This convoluted discussion is simply — it seems — to illustrate the evident truism that ‘the requirement of control increases with the remoteness of sources of satisfaction of needs’.

This abstract theorizing does not cease when Naess in later chapters discusses technology and lifestyle, economics and ecopolitics. This is a pity given the interesting things he has to say. He stresses in Gandhian fashion the importance of linking changes in personal life style with political action, and the importance of nonviolent direct action. Drawing a distinction between action, campaigns and social movements, Naess pleads for the continuation of struggles even if specific actions and campaigns appear to have been unsuccessful. But when he comes to discuss the state and the present economic system — Naess never brings himself to describe it as capitalism — Naess expresses very ambivalent attitudes. He continually emphasizes, often in strident terms, that the present economic system must be fundamentally transformed. The goal of the deep ecology movement, he writes, cannot be achieved without a ‘deep change’ of present industrial societies. Seeing contemporary environmental problems as being overcome solely by technical means reflects a ‘shallow’ ecological approach — what is needed are fundamental changes in consciousness and the economic system. Yet he follows — and quotes approvingly — Erik Dammann’s suggestion that it is far too simple to claim that capitalists, industrial magnates, bureaucrats and politicians alone have the power to preserve the system, implying that people in democratic countries (so-called) are free to make the changes if they desire. But then the disclaimer completely obscures the real causes of the environmental problems we now face — which are intrinsically related to an economic system, namely capitalism, which for centuries has been one of tyranny and exploitation, and which is based on the endless pursuit of profit. And to think that power lies in parliaments reflects a very limited conception of power under monopoly capitalism.

Drawing up a political triangle of red, blue and green, Naess sees ‘green’ as transcending the opposition between blue (capitalism) and red (socialism). He can only do this by making some very dubious equations. The greens (deep ecology) have affinity, he suggests, with the blues in valuing personal enterprise and in opposing bureaucracies. But, of course, supporters of capitalism when they talk about freedom and personal enterprise and initiative are not really concerned with the freedom of the individual but only with the needs of private ‘capital’. When the latter is challenged freedom goes by the board, and capitalist enterprises are highly bureaucratic. And when Naess distances himself from the reds (socialism) — which he sees as bureaucratic and as supporting industrialism and ‘big industry’ — what he does is to equate socialism with the state capitalism of the Soviet Union, as do most apologists for capitalism. Yet when Naess writes that the aims and values of the society cannot change unless the way of production is altered, when he speaks out for decentral isation and for the importance of social justice, and when he writes that ‘The Utopians of green societies point towards a kind of direct democracy with local control of the means of production as the best means of achieving the goals’ (p. 158), all he does of course is to suggest socialist ideas that communist anarchists and libertarian socialists have been propagating for a century or more. Like many in the ecology movement Naess seems quite oblivious to the libertarian socialist tradition and so offers suggestions for a ‘new renaissance’ that are anything but new or original. He makes no reference at all to Bookchin, let alone any of the earlier anarchists.

Yet paradoxically this advocate of direct democracy and critic of contemporary capitalism makes two glaring admissions. The first is to suggest that there is hardly any capitalistic political ideology (p. 156). What on earth is liberalism, fascism, Thatcherism, and the so-called ‘enterprise culture’ — not to mention intellectual fashions like socio- biology? Capitalist ideology — with its emphasis on competition, on efficiency, on management, on monitoring, on privatization, and on so- called free enterprise — permeates current social and political thought, and libertarian and real socialist thought hardly gets a hearing in any of the major institutions and cultural arenas. Democracy ends as soon as you enter the office or factory gate. Naess’ own book is infused with terms and ideas implicitly drawn from the capitalist paradigm — even when he is arguing against its tendencies. Naess makes, for instance, a very cogent critique of the ‘quantification’ (and the attempts to put a price tag on nature) that is so dominant in shaping the policies and attitudes of contemporary societies — but it is all done very much in the language of the market economists.

Secondly, although advocating decentralization, Naess suggests that in order to counter the increasing population pressure and war ‘some fairly strong central political institutions’ (p. 157) are necessary, and to keep transnational corporations in check we may in the future have to envision global institutions with some power ‘not only to criticize certain states and companies but also to implement certain measures against the states which violate the rules’ (p. 139). This is virtually the advocacy of a global state, the totalitarian implications of which are too ghastly to behold — but it is paradoxically suggested by Naess in order to safeguard ‘green communities’ from the forces of disruption and violence.

Although Naess argues for a biocentric approach towards nature, and stresses that all life forms should be seen as having intrinsic value — the principle of ‘biospherical egalitarianism’ — he is aware of the limitations of this principle and never lapses like other deep ecologists into misanthropy. Taken literally or seriously ‘biocentric equality’ would of course lead to the quick demise of the human species. What however Naess suggests is that we use this principle or norm as a ‘guideline’ — that we do not inflict unnecessary suffering upon other living beings, and that we treat all aspects of nature as having intrinsic value. He is aware that human praxis and the human condition necessarily involves a transgression of this norm, and that some killing and exploitation of non-human life forms is unavoidable. But his point is that this instrumentality should be kept to a minimum, and only serve vital human needs — for sustenance and shelter. Unlike many other ecologists — and many vegetarians — he is aware that among many tribal communities a sense of kinship or identification with nature coexists with a hunting culture. Unlike other ecologists too, Naess doesn’t deny the importance of humans, or treat humankind as if it were a blot upon the landscape. Like Bookchin he recognizes that there is a certain uniqueness about humans on earth — but he strongly argues that this uniqueness must not be used as a premise for the domination of nature, and for treating other life-forms simply as a means to human satisfaction. But rather it must be used as a premise for a universal care that other species can neither understand nor afford (p. 171). And this concern extends to humans, for social justice is an important component of his philosophy — ‘no exploitation’, ‘no subjection’ and ‘no class societies’ are constituent norms of his rather abstract normative schema.

The most fundamental norm for Naess and the logical starting point of his whole philosophy is the idea of Self-realization — the self having a capital S. All other norms are derived from this key idea. But he is ambivalent about what this Self stands for. He writes that this Self is known throughout the history of philosophy under such names as ‘the Universal Self, ‘the Absolute’, ‘the atman’. But in the religious traditions from which these terms derive Self does not imply an identification with nature but rather has spiritual connotations, and the discovery of the Self means the identification with god, the absolute or Brahman. For example, atman means that spiritual aspect of the person (soul) which is distinct from the mind, sense organs and the physical body, and self realization (moksha, or salvation) entails the realization that this soul is in fact Brahman — the supreme Self or world spirit. In this Vedanta tradition the natural world is an illusion (maya). In other religious traditions, as Naess himself writes, the spirit (soul) was considered radically distinct from the body, and the body and the material world were seen as a positive hindrance to self-realization. In the gnostic tradition the body is seen as a temporary ‘prison’ or ‘tomb’ of the soul (self) and, as Hans Jonas has perceptively written, this radical religious dualism — exemplified in the European tradition by Platonism, gnosticism and Judeo-Christianity — is an essential precursor of mechanistic philosophy and anthropocentrism. [6] This form of religious Self realization is profoundly anti-ecological — for as Naess suggests in writing about Plotinus, it involves a ‘depreciation of physical reality’. As he writes ‘A search for supernatural being can easily become an endeavor hostile to man and environment’ (p. 190) — but of course this is precisely what most mystical traditions entail — the detachment of self from organic life. What Naess seems to be suggesting however is something quite different: for the ‘oneness’ he suggests is not the identification of the self with god, the absolute or world spirit (Brahman), but rather the identification of the person with the natural world (in his case, especially with mountains). And in this, of course, he follows Spinoza and such nature mystics as Richard Jefferies. Although he seems to suggest that Spinoza was influenced by the idea of an ‘immanent God’ (p.201), Spinoza’s philosophy was in fact something quite different, for he equated god with nature, and advocated a religious atheism or a profane mysticism. He advocated a salvation ethic in which god is neither a transcendental nor immanent spirit but nature itself. Naess seems to suggest a similar ethic — a ‘philosophy of oneness’ — in which a deep identification with the natural world is felt or experienced. It is an ‘ecological consciousness’, or the development of an ‘ecological self that goes beyond the narrow ego and the ordinary self (with a small S). Naess thus seems to play down the ‘spiritual’ interpretation — God is hardly mentioned — and is skeptical of a mystical oneness. What we have to do, he writes, is to walk a difficult ridge: ‘To the left we have the ocean of organic and mystic views, to the right the abyss of atomic individualism’ (p. 165).

Naess writes as a philosopher rather than as a social theorist, and although he stresses the importance of community, autonomy, local self-sufficiency and cooperation, and decentralization, the discussion of these always tends to be rather abstract — ‘normative’. There is therefore very little in the book about bioregionalism, about feminism, about neighborhood associations, or about the communitarian movements and anarchist collectives that have been erupting throughout history to challenge capitalist exploitation and hierarchy. And the stress he puts on changing one’s life style and on ‘self-realization’ while perhaps important to the white affluent middle classes of Europe and North America, can all too easily lead to a politics of ‘survivalism’. Following Gandhi, Naess stresses the importance of political action, but such action as he envisages tends to focus on ‘symptoms’ — on environmental issues — rather than directly challenging the primary social institutions of the capitalist system — the multinational corporations and state structures that support them. Indeed in the future ecological society that he postulates after the radical transformation of the present system, he seems to envisage the continued existence of both these capitalist firms and the nation state — so one wonders how radical or ‘deep’ is the transformation that Naess envisages?

Deep Ecology, Anarchosyndicalism, and the Future of Anarchist Thought
by Murray Bookchin

There is very little I can add to the outstanding criticism Brian Morris levels at deep ecology. Indeed, Morris’s contribution to the debate around eco-mysticism generally has been insightful as well as incisive, and I have found his writings an educational experience that hopefully will reach a very wide audience in the United States in addition to Britain.

I should hope that his review of Arne Naess’s Ecology, Community and Lifestyle has revealed the intellectual poverty of the ‘father of deep ecology’ and the silliness of the entire deep ecology ‘movement’. Rodney Aitchtey’s rather airy, often inaccurate, and mystical Deep Ecology: Not Man Apart, it would seem to me, is perhaps the best argument against deep ecology that I have seen in quite a while. But after dealing with deep ecologists in North America for quite a few years, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the acolytes of Naess et al operate on faith and are motivated in their allegiances by theological rather than rational impulses. There is no reasoned argument, I suspect, that will shake a belief-system of this kind — hence I will leave discussion of the issues involved to others who still have the energy to deal with mindless dogmas.

I would add — or possibly reinforce — only one observation to the incisive ones that Morris makes. One wonders whether deep ecology’s biocentric maxim that all living beings can be equatable with one another in terms of their ‘intrinsic worth’ would have had any meaning during the long eras of organic evolution before human beings emerged. The entire conceptual framework of deep ecology is entirely a product of human agency — a fact that imparts to the human species a unique status in the natural world. All ethical systems (including those that can be grounded in biotic evolution) are formulated by human beings in distinctly cultural situations. Remove human agency from the scene, and there is not the least evidence that animals exhibit behavior that can be regarded as discursive, meaningful, or moral. When Elisee Reclus, the anarchist geographer, tells us that pussycats are (as cited by George Woodcock in his introduction to the Marie Fleming biography of Reclus) ‘natural anarchists’, or worse, that ‘there is not a human sentiment which on occasion they [i.e. cats] do not understand or share, not an idea which they do not divine [sic!], not a desire but what they forestall it’, Reclus is writing ethological and ecological nonsense. That anarchist writers celebrate the author of such an anthropomorphic absurdity as ‘ecological’ is regrettable to say the least. To the extent that ‘intrinsic worth’ is something more than merely an agreeable intuition in modern ecological thought, it is an ‘attribute’ that human beings formulate in their minds and a ‘right’ that they may decide to confer on animals and other creatures. It does not exist apart from the operations of the human mind or humanity’s social values.

To turn from the silliness of deep ecology to the preposterous elucidation of anarchosyndicalism that Graham Purchase advances is a thankless task that I would ignore were it not scheduled to be published in book form. Purchase’s piece, ‘Social Ecology, Anarchism and Trade Unionism’, is a malicious essay that begins by accusing me of writing belligerently and ‘insult(ing) American anarchists and trade unionists’, then goes on to heap upon me some of the most vituperative and ad hominem attacks that I’ve encountered in a long time. Not only am I ‘at best unconstructive and at worst positively harmful’, Purchase warns his readers, but worse, I am consumed by ‘an insatiable appetite for controversy’. Having advanced this no doubt balanced, unprovocative, and objective evaluation of my role in the anarchist movement, Purchase displays his psychoanalytic acumen by alleging that I suffer from ‘an unhealthy desire to be the intellectual leader and founder of a ‘new’ ecological movement’, that I exhibit evidence of ‘intellectual schizophrenia’, and finally that I ‘filch all the major ecological insights of anarchist theory and practice [and] dress them up in a socialist-feminist [!] cum neo-hegelian garb and go on to more or less claim them as [my] own’. As if this level of vituperation were not enough — no doubt it is intended to subdue my own ‘insatiable appetite for controversy’! — Purchase goes on to characterize the body of views that I have advanced over a dozen or so books and scores of articles as ‘an intellectual outrage’.

To correct Purchase’s often convoluted account of the evolution of my views — presumably I was an ‘anarchist-ecologist’ in the late 1960s and 1970s, only to mutate into an ‘outrageous’ anti-syndicalist and hence anti-anarchist ‘social ecologist’ in the 1980s and 1990s — would be as tedious as it would be futile. I shall leave it to serious readers of my work to sort out the absurdities of his account. Suffice it here to make a few points. No one, least of all I, believes that we can radically alter society without the support of the proletariat and working people of all kinds. But to assume that industrial workers will play the ‘hegemonic’ role that Marxists traditionally assigned to them — and that the anarchosyndicalists merely echoed — is to smother radical thought and practice with a vengeance. My criticism of theories that assign a hegemonic role to the proletariat in the struggle for an anarchist society — generically denoted by labor historians as ‘proletarian socialism’ — is simply that they are obsolete. The reasons for the passage of the era of proletarian socialism into history have been explored not only by myself but by serious radical theorists of all kinds — including anarchists. From decades of experience in my own life, I learned that industrial workers can more easily be reached as men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, indeed, as neighbors and citizens. They are often more concerned about community problems, pollution, public education, democracy, morality, and the quality of their lives than about whether they ‘control’ the factories in which they are ruthlessly exploited. Indeed, the majority of workers and trade-union members with whom I worked for years in foundries and auto plants were more eager to get out of their factories after working hours were over than to ponder production schedules and vocational assignments.

Is it inconceivable that we have misread the historical nature of the proletariat (more a Marxian failing, I may add, than a traditional anarchist one) as a revolutionary hegemonic class? Is it inconceivable that the factory system, far from organizing and radicalizing the proletariat, has steadily assimilated it to industrial systems of command and obedience? Have capitalism and the working class stood still since the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or have they both undergone profound changes that pose major challenges to — and significantly vitiate the claims of — anarchosyndicalists as well as traditional Marxists? With remarkable prescience, Bakunin himself expressed his fears about the possible ‘embourgeoisement’ of the working class and, more generally, that the ‘masses have allowed themselves to become deeply demoralized, apathetic, not to say castrated by the pernicious influence of our corrupt, centralized, statist civilization’. Bakunin’s fears were not merely an expression of a strategic view that applies only to his own time, but a historic judgment that still requires explication, not equivocation. Today, so-called ‘progressive’ capitalist enterprises have succeeded quite admirably by giving workers an appreciable share in hiring, firing and setting production quotas, bringing the proletariat into complicity with its own exploitation.

Purchase not only ignores these momentous developments and the analyzes that I and others have advanced; he grossly misinterprets and demagogically redefines any criticism of syndicalism, indeed, trade-unionism, as an expression of hostility toward anarchism as such. Assuming that Purchase knows very much about the history of anarchism and syndicalism, this line of argument is manipulative and an outright distortion; but to be generous, I will say that it reveals a degree of ignorance and intolerance that deserves vigorous reproval. In fact, in the late nineteenth century, when syndicalism emerged as an issue among anarchists, it was furiously debated. The outstanding luminaries of the anarchist movement at the the turn of the century — such as Errico Malatesta, Elisee Reclus, Emma Goldman, Sebastian Faure, and others — initially opposed syndicalism for a variety of reasons, many of which show a great deal of prescience on their part. And in time, when they came to accept it, many of them did so in a highly prudent manner. Malatesta, in his fundamental criticism of syndicalism, argued that the generation of a revolutionary spirit ‘cannot be the normal, natural definition of the Trade Union’s function’. Although he eventually accepted anarchosyndicalism with apparent reluctance, he continued to call for a far more expansive form of anarchist organization and practice than many syndicalists were prepared to accept.

In practice, anarchist groups often came into outright conflict with anarchosyndicalist organizations — not to speak of syndicalist organizations, many of which eschewed anarchism. Early in the century, the Spanish anarchocommunists, influenced primarily by Juan Baron and Francisco Cardinal, the editors of Tierra y Libertad, furiously denounced the anarchosyndicalists who were later to form the CNT as ‘deserters’ and ‘reformists’. Similar conflicts developed in Italy, France, and the United States, and perhaps not without reason. The record of the anarchosyndicalist movement has been one of the most abysmal in the history of anarchism generally. In the Mexican Revolution, for example, the anarchosyndicalist leaders of the Casa del Obrero Mundial shamefully placed their proletarian ‘Red Battalions’ at the service of Carranza, one of the revolution’s most bloodthirsty thugs, to fight the truly revolutionary militia of Zapata — all to gain a few paltry reforms, which Carranza withdrew once the Zapatista challenge had been broken with their collaboration. The great Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon justly denounced their behavior as a betrayal.

Nor can much be said in defense of the leaders of the CNT in Spain. They swallowed their libertarian principles by becoming ‘ministers’ in the Madrid government late in 1936, not without the support of many of their followers, I should add, and in May 1937 they used their prestige to disarm the Barcelona proletariat when it tried to resist the Stalinist counterrevolution in the Catalan capital. In the United States, lest present-day anarchosyndicalists get carried away by legendary movements like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), they should be advised that this syndicalist movement, like others elsewhere, was by no means committed to anarchism. ‘Big Bill’ Haywood, its most renowned leader, was never an anarchist. Still other IWW leaders, many of whom tilted toward an anarchist outlook, not only became Communists in the 1920s but became ardent Stalinists in the 1930s and later. It is worth noting that serious Spanish anarchists, even those who joined the CNT, regarded the influence of the CNT’s trade-unionist mentality on the FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation) as deleterious and ultimately disastrous. Toward the end of the civil war, it was questionable whether the FAI controlled the CNT or, more likely, whether the CNT, with its strong trade-union mentality, had essentially diluted the FAI’s anarchist principles. As Malatesta had so perceptively declared, even as he cautiously accepted the amalgamation of anarchist with syndicalist principles under the pressure of a growing syndicalist movement in Europe, ‘trade unions are, by their nature, reformist and never revolutionary’ (emphasis added). For an oaf like Graham Purchase to bombastically equate syndicalism with anarchism — an act of arrogance that is as fatuous as it is ignorant — and then to go on and essentially equate trade unionism with syndicalism deserves only disdain.

The authentic locus of anarchists in the past was the commune or municipality, not the factory, which was generally conceived as only part of a broader communal structure, not its decisive component. Syndicalism, to the extent that it narrowed this broader outlook by singling out the proletariat and its industrial environment as its locus, also crucially narrowed the more sweeping social and moral landscape that traditional anarchism had created. In large part, this ideological retreat reflected the rise of the factory system in the closing years of the last century in France and Spain, but it also echoed the ascendancy of a particularly vulgar form of economistic Marxism (Marx, to his credit, did not place much stock in trade unionism), to which many naive anarchists and nonpolitical trade unionists succumbed. After the Revolution by Abad de Santillan, one of the movers and shakers of Spanish anarchosyndicalism, reflects this shift toward a pragmatic economism in such a way that makes his views almost indistinguishable from those of the Spanish socialists — and, of course, that brought him into collusion with the Catalan government, literally one of the grave-diggers of Spanish anarchism. Syndicalism — be it anarchosyndicalism or its less libertarian variants — has probably done more to denature the ethical content of anarchism than any other single factor in the history of the movement, apart from anarchism’s largely marginal and ineffectual individualist tendencies. Indeed, until anarchism shakes off this syndicalist heritage and expands its communalistic and communistic heritage, it will be little more than a rhetorical and mindless echo of vulgar Marxism and the ghost of an era that has long passed into history.

But as the Germans say,genug! I’ve had it with Purchase and his kind. Let them explore more thoroughly the historical and textual bases of anarchist theory and practice before they leap into print with inanities that reveal their appalling ignorance of the intellectual and practical trajectories of their own beliefs. And they should also take some pains to read what I have written on the history and failings of the workers’ movement before they undertake to criticize my own views. What I strongly resent, however, is the fatuous implication — one that even more sensible anarchists sometimes imply — that I ‘filch’ my ecological views from’ anarchist theory and practice’. In fact, I have been overly eager to cite anarchist antecedents for social ecology (as I call my eco-anarchist views), and I have done so wherever I could. The Ecology of Freedom, written in 1982 — that is, during the period when, according to Purchase, I abandoned my anarchist views for social ecology — opens with an epigraph from Kropotkin’s Ethics. In the Acknowledgments section of that book, I observed that ‘Peter Kropotkin’s writings on mutual aid and anarchism remain an abiding tradition to which I am committed’. For reasons that I shall explain, this is a bit of an overstatement so far as Kropotkin is concerned, but the text contains no less than nine favorable, often laudatory references to him, including an extensive quotation from Mutual Aid with which I expressed my warm approval. If I have not mentioned Elisee Reclus, it was because I knew nothing about his work and views until I read Marie Fleming’s 1988 biography of him for the first time only a few weeks ago. And in retrospect, I doubt that I would have quoted or cited him in any case.

Try as I have to cite my affinity with anarchist writers of the past, guardians of the anarchist ossuary often miss a very crucial point. Social ecology is a fairly integrated and coherent viewpoint that encompasses a philosophy of natural evolution and of humanity’s place in that evolutionary process; a reformulation of dialectics along ecological lines; an account of the emergence of hierarchy; a historical examination of the dialectic between legacies and epistemologies of domination and freedom; an evaluation of technology from an historical, ethical, and philosophical standpoint; a wide-ranging critique of Marxism, the Frankfurt School, justice, rationalism, scientism, and instrumentalism; and finally, an eduction of a vision of a Utopian, decentralized, confederal, and esthetically grounded future society based on an objective ethics of complementarity. I do not present these ideas as a mere inventory of subjects but as a highly coherent viewpoint. The Ecology of Freedom, moreover, must be supplemented by the later Urbanization Without Cities, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, and Remaking Society, not to speak of quite a few important essays published mainly in Green Perspectives, if one is to recognize that social ecology is more than the sum of its parts.

Whether adequately or not, the holistic body of ideas in these works endeavors to place ‘eco-anarchism’, a term that to the best of my knowledge has come into existence entirely as a result of my writings, on a theoretical and intellectual par with the best systematic works in radical social theory. To pick this corpus apart by citing an antecedent, in the writings of some prominent nineteenth-century anarchists, for an idea that I developed in this whole, and thereby deal with only part of what I have tried to integrate into a meaningful and relevant whole for our times, is simply fatuous. One could similarly reduce systematic accounts of any body of social or even scientific theory by citing historical antecedents for various constituent fragments. If there is any ‘filching’ going on, it may well be by the guardians of the anarchist ossuary who have turned the rather smug boast ‘We said it long ago’ into a veritable industry, while themselves benefiting from whatever prestige anarchism has gained over the past decades by virtue of its association with social ecology.

I would not make such an assertion, had I not been provoked by the arrogance and dogmatism of these guardians in my encounters with them. To set the record straight: The fact is that Kropotkin had no influence on my turn from Marxism to anarchism — nor, for that matter, did Bakunin or Proudhon. It was Herbert Read’s “The Philosophy of Anarchism” that I found most useful for rooting the views that I slowly developed over the fifties and well into the sixties in a libertarian pedigree; hence the considerable attention he received in my 1964 essay, ‘Ecology and Revolutionary Thought’. Odd as it may seem, it was my reaction against Marx and Engels’s critiques of anarchism, my readings into the Athenian polis, George Woodcock’s informative history of anarchism, my own avocation as a biologist, and my studies in technology that gave rise to the views in my early essays — not any extensive readings into the works of early anarchists. Had I been ‘born into’ the anarchist tradition, as some of our more self-righteous anarchists claim to have been, I might well have taken umbrage at Proudhon’s exchange-oriented contractualism, and after my long experience in the workers’ movement, I would have felt smothered by the rubbish about syndicalism advanced by Graham Purchase and his kind.

Purchase’s fatuous attempt to distinguish my post-1980 writings on social ecology from my presumably ‘true-blue’ anarchist writings before that date leaves a number of facts about the development of social ecology unexplained. I wrote my earliest, almost book-length work on the ecological dislocations produced by capitalism, ‘The Problems of Chemicals in Food’, in 1952, while I was a neo-Marxist and had in no way been influenced by anarchist thinkers. Many of Marx’s views heavily contributed to my notion of post-scarcity, very much a ‘pre-1980’ outlook to which I still adhere. (Certain Spanish anarchists, I may add, held similar views in the 1930s, as I discovered decades later when I wrote The Spanish Anarchists.) I say all of this without being in the least concerned that my anarchist views may be ‘adulterated’ by some of Marx’s concepts. With Bakunin, I share the view that Marx made invaluable contributions to radical theory, contributions one can easily value without accepting his authoritarian politics or perspectives. For anarchists to foolishly demonize Marx — or even Hegel, for that matter — is to abandon a rich legacy of ideas that should be brought to the service of libertarian thought, just as the fascinating work of many biologists should be brought to the service of ecological thought. Which does not mean that we have to accept Marx’s gross errors about centralism, his commitment to a ‘worker’s party’, his support of the nation-state, and the like, any more than learning from Hegel’s dialectic means that we must necessarily accept the existence of an ‘Absolute’, a strict teleological system, a hybridized corporate-parliamentary monarchy, or what he broadly called ‘absolute idealism’.

By the same token, we will be deceiving nobody but ourselves if we celebrate the insights of traditional anarchism without dealing forthrightly with its shortcomings. Due honor should certainly be given to Proudhon for developing federalistic notions of social organization against the nation-state and defending the rights of craftspeople and peasants who were under the assault of industrial capitalism — a system that Marx dogmatically celebrated in so many of his writings. But it would be sheer myopia to ignore Proudhon’s commitment to a contractual form of economic relationships, as distinguished from the communistic maxim ‘From each according to his or her abilities, to each according to his or her needs’. His contractualism permeated his federalistic concepts and can scarcely be distinguished from bourgeois conceptions of ‘right’. I say this despite some attempts that have been made to cast his proclivity for contractual exchanges into a quasi-philosophical notion of ‘social contract’. Even if Proudhonism really were a social contract theory, this would be quite unsatisfactory, in my eyes. Nor can we ignore Richard Vernon’s observation in his introduction to Proudhon’s The Principle of Federalism that Proudhon viewed federalism as an abridgment of his earlier, largely personalistic anarchism. If thought out carefully, Proudhon’s views seem to be premised on the existence of free-floating, seemingly ‘sovereign’ individuals, craftspersons, or even collectives structured around contractual, exchangelike relationships and property ownership rather than on a communistic system of ‘ownership’ and distribution of goods.

Bakunin, in turn, was an avowed collectivist, not a communist, and his views on organization in particular were often at odds with themselves. (I might remind Purchase, here, that Fourier was in no sense a socialist, anarchist or even a revolutionary, despite his many rich insights.) Maximoff’s later assemblage of small portions of Bakunin’s many writings under the rubric of ‘scientific anarchism’ would probably have astonished Bakunin, just as many of Bakunin’s insights would shock orthodox anarchists today. I, for one, would generally agree with Bakunin, for example, that ‘municipal elections always best reflect the real attitude and will of the people’, although I would want to restate his formulation to mean that municipal elections can more accurately reflect the popular will than parliamentary ones. But how many orthodox anarchists would agree with Bakunin’s view — or even my qualified one? The extreme resistance I have encountered from anarchist traditionalists and ‘purists’ on this issue has virtually foreclosed any possibility of developing a libertarian, participatory, municipalist, and confederal politics today as part of the anarchist tradition.

Given his time and place, Kropotkin was perhaps one of the most far-seeing of the theorists I encountered in the libertarian tradition. It was not until the late sixties, when reprints of his works began to appear in American bookshops, that I became familiar with his Fields, Factories, and Workshops (and at a later time, Colin Ward’s excellent abridgment of this book), and it was not until the mid-sixties that I read portions of Mutual Aid — that is, the center portion that deals with medieval cities. To be quite frank, these books did not appreciably affect my views; rather, they confirmed them and reinforced my commitment to anarchism. In much the same way, my 1974 book The Limits of the City, structured around a very large essay I wrote in 1958, unknowingly paralleled some of Marx’s observations on the relationship between town and country that he expressed in the Grundrisse, which was not available to me in English translation until the 1960s. Indeed, it was mainly my study of urban development over the course of history that nourished The Limits of the City, a work strongly influenced by Marx’s Capital. My book mentions Kropotkin only incidentally as figuring in the history of city planning in the later-appended pages. I cite this background to note how nonsensical Purchase’s distinction between my pre-1980 and my post-1980 development really is, and to point out how little Purchase seems to know about my writings, much less their ‘pedigree’ and the diversity of ideological, philosophical, and historical sources that have nourished my writings.

Far from pillaging from Kropotkin and other anarchist writers, I have tended in the past, let me repeat, to overstate my obligation to them. I never agreed with free-booting notions of anarchism that rest as much on ordinary professional and scientific associations as they do on the broader notion of a commune based on civic unity and popular assemblies. Moreover, a revolutionism that is primarily rooted in a ‘revolutionary instinct’ (Bakunin) and a mutualism that is primarily rooted in a ‘social instinct’ (Kropotkin) are little more than vague substitutes for serious explanations. Instinct theory has to be dealt with very cautiously, lest it devolve into outright sociobiology. Kropotkin’s rather loose attribution of ‘social instinct’ to animals generally in order to validate mutualism is particularly troubling, in my view, not only because it is based on a highly selective study of animals — he tends to ignore a host of solitary animals, including highly advanced mammals. Even more troubling is that he tends to confuse animal troops, herds, packs, and transient communities with societies: that is to say, with highly mutable institutions, alterable as they are by virtue of the distinctly human ability to form, develop, subvert, and overthrow them according to their interests and will.

Elisee Reclus, for his part, carried certain elements of Kropotkin’s outlook to the point of absurdity. I am at a loss to understand how cats ‘understand or share’ or ‘forestall’ our ‘sentiments’, ‘desires’, and ‘ideas’, as Reclus asserted they do in the quotation I cited near the beginning of this article. I am certain that my doubts about so saintly and gentle an anarchist as Reclus will place me in the bad graces of cat owners, but I find such anthropomorphism naive. His view that ‘secret harmony exists between the earth and people’, one that ‘imprudent societies’ will always regret if they violate it, is far too vague, at times even mystical, to be regarded as more than a generous sentiment. One may surely respect such sentiments, but countless writers (including some very reactionary nature romantics) have reiterated them more emphatically to regard them as eco-anarchist in nature. Deep ecology, eco-theology, and air-headed spiritualists have found more ‘secret harmonies’ between humanity and nonhuman nature than I know what to do with. I would certainly praise Reclus as an anarchist and a resolute revolutionary, but I would be disquieted if his particular views on the natural world were identified, apart from their good intentions, with eco-anarchism.

Yes, let us give Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus, Malatesta, and other leading anarchist thinkers due honor and respect for what they did in their time and what they have to offer to ours. But cannot anarchism go further than the terrain they charted out a century ago? If some of us try to do so, must we live under the tyranny of ossuary guardians like Graham Purchase, who can be expected to lift a bony finger from out of the crypt and reprove us for ignoring nineteenth-century anarchists’ passages on ecologically oriented social relationships and humanity’s relationship to nature — a hint here, an antecedent fragment there, even a sizable passage — whose formulations are inadequate today and were often quite erroneous to begin with? We can certainly build on views advanced by the great anarchist thinkers of the past. But must we ignore the need for more sophisticated notions of confederalism, anti-statism, decentralism, definitions of freedom, and sensitivity to the natural world, than those that they advanced? There are many notions that were central to their views that we are obliged to discard. Such advances, hopefully, and the coherence they provide are part of the history of cultural development as a whole. Is anarchism to be immunized from further developments and revisions by the guardians of its ossuary? I would hope not, especially since anarchism — almost by definition — is the exercise of freedom not only in the social realm but also in the realm of thought. To lock anarchism into a crypt and condemn any innovative body of libertarian ideas as booty ‘filched’ from a sacred precinct is an affront to the libertarian spirit and all that the libertarian tradition stands for.

Times do change. The proletariat and, more marginally, the peasantry to which anarchosyndicalism turned as a ‘historical subject’, or agents for revolution, are numerically diminishing at best or are being integrated into the existing system at worst. The most crucial contradictions of capitalism are not those within the system but between the system and the natural world. Today, a broad consensus is growing among all oppressed people — by no means strictly industrial workers — that ecological dislocation has produced monumental problems, problems that may well bring the biosphere as we know it to an end. With the emergence of a general human interest, largely the need to maintain and restore a viable biosphere, an interest around which people of highly disparate backgrounds and social strata may yet unite, anarchosyndicalism is simply archaic, both as a movement and as a body of ideas. If anarchist theory and practice cannot keep pace with — let alone go beyond — historic changes that have altered the entire social, cultural, and moral landscape and effaced a good part of the world in which traditional anarchism was developed, the entire movement will indeed become what Theodor Adorno called it — ‘a ghost’. If every attempt to provide a coherent, contemporary interpretation of the anarchist tradition is fragmented, shattered, and parceled out to antecedents whose views were often more appropriate to their times than they are to ours, the libertarian tradition will fade back into history as surely as the anarchic Anabaptists have disappeared. Then capitalism and the Right will indeed have society completely under their control, and self-styled libertarian ideas may well become relics in an ideological museum that will be as remote to the coming century as Jacobinism is to our own.

July 11,1992

The Apple Falls from Grace
by Chris Wilbert

The History and Changing Meaning of the Apple as a Cultivated Fruit; Changing Attitudes towards Nature from Ancient Societies to the Present Day

1. Introduction

The Apple perhaps more than any other fruit has been intimately bound up with humans. Thoreau called the Apple tree ‘the most civilized of all trees’ being longer cultivated than any other and so more humanized. [7] This relationship has been shown in many ways. In Ancient cultures, such as the Greeks, Romans, and Celts, the Apple was the source of much folklore, magic and symbolism, which reflected the values and worldview of the cultures themselves.

As human society has changed, so too has the relationship between humans and nature, in this sense historical and cultural change leads to ecological and social change, [8] and these changes can be seen in the way that fruits and other crops are grown. In this way the Apple is used here partly as a metaphor for nature as a whole.

The changes of the fourteenth century onwards, the rise of capitalism, the scientific revolution and the fusion of science and capitalism has taken the Apple from a fruit imbued with spiritual and symbolic meaning — the fruit of health and immortality — to a fruit given only a single function, that of production of profit and a fruit feared because of the chemicals that are applied to it. Now genetic engineering promises to make the Apple almost unrecognizable as a Tree, in the drive to increase production, standardization and remove labor costs.

The old symbolism has not completely gone however, instead it too has been commodified and now adorns the ‘industries of the new age’, Apple Computers being but one example.

In these ways capitalism has separated us from the source and knowledge of production of essentials such as food, we are encouraged to trust the experts who are motivated mainly by profits [9] and we are learning that we should not. Without such knowledge of production for food, no moral responsibility for social and environmental consequences of one’s decisions of what to buy seems possible. [10]

Alternatives do exist, and ways of breaking out of this impersonal, morally irresponsible system, to bring the knowledge and meaning of food production and nature back into our lives, can and must be found. These cannot be separated from wider political realities however, nor should it be seen that to go back to some mythical golden age is the answer. But we can learn from the past by seeing what has been and what has gone wrong and look to a future to see what can be.

2. Fruit Cultivation: Myth, Magic and Folksymbols

In the essential prose
of things, the Apple Tree
stands up, emphatic
among the accidents of the afternoon, solvent
not to be denied. [11]

Wild fruits have probably always been collected by humans and still are, the Apple was particularly valued for its nutritional and storable qualities, and because it can be dried and kept over winter. [12] Cultivation of the Apple probably dates back to the Stone Age [13] and most likely began in the area of the Caucasus and Northern India where forests of wild Apples are found. [14] The Apple was cultivated in Egypt in the twelfth century BC and the Greeks and Romans were also adept at grafting and propagation of Apple trees. The Roman Palladius wrote of thirty-seven varieties in the fourth century BC.

It is not known whether the Apple was cultivated in Britain before the Romans invaded, though the crab apple (Malus sylvestris) is native and was highly valued by the Celts. The Romans did introduce their own form of fruit cultivation but after they left little is known of fruit growing in Britain until the Norman invasion apart from a few scattered references to orchards in Monasteries. [15] There is only one reference to an orchard in the Domesday book; however it is thought that this reflects the commonplace nature of fruit growing on an individual basis rather than as a cooperative pursuit. [16]

Trees have played an important part in the spiritual history of most cultures and trees bearing life-foods were always sacred. [17] It is probable that humans in an early stage of civilization, living a hard life close to nature, constructed no definite philosophy of life that could explain all the phenomena or workings of nature with which they came into contact. Their ‘rude’ science thus explained itself largely in satisfying their simple wants and needs in warding off dangers and appeasing the wrath of evil powers. [18] In such communities the natural world was viewed in anthropomorphic terms, spirits permeated matter, such that the earth was seen as animate, [19] a living organism and nurturing mother, and this view served as a cultural constraint restricting the exploitative action of humans. [20] Within such a cosmology, nothing was seen as isolated and apart, but in its relation to the whole of life, of which each object formed an integral part. [21] Thus, everyday things were invested with a deep symbolism or cosmological significance. [22] This paganism or animism was to some extent incorporated within Christianity when it arrived in Europe and Britain, but a marked shift did occur with nature being seen as man’s (sic) dominion and thus separate from nature.

One of the most widely known mentions of the Apple in myth is the Christian story of the Garden of Eden in which Adam and Eve partake of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is most commonly seen as the Apple, [23] and are then cast out of the Garden of Innocence by God into the world of experience. Russell has interpreted this myth, along with similar other ones from other cultures along with anthropological studies of societies in Papua New Guinea, as being connected with Kinship. She arrives at some significant conclusions in connection with fruit trees:

From evidence about modern societies that practice simple farming, I was able to show that the Fruit tree is the oldest form of property fixed to a place, and the theft of fruit the oldest form of crime in farming societies (the original sin). Moreover, since Fruit trees may last more than a generation, the fruit tree is the oldest form of heritable fixed property. Since it is important that fruit trees be cared for, it becomes important to control and certify kinship succession. Hence the fruit tree gives rise to the family tree. At this stage of cultural evolution, to ensure regular kinship succession, mating regulations begin to be connected with property. [24]

Thus, in Eden mating regulations are broken, the Tree of Life may be said to represent stable succession of inheritance (immortality), which ensures a kind of eternal life and renewal for the trees and those who succeed in tending them. The story of Eden may therefore be telling of the expulsion of groups who infringed the rules of mating. [25]

As the classical symbol of youth and renewal the Apple naturally rated high in Greek mythology. The Apple was a bridal symbol and offering, sacred to Venus as love and desire. [26] The Apple being round in shape, like many fruits, represents totality and unity and is sacred to Apollo the Sun god [27] (Ibid), while the Temple of Artemis was within an orchard. [28]

In Celtic mythology, the Apple was one of the central life trees of the Gaelic elysium, [29] seen as the Silver Bough, it has magic and cthonic powers, it is the emblem of security, [30] immortality and the fruit of the other world:

The Apple was the talisman which led him into the world of the immortals and fed him with the fruit of life and everlasting happiness. [31]

The Druids planted Apple trees in sacred places for their fruit and as harbors for mistletoe which was also sacred to them. [32] Hallowe’en is the Celtic Apple festival which marks the celebration of the beginning of winter and death of the old year — on the eve of November 1^st. This was also the eve of New Year’s Day in Anglo-Saxon times and this date was also dedicated to the spirit which presides over fruit and seeds. [33]

On Twelfth night, which has absorbed many early hallowe’en customs many folkrites were also carried out by people in orchards. One such is Apple Wassailing which took place in Cornwall, Devon and Somerset. On this night parishioners walk in procession visiting the main orchards in the parish. In each orchard one tree is selected and saluted with an incantation, the tree is then sprinkled with cider to ensure it bears plentifully the ensuing year. Implements are then banged to drive out evil spirits and arouse the tree spirits. ‘Hail to thee, good Apple tree, pocket-fulls, hat-fulls, peck-fulls, bushel-bag fulls’ goes one version of this Wassailing chorus. Afterwards vast quantities of cider are consumed. [34] The Apple was also associated in many cultures with health and healing; King Arthur’s grievous wound was treated in the Vale of Avalon, the Apple Vale of Celtic myth. [35] Fruit Trees were also planted in many places upon the birth of a new child and the health of the tree was thought to reflect that of the child. [36]

Another famous myth has it that one day while sitting in an orchard an apple fell and hit Isaac Newton (the ‘father’ of modern physics) upon the head and that this gave him the inspiration for his Law of Gravity. The irony of this story is that Newton was one of the most important formulators of the mechanistic view of nature. In conjunction with, and to some extent as a result of, the increased exploitation of the earth under early capitalism, this new paradigm of scientific thought eroded the view of nature as being in a generalized sense female, alive and responsive to human action and acting as a normative restraint on human exploitation. The new Mechanistic Theories and Capitalism, morally underpinned by Contemporary Christian Theology, replaced this with a view of nature as an inanimate, dead, physical system over which ‘man’ (sic) had dominion. This, as we shall see, had far reaching effects in the way humans exploit nature.

3. The Apple and the Rising Market System

The transformation from Feudalism to Capitalism set in motion a number of changes which eventually affected every form of life in western societies. When we look at these historical changes in human impact on the system as a whole, we can see that historical change becomes ecological change due to the ‘...dynamic interactions of the natural and cultural subsystems’. [37]

The main factor in the transformation of the early modern period was the growth in the market system for food production and other goods, such as wool, based on property rights and exchanges in land and money. This, along with population increases and urbanization, advances in agricultural improvement and the growth of rural industry, gradually broke down communal farming practices that were part of the feudal system. [38] People’s experiences of an increasingly manipulated nature also undermined the organic worldview and made way for the mechanistic model which reinforced and accelerated the exploitation of nature and human beings as resources. [39] While the spreading use of money facilitated open-ended accumulation of capital as opposed to the somewhat more limited feudal aim of production for consumption (including conspicuous consumption). [40] In these ways (and others) production for subsistence was replaced by rationally maximizing modes of economic organization for the market.

The tendency towards growth, expansion and accumulation in Capitalism led to continued displacement of subsistence farmers, [41] the growth of waged labor and the bringing into cultivation of new lands by improvement and reclamation as well as by enclosure of common lands. [42] This process was aided by new books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on agricultural improvements (in a scientific sense) and in the case of fruit, instructions on ordering, grafting and propagation. [43]

These early changes were essentially focused around London being the largest urban market and in this it is worth remembering the words of Hughes:

It is significant that the first urban societies were also the first societies to abandon a religious attitude of oneness with nature and to adopt one of separation. [44]

4. Transformations in Fruit Cultivation

Norman London, according to a contemporary account, was full of citizens gardens and orchards. All the main monasteries, encouraged to be self-sufficient since the time of St Benedict, [45] at Whitefriars, Blackfriars, Charterhouse and Holborn had their own gardens in which fruit was grown. [46] In the thirteenth century fruit was extensively grown in the Royal Gardens at Tower Hill and Westminster. [47] But fruit growing was not confined to the rich and monastic orders, though few records survive of peasant cultivation, Langland in Piers Plowman of 1362 mentions that the poor ate baked apples and cherries. [48]

Surplus fruits from the monasteries and Royal gardens, and from the Manor farming systems were sold at the ‘Market Cross’ at this time and this sale of fruit and other crops became so profitable that the system of renting gardens and orchards to grow especially for market became established. [49] This market gardening first developed in and around London in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. [50]

Cantor states that because this was a small-scale affair it was well suited to peasants with plenty of family labor, producing vegetables in beds separated by fruit trees and supplemented by produce from communal fields. By 1650 however, a class of wealthy market gardeners emerged who acquired larger holdings and whose soil they improved with fertilizers and employed wage earners of displaced peasants to work them. [51] Specialized fruit production was already well established in Kent by the end of the fifteenth century also supplying the markets of London. Jordan states that this required very heavy and certainly very profitable capital outlay. [52]

Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Somerset and Devon were also becoming main fruit growing areas, tending to focus more on cider production due to poorer transport and smaller markets. [53] Each of these areas had their own local varieties such as Cornish Aromatic, Hereford Pearmain, Flower of Kent and Devonshire Quarrenden, as well as growing more widespread varieties such as Golden Pippin.

Until the sixteenth century fruit growing in Britain had changed little from how it was undertaken in Greek or Roman times, apart from becoming somewhat more intensive. However, at this time new developments came about which signaled the move towards increasing economic rationalization.

The first of these was the introduction of dwarfing rootstocks from France, called ‘Paradise’. These enabled more trees to be planted in an area than before. Legendre, in his book The Manner of Ordering Fruit Trees (translated in 1660) suggested these should be spaced 6–9 feet apart, instead of the 18–24 feet for trees on seedlings. [54] This practice of dwarfing trees prevented the undercropping of other plants beneath the trees which had previously been widespread and marks the beginning of the transformation of the Apple tree to fit economic ‘needs’ of humans.

The developing mechanistic worldview, which saw nature as disorder and cultivation as the imposition of human order was distinguished by increasingly regular planting forms and monocultures, and an increasing admiration of it. None was more admired than the Quincunx, the old Roman way of setting out an orchard. [55] Thus, in the time of Henry VIII, Richard Harris planted over 100 acres of fruit trees at Teynham, Kent: ‘So beautifully as they not only stand in most right lines, but seem to be of one sort, shape and fashion’. [56]

Increased planting of orchards continued in the eighteenth century, supplied by many new nurseries especially around London. However, the increased acreage of orchards and the monocultural system began to have adverse side-effects by the late eighteenth century, with large-scale devastation by pests and diseases, as a result of the disruption of ecosystem balances. Canker and Woolly Aphid — introduced on dwarfing rootstocks — became rife, fruit quality and yields became very poor. [57] These problems led to more attention being given to possible remedies by the likes of the newly-formed Royal Horticultural Society, rather than any basic questioning of their causes.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, English agriculture was well on the way to becoming a fully commercial activity, organized and administered according to the needs of the market, [58] and dominated by the triple divisions into landlords, tenant farmers and hired laborers. [59]

In the nineteenth century few new developments came about in fruit cultivation. However, fruit growing continued to intensify under the influence of rapid population growth and urbanization, increasing per capita incomes, cheaper transport costs and more integrated markets. At the same time French imports of Apples and high sugar prices caused periodic contractions in cultivation. [60] At this time many Apple varieties grown today were introduced, these often having arisen as chance seedlings, Bramleys Seedling, Cox’s Orange Pippin, and Worcester Pearmain being examples. [61] The next set of new developments in fruit cultivation did not come about until the early twentieth century with the integration of science into commercial fruit production.

5. The Apple as a Machine

Most developments and improvements in fruit cultivation before the twentieth century came from individual growers and gardeners, amateur ‘Scientists’ and particularly in the nineteenth century from commercial nurseries such as Laxtons of Bedford. [62] By the early twentieth century however, research into new varieties by nurseries was largely given up as the new scientific research stations, financed by growers and government took a leading role [63] and a more scientific management of commercial orchards came into being.

The setting up of Fruit Research stations, principally those at Long Ashton, Bristol in 1903 (initially as the Cider Institute) and East Mailing, Kent in 1913, can be seen as part of the more general ‘scientific-technical revolution’, in which science became directly organized and dominated by capitalist institutions and was placed at the center of production. [64] This process of integration is described by Braverman:

Science is the last — and after labor the most important — social property to be turned into an adjunct of capital... At first science costs the capitalist nothing, since he merely exploits the accumulated knowledge of the physical sciences, but later the capitalist systematically organizes and harnesses science, paying for scientific education, research, laboratories etc, out of the huge surplus social product which either belongs directly to him or which the capitalist class as a whole controls in the form of tax revenues. A formerly relatively free-floating social endeavor is integrated into production and the market. [65]

The mechanistic philosophy and reductionist method of science harmonized well with the expanding capitalist system into a rationalized system of scientific management, in which the most efficient, scientifically and logically based means are sought to achieve pre-determined capitalist ends. [66] Thus, in the scientific-technical revolution, scientific management sets itself the problem of grasping the process of production as a whole and controlling every element of it, without exception. As H.L. Gantt wrote:

Improving the system of management means the elimination of elements of chance or accident and the accomplishment of all the ends desired in accordance with knowledge derived from a scientific investigation of everything down to the smallest details of labor. [67]

The result of this approach is that commercial fruit production has been revolutionized and has followed the precepts of rationalization apparent in other industries and agricultural sectors. Fruit growers have become ever more specialized, landholdings have become bigger, more capital intensive and more incorporated into sectors of the chemical, engineering and food processing industries. [68]

These developments have been made possible by the scientific investigations of the fruit research stations, much of it sponsored by companies such as ICI, Monsanto, Ciba-Geigy Agrochemicals, J Sainsbury Pic, Hoechst, and of course The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) who are the main sponsors. [69] MAFF grants are not given unless it can be shown that the research is of ‘practical’ importance and the current government’s policy is emphasizing this by cutting financial support for East Mailing and other research stations, so that a higher proportion of funding comes from the private sector and is thus more market orientated. [70]

Currently, control of Apple production is mainly focused on chemicals and hybridization, though this is shifting towards what is seen as the ‘ultimate’ control of the Apple, through genetic engineering. Up to twelve chemicals and hormones can be applied to apples in a single season, [71] rich pickings indeed for the chemical companies. These are applied to Apples at almost every stage of growth from beginning to end. They are used to control pests and diseases (of which there are an increasing number due to further disruption of predator-prey relationships), to thin fruit out on the tree, to control growth, to ‘stick’ apples to the tree and prevent windblow losses, to prevent rotting in storage and to lengthen shelf life. This is a potent cocktail synergistically speaking, yet what inadequate testing does take place is only to define lethal doses, not how chemicals may work together or effects of long term low level exposures.

Already several fungicides used regularly in the fruit industry, such as Mancozeb, Captan, and Folpet, are known carcinogens. [72] But most menacing are the growth regulators such as Alar (daminozide), which are used to slow the growth of leaves and branches on trees, and thus force an increase in budding and fruit production. These regulators and some herbicides dramatically alter growth rates at the level of the individual cell. [73] Alar sales were stopped in the USA because of links with cancer in young children and caused storms of protest from farmers and industry with the decision being roundly condemned by the Wall Street Journal as: ‘...false or superficial science prevailing over the real thing’. [74] A similar controversy erupted in Britain over the American decision, but after a brief review, the government decided in December 1989 that all daminozide based products (Alar and Dazide) were safe. [75]

Developments in plant breeding have also led to more intensive planting systems with even more dwarfing trees. These can be as little as 1 meter in height, while some bush trees need to be permanently staked and their branches strung up because they cannot support themselves. These developments allow labor ‘maintenance and picking’ costs to be reduced. Attempts to mechanize harvesting altogether are at present limited to fruit for cider or juice due to damage to the fruit. [76] Though fully automated chemical sprayers have recently been developed. [77]

Recent research has turned to genetic control of Apple characteristics. Here, by mapping genes responsible for control of tree habit, pest and disease resistance, and fruit characteristics, genes will be selected and transferred to give the right requirements for high yields, pest resistance and early cropping, this ‘...will allow the normally slow process of conventional breeding to be accelerated’. [78]

So far this has resulted in the new columnar varieties, compact, branchless ‘trees’ which have taken thirty years to develop. They require no pruning, crop early, need very little space and are thus being marketed under the legend: ‘Now even the smallest garden can have an orchard’. [79] These mutations however, bear little relation to a tree at all, having been stripped down to a purely functional level. Like the dwarf varieties of commercial orchards, they have no meaning beyond a straight economic one.

The effects of increasing economic rationalization have also been evident in the numbers of varieties grown commercially and available in shops. Over 6000 varieties of Apple are known, yet modern commercial orchards are dominated by only nine varieties. [80] English orchards are dominated by Cox’s Orange Pippin and its colored forms, making up 63% of dessert apple production in 1986, while Bramleys Seedlings made up 90% of culinary apples. [81] Only another six or seven dessert apples are widely available; most of these being imported often from as far away as Canada or New Zealand.

This increasing specialization in only a few varieties is a relatively recent trend of the twentieth century. In 1917, Prothero could boast that as many as 200 varieties of Apple were collected in a single orchard, [82] now he would be lucky to find more than two or three varieties in most orchards. This loss of local varieties of Apples that were often intimately related to their area can be seen as yet another factor in the loss of distinctiveness and identification of regions that has followed from the application of scientific management to agriculture. [83]

The work of the orchard laborer has also been transformed, with developments to reduce ‘maintenance’ and harvesting labor costs becoming increasingly deskilled and seasonally intense. Little information about these changes is available however, with only brief references in works such as Ronald Blythe’s Akenfield. The older orchard workers spoken to in connection with this research all bemoaned the lack of activity of most of the year and the much more intense and fast harvesting season in comparison to earlier days when the job was more varied, skilled and spread more evenly throughout the year. [84]

The sorting of fruit is now carried out on factory production line systems in on-farm refrigerated stores which are usually run on a cooperative basis between local farmers. Here the fruit is sorted into its various classes under EC quality standards and the Agricultural Development and Advisory Services Fruit Group provides advice to employers on how to run these lines on strict ‘time and motion’ systems to get the best results from the mainly female, part-time and low-paid workforce.

6. The Commodification of Apple Symbolism

As society has changed, the old symbols of ancient and pre-modern cultures have to a great extent lost their meaning [85] and have been replaced by new symbols that reflect the surroundings of contemporary, materialistic culture. Yet as Cooper states, a large body of symbolism has become traditional over the ages and this constitutes an international language transcending the normal limits of communication. [86]

It may be that this traditional form of symbolism (which is most often nature symbolism and includes the Apple) is selectively commodified by capitalism, in that it is used to imbue or associate technologies, goods and services with symbolic qualities of other phenomena, to make products more attractive to buyers. For example the Apple is used by Apple Mackintosh Computers and for Midland Bank’s orchard account, among others. This can be seen as a marketing or advertising ploy to associate these products with the traditional symbolic qualities of the Apple, of health, wisdom and fertility, as well as the naturalism and simplicity of the Apple to make these products and services more appealing and more salable.

This use can also be seen in the gardens of the early twentieth century suburban estates of London and other cities. Here Apple, Pear and Plum trees were often planted by builders, possibly to accentuate the rustic feeling of these areas. For as Jackson notes, a major attraction of suburban life had always been the opportunity it seemed to offer of enjoying the pleasanter aspects of rural life whilst remaining in touch with the amenities of urban civilization. [87] Some of these estates, as they spread further out into the countryside, were actually built on old orchards and some trees were left in place as at Broadlands estate, Ponders End in North London. [88]

Though it is easy to mock or denigrate this using of fruit trees in the suburbs, as Ward states, English gardens often remain a haven for the older fruit varieties no longer grown commercially. [89] For example, Hampstead Garden Society boasts over eighty Apple varieties in its members’ gardens.

7. Futures

As we have seen, it is the nature of our current economic and social system which reduces the Apple to a commodity with a single function. This has led to the transformation of the Apple tree to meet the needs of capitalist production, a process which has mainly taken place in the Horticultural Research Stations. It is clear that big business — particularly chemical companies — do well out of this research, yet what does the customer, the buyer of Apples receive in return for the huge amount of public investment? Cheaper Apples perhaps, but we also get a smaller choice of Apple varieties; ‘most’ people seem to think we get Apples that no longer taste much at all, and we get Apples that are sprayed with innumerable hazardous chemicals. Such developments are leading to a greater questioning of how far we can trust food producers, chemical companies etc, when their motive is profits.

Yet things do not have to be this way. The Apple need not be confined to massive orchards, as staked up, chemically soaked bush trees. In Switzerland for example, as I was informed by a research scientist from East Mailing, there seems to be a move to take a broader view of fruit cultivation. Instead of following a policy of transforming the Apple tree to fit economic needs, fruit cultivation was being seen as part of the workings and esthetics of the wider landscape and this was leading to a more ‘traditional’ form of cultivation.

Nor should we rely on private gardens in Britain, as a refuge for varieties not commercially available. As Alexander states:

Fruit trees on common land add much more to the neighborhood and the community than the same trees in private backyards: privately grown, the trees tend to produce more fruit than one household can consume. On public land, the trees concentrate the feeling of mutual benefit and responsibility. And because they require yearly care, pruning and harvesting the fruit trees naturally involve people in their common land. [90]

The idea of community orchards, like the aim of growing one’s own food (or at least a portion of it), aiming at buying fewer environmentally and socially destructive products, and insisting on organic foods, can be seen as an attempt to achieve some form of moral responsibility for one’s economic decisions in the market.

As Tisdell has noted, the market system operates in a way that minimizes the amount of knowledge needed to make an economic decision. As the divided responsibility of production has led to divided responsibility for its social and environmental impacts, so the overall lack of knowledge arising out of the market system has further diminished the moral responsibility for these impacts. For example, when one buys Apples one need only know the price and quality of Apples. No knowledge is required of the producer, the production process or its social and environmental impacts (both of production and consumption). Yet without such knowledge, says Tisdell, no moral responsibility for environmental consequences of one’s decisions seems possible. Even if knowledge is available, the remoteness of production may reduce any feeling of responsibility for social and environmental effects. [91]

It is this moral void which lies at the heart of capitalist society. As Jones states, in his discussion of Weber, this is a function of the fragmentation of reason, whereby reason is constrained to seek the most efficient, scientifically and logically based means to achieve pre-determined ends. This formal rationality therefore does not extend our vision or grasp of meaning in the world:

On the contrary, the myth, legend, folklore, poetry and magic, necessary for the creation of ultimate meanings in human societies and the emergence of a holistic worldview are rejected. [92]

Seen in this way it is evident that capitalism and its scientifically backed formal rationality, cannot solve the current, and growing, social and environmental problems. The problems emanate from the system itself. Nor can going back to a cosmological view be an answer, such philosophies were long ago destroyed by Mechanistic science. Only with an Ecological way of thinking and acting which posits humanity as inseparable from nature can these problems be properly addressed. If this is fully understood ‘...it will no longer be possible for us to injure nature wantonly, as this would mean injuring an integral part of ourselves’. [93]

Such a move may seem far off today. Yet much can and is being done to educate people, and to encourage awareness of the more manifold meanings of nature, especially in urban areas which remain so alienated from nature and alienating for people.

There is no reason for example, why we should not have ‘real’ Apple trees and other fruits growing all over our cities. As Alexander states:

The presence of orchards adds an experience that has all but vanished from our cities — the experience of growth, harvest, local sources of fresh food; walking down a city street pulling an apple out of a tree and biting into it. [94]

Appleyard quotes the example of Chandigarh, the capital of India’s Punjab, where the main roads of the city are lined with peaches and plum trees. [95] In Nanking in China, one sixth of trees planted in the city are fruit bearing, including litchis and mangoes. [96] There are problems of course in the amount of pollution from cars etc, in cities, but fruit growing can help draw more attention to this pollution.

The main tree identified with London is the London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia), a tree of uncertain origin, large, unusual, but purely a decorative tree. The Plane tree is also symbolic of moral superiority. [97] How much better to have the Apple tree, in its many forms, growing all over London again. Symbolic of health, immortality, love and fertility — these are qualities our towns and cities should seek to emulate.

Appendix

The original interest in this subject has come from the ‘Save Old Orchards’ campaign run by the environmental arts group Common Ground. In 1988 a short project was carried out by myself at Thames Polytechnic into attitudes to, and uses of, fruit grown in people’s gardens. This research threw up many more questions than it answered, but the background knowledge gained then, has added much to this research.

Part one of this paper dealing with mythology and symbolism was researched mainly at the Folklore Library, University College and relies extensively on the 1928 work by Eleanor Hull, who truly seems to have loved the symbolism surrounding apples. Much more remains to be discovered on this subject however.

The history of fruit cultivation is well covered by F.A. Roach, but coming from an ex-director of East Mailing research station, reflects a very pro-scientific view regarding developments. In reviewing the history I have followed Carolyn Merchant’s method that historical change becomes ecological change, emphasizing human impact on the system as a whole, whilst using the Apple as an example. As she rightly points out, Natural and Cultural subsystems are in dynamic interaction and cannot be separated.

The modern developments in fruit cultivation are by no means dealt with exhaustively, there being so many. It has also been hard to find works to explain adequately the mind-boggling nature of some of the work undertaken by these researchers in controlling the characteristics and life cycle of the Apple tree. Some of it appears to show the worst aspects of modern science, in its violent, reductionist methods and its tendency to reshape nature to fit capitalist societies’ needs. The fact that the Apple tree can be transformed from a beautiful 20–30 foot tree, to an eight foot stick with no branches, stuck in a pot, was finally too outrageous for it to be allowed to pass without comment.

The gaps that have appeared are in the section on Commodification of Symbolism, in which no texts could be found. Also on the work of the orchard worker, who seems to be totally ignored along with the many other horticultural workers. Even Howard Newby who is one of the few writers to broach the subject of agricultural workers’ conditions has neglected horticultural workers and this remains something that should be rectified.

Bibliography