Issues in Anarchism - The Environment

The Environment

See also: Green anarchism, Social ecology, Anarcho-primitivism, Ecofeminism, and Green syndicalism

The environment and sustainability have been an issue for anarchists from at least as far back as Kropotkin's 1899 book "Fields, Factories and Workshops", but since the late 1970s anarchists in Anglosphere and European countries have been agitating for the natural environment. Eco-anarchists or green anarchists often embrace deep ecology. This is a worldview that strives to cultivate biodiversity and sustainability. Eco-anarchists often use direct action against what they see as earth-destroying institutions. Of particular importance is the Earth First! movement, that takes action such as tree sitting. The more militant Earth Liberation Front, which grew out of Earth First!, also has connections with the anarchist movement. Another important component is ecofeminism, which sees the domination of nature as a metaphor for the domination of women.

Murray Bookchin's work on social ecology, David Watson's work with Fifth Estate magazine, Steve Booth's work in the UK publication Green Anarchist, and Graham Purchase's writings on green syndicalism have all contributed to the broad variety and scope of green anarchist/eco-anarchist thought and action. Green anarchism also involves a critique of industrial capitalism, and, for some green anarchists, civilization itself.

Most anarchists see class society as being the root cause of pollution. They argue that a small class of owners or controllers have the wealth to avoid the worst repercussions of pollution while a very much larger class of workers without such wealth have no say in the running of the workplace. Thus under capitalism and other class societies those who control workplaces are also those with the least interest in minimising pollution - indeed as most anti-pollution measures add to costs that class will have an interest in minimising such measures. Under capitalism pollution is often a product of externalising costs - that is a transfer of a pollutant from the property of the owner to a public river transfers the cost from the capitalist to society at large. The anarchist communist solution is to ensure that all those working and living within the ecosystem of a plant have control over all its outputs, including pollutants.

Primitivism is a predominantly Western philosophy that advocates a return to a pre-industrial and usually pre-agricultural society. It develops a critique of industrial civilization. In this critique technology and development have alienated people from the natural world. This philosophy develops themes present in the political action of the Luddites and the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Primitivism developed in the context of the Reclaim the Streets, Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front movements. John Zerzan wrote that civilization– not just the state– would need to fall for anarchy to be achieved. Anarcho-primitivists point to the anti-authoritarian nature of many 'primitive' or hunter-gatherer societies throughout the world's history as examples of anarchist societies.