In short, the domination of nature will continue as long as humanity remains under the sway of a vast system of social domination. In his analysis of the effects on nature of such an exploitative society, Reclus showed a level of awareness of the dangers posed by the destruc- tion of biodiversity and by ecological disruption that was unusual for his time. Here again, he focuses on a major ecological problem that has only recently gained widespread attention among those concerned with environmental issues.
It was his opinion that the human population of 1. At one point, he minimizes the significance of increases in human population by noting that if each person were given a square meter of space, everyone could fit into the area of greater London. Such a fact is, of course, entirely irrelevant from the standpoint of social geography. He is well aware of the fact that there is no optimal human population that can be cal- culated by means of arithmetic and plane geometry, or even discovered through more complex natural and social sciences.
In this recognition, he was already far ahead of some contemporary advocates of simplistic conceptions of "carrying capacity. As an example he cites changes in methods of production, most notably in the area of agriculture. In his view, such changes would probably allow a much greater human population to be supported. Today, the significant slowing of population growth in much of the global South can be seen as a response to such problems, which have been aggravated by the additional burdens imposed by the neoliberal restructuring of the global economy.
Reclus shared with many of his progressivist contemporaries certain pronatalist attitudes and saw a decline in birth rates in parts of Europe as a sign of decadence. He moralizes about the fact that in the more affluent areas, natality drops drastically. But what he fails to note is that where egoism reigns, all social phenomena including both the desire for offspring and the desire to limit the number of offspring take on an egoistic coloring, and that their egoistic character in such a context says little about these phenomena "in themselves.
He says that although "growth in numbers has been, without doubt, an element contributing to civilization, it has not been the principal one, and that in certain cases it can be an obstacle to the development of true progress in personal and collective well-being, as well as to mutual good will. Moreover, the conditions of production have changed in a sense contrary to the one he hoped for: An area in which Reclus was far in advance of his time, and in which he anticipated current debate in ecophilosophy and environmental ethics, is his effort to raise both ethical and ecological issues concerning our treatment of other species.
His ideas are important in view of the fact that he was not only a pioneer in ecological philosophy but also an early advocate of the humane treatment of animals and of ethical vegetarian- ism. Yet more than a century ago, Reclus offered some highly suggestive ideas about how a comprehensive holistic outlook might encompass a serious consideration of our moral responsibilities toward other species. The flourishing and adaptive development of species that takes place in the wild is halted and then reversed, as the animal is increasingly reshaped or reengineered in conformity with its single role as a food resource.
As has been noted, Reclus links the ethical and the aesthetic in his analysis of our relation to the phenomena of nature. He observes that the abuse of animals that we find to be morally repugnant is also repellent to our sensibilities. In this connection, he touches on the question of intrin- sic value, a concept that is central to current debates in environmental ethics.
For my part, I also include animals in my feeling of socialist solidarity. But I also say to myself: Let us realize justice in the largest circle in which we can possibly do so: Every partial realization of an ideal increases our sensitivity and delicacy and makes us more capable of realizing a larger ideal.
All that we accomplish for our neighbor moves us closer to those who are now distant from us. I am firmly confident that our harmonic society should embrace not only humans but also all beings that have consciousness of their lives. Reclus instead undertakes a fundamental rethinking of the ethical. He believes that our treatment of other species reflects our level of awareness of our connectedness to the whole of nature and of our development of feelings that are in accord with such awareness.
In his view, our growing knowledge of animals and their behavior "will help us to delve more deeply into the life sciences, increase our knowledge of the nature of things, and expand our love. His view of human moral development is noteworthy in relation to recent discussions of the distinction between the ethics of abstract moral principles and the ethics of care.
In his time, much of the radical opposition to the dominant order was fueled by a sense of injustice and outrage at the oppression and exploitation produced by that system. While this opposition certainly had an authentic ethical dimen- sion, it also succumbed to the reactive mentality and spirit of resentment that Nietzsche so perceptively diagnosed in many versions of socialism, communism, and anarchism.
In this, he has much in common with contemporary feminist ethicists who wish to restore the balance between these two sets of concerns. Reclus is closer to the position of social ecology and biore- gionalism on this issue, as in many other areas. In this insight, Reclus anticipated some of the most profound dimensions of contemporary ecological thought.
Indeed, in various guises it has constituted the dominant myth of moder- nity. Even radical critics of existing society have had difficulty challenging it, and the classical anarchist thinkers, including Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Reclus, were no exception. Indeed, they sometimes rivaled their capitalist and statist opponents in their confidence in the inexorable advance toward a better future. In this, he seems to be quintessentially modern in his thought, imagination, and sensibility. Nevertheless, Reclus distinguishes himself among classical radical theorists by the complex nature of his conception of progress.
On the most overt level, he is a strong partisan of the concept and seeks to defend it against those who would use it on behalf of injustice and oppression. He recognizes that since the French Revolution the idea of progress has often been used as an ideological justification for elitism, class domination, imperialism, and other evils.
Reclus attempts to rescue the concept from those who have betrayed it in this way, but on a deeper level, he questions the idea of progress itself. He refuses to interpret any given historical event, movement, institution, or tendency as being simply and unequivo- cally progressive. Instead, he takes a dialectical approach in which every historical phenomenon is seen as embodying in itself many contradictory moments. Thus, all such phenomena can be seen as having both progres- sive and regressive elements that require careful analysis if one is to under- stand their significance and assess accurately their dominant tendency.
When Reclus looks at the vast scope of human history, he sees certain slowly developing but pervasive changes in society that are moving it toward a future in which it realizes its own good — that is, the attainment of freedom and justice in its institutions and practices. Although he argues for the need for periodical violent revolutions, he interprets such cataclys- mic events as but the culmination of gradual changes that take place over long periods of time.
Progress is thus the result of interdependent revo- lutionary and evolutionary processes. He offers as evidence of evolution- ary change the slow decline in belief in certain scientific absurdities and religious superstitions, and the waning power of traditional hierarchical and deferential attitudes. Consequently, the more that all cultures of the world are unified in a universal global society, the more the advances of every region and age can contribute to general human development.
He admires much about tribal societies and considers the modern world to be quite inferior in many important areas. He cites, for example, the Aeta of the Philippines, whom he considers to be a model "in goodness, in spirit of justice, in rectitude of intention, and in reverence, in the truth of word and deed. Reclus contends that it is necessary to recognize that some tribal societies have engaged in the most hideous rites of murder and ritual decapitation, and that even such generally admirable cultures as that of Tahiti have included some brutal and inhumane institutions. He contends that modern society has regressed in comparison to tribal society not only in the area of social solidarity, but also in its relationship to the natural world.
His position on this issue is very similar to that of many contemporary social ecologists who concur with Reclus that human society has throughout history substituted one form of social hierarchy for another and has increasingly adopted an exploitative and destructive standpoint toward the natural world. The result is an intensify- ing contradiction between the possibilities created through social progress and the costs imposed on humanity and nature for its continuation. There is a growing need to resolve this contradiction through the destruction of the system of domination that divides human beings from one another and from nature.
The attainment of this goal will permit a reappropria- tion of those valuable aspects of human society that have been sacrificed, including the communal sensibility and the respect for nature embodied in earlier social formations. While it is neither desirable nor even possible to replicate past social phenomena, knowledge of such past achievements offers inspiration for transforming our values and for expanding our vision of human possibilities in the future. Through the scientific knowledge of history, humanity can learn how to preserve all the gains of historical progress and reclaim what has been lost through all the regressions of the past.
Without giving up any of the great privileges that civiliza- tion has conferred on him, neither must he lose any of his ancient strength, nor allow himself to be surpassed by any savage in vigor, dexterity, or in knowledge of natural phenomena. Modern society is superior in complexity since it has attained "a greater scope and constitutes a more heterogeneous organism through the successive assimilation of juxtaposed organisms.
While later social forms achieve greater complexity and even universality in their embodiment of a vast process of historical development, at the same time they move toward social simplification and the destruction of the wealth of cultural diversity, as a global monoculture is established by the global capitalist economic order and the global statist political order. There is a striking parallel and a real historical connection between this social simplification and the accompanying ecological sim- plification, alluded to by Reclus in his discussion of the Maori cited earlier.
His examination of the history of religion presents one of the most comprehensive and detailed applications of such an analysis. Beginning with tribal religions and the rise of the major world religious traditions and extending the analysis to his own day, he traces the changing role of religion in various social systems and delineates its historically progressive and regressive dimensions.
For example, he analyzes the long evolution of the Hebrew God. As a result of such ordeals, it began to conceive of the deity not as "the protector of the homeland, but rather as the repre- sentative of justice. For it is exactly this moral heritage of the Hebrew prophets, which was passed down to him by way of radical Protestantism, that lies at the core of his own anarchism.
Consequently, its powerful message was available for use in legitimat- ing and even strengthening that system. His discussion of the history of Buddhism perhaps best illustrates this. Reclus is among the few Western social and political theorists who have understood the challenge to all existing ideologies and institutions inherent in the Buddhist appeal to direct expe- rience. He perhaps sees the affinities between his own critique of domina- tion and belief in universal love, and the fundamental Buddhist teach- ings of nonattachment and compassion.
He notes the irony of the fact that the state reestablished the caste system, while official state proclamations continued to proclaim such Buddhist principles as "human fraternity and the necessity of spreading instruction to women and children as well as men. Yet the far-reaching social implications of such principles, which would certainly require the abolition of the state and other authoritarian institutions, were negated as Jain practice developed into an extreme and even fanatical obsession with avoidance of injury to various life forms. It became perhaps the only biocentrism in human history that took its prin- ciples to their logical conclusions though, some might say, by reducing them to the absurd.
The Jains adopted such extreme practices as filter- ing drinking water, breathing through a veil, and sweeping the ground before them as they walked in order to avoid destroying other life forms. As has been mentioned, he sometimes writes in a rather pantheistic vein of the experience of nature as involving a loss of the ordinary sense of selfhood and a merging with the surrounding milieu.
In some works he expresses not only an intense love of the natural world but something close to the experience of union with nature typical of nature mysticism.
(1830 - 1905)
He admits that there are tendencies within religion that are compatible with the social goals of anarchism, even when there are irreconcilable divergences on the level of beliefs. Thus, in his letter to M. We anarchists know that all the heartfelt love that you have for your non-Christian friends hastens the coming of that great federation into which all men of good will, going beyond all churches, will enter, even if they be atheists like the Buddha. He finds institutionalized religion to be primarily a force that per- petuates a past of ignorance and superstition, and that stands in the way of social progress.
He juxtaposes it starkly with science, which he sees as a force for progress, enlightenment, and modernity. Reclus traces the origins of religion as a social force back to early societies in which the shaman was both a teacher who conveyed knowledge based on observation of the real world and also a priest who propagated fantasies concerning an illusory world. He contends that throughout history traditional worldviews have inherited the legacy of this original split and have consisted of an amalgam of myth and reality, truth and falsehood.
He sees the result of this divergence as "a distinct opposition, a relentless war, between science — that is, the objec- tive search for truth — and the collection of feelings, beliefs and fetishistic vestiges that we call religion. Science thus plays a heroic role in history for Reclus. Though he finds elements of both progress and regression in the history of science, his account exhibits the almost boundless faith in science and technology that is so typical of classic modernity.
He sometimes depicts scientific institu- tions not only as essential to all material progress but, even more, as the key to truth in all realms. The march of progress advances inexorably, banishing obsolete ideas and overcoming material barriers, and science is the instru- ment of its triumph. As a result of this rather extreme historical optimism, Reclus some- times exaggerates the possibilities for banishing ideology from the modern world. Reclus vastly underestimates the need of human beings to create illusions to deal with the eternal problems of human existence: Like almost all classical radical theorists, he has an inadequate grasp of some of the most important spiritual, existential, and psychologi- cal dimensions of the human condition.
He also devotes little attention to the deep-seated human striving for power that has been explored by the Hegelian, Nietzschean, and Lacanian traditions but has been generally neglected by most radical social thought, including much of the anarchist tradition. But although Reclus sometimes lapses into naive technological opti- mism and uncritical rationalism, his thought often transcends these ten- dencies. As will be discussed later, he includes an incisive critique of tech- nology in his overall critique of domination. He sees the ultimate criterion for judging social progress to be neither technological development nor economic growth but rather the advancement of human social self-reali- zation in harmony with the natural world.
Furthermore, he rejects narrow views of this goal that would identify it with vastly increased productivity, material improvements, expansion of knowledge, or even the maximiza- tion of pleasure and happiness, as utilitarian ethics maintains, and as the conventional wisdom seemed increasingly inclined to hold even in his day. In place of any sort of technological or economistic utopianism, Reclus develops a many-sided view of human self-realization that includes some of the goals mentioned but goes far beyond them.
Happiness, he says, "is true, deep, and complete only when it extends to the whole of humanity. Accordingly, humanity has a wide-ranging moral responsibility that consists not only of negative duties to refrain from harming the natural world but also of positive duties to contribute actively to its flourishing. While examples of authori- tarian and even "fascistic" holism can certainly be found, the term in no way implies domination or "totalization.
It is thus, like any truly dialectical social ecology, a theory of unity-in-diversity. The nature of social progress cannot be understood merely through an analysis of the development of structures, institutions, or other social wholes but also requires careful attention to individuality and subjectivity. Yet he reminds us that history cannot be reduced entirely to the dialectical interplay between objective conditions and that the human freedom to act creatively and to shape the future always exists, albeit within certain social and natural constraints.
- Reclus "On Anarchy".
- Élisée Reclus : Exiled Anarchist Geographer, Environmentalist, and Animal Rights Activist.
- Élisée Reclus et les États-Unis.
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- An Anarchist on Anarchy.
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His overriding concern is to demonstrate that it is "the human person," rather than historical laws, institutions, or social forces, that is the "primary element of society. Yet spontaneity and choice remain possible, and they constitute the basis for creating a future society in which nondominating unity-in-diversity is finally realized. Spinoza defined the attainment of freedom by a being as its movement from being passively acted upon by external forces to shaping actively the world around it.
Hegel developed and radicalized this conception by giving it a historical dimension. Thus, "the essence of human progress consists of the discovery of the totality of interests and wills common to all peoples; it is identical to solidarity. He believes that one cost of the development of civilization has been an increase in the barriers between individuals and groups in society resulting from institutionalized domi- nation.
Social progress therefore depends on the elimination of hierarchi- cal divisions, so that open communication can be achieved. Long before Habermas, Reclus discussed the idea that social emancipation requires forms of communication that are free from domination, and the ability of the species to create a fund of practical knowledge relevant to that emancipation.
As early as the s he asserts that "since civilization has connected all the nations of the earth in one common humanity — since history has linked century to century — since astronomy and geology have enabled science to cast her retrospective glance on epochs thousands and thousands of years back, man has ceased to be an isolated being, and, if we may so speak, is no longer merely mortal: Thus, "the firm ground which he treads under his feet, and long thought to be immovable, is replete with vitality, and is actu- ated by incessant motion; the very mountains rise or sink; not only do the winds and ocean-currents circulate round the planet, but the continents themselves.
Reclus deserves recognition as an early prophet of the developing globalization or planetization of humanity. He believes that as the world is brought closer together through advances in transportation and commu- nication, and as knowledge of the common history of human beings and the earth grows, humanity will have to revolutionize its system of values in accord with its growing unity. Despite the rancors fostered by war, despite hereditary hatreds, all mankind is becoming one.
Nova Série - Números em texto integral
Whether our origin be one or manifold, this unity grows apace, daily assumes more of a quickening reality. In his view, a growing consciousness of this process will make the anarchist ideal of social unity-in-diversity appear increasingly plausible to humanity. Yet he would argue that social and technological developments have nevertheless created objective conditions that help form the basis for such a planetary consciousness.
He does not underestimate the obsta- cles to overcoming ideological distortions of this consciousness and to transforming it into effective social praxis, yet he is able perhaps in an act of modernist, progressivist faith to see profound, indeed revolution- ary implications in the slowly growing awareness of the interconnections between all terrestrial phenomena.
Reclus is often marvelously imaginative in attempting to contribute to the creation of this new, unified vision of the world. An example is his proposal that an enormous globe with a network of surrounding walkways be constructed at the center of Paris, so that people could pass at various levels examining the details of the earth and thereby begin to grasp it as a vast interconnected whole. He also proposes that a new calendar be adopted that would not be linked to the history of any particular religious tradition or show preference for one culture over another.
He judges the idea of numbering years in two directions with positive and negative numbers to be completely irrational. His solution is to choose a begin- ning point with a universal, planetary significance rather than a merely particularistic, culturally specific one. He suggests for this point of refer- ence the first eclipse recorded in human history. He notes that he would be writing in the year 13, according to this system. Although that event was a natural occurrence beyond human control and involved phenomena extending even beyond our own planet, as a recorded event it forms part of human history and is noteworthy for its place in the development of human knowledge of natural phenomena.
Reclus was well aware of the historical importance of Latin and later French as common languages of politics, commerce, culture, and scholarship. Today he would no doubt point to the growing dominance of English in these areas and in commerce as the expression of the need for an ever more closely interrelated human- ity to express itself in a common tongue.
Clearly, he would have preferred Esperanto or a new, more multicultural and universalistic language for such a means of communication. Yet the fact that far more human beings than ever before can now communicate directly would be seen by Reclus as strong evidence of progress in the unification of humanity. He would certainly add that the inevitable regressive dimensions of such a develop- ment should not be ignored, no doubt pointing out the cultural homogeni- zation and loss of diversity that has accompanied the growing dominance of English and Anglophone culture.
Full text of "Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected Writings of Elisée Reclus"
For Reclus, the self-consciousness of humanity will continue to grow as knowledge of geography and history create a new global spatiality and temporality. In his view, "humankind, which makes itself One at every latitude and longitude, similarly tries to realize itself through one form that encompasses all ages.
He believes that such a unifying narrative is increasingly inscribing itself in history as a social reality rooted in human experience. As we become increasingly planetary beings in many spheres of our activ- ity, social phenomena naturally begin to appear to us as aspects of the life story of a universal humanity. Cultures of other times and other places lose their quality of alien otherness, and their contributions to progress become available to all as examples of human possibilities.
For Reclus, this means that the diverse experiences of all become part of one great human experiment, the great struggle for the attainment of freedom. Before Reclus, he says, geography "was linked essentially to the state apparatus, not only as a tool of power, but also as an ideological and propagandistic representation. Reclus turned this tool against the state apparatus, the oppressors and the dominant classes. It is reported that Reclus once exclaimed to the Dutch anarchist Ferdinand Dornela Nieuwenhuis, "Yes, I am a geographer, but above all I am an anarchist.
His anar- chist vision of social freedom is also the mature expression of his endur- ing belief in moral autonomy. For Reclus, and as anarchist ethics from William Godwin on has so often stressed, moral responsibility is impos- sible without moral autonomy. Respect for human laws in disregard for the higher moral law is no virtue and indeed amounts to no more than "moral cowardice. It is capable of immediate realization wherever these values are embodied in existing human relationships and social practice.
For Reclus, as for the anarchist tradition in general, anarchism means much more than anti-statism, opposition to coercion, or rebellion against authority. In its most sophisticated forms, it proposes a practice of social transformation and reorganization based on nondominating mutual aid and coopera- tion.
In this, he is typical of the classical anarchist theorists and rather different from utopian writers, who often present highly imaginative depictions of a free and just society.
Anarchy consti- tutes for him an inspiring social ideal that could give direction to present- day struggles; however, the details of future social organization must be arranged "after the revolution. Reclus does at times discuss in general terms some of the institu- tions that might exist after the social revolution.
He observes that anarchism has spread "where minds have long been liberated from religious and monarchical prejudices, where revolutionary precedents have shaken faith in the established order, where the practice of municipal liberties has best prepared men to become their own masters, where disinterested study has developed thinkers free from all sectarianism. In order for successful revolutionary change to take place, a long history of evolutionary change must prepare the way. While Bakunin made an important contribution to a critical theory of libertarian social transformation, he also succumbed to a fetishism of revolution and often exaggerated the liberatory potential of reactive social movements, vague popular discontent, and unfocused rebellion.
Such views led to an exaggerated emphasis on revolutionary will and a vanguardism that has decidedly nonanarchistic and, indeed, authoritarian implications. The great intellectual evolution that eman- cipates minds has a logical consequence in the emancipation of individuals in all of their relationships with other individuals.
Reclus applies this analysis to specific social institutions and phe- nomena. For example, he has enormous confidence that many advances of modern science and technology can be used for such progressive pur- poses as the increase of knowledge, freedom, health, and beauty, but nev- ertheless he also sees within them the potential for unprecedented levels of regimentation, domination, malaise, and degradation of society and nature.
This forthright recognition of the dual nature of social realities distinguishes Reclus from many other modernist thinkers of his age, who focused one-sidedly on the possibilities for progress but neglected the dangers, costs, and self-contradictions of seemingly progressive historical developments. Revolution is an integral part of the move- ment of history and reflects the complexity and contradictory nature of all the other historical phenomena that interact with it and condition it.
Reclus points out that although a given revolutionary movement may be authentically liberatory in many ways, the revolutionaries have been shaped by the conditions existing prior to the revolution. These conditions do not disappear absolutely on the great day of revolt but rather leave traces on the personalities, practices, and institutions of the relatively transformed society. Consequently, the exercise of revolutionary power often becomes a convenient tool of aspiring authoritarians, who transform revolutionary ideals into authoritarian ideology.
These reservations did not, however, deter Reclus from actively sup- porting revolutionary movements and seeking to help them transcend their limitations. He was dedicated to the First International, which he saw as an advance of historic dimensions in the direction of unifying humanity for the cause of justice and progress.
In a sense, Reclus was saying that the First International ushered in the still rather incipient movement of "globalization from below. He participated in the Bakuninist Alliance for Social Democracy and in Bakunin's efforts to move the nonrevolutionary League for Peace and Freedom in a more radical direction. If these two assumptions were indeed correct, it was reasonable for him to hope that a revolutionary situation on an international scale was imminent.
Unfortunately, such expectations exhibit some of the same kind of unrealistic revolutionary optimism that plagued Bakunin. While Reclus was right about the general strike not being in principle impossible, he overestimated the existing level of consciousness of the European working class. The kind of the careful analysis he applied to other issues might usefully have been devoted to the nature of the barriers confronting the expansion of popular critical consciousness.
The names of terrorists like Ravachol, Vaillant, and Henry became well known to the public. Indeed, in a letter of , he asserts that "from the revolutionary point of view, I am very careful not to recommend violence, and I am distressed when friends carried away by passion allow themselves to resort to the idea of vengeance, which is so unscientific and sterile. Although some well-known anarchists disassociated themselves from all terrorist acts and others, like Kropotkin, adopted an ambiguous position, Reclus steadfastly refused to condemn the propagandists of the deed.
In his opinion, violence in society is the necessary result of a cruel and inhumane system of oppression, and blame should not be directed at those victims who in desperation lash out against their own oppression. Rather, in his view, those who control the unjust system and benefit from it should be held guilty for both the injustices that they inflict on society as a whole and the violent acts to which they drive some of the oppressed. At times, Reclus came even closer to explicit approval of terrorist acts.
However, in the case of propaganda by the deed, he veers in a strongly deontological direction. Reclus overlooks a number of crucial points concerning propaganda of the deed. First, the deterministic arguments that he invokes in order to excuse the terrorists have certain implications that he ignores. Second, whatever determinants may have been present, his refusal to hold the terrorists responsible for their actions denies them the status of moral agents capable of choosing between alternative methods of protesting against injustice.
Instead, they are treated as no more than links in a chain of causality. Finally, the acts of desperation that the terrorists committed were, in any case, miserable failures that did little promote authentic social transformation and often only contributed to promoting reaction and repression. Fie points out that to condemn the relatively rare violent acts of desperate individuals crying out for justice while at the same time compla- cently accepting the enormous system of day-to-day violence embodied in such social institutions as state domination, capitalist exploitation, institutionalized racism, and patriarchal oppression constitutes the worst form of ideological distortion.
It is his concern for the widespread moral insensitivity to the horrors of entrenched, institutionalized injustice that leads Reclus to emphasize terrorism as a symptom of greater evils, rather than as an evil in itself. But in his opinion, those who are outraged by this evil should direct their indigna- tion above all toward the capitalist, statist system that institutionalizes theft rather than toward exploited individuals who informally use theft as a means of striking back at that system.
First, he argues that under the existing exploita- tive order, theft is universal. He explains in a letter to Jean Grave that "in the society of injustice and caprice in which we live, we are, in spite of ourselves, implicated in all the evil that takes place. There are some obvious problems with this analysis.
To expect objectivity in such a process seems unrealistic at best.
On the one hand, it demonstrates an awareness of the manner in which all become implicated in systems of domination and injustice. If everything is theft, everything is deceit, and everything is exploitation since we participate in corrupt systems in which these evils are ubiquitous , then "everything is permitted. Rather, it overwhelmingly emphasizes the importance of collective and communal organization and the growth of a culture of freedom and solidarity. He undertakes an investi- gation of the history of libertarian and communitarian achievements going back as far as the Athenian polis and ancient tribal societies, presenting an imaginative vision of the possibilities for embodying this experience in a transformed society.
He wishes to reclaim the history of free community over the ages and to show how this tradition can be reinvigorated through the creation of a new libertarian and communitarian society. Reclus differs markedly from other radical political theorists of his time in his claim that many elements of this long history were of more practical significance than the prevailing strategies of his own era. For him, humanity must self-consciously seek self- realization by drawing on its long and expansive history of struggles for liberation and experiments in freedom.
Reclus attributes special significance in the history of human eman- cipation to the Athenian polis and to the achievements of Greek democ- racy. When a being attains its end telos within a larger whole, it is an organic part of that larger whole. However, the citizens are not mere structural cells or organs in the body politic but rather dynamic participants in the larger organic unity.
Reclus situates the development of the democratic polis within the larger scope of Greek history. Par exemple, au sujet de la langue des Indiens, il fait ce commentaire saisissant: Il fait, en son temps, ce triste constat: Cambridge est the Hub of the Hub. Retenons seulement une question: Existe-t-il des courants sur lesquels nous appuyer? Les plantations de la Louisiane. Humphreys and Lieutenant H. La Terre et les hommes. A Voyage to New-Orleans. La vida de un sabio justo y rebelde. Barcelona Biblioteca de la Revista Blanca, n. Librairie Hachette et Cie. British North America -- v.
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