Civilisation, Primitivism and anarchism
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anarchist movement |
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Thursday October 06, 2005 18:10
by Andrew - WSM (personal capacity)
Over the last decade a generalized critique of civilization has been made by a number of authors, mostly based in the USA. Some of these have chosen to identify as anarchists although the more general self-identification is primitivist. There overall argument is that 'civilisation' itself is the problem that results in our failure to live rewarding lives. The struggle for change is thus a struggle against civilization and for an earth where technology has been eliminated.
This primitivist critique of anarchism is based around the claim to have discovered a contradiction between liberty and mass society. In other words they see it as impossible for any society that involves groups much larger than a village to be a free society. If this was true it would make the anarchist proposal of a world of 'free federations of towns, cities and countryside' impossible. Such federations and population centers are obviously a form of mass society/civilisation.
Civilisation, Primitivism and anarchism
Over the last decade a generalized critique of civilization has
been made by a number of authors, mostly based in the USA. Some of
these have chosen to identify as anarchists although the more general
self-identification is primitivist. There overall argument is that
'civilisation' itself is the problem that results in our failure to
live rewarding lives. The struggle for change is thus a struggle
against civilization and for an earth where technology has been
eliminated.
This is an interesting argument that has some merits as an
intellectual exercise. But the problem is that some of its adherents
have used primitivism as a base from which to attack all other
proposals for changing society. Facing this challenge anarchists need
to first look to see if primitivism offers any sort of realistic
alternative to the world as it is.
Our starting point is that the expression 'life is hard' can
always receive the reply that 'it is better than the alternative'.
This provides a good general test of all critiques of the world 'as
it is', including anarchism. Which is to ask if a better alternative
is possible?
Even if we can't point to the 'better alternative', critiques of
the world 'as it is' can have a certain intellectual value. But after
the disaster of the 20th century when so-called alternatives like
Leninism created long lasting dictatorships that killed millions, the
question 'is your alternative any better then what exists?' has to be
put to anyone advocating change.
The primitivist critique of anarchism is based around the claim to
have discovered a contradiction between liberty and mass society. In
other words they see it as impossible for any society that involves
groups much larger than a village to be a free society. If this was
true it would make the anarchist proposal of a world of 'free
federations of towns, cities and countryside' impossible. Such
federations and population centers are obviously a form of mass
society/civilisation.
However the anarchist movement has been answering this very
so-called contradiction since its origins. Back in the 19th century
liberal defenders of the state pointed to such a contradiction in
order to justify the need for one set of men to rule over another.
Michael
Bakunin answered this in 1871 in his essay on 'The Paris Commune
and the Idea of the State"[1].
"It is said that the harmony and universal
solidarity of individuals with society can never be attained in
practice because their interests, being antagonistic, can never be
reconciled. To this objection I reply that if these interest have
never as yet come to mutual accord, it was because the State has
sacrificed the interests of the majority for the benefit of a
privileged minority. That is why this famous incompatibility, this
conflict of personal interests with those of society, is nothing but
a fraud, a political lie, born of the theological lie which invented
the doctrine of original sin in order to dishonor man and destroy his
self-respect. .... We are convinced that all the wealth of man's
intellectual, moral, and material development, as well as his
apparent independence, is the product of his life in society. Outside
society, not only would he not be a free man, he would not even
become genuinely human, a being conscious of himself, the only being
who thinks and speaks. Only the combination of intelligence and
collective labor was able to force man out of that savage and brutish
state which constituted his original nature, or rather the starting
point for his further development. We are profoundly convinced that
the entire life of men - their interests, tendencies, needs,
illusions, even stupidities, as well as every bit of violence,
injustice, and seemingly voluntary activity - merely represent the
result of inevitable societal forces. People cannot reject the idea
of mutual independence, nor can they deny the reciprocal influence
and uniformity exhibiting the manifestations of external nature."
What level of technology
Most primitivists evade the question of what level of technology
they wish to return to by hiding behind the claim that they are not
arguing for a return to anything, on the contrary they want to go
forward. With that in mind a reasonable summary of their position is
that certain technologies are acceptable up to the level of small
village society sustained by hunting and gathering. The problems for
primitivists start with the development of agriculture and mass
society.
Of course civilization is a rather general term, as is technology.
Few of these primitivists have taken this argument to its logical
conclusion. One who has is John Zerzan who identifies the root of the
problem in the evolution of language and abstract thought. This is a
logical end point for the primitivist rejection of mass society.
For the purposes of this article I'm taking as a starting point
that the form of future society that primitivists argue for would be
broadly similar in technological terms to that which existed around
12,000 years ago on earth, at the dawn of the agricultural
revolution. By this I do not claim that they want to 'go back',
something that is in any case impossible. But rather that if you seek
to go forward by getting rid of all the technology of the
agricultural revolution and beyond what results will look quite like
pre-agricultural societies of 10,000 BC. As this is the only example
we have of such a society in operation it seems reasonable to use it
to evaluate the primitivist claims.
A question of numbers
Hunter-gatherers live off the food they can hunt or gather, hence
the name. Animals can be hunted or trapped while fruits, nuts, greens
and roots are gathered. Before about 12,000 years ago every human on
the planet lived as a hunter-gatherer. Today only a tiny number of
people do, in isolated and marginal regions of the planet including
deserts, artic tundra and jungle. Some of these groups like the Acre
have only had contact with the rest of the planet in recent
decades(2), others like the Inuit(3) have had contact for long
periods of time and so have adopted technologies beyond those
developed locally. These latter groups are very much part of the
global civilization and have contributed to the development of new
technologies in this civilization.
In marginal ecosystems hunter-gathering often represents the only
feasible way of producing food. The desert is too dry for sustained
agriculture and the arctic too cold. The only other possibility is
pastoralism, the reliance on semi-domesticated animals as a food
source. For instance in the Scandinavian arctic the Sami(4) control
the movement of huge reindeer herds to provide a regular food source.
Hunter-gatherers survive on the food they hunt and gather. This
requires very low population densities as population growth is
limited by the need to avoid over hunting. Too much gathering of food
plants can also serve to reduce the number of plants that are
available in the future. This is the core problem with the
primitivist idea that the whole planet could live as
hunter-gatherers: there is not nearly enough food produced in natural
ecosystems for even a fraction of the current population of the world
to do so.
It should be obvious that the amount of calories available to
humans as food in an acre of oak forest will be a lot lower then the
amount of calories available to humans in an acre of corn.
Agriculture provides far, far more useful calories per acre than
hunter gathering in the same acre would. That is because we have
spent 12,000 years selecting plants and improving agricultural
techniques so that per acre we cram in lots of productive plants that
put their energy into producing plant parts that are food for us
rather then plant parts that are not food for us. Compare any
cultivated grain with its wild relative and you will see an
illustration of this, the cultivated form will have much bigger
grains and a much larger proportion of grain to stalk and foliage. We
have chosen plants that produce a high ratio of edible biomass.
In other words a pine tree may be as good or better then a lettuce
at capturing the solar energy that falls on it. But with the lettuce
a huge percentage of the captured energy goes into food (around 75%).
With pine tree none of the energy produces food we can eat. Compare
the amount of food to be found in a nearby woodland with the amount
you can grow in a couple of square meters of garden cultivated in
even an organic low energy fashion and you'll see why agriculture is
a must have for the population of the planet. An acre of organically
grown potato can yield 15,000 lbs of food(5). A a square that is 70
yards wide and 70 yards long measures just over an acre.
The estimated population of human on the earth before the advent
of agriculture (10,000 BC) varies with some estimates as low as
250,000 (6) Other estimates for the pre-agricultural hunter gather
population are more generous, in the range of 6 to 10 million.(7).
The earth's current population is nearing 6,000 million.
This 6,000 million are almost all supported by agriculture. They
could not be supported by hunter gathering, indeed it is suggested
that even the 10 million hunter gathers who may have existed before
agriculture may have been a non sustainable number. Evidence for this
can be seen in the Pleistocene overkill(8), a period from 12,000 to
10,000 BC in which 200 genera of large mammals went extinct. In the
Americas in this period over 80% of the population of large mammals
became extinct.(9) That this was due to over hunting is one
controversial hypothesis. If correct than the advent of agriculture
(and civilisation) may even have then due to the absence of large
game which forced hunter gathers to 'settle down' and find other ways
of obtaining food.
Certainly in recorded history the same over hunting has been
observed with the arrival of man on isolated Polynesian islands. Over
hunting caused the extinction of the Dodo in Mauretania and the Moa
in New Zealand not to mention many less famous species.
Living in the bog in winter
Another way of looking at the fact that primitivism cannot support
all of the people of the planet is more anecdotal and uses Ireland
(where I live) as an example. Left to itself the Irish countryside
would consist mostly of mature oak forest with some hazel scrub and
bogs. Go into an oak forest and see how much food you can gather - if
you know your stuff there is some. Acorns, fruit on brambles in
clearings, some wild garlic, strawberries, edible fungi, wild honey,
and the meat from animals like deer, squirrel, wild goat and pigeon
that can be hunted. But this is many, many, many fewer calories then
the same area cultivated as wheat or potatoes would yield. There is
simply not enough land in Ireland to support 5 million, the current
population of the island, as hunter gatherers.
Typically hunter gathers live at a population density of 1 per 10
square km. (Ireland's present population density is around 500 per 10
square km or 500 times this). By extending this standard calculation
from elsewhere on the planet the number that could be supported in
Ireland would be less then 70,000. Probably a lot less as only 20% of
Ireland is arable land. Blanket bog or Burren karst provide little in
the way of food useful for humans. In winter there would be very
little food to be gathered (perhaps small caches of nuts hidden by
squirrels and some wild honey) and that even 70,000 people living off
hunting would eradicate the large mammals (deer, wild goat) very
quickly. The coastal areas and larger rivers and lakes would be the
main source of hunting and some gathering in the form of shellfish
and edible seaweed.
But being generous and assuming that somehow Ireland could sustain
70,000 hunter gatherers we discover we need to 'reduce' the
population by some 4,930,000. Or 98.6%. The actual archaeological
estimates for the population of Ireland before the arrival of
agriculture is around 7,000 people.
The idea that a certain amount of land can support a certain
amount of people according to how it is (or in this case is not)
cultivated is referred to as its 'carrying capacity'. This can be
estimated for the earth as a whole. One modern calculation for hunter
gathers actually give you 100 million as the maximum figure but just
how much of a maximum this is becomes clear when you realize that
using similar methods gives 30 billion as the maximum farming
figure.(10) That would be six times the world's current population!
But let's take this figure of 100 million as the maximum rather
then the historical maximum of 10 million. This is generous estimate,
well above that of those primitivists who have dared to address this
issue. For instance Miss Ann Thropy writing in the US Earth First!
magazine estimated, "Ecotopia would be a planet with about 50
million people who are hunting and gathering for subsistence."
(11)
The earth's population today is around 6000 million. A return to a
'primitive' earth therefore requires that some 5900 million people
disappear. Something has to happen to 98% of the world's population
in order for the 100 million survivors to have even the slightest
hope of a sustainable primitive utopia.
Dirty tricks?
At this point some primitivist writers like John Moore cry foul,
dismissing the suggestion "that the population levels envisaged by
anarcho-primitivists would have to be achieved by mass die-offs or
nazi-style death camps. These are just smear tactics. The commitment
of anarcho-primitivists to the abolition of all power relations,
including the State with all its administrative and military
apparatus, and any kind of party or organization, means that such
orchestrated slaughter remains an impossibility as well as just plain
horrendous."(12)
The problem for John is that these 'smear tactics' are based not
only on the logical requirements of a primitivist world but are also
explicitly acknowledged by other primitivists. Miss Ann Thropy's 50
million has already been quoted. Another primitivist FAQ claims
"Drastic population reductions are going to happen whether we do
it voluntarily or not. It would be better, for obvious reasons to do
all this gradually and voluntarily, but if we don't the human
population is going to be cut anyway."(13)
The Coalition Against Civilization write "We need to be
realistic about what would happen were we to enter a post-civilized
world. One basic write-off is that a lot of people would die upon
civil collapse. While being a hard thing to argue to a moralistic
person, we shouldn't pretend this wouldn't be the case"(14)
More recently Derrick Jensen in an interview from Issue #6 of The
'A' Word Magazine[15] said civilization "needs to be actively
fought against, but I don't think that we can bring it down. What we
can do is assist the natural world to bring it down..... I want
civilization brought down and I want it brought down now." We
have seen above what the consequences of 'bringing down' civilization
are.
In short there is no shortage of primitivists who recognize that
the primitive world they desire would require "mass die-offs". I've
not come across any who advocate "nazi-style death camps" but perhaps
John just threw this in to muddy the water. Primitivists like John
Moore can therefore refuse to confront this question of die off by
upping the emotional ante and by accusing those who point the need
for die-off out as carrying out 'smear tactics'. It's up to him to
either explain how 6 billion can be fed or to admit that primitivism
is no more then an intellectual mind game.
My expectation is that just about everyone when confronted with
this requirement of mass death will conclude that 'primitivism'
offers nothing to fight for. A very few, like the survivalists
confronted by the threat of nuclear war in the 1980's, might conclude
that all this is inevitable and start planning how their loved ones
will survive when others die. But this later group has moved far, far
beyond any understanding of anarchism as I understand it. So the
'anarcho' prefix such primitivists try to claim has to be rejected.
Most primitivists run away from the requirement for mass death in
one of two ways. The more cuddly ones decide that primitivism is not
a program for a different way of running the world. Rather it exists
as a critique of civilization and not an alternative to it. This is
fair enough and there is a value in re-examining the basic
assumptions of civilization . But in that case primitivism is no
substitute for the anarchist struggle for liberation, which involves
adopting technology to our needs rather then rejecting it. The
problem is that primitivists like to attack the very methods of mass
organization that are necessary for overthrowing capitalism.
Reasonable enough if you believe you have an alternative to anarchism
but rather damaging if all you have is an interesting critique!
Other primitivists however take the Cassandra path, telling us
they are merely prophets of an inevitable doom. They don't desire the
death of 5,900 million they just point out it cannot be prevented.
This is worth examing in some detail precisely because it is so
disempowering. What after all is the use of fighting for a fair
society today if tomorrow or the day after 98% of us are going to die
and everything we have built crumble to dust?
Are we all doomed?
Primitivists are not the only ones to use the rhetoric of
catastrophe to panic people into accepting their political proposals.
Reformists such as George Monbiot, use similar 'we are all doomed'
arguments to try and stampede people into support for reformism and
world government. In the last decades acceptance that the world is
somehow doomed has become part of mainstream culture, first as the
cold war and then as looming environmental disaster. George Bush and
Tony Blair created a panic over Weapons of Mass Destruction to give
cover to their invasion of Iraq. The need to examine and dismantle
such panics is clear.
The most convincing form the 'end of civilisation' panic takes is
the idea of a looming resource crisis that will make life as we know
it impossible. And the best resource to focus on for those who wish
to make this argument is oil. Everything we produce, including food,
is dependant on massive energy inputs and 40% of the worlds energy
use is generated from oil.
The primitivist version of this argument goes something like this,
'everyone knows that in X number of year the oil will run out, this
will mean civilization will grind to a halt, and this will mean lots
of people will die. So we might as well embrace the inevitable'. The
oil running out argument is the primitivist equivalent of the
orthodox Marxist 'final economic crisis that results in the overthrow
of capitalism'. And, just like the orthodox Marxists, primitivists
always argue this final crisis is always just around the corner.
When looked at in any detail this argument evaporates and it
becomes clear that neither capitalism nor civilization face a final
crisis because of the oil running out. This is not because oil
supplies are inexhaustible, indeed we may be reaching the peak of oil
production today in 1994. But far from being the end of capitalism or
civilization this is an opportunity for profit and restructuring.
Capitalism, however reluctantly, is gearing up to make profits out of
developing alternative energy sources on the one hand and on the
other of accessing plentiful but more destructive to extract fossil
fuel supplies. The second path of course makes global warming and
other forms of pollution a lot worse but that's not likely to stop
the global capitalist class.
It is not just primitivists who have become mesmerized by the oil
crisis so I intend to deal with this in a separate essay. But in
summary, while oil will become more expensive over the decades the
process to develop substitutes for it is already underway. Denmark
for instance intends to produce 50% of its energy needs from wind
farms by 2030 and Danish companies are already making vast amounts of
money because they are the leading producers of wind turbines. The
switch over from oil is likely to provide an opportunity to make
profits for capitalism rather then representing some form of final
crisis.
There may well be an energy crisis as oil starts to rise in price
and alternative technologies are not yet capable of filling the 40%
of energy generation filled by oil. This will cause oil and therefore
energy prices to soar but this will be a crisis for the poor of the
world and not for the wealthy some of whom will even profit from it.
A severe energy crisis could trigger a global economic downturn but
again it is the world's workers that suffer the most in such times.
There is a good argument that the world's elite are already preparing
for such a situation, many of the recent US wars make sense in terms
of securing future oil supplies for US corporations.
Capitalism is quite capable of surviving very destructive crisis.
World War 2 saw many of the major cities of Europe destroyed and most
of the industry of central Europe flattened. (By bombers, by war, by
retreating Germans and then torn up and shipped east by advancing
Russians). Millions of European workers died as a result both in the
war years and in the years that followed. But capitalism not only
survived, it flourished as starvation allowed wages to be driven down
and profits soared.
What if?
However it is worth doing a little mental exercise on this idea of
the oil running out. If indeed there was no alternative what might
happen? Would a primitivist utopia emerge even at the bitter price of
5,900 million people dying?
No. The primitivists seem to forget that we live in a class
society. The population of the earth is divided into a few people
with vast resources and power and the rest of us. It is not a case of
equal access to resources, rather of quite incredible unequal access.
Those who fell victim to the mass die off would not include Rubert
Murdoch, Bill Gates or George Bush because these people have the
money and power to monopolise remaining supplies for themselves.
Instead the first to die in huge number would be the population of
the poorer mega cities on the planet. Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt
have a population of around 20 million between them. Egypt is
dependent both on food imports and on the very intensive agriculture
of the Nile valley and the oasis. Except for the tiny wealthy elite
those 20 million urban dwellers would have nowhere to go and there is
no more land to be worked. Current high yields are in part dependent
on high inputs of cheap energy.
The mass deaths of millions of people is not something that
destroys capitalism. Indeed at periods of history it has been seen as
quite natural and even desirable for the modernization of capital.
The potato famine of the 1840's that reduced the population of
Ireland by 30% was seen as desirable by many advocates of free
trade.(16) So was the 1943/4 famine in British ruled Bengal in which
four million died(17). For the capitalist class such mass deaths,
particularly in colonies afford opportunities to restructure the
economy in ways that would otherwise be resisted.
The real result of an 'end of energy' crisis would see our rulers
stock piling what energy sources remained and using them to power the
helicopter gunships that would be used to control those of us
fortunate enough to be selected to toil for them in the biofuel
fields. The unlucky majority would just be kept where they are and
allowed to die off. More of the 'Matrix' then utopia in other words.
The other point to be made here is that destruction can serve to
regenerate capitalism. Like it or not large scale destruction allows
some capitalist to make a lot of money. Think of the Iraq war. The
destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure may be a disaster for the
people of Iraq buts it's a profit making bonanza for Halliburton and
co[18]. Not coincidentally the Iraq war, is helping the US A, where
the largest corporations are based, gain control of the parts of the
planet where much future and current oil production takes place.
We can extend our intellectual exercise still further. Let us
pretend that some anarchists are magically transported from the Earth
to some Earth like planet elsewhere. And we are dumped there without
any technology at all. The few primitivists amongst us might head off
to run with the deer but a fair percentage would sit down and set
about trying to create an anarchist civilisation. Many of the skills
we could bring might not be that useful (programming without
computers is of little use) but between us we'd have a good basic
knowledge of agriculture, engineering, hydraulics and physics. Next
time the primitivists wandered through the area we settled they'd
find a landscape of farms and dams.
We'd at least have wheeled carts and possibly draft animals if any
of the large game were suitable for domestication. We'd send out
parties looking for obvious sources of coal and iron and if we found
these we'd mine and transport them. If not we'd be felling a lot of
lumber to turn into charcoal to extract whatever iron or copper we
could from what could be found. The furnace and the smelter would
also be found on that landscape. We have some medical knowledge, most
importantly an understanding of germs and medical hygiene so we'd
have both basic water purification and sewage removal systems.
We'd understand the importance of knowledge so we'd have an
education system for our children and at least the beginnings of a
long-term store of knowledge (books). We could probably find the
ingredients for gunpowder, which are quite common, which would give
us the blasting technology need for large-scale mining and
construction. If there was any marble nearby we could make concrete,
which is a much better building material then wood or mud.
Technology did not come from the gods. It was not imposed on man
by a mysterious outside force. Rather it is something we developed
and continue to develop. Even if you could turn the clock back it
would just start ticking again. John Zerzan seems to be the only
primitivists capable of acknowledging this and he retreats to the
position of seeing language and abstract thought as the problem. He
is both right and ludicrous at the same time. His vision of utopia
requires not only the death of the mass of the worlds population but
would require the genetically engineered lobotomy of those who
survive and their off spring! Not of course something he advocates
but a logical end point of his argument.
Why argue against it?
So why spend so much space demolishing such a fragile ideology as
primitivism. One reason is the embarrassing connection with anarchism
some primitivists seek to claim. More importantly primitivism both by
implication and often in its calls wants its followers to reject
rationalism for mysticism and oneness with nature. The are not the
first irrational ecological movement to do so, a good third of the
German Nazi party came from forest worshipping blood and soil
movements that sprang up in Germany in the aftermath of world war
one.
This is not an empty danger. Within primitivism a self-proclaimed
irrational wing has developed that if not yet advocating "nazi-style
death camps" has openly celebrated the deaths and murder of large
numbers of people as a first step.
In December 1997 the US publication Earth First wrote that "the
AIDS epidemic, rather than being a scourge, is a welcome development
in the inevitable reduction of human population."(19) Around the same
period in Britain Steve Booth, one of the editors of a magazine
called 'Green Anarchist ', wrote that
"The Oklahoma bombers had the right idea. The pity
was that they did not blast any more government offices. Even so,
they did all they could and now there are at least 200 government
automatons that are no longer capable of oppression.
The Tokyo sarin cult had the right idea. The pity was that in
testing the gas a year prior to the attack, they gave themselves
away. They were not secretive enough. They had the technology to
produce the gas but the method of delivery was ineffective. One day
the groups will be totally secretive and their methods of fumigation
will be completely effective."(20)
This is where you end up when you celebrate spirituality over
rationality. When the hope of 'running with deer' overcomes the need
to deal with the problem of making a revolution on a planet of 6
billion people. The ideas above have only reactionary conclusions.
Their logic is elitist and hierarchical , little more than a
semi-secular version of gods chosen people laying waste to the
unbelievers. It certainly has nothing in common with anarchism.
We need more not less technology
Which brings us back to the start. Civilisation comes with many,
many problems but it is better than the alternative. The challenge
for anarchists is in transforming civilization to a form that is
without hierarchy, or imbalances of power or wealth. This is not a
new challenge, it has always been the challenge of anarchism as shown
by the lengthy Bakunin quote at the start of this essay.
To do this we need modern technology to clean our water, pump away
and process our waste and inoculate or cure people of the diseases of
high population density. With only 10 million people on the earth you
can shit in the woods providing you keep moving on. With 6 billion
those who shit in the woods are shitting in the water they and those
around them will have to drink. According to the UN "each year,
more than 2.2 million people die from water and sanitation related
diseases, many of them children". Close to one billion urban
dwellers have no access to sustainable sanitation. Data for "43
African cities .... shows that 83 percent of the population do not
have toilets connected to sewers"(21).
The challenge then is not simply the construction of a
civilization that keeps everyone's standards of living at the level
they are now. The challenge is raising just about everyone's standard
of living but doing so in a manner that is reasonably sustainable.
Only the further development of technology coupled to a revolution
that eliminates inequality across the planet can deliver this.
It is unfortunate that some anarchists who live in the most
developed, most wealthy and most technological nations of the world
prefer to play with primitivism rather than getting down to thinking
about how we can really change the world. The global transformation
required will make all previous revolutions fade into insignificance.
The major problem is not simply that capitalism has been happy to
leave a huge proportion of the world's population in poverty. The
problem is also that development has been aimed at creating consumers
for future products rather then providing what people need.
Transport provides the simplest example. A variety of forms of
mass transport exist that can move huge numbers of people from place
to place at great speed. Yet in the last decade capitalism has
concentrated on the form that uses the greatest resources per
traveler both in terms of what goes into making it and what is
required to keep it running. This is the individual car.
Across large areas of the most developed parts of the globe this
is pretty much the only way to get around in an efficient manner. The
car has created the sprawling mega city of which Los Angeles is
perhaps the most infamous example. There a city has been created
whose urban layout makes individual car ownership almost compulsory.
This form of transport is simply not a solution for most of the
world's population. And it's not simply that most people cannot
afford a car at the moment. The resources consumed in the
construction of the 3 billion odd cars needed for every adult
inhabitant of the globe are simply not available. Nor are the
resources (petrol) to run these 3 billion cars available.
So taking hold of existing technologies and developing new ones
cannot simply mean carrying on capitalist production (or production
methods) under a red and black flag. Just as a future anarchist
society would seek to abolish the boring monotonous work of the
assembly line so it would need to radically change the nature of the
products that are produced. At a simple level in terms of transport
this would perhaps begin with greatly reducing the production of cars
and greatly increasing the production of bicycles, motorbikes,
trains, buses, trucks and mini-buses.
I'm neither a 'transport expert' nor a worker in the transport
industry so I can do no more then guess at what these changes might
be. But we should be aware that outside of the west the need for
transport is often solved in far less individualistic ways. Only the
wealthy can afford a car but the mass of the population can often
move almost as quickly from one location to another making use not
only of bus and rail but also of systems of long distance collective
taxis and mini-buses that run between towns whenever they are full.
This is the challenge for anarchism. Not simply to overthrow the
existing capitalist world order but also to see the birth of a new
world. A world that is at least capable of delivering the same access
to goods, transport, healthcare and education as is accessible to the
'middle class' in Scandinavian countries today.
It is that new society that will decide what new technologies are
needed and how to adopt existing technologies to the challenge of a
new world. It is quite likely that some technologies, if not
discarded, will be very much downgraded. It's hard to believe we
would happily decide to build new nuclear power stations for
instance. GMOs would need to prove something beyond the possibility
of GMO's meaning greater profits and monopolies for corporations, not
least that the benefit was greater than the dangers.
As long as capitalism exists it will continue to wreak
environmental havoc as it chases profits. It will only effectively
respond to the energy crisis once that becomes profitable and because
there will be a lag of many years before oil can be replaced this
might mean worsening poverty and death for many or the poorer people
in the world. But we cannot fix these problems by dreaming of some
lost golden age when the world's population was low enough to support
hunter gathering. We can only sort it out by building the sort of
mass movements that can not only overthrow capitalism but also
introduce a libertarian society. And on the way we need to find ways
to halt and even reverse some of the worst of the environmental
threats capitalism is generating.
Primitivism is a pipe dream - it offers no way forwards in the
struggle for a free society. Often its adherents end up undermining
that struggle by attacking the very things, like mass organization,
that are a requirement to win it. Those primitivists who are serious
about changing the world need to re-examine what they are fighting
for.
Andrew Flood
June 11 2004
[PDF file][Castellano] [Italiano]
-
1 http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/bakunin/paris.html
- 2
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,234225,00.html
- 3 http://www.heritage.nf.ca/aboriginal/inuit.html
- 4
http://www.yukoncollege.yk.ca/~agraham/nost202/norwaysami.htm
- 5
http://www.gardensofeden.org/04%20Crop%20Yield%20Verification.htm
- 6
http://biology.queensu.ca/~bio111/pdf%20files/lect9-human-demography-1.PDF
- 7 http://qrc.depaul.edu/lheneghan/ENV102/env102Lecture8.htm
- 8http://geography.berkeley.edu:16080/ProgramCourses/CoursePagesFA2002/geog148/Term%20Papers/Anita%20Lee/THEPLE~1.html
- 9 http://qrc.depaul.edu/lheneghan/ENV102/env102Lecture8.htm
- 10http://www.google.ie/search?q=cache:SC6WTwBCazUJ:library.thinkquest.org/
C003763/index.php%3Fpage%3Dterraform03+maximum+hunter+gather+population&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
- (sorry for the long URL but the page is not directly
accessible)
- 11 "Miss Ann Thropy," Earth First! Dec. 22, 1987, cited at
http://www.processedworld.com/Issues/issue22/primitive_thought.htm
- 12 http://www.eco-action.org/dt/primer.html A Primitivist
Primer By John Moore
- 13 http///www.eco-action.org/spellbreaker/faq.html
- 14 the Practical Anarcho-Primitivist: actualizing the
implications of a critique -Coalition Against Civilization, online
at
http://www.coalitionagainstcivilization.org/speciestraitor/pap.html
- 15 Issue #6 of The 'A' Word Magazine, this interview online at
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/02/11/5876278
- 16 http://struggle.ws/ws95/famine45.html
- 17 http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s19040.htm
- 18 For a reasoned critique of collapism from a Green anarchist
perspective see
http://pub47.ezboard.com/fanarchykkafrm1.showPrevMessage?topicID=372.topic
- 19 Earth First!, Dec. 22, 1987, cited at
http://www.processedworld.com/Issues/issue22/primitive_thought.htm
- 20 Green Anarchist, number 51, page 11, a defense of these
remarks was published in Number 52. The author Steve Booth was a
GA editor (and the treasurer) at the time
- 21 http://www.unhabitat.org/global_water.asp
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Comments (32 of 32)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32I would agree that there is ample historical precedent to predict that, while an oil crisis might impose misery and death on millions, it will by no means mandate the end of capitalism or "civilization". I am not so sure we can say the same of global warming. The markets, and the will of the elites, which make decisions under the status quo, while quite capable of responding to the destruction of cities or energy supply crises (and turning them into profit making opportunities) may well see climate change spin out of control. This seems to be a threat that is not of the same nature, as the bombing of cities in WWII or an energy crisis. I don't see any real clear historical parallels.
Also, anarchism has no magic cure for overpopulation. Surely, better technological responses are possible (or are even already available) than those that are now in use, as this article cites. But the fact remains, human numbers cannot increase continue to increase exponentially, forever. I don't know what the limits are, and the exact number is dependent on technology. But there are limits.
Would a horizontally organized society be capable of making decisions that would stabilize our numbers at a sustainable level? I am not sure. But that is a far more likely scenario, than, say, the markets or bosses making these decisions for us. Anarchism is our best shot at survival as a global society. But it not a sure thing, imo.
Yes global warming is a different sort of threat than the Oil crisis but unless you believe in the very worst 'Earth becoming like Venus' case it is something that might kill millions or billions but is unlikely to overthrow capitalism never mind civilisation.
It also offers 'investment opportunities' both directly in terms of CO2 scrubbing and storage which is becoming quite significant but also in recovery.
What do I mean?
There is a chance that the verocity of Hurricane Kathrian was a produce to the greater energy pumped into the weather system by global warming. Not worth arguing about as you can't prove this one way or the other. But it provides an example of how capital turns disaster into profit - anarchos essay 'The real looting of New Orleans begins' on this site at http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1432 gives examples.
On overpopulation - the evidence is already very clear that a rise in prosperity coupled with the education and empowerment of women results in a huge decrease in births. Across most of Europe - were in not for migration - the population would already be dropping drastically. Many of the most prosperous countries now have negative population growth.
That suggest that in an anarchist society where we would expect women to be empowered and everyone to be prosperous the 'problem' might not be population growth but the reverse.
The fact that the end of the world is near is not a new thing, and it's been proved right before.
To the inhabitants of Easter Island, the end of the world as they knew it came to a stop. almost, that is 90% of the population disapeared.
It didn't only happen in small islands but also on mainland!.
Look at the greenland Norse, the Anasazi tribe in North America reduced to canibalism and starvation.
The Maya civilisation for example collapse and died through in parts overpopulation, environmental damage, lack of resources, etc...
Yesteryear population couldn't move their problems to other areas because of lack of transport or resources. Today callapses occur less frequently because of migration. But because problems get transposed to other regions of the World, we are evolving towards the collapse of the whole planet.
And no this time we won't be able to flee to another planet.
The other problem is that we can't recognise a problem of environmental / population collapse when it hits us in the face. How else to describe the Rwandan collapse? it has all the ingredients of overpopulation, lack of arable land, environmental destruction, breakdown of society, etc....
Please read Jared Diamon "Collapse". it makes for fascinating reading.
Olivier
Yes, of course the reaction of the bosses may be predicted with some certainty. With regard to global warming, as with disasters and crises of all stripes, they will reap profit from death and destruction.
My point was that, where the rebuilding of European cities after WWII (like the reconstruction of tsunami or hurricane zones) could be safely predicted, we can't safely predict that capitalism will be capable of "repairing" damage done by global warming.
What are the implications for the anarchist project? Only that our efforts are more urgent than ever. We can ill afford to patently await some projected final crisis, whose outcome would likely be horrific. Or, to glibly ignore such a possibility. IMO, measurable changes in the planets temperature merit a greater degree of concern (and are more likely to be a harbinger of dramatic social upheavals) than such things as market pressures on energy prices.
I like this article a lot. Its good to see some literature out there countering the blatantly authoritarian primitivists. Hopefully this will get to reach more people.
What I think would be much more interesting, would be an article on climate justice from an anarchist perspective.
I, and many other people involved in climate justice campaigns, do beleive that if we don't do anything soon we are going to be more than screwed by climate chaos.
What we should be talking about, is the likely response to increasing weather chaos by capitalists, reformists and the general public aswell as the real human and environmental effects it has (particularly those in the poorest countries with the least ability to deal with the consequences of something they didn't create.)
Storaging co2 underground is not a solution and carbon sinks and other neoliberal solutions like the Kyoto Protocol are making things worse.
What is our solution as anarcho-communists?
How are we going to combat the likely environmental rascism from spreading and is already starting to occur? Things like finger pointing at countries like China. They want to have 50 new coal stations in the next 20 years and to have a car for every family - which will obviously exacerbate the problem of climate chaos.
But what people forget is that the western capitalist societies have created the problem which we are now feeling. What we are only just starting to feel in our climate, is the result of 50 years ago. There is a lag effect. Our whole society and standard of living has been based on the fossil fuel economy and greenhouse gases.
When people point the finger at China and other third world countries (Which are quickly reaching our output of CO2s) they seem to forget what our society was build on. How are we going to pay this ecological debt? Obviously we need solutions and we don't want more coal power stations - but it is environmentally racist to suggest that poor chinese workers can't have coal fire powerstations when they don't have insulation etc etc.
I think one of the important questions we should be asking, is wether a society based on needs and not profit will still be environmentally damaging if we maintain our current standard of living (despite the redistribution of wealth from the capitalists.) We can not forget, that environmental collapse would occur despite climate chaos, and is likely to egacerbate it. (If we hadn't chopped down all the trees, erosion from flooding wouldn't be as big a problem for example.)
Is it desireable, for "Everyone in the world to have a toaster" as someone once saw our future society.
Is it possible to sustain our entire population with non-mono culture organic produce? Has the industrialisation of food production allowed us to maintain large populations? Would it be environmentally stable in our damaged ecosystem to have collectively owned non-exploitative farmicuetical production?
And how will the working class (And small revolutionary groups) deal with the dual onslaught of the capitalist class and climate chaos? (keeping in mind that many of the working class organisations are either non-existant or highly reformist or misorganised).
Someone once suggested that climate chaos and environmental collapse is making the need for a communist revolution even more urgent and will most likely play a key part in igniting world revolution.
i often see critiques of primitivism, sometimes they have quite good things to say, but i rarely find them useful. (Which is also my fault because i haven't gotten around to writing anything useful either although i've been involved in grassroots climate justice stuff... none of it popular or mass etc etc.)
SImilarly, some of the anarchist writing that I have recently read on environmental issues (or environmental racism) read like marxist writings on the same topic. They often pull out the anti-human kill all the people type arguements and leave it at that.
Looking forward any replies!
(Oh and I disagree that it's not useful to look at Katrina in the context of climate chaos. It is quite right that you can not look at one incident and say it is the result of climate chaos - the climate is too complicated for that. But what you can do, is look at the increasing frequency and the response by neoliberal forces and the devastation it has on people. Climate chaos will be worse and wider spread. There are lessons to learn.)
As the great IWW industrial organiser once put it:
"the earth is not dying, it is being killed. ANd those killing it have names and addressess."
yours
simon
It's great to see critiques to primitivism, its association with anarchism is completely embarrassing.
btw.. i am a class struggle anarchists who organises low paid workers, and i am definelty not primitivist. i like the article, its just in nz/aotearoa here we have no primitivists, so it seems like a waste of breath worrying about them. although i know that its a different situation over thataways.
bobo
So what is you union going to do for the few remaining forests or coal reserves (industrial production does have to continue for you to have the working class to organize)? How are you helping the 200 billions animals slaughtered every year by organizing slaughter house workers to get better wages (must we really make murder a more comfortable job?) or helping UPS workers win the strike and get back to work while UPS support HLS (giant animal research lab). Your working class struggle is selfish and short sighted. Get a clue working class humans are not the only beings oppressed on this planet. Primitivism is a war of total liberation, human, animal, and earth. Primitive anarchy exsisted for nearly 3 million years. Many primintivsts have stated that the return to a naturally sustainable population level will be a process over many generations. No mass die-offs just lower birth rates. Primitivists dont need to explain how 6 billion can be fed because we dont intend to live in a world with that many people...POPULATION LEVELS IF GIVEN TIME CAN DROP WITHOUT DEATH CAMPS! Its called not having so many babies...can you handle that?...now lets start working on a way to convince people to stop having all those kids and find ways to distribute birth control info so that people can voluntarily lower the population....or do you thing that people could never do that of their own free will? Is it impossible that humans will realize that our population is out of control and think that maybe they should do something about it. You accuse primitivists of being heartless and possibly supporting the idea of mass die off while you defend a system of production that has created an epidemic of cancer, while you support industrial production that kills millions directly and indirectly (humans that is...for non-humans it would be in thew upper billions) A greater percentage of the population has starved under intensive agriculture than went hungry in H/G societies. Agriculture dosent prevent famine...it causes it. As population rises you have more mouths to feed so you have to grow more crops and then the population keeps expanding because there are non natural boundaries left soon you have to put alot of work into feel all those people and their survival becomes dependent on a good harvest...so you put millions at risk of starving in a situation that would hardly phase a H/G band. A nomadic H/G band was far less susceptible to famine because they didnt rely on having a good harvest but rather the naturally occurring plants in the area. The climate change would have to be quite extreme to kill off all native foliage...and even then it is a natural disaster...you cant blame its victims. With out being settled the nomadic bands were much more free to move about to avoid over gathering or hunting (which they didnt do alot of until much later in the paleolithic...early man was primarily a gatherer since you can get more calories per calorie expended from gathering plants and scavenging than from hunting)
But primitivism isnt a dogmatic ideology that say we must all live just liek H/Gs only that we must (for the survival of the planet and all life on it) we must recognize that we are just one animal among many and then begin to step down from our role as denominators of all that is wild and free and stop seeking to control nature for our own ends. Agriculture circumvents a vital natural population check. Unsanitary conditions in cities isnt caused by lack of technology but by the fact that urban environments exist at all. As our population increases we have to find more ways to feed the masses, protect them from disease that are created( or made worse) by industiral production and civilization ( http://www.primitivism.com/health-civilization.htm ). We have become dependent on technology for our very survival...sure going cold turkey would collectively be quite painful...but what about slowly weening ourselves off of it. Move towards local organic gardens to feed the people while other obliterate their prisons and factories (or are they one and the same) to make way for wilderness to take back over. Over the period of several generations we could be on our way to global healing.
"We'd at least have wheeled carts and possibly draft animals if any of the large game were suitable for domestication." yeah cause its ok to dominate a sentient being just as long as its not human right?...damn speciesists
While primitivists seeks to overthrow all forms of domination wether man on man, man on animal, or man on the planet. While your moral sphere only includes those genetically closest to you...wheres the rationality in that? Other beings that die daily for the survival of our precious civilization have a capacity for pain and and emotional life (some even have self consciousness). I dont know of any anarcho-primitivist that has advocated imposing their will upon others while you certainly have shown you have no problem with mass killing or making slaves of animals and exploiting the land for you own good (taking away vital habitat and feeding ground)
i think this article is a well-written and long needed critique of primitivism and its offshoots.
i dont know why you put it on the sf bay area snarchist website though, it is controlled by primitivists aand postleftists, i try and do my mental health a favour and stay away from it.
just incase "vegan hobo" ever checks this site again i just have to respond to his outrageous comment.
i will comment on just the most ridiculous and ill-informed statements.
"Its called not having so many babies...can you handle that?...now lets start working on a way to convince people to stop having all those kids and find ways to distribute birth control info so that people can voluntarily lower the population....or do you thing that people could never do that of their own free will? Is it impossible that humans will realize that our population is out of control and think that maybe they should do something about it."
it has been shown that even when birth control is readily available, women continue to have children. there are muliple reasons for this including but not limited to the fact that capitalism and colonialism and 'globalization' has resulted in more than half the world living in poverty (the half that are most likely to die as the earth "balances itself out". this means that A) many families need more children so there is more workers bringing in income and more hands to help the mother with her unpaid labor and B) poverty- (i.e. capitalist)- causing illnesses result in high infant and child mortality so as a result women will have more children in the hopes that they will survive, c)women are all over the world oppressed on multiple levels, unless all these levels are addressed (and seriously, meat-eaters are not one of them) then control over reproduction will remain out of their hands (i.e. people "choosing" not to reproduce with their "free will" is an absurd assumption about how people experience oppression)
also, i have to point out the absolute obvious which is that it is the relatively "controlled" populations in the United States andWestern European countries that cause the most waste -and the even more obvious that capitalism as a mode of production is by DEFINITION wasteful and that working towards abolishing it (through workplace organizing, community organizing -things that you think are ignoring the real suffereing experienced by cows....) is working towards ecological sustainability.
my suggestion for you "vegan hobo" is to read Angela Davis' "Race, Class, and Women" and see how progressive (white)activists (activists that actually are a lot more progressive than you, i would say really that you are 100% reactionary...) that talk about "birth control" completely side step white supremacy's historical mission to destroy (through, for example as Davis mentions, forced sterilization) communities of color. my other suggestion is to read up on the eugenecist movement in the first part of the 20th century and see the problematic paths that "population control" arguments can take you down...
" Agriculture dosent prevent famine...it causes it."
this is also totally mis-informed. once again, capitalism and state corruption (ofcourse all states are corrupt...) causes famine. if you knew anything about famines you would know that usually, indigenous agricultural methods allow for surplus to be created in case of a bad season so as to prevent famine. it is the fact that capitalists are more concerned with making money off of starving people than allowing a minute decrease of profits by not allowing increased inflation under famines to make food prices sky rocket that causes famine. during famines, there is usually foood available its just that a little thing called CAPITALISM makes it impossible for poor people to afford to buy food.
in the end, i have to say that myself and most sane people think that human suffering is a million degrees more inhumane than cow and chicken suffering. while my personal LIFESTYLE choice is to be vegetarian, i certainly am not going to focus my energies trying to get slaughterhoue workers' wages reduced, or worse get them fired or killed (as you insinuate would be a postive move towards liberation of animals ). ill leave that for the capitalists and their unlikely supporters such as yourself and other primtivists and 'green' anarchists.
i apologize for the length but i cannot stand seeing this garbage on a website meant for meaningful discussion.
-robyn
I'm working on responses to the replies this article has received here and elsewhere - but I've only posted it on infoshop and here - someone else is distributing it elsewhere. If you have a URL for the SF version I'd appreciate it.
heres the link to where they posted your essay. they like to cut and paste peoples essays there without telling them i suppose so peeople can just berate the person who wrote them without them ever being able to defend their arguments.
http://anarchistnews.org/
another thing i have to add, besides the eurocentric romantisization/exotification of the 'primitive' and the 'tribal' which andrew brought up in his pointing out the absurdity of privileged folks in eugene arguing for the end of technology when millions of people are suffering precisly because of a lack of access to technology (due to global capitalism's underdevelopment of the'third world') is the male chauvenism inherent in any philosophy which thinks i should spend fourteen hours a day picking berries (and, as has been proven often doing the hunting and the fishing as well) just so i can come home, go to sleep, wake up the next day and do it again (and maybe every once in while rear children). 'primitivism' is inherently against women's liberation , inspite of the twisted ways 'primitivist' women like to say otherwise.
for the revolution and the shortening of the working day,
robyn
This article in Italian:
A follow up article dealing with some of the replies to this one is to be found at
If I eat cake I become it and it becomes me. Neither of "us" is the same afterwards. That act of transformation is fearless, based upon a non-dream: me and not-me becoming more than what we were. It's as the Native Americans who proceded beyond primitivism to see themselves as integral moment of universal life. Energy is made for transformation and that requires motion, action. That requires stepping beyond who you are to become more than that, quantitatively and qualitatively. Primitivism is species-guilt implemented. It sucks at the nipple of life and yet rejects life, basking in tantrumic guilt because it hates itself as "taking", never noticing what it gives back because it closes its eyes. Milk is for milking. So is the adventure that starts with the Milky Way.... Life begets life. It expands or dies. Period. Primitivism is a walk with dead time.
The point of fusion energy and the applied dialectical understanding of quantum physics is to learn to make things from their unperceived, from the dareful dream of what they are "not". Need is imposed and "necessity" seems quite dictatorial as prime mover. To jump through the views of dear M. Bakunin: if God exists then it will be desirable, useful, and exciting to transcend it - otherwise, boredom and slavery. "Cake" first of all and not merely taken metaphorically - is a human creation. We made it from what it was not. We create it through dimensions unfelt by daily existence trapped in the "primitive" moment of being: time and space. We become by reaching beyond our dimensionalized "realities". Better yet, "cake" always existed in the possible. Unless we innovate, it remains impossible. We remain less for the non-act. We remain primitive to and for ourselves. In fact our "selves" remain as external to us. Only through us does the universe's implied or potential for "cake" become real, become kinetic. I don't have a limited amount of "cake" potentials either. I don't need cake on other planets or in other universes. I only "need" my innovative direct (inter-)action. The whole notion of "direct democracy" is found interleaved with the notion of self-evolution and generalized self-management - with expansion of SELF. It is only by transcending the partialities, the fuller universe of selfishness - do we embrace all, do we become totality. To not reach such is to recuperate one's self into that abyss of a zero-sum universe wherein all quality is condemned by "what is possible" according to the lower-leveling of dumbifying quantity. Do we have enough imagination to go beyond a self-imposed unit of measurement? Surely we are more than ourselves and wait only to pull that newness from the universe within.
The rejection of science as a method of understanding and innovating - based on the current lack of its use by capitalism - is the anti-humanist tendency of primitivism. Here it finds its bedmate: religio-mysticism. If the bourgeoisie failed at eradicating the kernel of life within that sphere it is precisely also why they cannot achieve science via a flat and commercial "use". It is only by grasping all that is seeking the human that we become more than a blade of grass, cake, or animals with primitive consciousness of our possibilities.
While I agree with many of your points about this juvenile and often ridiculous ideology, there is one part of the article that seriously undermines your argument and probably should be changed if your intent is to provide a factual debunking of the weak philosophies which underpin this small movement: while it may be true that tree fruits which can be gathered may not meet many peoples taste preferences, your statements regarding a field of corn producing more nutrition and caloric value than an acre of oak trees is actually incorrect. Corn is delicious and I wouldn't give it up for anything, but in North America, at any rate, the mast crop of a mature oak forest is relatively huge compared to the small yield of a corn field. Likewise with Chestnuts (before the blight, or with blight resistant hybrids), Walnuts, and a variety of other wild nuts found in North America. Moreover, a wide variety of low-light crops or wild plants can be planted in the understory, unlike in a corn monocrop. Perhaps the situation is different in the UK? You might could make a stronger case by talking about hunting for game animals, which many primitivists propose as an alternative to our current food production system.
Thanks for bringing this issue to my attention - however I believe your figures are incorrect (see below). Also I use the phrase 'available to humans' in the article in part to reflect that while harveting an agricultural crop will see a large percentage of calories going to humans a gathered crop in a natural setting will see a large percentage go to non human animals - in teh case of acorns 15% will be eaten before they even reach the ground.
Acorns certainly were used as a major foodstuff in parts of north American into historic times. In Europe because of the work involved in processing acorns into a palatable food stuff it appears they were more commonly feed to pigs who were of course eaten in turn. But acorns were one of tne major foods in Syria before the development of agriculture there.
The figures
David Bainbridge in Acorns: The Grain That Grows on Trees says "Corn yields range from 2,500 to 10,000 pounds per acre. In comparison, acorn yields in natural forest have been recorded as high as 2,000 pounds per acre from the live oak(Q.virginiana), and - in a good year - I've recorded black oak(Q.velutina) yields per tree that would amount to more than 6,000 pounds per acre in a pure stand." One pound of northern red oak acorns contains approximately 1,300 calories so high high figure he gives for natual forest would be 2000*1300 or 2.6 million calories - most of these would of course go to birds and squirrels.
David is clearly an acorn promoter but anyway lets use his lowest corn yield estimate of 2,500 pounds per acre. There are 1535 calories per pound of corn so this gives 3.8 million calories - already above the best estimate for natural forest. But take his high end estimate of 10,000 pounds an acre and you get 15.3 million calories or almost 6 times the raw calories output of a high yield natural acorn forest.
His figures are however a little suspect, the Forest and Forestry division say "Woodlands that attract and hold the greatest numbers of deer, turkeys and squirrels produce in excess of 100 pounds of acorns per acre per year." This would only be 0.13 million calories. I also found figures for the Turkey Oak of 278 lb/acre which would be under 0.4 million calories. It is hard to find other figures for yields but scaling up from the per tree figures that are availavle for various varities it appears David's yields are very high indeed.
I'd a difficult time finding other figures for corn as corn production is measure by volume rather than weight. However I found some conversion tables which suggest that a bushel of corn corresponds to between 56 (shelled) and 70 (ear) pounds. I'll take the lower shelled figure of 56 pounds per bushel. In terms of average yield an interesting one to use for this discussion are those given in a University of Minnesota study into how much corn production decreased using organic methods of cultivation. The organic method gave close to 130 bushels an acre or 7280 pounds. This converts into an actual calorie value per acre of 11.2 million.
When you compare these figures it appears that the total calories per acre from acorns may only be 3.5% of that from the same area of organically grown corn. Even David's best measured figure is only 23% of the average organic corn yield.