Criticism
In his essay "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm", Murray Bookchin directed criticism from an anarchist point of view at Zerzan's anti-civilisational and anti-technological perspective. Bob Black's Anarchy After Leftism is a known book within primitivist circles, written as a rebuttal to Bookchin. Another notable anarchist work directed at Bookchin's perspective is David Watson's Beyond Bookchin.
Aside from Murray Bookchin, several other anarchist critiques of Zerzan's primitivist philosophies exist. The pamphlet, "Anarchism vs. Primitivism" by Brian Oliver Sheppard criticizes many aspects of the primitivist philosophy. Some authors, such as Andrew Flood, have argued that destroying civilization would lead to the death of a significant majority of the population. John Zerzan contends the collapse of civilization as having a gradual decrease on population size, with the possibility of people having the need to seek means of sustainability more close to nature. Additionally, several related thinkers, such as Derrick Jensen, argue that civilization is in fact unsustainable, and as such the decline of civilization and the accompanying loss of population is unavoidable, rather than a matter of choice and debate.
Theodore J. Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, is a harsh critic of the current Anarcho-Primitivist mainstream and Zerzan in particular for what he sees as a foolish and invalid projection of leftist values such as gender equality, pacifism and leisure time onto the primitive way of life. Kaczynski holds that the values of gender equality, pacifism, leisure time etc. while still admirable, are exactly the values of techno-industrial civilization and its promised techno-utopia. Second, he holds that having such an interpretation is counter-productive to the ultimate anti-civilization/anti-tech goal as it attracts "leftist types" who are by nature uncommitted and act to dilute the movement. Kaczynski insists that the core values of freedom, autonomy, dignity, and human fulfillment must be emphasized above all others.
Read more about this topic: John Zerzan
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
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“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
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