Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected Writings Of Elisèe Reclus

There is a fundamental structural problem with this book. It contains 230 pages or so of material, but the first 100 pages of the book consist of commentary from the editors and translators of the work, John Clark and Camille Martin, who seek to frame Reclus as being some sort of proto-feminist and proto-eco-anarchist in their own mold. Admittedly, for the purposes of their behavior Reclus is pretty convenient, in being obscure enough that he is neglected in mainstream political literature that seeks to deal with those who are left-of-center, so that someone can make space for themselves in contemporary academia by seeking to bring this hitherto unrecognized philosopher into greater attention as a forerunner of some of society’s less benign intellectual trends. Similarly, he is not so advanced that the editors of this work cannot feel that sense of undeserved chronological snobbery about the language used by the French geographer and anarchist who they are translating and bringing before the attention of the world. He thus suits their purposes admirably in both respects as a forerunner but not someone who ran so far ahead of his time that he might embarrass the editors about their own provincial and regressive notions about philosophy and politics.

This book is some 235 pages or so of material, divided into two parts. Before both parts there are prefaces to the PM Press edition and to the first edition of the work. After that the first part of the book consists of an introduction to Reclus’ social thought from the translators and editors of his work (I). This introduction consists of seven smaller chapters that take up a bit more than 100 pages, namely the story of the earth and humanity (1), Reclus’ place as an anarchist geographer (2), his dialectic between nature and culture (3), his philosophy of progress (4), his views on social transformation (5), his critique of domination (6), and his legacy (7). The second part of the book then consists of selected writings from Reclus (II), namely, such works, largely in excerpted form, like “The Feeling For Nature In Modern Society (1866) (8), “To My Brother The Peasant (1893) (9), “Anarchy” (1894) (10), “The Extended Family” (1896), (11), “Evolution, Revolution, And The Anarchist Ideal” (1898) (12), “On Vegetarianism” (1901) (13), “The History Of Cities” (1905) (14), “The Modern State” (1905) (15), “Culture And Property” (1905) (16), “Progress” (1905) (17), and “Advice To My Anarchist Comrades” (1901) (18). After this the book concludes with notes, a bibliography, index, and information about the contributors.

Even when taking into account the structural problems of this work, there is a fundamental problem with the political worldview of an eco-anarchist of the stripe of Reclus and his editors and translators. There is indeed no proper place for themselves within any possible world as what they are. For the radical anarchist, only a few possible fates are possible. The best case scenario, for themselves and everyone else around them is for them to be so entirely ignored that their words fall unread and unheard. Alternatively, they act in ways contrary to what they view as an unjust system, and are punished for their crimes against people and property. The third option is the most tragic, their crimes are overlooked by those in authority who themselves wish to overturn the existing system of law and order, and when a new, revolutionary, one is erected, such people are the first to end up dead or in a gulag because they are no longer worthwhile and convenient to the totalitarian systems they have helped to set up. There is no way that the utopian schemes this author wishes for, or any other radical of his ilk, can be brought into reality without immense coercive power on the part of a state that will look very negatively on any attempt for people to be anarchical against it. Most unrealistic of all is probably the twaddle that the author engages in when talking to the peasant classes, because every totalitarian regime that ever sought to redistribute land was most interested in stealing the land of the independent farmers or kulaks that the author calls his brethren, in favor of massive and inefficient collective farms that are easy to control, unlike the behavior of regressive and independent-minded freeholding peasants. This book is full of the total unawareness of the tyranny that the author’s anarchy wishes to bring into practice combined with the sort of self-righteous hypocrisy that would be popular among the contemporary left.