C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of William Gillis‘ “15 Anti-Primitivist Theses” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with William Gillis’ “15 Anti-Primitivist Theses“.

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The past has no monopoly on the possibilities of the future. . . . I am anti-primitivism because I am a primitivist, or, that is to say, because I come from the tradition of primitivism. I no longer believe the limitations of primitivism are reconcilable with any true drive towards rewilding. –William Gillis.

15 THESES:

1. Biology’s constructs and dichotomies are not useful.
2. The biosphere is not inherently good or superior, just very dynamic.
3. Humans can choose their dynamics.
4. Role­-filling is moral nihilism.
5. Individuals flourish with increase of dynamic connections.
6. Understanding is not dependent on process but capacity to experience.
7. Physical limitation inspires social oppression.
8. Spatial limitation ingrains social hierarchy.
9. Freedom of information is necessary for free societies.
10. It’s impossible to speak of regional liberty.
11. Any society that embraces death will embrace oppression.
12. Technology can be applied dynamically.
13. We do not live in a closed system.
14. Hard though the struggle may be, the ease of partial victories will always cost us more.
15. The new is possible.

This provocative perspective, from long­time anarchist org­anizer William Gillis, offers a radical reconsideration of the implications of anti-civilization anarchism, showing that a wilder, more fluid and more engaged contact with the world means an anti-­primitive, technological anarchy, a society where we are no more ruled by the force of ‘Nature’ and biological limitations than by the force of human rulers.

Fifteen Anti-Primitivist Theses was first pub­lished on the web in 2006 as a series of posts to William Gillis’s Human Iterations weblog, at williamgillis.blogspot.com

William Gillis is a left­-wing market anarchist writer, social theorist and long-time radical activist. He studies high-­energy physics, de­signs web pages, publishes radical literature and has been a core member of countless anarchist projects and mobilizations, including the RNC Welcoming Committee convergence of anarchists and anti-­authoritarian direct ­act­ion activists to confront the Republican Nat­ional Convention in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota in 2008. Originally from Portland, he now works with a radical web design col­lective in the San Francisco Bay Area.