On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 2:21 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1@gmail.com> wrote:

Hiya,

Oh, wonderful... another Hobbesian critique of autonomy... just what
the world needs :-(

The theoretical error here is confusing the idea of self-organising
networks with the much more widespread, older, and more insidious idea
of a natural order. The ideas are similar in that they both posit a
certain form of organisation which, if realised and then left to its
own devices, will be stable. Where they differ, is that the old idea
of natural order implies some kind of equilibrium model. In fact if
we want to trace this idea we have to go at least as far back as
Aristotle, who also believed that everything in the world has a
'natural' function and if everything fulfilled its function, the world
would be a harmonious order.

Of course this view is very helpful for the process known as
'naturalisation' in discourse analysis: taking a contingent social
fact and insulating it from critique by declaring it to be 'natural'
(gender relations, heteronormativity, racial hierarchies, poverty,
class differences and so on). The trick is that the 'natural'
situation still has to be actively socially constructed, and relies on
hierarchy and violence to keep it in place. This is what's going on
in the South African case discussed.

Hence the criticism is conflating self-organising networks with the
equilibrium model of natural order, and the use of naturalisation in
discourse. A self-organising network is neither of these things for
two reasons: 1) by definition it does not require a hierarchy to keep
it in place, 2) it is a complex system and not a fixed order, ranking
or equilibrium. (That's not to say that complexity theory doesn't
have its own skeletons in the closet - TBH I was expecting at least
some reference to the sins of cybernetics here - Curtis isn't doing
his research as well as he might).

The 'Green movement = Romanticism' or 'Green movement = conservative
views of natural order' trick has been pulled many times before.
There was a certain love of the countryside and concern for
conservation in pro-peasant Romanticism and rural aristocratic
conservatism, but it's not much like Green thought, because the vision
of nature is radically different, so too is the politics, and anyway,
the main concern is with the virtues of peasants or aristocrats -
conservation is almost an afterthought, keeping the rural folk in
their 'natural environment'. It's possible to write a history of
ecological concern in that direction, but it's also possible to write
one which goes through Morris, Kropotkin and other figures of the left
(even Marx talks about alienation from nature).

Note also that if we're playing reductio ad hitlerum (South Africa
count as Nazi?), this author's stance can just as easily be debunked
the same way, i.e. people who believe nature is a Hobbesian chaos
quite often end up as control-freak eugenicists and ecocidal maniacs
(Herbert Spencer comes to mind); people who believe social movements
need strong organisation and leadership are repeating what the
Stalinists did in Russia, and are going to shoot us like partridges or
betray us like in Spain; the view of power as definitive in social
life is shared with Carl Schmitt, who of course is a Nazi, etc etc.
Seriously, an authoritarian Hobbesian does not want to start that
particular game, particularly when arguing with anarchists (who are
measurably the furthest possible one can be from Nazis on political
compass - guaranteeing that whoever is using the argument is closer).

The part of the article on Biosphere is a grotesque misreading... all
that it shows is that scientists don't (yet) know enough about how the
elements in an ecosystem interrelate to be able to build an ecosystem
at this level of complexity. Maybe this is a case for further
scientific research, maybe it's a case for trusting local knowledge
over modern science when dealing with complex local systems. I'd add
that scientists *have* created homeostatic ecosystems in jars
involving only a handful of species (I've seen one on display in a
science centre). Here we are:
http://www.mlms.logan.k12.ut.us/science/BioJar.html Hence very bad
attempt to discredit a concept.

Old leftists are very twitchy about the newest wave of social
movements - if not downright hostile, and it's always attached to this
same kind of suspicion that 1) they don't realise the need for
discipline/authority/strong organisations and 2) they're really
Thatcherites in disguise, too caught-up in self-expression to do
'serious' politics'. It's really the same as the objections of old
rightists, which far more explicitly whine about lost authority and
the breakdown of values and how 'selfish' people are and 'in my day
they'd all have been hung from the railings by their gonads'. The
leftist version is an echo of the same discourse, with the same
objections to contemporary society and its social movements. I think
it's partly a psychological problem and partly a generational problem.
In fact there was a characteristic of the old pre-60s 'consensus'
which has broken down, a kind of unquestioning acceptance of authority
and discipline, and to someone who still believes in this lost world
of proto-fascism which was shattered by the 60s rebellions, the New
Left and New Right look strangely similar. Hence the tropes we see
here: new social movements = irresponsible individualism and refusal
of normativity, autonomy = managerialism, social movements need
discipline to be effective (instrumentalism vs expressionism), and a
world without a strong boss to tell everyone what to do isn't going to
work because the world just doesn't work that way goddamnit it'd be
anarchy.

It's a product of a desire for a strong 'trunk' and arborescent
structures which is either a psychological disposition (think either
'Authoritarian Personality' and 'Fear of Freedom', or else maybe
certain Myers-Briggs types), or a learnt cultural disposition which
these people are having trouble unlearning (this is what they were
socialised into, they were 'good subjects' then, and they hate the
fact that they're not 'good subjects' any more, even though they've
always just about played by the rules they were socialised into, that
for them are 'just the way it is'). I've seen it a thousand times, it
comes up whenever networked protest groups or direct action or the
Black Bloc or subcultural deviance or any freedom vs collectivism
dispute comes up, and it's almost identical in structure every single
time. It's not a good idea to take it too seriously, because these
types seem pre-programmed to be unreflexive about the origins of their
own assumptions, and therefore are unable to justify their selection
of this particular set of assumptions - it isn't a conscious choice,
it's a reflex.

The real struggle now is not within the old industrial economy (old
right vs old left) but within the new
creative/informational/precarious economy (new right / new Third Way
vs new left / newest social movements), and the way these kinds who
want to go back to the old industrial economy relate to this struggle
is invariably reactionary: their 'need' for greater order is met by
the right-wing side of the current struggle, and they're therefore
drawn into it on the 'wrong' side, even if precariously so.

bw
Andy

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 6:40 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sam,
>
> I hope you survived the tornado?
>
> I hope some of our participants can react to this very interesting challenge
> from Adam Curtis in the Guardian,
>
> Michel
>
> On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 9:50 PM, Kevin Flanagan <kev.flanagan@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> How the 'ecosystem' myth has been used for sinister means - Adam
>> Curtis - Guardian
>>
>> When, in the 1920s, a botanist and a field marshal dreamed up rival
>> theories of nature and society, no one could have guessed their ideas
>> would influence the worldview of 70s hippies and 21st-century protest
>> movements. But their faith in self-regulating systems has a sinister
>> history
>>
>>
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/29/adam-curtis-ecosystems-tansley-smuts
>>
>> Episode 1 of his current documentary is up on youtube
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX5jImWRREc
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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