Anarchist solutions to fight capitalism- inspired by ecology & interdependence

Why should we look to the woods? -- A collaborative series!

Capitalism and the nation state have covered our intricate, diverse ecosystems with asphalt highways, high-risers, malls and factories. We desperately need solutions informed by ecologies and ecosystems to address our current environmental crisis and ongoing mass extinctions. Modeling human life after lessons we have learned through observing the land, plants, animals, and their interdependent relationships is essential to our ongoing survival as a species. To do this we must challenge the flawed Darwinist narrative that competition is the driving force of life and only the fittest survive by violently hoarding resources. 

We often frame “nature” as an entity external to us that we merely utilize as a tool whether for resources or as an escape. All life is interconnected and serves a role in a larger ecosystem, all animals are to some degree social, and when we see ourselves as a part of nature rather than separate from it, it is apparent that collaboration, mutual aid and co-evolution ensures our survival, not competition. Our wellbeing and health are inextricably dependent on the health of other creatures, plants, land & other non-living components of nature. Community building has to mean us forging relationships with land, flora, fauna, and all other parts of our ecosystem.

Part I of our “Anarchy & Ecology” series— Laying foundations

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Equitable models of society already exist in nature

2. Anarchist solutions to capitalism and state oppression are inspired by ecology

3. Capitalism and the state- both are tools of colonialism and extraction

4. There are no “green solutions” under the state and capitalism

5. Capitalist vs. Anarchist take on farming and agriculture

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1. Equitable models of society already exist in nature

Ecological science tells us that diversity and heterogeneity maintain the health and stability of our ecosystems which then interact to collectively form Earth. Models of community building, cooperation and mutualism are all around us- from the most basic forms of life (microbes) to more complex communities like an entire forest ecosystem. We cannot destroy habitats and build ever-expanding cities thru industrialization and urbanization without destroying our health which is inextricably tied to our ecosystem’s health. Just like you cannot isolate an infection to any single organ in the body- you cannot exert dominance over other components of our ecosystem without destroying yourself in the long-term. The infection eventually spreads and kills the entire human. 

To explain this interconnectedness further- here is an analogy. A group of cells come together, mobilize and share resources to make an organ like a stomach. A group of organs come together similarly to make an organ system like the digestive system. A group of organ systems in symbiosis with millions of microbes living within us make up a human. A group of humans, animals, plants, microbes, land, water, etc come together to make up an ecosystem and a group of ecosystems collectively form Earth. A group of planets and a star form a solar system and so on and so forth.

A human being is not the boundary for when our interconnectedness ends. Organization of resources and cooperation happens at micro and macro levels without any dominant external force coordinating these life processes. There are no hierarchies in nature except in human societies because they are socially constructed (made-up), despite us often projecting our reductive, binary-based, hierarchical lens onto nature. In order to control and exploit nature as a resource and justify our place “on top” of a socially-constructed ecological ladder, complexities in nature are reduced to binaries in order to facilitate extraction.

2. Anarchist solutions to capitalism and state oppression are inspired by ecology

Ecology is anarchism in that it aims to ‘build a world where many worlds fit’. Nature is an embodiment of multiple self-organized communities interacting and co-existing thru cooperation. 

Anarchist solutions push back against the one-size-fits-all, top-down model of capitalism and the state where a few control the fate of all human and non-human entities in the world. Instead anarchy advocates for local society building that honors and preserves the natural ecoregional organization of life on Earth where all living entities are considered equal. Instead of the nation state, building an equitable society requires us to organize spaces based on local geographical regions without consolidation and centralization of power. In place of large countries, we must push for local, small-scale, bottom-up ecosystems (town, village, city) to be self-sufficient entities based on cooperative relationships. Instead of top-down unaccountable governments where the few rule over the many, anarchist solutions are rooted in community consensus and face-to-face, local resolution of problems. In place of large, stagnant, power structures, anarchy pushes communities to design their own malleable, local systems that can adapt to the evolving needs of humans and non-human entities in a bioregion. For example, we cannot survive without the microbes within us and this naturally abolishes any hierarchy between organisms. We all do need each other. Symbiotic, intricate, interdependent relationships are the fabric of a healthy community.

3. Capitalism and the state- both are tools of colonialism and extraction

Life on earth exists as a network of roughly distinct ecological regions (topography, climate, species distribution, etc) with obvious boundaries like mountain ranges or a sea or less obvious regional demarcations. However, the borders of a nation-state are unnatural, made-up boundaries that we’ve been socialized with to believe are so “real” that we envision the world as cut up into countries. The reality is- these borders are unrelated to & often cut-across natural ecological boundaries which also translate to cultural/ ethnic/ tribal boundaries. A nation-state encompasses a large geographical land mass consisting of many diverse ecological niches and forces all the people & non-human components to be subjugated by a central power, leading to homogenization. The state, by design, is unable to meet the evolving diverse needs of everyone it rules over. 

Drawing lines in the earth from a government office with little to no knowledge of place has often ended poorly. Attempting to centralize decision making and planning has had terrible consequences for the human race, one can look to the famines caused by collectivization of peasant farm land in post revolutionary Russia, American agribusiness, or the villagization in Tanzania as humanist efforts of the state that wreaked havoc on people and their respective bioregions or were mere failures that were abandoned.

• The state is also an effort to maintain the global world order of 20th century European colonialism in the 21st century. Today, the industrialized Global North is the heart of capitalism’s profit centers as it extracts natural resources & people’s labor from the Global South via coercion. What facilitates this extractivism, that is linked to settler colonialism, is the hierarchical logic backing the domination of human and non-human entities based on the decisions of a few in power and the reductionism that is innate to nation building. A national identity is forcefully created from the violent erasure of diverse, distinct cultures, traditions & connected ecological practices.

Capitalism thrives under the nation-state structure of domination and power asymmetries because it is an exploitative economy that exploits people for labor but also depletes & endlessly extracts from the land and exploits flora/ fauna for mass production. This model prioritizes endless growth & profit accumulation for the luxury of a few over human and ecological health. So beyond capitalism, the root of environmental destruction & oppression in all forms is mass production & large-scale industrialism (built upon centralized power structures) which is inherently authoritarian and exploits all human and nonhuman nature. It requires violence and coercion to maintain (via police, prisons, military) which is normalized like forced labor, displacement, land evictions, genocide/ colonialism, forced assimilation and cultural destruction, ecosystem destruction etc.

4. There are no “green solutions” under the state and capitalism

We don't need to look very far to see examples of the state being the militia or hired gun of private capital. The police and “law enforcement” agencies are the right hand of capital. Standing Rock, Line 3, Yintah Access/ Coastal Gas Link are prime examples of the state’s settler colonial extractivism through violence toward the land and indigenous land protectors. If we look at the struggle at Thacker Pass we can see an example of the state and its “green solutions” using violence against the people and their land to mine for lithium to manufacture electric cars . Industrialism views all life & nature as a subordinate “resource” that can be objectified and commodified for large scale production which requires constant colonization, conquest and expansion. In order to destroy ecosystems for profit, the state alienates, separates and dispossesses people from their own land.

Why are the state and centralized planning and high modernist ideas inherently problematic? 

The sheer large size of a nation state- where the few rule over the many, is a model designed for oppression. There is no “just” way to dominate large populations across multiple ecosystems, no matter who is in control. There is no one size fits all solution to the current crisis we face, therefore centralized planning will not be able to address the ongoing ecological collapse. For example, planned reforestation projects have been a disaster for ecosystems, often planting monocultures with the only metric being to quantify the number of trees planted, creating a precarious ecosystem prone to collapse due to the lack of biodiversity that is essential to the resilience of a bioregion. 

A state relies on exploitation and domination of not only diverse human societies but also on hierarchies where humans dominate nonhumans. In order to build a state- you have to find ways to make complex, diverse populations legible, “simplified” and governable so they can be easy to dominate and control. The state only quantifies what it deems valuable- the number of trees, the bushels of wheat, etc. This type of reductionism ignores the interdependent elements and complex web of relationships that make life possible, that only someone with intimate knowledge of their immediate surroundings and bio region could be attuned to. This by default alienates us from nature where we see other members of our ecosystem as “separate” in order to justify their exploitation. Societies that dominate plants, animals and non-human entities in nature also dominate humans.

5. Capitalist vs. Anarchist take on farming & agriculture

To compare ideas of high modernist, centralized solutions with decentralized, bottom up and anarchist adjacent practices let us look to the example of farming and food production. In the next newsletters in this series, we will compare and contrast examples of capitalist/ state systems with anarchist models inspired by ecology in more detail.

• Capitalist/ State model: Under capitalist or any centralized industrialized government we see the practices of factory farming and agribusiness destroying the land and extracting nutrients from the soil and throwing chemicals in the form of pesticides, fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, on the land and using even more to process the harvest into processed foods or fuels. The only metric is the harvest, made possible most often with subsidies derived from public monies. These practices lead to the poisoning of watersheds and the erosion, depletion, and toxification through salinization of top soils.

• Anarchy/ Ecology model: In contrast an anarchist adjacent perspective builds from the bottom up, utilizing knowledge that can only come through intimate knowledge of place and the complex web of relationships that make thriving polycultures possible. That each piece of the farm or agricultural system serves a purpose and is a part of a larger interdependent web of relationships. For example Iroquois practice of planting "the three sisters" squash (shade), beans (nitrogen fixing) and corn (structure for the climbing plants) each providing a mutual benefit for the next. This is a simple example of a larger concept that everything is interrelated and interdependent and can be based on collaboration. Instead of pumping chemicals into the soil we instead focus on composting and soil building, understanding that the microbiology and health of the soil is essential to longevity in food production. Instead of a farming practice that destroys everything around it we seek to engage with the land and enrich the life around us by paying attention to the relationships between elements so often overlooked.

The woods have a lot to teach us if we can look to them with humility and hope. That’s it for today. In solidarity,

A & B.