by John Clark

Black Rose Books, Montreal (1984)

Reviewed

by

Clym Yeobright

People write reviews to tell other people whether they liked a book or not and why. So I might as well start by saying that Miked this book. The Anarchist Moment by John Clark is generally weli written, weil-structured, well-argued and informative. Above all I found it thought-provoking. This is not to say that I agree with or appreciate all of John Clark's positions, but that the book is a good one and I recommend it.

As i see it this book is essentially John Clark's explication of the social ecology anarchism of Murray Bookchin. This is not to say that Clark is simply a follower of Bookchin but that by and large his book is a fleshing out of points left lean by Bookchin. Yet the book remains of interest even to those who disagree vigorously with Bookchin's approach to anarchism, for John Clark is not Murray Bookchin and he does bring much that is new and interesting in his exposition.

The authors purpose is simply stated: "My purpose in this work is therefore to present a critique of classical radical theory, and to show that critical social thought requires a new vision of the self, society, and nature...a cultural politics founded on an ecological, organictst word

view", {p. 16) By and large radical social thought today is considered to be either marxism or some variant of marxism. Thus any radical critique which is not marxist has to differentiate itself from marxism as a point of reference. On practical grounds, for those of us in North America this ought to be simple, since there is no large or influential marxist movement here. Everywhere marxism in power is dictatorial. Why? John Clark, following Bookchin and many, many, others, claims this situation is no historical accident. It is a direct result of the very essence of marxism's philosophical positions. Most North Americans would,! think, have no difficulty agreeing with this. But Clark contends that marxism is more akin to comtemporary capitalist technocracy than to truly radical thought, which would surprise most North Americans. The basis of this kinship is that both marxism and capitalism share at root an attitude toward nature in which nature is treated as an object to be exploited for the presumed good of humanity; which is to say that marxism, like capitalism, is founded upon an ideology of domination. Thus marxism, despite its noble rhetoric of freedom and its often admirable intent, must have as practical end a society based on domination, and in fact a more blatant and ruthless one than under capitalism.

Clark argues these points and differentiates marxism from anarchism in chapters on "Marx, Bakunin, and Social

Revolution". This is a reasonable approach since historically anarchism defined or began to define itself largely through Bakunin's disagreements with the vastly more sophisticated and verbose positions of Marx and his followers. In the following chapter Clark extends this critique to Lenin and Trotsky, showing them to be as well "ideologists of high technology". (p.ltO) In later chapters Clark also exposes the "neo-marxists", the updaters and hurnanizers of marxism, to the same critique. For the same reason -that is, the failure to see domination, especially domination of nature, at the root of marxism ~ all these attempts, tnough well-intentioned, fail. Marxism remains a philosophy of power.

If not marxism, then why anarchism? And if anarchism, what sort of anarchism? In two chapters - What is Anarchism?'' and "Anarchism and the present world crisis" - John Clark attempts a brief answer. I found this chapter on the present world crisis Utopian and ingenuous, the former being a criticism which probably would not trouble either Clark or Bookchin. I did find his general definition of anarchism to be an interesting one, interesting enough to quote it here:

For a political theory to be called "anarchism" it must contain 1) a view of a ideal, non-coercive, non-authoritarian society; 2) a criticism of existing society and its institutions based on this anti-authoritarian ideat 3) a view of human nature that justifies the hope for

significant progress toward the ideat and 4) a strategy for change, involving immediate institution of no~coercive. non-authoritarian, and decentralist alternatives, (pp.126-127)

Having settled in his mind what anarchism is and that it is relevant to contemporary social problems, and having disposed of marxism, John Clark comes to what is for me the most important part of this book, the chapters titled "Ecology, Technology, and Respect for Nature" and "The Social Ecology of Murray Bookchin," in which he provides a preliminary sketch of just what sort of "new vision of the self, society, and nature' he has in mind

The first of these chapters is concerned with the possibility of establishing a basis in nature for a anarchist, ecological ethics. Humans, John Clark argues, have seperated nature into two parts, "one of which (our own species) is deserving of moral consideration, while the other ("external nature") is of purely instrumental value." (p. 191) The result is that mans attitude toward nature becomes one based on domination, of nature as an instrument, a tool to be used. Technology is the means we use to dominate and exploit nature This situation has spawned its own critics, but most criticism is based on humanistic foundations, "that we should preserve natural resources because they are neccassary for our survival, because they are aesthetically pleasing, because they have recreational value, because they

will be beneficial for future generations, or because doing so will maximize profit or economic growth in the long run. In other words, our regard for nature is grounded in its potential for use by human beings for various human purposes/' (p.192)

These humanist arguments can be effective and are ail well and good, but while they mollify the effects of instrumentalism, they fail to fundamentally challenge it because they implicitly share the same basic assumptions, namely the ethical division mentioned above. Thus the domination at the root of this attitude remains untouched. John Clark wishes to go beyond humanism and explore "whether there are any grounds for granting non-human nature any moral status, so that it cannot legitimatly be assimilated entirely into this realm of instrumentality.'' (p.192) He suggests we might find these grounds by coming to "understand more adequately the relation between ourselves and the rest of nature, thus we might come to find value in non-human external nature, that is, external nature might be seen as possesing goodness. If we attribute moral goodness to human nature, and if the goodness of human nature depends or rests upon its interaction with external nature, "then we are required by the demands of consistency to give moral recognition to the similar goods existing to all levels of nature." (p. 195) This attribution of moral character to external nature does not mean that humans may not interfere in

external nature in seeking the realization of human goods; we do after all make such choices and must make them. But it does provide a moral standard against which such interference may be judged. "If, as we are assuming, we are to give precedence to those goods realized at higher levels in the hierarchy of nature, then there is reason to give highest consideration among natural systems with which we have a practical relationship to that of the biosphere. If we can recognize a good for the biosphere, we should grant it priority over less comprehensive goods, and guide our actions accordingly." (pp.195-196)

The end result is that morality becomes ecology, or at least to a large extent it does so. "If the ecological crisis has resulted from our lack of recognition of the continuity between human social, cultural, and technological systems and the ecosystem within which these have evolved, a moral crisis has arisen from our failure to recognize the relation between our own good and the system of goods of which it is a part.'* (p.196) Moral action becomes ecological action, which is as we shall see anarchism.

This is a fascinating sketch. The Idea of an objective ethics based on nature, the "natural law", is not a new one and has seen many formulations from the Greeks and Romans (Italians, that is) through the Middle Ages to the present day. All such formulations have by and large been found wanting; yet the idea of a natural law still persists. Clark's admittedly brief

outline of what such an ethics might be remains to be filled in, expanded, and corrected. It seems to me that is ethics is to be rooted in ecology, then ethics must be to a large extent become dependant upon the current state of science at any given time. Many ethical questions thus become scientific ones. But in terms of issues like pollution or nuclear reactors, this is no great problem. In terms of individual behavior I cannot see where there will be any immediately startling practical changes. I presume that ecological behavior means being good to each other, but then that is merely to state the Golden Rule in other words.

; in such considerations of ethics 1 am always reminded of comments made by the writer William Golding, hardly original to him as he would admit, in an essay titled "Utopias and Anti-utoptas: "With bad people, hurting, unco-operative, selfish people no social system will work. With good people, loving, co-operative, unselfish people, any social system will work." (A moving Target, p.184)

In the same vein, in another place, Golding commented on the probability of there being a majority of such good people. No ethical of social philosophy, he contended, can succeed without taking into account the penchant or evil lying so close to the surface of civilized humanty.

Before the Second World War I beUeved in the perfectibility of social man;

that a correct structure of society would produce goodwitt and that therefore you

could remo ve all social His by a

reorganization of society- it is possible that today I believe something of the same again; but after the war I did not because I was unable to. I had discovered what one man could do to another. I am not talking of one man killing another with a gun, or dropping a bomb on him or blowing him up or torpedoing him. I am thinking of the vileness beyond alt words that went on, year after year, h the totalitarian states. It is bad enough to say that so many Jews were exterminated in this way and that so many people liquidated - lovely, elegant word - but there were tNngs done during that period from wNch I still have to avert my mind lest I should be physically sick. They were not done by the head hunters of New Guinea, or by some primative tribe in the Amazon. They were done, skillfully, coldly, by educated men, doctors, lawyers, by men with a tradition of civilization behind them, to beings of their own kind I do not want to elaborate upon this, but I must say that anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been bUnd or wrong in the head Let me take a parraltel from a social situation. We are commonly dressed, and commonly behave as if we had no genitaSa. Taboos and prohibitions have grown up round that very neccessary part of the human anatomy. But h sickness, tfie whole structure of man must be exibited to the doctor. When (he occasion is important enough, we admit to what we have. It

'.ems to me that in nineteenth-century id early twentieth-century society of the /est similar taboos grew up round the iture of man. He was supposed not to a ve in him the sad fact of Ns own cruelty id lust When these capacities emerged to action they were thought aberrent. ocial systems, political systems were omposed, detached from the real nature fman. They were what one might caS olitica! symphonies. They could perfect tost men, and at the least reduce bberence. Why, then, have they never 'orked? How did the idealist concepts of rimitive socialism turn at last into talinism ? How could the political and hilosophical idealism of Germany roduce as its ultimate fruit, the rule of ,dolf Hitler ? My own conviction grew lat men were putting the cart before the orse. They were looking at the system 3 ther than the people. It seemed to me iat man's capacity for greed, his innate ruelty and selfishness, was being hidden iehind a kind of pair of political pants. I >elieved then, tha t man was sick - nor ?xceptionalmen, but average man."(The lot Gates, pp.85 -86}

John Clark would obviously answer hat the root of the problem lies in the fact hat domination is the basis of civilizatioa tut his answer to the problem is autological and leaves unanswered the urther question, whence this domination? Human nature" is a much disputed >hrase. Everyone disagrees as to its neaning. But it seems to me that any ethics >r politics that fails to take human nature

realistically into account will have some serious practical difficulties or else be clothed in that "pair of political pants".

Perhaps widespread moral corruption is the best argument For the reduction of state and corporate power...and perhaps revolutionary power. In any event the recognition of humanity's penchant for evil seems to me the strongest argument against the sort of Utopian thinking Clark and Bookchin espouse. Clark's ethical sketch seems to me to lack what could be called an "existential" dimension, by which i mean that 1 fail to see how it would apply in many individual instances of mora! choice, at least in a manner different from some other existing ethical systems. Take abortion for example, if life is a good, and if a foetus is afive, and if the life of the mother is not in question, then how could one favor abortion as a moral choice? it seems to me that a Clarkian natural law would protect the sanctity of life virtually above aft else Vet for the woman making the choice many other factors would have to be weighed perhaps, in addition to the ecological principles involved. Thus it seems to me an ecological ethic would be of little help save to proscribe an abortion.

Finally, as an amusing aside, 1 would like to observe that John Clark has flirted with but apparently avoided what the ethical philosopher G.E. Moore termed the "naturalistic fallacy," no mean feat for an ecological ethician. John Clark is unrestrained in his praise of Murray

Bookchin. "To put it bluntly, anarchist thought has remained at best a melange of brilliant insight and theoretical niaiserie prior to the work of Bookchin and those who are building on his foundation." {p. 202) He considers Bookchin's work,The Ecology of Freedom, to be "a major achievement, destined to become a classic of contemporary social thought." {p. 215} This may or may not prove to be the case. and one may or may not share Clark's enthusiam for Bookchin, but nonetheless the points Clark emphasizes in his consideration of Bookchin's work are more than worthwhile. He says, 'Bookchin's single most important /contribution to social theory is his effort J to ground social analysis in a coherent and comprehensive theory of nature," (p. 202} I think this is correct: it is correct as an evaluation of Bookchin's work, and it is his most important contribution, however unclearly Bookchin may often express it, the effects of which ought to weigh heavily in anarchist thought of our time.

John Clark's examination of Bookchin basically centers around two of Bookchin's books. Toward an Ecological Society and The Ecology of Freedom. His discussion is informed, fair, and erudite, it parallels, or, perhaps better, complements, albeit in a different form and certainly less critically, much of what 1 had written in my essay on Bookchin in Black Rose *8, though it was written before the publication of The Ecology of Freedom, in which Bookchin deals with some of the critical

points 1 had raised. I agree with Clark that this is Bookchin's major work and that it is important, but I have many hesitations about the manner of the expression of the arguments in the book.

Largely, this is due to what I feel is Bookchin's uncritical acceptance of Hegelian philosophical methodology and in particular its dialectic. Clark himself apparently shares this acceptance and his book is replete with references to "dialectical interaction" and so on, a phrasing which to me tends to muddle things rather than clarify them. As an example of what 1 mean, the last chapter of The Anarchist Moment (admittedly the densest and hardest to understand in the book) contains the following:

As Bookchin has pointed out, following Hegel, the nature of a phenomenon is in an important sense equivalent to the Nstory of the phenomenon. The self can only be understood as an organic totality with the larger organic totalities of human culture and of nature, and with which it has a dialectical relationship of growth and development. True, the self cannot be thought of as having any- character apart from its natural and social relationships; yet it can at the same time have its own immanent, historically shaped telos, which is integral to its self-creative dialectical interaction with the rest of nature and society, (p.234)

What Clark means to say 1 think is this. The individual develops throughout his or her life Each person exists in a

social and natural milieu with which he or she interacts, affecting the milieu as it affects him or her- Despite the fact of this social and natural setting and interaction, each individual is unique, with his or her own personality, goals, and activity. There is no need for the use of Clark's Hegeiianized language to make the point in fact the Hegelian language obfuscates the thought and seemingly tries to render a relatively simple, straightfoward idea exotic and somehow more profound I tried re-reading the same passage, this time leaving out the word "dialectical" entirely, and scratching the phrase "immanent, historically shaped telos". replacing it with "individuality" or "personality" and found things much clearer and more sensible. Perhaps others might find this also to be the case and 1 would be curious to learn if this is so. My purpose is not to argue against the use of difficult or specialized language or to argue that all profound thought ought to be simply expressed. I am arguing that in Clark's case, and also in Bookchin's, there is no intrinsic need for the use of such language, which so often mystifies and muddles rather than clarifies.

1 would iike to take another, more striking example, that of Bookchin's argument as to the rationality of nature, an argument which Clark paraphrases in his chapter on Bookchia Human beings can make sense of natural phenomena. Nature is capable of being understood by reason. Hegel took this fact and argued from it that humans can understand

nature because nature itself is inherently rational. His formulation was the famous. The real is rational and the rational is reaL" Hegel went further and claimed that human reason itself was nature striving to become rational. There was individual reason, yes, but each individual reason was part of the "moment" of total reason trying to express itself through nature of which we human are a part.

If this seems unclear or muddled, that is because it is unclear and muddied. In Toward An Ecological Society Bookchin expresses essentially the same thought in this manner: "Inasmuch as human beings are themselves products of the natural world, human self-consciousness could be described in philosophical terms as nature rendered 'self-conscious", {p. 109) Espressed so briefly, this statement is virtually unsupported, a mere play on words. In The Ecology of Freedom Bookchin attempts to support the expression. Reason was once considered by the Greeks as Logos. Logos was immanent, inherent in nature as its organizing and motivating principle. Clark, paraphrasing Bookchin again, says: "From the epistemelogicai standpoint, reason means speculative knowledge, comprehension of the nature of this Logos. Yet such knowledge is only possible because of the rationality inherent in reality itself." {p. 216) The idea is obvious, that reality is understandable because we can grasp its inherent rationality .being part of that rationality ourselves. Nature, being

rational, is further seen as striving toward comprehension of its own rationality. It does this through human beings, the highest form of rationaPty of which we know, "in the scheme of the evolutionary development of subjectivity, humanity is 'nature rendered self-conscious", {p. 218)

As Clark admits, there are very serious problems in proving such a point of view, problems which he does not elaborate- 1 would like to briefly point out that it takes what amounts to a leap of faith to jump from "humans can understand nature" to "all nature is rational" to "humanity is nature rendered self-conscious." The argument as presented is based more on word play than on real evidence. (One might also question the liberal use of the notion of teleology in much of Clark's and Bookchin's arguments.) That Clark does not examine the objections to his arguments in some detail in this book is a pity since what is in question is the fundament of the ecological anarchism both he and Bookchin would iike to establish.

But this is always a problem with so-called dialectical thought, at least as far as I have experienced it, namely that .linguistic "tricks" and confusion too often take the place of real argument. It is a danger that 1 feel that both John Clark and Murray Bookchin at times fail to avoid. Yet despite such criticisms, Clark is basically correct The Ecology of Freedom is indeed both a good book and Bookchin's magnum opus. Curiously, in considering

the book Clark does not mention what was for me the most immediately striking feature of The Ecology of Freedom, that is, Bookchin's abandonment of his earlier formulation of his theory of "post-scarcity anarchism." Bookchin now seeks to completely ground his critique in an ecology, a philosophy of nature, and the attempt is a praiseworthy one.

Two chapters in this book seems to me both curious and somewhat out of place. One is the already mentioned dense and murky last chapter. Here John Clark seems to be arguing that progressive and truly radical opposition to contemporary society must be cultural rather than economic or class based and must avoid the temptation to either seize or reform the power structure. In the first chapter of The Anarchist Moment he argued the same points in a much clearer and more compelling manner. There he set out what he calls the libertarian problematic", by which I suppose him to mean how anarchism needs to be recast to face the challenges of the contemporary world and to learn from the past. "The libertarian problematic today is, of course, to develop a coherent, systematic and thoroughly critical view of reality, and a practice adequate to transform reality in accord with this vision." (p. 27) This may at first blush seem to be nothing more than a fancy rephrasing of what might be called the "old problematic" but, as I hope has been shown, John Clark means that we need to establish this ecological critique.

The other out-of-place chapter is the one, "Master Lao and the Anarchist Prince" in which Clark claims, "Lao Tzu is one of the great anarchist classics. Indeed, there are good reasons to conclude that no important philosophical work of either East or West has ever been so thoroughly pervaded by the anarchist spirit, and that none of the Western political thinkers known as major anarchist theorists ...have been nearly as consistent in drawing out the implications of the anarchist perspective." (p. 165)

Whether this is true or not I cannot say, but John Clark is certainly willing and able to argue his case. Why Clark might be attracted to Taoism can be understood- As the editor of The Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, the main work Clark here uses, says of the Lao-Tzu "As the way of life, it denotes simplicity, spontaneity, tranquillity, weakness, and most important of all non-action (wu-wei). By the latter ?inactivity" is not meant literally but rather "taking no action that is contrary to Nature" - in other words letting Nature take its own course." (p. 136) And again: "The book advocates not only non~action,but also practical tactics for action. It teaches submission, but strongly opposes oppresive government. The philosophy of the Lao-Tzu is not for the hermit but for the sage-ruler, who does not desert the world but rules it with non-interference Taoism is therefore not a philosophy of withdrawal. Man is to follow Nature but in doing so he

is not efiminated; instead, his nature is fulfilled." (p. tJ7) Exactly how Taoism relates to the idea of an anarchist ecological ethics is still unclear to me, unless of course Clark is hinting that Taoism is that ethics. Perhaps he will expand on this matter some day. I certainly hope he does, and hope as well that should he do so he not title it "The Tao of Bookchin." My confontation with The Anarchist Moment has sharpened,, expanded, and enriched my understanding of anarchism. One really couldn"t ask for more than that. Thus I recommend this thoughtful and provocative book to our readers just as would also recommend the work of Bookchin. The Anarchist Moment is a worthy addition to the libertarian literary corpus.