“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Monday, May 30, 2011

Ecology, Anarchy, Hierarchy: New Left Project on Self-Organization

HT @SFTMC. This piece by Jamie from New Left Project is a pleasing continuation of my line of argument against Curtis's lacquering of UK Uncut with Gaian holism. But this one contains a lot more detail. For instance, you can find out about Murray Bookchin's critique of Gaia and so on from within ecological political theory.

In other words, it's perfectly possible to be ecological and anti-authoritarian in your politics. Indeed, Bookchin style thinking influenced the anti-globalization movement.

We can conclude, then, that one act that Curtis's editorial performs is to wipe out traces of this and other forms of ecological politics. It's a cartoon.

2 comments:

ajohnstone said...

The issue is not whether Uncut's form of action and organising is anti-authoritarian but whether it is anti-democratic, in excluding some in the decision making by the lack of a recognisable and accessible structure.

Bookchin was an advocate of what he called libertarian municipalism that did offer a process for participation in decisions and which involves organising in parties of some shape. ( but see http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/aug02/reflections.html for a critique)

Timothy Morton said...

Yeah, but it's a little bit unfair of Curtis to compare the apples of Gaian holism with the oranges of political protest movements--in particular a movement that just isn't a party of any kind.