4: A Philosophy of Progress

Although the myth of progress has taken on myriad forms over the ages, it has remained powerful through much of the history of Western civilization. Indeed, in various guises it has constituted the dominant myth of modernity. Even radical critics of existing society have had difficulty challenging it, and the classical anarchist thinkers, including Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Reclus, were no exception. Indeed, they sometimes rivaled their capitalist and statist opponents in their confidence in the inexorable advance toward a better future.[147] When one examines Reclus’ view of history, one is struck by the strongly progressivist nature of his thought. In this, he seems to be quintessentially modern in his thought, imagination, and sensibility.

Nevertheless, Reclus distinguishes himself among classical radical theorists by the complex nature of his conception of progress. On the most overt level, he is a strong partisan of the concept and seeks to defend it against those who would use it on behalf of injustice and oppression. He recognizes that since the French Revolution the idea of progress has often been used as an ideological justification for elitism, class domination, imperialism, and other evils. Reclus attempts to rescue the concept from those who have betrayed it in this way, but on a deeper level, he questions the idea of progress itself. He refuses to interpret any given historical event, movement, institution, or tendency as being simply and unequivocally progressive. Instead, he takes a dialectical approach in which every historical phenomenon is seen as embodying in itself many contradictory moments. Thus, all such phenomena can be seen as having both progressive and regressive elements that require careful analysis if one is to understand their significance and assess accurately their dominant tendency.

One of the goals of Reclus’ social geography is to uncover continuities between the natural and social worlds and between natural and social phenomena. His analysis of progress exemplifies this endeavor, for it seeks to show that the concept can be applied meaningfully not only to human society but also to the natural world. Just as in human history there are cases in which various “social types” have attained “full blossoming,” so in nature there are examples of genera and species that “have reached such ideals of strength, rhythm, or beauty that nothing superior to them can be imagined.” Thus “each form, epitomizing in itself all of the laws of the universe that converge to determine it, is an equally marvelous consequence of this process.”[148] Reclus’ analysis echoes such philosophical themes as Aristotle’s concept of telos (according to which beings have ends toward which they aim and that, if attained, constitute the full realization of their highest potentialities); Aristotle’s more specific idea of the aretai, or excellences, which define such elements of self-realization for human beings; and the Daoist concept of de, which refers to the power of beings to realize their unique and incomparable goods. Even more striking is the similarity between Reclus’ thinking and concepts of recent ecophilosophers who focus on the importance of the fact that beings in nature have the capacity to attain their peculiar goods and that each has the possibility of developing into a “good of its kind.” He sees such development toward a good as a key concept for understanding both nature and human society.

When Reclus looks at the vast scope of human history, he sees certain slowly developing but pervasive changes in society that are moving it toward a future in which it realizes its own good—that is, the attainment of freedom and justice in its institutions and practices. Although he argues for the need for periodical violent revolutions, he interprets such cataclysmic events as but the culmination of gradual changes that take place over long periods of time. Progress is thus the result of interdependent revolutionary and evolutionary processes. He offers as evidence of evolutionary change the slow decline in belief in certain scientific absurdities and religious superstitions, and the waning power of traditional hierarchical and deferential attitudes. He believes that contrary to some versions of historical materialism, changes in consciousness can precede and indeed give rise to fundamental changes in what is incorrectly seen as the “material base” of society. It is in part for this reason that he hopes “the great evolution now taking place” can prepare the way for “the long expected, great revolution.”[149]

Though Reclus tries to show that world history (within which he would include so-called prehistory) contains both advances and regressions, he concludes that beneath these changes there is an overall movement of evolutionary progress. In interpreting social evolution, he sides ultimately with the view that “civilized” societies are more developed, not in the common economic or technical senses of this term but rather in relation to the project of human self-realization. He contends that while these societies have regressed in some important ways in comparison to previous ones, their advances make them on balance a positive step on the path of evolutionary social progress. Thus, the more “primitive” society often has the advantage of greater “coherence” and “consistency with its ideal,” while the “civilized” one has gained in “complexity” and “diversity.”[150] By this he means that the latter incorporates within itself a greater range of elements and has more highly developed interrelationships with other societies. For Reclus, the various forms of social “intermingling” characteristic of modern societies are enormous advantages since they expand our possibility of sharing human experience and attaining greater universality. In his view, the greater the interaction between cultures and races in a society, the greater the society’s strength and ability to achieve the good for all its members. Consequently, the more that all cultures of the world are unified in a universal global society, the more the advances of every region and age can contribute to general human development.

Reclus’ works sometimes exhibit a disconcerting juxtaposition of profound admiration for diverse cultures and condescension to those that he considers less advanced. Some of his earlier works in particular are lacking in appreciation of the merits of so-called “primitive” societies. Thus, writing in the 1860s in The Earth, he claims that in tropical regions “the mildness of the climate, the fertility of the soil, the exuberance of life, and the suddenness of death, take an equal part in maintaining man in his native carelessness and idleness,” so that humans “bend in silence before the majesty of mighty nature” and reconcile themselves to being “her slave.”[151] Like many of his contemporaries, he depicts such societies as remaining at the level of the “childhood” of humanity. He chides the Europeans for falsely taking pride in advances that were due less to their unique qualities and more to their good fortune in happening to live in the temperate zone, where they are “incited to labor” and pushed into efforts that led them to acquire “shrewdness, knowledge, cheerfulness, and love of life.”[152]

In his later works, he comes to recognize that many of these same intellectual and personal qualities exist in one form or another in societies other than the naturally “favored” ones. Even so, he sometimes lapses into generalizations about the “backwardness” of peoples of the tropics. For example, he argues in Man and the Earth that while in such regions people can live with little effort, they do not “prosper” because “a purely vegetative existence is not conducive to the development of [man’s] intelligence” and will not “render him master of the too-indulgent nature that surrounds him.”[153] He reiterates his opinion that the conditions necessary for these achievements are present only in certain “regions of effort” that “are all situated in the northern temperate zone.”[154]

Despite such questionable assessments of various cultures, Reclus manages to escape the widespread prejudice of his age according to which civilization constituted an unambiguous advance compared to previous social forms. Indeed, he explicitly attacks what he calls “chronocentric egoism,” which holds “that contemporary civilization, as imperfect as it may be, is nevertheless the culminating state of humanity, and that by comparison, all past ages were barbaric.”[155] In his view, societies go through periods of both progress and regression, and there is no single, unilinear path of world history by which to judge achievements. He criticizes European observers who “haughtily” dismiss all tribal cultures as merely “savage,” when in fact these societies are at “distinct points” in social evolution and may either be in a vital and creative “state of becoming” or “on the road to decay and death.”[156] This recognition of the specificity of social evolution within each society shows a relative openness to the unique qualities of those societies. Reclus concedes that societies that are often arrogantly excluded by European thought from world history are in fact “in history”—that is, they have their own history, which is comparable to the history of any other society.

Furthermore, despite Reclus’ statements concerning the greater degree of progress in modern societies, his writings demonstrate considerable sensitivity to the values and achievements of premodern and nonWestern societies. He admires much about tribal societies and considers the modern world to be quite inferior in many important areas. He cites, for example, the Aeta of the Philippines, whom he considers to be a model “in goodness, in spirit of justice, in rectitude of intention, and in reverence, in the truth of word and deed.”[157] Similarly, he praises the Aleuts for many qualities, including their artistic achievements, their boat-building and sailing accomplishments, their achievement of “social equilibrium,” and their peacefulness and amiability.[158]

Reclus avoids both the narrowness of provincialists, who are blind to the achievements of such societies, and the naïveté of primitivists, who often have limited knowledge of tribal peoples yet idealize them as “noble savages.” The latter observers, by not applying critical judgment to a society’s practices and by subordinating its lived reality to their illusions, express a subtle condescension toward the society. Reclus contends that it is necessary to recognize that some tribal societies have engaged in the most hideous rites of murder and ritual decapitation, and that even such generally admirable cultures as that of Tahiti have included some brutal and inhumane institutions.[159] Yet there is no need to idealize such societies to find merit in them, for when examined in the most realistic light they offer examples of some of the greatest achievements of human self-realization.

The fundamental challenge for society, according to Reclus, is to discover and develop fully every area in which humanity has progressed, while at the same time uncovering and negating every tendency toward regression. He contends that modern society has regressed in comparison to tribal society not only in the area of social solidarity, but also in its relationship to the natural world. His position on this issue is very similar to that of many contemporary social ecologists who concur with Reclus that human society has throughout history substituted one form of social hierarchy for another and has increasingly adopted an exploitative and destructive standpoint toward the natural world. The result is an intensifying contradiction between the possibilities created through social progress and the costs imposed on humanity and nature for its continuation. There is a growing need to resolve this contradiction through the destruction of the system of domination that divides human beings from one another and from nature. The attainment of this goal will permit a reappropriation of those valuable aspects of human society that have been sacrificed, including the communal sensibility and the respect for nature embodied in earlier social formations. While it is neither desirable nor even possible to replicate past social phenomena, knowledge of such past achievements offers inspiration for transforming our values and for expanding our vision of human possibilities in the future.

For Reclus, as for many modernist political radicals, humanity’s success in the project of liberatory social transformation requires both the vanquishing of ignorance and prejudice and a further development of human rationality. He states that the true revolutionary must be not only “a man of sentiment” but also “a man of reason,” uniting a strong feeling of human solidarity with precise knowledge of history, sociology, biology, and other fields, so that he can “incorporate his personal ideas into the generic whole of the human sciences.”[160] Advances in critical historical rationality are particularly important to Reclus. Through the scientific knowledge of history, humanity can learn how to preserve all the gains of historical progress and reclaim what has been lost through all the regressions of the past. “Modern man must unite in his being all of the virtues of those who have preceded him on earth. Without giving up any of the great privileges that civilization has conferred on him, neither must he lose any of his ancient strength, nor allow himself to be surpassed by any savage in vigor, dexterity, or in knowledge of natural phenomena.”[161] It is notable that despite his use of the now-pejorative term “savages,” Reclus recognizes among the many virtues of tribal people a greater knowledge of nature, which is no small matter from his strongly naturalistic, ecological point of view.

Indeed, Reclus’ overall judgment on the modern world is that despite enormous progress in many spheres, regression has taken place in some of the most essential areas. Modern society is superior in complexity since it has attained “a greater scope and constitutes a more heterogeneous organism through the successive assimilation of juxtaposed organisms.”[162] But this growing unity is achieved through the creation of a nation-state “whose aim is preeminence over and even the absorption of other ethnic groups,” so that the diversity of cultures existing in decentralized tribal societies is increasingly lost.[163] Here again, there is a strong parallel with more recent social ecological analysis of the dialectic underlying the history of civilization. While later social forms achieve greater complexity and even universality in their embodiment of a vast process of historical development, at the same time they move toward social simplification and the destruction of the wealth of cultural diversity, as a global monoculture is established by the global capitalist economic order and the global statist political order. There is a striking parallel and a real historical connection between this social simplification and the accompanying ecological simplification, alluded to by Reclus in his discussion of the Maori cited earlier.

Throughout Reclus’ work one finds such a dialectical social critique, in which the coexisting progressive and regressive moments of historical phenomena are delineated. His examination of the history of religion presents one of the most comprehensive and detailed applications of such an analysis. Beginning with tribal religions and the rise of the major world religious traditions and extending the analysis to his own day, he traces the changing role of religion in various social systems and delineates its historically progressive and regressive dimensions.

For example, he analyzes the long evolution of the Hebrew God. Beginning as a “belligerent defender of the confines of his narrow homeland,” Yahweh is gradually transformed into a rather distant and transcendent ruler of the earth, and finally into a god of compassion, as the sorrow of the people, “having renewed the nation, renewed its god also.”[164] He explains that this transformation was a response to the experience of the Jewish people, specifically to its experience of war, plunder, and betrayal by its leaders. As a result of such ordeals, it began to conceive of the deity not as “the protector of the homeland, but rather as the representative of justice.”[165] Religion thus reflected a process of moral education in society.

Reclus contends that in Israel a “moral revolution” took place, in which the Hebrew prophets expressed a vision of social justice the legacy of which continues in the demands of reformers and revolutionaries of modern times. Prophets such as Amos and Micah “expressed their disgust for religious formalities, spectacles, sacrifices and genuflections,” and epitomized the essence of religion as “pure and simple morality, the practice of justice, and kindness.”[166] They condemned war, looked forward to a future age of peace, and “dreamed of that universal fraternity of which we still dream today and which has fled from us like a mirage over the past two thousand years.”[167] Having lost their own land, they “embraced in thought the whole of the universe” and looked forward to the day when all would be united “in the perfect consciousness of what is just and good.”[168] Needless to say, this vision of justice and solidarity is of much more than historical interest to Reclus. For it is exactly this moral heritage of the Hebrew prophets, which was passed down to him by way of radical Protestantism, that lies at the core of his own anarchism.

Despite Reclus’ admiration for the prophetic tradition, he subjects it to a critical, dialectical analysis and finds in it not only progressive but also strongly regressive aspects. While the prophets’ message of justice constituted an enormous contribution to the history of liberation, it was also inextricably enmeshed in the system of historical domination. Consequently, its powerful message was available for use in legitimating and even strengthening that system. Because it was allied with an authoritarian monotheism that claimed “the certitude of knowing the only God, the absolute Master,” the prophetic tradition also contributed to the creation of the theocratic state and the first “perfect religious intolerance” in history.[169]

Reclus is particularly astute in diagnosing the ways in which the metaphysical and moral insights of the founders of spiritual traditions have been turned into ideology at the service of power. His discussion of the history of Buddhism perhaps best illustrates this. He shows how the revolutionary implications of Shakyamuni Buddha’s message were negated as his teachings were institutionalized in the form of an organized religion in alliance with political power. Reclus is among the few Western social and political theorists who have understood the challenge to all existing ideologies and institutions inherent in the Buddhist appeal to direct experience. He perhaps sees the affinities between his own critique of domination and belief in universal love, and the fundamental Buddhist teachings of nonattachment and compassion. In Reclus’ words, the Buddha preached a “gospel of brotherhood” that proclaimed “no more kings, no more princes, no more bosses or judges, no more Brahmins or warriors, no more enemy castes that hate one another, but rather brothers, comrades, and companions who work together!” He goes so far as to say that in this original teaching “all hierarchy is abolished” and that “there is no role at all for authority.”[170] In effect, the original Dharma was a form of anarchism.

Reclus explains that these revolutionary, anarchistic dimensions of Buddhism were destroyed as its social egalitarianism was given a purely moral or mystical interpretation, the Buddha was declared a god (or an avatar of Vishnu), and the Dharma was established as an official state religion. He notes the irony of the fact that the state reestablished the caste system, while official state proclamations continued to proclaim such Buddhist principles as “human fraternity and the necessity of spreading instruction to women and children as well as men.”[171]

Reclus notes an even more extreme conflict between ideology and practice in the case of the Jains. The Jain religion is based on a feeling of unity with all of life and an ethics of nonviolence that extends even to other species (a view that today would be called “biocentric egalitarianism”). Yet the far-reaching social implications of such principles, which would certainly require the abolition of the state and other authoritarian institutions, were negated as Jain practice developed into an extreme and even fanatical obsession with avoidance of injury to various life forms. It became perhaps the only biocentrism in human history that took its principles to their logical conclusions (though, some might say, by reducing them to the absurd). The Jains adopted such extreme practices as filtering drinking water, breathing through a veil, and sweeping the ground before them as they walked in order to avoid destroying other life forms. However, their respect for life did not prevent them from “enriching themselves at the expense of the populace” so that they became “a fierce caste, composed of public enemies who were justly detested by the people.”[172] Reclus points out that their respect for all life forms did not prevent them from becoming an elite group that exploited the masses.[173] He remarks that “such is the fate of religions: in becoming established, they negate their own starting-points, systemize their betrayal, and repudiate their own founders.”[174]

Despite Reclus’ harsh critique of institutionalized religion and his professed atheism and secularism, there is an implicit, but very significant, religious undercurrent in his own works. As has been mentioned, he sometimes writes in a rather pantheistic vein of the experience of nature as involving a loss of the ordinary sense of selfhood and a merging with the surrounding milieu. In some works he expresses not only an intense love of the natural world but something close to the experience of union with nature typical of nature mysticism.[175] Furthermore, at times he explicitly refers to his own philosophy as a kind of humanistic religion based on the pursuit of the good of the whole. When the journal La Revue proposed discussion of “morality without God,” Reclus replied that “the public good, or in other words the happiness of all human beings, our brothers, will naturally become the special goal of our renewed existence” and that “we will thus have our religion, which, henceforth, will be in no way incompatible with reason, and this religion, which is moreover far from new and has always been practiced by the best people, includes everything good that was contained in the ancient religions.”[176]

Reclus holds that this positive core of religion has been overwhelmingly betrayed by its institutionalized forms; nevertheless, he recognizes that it is still put into practice by the more enlightened and compassionate adherents of these traditions. He admits that there are tendencies within religion that are compatible with the social goals of anarchism, even when there are irreconcilable divergences on the level of beliefs. Thus, in his letter to M. Roth, a minister in Orthez, he says that although “there can be no agreement between Christians and anarchists, for all confusion of languages leads to a confusion of ideas,” nevertheless, “as a Christian, you carry out your mission conscientiously. We anarchists know that all the heartfelt love that you have for your non-Christian friends hastens the coming of that great federation into which all men of good will, going beyond all churches, will enter, even if they be atheists like the Buddha.”[177]

Despite his recognition of the progressive aspects of religion, Reclus sees its regressive aspects as by far the most significant ones in the modern world. He finds institutionalized religion to be primarily a force that perpetuates a past of ignorance and superstition, and that stands in the way of social progress. He juxtaposes it starkly with science, which he sees as a force for progress, enlightenment, and modernity. Reclus traces the origins of religion as a social force back to early societies in which the shaman was both a teacher who conveyed knowledge based on observation of the real world and also a priest who propagated fantasies concerning an illusory world. He contends that throughout history traditional worldviews have inherited the legacy of this original split and have consisted of an amalgam of myth and reality, truth and falsehood.[178]

Reclus observes that as knowledge of society and nature has progressed in the modern world, science and religion have increasingly diverged from one another. He sees the result of this divergence as “a distinct opposition, a relentless war, between science—that is, the objective search for truth—and the collection of feelings, beliefs and fetishistic vestiges that we call religion.”[179] He believes that in this struggle science must ultimately triumph and reveal the dominant religious concepts to be relics of past ignorance and superstition.

Science thus plays a heroic role in history for Reclus. Though he finds elements of both progress and regression in the history of science, his account exhibits the almost boundless faith in science and technology that is so typical of classic modernity. He sometimes depicts scientific institutions not only as essential to all material progress but, even more, as the key to truth in all realms. The march of progress advances inexorably, banishing obsolete ideas and overcoming material barriers, and science is the instrument of its triumph. In his preface to the 1892 French edition of Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread, Reclus goes so far as to say that he “professes a new faith” and that the object of that faith, “science,” is the “ideal” upon which society must ultimately “model” itself.[180] How this “modeling” might be accomplished is not made entirely clear. However, what is apparent is Reclus’ adherence to a variation of the myth of the Enlightenment, in which technique and reason march forward in tandem, as ignorance, superstition, and material scarcity are progressively vanquished.

As a result of this rather extreme historical optimism, Reclus sometimes exaggerates the possibilities for banishing ideology from the modern world. “As the worker believes no longer in miracles,” he asks rhetorically, “can he be induced to believe in lies?”[181] Unfortunately, we have seen over the last century abundant evidence of the capacity of human beings—workers or otherwise—to delude themselves, whether to justify their hope in times of desperation or their cynicism in times of complacent satisfaction. Reclus vastly underestimates the need of human beings to create illusions to deal with the eternal problems of human existence: pain, suffering, death, losses of all kinds, the search for identity, the quest for meaning. Like almost all classical radical theorists, he has an inadequate grasp of some of the most important spiritual, existential, and psychological dimensions of the human condition. He also devotes little attention to the deep-seated human striving for power that has been explored by the Hegelian, Nietzschean, and Lacanian traditions but has been generally neglected by most radical social thought, including much of the anarchist tradition. Consequently, he fails to consider adequately the ways in which ideals like “anarchy,” “communism,” or even his cherished “brotherhood” and “solidarity,” not to mention “science,” “reason,” and “progress,” could themselves so easily be distorted ideologically.

But although Reclus sometimes lapses into naïve technological optimism and uncritical rationalism, his thought often transcends these tendencies. As will be discussed later, he includes an incisive critique of technology in his overall critique of domination. He sees the ultimate criterion for judging social progress to be neither technological development nor economic growth but rather the advancement of human social self-realization in harmony with the natural world. Furthermore, he rejects narrow views of this goal that would identify it with vastly increased productivity, material improvements, expansion of knowledge, or even the maximization of pleasure and happiness, as utilitarian ethics maintains, and as the conventional wisdom seemed increasingly inclined to hold even in his day.

In place of any sort of technological or economistic utopianism, Reclus develops a many-sided view of human self-realization that includes some of the goals mentioned but goes far beyond them. It consists, he says, of “a complete development of the individual,” including such areas as “the improvement of the physical being in strength, beauty, grace, longevity, material enrichment, and increase of knowledge,” in addition to “the perfecting of character, the becoming more noble, more generous, and more devoted.”[182] Moreover, self-realization must be a social process in which “the progress of the individual merges with that of society, united by the force of an increasingly intimate solidarity.”[183] Even in this brief summary of the nature of the good life, Reclus includes its physical, esthetic, material, intellectual, moral, and social dimensions. Reclus’ view has much in common with the Aristotelian eudemonistic ethic, both in his multifaceted conception of human self-realization and in his belief in the inseparable interconnection between the individual attainment of diverse virtues or excellences and the collective realization of a common good. Though Reclus’ ethics can in many ways be looked upon as “an ethics of care,” it might also be seen as a “left Aristotelianism,” in that it broadens the concept of self-realization into a radically universal one. It is in some ways more radical than Marx’s left Aristotelianism, not only in proposing a conception of human solidarity with more deeply communitarian dimensions but also in linking human self-realization to similar processes of unfolding and development on the part of other species and of the earth as a whole.

Reclus seems particularly Aristotelian when he defines the ultimate goal of progress as “happiness,” in a very expansive sense. He explicitly rejects the individualistic or utilitarian conception of happiness as mere “personal enjoyment,” and he redefines it to encompass a process of universal self-realization. Happiness, he says, “is true, deep, and complete only when it extends to the whole of humanity.”[184] But this does not mean merely totaling up the sum of all individual satisfactions to produce the aggregate good for humanity as a whole. The attainment of happiness cannot be reduced (in the manner of individualistic ethical theories) to “a certain level of personal or collective existence,” but rather includes a collective “consciousness of marching toward a well-defined goal” and a process of “directing the whole great human body toward the greatest good.”[185] “Happiness” is thus a broad concept signifying participation in humanity’s collective project of self-realization.

From Reclus’ holistic ethical perspective, the concept of self-realization must also be extended beyond our own species. If we are truly to act as “nature becoming self-conscious,” we must, in addition to pursuing the good of humanity, also contribute as much as is in our power to the good of all living beings. Accordingly, humanity has a wide-ranging moral responsibility that consists not only of negative duties to refrain from harming the natural world but also of positive duties to contribute actively to its flourishing. We have an obligation to “develop the continents, the seas, and the atmosphere that surrounds us; to ‘cultivate our garden’ on earth; to rearrange and regulate the environment in order to promote each individual plant, animal, and human life.”[186] Such actions must be based on a growing awareness of our integral place in nature that leads us “to become fully conscious of our human solidarity, forming one body with the planet itself, and to take a sweeping view of our origins, our present, our immediate goal, and our distant ideal.”[187]

Holistic thought is sometimes criticized for emphasizing the good of the whole to the detriment of that of the part. While examples of authoritarian and even “fascistic” holism can certainly be found, the term in no way implies domination or “totalization.” Indeed, the most authentically holistic approaches recognize that the self-realization of the whole can only be attained through that of the parts, whether these may be the body and all its organs and faculties, in the case of holistic health, or the community and all its constituent groups and individuals, in the case of holistic social theory.[188] Reclus’ social thought is instructive as an example of a critical holism that gives full recognition to the relative autonomy and integrity of individuals. It is thus, like any truly dialectical social ecology, a theory of unity-in-diversity. The nature of social progress cannot be understood merely through an analysis of the development of structures, institutions, or other social wholes but also requires careful attention to individuality and subjectivity.

According to Reclus, all “evolution in the existence of peoples” is the result of “individual effort.”[189] It is true that he often explains various social phenomena as the result of the interaction between natural and social forces. Yet he reminds us that history cannot be reduced entirely to the dialectical interplay between objective conditions and that the human freedom to act creatively and to shape the future always exists, albeit within certain social and natural constraints. His overriding concern is to demonstrate that it is “the human person,” rather than historical laws, institutions, or social forces, that is the “primary element of society.”[190] Society, he believes, becomes more deterministic as economic power, the authoritarian state, and manipulative technologies subject people to more rigid controls and as freedom and creativity find fewer (or perhaps less conspicuous) avenues for social expression. Yet spontaneity and choice remain possible, and they constitute the basis for creating a future society in which nondominating unity-in-diversity is finally realized. “Free society establishes itself through the liberty provided for the full development of each human person, the original basic cell of society, who then joins together and associates as he wishes with other cells of a changing humanity.”[191] Reclus’ account of the achievement of personal self-realization through participation in the free, cooperative community is an excellent example of that “commitment to communal individuality” that Alan Ritter sees as “the strength of the anarchists’ thought.”[192]

Reclus’ vision of the unfolding of freedom in human history continues in many ways the Spinozistic and Hegelian conceptions of freedom as a form of self-determination and self-expression. Spinoza defined the attainment of freedom by a being as its movement from being passively acted upon by external forces to shaping actively the world around it. Hegel developed and radicalized this conception by giving it a historical dimension. Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura (God or Nature) becomes in Hegel Geist (Spirit) or the Absolute, the universal subject of world-historical development toward freedom through self-realization. Reclus’ philosophy of progress is a major step toward naturalizing and demystifying such a conception of freedom. He notes that while “for a long time we were nothing more than [the earth’s] unconscious products, we have become increasingly active agents in its history.”[193] As humanity becomes more aware of its agency, it can develop a meaningful conception of its collective self-liberation. Thus, “the essence of human progress consists of the discovery of the totality of interests and wills common to all peoples; it is identical to solidarity.”[194] Finally, our conception of unity will extend beyond our own species to the earth itself. As we begin to see ourselves as “one body with the planet” and conceive of ourselves as “nature becoming self-conscious,” we realize that the process of attaining freedom through self-realization encompasses not only humanity but also the earth as a whole.

Needless to say, from Reclus’ perspective, while this general progressive movement toward freedom takes place, contrary regressive developments are also impeding its advance. He believes that one cost of the development of civilization has been an increase in the barriers between individuals and groups in society resulting from institutionalized domination. Social progress therefore depends on the elimination of hierarchical divisions, so that open communication can be achieved. Long before Habermas, Reclus discussed the idea that social emancipation requires forms of communication that are free from domination, and the ability of the species to create a fund of practical knowledge relevant to that emancipation. Reclus asserts that it is necessary to destroy “the boundaries between castes, as well as between peoples,”[195] so that humanity will finally be able to draw on the experience of all cultures and all individuals in formulating its goals and values. As a result, humanity will be able to synthesize the virtues and achievements of both modern and “primitive” societies. The complexity, diversity, and universality of the former will be allied with the latter’s “original simplicity” of life, in which there is “a complete and amicable freedom of human social intercourse.”[196]

As humanity becomes in this way more conscious of its own history, it also expands its consciousness into the larger context of nature. The concept of humanity as the self-consciousness of nature was present in Reclus’ work almost three decades before he made it the opening statement of Man and the Earth. As early as the 1860s he asserts that “since civilization has connected all the nations of the earth in one common humanity—since history has linked century to century—since astronomy and geology have enabled science to cast her retrospective glance on epochs thousands and thousands of years back, man has ceased to be an isolated being, and, if we may so speak, is no longer merely mortal: he has become the consciousness of the imperishable universe.”[197]

Reclus had already begun to develop his dialectical conception that all phenomena of nature are in a constant state of transformation and unfolding. He notes that one of the most basic truths discovered through the universalization of consciousness is that “everything is changing and everything is in motion.”[198] Humanity begins to understand itself in the context of these larger processes when it begins to look beyond human history to earth history. Thus, “the firm ground which he treads under his feet, and long thought to be immovable, is replete with vitality, and is actuated by incessant motion; the very mountains rise or sink; not only do the winds and ocean-currents circulate round the planet, but the continents themselves ... are slowly traveling around the circle of the globe.”[199] Over the subsequent decades, Reclus increasingly developed this process view of reality in a teleological (though in no way deterministic) direction as he united it with a vision of universal self-realization.

Reclus deserves recognition as an early prophet of the developing globalization or planetization of humanity. He believes that as the world is brought closer together through advances in transportation and communication, and as knowledge of the common history of human beings and the earth grows, humanity will have to revolutionize its system of values in accord with its growing unity. He notes that “industrial appliances, that by a single electric impulse make the same thought vibrate through far continents, have distanced by far our social morals”;[200] further, the exploration of all corners of the earth and the perpetual movement of travelers between all countries has made us “citizens of the planet.”[201] He concludes that through such means the illusion of separateness has become untenable and that “humanity has arrived at self-consciousness.”[202] In the New Universal Geography he strikingly expresses this conception of the growing planetary unity of humanity:

So bounded are now the confines of the planet, that it everywhere benefits by the same industrial appliances; that, thanks to a continuous network of postal and telegraphic services, it has been enriched by a nervous system for the interchange of thought; that it demands a common meridian and a common hour, while on all sides appear the inventors of a universal language. Despite the rancors fostered by war, despite hereditary hatreds, all mankind is becoming one. Whether our origin be one or manifold, this unity grows apace, daily assumes more of a quickening reality.[203]

Reclus thus saw the unification of humanity as a concrete, material process that will increasingly be experienced as a historical reality. In his view, a growing consciousness of this process will make the anarchist ideal of social unity-in-diversity appear increasingly plausible to humanity. History increasingly exhibits “a general tendency of things to merge themselves into one living body in which all the parts are in reciprocal interdependence,” so that society can be seen as moving toward a state in everything “would constitute a harmonious cosmos in which each cell retains its individuality, corresponding to the free labor of each individual, and in which all would mesh together with one another, each one being necessary to the work of all.”[204]

Of course, the consciousness of global unity that Reclus hoped for was in his own time, and largely remains today, in only a rudimentary state. Yet he would argue that social and technological developments have nevertheless created objective conditions that help form the basis for such a planetary consciousness. He does not underestimate the obstacles to overcoming ideological distortions of this consciousness and to transforming it into effective social praxis, yet he is able (perhaps in an act of modernist, progressivist faith) to see profound, indeed revolutionary implications in the slowly growing awareness of the interconnections between all terrestrial phenomena.

Reclus is often marvelously imaginative in attempting to contribute to the creation of this new, unified vision of the world. An example is his proposal that an enormous globe with a network of surrounding walkways be constructed at the center of Paris, so that people could pass at various levels examining the details of the earth and thereby begin to grasp it as a vast interconnected whole. He also proposes that a new calendar be adopted that would not be linked to the history of any particular religious tradition or show preference for one culture over another. He judges the idea of numbering years in two directions with positive and negative numbers to be completely irrational. His solution is to choose a beginning point with a universal, planetary significance rather than a merely particularistic, culturally specific one. He suggests for this point of reference the first eclipse recorded in human history. He notes that he would be writing in the year 13,447 according to this system.[205] His choice of the first recorded eclipse is a powerful symbol of the interrelation between the natural and the social. Although that event was a natural occurrence beyond human control and involved phenomena extending even beyond our own planet, as a recorded event it forms part of human history and is noteworthy for its place in the development of human knowledge of natural phenomena.

Reclus’ desire to promote the unity of humanity seems sometimes to go to extreme lengths, as when he discusses the need for a “common language” for all human beings to facilitate global communication. He certainly appears a bit naïve when he states that the members of the new nation of humanity “must understand each other completely” and suggests that a language might be developed that would help realize this rather ambitious goal.[206] However, there may be more value to his speculation on this topic than appears at first sight. Reclus was well aware of the historical importance of Latin and later French as common languages of politics, commerce, culture, and scholarship. Today he would no doubt point to the growing dominance of English in these areas and in commerce as the expression of the need for an ever more closely interrelated humanity to express itself in a common tongue. Clearly, he would have preferred Esperanto or a new, more multicultural and universalistic language for such a means of communication. Yet the fact that far more human beings than ever before can now communicate directly would be seen by Reclus as strong evidence of progress in the unification of humanity. He would certainly add that the inevitable regressive dimensions of such a development should not be ignored, no doubt pointing out the cultural homogenization and loss of diversity that has accompanied the growing dominance of English and Anglophone culture.

For Reclus, the self-consciousness of humanity will continue to grow as knowledge of geography and history create a new global spatiality and temporality. In his view, “humankind, which makes itself One at every latitude and longitude, similarly tries to realize itself through one form that encompasses all ages.”[207] He posits a close relationship between this growing knowledge (which Hegel calls “world-historical” but which in the spirit of Reclus we might call “earth-historical”) and the expansion of freedom. For Reclus, history exhibits a certain order and “logic of events,” the knowledge of which allows us to play a more active and creative role in determining our own destiny. To the degree that we broaden our grasp of historical development and the diversity of human possibilities, we transcend any “strict line of development” determined by environmental and hereditary factors.[208]

The achievement of a grasp of this historical unity-in-diversity is the goal of Reclus’ social geography, especially as expressed in his sweeping account of human history in Man and the Earth. There he surveys the vast diversity of human achievements, while at the same time synthesizing that multiplicity into a single narrative of the human struggle for self-realization. He believes that such a unifying narrative is increasingly inscribing itself in history as a social reality rooted in human experience. As we become increasingly planetary beings in many spheres of our activity, social phenomena naturally begin to appear to us as aspects of the life story of a universal humanity. Cultures of other times and other places lose their quality of alien otherness, and their contributions to progress become available to all as examples of human possibilities. We come to see all peoples as “brothers toward whom we feel a growing spirit of solidarity,” and we find throughout history “an increasing number of models demanding understanding, including many that awaken in us the ambition to imitate some aspect of their ideal.”[209] The human race discovers itself to have a common history and is able to undertake a common project of self-realization. For Reclus, this means that the diverse experiences of all become part of one great human experiment, the great struggle for the attainment of freedom.