard city of ethics is not left alone,
unscathed.
Much the same sort of points can be presented in the form of a dilemma, for standard ethics and a
proposed field, such as environmental issues. Either standard ethics will not cover the field (or cannot
be extended to do so because it (or its extension) does not apply, or through being forced upon the
field it twists or damages the data, for instance leaves an indelible anthropic bias. A homely carpentry
analogy may help: there is some cabinet work where delicate hammering would be appropriate, but
the only tool we have is a sledgehammer.15 Likewise, a standard chauvinistic ethic is the wrong tool
to try to use or extend for deeper environmental work.
Unremarkably, the three options emerging, namely (inappropriate) application, extension or adjustment,
and fashioning of something new or different, correspond more or less to the now familiar threefold
division of environmental positions, into shallow, intermediate and deep.16 As before, deep ethics are
not "applications", but near ethics.
3.
Extraneous issues
Among the many extraneous issues concerning field ethics, those that have come to exercise
philosophers do look distinctly partisan:17 namely, the role of philosophers, especially professionals;
the place of philosophy in field ethics; and the poor practice of these ethics, particularly from a
professional philosophical perspective. Here the main thesis to be advanced inclines towards these
professionally unsympathetic lines: insofar as these matters, philosophical extranalities, are of negatixe
impact for philosophy, philosophers have largely themselves to blame, for they are largely of their own
making (or, to sheet some of the responsibility more accurately, of the controlling power elite of the
profession}.18 Let us investigate some of the extraneous issues seriatim.
Because a field ethics concerns the field as well as (relevant parts of) ethics, its investigation, practice
and teaching, requires an intersection of capacities and skills, drawn from both ethics and the field.
n
What is wrong with applied ethics
This simple observation enables an immediate response to such questions as: if not philosophers, then
who is to investigate, and teach, field ethics? That response is: those from one area or the other who
have acquired requisite knowledge and technique in the other, or less promising, those from outside
(but with some appropriate informational background) who acquire these prerequisites in both. In
medical ethics, where there is perhaps a larger pool of information concerning the field than there is
regarding ethics, a moral philosopher untrained in medicine may have more to learn than a medical
doctor unversed in ethics and lacking philosophical skills. (Really, neither should be let loose on
students before they are duly prepared in the intersection.) It is evident, then, that philosophy enjoys
no natural monopoly in field ethics. The place of philosophy is less exalted, and certainly is not
dominant - still less given recent proposed (but hardly well justified) decoupling of ethics from
philosophy.19
There are corollaries regarding the roles of philosophers on committees relating to field ethics, in
decision-making and so on on these topics. Philosophers do not have an automatic place. Unless they
are well-informed as to ethics (many philosophers are not) and as to the field, they do not deserve a
place at all (of course they still may gain a role for want of any better placed). Ousting of
under-informed or unenergetic philosophers is not always such a bad thing.
While the informational situation is now significantly better than in 1945 when Maclver was agonising
over the predicament of moral philosophy, it is still true that ‘academic moral philosophers are not
using ‘every opportunity to make themselves acquainted, so far as possible, with the real difficulties
of those [not merely present humans] who need the help of moral philosophy most... I ... confess that
I myself lack the factual knowledge which would be required to do this work well. I suspect that
many ethic philosophers are in the same position ...20 One of the reasons why philosophy has lost
prestige in recent years is that it has not kept pace’ (pp.204-205). One example Maclver incisively
develops concerns ‘discoveries associated with the name of Freud. The behaviour of philosophers in
this connection is particularly hard to excuse. At first they flatly denied the reality of the alleged
discoveries - maintained that the notion of "unconscious mind" was self contradictory, and so forth.
But all this has now been given up. ... Philosophers no longer dispute ... details of the Freudian
system - but disregard them. If they mention them at all, they talk as if they somehow concerned
none but medical men - as if the same propositions could be sene in medicine and false outside it.
In the light of the recognition of unconscious motives the whole traditional theory of moral
responsibility needs overhauling, but no moral philosopher undertakes this’ (p.205). The reason why
the corresponding philosophical debate (about whether unconscious desires are sometimes evil, whether
relevant moral predicates are restricted to conscious motives, and so forth) had not "by 1945, after 40
years of exposure to Freudian issues, Maclver attributed to the mass of psychological literature which
philosophers have not read and would have to read, reading that is obligatory if moral philosophy is
to be made ‘the subject which it ought to be’ (p.206).
There has been disappointment among some professional philosophers, those with expansionist .
instin^tions, that field ethics has not turned out to be quite the bonanza anticipated, that the expected /
boom in new opportunities and positions began to dissipate as field practitioners started to supply their
own "field ethicists".21 None of this should have been surprising, for broad inductive reasons.
Philosophy had long shed subjects and fields of overlap; and those professionals who have hung in
have become something different (economists instead of social philosophers, computer scientists
instead of logicians22) Nor have philosophers, especially those who have not changed or reskilled, all
the virtues assumed by professionals; e.g. they have little or no theory, they are too fuzzy, they are
indecisive, or vacillate, etc. (remember the sophists; these provide some of the reasons too why
philosophers are often not welcome on committees).
(
Richard Sylvan
23
Some outside inputs into ethics, such as field studies or field workers may supply, would not go
astray. For there is theoretically little that is new or interesting on the standard ethics scene. Much
of it is 19th century revival, refinement of utilitarianism or Kantianism, and ornate additions (with
bells and whistles). One of the few "new" offerings is the revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics!
Nothing, however, stops outside inputs. Anyone is free to attempt philosophy. Professionals have no
exclusive rights over philosophy, still less over ethics; nor should they. There is a case for widening
practice of philosophy, and encouraging paraphilosophers. For critical problems emerging are not so
much those of philosophy itself (which could be very different from the way it is practised and
professionalised), but of philosophy as professionalised and as conducted. The immediate future does
not bode well for change in the latter, for several reasons; the prevailing materialistic technological
ethos (which dev^lyes pure intellectual activity), the consequent marginalisation of subjects like
philosophy and continuing narrowness of dominant philosophical activity.
Nor, moreover, have philosophers proceeded well, particularly in the Antipodes, in training and
"^pp^ing students who can readily adapt to become field ethicists. Philosophy has never been strongly
employment-market driven (but has tended to rely on a version of Say’s flawed law); indeed there are
features intrinsic to philosophy, such as its contemplative character, that renders it antithetical to the
veiy idea of responding to markets at all. There are other regional features that compound this sort
of problem: the conservative, and class, bias of philosophy (inherited from similar British
arrangements), which has meant that Australian philosophy has not been innovative in adapting its
topics and emphases to changing circumstances;23 and the heavy concentration, as in British
empiricism (still dominant in Australia), upon epistemology, with ethics and what went into moral
sciences and social philosophy still regarded as second class arenas and not what philosophy was really
about or what first class chaps would mainly concern themselves. These are major reasons why
philosophy lost out, and Reserved to lose.
It is for those latter sorts of reasons in particular, that environmental ethics and environmental
philosophy have been unable to gain more than occasional marginal status in philosophy curricula in
Australian universities. Fuller accounts of the predicament of environmental philosophy have been
given elsewhere.24 Its predicament tends to illustrate a general problem for field ethics, with bioethics
(with its own institutional settings) the only partial exception.
Now that field ethics is being lost to the fields in many cases, there are complaints about the calibre
of what is done and taught, the quality of the investigators and teachers, and so on. No doubt much
of this criticism is warranted; some similar criticism of ethics within philosophy would also be
warranted. Among the justified criticisms are these:
•
that field ethics as done from the field is divorced from ethical theory (from what theory has
so far been developed). Too much comprises mere case studies, as with business MBAs.
•
that the field practitioners are not trained in ethical theory, and are often ill-informed ethically
and lacking in analytic and critical skills crucial for satisfactory philosophy.
A different complaint, of importance, concerns the poor ethical practice, even the unethical practice
in some of the fields, despite the development of field ethics. Such a problem is particularly
conspicuous in the field of business.25 But this has been a long-standing problem for ethics itself;
how to get people to behave as they ought? Teaching agents ethics can certainly enable, and
encourage, them to be moral: but it cannot make them moral. Nor would it be proper for it to do so.
The field ethics movement, successor to the late AE movement, is both important and timely,
especially as regards getting ethics and axiology back into many fields that hard tried, erroneously it
now appears, to eliminate them. The movement will have to be carefully orchestrated however to
\
I
1
24
What is wrong with applied ethics
avoid capture by the very power structures and disciplinary paradigms that it should transform. These
are certainly grounds for some cynicism about such movements: that they are easy targets for
co-option, that they can bemused to cover up abuses by power structures, and to authorise dubious
procedures, or worse,^with a rubber stamp of ethical approval from appropriate ethics’ committees and
inquiries. Such grounds for cynicism can be reasoned, however, and new hope inaugurated, given
more adequate formulation and development of relevant field ethics (exercises including considerable
theoretical work), along with independent and impartial administration of emerging codes and decision
methods, and with appropriate openness of the formerly abused procedures they are intended to
regulate fairly.
REFERENCES
Callicott, J.B., In Defense of the Land Ethic, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1989.
Edwards, J.C., Ethics without Philosophy, University Presses of Florida, Tampa, 1982.
Engel, J.R., Ethics of Environment and Development, Belhaven Press, 1990.
Hinkfuss, I., The Moral Society: Its Structure and Effects, Discussion papers in environmental
philosophy, no. 16, The Australian National University, 1987.
Leopold, A., A Sand Country Almanac, Oxford University Press, New York, 1949.
MacIntyre, A., After Virtue, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1981.
Maclver, A.M., "Towards anew moral philosophy", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, no. 46
(1945-6): 179-206.
Sylvan, R. "Prospects for regional philosophy in Australasia", Australasian Journal of Philosophy,
1986.
Sylvan, R., From Wisdom to Wowserism, typescript, 1991.
Sylvan, R., Deep-Green Ethics, typescript, 1993.
i
Sylvan, R. and Bennett, H., The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 199^.
Wilson, E.O. (ed.), Biodiversity, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1988.
NOTES
1. For such a treatment of items like ethics, as economic goods, see further Greening of Ethics.
2. The Conference, organised by the University of Newcastle in August 1993, where this paper was
presented.
3. Ethical theory has tended to borrow classifications from elsewhere, from apparently more successful
enterprises. Thus, for instance, the (normative) ethics/meta-ethics distinction lifted, none too adeptly,
25
Richard Sylvan
from logical theory. Thus too the present pure/applied distinction, also purloined. By no means
everything that intelligent agents dream up and promote is entirely in order. Rather uncontroversially
colourless green ideas is one such combination, more controversially human nature, deep ecology and
post-modernism are such. Applied ethics appears to belong to this not-in-satisfactory-order or
out-of-order bunch.
4. ‘Applied. Practical, put to practical use. Applied science. Science of which the abstract principles
are put to practical use in the arts’ (Concise English').
‘2. Put to practical use; practical as distinguished from abstract or theoretical’ (OED). Though
we persevere with these dictionary explications, there are grounds for complaint; there are neglected
nuances. For example, the practical/theoretical contrast (just one of the muddy contrasts with
practical) differs from an applied/pure contrast. A theory can in principle be applied (a plying to, i.e.,
a mapping) in a non practical, or impractical, field. Different again is that concrete/abstract contrast.
And what exactly is practical?
5. The advance notices for the Conference (which look pretty confused, even mumbo jumbo), well
they add insult to injury by invoking talk of a theory of applied ethics. There is said to ‘appear to be
a significant gap between the theory of applied ethics and its practice’; this is said to be why
‘disillusionment has set in’ now. While there may be a theory of applications, talk of a "theory of
applied ethics" heaps confusion (‘theory of) upon confusion (‘applied ethics’). As for gaps (really,
between the theory and practice of ethics), there are two, as we shall see; there is an ambiguity in
‘gap’As for mumbo jumbo, try the following sentence:
‘The teaching and practice of applied ethics has grown rapidly and in an unruly manner across many
disciplines, with many practitioners now not possessing any depth of philosophical knowledge and
expertise and, because of difficulties experienced with the theory and practice given, in some cases
deciding that same is relevant.’ Its sequel is easily unscrambled:
‘We wish to hold a conference to explore this issue for the Australian community and its practical
consequences.’
6. Thus, too, there is a two way process. Application feeds back to inform theory and to enrich the
pure subject. With ethics, as we shall see, something similar or more dramatic happens. Field
developments not merely may inform and enlarge the ethical theory; some may alter it irrevocably.
7. Of course not all adjectives function in this way. butTor. instance without types of responded s.
Thus, e.g. possible, probable, alleged, putative,etc.
I
8. Examples include Wilson in Biodiversity, Engel.
9. We try to
show as much elsewherey-Routley and HTIF.
10. This is by no means all that is wrong with standard ethics. Another, important for field ethics,
is the lack of an adequate theory of ethical dilemmas, confronting which is a main engine of progress
in ethics.
11. See Greening of Ethics', also ‘Ethics without humans. Philosophy without humans', Observe that
^repairs are not unique.
<y :
»
12. As to how this is accomplished, see the annular theory, reiterated in Greening'.
X
26
What is wrong with applied ethics
13. Maclver suggests ‘that all the old codes are out of date and a satisfactory new one has still to be
discovered. A lost moral code cannot be recovered, and a new one obtained, simply for the asking’
(p.201).
14. Nothing, no paradigm shift as revolution has effected the whole citadel of mathematics; none is
likely to (even dialethism, more threatening than much else, because central areas can be protected by /w roj
due qualification).
15. A different example: an isolated person has an extensive weeding tool in a weed invaded forest,
with the only techniques availabe a broad-acre chemical defoliant.
16. For a classification of environmental positions along the lines of the three options, see Callicott
Introduction, where attention is also drawn to shortcomings in the applied idea.
17. On extraneous issues in ethics, including especially field ethics such as environmental ethics, see
for a detailed treatment Greening of Ethics, part II/.
JJ
18. Among other things, philosophers did not act, did not respond to incipient demand, fast enough
in organising appropriate structures for delivery of field ethics.
<5?
19. See esp. Edwards, plhieswilhourPhilosophy^
20. Maclver continues ‘and for this reason this conception of the task of moral philosophy is unlikely
to be popular in the profession.’ There are two troubles with the tack: firstly, field ethics do not should not - exhaust ethics; secondly, field ethics are enjoying some popularity.
21. The proposition, from the circulated Conference announcement, that field ethics might rejuvenate
a flagging philosophy, that they had ‘given philosophy a rebirth’ can hardly be taken seriously (for
all that they may have given jaded philosophy departments a fillip). Concrete working examples and
dilemmas might stimulate ethical investigation, but would only exceptionally impact an ethical theory,
and moreover ethics itself has but rarely been a source of growth and development in philosophy.
Field practitioners, who often have their own expansionist and imperialist ambitions and
programs, are unlikely to let a service subject be supplied from elsewhere unless they cannot yet
manage the subject themselves and then only so long as times are good so they do not need the jobs
and can avoid chores involved.
22. Interestingly there has been no similar fuss from professionals regarding the attrition of logicians
within philosophy (for which some of them have responsibility), or the on-going loss of logic to
computing science and mathematics.
23. It is for this sort of reason that philosophy in Australia, unlike that in parts of USA^,missed the
field van.
24. See Sylvan 1986, The Greening of Ethics, From Wisdom to Wowserism.
iSrn-
25. A problem in fact exacerbated under prominent ethical positions, e.g., crude utilitarian fostering
"greed is good" notions, most social Darwinism encouraging cut-throat competition.
I'
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�-125
TABLE 2.
Populations of Australia at 2040 under
various assumptions as to population at
2000 and various growth rates.
Population in
Hypothesis as
Population in
millions at 2000
to growth rate
millions at 2040
more \
likely) •'
range /'
17-3
1.1% from 1970
26.8
17.8
1.2% from 1970
28.7
18.9
1.1% from 2000
29.2
18.9
1.2% from 2000
30.4
20.0
1.1% from 2000
30.9
20.0
1.2% from 2000
32.2
21.0
1.1% from 2000
32.5
21.0
1.2% from 2000
33.8
21.0
1.4% from 2000
36.6
22.0
1.7% from 2000
38.2
22.0
1.5% from 2000
39.6
22.4
1.87% from 2000
46.99
probable
range
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�The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Letter, Dick Coutinho, Royal Vangorcum to Dr Richard Routley, Australian National University,
1974? re Routhley's manuscript on environmental ethics. (1 leaf)
�u*^
•f-—
Is there a need for a new, an environmental, ethic?
§1.
It is increasingly said that civilization, Western
civilization at least, stands in need of a new ethic (and
derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's
relations to the natural environment, in Leopold's words
'an ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the
animals and plants which grow upon it'
([1], p.238).
It
is not of course that old and prevailing ethics do not deal
with man's relation to nature:
they do, and on the prevailing
view man is free to deal with nature as he pleases, i.e. his
relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect
others, are not subject to moral censure.
Thus assertions
such as 'Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees' are
significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least
as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are
false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense,
It is to this, to the values and evaluations
moral objects.
*
of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact
take exception.
Leopold regards as subject to moral crit
icism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing views is morally
permissible.
But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that
such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics
and that an extension of traditional morality is required to
cover such cases,to fill a moral void.
If Leopold is right
in his criticism of prevailing conduct what is required is
a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations.
For as matters stand, as he himself explains, men do not feel
morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield,
and then move on; and such conduct is not taken to interfere
with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others.
'A
* A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house
spirits.
�2
farmer who clears the woods off a 75% slope, turns his
cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks,
and soil into the community creek, is still (if other
wise decent) a respected member of society.'
([1], p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such trad
itionally permissible conduct would be accounted morally
wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose
What is not so clear is that a new ethic
is required even for such radical judgements.
For one thing
of the argument.
it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic,
much as it is often unclear whether a new development in
physics counts as a new physics or just as a modification
or extension of the old.
For, notoriously, ethics are not
clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the
application of identity criteria for ethics may remain
*
obscure.
Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of
ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental
principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain
ethic, which is an umbrella notion covering a cluster of
differing and even competing systems.
In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental
ethic, which might cater for the evaluations, namely that
of an extension or modification of the prevailing ethics
or that of the development of principles that are already
encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic.
The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be
incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within)
the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because
there isn't a single ethical system uniquely assumed in
* To the consternation no doubt of Quineans.
But the fact
is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and
fragmentary systems the identity of which may be indeter
minate .
�3.
Western civilization:
on many issues, and especially on
controversial issues such as infanticide, women's rights
and drugs, there are competing sets of principles.
Talk
of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a
sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing
ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
Indeed Passmore (in [2]) has mapped out three
important traditions in Western ethical views concerning
man's relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic
position, with man as despot (or tyrant), and two lesser
traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian,
and the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor
are these the only traditions; primitivism is another, and
both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent
with an environmental ethic; for according to it nature is
the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he
pleases (since - at least on the mainstream Stoic - Augustine
view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environ
mental ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases.
But
it is not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic can
*
not be coupled with one of the lesser traditions.
Part of
the problem is that the lesser traditions are by no means
adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the
religious backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for
and responsible to?
However both traditions are inconsistent
with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of
complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic
some worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be
preserved from substantial human interference, whether of
�4.
the "improving" sort or not.
Both traditions would in
fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces reshaped along
the lines of the tame and comfortable north-European small
farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative
position man's proper role is to develop, cultivate and
perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out
its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily
usefulness for human purposes; while on the stewardship
view man's role, like that of a farm manager, is to make
nature productive by his efforts though not by means that
will deliberately degrade its resources.
Although these
positions both depart from the dominant position in a way
which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of an
environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the
irresponsible farmer, they do not go far enough:
for in
the present situation of expanding populations confined to
finite natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the
perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thorough
going environmental ethic would reject, a principle of
total use, implying that every natural area should be culti
vated or otherwise used
*
for human ends, "humanized".
As the important Western traditions exclude an
environmental ethic, it would appear that such an ethic,
not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright.
The matter is not so straightforward; for the dominant ethic
has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is
not always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically
interferes with others.
Maybe some such proviso was implicit
all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was
* If 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use
for preservation, this total use principle is rendered
inocuous at least as regards its actual effects. Note
that the total use principle is tied to the resource view
of nature.
�simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural
items would not affect others (the non-interference
assumption).
Be this as it may, the modified dominant
position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have
supplanted the dominant position; and the modified posi
tion can undoubtedly go much further towards an environ
mental ethic.
For example, the farmer's polluting of a
community stream may be ruled immoral on the grounds that
it physically interferes with others who use or would use
the stream.
Likewise business enterprises which destroy
the natural environment for no satisfactory returns or which
cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans,
can be criticised on the sort of welfare basis (e.g. that
of [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on.
The position may even serve to restrict the sort of family
size one is entitled to have since in a finite situation
excessive population levels will interfere with future people.
Nontheless neither the modified dominant position nor its
Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser
traditions, is adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall
A new ethic is wanted.
e
As we noticed (an) ethic is ambiguous, as between
try to show.
§2.
a specific ethical system, a specific ethic, and a more generic
notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.
*
An ethical system S is, near enough, a propositional system
(i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which
includes (like individuals of a theory) a set of values
and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general evalu
ative judgements concerning conduct, typically of what is
obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rights^what
* A meta-ethic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super
ethics, their features and fundamental notions.
�6.
is valued, and so forth.
A general or lawlike proposition
of a system is a principle; and certainly if systems S| and
S2 contain different principles then they are different
systems.
It follows that any environmental ethic differs
from the important traditional ethics outlined.
Moreover
if environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems
on some core principle embedded in Western systems, then
these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming,
what seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised)
- in which case if an environmental ethic is needed then a
new ethic is wanted.
It suffices then to locate a core
principle and to provide environmental counter examples to
it.
It is commonly assumed that there are, what amount
to, core principles of Western ethical systems, principles
that will accordingly belong to the super ethic.
The fair-
ness principle inscribed in the Golden Rule provides one
example.
Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core
principle, is the commonly formulated liberal principle of
4- A'/Z
the modified dominance position:.
A recent formulation
*
runs
as follows ([3], p.58):
'The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds
that one should be able to do what he wishesproviding (1)
that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not likely
to harm himself irreparably.'
Let us call this principle basic (human) chauvinism -because
under it humans, or people, come first and everything else a
bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a
freedom principle because it gives permission to perform a
wide range of actions (including actions which mess up the
environment and natural things) providing they do not harm
* A related principle is that (modified)
can operate within similar limits.
t
X
/< > /Cy
,
.... r -r-
free enterprise
'i-
�others.
In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of
proof to others.
It is worth remarking that harming others
in the restriction is narrower than a restriction to the
(usual) interests of others; it is not enough that it is in
my interests, because I detest you, that you stop breathing;
you are free to breathe, for the time being anyway, because
it does not harm me.
There remains a problem however as to
exactly what counts as harm or interference.
Moreover the
width of the principle is so far obscure because 'other' may
be filled out in significantly different ways:
it makes a
difference to the extent, and privilege, of the chauvinism
whether 'other' expands to 'other human' - which is too
restrictive - or to 'other person' or to 'other sentient
-hv
being'; and it makes a difference to the adequacy of the
principle, and inversely to its economic applicability, to
which class of others it is intended to apply, whether to
future as well as to present others, whether to remote future
others or only to non-discountable future others, and whether
to possible others.
The latter would make the principle
completely unworkable, and it is generally assumed that it
applies at most to present and future others,
7/v
It is taken for granted in designing counter examples
to basic chauvinist principles, that a semantical analysis
of permissibility and obligation statements stretches out
over ideal situations (which may be incomplete or even incon
sistent) , so that what is permissible holds in some ideal
situation, what is obligatory in every ideal situation, and
what is wrong is excluded in every ideal situation.
But the
main point to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is
that ethical principles if correct are universal and are
�assessed over the class of ideal situations.
(i)
The last man (or person)
surviving the collapse of the world system lays
about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every
The last man example.
living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if
you like, as at the best abattoirs) .
What he does
is quite permissible according to basic chauvinism,
but on environmental grounds what he does is wrong.
Moreover one does not have to be committed to esot
eric
values
to regard Mr. Last Man as behaving
badly (the reason being perhaps that radical thinking
and values have shifted in an environmental direction
in advance of corresponding shifts in the formulation
of fundamental evaluative principles).
(ii)
The last people example.
The last man example can
be broadened to the last people example.
We can
assume that they know they are the last people, e.g.
because they are aware that radiation effects have
blocked any chance of reproduction.
One considers
the last people in order to rule out the possibility
that what these people do harms or somehow physically
interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as
well consider science fiction cases where people
arrive at a new planet and destroy its ecosystems,
whether with good intentions such as perfecting the
planet for their ends and making it more fruitful
or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the
hell of it.
Let us assume that the last people are
very numerous.
They humanely exterminate every wild
�9.
animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they
put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and
all remaining forests disappear in favour of quarries
or plantations, and so on.
They may give various
familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is
the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are
simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it
is needed to keep the last people employed or occupied
so that they do not worry too much about their impending
extinctions.
On an environmental ethic the last
people have behaved badly; they have simplified and
largely destroyed all the natural ecosystems, and
with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and
largely wrecked place.
But this conduct may conform
with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with
the principles enjoined by the lesser traditions.
Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauv
inism may conflict with stewardship or co-operation
principles.
The conflict may be removed it seems by
conjoining a further proviso to the basic principle,
to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy
natural resources.
But as the last people do not
destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the
best of reasons", the variant is still environmentally
inadequate.
(iii)
The great entrepreneur example.
The last man example
can be adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3).
The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant
complex of automated factories and farms which he
�10.
proceeds to extend.
He produces automobiles among
other things, from renewable and recyclable resources
of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly
after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead
of putting them on the road for a short time as we
do.
Of course he has the best of reasons for his
activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product,
or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and
he will be increasing his own and general welfare
since he much prefers increased output and product
ivity.
The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly
thought to be quite fine and may even meet Pareto
optimality requirements given prevailing notions of
being "better off".
Just as we can extend the last man example
to a class of last people, so we can extend this
example to the industrial society example:
looks rather like
Civ)
the society
ours.
The vanishing species example. Consider the blue
whale, a mixed good on the economic picture. The
blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of
his qualities as a private good, as a source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue
whales does not harm the whalers; it does not harm or
physically interfere with others in any good sense,
though it may upset them and they may be prepared to
compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale
hunting be wilful destruction.
(Slightly different
examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the
�11.
blue whale example are provided by cases where a
species is eliminated or threatened through destruc
tion of its habitat by man's activity or the activ
ities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many plains-
dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.)
The behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this
magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite
permissible - at least according to basic chauvinism.
But on an environmental ethic it is not.
However the
free-market mechanism will not cease allocating
whalers to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environ
mental economics would; instead the market model will
grind inexorably
*
along the private demand curve until
the blue whale population is no longer viable - if
’r <
that point has not already been passed.
7/7 /
(U•
‘
In sum'
class of permissible actions that
/rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed
on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super
ethic.
But aren't environmentalists going too far in claim
ing that these people, those of the examples and respected
industrialists, fishermen and farmers are behaving, when
engaging in environmentally degrading activities of the
sort described, in a morally impermissible way?
these people do is
No, what
to a greater or lesser extent evil,
and hence in serious cases morally impermissible.
For example,
insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive
peoples who stand in the way of an industrial development is
morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is the
slaughter of the last remaining blue whales for private
profit.
But how to reformulate basic chauvinism as a
* For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained
in [3] .
�13.
/•~i'<'-^\,<
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<"-
capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no oblig
ation to abstain from) any action which is not one coercing or
restraining or designed to injure other persons'.
But this
sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on accepting
the very human chauvinist principle an environmental ethic rejects,
since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the
definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and
accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same
defective principle.
Accordingly an environmental ethic would
have to amend the classical notion of a natural right, a far from
straight forward matter now that human rights with respect to
animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect
to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major re-evaluation.
An environmental ethic
�14.
morally, through obligations
practically anything at all.
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions
which aim to make principles of conduct or reasonable economic
behaviour calculable is easily brought out.
These positions typ
ically employ a single criterion p, such as preference or happi
ness, as a summum banum; characteristically each individual of
some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps including future
humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in
question (e.g. of affairs, of the economy); then some principle is
supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual p rankings, and what is best or ought to be
done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under
the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule
utilitarianism, in terms of some optimization principle applied to
the collective ranking.
The species bias is transparent from the
selection of the base class.
And even if the base class is extended
to embrace persons, or even some animals (at the cost, like that of
including remotely future humans, of losing testability), the
positions are open to familiar criticism; namely that the whole of
the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust
principles.
For example if every member of the base class detests
dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes' behaviour,
ive
then by the Pareto ranking test the collect/ranking will rank states
where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will
generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the
evaluation of most Australian farmers anyway).
Likewise it would
just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective demand (hori
zontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy
with blue whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing
J
�15.
private whaling demands; for if no one in the base class happened
to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
"rational" economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent
their extinction.
Whether the blue whale survives should not have
to depend on what humans know or what they see on television.
Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide
a satisfactory basis for deciding on what is environmentally
desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not alone in
their species chauvinism; much the same applies to most going
meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories,
try to offer some rationale for their basic principles.
For
instance, on social contract positions obligations are a matter
of mutual agreements between individuals of the base class; on
a social justice picture rights and obligations spring from the
application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the
base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on
a Kantian position.which has some vogue-obligations somehow
arise from respect for members of the base class, persons.
In each case if members of the base class happen to be ill-
disposed to items outside the base class then that is too bad
for them; that is (rough) justice.
R. Routley
Australian National University
�REFERENCES
[1]
A. Leopold,
A Sand Country Almenac with other essays
on Conservation,
[2]
J. Passmore,
New York (196 6) .
Ecological Problems and Western Traditions
(unpublished).
[3]
P.W. Barkley and D.W. Seckier, Economic Growth and
Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the Problem,
New York (1972).
[4]
S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors),
Men and Morals.
hon-humans,
[5]
Animals,
An enquiry into the maltreatment of
London (1971).
H.L.A. Hart,
‘Are there any natural rights?',
reprinted in A. Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy,
Oxford (1967).
����The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Letter, S. I. Benn, Acting Head of Department of Philosophy to Dr. R. Rosenkrantz, Department
of Philosophy, University of South Caroline, 6 Sep 1973 re fellowship at the Research School of
Social Sciences, supervised by Richard Routley. (3 pages)
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�Is there a need for a new, an environmental, ethic?
§1.
It is increasingly said that civilization, Western
civilization at least, stands in need of a new ethic (and
derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's
relations to the natural environment, in Leopold’s words
’an ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the
animals and plants which grow upon it'
([1], p.238).
It
is not of course that old and prevailing ethics do not deal
with man's relation to nature:
they do, and on the prevailing
view man is free to deal with nature as he pleases, i.e. his
relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect
others, are not subject to moral censure.
such as
Thus assertions
Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees' are
significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least
as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are
false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense,
It is to this, to the values and evaluations
moral oojects.
*
of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact
take exception.
Leopold regards as subject to moral crit
icism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing views is morally
permissible.
But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that
such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics
and that an extension of traditional morality is required to
cover such cases,to fill a moral void.
If Leopold is right
in his criticism of prevailing conduct what is required is
a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations.
For as matters stand, as he himself explains, men do not feel
morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield,
and then move on; and such conduct is not taken to interfere
with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others.
'A
* A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house
* spirits.
�2.
fanner who clears the woods off a 75% slope, turns his
cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks,
and soil into the community creek, is still (if other
wise decent) a respected member of society.'
([1], p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such trad
itionally permissible conduct would be accounted morally
wrong, and the fanner subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose
of the argument.
What is not so clear is that a new ethic
is required even for such radical judgements.
For one thing
it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic,
much as it is often unclear whether a new development in
physics counts as a new physics or just as a modification
or extension of the old.
For, notoriously, ethics are not
clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the
application of identity criteria for ethics may remain
*
obscure.
Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of
ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental
principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain
ethic, which is an umbrella notion covering a cluster of
differing and even competing systems.
In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental
ethic, which might cater for the evaluations, namely that
of an extension or modification of the prevailing ethics
or that of the development of principles that are already
encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic.
The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be
incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within)
the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because
there isn't a single ethical system uniquely assumed in
* To the consternation no doubt of Quineans. But the fact
is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and
fragmentary systems the identity of which may be indeter
minate .
�3.
Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on
controversial issues such as infanticide, women's rights
and drugs, there are competing sets of principles.
Talk
of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a
sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing
ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
Indeed Passmore (in [2]) has mapped out three
important traditions in Western ethical views concerning
man's relation to nature? a dominant tradition, the despotic
position, with man as despot (or tyrant^ and two lesser
traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, ■
and tne co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor
are these the only traditions; primitivism is another, and
both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent
with an environmental ethic; for according to it nature is
the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he
pleases (since - at least on the mainstream Stoic - Augustine
view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environ
mental ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases,
it is not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic can
not be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of
the problem is that the lesser traditions are by no means
adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the
religious backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for
and responsible to?
However both traditions are inconsistent
with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of
complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic
some worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be
preserved *
rom substantial human interference, whether of
�4.
the "improving" sort or not.
Both traditions would in
fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces reshaped along
the lines of the tame and comfortable north-European small
farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative
position man's proper role is to develop, cultivate and
perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out
its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily
usefulness for human purposes; while on the stewardship
view man's role, like that of a farm manager, is to make
nature productive by his efforts though not by means that
will deliberately degrade its resources.
Although these
positions both depart from the dominant position in a way
which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of an
environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the
irresponsible farmer, they do not go far enough:
for in
the present situation of expanding populations confined to
finite natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the
perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thorough
going environmental ethic would reject, a principle of
total use, implying that every natural area should be culti
vated or otherwise used
*
for human ends, "humanized".
As the important Western traditions exclude an
environmental ethic, it would appear that such an ethic,
not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright,
h//
The matter is not so straightforward; for the dominant ethic
has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is
not always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically
interferes with others.
Maybe some such proviso was implicit
all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was
* If 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use
for preservation, this total use principle is rendered
inocuous at least as regards its actual effects. Note
that the total use principle is tied to the resource view
of nature.
�simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural
items would not affect others (the non-interference
assumption).
Be this as it may, the modified dominant
position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have
supplanted the dominant position; and the modified posi
tion can undoubtedly go much further towards an environ
mental ethic.
For example, the farmer's polluting of a
community stream may be ruled immoral on the grounds that
it physically interferes with others who use or would use
the stream. Likewise business enterprises which destroy
the natural environment for no satisfactory returns or which
cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans,
can be criticised on the sort of welfare basis (e.g. that
of(j[3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on.
The position may even serve to restrict the sort of family
size one is entitled to have since in a finite situation
excessive population levels will interfere with future people.
Nonetheless neither the modified dominant position nor its
Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser
traditions, is adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall
try to show.
A new ethic is wanted.
§2.
As we noticed (an) ethic is ambiguous, as between
a specific ethical system, a specific ethic, and a more generic
notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.
*
An ethical system S is, near enough, a propositional system
(i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which
includes (like individuals of a theory) a set of values
and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general evalu
ative judgements concerning conduct, typically of what is
obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rightsr what
* A meta-ethic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super
ethics, their features and fundamental notions.
�6.
is valued, and so forth.
A general or lawlike proposition
of a system is a principle; and certainly if systems Sj and
S2 contain different principles then they are different
systems.
It follows that any environmental ethic differs
from the important traditional ethics outlined.
Moreover
if environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems
on some core principle embedded in Western systems, then
these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming,
what seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised)
- in which case if an environmental ethic is needed then a
new ethic is wanted.
It suffices then to locate a core
principle and to provide environmental counter examples to
it.
It is commonly assumed that there are, what amount
to, core principles of Western ethical systems, principles
that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fair
ness principle inscribed in the Golden Rule provides one
example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core
principle, is the commonly formulated liberal principle of
the modified dominance position.
A recent formulation
*
runs
as follows ([3], p.58):
K^> AACC C-aU tv/'
i^/' of
O'f
speA
SPcP
yvxo &"(
The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds
that one should be able to do what he wishes, providing (1)
that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not likely
to harm himself irreparably.'
Let us call this principle basic (human) chauvinism - because
jlfjA-aw
itUU*
under it humans, or people, come first and everything else a
$4vM« *h
bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a
freedom principle because it gives permission to perform a
d(L<- tic.
tic. Cl-IK
Cl-ik
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�7.
others.
In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of
proof to others.
It is worth remarking that harming others
in the restriction is narrower than a restriction to the
(usual) interests of others; it is not enough that it is in
£my interests, because I detest you?, that you stop breathing «
I-
you are free to breathe , for the time being anyway, because
it does not harm me
There remains a problem however as to
exactly what counts as harm or interference
Moreover the
width of the principle is so far obscure because ’other' may
be filled out in significantly different ways: it makes a
difference to the extent, and privilege, of the chauvinism
•
t.
whether 'other' expands to 'other human' - which is too
^1- -fL 3^
- WAa-Zm
lullu
rfy - Ah. I W-tc
restrictive - <or to 'other person' or to 'other sentient
being'; and it makes a difference to the adequacy of the
principle, and inversely to its economic applicability, to
which class of others it is intended to apply, whether to
future as well as to present others, whether to remote future
others or only to non-discountable future others, and whether
to possible others,
The latter would make the principle
completely unworkable, and it is generally assumed that it
applies at most to present and future others.
It is taken for granted in designing counter examples
to basic chauvinist principles, that a semantical analysis
of permissibility and obligation statements stretches out
over ideal situations (which may be incomplete or even incon
sistent) , so that what is permissible holds in some ideal
situation, what is obligatory in every ideal situation, and
what is wrong is excluded in every ideal situation.
But the
main point to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is
that ethical principles if correct are universal and are
�8.
assessed over the class of ideal situations.
The last man example.
(1)
The last man (or person)
surviving the collapse of the world system lays
. .
--------.................................... I
about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every
living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly i
you like, as at the best abattoirs) . What he does
is quite permissible according to basic chauvinism,
) but on environmental grounds what he does is wrong.
Moreover one does not have to be committed to eso
values to regard Mr. Last Man as behaving
I badly (the reason being perhaps that radical thinking
‘r- l C-a values have shifted in an environ-nt.l direction
h-
■
eric
'°f -^responding shifts in the formulation
fundamental evaluative principles).
The last people example.
The last man example can
be broadened to the last people example. We can
assume that they know they are the last people, e.g.
because they are aware that radiation effects have
blocked any chance of reproduction. One const ers
the last people in order to rule out the posslbt 1 y
that what these people do harms or somehow physically
interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as
well consider science fiction cases where people
arrive at a new planet and destroy its ecosystems
whether with good intentions such as perfecting the
planet for their ends and making it more fruit.u
or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the
hell of it.
Let us assume that the last people are
very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild
4
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animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they
put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and
all remaining forests disappear in favour of quarries
or plantations, and so on. They may give various
V, familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is
the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are
simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it
is needed to keep the last people employed or occupied
so that they do not worry too much about their impending
extinctions.
On an environmental ethic the last
people have behaved badly; they have simplified and
KfalltL
largely destroyed all the natural ecosystems, and
with their demise the world will soon bean ugly and
largely wrecked place. But this conduct may conform
witlCthe^basic chauvinist principle, and as well with
jltZ -
/W's
the principles enjoined by the lesser traditions.
Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
foz‘
QC
Ko^r‘
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauv
1
ft/qh'a»4.
inism may conflict with stewardship or co-operation
principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by
conjoining a further proviso to the basic principle, b’J
to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy^
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A,
(.
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brovj^ rsuei
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£o loot e^>
K'oV«f^arjJ<
(lii)
?
But as_____________
the last people do not
natural resources.
--------------------------------------------- -------- —..... —
xO°V
' ! J
destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the
the variant is still environmentallW^,^
best of reasons",
inadequate.
The great entrepreneur example. The last man example
can be adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3) .
The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant,
S.sau<i
*/>'»'
\
v#' rei
complex of automated factories and farms which he
- <r>
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�10.
proceeds to extend.
He produces automobiles among
other things, from renewable and recyclable resources
of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly
after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead
of putting them on the road for a short time as we
do.
A
Of coarse he has the best of reasons for his
activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product,
or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and
he will be increasing his own and general welfare
CHvc
since he much prefers increased output and product
ka L■/
l^,(-
if-
A> p^i^ /?
* ’ gUV*
k'
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ivity.
The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
J
ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonlyj'bovtW',
thought to be quite fine and may even meet Pareto
optimality requirements given prevailing notions of
being "better off".
Just as we can extend the last man example
to a class of last people, so we can extend this
C^S/XU-i
example to the industrial society example:
looks rather like ours.
(iv)
The vanishing species example.
(,
J X «<
T 7/
vr
u*fl ^4/
’“fa *•
TafeTT
lQ w
the society
Consider the blue
whale, a mixed good on the economic picture.
The
J—
'
blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of
X
his qualities as a private good, as a source of valu-
able oil and meat.
The catching and marketing of blue
whales does not harm the whalers; it does not harm or
physically interfere with others in any good sense,
7
though it may upset them and they may be prepared to
compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale
hunting be wilful destruction.
(Slightly different
examples which eliminate the hunting aspect rf the
"C
V
'•S
M
'n
�11.
blue whale example are provided by cases where a
species is eliminated or threatened through destruc—
tion of its habitat by man's activity or the activ
ities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many plainsdwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.)
The behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this
magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite
permissible — at least according to basic chauvinism.
L-iUl
il~
Wk
&
But on an environmental ethic it is not.
However the
free-market mechanism will not cease allocating
whalers to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environ
mental economics would; instead the market model will
HL
ui
7?I
grind inexorably
*
along the private demand curve until
the blue whale population is no longer viable - if
a
n
a 2^ o>^.‘
I, fisKis
that point has not already been passed.
In sum, the class of permissible actions that
Ola
rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed
on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super
ethic. But aren't environmentalists going too far in claim
ing that these people, those of the examples and respected
industrialists, fishermen and farmers are behaving, when
engaging in environmentally degrading activities of the
sort described, in a morally impermissible way? No, what
these people do is
to a greater or lesser extent evil,
and hence in serious cases morally impermissible.
For example,
insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive
peoples who stand in the way of an industrial development is
morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is the
slaughter of the last remaining blue whales for private
profit.
But how to reformulate basic chauvinism as a
* For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained
in [ 3 ] .
�0
n ‘s
■UjK
,
i
111
„lth
... „„ r .=...
.J-
extending (2) to rnclu
.,question were they placed in
would be so affected by the action in
It may be preferand (3) to exclude speciej&de.
the environment
in vieW of the way the freedom
“J
ab le,
imply to scrap it altogether, and mate
proof, s of rights and permissible conduct, as in a b
classes
theory sometimes forces changes
§3
a radical change in a
rejects the Reference
in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which
a modification of the
Theory in a
Reference Theory and
usual -ta-tdef-eh^also^aeee
Jat simllt pheno^nCseens to occur in the case of a neta-
A somewhat s nxl
P
ethlc.
Quite apart from
ethl°de’“ several environmentally important notions, such as
introducing several
meta—
n 4.4™ arowth and preservation, for mec»
conservation, pollut^COTp^e-examinatlon
I
ethical analysis, an ,< of such characteristic(actions) as natural
and modified analyses
3 of obligation and
round of right, and of the relations
right■
may well require re-assessment of
permissibility to rights; it
notions as value and right, espectraditional analyses of such
on chauvinist assumptions; and it
ially where these are based
of the more prominent meta-ethical
forces the rejection of many
illustrated by a very brief exam
positions. These points are
then by a sketch of the
ination of accounts of nature^ right an
speciess bias of some major positions.
*
positions.
to defeating conditions
Hart (in [5]) accepts, subject
doctrine of natural rights
here irrelevant, the classical
which are
'anv adult human ■.•
to
which,
among
other
things,
according
are developed by those protesting about
points are oevei p
especially the essay s
Some of these
ltreatment of animals; see especial y
human ma
collected in [4] .
�9
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O
/<
A, °uf
13.
a
i, g>OT' ° >f
1
capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no oblig
ation to abstain from) any action which is not one coercing or
restraining or designed to injure other persons'.
But this
sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on accepting
the very human chauvinist principle an environmental ethic rejects,
since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the
definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and
accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same
defective principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would
have to amend the classical notion of a natural right, a far from
straight forward matter now that human rights with respect to
animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect
.. to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major re-evaluation.
An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view
that natural objects such as trees^have rights (though such a view
is occasionally held, e.g. by partheists.
since artefacts are not alive).
But p^/theism is false
For moral prohibitions forbidding
certairTactions with respect to an object do not award that object
a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given
tree or piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of
property has a correlative right not to be mutilated (without
seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views
can stick with mainstream theses according to which rights are
coupled with corresponding responsibilities and so with bearing
obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e.,
has a right also has responsibilities and thereat least , whatever____________
'J
fore obligations, and whatever has a right has interests, Thus
although any person may have a right by no means every living thing
can (significantly) have rights, and arguably most sentient objects
other than persons cannot have rights.
r \fhO<
*
But persons can relate
AT
***.
A-
*/Z
/»
A '^s" fa
. ... 8(^
�14.
morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth, to
practically anything at all.
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions
which aim to make principles of conduct or reasonable economic
behaviour calculable is easily brought out.
These positions typ
ically employ a single criterion p, such as preference or happi
ness, as a summum bgnum; characteristically each individual of
soine base class, almost always humans, but perhaps including future
humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in
question (e.g. of affairs, of the economy); then some principle is
supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual p rankings, and what is best or ought to be
done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under
the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule
utilitarianism, in terms of some optimization principle applied to
The species bias is transparent from the
the collective ranking.
selection of the base class.
And even if the base class is extended
to embrace persons, or even some animals (at the cost, like that of
including remotely future humans, of losing testability), the
positions are open to familiar criticism; namely that the whole of
the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust
principles.
For example if every member of the base class detests
dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes’ behaviour,
ive
then by the Pareto ranking test the collect/ranking will rank states
where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will
generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the
evaluation of most Australian farmers anyway).
Likewise it would
just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective demand (hori
zontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy
with blue whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing
*
�b'v
d(k^
V10'"
hU
•x'5
5
15.
oP ,
X»
private whaling demands; for if no one in the base class happened
to kr^ow that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
"rational" economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent
their extinction.
Whether the blue whale survives should not have
to depend on what humans know or what they see on television.
Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide
a satisfactory basis for deciding on what is environmentally
desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not alone in
their species chauvinism; much the same applies to most going
meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories,
try to offer some rationale for their basic principles.
For
instance, on social contract positions obligations are a matter
of mutual agreements between individuals of .the base class; on
a social justice picture rights and obligations spring from the
application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the
base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on
a Kantian position which has some vogue obligations somehow
arise from respect for members of the base class, persons.
In each case if members of the base class happen to be ill-
disposed to items outside the base class then that is too bad
for them: that is
R. Routley
(rough) justice.
Australian National University
�REFERENCES
[1]
A. Leopold,
A Sand Country Almenac with other essays
on Conservation,
New York (1966) .
[2]
J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions
(unpublished).
[3]
P.W. Barkley and D.W. Seckier,
Environmental Decay.
New York (1972).
[4]
The Solution becomes the Problem,
S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors),
Men and Morals.
hon-humans,
[5]
Economic Growth and
H.L.A. Hart,
An enquiry into the maltreatment of
London (1971) .
'Are there any natural rights?',
reprinted in A. Quinton (editor),
Oxford (1967).
Animals,
Political Philosophy,
�The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of
conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions
typically employ a single criterion p, such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum;
characteristically each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps including
future humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, Of
the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual prankings, and what is best or ought to be done is determined either directly, as
in act-utilitarianism under the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism,
in terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking. The species bias is
transparent from the selection of the base class. And even if the base class is extended to embrace
persons, or even some animals (at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that-the whole of the base class may
be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust principles. For example if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes’ behaviour, then by the Pareto
ranking test the collective ranking will rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly,
from which it will generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the evaluation of
most Australian farmers anyway). Likewise it would just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective
demand (horizontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy with blue
whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in
the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
“rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the
blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi
sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for
deciding on what is environmentally desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not aione in their species chauvinism; much the
same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer
some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a
matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the base class; on a social justice picture rights
and obligations spring from the application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the
base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on a Kantian position which has some
vigue obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the base class, persons. In each case
if members of the base class happen to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class then that is
too bad for them: that is (rough) justice.
/
REFERENCES
1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966).
2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished).
3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the
Problem, New York (1972).
4. S. and R.Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), Animals, Men and Morals. An enquiry into the maltreatment
of non-humans, London (1971).
5. H.L.A.Hart, ‘Are there any natural rights?’, reprinted in A.Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy, Oxford
(1967).
�§ 3. A radical change in a teory sometimes forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which
rejects the Reference Theory in a thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for
logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a
meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmen
tally important notions, such as conservation, pollution, growth and preservation,for meta-ethical
analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such
characteristic actions as natural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and permissibility to rights; it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as
XT
value and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejec
tion of many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a very
brief examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some *
6
major positions.7
A
Hart (in [5]) accepts, subject to defeating conditions which are here irrelevant, the classical
doctrine of natural rights according to which, among other things, ‘any adult human . . . capable of
choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons’. But this sufficient condition for a
human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an environmental
ethic rejects, since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the definition of a natural
right adopted by classical theorists and accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes *
the same defective principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right, a farzfrom straight forward matter now that human rights with'
respect to animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect to slaves not all that
long ago, undergoing major re-evaluation.
An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees
have rights (though such a view is occasionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since
artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object
do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or
piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right not to be
mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with
mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and
so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever
has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has in
terests. Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can
(significantly) have rights, and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have
rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth, to practically
anything at all.
H Some of these points are developed by those protesting about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays
collected in [4]
�/§ 2. As we noticed (an) ethic is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a specific ethic,
and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S
3 If ‘use’ is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least
as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use principle is tied to the resource view of nature
4 A meta-ethic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions
is, near enough, a propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in
cludes (like individuals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general
evaluative judgements concerning conduct, typically of what is obligatory, permissible and wrong,
of what are rights, what is valued, and so forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a
principle; and certainly if systems Sj and S2contain different principles, then they are different
systems. It follows that any environmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlin
ed. Moreover if environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principle
embedded in Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming,
what seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) — in which case if an environmental
ethic is needed then a new ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environmental counter examples to it.
It is commonly assumed that there are. what amount to, core principles of Western ethical
systems, principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed
in the Golden Rule provides one example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core principle,
is the commonly formulated liberal principle of the modified dominance position. A recent for
mulation5 runs as follows ( [31, p. 58):
’The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that one should be able to do what he
wishes, providing (1) that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not likely to harm himself
irreparably.’
Let us call this principle basic (human) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people,
come first and everything else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom
principle because it gives permission to perform a wide range of actions (including actions which
mess up the environment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to
cunningly shift the onus of proof to others. It is worth remarking that harming others in the restric
tion is narrower than a restriction to the (usual) interests of others; it is not enough that it is in my
interests, because I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being t
anywav, because it does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to exactly what counts
as harm or interference. Moreover the width of the principle is so far obscure because ‘other’ may
be filled out in significantly different ways: it makes a difference to the extent, and privilege, of the
chauvinism whethe^ ‘other’ expands to ‘other human’ - which is too restrictive - or to ‘other’person’ or to ‘other’seritient being’; and it makes a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and in
versely to its economic applicability, to which class of others it is intended to apply, whether to
future as well as to present others, whether to remote future others or only to non-discountable
future others, and whether to possible others. The latter would make the principle completely un
workable, and it is generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others.
It is taken for granted in designing counter examples to basic chauvinist principles, that a
semantical analysis of permissibility and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations *
(which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some ideal
situation, what is obligatory in every ideal situation, and what is wrong is excluded in every ideal
situation. But the main point to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles
if correct are universal and are assessed over the class of ideal situations.
(i)
The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system
lays about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if
you like, as at the best abattoirs). What he does is quite permissible according to basic chauvinism,
but on environmental grounds what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be commit
ted to esoteric values to regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that ra
dical thinking and values have shifted in an environmental direction in advance of corresponding
shifts in the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
(ii) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example.
We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation
effects have blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rule out
the possibility that what these people do harms or somehow physically interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as well consider science fiction cases where peonle arrive at a new planet and
5 A related principle is that (modified) free enterprise can operate v. ithin similar limits
�destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild
animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation,
and all remaining forests disappear in favour of quarries or plantations, and so on. They may give
various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they
are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or
occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an en
vironmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; they have simplified and largely destroyed
all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wreck
ed place. But this conduct may conform with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the
principles enjoined by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or co
operation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the
basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last
people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons”, the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and
farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable
and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture
and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of
course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is
improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since he
much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur’s behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better off’.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this ex
ample to the Industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours.
(iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic pic
ture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up
set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hun
ting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the
blue whale example are provided by cases where a species is eliminated or threatened through
destruction of its habitat by man’s activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The behaviour of the whalers in
eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite permissible-at least according to
basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not. However the free-market mechanism will
not cease allocating whalep to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics
would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the
blue whale population is no longer viable-if that point has not already been passed.
In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment is more narrowly
circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren’t en
vironmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respected in
dustrialists, fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading ac
tivities of the sort described, in a morally impermissible way? No, what these people do is to a
greater or lesser extent evil, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible. For example, insofar
as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who stand in the way of an industrial
development is morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is the slaughter of the last remain
ing blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvinism as a satisfactory
6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in [3]
freedom principle is a more difficult matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be
made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by
the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude specieside. It may be
preferable, in view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof, simply to scrap it
altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct, as in a bill of rights.
�CJ\^<.
& ’
�§ 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new
ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people’s relations to the natural environ
ment, in Leopold’s words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and
plants which grow upon it’ ([1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling ethics do not deal
with man’s relation to nature: they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as
he pleases, i.e. his relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect others, are not subject
to moral censure. Thus assertions such as ‘Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees’ are
significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least as Crusoe’s actions do not interfere with
others, they are false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.1 It is to
this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex
ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing
views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is
beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void. If Leopold is right in his criticism of prevailing conduct
what is required is a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations. For as matters stand,
as he himself explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not
taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the
woods off a 75% slope,turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall,rocks, andsoil into
the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society.’ ([1]), p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be
accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a
new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing it is none too clear what is
going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics
counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics
may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a
1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits
- To the consternation modoubt of Quineans. But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary
systems the identity of which may be indeterminate
205
�single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on
controversial issues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin
ciples. Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a
uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
Indeed Passmore (in [2]) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is
another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according
to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the
mainstream Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental
ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious
backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference,
whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserv
ed from substantial human interference, whether of the “improving” sort or not. Both traditions
would in fact prefer to see the earth’s land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and com
fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man's proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; while on
the stewardship view man’s role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his
efforts though not by means that wiil deliberately degrade its resources. Although these positions
both depart from the dominant position in a way which enables the incorporation of some
evaluations of an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible farmer, they
do not go far enough: for in the present situation of expanding populations confined to finite
natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a
principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used3 for
human ends, “humanized”.
As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that
such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so
straightforward; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is not
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such
proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assump
tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have
supplanted the dominant position; and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further
towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer’s polluting of a community stream may
be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream. Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory
returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the
sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The posi
tion may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa
tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted.
�
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Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia
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-125
TABLE 2.
Populations of Australia at 2040 under
various assumptions as to population at
2000 and various growth rates.
Population in
Hypothesis as
Population in
millions at 2000
to growth rate
millions at 2040
more \
likely) •'
range /'
17-3
1.1% from 1970
26.8
17.8
1.2% from 1970
28.7
18.9
1.1% from 2000
29.2
18.9
1.2% from 2000
30.4
20.0
1.1% from 2000
30.9
20.0
1.2% from 2000
32.2
21.0
1.1% from 2000
32.5
21.0
1.2% from 2000
33.8
21.0
1.4% from 2000
36.6
22.0
1.7% from 2000
38.2
22.0
1.5% from 2000
39.6
22.4
1.87% from 2000
46.99
probable
range
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The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Letter, Dick Coutinho, Royal Vangorcum to Dr Richard Routley, Australian National University,
1974? re Routhley's manuscript on environmental ethics. (1 leaf)
u*^
•f-—
Is there a need for a new, an environmental, ethic?
§1.
It is increasingly said that civilization, Western
civilization at least, stands in need of a new ethic (and
derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's
relations to the natural environment, in Leopold's words
'an ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the
animals and plants which grow upon it'
([1], p.238).
It
is not of course that old and prevailing ethics do not deal
with man's relation to nature:
they do, and on the prevailing
view man is free to deal with nature as he pleases, i.e. his
relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect
others, are not subject to moral censure.
Thus assertions
such as 'Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees' are
significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least
as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are
false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense,
It is to this, to the values and evaluations
moral objects.
*
of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact
take exception.
Leopold regards as subject to moral crit
icism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing views is morally
permissible.
But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that
such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics
and that an extension of traditional morality is required to
cover such cases,to fill a moral void.
If Leopold is right
in his criticism of prevailing conduct what is required is
a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations.
For as matters stand, as he himself explains, men do not feel
morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield,
and then move on; and such conduct is not taken to interfere
with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others.
'A
* A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house
spirits.
2
farmer who clears the woods off a 75% slope, turns his
cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks,
and soil into the community creek, is still (if other
wise decent) a respected member of society.'
([1], p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such trad
itionally permissible conduct would be accounted morally
wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose
What is not so clear is that a new ethic
is required even for such radical judgements.
For one thing
of the argument.
it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic,
much as it is often unclear whether a new development in
physics counts as a new physics or just as a modification
or extension of the old.
For, notoriously, ethics are not
clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the
application of identity criteria for ethics may remain
*
obscure.
Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of
ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental
principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain
ethic, which is an umbrella notion covering a cluster of
differing and even competing systems.
In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental
ethic, which might cater for the evaluations, namely that
of an extension or modification of the prevailing ethics
or that of the development of principles that are already
encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic.
The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be
incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within)
the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because
there isn't a single ethical system uniquely assumed in
* To the consternation no doubt of Quineans.
But the fact
is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and
fragmentary systems the identity of which may be indeter
minate .
3.
Western civilization:
on many issues, and especially on
controversial issues such as infanticide, women's rights
and drugs, there are competing sets of principles.
Talk
of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a
sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing
ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
Indeed Passmore (in [2]) has mapped out three
important traditions in Western ethical views concerning
man's relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic
position, with man as despot (or tyrant), and two lesser
traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian,
and the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor
are these the only traditions; primitivism is another, and
both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent
with an environmental ethic; for according to it nature is
the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he
pleases (since - at least on the mainstream Stoic - Augustine
view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environ
mental ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases.
But
it is not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic can
*
not be coupled with one of the lesser traditions.
Part of
the problem is that the lesser traditions are by no means
adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the
religious backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for
and responsible to?
However both traditions are inconsistent
with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of
complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic
some worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be
preserved from substantial human interference, whether of
4.
the "improving" sort or not.
Both traditions would in
fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces reshaped along
the lines of the tame and comfortable north-European small
farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative
position man's proper role is to develop, cultivate and
perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out
its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily
usefulness for human purposes; while on the stewardship
view man's role, like that of a farm manager, is to make
nature productive by his efforts though not by means that
will deliberately degrade its resources.
Although these
positions both depart from the dominant position in a way
which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of an
environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the
irresponsible farmer, they do not go far enough:
for in
the present situation of expanding populations confined to
finite natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the
perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thorough
going environmental ethic would reject, a principle of
total use, implying that every natural area should be culti
vated or otherwise used
*
for human ends, "humanized".
As the important Western traditions exclude an
environmental ethic, it would appear that such an ethic,
not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright.
The matter is not so straightforward; for the dominant ethic
has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is
not always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically
interferes with others.
Maybe some such proviso was implicit
all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was
* If 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use
for preservation, this total use principle is rendered
inocuous at least as regards its actual effects. Note
that the total use principle is tied to the resource view
of nature.
simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural
items would not affect others (the non-interference
assumption).
Be this as it may, the modified dominant
position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have
supplanted the dominant position; and the modified posi
tion can undoubtedly go much further towards an environ
mental ethic.
For example, the farmer's polluting of a
community stream may be ruled immoral on the grounds that
it physically interferes with others who use or would use
the stream.
Likewise business enterprises which destroy
the natural environment for no satisfactory returns or which
cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans,
can be criticised on the sort of welfare basis (e.g. that
of [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on.
The position may even serve to restrict the sort of family
size one is entitled to have since in a finite situation
excessive population levels will interfere with future people.
Nontheless neither the modified dominant position nor its
Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser
traditions, is adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall
A new ethic is wanted.
e
As we noticed (an) ethic is ambiguous, as between
try to show.
§2.
a specific ethical system, a specific ethic, and a more generic
notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.
*
An ethical system S is, near enough, a propositional system
(i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which
includes (like individuals of a theory) a set of values
and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general evalu
ative judgements concerning conduct, typically of what is
obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rights^what
* A meta-ethic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super
ethics, their features and fundamental notions.
6.
is valued, and so forth.
A general or lawlike proposition
of a system is a principle; and certainly if systems S| and
S2 contain different principles then they are different
systems.
It follows that any environmental ethic differs
from the important traditional ethics outlined.
Moreover
if environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems
on some core principle embedded in Western systems, then
these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming,
what seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised)
- in which case if an environmental ethic is needed then a
new ethic is wanted.
It suffices then to locate a core
principle and to provide environmental counter examples to
it.
It is commonly assumed that there are, what amount
to, core principles of Western ethical systems, principles
that will accordingly belong to the super ethic.
The fair-
ness principle inscribed in the Golden Rule provides one
example.
Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core
principle, is the commonly formulated liberal principle of
4- A'/Z
the modified dominance position:.
A recent formulation
*
runs
as follows ([3], p.58):
'The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds
that one should be able to do what he wishesproviding (1)
that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not likely
to harm himself irreparably.'
Let us call this principle basic (human) chauvinism -because
under it humans, or people, come first and everything else a
bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a
freedom principle because it gives permission to perform a
wide range of actions (including actions which mess up the
environment and natural things) providing they do not harm
* A related principle is that (modified)
can operate within similar limits.
t
X
/< > /Cy
,
.... r -r-
free enterprise
'i-
others.
In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of
proof to others.
It is worth remarking that harming others
in the restriction is narrower than a restriction to the
(usual) interests of others; it is not enough that it is in
my interests, because I detest you, that you stop breathing;
you are free to breathe, for the time being anyway, because
it does not harm me.
There remains a problem however as to
exactly what counts as harm or interference.
Moreover the
width of the principle is so far obscure because 'other' may
be filled out in significantly different ways:
it makes a
difference to the extent, and privilege, of the chauvinism
whether 'other' expands to 'other human' - which is too
restrictive - or to 'other person' or to 'other sentient
-hv
being'; and it makes a difference to the adequacy of the
principle, and inversely to its economic applicability, to
which class of others it is intended to apply, whether to
future as well as to present others, whether to remote future
others or only to non-discountable future others, and whether
to possible others.
The latter would make the principle
completely unworkable, and it is generally assumed that it
applies at most to present and future others,
7/v
It is taken for granted in designing counter examples
to basic chauvinist principles, that a semantical analysis
of permissibility and obligation statements stretches out
over ideal situations (which may be incomplete or even incon
sistent) , so that what is permissible holds in some ideal
situation, what is obligatory in every ideal situation, and
what is wrong is excluded in every ideal situation.
But the
main point to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is
that ethical principles if correct are universal and are
assessed over the class of ideal situations.
(i)
The last man (or person)
surviving the collapse of the world system lays
about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every
The last man example.
living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if
you like, as at the best abattoirs) .
What he does
is quite permissible according to basic chauvinism,
but on environmental grounds what he does is wrong.
Moreover one does not have to be committed to esot
eric
values
to regard Mr. Last Man as behaving
badly (the reason being perhaps that radical thinking
and values have shifted in an environmental direction
in advance of corresponding shifts in the formulation
of fundamental evaluative principles).
(ii)
The last people example.
The last man example can
be broadened to the last people example.
We can
assume that they know they are the last people, e.g.
because they are aware that radiation effects have
blocked any chance of reproduction.
One considers
the last people in order to rule out the possibility
that what these people do harms or somehow physically
interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as
well consider science fiction cases where people
arrive at a new planet and destroy its ecosystems,
whether with good intentions such as perfecting the
planet for their ends and making it more fruitful
or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the
hell of it.
Let us assume that the last people are
very numerous.
They humanely exterminate every wild
9.
animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they
put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and
all remaining forests disappear in favour of quarries
or plantations, and so on.
They may give various
familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is
the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are
simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it
is needed to keep the last people employed or occupied
so that they do not worry too much about their impending
extinctions.
On an environmental ethic the last
people have behaved badly; they have simplified and
largely destroyed all the natural ecosystems, and
with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and
largely wrecked place.
But this conduct may conform
with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with
the principles enjoined by the lesser traditions.
Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauv
inism may conflict with stewardship or co-operation
principles.
The conflict may be removed it seems by
conjoining a further proviso to the basic principle,
to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy
natural resources.
But as the last people do not
destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the
best of reasons", the variant is still environmentally
inadequate.
(iii)
The great entrepreneur example.
The last man example
can be adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3).
The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant
complex of automated factories and farms which he
10.
proceeds to extend.
He produces automobiles among
other things, from renewable and recyclable resources
of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly
after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead
of putting them on the road for a short time as we
do.
Of course he has the best of reasons for his
activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product,
or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and
he will be increasing his own and general welfare
since he much prefers increased output and product
ivity.
The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly
thought to be quite fine and may even meet Pareto
optimality requirements given prevailing notions of
being "better off".
Just as we can extend the last man example
to a class of last people, so we can extend this
example to the industrial society example:
looks rather like
Civ)
the society
ours.
The vanishing species example. Consider the blue
whale, a mixed good on the economic picture. The
blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of
his qualities as a private good, as a source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue
whales does not harm the whalers; it does not harm or
physically interfere with others in any good sense,
though it may upset them and they may be prepared to
compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale
hunting be wilful destruction.
(Slightly different
examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the
11.
blue whale example are provided by cases where a
species is eliminated or threatened through destruc
tion of its habitat by man's activity or the activ
ities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many plains-
dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.)
The behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this
magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite
permissible - at least according to basic chauvinism.
But on an environmental ethic it is not.
However the
free-market mechanism will not cease allocating
whalers to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environ
mental economics would; instead the market model will
grind inexorably
*
along the private demand curve until
the blue whale population is no longer viable - if
’r <
that point has not already been passed.
7/7 /
(U•
‘
In sum'
class of permissible actions that
/rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed
on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super
ethic.
But aren't environmentalists going too far in claim
ing that these people, those of the examples and respected
industrialists, fishermen and farmers are behaving, when
engaging in environmentally degrading activities of the
sort described, in a morally impermissible way?
these people do is
No, what
to a greater or lesser extent evil,
and hence in serious cases morally impermissible.
For example,
insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive
peoples who stand in the way of an industrial development is
morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is the
slaughter of the last remaining blue whales for private
profit.
But how to reformulate basic chauvinism as a
* For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained
in [3] .
13.
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capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no oblig
ation to abstain from) any action which is not one coercing or
restraining or designed to injure other persons'.
But this
sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on accepting
the very human chauvinist principle an environmental ethic rejects,
since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the
definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and
accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same
defective principle.
Accordingly an environmental ethic would
have to amend the classical notion of a natural right, a far from
straight forward matter now that human rights with respect to
animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect
to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major re-evaluation.
An environmental ethic
14.
morally, through obligations
practically anything at all.
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions
which aim to make principles of conduct or reasonable economic
behaviour calculable is easily brought out.
These positions typ
ically employ a single criterion p, such as preference or happi
ness, as a summum banum; characteristically each individual of
some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps including future
humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in
question (e.g. of affairs, of the economy); then some principle is
supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual p rankings, and what is best or ought to be
done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under
the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule
utilitarianism, in terms of some optimization principle applied to
the collective ranking.
The species bias is transparent from the
selection of the base class.
And even if the base class is extended
to embrace persons, or even some animals (at the cost, like that of
including remotely future humans, of losing testability), the
positions are open to familiar criticism; namely that the whole of
the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust
principles.
For example if every member of the base class detests
dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes' behaviour,
ive
then by the Pareto ranking test the collect/ranking will rank states
where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will
generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the
evaluation of most Australian farmers anyway).
Likewise it would
just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective demand (hori
zontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy
with blue whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing
J
15.
private whaling demands; for if no one in the base class happened
to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
"rational" economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent
their extinction.
Whether the blue whale survives should not have
to depend on what humans know or what they see on television.
Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide
a satisfactory basis for deciding on what is environmentally
desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not alone in
their species chauvinism; much the same applies to most going
meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories,
try to offer some rationale for their basic principles.
For
instance, on social contract positions obligations are a matter
of mutual agreements between individuals of the base class; on
a social justice picture rights and obligations spring from the
application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the
base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on
a Kantian position.which has some vogue-obligations somehow
arise from respect for members of the base class, persons.
In each case if members of the base class happen to be ill-
disposed to items outside the base class then that is too bad
for them; that is (rough) justice.
R. Routley
Australian National University
REFERENCES
[1]
A. Leopold,
A Sand Country Almenac with other essays
on Conservation,
[2]
J. Passmore,
New York (196 6) .
Ecological Problems and Western Traditions
(unpublished).
[3]
P.W. Barkley and D.W. Seckier, Economic Growth and
Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the Problem,
New York (1972).
[4]
S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors),
Men and Morals.
hon-humans,
[5]
Animals,
An enquiry into the maltreatment of
London (1971).
H.L.A. Hart,
‘Are there any natural rights?',
reprinted in A. Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy,
Oxford (1967).
The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Letter, S. I. Benn, Acting Head of Department of Philosophy to Dr. R. Rosenkrantz, Department
of Philosophy, University of South Caroline, 6 Sep 1973 re fellowship at the Research School of
Social Sciences, supervised by Richard Routley. (3 pages)
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Is there a need for a new, an environmental, ethic?
§1.
It is increasingly said that civilization, Western
civilization at least, stands in need of a new ethic (and
derivatively of a new economics) setting out people's
relations to the natural environment, in Leopold’s words
’an ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the
animals and plants which grow upon it'
([1], p.238).
It
is not of course that old and prevailing ethics do not deal
with man's relation to nature:
they do, and on the prevailing
view man is free to deal with nature as he pleases, i.e. his
relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect
others, are not subject to moral censure.
such as
Thus assertions
Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees' are
significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least
as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are
false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense,
It is to this, to the values and evaluations
moral oojects.
*
of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact
take exception.
Leopold regards as subject to moral crit
icism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing views is morally
permissible.
But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that
such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics
and that an extension of traditional morality is required to
cover such cases,to fill a moral void.
If Leopold is right
in his criticism of prevailing conduct what is required is
a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations.
For as matters stand, as he himself explains, men do not feel
morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield,
and then move on; and such conduct is not taken to interfere
with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others.
'A
* A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house
* spirits.
2.
fanner who clears the woods off a 75% slope, turns his
cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks,
and soil into the community creek, is still (if other
wise decent) a respected member of society.'
([1], p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such trad
itionally permissible conduct would be accounted morally
wrong, and the fanner subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose
of the argument.
What is not so clear is that a new ethic
is required even for such radical judgements.
For one thing
it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic,
much as it is often unclear whether a new development in
physics counts as a new physics or just as a modification
or extension of the old.
For, notoriously, ethics are not
clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the
application of identity criteria for ethics may remain
*
obscure.
Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of
ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental
principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain
ethic, which is an umbrella notion covering a cluster of
differing and even competing systems.
In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental
ethic, which might cater for the evaluations, namely that
of an extension or modification of the prevailing ethics
or that of the development of principles that are already
encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic.
The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be
incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within)
the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because
there isn't a single ethical system uniquely assumed in
* To the consternation no doubt of Quineans. But the fact
is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and
fragmentary systems the identity of which may be indeter
minate .
3.
Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on
controversial issues such as infanticide, women's rights
and drugs, there are competing sets of principles.
Talk
of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a
sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing
ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
Indeed Passmore (in [2]) has mapped out three
important traditions in Western ethical views concerning
man's relation to nature? a dominant tradition, the despotic
position, with man as despot (or tyrant^ and two lesser
traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, ■
and tne co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor
are these the only traditions; primitivism is another, and
both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent
with an environmental ethic; for according to it nature is
the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he
pleases (since - at least on the mainstream Stoic - Augustine
view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environ
mental ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases,
it is not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic can
not be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of
the problem is that the lesser traditions are by no means
adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the
religious backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for
and responsible to?
However both traditions are inconsistent
with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of
complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic
some worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be
preserved *
rom substantial human interference, whether of
4.
the "improving" sort or not.
Both traditions would in
fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces reshaped along
the lines of the tame and comfortable north-European small
farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative
position man's proper role is to develop, cultivate and
perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out
its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily
usefulness for human purposes; while on the stewardship
view man's role, like that of a farm manager, is to make
nature productive by his efforts though not by means that
will deliberately degrade its resources.
Although these
positions both depart from the dominant position in a way
which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of an
environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the
irresponsible farmer, they do not go far enough:
for in
the present situation of expanding populations confined to
finite natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the
perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thorough
going environmental ethic would reject, a principle of
total use, implying that every natural area should be culti
vated or otherwise used
*
for human ends, "humanized".
As the important Western traditions exclude an
environmental ethic, it would appear that such an ethic,
not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright,
h//
The matter is not so straightforward; for the dominant ethic
has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is
not always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically
interferes with others.
Maybe some such proviso was implicit
all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was
* If 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use
for preservation, this total use principle is rendered
inocuous at least as regards its actual effects. Note
that the total use principle is tied to the resource view
of nature.
simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural
items would not affect others (the non-interference
assumption).
Be this as it may, the modified dominant
position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have
supplanted the dominant position; and the modified posi
tion can undoubtedly go much further towards an environ
mental ethic.
For example, the farmer's polluting of a
community stream may be ruled immoral on the grounds that
it physically interferes with others who use or would use
the stream. Likewise business enterprises which destroy
the natural environment for no satisfactory returns or which
cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans,
can be criticised on the sort of welfare basis (e.g. that
of(j[3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on.
The position may even serve to restrict the sort of family
size one is entitled to have since in a finite situation
excessive population levels will interfere with future people.
Nonetheless neither the modified dominant position nor its
Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser
traditions, is adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall
try to show.
A new ethic is wanted.
§2.
As we noticed (an) ethic is ambiguous, as between
a specific ethical system, a specific ethic, and a more generic
notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.
*
An ethical system S is, near enough, a propositional system
(i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which
includes (like individuals of a theory) a set of values
and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general evalu
ative judgements concerning conduct, typically of what is
obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rightsr what
* A meta-ethic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super
ethics, their features and fundamental notions.
6.
is valued, and so forth.
A general or lawlike proposition
of a system is a principle; and certainly if systems Sj and
S2 contain different principles then they are different
systems.
It follows that any environmental ethic differs
from the important traditional ethics outlined.
Moreover
if environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems
on some core principle embedded in Western systems, then
these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming,
what seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised)
- in which case if an environmental ethic is needed then a
new ethic is wanted.
It suffices then to locate a core
principle and to provide environmental counter examples to
it.
It is commonly assumed that there are, what amount
to, core principles of Western ethical systems, principles
that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fair
ness principle inscribed in the Golden Rule provides one
example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core
principle, is the commonly formulated liberal principle of
the modified dominance position.
A recent formulation
*
runs
as follows ([3], p.58):
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The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds
that one should be able to do what he wishes, providing (1)
that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not likely
to harm himself irreparably.'
Let us call this principle basic (human) chauvinism - because
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under it humans, or people, come first and everything else a
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bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a
freedom principle because it gives permission to perform a
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others.
In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of
proof to others.
It is worth remarking that harming others
in the restriction is narrower than a restriction to the
(usual) interests of others; it is not enough that it is in
£my interests, because I detest you?, that you stop breathing «
I-
you are free to breathe , for the time being anyway, because
it does not harm me
There remains a problem however as to
exactly what counts as harm or interference
Moreover the
width of the principle is so far obscure because ’other' may
be filled out in significantly different ways: it makes a
difference to the extent, and privilege, of the chauvinism
•
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whether 'other' expands to 'other human' - which is too
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restrictive - <or to 'other person' or to 'other sentient
being'; and it makes a difference to the adequacy of the
principle, and inversely to its economic applicability, to
which class of others it is intended to apply, whether to
future as well as to present others, whether to remote future
others or only to non-discountable future others, and whether
to possible others,
The latter would make the principle
completely unworkable, and it is generally assumed that it
applies at most to present and future others.
It is taken for granted in designing counter examples
to basic chauvinist principles, that a semantical analysis
of permissibility and obligation statements stretches out
over ideal situations (which may be incomplete or even incon
sistent) , so that what is permissible holds in some ideal
situation, what is obligatory in every ideal situation, and
what is wrong is excluded in every ideal situation.
But the
main point to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is
that ethical principles if correct are universal and are
8.
assessed over the class of ideal situations.
The last man example.
(1)
The last man (or person)
surviving the collapse of the world system lays
. .
--------.................................... I
about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every
living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly i
you like, as at the best abattoirs) . What he does
is quite permissible according to basic chauvinism,
) but on environmental grounds what he does is wrong.
Moreover one does not have to be committed to eso
values to regard Mr. Last Man as behaving
I badly (the reason being perhaps that radical thinking
‘r- l C-a values have shifted in an environ-nt.l direction
h-
■
eric
'°f -^responding shifts in the formulation
fundamental evaluative principles).
The last people example.
The last man example can
be broadened to the last people example. We can
assume that they know they are the last people, e.g.
because they are aware that radiation effects have
blocked any chance of reproduction. One const ers
the last people in order to rule out the posslbt 1 y
that what these people do harms or somehow physically
interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as
well consider science fiction cases where people
arrive at a new planet and destroy its ecosystems
whether with good intentions such as perfecting the
planet for their ends and making it more fruit.u
or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the
hell of it.
Let us assume that the last people are
very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild
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animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they
put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and
all remaining forests disappear in favour of quarries
or plantations, and so on. They may give various
V, familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is
the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are
simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it
is needed to keep the last people employed or occupied
so that they do not worry too much about their impending
extinctions.
On an environmental ethic the last
people have behaved badly; they have simplified and
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largely destroyed all the natural ecosystems, and
with their demise the world will soon bean ugly and
largely wrecked place. But this conduct may conform
witlCthe^basic chauvinist principle, and as well with
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the principles enjoined by the lesser traditions.
Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
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because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauv
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inism may conflict with stewardship or co-operation
principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by
conjoining a further proviso to the basic principle, b’J
to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy^
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But as_____________
the last people do not
natural resources.
--------------------------------------------- -------- —..... —
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destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the
the variant is still environmentallW^,^
best of reasons",
inadequate.
The great entrepreneur example. The last man example
can be adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3) .
The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant,
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complex of automated factories and farms which he
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10.
proceeds to extend.
He produces automobiles among
other things, from renewable and recyclable resources
of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly
after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead
of putting them on the road for a short time as we
do.
A
Of coarse he has the best of reasons for his
activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product,
or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and
he will be increasing his own and general welfare
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since he much prefers increased output and product
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ivity.
The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
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ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonlyj'bovtW',
thought to be quite fine and may even meet Pareto
optimality requirements given prevailing notions of
being "better off".
Just as we can extend the last man example
to a class of last people, so we can extend this
C^S/XU-i
example to the industrial society example:
looks rather like ours.
(iv)
The vanishing species example.
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the society
Consider the blue
whale, a mixed good on the economic picture.
The
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blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of
X
his qualities as a private good, as a source of valu-
able oil and meat.
The catching and marketing of blue
whales does not harm the whalers; it does not harm or
physically interfere with others in any good sense,
7
though it may upset them and they may be prepared to
compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale
hunting be wilful destruction.
(Slightly different
examples which eliminate the hunting aspect rf the
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11.
blue whale example are provided by cases where a
species is eliminated or threatened through destruc—
tion of its habitat by man's activity or the activ
ities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many plainsdwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.)
The behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this
magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite
permissible — at least according to basic chauvinism.
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But on an environmental ethic it is not.
However the
free-market mechanism will not cease allocating
whalers to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environ
mental economics would; instead the market model will
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grind inexorably
*
along the private demand curve until
the blue whale population is no longer viable - if
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that point has not already been passed.
In sum, the class of permissible actions that
Ola
rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed
on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super
ethic. But aren't environmentalists going too far in claim
ing that these people, those of the examples and respected
industrialists, fishermen and farmers are behaving, when
engaging in environmentally degrading activities of the
sort described, in a morally impermissible way? No, what
these people do is
to a greater or lesser extent evil,
and hence in serious cases morally impermissible.
For example,
insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive
peoples who stand in the way of an industrial development is
morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is the
slaughter of the last remaining blue whales for private
profit.
But how to reformulate basic chauvinism as a
* For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained
in [ 3 ] .
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extending (2) to rnclu
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would be so affected by the action in
It may be preferand (3) to exclude speciej&de.
the environment
in vieW of the way the freedom
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ab le,
imply to scrap it altogether, and mate
proof, s of rights and permissible conduct, as in a b
classes
theory sometimes forces changes
§3
a radical change in a
rejects the Reference
in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which
a modification of the
Theory in a
Reference Theory and
usual -ta-tdef-eh^also^aeee
Jat simllt pheno^nCseens to occur in the case of a neta-
A somewhat s nxl
P
ethlc.
Quite apart from
ethl°de’“ several environmentally important notions, such as
introducing several
meta—
n 4.4™ arowth and preservation, for mec»
conservation, pollut^COTp^e-examinatlon
I
ethical analysis, an ,< of such characteristic(actions) as natural
and modified analyses
3 of obligation and
round of right, and of the relations
right■
may well require re-assessment of
permissibility to rights; it
notions as value and right, espectraditional analyses of such
on chauvinist assumptions; and it
ially where these are based
of the more prominent meta-ethical
forces the rejection of many
illustrated by a very brief exam
positions. These points are
then by a sketch of the
ination of accounts of nature^ right an
speciess bias of some major positions.
*
positions.
to defeating conditions
Hart (in [5]) accepts, subject
doctrine of natural rights
here irrelevant, the classical
which are
'anv adult human ■.•
to
which,
among
other
things,
according
are developed by those protesting about
points are oevei p
especially the essay s
Some of these
ltreatment of animals; see especial y
human ma
collected in [4] .
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capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no oblig
ation to abstain from) any action which is not one coercing or
restraining or designed to injure other persons'.
But this
sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on accepting
the very human chauvinist principle an environmental ethic rejects,
since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the
definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and
accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same
defective principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would
have to amend the classical notion of a natural right, a far from
straight forward matter now that human rights with respect to
animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect
.. to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major re-evaluation.
An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view
that natural objects such as trees^have rights (though such a view
is occasionally held, e.g. by partheists.
since artefacts are not alive).
But p^/theism is false
For moral prohibitions forbidding
certairTactions with respect to an object do not award that object
a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given
tree or piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of
property has a correlative right not to be mutilated (without
seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views
can stick with mainstream theses according to which rights are
coupled with corresponding responsibilities and so with bearing
obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e.,
has a right also has responsibilities and thereat least , whatever____________
'J
fore obligations, and whatever has a right has interests, Thus
although any person may have a right by no means every living thing
can (significantly) have rights, and arguably most sentient objects
other than persons cannot have rights.
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But persons can relate
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14.
morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth, to
practically anything at all.
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions
which aim to make principles of conduct or reasonable economic
behaviour calculable is easily brought out.
These positions typ
ically employ a single criterion p, such as preference or happi
ness, as a summum bgnum; characteristically each individual of
soine base class, almost always humans, but perhaps including future
humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in
question (e.g. of affairs, of the economy); then some principle is
supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual p rankings, and what is best or ought to be
done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under
the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule
utilitarianism, in terms of some optimization principle applied to
The species bias is transparent from the
the collective ranking.
selection of the base class.
And even if the base class is extended
to embrace persons, or even some animals (at the cost, like that of
including remotely future humans, of losing testability), the
positions are open to familiar criticism; namely that the whole of
the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust
principles.
For example if every member of the base class detests
dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes’ behaviour,
ive
then by the Pareto ranking test the collect/ranking will rank states
where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will
generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the
evaluation of most Australian farmers anyway).
Likewise it would
just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective demand (hori
zontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy
with blue whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing
*
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private whaling demands; for if no one in the base class happened
to kr^ow that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
"rational" economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent
their extinction.
Whether the blue whale survives should not have
to depend on what humans know or what they see on television.
Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide
a satisfactory basis for deciding on what is environmentally
desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not alone in
their species chauvinism; much the same applies to most going
meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories,
try to offer some rationale for their basic principles.
For
instance, on social contract positions obligations are a matter
of mutual agreements between individuals of .the base class; on
a social justice picture rights and obligations spring from the
application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the
base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on
a Kantian position which has some vogue obligations somehow
arise from respect for members of the base class, persons.
In each case if members of the base class happen to be ill-
disposed to items outside the base class then that is too bad
for them: that is
R. Routley
(rough) justice.
Australian National University
REFERENCES
[1]
A. Leopold,
A Sand Country Almenac with other essays
on Conservation,
New York (1966) .
[2]
J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions
(unpublished).
[3]
P.W. Barkley and D.W. Seckier,
Environmental Decay.
New York (1972).
[4]
The Solution becomes the Problem,
S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors),
Men and Morals.
hon-humans,
[5]
Economic Growth and
H.L.A. Hart,
An enquiry into the maltreatment of
London (1971) .
'Are there any natural rights?',
reprinted in A. Quinton (editor),
Oxford (1967).
Animals,
Political Philosophy,
The species bias of certain ethical and economic positions which aim to make principles of
conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is easily brought out. These positions
typically employ a single criterion p, such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum;
characteristically each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps including
future humans, is supposed to have an ordinal p ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, Of
the economy); then some principle is supplied to determine a collective p ranking of these states in
terms of individual prankings, and what is best or ought to be done is determined either directly, as
in act-utilitarianism under the Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism,
in terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking. The species bias is
transparent from the selection of the base class. And even if the base class is extended to embrace
persons, or even some animals (at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that-the whole of the base class may
be prejudiced in a way which leads to unjust principles. For example if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes’ behaviour, then by the Pareto
ranking test the collective ranking will rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly,
from which it will generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (the evaluation of
most Australian farmers anyway). Likewise it would just be a happy accident, it seems, if collective
demand (horizontally summed from individual demand) for a state of the economy with blue
whales as a mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands; for if no one in
the base class happened to know that blue whales exist or cared a jot that they do then
“rational” economic decision-making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. Whether the
blue whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what they see on televi
sion. Human interests and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for
deciding on what is environmentally desirable.
These ethical and economic theories are not aione in their species chauvinism; much the
same applies to most going meta-ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer
some rationale for their basic principles. For instance, on social contract positions obligations are a
matter of mutual agreements between individuals of the base class; on a social justice picture rights
and obligations spring from the application of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the
base class, usually a rather special class of persons, while on a Kantian position which has some
vigue obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the base class, persons. In each case
if members of the base class happen to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class then that is
too bad for them: that is (rough) justice.
/
REFERENCES
1. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac with other essays on Conservation. New York (1966).
2. J. Passmore, Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (unpublished).
3. P.W.Barkley and D.W.Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay. The Solution becomes the
Problem, New York (1972).
4. S. and R.Godlovitch and J. Harris (editors), Animals, Men and Morals. An enquiry into the maltreatment
of non-humans, London (1971).
5. H.L.A.Hart, ‘Are there any natural rights?’, reprinted in A.Quinton (editor), Political Philosophy, Oxford
(1967).
§ 3. A radical change in a teory sometimes forces changes in the meta-theory; e.g. a logic which
rejects the Reference Theory in a thoroughgoing way requires a modification of the usual metatheory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is tailored to cater only for
logics which do conform. A somewhat similar phenomena seems to occur in the case of a
meta-ethic adequate for an environmental ethic. Quite apart from introducing several environmen
tally important notions, such as conservation, pollution, growth and preservation,for meta-ethical
analysis, an environmental ethic compels re-examination and modified analyses of such
characteristic actions as natural right, ground of right, and of the relations of obligation and permissibility to rights; it may well require re-assessment of traditional analyses of such notions as
XT
value and right, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions; and it forces the rejec
tion of many of the more prominent meta-ethical positions. These points are illustrated by a very
brief examination of accounts of natural right and then by a sketch of the species bias of some *
6
major positions.7
A
Hart (in [5]) accepts, subject to defeating conditions which are here irrelevant, the classical
doctrine of natural rights according to which, among other things, ‘any adult human . . . capable of
choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons’. But this sufficient condition for a
human natural right depends on accepting the very human chauvinist principle an environmental
ethic rejects, since if a person has a natural right he has a right; so too the definition of a natural
right adopted by classical theorists and accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes *
the same defective principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right, a farzfrom straight forward matter now that human rights with'
respect to animals and the natural environment are, like those with respect to slaves not all that
long ago, undergoing major re-evaluation.
An environmental ethic does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees
have rights (though such a view is occasionally held, e.g. by pantheists. But pantheism is false since
artefacts are not alive). For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object
do not award that object a correlative right. That it would be wrong to mutilate a given tree or
piece of property does not entail that the tree or piece of property has a correlative right not to be
mutilated (without seriously stretching the notion of a right). Environmental views can stick with
mainstream theses according to which rights are coupled with corresponding responsibilities and
so with bearing obligations, and with corresponding interests and concern; i.e., at least, whatever
has a right also has responsibilities and therefore obligations, and whatever has a right has in
terests. Thus although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can
(significantly) have rights, and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have
rights. But persons can relate morally, through obligations, prohibitions and so forth, to practically
anything at all.
H Some of these points are developed by those protesting about human maltreatment of animals; see especially the essays
collected in [4]
/§ 2. As we noticed (an) ethic is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a specific ethic,
and a more generic notion, a super ethic, under which specific ethics cluster.4 An ethical system S
3 If ‘use’ is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for preservation, this total use principle is rendered inocuous at least
as regards its actual effects. Note that the total use principle is tied to the resource view of nature
4 A meta-ethic is, as usual, a theory about ethics, super ethics, their features and fundamental notions
is, near enough, a propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which in
cludes (like individuals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general
evaluative judgements concerning conduct, typically of what is obligatory, permissible and wrong,
of what are rights, what is valued, and so forth. A general or lawlike proposition of a system is a
principle; and certainly if systems Sj and S2contain different principles, then they are different
systems. It follows that any environmental ethic differs from the important traditional ethics outlin
ed. Moreover if environmental ethics differ from Western ethical systems on some core principle
embedded in Western systems, then these systems differ from the Western super ethic (assuming,
what seems to be so, that it can be uniquely characterised) — in which case if an environmental
ethic is needed then a new ethic is wanted. It suffices then to locate a core principle and to provide
environmental counter examples to it.
It is commonly assumed that there are. what amount to, core principles of Western ethical
systems, principles that will accordingly belong to the super ethic. The fairness principle inscribed
in the Golden Rule provides one example. Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core principle,
is the commonly formulated liberal principle of the modified dominance position. A recent for
mulation5 runs as follows ( [31, p. 58):
’The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that one should be able to do what he
wishes, providing (1) that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not likely to harm himself
irreparably.’
Let us call this principle basic (human) chauvinism - because under it humans, or people,
come first and everything else a bad last - though sometimes the principle is hailed as a freedom
principle because it gives permission to perform a wide range of actions (including actions which
mess up the environment and natural things) providing they do not harm others. In fact it tends to
cunningly shift the onus of proof to others. It is worth remarking that harming others in the restric
tion is narrower than a restriction to the (usual) interests of others; it is not enough that it is in my
interests, because I detest you, that you stop breathing; you are free to breathe, for the time being t
anywav, because it does not harm me. There remains a problem however as to exactly what counts
as harm or interference. Moreover the width of the principle is so far obscure because ‘other’ may
be filled out in significantly different ways: it makes a difference to the extent, and privilege, of the
chauvinism whethe^ ‘other’ expands to ‘other human’ - which is too restrictive - or to ‘other’person’ or to ‘other’seritient being’; and it makes a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and in
versely to its economic applicability, to which class of others it is intended to apply, whether to
future as well as to present others, whether to remote future others or only to non-discountable
future others, and whether to possible others. The latter would make the principle completely un
workable, and it is generally assumed that it applies at most to present and future others.
It is taken for granted in designing counter examples to basic chauvinist principles, that a
semantical analysis of permissibility and obligation statements stretches out over ideal situations *
(which may be incomplete or even inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some ideal
situation, what is obligatory in every ideal situation, and what is wrong is excluded in every ideal
situation. But the main point to grasp for the counter examples that follow, is that ethical principles
if correct are universal and are assessed over the class of ideal situations.
(i)
The last man example. The last man (or person) surviving the collapse of the world system
lays about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if
you like, as at the best abattoirs). What he does is quite permissible according to basic chauvinism,
but on environmental grounds what he does is wrong. Moreover one does not have to be commit
ted to esoteric values to regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly (the reason being perhaps that ra
dical thinking and values have shifted in an environmental direction in advance of corresponding
shifts in the formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
(ii) The last people example. The last man example can be broadened to the last people example.
We can assume that they know they are the last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation
effects have blocked any chance of reproduction. One considers the last people in order to rule out
the possibility that what these people do harms or somehow physically interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as well consider science fiction cases where peonle arrive at a new planet and
5 A related principle is that (modified) free enterprise can operate v. ithin similar limits
destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfecting the planet for their ends
and making it more fruitful or, forgetting the lesser traditions, just for the hell of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous. They humanely exterminate every wild
animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas, they put all arable land under intensive cultivation,
and all remaining forests disappear in favour of quarries or plantations, and so on. They may give
various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is the way to salvation or to perfection, or they
are simply satisfying reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people employed or
occupied so that they do not worry too much about their impending extinctions. On an en
vironmental ethic the last people have behaved badly; they have simplified and largely destroyed
all the natural ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and largely wreck
ed place. But this conduct may conform with the basic chauvinist principle, and as well with the
principles enjoined by the lesser traditions. Indeed the main point of elaborating this example is
because, as the last man example reveals, basic chauvinism may conflict with stewardship or co
operation principles. The conflict may be removed it seems by conjoining a further proviso to the
basic principle, to the effect (3) that he does not wilfully destroy natural resources. But as the last
people do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps “for the best of reasons”, the variant is still
environmentally inadequate.
(iii) The great entrepreneur example. The last man example can be adjusted so as to not fall foul
of clause (3). The last man is an industrialist; he runs a giant complex of automated factories and
farms which he proceeds to extend. He produces automobiles among other things, from renewable
and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and recycles these shortly after manufacture
and sale to a dummy buyer instead of putting them on the road for a short time as we do. Of
course he has the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world product, or he is
improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be increasing his own and general welfare since he
much prefers increased output and productivity. The entrepreneur’s behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible; indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be quite fine and may even
meet Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing notions of being “better off’.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last people, so we can extend this ex
ample to the Industrial society example: the society looks rather like ours.
(iv) The vanishing species example. Consider the blue whale, a mixed good on the economic pic
ture. The blue whale is on the verge of extinction because of his qualities as a private good, as a
source of valuable oil and meat. The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
whalers; it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any good sense, though it may up
set them and they may be prepared to compensate the whalers if they desist; nor need whale hun
ting be wilful destruction. (Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting aspect of the
blue whale example are provided by cases where a species is eliminated or threatened through
destruction of its habitat by man’s activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.) The behaviour of the whalers in
eliminating this magnificent species of whale is accordingly quite permissible-at least according to
basic chauvinism. But on an environmental ethic it is not. However the free-market mechanism will
not cease allocating whalep to commercial uses, as a satisfactory environmental economics
would; instead the market model will grind inexorably 6 along the private demand curve until the
blue whale population is no longer viable-if that point has not already been passed.
In sum, the class of permissible actions that rebound on the environment is more narrowly
circumscribed on an environmental ethic than it is in the Western super ethic. But aren’t en
vironmentalists going too far in claiming that these people, those of the examples and respected in
dustrialists, fishermen and farmers are behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading ac
tivities of the sort described, in a morally impermissible way? No, what these people do is to a
greater or lesser extent evil, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible. For example, insofar
as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who stand in the way of an industrial
development is morally indefensible and impermissible, so also is the slaughter of the last remain
ing blue whales for private profit. But how to reformulate basic chauvinism as a satisfactory
6 For the tragedy-of-the-commons type reasons well explained in [3]
freedom principle is a more difficult matter. A tentative, but none too adequate beginning might be
made by extending (2) to include harm to or interference with others who would be so affected by
the action in question were they placed in the environment and (3) to exclude specieside. It may be
preferable, in view of the way the freedom principle sets the onus of proof, simply to scrap it
altogether, and instead to specify classes of rights and permissible conduct, as in a bill of rights.
CJ\^<.
& ’
§ 1. It is increasingly said that civilization, Western civilization at least, stands in need of a new
ethic (and derivatively of a new economics) setting out people’s relations to the natural environ
ment, in Leopold’s words ‘an ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and
plants which grow upon it’ ([1], p. 238). It is not of course that old and prevaling ethics do not deal
with man’s relation to nature: they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as
he pleases, i.e. his relations with nature, insofar at least as they do not affect others, are not subject
to moral censure. Thus assertions such as ‘Crusoe ought not to be mutilating those trees’ are
significant and morally determinate but, inasmuch at least as Crusoe’s actions do not interfere with
others, they are false or do not hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.1 It is to
this, to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold and others in fact take ex
ception. Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on prevailing
views is morally permissible. But it is not, as Leopold seems to think, that such behaviour is
beyond the scope of the prevailing ethics and that an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void. If Leopold is right in his criticism of prevailing conduct
what is required is a change in the ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations. For as matters stand,
as he himself explains, men do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever it will yield, and then move on; and such conduct is not
taken to interfere with and does not rouse the moral indignation of others. ‘A farmer who clears the
woods off a 75% slope,turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall,rocks, andsoil into
the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society.’ ([1]), p.245)
Under what we shall call an environmental ethic such traditionally permissible conduct would be
accounted morally wrong, and the farmer subject to proper moral criticism.
Let us grant such evaluations for the purpose of the argument. What is not so clear is that a
new ethic is required even for such radical judgements. For one thing it is none too clear what is
going to count as a new ethic, much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics
counts as a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old. For, notoriosly, ethics are
not clearly articulated or at all well worked out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics
may remain obscure.2 Furthermore we tend to cluster a family of ethical systems which do not
differ on core or fundamental principles together as the one ethic; e.g. the Christain ethic, which is
an umbrella notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems. In fact then there
are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental ethic, which might cater for the
evaluations, namely that of an extension of modification of the prevailing ethics or that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within the prevailing ethic. The
second possibility, that environmental evaluations can be incorporated within (and ecological
problems solved within) the framework of prevailing Western ethics, is open because there isn’t a
1 A view occasionally tempered by the idea that trees house spirits
- To the consternation modoubt of Quineans. But the fact is that we can talk perfectly well about inchoate and fragmentary
systems the identity of which may be indeterminate
205
single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civilization: on many issues, and especially on
controversial issues such as infanticide, women’s rights and drugs, there are competing sets of prin
ciples. Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a sort of monolithic structure, a
uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and even a single ethic, need not have.
Indeed Passmore (in [2]) has mapped out three important traditions in Western ethical views
concerning man’s relation to nature; a dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as
despot (or tyrant), and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custodian, and
the co-operative position with man as perfector. Nor are these the only traditions; primitivism is
another, and both romanticism and mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental ethic; for according
to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the
mainstream Stoic - Augustine view - it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental
ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases. But it is not quite so obvious that an environmental
ethic cannot be coupled with one of the lesser traditions. Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially when the religious
backdrop is removed, e.g. who is man steward for and responsible to? However both traditions are
inconsistent with an environmental ethic because they imply policies of complete interference,
whereas on an environmental ethic some worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserv
ed from substantial human interference, whether of the “improving” sort or not. Both traditions
would in fact prefer to see the earth’s land surfaces reshaped along the lines of the tame and com
fortable north-European small farm and village landscape. According to the co-operative position
man's proper role is todevelop, cultivate and perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing
out its potentialities, the test of perfection being primarily usefulness for human purposes; while on
the stewardship view man’s role, like that of a farm manager, is to make nature productive by his
efforts though not by means that wiil deliberately degrade its resources. Although these positions
both depart from the dominant position in a way which enables the incorporation of some
evaluations of an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible farmer, they
do not go far enough: for in the present situation of expanding populations confined to finite
natural areas, they will lead to, and enjoin, the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thoroughgoing environmental ethic would reject, a
principle of total use,implying that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used3 for
human ends, “humanized”.
As the important Western traditions exclude an environmental ethic, it would appear that
such an ethic, not primitive, mystical or romantic, would be new alright. The matter is not so
straightforward; for the dominant ethic has been substantially qualified by the rider that one is not
always entitled to do as one pleases where this physically interferes with others. Maybe some such
proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary), and it was simply assumed that
doing what one pleased with natural items would not affect others (the non-interference assump
tion). Be this as it may, the modified dominant position appears, at least for many thinkers, to have
supplanted the dominant position; and the modified position can undoubtedly go much further
towards an environmental ethic. For example, the farmer’s polluting of a community stream may
be ruled immoral on the grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream. Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environment for no satisfactory
returns or which cause pollution deleterious to the health of future humans, can be criticised on the
sort of welfare basis (e.g. that of [3]) that blends with the modified position; and so on. The posi
tion may even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have since in a finite situa
tion excessive population levels will interfere with future people. Nontheless neither the modified
dominant position nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser traditions, is
adequate as an environmental ethic, as I shall try to show. A new ethic is wanted.
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Box 15: Green Projects in Progress
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2073
WAR AND PEACE IV:
TAO AND DEEP-GREEN flAClF/Stf
Taoism and deep-green environmental theory, although closely aligned on very many
issues, diverge over war. For Taoism, by contrast for instance with Buddhism, is not a pacific
doctrine, but is committed to skilful defensive militarism. While it does not espouse a fortress
mentality, Taoism certainly condones limited defensive military operations for specific
purposes, a sort of guerilla warfare. By contrast, deep-green theory, while acknowledging the
role of organised social defence, stands opposed to professional militarism, and thereby to
military defence, and is committed to a principled pacifism. Conveniently a route through
Taoism, philosophically fascinating in its own right, will lead us to problems of pacifism and
towards deep-green theory.
1. Features of a Taoist critique of war and militarism.
War did not receive a favourable press in ancient Chinese philosophy. Generally
aggression and war were to be avoided. Even Confucius imposed very demanding conditions:
for example, ‘when good men have instructed the people [in morals, agriculture, military
tactics] for seven years, they may be allowed to bear arms,’ ‘If a ruler ... does not set himself
right, even his commands will not be obeyed’ (SB p.41, italics added). Mo Tzu went much
further than Confucius, roundly condemning war - on utilitarian grounds, that war yields no
net benefit at any level (SB p.227). What is more, he backed his heavy condemnation
practically (unlike some conspicuous contemporary theoretical utilitarians); ‘he did not hesitate
to walk for ten days and ten nights in an effort to dissuade a ruler from making war’ (SB
p.212). But none, it is said, went as far, in a detailed and sophisticated criticism of war, as Lao
Tzu; ‘none has condemned war more strongly than Lao Tzu’. ‘[T]he opposition of Taoism to
the use of force is well-known, and the most bitter attack on militarism if found in the Lao Tzu'
(Chan, p.154, p.17.)
But, after that splendid build-up, the text is slightly disappointing. Lao Tzu does not
assert outright that war is an abomination, or even roundly condemn it. His critique of war,
militarism, and military technology, is subtle and oblique, and, on the surface, far distanced
from pacifism. For he does not recommend an end to war - in that genuine Taoists, those who
possess Tao, will never participate in them - but expects wars to continue as unavoidable evils.
Worse, he even goes so far as to outline proper attitudes to war and conduct in war, and indeed
to suggest military techniques and strategies, some of which look decidedly devious. Among
the classical works of Taoism, we focus on the Lao Tzu because, by contrast with other works,
a remarkable component of that book is devoted to war and militarism.
The apparent deviousness of the tactics Lao Tzu allocates serves to highlight what has
been seen as ‘the most troublesome element’ in his philosophy (Chan p.17) - not so much
however because they concern military operations, but because they are taken to apply much
�2
dispensation? Why should what is not tolerated more generally be exonerated there? But given
that Taoism has here the virtue of consistency (i.e. uniformity on principles) and of
universalizability, that simply leaves more explaining to be done.
• Puzzles for Taoism, and wars as unavoidable evils
There are two puzzles here in Taoism rather than one. There is the military-practices
paradox, and, varying and generalising on that, there are life-practices paradoxes. The special
paradox is generated by the following incompatible elements: on the one side, ‘the most bitter
attack on militarism’, the well-known opposition of Taoism to the use of force (p. 17) and to the
possession and use of smart military weapons and technology - implying that war is far from
all right - and on the other, advocacy of certain (devious) military tactics, outlines of (deceitful)
conduct in war, and so on - implying that war is all right after all. A straightforward
generalisation of this paradox would look at other morally-sensitive parts of life, where some
practice was strongly condemned yet engaged in (for many examples, see the dilemmas
assembled in MD). But the variation of concern to Chan and the neo-Confucians concerns the
conjunction of upright with devious practices in life, in particular in the life of the sage. For a
Taoist sage is presumed to lead an upright straightforward life, yet appears to engage in devious
and even deceitful practices incompatible with such a life-style. Call this the Taoist-lifestyle
paradox.
Evidently a good deal of explaining is required, as to how Taoism can coherently take the
positions it appears to presume, both on war and peace, and on life more generally. A desirable
preliminary would seem to be a little investigation of what position A taken, especially on war
and militarism. One key pasage runs:
Fine weapons are instruments of evil
They are hated by creatures
Therefore those who possess the Tao turn away from them....
Weapons are instruments of evil, not the instruments of a good ruler.
When he uses them unavoidably, he regards calm restraint as the best
principle
Even when he is victorious, he does not regard it as praiseworthy,
For to praise victory is to delight in the slaughter of men.
He who delights in the slaughter of men will not succeed in the empire. ...
For a victory, let us observe the occasion with funeral-ceremonies
(LT p.154).
Wars, which involve the use of weapons, instruments of evil, are accordingly themselves evil.
They are also evil because they involve the slaughter of men. But they are also sometimes
unavoidable (also p. 152). Therefore such wars are unavoidable evils. Such discourse,
obtained by almost immediate inference from the passage, is within the standard orbit of
dilemma talk. But Taoism lacks, through deliberately eschewing deontic talk, the discourse
which enables direct expression of such dilemmas, or even direct condemnation of wars or of
clever weapons. Instead the points are made by circumlocution, what the possesser of Tao
does, how the good ruler conducts himself, or by analogy, of victory in war with death.
�3
Unavoidable evils are the very stuff of deontic dilemmas (though many theories,
underpinned by shonky logic, lack the resources for representing this stuff properly). Where
something is unavoidably evil, it is both bad, because evil, and also not bad, doing it is
excusable, because it is unavoidable. So, given such an argument (which has its weaknesses),
an unavoidable evil is a genuinely dilemmatic object with inconsistent features. Certain wars
have looked, since ancient times, like such dilemmatic objects.
Revealingly, Chan tries to explain that ‘most troublesome element’ in Taoism, the
military-practice paradox, through the following exercise in lateral thinking:
It can ... be argued that Lao Tzu uses warfare to illustrate his principles of
taking no action and weakness because warfare is among the most dynamic
and critical of human experiences, just as the Indian classic, the Bhagavadgita
chooses fighting as the theme on which to discuss the terrible dilemma
whether one should fulfil his duty, as in the case of a soldier, and kill, or
should fail in his duty and refrain from killing (p. 17).
‘Just as’? The Indian classic prevents a classic moral dilemma, a dilemma represented in
contemporary philosophy (following its rediscovery by Sartre), where there are incompatible
duties: the duty to kill, because of one's role as a soldier, and the duty not to kill, because of
one's human condition, and the supervenient dilemma of failing in and fulfilling one's duties.
These dilemmas for an individual (male, as it then was) are replicated in dilemmas regarding
war for group institutions: at bottom, the obligation to engage in war (for one set of compelling
reasons) as contraposed with the obligation not to engage in war (for another, perhaps
overlapping, set of reasons).
A theory of moral dilemmas (as worked out for example in MD) is crucial for an adequate
treatment of major issues in war and peace, especially (as will become evident) for a viable
strong pacifism. But Taoism, eschewing deontic discourse, lacks the apparatus to state or
develop moral dilemmas. Hence it is logically excluded from giving a full or adequate account
of what is going on conceptually. One of the philosophically fascinating feature of Taoism is
the fashion in which it manages to avoid deontic discourse, and to substitute for direct deontic
discourse or improvise circumlocutions when deontic discourse would otherwise appear
inevitable (cf. UT for examples). But there are costs. One is inability to display the mechanism
of deontic dilemmas, or to show what reasons and argument lie behind Taoist prounouncements
and conclusions (the shortage of Taoism on argument is another philosophically conspicious
feature, also observed in UT). As conceptual apparatus for analysizing moral dilemmas is
missing, most of the machinery involved has to be passed over. Only the outcomes, as Taoism
sees them, are presented, as if from a black box. Taoism blacks out the story on deontic
dilemmas that deep-green theory can tell, as the following diagram tries to show:
Diagrams . Charting the processing of deontic dilemmas that are "resolved”.
�4
Deep-green chart:
dilemma
input
Arguments to
incompatible
prescriptions
->
Processing of dilemma,
directive
situational procedures
output
Corresponding Taoist chart:
Black
directive
Box
output
input
It is evident that Taoism can be extended', information can be put into the Black Box
rendering it less opaque. That extension can be made so as to conform to deep-green theory,
i.e. so that the extended Taoist chart, a neo-Daoist chart, looks like the deep-green one. That is
indeed essentially how neo-Daoism get characterised, in terms of conformity of the extension to
deep ecological theory (see UT).
We are now placed to explain how to dissolve, or at least neutralize, the paradoxes
deriving from repudiation of militarism, an awkwardly qualified repudiation in the case of
Taoism. In a significant sense there is no resolving of genuine deontic dilemmas. The
principles delineating the fix may stand, incompatible, signalling the persisting suboptimality
(or better, sublimenality) of the dilemmatic situation. Where there is a dilemma, involved
parties should try to do well enough in the sublimenal circumstances (for a much fuller account,
see MD). Thus where there is a war, itself a non-Taoist process, engaged or caught up Taoists
will not abandon Taoism. Taoist methods will be applied, Taoist strategies pursued.
So much for theoretical representation and (non-)resolution of life-practices and other
dilemmas, details of which are readily elaborated in deep-green extensions of Taoism. A prior
substantive issue is whether dilemmas always are generated: not whether wars are evil
(typically they are, an issue we shall come to), but whether wars are unavoidable. Analysis of
wars does not bear that familiar claim out decisively. Many wars could have been avoided,
through conciliation, negotiation, restraint, etc., and no worse results apparently obtained,
through sanctions, exchange, trade, etc. Through a typology of wars (coming up) that
conjecture can be given some substance. Consider, for instance, what would be walk-overs.
Then there is little point in making a military response. So war can be avoided. Certainly an
occupation, to be met in a different way, may still occur. And so on, perhaps, for various other
types of war. But, more generally, try this:Every war involves an aggressor, who makes an aggressive move. Such an aggressor
could always avoid that move, taking a different (or a do-nothing) course of action. Therefore,
�5
every war can be avoided. No war is entirely unavoidable.
Setting aside determinism (which renders all actual wars along with all other events
unavoidable), it could be argued that a war sometimes simply boils up, without an aggressor,
an intensification of a conflagatory situation. There are grounds for scepticism regarding such
examples; for such intensification can only occur if provocative military moves are made, for
instance troops are stationed in provocative or risky positions.
The presumption that certain wars are unavoidable typically derives from a one-sided
perspective on war, a defender's perspective. A defender has no option, so it is routinely
averred, but to respond to a determined aggressor. Even if that should be so sometimes, when
there is no running away or going underground, it does not establish that such a war is
unavoidable; for it neglects the role of the aggressor. By a smarter formulation, relevant
features of unavoidability can be captured. Although wars may not be unavoidable, defensive
action in wars that have been initiated may be unavoidable. At least such action may be
unavoidable if unacceptably high costs (death, enslavement, etc.) are not to be avoided.
Thereupon another highly relevant feature emerges: the linkage of avoidability to costs. For
whether an action is unavoidable then depends upon what costs a party is prepared to incur
before and when insisting on action: but this appears entirely unacceptable. How can what is
“unavoidable” cease to be so when some further costs are absorbed? However with basics like
survival, a certain liberty, and so on, we do reach such bounds. An important type of
unavoidability. We also reach scenarios, unavailable to Lao Tzu but kindly brought within
range by modem technology, which may appear to justify aggressive strikes.
State Z, while not an aggressor, is carrying out practices which will impose unacceptably
high costs upon peoples of other states and implacably refuses to desist. It could, for example,
be poisoning air or water flowing to other states. But ,to make the case vivid, let us suppose
that state Z is constructing, for reasons Zeders find convincing (they are committed to a faith
which depicts all humans as incorrigible sinners and unworthy of life), an effective doomsday
machine. Would an (aggressive) preemptory strike designed to disable or destroy the machine
be unavoidable?1 In a sense, No; in another Yes. For different modalities can operate.
Physically outsiders need to do nothing, but watch Zeders go about their zealous work. But
deontically they are under heavy moral pressure, because of the costs of standing by idly: if the
human race is worth anything very substantial, then they are obliged to act, action is deontically
unavoidable. Here is a situation where a proposed reduction of deontic logic proves
illuminating. Obligation is explicated through not implying, or necessitating, the sanction, i.e.
1
Whether it would be justifiable, or just, are separate issues. But it is evident enought that
such scenarios further damage the obsolescent idea of just war. For, according to received
doctrine, a just war is defensive. (How such a war can be fought at all is another matter;
coherence requires relativization to ‘just war for party d’.)
�6
excessive ethical costs such as extermination. Let us explain deontic unavoidability
analogously: an action is so unavoidable if not undertaking it would result in excessive ethical
costs. Then if it can be established that there is no other way than a military strike, an act of
war, to ensure that the Zeders desist (and certainly we can envisage scenarios like that), then
that is deontically unavoidable. It is also dilemmatic for those committed to, or inclined
towards pacifism; and it is, for them at least, but paradoxically justifiable, as the negation is
also justifiable, on pacific grounds.
Scenarios like that sketched, that appear to render certain wars deontically unavoidable
require but little or no elaboration to render them evil. Evil indeed is such a standard feature of
standard wars that at least its great presence call for little supporting evidence. But it has taken
to vast stretch of human history to reach this general point of recognition.
The manifold evils of war Lao Tzu very early recognised and emphasized:
Wherever armies are stationed, briars and thorns grow.
Great wars are always followed by famines (p.152).
And nowadays followed by great tides of refugees. This passage includes not only recognition
of the widely-observed socio-environmental consequences of war, but, more striking, very
early recognition of the severe environmental impact of military forces. That critique is not
however developed in Taoism.2 Only recently has it been pushed substantially further. And
only recently could a new, most significant twist occur, the merging of resource security, long a
military objective, with environmental security.
The appalling idea has recently been floated that the military, in need of new work and
roles with the apparent warming of West-East relations and cooling of the Cold War, should
exchange usual military idleness for meddling in environmental matters: regulation and policing
of environmental resources, ensurance of environmental security of powerful states, and
similar. This is a bit like reassigning those imprisoned for child abuse to managing
kindergartens; for consider the impressive military record of environmental vandalism. What
the military is alleged to offer is a structure appropriate and available for handling such matters.
But, to the contrary, it is precisely the sort of hierarchical, authoritarian expensive structure that
should be wound down and up as soon as the opportunity appears, as (briefly) now, rather than
being retained and shockingly reoriented (as a state-serving “Greenwar”).
2.
On the divergence of deep-green from Taoism.
Having arrived, by better or worse arguments, at the conclusion that wars, though
2
But a bridge to deep-green theory can be made through neo-Daoism, an updating of Taoism in
confirmity with deep ecology (which however is somewhat thin and threadbare on war; for
what there is so far, see Naess p. 160). On neo-Daoism, sec UT.
�7
generally evil, may be sometimes unavoidable, it is evidently important to say something about
how they - those of the theoretical residue - are to be conducted. By appropriate conduct the
damage they do may be reduced; also the conduct should be appropriate to the funereal nature
of wars (to exceed Taoist resources for stating this sort of point). It is at this stage that deep
green theory begins to diverge from Taoism.
In further explaining the Taoist and deep-green critiques of war, and diverting objections
to them, a rough and preliminary typology of wars is important. It is also of passing interest in
its own philosophical right. War, according to English Dictionaries, is a ‘contest carried on by
force of arms, typically between nations or states’. More exactly, war is a game - in the
generous technical sense of game-theory, with players, rules, goals, strategies, and so on carried on in significant part by military means, normally between states or substates. Call the
contestants, (warring) parties. They typically represent of course larger populations. The set
up between parties resembles the arrangements of players in game theory. There are several
analogical extensions of the term war to cover games where one of the parties is an object,
construed as hostile (an enemy of the state), such as Crime, Drugs, Poverty or Nature. These
we can set aside as analogical wars. Of course wars form only a part of military activities.
Military interests and objectives have always stretched significantly further than war, to include
surveillence and security, easily extended to resource security, environmental security and life
style security, and beyond that to political stability and other political matters. Evidently
military ambitions have far over-extended themselves in bagging such democratic concerns.
An anarchist solution to the whole problem of war, which some have seen Taoism as
reaching towards, is immediate: eliminate the source of war, states. Unfortunately it is not
quite that simple (and that's not simple). For wars can also occur between nations, cultures,
races or tribes (which are not such artifices as states, and not always so readily or desirably
abolished), between inhabited regions, and between factions within states (thus civil wars) or,
perhaps by extension, between factions within other social structures (thus, for instance, gang
wars). But undoubtedly eliminating states and aspiring states would abolish most wars and
virtually all the worst wars.
While “nonviolent wars” are excluded by definition, by virtue of ‘force of arms’, token
wars, limited wars, and so on, are not: for instance, wars fought by small armed teams
representing competing sides (cf. medieval and science fiction war games). As wars are
hemmed in by conventions and agreed rules, there is no reason in principle why they should
not be reduced to two person contests, fought under strict rules like boxing or gladiatorial
contests. But in modern times wars have never taken such sensible forms, but have been much
larger affairs, making heavy (though fortunately restricted) use of latest technology. Let us
distinguish such wars as techno-powered, wars. They have, directly or indirectly (for the
technology may be bought or bartered), a heavy research and development support structure
(indeed the bulk of contemporary science is devoted - misdirected - in one way or another to
�8
this effort).
Among wars, an important distinction is that between offensive and defensive wars. An
offensive war is one which ventures off a given party's territory or recognised pad, “invading”
that of another party or parties; correlatively defensive parties, if they have not also invaded.
Force projection typifies offensive practice. Plainly, offensiveness and defensiveness are not
strictly features of a war, but of parties to a war. In a two-party war, while both parties can
easily act offensively, the possibility of both parties proceeding defensively is excluded, unless
they share territory. (Even then issues may arise as to which party, if any, was the aggressor,
which started it, was responsible for starting it, and so on.) Thus mutually defensive wars
between contemporary states are impossible (but would be possible if states shared territory,
e.g. if Eire and Britain shared the territory of Northern Ireland). Tao-accredited wars were
defensive wars, never wars aiming at domination: last-resort wars, in which no pride was taken
(LTp.152).3
The pretence that offensive wars are defensive is widespread, and reflected in the
subterfuge that departments or ministries of war are those of defence, security or whatever. (If
they really were what they purport to be, we should be well on the way to an end to war.)
Offensive practices are rendered defensive ones by shabby redefinitional strategems, such as
redefining ‘defensive’ to include defence of ideals like democracy or liberty, infringed (or
allegedly infringed) on territories abroad, or to include “defence” of a third party or place
(whence every offensive war is “defensive”). In the present war in which part of Arabia is
engulfed (February 1991), one party claims to be defending what really was (or should be) part
of its territory, namely Kuwait, another party to be defending (what Kuwait did not enjoy)
democracy. It is a doubly offensive war presented in this guise as jointly defensive.
Aggressive wars are waged for a variety of reasons, but usually for resources or access to
resources or markets, a matter often disguised by appeal to ideology (thus a war for oil is
represented as a war of liberation). But there are other reasons than narrowly economic ones,
such as religion (as with crusades), power and aggrandisement (as in building an empire), and
so on. Nor are those reasons necessarily far separated; ideologies like Marxism and market
capitalism, for example, exhibit many of the features of religion.
The economic reasons for war appear to have become much more complex with the
3
There is one line in LT that may suggest that attack was sometimes justifiable, namely ‘For
deep love helps one to win in the case of attack’ (p.219). But how can compassion be
appropriate unless this attack is within a defensive setting, a larger context of unavoidability
or such like. A passage shortly below confirms this interpretation:
I dare not take the offensive but I take the defensive:
I dare not advance an inch but I retreat a foot (p.222).
These are advances and attacks within a defensive setting.
�9
advent of an integrated world economy. At the same time many of the independent reasons for
economic wars are now obsolete. For to powerful states accrue the advantages of war without
war. At least most of the former economic advantages of war can be obtained without
expensive wars, through trade, institution of economic dependence, etc. Small medieval wars
were sometimes instituted for the collection of neighbouring riches and booty, a kind of piracy
meeting conditions of war. “Small” contemporary wars can be waged for a remarkable mix of
political-economy ends: to establish a regime favourable to economic penetration and profit
repatriation, to subjugate markets and to remove competition, to boost a sagging weapons
economy by using up old stocks and also testing new equipment, to restart a depressed
economy, and so on. Such wars, along with the economic aims which motivate them, are in
effect heavily castigated by Lao Tzu:
When Tao prevails in the world, galloping horses are turned back to
fertilize (the fields ...).
When Tao does not prevail in the world, war horses thrive in the suburbs.
There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. (LT p. 181).
But it does exceed evidential warrant to claim that Tao is not only sufficient, but necessary, for
cessation of such practices.
The practice of regularly stimulating complex military-saturated economies through war is
reminiscent of older, much ridiculed practices in simpler societies. They now ridicule the
Tsembaga, who proceeded to destroy much of their surplus product by going to war every 5-15
years (cf Rapaport). But they do not similarly ridicule the most powerful nation on the Earth,
the USA, which proceeds to write off a colossal amount of surplus in war every 10-20 years
(the Gulf war liquidated some $1.7 billion per day). Taoists would. For ridicule was a
favoured method, an important rhetorical strategem, and war and its idiocy were favourite
targets.
Some classification of defensive wars is also important, for various reasons: reducing and
abolishing wars, their costs and damage, restructuring societies away from war and military
practices, and, not least, for appreciating Taoism.
A main distinction is between
• conventional defence, maintained by armies of armed soldiers, many of them professionals,
and
• social defence, where there are no such armies or but fragments of them, and defence is
carried out through social networks of a significant part of society.4
It is here that Taoism and deep-green theory part company. Under Taoism, the state will
have a standing army, but a defensive army operating by strange, surprise tactics (p.201). No
4
Details of social defence are presented in Sharp and in Martin.
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doubt defensive wars are to remain last resort action. Nonetheless the state will operate in
secrecy, in a way incompatible with decentralised social defence; people will be kept in the dark
about smart weapons of the state; and they too will be surprised, along with presumed enemies
of the state. By contrast, under deep-green theory, there should be no hidden smart weapons
of state; information would flow more freely and not be hidden from the people (who should
retain influence in informed decision making). Under deep-green, standing armies, and more
generally military organisation, will be wound down altogether.
Taoism should have pushed its searching criticism further. For military objectives, easily
acquired by standing armies with time on their hands, are frequently incompatible with Taoism.
For example, Taoism is opposed to domination (LT p.152), whereas military operations
frequently seek or involve domination; and military structure is invariably hierarchical and
authoritarian. Taoism aims for self-regulation, wherever feasible (cf. p.201); so does deep
green theory, which is one reasons why it aims to dispose of standing armies, as an important
preliminary to the withering away of states themselves (military forces being major props of
state control and power, and often maintained primarily for internal state security). Taoism has
no project for ending the era of wars; deep-green theory does. That project involves an
elimination of standing armies, too often poised for fighting or political interference.
A recommended route to end war consists in progressive scaling down: reduction of the
means and manpower. The initial stages are well-known, and include
• elimination of nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry, and
• force reduction. It can hardly be pretended that the Earth's states have managed to proceed
very far on even this complex of stages. The next stage consists in
• contraction to defensive capacities only, and the final stage consists in
• elimination of remaining military defensive forces, and adoption, so far as required, of social
defence practices. The complete route thus involves complete demilitarisation.
Reasons why deep-green aims to proceed the full distance are readily grasped by
considering the environmental shallowness of an otherwise cogent traditional case for the sharp
curtailment of wars and militarism. The traditional Western case against wars has been
primarily along two dimensions: social and moral. Wars are highly disruptive of the social
fabric; wars may be unjust. From these joint features, it was argued that wars should be a
matter of last resort, to be fought to ensure peace. It was argued further that only just wars
should be fought. Just wars were rare objects. But as there was little evidence of the decline
and fall of wars, much effort was expended, more practically and unsuccessfully, upon
endeavouring to improve the calibre of wars, and more theoretically, upon trying to characterize
just war satisfactorily, or rather to bend the notion in an effort to approximate the gory unjust
facts.
Progress was long hindered, furthermore, because there was always a rival positive
perspective on wars, which encouraged the exaltation of wars and military feats. It also
�facilitated the transfer of the favourable image of war to other problem areas, whence the long
and apparently successful war against Nature (but the short-term successes are turning into
long-term problems), the short and unsuccessful war against Poverty, and so on. Behind all
this is the complex idea of war as rejuvenating, even cleansing, like fire; of war as heroic, and
glorious, of war as the supreme testing ground of men. These pictures of war - finally
shattered by the first World War (where even the poets began to tell of horrors and atrocities)
and subsequent technological wars - though no longer in ascendency, have by no means
vanished. The notion of war as rejuvenating a flagging economy persists, along with the
practice of keeping capitalism running smoothly by integrating substantial military components
into the industrial engine.
With the development of highly technological wars — the celebrated development of the
dirty industrial age is substantially military - the traditional negative case has grown in strength.
Wars have become much more damaging, with the potential for much more that is significantly
worse, and the possibility of a just war has correspondingly contracted, virtually to zero. The
opposition to war has likewise grown, but more than correspondingly with the rise of women
in social and political influence. Wars have almost always and everywhere been Men's affairs;
likewise conquest.
Deep-green theory accepts much of the traditional negative case, but would further
strengthen it. For example, the stricture against unjust wars, as out and out immoral, can be
strengthened, through the following syllogism:
All wars should be fully just wars.
Modem wars cannot be fully just wars.
Therefore, there should be no modern wars.
A fully just war is not merely a just war, but a war those just character can be reliably forecast
in advance. A modern war is of course a war that deploys modern technology, at least that
available this century. The evidential basis for the second premiss derives from much
information that collateral damage, damage to innocent bystanders and involved citizens is
always likely and cannot be excluded. Such wars are always liable to violate uncontroversial
requirements for a just war, even if they are purely “conventional” wars, not throwing radiation
or chemical or biological weapons around.
From a contemporary viewpoint the traditional doctrine of a just war, really of a just
defensive v/ax, is seriously out of date. The reasons for this reach wider than the new features
introduced by modem technological wars and the character of modem civilization, with its giant
cities littered with dangerous and vulnerable military targets. They have also to do with the
chauvinism of the justice proposed, which is shallow human justice, not natural or
environmental justice. There is no consideration of justice to other creatures or to the Earth (cf
Naess p.160). Two troubles are really intertwined here: conceptual difficulties with too narrow
a notion of justice, and ideological difficulties with too narrow a vision of what is an object of
�12
value, of what counts.
The deep-green case against war adds to the traditional case a further dimension,
neglected until very recently: the environmental dimension. It has suddenly been seen that wars
are typically environmental atrocities. Earlier, of course, “environments” were simply
backgrounds, backdrops in paintings and plays, to the real drama.
Contemporary technological wars tend to be not merely social tragedies but environmental
ones as well. There is a doctrine of just war, but it is a human chauvinistic affair. There is no
similarly developed doctrine of an ecologically sound war, a deep ecological war. Unless any
such war were literally different from modern wars, that is from contemporary technological
wars, it would overstep permitted bounds. For such wars are characteristically ecological
disasters. Hardened military people, desensitized by a rigorous unethical training, feel even
less compunction about degrading or destroying environments or members of other species
than they do of maiming or killing civilians through “collateral” activity.
Matching the no-just-war syllogism is a no-sound-war syllogism:
All wars should be environmentally sound wars.
Modern wars cannot be environmentally sound.
Therefore, there should be no modern wars.
The argument for the second premiss has of course to be different. It looks to the information
accumulating on what wars do to natural and built environments. The Vietnam and Gulf wars
both inflicted immense damage on natural environments or what was left of them.
The environmental effects of war are not confined to direct and collateral damage. There
are indirect effects also. Thus, for instance, war also supplied the mechanism of, and the
technology for, modern environmental destruction: explosives, bulldozers from tanks, etc. As
well, training for war and engagement in war have much fostered, along with attitudes that
make for social callousness or ruthlessness, those that contribute to environmental insensitivity
and cruelty.
3. Puzzles about Taoist strategy and its critiques of technology and violence
‘It is surprising how much of the Lao Tzu is devoted to military strategy’. Which
strategies? Surprise, above all. But why such strategies? ‘Do they not contradict the Taoists’
strong opposition to the use of force’ (Chan p.222), the implied commitment to quietism?
Briefly, Taoism is not committed to quietism, and while certainly antagonistic to violence, does
not oppose certain uses of force (only really z7/-forcing, as will be explained). Even so, the
emphasis on military strategy remains puzzling.
The strategies, many of them relevant to social defence, include
• seriousness, not ‘making light of the enemy’ (p.222)
• surprise, and nonvisibility (p.201). The defensive strategy involves guerilla tactics:
marching without formation, holding weapons without seeming to have them, confronting
�13
enemies without seeming to meet them (p.222). But even in times of peace, ‘smart weapons of
the state should not be displayed to the people’ (p.164). Such recommendations helped to fuel
the charge of deviousness lodged against Lao Tzu. But look at part of the reason for concealing
smart weapons: ‘The more smart weapons the people have, the more troubled the state will be’
(p.201). Smart weapons are carried in corrupt states, where the rich engage in conspicuous
consumption and the people are suppressed, not where Tao is practiced (LT p.194).
• advance from weakness, flexibility but firmness. Weakness is the principle of life and will
overcome strength (LT p.164, p.233).
• coolness and non-competition (LT p.233, p.164). Like these, most of the general strategies
are standard Taoist practices simply applied to military conduct. For these standard practices
the charge of deviousness looks feeble.
The response applies more generally to other allegedly devious political strategies. For
the strategies are but application of Taoist principles and techniques to warfare, politics and
elsewhere. Nothing excludes application of these techniques to what are accounted, in general,
unnecessary evils (which must sometimes, on other Taoist grounds, be countered). Nor, to
meet the main criticism, need any deceit or deviousness be involved; nor is it. In particular, the
legalist tactic, Tn order to grasp, it is necessary first to give’ (LT p.164), is cited as involving
‘an element of deceit’ ‘undeniably’, and ‘worse’ it is ‘morally questionable’ (Chan p.17). But
in order for me to grasp your hand in a normal handshake, it is necessary first for me to give
my hand. There is no deceit here, nothing morally questionable. All the tactics permit of
benign construals, of a Taoist kind. Consider, for instance, Tn order to contract, it is necessary
first to expand’ (LT p.164). In order to bend a copper pipe to the intended angle, it is better to
bend it first a little further than required. The transformation of water to ice (both favoured
natural items for symbolic purposes: natural processes which may look devious!) neatly
illustrates the Taoist principle (which is however hardly necessary), and shows softness and
weakness turned hardness and strength.
The Taoist critique of militarism is as much a critique of technology as of war. Sharp
weapons, ‘smart weapons’ as we might now say, come in for much critical attention, as we
have already noticed. Only in corrupt and degenerate states are they displayed or flaunted
(p.194, p.164); in deep-green regions smart weapons of state’ would not be retained
unexhibited. The people will not have them for they mean trouble (p.201); for similar reasons
deep-green regions will be free of them. So, it seems, will ideal Taoist regions: ‘Even if there
are arrows and weapons, none will display them’ (LT p.238). Much technology, military and
other, is excluded under the Taoist edict against violence (a further facet of the military-practices
paradox).5
5
Under contemporary technology and technological arrangements, such as the storage of
quantities of oil and nuclear and chemical materials in great cities, wars have assumed new and
�14
The powerful critique of militarism in the Tao-te Ching is coupled with strong opposition
to violence. Some of the linkage is evident enough. Militarism as practised represents an
ultimate form of state (or party) violence. A basic theme is that violent practices will come to an
unnatural end, and accordingly to a non-Taoist end (generalising LT p.176). While force may
occur in spectacular, but satisfactory, natural forms, force is duly distinguished from violence.
To force the growth of life means ill omen.
For the mind to employ the vital force without restraint means violence
(LT p. 197).
One who follows Tao does not apply dominating force, which usually has had results bringing
requital (p.152). Dominating force, like power, is in general castigated, under doctrine of wuwei, no forced actions, no violence. To force natural growth is deviant, destroying harmony.
To stop natural growth is deviant. But there is a significant difference between force and
violence. To intentionally employ destructive force is to do violence. To so force things is
condemned. To remain in harmony with things one does not so force things or practice
violence. There is a non-interference principle at work, which also indicates types of non
interference that are excluded.
However Taoism does not always get the distinction between force and violence quite
right. ‘Vital force without restraint’, intentionally excessive force, is only part of what counts
as violence, which is more generally force which violates, i.e. transgresses, descrecrates,
very destructive dimensions, to the point of being utterly irresponsible.
A different approach to technology, as to war, is now mandatory. These are no longer things
that can in principle be nicely confined and need not touch parties outside the fray. An
important part of ending wars, “winning the war against wars”, is removing the technology of
war, above all from irresponsible state power.
As for which technology to try to jettison and which to try to retain or improve, it is not so
difficult to indicate, provided evaluative terminology is not outlawed. What is wanted is
technology that is good in its place, what should be excluded is technology that is indifferent
or bad or potentially so. Technology to be justified has to do something worthwhile, it has
to address identifiable respectable needs. That is why merely indifferent technology is out;
there is no virtue in technology for technology's sake, as it is a mere means technique. It is
because of the crucial evaluative component in choice of technology that appropriateness,
itself evaluative, comes closer to encapsulating the criterion than other recent efforts. Size,
such as smallness, or intermediateness, are not what matter, though modest and not excessive
technologies are likely to fare better in satisfying appropriateness. In simpler societies, small
technology is of course more appropriate; for that is what is good there. From known criteria
for what is good these other features for locally appropriate technology can be read off:
reliability, esp. in maintenance, functioning well and safely under the expected range of
operating conditions (which may be difficult), ease of repair, capital cheapness and repair
inexpensiveness, environmental benignness, and meeting sound social needs.
�15
profanes, injures, outrages, etc. It is thus a negatively connoted force, an evil force in some
specified intentional respect. There is a tendency for Taoist commentators, not Taoists, to
regard Taoism as condemning all uses, or even occurrences, of force, but this is not so. Rather
intentional ill-forcing is what is castigated, what is deviant. Thus Taoism does not exclude a
range of defensive practices, which make satisfactory use of natural forces, like letting the
machines of war industry stop.
Those who would abolish war and its machinery, substituting for it nonwarlike and
ideally nonviolent methods, technology, and strategies, have been confronted not merely with
much sub-rational abuse but with plenty of criticism and even some paradoxes. Here is a recent
paradox concerning war and nonviolence:
• War must be abolished. One reason is simply economic. We can no longer afford it, and
the opportunity costs are enormous. Along with other extraordinarily wasteful activities, it is an
anachronism.
• Doing so cannot be accomplished without violence, i.e. in effect, given the types of violence
involved, without what amounts to war. According to a fuller version of this premiss, the
process of abolishing a war would only be achieved through a revolution so profound that it
could not succeed without extensive and extreme violence, amounting to (civil) war.
But then war cannot be abolished without war.
Therefore, war which must be abolished cannot be abolished.6
This “paradox” has been compared with the Liar paradox, but the parallel does not persist far.
For this paradox does not involve self-referential features, and is easily broken, as follows. Let
the “last war” be not the last standard war but the revolution abolishing war. Then, given that
the revolution is successful, war will be abolished therewith, i.e. with that last war. There need
be no regress, given again a successful outcome. All the premisses stand intact, but the
conclusion, following the ‘therefore’ is a nonsequitur. However, while the dissolution of the
argument is accordingly logically fine, the route is repugnant. Standard pacifism challenges the
second premiss.
4. Standard and moral pacifism.
6
Brian Medlin, who forcefully propounded this puzzle, set other analogous puzzles alongside it
- designed to reveal deep difficulties in contemporary political, and especially alternative,
thought. Another puzzle, concerning liberty and repression in the context of capitalism,
revolved around the following inconsistent triad:
• capitalism must be removed, but liberty retained.
• capitalism cannot be removed without repression.
• repression is antithetical to liberty.
The puzzle is resolved as with the analogous puzzle of abolishing. Let the “last capitalist”
action before the days of liberty be the repressive but liberating revolution overthrowing
capitalism.
�16
Although Taoism is strongly opposed to war, and much in favour of peace - and
accordingly by prevailing standards a substantially pacific position - it is not (nowhere in the
central texts) committed to pacifism in usual senses, for two different reasons:• It is not, by contrast with pacifism, opposed to all types of warfare, for example smart
defensive wars.
• It eschews deontology in terms of which moral pacifism is commonly stated, for instance
through the watershed thesis
P2.
It is morally wrong to use violence.
By contrast with Taoism, deep environmentalism does not avoid deontic claims, and is
committed in principle to nonviolent technologies and ways and to pacifistic principles.
Moreover, certain forms of deep environmentalism are completely committed to pacifism,
notably European forms. Is deep green?
There is heavy contemporary opposition to pacifism, as there also was to Taoism in the
warring times when Taoism was first being promulgated. Many of the central institutions of
contemporary life are intricated in coercion, violence and war. The most prominent
contemporary institutions, states, are premissed on these elements of damaging force; they
claim entitlement to use them widely, and even claim a certain territorial monopoly on their use.
As a result they are having constantly to engage in them in attempt to maintain that monopoly.
They are certainly the main perpetrators of wars, and of violence. They are indeed inured to
wars, are in constant preparation for wars, yet propound dialectial (and normally dishonest and
cynical) doctrines of peace through war (for a recent example see the appendix).
Unremarkably then, the extensive propagandistic machinery of state has invested heavily
in “justificatory” exercises in favour of controlled use, its own use, of destructive force, and
continues to inveigh against pacifism. Because a routine trick in this sophistical repetoire
consists in conflating pacifism with extreme, naive and inplausible, forms, an inevitable and
important early task commits in unscrambling senses of ‘pacifism’. Semantical skulduggery
can be thwarted in this way.
Pacifism, as explained by English dictionaries, invariably concerns wars and warfare, and
contains two components, negative and, elaborating on that, positive:- The negative component
is, in Amauld's word, anti-War-ism, opposition (in ways to be further specified) to all forms of
warfare (see OED). The positive component supplies alternative ways of settling disputes (what
it is supposed that wars with some semblance of justification involve), such as negotiation,
arbitration,... - and, adding to too narrow dictionary accounts - sanctions, substitutions (e.g.
of sporting events, operatic contests, cooperative ventures),... . In brief standard pacifism is
opposition to all warfare and resolution of potential wars by other nonmilitary means.
Plainly the opposition to warfare, like the sanctions and so on, cannot itself be military
(using soldiers and other devices of war), on pain of some incoherence. But otherwise the
ways of opposition can be many and various: they can certainly be active, as with nonviolent
�17
demonstrations, resistance movements, and so forth, and they may also be devious (e.g.
turning the forces of war upon themselves so they are neutralised). It quickly becomes evident,
then, that some of the dictionaries offer but loaded definitions which, by restricting the negative
components, reduce the initial appeal and plausibility of pacifism. Consider the Concise
English definition of the negative component: ‘the doctrine of non-resistance to hostilities and
of total non-co-operation with any form of warfare’. Thereby excluded are forms of pacifism
which offer active and plausible alternatives to warfare such as social defence. The Concise
English tends to force pacifism into what the Oxford English Dictionary lists as its final item:
‘often, with depreciatory implication, the advocacy of peace at any price’, ‘in any
circumstance’. Pacifism can easily resist being forced into these sorts of circumstances: it has
many resources, as an extensive series of texts on alternatives to war, such as negotiation, non
violent action and social defence, from Taoism to contemporary environmentalism attest.
Academic philosophers have much advanced the semantical strategy of some dictionaries,
of rendering pacifism more difficult from the very outset by narrow and biassed definitions.
They have stretched the term from its restricted setting of warfare, confined to state and
organised gang violence, to cover all forms of violence, from state and interstate to, what is
very different, personal and interpersonal violence. Call the resulting considerably stretched
notion of pacifism, according to which it is morally wrong to use violence, according to which
P2 holds, stretched pacifism.'1 While stretched pacifism certainly includes standard pacifism
(unless the notions of war and warfare are tampered with), the converse is very far from being
the case. A pacifist is in no way committed to stretched pacifism, which is a much more
problematic and difficult position than standard pacifism. There are several, substantially
different reasons for this, which will be picked up seriatim.
Stretched pacifism, also misleadingly called moral pacifism, has looked a very easy
critical target to moral philosophers. Many the effusive philosopher who, upon sighting such a
target, has charged, whooping such rhetoric as “incoherent”, “inconsistent”, “insensitive”,
“fanatical”. However, with improved logical technology now available for accommodating and
treating moral dilemmas, it is no great feat to resist such attacks, in the fashion of previous
investigations (see esp. Al, also MD). A main aim was to demonstrate that stretched pacifism
was not so stupid as it was made out to be or appeared to be to these inured to present dominant
violent ways. So far from being stupid, it is viable. In future gentler times stretched pacifism
could even be realised for whole communities of creatures (as some genuinely Christian sects
envisaged); whence it will finally be seen to be feasible not merely for sages and supermen, and
many ordinary women, but much more extensively.
7
In Al this notion was contrasted with standard pacifism as comprehensive pacifism:
overcomprehensive might have been better.
�18
The method of philosophical accommodation was through moral dilemmas. The sort of
moral dilemma that stretched pacifism can induce derives as follows. On the one side stands
the theme P2, Wv, in convenient symbols, for Wrong V-ing, violencing. Now this implies to
WB, where B presents a case of of violence. On the other side, particular circumstances
develop which lead to W ~B, because ~B would produce in the circumstances considerable
wrong, for instance extensive violence, mass murder, etc. One stock example from the
literature concerns calling off the firing squad about to shoot several captives if the pacifist
shoots one of them (it is elaborated in Al p.13). Interestingly, another stock example from the
literature concerns standard pacifism (it can also be presented in terms of patriotism; for details
of both see MD p.10).
Resolution of intractable moral dilemmas is, where it is required, situational. The agent
decides in the situation, within the fix, what to do. There are many ways in which such
decision making can proceed, less rational, such as those applying chance or involving bad
faith, or more rational, such as those applying consequentialist decision theory (for details see
MD, pp.32-9). A decision theory taking account of all that should be included will not however
be purely consequential. It would also take account of relevant motivation.
This defence and rehabilitation of moral pacifism has been challenged, in particular by
Smith (hereafter JWS). JWS claims the defence offered is a ‘failure because it trivializes
pacifism’ (p. 153 twice). The rehabilitation
trivializes pacifism because it entails that pacifism doesn't substantially differ
from a form of activism which holds that while violence is always wrong
one is sometimes justified on consequentialist grounds for preferring violent
acts, if these acts are lesser evils than any other real alternatives. This is the
commonsense position which most people hold - yet - pacifism after all was
supposed to be radical moral doctrine - (p.153 rearranged).8
Part of the criticism is, then, not so much that pacifism is trivialized - JWS “activism” is
hardly trivial - as that pacifism is popularised, deflated from a radical position to the
commonsense position most people hold (p.154 also). Yet not a shred of evidence is adduced
that JWS activism is such a populist position. Available evidence, for example from peace
movements and oppositional opinion polls, suggests the very opposite: that, for instance, most
people support state-justified conventional wars with the military violence they incur, and
accordingly do not hold that violence is always wrong. From such a commonsense angle,
pacifism with its condemnation of conventional wars and the violence they involve remains a
radical doctrine.
As regards wars and other violence-incurring social authorities, contemporary pacificism
8
JWS now informs me that he has changed his position. Whether the move effects his
criticism, I don't know.
�19
is, as previous explained (e.g. Al p.3), a form of activism. Pacifism does not imply utter
pacifity, but may actively involve social defence, resistance and so on. However a certain level
of misrepresentation enters into the JWS challenge in the details of what forms of activism
pacifism may include. That misrepresentation begins in the second clause concerning what is
said to be sometimes justified. For the situational procedure where dilemmas arise will not
generally be consequential applying a principle of lesser evil. In dilemmatic situations such
principles are suspended, and such a principle is in any case unacceptable to moral pacifists. A
small amount of violence may be less bad in its consequences than verbal offence, but a
principled pacifist will choose the slightly greater evil where other obligations do not exclude it.
A more serious distortion occurs in JWS's effort to force procedures in dilemma
situations into purely consequentialist form. In fact consequential decision theory was
deployed as a model only for how to proceed rationally in a situational setting where deontic
procedures were suspended (see MD p.38). What was said, still misleadingly retrospective
vision reveals, was this: ‘what is done is a very consequentialist thing’ (Al p.13), not ‘one acts
in a consequentialist fashion to do the sufficiently good thing in the circumstances’ (JWS
p.152). Situationally other procedures than those resembling orthodox rational decision
making (modified from maximizing to satisizing objectives) may be adopted (MD p.38).
Further the orthodox consequentialist theory is inadequate because it leaves out, or tries to
reduce to consequences, nonconsequential elements, notably motives. It is not difficult, in
principle (in advance of attempted consequentialization of motives), to design situations where
motives, such as integrity or maintaining faith, enter to yield outcomes upsetting consequential
calculations. More elaborate decision making procedures than those of consequentialism,
sometimes at variance with consequentialism, are thus presupposed.
A further part of JWS's criticism accordingly goes by the board, the alleged appeal ‘to
“second best” consequentialist considerations,... already explicitly condemned’ (p.154). What
was condemned was stock universal consequentialism, ‘that only consequentialist
considerations carry argumentative weight’ (quoted on p. 152), so undercutting other deontic
principles, such as those of pacifism. It was not claimed, what is utterly different, that
consequentialist considerations can nowhere enter into deliberation and decision making. The
conclusion JWS arrives at is therefore substantially astray.
After criticising modern moral philosophy for its reliance upon
consequentialist modes of thought, it is surprising, and inconsistent, to find
... [reliance] upon such modes of thought to escape logical difficulties raised
by moral dilemmas facing ... pacifis[m] (p. 152)
There is no inconsistency. JWS has confused universal with particular. As well he has
wrongly contracted all situational decision making to consequentialist modes.
There is a third part to the criticism, that the defence is too easy; the ‘strategy will allow
too much violence to be (perpetrated and) justified to suit the tastes of any real pacifist’ (p. 153).
This another part of the so-called trivialization, this time however dilution rather than
�20
popularization, weakening the moral stand against violence. This third contention is premissed
on a mistake: that one can ‘justify on consequentialist grounds any number of violent acts,
providing that such acts are lesser evils than other real alternatives facing social agents’ (p.153).
Moral pacifism offers no such licence; allowing such consequentialism to take over was never
part of the position. The slide to such consequentialism is made on the strength of a similarly
erroneous example. The potential victim of an aspiring rapist ‘is supposed to flee or wriggle
free if possible. But it is easy to consequentially justify the use of violence by the woman to
prevent herself from being raped’ (p.153 italics added). In the example so far described there is
no dilemma, and no such easy resort to consequentially ‘justified’ violence.
What allows too much violence is the lesser evil JWS assumes is easily consequentially
justified; for example that the woman is entitled to inflict, and escalate, violence so long as it
remains ‘a lesser evil than the violence of attempted rape’ (p. 153). Since she may thereby
inflict quite unreasonable damage (esp. if she is a Kung Fu expert), the result is inconsistent
with ‘the basic principle of self-defence’ which JWS earlier adduced according to which what is
‘appropriate, in response is only that level of force necessary to defend oneself against the
threat’ (p.150). There is evidence in JWS's work of some enthusiasm for levels of violence
which exceed his ‘basic principle’, his appeal to ‘lesser evil’ generates some instances. The
‘basic principle’, itself fraught with difficulties (cf. the contorted discussion of what weapons
are appropriate in response to what attacks, p. 150), still exceeds what stretched pacifism would
enjoin; for instance, it may not be appropriate to respond with force. But in a technical sense
stretched pacifism is compatible with the ‘basic principle’, since it only imposes the upper
bound on level of force.
As for easiness, moral pacifism is not an easy position to live by, or to justify. Removing
objections to pacifism is one thing; solidifying a positive case for it is quite another, and so far
hardly conclusive (as Al tried to explain, pp 29-31). Stretched pacifism was advanced,
hypothesized to put it more precisely, as a still viable option. It was not presented as a morally
compulsory position, or, for that matter, as one that this defender adhered to or affirmed.
To reiterate, while a cumulative case can be made for stetched pacifism as principled non
violence, that case was not conclusive, and is hard to improve. For, further, some serious
difficulties standing in the way of stretched pacifism were assembled, the most important of
which derives from the extent of violence apparent in transactions within the natural world.
Simply consider the practices of carnivores, essential to their natural way of life. In order to
meet their life needs for sustenance, these creatures do, and are often obliged to, engage
routinely in violent activity. While it can no doubt be argued, as some vegetarians may do, that
the natural order is an immoral order, and that remaining carnivores should be converted to
vegetarianism as rapidly as proves possible (in the way domestic dogs are converted to dog
biscuits), the difficulties with such proposals are immense. The task envisaged is gigantic, and
beyond human capacities - even if it were desirable. For there are millions of species to be
�21
somehow converted to proper vegetarianism. Then there are millions of other species to be
converted to proper and well regulated contraceptive practices, else their numbers will get out of
hand (uncontrollably) with predation removed. Given humans lack of success in limiting their
own excessive numbers, such regulation appears entirely remote. Aside however from the
practical difficulties, is such a fully vegetarian order, with evolution further derailed, a desirable
improvement on the natural order? Is it morally obligatory? It is certainly not obligatory, as
alternative systems of morality in harmony with the prevailing natural order are feasible. Nor is
it desirable, for (to appeal to such alternative value systems) the natural order is more or less in
order as it is. Full vegetarianization would only reduce its value, vastly.
More generally, a defensible ethical framework should not, it would be rightly contended,
be right out of step with the natural order of other creatures, decently depicted. Decent
depiction is important, for some features of the natural order, such as competition, combat and
predation, so far from escaping attention, have been grossly exaggerated and exploited. Thus,
for instance, the ludicrous picture of nature red in truth and claw, so beloved of descendents of
orthodox Victorians and of orthodox economists. However, even under decent depiction, the
“natural order” is often not benign. That appears to be enough to induce a supervenient moral
dilemma for any stretched pacifism which is coupled to a deep ethic (e.g. which does not
separate humans out from the natural order) and which eschews the desperate vegetarian route:
The natural order is not an immoral order
The natural order contains (regular) instances of violence.
Therefore, instances of violence are not immoral in apparent defiance of P2 Moreover, there are too many instances of violence, too regularly
occurring, for them all to be plausibly shunted into the moral dilemma category (and predatory
carnivores face no dilemmas). Raptors that practice violence every week are not immoral
(neither are they clearly moral; the category of morality only significantly extends so far).
The main trouble lies however with P2 (which needs some finer adjustment, as was
alrady indicated in Al). While P2 is alright in context, within a particular, perfectly viable,
ethical framework, designed for the usual human round, the conventional setting for ethical
theories, it stands in need of modification outside that setting. It is time to suggest the sort of
modification envisaged. Evidently P2 was addressed to moral agents. Which agents? Not to
carnivores that supply their own livelihood, nor really to morally degenerate humans, but to
peace-sensitive agents. With that semi-technical form, yet to be characterised, a suitably
P2
MP2. It is morally wrong, for a peace-sensitive agent, to use violence.9
modified
9
results:
The generalization of P2, suggested in Al, to cover also the parallel situation of
environmental vandalism, can be similarly modified. The anti-vandolence principle becomes
MP2°. It is morally wrong, for a peace- and environmentally-sensitive agent, to use
�22
To recover what amounts, in the previous discussive context, to P2, it suffices to add the
proposition that every human agent ought to be peace-sensitive. Much as that proposition has
to recommend it, it appears too ethically advanced for many modern humans; it sets too high a
moral standard to be taken as a serious guide to practice. It seems wise to settle presently for
something less demanding, such as that every advanced moral agent ought to be peace
sensitive. To put essentially the same proposition alternatively:
Stretched pacifism (as modified) is supererogatory. While it is perhaps too late to hope for
much moral progress in humans, it is pleasant to contemplate alternative futures where what is
supererogatory became obligatory, and widely practiced.
Richard Sylvan*
Appendix
I began drafting this essay at the time (January 17, midday Australian time) of the
American attacks upon Iraq. The optly named Prime Minister Hawke of Australia had just
made a statement to the nation-state, announcing (the) war. In this statement there was much
talk of peace. There was even - in what was effectively a declaration of war - reiteration of the
modem quest for ‘a new world order of peace’. Peace through war; so it rings out again and
again, through the centuries. ‘War must be for the sake of peace’ (Aristotle p.220). More than
two thousand years later, we have fought those wars to end all wars. But it is no use, Hawke
solemely pronounced, just talking about peace, and thinking about peace; we must work for
peace, fight for it - through war. Impeccable logic?
President Bush, supreme commander, convinced us with similar logic, speaking too with
many tongues. Of how he ‘preferred to think of peace, not war’. But now ‘only force will
prevail’, as ‘all reasonable efforts to reach a peaceful solution are exhausted’. ‘What must be
done’ must be done, or will be anyway. With God on side with the US offensive (as well as
on the other side), it will go well. As it was said to have, though it achieved comparatively little
that other efforts may not have yielded more satisfactorily, and thought it may now have to
followed with another invasion. Nor have we ever managed to glimpse much of what is now
supposed, when we are no longer engaged, to come ‘out of the horror of war’: a ‘new world
order ... which governs the conflict of nations’; a ‘rule of law’, not war. How the one,
enforcable law, is achieved, unless backed by the the other, is not explained (Medlin's paradox
hits back). Similarly what we now hear from many militarists, as they rush to war, is that
vandolence.
Thank to David Bennett for joint contributions (from UT) and to JWS for opposition (in
JWS)
�23
‘peace is a great good, war a great evil’. But, for the most part, only the rhetoric has shifted;
practice has scarcely changed at all.
REFERENCES
W.-T. Chan, A Source Book on Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963;
referred to as ST.
W.-T. Chan (ed.), The Way of Lao Tzu (Tao-te Ching), Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1963;
referred to as LT.
B. Martin, Uprooting War, Freedom Press, London, 1984.
A. Naess, Ecology, community and lifestyle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK,
1989.
R.A. Rapaport, Pigs for the Ancestors : ritual in the ecology of a New Guinea People, Yale
University Press, New Haven, 1967.
R. Routley, ‘War and Peace II. On the alleged inconsistency, moral insensitivity and fanaticism
of pacifism’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #9, Research School of
Social Science, Australian National University, 1983 (also in. Inquiry ); referred to as AL
R. Routley and V. Plumwood, ‘Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions’, Discussion
papers in environmental philosophy #6, Research School of Social Science, Australian
National University, 1984 (also in Paraconsistent Logic)-, referred to as MD.
R. Routley, ‘War and Peace I. On the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and nuclear-deterrence
and the political fall-out’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy, #5, Research
School Of Social Science, Australian National University, 1984.
G. Sharp, Social Power and Political Freedom, Porter Sargent, Boston, 1980.
J.W. Smith, The Worms at the Heart of Things , Public Relations Unit, Flinders University,
1989.
R. Sylvan, ‘War and Peace III, Australia's defence philosophy’, Social Philosophy, for Nuclear
Conference, University of Queensland, 1985.
R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, ‘Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology’, Discussion papers in
environmental philosophy #19, Research School of Social Science, Australian National
University, 1990; referred to as UT.
�
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2073
WAR AND PEACE IV:
TAO AND DEEP-GREEN flAClF/Stf
Taoism and deep-green environmental theory, although closely aligned on very many
issues, diverge over war. For Taoism, by contrast for instance with Buddhism, is not a pacific
doctrine, but is committed to skilful defensive militarism. While it does not espouse a fortress
mentality, Taoism certainly condones limited defensive military operations for specific
purposes, a sort of guerilla warfare. By contrast, deep-green theory, while acknowledging the
role of organised social defence, stands opposed to professional militarism, and thereby to
military defence, and is committed to a principled pacifism. Conveniently a route through
Taoism, philosophically fascinating in its own right, will lead us to problems of pacifism and
towards deep-green theory.
1. Features of a Taoist critique of war and militarism.
War did not receive a favourable press in ancient Chinese philosophy. Generally
aggression and war were to be avoided. Even Confucius imposed very demanding conditions:
for example, ‘when good men have instructed the people [in morals, agriculture, military
tactics] for seven years, they may be allowed to bear arms,’ ‘If a ruler ... does not set himself
right, even his commands will not be obeyed’ (SB p.41, italics added). Mo Tzu went much
further than Confucius, roundly condemning war - on utilitarian grounds, that war yields no
net benefit at any level (SB p.227). What is more, he backed his heavy condemnation
practically (unlike some conspicuous contemporary theoretical utilitarians); ‘he did not hesitate
to walk for ten days and ten nights in an effort to dissuade a ruler from making war’ (SB
p.212). But none, it is said, went as far, in a detailed and sophisticated criticism of war, as Lao
Tzu; ‘none has condemned war more strongly than Lao Tzu’. ‘[T]he opposition of Taoism to
the use of force is well-known, and the most bitter attack on militarism if found in the Lao Tzu'
(Chan, p.154, p.17.)
But, after that splendid build-up, the text is slightly disappointing. Lao Tzu does not
assert outright that war is an abomination, or even roundly condemn it. His critique of war,
militarism, and military technology, is subtle and oblique, and, on the surface, far distanced
from pacifism. For he does not recommend an end to war - in that genuine Taoists, those who
possess Tao, will never participate in them - but expects wars to continue as unavoidable evils.
Worse, he even goes so far as to outline proper attitudes to war and conduct in war, and indeed
to suggest military techniques and strategies, some of which look decidedly devious. Among
the classical works of Taoism, we focus on the Lao Tzu because, by contrast with other works,
a remarkable component of that book is devoted to war and militarism.
The apparent deviousness of the tactics Lao Tzu allocates serves to highlight what has
been seen as ‘the most troublesome element’ in his philosophy (Chan p.17) - not so much
however because they concern military operations, but because they are taken to apply much
2
dispensation? Why should what is not tolerated more generally be exonerated there? But given
that Taoism has here the virtue of consistency (i.e. uniformity on principles) and of
universalizability, that simply leaves more explaining to be done.
• Puzzles for Taoism, and wars as unavoidable evils
There are two puzzles here in Taoism rather than one. There is the military-practices
paradox, and, varying and generalising on that, there are life-practices paradoxes. The special
paradox is generated by the following incompatible elements: on the one side, ‘the most bitter
attack on militarism’, the well-known opposition of Taoism to the use of force (p. 17) and to the
possession and use of smart military weapons and technology - implying that war is far from
all right - and on the other, advocacy of certain (devious) military tactics, outlines of (deceitful)
conduct in war, and so on - implying that war is all right after all. A straightforward
generalisation of this paradox would look at other morally-sensitive parts of life, where some
practice was strongly condemned yet engaged in (for many examples, see the dilemmas
assembled in MD). But the variation of concern to Chan and the neo-Confucians concerns the
conjunction of upright with devious practices in life, in particular in the life of the sage. For a
Taoist sage is presumed to lead an upright straightforward life, yet appears to engage in devious
and even deceitful practices incompatible with such a life-style. Call this the Taoist-lifestyle
paradox.
Evidently a good deal of explaining is required, as to how Taoism can coherently take the
positions it appears to presume, both on war and peace, and on life more generally. A desirable
preliminary would seem to be a little investigation of what position A taken, especially on war
and militarism. One key pasage runs:
Fine weapons are instruments of evil
They are hated by creatures
Therefore those who possess the Tao turn away from them....
Weapons are instruments of evil, not the instruments of a good ruler.
When he uses them unavoidably, he regards calm restraint as the best
principle
Even when he is victorious, he does not regard it as praiseworthy,
For to praise victory is to delight in the slaughter of men.
He who delights in the slaughter of men will not succeed in the empire. ...
For a victory, let us observe the occasion with funeral-ceremonies
(LT p.154).
Wars, which involve the use of weapons, instruments of evil, are accordingly themselves evil.
They are also evil because they involve the slaughter of men. But they are also sometimes
unavoidable (also p. 152). Therefore such wars are unavoidable evils. Such discourse,
obtained by almost immediate inference from the passage, is within the standard orbit of
dilemma talk. But Taoism lacks, through deliberately eschewing deontic talk, the discourse
which enables direct expression of such dilemmas, or even direct condemnation of wars or of
clever weapons. Instead the points are made by circumlocution, what the possesser of Tao
does, how the good ruler conducts himself, or by analogy, of victory in war with death.
3
Unavoidable evils are the very stuff of deontic dilemmas (though many theories,
underpinned by shonky logic, lack the resources for representing this stuff properly). Where
something is unavoidably evil, it is both bad, because evil, and also not bad, doing it is
excusable, because it is unavoidable. So, given such an argument (which has its weaknesses),
an unavoidable evil is a genuinely dilemmatic object with inconsistent features. Certain wars
have looked, since ancient times, like such dilemmatic objects.
Revealingly, Chan tries to explain that ‘most troublesome element’ in Taoism, the
military-practice paradox, through the following exercise in lateral thinking:
It can ... be argued that Lao Tzu uses warfare to illustrate his principles of
taking no action and weakness because warfare is among the most dynamic
and critical of human experiences, just as the Indian classic, the Bhagavadgita
chooses fighting as the theme on which to discuss the terrible dilemma
whether one should fulfil his duty, as in the case of a soldier, and kill, or
should fail in his duty and refrain from killing (p. 17).
‘Just as’? The Indian classic prevents a classic moral dilemma, a dilemma represented in
contemporary philosophy (following its rediscovery by Sartre), where there are incompatible
duties: the duty to kill, because of one's role as a soldier, and the duty not to kill, because of
one's human condition, and the supervenient dilemma of failing in and fulfilling one's duties.
These dilemmas for an individual (male, as it then was) are replicated in dilemmas regarding
war for group institutions: at bottom, the obligation to engage in war (for one set of compelling
reasons) as contraposed with the obligation not to engage in war (for another, perhaps
overlapping, set of reasons).
A theory of moral dilemmas (as worked out for example in MD) is crucial for an adequate
treatment of major issues in war and peace, especially (as will become evident) for a viable
strong pacifism. But Taoism, eschewing deontic discourse, lacks the apparatus to state or
develop moral dilemmas. Hence it is logically excluded from giving a full or adequate account
of what is going on conceptually. One of the philosophically fascinating feature of Taoism is
the fashion in which it manages to avoid deontic discourse, and to substitute for direct deontic
discourse or improvise circumlocutions when deontic discourse would otherwise appear
inevitable (cf. UT for examples). But there are costs. One is inability to display the mechanism
of deontic dilemmas, or to show what reasons and argument lie behind Taoist prounouncements
and conclusions (the shortage of Taoism on argument is another philosophically conspicious
feature, also observed in UT). As conceptual apparatus for analysizing moral dilemmas is
missing, most of the machinery involved has to be passed over. Only the outcomes, as Taoism
sees them, are presented, as if from a black box. Taoism blacks out the story on deontic
dilemmas that deep-green theory can tell, as the following diagram tries to show:
Diagrams . Charting the processing of deontic dilemmas that are "resolved”.
4
Deep-green chart:
dilemma
input
Arguments to
incompatible
prescriptions
->
Processing of dilemma,
directive
situational procedures
output
Corresponding Taoist chart:
Black
directive
Box
output
input
It is evident that Taoism can be extended', information can be put into the Black Box
rendering it less opaque. That extension can be made so as to conform to deep-green theory,
i.e. so that the extended Taoist chart, a neo-Daoist chart, looks like the deep-green one. That is
indeed essentially how neo-Daoism get characterised, in terms of conformity of the extension to
deep ecological theory (see UT).
We are now placed to explain how to dissolve, or at least neutralize, the paradoxes
deriving from repudiation of militarism, an awkwardly qualified repudiation in the case of
Taoism. In a significant sense there is no resolving of genuine deontic dilemmas. The
principles delineating the fix may stand, incompatible, signalling the persisting suboptimality
(or better, sublimenality) of the dilemmatic situation. Where there is a dilemma, involved
parties should try to do well enough in the sublimenal circumstances (for a much fuller account,
see MD). Thus where there is a war, itself a non-Taoist process, engaged or caught up Taoists
will not abandon Taoism. Taoist methods will be applied, Taoist strategies pursued.
So much for theoretical representation and (non-)resolution of life-practices and other
dilemmas, details of which are readily elaborated in deep-green extensions of Taoism. A prior
substantive issue is whether dilemmas always are generated: not whether wars are evil
(typically they are, an issue we shall come to), but whether wars are unavoidable. Analysis of
wars does not bear that familiar claim out decisively. Many wars could have been avoided,
through conciliation, negotiation, restraint, etc., and no worse results apparently obtained,
through sanctions, exchange, trade, etc. Through a typology of wars (coming up) that
conjecture can be given some substance. Consider, for instance, what would be walk-overs.
Then there is little point in making a military response. So war can be avoided. Certainly an
occupation, to be met in a different way, may still occur. And so on, perhaps, for various other
types of war. But, more generally, try this:Every war involves an aggressor, who makes an aggressive move. Such an aggressor
could always avoid that move, taking a different (or a do-nothing) course of action. Therefore,
5
every war can be avoided. No war is entirely unavoidable.
Setting aside determinism (which renders all actual wars along with all other events
unavoidable), it could be argued that a war sometimes simply boils up, without an aggressor,
an intensification of a conflagatory situation. There are grounds for scepticism regarding such
examples; for such intensification can only occur if provocative military moves are made, for
instance troops are stationed in provocative or risky positions.
The presumption that certain wars are unavoidable typically derives from a one-sided
perspective on war, a defender's perspective. A defender has no option, so it is routinely
averred, but to respond to a determined aggressor. Even if that should be so sometimes, when
there is no running away or going underground, it does not establish that such a war is
unavoidable; for it neglects the role of the aggressor. By a smarter formulation, relevant
features of unavoidability can be captured. Although wars may not be unavoidable, defensive
action in wars that have been initiated may be unavoidable. At least such action may be
unavoidable if unacceptably high costs (death, enslavement, etc.) are not to be avoided.
Thereupon another highly relevant feature emerges: the linkage of avoidability to costs. For
whether an action is unavoidable then depends upon what costs a party is prepared to incur
before and when insisting on action: but this appears entirely unacceptable. How can what is
“unavoidable” cease to be so when some further costs are absorbed? However with basics like
survival, a certain liberty, and so on, we do reach such bounds. An important type of
unavoidability. We also reach scenarios, unavailable to Lao Tzu but kindly brought within
range by modem technology, which may appear to justify aggressive strikes.
State Z, while not an aggressor, is carrying out practices which will impose unacceptably
high costs upon peoples of other states and implacably refuses to desist. It could, for example,
be poisoning air or water flowing to other states. But ,to make the case vivid, let us suppose
that state Z is constructing, for reasons Zeders find convincing (they are committed to a faith
which depicts all humans as incorrigible sinners and unworthy of life), an effective doomsday
machine. Would an (aggressive) preemptory strike designed to disable or destroy the machine
be unavoidable?1 In a sense, No; in another Yes. For different modalities can operate.
Physically outsiders need to do nothing, but watch Zeders go about their zealous work. But
deontically they are under heavy moral pressure, because of the costs of standing by idly: if the
human race is worth anything very substantial, then they are obliged to act, action is deontically
unavoidable. Here is a situation where a proposed reduction of deontic logic proves
illuminating. Obligation is explicated through not implying, or necessitating, the sanction, i.e.
1
Whether it would be justifiable, or just, are separate issues. But it is evident enought that
such scenarios further damage the obsolescent idea of just war. For, according to received
doctrine, a just war is defensive. (How such a war can be fought at all is another matter;
coherence requires relativization to ‘just war for party d’.)
6
excessive ethical costs such as extermination. Let us explain deontic unavoidability
analogously: an action is so unavoidable if not undertaking it would result in excessive ethical
costs. Then if it can be established that there is no other way than a military strike, an act of
war, to ensure that the Zeders desist (and certainly we can envisage scenarios like that), then
that is deontically unavoidable. It is also dilemmatic for those committed to, or inclined
towards pacifism; and it is, for them at least, but paradoxically justifiable, as the negation is
also justifiable, on pacific grounds.
Scenarios like that sketched, that appear to render certain wars deontically unavoidable
require but little or no elaboration to render them evil. Evil indeed is such a standard feature of
standard wars that at least its great presence call for little supporting evidence. But it has taken
to vast stretch of human history to reach this general point of recognition.
The manifold evils of war Lao Tzu very early recognised and emphasized:
Wherever armies are stationed, briars and thorns grow.
Great wars are always followed by famines (p.152).
And nowadays followed by great tides of refugees. This passage includes not only recognition
of the widely-observed socio-environmental consequences of war, but, more striking, very
early recognition of the severe environmental impact of military forces. That critique is not
however developed in Taoism.2 Only recently has it been pushed substantially further. And
only recently could a new, most significant twist occur, the merging of resource security, long a
military objective, with environmental security.
The appalling idea has recently been floated that the military, in need of new work and
roles with the apparent warming of West-East relations and cooling of the Cold War, should
exchange usual military idleness for meddling in environmental matters: regulation and policing
of environmental resources, ensurance of environmental security of powerful states, and
similar. This is a bit like reassigning those imprisoned for child abuse to managing
kindergartens; for consider the impressive military record of environmental vandalism. What
the military is alleged to offer is a structure appropriate and available for handling such matters.
But, to the contrary, it is precisely the sort of hierarchical, authoritarian expensive structure that
should be wound down and up as soon as the opportunity appears, as (briefly) now, rather than
being retained and shockingly reoriented (as a state-serving “Greenwar”).
2.
On the divergence of deep-green from Taoism.
Having arrived, by better or worse arguments, at the conclusion that wars, though
2
But a bridge to deep-green theory can be made through neo-Daoism, an updating of Taoism in
confirmity with deep ecology (which however is somewhat thin and threadbare on war; for
what there is so far, see Naess p. 160). On neo-Daoism, sec UT.
7
generally evil, may be sometimes unavoidable, it is evidently important to say something about
how they - those of the theoretical residue - are to be conducted. By appropriate conduct the
damage they do may be reduced; also the conduct should be appropriate to the funereal nature
of wars (to exceed Taoist resources for stating this sort of point). It is at this stage that deep
green theory begins to diverge from Taoism.
In further explaining the Taoist and deep-green critiques of war, and diverting objections
to them, a rough and preliminary typology of wars is important. It is also of passing interest in
its own philosophical right. War, according to English Dictionaries, is a ‘contest carried on by
force of arms, typically between nations or states’. More exactly, war is a game - in the
generous technical sense of game-theory, with players, rules, goals, strategies, and so on carried on in significant part by military means, normally between states or substates. Call the
contestants, (warring) parties. They typically represent of course larger populations. The set
up between parties resembles the arrangements of players in game theory. There are several
analogical extensions of the term war to cover games where one of the parties is an object,
construed as hostile (an enemy of the state), such as Crime, Drugs, Poverty or Nature. These
we can set aside as analogical wars. Of course wars form only a part of military activities.
Military interests and objectives have always stretched significantly further than war, to include
surveillence and security, easily extended to resource security, environmental security and life
style security, and beyond that to political stability and other political matters. Evidently
military ambitions have far over-extended themselves in bagging such democratic concerns.
An anarchist solution to the whole problem of war, which some have seen Taoism as
reaching towards, is immediate: eliminate the source of war, states. Unfortunately it is not
quite that simple (and that's not simple). For wars can also occur between nations, cultures,
races or tribes (which are not such artifices as states, and not always so readily or desirably
abolished), between inhabited regions, and between factions within states (thus civil wars) or,
perhaps by extension, between factions within other social structures (thus, for instance, gang
wars). But undoubtedly eliminating states and aspiring states would abolish most wars and
virtually all the worst wars.
While “nonviolent wars” are excluded by definition, by virtue of ‘force of arms’, token
wars, limited wars, and so on, are not: for instance, wars fought by small armed teams
representing competing sides (cf. medieval and science fiction war games). As wars are
hemmed in by conventions and agreed rules, there is no reason in principle why they should
not be reduced to two person contests, fought under strict rules like boxing or gladiatorial
contests. But in modern times wars have never taken such sensible forms, but have been much
larger affairs, making heavy (though fortunately restricted) use of latest technology. Let us
distinguish such wars as techno-powered, wars. They have, directly or indirectly (for the
technology may be bought or bartered), a heavy research and development support structure
(indeed the bulk of contemporary science is devoted - misdirected - in one way or another to
8
this effort).
Among wars, an important distinction is that between offensive and defensive wars. An
offensive war is one which ventures off a given party's territory or recognised pad, “invading”
that of another party or parties; correlatively defensive parties, if they have not also invaded.
Force projection typifies offensive practice. Plainly, offensiveness and defensiveness are not
strictly features of a war, but of parties to a war. In a two-party war, while both parties can
easily act offensively, the possibility of both parties proceeding defensively is excluded, unless
they share territory. (Even then issues may arise as to which party, if any, was the aggressor,
which started it, was responsible for starting it, and so on.) Thus mutually defensive wars
between contemporary states are impossible (but would be possible if states shared territory,
e.g. if Eire and Britain shared the territory of Northern Ireland). Tao-accredited wars were
defensive wars, never wars aiming at domination: last-resort wars, in which no pride was taken
(LTp.152).3
The pretence that offensive wars are defensive is widespread, and reflected in the
subterfuge that departments or ministries of war are those of defence, security or whatever. (If
they really were what they purport to be, we should be well on the way to an end to war.)
Offensive practices are rendered defensive ones by shabby redefinitional strategems, such as
redefining ‘defensive’ to include defence of ideals like democracy or liberty, infringed (or
allegedly infringed) on territories abroad, or to include “defence” of a third party or place
(whence every offensive war is “defensive”). In the present war in which part of Arabia is
engulfed (February 1991), one party claims to be defending what really was (or should be) part
of its territory, namely Kuwait, another party to be defending (what Kuwait did not enjoy)
democracy. It is a doubly offensive war presented in this guise as jointly defensive.
Aggressive wars are waged for a variety of reasons, but usually for resources or access to
resources or markets, a matter often disguised by appeal to ideology (thus a war for oil is
represented as a war of liberation). But there are other reasons than narrowly economic ones,
such as religion (as with crusades), power and aggrandisement (as in building an empire), and
so on. Nor are those reasons necessarily far separated; ideologies like Marxism and market
capitalism, for example, exhibit many of the features of religion.
The economic reasons for war appear to have become much more complex with the
3
There is one line in LT that may suggest that attack was sometimes justifiable, namely ‘For
deep love helps one to win in the case of attack’ (p.219). But how can compassion be
appropriate unless this attack is within a defensive setting, a larger context of unavoidability
or such like. A passage shortly below confirms this interpretation:
I dare not take the offensive but I take the defensive:
I dare not advance an inch but I retreat a foot (p.222).
These are advances and attacks within a defensive setting.
9
advent of an integrated world economy. At the same time many of the independent reasons for
economic wars are now obsolete. For to powerful states accrue the advantages of war without
war. At least most of the former economic advantages of war can be obtained without
expensive wars, through trade, institution of economic dependence, etc. Small medieval wars
were sometimes instituted for the collection of neighbouring riches and booty, a kind of piracy
meeting conditions of war. “Small” contemporary wars can be waged for a remarkable mix of
political-economy ends: to establish a regime favourable to economic penetration and profit
repatriation, to subjugate markets and to remove competition, to boost a sagging weapons
economy by using up old stocks and also testing new equipment, to restart a depressed
economy, and so on. Such wars, along with the economic aims which motivate them, are in
effect heavily castigated by Lao Tzu:
When Tao prevails in the world, galloping horses are turned back to
fertilize (the fields ...).
When Tao does not prevail in the world, war horses thrive in the suburbs.
There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. (LT p. 181).
But it does exceed evidential warrant to claim that Tao is not only sufficient, but necessary, for
cessation of such practices.
The practice of regularly stimulating complex military-saturated economies through war is
reminiscent of older, much ridiculed practices in simpler societies. They now ridicule the
Tsembaga, who proceeded to destroy much of their surplus product by going to war every 5-15
years (cf Rapaport). But they do not similarly ridicule the most powerful nation on the Earth,
the USA, which proceeds to write off a colossal amount of surplus in war every 10-20 years
(the Gulf war liquidated some $1.7 billion per day). Taoists would. For ridicule was a
favoured method, an important rhetorical strategem, and war and its idiocy were favourite
targets.
Some classification of defensive wars is also important, for various reasons: reducing and
abolishing wars, their costs and damage, restructuring societies away from war and military
practices, and, not least, for appreciating Taoism.
A main distinction is between
• conventional defence, maintained by armies of armed soldiers, many of them professionals,
and
• social defence, where there are no such armies or but fragments of them, and defence is
carried out through social networks of a significant part of society.4
It is here that Taoism and deep-green theory part company. Under Taoism, the state will
have a standing army, but a defensive army operating by strange, surprise tactics (p.201). No
4
Details of social defence are presented in Sharp and in Martin.
10
doubt defensive wars are to remain last resort action. Nonetheless the state will operate in
secrecy, in a way incompatible with decentralised social defence; people will be kept in the dark
about smart weapons of the state; and they too will be surprised, along with presumed enemies
of the state. By contrast, under deep-green theory, there should be no hidden smart weapons
of state; information would flow more freely and not be hidden from the people (who should
retain influence in informed decision making). Under deep-green, standing armies, and more
generally military organisation, will be wound down altogether.
Taoism should have pushed its searching criticism further. For military objectives, easily
acquired by standing armies with time on their hands, are frequently incompatible with Taoism.
For example, Taoism is opposed to domination (LT p.152), whereas military operations
frequently seek or involve domination; and military structure is invariably hierarchical and
authoritarian. Taoism aims for self-regulation, wherever feasible (cf. p.201); so does deep
green theory, which is one reasons why it aims to dispose of standing armies, as an important
preliminary to the withering away of states themselves (military forces being major props of
state control and power, and often maintained primarily for internal state security). Taoism has
no project for ending the era of wars; deep-green theory does. That project involves an
elimination of standing armies, too often poised for fighting or political interference.
A recommended route to end war consists in progressive scaling down: reduction of the
means and manpower. The initial stages are well-known, and include
• elimination of nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry, and
• force reduction. It can hardly be pretended that the Earth's states have managed to proceed
very far on even this complex of stages. The next stage consists in
• contraction to defensive capacities only, and the final stage consists in
• elimination of remaining military defensive forces, and adoption, so far as required, of social
defence practices. The complete route thus involves complete demilitarisation.
Reasons why deep-green aims to proceed the full distance are readily grasped by
considering the environmental shallowness of an otherwise cogent traditional case for the sharp
curtailment of wars and militarism. The traditional Western case against wars has been
primarily along two dimensions: social and moral. Wars are highly disruptive of the social
fabric; wars may be unjust. From these joint features, it was argued that wars should be a
matter of last resort, to be fought to ensure peace. It was argued further that only just wars
should be fought. Just wars were rare objects. But as there was little evidence of the decline
and fall of wars, much effort was expended, more practically and unsuccessfully, upon
endeavouring to improve the calibre of wars, and more theoretically, upon trying to characterize
just war satisfactorily, or rather to bend the notion in an effort to approximate the gory unjust
facts.
Progress was long hindered, furthermore, because there was always a rival positive
perspective on wars, which encouraged the exaltation of wars and military feats. It also
facilitated the transfer of the favourable image of war to other problem areas, whence the long
and apparently successful war against Nature (but the short-term successes are turning into
long-term problems), the short and unsuccessful war against Poverty, and so on. Behind all
this is the complex idea of war as rejuvenating, even cleansing, like fire; of war as heroic, and
glorious, of war as the supreme testing ground of men. These pictures of war - finally
shattered by the first World War (where even the poets began to tell of horrors and atrocities)
and subsequent technological wars - though no longer in ascendency, have by no means
vanished. The notion of war as rejuvenating a flagging economy persists, along with the
practice of keeping capitalism running smoothly by integrating substantial military components
into the industrial engine.
With the development of highly technological wars — the celebrated development of the
dirty industrial age is substantially military - the traditional negative case has grown in strength.
Wars have become much more damaging, with the potential for much more that is significantly
worse, and the possibility of a just war has correspondingly contracted, virtually to zero. The
opposition to war has likewise grown, but more than correspondingly with the rise of women
in social and political influence. Wars have almost always and everywhere been Men's affairs;
likewise conquest.
Deep-green theory accepts much of the traditional negative case, but would further
strengthen it. For example, the stricture against unjust wars, as out and out immoral, can be
strengthened, through the following syllogism:
All wars should be fully just wars.
Modem wars cannot be fully just wars.
Therefore, there should be no modern wars.
A fully just war is not merely a just war, but a war those just character can be reliably forecast
in advance. A modern war is of course a war that deploys modern technology, at least that
available this century. The evidential basis for the second premiss derives from much
information that collateral damage, damage to innocent bystanders and involved citizens is
always likely and cannot be excluded. Such wars are always liable to violate uncontroversial
requirements for a just war, even if they are purely “conventional” wars, not throwing radiation
or chemical or biological weapons around.
From a contemporary viewpoint the traditional doctrine of a just war, really of a just
defensive v/ax, is seriously out of date. The reasons for this reach wider than the new features
introduced by modem technological wars and the character of modem civilization, with its giant
cities littered with dangerous and vulnerable military targets. They have also to do with the
chauvinism of the justice proposed, which is shallow human justice, not natural or
environmental justice. There is no consideration of justice to other creatures or to the Earth (cf
Naess p.160). Two troubles are really intertwined here: conceptual difficulties with too narrow
a notion of justice, and ideological difficulties with too narrow a vision of what is an object of
12
value, of what counts.
The deep-green case against war adds to the traditional case a further dimension,
neglected until very recently: the environmental dimension. It has suddenly been seen that wars
are typically environmental atrocities. Earlier, of course, “environments” were simply
backgrounds, backdrops in paintings and plays, to the real drama.
Contemporary technological wars tend to be not merely social tragedies but environmental
ones as well. There is a doctrine of just war, but it is a human chauvinistic affair. There is no
similarly developed doctrine of an ecologically sound war, a deep ecological war. Unless any
such war were literally different from modern wars, that is from contemporary technological
wars, it would overstep permitted bounds. For such wars are characteristically ecological
disasters. Hardened military people, desensitized by a rigorous unethical training, feel even
less compunction about degrading or destroying environments or members of other species
than they do of maiming or killing civilians through “collateral” activity.
Matching the no-just-war syllogism is a no-sound-war syllogism:
All wars should be environmentally sound wars.
Modern wars cannot be environmentally sound.
Therefore, there should be no modern wars.
The argument for the second premiss has of course to be different. It looks to the information
accumulating on what wars do to natural and built environments. The Vietnam and Gulf wars
both inflicted immense damage on natural environments or what was left of them.
The environmental effects of war are not confined to direct and collateral damage. There
are indirect effects also. Thus, for instance, war also supplied the mechanism of, and the
technology for, modern environmental destruction: explosives, bulldozers from tanks, etc. As
well, training for war and engagement in war have much fostered, along with attitudes that
make for social callousness or ruthlessness, those that contribute to environmental insensitivity
and cruelty.
3. Puzzles about Taoist strategy and its critiques of technology and violence
‘It is surprising how much of the Lao Tzu is devoted to military strategy’. Which
strategies? Surprise, above all. But why such strategies? ‘Do they not contradict the Taoists’
strong opposition to the use of force’ (Chan p.222), the implied commitment to quietism?
Briefly, Taoism is not committed to quietism, and while certainly antagonistic to violence, does
not oppose certain uses of force (only really z7/-forcing, as will be explained). Even so, the
emphasis on military strategy remains puzzling.
The strategies, many of them relevant to social defence, include
• seriousness, not ‘making light of the enemy’ (p.222)
• surprise, and nonvisibility (p.201). The defensive strategy involves guerilla tactics:
marching without formation, holding weapons without seeming to have them, confronting
13
enemies without seeming to meet them (p.222). But even in times of peace, ‘smart weapons of
the state should not be displayed to the people’ (p.164). Such recommendations helped to fuel
the charge of deviousness lodged against Lao Tzu. But look at part of the reason for concealing
smart weapons: ‘The more smart weapons the people have, the more troubled the state will be’
(p.201). Smart weapons are carried in corrupt states, where the rich engage in conspicuous
consumption and the people are suppressed, not where Tao is practiced (LT p.194).
• advance from weakness, flexibility but firmness. Weakness is the principle of life and will
overcome strength (LT p.164, p.233).
• coolness and non-competition (LT p.233, p.164). Like these, most of the general strategies
are standard Taoist practices simply applied to military conduct. For these standard practices
the charge of deviousness looks feeble.
The response applies more generally to other allegedly devious political strategies. For
the strategies are but application of Taoist principles and techniques to warfare, politics and
elsewhere. Nothing excludes application of these techniques to what are accounted, in general,
unnecessary evils (which must sometimes, on other Taoist grounds, be countered). Nor, to
meet the main criticism, need any deceit or deviousness be involved; nor is it. In particular, the
legalist tactic, Tn order to grasp, it is necessary first to give’ (LT p.164), is cited as involving
‘an element of deceit’ ‘undeniably’, and ‘worse’ it is ‘morally questionable’ (Chan p.17). But
in order for me to grasp your hand in a normal handshake, it is necessary first for me to give
my hand. There is no deceit here, nothing morally questionable. All the tactics permit of
benign construals, of a Taoist kind. Consider, for instance, Tn order to contract, it is necessary
first to expand’ (LT p.164). In order to bend a copper pipe to the intended angle, it is better to
bend it first a little further than required. The transformation of water to ice (both favoured
natural items for symbolic purposes: natural processes which may look devious!) neatly
illustrates the Taoist principle (which is however hardly necessary), and shows softness and
weakness turned hardness and strength.
The Taoist critique of militarism is as much a critique of technology as of war. Sharp
weapons, ‘smart weapons’ as we might now say, come in for much critical attention, as we
have already noticed. Only in corrupt and degenerate states are they displayed or flaunted
(p.194, p.164); in deep-green regions smart weapons of state’ would not be retained
unexhibited. The people will not have them for they mean trouble (p.201); for similar reasons
deep-green regions will be free of them. So, it seems, will ideal Taoist regions: ‘Even if there
are arrows and weapons, none will display them’ (LT p.238). Much technology, military and
other, is excluded under the Taoist edict against violence (a further facet of the military-practices
paradox).5
5
Under contemporary technology and technological arrangements, such as the storage of
quantities of oil and nuclear and chemical materials in great cities, wars have assumed new and
14
The powerful critique of militarism in the Tao-te Ching is coupled with strong opposition
to violence. Some of the linkage is evident enough. Militarism as practised represents an
ultimate form of state (or party) violence. A basic theme is that violent practices will come to an
unnatural end, and accordingly to a non-Taoist end (generalising LT p.176). While force may
occur in spectacular, but satisfactory, natural forms, force is duly distinguished from violence.
To force the growth of life means ill omen.
For the mind to employ the vital force without restraint means violence
(LT p. 197).
One who follows Tao does not apply dominating force, which usually has had results bringing
requital (p.152). Dominating force, like power, is in general castigated, under doctrine of wuwei, no forced actions, no violence. To force natural growth is deviant, destroying harmony.
To stop natural growth is deviant. But there is a significant difference between force and
violence. To intentionally employ destructive force is to do violence. To so force things is
condemned. To remain in harmony with things one does not so force things or practice
violence. There is a non-interference principle at work, which also indicates types of non
interference that are excluded.
However Taoism does not always get the distinction between force and violence quite
right. ‘Vital force without restraint’, intentionally excessive force, is only part of what counts
as violence, which is more generally force which violates, i.e. transgresses, descrecrates,
very destructive dimensions, to the point of being utterly irresponsible.
A different approach to technology, as to war, is now mandatory. These are no longer things
that can in principle be nicely confined and need not touch parties outside the fray. An
important part of ending wars, “winning the war against wars”, is removing the technology of
war, above all from irresponsible state power.
As for which technology to try to jettison and which to try to retain or improve, it is not so
difficult to indicate, provided evaluative terminology is not outlawed. What is wanted is
technology that is good in its place, what should be excluded is technology that is indifferent
or bad or potentially so. Technology to be justified has to do something worthwhile, it has
to address identifiable respectable needs. That is why merely indifferent technology is out;
there is no virtue in technology for technology's sake, as it is a mere means technique. It is
because of the crucial evaluative component in choice of technology that appropriateness,
itself evaluative, comes closer to encapsulating the criterion than other recent efforts. Size,
such as smallness, or intermediateness, are not what matter, though modest and not excessive
technologies are likely to fare better in satisfying appropriateness. In simpler societies, small
technology is of course more appropriate; for that is what is good there. From known criteria
for what is good these other features for locally appropriate technology can be read off:
reliability, esp. in maintenance, functioning well and safely under the expected range of
operating conditions (which may be difficult), ease of repair, capital cheapness and repair
inexpensiveness, environmental benignness, and meeting sound social needs.
15
profanes, injures, outrages, etc. It is thus a negatively connoted force, an evil force in some
specified intentional respect. There is a tendency for Taoist commentators, not Taoists, to
regard Taoism as condemning all uses, or even occurrences, of force, but this is not so. Rather
intentional ill-forcing is what is castigated, what is deviant. Thus Taoism does not exclude a
range of defensive practices, which make satisfactory use of natural forces, like letting the
machines of war industry stop.
Those who would abolish war and its machinery, substituting for it nonwarlike and
ideally nonviolent methods, technology, and strategies, have been confronted not merely with
much sub-rational abuse but with plenty of criticism and even some paradoxes. Here is a recent
paradox concerning war and nonviolence:
• War must be abolished. One reason is simply economic. We can no longer afford it, and
the opportunity costs are enormous. Along with other extraordinarily wasteful activities, it is an
anachronism.
• Doing so cannot be accomplished without violence, i.e. in effect, given the types of violence
involved, without what amounts to war. According to a fuller version of this premiss, the
process of abolishing a war would only be achieved through a revolution so profound that it
could not succeed without extensive and extreme violence, amounting to (civil) war.
But then war cannot be abolished without war.
Therefore, war which must be abolished cannot be abolished.6
This “paradox” has been compared with the Liar paradox, but the parallel does not persist far.
For this paradox does not involve self-referential features, and is easily broken, as follows. Let
the “last war” be not the last standard war but the revolution abolishing war. Then, given that
the revolution is successful, war will be abolished therewith, i.e. with that last war. There need
be no regress, given again a successful outcome. All the premisses stand intact, but the
conclusion, following the ‘therefore’ is a nonsequitur. However, while the dissolution of the
argument is accordingly logically fine, the route is repugnant. Standard pacifism challenges the
second premiss.
4. Standard and moral pacifism.
6
Brian Medlin, who forcefully propounded this puzzle, set other analogous puzzles alongside it
- designed to reveal deep difficulties in contemporary political, and especially alternative,
thought. Another puzzle, concerning liberty and repression in the context of capitalism,
revolved around the following inconsistent triad:
• capitalism must be removed, but liberty retained.
• capitalism cannot be removed without repression.
• repression is antithetical to liberty.
The puzzle is resolved as with the analogous puzzle of abolishing. Let the “last capitalist”
action before the days of liberty be the repressive but liberating revolution overthrowing
capitalism.
16
Although Taoism is strongly opposed to war, and much in favour of peace - and
accordingly by prevailing standards a substantially pacific position - it is not (nowhere in the
central texts) committed to pacifism in usual senses, for two different reasons:• It is not, by contrast with pacifism, opposed to all types of warfare, for example smart
defensive wars.
• It eschews deontology in terms of which moral pacifism is commonly stated, for instance
through the watershed thesis
P2.
It is morally wrong to use violence.
By contrast with Taoism, deep environmentalism does not avoid deontic claims, and is
committed in principle to nonviolent technologies and ways and to pacifistic principles.
Moreover, certain forms of deep environmentalism are completely committed to pacifism,
notably European forms. Is deep green?
There is heavy contemporary opposition to pacifism, as there also was to Taoism in the
warring times when Taoism was first being promulgated. Many of the central institutions of
contemporary life are intricated in coercion, violence and war. The most prominent
contemporary institutions, states, are premissed on these elements of damaging force; they
claim entitlement to use them widely, and even claim a certain territorial monopoly on their use.
As a result they are having constantly to engage in them in attempt to maintain that monopoly.
They are certainly the main perpetrators of wars, and of violence. They are indeed inured to
wars, are in constant preparation for wars, yet propound dialectial (and normally dishonest and
cynical) doctrines of peace through war (for a recent example see the appendix).
Unremarkably then, the extensive propagandistic machinery of state has invested heavily
in “justificatory” exercises in favour of controlled use, its own use, of destructive force, and
continues to inveigh against pacifism. Because a routine trick in this sophistical repetoire
consists in conflating pacifism with extreme, naive and inplausible, forms, an inevitable and
important early task commits in unscrambling senses of ‘pacifism’. Semantical skulduggery
can be thwarted in this way.
Pacifism, as explained by English dictionaries, invariably concerns wars and warfare, and
contains two components, negative and, elaborating on that, positive:- The negative component
is, in Amauld's word, anti-War-ism, opposition (in ways to be further specified) to all forms of
warfare (see OED). The positive component supplies alternative ways of settling disputes (what
it is supposed that wars with some semblance of justification involve), such as negotiation,
arbitration,... - and, adding to too narrow dictionary accounts - sanctions, substitutions (e.g.
of sporting events, operatic contests, cooperative ventures),... . In brief standard pacifism is
opposition to all warfare and resolution of potential wars by other nonmilitary means.
Plainly the opposition to warfare, like the sanctions and so on, cannot itself be military
(using soldiers and other devices of war), on pain of some incoherence. But otherwise the
ways of opposition can be many and various: they can certainly be active, as with nonviolent
17
demonstrations, resistance movements, and so forth, and they may also be devious (e.g.
turning the forces of war upon themselves so they are neutralised). It quickly becomes evident,
then, that some of the dictionaries offer but loaded definitions which, by restricting the negative
components, reduce the initial appeal and plausibility of pacifism. Consider the Concise
English definition of the negative component: ‘the doctrine of non-resistance to hostilities and
of total non-co-operation with any form of warfare’. Thereby excluded are forms of pacifism
which offer active and plausible alternatives to warfare such as social defence. The Concise
English tends to force pacifism into what the Oxford English Dictionary lists as its final item:
‘often, with depreciatory implication, the advocacy of peace at any price’, ‘in any
circumstance’. Pacifism can easily resist being forced into these sorts of circumstances: it has
many resources, as an extensive series of texts on alternatives to war, such as negotiation, non
violent action and social defence, from Taoism to contemporary environmentalism attest.
Academic philosophers have much advanced the semantical strategy of some dictionaries,
of rendering pacifism more difficult from the very outset by narrow and biassed definitions.
They have stretched the term from its restricted setting of warfare, confined to state and
organised gang violence, to cover all forms of violence, from state and interstate to, what is
very different, personal and interpersonal violence. Call the resulting considerably stretched
notion of pacifism, according to which it is morally wrong to use violence, according to which
P2 holds, stretched pacifism.'1 While stretched pacifism certainly includes standard pacifism
(unless the notions of war and warfare are tampered with), the converse is very far from being
the case. A pacifist is in no way committed to stretched pacifism, which is a much more
problematic and difficult position than standard pacifism. There are several, substantially
different reasons for this, which will be picked up seriatim.
Stretched pacifism, also misleadingly called moral pacifism, has looked a very easy
critical target to moral philosophers. Many the effusive philosopher who, upon sighting such a
target, has charged, whooping such rhetoric as “incoherent”, “inconsistent”, “insensitive”,
“fanatical”. However, with improved logical technology now available for accommodating and
treating moral dilemmas, it is no great feat to resist such attacks, in the fashion of previous
investigations (see esp. Al, also MD). A main aim was to demonstrate that stretched pacifism
was not so stupid as it was made out to be or appeared to be to these inured to present dominant
violent ways. So far from being stupid, it is viable. In future gentler times stretched pacifism
could even be realised for whole communities of creatures (as some genuinely Christian sects
envisaged); whence it will finally be seen to be feasible not merely for sages and supermen, and
many ordinary women, but much more extensively.
7
In Al this notion was contrasted with standard pacifism as comprehensive pacifism:
overcomprehensive might have been better.
18
The method of philosophical accommodation was through moral dilemmas. The sort of
moral dilemma that stretched pacifism can induce derives as follows. On the one side stands
the theme P2, Wv, in convenient symbols, for Wrong V-ing, violencing. Now this implies to
WB, where B presents a case of of violence. On the other side, particular circumstances
develop which lead to W ~B, because ~B would produce in the circumstances considerable
wrong, for instance extensive violence, mass murder, etc. One stock example from the
literature concerns calling off the firing squad about to shoot several captives if the pacifist
shoots one of them (it is elaborated in Al p.13). Interestingly, another stock example from the
literature concerns standard pacifism (it can also be presented in terms of patriotism; for details
of both see MD p.10).
Resolution of intractable moral dilemmas is, where it is required, situational. The agent
decides in the situation, within the fix, what to do. There are many ways in which such
decision making can proceed, less rational, such as those applying chance or involving bad
faith, or more rational, such as those applying consequentialist decision theory (for details see
MD, pp.32-9). A decision theory taking account of all that should be included will not however
be purely consequential. It would also take account of relevant motivation.
This defence and rehabilitation of moral pacifism has been challenged, in particular by
Smith (hereafter JWS). JWS claims the defence offered is a ‘failure because it trivializes
pacifism’ (p. 153 twice). The rehabilitation
trivializes pacifism because it entails that pacifism doesn't substantially differ
from a form of activism which holds that while violence is always wrong
one is sometimes justified on consequentialist grounds for preferring violent
acts, if these acts are lesser evils than any other real alternatives. This is the
commonsense position which most people hold - yet - pacifism after all was
supposed to be radical moral doctrine - (p.153 rearranged).8
Part of the criticism is, then, not so much that pacifism is trivialized - JWS “activism” is
hardly trivial - as that pacifism is popularised, deflated from a radical position to the
commonsense position most people hold (p.154 also). Yet not a shred of evidence is adduced
that JWS activism is such a populist position. Available evidence, for example from peace
movements and oppositional opinion polls, suggests the very opposite: that, for instance, most
people support state-justified conventional wars with the military violence they incur, and
accordingly do not hold that violence is always wrong. From such a commonsense angle,
pacifism with its condemnation of conventional wars and the violence they involve remains a
radical doctrine.
As regards wars and other violence-incurring social authorities, contemporary pacificism
8
JWS now informs me that he has changed his position. Whether the move effects his
criticism, I don't know.
19
is, as previous explained (e.g. Al p.3), a form of activism. Pacifism does not imply utter
pacifity, but may actively involve social defence, resistance and so on. However a certain level
of misrepresentation enters into the JWS challenge in the details of what forms of activism
pacifism may include. That misrepresentation begins in the second clause concerning what is
said to be sometimes justified. For the situational procedure where dilemmas arise will not
generally be consequential applying a principle of lesser evil. In dilemmatic situations such
principles are suspended, and such a principle is in any case unacceptable to moral pacifists. A
small amount of violence may be less bad in its consequences than verbal offence, but a
principled pacifist will choose the slightly greater evil where other obligations do not exclude it.
A more serious distortion occurs in JWS's effort to force procedures in dilemma
situations into purely consequentialist form. In fact consequential decision theory was
deployed as a model only for how to proceed rationally in a situational setting where deontic
procedures were suspended (see MD p.38). What was said, still misleadingly retrospective
vision reveals, was this: ‘what is done is a very consequentialist thing’ (Al p.13), not ‘one acts
in a consequentialist fashion to do the sufficiently good thing in the circumstances’ (JWS
p.152). Situationally other procedures than those resembling orthodox rational decision
making (modified from maximizing to satisizing objectives) may be adopted (MD p.38).
Further the orthodox consequentialist theory is inadequate because it leaves out, or tries to
reduce to consequences, nonconsequential elements, notably motives. It is not difficult, in
principle (in advance of attempted consequentialization of motives), to design situations where
motives, such as integrity or maintaining faith, enter to yield outcomes upsetting consequential
calculations. More elaborate decision making procedures than those of consequentialism,
sometimes at variance with consequentialism, are thus presupposed.
A further part of JWS's criticism accordingly goes by the board, the alleged appeal ‘to
“second best” consequentialist considerations,... already explicitly condemned’ (p.154). What
was condemned was stock universal consequentialism, ‘that only consequentialist
considerations carry argumentative weight’ (quoted on p. 152), so undercutting other deontic
principles, such as those of pacifism. It was not claimed, what is utterly different, that
consequentialist considerations can nowhere enter into deliberation and decision making. The
conclusion JWS arrives at is therefore substantially astray.
After criticising modern moral philosophy for its reliance upon
consequentialist modes of thought, it is surprising, and inconsistent, to find
... [reliance] upon such modes of thought to escape logical difficulties raised
by moral dilemmas facing ... pacifis[m] (p. 152)
There is no inconsistency. JWS has confused universal with particular. As well he has
wrongly contracted all situational decision making to consequentialist modes.
There is a third part to the criticism, that the defence is too easy; the ‘strategy will allow
too much violence to be (perpetrated and) justified to suit the tastes of any real pacifist’ (p. 153).
This another part of the so-called trivialization, this time however dilution rather than
20
popularization, weakening the moral stand against violence. This third contention is premissed
on a mistake: that one can ‘justify on consequentialist grounds any number of violent acts,
providing that such acts are lesser evils than other real alternatives facing social agents’ (p.153).
Moral pacifism offers no such licence; allowing such consequentialism to take over was never
part of the position. The slide to such consequentialism is made on the strength of a similarly
erroneous example. The potential victim of an aspiring rapist ‘is supposed to flee or wriggle
free if possible. But it is easy to consequentially justify the use of violence by the woman to
prevent herself from being raped’ (p.153 italics added). In the example so far described there is
no dilemma, and no such easy resort to consequentially ‘justified’ violence.
What allows too much violence is the lesser evil JWS assumes is easily consequentially
justified; for example that the woman is entitled to inflict, and escalate, violence so long as it
remains ‘a lesser evil than the violence of attempted rape’ (p. 153). Since she may thereby
inflict quite unreasonable damage (esp. if she is a Kung Fu expert), the result is inconsistent
with ‘the basic principle of self-defence’ which JWS earlier adduced according to which what is
‘appropriate, in response is only that level of force necessary to defend oneself against the
threat’ (p.150). There is evidence in JWS's work of some enthusiasm for levels of violence
which exceed his ‘basic principle’, his appeal to ‘lesser evil’ generates some instances. The
‘basic principle’, itself fraught with difficulties (cf. the contorted discussion of what weapons
are appropriate in response to what attacks, p. 150), still exceeds what stretched pacifism would
enjoin; for instance, it may not be appropriate to respond with force. But in a technical sense
stretched pacifism is compatible with the ‘basic principle’, since it only imposes the upper
bound on level of force.
As for easiness, moral pacifism is not an easy position to live by, or to justify. Removing
objections to pacifism is one thing; solidifying a positive case for it is quite another, and so far
hardly conclusive (as Al tried to explain, pp 29-31). Stretched pacifism was advanced,
hypothesized to put it more precisely, as a still viable option. It was not presented as a morally
compulsory position, or, for that matter, as one that this defender adhered to or affirmed.
To reiterate, while a cumulative case can be made for stetched pacifism as principled non
violence, that case was not conclusive, and is hard to improve. For, further, some serious
difficulties standing in the way of stretched pacifism were assembled, the most important of
which derives from the extent of violence apparent in transactions within the natural world.
Simply consider the practices of carnivores, essential to their natural way of life. In order to
meet their life needs for sustenance, these creatures do, and are often obliged to, engage
routinely in violent activity. While it can no doubt be argued, as some vegetarians may do, that
the natural order is an immoral order, and that remaining carnivores should be converted to
vegetarianism as rapidly as proves possible (in the way domestic dogs are converted to dog
biscuits), the difficulties with such proposals are immense. The task envisaged is gigantic, and
beyond human capacities - even if it were desirable. For there are millions of species to be
21
somehow converted to proper vegetarianism. Then there are millions of other species to be
converted to proper and well regulated contraceptive practices, else their numbers will get out of
hand (uncontrollably) with predation removed. Given humans lack of success in limiting their
own excessive numbers, such regulation appears entirely remote. Aside however from the
practical difficulties, is such a fully vegetarian order, with evolution further derailed, a desirable
improvement on the natural order? Is it morally obligatory? It is certainly not obligatory, as
alternative systems of morality in harmony with the prevailing natural order are feasible. Nor is
it desirable, for (to appeal to such alternative value systems) the natural order is more or less in
order as it is. Full vegetarianization would only reduce its value, vastly.
More generally, a defensible ethical framework should not, it would be rightly contended,
be right out of step with the natural order of other creatures, decently depicted. Decent
depiction is important, for some features of the natural order, such as competition, combat and
predation, so far from escaping attention, have been grossly exaggerated and exploited. Thus,
for instance, the ludicrous picture of nature red in truth and claw, so beloved of descendents of
orthodox Victorians and of orthodox economists. However, even under decent depiction, the
“natural order” is often not benign. That appears to be enough to induce a supervenient moral
dilemma for any stretched pacifism which is coupled to a deep ethic (e.g. which does not
separate humans out from the natural order) and which eschews the desperate vegetarian route:
The natural order is not an immoral order
The natural order contains (regular) instances of violence.
Therefore, instances of violence are not immoral in apparent defiance of P2 Moreover, there are too many instances of violence, too regularly
occurring, for them all to be plausibly shunted into the moral dilemma category (and predatory
carnivores face no dilemmas). Raptors that practice violence every week are not immoral
(neither are they clearly moral; the category of morality only significantly extends so far).
The main trouble lies however with P2 (which needs some finer adjustment, as was
alrady indicated in Al). While P2 is alright in context, within a particular, perfectly viable,
ethical framework, designed for the usual human round, the conventional setting for ethical
theories, it stands in need of modification outside that setting. It is time to suggest the sort of
modification envisaged. Evidently P2 was addressed to moral agents. Which agents? Not to
carnivores that supply their own livelihood, nor really to morally degenerate humans, but to
peace-sensitive agents. With that semi-technical form, yet to be characterised, a suitably
P2
MP2. It is morally wrong, for a peace-sensitive agent, to use violence.9
modified
9
results:
The generalization of P2, suggested in Al, to cover also the parallel situation of
environmental vandalism, can be similarly modified. The anti-vandolence principle becomes
MP2°. It is morally wrong, for a peace- and environmentally-sensitive agent, to use
22
To recover what amounts, in the previous discussive context, to P2, it suffices to add the
proposition that every human agent ought to be peace-sensitive. Much as that proposition has
to recommend it, it appears too ethically advanced for many modern humans; it sets too high a
moral standard to be taken as a serious guide to practice. It seems wise to settle presently for
something less demanding, such as that every advanced moral agent ought to be peace
sensitive. To put essentially the same proposition alternatively:
Stretched pacifism (as modified) is supererogatory. While it is perhaps too late to hope for
much moral progress in humans, it is pleasant to contemplate alternative futures where what is
supererogatory became obligatory, and widely practiced.
Richard Sylvan*
Appendix
I began drafting this essay at the time (January 17, midday Australian time) of the
American attacks upon Iraq. The optly named Prime Minister Hawke of Australia had just
made a statement to the nation-state, announcing (the) war. In this statement there was much
talk of peace. There was even - in what was effectively a declaration of war - reiteration of the
modem quest for ‘a new world order of peace’. Peace through war; so it rings out again and
again, through the centuries. ‘War must be for the sake of peace’ (Aristotle p.220). More than
two thousand years later, we have fought those wars to end all wars. But it is no use, Hawke
solemely pronounced, just talking about peace, and thinking about peace; we must work for
peace, fight for it - through war. Impeccable logic?
President Bush, supreme commander, convinced us with similar logic, speaking too with
many tongues. Of how he ‘preferred to think of peace, not war’. But now ‘only force will
prevail’, as ‘all reasonable efforts to reach a peaceful solution are exhausted’. ‘What must be
done’ must be done, or will be anyway. With God on side with the US offensive (as well as
on the other side), it will go well. As it was said to have, though it achieved comparatively little
that other efforts may not have yielded more satisfactorily, and thought it may now have to
followed with another invasion. Nor have we ever managed to glimpse much of what is now
supposed, when we are no longer engaged, to come ‘out of the horror of war’: a ‘new world
order ... which governs the conflict of nations’; a ‘rule of law’, not war. How the one,
enforcable law, is achieved, unless backed by the the other, is not explained (Medlin's paradox
hits back). Similarly what we now hear from many militarists, as they rush to war, is that
vandolence.
Thank to David Bennett for joint contributions (from UT) and to JWS for opposition (in
JWS)
23
‘peace is a great good, war a great evil’. But, for the most part, only the rhetoric has shifted;
practice has scarcely changed at all.
REFERENCES
W.-T. Chan, A Source Book on Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963;
referred to as ST.
W.-T. Chan (ed.), The Way of Lao Tzu (Tao-te Ching), Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1963;
referred to as LT.
B. Martin, Uprooting War, Freedom Press, London, 1984.
A. Naess, Ecology, community and lifestyle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK,
1989.
R.A. Rapaport, Pigs for the Ancestors : ritual in the ecology of a New Guinea People, Yale
University Press, New Haven, 1967.
R. Routley, ‘War and Peace II. On the alleged inconsistency, moral insensitivity and fanaticism
of pacifism’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy #9, Research School of
Social Science, Australian National University, 1983 (also in. Inquiry ); referred to as AL
R. Routley and V. Plumwood, ‘Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions’, Discussion
papers in environmental philosophy #6, Research School of Social Science, Australian
National University, 1984 (also in Paraconsistent Logic)-, referred to as MD.
R. Routley, ‘War and Peace I. On the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and nuclear-deterrence
and the political fall-out’, Discussion papers in environmental philosophy, #5, Research
School Of Social Science, Australian National University, 1984.
G. Sharp, Social Power and Political Freedom, Porter Sargent, Boston, 1980.
J.W. Smith, The Worms at the Heart of Things , Public Relations Unit, Flinders University,
1989.
R. Sylvan, ‘War and Peace III, Australia's defence philosophy’, Social Philosophy, for Nuclear
Conference, University of Queensland, 1985.
R. Sylvan and D. Bennett, ‘Of Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology’, Discussion papers in
environmental philosophy #19, Research School of Social Science, Australian National
University, 1990; referred to as UT.
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Typescript with handwritten emendations and annotations. Previous title of paper: War and peace IV: Tao and deep-green.
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Box 14: Green Projects in Progress
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/87ae026d1b7eb1686912cf50e2b4c625.pdf
da91a8a30bfeb69bfdd62ed9f6cc3aeb
PDF Text
Text
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. a new democratic public sphere of empowered,
decentralized and diverse local communities needs a set of
national and regional state structures to facilitate
legal, economic, educational and cultural values and
practices, to support those local citizens lacking in
material and cultural resources, and to settle the many
disputes and conflicts which will continue to be a part of
any foreseeable social formation. A combination of local,
direct democracy and new semi-direct democratic structures
at the national level will make life for traditional
political parties very difficult if not impossible.
This
development is to be applauded because too many citizens
in contemporary societies have an impoverished notion of
the possibilities of democratic participation and often
equate democracy with voting rituals® . /zCtZJ/J
�»
<3
j
> .
'
i
— publicpolicies-ts-involved in one or other project/ Arterton s
study shows
stimulate
the promise of some ways of using
and
enhance
the
impact
and
technology
quality
of
to
citizen
participation in politics in the US, almost exclusively at the
local level^?.
Barber is perhaps the most prominent example of
a democratic theorist putting great faith in teledemocracy to
revitalise local participation and local political power in his
As one of a range of far’strong democracy'.
reaching reforms,, including the establishment of 'neigborhood
assemblies', he advocates 'a national civic communications
vision
of
regulate and oversee
technology
and
to
communications
__ ____ ___
__ .68 •
discussion of referendum
issues
cooperative
to
the civic
supervise
/Z-<W •
use of
debate
new
and
�8.2.95
A FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM FOR (DEEP-)GREEN POLITICAL
THEORY? DEMOCRATIC OR AUTHORITARIAN PROCEDURES
There is strictly no logical space for a deep-green democracy, according forexample to
For there is a clash, an essential tension, between deeper green values and
commitments, notably to intrinsic values in nature, and democratic procedures. The main drift
of the argument is that green values, which are mandatory for deeper greens, require for their
implementation anti-democratic, indeed authoritarian procedures; otherwise they cannot be
guaranteed.
__
This nasty conundrum for green theory over democracy, which 'it typically supports, is
put in a sharp form as follows:1*
Democracy concerns procedures, environmentalism certain outcomes. What guarantee can
there be that the procedures will deliver the outcomes? What guarantee that democracy will
yield a way of protecting environments?
However the type of situation is worse than a matter of guarantess, which greens are not
really seeking and could not in general expect.^It is a type of situation, moreover, which
effects not only environmentalism but any sort of social and other amelioration, and even
democracy itself. For democratic procedures may yield unsatisfactory and even anti-democratic
ocout-r
outcomes. Plausible scenarios are easily designed where just such outcomes happens, for
instance as in what has been called a “paradox of democracy” where a constituency elects an
antidemocratic tyrant.3
A concerned attempt is made by Saward to mount a strong version of such a paradox
against deep-green political theory (which he calls ‘dark green’). The version is based upon
holismand intrinsic value requirements, coupled with democratic demands, of deep-green
theory. In clearest form, the version turns as follows: Holism implies consistency or
compatibility. But intrinsic value maintenance and democracy are not compatible, under evident
conditions (e.g. democratic procedures result in diminution or destruction of intrinsic value).
Firstly, partial confirmation for this explication:
The green imperative contains a number of elements, variously economic,
political, social, geographical, religious, and so on. Its force comes partly
from the holism it embodies, and partly from its basis in the idea of the
‘intrinsic value’ of nature. Holism implies that the various elements which
3
Goodin condensing Saward p.168.
( For here as almost everywhere else, things can go wrong. Philosophy especially supplies few
absolutes and little certainty.)
Such paradxes of democracy, and varieants thereupon, are presented trenchantly by Popper, and
nullified in UTD.
�make up the imperative are compatible. The elements of the imperative gain
their importance, and their links with each other, by being referable back to a
common, intrinsic value. It is at this point that we can pick up the position of
democracy or ‘direct democracy’ in lists of basic values set out by greens.
These goals are the elements of the overall green imperative, and gain their
importance from both the holistic nature and intrinsic merit of the values
which the imperative represents.4
As should now be plain, and will be made plainer, consistency is not an invariant desideratien,
and is not insisted upon; coherence is what is “implied” and what supersedes consistency. As
more than a century of Hegalian theory revealed, there may be inconsistent wholes.
A further key assumption in the argument is that guaranteeing that intrinsic value is
protected (or like absolutes sustained) will require undemocratic procedures, such as
authoritarian ones. An underlying assumption (soon to be rejectee^) is that only undemocratic,
authoritarian procedures fit with deeper green imperatives or givens.5 Several illustrations are
offered of inconsistency of green imperatives with types of democratic procedures—none of
which tell, without testing adaptation, specifically against deeper green positions.
\ first illustration is directed against Porritt:
A direct democratic procedure (is not) compatible with imperative goals like
‘local production for local need’, Tow consumption’, ‘labour-intensive
production’, and ‘voluntary siplicity’ (other items from Porritt’s list).6
Against this and other illustrations, it is worth emphasizing goals resemble objectives and
targets, goals are goals which are not mandatory and by no means always achieved, especially if
the achievers, like present humans, fall short (e.g. in ecological sensitivity) or their
organisational means and opportunities are inadequate. Observe the oppositional attempt, to
convey (fatTup-grading by high redefinition), ^ twistzgoals, programs, and principles—through
‘imperative goals’ and the like—into ‘imperatives’, ‘prescribed outcomes’, undeniable
principles, intimates. That attempt should be resisted.
A second example looks at an alleged
contradiction in the programme of the German Green Party. ‘Grassroots
democracy’ is one of the four ‘basic principles’ of the party’s ‘global
conception’. Another is the ‘ecological’; ‘Proceeding from the laws of nature,
and especially from the knowledge that unlimited growth is impossible in a
limited system, and ecological policy means understanding ourselves and our
environment as part of nature’. In effect, this means that certain outcomes are
proscribed from decision-making procedures. Proscribed outcomes go well
beyond any plausible list of outcomes which must be proscribed in the
interests of defending a direct democratic decision procedure. Therefore,
there is a clear contradiction between elements of the value-set, whereas given
the holism the green imperative is based on we would have the right to expect
these goals and values to be thoroughly compatible.7
Saward, paper version p.3.; repeated p.5.
Cf. p.12 essay.
[Reference]
[Reference]
�3
The last charge repeats the critical point already rejected, that holism implies consistency. A
further critical point should also be rejected: the flawed inference that ‘certain outcomes are
proscribed’. A political party in a democratic system has to be prepared to see its principles,
however splendid, overriden, certainly by other parties if they gain or hold political power.
‘..^principles [too] can only be akin to [givens and] Taws of nature’, against which democratic
procedures must inevitably be traded off the board’. Sets of principles, which may themselves
turn out to be inconsistent, are hardly akin to natural laws; consider for instance reasons for
their revision, procedures for rechecking and revision, and so on. In any case, democratic
procedures are not traded away against laws of nature, which they may try to upset or suppress.
(Rather effort should be directed at informing the electorate, etc.).
To reinforce his case, Saward appeals to other authors who have advanced similar claims
CO
l
Qf~
(it is like appealing for information of a newspaper repeat to other newspapers).
Frankel accuses Bahro of an ‘anti-democratic’ vision of an ecological society,
given that politics as conflict will have no place in a sea of ‘givens’. He sees
the dilemma as being similar to that of socialists—deeming certain things as
desirable in an ultimate sense, but proclaiming attachment to democracy and
the diversity it implies. Ophuls has stated the matter especially clearly. The
basic question about politics, he writes, is ‘Is the way we organize our
communal life and rule ourselves compatible with ecological imperatives and
other natural laws? ... how we run our lives will be increasingly determined
by ecological imperatives’8
In an ecological society, enough of the demos (members of democratic constituency) will hold
ecological attitudes and vote accordingly, almost by definition. Problems of effecting change lie
with unecological communities, which may not support ecological principles under instituted
democratic procedures (as presently in many places). Principles, and ecological “givenT, stand,
they remain ‘desirable in an ultimate sense’, but they are not followed and implemented, while
revealed democratic preferences go unchanged. There need be no ‘anti-democratic vision’, but
rather an unecological prbxis, which principled greens will work to change.
The route is accordingly barred to Say ward’s
important conclusions...: that at best direct democracy, and for that matter
indirect forms of democracy, can only be at or near the bottom of value-lists
of greens. A commitment to democracy must clash with values that are
inherent to ecologism—and ecologism is about inherency, intrinsic values,
laws of nature and holism. Things—like democracy—that can only have
instrumental value must lose out to imperatives backed by inescapable
canonical force.9
familiar: pragmatism, jettison intrinsic value.
What Skyward proposes instead is dep
Out therewith go deep-green positions.
8
9
[Ref.] Note that a very streamlined version of Saward’s case is being presented. The last part of
Saward’s essay contains much fitfand a good deal of garbage.
[ref].
�4
... greens should not think in terms of green imperatives. Indeed, it suggests
that to think in terms of imperatives based on arguments about intrinsic merit
is unjustifiable.10
Fortunately the argument developed does not sustain the proposals. There is, to itberate a
central point, no inteVal or latent contradiction between (deep-)green policy objectives and
democratic procedures. Rather, green objectives will fail to be achieved without ^ell-disposed
decision makers, who may not straightforwardly reflect any “will” of the demos. A logical
requirement on a realistic set of political objectives is that there are accessible circumstances
where they are realisable, where all elements of the whole world obtain. It should not be
required that there are are no situations where they may conflict, become inconsistent. It is
certainly not required that they are realised, by whatever means. A community, as variously
represented, can choose better or worse. There are many means available, which it may shun
(again there are no guarantees), enabling it to choose better, including improved structures,
attitudinal change and consciousness raising, and so on.
In the end, Saward too recognises the popules power of attitutdinal change, thereby
removing himself;his previous loading of authoritarian means upon greens. There
needs, from a green perspective [and others], to be a change in political
)
culture such that it will be compatible with sustainability. This, of course, is a
familiar theme from green writing. How[?] ... It can only be the case that
‘political change will ony occur once people think differently or, more
particularly, that sustainable living must be prefaced by sustainable thinking’.
Byibandoning foundationalist myths of intrinsic merit, greens abandon the
implicit arrogance that have made democracy such a tenuous part of green
political theory.11
But he overstates the attitudinal point, with ‘only...the case’. People can be politically led
(retardation, as distinct from genuine advancement is a common phenomena); they could just
elect a green government which instituted, under permuaible democratic methods, sustainable
living or the like. And:the fmq ungrammatical sentence is a complete non-sequitur. Attitudinal
change may including coming to appreciate intrinsic merit in natural things other than humans.
10
11
Of course it is now put in terms of “imperatives”; it y>uld be better expre^n terms of
principles, policy objectives or the like.
[Ref. and page]
.
/
/“■
w
/’
�11
4.
Technical interlude: Strong family resemblances of ubiquitous problem-generating
structures.
The skeleton or scaffolding of organisation is structure; it is the frame on which
organisation is hung, which organisation fills or fleshes out. The sense of structure, explicating
the underlying organic image, implies as much. According, for instance, to the Concise Oxford
Dictionary, ‘structure: manner in which a building or organism or other complete whole is
constructed, supporting framework or whole of the essential parts of something’. Structure
itself is primarily, though not entirely, a matter of relations of elements and parts.
Remarkably, the same sort of problem-generating structures occur in a range of
seemingly diverse theoretical areas, to be displaced in each case by a similar sort of problem-
dissipating structure.
To illustrate, consider an order on a type (or set) of items Q given by one order relation R,
where R may itself depend on item c in Q, i.e. R = Rc. For example, where Q is a system of
worlds including your world the ordering R of worlds may depend on your world (and my
world could supply a different order). Differently, where Q is a system of values or valued
items, R may depend upon your values; and so on. As an order, R is at least transitive, and
perhaps either (if like <) reflexive or (if like <) symmetric, on its range. The system <£2, R> is
a simple ordered structure, or a frame. (The latter is the term now used in modal logic, where
such structures are the bases of models for the logic.) A cap or top t of such a system is an
element such that all items of Q bear R to t but which does not itself bear R to any element of
Q. (The notion, that of supremum, and likewise maximum, may be similarly defined relative to
subsets or types within Q.33)
Simple Theorem. There are order structures without tops.
Examples are provided by systems (often with much more structure) with no supremum. Here
is a simple 6 element example drawn from relevant logical theory.
+1
X
/ \
„ = {=2, -1, -0, +0, +1, +2}
R = — is as shown by arrows.
T = {+0, +1, +2} is a truth component
-1
Topologically, several notions of prime political and philosophical cast are tantamount to
tops in order structures, including chiefs (top persons in power rankings) hierarchs, grand
leaders, centres, absolutes, and objective items.
33
Consider, a pertinent issue, the matter of
A supremum t of R (in type T) is an (that) element (of T) such that all elements (of T) bear R to t
but which does not itself bear R to anything (in T).
�11
Topologically, several notions of prime political and philosophical cast are tantamount to
tops in order structures, including chiefs (top persons in power rankings) hierarchs, grand
leaders, centres, absolutes, and objective items.
Consider, a pertinent issue, the matter of
central control or authority, where as in the next diagram all elements answer to L
Looked at from above t is centre of a network. In the diagram shown, it remains a structure, a
flattened hierarchy, when t and relations leading to it are deleted, under decapitation so to say.
What this shows in a simple fashion is that there can be ordered structures without central
control (and ranging further there can be statelessness, absence of central control, anarchy
without “anarchy” or chaos, because there is order), anencephaletic structures. Order,
including good order of a range of sorts, does not require central controls, leaders, absolute
rulers or arrangements, or similar. Order does not require hierarchy, such hierarchy.34
Let us briefly allude to a much wider philosophical sweep. Related order structural
considerations to those that tell against central states, absolute rulers, top authorities as required
for satisfactory order, also count against absolutes of other sorts, such as absolute truth (there
need be none, as the first diagram above indicates), absolute order (thus R itself is relative to c),
and objectives Qt various sorts, such as objective fact (another supposed absolute), objective
value (supplied under an absolute order), and so on. On this broad sweep the following sorts
contrast sets emerge:35
centralism
elitism
statism
in
decentralism
egalitarianism
anarchism
Part of what seems correct in Bookchin's vendetta against hierarchy can be captured in this way.
For a fuller picture see Sylvan 93/4, chapter 10.
n
�12
central control or authority, where as in the next diagram all elements answer to t.
t
c
Cl
C4
a
C2
c3
b
at
b2
a2
bi
Looked at from above t is centre of a network. In the diagram shown, it remains a structure, a
flattened hierarchy, when t and relations leading to it are deleted, under decapitation so to say.
What this shows in a simple fashion is that there can be ordered structures without central
control (and ranging further there can be statelessness, absence of central control, anarchy
without “anarchy” or chaos, because there is order), anencephaletic structures. Order,
including good order of a range of sorts, does not require central controls, leaders, absolute
rulers or arrangements, or similar. Order does not require hierarchy, such hierarchy.34
Let us briefly allude to a much wider philosophical sweep. Related order structural
considerations to those that tell against central states, absolute rulers, top authorities as required
for satisfactory order, also count against absolutes of other sorts, such as absolute truth (there
need be none, as the first diagram above indicates), absolute order (thus R itself is relative to c),
and objectives of various sorts, such as objective fact (another supposed absolute), objective
value (supplied under an absolute order), and so on. On this broad sweep the following sorts
contrast sets emerge:35
centralism
elitism
statism
absolutism
realism
objectivism
in
rough
contrast
respectively
with
maximizing rationalism
decentralism
egalitarianism
anarchism
pluralism
nonrealism
nonjectivism
satisizing rationalism
Naturally, these simple structural considerations are only indicative, not decisive. For we
might find, as more and more constraints are imposed on structures, as account is taken of
Part of what seems correct in Bookchin's vendetta against hierarchy can be captured in this way.
For a fuller picture see Sylvan 94, chapter 10.
�13
actual conditions, that freedom contracts, that structural arrangements are forced towards
centralism or absolutism. While such forcing may now look, in the light of a little logic,
implausible, it requires further argument that it need not in general eventuate. The argument
here against centralism and statism takes these lines: that there is ready design of institutional
arrangements for decentralised communities which does not lead back to a central state. The
state is organisationally otiose.
Organisation is delivered anencephaletically, more specifically through a decentralised
functional ecoregionalism. As to how this can be accomplished, a sweep of anarchoidal work
discloses.36
36
Most of the key elements are already available from political theory relevant to anarchism. As to
putting them together see e.g. Bumheim 85 (where demarchy and much else of reference is
explained) and Sylvan 95.
�
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Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia
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a/c*/ /Mi
J
(JO ef
,
•
*1 A >—k Z /<—. Z^-!-<
' 4
, X
I
cM 'j
/)
r
ex
Zy
/
*~>Z
A:
»
-^.—. '~^~y t
’
’ / •
-*x/^ <
’----
c« /' z/-
7^
.
.
. a new democratic public sphere of empowered,
decentralized and diverse local communities needs a set of
national and regional state structures to facilitate
legal, economic, educational and cultural values and
practices, to support those local citizens lacking in
material and cultural resources, and to settle the many
disputes and conflicts which will continue to be a part of
any foreseeable social formation. A combination of local,
direct democracy and new semi-direct democratic structures
at the national level will make life for traditional
political parties very difficult if not impossible.
This
development is to be applauded because too many citizens
in contemporary societies have an impoverished notion of
the possibilities of democratic participation and often
equate democracy with voting rituals® . /zCtZJ/J
»
<3
j
> .
'
i
— publicpolicies-ts-involved in one or other project/ Arterton s
study shows
stimulate
the promise of some ways of using
and
enhance
the
impact
and
technology
quality
of
to
citizen
participation in politics in the US, almost exclusively at the
local level^?.
Barber is perhaps the most prominent example of
a democratic theorist putting great faith in teledemocracy to
revitalise local participation and local political power in his
As one of a range of far’strong democracy'.
reaching reforms,, including the establishment of 'neigborhood
assemblies', he advocates 'a national civic communications
vision
of
regulate and oversee
technology
and
to
communications
__ ____ ___
__ .68 •
discussion of referendum
issues
cooperative
to
the civic
supervise
/Z-<W •
use of
debate
new
and
8.2.95
A FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM FOR (DEEP-)GREEN POLITICAL
THEORY? DEMOCRATIC OR AUTHORITARIAN PROCEDURES
There is strictly no logical space for a deep-green democracy, according forexample to
For there is a clash, an essential tension, between deeper green values and
commitments, notably to intrinsic values in nature, and democratic procedures. The main drift
of the argument is that green values, which are mandatory for deeper greens, require for their
implementation anti-democratic, indeed authoritarian procedures; otherwise they cannot be
guaranteed.
__
This nasty conundrum for green theory over democracy, which 'it typically supports, is
put in a sharp form as follows:1*
Democracy concerns procedures, environmentalism certain outcomes. What guarantee can
there be that the procedures will deliver the outcomes? What guarantee that democracy will
yield a way of protecting environments?
However the type of situation is worse than a matter of guarantess, which greens are not
really seeking and could not in general expect.^It is a type of situation, moreover, which
effects not only environmentalism but any sort of social and other amelioration, and even
democracy itself. For democratic procedures may yield unsatisfactory and even anti-democratic
ocout-r
outcomes. Plausible scenarios are easily designed where just such outcomes happens, for
instance as in what has been called a “paradox of democracy” where a constituency elects an
antidemocratic tyrant.3
A concerned attempt is made by Saward to mount a strong version of such a paradox
against deep-green political theory (which he calls ‘dark green’). The version is based upon
holismand intrinsic value requirements, coupled with democratic demands, of deep-green
theory. In clearest form, the version turns as follows: Holism implies consistency or
compatibility. But intrinsic value maintenance and democracy are not compatible, under evident
conditions (e.g. democratic procedures result in diminution or destruction of intrinsic value).
Firstly, partial confirmation for this explication:
The green imperative contains a number of elements, variously economic,
political, social, geographical, religious, and so on. Its force comes partly
from the holism it embodies, and partly from its basis in the idea of the
‘intrinsic value’ of nature. Holism implies that the various elements which
3
Goodin condensing Saward p.168.
( For here as almost everywhere else, things can go wrong. Philosophy especially supplies few
absolutes and little certainty.)
Such paradxes of democracy, and varieants thereupon, are presented trenchantly by Popper, and
nullified in UTD.
make up the imperative are compatible. The elements of the imperative gain
their importance, and their links with each other, by being referable back to a
common, intrinsic value. It is at this point that we can pick up the position of
democracy or ‘direct democracy’ in lists of basic values set out by greens.
These goals are the elements of the overall green imperative, and gain their
importance from both the holistic nature and intrinsic merit of the values
which the imperative represents.4
As should now be plain, and will be made plainer, consistency is not an invariant desideratien,
and is not insisted upon; coherence is what is “implied” and what supersedes consistency. As
more than a century of Hegalian theory revealed, there may be inconsistent wholes.
A further key assumption in the argument is that guaranteeing that intrinsic value is
protected (or like absolutes sustained) will require undemocratic procedures, such as
authoritarian ones. An underlying assumption (soon to be rejectee^) is that only undemocratic,
authoritarian procedures fit with deeper green imperatives or givens.5 Several illustrations are
offered of inconsistency of green imperatives with types of democratic procedures—none of
which tell, without testing adaptation, specifically against deeper green positions.
\ first illustration is directed against Porritt:
A direct democratic procedure (is not) compatible with imperative goals like
‘local production for local need’, Tow consumption’, ‘labour-intensive
production’, and ‘voluntary siplicity’ (other items from Porritt’s list).6
Against this and other illustrations, it is worth emphasizing goals resemble objectives and
targets, goals are goals which are not mandatory and by no means always achieved, especially if
the achievers, like present humans, fall short (e.g. in ecological sensitivity) or their
organisational means and opportunities are inadequate. Observe the oppositional attempt, to
convey (fatTup-grading by high redefinition), ^ twistzgoals, programs, and principles—through
‘imperative goals’ and the like—into ‘imperatives’, ‘prescribed outcomes’, undeniable
principles, intimates. That attempt should be resisted.
A second example looks at an alleged
contradiction in the programme of the German Green Party. ‘Grassroots
democracy’ is one of the four ‘basic principles’ of the party’s ‘global
conception’. Another is the ‘ecological’; ‘Proceeding from the laws of nature,
and especially from the knowledge that unlimited growth is impossible in a
limited system, and ecological policy means understanding ourselves and our
environment as part of nature’. In effect, this means that certain outcomes are
proscribed from decision-making procedures. Proscribed outcomes go well
beyond any plausible list of outcomes which must be proscribed in the
interests of defending a direct democratic decision procedure. Therefore,
there is a clear contradiction between elements of the value-set, whereas given
the holism the green imperative is based on we would have the right to expect
these goals and values to be thoroughly compatible.7
Saward, paper version p.3.; repeated p.5.
Cf. p.12 essay.
[Reference]
[Reference]
3
The last charge repeats the critical point already rejected, that holism implies consistency. A
further critical point should also be rejected: the flawed inference that ‘certain outcomes are
proscribed’. A political party in a democratic system has to be prepared to see its principles,
however splendid, overriden, certainly by other parties if they gain or hold political power.
‘..^principles [too] can only be akin to [givens and] Taws of nature’, against which democratic
procedures must inevitably be traded off the board’. Sets of principles, which may themselves
turn out to be inconsistent, are hardly akin to natural laws; consider for instance reasons for
their revision, procedures for rechecking and revision, and so on. In any case, democratic
procedures are not traded away against laws of nature, which they may try to upset or suppress.
(Rather effort should be directed at informing the electorate, etc.).
To reinforce his case, Saward appeals to other authors who have advanced similar claims
CO
l
Qf~
(it is like appealing for information of a newspaper repeat to other newspapers).
Frankel accuses Bahro of an ‘anti-democratic’ vision of an ecological society,
given that politics as conflict will have no place in a sea of ‘givens’. He sees
the dilemma as being similar to that of socialists—deeming certain things as
desirable in an ultimate sense, but proclaiming attachment to democracy and
the diversity it implies. Ophuls has stated the matter especially clearly. The
basic question about politics, he writes, is ‘Is the way we organize our
communal life and rule ourselves compatible with ecological imperatives and
other natural laws? ... how we run our lives will be increasingly determined
by ecological imperatives’8
In an ecological society, enough of the demos (members of democratic constituency) will hold
ecological attitudes and vote accordingly, almost by definition. Problems of effecting change lie
with unecological communities, which may not support ecological principles under instituted
democratic procedures (as presently in many places). Principles, and ecological “givenT, stand,
they remain ‘desirable in an ultimate sense’, but they are not followed and implemented, while
revealed democratic preferences go unchanged. There need be no ‘anti-democratic vision’, but
rather an unecological prbxis, which principled greens will work to change.
The route is accordingly barred to Say ward’s
important conclusions...: that at best direct democracy, and for that matter
indirect forms of democracy, can only be at or near the bottom of value-lists
of greens. A commitment to democracy must clash with values that are
inherent to ecologism—and ecologism is about inherency, intrinsic values,
laws of nature and holism. Things—like democracy—that can only have
instrumental value must lose out to imperatives backed by inescapable
canonical force.9
familiar: pragmatism, jettison intrinsic value.
What Skyward proposes instead is dep
Out therewith go deep-green positions.
8
9
[Ref.] Note that a very streamlined version of Saward’s case is being presented. The last part of
Saward’s essay contains much fitfand a good deal of garbage.
[ref].
4
... greens should not think in terms of green imperatives. Indeed, it suggests
that to think in terms of imperatives based on arguments about intrinsic merit
is unjustifiable.10
Fortunately the argument developed does not sustain the proposals. There is, to itberate a
central point, no inteVal or latent contradiction between (deep-)green policy objectives and
democratic procedures. Rather, green objectives will fail to be achieved without ^ell-disposed
decision makers, who may not straightforwardly reflect any “will” of the demos. A logical
requirement on a realistic set of political objectives is that there are accessible circumstances
where they are realisable, where all elements of the whole world obtain. It should not be
required that there are are no situations where they may conflict, become inconsistent. It is
certainly not required that they are realised, by whatever means. A community, as variously
represented, can choose better or worse. There are many means available, which it may shun
(again there are no guarantees), enabling it to choose better, including improved structures,
attitudinal change and consciousness raising, and so on.
In the end, Saward too recognises the popules power of attitutdinal change, thereby
removing himself;his previous loading of authoritarian means upon greens. There
needs, from a green perspective [and others], to be a change in political
)
culture such that it will be compatible with sustainability. This, of course, is a
familiar theme from green writing. How[?] ... It can only be the case that
‘political change will ony occur once people think differently or, more
particularly, that sustainable living must be prefaced by sustainable thinking’.
Byibandoning foundationalist myths of intrinsic merit, greens abandon the
implicit arrogance that have made democracy such a tenuous part of green
political theory.11
But he overstates the attitudinal point, with ‘only...the case’. People can be politically led
(retardation, as distinct from genuine advancement is a common phenomena); they could just
elect a green government which instituted, under permuaible democratic methods, sustainable
living or the like. And:the fmq ungrammatical sentence is a complete non-sequitur. Attitudinal
change may including coming to appreciate intrinsic merit in natural things other than humans.
10
11
Of course it is now put in terms of “imperatives”; it y>uld be better expre^n terms of
principles, policy objectives or the like.
[Ref. and page]
.
/
/“■
w
/’
11
4.
Technical interlude: Strong family resemblances of ubiquitous problem-generating
structures.
The skeleton or scaffolding of organisation is structure; it is the frame on which
organisation is hung, which organisation fills or fleshes out. The sense of structure, explicating
the underlying organic image, implies as much. According, for instance, to the Concise Oxford
Dictionary, ‘structure: manner in which a building or organism or other complete whole is
constructed, supporting framework or whole of the essential parts of something’. Structure
itself is primarily, though not entirely, a matter of relations of elements and parts.
Remarkably, the same sort of problem-generating structures occur in a range of
seemingly diverse theoretical areas, to be displaced in each case by a similar sort of problem-
dissipating structure.
To illustrate, consider an order on a type (or set) of items Q given by one order relation R,
where R may itself depend on item c in Q, i.e. R = Rc. For example, where Q is a system of
worlds including your world the ordering R of worlds may depend on your world (and my
world could supply a different order). Differently, where Q is a system of values or valued
items, R may depend upon your values; and so on. As an order, R is at least transitive, and
perhaps either (if like <) reflexive or (if like <) symmetric, on its range. The system <£2, R> is
a simple ordered structure, or a frame. (The latter is the term now used in modal logic, where
such structures are the bases of models for the logic.) A cap or top t of such a system is an
element such that all items of Q bear R to t but which does not itself bear R to any element of
Q. (The notion, that of supremum, and likewise maximum, may be similarly defined relative to
subsets or types within Q.33)
Simple Theorem. There are order structures without tops.
Examples are provided by systems (often with much more structure) with no supremum. Here
is a simple 6 element example drawn from relevant logical theory.
+1
X
/ \
„ = {=2, -1, -0, +0, +1, +2}
R = — is as shown by arrows.
T = {+0, +1, +2} is a truth component
-1
Topologically, several notions of prime political and philosophical cast are tantamount to
tops in order structures, including chiefs (top persons in power rankings) hierarchs, grand
leaders, centres, absolutes, and objective items.
33
Consider, a pertinent issue, the matter of
A supremum t of R (in type T) is an (that) element (of T) such that all elements (of T) bear R to t
but which does not itself bear R to anything (in T).
11
Topologically, several notions of prime political and philosophical cast are tantamount to
tops in order structures, including chiefs (top persons in power rankings) hierarchs, grand
leaders, centres, absolutes, and objective items.
Consider, a pertinent issue, the matter of
central control or authority, where as in the next diagram all elements answer to L
Looked at from above t is centre of a network. In the diagram shown, it remains a structure, a
flattened hierarchy, when t and relations leading to it are deleted, under decapitation so to say.
What this shows in a simple fashion is that there can be ordered structures without central
control (and ranging further there can be statelessness, absence of central control, anarchy
without “anarchy” or chaos, because there is order), anencephaletic structures. Order,
including good order of a range of sorts, does not require central controls, leaders, absolute
rulers or arrangements, or similar. Order does not require hierarchy, such hierarchy.34
Let us briefly allude to a much wider philosophical sweep. Related order structural
considerations to those that tell against central states, absolute rulers, top authorities as required
for satisfactory order, also count against absolutes of other sorts, such as absolute truth (there
need be none, as the first diagram above indicates), absolute order (thus R itself is relative to c),
and objectives Qt various sorts, such as objective fact (another supposed absolute), objective
value (supplied under an absolute order), and so on. On this broad sweep the following sorts
contrast sets emerge:35
centralism
elitism
statism
in
decentralism
egalitarianism
anarchism
Part of what seems correct in Bookchin's vendetta against hierarchy can be captured in this way.
For a fuller picture see Sylvan 93/4, chapter 10.
n
12
central control or authority, where as in the next diagram all elements answer to t.
t
c
Cl
C4
a
C2
c3
b
at
b2
a2
bi
Looked at from above t is centre of a network. In the diagram shown, it remains a structure, a
flattened hierarchy, when t and relations leading to it are deleted, under decapitation so to say.
What this shows in a simple fashion is that there can be ordered structures without central
control (and ranging further there can be statelessness, absence of central control, anarchy
without “anarchy” or chaos, because there is order), anencephaletic structures. Order,
including good order of a range of sorts, does not require central controls, leaders, absolute
rulers or arrangements, or similar. Order does not require hierarchy, such hierarchy.34
Let us briefly allude to a much wider philosophical sweep. Related order structural
considerations to those that tell against central states, absolute rulers, top authorities as required
for satisfactory order, also count against absolutes of other sorts, such as absolute truth (there
need be none, as the first diagram above indicates), absolute order (thus R itself is relative to c),
and objectives of various sorts, such as objective fact (another supposed absolute), objective
value (supplied under an absolute order), and so on. On this broad sweep the following sorts
contrast sets emerge:35
centralism
elitism
statism
absolutism
realism
objectivism
in
rough
contrast
respectively
with
maximizing rationalism
decentralism
egalitarianism
anarchism
pluralism
nonrealism
nonjectivism
satisizing rationalism
Naturally, these simple structural considerations are only indicative, not decisive. For we
might find, as more and more constraints are imposed on structures, as account is taken of
Part of what seems correct in Bookchin's vendetta against hierarchy can be captured in this way.
For a fuller picture see Sylvan 94, chapter 10.
13
actual conditions, that freedom contracts, that structural arrangements are forced towards
centralism or absolutism. While such forcing may now look, in the light of a little logic,
implausible, it requires further argument that it need not in general eventuate. The argument
here against centralism and statism takes these lines: that there is ready design of institutional
arrangements for decentralised communities which does not lead back to a central state. The
state is organisationally otiose.
Organisation is delivered anencephaletically, more specifically through a decentralised
functional ecoregionalism. As to how this can be accomplished, a sweep of anarchoidal work
discloses.36
36
Most of the key elements are already available from political theory relevant to anarchism. As to
putting them together see e.g. Bumheim 85 (where demarchy and much else of reference is
explained) and Sylvan 95.
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Handwritten notes and typescript papers with handwritten emendations and annotations, 'A fundamental dilemma for (deep-) green political theory? Democratic or authoritarian procedures' (dated 8.2.95), and 'Technical interlude, strong family resemblances of ubiquitous problem-generating structures'.
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Lake George - Floor - Pile 7
Box 14: Green Projects in Progress
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https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/c89ac283cca67c1d1891cadce5f43e34.pdf
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Text
Inquiry, 21, 133-79
Nuclear Energy and Obligations
to the Future
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain, Braidwood, Australia
The paper considers the morality of nuclear energy development as it concerns
future people, especially the creation of highly toxic nuclear wastes requiring longterm storage. On the basis of an example with many parallel moral features it is
argued that the imposition of such costs and risks on the future is morally unacceptable. The paper goes on to examine in detail possible ways of escaping this
conclusion, especially the escape route of denying that moral obligations of the
appropriate type apply to future people. The bulk of the paper comprises discussion
of this philosophical issue, including many arguments against assigning obligations
to the future drawn both from analyses of obligation and from features of the future
such as uncertainty and indeterminacy. A further escape through appeal to moral
conflict is also considered, and in particular two conflict arguments, the Poverty
and Lights-going-out arguments are briefly discussed. Both these escape routes are
rejected and it is concluded that if the same standards of behaviour are applied to
the future as to the present, nuclear energy development is morally unacceptable.
I. The Bus Example
Suppose we consider a bus, a bus which we hope is to make a very long
journey. This bus, a third world bus, carries both passengers and freight.
The bus sets down and picks up many different passengers in the course of
its long journey and the drivers change many times, but because of the way
the bus line is managed and the poor service on the route it is nearly always
full to overcrowded, with passengers hanging off the back, and as in
Afghanistan, passengers riding on the roof, and chickens and goats in the
freight compartment.
Early in the bus's journey someone consigns on it, to a far distant
destination, a package containing a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is
packaged in a very thin container, which as the consigner well knows is
unlikely to contain the gas for the full distance for which it is consigned,
and certainly will not do so if the bus should encounter any trouble, for
example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the bus becomes very
hot, if the bus should strike a very large bump or pothole of the sort
commonly found on some of the bad roads it has to traverse, or if some
1
�134 R. and V. Routley
passenger should interfere deliberately or inadvertently with the cargo or
perhaps try to steal some of the freight, as also frequently happens. All of
these things, let us suppose, have happened on some of the bus's previous
journeys. If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people and animals on the bus, while others
could be maimed or contract serious diseases.
There does not seem much doubt about what most of us would say about
the morality of the consigner's action, and there is certainly no doubt
about what the passengers would say. The consigner's action in putting
the safety of the occupants of the bus at risk is appalling. What could
excuse such an action, what sort of circumstances might justify it, and
what sort of case could the consigner reasonably put up? The consigner
might say that it is by no means certain that the gas will escape; he himself
is an optimist and therefore feels that such unfavourable possible outcomes should be ignored. In any case the bus might have an accident and
the passengers be killed long before the container gets a chance to leak; or
the passengers might change to another bus and leave the lethal parcel
behind.
He might say that it is the responsibility of the passengers and the driver
to ensure that the journey is a smooth one, and that if they fail to do so, the
results are not his fault. He might say that the journey is such a long one
that many of the passengers may have become mere mindless vegetables
or degenerate wretches about whose fate no decent person need concern
himself, or that they might not care about losing their lives or health or
possessions anyway by that time.
Most of these excuses will seem little more than a bad joke, and certainly would not usually be reckoned any sort of justification. The main
argument the consigner of the lethal parcel employs, however, is that his
own pressing needs justify his actions. He has no option but to consign his
potentially lethal parcel, he says, since the firm he owns, and which has
produced the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits and
cannot afford to produce a better container or to stop the production of the
gas. If the firm goes out of business, the consigner says, his wife will leave
him, and he will lose his family happiness, the comfortable way of life to
which he has become accustomed and sees now as a necessity; his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others; not only will the
firm's customers be inconvenienced but he, the consigner, will have to
break some business contracts; the inhabitants of the local village through
loss of spending and cancellation of the Multiplier Effect will suffer finan-
�Obligations to the Future 135
cial hardship, and, worst of all, the tiny flow of droplets that the poor of the
village might receive (theoretically at any rate) as a result of the trickling
down of these good things would dry up entirely. In short, some basic and
some perhaps uncomfortable changes will be needed in the village.
Even if the consigner's story were accepted at face value - and it would
be wise to look critically at his story - only someone whose moral sensibilities had been paralysed by the disease of galloping economism could see
such a set of considerations, based on 'needs', comfort, and the goal of
local prosperity, as justifying the consigner's action.
One is not generally entitled to thus simply transfer the risks and costs
arising from one's own life onto other uninvolved parties, to get oneself
out of a hole of one's own making by creating harm or risk of harm to
someone else who has had no share in creating the situation. To create
serious risks and costs, especially risks to life or health for such others,
simply to avoid having to make some changes to a comfortable life style, or
even for a somewhat better reason, is usually thought deserving of moral
condemnation, and sometimes considered a crime; for example, the action
of a company in creating risks to the lives or health of its workers or
customers to prevent itself from going bankrupt. What the consigner says
may be an explanation of his behaviour, but it is not a justification.
The problem raised by nuclear waste disposal is by no means a perfect
analogy to the bus case, since, for example, the passengers on the nuclear
bus cannot get off the bus or easily throw out the lethal package. In many
crucial moral respects, however, the nuclear waste storage problem as it
affects future people, the passengers in the bus we are considering, resembles the consignment of the faultily packaged lethal gas. Not only are
rather similar moral principles involved, but a rather similar set of arguments to the lamentable excuses the consigner presents have been seriously put up to justify nuclear development, the difference being that in the
nuclear case these arguments have been widely accepted. There is also
some parallel in the risks involved; there is no known safe way to package
the highly toxic wastes generated by nuclear plants that will be spread
around the world if large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.1 The
wastes problem will not be a slight one, with each one of the more than
2,000 reactors envisaged by the end of the century, producing on average
annual wastes containing one thousand times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb.2 The wastes include not merely the spent fuels and their
radioactive by-products, but also everything they contaminate, from fuel
containers to the thousands of widely distributed decommissioned nuclear
�136 R. and V. Routley
reactors which will have to be abandoned, still in a highly radioactive
condition, after the expiry of their expected lifetimes of about thirty years,
and which have been estimated to require perhaps one and a half million
years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.3 The wastes must be kept
suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime; for
fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or
so, and for the actinides (transuranic elements) which include plutonium,
there is a half-million to a million-year storage problem.4
Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed longterm methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of
waste that have been produced over the last twenty years.5 With present
known short-term surface methods of storage there is a continued need for
human intervention to keep the material isolated from the environment,
while with proposed longer-term methods such as storage in salt mines or
granite to the risk of human interference there are added the risks of
leakage, e.g. through water seepage, and of disturbance, for example
through climatic change, earth movements, etc. The risks are significant:
no reasonable person with even a limited acquaintance with the history of
human affairs over the last 3,000 years could be confident of safe storage
by methods involving human intervention over the enormous time periods
involved. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and
climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period which has
seen a number of ice ages and great fluctuations in climate for example,
could be confident that the waste material could be safely stored for the
vast periods of time required. Much of this waste is highly toxic; for
example, even a beachball sized quantity of plutonium appropriately
distributed is enough to give every person on the planet lung cancer - so
that a leak of even a small part of this waste material could involve huge
loss of life, widespread disease and genetic damage, and contamination of
immense areas of land.6
Given the enormous costs which could be involved for the future, it is
plainly grossly inadequ'ate'to merely speculate concerning untested, but
possibly or even probably, safe methods for disposal of wastes. Yet none
of the proposed methods has been properly tested, and they may prove to
involve all sorts of unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is
made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that
could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that
placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult
to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the
�Obligations to the Future 137
geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable,
rigorously safe long-term storage method could be devised, there is the
problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it would be, especially if, as seems likely, such a
method proved expensive economically and politically, seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future not
previously encountered in human affairs, and certainly not conspicuous in
the nuclear industry.7 Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless
guarding of long-term storage sites through perhaps a million years of
possible future human activity, weapons-grade radioactive material will
be accessible, over much of the million-year storage period, to any party
who is in a position to retrieve it.
Our behaviour in creating this nightmare situation for the future is
certainly no better than that of the consigner in the bus example. Industrialized countries, in order to get out of a mess of their own making essentially the creation of economies dependent on an abundance" of
non-renewable energy in a situation where it is in fact in limited supply opt for a 'solution' which may enable them to avoid the making of uncomfortable changes during the lifetime of those now living, at the expense of
passing heavy burdens on to the inhabitants of the earth at a future time burdens in the shape of costs and risks which, just as in the bus case, may
adversely affect the life and health of future people and their opportunity
to lead a decent life.8
It is sometimes suggested that analogies like the bus example are defective; that morally they are crucially different from the nuclear case, since
future people, unlike the passengers in the bus, will benefit directly from
nuclear development, which will provide an abundance of energy for the
indefinite future. But this is incorrect. Nuclear fission creates wastes
which may remain toxic for a million years, but even with the breeder
reactor it could be an energy source for perhaps only 150 years. It will do
nothing for the energy problems of the people of the distant future whose
lives could be seriously affected by the wastes. Thus perhaps 30,000
generations of future people could be forced to bear significant risks,
without any corresponding benefits, in order to provide for the extravagant energy use of only five generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop-gap, it
seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a
�138 R. and V. Routley
transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a
future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be
very much worse placed to cope with it.9 For they may well have to face
the change to renewable resources in an over-populated world not only
burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in
which, if the nuclear proponents' dream of global industrialization is
realized, more and more of the global population will have become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy
resource use, and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and
soils as remain, resources which will have to form a very important part of
the basis of life, are in a run-down condition. Such points tell against the
idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission
energy, at least indirect beneficiaries.
The 'solution' then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society at
a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but
which reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Just as in the bus
case, contemporary industrial society proposes to get itself out of a hole of
its own making by creating risk of harm, and by transferring costs and
risks, to someone else who has had no part in producing the situation and
who will obtain no clear benefit. It has clear alternatives to this action.
That it does not take them is due essentially to its unwillingness to avoid
changing wasteful patterns of consumption and to its desire to protect the
interests of those who benefit from them.
If we apply to the nuclear situation the same standards of behaviour and
moral principles that we acknowledge (in principle if perhaps often not in
fact) in the contemporary world, it will not be easy to avoid the conclusion
that the situation involves injustice with respect to future people on a
grand scale. It seems to us that there are only two plausible moves that
might enable the avoidance of such a conclusion. First, it might be argued
that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the
contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply because the
recipients of our nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future. Secondly,
an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to
reject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course
to say that there are no circumstances in which such an action might
possibly be justifiable, or at least where the case is less clearcut. It is the
same with the nuclear case. Just as in the case of the consigner of the
�Obligations to the Future 139
package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances
might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We turn now to the
first of these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development, to the philosophical question of our obligations to the future.
II. Obligations to the Distant Future
The area in which these philosophical problems arise is that of the distant
(i.e. non-immediate) future, that is, the future with which people alive
today will make no direct contact; the immediate future provides comparatively few problems for moral theories. The issues involved, although of
far more than academic interest, have not received any great attention in
recent philosophical literature, despite the fact that the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail
to pass, and also raises a number of questions in political philosophy
concerning the adequacy of accepted institutions which leave out of
account the interests of future people.
Moral philosophers have predictably differed on the issue. But contrary
to the picture painted in a recent, widely read, and influential work
discussing it, Passmore's Man's Responsibility for Nature, a good many
philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come
down in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and
interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately
future people. Other philosophers have tended to fall into three categories
- those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take
them seriously or who assign them less weight, those who deny, or who
are committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are
moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those like Passmore
and Golding who come down, with admirable philosophical caution, on
both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the
view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there
are no moral obligations to the future beyond those to the next generation.
• According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally
unconstrained; there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act
deriving from the effect of our actions on future people. Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply, that we don't have obligations to
the (non-immediate) future, i.e. those who have opted for the uncon-
�140 R. and V. Routley
strained position, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded on or as
presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). For example, obligation
is seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration
and also non-transitive. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral
obligation, or requirements for moral obligation, which would rule out
obligations to the non-immediate future are these: First, there are those
accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held
be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will
not be able to claim rights and entitlements as against us, and of course
they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have for their rights
against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would
require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not hold invariantly
over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and so will not
be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their
interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any
contemporary institution would do it for them.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out
the distant future as a field of moral obligation, as they not only require a
commonality, or some sort of common basis, which cannot be guaranteed
in the case of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or
reciprocity of action which cannot apply to the future. Where the basis of
moral obligation is seen as mutual exchange, the interests of future people
must be set aside because they cannot change the past and cannot be
parties to any mutual contract. The exclusion of moral obligations to the
distant future also follows from those views which attempt to ground
moral obligations in non-transitive relations of short duration such as
sympathy and love. There are some difficulties also about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about whose
personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has no sympathy. On
the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for
future people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary
�Obligations to the Future 141
people have no obligations to future people and can harm them as it suits
them.
What all these views have in common is a naturalistic picture of obligation as something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which is conditional on doing something or failing to do something
(e.g. participating in the moral community, contracting), or having some
characteristic one can fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).10
Because obligation therefore becomes conditional, features usually
thought to characterize it, such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding features), are lost, especially where there is a choice
of whether or not to do the thing required to acquire the obligation, and so
of whether to acquire it. The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as
to exclude people in the distant future.
However, the view that there are no moral constraints with respect to
future people, that one is free to act as one likes with respect to them, is a
very difficult one to sustain. Consider the example of a scientific group
which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb which is to be set off by a
triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of
its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate
descendants would be affected, but the population of the earth in the
distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the
action. The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in
the scientists' experiment, perhaps its being unduly expensive or badly
designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to
future people. The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of examples: A firm discovers it can make a
handsome profit from mining, processing, and manufacturing a new type
of material which, although it causes no problems for present people or
their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years
decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer
among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any
consideration for the harm it does to future people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view might seem childishly
obvious. Yet the unconstrained position concerning the future from which
they follow is far from being a straw man; not only have a number of
philosophers writing on the issue endorsed this position, but it is the clear
�142 R. and V. Routley
implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of economic theory. It does not appear, on the other hand,
that those who opt for the unconstrained position have considered such
examples and endorsed them as morally acceptable, despite their being
clearly implied by their position. We suspect that when it is brought out
that the unconstrained position admits such counterexamples, that being
free to act implies, among other things being free to inflict pointless harm,
most of those who opted for the unconstrained position would want to
assert that it was not what they intended. What those who have put
forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in mind in denying
moral obligation is rather that future people can look after themselves, that
we are not responsible for their lives. The view that the future can take
care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the
present. But it is not. It is not as if, in cases such as those discussed above
and the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of
itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so must acquire many
of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting
the present and immediate future. The thesis seems thus to assume an
incorrect model of an independent and unrelated future.
Also, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future people
does not amount to the same as saying that we are free to do as we like with
respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action involving
them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have, or has not
acquired, an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been
involved - that one has no responsibility for his life - does not imply that
one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him
or to pursue some course of action of advantage to oneself which could
seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
failure to make an important distinction between, on the one hand, acquired or assumed obligations towards somebody, for which some act of
acquisition or assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and on the
other hand moral constraints, which require, for example, that one should
not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which no act of
acquisition is required. There is a considerable difference in the level and
kind of responsibility involved. In the first case one must do something or
be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. have loves, sympathy, be
contracted. In the second case responsibility arises as a result of being a
causal agent aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his
�Obligations to the Future 143
action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or assumed. Thus
there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints, can
apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied. They apply as a
result of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a
reasonably predictable nature. Thus also moral constraints can apply to
what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet)
exist. While it may be the case that there would need to be an acquired or
assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people
must make special sacrifices of an heroic kind for future people, or even to
help them especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to
be constrained from harming them. Thus, to return to the bus example, the
consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has never
assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not
know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them, and that they
are not part of his moral community, in short that he has no special
obligations to help them. All that one needs to argue in respect of both the
bus and the nuclear case is that there are moral constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to take responsibility
for the lives of the people involved.
The confusion of moral constraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off
non-acquired constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term 'moral
obligation' in philosophy to indicate any type of deontic constraint, while
in natural language it is used to indicate something which has to be
assumed or acquired. Hence the equation and at least one root of the
unconstrained position, that is of the belief that there are no moral constraints concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counterexamples, to a more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent position. Passmore's position in [1] is a striking example of the second ambivalent
position. On the one hand Passmore regularly gives the impression of one
championing future people; for example, in the final sentence of [1] he
says, concerning men a century hence:
My sole concern is that we should do nothing which will reduce their
freedom of thought and action, whether by destroying.the natural
world which makes that freedom possible or the social traditions
which permit and encourage it.
�144 R. and V. Routley
Earlier (esp. pp. 84-85) Passmore appears to endorse the principle 'that we
ought not to act so as certainly to harm posterity' and claims (p. 98) that,
even where there are uncertainties, 'these uncertainties do not justify
negligence'. Nevertheless, though obligations concerning non-immediate
posterity are thus admitted, the main thrust of Passmore's argument is
entirely different, being in favour of the unconstrained position according
to which we have no obligations to non-immediate posterity. Thus his
conclusion (p. 91):
So whether we approach the problem of obligations to posterity by
way of Bentham and Sidgwick, Rawls or Golding, we are led to
something like the same conclusion: our obligations are to immediate
posterity, we ought to try to improve the world so that we shall be able
to hand it over to our immediate successors in a better condition, and
that is all.11
Passmore's position is, to all appearances, simply inconsistent. There are
two ways one might try to render it consistent, but neither is readily
available to Passmore. The first is by taking advantage of the distinction
between moral constraints and acquired obligations, but a basis for this
distinction is not evident in Passmore's work and indeed the distinction is
antithetical to the analyses of obligation that Passmore tries to synthesize
with his own analysis in terms of loves. The second, sceptical, route to
consistency is by way of the argument that we shall consider shortly, that
there is always gross uncertainty with respect to the distant future, uncertainty which relieves us in practice of any moral constraints regarding the
distant future. But though Passmore's writing strongly suggests this uncertainty argument (especially his sympathetic discussion of the Premier
of Queensland's argument against conservationists [p. 77]), he also rules it
out with the claim that uncertainties do not justify negligence.12
Many of the accounts of moral obligation that give rise to the unconstrained position are fused in Passmore's work, again not entirely consistently, since the different accounts exploited do not give uniform results.
Thus the primary account of obligation is said to be in terms of loves though the account is never satisfactorily formulated or developed - and it
is suggested that because our loves do not extend into the distant future,
neither do our obligations. This sentimental account of obligation will
obviously lead to different results from utilitarian accounts of obligation,
which however Passmore appeals to in his discussion of wilderness. In yet
other places in [1], furthermore, social contract and moral community
�Obligations to the Future 145
views are appealed to - see, e.g., the treatment of animals, of preservation, and of duties to nature. In the case of obligations to future people,
however, Passmore does try to sketch an argument - what we call the
convergence argument - that all the accounts lead in the end to the
unconstrained position.
As well as the convergence argument, and various uncertainty arguments to be considered later, Passmore appears to endorse several other
arguments in favour of his theme that there are in practice no obligations to
the distant future. In particular, he suggests that such obligations would in
practice be otiose. Everything that needs to be accounted for can be
encompassed through the chain picture of obligation as linking successive
generations, under which each generation has obligations, based on loves,
only to the succeeding generation. We outline three objections to this
chain account. First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the
future as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no
question of constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations,
since individuals can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a
way which may create individual responsibility, and which can't necessarily be sheeted home to an entire generation. Secondly, such chains, since
they are non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant
future. But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as
examples again show. For the picture is unable to explain several of the
cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which
show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without
affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to influence
matters.13 Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be
achieved at the expense of disadvantages to people of the more distant
future. Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible
with, and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by,
ruining it for less immediate successors. Such cases can hardly be written
off as 'never-never land' examples, since many cases of environmental
exploitation might be seen as of just this type, e.g. not just the nuclear case
but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the long-term
depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through overcropping. If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the
favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations
in the way the chain picture suggests.
�146 R. and V. Routley
Passmore tries to represent all obligations to the distant future in terms
of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be morally
required. But in view of the distinctions between constraints and acquired
obligation and between obligation and supererogation, this is just to misrepresent the position of these obligations. For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an
unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm, than
one is resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from beating and
robbing some stranger and leaving him to starve.
Passmore's most sustained argument for the unconstrained position is a
convergence argument, that different analyses of obligations, including
his own, lead to the one conclusion. This style of argument is hardly
convincing when there are well-known accounts of obligation which do
not lead to the intended conclusion, e.g. deontological accounts such as
those of Kant and of modern European schools, and teleological accounts
such as those of Moore (in [8]). But such unfavourable positions are either
rapidly passed over or ignored in Passmore's historical treatment and
narrow selection of historical figures. The style of argument becomes even
less persuasive when it is discovered that the accounts of the main authorities appealed to, Bentham, Sidgwick, and Rawls,14 do not lead, without
serious distortion, to the intended conclusion. Indeed Passmore has twisted the historical and textual evidence to suit his case, as we now try to
indicate.
Consider Bentham first. Passmore's assumption, for which no textual
evidence is cited, ls is that no Benthamite calculation can take account of a
future more extensive than the immediate future (cf. pp. 87-88). The
assumption seems to be based simply on the fact that Bentham remarked
that 'the value of the pleasure or pain to each person to be considered in
any estimate will be greater or less in virtue of the following circumstances'. '3. Its certainty or uncertainty. 4. Its propinquity or remoteness'
([10], p. 16). But this does nothing to show that future persons are discounted: the certainty and propinquity do not concern persons, but the
utilities of the persons concerned. As regards which persons are concerned in any calculation Bentham is quite explicit, detailing how
to take an exact account. . . of the general tendency of any act.. . .5 .
Take an account of the number of persons whose interests appear to
be concerned; and repeat the above process [summation of values of
pleasure and of pain] with respect to each. ([10], p. 16)
�Obligations to the Future 147
It follows that Bentham's calculation takes account of everyone (and, in
his larger scheme, every sentient creature) whose interests appear to be
concerned: if the interests of people in the distant future appear to be
concerned - as they are in conservation issues - they are to be included in
the calculation. And there is independent evidence16 that in Bentham's
view the principle of utility was not temporally restricted: 'that is useful
which, taking all times and all persons into consideration, leaves a balance
of happiness' ([10], pp. 17-18, our italics). Thus the future cut-off that
Passmore has attributed to Bentham is contradicted by Bentham's own
account.
The case of Sidgwick is more complex, because there is isolated oscillation in his application of utilitarianism between use of utility and of
(something like) expected utility (see [11], pp. 381,414): Sidgwick's utilitarianism is, in its general characterization, essentially that of Bentham:
the conduct which . . . is objectively right is that which will produce
the greatest amount of happiness on the whole; that is, taking into
account all those whose happiness is affected by the conduct. ([11], p.
411)
All includes all sentient beings, both existing and to exist, as Sidgwick goes
on to explain (p. 414). In particular, in answer to the question 'How far are
we to consider the interests of posterity when they seem to conflict with
those of existing human beings?' Sidgwick writes ([11], p. 414, our italics):
It seems, however, clear that the time at which a man exists cannot
affect the value of his happiness from a universal point of view; and
that the interests of posterity must concern a Utilitarian as much as
those of his contemporaries, except in so far as the effect of his
actions on posterity - and even the existence of human beings to be
affected - must necessarily be more uncertain.
But Passmore manages, first of all, to give a different sense to what
Sidgwick is saying by adjusting the quotation, by omitting the clause we
have italicized, which equalizes the degree of concern for present and
future persons, and by italicizing the whole except-clause, thereby placing
much greater emphasis than Sidgwick does on uncertainty. For according
to Sidgwick's impartiality principle, 'the mere difference in time is not a
�148 R. and V. Routley
reasonable ground for having more regard to the consciousness of one
-amount than to that of another' ([11], p. 381; see also p. 124). The apparent
tension in Sidgwick's theory as to whether uncertainty should be taken
into account is readily removed by resort to a modern distinction between
values and expected values (i.e. probability weighted values); utilitarian
rightness is defined as before in terms of the net happiness of all concerned
over all time without mention of uncertainty or probabilities, but it is
distinguished from probable rightness (given present information), in the
utilitarian sense,17 which is defined in terms of the expected net happiness
of those concerned, using present probabilities. It is the latter notion, of
probable rightness, that practical reasoning is commonly concerned with
and that decision theory studies; and it is this that Passmore supposes
Sidgwick is using ([1], p. 84). But it is evident that the utilitarian determination of probable rightness, like that of rightness, will sometimes take
into account the distant future - as Sidgwick's discussion of utilitarian
determination of optimum population (immediately following his remark
on uncertainty) does. So how does Passmore contrive to reverse matters,
to have Sidgwick's position lead to his own unconstrained conclusion?
The answer is: By inserting an additional assumption of his own - which
Sidgwick would certainly have rejected - that the uncertainties entitle us
to ignore the distant future. What Passmore has implicitly assumed in his
claim ([1], p. 85) that 'utilitarian principles [such as Sidgwick's] are not
strong enough' 'to justify the kinds of sacrifice some conservationists now
call upon us to make' is his own thesis that 'The uncertainty of harms we
are hoping to prevent would in general entitle us to ignore them.. .'. From
a decision-theory viewpoint this is simply irrational18 unless the probabilities of damage are approaching zero. We will deal with the essentially
sceptical uncertainty arguments on which Passmore's position depends
shortly: here it is enough to observe that Sidgwick's position does not lead
to anything like that which Passmore attributes to him - without uncertainty assumptions which Sidgwick would have rejected (for he thought
that future people'will certainly have pleasure and suffer pain).
We can also begin to gauge from Passmore's treatment of nineteenthcentury utilitarians, such as Bentham and Sidgwick, the extent of the
distortion which underlies his more general historical case for the unconstrained position which, so he claims,
represents accurately enough what, over the last two centuries, men
have seen as their duty to posterity as a whole. . . . ([1], p. 91)
�Obligations to the Future 149
The treatment accorded Rawls in only marginally more satisfactory.
Passmore supposes that Rawls's theory of justice leads directly to the
unconstrained position ([1], p. 87 and p. 91), whereas Rawls claims ([5], p.
293) that we have obligations to future people just as to present ones. But
the situation is more complicated than Rawls's claim would indicate, as we
now try to explain in a summary way (more detail is given in the Appendix). For, in order to justify this claim on his theory (with its present
time-of-entry interpretation), Rawls has to invoke additional and dubious
motivational assumptions; even so the theory which thus results does not
yield the intended conclusion, but a conclusion inconsistent with Rawls's
claim. However, by changing the time-of-entry interpretation to an omnitemporal one, Rawls's claim does result from the theory so amended.
Moreover, the amended theory also yields, by exactly Rawls's argument
for a just saving rate, a resource conservation policy, and also a case
against nuclear development. Accordingly Passmore's other claims regarding Rawls are mistaken, e.g. that the theory cannot justify a policy of
resource conservation. Rawls does not emerge unscathed either. As on
the issue of whether his contract is a necessary condition for obligations,
so on obligations which the contract yields to the distant future, Rawls is
far from consistent. Furthermore, institutions such as qualified market
and voting systems are recommended as just though from a future perspective their results are far from that. Rawls, then, does not take obligations to the future with full seriousness.
In sum, it is not true that the theory of Rawls, any more than the theories
of the historical figures actually discussed by Passmore, unequivocally
supports the unconstrained position.
III. Uncertainty and Indeterminacy Arguments
Although there are grave difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position. According to the qualified
position we are not entirely unconstrained with respect to the distant
future: there are obligations, but these are not so important as those to the
present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much
in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much
less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present
�150 R. and V. Routley
people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in most
modern economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of
future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of an (opportunity cost) discount rate. The attempt to
apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position. What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within the bounds
of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal
constraints, and cannot determine what those constraints are. There are,
moreover, alternative economic theories and simply to adopt one which
discounts the future is to beg all the questions at issue. The discounting
move often has the same result as the unconstrained position; if, for
instance, we consider the cancer example and consider costs as payable
compensation, it is evident that, over a sufficiently long period of time,
discounting at current prices would lead to the conclusion that there are no
recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no constraints. In short,
even certain damage to future people could be written off. One way to
achieve the bias against future people is by the application of discount
rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
more than about fifteen years,19 and application of such rates would
simply beg the question against the interests and rights of future people.
Where there is certain future damage of a morally forbidden type the
whole method of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would
violate moral constraints.20
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations.The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the
present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis
concerning the distant future.21 But then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against costs and
benefits, it is evident that the interests of future people, except in cases
where there is an unusually high degree of certainty, must count for (very
much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much)
higher probabilities obtain. So in the case of conflict between the present
and the future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the
people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower
�Obligations to the Future 151
probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the
present, assuming that anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. But of course it can't be assumed that anything like similarly
weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it
is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so
years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of
future people, in order to obtain quite doubtful or trivial benefits for some
present people, in the shape of the opportunity to continue unnecessarily
high energy use. And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or
evenly weighted, such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner's action is acceptable
provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit
approach to moral and decision problems, with or without the probability
frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned, or for
dealing with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic
constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles that it is permissible for a
firm to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm
stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it. But the costs and benefits
involved are not transferable in any simple or general way from one party
to another. Transfers of this kind, of costs and benefits involving different
parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g. is x entitled to benefit himself
by imposing costs ony ? - which are not susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted by some proponents of nuclear energy,
who attempt to dismiss the costs to future people with the soothing remark
that any development involves costs as well as benefits. The transfer point
is enough to invalidate the comparison, heavily relied on by McCracken
[16] in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risk, between
nuclear risks and those from cigarette smoking. In the latter case those
who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming
extent* those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In
contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear energy will be
risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also
those of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or
temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related
to a person's extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
�152 R. and V. Routley
happiness sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different
parties, and the introduction of probability considerations does not change
the principles involved but merely complicates analyses. One might further object to the probability argument that probabilities involving distant
future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate
future in the way the argument supposes, and that the outcomes of some
moral problems such as the bus example do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway. In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the bus example
reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and
important ones used by philosophers and others to argue for the position
that we cannot be expected to take serious account of the effects of our
actions on the distant future. There are two strands to the uncertainty
argument, capable of separation, but frequently entangled. Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds. The first argument is a generalized uncertainty argument
which runs as follows: In contrast to the exact information we can obtain
about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our
actions on the distant future is unreliable, woolly, and highly speculative.
But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of
this kind, especially when accurate information is obtainable about the
present which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future. More
formally and crudely: One only has obligations to the future if these
obligations are based on reliable information; there is no reliable information at present as regards the distant future; therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
The first argument is essentially a variation on a sceptical argument in
epistemology concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace
'obligations' by 'knowledge' in the crude statement of the argument
above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the
degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate
future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral
consideration both with respect to the present and with respect to the
future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as
regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and
�Obligations to the Future 153
the adjacent future and present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and
constantly do act on the basis of such 'unreliable' information as the
sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels 'uncertainty'; for scepticproof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the
present and immediate future. In moral situations in the present, action
often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. A
good example is again the bus case. We do not need to know for certain
that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not
even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not,
in order for us to condemn the consigner's action. It is enough that there is
a significant risk of harm in this sort of case. It does not matter if the
decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and the prospects of the
passengers quite uncertain; the resolution of the problem is still clearly in
favour of the so-called 'speculative' and 'unreliable'. But if we do not
require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the
future? Why should we require epistemic standards for the future which
the more familiar sphere of moral action concerning the present and
adjacent future does not need to meet? The insistence on certainty as a
necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant
future, then, amounts to an epistemic double standard. But such an
epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between
the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples' interests,
in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it
already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each
class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in
practice take the interests of future people into account, because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what
the likely consequences of actions upon it will be and therefore, however
good our intentions to the people of the distant future, in practice we have
no choice but to ignore their interests. Uncertainty is gross where certain
incompatible hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no
rational ground for choosing between them. The second uncertainty argument can also be put in this way: If moral principles are, like other
principles, implicational in form, that is of such forms as 'if* has character
h then x is wrong, for every (action) x', then what the argument claims is
�154 R. and V. Routley
that we can never obtain the information about future actions which would
enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. So even if moral
principles theoretically apply to future people, in practice they cannot be
applied to obtain clear conclusions or directions concerning contemporary
action of the 'It is wrong to do x' type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument have to be conceded.
If the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the
effects of present action will be, and whether any given action will help or
hinder future people, then moral principles, although they may apply
theoretically to the future, will not be applicable in practice for obtaining
any clear conclusions about how to act. Hence the distant future will
impose no practical moral constraints on action. However, the argument
is factually incorrect in assuming that the future is always so grossly
uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of
uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent)
fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as to exclude
constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty is
commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be
needed in some cases is the creation of"a significant risk. Again there is
considerable uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at
all, morally relevant, but this does not extend to many factors which are of
much greater importance to moral issues. For example, we may not have
any idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years in girls' names or
men's footwear, or what brands of ice cream people will be eating if any,
but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3,000
years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to
have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will
need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be
immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or
the elimination from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of
non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
For this sort of reason, the second uncertainty argument should be rejected. While it is true that there are many areas in which the morally relevant
information needed is uncertain or unavailable, and in which we cannot
therefore determine satisfactorily how to act, there are certainly others in
�Obligations to the Future 155
which uncertainty in morally relevant areas is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient
for the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases,
especially where spatially remote people are involved. The case of nuclear
waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people,
seems to be of the latter sort. Here there is no gross indeterminacy or
uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses about what
may happen are as good as each other. It is plain that nuclear waste storage
does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as we can see
from the bus example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this
type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the corresponding defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty
arguments used to write off probable harm to future people as outside the
scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both
of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the
other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves. For example,
we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because
we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not
be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not
suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the things that would
affect us (cf. Passmore [1]). But this is to insist upon complete certainty of
a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where
there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake
those we are morally committed to. Again we may be told that there is no
guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part,
because they may be morons or forever plugged into enjoyment- or other
machines (Golding [12]). Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist
approach presupposed - according to which only those who meet certain
properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments as a serious defeating
consideration is again a mere outside possibility - like the sceptic who says
that the solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a facade, not
because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he hasn't
looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. Neither the contemporary
nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a
lapse into universal moronity or universal pleasure-machine escapism is a
serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility. We can contrast
�156 R. and V. Routley
with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable
risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilization through destruction of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities. Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is
acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to
future people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case. This is the
argument that future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent
storage method for nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped
waste material. Let us grant for the sake of the argument that this is a real
possibility (though physical arguments may show that it is not). This still
does not affect the fact that there is a significant risk of serious damage and
that the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action of this
type as morally impermissible. In just the same way, future people may
discover a cure for cancer, and the fact that this appears to be a real and not
merely a logical possibility, does not make the action of the firm in the
example discussed above, of producing a substance likely to cause cancer
in future people, morally admissible. The fact that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show that actions of these
sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was
certainty of harm or a very high probability of it. In such cases, before such
actions could be considered admissible, what would be required is far
more than a possibility, real or not22 - it is at least the availability of an
applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique
for achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves.
The strategy of most of these uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the bus example, where the
consigner says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of
his actions on the passengers because they may find an effective way to
deal with his parcel or some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the
bus may break down and they may all change to a different bus leaving the
parcel behind, or the bus may crash, killing all the passengers before the
container gets a chance to leak. These are all possibilities, of course, but
there is no positive reason to believe that they are any more than that, that
is they are not real possibilities. The strategy is to stress such outside
possibilities in order to create the false impression that there is gross
uncertainty about the future, that the real possibility that the container will
�Obligations to the Future 157
break should be treated in the same way as these mere logical possibilities,
that uncertainty about the future is so great as to preclude the consigners'
taking account of the passengers' welfare and of the real possibility of
harm from his parcel, and thereby excuse his action. A related strategy is
to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and thereby
imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints .This move
implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty, or at
least a very high probability, of harm is required before an action can be
judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree
of certainty or probability cannot be attained. That is, the strategy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat
the application of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not
so.
An argument closely related to the uncertainty arguments is based on
the non-existence and indeterminacy of the future.23 An item is indeterminate in a given respect if its properties in that respect are, as a matter of
logic, not settled (nor are they settlable in a non-arbitrary fashion). The
respects in which future items are indeterminate are well enough known
for a few examples to serve as reminders: all the following are indeterminate: the population of Australia at 2001, its distribution, its age structure,
the preferences of its members for folk music, wilderness, etc., the size
and shape of Wollongong, the average number of rooms in its houses and
in its office blocks, and so on. Philosophical discussion of such indeterminacy is as old as Aristotle's sea battle and as modern as truth-value gaps
and fuzzy logics, and many positions have been adopted on the existence
and determinacy of future items. Nevertheless theories that there are
obligations to the future are not sensitive to the metaphysical position
adopted concerning the existence or non-existence of the future. Any
theory which denied obligations to the future on the metaphysical grounds
that the future did not exist, and did not have properties, so that the
present could not be related to it, would be committed to denying such
obvious facts as that the present could causally influence the future, that
present people could be great-grandparents of purely future people, and so
on, and hence would have to be rejected on independent grounds. This is
not to say that there are not important problems about the existence or
non-existence of future items, problems which are perhaps most straightforwardly handled by a Meinongian position which allows that items
which do not exist may have properties. The non-existence of the future
�158 R. and V. Routley
does raise problems for standard theories which buy the Ontological
Assumption (the thesis that what does not exist does not have properties),
especially given the natural (and correct) inclination to say that the future
does not (now) exist; but such theories can adopt various strategies for
coping with these problems (e.g. the adoption of a platonistic position
according to which the future does now exist, or the allowance for certain
sorts of relations between existents at different times), although the satisfactoriness of these strategies is open to question (cf. [4]). Thus whether or
not the Ontological Assumption is assumed and however it is applied, it
will be allowed that future items will have properties even if they do not
have them now, and that is enough to provide the basis for moral concern
about the future. Thus the thesis of obligations to the future does not
presuppose any special metaphysical position on the existence of the
future.
If the non-existence of future items creates no special problems for
obligations to the future, the same is not true of their indeterminacy.
Whether the indeterminacy of future items is seen as a logical feature of
the future which results from the non-existence of purely future items or
whether one adopts a (mistaken) platonistic view of the future as existing
and sees the indeterminacy as an epistemological one resulting from our
inability to know the character of these entities - that is, we cannot
completely know the future .though it exists and has a definite characterwhichever view we take indeterminacy still creates major difficulties for
certain ethical theories and their treatment of the future.
The difficulties arise for theories which appear to require a high level of
determinacy with respect to the number and character of future items, in
particular calculus-type theories such as utilitarianism in its usual forms,
where the calculations are critically dependent on such information as
numbers, totals, and averages, information which so far as the future is
concerned is generally indeterminate. The fact that this numerical information is typically indeterminate means that insofar as head-count utilitarianism requires determinate information on numbers, it is in a similar
position to theories discussed earlier; it may apply theoretically to future
people, but since the calculations cannot be applied to them their interests
will be left out of account. And, in fact, utilitarianism for the most part
does not, and perhaps cannot, take future creatures and their interests
seriously; there is little discussion as to how the difficulties or impossibility of calculations regarding the open future are to be obtained. Non-platonistic utilitarianism is in logical difficulty on this matter, while platonis-
�Obligations to the Future 159
tic utilitarianism - which faces a range of other objections - is inapplicable
because of epistemic indeterminacy. We have yet another case of a theory
of the sort that applies theoretically but in practice doesn't take the future
seriously. But far from this showing that future people's interests should
be left out of account, what these considerations show are deficiencies in
these sorts of theories, which require excessive determinacy of information. This kind of information is commonly equally unavailable for the
accepted areas of moral constraint, the present and immediate future; and
the resolution of moral issues is often not heavily dependent on knowledge
of such specific determinate features as numbers or other determinate
features. For example, we do not need to know how many people there
will be on the bus, how intelligent they are, what their preferences are or
how badly they will be injured, in order to reach the conclusion that the
consigner's action in despatching his parcel is a bad one. Furthermore, it is
only the ability of moral considerations to continue to apply in the absence
of determinate information about such things as numbers that makes it
possible to take account of the possible effects of action, as the risks
associated with action - something which is quite essential even for the
present if moral considerations are to apply in the normal and accepted
way. For it is essential in order to apply moral considerations in the
accepted way that we consider alternative worlds, in order to take account
of options, risks, and alternative outcomes; but these alternative or counterfactual worlds are not in so different a position from the future with
respect to determinacy; for example, there is indeterminacy with respect
to the number of people who may be harmed in the bus case or in apossible
nuclear reactor melt-down. These alternative worlds, like the distant
future, are indeterminate in some respects, but not totally indeterminate.
It might still be thought that the indeterminacy of the future, for example
with respect to number and exact character, would at least prevent the
interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict
with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown, how can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future where this information is available in a more
or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of
sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people,
when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are
indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the
future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in
decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by ignoring
�160 R. and V. Routley
such factors. Nor are such distributional problems as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to
focus on them would suggest. It should be conceded then that there will be
cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts
very difficult or indeed impossible to resolve - a realistic ethical theory
will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other
conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution
of the issue, e.g. the bus example which is a conflict case of a type. In
particular, there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing
numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to
know only the most general probable characteristics of future people.
Moreover, even where numbers are relevant often only bounds will be
required, exact numerical counts only being required where, for instance,
margins are narrow; e.g. issues may be resolved as in parliament where a
detailed vote (or division) is only required when the issue is close. It is
certainly not necessary then to have complete determinacy to resolve all
cases of conflict.
The question we must ask then is what features of future people could
disqualify them from moral consideration or reduce their claims to it to
below those of present people? The answer is: in principle None. Prima
facie moral principles are universalizable, and lawlike, in that they apply
independently of position in space or in time, for example.24 But universalizability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are
capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present; in other words, a theory
that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects as
regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup such as
(white-skinned) humans, etc. The only candidates for characteristics that
would fairly rule out future people are the logical features we have been
looking at, uncertainty and indeterminacy; what we have argued is that it
would be far too sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral
claims of future people in a general way. These special features only affect
certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable or practical
course of action given only present information). In particular they do not
affect cases of the sort being considered, the nuclear one, where highly
determinate or certain information about the numbers and characteristics
of the class likely to be harmed or certainty of damage are not required.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability principle is
not needed: it is enough to require that the temporal position of a person
�Obligations to the Future 161
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideration;25 inversely that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position. As a result of this
universalizability, there is the same obligation to future people as to the
present; and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and
their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of
the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions' causing harm or
damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob
future people of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy do not free us of these obligations. If, in a closely
comparable case concerning the present, the creation of a significant risk
is enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent
grounds for requiring greater certainty of harm in the future case under
consideration, then futurity alone will not provide adequate grounds for
proceeding with the action, thus discriminating against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to futurity, the conclusion
tentatively reached in our first section, that proposals for nuclear development in the present state of technology for future waste disposal are
immoral.
IV. Overriding Consideration Arguments
In the first part we noticed that the consigner's action could not be justified
by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the
firm or the village would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact
that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed.
We also observed that the principle on which this assessment was based,
that one was not usually entitled to create a serious risk to others for these
sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to the
nuclear case. For this reason the economistic arguments which are thus
most commonly advanced to promote nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring of employment,
investment, and consumption-do not even begin to show that the nuclear
alternative is an acceptable one. Even if these economistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct (and there is reason to doubt
that most of them are),26 the arguments would fail because economics
must operate within the framework of moral constraints, and not vice
versa.
�162 R. and V. Routley
What one does have to consider, however, are moral conflict arguments, that is arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is
the only possible outcome, and will ensue. For example, in the bus case,
the consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is
taken the village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a
justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the
passengers is high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs
and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would no longer be so
clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action taken in
such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on
competing duties to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such
moral conflict arguments is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives),
and upon showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument-for example, if in the bus
case it turns out that the villagers have another option to starving or to the
sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way - then
the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. We want to argue
that suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument,
designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse
than the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these
arguments as well. In short, the arguments depend essentially on the
presentation of false dichotomies.
The first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of
industrialized countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often
claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the
standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment
and poverty in the industrialized nations.
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third
world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to
increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the
�Obligations to the Future 163
diversion of great amounts of available capital into an industry which is not
only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also helps
to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for
labour use. 27 The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third
world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and
economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive
amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers,
and creates negligible employment, while politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralized entrenched power and reduces the
chance for change in the oppressive political structures which are a large
part of the problem.28 The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of
people of the third world does not, of course, mean that it is not in the
interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the westernized and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually
organized; but it is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands
these ruling elites may make in the name of the poor.
The poverty argument then is a fraud. Nuclear energy will not be used to
help the poor.29 Both for the third world and for the industrialized countries there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy sources,30 alternatives which are
morally acceptable and socially preferable to nuclear development, and
which have far better prospects for helping the poor.31
The second major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to
a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people.
We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and
institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technological, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable
institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The
argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued
level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of
our civilization will go out.32 .
The lights-going-out argument raises rather sharply questions as to
what is valuable in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary
for a good society. These are questions which deserve much fuller treatment than we can allot them here, but a few brief points should be made.
The argument adopts an extremely uncritical position with respect to
existing high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are
uniformly and uniquely valuable; it also assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that it can't be changed in the direction of energy
�164 R. and V. Routley
conservation or alternative energy sources without collapse. Such a society has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept. The assumption that technological society's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so - after all, it
has survived events such as world wars which have required major social
and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western
society's demands for energy are totally unmodifiable without collapse,
not only would it be committed to a programme of increasing destruction,
but one might ask what use its culture could be to future people who would
very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base
which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary
society.
There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness; but
if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-technological society and its political institutions? but rather: what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the
political institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue
that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable,
presumably, that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, e.g. from history, is that no very high level of material
affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower
energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable
than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we believe it is, it is not necessary to presuppose such
a change, in the short term at least, in order to see that the assumptions of
the lights-going-out argument are wrong. No enormous reduction of wellbeing is required to consume less energy than at present, and certainly far
less than the large increase over present levels of consumption which is
assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.33 What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going
out in western civilization, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the
time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy
Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
�Obligations to the Future 165
is obtained by nuclear-fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralized,
controlled, and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy
source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power,
and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether
capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political
system and over people's lives, even more than they do at present. Very
persuasive arguments have been advanced by civil liberties groups and
others in a number of countries to suggest that such a society would tend to
become authoritarian, if only as an outcome of its response to the threat
posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation.34
There are reasons to believe then that with nuclear development what
we would be passing on to future generations would be some of the worst
aspects of our society (e.g. the consumerism, growing concentration of
power, destruction of the natural environment, and latent authoritarianism), while certain valuable aspects would be lost or threatened. Political
freedom is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives which
do not involve such unacceptable consequences are available. The alternative to the high technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the
loss of all that is valuable, but the development of alternative technologies
and life-styles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and
further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly
centralized nuclear option.35 The lights-going-out argument, as a moral
conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a false
dichotomy. Thus both the escape routes, the appeal to moral conflict and
to the appeal to futurity, are closed.
If then we apply the same standards of morality to the future as we
acknowledge for the present - as we have argued we should - the conclusion that the proposal to develop nuclear energy on a large scale is a crime
against the future is inevitable, since both the escape routes are closed.
There are, of course, also many other grounds for ruling it out as morally
unacceptable, for saying that it-is not only a crime against the distant future
but also a crime against the present and immediate future. These other
grounds for moral concern about nuclear energy, as it affects the present
and immediate future, include problems arising from the possibility of
catastrophic releases of radioactive fuel into the environment or of waste
material following an accident such as reactor melt-down, of unscheduled
discharges of radiation into the environment from a plant fault, of proli-
�166 R. and V. Routley
feration of nuclear weapons, and of deliberate release or threat of release
of radioactive materials as a measure of terrorism or of extortion. All these
are important issues, of much moral interest. What we want to claim,
however, is that on the basis of its effects on the future alone, the nuclear
option is morally unacceptable.
Appendix
Passmore's Treatment ofRawls,
and What Really Happens on Rawls's Theory
Passmore takes it that Rawls's theory yields an unconstrained position
but, according to Rawls, the theory leads to quite the opposite result;
namely,
persons in different generations [and not merely neighbouring generations] have duties and obligations to one another just as contemporaries do. The present generation cannot do as it pleases but is bound
by the principles that would be chosen in the original position to
define justice between persons at different moments of time.. . . The
derivation of these duties and obligations may seem at first a somewhat far-fetched application of the central doctrine. Nevertheless
these requirements would be acknowledged in the original position
[where the parties do not know to which generation they belong], and
so the conception of justice as fairness covers these matters without
any change in its basic idea. ([5], p. 293; the second insert is drawn
from p. 287)
Through judicious use of the veil of ignorance and the time of entry of
parties to the original contract position, Rawls's contract theory, unlike
simpler explicit contract theories, can yield definite obligations to distant
future people,36 for example, we ought to save at a just rate for future
people.
But, as Rawls remarks (p. 284), 'the question of justice between generations . . . subjects any ethical theory to severe if not impossible tests'. It is
doubtful that Rawls's theory as formulated passes the tests; for the theory
as formulated does not yield the stated conclusion, but a conclusion
inconsistent with the thesis that there are the same obligations to future
people as to contemporaries. Exactly how these obligations arise from the
initial agreement depends critically on the interpretation of the time of
�Obligations to the Future 167
entry of the parties into the agreement. Insofar as Rawls insists upon the
present-time-of-entry interpretation (p. 139), he has to introduce supplementary motivational assumptions in order to (try to) secure the desired
bondings between generations, in particular to ensure that the generation
of the original position saves for any later generation, even their immediate successors ([5], p. 140 and p. 292). Rawls falls back on-what is as we
have seen inadequate to the task, since it does not exclude one generation
damaging another remote generation in a way that bypasses mutually
successive generations - 'ties of sentiment between successive generations' (p. 292): to this limited extent Passmore has a point, for such a social
contract on its own (without additional assumptions about the motives of
the parties to the agreement) does not furnish obligations even to our
immediate successors. This is indicative also of the unsatisfactory instability of Rawls's theory under changes, its sensitivity to the way the original
agreement is set up, to the motivation of parties, their time of entry, what
they can know, etc.
To arrive at a more adequate account of obligations to the distant future
under Rawls's theory, let us adopt, to avoid the additional, dubious and
unsatisfactory, motivational assumptions Rawls invokes, one of the alternative - and non -equivalent - time-of-entry interpretations that Rawls lists
(p. 146), that of persons alive at some time in simultaneous agreement. Let
us call this, following Rawls's notation (on p. 140), interpretation 4b (it is
perhaps unnecessary to assume for 4b any more than 4a that all people
need be involved: it may be enough given the equivalencizing effect of the
veil of ignorance that some are, and as with the particular quantifier it is
quite unnecessary to be specific about numbers). Then of course the
parties, since they are, for all they know, of different generations, will
presumably agree on a just savings rate, and also to other just distribution
principles, simply on the basis of Rawlsian rationality, i.e. advancing their
own interests, without additional motivation assumptions. This more
appealing omnitemporal interpretation of time of entry into the agreement,
which gives a superior account of obligation to the future consistent with
Rawls's claim, Rawls in some places puts down as less than best (p. 292)
but in his most detailed account of the original position simply dismisses
(p. 139):
To conceive of the original position [as a gathering of people living at
different times] would be to stretch fantasy too far; the conception
would cease to be a natural guide to intuition.
�168 R. and V. Rout ley
This we question: it would be a better guide to intuition than a position
(like 4a) which brings out intuitively wrong results; it is a more satisfactory
guide, for example, to justice between generations than the present-timeof-entry interpretation, which fails conspicuously to allow for the range of
potential persons (all of whom are supposed to qualify on Rawls's account
for just treatment, cf. § 77). Moreover, it stretches fantasy no further than
science fiction or than some earlier contract accounts.36 But it does
require changes in the way the original position is conceived, and it does
generate metaphysical difficulties for orthodox ontological views (though
not to the same extent for the Meinongian view we prefer); for, to consider
the latter, either time travel is possible or the original hypothetical position
is an impossible situation, with people who live at different times assembled at the same time. The difficulties - of such an impossible meeting help to reveal that what Rawls's theory offers is but a colourful representation of obligations in terms of a contract agreed upon at a meeting.
The metaphysical difficulties do not concern merely possible people,
because all those involved are sometime-actual people; nor are there
really serious difficulties generated by the fact that very many of these
people do not exist, i.e. exist now. The more serious difficulties are either
those of time travel, e.g. that future parties relocated into the present may
be able to interfere with their own history, or, if time travel is ruled out
logically or otherwise, that future parties may be advantaged (or disadvantaged) by their knowledge of history and technology, and that accordingly fairness is lost. As there is considerable freedom in how we choose to
(re)arrange the original position, we shall suppose that time travel is
rejected as a means of entering the original position. For much less than
travel is required; some sort of limited communicational network which
filters out, for example, all historical data (and all cultural or species
dependent material) would suffice; and in any case if time travel were not
excluded essentially the present-time-of-entry interpretation would serve,
though fairness would again be put in doubt. The filtered communicational
hook-up by which the omnitemporal position is engineered still has - if
fairness is to be seen to be built into the decision making - to be combined
with a reinterpreted veil of ignorance, so that parties do not know where
they are located temporally any more than they know who they are
characterwise. This implies, among other things, limitations on the parties' knowledge of factual matters, such as available technology and world
and local history; for otherwise parties could work out their location,
temporal or spatial. For example, if some party knew, as Rawls supposes,
�Obligations to the Future 169
the general social facts, then he would presumably be aware of the history
of his time and so of where history ends, that is of the date of his
generation, his time (his present), and so be aware of his temporal location. These are already problems for Rawls's so-called 'present-time-ofentry interpretation' - it is, rather, a variable-time-of-entry interpretation
- given that the parties may be, as Rawls occasionally admits (e.g. p. 287),
of any one generation, not necessarily the present: either they really do
have to be ofthepresent time or they cannot be assumed to know as much
as Rawls supposes.37 There is, however, no reason why the veil of ignorance should not be extended so as to avoid this problem; and virtually any
extension that solves the problem for the variable-time-of-entry interpretation should serve, so it seems, for the omnitemporal one. We shall
assume then that the parties know nothing which discloses their respective
locations (i.e. in effect we write in conditions for universalizability of
principles decided upon). There are still gaps between the assumptions of
the omnitemporal position as roughly sketched and the desired conclusion
concerning obligations to the future, but (the matter is beginning to look
non-trivially provable given not widely implausible assumptions and) the
intuitive arguments are as clear as those in [5], indeed they simply restate
arguments to obligations given by Rawls.
Rawls's theory, under interpretation 4b, admits of nice application to
the problems of just distribution of material resources and of nuclear
power. The just distribution, or rate of usage, of material resources38 over
time is an important conservation issue to which Rawls's theory seems to
apply, just as readily, and in a similar fashion, to that in which it applies to
the issue of a just rate of savings. In fact the argument from the original
position for a just rate of saving - whatever its adequacy - can by simply
mimicked to yield an argument for just distribution of resources over
generations. Thus, for example:
persons in the original position are to ask themselves how much they
would be willing to save [i.e. conserve] at each stage of advance on
the assumption that all other generations are to save at the same rate
[conserve resources to the same extent]. . . . In effect, then, they
must choose a just savings principle [resources distribution principle]
that assigns an appropriate rate of accumulation to [degree of resource conservation at] each level of advance. ([5], p. 287; our
bracketed options give the alternative argument)
�170 R. and V. Routley
Just as 'they try to piece together a just savings schedule' (p. 289), so they
can try to piece together a just resource distribution policy. Just as a case
for resource conservation can be made out by appeal to the original
position, since it is going to be against the interests of, to the disadvantage
of, later parties to find themselves in a resource depleted situation (thus,
on Rawlsian assumptions, they will bargain hard for a share of resources),
so, interestingly, a case against a rapid programme of nuclear power
development can be devised. The basis of a case against large-scale
nuclear development is implicit in Rawls's contract theory under interpretation 4b, though naturally the theory is not applied in this sort of way
by Rawls. To state the case in its crude but powerful form: people from
later generations in the original position are bound to take it as against their
interests to simply carry the waste can for energy consumed by an earlier
generation. (We have already argued that they will find no convincing
overriding considerations that make it worth their while to carry the waste
can.) Thus not only has Passmore misrepresented the obligations to the
future that Rawls's theory admits; he is also wrong in suggesting (p. 87 and
p. 91) that Rawls's theory cannot justify a policy of resource conservation
which includes reductions in present consumption.
There is, in this connection, an accumulation of errors in Passmore,
some of which spill over to Rawls, which it is worth trying to set out. First,
Passmore claims ([1], p. 86; cf. also p. 90) that 'Rawls does not so much
mention the saving of natural resources'. In fact the 'husbanding of natural
resources' is very briefly considered ([5], p. 271). It is true, however, that
Rawls does not reveal any of the considerable power that his theory,
properly interpreted, has for natural resource conservation, as implying a
just distribution of natural resources over time. Secondly, Passmore attempts ([1], pp. 87 ff.) to represent the calls of conservationists for a
reduction in present resource usage and for a more just distribution as a
call for heroic self-sacrifices; this is part of his more general attempt to
represent every moral constraint with respect to the non-immediate future
as a matter of self-sacrifice. 'Rawls's theory', Passmore says (on p. 87),
'leaves no room for heroic sacrifice', and so, he infers, leaves no room for
conservation. Not only is the conclusion false, but the premiss also:
Rawls's theory allows for supererogation, as Rawls explains ([5], p. 117).
But resource conservation is, like refraining from nuclear development,
not a question of heroic self-sacrifice; it is in part a question of obligations
or duties to the distant future. And Rawls's theory allows not only for
obligations as well as supererogation, but also for natural duties. Rawls's
�Obligations to the Future 171
contract, unlike the contracts of what is usually meant by a 'contract
theory', is by no means exhaustive of the moral sphere:
But even this wider [contract] theory fails to embrace all moral
relationships, since it would seem to include only our relations with
other persons and to leave out of account how we are to conduct
ourselves towards,animals and the rest of nature. I do not contend
that the contract notion offers a way to approach these questions
which are certainly of the first importance; and I shall have to put
them aside, (p. 17)
The important class of obligations beyond the scope of the contract theory
surely generates obligations between persons which even the wider contract theory likewise cannot explain. The upshot is that such a contract
account, even if sufficient for the determination of obligations, is not
necessary. To this extent Rawls' s theory is not a full social contract theory
at all. However, Rawls appears to lose sight of the fact that his contract
theory delivers only a sufficient condition when he claims, for example (p.
298), that 'one feature of the contract doctrine is that it places an upper
bound on how much a generation can be asked to save for the welfare of
later generations'. For greater savings may sometimes be required to meet
obligations beyond those that the contract doctrine delivers. In short,
Rawls appears to have slipped into assuming, inconsistently, that his
contract theory is a necessary condition.
Although Rawls's theory caters for justice between generations and
allows the derivation of important obligations to people in the distant
future, the full theory is far from consistent on these matters and there are
significant respects in which Rawls does not take justice to the future
seriously. The most conspicuous symptoms of this are that justice to the
future is reduced to a special case, justice between generations, and that
the only aspect of justice between generations that Rawls actually considers is a just savings rate; there is, for example, no proper examination of
the just distribution of resources among generations, though these resources, Rawls believes, provide the material base of the just institutions that
he wants to see maintained. In fact Rawls strongly recommends a system
of markets as a just means for the allocation of most goods and services,
recognizing their well-known limitations only in the usual perfunctory
fashion ([5], pp. 270 ff.). Yet market systems are limited by a narrow time
horizon, and are quite ill-equipped to allocate resources in a just fashion
�172 R. and V. Rout ley
over a time span of several generations. Similarly Rawls's endorsement of
democratic voting procedures as in many cases a just method of determining procedures depends upon the assumptions that everyone with ah
interest is represented. But given his own assumptions about obligations
to the future and in respect of potential persons this is evidently not the
case. Catering in a just fashion for the interests of future people poses
serious problems for any method of decision that depends upon people
being present to represent their own interests.
Some of the more conservative, indeed reactionary, economic assumptions in Rawls emerge with the assumption that all that is required for
justice between generations is a just savings rate, that all we need to pass
on to the future are the things that guarantee appropriate savings such as
capital, factories, and machines. But the transmission of these things is
quite insufficient for justice to the future, and neither necessary nor
sufficient as a foundation for a good life for future generations. What is
required for justice is the transmission in due measure of what is valuable.
Rawls has, however, taken value accumulation as capital accumulation,
thereby importing one of the grossest economic assumptions, that capital
reflects value. But of course the accumulation of capital may conflict with
the preservation of what is valuable. It is for this sort of reason (and thus,
in essence, because of the introduction of supplementary economistic
theses which are not part of the pure contract theory) that Rawls's theory
is a reactionary one from an environmental point of view; on the theory as
presented (i.e. the contract theory plus all the supplementary assumptions) there is no need to preserve such things as wilderness or natural
beauty. The savings doctrine supposes that everything of value for transmission to the future is negotiable in the market or tradeable; but then
transmission of savings can by no means guarantee that some valuable
things, not properly represented in market systems, are not eliminated or
not passed on, thereby making future people worse off. It becomes evident
in this way, too, how culturally-bound Rawls's idea of ensuring justice to
future generations through savings is. It is not just that the idea does not
apply, without a complete overhaul, to non-industrial societies such as
those of hunter-gatherers; it does not apply to genuinely post-industrial
societies either. Consideration of such alternative societies suggests that
whafis required, in place of capital accumulation, is that we pass on what
is necessary for a good life, that we ensure that the basics are fairly
distributed over time and not eroded, e.g. that in the case of the forest
people that the forest is maintained. The narrowness of Rawls's picture,
�Obligations to the Future 173
which makes no due allowance for social or cultural diversity (from the
original contractual position on) or for individual diversity arises in part
from his underlying and especially narrow socio-economic assumption as
to what people want:
What men want is meaningful work in free association with others,
these associations regulating their relations to one another within a
framework of just basic institutions. ([5], p. 290)
This may be what many Harvard men want; but as a statement of what
men want it supplies neither sufficient nor even necessary conditions.39
NOTES
1 Thus according to the Fox Report ([2], p. 110; our italics).
There is at present no generally accepted means by which high level waste can be
permanently isolated from the environment and remain safe for very long periods.
. . . Permanent disposal of high-level solid wastes in stable geological formations is
regarded as the most likely solution, but has yet to be demonstrated as feasible. It is
not certain that such methods and disposal sites will entirely prevent radioactive
releases following disturbances caused by natural processes or human activity.
The Fox Report also quoted approvingly ([2], p. 187; our italics) the conclusion of the
British (Flowers) Report [6]:
There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until
it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exist s to ensure the
safe containment of long-lived, highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future.
Although the absence of a satisfactory storage method has been conceded by some
leading proponents of nuclear development, e.g. Weinberg ([3], pp. 32-33), it is now
disputed by others. In particular, the headline for Cohen [15], which reads 'A substantial
body of evidence indicates that the high level radioactive wastes generated by U.S.
nuclear power plants can be stored satisfactorily in deep geological formations', has
suggested to many readers - what it was no doubt intended to suggest- that there is really
no problem about the disposal of radioactive wastes after all. Cohen presents, however,
no new hard evidence, no evidence not already available to the British and Australian
Commissions ([2] and [6]). Moreover the evidence Cohen does outline fails conspicuously
to measure up to the standards rightly required by the Flowers and Fox Reports. Does
Cohen offer a commercial-scale procedure for waste disposal which can be demonstrated
as safe? Far from it:
�174 R. and V. Routley
The detailed procedures for handling the high-level wastes are not yet definite, but
present indications are that. . . . (Cohen [1], p. 24; our italics)
Does Cohen 'demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt' the long-term safety of burial of
wastes, deep underground? Again, far from it:
On the face of it such an approach appears to be reasonably safe. . . . (p. 24; our
italics)
Cohen has apparently not realized what is required.
At issue here are not so much scientific or empirical issues as questions of methodology, of standards of evidence required for claims of safety, and above all, of values, since
claims of safety, for example, involve implicit evaluations concerning what counts as an
acceptable risk, an admissible cost, etc. In the headline 'a substantial body of evidence
. . . indicates that. . . wastes . . . can be stored satisfactorily' the key words (italicized)
are evaluative or elastic, and the strategy of Cohen's case is to adopt very low standards
for their application. But in view of what is at stake it is hardly acceptable to do this, to
dress up in this way what are essentially optimistic assurances and untested speculations
about storage, which in any case do little to meet the difficulties and uncertainties that
have been widely pointed out as regards precisely the storage proposals Cohen outlines,
namely human or natural interference or disturbance.
2 See [18], pp. 24-25.
3 On all these points, see [14], esp. p. 141. According to the Fox Report ([2], p. 110):
Parts of the reactor structure will be highly radioactive and their disposal could be
very difficult. There is at present no experience of dismantling a full size reactor.
4 See, in particular, The Union of Concerned Scientists, The Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Friends
of the Earth Energy Paper, San Francisco 1973, p. 47; also [3], p. 32 and [14], p. 149.
5 As the discussion in [14], pp. 153-7, explains.
6 Cf. [17], pp. 35-36, [18] and, for much detail, J. R. Goffman and A. R. Tamplin, Poisoned
Power, Rodale Press, Emmau Pa. 1971.
7 On the pollution and waste disposal record of the infant nuclear industry, see [14] and
[17].
The record of many countries on pollution control, where in many cases available
technologies for reducing or removing pollution are not applied because they are considered too expensive or because they adversely affect the interests of some powerful group,
provides clear historical evidence that the problem of nuclear waste disposal would not
end simply with the devising of a 'safe' technology for disposal, even if one could be
devised which provided a sufficient guarantee of safety and was commercially feasible.
The fact that present economic and political arrangements are overwhelmingly weighted
in favour of the interests and concerns of (some) contemporary humans makes it not
unrealistic to expect the long-term nuclear waste disposal, if it involved any significant
cost at all, when public concern about the issue died down, would be seen to conflict with
the interests of contemporary groups, and that these latter interests would in many cases
be favoured. Nor, as the history of movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament shows, could generalized public concern in the absence of direct personal
interest, be relied upon to be sustained for long enough to ensure implementation of costly
or troublesome long-term disposal methods - even in those places where public concern
exists and is a politically significant force.
It must be stressed then that the problem is not merely one of disposal technique.
Historical and other evidence points to the conclusion that many of the most important
risks associated with nuclear waste disposal are not of the kind which might be amenable
�Obligations to the Future
175
to technical solutions in the laboratory. A realistic assessment of potential costs to the
future from nuclear development cannot overlook these important non-technical risk
factors.
8 Of course the effect on people is not the only factor which has to be taken into consideration in arriving at a moral judgment. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does
not confine its scope to human life. But since the harm nuclear development is likely to
cause to non-human life can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be
made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional way.
9 Proponents of nuclear power often try to give the impression that future people will not
just bear costs from nuclear development but will also be beneficiaries, because nuclear
powerprovides an 'abundant' or even 'unlimited' source of energy; thus Weinberg ([3], p.
34): 'an all but infinite source of relatively cheap and clean energy'. A good example of an
attempt to create the impression that 'abundant' and 'cheap' energy from nuclear fission
will be available to 'our descendants', i.e. all future people, is found in the last paragraph
of Cohen [15]. Such claims are most misleading, since fission power even with the breeder
reactor has only about the same prospective lifetime as coal-produced electricity (a point
that can be derived using data in A. Parker, 'World Energy Resources: A Survey', Energy
Policy, Vol. 3 [1975], pp. 58-66), and it is quite illegitimate to assume that nuclear fusion,
for which there are still major unsolved problems, will have a viable, clean technology by
the time fission runs out, or, for that matter, that it ever will. Thus while some few
generations of the immediate future may obtain some benefits as well as costs, there is a
very substantial chance that tho se of the more distant future will obtain nothing but costs.
10 These feelings, of which Smith's and Hume's sympathy is representative, are but the
feeling echoes of obligation. At most, sympathy explains the feeling of obligation or lack
of it, and this provides little guide as to whether there is an obligation or not - unless one
interprets moral sympathy, the feeling of having a obligation, or being obligated, itself as
a sufficient indication of obligation, in which case moral sympathy is a non-explanatory
correlate in the feelings department of obligation itself and cannot be truly explanatory of
the ground of it; unless, in short, moral sympathy reduces to an emotive rewrite of moral
obligation.
11 Elsewhere in [1] Passmore is especially exercised that our institutions and intellectual
traditions - presumably only the better ones - should be passed on to posterity, and that
we should strive to make the world a better place, if not eventually an ideal one.
12 This is not the only philosophically important issue in environmental ethics on which
Passmore is inconsistent. Consider his: 'over-arching intention: to consider whether the
solution of ecological problems demands a moral or metaphysical revolution' (p. x),
whether the West needs a new ethic and a new metaphysics. Passmore's answer in [1] is
an emphatic No.
Only insofar as Western moralists have [made various erroneous suggestions] can
the West plausibly be said to need a 'new ethic'. What it needs, for the most part, is
not so much a 'new ethic' as adherence to a perfectly familiar ethic.
For the major sources of our ecological disasters - apart from ignorance - are
greed and shortsightedness, which amount to much the same thing. . . There is no
novelty in the view that greed is evil; no need of a new ethic to tell us as much. (p. 187)
'The view that the West now needs. . . a new concept of nature' is similarly dismissed (p.
186, cf. p. 72). But in his paper [1*] (i.e. 'Attitudes to Nature', Royal Institute of
Philosophy Lectures, Vol. 8, Macmillan, London 1975), which is said to be an attempt to
bring together and to reformulate some of the basic philosophical themes of [1], Passmore's answer is Yes, and quite different themes, inconsistent with those of [1], are
advanced:
�176 R. and V. Routley
[T]he general conditions I have laid down . . . have not been satisfied in most of the
traditional philosophies of nature. To that degree it is true, I think, that we do need a
'new metaphysics' which is genuinely not anthropocentric. . . . A 'new metaphysics', if it is not to falsify the facts, will have to be naturalistic, but not reductionist.
The working out of such a metaphysics is, in my judgement, the most important task
which lies ahead of philosophy. ([1*], pp. 260-1)
A new ethic accompanies this new metaphysics.
The emergence of new moral attitudes to nature is bound up, then, with the emergence of a more realistic philosophy of nature. That is the only adequate foundation
for effective ecological concern. ([1*], p. 264)
This is a far cry from the theme of [1] that ecological problems can be solved within the
traditions of the West.
13 Put differently, the causal linkage can bypass intermediate generations, especially given
action at a temporal distance: the chain account implies that there are no moral constraints in initiating such causal linkages. The chain picture accordingly seems to presuppose an unsatisfactory Humean model of causation, demanding contiguity and excluding
action at a distance.
14 Golding we shall concede to Passmore, though even here the case is not clearcut. For
Golding writes towards the end of his article ([12], p. 96):
My discussion, until this point, has proceeded on the view that we have obligations
to future generations. But do we? I am not sure that the question can be answered in
the affirmative with any certainty. I shall conclude this note with a very brief
discussion of some of the difficulties.
All of Passmore's material on Golding is drawn from this latter and, as Golding says,
'speculative' discussion.
15 There is no textual citation for Bentham at all for the chapter of [1] concerned, viz. Ch. 4,
'Conservation'.
16 As Passmore himself at first concedes ([1], p. 84):
If, as Bentham tells us, in deciding how to act men ought to take account of the
effects of their actions on every sentient being, they obviously ought to take account
of the pleasure and pains of the as yet unborn.
17 Neither rightness nor probable lightness in the hedonistic senses correspond to these
notions in the ordinary sense; so at least [13] argues, following much anti-utilitarian
literature.
18 On this irrationality different theories agree: the rational procedure, for example according to the minimax rule for decision-making under uncertainty, is to minimize that
outcome which maximizes harm.
19 Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to follow the market (cf.
P. A. Samuelson, Economics, 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York 1967, p. 351). Thus the
rates have little moral relevance.
20 Cf. Rawls [5], p. 287: 'From a moral point of view there are no grounds for discounting
future well-being on the basis of pure time preference.'
21 What the probabilities would be depends on the theory of probability adopted: a Carnapian theory, e.g., would lead back to the unconstrained position.
�Obligations to the Future 177
22 A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could eventuate. A real
possibility requires producible evidence for its consideration. The contrast is with mere
logical possibility.
23 Thus, to take a simple special case, economists dismiss distant future people from their
assessments of utility, welfare, etc., on the basis of their non-existence; cf. Ng ('the utility
of a non-existent person is zero') and Harsanyi ('only existing people [not even "nonexisting potential individuals"] can have real utility levels since they are the only ones
able to enjoy objects with a positive utility, suffer from objects with a negative utility, and
feel indifferent to objects with zero utility') (see Appendix B of Y. K. Ng, 'Preference,
Welfare, and Social Welfare', paper presented at the Colloquium on Preference, Choice
and Value Theory, RSSS, Australian National University, August 1977, pp. 24, 26-27).
Non-existent people have no experiences, no preferences; distant future people do not
exist; therefore distant future people have no utility assignments - so the sorites goes. But
future people at least will have wants, preferences, and so on, and these have to be taken
into account in adequate utility assessments (which should be assessed over afuture time
horizon), no matter how much it may complicate or defeat calculations.
24 There are problems about formulating universalizability satisfactorily, but they hardly
affect the point. The requisite universalizability can in fact be satisfactorily brought out
from the semantical analysis of deontic notions such as obligation, and indeed argued for
on the basis of such an analysis which is universal in form. The lawlikeness requirement,
which can be similarly defended, is essentially that imposed on genuine scientific laws by
logical empiricists (e.g. Carnap and Hempel), that such laws should contain no proper
names or the like, no reference to specific locations or times.
25 Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g. Sidgwick [11], p. 414), and
in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and Rousseau toRawls ([5], p. 293).
How the principle is argued for will depend heavily, however, on the underlying theory;
and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particular ethical theories.
26 See esp. R. Lanoue, NuclearPlants:The MoreTheyBuild, The More You Pay, Centerfor
Study of Responsive Law, Washington DC 1976; also [14], pp. 212 ff.
27 On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and Energy,
Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC 1977, pp. 1-7, and also the
details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner [7]. On the absorption
of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as well [18], p. 23. On the employment
issues, see too H. E. Daly in [9], p. 149. A more fundamental challenge to the poverty
argument appears in I. Illich, Energy and Equality, Calder & Boyars, London 1974,
where it is argued that the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the
opposite of what the poor need.
28 For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful,
Blond & Briggs, London 1973. As to the capital and other requirements, see [2], p. 48, and
also [7] and [9].
For an illuminating look at the sort of development high-energy technology will tend to
promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries, see the paper of Waiko and other
papers in the Melanesian Environment (ed. by J. H. Winslow), Australian National
University Press, Canberra 1977.
29 This fact is implicitly recognized in [2], p. 56.
30 A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken, Friends of
the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs, October 1976); see also [17],
[6], [7], [14], pp. 233 ff., and Schumacher, op. cit.
31 This is also explained in [2], p. 56.
32 An argument like this is suggested in Passmore [1], Chs. 4 and 7, with respect to the
question of saving resources. In Passmore this argument for the overriding importance
of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned by what appears to be a future-
�178 R. and V. Routley
directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed be fortunate, the best way to take care of the future
(and perhaps even the only way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to
go wrong) is to take proper care of the present and immediate future. The argument has
all the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
33 See [14], p. 66, p. 191, and also [7].
34 For such arguments see esp. M. Flood and R. Grove-White, Nuclear Prospects. A
Comment on the Individual, the State and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council
for the Protection of Rural England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London
1976.
35 For a recent sketch of one such alternative which is outside the framework of the
conventional option of centralized bureaucratic socialism, see E. Callenbach's novel,
Ecotopia, Banyan Tree Books, Berkeley, California 1975. For the outline of a liberation
socialist alternative see Radical Technology (ed. by G. Boyle and P. Harper), Undercurrents Limited, London 1976, and references therein.
36 Some earlier contract theories also did. Burke's contract (in E. Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France, Dent, London 1910, pp. 93-94) 'becomes a partnership not only
between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and
those who are not yet born'. Thus Burke's contract certainly appears to lead to obligations to distant future generations. Needless to say, there are metaphysical difficulties,
which however Burke never considers, about contracts between parties at widely separated temporal locations.
37 Several of the preceding points we owe to M. W. Jackson.
38 Resources such as soil fertility and petroleum could even be a primary social goods on
Rawls's very hazy general account of these goods ([5], pp. 62, 97): are these 'something a
rational man wants whatever else he wants'? The primary social goods should presumably be those which are necessary for the good and just life -which will however vary with
culture.
39 We have benefited from discussion with Ian Hughes and Frank Muller and useful
comments on the paper from Brian Martin and Derek Browne.
REFERENCES
[1] J. Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London 1974.
[2] Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra 1977.
[3] A. M. Weinberg, 'Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy", Science, Vol. 177 (July 1972),
pp. 27-34.
•
[4] R. Routley, 'Exploring Meinong's Jungle II. Existence is Existence Now', Notre Dame
Journal of Formal Logic (to appear).
[5] J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1971.
[6] Nuclear Power and the Environment. Sixth Report of the British Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution, London 1976.
[7] B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power, Knopf, New York 1976.
[8] G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1903.
[9] B. Commoner, H. Boksenbaum and M. Corr (Eds.), Energy and Human Welfare - A
Critical Analysis, Vol. III, Macmillan, New York 1975.
�Obligations to the Future 179
[10] J. Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 1, published under the superintendence of J. Bowring, with an intro. by J. H. Burton; William Tait, Edinburgh 1843.
[11] H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, Macmillan, London 1962 (reissue).
[12] M. P. Golding, 'Obligations to Future Generations', Monist, Vol. 56 (1972), pp. 85-99.
[13] R. and V. Routley, 'An Expensive Repair Kit for Utilitarianism', presented at the
Colloquium on Preference, Choice and Value Theory, RSSS, Australian National
University, August 1977.
[14] R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne
1977.
[15] B. L. Cohen, 'The Disposal of Radioactive Wastes from Fission Reactors', Scientific
American, Vol. 236 (June 1977), pp. 22-31.
[16] S. McCracken, 'The Waragainst the Atom' .Commentary (September 1977), pp. 33-47.
[17] A. B. Lovins and J. H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy
Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco 1975.
[18] A. Roberts, "The Politics of Nuclear Power', Arena, No. 41 (1976), pp. 22-47.
�
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Inquiry, 21, 133-79
Nuclear Energy and Obligations
to the Future
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain, Braidwood, Australia
The paper considers the morality of nuclear energy development as it concerns
future people, especially the creation of highly toxic nuclear wastes requiring longterm storage. On the basis of an example with many parallel moral features it is
argued that the imposition of such costs and risks on the future is morally unacceptable. The paper goes on to examine in detail possible ways of escaping this
conclusion, especially the escape route of denying that moral obligations of the
appropriate type apply to future people. The bulk of the paper comprises discussion
of this philosophical issue, including many arguments against assigning obligations
to the future drawn both from analyses of obligation and from features of the future
such as uncertainty and indeterminacy. A further escape through appeal to moral
conflict is also considered, and in particular two conflict arguments, the Poverty
and Lights-going-out arguments are briefly discussed. Both these escape routes are
rejected and it is concluded that if the same standards of behaviour are applied to
the future as to the present, nuclear energy development is morally unacceptable.
I. The Bus Example
Suppose we consider a bus, a bus which we hope is to make a very long
journey. This bus, a third world bus, carries both passengers and freight.
The bus sets down and picks up many different passengers in the course of
its long journey and the drivers change many times, but because of the way
the bus line is managed and the poor service on the route it is nearly always
full to overcrowded, with passengers hanging off the back, and as in
Afghanistan, passengers riding on the roof, and chickens and goats in the
freight compartment.
Early in the bus's journey someone consigns on it, to a far distant
destination, a package containing a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is
packaged in a very thin container, which as the consigner well knows is
unlikely to contain the gas for the full distance for which it is consigned,
and certainly will not do so if the bus should encounter any trouble, for
example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the bus becomes very
hot, if the bus should strike a very large bump or pothole of the sort
commonly found on some of the bad roads it has to traverse, or if some
1
134 R. and V. Routley
passenger should interfere deliberately or inadvertently with the cargo or
perhaps try to steal some of the freight, as also frequently happens. All of
these things, let us suppose, have happened on some of the bus's previous
journeys. If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people and animals on the bus, while others
could be maimed or contract serious diseases.
There does not seem much doubt about what most of us would say about
the morality of the consigner's action, and there is certainly no doubt
about what the passengers would say. The consigner's action in putting
the safety of the occupants of the bus at risk is appalling. What could
excuse such an action, what sort of circumstances might justify it, and
what sort of case could the consigner reasonably put up? The consigner
might say that it is by no means certain that the gas will escape; he himself
is an optimist and therefore feels that such unfavourable possible outcomes should be ignored. In any case the bus might have an accident and
the passengers be killed long before the container gets a chance to leak; or
the passengers might change to another bus and leave the lethal parcel
behind.
He might say that it is the responsibility of the passengers and the driver
to ensure that the journey is a smooth one, and that if they fail to do so, the
results are not his fault. He might say that the journey is such a long one
that many of the passengers may have become mere mindless vegetables
or degenerate wretches about whose fate no decent person need concern
himself, or that they might not care about losing their lives or health or
possessions anyway by that time.
Most of these excuses will seem little more than a bad joke, and certainly would not usually be reckoned any sort of justification. The main
argument the consigner of the lethal parcel employs, however, is that his
own pressing needs justify his actions. He has no option but to consign his
potentially lethal parcel, he says, since the firm he owns, and which has
produced the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits and
cannot afford to produce a better container or to stop the production of the
gas. If the firm goes out of business, the consigner says, his wife will leave
him, and he will lose his family happiness, the comfortable way of life to
which he has become accustomed and sees now as a necessity; his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others; not only will the
firm's customers be inconvenienced but he, the consigner, will have to
break some business contracts; the inhabitants of the local village through
loss of spending and cancellation of the Multiplier Effect will suffer finan-
Obligations to the Future 135
cial hardship, and, worst of all, the tiny flow of droplets that the poor of the
village might receive (theoretically at any rate) as a result of the trickling
down of these good things would dry up entirely. In short, some basic and
some perhaps uncomfortable changes will be needed in the village.
Even if the consigner's story were accepted at face value - and it would
be wise to look critically at his story - only someone whose moral sensibilities had been paralysed by the disease of galloping economism could see
such a set of considerations, based on 'needs', comfort, and the goal of
local prosperity, as justifying the consigner's action.
One is not generally entitled to thus simply transfer the risks and costs
arising from one's own life onto other uninvolved parties, to get oneself
out of a hole of one's own making by creating harm or risk of harm to
someone else who has had no share in creating the situation. To create
serious risks and costs, especially risks to life or health for such others,
simply to avoid having to make some changes to a comfortable life style, or
even for a somewhat better reason, is usually thought deserving of moral
condemnation, and sometimes considered a crime; for example, the action
of a company in creating risks to the lives or health of its workers or
customers to prevent itself from going bankrupt. What the consigner says
may be an explanation of his behaviour, but it is not a justification.
The problem raised by nuclear waste disposal is by no means a perfect
analogy to the bus case, since, for example, the passengers on the nuclear
bus cannot get off the bus or easily throw out the lethal package. In many
crucial moral respects, however, the nuclear waste storage problem as it
affects future people, the passengers in the bus we are considering, resembles the consignment of the faultily packaged lethal gas. Not only are
rather similar moral principles involved, but a rather similar set of arguments to the lamentable excuses the consigner presents have been seriously put up to justify nuclear development, the difference being that in the
nuclear case these arguments have been widely accepted. There is also
some parallel in the risks involved; there is no known safe way to package
the highly toxic wastes generated by nuclear plants that will be spread
around the world if large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.1 The
wastes problem will not be a slight one, with each one of the more than
2,000 reactors envisaged by the end of the century, producing on average
annual wastes containing one thousand times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb.2 The wastes include not merely the spent fuels and their
radioactive by-products, but also everything they contaminate, from fuel
containers to the thousands of widely distributed decommissioned nuclear
136 R. and V. Routley
reactors which will have to be abandoned, still in a highly radioactive
condition, after the expiry of their expected lifetimes of about thirty years,
and which have been estimated to require perhaps one and a half million
years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.3 The wastes must be kept
suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime; for
fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or
so, and for the actinides (transuranic elements) which include plutonium,
there is a half-million to a million-year storage problem.4
Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed longterm methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of
waste that have been produced over the last twenty years.5 With present
known short-term surface methods of storage there is a continued need for
human intervention to keep the material isolated from the environment,
while with proposed longer-term methods such as storage in salt mines or
granite to the risk of human interference there are added the risks of
leakage, e.g. through water seepage, and of disturbance, for example
through climatic change, earth movements, etc. The risks are significant:
no reasonable person with even a limited acquaintance with the history of
human affairs over the last 3,000 years could be confident of safe storage
by methods involving human intervention over the enormous time periods
involved. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and
climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period which has
seen a number of ice ages and great fluctuations in climate for example,
could be confident that the waste material could be safely stored for the
vast periods of time required. Much of this waste is highly toxic; for
example, even a beachball sized quantity of plutonium appropriately
distributed is enough to give every person on the planet lung cancer - so
that a leak of even a small part of this waste material could involve huge
loss of life, widespread disease and genetic damage, and contamination of
immense areas of land.6
Given the enormous costs which could be involved for the future, it is
plainly grossly inadequ'ate'to merely speculate concerning untested, but
possibly or even probably, safe methods for disposal of wastes. Yet none
of the proposed methods has been properly tested, and they may prove to
involve all sorts of unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is
made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that
could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that
placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult
to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the
Obligations to the Future 137
geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable,
rigorously safe long-term storage method could be devised, there is the
problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it would be, especially if, as seems likely, such a
method proved expensive economically and politically, seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future not
previously encountered in human affairs, and certainly not conspicuous in
the nuclear industry.7 Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless
guarding of long-term storage sites through perhaps a million years of
possible future human activity, weapons-grade radioactive material will
be accessible, over much of the million-year storage period, to any party
who is in a position to retrieve it.
Our behaviour in creating this nightmare situation for the future is
certainly no better than that of the consigner in the bus example. Industrialized countries, in order to get out of a mess of their own making essentially the creation of economies dependent on an abundance" of
non-renewable energy in a situation where it is in fact in limited supply opt for a 'solution' which may enable them to avoid the making of uncomfortable changes during the lifetime of those now living, at the expense of
passing heavy burdens on to the inhabitants of the earth at a future time burdens in the shape of costs and risks which, just as in the bus case, may
adversely affect the life and health of future people and their opportunity
to lead a decent life.8
It is sometimes suggested that analogies like the bus example are defective; that morally they are crucially different from the nuclear case, since
future people, unlike the passengers in the bus, will benefit directly from
nuclear development, which will provide an abundance of energy for the
indefinite future. But this is incorrect. Nuclear fission creates wastes
which may remain toxic for a million years, but even with the breeder
reactor it could be an energy source for perhaps only 150 years. It will do
nothing for the energy problems of the people of the distant future whose
lives could be seriously affected by the wastes. Thus perhaps 30,000
generations of future people could be forced to bear significant risks,
without any corresponding benefits, in order to provide for the extravagant energy use of only five generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop-gap, it
seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a
138 R. and V. Routley
transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a
future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be
very much worse placed to cope with it.9 For they may well have to face
the change to renewable resources in an over-populated world not only
burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in
which, if the nuclear proponents' dream of global industrialization is
realized, more and more of the global population will have become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy
resource use, and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and
soils as remain, resources which will have to form a very important part of
the basis of life, are in a run-down condition. Such points tell against the
idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission
energy, at least indirect beneficiaries.
The 'solution' then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society at
a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but
which reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Just as in the bus
case, contemporary industrial society proposes to get itself out of a hole of
its own making by creating risk of harm, and by transferring costs and
risks, to someone else who has had no part in producing the situation and
who will obtain no clear benefit. It has clear alternatives to this action.
That it does not take them is due essentially to its unwillingness to avoid
changing wasteful patterns of consumption and to its desire to protect the
interests of those who benefit from them.
If we apply to the nuclear situation the same standards of behaviour and
moral principles that we acknowledge (in principle if perhaps often not in
fact) in the contemporary world, it will not be easy to avoid the conclusion
that the situation involves injustice with respect to future people on a
grand scale. It seems to us that there are only two plausible moves that
might enable the avoidance of such a conclusion. First, it might be argued
that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the
contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply because the
recipients of our nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future. Secondly,
an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to
reject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course
to say that there are no circumstances in which such an action might
possibly be justifiable, or at least where the case is less clearcut. It is the
same with the nuclear case. Just as in the case of the consigner of the
Obligations to the Future 139
package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances
might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We turn now to the
first of these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development, to the philosophical question of our obligations to the future.
II. Obligations to the Distant Future
The area in which these philosophical problems arise is that of the distant
(i.e. non-immediate) future, that is, the future with which people alive
today will make no direct contact; the immediate future provides comparatively few problems for moral theories. The issues involved, although of
far more than academic interest, have not received any great attention in
recent philosophical literature, despite the fact that the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail
to pass, and also raises a number of questions in political philosophy
concerning the adequacy of accepted institutions which leave out of
account the interests of future people.
Moral philosophers have predictably differed on the issue. But contrary
to the picture painted in a recent, widely read, and influential work
discussing it, Passmore's Man's Responsibility for Nature, a good many
philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come
down in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and
interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately
future people. Other philosophers have tended to fall into three categories
- those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take
them seriously or who assign them less weight, those who deny, or who
are committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are
moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those like Passmore
and Golding who come down, with admirable philosophical caution, on
both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the
view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there
are no moral obligations to the future beyond those to the next generation.
• According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally
unconstrained; there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act
deriving from the effect of our actions on future people. Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply, that we don't have obligations to
the (non-immediate) future, i.e. those who have opted for the uncon-
140 R. and V. Routley
strained position, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded on or as
presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). For example, obligation
is seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration
and also non-transitive. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral
obligation, or requirements for moral obligation, which would rule out
obligations to the non-immediate future are these: First, there are those
accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held
be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will
not be able to claim rights and entitlements as against us, and of course
they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have for their rights
against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would
require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not hold invariantly
over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and so will not
be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their
interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any
contemporary institution would do it for them.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out
the distant future as a field of moral obligation, as they not only require a
commonality, or some sort of common basis, which cannot be guaranteed
in the case of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or
reciprocity of action which cannot apply to the future. Where the basis of
moral obligation is seen as mutual exchange, the interests of future people
must be set aside because they cannot change the past and cannot be
parties to any mutual contract. The exclusion of moral obligations to the
distant future also follows from those views which attempt to ground
moral obligations in non-transitive relations of short duration such as
sympathy and love. There are some difficulties also about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about whose
personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has no sympathy. On
the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for
future people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary
Obligations to the Future 141
people have no obligations to future people and can harm them as it suits
them.
What all these views have in common is a naturalistic picture of obligation as something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which is conditional on doing something or failing to do something
(e.g. participating in the moral community, contracting), or having some
characteristic one can fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).10
Because obligation therefore becomes conditional, features usually
thought to characterize it, such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding features), are lost, especially where there is a choice
of whether or not to do the thing required to acquire the obligation, and so
of whether to acquire it. The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as
to exclude people in the distant future.
However, the view that there are no moral constraints with respect to
future people, that one is free to act as one likes with respect to them, is a
very difficult one to sustain. Consider the example of a scientific group
which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb which is to be set off by a
triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of
its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate
descendants would be affected, but the population of the earth in the
distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the
action. The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in
the scientists' experiment, perhaps its being unduly expensive or badly
designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to
future people. The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of examples: A firm discovers it can make a
handsome profit from mining, processing, and manufacturing a new type
of material which, although it causes no problems for present people or
their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years
decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer
among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any
consideration for the harm it does to future people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view might seem childishly
obvious. Yet the unconstrained position concerning the future from which
they follow is far from being a straw man; not only have a number of
philosophers writing on the issue endorsed this position, but it is the clear
142 R. and V. Routley
implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of economic theory. It does not appear, on the other hand,
that those who opt for the unconstrained position have considered such
examples and endorsed them as morally acceptable, despite their being
clearly implied by their position. We suspect that when it is brought out
that the unconstrained position admits such counterexamples, that being
free to act implies, among other things being free to inflict pointless harm,
most of those who opted for the unconstrained position would want to
assert that it was not what they intended. What those who have put
forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in mind in denying
moral obligation is rather that future people can look after themselves, that
we are not responsible for their lives. The view that the future can take
care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the
present. But it is not. It is not as if, in cases such as those discussed above
and the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of
itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so must acquire many
of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting
the present and immediate future. The thesis seems thus to assume an
incorrect model of an independent and unrelated future.
Also, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future people
does not amount to the same as saying that we are free to do as we like with
respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action involving
them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have, or has not
acquired, an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been
involved - that one has no responsibility for his life - does not imply that
one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him
or to pursue some course of action of advantage to oneself which could
seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
failure to make an important distinction between, on the one hand, acquired or assumed obligations towards somebody, for which some act of
acquisition or assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and on the
other hand moral constraints, which require, for example, that one should
not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which no act of
acquisition is required. There is a considerable difference in the level and
kind of responsibility involved. In the first case one must do something or
be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. have loves, sympathy, be
contracted. In the second case responsibility arises as a result of being a
causal agent aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his
Obligations to the Future 143
action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or assumed. Thus
there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints, can
apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied. They apply as a
result of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a
reasonably predictable nature. Thus also moral constraints can apply to
what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet)
exist. While it may be the case that there would need to be an acquired or
assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people
must make special sacrifices of an heroic kind for future people, or even to
help them especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to
be constrained from harming them. Thus, to return to the bus example, the
consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has never
assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not
know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them, and that they
are not part of his moral community, in short that he has no special
obligations to help them. All that one needs to argue in respect of both the
bus and the nuclear case is that there are moral constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to take responsibility
for the lives of the people involved.
The confusion of moral constraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off
non-acquired constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term 'moral
obligation' in philosophy to indicate any type of deontic constraint, while
in natural language it is used to indicate something which has to be
assumed or acquired. Hence the equation and at least one root of the
unconstrained position, that is of the belief that there are no moral constraints concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counterexamples, to a more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent position. Passmore's position in [1] is a striking example of the second ambivalent
position. On the one hand Passmore regularly gives the impression of one
championing future people; for example, in the final sentence of [1] he
says, concerning men a century hence:
My sole concern is that we should do nothing which will reduce their
freedom of thought and action, whether by destroying.the natural
world which makes that freedom possible or the social traditions
which permit and encourage it.
144 R. and V. Routley
Earlier (esp. pp. 84-85) Passmore appears to endorse the principle 'that we
ought not to act so as certainly to harm posterity' and claims (p. 98) that,
even where there are uncertainties, 'these uncertainties do not justify
negligence'. Nevertheless, though obligations concerning non-immediate
posterity are thus admitted, the main thrust of Passmore's argument is
entirely different, being in favour of the unconstrained position according
to which we have no obligations to non-immediate posterity. Thus his
conclusion (p. 91):
So whether we approach the problem of obligations to posterity by
way of Bentham and Sidgwick, Rawls or Golding, we are led to
something like the same conclusion: our obligations are to immediate
posterity, we ought to try to improve the world so that we shall be able
to hand it over to our immediate successors in a better condition, and
that is all.11
Passmore's position is, to all appearances, simply inconsistent. There are
two ways one might try to render it consistent, but neither is readily
available to Passmore. The first is by taking advantage of the distinction
between moral constraints and acquired obligations, but a basis for this
distinction is not evident in Passmore's work and indeed the distinction is
antithetical to the analyses of obligation that Passmore tries to synthesize
with his own analysis in terms of loves. The second, sceptical, route to
consistency is by way of the argument that we shall consider shortly, that
there is always gross uncertainty with respect to the distant future, uncertainty which relieves us in practice of any moral constraints regarding the
distant future. But though Passmore's writing strongly suggests this uncertainty argument (especially his sympathetic discussion of the Premier
of Queensland's argument against conservationists [p. 77]), he also rules it
out with the claim that uncertainties do not justify negligence.12
Many of the accounts of moral obligation that give rise to the unconstrained position are fused in Passmore's work, again not entirely consistently, since the different accounts exploited do not give uniform results.
Thus the primary account of obligation is said to be in terms of loves though the account is never satisfactorily formulated or developed - and it
is suggested that because our loves do not extend into the distant future,
neither do our obligations. This sentimental account of obligation will
obviously lead to different results from utilitarian accounts of obligation,
which however Passmore appeals to in his discussion of wilderness. In yet
other places in [1], furthermore, social contract and moral community
Obligations to the Future 145
views are appealed to - see, e.g., the treatment of animals, of preservation, and of duties to nature. In the case of obligations to future people,
however, Passmore does try to sketch an argument - what we call the
convergence argument - that all the accounts lead in the end to the
unconstrained position.
As well as the convergence argument, and various uncertainty arguments to be considered later, Passmore appears to endorse several other
arguments in favour of his theme that there are in practice no obligations to
the distant future. In particular, he suggests that such obligations would in
practice be otiose. Everything that needs to be accounted for can be
encompassed through the chain picture of obligation as linking successive
generations, under which each generation has obligations, based on loves,
only to the succeeding generation. We outline three objections to this
chain account. First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the
future as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no
question of constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations,
since individuals can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a
way which may create individual responsibility, and which can't necessarily be sheeted home to an entire generation. Secondly, such chains, since
they are non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant
future. But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as
examples again show. For the picture is unable to explain several of the
cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which
show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without
affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to influence
matters.13 Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be
achieved at the expense of disadvantages to people of the more distant
future. Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible
with, and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by,
ruining it for less immediate successors. Such cases can hardly be written
off as 'never-never land' examples, since many cases of environmental
exploitation might be seen as of just this type, e.g. not just the nuclear case
but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the long-term
depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through overcropping. If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the
favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations
in the way the chain picture suggests.
146 R. and V. Routley
Passmore tries to represent all obligations to the distant future in terms
of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be morally
required. But in view of the distinctions between constraints and acquired
obligation and between obligation and supererogation, this is just to misrepresent the position of these obligations. For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an
unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm, than
one is resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from beating and
robbing some stranger and leaving him to starve.
Passmore's most sustained argument for the unconstrained position is a
convergence argument, that different analyses of obligations, including
his own, lead to the one conclusion. This style of argument is hardly
convincing when there are well-known accounts of obligation which do
not lead to the intended conclusion, e.g. deontological accounts such as
those of Kant and of modern European schools, and teleological accounts
such as those of Moore (in [8]). But such unfavourable positions are either
rapidly passed over or ignored in Passmore's historical treatment and
narrow selection of historical figures. The style of argument becomes even
less persuasive when it is discovered that the accounts of the main authorities appealed to, Bentham, Sidgwick, and Rawls,14 do not lead, without
serious distortion, to the intended conclusion. Indeed Passmore has twisted the historical and textual evidence to suit his case, as we now try to
indicate.
Consider Bentham first. Passmore's assumption, for which no textual
evidence is cited, ls is that no Benthamite calculation can take account of a
future more extensive than the immediate future (cf. pp. 87-88). The
assumption seems to be based simply on the fact that Bentham remarked
that 'the value of the pleasure or pain to each person to be considered in
any estimate will be greater or less in virtue of the following circumstances'. '3. Its certainty or uncertainty. 4. Its propinquity or remoteness'
([10], p. 16). But this does nothing to show that future persons are discounted: the certainty and propinquity do not concern persons, but the
utilities of the persons concerned. As regards which persons are concerned in any calculation Bentham is quite explicit, detailing how
to take an exact account. . . of the general tendency of any act.. . .5 .
Take an account of the number of persons whose interests appear to
be concerned; and repeat the above process [summation of values of
pleasure and of pain] with respect to each. ([10], p. 16)
Obligations to the Future 147
It follows that Bentham's calculation takes account of everyone (and, in
his larger scheme, every sentient creature) whose interests appear to be
concerned: if the interests of people in the distant future appear to be
concerned - as they are in conservation issues - they are to be included in
the calculation. And there is independent evidence16 that in Bentham's
view the principle of utility was not temporally restricted: 'that is useful
which, taking all times and all persons into consideration, leaves a balance
of happiness' ([10], pp. 17-18, our italics). Thus the future cut-off that
Passmore has attributed to Bentham is contradicted by Bentham's own
account.
The case of Sidgwick is more complex, because there is isolated oscillation in his application of utilitarianism between use of utility and of
(something like) expected utility (see [11], pp. 381,414): Sidgwick's utilitarianism is, in its general characterization, essentially that of Bentham:
the conduct which . . . is objectively right is that which will produce
the greatest amount of happiness on the whole; that is, taking into
account all those whose happiness is affected by the conduct. ([11], p.
411)
All includes all sentient beings, both existing and to exist, as Sidgwick goes
on to explain (p. 414). In particular, in answer to the question 'How far are
we to consider the interests of posterity when they seem to conflict with
those of existing human beings?' Sidgwick writes ([11], p. 414, our italics):
It seems, however, clear that the time at which a man exists cannot
affect the value of his happiness from a universal point of view; and
that the interests of posterity must concern a Utilitarian as much as
those of his contemporaries, except in so far as the effect of his
actions on posterity - and even the existence of human beings to be
affected - must necessarily be more uncertain.
But Passmore manages, first of all, to give a different sense to what
Sidgwick is saying by adjusting the quotation, by omitting the clause we
have italicized, which equalizes the degree of concern for present and
future persons, and by italicizing the whole except-clause, thereby placing
much greater emphasis than Sidgwick does on uncertainty. For according
to Sidgwick's impartiality principle, 'the mere difference in time is not a
148 R. and V. Routley
reasonable ground for having more regard to the consciousness of one
-amount than to that of another' ([11], p. 381; see also p. 124). The apparent
tension in Sidgwick's theory as to whether uncertainty should be taken
into account is readily removed by resort to a modern distinction between
values and expected values (i.e. probability weighted values); utilitarian
rightness is defined as before in terms of the net happiness of all concerned
over all time without mention of uncertainty or probabilities, but it is
distinguished from probable rightness (given present information), in the
utilitarian sense,17 which is defined in terms of the expected net happiness
of those concerned, using present probabilities. It is the latter notion, of
probable rightness, that practical reasoning is commonly concerned with
and that decision theory studies; and it is this that Passmore supposes
Sidgwick is using ([1], p. 84). But it is evident that the utilitarian determination of probable rightness, like that of rightness, will sometimes take
into account the distant future - as Sidgwick's discussion of utilitarian
determination of optimum population (immediately following his remark
on uncertainty) does. So how does Passmore contrive to reverse matters,
to have Sidgwick's position lead to his own unconstrained conclusion?
The answer is: By inserting an additional assumption of his own - which
Sidgwick would certainly have rejected - that the uncertainties entitle us
to ignore the distant future. What Passmore has implicitly assumed in his
claim ([1], p. 85) that 'utilitarian principles [such as Sidgwick's] are not
strong enough' 'to justify the kinds of sacrifice some conservationists now
call upon us to make' is his own thesis that 'The uncertainty of harms we
are hoping to prevent would in general entitle us to ignore them.. .'. From
a decision-theory viewpoint this is simply irrational18 unless the probabilities of damage are approaching zero. We will deal with the essentially
sceptical uncertainty arguments on which Passmore's position depends
shortly: here it is enough to observe that Sidgwick's position does not lead
to anything like that which Passmore attributes to him - without uncertainty assumptions which Sidgwick would have rejected (for he thought
that future people'will certainly have pleasure and suffer pain).
We can also begin to gauge from Passmore's treatment of nineteenthcentury utilitarians, such as Bentham and Sidgwick, the extent of the
distortion which underlies his more general historical case for the unconstrained position which, so he claims,
represents accurately enough what, over the last two centuries, men
have seen as their duty to posterity as a whole. . . . ([1], p. 91)
Obligations to the Future 149
The treatment accorded Rawls in only marginally more satisfactory.
Passmore supposes that Rawls's theory of justice leads directly to the
unconstrained position ([1], p. 87 and p. 91), whereas Rawls claims ([5], p.
293) that we have obligations to future people just as to present ones. But
the situation is more complicated than Rawls's claim would indicate, as we
now try to explain in a summary way (more detail is given in the Appendix). For, in order to justify this claim on his theory (with its present
time-of-entry interpretation), Rawls has to invoke additional and dubious
motivational assumptions; even so the theory which thus results does not
yield the intended conclusion, but a conclusion inconsistent with Rawls's
claim. However, by changing the time-of-entry interpretation to an omnitemporal one, Rawls's claim does result from the theory so amended.
Moreover, the amended theory also yields, by exactly Rawls's argument
for a just saving rate, a resource conservation policy, and also a case
against nuclear development. Accordingly Passmore's other claims regarding Rawls are mistaken, e.g. that the theory cannot justify a policy of
resource conservation. Rawls does not emerge unscathed either. As on
the issue of whether his contract is a necessary condition for obligations,
so on obligations which the contract yields to the distant future, Rawls is
far from consistent. Furthermore, institutions such as qualified market
and voting systems are recommended as just though from a future perspective their results are far from that. Rawls, then, does not take obligations to the future with full seriousness.
In sum, it is not true that the theory of Rawls, any more than the theories
of the historical figures actually discussed by Passmore, unequivocally
supports the unconstrained position.
III. Uncertainty and Indeterminacy Arguments
Although there are grave difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position. According to the qualified
position we are not entirely unconstrained with respect to the distant
future: there are obligations, but these are not so important as those to the
present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much
in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much
less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present
150 R. and V. Routley
people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in most
modern economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of
future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of an (opportunity cost) discount rate. The attempt to
apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position. What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within the bounds
of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal
constraints, and cannot determine what those constraints are. There are,
moreover, alternative economic theories and simply to adopt one which
discounts the future is to beg all the questions at issue. The discounting
move often has the same result as the unconstrained position; if, for
instance, we consider the cancer example and consider costs as payable
compensation, it is evident that, over a sufficiently long period of time,
discounting at current prices would lead to the conclusion that there are no
recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no constraints. In short,
even certain damage to future people could be written off. One way to
achieve the bias against future people is by the application of discount
rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
more than about fifteen years,19 and application of such rates would
simply beg the question against the interests and rights of future people.
Where there is certain future damage of a morally forbidden type the
whole method of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would
violate moral constraints.20
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations.The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the
present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis
concerning the distant future.21 But then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against costs and
benefits, it is evident that the interests of future people, except in cases
where there is an unusually high degree of certainty, must count for (very
much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much)
higher probabilities obtain. So in the case of conflict between the present
and the future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the
people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower
Obligations to the Future 151
probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the
present, assuming that anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. But of course it can't be assumed that anything like similarly
weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it
is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so
years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of
future people, in order to obtain quite doubtful or trivial benefits for some
present people, in the shape of the opportunity to continue unnecessarily
high energy use. And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or
evenly weighted, such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner's action is acceptable
provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit
approach to moral and decision problems, with or without the probability
frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned, or for
dealing with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic
constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles that it is permissible for a
firm to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm
stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it. But the costs and benefits
involved are not transferable in any simple or general way from one party
to another. Transfers of this kind, of costs and benefits involving different
parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g. is x entitled to benefit himself
by imposing costs ony ? - which are not susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted by some proponents of nuclear energy,
who attempt to dismiss the costs to future people with the soothing remark
that any development involves costs as well as benefits. The transfer point
is enough to invalidate the comparison, heavily relied on by McCracken
[16] in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risk, between
nuclear risks and those from cigarette smoking. In the latter case those
who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming
extent* those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In
contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear energy will be
risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also
those of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or
temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related
to a person's extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
152 R. and V. Routley
happiness sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different
parties, and the introduction of probability considerations does not change
the principles involved but merely complicates analyses. One might further object to the probability argument that probabilities involving distant
future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate
future in the way the argument supposes, and that the outcomes of some
moral problems such as the bus example do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway. In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the bus example
reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and
important ones used by philosophers and others to argue for the position
that we cannot be expected to take serious account of the effects of our
actions on the distant future. There are two strands to the uncertainty
argument, capable of separation, but frequently entangled. Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds. The first argument is a generalized uncertainty argument
which runs as follows: In contrast to the exact information we can obtain
about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our
actions on the distant future is unreliable, woolly, and highly speculative.
But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of
this kind, especially when accurate information is obtainable about the
present which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future. More
formally and crudely: One only has obligations to the future if these
obligations are based on reliable information; there is no reliable information at present as regards the distant future; therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
The first argument is essentially a variation on a sceptical argument in
epistemology concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace
'obligations' by 'knowledge' in the crude statement of the argument
above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the
degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate
future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral
consideration both with respect to the present and with respect to the
future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as
regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and
Obligations to the Future 153
the adjacent future and present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and
constantly do act on the basis of such 'unreliable' information as the
sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels 'uncertainty'; for scepticproof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the
present and immediate future. In moral situations in the present, action
often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. A
good example is again the bus case. We do not need to know for certain
that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not
even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not,
in order for us to condemn the consigner's action. It is enough that there is
a significant risk of harm in this sort of case. It does not matter if the
decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and the prospects of the
passengers quite uncertain; the resolution of the problem is still clearly in
favour of the so-called 'speculative' and 'unreliable'. But if we do not
require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the
future? Why should we require epistemic standards for the future which
the more familiar sphere of moral action concerning the present and
adjacent future does not need to meet? The insistence on certainty as a
necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant
future, then, amounts to an epistemic double standard. But such an
epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between
the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples' interests,
in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it
already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each
class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in
practice take the interests of future people into account, because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what
the likely consequences of actions upon it will be and therefore, however
good our intentions to the people of the distant future, in practice we have
no choice but to ignore their interests. Uncertainty is gross where certain
incompatible hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no
rational ground for choosing between them. The second uncertainty argument can also be put in this way: If moral principles are, like other
principles, implicational in form, that is of such forms as 'if* has character
h then x is wrong, for every (action) x', then what the argument claims is
154 R. and V. Routley
that we can never obtain the information about future actions which would
enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. So even if moral
principles theoretically apply to future people, in practice they cannot be
applied to obtain clear conclusions or directions concerning contemporary
action of the 'It is wrong to do x' type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument have to be conceded.
If the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the
effects of present action will be, and whether any given action will help or
hinder future people, then moral principles, although they may apply
theoretically to the future, will not be applicable in practice for obtaining
any clear conclusions about how to act. Hence the distant future will
impose no practical moral constraints on action. However, the argument
is factually incorrect in assuming that the future is always so grossly
uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of
uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent)
fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as to exclude
constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty is
commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be
needed in some cases is the creation of"a significant risk. Again there is
considerable uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at
all, morally relevant, but this does not extend to many factors which are of
much greater importance to moral issues. For example, we may not have
any idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years in girls' names or
men's footwear, or what brands of ice cream people will be eating if any,
but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3,000
years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to
have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will
need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be
immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or
the elimination from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of
non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
For this sort of reason, the second uncertainty argument should be rejected. While it is true that there are many areas in which the morally relevant
information needed is uncertain or unavailable, and in which we cannot
therefore determine satisfactorily how to act, there are certainly others in
Obligations to the Future 155
which uncertainty in morally relevant areas is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient
for the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases,
especially where spatially remote people are involved. The case of nuclear
waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people,
seems to be of the latter sort. Here there is no gross indeterminacy or
uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses about what
may happen are as good as each other. It is plain that nuclear waste storage
does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as we can see
from the bus example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this
type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the corresponding defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty
arguments used to write off probable harm to future people as outside the
scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both
of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the
other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves. For example,
we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because
we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not
be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not
suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the things that would
affect us (cf. Passmore [1]). But this is to insist upon complete certainty of
a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where
there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake
those we are morally committed to. Again we may be told that there is no
guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part,
because they may be morons or forever plugged into enjoyment- or other
machines (Golding [12]). Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist
approach presupposed - according to which only those who meet certain
properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments as a serious defeating
consideration is again a mere outside possibility - like the sceptic who says
that the solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a facade, not
because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he hasn't
looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. Neither the contemporary
nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a
lapse into universal moronity or universal pleasure-machine escapism is a
serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility. We can contrast
156 R. and V. Routley
with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable
risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilization through destruction of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities. Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is
acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to
future people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case. This is the
argument that future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent
storage method for nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped
waste material. Let us grant for the sake of the argument that this is a real
possibility (though physical arguments may show that it is not). This still
does not affect the fact that there is a significant risk of serious damage and
that the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action of this
type as morally impermissible. In just the same way, future people may
discover a cure for cancer, and the fact that this appears to be a real and not
merely a logical possibility, does not make the action of the firm in the
example discussed above, of producing a substance likely to cause cancer
in future people, morally admissible. The fact that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show that actions of these
sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was
certainty of harm or a very high probability of it. In such cases, before such
actions could be considered admissible, what would be required is far
more than a possibility, real or not22 - it is at least the availability of an
applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique
for achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves.
The strategy of most of these uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the bus example, where the
consigner says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of
his actions on the passengers because they may find an effective way to
deal with his parcel or some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the
bus may break down and they may all change to a different bus leaving the
parcel behind, or the bus may crash, killing all the passengers before the
container gets a chance to leak. These are all possibilities, of course, but
there is no positive reason to believe that they are any more than that, that
is they are not real possibilities. The strategy is to stress such outside
possibilities in order to create the false impression that there is gross
uncertainty about the future, that the real possibility that the container will
Obligations to the Future 157
break should be treated in the same way as these mere logical possibilities,
that uncertainty about the future is so great as to preclude the consigners'
taking account of the passengers' welfare and of the real possibility of
harm from his parcel, and thereby excuse his action. A related strategy is
to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and thereby
imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints .This move
implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty, or at
least a very high probability, of harm is required before an action can be
judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree
of certainty or probability cannot be attained. That is, the strategy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat
the application of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not
so.
An argument closely related to the uncertainty arguments is based on
the non-existence and indeterminacy of the future.23 An item is indeterminate in a given respect if its properties in that respect are, as a matter of
logic, not settled (nor are they settlable in a non-arbitrary fashion). The
respects in which future items are indeterminate are well enough known
for a few examples to serve as reminders: all the following are indeterminate: the population of Australia at 2001, its distribution, its age structure,
the preferences of its members for folk music, wilderness, etc., the size
and shape of Wollongong, the average number of rooms in its houses and
in its office blocks, and so on. Philosophical discussion of such indeterminacy is as old as Aristotle's sea battle and as modern as truth-value gaps
and fuzzy logics, and many positions have been adopted on the existence
and determinacy of future items. Nevertheless theories that there are
obligations to the future are not sensitive to the metaphysical position
adopted concerning the existence or non-existence of the future. Any
theory which denied obligations to the future on the metaphysical grounds
that the future did not exist, and did not have properties, so that the
present could not be related to it, would be committed to denying such
obvious facts as that the present could causally influence the future, that
present people could be great-grandparents of purely future people, and so
on, and hence would have to be rejected on independent grounds. This is
not to say that there are not important problems about the existence or
non-existence of future items, problems which are perhaps most straightforwardly handled by a Meinongian position which allows that items
which do not exist may have properties. The non-existence of the future
158 R. and V. Routley
does raise problems for standard theories which buy the Ontological
Assumption (the thesis that what does not exist does not have properties),
especially given the natural (and correct) inclination to say that the future
does not (now) exist; but such theories can adopt various strategies for
coping with these problems (e.g. the adoption of a platonistic position
according to which the future does now exist, or the allowance for certain
sorts of relations between existents at different times), although the satisfactoriness of these strategies is open to question (cf. [4]). Thus whether or
not the Ontological Assumption is assumed and however it is applied, it
will be allowed that future items will have properties even if they do not
have them now, and that is enough to provide the basis for moral concern
about the future. Thus the thesis of obligations to the future does not
presuppose any special metaphysical position on the existence of the
future.
If the non-existence of future items creates no special problems for
obligations to the future, the same is not true of their indeterminacy.
Whether the indeterminacy of future items is seen as a logical feature of
the future which results from the non-existence of purely future items or
whether one adopts a (mistaken) platonistic view of the future as existing
and sees the indeterminacy as an epistemological one resulting from our
inability to know the character of these entities - that is, we cannot
completely know the future .though it exists and has a definite characterwhichever view we take indeterminacy still creates major difficulties for
certain ethical theories and their treatment of the future.
The difficulties arise for theories which appear to require a high level of
determinacy with respect to the number and character of future items, in
particular calculus-type theories such as utilitarianism in its usual forms,
where the calculations are critically dependent on such information as
numbers, totals, and averages, information which so far as the future is
concerned is generally indeterminate. The fact that this numerical information is typically indeterminate means that insofar as head-count utilitarianism requires determinate information on numbers, it is in a similar
position to theories discussed earlier; it may apply theoretically to future
people, but since the calculations cannot be applied to them their interests
will be left out of account. And, in fact, utilitarianism for the most part
does not, and perhaps cannot, take future creatures and their interests
seriously; there is little discussion as to how the difficulties or impossibility of calculations regarding the open future are to be obtained. Non-platonistic utilitarianism is in logical difficulty on this matter, while platonis-
Obligations to the Future 159
tic utilitarianism - which faces a range of other objections - is inapplicable
because of epistemic indeterminacy. We have yet another case of a theory
of the sort that applies theoretically but in practice doesn't take the future
seriously. But far from this showing that future people's interests should
be left out of account, what these considerations show are deficiencies in
these sorts of theories, which require excessive determinacy of information. This kind of information is commonly equally unavailable for the
accepted areas of moral constraint, the present and immediate future; and
the resolution of moral issues is often not heavily dependent on knowledge
of such specific determinate features as numbers or other determinate
features. For example, we do not need to know how many people there
will be on the bus, how intelligent they are, what their preferences are or
how badly they will be injured, in order to reach the conclusion that the
consigner's action in despatching his parcel is a bad one. Furthermore, it is
only the ability of moral considerations to continue to apply in the absence
of determinate information about such things as numbers that makes it
possible to take account of the possible effects of action, as the risks
associated with action - something which is quite essential even for the
present if moral considerations are to apply in the normal and accepted
way. For it is essential in order to apply moral considerations in the
accepted way that we consider alternative worlds, in order to take account
of options, risks, and alternative outcomes; but these alternative or counterfactual worlds are not in so different a position from the future with
respect to determinacy; for example, there is indeterminacy with respect
to the number of people who may be harmed in the bus case or in apossible
nuclear reactor melt-down. These alternative worlds, like the distant
future, are indeterminate in some respects, but not totally indeterminate.
It might still be thought that the indeterminacy of the future, for example
with respect to number and exact character, would at least prevent the
interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict
with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown, how can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future where this information is available in a more
or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of
sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people,
when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are
indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the
future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in
decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by ignoring
160 R. and V. Routley
such factors. Nor are such distributional problems as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to
focus on them would suggest. It should be conceded then that there will be
cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts
very difficult or indeed impossible to resolve - a realistic ethical theory
will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other
conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution
of the issue, e.g. the bus example which is a conflict case of a type. In
particular, there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing
numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to
know only the most general probable characteristics of future people.
Moreover, even where numbers are relevant often only bounds will be
required, exact numerical counts only being required where, for instance,
margins are narrow; e.g. issues may be resolved as in parliament where a
detailed vote (or division) is only required when the issue is close. It is
certainly not necessary then to have complete determinacy to resolve all
cases of conflict.
The question we must ask then is what features of future people could
disqualify them from moral consideration or reduce their claims to it to
below those of present people? The answer is: in principle None. Prima
facie moral principles are universalizable, and lawlike, in that they apply
independently of position in space or in time, for example.24 But universalizability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are
capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present; in other words, a theory
that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects as
regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup such as
(white-skinned) humans, etc. The only candidates for characteristics that
would fairly rule out future people are the logical features we have been
looking at, uncertainty and indeterminacy; what we have argued is that it
would be far too sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral
claims of future people in a general way. These special features only affect
certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable or practical
course of action given only present information). In particular they do not
affect cases of the sort being considered, the nuclear one, where highly
determinate or certain information about the numbers and characteristics
of the class likely to be harmed or certainty of damage are not required.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability principle is
not needed: it is enough to require that the temporal position of a person
Obligations to the Future 161
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideration;25 inversely that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position. As a result of this
universalizability, there is the same obligation to future people as to the
present; and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and
their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of
the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions' causing harm or
damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob
future people of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy do not free us of these obligations. If, in a closely
comparable case concerning the present, the creation of a significant risk
is enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent
grounds for requiring greater certainty of harm in the future case under
consideration, then futurity alone will not provide adequate grounds for
proceeding with the action, thus discriminating against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to futurity, the conclusion
tentatively reached in our first section, that proposals for nuclear development in the present state of technology for future waste disposal are
immoral.
IV. Overriding Consideration Arguments
In the first part we noticed that the consigner's action could not be justified
by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the
firm or the village would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact
that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed.
We also observed that the principle on which this assessment was based,
that one was not usually entitled to create a serious risk to others for these
sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to the
nuclear case. For this reason the economistic arguments which are thus
most commonly advanced to promote nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring of employment,
investment, and consumption-do not even begin to show that the nuclear
alternative is an acceptable one. Even if these economistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct (and there is reason to doubt
that most of them are),26 the arguments would fail because economics
must operate within the framework of moral constraints, and not vice
versa.
162 R. and V. Routley
What one does have to consider, however, are moral conflict arguments, that is arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is
the only possible outcome, and will ensue. For example, in the bus case,
the consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is
taken the village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a
justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the
passengers is high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs
and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would no longer be so
clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action taken in
such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on
competing duties to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such
moral conflict arguments is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives),
and upon showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument-for example, if in the bus
case it turns out that the villagers have another option to starving or to the
sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way - then
the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. We want to argue
that suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument,
designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse
than the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these
arguments as well. In short, the arguments depend essentially on the
presentation of false dichotomies.
The first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of
industrialized countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often
claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the
standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment
and poverty in the industrialized nations.
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third
world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to
increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the
Obligations to the Future 163
diversion of great amounts of available capital into an industry which is not
only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also helps
to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for
labour use. 27 The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third
world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and
economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive
amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers,
and creates negligible employment, while politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralized entrenched power and reduces the
chance for change in the oppressive political structures which are a large
part of the problem.28 The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of
people of the third world does not, of course, mean that it is not in the
interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the westernized and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually
organized; but it is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands
these ruling elites may make in the name of the poor.
The poverty argument then is a fraud. Nuclear energy will not be used to
help the poor.29 Both for the third world and for the industrialized countries there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy sources,30 alternatives which are
morally acceptable and socially preferable to nuclear development, and
which have far better prospects for helping the poor.31
The second major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to
a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people.
We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and
institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technological, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable
institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The
argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued
level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of
our civilization will go out.32 .
The lights-going-out argument raises rather sharply questions as to
what is valuable in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary
for a good society. These are questions which deserve much fuller treatment than we can allot them here, but a few brief points should be made.
The argument adopts an extremely uncritical position with respect to
existing high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are
uniformly and uniquely valuable; it also assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that it can't be changed in the direction of energy
164 R. and V. Routley
conservation or alternative energy sources without collapse. Such a society has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept. The assumption that technological society's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so - after all, it
has survived events such as world wars which have required major social
and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western
society's demands for energy are totally unmodifiable without collapse,
not only would it be committed to a programme of increasing destruction,
but one might ask what use its culture could be to future people who would
very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base
which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary
society.
There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness; but
if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-technological society and its political institutions? but rather: what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the
political institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue
that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable,
presumably, that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, e.g. from history, is that no very high level of material
affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower
energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable
than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we believe it is, it is not necessary to presuppose such
a change, in the short term at least, in order to see that the assumptions of
the lights-going-out argument are wrong. No enormous reduction of wellbeing is required to consume less energy than at present, and certainly far
less than the large increase over present levels of consumption which is
assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.33 What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going
out in western civilization, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the
time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy
Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
Obligations to the Future 165
is obtained by nuclear-fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralized,
controlled, and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy
source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power,
and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether
capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political
system and over people's lives, even more than they do at present. Very
persuasive arguments have been advanced by civil liberties groups and
others in a number of countries to suggest that such a society would tend to
become authoritarian, if only as an outcome of its response to the threat
posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation.34
There are reasons to believe then that with nuclear development what
we would be passing on to future generations would be some of the worst
aspects of our society (e.g. the consumerism, growing concentration of
power, destruction of the natural environment, and latent authoritarianism), while certain valuable aspects would be lost or threatened. Political
freedom is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives which
do not involve such unacceptable consequences are available. The alternative to the high technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the
loss of all that is valuable, but the development of alternative technologies
and life-styles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and
further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly
centralized nuclear option.35 The lights-going-out argument, as a moral
conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a false
dichotomy. Thus both the escape routes, the appeal to moral conflict and
to the appeal to futurity, are closed.
If then we apply the same standards of morality to the future as we
acknowledge for the present - as we have argued we should - the conclusion that the proposal to develop nuclear energy on a large scale is a crime
against the future is inevitable, since both the escape routes are closed.
There are, of course, also many other grounds for ruling it out as morally
unacceptable, for saying that it-is not only a crime against the distant future
but also a crime against the present and immediate future. These other
grounds for moral concern about nuclear energy, as it affects the present
and immediate future, include problems arising from the possibility of
catastrophic releases of radioactive fuel into the environment or of waste
material following an accident such as reactor melt-down, of unscheduled
discharges of radiation into the environment from a plant fault, of proli-
166 R. and V. Routley
feration of nuclear weapons, and of deliberate release or threat of release
of radioactive materials as a measure of terrorism or of extortion. All these
are important issues, of much moral interest. What we want to claim,
however, is that on the basis of its effects on the future alone, the nuclear
option is morally unacceptable.
Appendix
Passmore's Treatment ofRawls,
and What Really Happens on Rawls's Theory
Passmore takes it that Rawls's theory yields an unconstrained position
but, according to Rawls, the theory leads to quite the opposite result;
namely,
persons in different generations [and not merely neighbouring generations] have duties and obligations to one another just as contemporaries do. The present generation cannot do as it pleases but is bound
by the principles that would be chosen in the original position to
define justice between persons at different moments of time.. . . The
derivation of these duties and obligations may seem at first a somewhat far-fetched application of the central doctrine. Nevertheless
these requirements would be acknowledged in the original position
[where the parties do not know to which generation they belong], and
so the conception of justice as fairness covers these matters without
any change in its basic idea. ([5], p. 293; the second insert is drawn
from p. 287)
Through judicious use of the veil of ignorance and the time of entry of
parties to the original contract position, Rawls's contract theory, unlike
simpler explicit contract theories, can yield definite obligations to distant
future people,36 for example, we ought to save at a just rate for future
people.
But, as Rawls remarks (p. 284), 'the question of justice between generations . . . subjects any ethical theory to severe if not impossible tests'. It is
doubtful that Rawls's theory as formulated passes the tests; for the theory
as formulated does not yield the stated conclusion, but a conclusion
inconsistent with the thesis that there are the same obligations to future
people as to contemporaries. Exactly how these obligations arise from the
initial agreement depends critically on the interpretation of the time of
Obligations to the Future 167
entry of the parties into the agreement. Insofar as Rawls insists upon the
present-time-of-entry interpretation (p. 139), he has to introduce supplementary motivational assumptions in order to (try to) secure the desired
bondings between generations, in particular to ensure that the generation
of the original position saves for any later generation, even their immediate successors ([5], p. 140 and p. 292). Rawls falls back on-what is as we
have seen inadequate to the task, since it does not exclude one generation
damaging another remote generation in a way that bypasses mutually
successive generations - 'ties of sentiment between successive generations' (p. 292): to this limited extent Passmore has a point, for such a social
contract on its own (without additional assumptions about the motives of
the parties to the agreement) does not furnish obligations even to our
immediate successors. This is indicative also of the unsatisfactory instability of Rawls's theory under changes, its sensitivity to the way the original
agreement is set up, to the motivation of parties, their time of entry, what
they can know, etc.
To arrive at a more adequate account of obligations to the distant future
under Rawls's theory, let us adopt, to avoid the additional, dubious and
unsatisfactory, motivational assumptions Rawls invokes, one of the alternative - and non -equivalent - time-of-entry interpretations that Rawls lists
(p. 146), that of persons alive at some time in simultaneous agreement. Let
us call this, following Rawls's notation (on p. 140), interpretation 4b (it is
perhaps unnecessary to assume for 4b any more than 4a that all people
need be involved: it may be enough given the equivalencizing effect of the
veil of ignorance that some are, and as with the particular quantifier it is
quite unnecessary to be specific about numbers). Then of course the
parties, since they are, for all they know, of different generations, will
presumably agree on a just savings rate, and also to other just distribution
principles, simply on the basis of Rawlsian rationality, i.e. advancing their
own interests, without additional motivation assumptions. This more
appealing omnitemporal interpretation of time of entry into the agreement,
which gives a superior account of obligation to the future consistent with
Rawls's claim, Rawls in some places puts down as less than best (p. 292)
but in his most detailed account of the original position simply dismisses
(p. 139):
To conceive of the original position [as a gathering of people living at
different times] would be to stretch fantasy too far; the conception
would cease to be a natural guide to intuition.
168 R. and V. Rout ley
This we question: it would be a better guide to intuition than a position
(like 4a) which brings out intuitively wrong results; it is a more satisfactory
guide, for example, to justice between generations than the present-timeof-entry interpretation, which fails conspicuously to allow for the range of
potential persons (all of whom are supposed to qualify on Rawls's account
for just treatment, cf. § 77). Moreover, it stretches fantasy no further than
science fiction or than some earlier contract accounts.36 But it does
require changes in the way the original position is conceived, and it does
generate metaphysical difficulties for orthodox ontological views (though
not to the same extent for the Meinongian view we prefer); for, to consider
the latter, either time travel is possible or the original hypothetical position
is an impossible situation, with people who live at different times assembled at the same time. The difficulties - of such an impossible meeting help to reveal that what Rawls's theory offers is but a colourful representation of obligations in terms of a contract agreed upon at a meeting.
The metaphysical difficulties do not concern merely possible people,
because all those involved are sometime-actual people; nor are there
really serious difficulties generated by the fact that very many of these
people do not exist, i.e. exist now. The more serious difficulties are either
those of time travel, e.g. that future parties relocated into the present may
be able to interfere with their own history, or, if time travel is ruled out
logically or otherwise, that future parties may be advantaged (or disadvantaged) by their knowledge of history and technology, and that accordingly fairness is lost. As there is considerable freedom in how we choose to
(re)arrange the original position, we shall suppose that time travel is
rejected as a means of entering the original position. For much less than
travel is required; some sort of limited communicational network which
filters out, for example, all historical data (and all cultural or species
dependent material) would suffice; and in any case if time travel were not
excluded essentially the present-time-of-entry interpretation would serve,
though fairness would again be put in doubt. The filtered communicational
hook-up by which the omnitemporal position is engineered still has - if
fairness is to be seen to be built into the decision making - to be combined
with a reinterpreted veil of ignorance, so that parties do not know where
they are located temporally any more than they know who they are
characterwise. This implies, among other things, limitations on the parties' knowledge of factual matters, such as available technology and world
and local history; for otherwise parties could work out their location,
temporal or spatial. For example, if some party knew, as Rawls supposes,
Obligations to the Future 169
the general social facts, then he would presumably be aware of the history
of his time and so of where history ends, that is of the date of his
generation, his time (his present), and so be aware of his temporal location. These are already problems for Rawls's so-called 'present-time-ofentry interpretation' - it is, rather, a variable-time-of-entry interpretation
- given that the parties may be, as Rawls occasionally admits (e.g. p. 287),
of any one generation, not necessarily the present: either they really do
have to be ofthepresent time or they cannot be assumed to know as much
as Rawls supposes.37 There is, however, no reason why the veil of ignorance should not be extended so as to avoid this problem; and virtually any
extension that solves the problem for the variable-time-of-entry interpretation should serve, so it seems, for the omnitemporal one. We shall
assume then that the parties know nothing which discloses their respective
locations (i.e. in effect we write in conditions for universalizability of
principles decided upon). There are still gaps between the assumptions of
the omnitemporal position as roughly sketched and the desired conclusion
concerning obligations to the future, but (the matter is beginning to look
non-trivially provable given not widely implausible assumptions and) the
intuitive arguments are as clear as those in [5], indeed they simply restate
arguments to obligations given by Rawls.
Rawls's theory, under interpretation 4b, admits of nice application to
the problems of just distribution of material resources and of nuclear
power. The just distribution, or rate of usage, of material resources38 over
time is an important conservation issue to which Rawls's theory seems to
apply, just as readily, and in a similar fashion, to that in which it applies to
the issue of a just rate of savings. In fact the argument from the original
position for a just rate of saving - whatever its adequacy - can by simply
mimicked to yield an argument for just distribution of resources over
generations. Thus, for example:
persons in the original position are to ask themselves how much they
would be willing to save [i.e. conserve] at each stage of advance on
the assumption that all other generations are to save at the same rate
[conserve resources to the same extent]. . . . In effect, then, they
must choose a just savings principle [resources distribution principle]
that assigns an appropriate rate of accumulation to [degree of resource conservation at] each level of advance. ([5], p. 287; our
bracketed options give the alternative argument)
170 R. and V. Routley
Just as 'they try to piece together a just savings schedule' (p. 289), so they
can try to piece together a just resource distribution policy. Just as a case
for resource conservation can be made out by appeal to the original
position, since it is going to be against the interests of, to the disadvantage
of, later parties to find themselves in a resource depleted situation (thus,
on Rawlsian assumptions, they will bargain hard for a share of resources),
so, interestingly, a case against a rapid programme of nuclear power
development can be devised. The basis of a case against large-scale
nuclear development is implicit in Rawls's contract theory under interpretation 4b, though naturally the theory is not applied in this sort of way
by Rawls. To state the case in its crude but powerful form: people from
later generations in the original position are bound to take it as against their
interests to simply carry the waste can for energy consumed by an earlier
generation. (We have already argued that they will find no convincing
overriding considerations that make it worth their while to carry the waste
can.) Thus not only has Passmore misrepresented the obligations to the
future that Rawls's theory admits; he is also wrong in suggesting (p. 87 and
p. 91) that Rawls's theory cannot justify a policy of resource conservation
which includes reductions in present consumption.
There is, in this connection, an accumulation of errors in Passmore,
some of which spill over to Rawls, which it is worth trying to set out. First,
Passmore claims ([1], p. 86; cf. also p. 90) that 'Rawls does not so much
mention the saving of natural resources'. In fact the 'husbanding of natural
resources' is very briefly considered ([5], p. 271). It is true, however, that
Rawls does not reveal any of the considerable power that his theory,
properly interpreted, has for natural resource conservation, as implying a
just distribution of natural resources over time. Secondly, Passmore attempts ([1], pp. 87 ff.) to represent the calls of conservationists for a
reduction in present resource usage and for a more just distribution as a
call for heroic self-sacrifices; this is part of his more general attempt to
represent every moral constraint with respect to the non-immediate future
as a matter of self-sacrifice. 'Rawls's theory', Passmore says (on p. 87),
'leaves no room for heroic sacrifice', and so, he infers, leaves no room for
conservation. Not only is the conclusion false, but the premiss also:
Rawls's theory allows for supererogation, as Rawls explains ([5], p. 117).
But resource conservation is, like refraining from nuclear development,
not a question of heroic self-sacrifice; it is in part a question of obligations
or duties to the distant future. And Rawls's theory allows not only for
obligations as well as supererogation, but also for natural duties. Rawls's
Obligations to the Future 171
contract, unlike the contracts of what is usually meant by a 'contract
theory', is by no means exhaustive of the moral sphere:
But even this wider [contract] theory fails to embrace all moral
relationships, since it would seem to include only our relations with
other persons and to leave out of account how we are to conduct
ourselves towards,animals and the rest of nature. I do not contend
that the contract notion offers a way to approach these questions
which are certainly of the first importance; and I shall have to put
them aside, (p. 17)
The important class of obligations beyond the scope of the contract theory
surely generates obligations between persons which even the wider contract theory likewise cannot explain. The upshot is that such a contract
account, even if sufficient for the determination of obligations, is not
necessary. To this extent Rawls' s theory is not a full social contract theory
at all. However, Rawls appears to lose sight of the fact that his contract
theory delivers only a sufficient condition when he claims, for example (p.
298), that 'one feature of the contract doctrine is that it places an upper
bound on how much a generation can be asked to save for the welfare of
later generations'. For greater savings may sometimes be required to meet
obligations beyond those that the contract doctrine delivers. In short,
Rawls appears to have slipped into assuming, inconsistently, that his
contract theory is a necessary condition.
Although Rawls's theory caters for justice between generations and
allows the derivation of important obligations to people in the distant
future, the full theory is far from consistent on these matters and there are
significant respects in which Rawls does not take justice to the future
seriously. The most conspicuous symptoms of this are that justice to the
future is reduced to a special case, justice between generations, and that
the only aspect of justice between generations that Rawls actually considers is a just savings rate; there is, for example, no proper examination of
the just distribution of resources among generations, though these resources, Rawls believes, provide the material base of the just institutions that
he wants to see maintained. In fact Rawls strongly recommends a system
of markets as a just means for the allocation of most goods and services,
recognizing their well-known limitations only in the usual perfunctory
fashion ([5], pp. 270 ff.). Yet market systems are limited by a narrow time
horizon, and are quite ill-equipped to allocate resources in a just fashion
172 R. and V. Rout ley
over a time span of several generations. Similarly Rawls's endorsement of
democratic voting procedures as in many cases a just method of determining procedures depends upon the assumptions that everyone with ah
interest is represented. But given his own assumptions about obligations
to the future and in respect of potential persons this is evidently not the
case. Catering in a just fashion for the interests of future people poses
serious problems for any method of decision that depends upon people
being present to represent their own interests.
Some of the more conservative, indeed reactionary, economic assumptions in Rawls emerge with the assumption that all that is required for
justice between generations is a just savings rate, that all we need to pass
on to the future are the things that guarantee appropriate savings such as
capital, factories, and machines. But the transmission of these things is
quite insufficient for justice to the future, and neither necessary nor
sufficient as a foundation for a good life for future generations. What is
required for justice is the transmission in due measure of what is valuable.
Rawls has, however, taken value accumulation as capital accumulation,
thereby importing one of the grossest economic assumptions, that capital
reflects value. But of course the accumulation of capital may conflict with
the preservation of what is valuable. It is for this sort of reason (and thus,
in essence, because of the introduction of supplementary economistic
theses which are not part of the pure contract theory) that Rawls's theory
is a reactionary one from an environmental point of view; on the theory as
presented (i.e. the contract theory plus all the supplementary assumptions) there is no need to preserve such things as wilderness or natural
beauty. The savings doctrine supposes that everything of value for transmission to the future is negotiable in the market or tradeable; but then
transmission of savings can by no means guarantee that some valuable
things, not properly represented in market systems, are not eliminated or
not passed on, thereby making future people worse off. It becomes evident
in this way, too, how culturally-bound Rawls's idea of ensuring justice to
future generations through savings is. It is not just that the idea does not
apply, without a complete overhaul, to non-industrial societies such as
those of hunter-gatherers; it does not apply to genuinely post-industrial
societies either. Consideration of such alternative societies suggests that
whafis required, in place of capital accumulation, is that we pass on what
is necessary for a good life, that we ensure that the basics are fairly
distributed over time and not eroded, e.g. that in the case of the forest
people that the forest is maintained. The narrowness of Rawls's picture,
Obligations to the Future 173
which makes no due allowance for social or cultural diversity (from the
original contractual position on) or for individual diversity arises in part
from his underlying and especially narrow socio-economic assumption as
to what people want:
What men want is meaningful work in free association with others,
these associations regulating their relations to one another within a
framework of just basic institutions. ([5], p. 290)
This may be what many Harvard men want; but as a statement of what
men want it supplies neither sufficient nor even necessary conditions.39
NOTES
1 Thus according to the Fox Report ([2], p. 110; our italics).
There is at present no generally accepted means by which high level waste can be
permanently isolated from the environment and remain safe for very long periods.
. . . Permanent disposal of high-level solid wastes in stable geological formations is
regarded as the most likely solution, but has yet to be demonstrated as feasible. It is
not certain that such methods and disposal sites will entirely prevent radioactive
releases following disturbances caused by natural processes or human activity.
The Fox Report also quoted approvingly ([2], p. 187; our italics) the conclusion of the
British (Flowers) Report [6]:
There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until
it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exist s to ensure the
safe containment of long-lived, highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future.
Although the absence of a satisfactory storage method has been conceded by some
leading proponents of nuclear development, e.g. Weinberg ([3], pp. 32-33), it is now
disputed by others. In particular, the headline for Cohen [15], which reads 'A substantial
body of evidence indicates that the high level radioactive wastes generated by U.S.
nuclear power plants can be stored satisfactorily in deep geological formations', has
suggested to many readers - what it was no doubt intended to suggest- that there is really
no problem about the disposal of radioactive wastes after all. Cohen presents, however,
no new hard evidence, no evidence not already available to the British and Australian
Commissions ([2] and [6]). Moreover the evidence Cohen does outline fails conspicuously
to measure up to the standards rightly required by the Flowers and Fox Reports. Does
Cohen offer a commercial-scale procedure for waste disposal which can be demonstrated
as safe? Far from it:
174 R. and V. Routley
The detailed procedures for handling the high-level wastes are not yet definite, but
present indications are that. . . . (Cohen [1], p. 24; our italics)
Does Cohen 'demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt' the long-term safety of burial of
wastes, deep underground? Again, far from it:
On the face of it such an approach appears to be reasonably safe. . . . (p. 24; our
italics)
Cohen has apparently not realized what is required.
At issue here are not so much scientific or empirical issues as questions of methodology, of standards of evidence required for claims of safety, and above all, of values, since
claims of safety, for example, involve implicit evaluations concerning what counts as an
acceptable risk, an admissible cost, etc. In the headline 'a substantial body of evidence
. . . indicates that. . . wastes . . . can be stored satisfactorily' the key words (italicized)
are evaluative or elastic, and the strategy of Cohen's case is to adopt very low standards
for their application. But in view of what is at stake it is hardly acceptable to do this, to
dress up in this way what are essentially optimistic assurances and untested speculations
about storage, which in any case do little to meet the difficulties and uncertainties that
have been widely pointed out as regards precisely the storage proposals Cohen outlines,
namely human or natural interference or disturbance.
2 See [18], pp. 24-25.
3 On all these points, see [14], esp. p. 141. According to the Fox Report ([2], p. 110):
Parts of the reactor structure will be highly radioactive and their disposal could be
very difficult. There is at present no experience of dismantling a full size reactor.
4 See, in particular, The Union of Concerned Scientists, The Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Friends
of the Earth Energy Paper, San Francisco 1973, p. 47; also [3], p. 32 and [14], p. 149.
5 As the discussion in [14], pp. 153-7, explains.
6 Cf. [17], pp. 35-36, [18] and, for much detail, J. R. Goffman and A. R. Tamplin, Poisoned
Power, Rodale Press, Emmau Pa. 1971.
7 On the pollution and waste disposal record of the infant nuclear industry, see [14] and
[17].
The record of many countries on pollution control, where in many cases available
technologies for reducing or removing pollution are not applied because they are considered too expensive or because they adversely affect the interests of some powerful group,
provides clear historical evidence that the problem of nuclear waste disposal would not
end simply with the devising of a 'safe' technology for disposal, even if one could be
devised which provided a sufficient guarantee of safety and was commercially feasible.
The fact that present economic and political arrangements are overwhelmingly weighted
in favour of the interests and concerns of (some) contemporary humans makes it not
unrealistic to expect the long-term nuclear waste disposal, if it involved any significant
cost at all, when public concern about the issue died down, would be seen to conflict with
the interests of contemporary groups, and that these latter interests would in many cases
be favoured. Nor, as the history of movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament shows, could generalized public concern in the absence of direct personal
interest, be relied upon to be sustained for long enough to ensure implementation of costly
or troublesome long-term disposal methods - even in those places where public concern
exists and is a politically significant force.
It must be stressed then that the problem is not merely one of disposal technique.
Historical and other evidence points to the conclusion that many of the most important
risks associated with nuclear waste disposal are not of the kind which might be amenable
Obligations to the Future
175
to technical solutions in the laboratory. A realistic assessment of potential costs to the
future from nuclear development cannot overlook these important non-technical risk
factors.
8 Of course the effect on people is not the only factor which has to be taken into consideration in arriving at a moral judgment. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does
not confine its scope to human life. But since the harm nuclear development is likely to
cause to non-human life can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be
made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional way.
9 Proponents of nuclear power often try to give the impression that future people will not
just bear costs from nuclear development but will also be beneficiaries, because nuclear
powerprovides an 'abundant' or even 'unlimited' source of energy; thus Weinberg ([3], p.
34): 'an all but infinite source of relatively cheap and clean energy'. A good example of an
attempt to create the impression that 'abundant' and 'cheap' energy from nuclear fission
will be available to 'our descendants', i.e. all future people, is found in the last paragraph
of Cohen [15]. Such claims are most misleading, since fission power even with the breeder
reactor has only about the same prospective lifetime as coal-produced electricity (a point
that can be derived using data in A. Parker, 'World Energy Resources: A Survey', Energy
Policy, Vol. 3 [1975], pp. 58-66), and it is quite illegitimate to assume that nuclear fusion,
for which there are still major unsolved problems, will have a viable, clean technology by
the time fission runs out, or, for that matter, that it ever will. Thus while some few
generations of the immediate future may obtain some benefits as well as costs, there is a
very substantial chance that tho se of the more distant future will obtain nothing but costs.
10 These feelings, of which Smith's and Hume's sympathy is representative, are but the
feeling echoes of obligation. At most, sympathy explains the feeling of obligation or lack
of it, and this provides little guide as to whether there is an obligation or not - unless one
interprets moral sympathy, the feeling of having a obligation, or being obligated, itself as
a sufficient indication of obligation, in which case moral sympathy is a non-explanatory
correlate in the feelings department of obligation itself and cannot be truly explanatory of
the ground of it; unless, in short, moral sympathy reduces to an emotive rewrite of moral
obligation.
11 Elsewhere in [1] Passmore is especially exercised that our institutions and intellectual
traditions - presumably only the better ones - should be passed on to posterity, and that
we should strive to make the world a better place, if not eventually an ideal one.
12 This is not the only philosophically important issue in environmental ethics on which
Passmore is inconsistent. Consider his: 'over-arching intention: to consider whether the
solution of ecological problems demands a moral or metaphysical revolution' (p. x),
whether the West needs a new ethic and a new metaphysics. Passmore's answer in [1] is
an emphatic No.
Only insofar as Western moralists have [made various erroneous suggestions] can
the West plausibly be said to need a 'new ethic'. What it needs, for the most part, is
not so much a 'new ethic' as adherence to a perfectly familiar ethic.
For the major sources of our ecological disasters - apart from ignorance - are
greed and shortsightedness, which amount to much the same thing. . . There is no
novelty in the view that greed is evil; no need of a new ethic to tell us as much. (p. 187)
'The view that the West now needs. . . a new concept of nature' is similarly dismissed (p.
186, cf. p. 72). But in his paper [1*] (i.e. 'Attitudes to Nature', Royal Institute of
Philosophy Lectures, Vol. 8, Macmillan, London 1975), which is said to be an attempt to
bring together and to reformulate some of the basic philosophical themes of [1], Passmore's answer is Yes, and quite different themes, inconsistent with those of [1], are
advanced:
176 R. and V. Routley
[T]he general conditions I have laid down . . . have not been satisfied in most of the
traditional philosophies of nature. To that degree it is true, I think, that we do need a
'new metaphysics' which is genuinely not anthropocentric. . . . A 'new metaphysics', if it is not to falsify the facts, will have to be naturalistic, but not reductionist.
The working out of such a metaphysics is, in my judgement, the most important task
which lies ahead of philosophy. ([1*], pp. 260-1)
A new ethic accompanies this new metaphysics.
The emergence of new moral attitudes to nature is bound up, then, with the emergence of a more realistic philosophy of nature. That is the only adequate foundation
for effective ecological concern. ([1*], p. 264)
This is a far cry from the theme of [1] that ecological problems can be solved within the
traditions of the West.
13 Put differently, the causal linkage can bypass intermediate generations, especially given
action at a temporal distance: the chain account implies that there are no moral constraints in initiating such causal linkages. The chain picture accordingly seems to presuppose an unsatisfactory Humean model of causation, demanding contiguity and excluding
action at a distance.
14 Golding we shall concede to Passmore, though even here the case is not clearcut. For
Golding writes towards the end of his article ([12], p. 96):
My discussion, until this point, has proceeded on the view that we have obligations
to future generations. But do we? I am not sure that the question can be answered in
the affirmative with any certainty. I shall conclude this note with a very brief
discussion of some of the difficulties.
All of Passmore's material on Golding is drawn from this latter and, as Golding says,
'speculative' discussion.
15 There is no textual citation for Bentham at all for the chapter of [1] concerned, viz. Ch. 4,
'Conservation'.
16 As Passmore himself at first concedes ([1], p. 84):
If, as Bentham tells us, in deciding how to act men ought to take account of the
effects of their actions on every sentient being, they obviously ought to take account
of the pleasure and pains of the as yet unborn.
17 Neither rightness nor probable lightness in the hedonistic senses correspond to these
notions in the ordinary sense; so at least [13] argues, following much anti-utilitarian
literature.
18 On this irrationality different theories agree: the rational procedure, for example according to the minimax rule for decision-making under uncertainty, is to minimize that
outcome which maximizes harm.
19 Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to follow the market (cf.
P. A. Samuelson, Economics, 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York 1967, p. 351). Thus the
rates have little moral relevance.
20 Cf. Rawls [5], p. 287: 'From a moral point of view there are no grounds for discounting
future well-being on the basis of pure time preference.'
21 What the probabilities would be depends on the theory of probability adopted: a Carnapian theory, e.g., would lead back to the unconstrained position.
Obligations to the Future 177
22 A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could eventuate. A real
possibility requires producible evidence for its consideration. The contrast is with mere
logical possibility.
23 Thus, to take a simple special case, economists dismiss distant future people from their
assessments of utility, welfare, etc., on the basis of their non-existence; cf. Ng ('the utility
of a non-existent person is zero') and Harsanyi ('only existing people [not even "nonexisting potential individuals"] can have real utility levels since they are the only ones
able to enjoy objects with a positive utility, suffer from objects with a negative utility, and
feel indifferent to objects with zero utility') (see Appendix B of Y. K. Ng, 'Preference,
Welfare, and Social Welfare', paper presented at the Colloquium on Preference, Choice
and Value Theory, RSSS, Australian National University, August 1977, pp. 24, 26-27).
Non-existent people have no experiences, no preferences; distant future people do not
exist; therefore distant future people have no utility assignments - so the sorites goes. But
future people at least will have wants, preferences, and so on, and these have to be taken
into account in adequate utility assessments (which should be assessed over afuture time
horizon), no matter how much it may complicate or defeat calculations.
24 There are problems about formulating universalizability satisfactorily, but they hardly
affect the point. The requisite universalizability can in fact be satisfactorily brought out
from the semantical analysis of deontic notions such as obligation, and indeed argued for
on the basis of such an analysis which is universal in form. The lawlikeness requirement,
which can be similarly defended, is essentially that imposed on genuine scientific laws by
logical empiricists (e.g. Carnap and Hempel), that such laws should contain no proper
names or the like, no reference to specific locations or times.
25 Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g. Sidgwick [11], p. 414), and
in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and Rousseau toRawls ([5], p. 293).
How the principle is argued for will depend heavily, however, on the underlying theory;
and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particular ethical theories.
26 See esp. R. Lanoue, NuclearPlants:The MoreTheyBuild, The More You Pay, Centerfor
Study of Responsive Law, Washington DC 1976; also [14], pp. 212 ff.
27 On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and Energy,
Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC 1977, pp. 1-7, and also the
details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner [7]. On the absorption
of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as well [18], p. 23. On the employment
issues, see too H. E. Daly in [9], p. 149. A more fundamental challenge to the poverty
argument appears in I. Illich, Energy and Equality, Calder & Boyars, London 1974,
where it is argued that the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the
opposite of what the poor need.
28 For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful,
Blond & Briggs, London 1973. As to the capital and other requirements, see [2], p. 48, and
also [7] and [9].
For an illuminating look at the sort of development high-energy technology will tend to
promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries, see the paper of Waiko and other
papers in the Melanesian Environment (ed. by J. H. Winslow), Australian National
University Press, Canberra 1977.
29 This fact is implicitly recognized in [2], p. 56.
30 A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken, Friends of
the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs, October 1976); see also [17],
[6], [7], [14], pp. 233 ff., and Schumacher, op. cit.
31 This is also explained in [2], p. 56.
32 An argument like this is suggested in Passmore [1], Chs. 4 and 7, with respect to the
question of saving resources. In Passmore this argument for the overriding importance
of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned by what appears to be a future-
178 R. and V. Routley
directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed be fortunate, the best way to take care of the future
(and perhaps even the only way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to
go wrong) is to take proper care of the present and immediate future. The argument has
all the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
33 See [14], p. 66, p. 191, and also [7].
34 For such arguments see esp. M. Flood and R. Grove-White, Nuclear Prospects. A
Comment on the Individual, the State and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council
for the Protection of Rural England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London
1976.
35 For a recent sketch of one such alternative which is outside the framework of the
conventional option of centralized bureaucratic socialism, see E. Callenbach's novel,
Ecotopia, Banyan Tree Books, Berkeley, California 1975. For the outline of a liberation
socialist alternative see Radical Technology (ed. by G. Boyle and P. Harper), Undercurrents Limited, London 1976, and references therein.
36 Some earlier contract theories also did. Burke's contract (in E. Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France, Dent, London 1910, pp. 93-94) 'becomes a partnership not only
between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and
those who are not yet born'. Thus Burke's contract certainly appears to lead to obligations to distant future generations. Needless to say, there are metaphysical difficulties,
which however Burke never considers, about contracts between parties at widely separated temporal locations.
37 Several of the preceding points we owe to M. W. Jackson.
38 Resources such as soil fertility and petroleum could even be a primary social goods on
Rawls's very hazy general account of these goods ([5], pp. 62, 97): are these 'something a
rational man wants whatever else he wants'? The primary social goods should presumably be those which are necessary for the good and just life -which will however vary with
culture.
39 We have benefited from discussion with Ian Hughes and Frank Muller and useful
comments on the paper from Brian Martin and Derek Browne.
REFERENCES
[1] J. Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London 1974.
[2] Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra 1977.
[3] A. M. Weinberg, 'Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy", Science, Vol. 177 (July 1972),
pp. 27-34.
•
[4] R. Routley, 'Exploring Meinong's Jungle II. Existence is Existence Now', Notre Dame
Journal of Formal Logic (to appear).
[5] J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1971.
[6] Nuclear Power and the Environment. Sixth Report of the British Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution, London 1976.
[7] B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power, Knopf, New York 1976.
[8] G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1903.
[9] B. Commoner, H. Boksenbaum and M. Corr (Eds.), Energy and Human Welfare - A
Critical Analysis, Vol. III, Macmillan, New York 1975.
Obligations to the Future 179
[10] J. Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 1, published under the superintendence of J. Bowring, with an intro. by J. H. Burton; William Tait, Edinburgh 1843.
[11] H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, Macmillan, London 1962 (reissue).
[12] M. P. Golding, 'Obligations to Future Generations', Monist, Vol. 56 (1972), pp. 85-99.
[13] R. and V. Routley, 'An Expensive Repair Kit for Utilitarianism', presented at the
Colloquium on Preference, Choice and Value Theory, RSSS, Australian National
University, August 1977.
[14] R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne
1977.
[15] B. L. Cohen, 'The Disposal of Radioactive Wastes from Fission Reactors', Scientific
American, Vol. 236 (June 1977), pp. 22-31.
[16] S. McCracken, 'The Waragainst the Atom' .Commentary (September 1977), pp. 33-47.
[17] A. B. Lovins and J. H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy
Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco 1975.
[18] A. Roberts, "The Politics of Nuclear Power', Arena, No. 41 (1976), pp. 22-47.
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Nuclear energy and obligations to the future
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Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy
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Sylvan formally published very little of his nuclear ethics and politics, although a nuclear imaginary is present throughout his ouevre.
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Nuclear Power—Some Ethical and Social Dimensions
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a>
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=val+routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Routley</a>
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Rowman and Littlefield
Date
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1982
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This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
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For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.
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https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/0b7902d211e4ae23ce6364a79b1fdef4.pdf
903a4c17a0584ed036707fe4b4aa469a
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Draft Papers
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Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed.
Text
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Nuclear Power—Some Ethical, Social and Political Dimensions
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Manuscript
Creator
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a>
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=val+routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Routley</a>
Date
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1984
Publisher
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<a href="https://manuscripts.library.uq.edu.au/index.php/uqfl291" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Richard Sylvan Papers, UQFL291</a>
Contributor
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This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
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For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.
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