6: The Critique of Domination

Reclus was always an anarchist by temperament, and his libertarian ideas began to develop early in his life. However, his anarchism became increasingly deeper and more consistent as his social analysis expanded into a detailed critique of all forms of domination. As has been shown, Reclus was unusual in questioning the conception of human domination of nature that was accepted not only by mainstream thinkers but also by most critics of the prevailing order. He is also distinctive for the comprehensiveness of his critique of domination within human society. His analysis of various institutional forms of social domination constitutes one the most far-reaching accounts in classical radical thought, and his position prefigures in many ways the more widely recognized achievements of later critical theory.

One of the most extensively developed aspects of Reclus critique is his devastating attack on all forms of the state, including what he saw as the ideological fiction of the “representative” state. Although as late as 1871 he was willing to offer himself as a candidate for the National Assembly, he soon came to oppose the parliamentary system entirely, and for the remainder of his life he rejected voting in national elections, even in the proverbial case of “the lesser of evils.” In his opinion, all those who seek to exercise power in a centralized nation-state render themselves vulnerable to absorption into that system of domination. He says that aspiring officeholders are “raised above the crowd, whom they soon learn to despise,” so that they “end by considering themselves essentially superior beings; solicited by ambition in a thousand forms, by vanity, greed and caprice,” and “are all the more easily corrupted.”[299] He observes that their corruption is encouraged by a “rabble of interested flatterers” who are “ever on the watch to profit by their vices.”[300]

Reclus’ remarks on the processes by which elected officials are selected are often quite astute and describe accurately many features of what is called representative democracy. He notes that in order to gain support, an aspiring public official must please a variety of factions so that “ambitions inevitably emerge, and machinations, extravagant promises, and lies have free rein. Moreover, it is certainly not the most honest candidate who has the best chance of winning.”[301] In theory, the legislator should be a specialist in every area in order to make decisions for everyone on every subject imaginable. But in reality the candidates do not possess such capacities any more than do the members of the electorate. In practice, what is required of them is only that they be experts at getting elected, and “no particular ability recommends the candidate to the voters.”[302] Entirely irrelevant or arbitrary qualities become essential to electoral victory, and “the winner may owe his success to a certain provincial popularity, his good-natured qualities, his oratorical skills, or his organizational talents, but frequently he is also indebted to his wealth, his family connections, or even the terror that he can inspire as a great industrialist or large property owner.”[303]

The products of this degraded system, Reclus contends, are a collection of mediocrities who have no conception of the common good. The successful politician “will be a man of the party; he will be asked neither to involve himself in public works, nor to facilitate human relations, but rather to fight against one faction or another.”[304] The greatest danger is not the incompetence of the legislature but the fact that it is “inferior in moral qualities, since it is dominated by professional politicians.”[305] In Reclus’ opinion, these falsely denominated “representatives of the people” will certainly make far worse decisions for the populace than its individual members would have made for themselves without going through the trouble of holding elections.

Reclus contends that after the so-called representatives are elected, they are free to move ever farther from any kind of effective control by the people. Knowing that there is no real accountability between elections, and “well aware that he can now commit crimes with impunity, the elected official finds himself immediately exposed to all sorts of seductions on behalf of the ruling classes.”[306] The legislators find themselves in a world of power and wealth that is quite alien to the lives of those who elected them. The power of this milieu overcomes any scruples that may have stood in the way of identification with the political elite, as “the newcomer is initiated into the legislative traditions under the leadership of the veteran parliamentarians, adopts the esprit de corps, and is solicited by big industry, high officials, and above all, international finance.”[307] As is typical of all modes of socialization, the immediate social environment has an overwhelmingly powerful effect on the individual.

Reclus’ attack on electoralism is directed especially against the parliamentary socialists. He comments that “it would be absurd on our part to hold a grudge against the socialist leaders who, finding themselves caught up in the electoral machine, end up being gradually transformed into nothing more than bourgeois with liberal ideas. They have placed themselves in determinate conditions that in turn determine them.”[308] But while he (perhaps disingenuously) dismisses the idea of “holding a grudge against” such socialists, he certainly thinks they should be exposed as traitors to the cause of freedom and justice. Since they use the rhetoric of justice and equality and claim to act on behalf of the masses, they become powerful impediments to the popular acceptance of libertarian and revolutionary ideas. They sap the people’s revolutionary energies by diverting them into ineffectual and indeed counterproductive strategies. Reclus would no doubt direct similar criticisms at today’s “progressive” and social democratic politicians who argue that society can be made just and free if only their faction is elected to national office in sufficient numbers to guide the policies of the nation-state and mitigate somewhat the worst excesses of the capitalist system.

According to Reclus, such politicians corrupt themselves and become shameless hypocrites in seeking electoral success and high position rather than devoting all their efforts to achieving the social emancipation to which they profess allegiance. Once again (as on the issues of cooperatives and intentional communities), he raises the question of a discontinuity between means and ends. He argues that means that are justified in the name of quite laudable ends soon come to exert such a powerful influence that the ends become no more than ideological alibis for helping to perpetuate the system of domination and to legitimate the position of the nominal opposition within that system. In pursuit of electoral success, “the socialist candidate readily flatters the tastes, the inclinations, or even the prejudices of his electorate. He blithely ignores disagreements, disputes, and grudges, and for a while becomes the friend, or at least the ally, of those with whom only a short time ago he had exchanged invectives.”[309] If these politicians succeed in their quest for office, the disintegration of their character only accelerates. “Their very spirit undergoes a pervasive transformation,” and they finally end up as “experts at exchanging smiles, handshakes, and favors.”[310]

Reclus contends that the achievement of electoral success, though always greeted with euphoria, may actually be a major setback for any growing movement for social change, no matter how just and moral its professed ends may be. While it would seem that such a movement has gained a great victory if it can enact its demands into law, “it is possible that the result will be precisely the opposite. While it is true that any charter or laws that are agreed to by the insurgents may sanction the liberty that has been won, it is also true that they will limit it, and therein lies the danger. They determine the precise limit at which the victors must stop, and this inevitably becomes the point of departure for a retreat.”[311] Within a vital social movement, ideas and practices develop and evolve among the community of those committed to common ends. The shift to the parliamentary realm (and often even merely to the electoral one) transforms this dynamic process into a debilitating struggle to salvage some elements of the ideal in the form of a viable “program” or “platform.” This critique perhaps overstates the extent to which all such efforts to embody far-ranging ideals in practical political programs must founder on the shoals of political pragmatism. Yet the examples multiply of “progressive” (whether liberal, social democratic, or green) social movements that have envisioned vast social transformations, only to become practically ineffectual and theoretically insipid in the face of their own electoral and legislative successes.

If Reclus is harsh in his criticism of legislative power, he is no less scathing in his attack on bureaucracy and administration. He observes that injustice is woven into the fabric of existing society and that as long as the system of power remains fundamentally intact, any large institution must adapt itself to the prevailing conditions. He has a disturbing yet powerful message for many liberals, social democrats, and others of the reformist left who have continued to believe that an improved state bureaucracy is a promising agent for the rectification of social injustices. “As soon as an [administrative] institution is established, even if it should be only to combat flagrant abuses, it creates them anew through its very existence. It has to adapt to its bad environment, and in order to function, it must do so in a pathological way. Whereas the creators of the institution follow only noble ideals, the employes that they appoint must consider above all their remuneration and the continuation of their employment.”[312] Far from constituting, as Hegel claimed, a “universal class,” the bureaucracy is rather a powerful particularistic interest.

Furthermore, Reclus warns, bureaucracy is hopelessly inefficient. While bureaucratic rationality claims to maximize efficiency, it in fact does the reverse, because “first, it impedes individual initiative in every way and even prevents its emergence; second, it delays, halts, and immobilizes the works that are entrusted to it.”[313] Reclus’ critique of bureaucracy is of interest in part because many of his points sound so much like the antibureaucratic discourse of the neoliberal right in many countries today. But Reclus would argue that the contemporary left succumbs to a fallacious and disastrous logic when it deduces from the true premise that big business acts in ways detrimental to society the false conclusion that state bureaucracies will act in ways that are truly beneficial to the populations whose welfare is entrusted to them. He would contend that this logic will seldom seem convincing to those who have the most immediate experience of the administrative state, the actual “clients” (he would say “victims”) of state bureaucracies.

Reclus argues that the bureaucracy creates its own forms of social irresponsibility and greatly reduces efficiency at the same time. Despite his loathing for the capitalist industrial system, Reclus finds the bureaucratic world to be in some ways even worse. While human values are trampled on by industry, at least its economic rationality produces an effort to reduce waste and increase productivity. On the other hand, “the administrative hierarchy does its utmost to multiply the number of employes and subordinates, directors, auditors, and inspectors. Work becomes so complicated as to be impossible,” and “everything becomes a pretext for a delay or a reprimand.”[314] In this respect, there is even less redeeming social value in state bureaucratic organization.

Reclus sees another evil of bureaucracy in the loss of responsibility that results from its complex, mazelike network of power, in which accountability becomes impossible. In such a system, “minor officials exercise their power more absolutely than persons of high rank, who are by their very importance constrained by a certain propriety,” and “the petty official need not have the slightest fear of being held responsible in this way so long as he is shielded by a powerful boss.”[315] The egoistic, dominating personality fostered by authoritarian institutions gains a multitude of outlets in the bureaucratic labyrinth: “The uncouth can give free rein to crass behavior, the violent lash out as they please, and the cruel enjoy torturing at their leisure.”[316]

Reclus thus developed a quite challenging critique of bureaucracy over a century ago, pointing out evils that have become even more evident in the massively bureaucratic states that have developed since his time. It might seem ironic that the mainstream left has allowed the right to monopolize antibureaucratic rhetoric for its own benefit, even as military and corporate bureaucracies hostile to the presumed goals of the left have proliferated. Reclus would argue that this lapse has continued to exist for very good ideological reasons. He would point out that an incisive critique of bureaucratic abuses would necessarily lead to a critique of statism, party politics, and all the other related hierarchical institutions that oppositional political movements and parties have themselves done so much to perpetuate and in which they continue to have a vested interest.

Another area in which Reclus’ critique of the state is particularly acute is in his discussion of patriotism and the ideology of nationalism. His dissection of the extremes of patriotic folly prefigures later analysis of the psychology (and pathology) of nationalism by figures such as Randolph Bourne and Wilhelm Reich. Although individuals, he notes, may sometimes escape a prevailing insular mentality, masses of people tend to remain in the grip of a “primitive morality of force” that can be aroused whenever their leaders find an enemy against whom they can direct malignant passions and murderous fantasies.

Reclus is quite eloquent in his description of the collective insanity that periodically breaks out under the influence of nationalist leaders and manipulative politicians. Once it is deceived into conflict, a nation unites in patriotic hatred and then “delights in ravishing, killing, and then singing of victory over the sprawling corpses. It glories in all the evil that its ancestors have inflicted on other peoples. It gets carried away, and wildly celebrates in verse, in prose, and in triumphant depictions, all the abominations that its own people have committed in foreign lands. It even solemnly invites its God to take part in the general intoxication.”[317] What Reclus describes, though he never specifically mentions the term, is a process in which all the forces of the social imagination are enlisted on behalf of the state and its atrocities.

This mechanism is one of the most powerful means of control available to “the masters of the people.” Social antagonisms are calmed and oppositional forces abated by “transforming all the energies of a nation into a rage against the foreigner.”[318] This recourse is readily available since the state and its rulers labor tirelessly to rewrite history as a chronicle of offenses against the nation by malevolent foreign powers, with episodes of injury and victimization alternating with those of triumph and revenge. The fundamentally oppositional and antagonistic nature of the system of nation-states greatly facilitates this task. Pretexts for turning neighbors into enemies “are easy to find, since the interests of states remain different and in conflict through the very fact of their separation into distinct artificial organisms.”[319] In addition, given the vicissitudes of international relations, there is usually a long history of conflict at the disposal of the rulers for purposes of inflaming the public. They can make use of “the memories of actual wrongs, massacres, and crimes of all sorts committed in former wars. The call for revenge still resounds, and when a new war will have passed like the terrible flames of a fire devouring everything in its path, it will also leave the memory of hatred and will serve as leaven for future conflicts.”[320]

The oppositional nature of the state dictates not only conflict but also conquest. By Reclus’ time the age-old process of state expansionism had evolved into the system of global imperialism in which the more powerful European nation-states had succeeded in subjecting most of the surface of the earth to colonization. This process of global transformation was of great interest to Reclus both as a social geographer and as a political theorist. Béatrice Giblin notes that his views on colonization are ambiguous because of his distinction between “colonies of exploitation,” based on the domination of conquered peoples, and “colonies of population,” which, in his view, have contributed to progress through the spread of constructive human activity over the face of the earth.[321] Giblin correctly points out that he “had a dialectical vision of the phenomenon of colonialism,” according to which “he denounces the negative effects—such as the plunder of the economy, the destructuring of indigenous cultures, the increase in famines, etc.,” while also recognizing such positive consequences as “the spread of education to a greater proportion of the population, the progressive disappearance of certain ‘barbaric’ customs such as infanticide of female offspring, improvement in health conditions, etc.”[322] His assessment of colonialism thus coincides with his general view of social phenomena, which requires a careful analysis of both progressive and regressive moments.

It would be incorrect to see in this dialectical analysis any sort of apology for colonization. Reclus does not seek to explain away the evils of history in any quasi-Hegelian defense of their necessity in some vast scheme of world history. Rather, he asserts that freedom and solidarity must always be defended and that progress must be pursued only through the most just and liberatory means possible. He therefore vehemently opposes the spread of imperial state power, whatever good might be discovered amid the evils of conquest and oppression. For example, his condemnation of the French colonization of Algeria—despite the implantation of widespread “colonies of population” there—is scathing. He notes that the military conquerors “were interested much less in the fate of the conquered populations than in plying their trade, and he saw little in Algeria beyond a vast field for training troops in all sorts of military exercises,” so that as a consequence “the so-called military spirit was formed—a spirit hostile to all free thought, individual initiative, and peaceful, spontaneous progress.”[323] He condemns colonial exploitation elsewhere on similar grounds, sometimes noting the correspondence between the destruction of indigenous cultures and the assault on the integrity of nature as European power spread across the earth.

While Reclus finds certain evils, such as conflict and conquest, to be inherent in the very form of the nation-state, he does not treat “the state” as a monolithic institution. He recognizes that states have diverse histories and compositions, and that they play varying roles in the course of history. He is even willing to concede that they have both progressive and regressive aspects (perhaps a surprising concession for as thoroughgoing an anarchist as Reclus). In his consideration of modern nation-states, he finds Russia and the United States to be of particular importance in the future course of history. He sees these two societies as the major modern paradigms of social organization. The United States is “a republic, the leader of other republics,” while Russia represents “conservative principles and the old despotism.”[324] Indeed, he discovers in Russia the seeds of an Oriental despotism that constitutes a major threat to European society. He warns of “the poison of a traditional, atavistic servitude that easily spreads through the veins of the European: the Oriental conception of the necessity for a strong government,” and suggests that there is no lack of “base souls, happy to renounce themselves and to obey.”[325] In particular, he fears that European authoritarianism would be promoted by the example of a modern Russian despotism that carried on the tradition of Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible. It takes little imagination to combine these remarks on Oriental despotism with Reclus’ attacks on authoritarian socialism and to discover a powerful implicit critique of Stalinism and the future Soviet “communist” state.[326]

Reclus also warns against more subtle developments in the direction of despotism. He recognizes that with the spread of illusory “representative democracy” the state begins in some ways to gain a firmer hold over the populace. “On the one hand, the ambition to govern becomes widespread, even universal, so that the natural tendency of the ordinary citizen is to participate in the management of public affairs. Millions of men feel solidarity in the maintenance of the state, which is their property, their affair.”[327] On the other hand, the state is strengthened by the spread of an equally superficial social democracy, as a multitude of people become dependent on it for “small entitlements to income.”[328] For Reclus, no less than for Friedrich Hayek, the social-democratic state is certainly a “road to serfdom” (though Reclus would contend that Hayek and other conservative critics of the state merely take detours to the same destination).

But in spite of his fears of regression to old forms of despotism and evolution toward new ones, Reclus holds out hope that the despotic state might on the whole be moving into a period of decline. He notes that even as the public begins to find itself on much more intimate terms with the state, true to the cliché, familiarity begins to breed contempt. The unmasking of the state’s cynical exercise of power begins, and the manipulative and self-interested nature of its actions becomes increasingly clear. Reclus is rather prophetic in describing this unmasking process, which might be called the “disenchantment of the state.” While we have yet to see whether it proceeds to what he sees as its logical conclusion, his analysis of the phenomenon is brilliantly prescient.

He observes that as the populace becomes more involved, albeit superficially, in the affairs of state, “this banal government, being all too well understood, no longer dominates the multitudes through the impression of terrifying majesty that once belonged to masters who were all but invisible and who only appeared before the public surrounded by judges, attendants, and executioners.”[329] While the popularization of the state superficially seems to reinforce its power, the disenchanted state loses its capacity to “inspire mysterious and sacred fear” and finally reaches the point at which “it even provokes laughter and contempt.”[330] He suggests that historians will have to study satire and caricature to understand adequately the fate of the state and government beginning with the second half of the nineteenth century.

Reclus describes this process in dialectical terms: “The state perishes and is neutralized through its very dissemination. Just when all possess it, it has virtually ceased to exist, and is no more than a shadow of itself.”[331] The transformation of the modern state illustrates the classically Hegelian dialectical principle that when a phenomenon reaches the limit of its selfdevelopment it begins to destroy itself, though its history is preserved through its embodiment in succeeding phenomena. “Institutions thus disappear at the moment when they seem to triumph. The state has branched out everywhere; however, an opposing force also appears everywhere. While it was once considered inconsequential and was unaware of itself, it is constantly growing and henceforth will be conscious of the work that it has to accomplish.”[332] The opposing force is, of course, the movement for human liberation. Needless to say, Reclus’ optimism concerning its efficacy, and even its growing self-consciousness, has yet to be borne out in history. And to the extent that the legitimacy of the state has indeed eroded, its place has often been taken by other modes of domination, including the form that is given the most extensive attention in Reclus’ own analysis—economic exploitation.

Although Reclus launches a stinging attack on the state and bureaucracy, it is economic power that is the object of his most far-reaching critique. In his view, capital is the supreme power in modern society and the major obstacle to social emancipation. He therefore presents an extensive analysis of the evolution of forms of property, the domination of society by economic power, and the destructive effects of the economization of society and its values. His reflections on the subject make an important contribution to an anarchist theory of property. In part, he further develops such conceptions as Godwin’s idea of entitlement based on need and Proudhon’s distinction between exploitative forms of property, which the latter defined as “theft,” and property as personal possession, which he saw as a form of “freedom.”

According to Reclus, there are ancient forms of appropriation that preceded “property” as we now conceive of it. Early societies linked possession to use and had no conception of individual or group ownership. Even collective property, he says, is “a limitation of the primitive right to labor belonging to all.”[333] The most ancient forms seem to come closest to what Reclus proposes for the future, which is a kind of distribution according to need, or, as he would put it, distribution based on solidarity with others and with the community. In his view, the earliest forms were succeeded by a system of possession of property by the community as a whole. Although he sees a regressive aspect in this change since it introduced ideas of possession that had potentially antisocial implications, he argues that many of the virtues of the more ancient system were preserved. Indeed, he praises lavishly what remains of the tradition of communal property, for it offers a sphere of resistance to the domination of capitalist property relations, presents a point of reference with which to show the brutality of the present economic order, and points toward a future system of cooperative production.

Critics have sometimes contended that anarchist thought, and classical anarchist theory in particular, has emphasized opposition to the state to the point of neglecting the real hegemony of economic power. This interpretation arises, perhaps, from a simplistic and overdrawn distinction between the anarchist focus on political domination and the Marxist focus on economic exploitation. While there is abundant evidence against such a thesis throughout the history of anarchist thought, Reclus’ analysis refutes it in a particularly conclusive manner. In his view, “one overriding fact dominates all of modern civilization, the fact that the property of a single person can increase indefinitely, and even, by virtue of almost universal consent, encompass the entire world.”[334] He observes that the ability of capital to transgress all boundaries of state and nationality gives it a great advantage over political power. “The power of kings and emperors has limits, but that of wealth has none at all. The dollar is the master of masters.”[335]

In analyzing the destructive aspects of capital, Reclus considers arguments that concentration of property has fostered economic and technological progress, and that economies of scale have increased productivity. He holds that if one looks at this concentration from the standpoint of social geography rather than from that of economic rationality, the results are seen to be detrimental to both human society and to nature. In his words, “the devouring of the surrounding land by the large estates is hardly less disastrous than fire and other devastations” since “it produces the same end result, which is the ruin not only of populations but also frequently of the land itself.”[336] With stinging irony he notes that “intelligent large landholders can no doubt train excellent farm hands, and they will certainly have domestics of impeccable correctness,” but they make no contribution to social progress since they produce “subjects” rather than “dignified equals.”[337] Reclus the social geographer once again shows how the ecological and the social (in this case degradation of the land and degradation of character) are intimately interrelated and result from the same root causes.

It has been noted that Reclus saw Russia and the United States as the two emerging models for the next period of world history. While Russia is taken as the paradigm for statism and political domination, the United States serves as the model for economism and the power of capital. Nevertheless, Reclus is not so naïve as to reduce American society to its economic system in the manner of some superficial social critics, including some anarchists. He knew that society well and presents a subtle analysis of both its great achievements and promise as well as its tragic injustices and contradictions. He finds its republican institutions to have many admirable qualities, and he recognizes its capacity to exert a positive influence on societies that are still struggling to end political despotism. In addition, he praises it as the world’s best example of “daring, initiative, and energy in labor.”[338] He suggests, however, that much of the society’s vast potential for social progress is negated by the dominance of its economistic values.

After living several years in the United States, he depicted in his early work A Voyage to New Orleans the baneful effects of commerce on the American character. He notes that while Europeans “obey traditions rather than humans” and are “governed by the dead more than by the living,” in the United States “not a single superstition is attached to the past, or to the native soil, and the population, moving like the surface of a lake seeking its level, distributes itself entirely according to the laws of economics.”[339] He observes that in such a society the quest for innovation leads to widespread destruction, as so much falls quickly into obsolescence. He notes that “in the young and growing republic, there are already as many ruins as in our old empires.”[340] Writing before the Civil War, he diagnoses rather acutely the growing dominance of economic ideology in American society. “For the masses,” he comments, “all feelings merge more and more with pecuniary interests.”[341] He was greatly alarmed at the prospect that the “leader of republics” would lead other nations toward class domination and egoistic exploitation rather than freedom and solidarity, as it spread this economistic outlook throughout the world.

Indeed, Reclus foresees the coming ascendancy of a world economic system pervaded by a global culture of economistic values. This culture, he notes, is already entrenched in societies of the West. He remarks that “for the typical civilized European, or better yet, the North American, the essential thing is to train oneself to pursue monetary gain, with the goal of commanding others by means of the omnipotence of money. One’s power increases in direct proportion to one’s economic resources.”[342] Such a system of values is dominant in countries with European cultures but is spreading across the globe. He notes its influence in “those countries of Asia that have developed in the direction of the ideal world of economics, and in all other parts of the world that are carried along by the example of Europe and its all-powerful will.”[343] It would not be surprising to Reclus to find that today countries of East Asia have been integrated into the core of the world system.

Reclus laments the fact that as this process of economization and Europeanization extends to an increasing number of traditional cultures, the communal traditions that might contribute to the development of a free communitarian society are destroyed: “The ancient forms of property that grant to each member of the community equal right to the use of the earth, water, air and fire are nothing more than archaic survivals in the process of rapid extinction.”[344] Whereas Marx and many other classical radical theorists accepted the dissolution of all traditional institutions as the necessary cost of economic and technological progress, Reclus sees the processes of commodification and economic rationalization as destroying genuinely progressive features of traditional culture—features that might be developed in a liberatory direction.

In addition to diagnosing at a rather early date the destructive cultural effects of global economic imperialism, Reclus also warns of the dangers inherent in the more purely economic tendencies of that system. Describing the process of economic expansion, he observes that

the theater expands, since it now embraces the whole of the land and seas. But the forces that struggled against one another in each particular state are precisely those that fight across the earth. In each country, capital seeks to subdue the workers. Similarly, on the level of the broadest world market, capital, which has grown enormously, disregards all the old borders and seeks to put the entire mass of producers to work on behalf of its profits, and to secure all the consumers in the world, savage and barbarian as well as civilized.[345]

He notes that in this globalizing economy the state acts increasingly on a transnational level to enforce the interests of economic power. He observes that already troops have been dispatched to foreign countries “by order of the stock exchange” and that “the unlimited power of capital and its international character are phenomena that are so well established that one may speak of the replacement of governments by banks in directing the undertaking and administration of war and peace.”[346] Finally, he goes so far as to ask rhetorically whether these economic institutions that “already directly manage—albeit under an assumed name—billions of the budget, do not indirectly manage all the affairs of state.”[347] He thus depicts modern capitalism, at a relatively early stage in its development, as an increasingly totalizing system of global economic imperialism.

Reclus’ critique of economic domination is based above all on his acute sense of justice, on his deep compassion for those who suffer, and on his intense feeling of outrage at the subordination of some to the power of others. His concern for justice is expressed perhaps most strikingly in such popular works as his pamphlet To My Brother the Peasant, in which he juxtaposes a description of the enormous wealth of the infant born into the world of privilege and an account of the growing degradation of the lives of working people. Here and in some of his other more polemical works he expresses, often in eloquent terms, the righteous moral indignation that underlies his social analysis.

But despite his identification with the oppressed, he does not neglect the detrimental effects of injustice on those who seemingly benefit from exploitation. He believes deeply that a life of cooperation and mutual aid within a compassionate community is the most fulfilling existence for a human being. Conversely, he sees a life of privilege based on injustice as no more than an illusion of happiness and success. For Reclus, the human spirit is necessarily distorted when some prosper at the expense of others. Accordingly, “the present cruel state of inequality, in which some are overloaded with superfluous wealth while others are deprived even of hope, weighs like a bad conscience on the human soul, whether one is aware of it or not. It weighs most on the souls of the fortunate, whose joys are always poisoned by it.”[348] Reclus’ critique of economic inequality is fundamentally an ethical one that focuses on the fact that it destroys the human potential to achieve the good life, whether on the part of the oppressed or of the oppressors.

Reclus also does not overlook the many ways in which the drive for economic power destroys what is of value in the natural world and prevents it from flourishing. In his relatively early essay on “The Feeling for Nature in Modern Society,” he describes the acquisitive drive to turn into a new source of profit everything in nature that can possibly be exploited economically. He notes that even the most exalted spiritual and esthetic dimensions of nature are increasingly reduced to the level of economic values.

Each natural curiosity, be it rock, grotto, waterfall, or the fissure of a glacier—everything, even the sound of an echo—can become individual property. The entrepreneurs lease waterfalls and enclose them with wooden fences to prevent nonpaying travelers from gazing at the turbulent waters. Then, through a deluge of advertising, the light that plays about the scattering droplets and the puffs of wind unfurling curtains of mist are transformed into the resounding jingle of silver.[349]

Reclus’ discussion of such economic exploitation exhibits the appeal to both moral and esthetic sensibilities that so often marks his ethical critique.

Reclus was also an early and perceptive critic of the social regimentation and control that results from the development of industrial technology at the service of economic power. He deserves recognition for his prescient insights concerning technocracy in general and the dangers of the coming machine civilization. In his widely reprinted To My Brother the Peasant, he warns that “we are in an age of science and method, and our rulers, served by an army of chemists and professors, are preparing a social structure for you in which all will be regulated as in a factory. There, the machine controls everything, even men, who are simple cogs to be disposed of when they take it upon themselves to reason and to will.”[350] In some ways, his critique is reminiscent of Marx’s account of alienation and dehumanization under a capitalist division of labor. However, unlike his great contemporary, he did not see humanity’s passage through “the steeling school of labor” as a historically necessary stage, and he did not accept the desirability of continuing the regimentation of labor until the automated industrial machine freed humanity from the necessity of toil.

In order to illustrate the nature of the process of mechanization, Reclus points to the example of industrialized farming in the American West. The criteria for the organization of production, he notes, are, first, the reduction of everything, including human beings, according to technical rationality, to quantifiable and manipulable resources, and, second, the efficient use of these resources according to the dictates of economic rationality, with minimal investment and maximum return. “Machines, horses, and men are used in the same manner: they are viewed as so much force to be quantified numerically, and they must be used most profitably for the employer, with the greatest productivity and the least expense possible.”[351] The result is a system of regimentation and control in which “all of the workers’ movements are regulated from the moment they leave the communal dormitories.”[352]

Later, in Man and the Earth, he describes this system as a process of reducing workers “to the simple role of living cogs in the machine” who, after “repeating the same motions millions or even billions of times,” finally have “but the appearance of life.”[353] He thus outlined and criticized the principles of capitalist “scientific management,” just as Frederick Taylor was beginning to introduce it into American industry. Of course, Adam Smith had described the process of mechanized labor, and Marx and others had criticized it long before. But Reclus’ analysis goes farther than many others, for in addition to stressing the dehumanization, alienation, and immiseration of the workers, he also points out the emergence of systematic technological domination of society. His judgment of the developing system of technical rationality is astute: “Never did ancient slavery more methodically mold and shape human material to reduce it to being a tool.”[354] In his view, modern “free” labor is subjected to a kind of domination and objectification that was inconceivable under any previous system of exploitation, no matter how brutal it may have been.

Bakunin is often thought to be distinctive among anarchist political theorists for his prophetic warning of the coming domination of the “new class”—that is, the rule of the new elite of scientific and technical intelligentsia. In Bakunin’s words, their attainment of power would signal “the reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant and contemptuous of all regimes.”[355] However, Reclus also stresses the dangers posed by the rise of this new class. He notes the example of those German scientists who served as “intellectual bodyguards for the imperial House of Hohenzollern”[356] and warns that although the technobureaucratic elite can function as an important tool of concentrated power, it also aspires to the direct exercise of such power: “If some scientists pride themselves in serving the master, there are others who aspire to become masters themselves.”[357] He cites the principles of the Saint-Simonians and the Comptists as early examples of ideologies legitimating technocratic domination in the alleged interest of society as a whole. According to these schools, society must be managed “like a great factory directed by the discretion of engineers” and, more particularly, directed “precisely by the leaders of these new schools, who aim at infallibility.”[358] In his view, this project of technocratic domination was advanced by authoritarians of his own time under the guise of “scientific socialism.”

Reclus’ reaction to the growth of scientific and technical knowledge and expertize was far from entirely negative. Here as elsewhere his view is a dialectical one, in which both positive and negative moments are identified and analyzed. He finds that despite its ruthless and destructive aspects, the developing scientific and technical division of labor has made a definite contribution to social progress. It has done so not only by increasing the wealth of society, as its defenders often claim, but also by fostering “the participation of an increasingly greater number of workers in the science of mechanics and all the associated areas of knowledge, including electronics, chemistry and metallurgy.”[359] Much like Bakunin, Kropotkin, and other anarchist theorists, Reclus believes that society’s goal should be to extend this process to create a “synthesis of intellectual and manual labor” in which “science becomes active.”[360]

For Reclus, the distinctive quality of the division of labor and the ideal toward which it moves is not mere increase in production but above all the creation of “solidarity between all the functions that are divided from one another.”[361] In his view, modern industry subverts this ideal by using the division of labor to increase its profit and, in pursuit of this goal, seeks “to separate the workers, isolate them one from another, and maintain its own power through the breaking up of opposing forces.”[362] The challenge for a liberatory social movement, according to Reclus, is to take control of the system of production so that the growing solidarity of labor can be allowed to develop freely and take its place within a larger system of solidarity encompassing both humanity and nature.

Another form of domination that concerned Reclus very deeply throughout his life was racism. For Reclus, racism expresses a contemptuous, hierarchical ranking of human beings that conflicts with his sense of human solidarity, his belief in social equality, and his respect for the achievements of all cultures. This great social evil became a matter of intense personal interest to him when his stay in Louisiana gave him direct experience of a racist, slaveholding society. His marriage to a woman of mixed African and European ancestry intensified his personal involvement in the issue. While classical anarchist thinkers and radical theorists in general tended to focus their critique on the state and capitalism, Reclus always identifies racism as one of the most pernicious forms of oppression and domination. He holds that the most effective response to racism is the destruction of the social barriers that have been created to enforce the system of dominance and subordination. In his view, society is always strengthened by the creative diversification resulting from the interaction and blending of peoples and cultures. The social and biological intermingling of previously segregated races would therefore both eliminate the basis for racism and also contribute to the vitality of society.

Reclus was particularly interested in the conditions of black people in the United States, a topic he analyzed both before and after slavery. In his Voyage to New Orleans, he presents a moving depiction of an antebellum slave market. Reflecting on the atrocities of the auction block, he observes that “all the Negroes of Louisiana pass in turn on this fateful table: children who have just ended their seventh year and whom the law in its solicitude deems old enough to be separated from their mothers, young girls subjected to the stares of two thousand spectators and sold by the pound, mothers who come to see their children stolen from them, and who are obliged to remain cheerful under threat of the whip, and the elderly, who have already been auctioned off many times, and who have to appear one last time before these pale-faced men who despise them and jeer at their white hair.”[363] His encounter, relatively early in his life, with racism in this most brutal form affected him profoundly and left him with an unusual sensitivity to the ethnic dimensions of domination.

Reclus was well aware of the fact that the abolition of slavery did not eliminate the system of racism and the exploitation of black people in America. He notes that after what was called emancipation, capitalist entrepreneurs found ways to exploit the freed labor power of former slaves at the lowest possible cost. The result was “slavery, minus the obligation to care for the children and the elderly.”[364] New discriminatory laws and the biased enforcement of existing ones facilitated this exploitation by segregating blacks in living areas near plantations and workplaces, and by depriving them of the vote. In some areas, imprisonment for minor infractions was encouraged so that entrepreneurs could make use of forced prison labor. Some towns, consumed with “pure, brutal and instinctive hatred,” merely expelled blacks and forbade their reentry.[365]

Reclus was unusual among social critics of his day in developing an extensive critique of American racism in the postslavery period. What is most striking is that he, a Frenchman, did so when American radicals and reformers almost unanimously neglected the issue. While the left of this period focused heavily on economic class issues and only gradually came to grasp the centrality of racism to the system of social injustice, liberals and “progressives” needed another half-century to discover the “American dilemma.” Reclus, on the other hand, continued until his last days to develop the critique of racism that he had begun in the 1850s. He describes the American system of racial segregation with an acute sense of moral outrage. He recounts the harsh punishment, tortures, and murders committed against blacks who offended the mores of racist communities, noting that such “horrible practices” were so common that they had taken on the force of “local law.”[366]

While Reclus deserves credit for such advanced views, certain serious limitations of his outlook must also be noted. Despite his fierce anti-racism and his appreciation of diverse cultures and peoples, he was not entirely successful in overcoming the Eurocentric ideology of his time. Especially in his early work, one detects undertones of condescension, even when he enthusiastically praises non-Western cultures. Also, surprisingly, in view of his hatred for racism and his experience of living in the South, he shows little awareness of the contributions of black culture to American culture in general. In his view, blacks had been so “deracinated” and so Americanized “by language, education, ways of thinking, and even patriotism and all its prejudices” that their “originality within the whole of the nation” became “minimal.”[367] He should perhaps be given credit for avoiding the perennial leftist pitfall of uncritically idealizing oppressed groups, but unfortunately, in this case, he sometimes goes to the opposite extreme.

Despite such lapses, Reclus’ abhorrence of racism and his quest for understanding and mutual recognition between all ethnic groups and cultures persisted throughout his life. His efforts to transcend the prejudices of his age became consistently more successful, and, especially in his mature writing, he exhibited unusual openness and perceptiveness in examining the values and achievements of every society. After his death, Kropotkin could say of him with justice that “in speaking of the smallest tribe, he always found a few words to inspire his reader with the feeling that all men are equal, that there are no superior or inferior races.”[368]

Just as through most of its history the theorists of the left neglected the issue of racism, they also exhibited a very limited awareness of the central place of patriarchy in the system of domination. On this topic, Reclus is also rather exceptional, for not only did he challenge the patriarchal system explicitly in his theoretical analyzes, but—as is even more unusual in his epoch—he also attempted to put theory into practice in his personal life. In accord with his repugnance for all hierarchical relations, he opposed the concept of male dominance and advocated sexual egalitarianism. He believed that one precondition for equality between the sexes is the practice of “free unions” between men and women. In describing such unions, he states that “the normal, spontaneous family must be based solely on affection and on free affinity: Everything related to the family that arises out of the force of prejudice, the intervention of the law, or financial interests should disappear since it is essentially corrupting. Here, as in every other area, freedom and natural impulses are the basis of life.”[369] In his view, such a union at its best is deeply fulfilling on many levels and contributes to the ongoing self-development of each partner. It “includes at once mutual passion, fervent friendship, perfect respect and the constancy of love that stems from continual transformation, from the renewal of each by the other until the end of their lives.”[370] It is clear that Reclus’ depiction of such a relationship was profoundly shaped by his own deeply fulfilling life with Fanny L’Herminez.

Compared to his ideal of “free unions, based only on mutual affection, self-respect and the dignity of others,” he sees traditional marriage, authorized by the church and enforced by the state, as mere “matrimonial trafficking.”[371] It is a morally debasing institution that lies at the core of the larger system of domination. Almost a half-century before Wilhelm Reich’s revolutionary analysis of the connection between the authoritarian family and the authoritarian state, Reclus made strikingly similar claims. He argues that “it is certain that familial associations, whether manifested in polygyny, polyandry, monogamy, or free unions, exercise a direct influence on the form of the state through the effects of their ethics. What one sees on a large scale parallels what one sees on the small scale.”[372] Though he, like other anarchist theorists, emphasizes the strong determining influence of the state on all other forms of domination, he is unusual in placing such a heavy emphasis on the correlatively powerful effects of family relationships on the state and other oppressive institutions. While not underestimating the evils of political coercion, he recognizes the ultimately greater force of psychological coercion operating in the context of the most intimate relationships. He notes the connection between the system of political authority and that prevailing in the family, and he remarks that the former is “ordinarily in lesser proportions, for the government is incapable of pressuring widely dispersed individuals in the way that one spouse can pressure the other who lives under the same roof.”[373]

Reclus’ views on marriage represent an important way in which he breaks fundamentally with the mainstream of modernist social thought, which tends to accept the division between the public and private spheres as autonomous realms. He believes that a free society can exist only if the principles of freedom that are to guide society are put into practice in the most intimate and personal details of life. His outlook anticipates the feminist interpretation of personal life as being eminently political and the post-1968 movement for the “liberation of everyday life.” It also situates him in some ways closer to the tradition of utopian communitarianism than to the mainstream of modern anarchist and socialist political theory. The utopians have been among the few who have long taken questions of personal life seriously, while more conventional political radicals have usually seen changes in this realm as merely “superstructural” or have relegated them to the postrevolutionary era. Reclus saw an immediate and thoroughgoing change in personal relationships as a necessary precondition for liberatory social transformation. He comments that “it is above all within the family, in a man’s daily relationships with those close to him, that one can best judge him. If he absolutely respects the liberty of his wife, if the rights and the dignity of his sons and daughters are as precious to him as his own, then he proves himself worthy of entering the assembly of free citizens. If not, he is still a slave, since he is a tyrant.”[374]

In attempting to undermine the foundations of patriarchy and to demythologize it, Reclus looks back to the beginnings of human society. He was unusual for his time in his willingness to recognize the powerful contribution of women to the origins of civilization. According to his revisionist account of history, the institution of “maternity” (that is, of matricentric and matrilineal practices) arises “in the midst of primitive barbarism” and gives “the first impulse to the future civilization” by uniting the members of primitive bands around the maternal hearth and socializing them.[375] He believes that the role of women across the entire history of society has been vastly underestimated, both by scholars and in the popular mind. He notes that there is no lack of examples in history “of women who were veritable chiefs,” that “diverse tribes have recognized absolutely the supremacy of women,” and that “other tribes in which men have exercised power have adhered to the maternal family line.”[376] Through such examples he seeks to destroy the myth of the universality and, by implication, the natural necessity, of patriarchy.

Reclus argues that the significance of women in the social institutions of many societies has been vastly underestimated. One of the most important areas that has been neglected in this way is economics. He notes that in societies where horticulture has been the prerogative of women, they have had “the useful role par excellence in the general economy of the tribe,”[377] and their labor has been the most secure source of food for the group. In such societies, “the general prosperity depends absolutely on capable management by the mothers, and on the spirit of order, peace and harmony that they introduce into the household.”[378] Furthermore, in these cultures, the feminine influence is decisive for determining the values of the group, as “the natural affection that they bestow on the children gathered around them develops into a kind of religion.”[379] Reclus also stresses the fact that, contrary to general misconceptions, women have often possessed powerful political authority in such communities. “No decision can be made without their being consulted beforehand. As the absolute dispensers of familial fortune, they come to be the regulators of all social and political affairs. Although the males are stronger, they bow before the moral sovereigns.”[380] According to Reclus’ analysis, even when in certain societies males performed the functions that from our perspective seem to be of greatest importance (e.g., the nominal “chief” may have been male), this does not necessarily indicate male social dominance. In such societies, even the exclusively male functions were subject to strong female influence, other functions of equal or greater importance were directly in the hands of women, and—what is most important—feminine and maternal values thoroughly pervaded the culture.

In his discussions of such societies, Reclus often refers to the “matriarchal family.” This usage is a bit disconcerting since he purports to make an “anarchic” critique of all forms of social domination, yet we find him praising the superiority of another “archy.” However, he recognizes that the concept of “matriarchy” would lead to confusion if taken in its literal etymological sense. He observes that in the kinship systems that are given this label the mother does not actually “rule.” He notes that in fact the very significant maternal power that exists in such societies has sometimes been compatible even with “brutality” by the father, and with situations in which he is “the incontestable master” of the family.[381] Reclus is not describing a supposed system of female dominance. He does not attempt to invent a mythological “matriarchy” in which an imagined matriarchal power becomes the mirror image of historical patriarchal power. Rather, he seeks merely to show that patriarchy is not “inevitable,” that women have often exercised authority in the most essential areas of social life, and that in doing so they have been the most powerful agents of “progress” and “civilization,” in the best senses of those terms.

In addition to defending women’s rightful place in history, Reclus vehemently supported their quest for social emancipation in his own day. In the strongest terms, he declares himself completely in accord with the feminist cause, asserting that “obviously, all of the claims of women against men are just: the demands of the female worker who is not paid at the same rate as the male worker for the same labor, the demands of the wife who is punished for ‘crimes’ that are mere ‘peccadilloes’ when committed by the husband, and the demands of the female citizen who is barred from all overt political action, who obeys laws that she has not helped to create, and who pays taxes to which she has not consented.”[382] In short, women are oppressed not only in the domestic sphere but in the economic, social, and political ones also, and complete justice and equality must be achieved in all these areas.

But although Reclus is in sympathy with all the goals of feminism, he does not approve of all feminists. He is disturbed that some middle-class feminists seem concerned only with their own oppression and exhibit disdain for the working class. He laments the fact that they fail to see that “their cause merges with that of all oppressed people, whoever they may be.”[383] Reclus’ comments are echoed today by radical feminists who criticize liberal feminism for focusing on issues such as “the glass ceiling” that affects upwardly mobile, more privileged women while neglecting the suffering and oppression of working-class and poor women. Reclus celebrates “the heroism of brave women who go to the prostitutes to join them in solidarity to protest the abominable treatment to which they have been subjected, and the shocking bias of the law in favor of the corrupters and against their victims.”[384] Reclus was far ahead of his time not only in speaking out for the cause of the most abused and abandoned of women but also in calling attention to the state’s complicity with the men who exploit them.

Another of Reclus’ views that has only recently begun to gain widespread sympathy is his firm belief that women are justified in striking back at their oppressors. He declares that as a result of the severe mistreatment to which they have been subjected, women have “an absolute right to recrimination, and the women who occasionally take revenge are not to be condemned, since the greatest wrongs are those committed by the privileged.”[385] From Reclus’ time to the present, few have defended retaliation by women except in the most extreme cases of abuse. However Reclus believed that in view of the brutality of the oppression of women and because the most oppressed found few advocates of their cause, overt rebellion was often an appropriate response. He deplores the fact that the cause of women is usually dominated by well-behaved, conventional personalities (moderate and liberal feminists, we would say today) who “naïvely petitions legislators and high officials, waiting for salvation through their deliberations and decrees,” when in truth “freedom does not come begging, but rather must be conquered.”[386] Reclus, like his great anarchist-feminist contemporary Emma Goldman, thought that women could only advance their cause effectively through direct action—in both the personal and social spheres.

Another area that was much neglected in Reclus’ time, but about which he shows remarkable insight, is the question of the rights of children and the place of the young in society. His thoughts on this topic are closely related to his critique of patriarchy. In his view, just as it was necessary to break with the long tradition, running “from Aristotle, St. Paul and the Church Fathers” down to “the Fathers of the American Constitution,” that saw slavery as a legitimate form of property ownership, so the equally ancient tradition that makes the father the proprietor of his children must be rejected.[387] Reclus proposes a new morality that will “recognize the free individual even in the newborn infant, and defend the child’s rights in relation to all, including, first of all, the father.”[388] A corollary of this view is that the repressive system of authoritarian education, which is an extension of the patriarchal family and the authoritarian state, must be abolished.

Reclus attacks the existing system of education as a process of training children to fit well into institutions based on egoism, domination, and unthinking obedience. Through its hierarchical structure this system teaches competition for personal advantage rather than cooperation in pursuit of the general good. The students, “from their first lesson, learn that they are rivals and combatants. They are told in every way that the prizes to be won are few in number, and that one must snatch them away from one’s comrades, not only by superior talent, but, when possible, by trickery, by force, by cabals and schemes, by the basest sort of machinations, or by prayers to St. Anthony of Padua.”[389] The goal is to convince the students that all sorts of future honors and benefits can be achieved if they are willing to fight for them and destroy others in the process. Humanity and solidarity are undermined for the sake of “these symbols.”[390] Just as a system of libertarian education is necessary to create a community of free, compassionate, and cooperative human beings, a system of authoritarian education is essential to the production of a hierarchical society of dominant and submissive individuals.

Another area that for Reclus is fundamental to the creation of an authoritarian character structure is the system of repressive morality. One of the expressions of this morality that he finds most outrageous is the nudity taboo.[391] He believes that a free society can never be attained without the rehabilitation of the body and the complete affirmation of our physical being. From his perspective it is clothing, rather than the human body, that is the true scandal.

While Reclus has a long list of arguments against the evils of clothing, his principal objection is a moral one. He asserts that “it is from the point of view of moral health above all that the reintroduction of nude beauty is necessary.”[392] A morality that “consists of repressing one’s body” and pretending that one “no longer has any organs, results in constantly directing thought toward those things that should remain ‘out of sight.’ It is a phobia, madness, fierce lechery, the perversion of all the senses. It is lying, hypocrisy.”[393] Opponents of nudity create a moralistic travesty of morality in which “normal acts become vicious” and “the source of life is corrupted,” so that “from generation to generation the world is perverted.”[394] From Reclus’ point of view, the deleterious effects of clothing on individual character and social morality can hardly be overestimated.

He attacks what might be called the fetishism of clothing on grounds not only of morality but also of physical health. He claims that “without doubt, the skin regains its vitality and its natural activity when it is freely exposed to air, light, and the changing phenomena outdoors. Perspiration is not hampered; the functioning of the bodily organ is improved; it becomes at once firm and supple; it does not pale like an isolated plant deprived of sunlight.”[395] While nudity, he contends, contributes to health, clothes are “nests of germs that cut us off from pure air and light, make us sickly and uncoordinated, turn our skin pale and cover it with ulcers, make lovers repulsive to one another, and sometimes make women sterile or doom them to give birth to weak and stunted infants!”[396] Reclus’ feelings about clothing place him in sympathy with the dress reform movement of his time, which sought to liberate both women and men from restrictive and unhealthy clothing. For example, this movement blamed tight corsets, popular during the Victorian era, for a variety of health problems, including constriction and displacement of vital organs, atrophy of muscles, and risks to pregnant women and their fetuses.[397]

Reclus also objects to the obsession with clothing on the grounds of esthetic appreciation. He cites travelers’ accounts of the Polynesians as “the most beautiful of people” in their nudity before “the missionaries went on their rampage,” and he notes the universal admiration for Greek artistic representations of the nude.[398] He believes that without the liberation of the body and the freedom to appreciate the body, the full development of art is not possible. He also believes that clothing is destructive of beauty in everyday life. As a result of clothing and the dictates of fashion, “natural curves are replaced by rows of buttons, and by skirts and blouses.”[399]

While this spirited tirade certainly makes some excellent points about repression and hypocrisy, it also exhibits a paradoxical relationship between his nudism and the very Puritanical spirit that he attacks. He praises nudity, quite consistently, in the name of free expression and healthy self-affirmation. However, the seemingly obvious possibility that clothing and self-decoration might also be positive forms of individual and social self-expression is rather dogmatically overlooked. Clothing for Reclus can only be seen as an expression of corrupt society, with its class hierarchy and sexual repression. “The artifice of dress and finery is one that leads most—through foolish vanity, the slavish spirit of imitation, and above all, the thousand ingenuities of vice—to the general corruption of society.... Nude beauty purifies and ennobles; clothing, insidious and deceptive, degrades and perverts.”[400]

At this point, the radicalism of Reclus’ position is undermined by the reactive, absolutist quality of his response to a corrupt and hypocritical society. Moreover, his own viewpoint borders on a form of naturist Puritanism when, in criticizing the distorted eroticism of a repressive society, he comes close to purging both nudity and clothing of any positive erotic potential. He certainly deserves recognition for his courageous application of the idea of human liberation to the body, a subject neglected by most radical theorists (other than a few “utopians”) until recent times. However, his idealization of nudity sometimes falls into the kind of naïve, reactive naturalism that has plagued ecological thought even up to the present.

An institution that Reclus sees as closely allied to authoritarian morality is authoritarian religion. As was discussed in considerable detail earlier, he sees religion as having both progressive and regressive aspects. He holds that the founders of the great religions had metaphysical and moral insights that conflicted starkly with the later religious institutions that he attacks so vehemently. These original insights often had subversive and even revolutionary implications that had to be negated in order for religion to be transformed into an ideology at the service of patriarchy, state power, and economic exploitation. It is thus by betraying its own egalitarian and libertarian premises that religion becomes one of the most powerful cultural and psychological supports for oppression and domination. Reclus believes that institutionalized religion has carried out this authoritarian role very successfully across history. As he sums up the tragic and brutal history of institutionalized religion in one of his letters, “the fear of God is the beginning of all servitude and all depravity.”[401]

As has been mentioned, Reclus believes that the inexorable progress of science will progressively destroy the ideological basis of religion and that it will therefore be in a state of constant retreat before the imperious forces of modernity. In fact, he contends that although religion was once a powerful form of social domination in its own right, by his own time it had already lost much of its hold on the masses and was becoming primarily a system of social convention. This view, which exaggerates the decline of religious institutions, seems to be shaped strongly by Reclus’ experience of the Catholic cultures of southern Europe. He observes that in these cultures “the interests of property, capital, parasitism, and everything of this sort demand the prescribed practice of the Catholic religion, and millions of people conform to this obligation, carried out without the least sincerity.”[402] He contends that not only in southern Europe but in much of the world, religion had been reduced to such superficial practice and no longer consisted of deeply held beliefs. He judges, however, that even as a form of social convention religion would continue for some time to function as an important support for other forms of domination, such as the state and capitalism, that are now in a period of historical ascendancy.

It is likely that Reclus would have no difficulty recognizing the authentically progressive nature of liberation theology and other religiously based social justice movements today. Also, the fact that religion continues to reinforce various systems of political, economic, and cultural power would be fully in accord with his expectations. On the other hand, in view of his thesis that the advances of science and general enlightenment would result in the progressive decline of religious institutions, he would no doubt be surprised at the enduring strength of highly repressive, doctrinaire religious movements, at the global resurgence of fundamentalism, and at the ability of religion to function at times as a relatively autonomous form within the larger system of domination.

Despite certain limitations that have been mentioned, Reclus’ critique of domination is an analysis with a consistency and comprehensiveness that are impressive. Not only is it broad enough to encompass many of the major institutions of society, including politics, economics, technology, sex roles, family structure, education, morality, and religion, but it is also deep enough to extend from the level of vast social institutions to the most intimate areas of personal life and human relationships. For this, Reclus must be recognized as a groundbreaking social theorist whose thought is a landmark in the development of the critical theory of society.