“Time and
Time Again,” by John
Zerzan, 2018
This book
by an academic anarchist is chock full of quotes on the oppressive role of time
in elite-run societies. In its 78 pages
it contains over 150 cited quotes and many more uncited, so if you want quotes
on time, this book is a good compendium!
Otherwise, it flip flops between idealist philosophy and materialism. Zerzan is a primitivist philosopher who wants
to go back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Which, given the coming climate Armageddon,
might be doable in larger parts of the world in the next 20-30 years. However, the proletariat might question his
agenda. He’s now a middle-class consultant to non-profits and museums. I question whether this guy has ever tried
living off hunting or berries. After
all, most animals are nearly gone.
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| The Civic God |
Zerzan’s
main point is that the development of the calendar, the clock, maps and other
technologies of economic change (the computer!) have imprisoned us in a false
sense of time. And certainly anyone working
and living in the present understands the terrible crushing role of time that
is demanded by modern, world-wide capitalism.
He enlists Marx in one quote about clocks as driving industrialism, hoping
to turn Marx upside down. Zerzan’s angle
ignores class struggle and economics .
He says: “…the beginning of Time – constitutes the Fall: the initiation
of alienation, of history.”
Marx and
Engels actually pointed out that economic factors and classes made calendars
useful in the agricultural slave societies of Mesopotamia, Egypt
and Meso-America; religious clocks and calendars useful in the medieval
economies of serfdom; and the punch clock and watch of capitalist industrialism
a necessity. Now the 24/7 ‘clock’ of a sped-up
computerized global web never sleeps - a natural outgrowth of globalized imperialist
economics. Class society introduced alienation,
not calendars. The
calendars and clocks amplified the economic structures, facilitating each mode of class production.
Zerzan is inconsistent in talking about time’s
origins, and sometimes claims that ‘the division of labor’ caused different methods
of time-keeping. Yet he does not explain why there was a division of labor. In addition, Zerzan rages against ‘linear
time,’ yet no one has proved any other kind exists.
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| Megalith stone circles - Portugal |
Zerzan
insists that prior to ‘the Fall,’ hunter-gatherers had no sense of time. He insists that natural rhythms are not
time, yet any musician knows otherwise. The seasons, the moons, the movement of the sun, the process of day and
night, the weather – all are a natural form of time. Death of humans and animals itself certainly
ends at least one form of existence, even among primitive societies who might
believe in an afterlife. Early people
constructed circular megalith ‘clocks.’ Native
American tribes tell oral tales of the past, of their origins, of their people,
so for these hunter-gatherer societies, history also exists. Children and teenagers, especially during summers
outside the time-controlled regimentation of schools, can still experience a
sense of timelessness – a timelessness which seems to be Zerzan’s goal.
In the same
sense regarding ‘space,’ mercantile trade demanded exploration, which required
maps, astrolabes and primitive compasses.
Horses, canoes, ships, trains and planes expanded the sense of space necessary
to various modes of production and commodification. He also addresses the alienation
caused by the development of language, which is too absurd and ahistorical to
deal with. At bottom, he doesn’t believe that change is built into existence
or society.
In all
this, he fails to chart a rational path back to a timeless primitive
communist hunter-gatherer society – perhaps because it is impossible at this
point except through disaster.
Communists have always been inspired by the initial classless nature of
this period in history, and want to use present technologies to create a modern communism,
where people live longer, work less, are able to be creative, do not fight
(hunter-gatherers practiced warfare on a regular basis) and have their necessities
taken care of. I.E. getting rid of
alienation will not come from getting rid of time but firstly, getting rid of
capital and its notion of labor and production.
Zerzan never mentions this.
Other reviews
on the subject of time or primitivism, use blog search box in the upper left
with these terms: “Time Wars,” “The Big Bang,” “The Philosophy of Space-Time,” “Captain
Fantastic,” “Flash Boys” “Ten Assumptions of Science,” “Factory Days,” “Night
Shift.” Or ‘anarchism,’
‘Dimitry Orlov,’ and ‘deep ecology.’
And I
bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog
April 19,
2019
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