Leftist Reading: Post-Scarcity Anarchism Part 5

Episode 125:This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.You can find the book here:https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book[Part 1 - 4]Post-Scarcity AnarchismEcology and Revolutionary Thought[Part 5 - This Week]Towards a Liberatory Technology - 0:13-Technology and Freedom - 4:49[Part 5 - 8]Towards a Liberatory Technology[Part 9 - 11]The Forms of Freedom[Part 12 - 16]Listen, Marxist!Footnotes:21) 4:23Both Juenger and Elul believe that the debasement of man by the machine is intrinsic to the development of technology, and their works conclude on a grim note of resignation. This viewpoint reflects the social fatalism I have in mind—especially as expressed by Elul, whose ideas are more symptomatic of the contemporary human condition. See Friedrich George Juenger, The Failure of Technology (Regnery; Chicago, 1956) and Jacques Elul, The Technological Society (Knopf; New York, 1968).22) 17:04It is my own belief that the development of the “workers’ state” in Russia thoroughly supports the anarchist critique of Marxist statism. Indeed, modern Marxists would do well to consult Marx’s own discussion of commodity fetishism in Capital to understand how everything (including the state) tends to become an end in itself under conditions of commodity exchange. 23) 17:54The distinction between pleasurable work and onerous toil should always be kept in mind. 24) 21:52An exclusively quantitative approach to the new technology, I may add, is not only economically archaic, but morally regressive. This approach partakes of the old principle of justice, as distinguished from the new principle of freedom. Historically, justice is derived from the world of material necessity and toil; it implies relatively scarce resources which are apportioned by a moral principle which is either “just” or “unjust.” Justice, even “equal” justice, is a concept of limitation, involving the denial of goods and the sacrifice of time and energy to production. Once we transcend the concept of justice—indeed, once we pass from the quantitative to the qualitative potentialities of modern technology—we enter the unexplored domain of freedom, based on spontaneous organization and full access to the means of life.Citations:12) 10:57Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology (International Publishers; New York, 1947), p. 24. 13) 12:30Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What Is Property? (Bellamy Library; London, I n.d.), vol. 1, p. 135.