Why Anarcho-Primitivism Doesn't Work (And A Comment on Kaczynski's Anti-Leftism)
The roots of Anarcho-Primitivism are in the thought of Ted Kaczynski, an anarchist theorist who you may know as the Unabomber, who sent packages with bombs inside them to several airplanes and offices. His essay, Industrial Society and It’s Future, was published in September 22, 1995 and detailed reasons for why the industrial revolution was horrible for the human race, some of them I can get behind with. It features a heavy critique of both leftists and rightists of his time, as well as going into insight about why mental health is suffering in our modern day capitalist technological society. Kaczynski was right in some of these points, and he even critiqued Anarcho-Primitivism in his later works as well, aiming for an anarcho-luddite version of events, but the ideas that spawned out of his essay wanted a total return to hunter-gatherer societies.
In this blogpost, I will give reasons why Anarcho-Primitivism is a failed experiment and shouldn’t be a current in anarchist philosophy, as well as detailing why Kaczynski’s Anarcho-Luddism is a better alternative for the green anarchists.
Anarcho-Primitivism bases itself on a left-reactionary version of Primitive idealism. It seeks to go back to a time before technology, and a time before the ills of the industrial revolution without realizing that we can never go back to that time. Perhaps we could, in a post apocalyptic scenario, go back to a time of rural living, without the internet and the bourgeois luxuries we enjoy today, but that time is a mere unreachable phenomenon, only sealed by hauntological echoes of retvrn. They are longing for a past that was heralded by the 19th century primitivist painters, but without the beauty of the societies that they idealize. They’re deluded in a sense of dreamlike vision of mud-huts and hunting for fish, finishing the day off with cave-drawing their adventures in the process. This society will never happen, Capitalism (and by extension the Industrial Revolution) has made it so that this society will never happen. It’s become clear to me that the only way out of Capitalism is, in fact, through it. (Read my blogpost on situationist-accelerationism for more information on this)
Anarcho-Primitivism lacks the foresight needed to correctly critique Capitalist technological advances, only suggesting an anti-technological point of view. It incorrectly states that technology is a net negative, it’s philosophy suffering in the process. If we go back to a time of hunter-gatherers, we will lack the technology that made life better for many people. Neurodivergent people will die off en masse, with no help being given to them. People with poor eyesight cannot have the strength to survive in a Hunter-Gatherer society, being lost to time as days go by. In short, humanity will revert into a stage of wild-like predatorism, removing it’s sanity in the process, and the people who are lesser off will unfairly fall with industrial society.
For Kaczynski, he sees the anarcho-primitivists as out of touch with reality, but also stating that “one can truthfully say about such societies a great deal that is positive.” (The Truth About Primitive Life, Kaczynski, 2008). He also cited contradictions with the anarcho-primitivists worldview, stating that tribal life wasn’t as great as the anarcho-primitivist think it was, with examples of things that tribes did that would amount to crime today. “[A boy] has to have [a girl’s] permission before intercourse can take place. The men say that once they lie down with a girl, however, if they want her they take her by surprise, when petting her, and force her to their will.” Nowadays we would call that “date rape”, and the young man involved would risk a long prison sentence.” (The Truth About Primitive Life, Kaczynski, 2008). There was also a higher risk of death and disease in tribal life: we wouldn’t have the advances in medical care that we have now. The tribes placed their faith in shamans and witch doctors who prescribed spiritual medicine for any sorts of illness. Some of these worked, but most of them failed miserably, making the situation worse rather than better.
It is clear to me that Anarcho-Primitivists have not factored in this reasoning. However, from this explanation could potentially rise from the ashes of Anarcho-Primitivism a better form of Green Anarchy, even though I’m not a Green Anarchist myself.
This is where the critique of anarcho-primitivists from my point of view ends, transitioning into my response to a comment that a redditor made when I posted my critique of Anti-Natalism and New Atheism (derogatively called “Reddit Atheism”).
“Quoting Kaczynski to rail against ineffective "pseudo-leftist" protest felt a little weird; He's a socially conservative anprim (I repeat myself, of course), and would have said the same about likely any protest movement that wasn't about abolishing the state and returning to a "natural hierarchy" (hence why anprims aren't actually anarchists, but that's neither here nor there). I'd cut that part out. You can make your point without aligning yourself with a murderer, who almost certainly would not agree with your characterization of his argument (I'm certain he would disagree with your distinction between "pseudo-leftists" and "real" leftists)”
-bin_it_to_win_it
He wasn’t conservative in the traditional sense, actually critiquing right-wingers as well as left-wingers. His philosophy wasn’t traditionalist, seeing that traditionalism (especially the ones espoused in alt-right circles) is a misguided way of making sure that the world is improved. He was more in vein of the modern day anti-civilization anarchists, Derrick Jensen for example, who are very anti-traditional in the right-wing sense. He had conservative views on gender, yes, but one conservative view does not make someone a full-on conservative.
Modern day illegalists and some post-leftists align themselves with the italian illegalists (Novatore for example), whom did crime that was justified by themselves as propaganda of the deed. Would you say that they could get their point across without aligning themselves with thieves? Besides, his work as the Unabomber is not important here: What matters is his ideas, not the person behind them.
His views on leftism could be adapted to fit those of the pseudo-leftists. He was anti-leftist, yes, but his views still hold up when describing the pseudo-leftists, who in his view are masochists who are not interested in any type of change.