145 lines
8.0 KiB
Plaintext
145 lines
8.0 KiB
Plaintext
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SOCIAL ECOLOGY - SOME CONCERNS -by Philip Winn
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Murray Bookchin is unquestionably one of the most interesting
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anarchist theoreticians to emerge in recent decades. It is
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impossible in the space given to produce as comprehensive a
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critique as is required to do justice both to the scope of
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Bookchin's work and to its inherent problems. I will touch here
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on only a few concerns.
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There's not much new about a person in the West taking as their
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task the discovery of the ordering principles of history, within
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culture, within reality itself. Just look at Hegel or Marx. The
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problem arises in the claims these folks make to universal truth.
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The construction of Truth always represents a massive grab for
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power - the power of framing, the power of naming, the power of
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valuing. Marxism is a case in point, surely the greatest act of
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political chutzpah the world has ever seen. At a time when the
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very act of creating such similarly ambitious projects are
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finally being questioned and challenged, Bookchin emerges as a
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self-described defender of the Western right to present the Grand
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Truth. His particular version is (politically) Social Ecology or
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(philosophically) Dialectical Naturalism.
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So what are the realms of power present in social ecology, what
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is its particular regime of inclusions and exclusions? Again,
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there isn't space to deal with them all, but a crucial exclusion
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is contained in its developmental view of evolution, the
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"directedness" and "becoming" reflected in dialectical
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naturalism. Although Bookchin tends to play this aspect down,
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other social ecologists accept that such a perspective places
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them firmly in the teleological tradition of Western thinking.
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What this implies is that evolution has an inherent purpose and
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direction, it moves towards a predetermined goal. Bookchin views
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this dynamic as applicable both to the biological world and to
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the human social world, creating a perspective that lends support
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to theories of cultural evolution - the idea that human culture
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moves through stages, from the most basic (often referred to as
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primitive, or simple) through to the most advanced.
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It's not surprising to find that the folks who construct schemes
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which depict culture evolving as a rule tend to put their own
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towards the advanced end of any sequence. For Bookchin, it is
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indeed Western culture, its modes of knowledge and world views,
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its intellectual history which is seen as holding the most
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promise for fulfilling the purpose of evolution. The vast array
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of indigenous peoples, their knowledges and world views, their
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lifeways and struggles do not feature in Bookchin's work except
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when relegated to the past, as early "organic societies"
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illustrating past events or previous stages in the course of
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human history and development. They are universally described as
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"preliterate" or "primordial", and unfortunately, "flawed" in
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numerous ways, most notably in possessing features of "nascent
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hierarchy" - what Bookchin interprets as inequalities based
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around age and gender, and which eventually give rise to the
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fully blown hierarchies we are all familiar with.
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The ethnocentricity and cultural arrogance of such a position is
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breathtaking but again not particularly new for the
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universalising Western intellectual. Interestingly, while
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challenging Marx's theoretical elevation of questions of
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production and economic exploitation and replacing these with
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notions of hierarchy and domination, Bookchin ultimately simply
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reproducers the classical Marxist depiction of indigenous peoples
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and their static culture left behind in the process of historical
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advance.
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Bookchin is unable however to explain in any meaningful sense
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just how these original inequalities and nascent hierarchies
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emerged, given the evolutionary impetus (as he interprets it)
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towards non-hierarchical social and ecological forms inherent in
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the Purpose Of Nature. Simply saying that things happened a
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certain way does not make them so, but this is a common problem
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within Bookchin's work. Additionally, Bookchin draws on an
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extremely limited range of material for information to support
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his generalising about indigenous cultures, and exhibits a total
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lack of appreciation of the current controversies raging in the
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anthropological world around issues of the authority and
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legitimacy of past and present ethnographic representation. Not
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the least of these is the claim that sexism within early,
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frequently colonial, accounts led to a widespread neglect of the
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role of women in indigenous societies, problematising the easy
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accusations of inequality or injustice that are aimed at
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indigenous people and which continue to be used to justify the
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destruction of their lifeways and knowledges by those who
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consider their own morality, ethics civilisation or political
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purpose as superior.
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There is a major contradiction at the heart of social ecology.
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It is committed to diversity as an expression of dialectical
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naturalism but fails to take serious theoretical account of one
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of the most evident diverse productions of human beings -
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culture. If there is inherent, objective value in natural
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diversity, then the multiplicity of forms of human cultural
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expression must surely also contain value, must also reflect
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evolutionary teleos, purpose. If indeed Nature is to find its
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voice through humans, must this voice take only one form, that of
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the Western cultural tradition, rather than continuing its
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dialectic movement towards diversity and complexity through an
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abundance of human voices?
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The reality is that those areas of the world with the greatest
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enduring biological diversity are the remaining homelands of
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(living, breathing, present-time) indigenous people - the
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ecological credentials of their systems of knowledge are
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therefore self-evident. Are Bookchin's? At the same time many of
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these peoples are actively resisting their forced incorporation
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into the world economy and its client states - surely any
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contemporary liberatory social theorist must approach ideas of
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the global with a great deal of cultural humility.
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Finally I'd like to pose a more general question: which of the
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following seems the more anarchic approach, which orientation
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seems to lend itself to a greater fostering of self determination
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and genuinely participatory democracy? To attempt to sell the
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masses yet another 'New Improved' version of universal Truth
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fresh from the oven of Western Enlightenment ("forget Marxism,
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Anarchism or Feminism, lets do the Dialectical Naturalism.) Or to
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develop instead a thorough understanding of the ways in which
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elements of power and hierarchy operate through the creation and
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validation of all truth and knowledge claims, and to reach for
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social visions and practices based on an affirmation and
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politicisation of difference, multiplicity and diversity? I'll
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leave it to you.
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END NOTE - It seems to need repeating as often as possible that
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the outcome of a position that affirms the partiality of all
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knowledge claims is not necessarily the embracing of absolute
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relativity. This accusation is as easy to make as the one about
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all anarchists wanting chaos, and just as flippantly ill-
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informed. Creating the discursive space for radical plurality,
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for the radical democratising of any emancipatory project, is not
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the same thing as the total absence of any basis for constructing
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personal or community values. For those who continue to think it
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is, and for anyone interested in exploring in greater depth some
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of the ideas underpinning this article, the works of Elizabeth
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Grosz and/or Anna Yeatman are a good instruction; both women are
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writing in Australia now and both provide accessible and
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stimulating accounts of the relation of the postmodern to the
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political (and feminist).
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