Foreword

Mark Bray

Science and socialism. For most of us this pairing brings to mind the “scientific socialism” of Marx and Engels that undergirded the ascension of “historical materialism” to the forefront of socialist thought into the twentieth century. Certainly “historical materialism” grew out of the burgeoning social sciences, but the school of 19^th and early 20^th century socialist thought that most privileged the natural sciences may have been anarchism.

Many anarchists of the era considered their doctrine to be the social embodiment of the ‘truths’ of the natural world revealed through scientific inquiry. ‘Nature’ was endowed with a redemptive transcendence manifested through Darwinian and (especially) Spencerian understandings of evolution. In that vein, the turn of the century Catalan anarchist Joan Montseny, aka Federico Urales—father of Federica Montseny, argued that “in the world there exists a law that is perfectly harmonious and perfectly just: the law of evolution.”[2] Likewise, the Russian anarchist geographer and scientist Pyotr Kropotkin grounded his exposition of mutual aid, one of the most lasting and influential anarchist concepts, in his studies not only of history but of the importance of cooperation in the natural world. He even went so far as to argue that anarchism ought to be considered one of the “departments” of the natural sciences.[3] Francisco Ferrer’s early 20^th century Modern School, which became the model of anarchist education over the following decades, was allegedly “based solely upon the Natural Sciences” which Ferrer considered to be the font of a unitary truth applicable to all of existence including human relations.[4] The prominent Spanish anarchist Fermín Salvochea was so optimistic about the potential of the revolution to unshackle scientific inquiry from capitalist fetters that he speculated in 1888 that post-revolutionary medicine could even discover the key to immortality.[5] For some late 19^th century anarchists, science was “our God.”[6]

As with just about every aspect of anarchism, there were those who dissented. Nietzschean anarchists attacked the supremacy of rationalism and science while the primitivists of the Parisian L’État naturel and the prominent Spanish anarchist Ricardo Mella were some of the most critical of positivism.[7] It should also be noted that anarchists were no less enthusiastic about the emergence of social sciences like sociology. Nevertheless, the majority of late 19^th and early 20^th century anarchists adopted the positivist, rationalist, and modernist optimism of their era.

If the confidence that these anarchists expressed in the ability of the natural sciences to solve the ‘social question’ feels distant and removed from present-day considerations of societal change, that’s because it is. The horrors of the world wars and the Holocaust dashed the 19^th century Western expectation of a clean upward ascent for humanity. As the 20^th century advanced, movements for decolonization, feminism, queer liberation, black liberation, and others revealed the hypocrisy at the heart of the fundamentally imperial, patriarchal, heteronormative, and white supremacist concept of Western ‘progress.’ While it would be unfair to lump turn of the century anarchists in with imperialists, they were not entirely immune to the oppressive modes of thought of their era. Likewise, post-structuralist critiques of conceptions of truth, justice, and objectivity itself pushed many radicals to examine discourses of power, analyze fragmented subjectivities, and dissect socially reproduced layers of domination rather than turn to the natural sciences as sources of liberation. Inherent in this post-modern turn has been a widespread wariness of master narratives and grand theoretical formulations across much of the political spectrum after Fukuyama’s “end of history.”

The audacity of Scott Nicholas Nappalos’ Emergence and Anarchism lies in its ability to step back from the fray of intellectual trends and taboos to offer a clear and sober analysis of how we can start to answer some of the most basic questions about social transformation while avoiding the limitations and pitfalls of both modernist and postmodernist thought. Fundamentally, Nappalos reaffirms the importance of theory, philosophy, and metapolitics against antiintellectual and ‘pragmatist’ tendencies prevalent in some “horizontalist” movements that reduce liberation to a technics of practices and tactics. In so doing, he refuses to allow the positivist baggage of past attempts to utilize science for socialist ends to prevent us from gleaning useful models from the natural world to help solve social problems today.

Most profoundly, perhaps, his use of the scientific concept of emergence to describe multi-causal events and developments whose outcomes are “more than the sum of their parts,” so to speak, presents opportunities to build bridges between post-structuralism and more recent perspectives on social transformation and the natural sciences in a somewhat similar vein to Deleuze and Guattari’s use of the botanical concept of the rhizome. The plurality and polyvalence of emergence open up alternative routes to put Foucauldian notions of power or broad conceptions of intersectionality, for example, into conversation with scientific insights in the pursuit of liberation.

Emergence and Anarchism adeptly explores the tensions and synergies between individuals and collectivities at the heart of anarchism’s attempt to synthesize personal and collective agency. By delving into the inner workings of agency, it challenges one-dimensional distinctions between what have been referred to as insurrectionary and mass anarchism.

Recognizing the enormity of the project of re-orienting some of the philosophical foundations of revolutionary thought, Nappalos strategically scales back his main goal by entreating the reader to recognize the necessity of theories for action and the inseparability of method and philosophy. Emergence and Anarchism aspires to be a foundational building block for future theorizing and conceptualizing. It accomplishes this goal. Agree or disagree with its premises and conclusions, it confronts us with a broad array of fundamental questions at the very heart of social transformation that cannot be ignored. More than offering us answers to such questions, Nappalos demands that we all take it upon ourselves to think through how change occurs, for “philosophy is the domain of all people irrespective of their intelligence, gender, class, race, or position.” As a health care worker, Nappalos directly challenges “the alienation of this activity” from the majority of humanity through his words.

The true value of this work will only become clear in the future to the degree that Nappalos’ appeals for re-conceptualizing theory, metapolitics, and agency inspire others to pursue and build upon his train of thought. Many questions remain unanswered about how to build a new world free from hunger, war, and domination. Emergence and Anarchism reminds us that to create such a world we must not only examine our political positions but also their metapolitical foundations.