Sorry for the lack of blogging and articles, but have been somewhat busy. First, I had to prepare a talk on the 1848 Revolution (which I now need to write up).
Sorry for the lack of blogging and articles, but have been somewhat busy. First, I had to prepare a talk on the 1848 Revolution (which I now need to write up). Second, I was trying out various projects – I started to translate volume 2 of Proudhon’s System of Economic Contradictions (and made some progress on the chapters on Trade – and Proudhon was not a fan of free trade, incidentally – and Community, after completing the Conclusion), then – due to the 1848 research I was doing, then swapped to Confessions of a Revolutionary (and did the preface). Then PM Press got back and said they were interested in my suggestion of A Libertarian Reader.
Obviously, as well as the texts – starting with Proudhon as context for Joseph Déjacque’s 1857 Letter – I will alter my 160 Years of Libertarian for the introduction and add short biographical sketches for the people and groups included.
So I’ve been working on that, identifying writers, gathering texts, translating material. The major problem is that there is so many interesting writers, so much material, lots of events and organisations to cover. It is nice to be able to include not-quite anarchist writers and groups, like the IWW, guild socialism, council communists, situationists and the likes of Maurice Brinton and Cornelius Castoriadis. And it is nice to reread the material and discover new works – so I’m quite excited by the project.
It is fun reading council communists repeat anarchist notions – often using the same words and terms – while also denouncing anarchism and syndicalism. Not to mention defending the old Marxist tactics of Parliamentarianism and (centralised) trade unionism as fine for the previous phase of capitalism but now useless for the new one – while admitting the barriers these bodies they had spent so long building now posed for the revolution! The knots Marxists get into to avoid admitting Marx was wrong and Bakunin right…
Still, at least they learned from experience – which is more than can be said for the Leninists (who sought to repeat social democratic tactics which produced opportunism) and the Trotskyists (who sought to repeat the tactics which produced Stalinism).
So that is the main reason for the lack of blogging – more details on the project once I get a better idea of the texts which will be included. As may be expected, I have gathered far more than the word count allows and will need to be very selective. But I aim to include something from anarchists whom we do not hear much from these days or who have not been translated as much as they should be. Also, I need to make sure it does not become a syndicalism reader – another project I would like to do, but that is another story…
So, the title. Thanos – for those with no links to popular culture – is the big bad from the latest Avengers movie (google it…). His goal, to get all the infinity stones in order to randomly eliminate half the universe’s population to end pressure on resources. Excellent movie – with an impressive ending for a mainstream film. Also, Antman and The Wasp is fun – but that is beside the point.
So what has Thanos to do with anarchism? Nothing, but his argument is that of Malthus – someone anarchists have spent some time refuting. Indeed, the first edition of his book on population saw Malthus name-check William Godwin in the sub-title. So the work – and its argument – was directed against socialism, arguing that human misery was not caused by social institutions but rather because numbers of people exceeded available resources. As Kropotkin summarised in Fields, Factories and Workshops:
“Few books have exercised so pernicious an influence upon the general development of economic thought as Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population exercised for three consecutive generations. It appeared at the right time, like all books which have had any influence at all, and it summed up ideas already current in the minds of the wealth-possessing minority. It was precisely when the ideas of equality and liberty, awakened by the French and American revolutions, were still permeating the minds of the poor, while the richer classes had become tired of their amateur excursions into the same domains, that Malthus came to assert, in reply to Godwin, that no equality is possible; that the poverty of the many is not due to institutions, but is a natural law. Population, he wrote, grows too rapidly and the new-comers find no room at the feast of nature; and that law cannot be altered by any change of institutions. He thus gave to the rich a kind of scientific argument against the ideas of equality; and we know that though all dominion is based upon force, force itself begins to totter as soon as it is no longer supported by a firm belief in its own rightfulness. As to the poorer classes — who always feel the influence of ideas circulating at a given time amid the wealthier classes — it deprived them of the very hope of improvement; it made them sceptical as to the promises of the social reformers; and to this day the most advanced reformers entertain doubts as to the possibility of satisfying the needs of all, in case there should be a claim for their satisfaction, and a temporary welfare of the labourers resulted in a sudden increase of population.”
Proudhon has a chapter in volume two on System of Economic Contradictions on Population, not to mention his article “The Malthusians”. The latter is (justly) the better known (not least because its been translated into English!), but in 1846 Proudhon made the very sensible point that humans do not just gather food – rather, we produce. So the basic assumption of Malthus that food grows more slowly than population is simply not true – humans act to increase the food supply by their labour, their intelligence, their co-operation. They place crops into the same location, invent tools and processes to aid the production process, and so on. Kropotkin echoed this in 1887:
“Sufficient importance is not given to the difference between the struggle which goes on among organisms which do not co-operate for providing the means of subsistence, and those which do so. In this last case again there must be some confusion between those aggregates whose members find their means of subsistence in the ready produce of the vegetable and animal kingdom, and those whose members artificially grow their means of subsistence and are enabled to increase (to a yet unknown amount) the productivity of each spot of the surface of the globe. Hunters who hunt, each of them for his own sake, and the hunters who unite into societies for hunting, stand quite differently with regard to the means of subsistence. But the difference is still greater between the hunters who take their means of subsistence as they are in nature, and civilised men who grow their food and produce all requisites for a comfortable life by machinery. In this last case—the stock of potential energy in nature being little short of infinite in comparison with the present population of scientific knowledge; so that for human beings who are in possession of scientific knowledge, and co-operate for the artificial production of the means of subsistence and comfort, the law is quite the reverse to that of Malthus.”
Which is the first thing Thanos gets wrong – people are not just mouths, they are workers. So eliminating half the mouths means eliminating a sizeable number of the people who produce what goes into those mouths (either directly or indirectly). That is going to cause more misery.
Interestingly, Malthus in his economic works claims that supply does not generate its own demand and that oversupply can lead the economy to recession, arguing that the economy tends to move towards recessions because productivity grows more quickly than demand. He suggested increasing government spending and private investment on luxuries to cure recessions. That he was a wealthy man himself, a member of the idle class, suggests a vested interest in his advice…
Still, we have the contradiction of his views on population and his views on economics – well, no contradiction really as both positions are premised on defence of his class position. The first is an attack on socialism, the second is a defence of class society. That they conclude contrary things is apparently beside the point… but defenders of capitalism always end up in contradiction for they are defending a contradictory system, usually for self-interested reasons.
Which brings me to the second thing Thanos gets wrong. His solution completely ignores class and the distribution of wealth. After all, randomly getting rid of half the population leaves ownership intact. People in most societies go hungry not because of lack of food but lack of resources to buy it. So income inequality and wealth distribution cannot be ignored without seriously misunderstanding the nature of the problem – and real solutions to it. So, for example, a few mouths can monopolise resources at the expense of others and land which could be used for farming is used by the local lord for deer hunting. So reducing population without transforming the distribution of resources solves little…
Which brings me to the final thing Thanos gets wrong. He acts on behalf of people rather than encouraging them to act for themselves to change society and themselves. George Barrett puts it best:
“Even if you could overthrow the Government to-morrow and establish Anarchism, the same system would soon grow up again.
“This objection is quite true, except that we do not propose to overthrow the Government to-morrow. If I (or we as a group of Anarchists) came to the conclusion that I was to be the liberator of humanity, and if by some means I could manage to blow up the King, the Houses of Lords and Commons, the police force, and, in a word, all persons and institutions which make up the Government — if I were successful in all this, and expected to see the people enjoying freedom ever afterwards as a result, then, no doubt, I should find myself greatly mistaken.
“The chief results of my action would be to arouse an immense indignation on the part of the majority of the people, and a reorganisation by them of all the forces of government.
“The reason why this method would fail is very easy to understand. It is because the strength of the Government rests not with itself, but with the people. A great tyrant may be a fool, and not a superman. His strength lies not in himself, but in the superstition of the people who think that it is right to obey him. So long as that superstition exists it is useless for some liberator to cut off the head of tyranny; the people will create another, for they have grown accustomed to rely on something outside themselves.
“Suppose, however, that the people develop, and become strong in their love of liberty, and self-reliant, then the foremost of its rebels will overthrow tyranny, and backed by the general sentiment of their age their action will never be undone. Tyranny will never be raised from the dead, A landmark in the progress of humanity will have been passed and put behind for ever.
“So the Anarchist rebel when he strikes his blow at Governments understands that he is no liberator with a divine mission to free humanity, but he is a part of that humanity struggling onwards towards liberty.
“If, then, by some external means an Anarchist Revolution could be, so to speak, supplied ready-made and thrust upon the people, it is true that they would reject it and rebuild the old society. If, on the other hand, the people develop their ideas of freedom, and then themselves get rid of the last stronghold of tyranny — the Government — then indeed the Revolution will be permanently accomplished.”
Thanos is reducing population from above (by genocide, effectively), leaving everything else the same – not least the ideas in people’s heads and the social hierarchies they reflect. The only way to limit population growth is through women’s liberation – when they refuse to be baby-machines and take control of their own bodies. As population figures in, say, Western Europe prove. Being a male supervillain, I guess that would not be at the top of his agenda…
Perhaps it comes as no surprise that a giant purple mad tyrant lacks an analysis of hierarchy and class? After all, we are talking about a superhero movie….
As an aside, I mention this obvious point because I remember when V for Vendetta came out that some Marxists wrote serious articles on how this superhero movie exposed the flaws in anarchism. They did not seem to realise, first, they were talking about a superhero movie rather than real events and, second, propaganda by the deed was never a mainstream anarchist tactic and was rightly abandoned. Still, I guess forgetting they were discussing a superhero movie is the greater crime than discussing events of over a hundred years ago as if they were current… (oh, the movie is not great – read the comic book, far better entertainment which does make some good anarchist points within the confines of the superhero genre. But, then, Alan Moore is an anarchist….).
Needless to say, Thanos follows Malthus in taking the class system as a given – and fails to note that, say, landless peasants seizing the lands of aristocrats would instantly increase the resources available to grow food.
Also, of course, there is the awkward fact that Malthus has been proven wrong on population since his book was first published in 1878. Proudhon’s critique has been confirmed – as Kropotkin noted, population has increased along with wealth. Still, its utility for indifference in the face of crises caused by a flawed social system will mean it will never go away (which is why there is a section on the population myth in An Anarchist FAQ).
Finally, I should note that Malthus did inspire Darwin and the theory of natural selection which suggests even flawed theories can have some positive influence. But, as Kropotkin noted, natural selection need not mean atomised competition within groups or species, it can produce co-operative activity — and, ultimately, feelings of justice, sympathy and ethics. Kropotkin, then, came from the Russian scientific tradition which Daniel Todes discusses well in his book Darwin without Malthus, which recognised the cultural and class baises within Darwin and his work — while not denying its importance. For more details, see my Mutual Aid: An Introduction and Evaluation
Anyway, I’m sure more could be written — but time is pressing and I have other things to do. Yes, there are far more important things going on than superhero movies but we all need a break once in a while – and Malthus and his spurious arguments always resurface. And, more importantly, if I cannot write about what I like then it’s not my revolution!
Until I blog again, be seeing you…