Part I: An Introduction to Reclus’ Social Thought

1: The Earth Story, the Human Story

Elisée Reclus begins his magnum opus of social theory, Man and the Earth, with the words “L’Homme est la nature prenant conscience d’ellemême”—“Humanity is nature becoming self-conscious.”[14] Above this statement is an image of the earth, held in two upward-stretching hands. In an important sense, the purpose of that work, and indeed, of Reclus’ entire life’s work, is to draw out the implications of these words and this image. He wishes to trace the course of human history, showing the unity of development underlying the diversity of cultures and epochs, and then to situate the history of our species within the larger history of the planet. In doing so, he hopes to contribute significantly to the very process of the development of self-consciousness that he describes.

Reclus wishes in this way to help humanity discover its meaning as a historical being and as an aspect of the earth’s larger processes of selfrealization. It is his further hope that the discovery of these truths about ourselves can also help us to act consciously and responsibly as part of a developing human community and a developing earth community. In short, Reclus retells the story of humanity in the context of the story of the earth. He thus places his work firmly in the tradition of the great historical narratives.

This is a tradition that might seem outmoded today. The revolutionary “grand narratives” of socialism and communism have been widely discredited, and even the dominant “grand narratives” of capitalism, technological progress, and nationalism appear in an increasingly demythologized form. The power of brute facts (or certain social conditions that are ideologically mystified as “brute facts”) seemingly banishes the great myths of progress and social transformation. Ironically, mystification displaces mythology.

We (or at least the “we” of the West and its dependencies) seem now to be living through a period between narratives, between myths, if indeed we have not reached the end of the history of myth. It is a time of nihilism, in which the quest for being and meaning is replaced by the struggle for power. Without a Golden Age to emulate or a utopia to create, we find ourselves seemingly trapped in a rather uninspiring if overawing present. Banality is raised to the level of the sublime. We retain bits and pieces of the fragmented myths of the past and increasingly find ourselves left with disconnected bits and pieces of self. At worst, we merely accumulate and discard; at best, we recycle.

Reclus lived in a strikingly different age, in the heyday of the Myth of Progress. Partisans of the system of domination exuded optimism, if not smug complacency. Its opponents bristled with righteous indignation and glowed with idealistic hope for revolutionary change. Today, such hope has largely been replaced by the spirit of resignation. Conservatism declines into hardened cynicism, while radicalism is reduced to resentful marginalization. Between the two reigns confusion.

In an age of resignation, any narrative of universal self-realization seems suspect—as evidenced by recent postmodernist critiques of the very idea of the “grand narrative.” Critics allege that any attempt to discover a transhistorical universality, or even any unifying thread running through the fabric of history, betrays an intellectual will to power, cultural imperialism, or a disguised apology for the forces of domination. It is indeed true that such narratives are usually guilty of one or more of these charges. And granted, it is the function of critical thought to subject all interpretation to the most ruthless questioning.

Yet Reclus’ anarchist “grand narrative”—for the very reason that it is self-consciously anarchistic and aims at the destruction of the system of domination—presents a challenge to such sweeping dismissals of the quest for a more comprehensive, holistic view of history. Although it is true (and not very surprising) that Reclus does not entirely escape the biases that plague the creators of universal narratives, there are fundamental differences between his project and almost all the others. One of these concerns the identity of the historical protagonist (the “subject” or agent of history). Reclus’ universal subject is not, as one finds in the stereotypical “grand narrative,” Western or “civilized” humanity engaged in a process of triumphant world domination. Rather, it is a global humanity, embedded in nature, yet undertaking an open-ended and creative project of liberatory self-realization.

Thus, Reclus can be looked upon as an early prophet of globalization. His significance today comes in large part from his presentation of an egalitarian, libertarian vision of globalization—a globalization “from below”—that offers a theoretical alternative to the dominant corporate and statist versions that now prevail. Writing in the 1870s, he foresees a future in which “equality will obtain in the end, not only between America and Europe, but also between these two and the other quarters of the world.” In place of a world divided into a powerful, wealthy, and hegemonic core and a weak, poor, and dominated periphery, the world will have “its center everywhere, its periphery nowhere.”[15] Reclus’ project in fact points beyond even the globalization of humanity, for he understood the globe as the whole earth, of which we are an integral part. We develop within and in relation to that whole in all its complexity. He takes a dialectical approach in which every phenomenon, including the phenomenon of humanity, is inseparable from other phenomena (geographical features of the land, other living beings, natural regions) to which it is related. An understanding of the world thus requires a simultaneous understanding of all the interconnected and interpenetrating factors. For as Reclus states, though we must always seek to understand the significance of each determining factor, “it is only through an act of pure abstraction that one can contrive to present a particular aspect of the environment as if it had a distinct existence, and strive to isolate it from all the others, in order to study its essential influence.”[16]

Thus, from his dialectical perspective the unity of history must be discovered through an understanding of the diversity of phenomena, both natural and social. Accordingly, his account of the human story recognizes the integrity and specificity of the other—whether this other be a cultural or natural one. He recognizes various past cultures and many existing non-Western ones for their unique and enduring contributions to progress, and he rejects the reduction of these cultures to mere obsolete stages of development toward the higher social, political, economic, and intellectual achievements of the modern West. Nor does he depict the natural world as a mere backdrop for human history. Rather, nature is for him always an active presence, both encompassing humanity and remaining in intimate dialectical interaction with humanity throughout history.

Furthermore, Reclus’ account of human history and earth history avoids the imposition of closure, and it always retains a moment of creativity, novelty, and openness. In the preface to Man and the Earth, he summarizes what he sees as “the three orders of facts that are revealed to us through the study of social geography, and which remain so constant amid the chaos of things that one might well label them ‘laws.’” These are “the class struggle, the quest for equilibrium and the sovereign decision of the individual.”[17] In each case, the sweeping historical “law” is far from being a narrowly deterministic one. The class struggle for Reclus is a realm of creative, selfexpressive activity on the part of the dominated and oppressed, not a result of their mere reactivity to social conditions. Moreover, the quest for equilibrium is a creative project of humanity in which human beings have over the course of history invented diverse modes of cooperation, mutual aid, and cultural self-expression. For Reclus, social disequilibrium arises from the lack of freedom and from the attempt to impose a static order on a dynamic social milieu.[18] He agrees with Proudhon that freedom is “the mother, not the daughter, of order,” and he adds that domination necessarily engenders disorder. Finally, despite the strongly communitarian dimension of Reclus’ anarchism, it is “the human person, the primary element of society,” that is the source of “the creative will that constructs and reconstructs the world.”[19] It is his hope that this creative freedom will lead humanity to a future society based on free association, which will synthesize social harmony and equilibrium with social diversity and spontaneity.

Reclus was a pioneer in the project of writing the story of the earth and of humanity.[20] His anarchist grand narrative is a sweeping account of the planet from its beginnings, through the course of evolution over the ages, and finally through the manifold episodes of the human story within the story. It depicts the intersection of natural history and human history— or as he terms it, the story of “nature becoming self-conscious.” Integral to this history is an account of the forces of domination that emerge in human history, only to restrict the future self-realization of both humanity and nature. So needless to say, another central theme of his story is the long quest to overcome these forces of domination.

In exploring such themes, Reclus anticipates later critiques of the domination of humanity and nature, developed from the Frankfurt School through contemporary poststructuralist and radical ecological thought. We are now entering an era in which concepts of global social and ecological crisis become more familiar; ideas that were once limited primarily to the arcane realm of abstract social theory begin to pervade the larger culture. Consequently, the world-historical narrative that Reclus recounts may have even greater resonance today than it did in his own time.

As will be shown in the discussion that follows, Reclus’ emancipatory vision of history is a sweeping one with universalistic dimensions, but it encompasses a social and ecological ethic that is based on a concern for the self-realization of all beings in their uniqueness and particularity, and a practice of love and care for those beings.[21] This ethic is perhaps summarized best (at least in regard to humanity) in a letter that Reclus wrote near the end of his life to a Protestant minister in Orthez, his hometown. He asserts that his own ethic embodies the highest ideals of Christianity, ideals that had, perhaps ironically, been betrayed by institutionalized religion but carried on by anarchism:

It seems to me that as a libertarian socialist or, to be more precise, a communist anarchist, I am in many ways close to the Christian of the Gospels. Thus, I must neither call anyone “master” nor call myself “master” of anyone else. I must seek to live in a condition of equality with everyone, Jew or Greek, owner or slave, millionaire or beggar, without accepting any kind of supposed superiority or inferiority. I must adopt the old Christian maxim not to do anything to others that I would not want done to myself, and to do to others only what I would wish them to do to me. If I claim the right of personal or collective selfdefense, nevertheless I will forbid myself any idea of vengeance, which is a primitive practice, and no hatred will arise in my heart, since it would be aimed at unfortunates who are already victims of atavism or a bad environment. Finally, and again like the Christian who is faithful to his name, I would love first of all the brother whom I see “before cherishing or adoring the unknown beings that I do not see.”[22]

Reclus’ life work was to prepare the way for a world in which all forms of domination—all “mastery”—would be abolished, so that humanity could live in a free community of equals founded on such a practice of active, engaged love and compassion.