[Amazon link to book can be found on the right hand side of this page, alphabetically by title]
Book epigraph:
For all who are able to envision
a free, just, and compassionate world,
and who, like Reclus,
dedicate their lives
to creating such a world
Select excerpts:
[Please note that the text up to page 100 is that of the editors. The selected writings of Reclus start on page 102]
For Reclus, social disequilibrium arises from the lack of freedom and from the attempt to impose a static order on a dynamic social milieu. He agrees with Proudhon that freedom is "the mother, not the daughter of order," and he adds that domination necessarily engenders disorder. Finally, despite the strongly communitarian dimension of Reclus' anarchism, it is "the human person, the primary element of society," that is the source of "the creative will that constructs and reconstructs the world." It is his hope that this creative freedom will lead humanity to a future society based on free association, which will synthesize social harmony and equilibrium with social diversity and spontaneity. [p.6]
Indeed, his anarchism can be seen as the ultimate Protestant revolt against tow of the most dominant religions of the modern age: the deification of capital and the worship of the state. [p.8]
The situation parallels in some ways the reception of social ecology and radical political ecology today. Such perspectives are sometimes granted validity to the extent that they point out that "all things are connected," including ecological and social realities, but they often lose credibility when they begin to explore the nature of that connection -- and dare to find the roots of the ecological crisis in the existence of the centralized nation-state and the corporate capitalist economy. [This is a weak point in Ken Wilber's Integral Theory.]
Such parallels should not be surprising, for the connections between Reclus' social geography and social ecology in particular are in many ways quite striking. To the extent that social ecology remains radically dialectical, one of its fundamental interpretive principles is the concept that every phenomenon incorporates within itself the history of that phenomenon. Reclus uses much the same concept to guide his social geography when he observes that "present-day society contains within itself all past societies." He also applies it to human nature, expressing a variation on the idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. In his formulation, "man recollects in his structure everything that his ancestors lived through during the vast expanse of ages. He indeed epitomizes in himself all that preceded him in existence, just as, in his embryonic life, he presents successively various forms of organization that are more simple than his own." [p.18]
In his time, much of the radical opposition to the dominant order was fueled by a sense of injustice and outrage at the oppression and exploitation produced by that system. While this opposition certainly had an authentic ethical dimension, it also succumbed to the reactive mentality and spirit of resentment that Nietzsche so perceptively diagnosed in many versions of socialism, communism, and anarchism. Reclus' outlook achieves a remarkable synthesis between, on the one hand, the concern for justice, knowledge and rationality, and on the other hand, the need for social solidarity and the development of care and compassion. In this, he has much in common with contemporary feminist ethicists who wish to restore the balance between these two sets of concerns.
Reclus' conception of love and solidarity is also relevant to issues in contemporary ecophilosophy. While various recent theorists have offered "identification" with nature as an antidote to anthropocentric attitudes and practices, such proposals have sometimes remained on a rather idealistic level at which identification has the character of an act of will, if not that of a leap of faith. Reclus is closer to the position of social ecology and bioregionalism on this issue, as in many other areas. For him, it is our growing knowledge (in the sense of both savoir, understanding; and connaitre, being acquainted with) of the earth and its human and nonhuman communities that offers an expanded scope for identification and solidarity. As we come to know each realm more adequately, we achieve greater identification with our own species, identification with all the inhabitants of the planet, and finally, as "the conscience of the earth," identification with the living, evolving planet itself. In this insight, Reclus anticipated some of the most profound dimensions of contemporary ecological thought. [p.33-34]
Although the myth of progress has taken on myriad forms over the ages, it has remained powerful through much of the history of Western civilization. Indeed, in various guises it has constituted the dominant myth of modernity. Even radical critics of existing society have had difficulty challenging it, and the classical anarchist thinkers, including Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Reclus, were no exception. Indeed, they sometimes rivaled their capitalist and statist opponents in their confidence in the inexorable advance toward a better future. When one examines Reclus' view of history, one is struck by the strongly progressive nature of his thought. In this, he seems to be quintessentially modern in his thought, imagination, and sensibility.
Nevertheless, Reclus distinguishes himself among classical radical theorists by the complex nature of his conception of progress. On the most overt level, he is a strong partisan of the concept and seeks to defend it against those who would use it on behalf of injustice and oppression. He recognizes that since the French Revolution the idea of progress has often been used as an ideological justification for elitism, class domination, imperialism, and other evils. Reclus attempts to rescue the concept from those who have betrayed it in this way, but on a deeper level, he questions the idea of progress itself. He refuses to interpret any given historical event, movement, institution, or tendency as being simply and unequivocally progressive. Instead, he takes a dialectical approach in which every historical phenomenon is seen as embodying in itself many contradictory moments. Thus, all such phenomena can be seen as having both progressive and regressive elements that require careful analysis if one is to understand their significance and assess accurately their dominant tendency. [p.35]
Reclus vastly underestimates the need of human beings to create illusions to deal with the eternal problems of human existence: pain, suffering, death, losses of all kinds, the search for identity, the quest for meaning. Like almost all classical radical theorists, he has an inadequate grasp of some of the most important spiritual, existential, and psychological dimensions of the human condition. He also devotes little attention to the deep-seated human striving for power that has been explored by the Hegelian, Nietzschean, and Lananian traditions but has been generally neglected by most radical social thought, including much of the anarchist tradition. Consequently, he fails to consider adequately the ways in which ideals like "anarchy," "communism," or even his cherished "brotherhood" and "solidarity," not to mention "science," "reason," and "progress," could themselves so easily be distorted ideologically. [p.44]
Of course, the consciousness of global unity that Reclus hoped for was in his own time, and largely remains today, in only a rudimentary state. Yet he would argue that social and technological developments have nevertheless created objective conditions that help form the basis for such a planetary consciousness. He does not underestimate the obstacles to overcoming ideological distortions of this consciousness and to transforming it into effective social praxis, yet he is able (perhaps in an act of modernist, progressivist faith) to see profound, indeed revolutionary implications in the slowly growing awareness of the interconnections between all terrestrial phenomena. [p.49]
He posits a close relationship between this knowledge (which Hegel calls "world historical" but which in the spirit of Reclus we might call "earth-historical") and the expansion of freedom. For Reclus, history exhibits a certain order and 'logic of events," the knowledge of which allows us to play a more active and creative role in determining our own destiny. To the degree that we broaden our grasp of historical development and the diversity of human possibilities, we transcend any "strict line of development" determined by environmental and hereditary factors. [p.50, It appears that Reclus did not foresee the danger in increasing specialization and manipulation.]
"Anarchy" is the entire sphere of human life that takes place outside the boundaries of arche, or domination. He [Reclus] states in the preface to the 1892 French edition of Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread that "anarchistic society has long been in a process of rapid development," for it can be found "wherever free thought breaks loose from the chains of dogma; wherever the spirit of inquiry rejects the old formulas; wherever the human will asserts itself through independent actions; wherever honest people, rebelling against all enforced discipline, join freely together in order to educate themselves, and to reclaim, without any master, their share of life, and the complete satisfaction of their needs." In effect, the entire history of the struggle for human collective self-realization constitutes anarchy, though it is often "unaware of itself." [p.53]
The former [anarchistic society] has "authentic organization, spontaneous, attractive association that constantly adapts to the changes in persons and things," while the latter [State run society] consists of "a forced juxtaposition that is opposed by continual tendencies to disjoin the parts. The former ...is precisely the kind that by the very fact of its liberty remains centripetal, while the latter, held together only by regulations, is made up of centrifugal elements." [p.53]
Its [the Paris Commune] flaw was that rather than becoming a fully developed experiment in municipal liberty, and thus a model for other such experiments, it began to reinstitute the form of the state. The problem was that the necessary "evolution" had not taken place prior to the "revolution." The revolutionaries were still too much under the influence of traditional centralist, authoritarian politics to create a new, radically libertarian regime. [p.64-65]
It is only when cities become expressions of the collective self-realization of all the citizens that they can possibly be renewed and regenerated. Only then can they become "perfectly healthy and beautiful organic bodies." In short, the city can attain freedom, justice, beauty, and cooperation only when the social revolution achieves these goals for society as a whole. [p.66, While I don't necessarily disagree, I don't see the revolution occurring anytime soon. As a consequence, perhaps the "city" should be formed first.]
The defenders of the status quo proclaim the eternal rule of "the law of the blind and brutal struggle for existence," but it will be succeeded by another law, that of "the grouping of weak individualities into organisms more and more developed, learning to defend themselves against the enemy forces, to recognize the resources of their environments, even to create new ones." Thus mutual aid, allied with human intelligence, will once again show itself to be a force for social evolution. [p.66-67]
He [Reclus] did not seem to grasp fully the importance of developing a "pre-revolutionary" practice of libertarian and communitarian social life in areas like production, consumption, and cooperative living that would prepare the way for a more thorough transformation of society. [p.67]
A final area in which Reclus made a strong positive conception [contribution?] to anarchist thought is the sphere of education. It is surprising that he has not been more widely recognized as one of the most important figures in the history of libertarian education, for many concepts often associated with Bakunin, Tolstoy, Ferrer, and other libertarian educational theorists were also proposed, and developed with at least as much originality, in his writings. Reclus' conception of education focuses on the ideal of the free self-realization of the child. His ideas are in some ways reminiscent of Rousseau and also prefigure Montessori, Dewey, and other later reformers. He sees the primary objective of education as being to "help the child develop in conformity with the logic of its own nature. There is no need for any goal other than drawing forth in the young intellect that which it already possessed in an unconscious form, and to assist religiously with the interior labors of that intellect, without any hurry, and without drawing premature conclusions. He sees this process of creating the conditions conducive to such natural unfolding as involving more than merely the intellect. Here, as in other areas, Reclus' approach is dialectical and holistic. He recommends that practical, physical endeavors always be combined with intellectual ones and stresses that fact that education must involve both the body and the mind. He says that if both intellectual abilities and "skill and muscular energy" are given due attention, there will be a "natural balance of power" in the developing human being. The child's development also requires adequate motivation, so his or her interests, imagination, and "passion" must be encouraged. Fortunately, Reclus says, the educator has a powerful ally in pursuing this end -- play. In his words, "free amusement is one of the great educators of man." [p.71]
It must be added that for Reclus, formal education is only one aspect of a larger process of libertarian education -- education for social self-realization -- within society as a whole. He explains that "the ideal of the anarchists is not to eliminate the school, but rather to enlarge it, to make society itself into a great body for mutual instruction, where all will be at once pupils and professors, where each child, after having received 'the basics' in primary education will learn to develop himself integrally, according to his own intellectual capacities, in the existence that he has chosen for himself.
Reclus' ideas concerning formal education are thus an application of his more general theory of the development of liberatory consciousness and practice within society. They reflect what has often been seen, with good reason, as one of the great strengths of his political thought: his analysis of the close relation between revolutionary change at the level of social institutions and prior evolutionary change at the level of personal life, values, and social practices. [p.73]
And to the extent that the legitimacy of the state has indeed eroded, its place has often been taken by other modes of domination, including the form that is given the most extensive attention in Reclus' own analysis -- economic exploitation. [p.82]
In analyzing the destructive aspects of capital, Reclus considers arguments that concentration of property has fostered economic and technological progress, and that economies of scale have increased productivity. He holds that if one looks at the concentration from the standpoint of social geography rather than from that of economic rationality, the results are seen as detrimental to both human society and to nature. In his words, "the devouring of the surrounding land by the large estates is hardly less disastrous than fire and other devastations" since "it produces the same end result, which is the ruin not only of populations but also frequently of the land itself." With stinging irony he notes that "intelligent large landholders can no doubt train excellent farm hands, and they will certainly have domestics of impeccable correctness," but they make no contribution to social progress since they produce "subjects" rather than dignified equals." Reclus the social geographer once again shows how the ecological and the social (in this case degradation of the land and degradation of character) are intimately interrelated and result from the same root causes. [p.83]
Indeed, Reclus foresees the coming ascendancy of a world economic system pervaded by a global culture of economistic [spell check does not recognize as a word; perhaps it should] values. This culture, he notes, is already entrenched in societies of the West. He remarks that "for the typical civilized European, or better yet, the North American, the essential thing is to train oneself to pursue monetary gain, with the goal of commanding others by means of the omnipotence of money. One's power increases in direct proportion to one's economic resources." Such a system of values is dominant in countries with European cultures but is spreading across the globe. He notes its influence in "those countries of Asia that have developed in the direction of the ideal world of economies, and in all other parts of the world that are carried along by the example of Europe and its all-powerful will." It would not be surprising to Reclus to find that today countries of East Asia have been integrated into the core of the world system. [p.84-85]
Reclus attacks the existing system of education as a process of training children to fit well into institutions based on egoism, domination, and unthinking obedience. Through its hierarchical structure this system teaches competition for personal advantage rather than cooperation in pursuit of the general good. The students, "from their first lesson, learn that they are rivals and combatants. They are told in every way that the prizes to be won are few in number, and that one must snatch them away from one's comrades, not only by superior talent, but, when possible, by trickery, by force, by cabals and schemes, by the basest sort of machinations, or by prayers to St. Anthony of Padua." The goal is to convince the students that all sorts of future honors and benefits can be achieved if they are willing to fight for them and destroy others in the process. Humanity and solidarity are undermined for the sake of "these symbols." Just as a system of libertarian education is necessary to create a community of free, compassionate, and cooperative human beings, a system of authoritarian education is essential to the production of a hierarchical society of dominant and submissive individuals. [p.95]
On this topic [of simply replacing one set of rulers with another set] it might be appropriate to repeat the line from Victor Hugo: "There is an age-old human instinct that leads to turpitude." [p.122]
More than three thousand years ago the Hindu poet of the Mahabharata expressed the wisdom of the centuries on this subject: "He who rides in a chariot will never be the friend of the one who goes on foot!" [p.122]
It is in fact our struggle against all official power that distinguishes us most essentially. Each individuality seems to us to be the center of the universe and each has the same right to its integral development, without interference from any power that supervises, reprimands or castigates it. [p.123]
Each of you knows, if only by hearsay, of schools in which the professor, disregarding harsh regulations, treats all the pupils as friends and cordial colleagues. Everything required to get the little rascals under control is provided by the proper authorities, but their big friend has no need for all that paraphernalia of repression. He treats the children like human beings, constantly appealing to their good will, to their understanding of things, and to their sense of justice. And they all respond joyfully. A miniscule society that is anarchistic and truly humane is thus created, even though everything in the larger world seems to be in league to prevent its being born -- laws, regulations, bad examples, and public immortality. [p.130]
On the other hand, if there is any form of society that is illusory and impossible, it is the pandemonium in which we now live. [p.130]
Each transformation of matter and each realization of an idea is, during its actual process of change, thwarted by the inertia of the environment. [p.139]
Nothing good can possibly come to us from the republic and the successful "republicans," that is, those who gain power. To hope otherwise would be to accept a historical absurdity, utter nonsense. The class that possesses and governs is inevitably the enemy of all progress. The vehicle of modern thought and of intellectual and moral evolution is that part of society which struggles, labors, and is oppressed. It is that part which develops and realizes the idea and which, with great difficulty, constantly set the chariot of society in motion, while conservatives endlessly try to stall it or bog it down. [p.145]
In no modern revolution have the privileged been known to fight their own battles. They always depend on armies of poor people, whom they indoctrinate with the so-called religion of the flag and drill in the so-called maintenance of order. [p.149]
The wicked, depraved, and decadent will consume and corrupt themselves more rapidly in a milieu obsessed with pleasure or indeed fallen into decay. However, there others with better motives, who wish to learn, who seek opportunities to think, to improve themselves, to blossom into writers or artists or even the apostles of some truth. They turn reverently toward museums, schools, and libraries, and renew their ideals through contact with others who are equally in the thrall of great things. [p.166, Does the latter exist in contemporary times?]
Around Bamberg, the density reaches 180 [persons per square kilometer], even though the terrain onto which this mass of people is crowded was originally of little value. As a mixture of sand and peat, it was only suitable for growing conifers; nevertheless, it has been transformed into garden soil of unsurpassed quality. [p.183]
As soon as an institution is established, even if it should be only to combat flagrant abuses, it creates them anew through its very existence. It has to adapt to its bad environment, and in order to function, it must do so in a pathological way. Whereas the creators of the institution follow only noble ideals, the employees that they appoint must consider above all their remuneration and the continuation of their employment. [p.192]
The study of the interconnected facts and laws revealed by contemporary science, the rapid transformation of society, new conditions in the environment, and the need for mental balance in those attracted to the search for truth -- all this creates for the young a milieu completely different from that entailed by a traditional society with its slow and painful evolution. It is true that the representatives of ancient monopolies also gain recruits, especially among those who, tired of suffering for their ideas, finally want to try out the joys and privileges of this world, to eat when they are hungry and take their turn living as parasites. [p.196]
It is through the phenomena of human activity in the arenas of labor, agriculture, industry, commerce, study, education, and discovery that subjugated peoples gradually succeed in liberating themselves and in gaining complete possession of the individual initiative without which no progress can ever take place. [p.201]
The idea that there has been progress...in the whole of human evolution owes its persuasiveness largely to geological research, which has revealed, if not a "divine plan," as it was once called, a natural evolution that gradually refines life by means of increasingly complex organisms. [p.212]
But theoretically, when one detaches oneself intellectually from the chaos of conflicting interests, it is easy to see immediately that the true and fundamental conquest, from which all others can logically be derived, it that of procuring bread for all men.... [p.224]
The conquest of bread, which true progress requires, must be an actual conquest. It is not simply a question of eating, but of eating the bread that is due by human right rather than owing to the charity or a great or wealthy monastery. [p.234]
[End notes]
Reclus' comprehensive, critically holistic perspectives relates him to intellectual traditions beyond those that are emphasized in the present discussion. Joel Cornuault points out that Reclus' encyclopedic approach places him in the broader humanistic tradition of scholarship that preceded the extreme scientific specialization we have known since his time. He also mentions as an antecedent the Renaissance humanism of Pico della Mirandola, a reference that is perhaps surprising, but not at all inappropriate, in view of Reclus' often-eloquent affirmation of the beauty and goodness of humanity and nature. Cornuault also relates Reclus' holistic dimension to certain scientific views that were developing in the latter part of the nineteenth century, including the idea of "terrestrial unity" of Vidal de la Blache and the "principle of connection" of Brunhes. [Note 9, p.242]
This distinction was basic to Aristotle's ethics, and was important both for Hegel and for Marx's critique of Hegel on the issue of transformative praxis and the problematic of "the end of prehistory." [Note 29, p.243]