Bertolt Brecht 1935
Questions From a Worker Who Reads
Who built Thebes of the 7 gates ?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ?
And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times ?
In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?
Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them ?
Over whom did the Caesars triumph ?
Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ?
Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it,
The drowning still cried out for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone ?
Caesar defeated the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him ?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep ?
Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War.
Who else won it ?
Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors ?
Every 10 years a great man.
Who paid the bill ?
So many reports.
So many questions.
Social scientific inquiry into liberation theory, scientific socialism and critical theory perspectives on contemporary culture.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Militant History Lesson Today
The Cuban Revolution:
1952
* 1952 March Former president Batista, supported by the army, seizes power.
1953
* 1953 July 26 Some 160 revolutionaries under the command of Fidel Castro launch an attack on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba.
* 1953 October 16 Fidel Castro makes "History Will Absolve Me" speech in his own defense against the charges brought on him after the attack on the Moncada Barracks.
1954
* 1954 September Che Guevara arrives in Mexico City.
* 1954 November Batista dissolves parliament and is elected constitutional president without opposition.
1955
* 1955 May Fidel and surviving members of his movement are released from prison under an amnesty from Batista.
* 1955 June Brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro are introduced to Che Guevara in Mexico City.
1956
* 1956 November 25 Fidel Castro, with some 80 insurgents including Raúl Castro, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos set sail from Mexico for Cuba on the yacht Granma.
* 1956 December 2 Granma lands in Oriente Province.
1957
* 1957 January 17, Castro's guerrillas score their first success by sacking an army outpost on the south coast, and started gaining followers in both Cuba and abroad.
* 1957 March 13, University students mount an unsuccessful attack on the Presidential Palace in Havana.
* 1957 May 28, Castro's 26 July movement overwhelm an army post in El Uvero.
* 1957 July 30 Cuban revolutionary Frank País is killed in the streets of Santiago de Cuba by police while campaigning for the overthrow of Batista government.
1958
* 1958 February Raúl Castro opens a front in the Sierra de Cristal on Oriente's north coast.
* 1958 March 13 U.S. suspends shipments of arms to Batista's forces.
* 1958 March 17 Castro calls for a general revolt.
* 1958 April 9 A general strike, organized by the 26th of July movement, is partially observed.
* 1958 May Batista sends an army of 10,000 into the Sierra Maestra to destroy Castro's 300 armed guerrillas. By August, the rebels had defeated the army's advance and captured a huge amount of arms.
* 1958 November 1 A Cuban aircraft en route from Miami to Havana is hijacked by militants but crashes. The hijackers were trying to land at Sierra Cristal in Eastern Cuba to deliver weapons to Raúl Castro's rebels. It is the first of what was to become many Cuba-U.S. hijackings[1]
* 1958 December Guevara directs a rebel attack on Santa Clara
* 1958 December 28 Guevara's guerrilla troops seize Santa Clara.
* 1958 December 31 Camilo Cienfuegos leads revolutionary guerrillas to victory in Yaguajay.
The Weather Underground
1969
* June 18-22 – Students for a Democratic Society SDS National Convention held in Chicago, Illinois. Publication of "Weatherman" founding statement. Members seize control of SDS National Office.[1][2]
* July – Members Bernardine Dohrn, Eleanor Raskin,[3] Dianne Donghi,[4] Peter Clapp, David Millstone and Diana Oughton[5] travel to Cuba and meet representatives of the North Vietnamese and Cuban governments.
* August – Weatherman member Linda Sue Evans travels to North Vietnam. Weatherman activists meet in Cleveland, Ohio, in preparation for "Days of Rage" protests scheduled for October, 1969 in Chicago.
* September 3 – Female members participate in a "jailbreak" at South Hills High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they run through the school shouting anti-war slogans and distributing literature promoting the “National Action.” The term "Pittsburgh 26" refers to the 26 women arrested in connection with this incident.[2]
* September 24 – A group of members confront Chicago Police during a demonstration supporting the "National Action," and protesting the commencement of the Chicago Eight trial stemming from the 1968 Democratic National Convention.[6]
* October 5 – The Haymarket Police Statue in Chicago is bombed; Weathermen later claim credit for the bombing in their book, Prairie Fire.[6]
* October 8-11 – The "Days of Rage" riots occur in Chicago, damaging a large amount of property. 287 Weatherman members are arrested, some become fugitives when they fail to appear for trial in connection with their arrests.[2][6]
* November 8th - Sniper attack on Cambridge Police Station. Two shots were fired. Two Weathermen, James Kilpatrick and James Reaves, were indicted and then subsequently released when a witness recanted his testimony.[7]
* November-December – Karen Ashley and Phoebe Hirsch were among the few Weatherman members to join the first contingent of the Venceremos Brigade (VB) that departs for Cuba to harvest sugar cane.
* December 6 – Bombing of several Chicago police cars parked in a precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago. The WUO claims responsibility in Prairie Fire, stating it is a protest of the fatal police shooting of Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark on December 4, 1969.
* December 27-30 – Weathermen hold a "War Council" in Flint, Michigan, where plans are finalized to change into an underground organization that will commit strategic acts of sabotage against the government. Thereafter they are called "Weather Underground Organization" (WUO).[2][8]
1970
* January - Silas and Judith Bissell placed a home-made bomb under the steps of the R.O.T.C. building. The bomb was made from an electric blasting cap, an alarm clock, a battery and a plastic bag filled with gasoline and explosives.[9]
* February – The WUO closes the SDS National Office in Chicago, concluding the major campus-based organization of the 1960s. The first contingent of the VB returns from Cuba and the second contingent departs. By mid-February the bulk of the leading WUO members go underground.
* February 16: A bomb is detonated at the Golden Gate Park branch of the San Francisco Police Department, killing one officer and injuring a number of other policemen (one seriously). No organization claims credit for either bombing. (See San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing.)
* On February 21, the house of Judge Murtagh, who presides over the Panther 21 trial, is fire-bombed by a WUO cell in New York City.[2][10] The same night, molotov cocktails were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn.[11]
* March – Warrants are issued for several WUO members, who become federal fugitives when they fail to appear for trial in Chicago.
* March 6 – WUO members Theodore Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins are killed in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion,[2][8] when a nailbomb they were constructing detonates. The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer's dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
* March 30 – Chicago police discover a WUO "bomb factory" on Chicago’s north side.
* April 1 - Based on a tip Chicago Police find 59 sticks of dynamite, ammunition, and nitro glyerine in an apartment traced to WUO members.[12] The discover of the WUO weapons cache ends WUO activity in this city.
* April 2 - A federal grand jury in Chicago returns a number of indictments charging WUO members with violation of federal anti-riot laws.[8] Also, a number of additional federal warrants charging "unlawful flight to avoid prosecution" are returned in Chicago based on the failure of WUO members to appear for trial in local cases. (The Anti-riot Law charges were later dropped in January, 1974.)
* April 15 – The FBI arrests WUO members Linda Sue Evans and Dianne Donghi in New York[8] with the help of WUO infiltrator, Larry Grathwohl.[2]
* May 10 – The National Guard Association building in Washington, D.C. is bombed.[13]
* May 21 – The WUO releases its "Declaration of a State of War" communique[13][14] under Bernardine Dohrn's name.
* June 6 – In a letter, the WUO claims credit for bombing of the San Francisco Hall of Justice, although no explosion has occurred. Months later, workmen locate an unexploded bomb.[citation needed]
* June 9 - The New York City Police headquarters is bombed by Jane Alpert and accomplices. Weathermen state this is in response to "police repression."[13][14] The bomb made with ten sticks of dynamite exploded in the NYC Police Headquarters. The explosion was preceded by a warning about six minutes prior to the detonation and subsequently by a WUO claim of responsibility.[15]
* July 23 – A federal grand jury in Detroit, Michigan, returns indictments against thirteen WUO members and former WUO members charging violations of various explosives and firearms laws.[13][14] (These indictments were later dropped in October, 1973.)
* July 25 - The United States Army base at The Presidio in San Francisco is bombed on the 11th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.[13] [NYT, 7/27/70] On the same day, a branch of the Bank of America is bombed in New York.[14]
* July 28 - Bank of America HQ in NYC is bombed around 3:50 AM. WUO claims responsibility.[16]
* September 15 – The WUO helps Dr. Timothy Leary escape from the California Men's Colony prison.[17]
* October 8 - Bombing of Marin County courthouse. WUO states this is in retaliation for the killings of Jonathan Jackson,[18] William Christmas, and James McClain[nb 1]
* October 10 - A Queens traffic-court building is bombed. WUO claims this is to express support for the New York prison riots. [NYT, 10/10/70, p. 12]
* October 11 - A Courthouse in Long Island City, NY is bombed. An estimated 8 to 10 sticks of dynamite are used. A warning was given around 10 min. prior to the 1:23 AM blast by the WUO.[20]
* October 12 - Around October 12 eight bomb explosions occur, Five in Rochester New York, Two in NYC, and One in Orlando FL. Despite WUO bomb warnings three persons are injured.[21]
* October 14 - The Harvard Center for International Affairs is bombed by The Proud Eagle Tribe of Weather (later renamed the Women's Brigade of the Weather Underground).[18] WUO claims this is to protest the war in Vietnam. [NYT, 10/14/70, p. 30] The bombing was in reaction to Angela Davis' arrest and was the first action undertaken by an all-women's unit of WUO.[17][18]
* October - Bernardine Dohrn, Katherine Ann Power, and Susan Edith Saxe were put on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List[22]
* December – Fugitive WUO member Caroline Tanker, who fled the country for Cuba, is arrested by the FBI in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
* December 5th - Five Weatherman are captured for trying to bomb First National City Bank of NY and other buildings on the anniversary of the death of Fred Hampton. These individuals subsequently plead guilty.[23]
* December 11th - Vivian Bogart and Patricia Mclean from the WUO are arrested after throwing an incendiary bomb at the Royal National Bank in NYC around 1:30 AM.[24]
* December 16 - Fugitive WUO member Judith Alice Clark is arrested on the Days of Rage indictments by the FBI in New York.[18]
1971
* March 1 - The United States Capitol is bombed. WUO states this is to protest the invasion of Laos. President Richard M. Nixon denounces the bombing as a "shocking act of violence that will outrage all Americans." [NYT, 3/2/71]
* April – FBI agents discover what is dubbed "Pine Street Bomb Factory", an abandoned apartment utilized by WUO in San Francisco, California.
* August 30 - Bombings of the Office of California Prisonsin Sacramento and San Francisco, allegedly in retaliation for the killing of George Jackson. [LAT, 8/29/71][25][26]
* September 17 - The New York Department of Corrections in Albany, New York is bombed, as per WUO to protest the killing of 29 inmates at Attica State Penitentiary. [NYT, 9/18/71][27]
* October 15 - The bombing of William Bundy's office in the MIT research center. [NYT, 10/16/71]
1972
* May 19 - Bombing of The Pentagon, "in retaliation for the U.S. bombing raid in Hanoi." The date was chosen for it being Ho Chi Minh's birthday. [NYT, 5/19/72][27]
1973
* May 18 - The bombing of the 103rd Police Precinct in New York. WUO states this is in response to the killing of 10-year-old black youth Clifford Glover by police.[28][note 1]
* September 19 – A WUO member is arrested by the FBI in New York. Released on bond, this member again submerges into the underground.
* September 28 - The ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy are bombed. WUO states this is in response to ITT's alleged role in the Chilean coup earlier that month. [NYT, 9/28/73]
* Around October, 1973 the Government requested dropping charges against most of the WUO members. The requests cited a recent decision by the Supreme Court that barred electronic surveillance without a court order. This decision could hamper prosecution of the WUO cases. In addition, the government did not want to reveal foreign intelligence secrets that the court has ordered disclosed.[29]
1974
* March 6 - Bombing of the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco. WUO states this is to protest alleged sterilization of poor women. In the accompanying communiqué, the Women’s Brigade argues for "the need for women to take control of daycare, healthcare, birth control and other aspects of women's daily lives."
* May 31 - The Office of the California Attorney General is bombed. WUO states this is in response to the killing of six members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
* June 17 - Gulf Oil's Pittsburgh headquarters is bombed. WUO states this is to protest the company's actions in Angola, Vietnam, and elsewhere.
* July – The WUO releases the book Prairie Fire, in which they indicate the need for a unified Communist Party. They encourage the creation of study groups to discuss their ideology, and continue to stress the need for violent acts. The book also admits WUO responsibility of several actions from previous years. The Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC) arises from the teachings in this book and is organized by many former WUO members.
* September 11 – Bombing of Anaconda Corporation (part of the Rockefeller Corporation). WUO states this is in retribution for Anaconda’s alleged involvement in the Chilean coup the previous year.[30]
1975
* January 29 - Bombing of the State Department; WUO states this is in response to escalation in Vietnam. (AP. "State Department Rattled by Blast," The Daily Times-News, January 29, 1975, p. 1)[31]
* January 23 - Offices of Dept. of Defense in Oakland are bombed. In a statement released to the press, Weather expressed solidarity with the Vietnamese still fighting against the Thieu regime in Vietnam. [32]
* Spring - WUO publishes "Politics in Command," which is its new political-military strategy. It furthers the line of building a legal, above-ground organization and begins to minimize the armed struggle role.[31]
* March – The WUO releases its first edition of a new magazine entitled Osawatomie.[33]
* June 16 - Weathermen bomb a Banco de Ponce (a Puerto Rican bank) in New York, WUO states this is in solidarity with striking Puerto Rican cement workers.[31][33]
* July - More than a thousand women attend the Socialist Feminist Conference at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH in which WUO supporters attempt to play a major role.[31]
* July 11-13 – The Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC) holds its first national convention during which time they go through the formality of creating a new organization.[33]
* September – Bombing of the Kennecott Corporation; WUO states this is in retribution for Kennecott's alleged involvement in the Chilean coup two years prior.[33][34]
1976
* 1976-1981 the Weather Underground slowly disbands, many members turning themselves in after taking advantage of the Federal Government dropping most charges in 1973 (illegal wiretaps and intelligence sources & methods issues) and of President Jimmy Carter’s amnesty for draft dodgers.
1977
* February - The first issue of Prairie Fire Organizing Committee's magazine, Breakthrough, is published.[35]
* Spring - The John Brown Book Club compiles articles critical of the old WUO leadership and subsequent split in a pamphlet entitled: The Split of the Weather Underground Organization: Struggling against White and Male Supremacy.[35]
* November - Five WUO members are arrested on conspiracy to bomb California State Senator, John Brigg's offices. It is later revealed that the Revolutionary Committee and PFOC had been infiltrated, and the arrests were the results of the infiltration. From this point on, some authors argue that the Weather Underground Organization ceases to exist.[35]
1980
* July - Former WUO member, Cathy Wilkerson surfaces in New York City and is charged with possession of explosives arising from the 1970 townhouse explosion. She is sentenced to 3 years in prison.[36]
* December 3 - Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers turn themselves in. Charges against Ayers are dropped in 1973 (illegal wire taps & foreign intelligence sources and methods). Dohrn is placed on probation. It was discovered that the FBI had discussed a plan to kidnap her nephew, amongst other controversial schemes.[37]
1981
* October 20 - Brinks robbery in which WUO members Kathy Boudin, Sam Brown, Judy Clark and David Gilbert and the Black Liberation Army stole over $1.6 million from a Brinks armored car at the Nanuet Mall, near Nyack, New York on October 20, 1981. The robbers were stopped by police later that day and engaged them in a shootout, killing two police officers and one Brinks guard[37] as well as wounding several others.
1987
Silas Bissell a leader of the Weather Underground Organization, who was once on the FBI's Ten Most is arrested for bombing a ROTC building. His ex-wife, Judith Bissell served three years for the attempted bombing of CA State Senator John Briggs[38]
Earth Liberation Front
* March 11, 1997, Sandy, Utah: A series of pipe bombs and one firebomb claimed jointly by the ALF and the ELF destroys four trucks and leveled the offices of the Agricultural Fur Breeders Co-Op, causing about $1 million in damage.[5]
1997
* March 14, 1997, near Eugene, Oregon: Tree spiking at Robinson-Scott timber harvest site in the Mackenzie River watershed, Willamette National Forest. Joint ALF / ELF claim.[citation needed]
* March 18, 1997, Davis, California: The "Bay Area Cell of the Earth X ALF" takes credit for setting fire to the University of California, Davis, Center for Comparative Medicine facility, which was still under construction.[6]
* July 21, 1997, Redmond, Oregon: Arson attack on the Cavel West meat packing plant. The plant was in the business of slaughtering horses and then shipping the meat to Europe to be sold there. Estimated cost over $1 million. The plant was never rebuilt. Joint ALF / ELF claim. 27 horses were burnt to death in the fire[citation needed]
* November 29, 1997, Burns, Oregon: Fire at the Bureau of Land Management Wild Horse Corrals destroys a horse barn, chutes, pens and equipment, and 400 horses are released. ELF and ALF claim joint responsibility. Damages: $474,000. 6 horses were burnt to death in the fire[citation needed]
1998
* June 2, 1998, Olympia, Washington: The U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal Damage Control building and another U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife station, miles apart, go up in flames on the same morning. The Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front take joint responsibility for both actions. Damages: $1.9 million.[citation needed]
* June 28, 1998, Boston, Massachusetts: ELF defaces the Mexican Consulate in Boston with red paint in support of the indigenous Zapatista Army of National Liberation uprising in the Mexican state of Chiapas. ELF paints blood-red hand prints on the walls, spills pools of red paint on the ground, and paints "VIVA E.Z.L.N." [7][citation needed]
* July 3, 1998, Middleton, Wisconsin: Break-in and release of 171 mink and ferrets from United Vaccines laboratory during a daylight raid. Holes are cut in the fence and 310 ferrets and mink are released. Equipment and windows are also destroyed. The slogan 'Independence Day for Fur Farm Prisoners' is painted at the United Vaccines laboratory during the daylight raid. Joint ALF / ELF claim. [8][citation needed]
* October 10, 1998, Rock Springs, Wyoming: Saboteurs cut the locks off horse pens at a BLM corral, freeing about 40-100 wild horses. Failed incendiaries are found next to a pickup truck and a building. The ELF and the ALF take joint responsibility.
* October 19, 1998, Vail, Colorado: The ELF claims responsibility for burning five buildings and four chair lifts at the Vail Mountain ski resort in Vail, Colorado, causing in excess of $12 million in damages. The action come only five days after a court had ruled that Vail could proceed with its planned Category III expansion into the Two Elks Roadless Area, despite the objections of local environmentalists. In a communiqué, ELF claims that the fires were set on behalf of the lynx. "If there is any critical lynx habitat in the state, this is it!" [9]
* October 26, 1998, Powers, Michigan: About 5,000 mink are released from the Pipkorn farm in the Upper Peninsula. Damages: $100,000.[citation needed]
* December 26, 1998, Medford, Oregon: Fire ravages the headquarters of U.S. Forest Industries. An ELF communiqué issued weeks later says the strike was payback to the company for razing forests and killing wild animals for profit. Damages: $700,000.[citation needed]
1999
* August 7, 1999, Escanaba, Michigan: Two fishing boats are set ablaze in the driveway of a veterinarian who once worked as a mink rancher. A garage door is tagged with graffiti 18 inches (460 mm) high: "FUR IS MURDER. E.L.F." The ELF later claims in an Internet posting it targeted the veterinarian after finding a "Fur is Enough" sign outside his home. Damages: $15,000.[10]
* December 25, 1999, Monmouth, Oregon: Fire destroys the main office of the Boise Cascade logging company costing over $1 million. ELF claim responsibility in a communiqué.[citation needed]
* December 31, 1999, East Lansing, Michigan: Arson of the offices of Catherine Ives, Room 324, Agriculture Hall at Michigan State University. The offices are doused with gasoline and set afire. ELF says the fire was set in response to the work being done to force developing nations in Asia, Latin America and Africa to switch from natural crop plants to genetically engineered sweet potatoes, corn, bananas and pineapples. Monsanto Company and USAID are major funders of the research and promotional work being done through Michigan State University. According to local newspapers, the fire caused over $1 million in damage.[2] "Cremate Monsanto, Long live the E.L.F. On to the next GE target!"
2000
* January 23, 2000, Bloomington, Indiana: Arson destroys a partially-built luxury home. Investigators found a message spray-painted in black on a sign near the house: "No Sprawl ELF." The ELF later issues a communiqué saying it torched the home because it was in the Lake Monroe Watershed, which provides drinking water to the city of Bloomington. Damages: $200,000.[citation needed]
* February 9, 2000, Saint Paul, Minnesota: University of Minnesota, ELF Crop Destruction, $1,000+ in damages.[citation needed]
* March 24, 2000, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Highway 55 reroute, $500,000 in damages done to construction equipment.[citation needed]
* April 30, 2000, Bloomington, Indiana: At least six pieces of logging and heavy construction equipment are sabotaged and a trailer full of wood chips is set ablaze at a road construction site just outside the city. A communiqué from the Earth Liberation Front states its plan was to punish those developing wooded areas around Bloomington, which "have turned what was once forested land into parking lots, luxury houses for rich scum and expanded roads." Damages: $75,000.[citation needed]
* July 20, 2000, Rhinelander, Wisconsin: Vandals hack down thousands of experimental trees, mostly poplars, and spray-paint vehicles at a U.S. Forest Service research station. The ELF claims the attack was against bioengineering, although researchers say the trees were naturally bred (not bioengineered) to grow faster and resist diseases. Damages: $1 million.[citation needed]
* September 9, 2000, Bloomington, Indiana: Fire erupts at the headquarters of the Monroe County Republican Party Committee headquarters. Investigators say a flammable liquid was poured on the building and ignited. The arson was a reminder, according to the ELF communiqué, that the ELF would not sit quietly as politicians pushed for plans to extend Interstate 69. Damages: $1,500.[citation needed]
* October 18, 2000, Shoals, Indiana: Vandals find four pieces of heavy logging equipment in the Martin State Forest and cut hoses, slash seats, destroy gauges and pour sand in the engines, fuel tanks and radiators. They leave spray-painted graffiti including, "Earth Raper," "Go Cut in Hell," and "ELF." Damages: $55,000.[citation needed]
* November 27, 2000, Niwot, Colorado: Arson hits one of the first luxury homes going up in a new subdivision. The ELF later sends a note, made of letters clipped from magazines, to the Boulder Weekly newspaper: "Viva la revolution! The Boulder ELF burned the Legend Ridge mansion on Nov. 27th." The underground group explains in a follow-up communiqué that the arson was driven by defeat of a statewide ballot measure to control growth. Damages: $2.5 million.[11]
* December 9, 2000, Middle Island, New York: Fire erupts in a Long Island condominium under construction. The ELF claims responsibility, saying the homes were "future dens of the wealthy elite." The group, announcing "an unbounded war on urban sprawl," claims it checked for occupants—human and animal—in 16 condos before setting incendiaries in them. Damages: $200,000.[citation needed]
* December 19, 2000, Miller Place, New York: A Long Island house under construction goes up in flames. "Building homes for the wealthy should not even be a priority," the ELF writes in its communiqué. "Forests, farms and wetlands are being replaced with a sea of houses, green chemical lawns, blacktop and roadkill." Damages: $50,000.[citation needed]
* December 29, 2000, Mount Sinai, New York: Three Long Island luxury homes under construction are set ablaze, and a fourth is spray-painted with graffiti: "If you build it we will burn it." The ELF issues a communiqué saying: "Recently, hundreds of houses have been built over much of Mount Sinai's picturesque landscape and developers now plan to build a further 189 luxury houses over the farms and forests adjacent to Island Estates...This hopefully provided a firm message that we will not tolerate the destruction of our island." Damages: $160,000.[citation needed]
2001
* May 21, 2001, Seattle, Washington: ELF sets off a firebomb that caused $7 million in damages at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture. Lacey Phillabaum and Jennifer Kolar plead guilty to the attack in 2006. Bill Rodgers, who was "considered to be one of the top organizers of the ELF and a hands-on participant who allegedly help set the fire bombs inside the UW horticulture center," later commits suicide in an Arizona jail. Justin Solondz, who allegedly helped assemble the fire bombs and joined Rodgers in setting them is now a fugitive.[3] Briana Waters, a student at The Evergreen State College at the time of the bombing, was convicted in 2008 and sentenced to six years in prison.[4]
2002
* January 26, 2002, St. Paul, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Microbial and Plant Genomics Research Center soil-testing lab and construction trailer burned down, construction equipment, including a bulldozer damaged, $630,000 damages Claimed by ELF.
* January 29, 2002, Fairfield, Maine: ELF announced they had sabotaged a “Biotech Park” in a communiqué that read:
We are writing to inform you that there is a Biotech Park being built in Fairfield, Maine. We went there some weeks ago and put a sand/quickcrete mix in the engines, gas, and hydraulics of an excavator and a roller. These were the only machines there, plowing up the land, building bridges over creeks. So we left no trace so when the operators came to work the machines would run and then seize, costing big bucks. Now, we are letting the people know. The park is being pushed by Paul Tessier, a representative of Fairfield, and others. It is in cohoots with Jackson Labs, which is the largest breeder of mice. They grow mice with human ears there! How sick! These people want the park to be an incubator to bring more biotechnology into Maine.
We oppose this for the following reasons... Biotechnology is one more tool by the ruling class to control our lives and make more money. Only the rich can produce biotechnology and even if that wasn't so, we would want no part of it because it sees the wild as incomplete, or as lacking, needing manipulation. Our ancestors lived in harmony on this planet for a long time, now all of humanity's progress is making us sick. And we're gonna trust those that gave us cancer to create new technologies to cure it. No way!
We want to be left alone. No more development. We enjoy life here and are sick of business men coming in and trying to dupe us into trading the good life for their wage slavery. People!!! Take action!!!
The Biotech Park is on route 201 near Kennebec Valley Technical College in Fairfield. KVTC is in on it too. Solidarity to those fighting against the greedy! ELF...ALF...Together with all”[12]
* February 12, 2002, Washington D.C.: FBI testimony before the House Ecoterror Hearing.
Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States (or its territories) without foreign direction, committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives...During the past several years, special interest extremism, as characterized by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), has emerged as a serious terrorist threat. The FBI estimates that the ALF/ELF have committed more than 600 criminal acts in the United States since 1996, resulting in damages in excess of 43 million dollars. [13]
* March 24, 2002, Erie, Pennsylvania: Hundreds of trees spiked in Wintergreen Gorge, crane, generators and pumps torched, other equipment monkey wrenched, $500,000 damages Claimed by ELF. [14]
* May 12, 2002, Harbor Creek, Pennsylvania: 200 mink released from Mindek mink farm Claimed by ALF and ELF.[15]
* August 11, 2002, Irvine, Pennsylvania: A device, containing gasoline, was thrown onto the roof of the Northeast Research Station in the Allegheny National Forest. The ensuing fire caused nearly $700,000 in damages. An e-mail from ELF's office said:
While innocent life will never be harmed in any action we undertake, where it is necessary, we will no longer hesitate to pick up the gun to implement justice, and provide the needed protection for our planet that decades of legal battles, pleading protest, and economic sabotage have failed so drastically to achieve." and that "all other US Forest Services administration and research facilities, as well as all Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) buildings nationwide should now be considered likely targets.
* September 2002, Harbor Creek, Pennsylvania: more than 50 mink released Mindek mink farm Claimed by ALF and ELF.[16]
* September 28, 2002, Richmond, Virginia: 25 windows etched at 1 Burger King and 13 windows etched at each of 2 McDonalds Claimed by ELF.
* November 1, 2002, Richmond, Virginia: Vandals who left messages crediting ELF damaged SUVs in several incidents recently. Twenty-five SUVs on the lot of a Ford dealer were permanently defaced with a glass-etching cream. A week later, SUVs parked near homes were severely damaged with an ax or hatchet. Vandalism and attempted arson have also been reported recently at highway and home construction sites in the area.
* December 28, 2002, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: ELF activists attacked a housing development, severely damaging construction vehicles and the model home on the property.
2003
* January 1, 2003, Girard, Pennsylvania: Jugs of gasoline were set under three vehicles at Bob Ferrando Ford Lincoln Mercury and set ablaze. Two pickup trucks, one Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) and a car were destroyed causing $90,000 in damages. The ELF claimed responsibility for the attack.[5]
* January 20, 2003, Seattle, Washington: Arson at a McDonalds caused $5000 worth of damage. In September, 2005, Christopher W. McIntosh of Maple Shade, NJ, admitted he set the fire by pouring several gallons of gasoline on the roof on behalf of ALF-ELF. In an anonymous phone call he said:
[t]here was an E-L-F-A-L-F hit at McDonald's across from the Space Needle. There will be more. ... As long as Mother Earth is pillaged, raped, destroyed. As long as McDonald's keeps hurting our furry brothers, there will be more.
He was sentenced to eight years in prison. [17]
* March 21, 2003, Superior Township, Michigan: Two luxury homes set on fire in a Superior Township housing development in an action against urban sprawl. Claimed by the ELF. Damages estimated at $400,000. [18]
* March 28, 2003, Montgomery, Alabama: Five government vehicles were vandalized and one truck was set on fire at a Naval Recruitment Headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama. The ELF claimed responsibility for the attacks both in a communiqué and by spray-painting their initials at the scene. Messages that read, "Stop the War," "Stop killing" and "Leave Iraq" were also found along with the ELF initials. [19]
* April 8, 2003, Santa Cruz, California: The ELF claims responsibility for vandalizing 65 SUVs, including about twenty private vehicles as well forty at the North Bay Ford and Lincoln Mercury car dealership. Messages are spray-painted on the vehicles denouncing the war in [Iraq].[20]
* April 15, 2003, Santa Cruz, California: ELF activists attack 15 SUVs with bright orange paint, and in an ELF press release, complain that the local paper did not cover the story. [21]
* June 3, 2003, Chico, California: ELF claims the attempted arson of a new home. The fire burns through a PVC pipe holding water, dousing the flames so the damage was minimal, about $100. "Save our bio-region ELF" is painted on the sidewalk.[22]
* June 4, 2003, Macomb County, Michigan: ELF sets fire to two luxury homes in a Macomb County housing development in an action against urban sprawl. "ELF" and "Stop sprawl" are spray painted on nearby construction equipment. Damages estimated at $700,000.[23]
* June 5, 2003, Chico, California: An arson attempt is made at a shopping center under construction. Workers find remnants of several small fires, and ELF spray-painted on the door of a work truck at the site. The FBI explores connections with arson attempts at two McDonalds in March, and SUVs in May, in Chico. [24]
* June 14, 2003, Santa Cruz, California: Environmental activists scratch the slogan ELF into ten new SUVs, causing $15,000 worth of damage.[25]
* July 2, 2003, South Windsor, Connecticut: Signs of the Earth Liberation Front, "ELF" and "no sprawl," are spray-painted on a newly completed. An unidentified man called police and said the graffiti was done by an ELF activist. [26]
* August 1, 2003, San Diego, California: A 206-unit condominium being built is burnt down causing damage in excess of $50 million. A 12-foot (3.7 m) banner at the scene reads "If you build it, we will burn it," signed, "The E.L.F.s are mad." [27] — sympathizers often refer to themselves as "elfs" or "elves".
* August 22, 2003, West Covina, California: The ELF attacks several car dealerships in east suburban Los Angeles, burning down a warehouse and vandalizing several cars, with such phrases as "I love pollution" written on the cars. All told, more 125 SUVs and Hummers, which were targeted due to their lower than average fuel efficiency, are damaged or destroyed causing $2.3 million in damages.
* August 29, 2003, Fairbanks, Alaska: ELF spray-paints concrete walls and construction equipment at a [Wal-Mart] construction site.[28]
* September 4, 2003, Santa Fe, New Mexico: ELF action against SUV dealer in New Mexico - SUVS spray-painted with messages naming the seven deadly sins. 1/3 of the dealership's stock was marked, leaving thousands of dollars in damages.
* September 12, 2003: Federal agents arrest Pomona, California resident Joshua Thomas Connole in connection with the August 22nd 2003 Los Angeles area arsons. [29] Apparently, the FBI profiled Connole based on his anti-war protest activities. [30] He is soon released due to lack of evidence. [31] The FBI later awards Connole $100,000 and agrees to give him an apology after he files a lawsuit against the agency.[32]
* September 19, 2003, San Diego, California: ELF action against urban sprawl at three separate construction sites in the upscale Carmel Valley neighborhood of San Diego, causing an estimated $1 million in damages. Four unfinished houses were destroyed, two others were damaged and a condominium under construction sustained minor damage. A banner at the site of the first fires read, "Development = destruction. Stop raping nature. The ELFs are mad." [33]
* September 22, 2003, Martiny, Michigan: The ELF claims responsibility for planting plastic bottles containing flammable liquid at an Ice Mountain Spring Water Company (a subsidiary of Nestle) pumping station. The devices are apparently intended to start a fire at the premises but are discovered by maintenance workers before they are set ablaze.
In a written statement, the ELF stated:
We will no longer stand idly be while corporations profit at the expense of all others. To this end, we have taken action against one of the pumping stations that Perrier uses to steal water… Clean water is one of the most fundamental necessities and no one can be allowed to privatize it, commodify it, and try and sell it back to us.
Two months later a judge orders the company to halt pumping water from the wells. Nestle had been removing 200 gallons of water from the ground per minute and was lowering the water table.[34]
* October 6, 2003, Jemez Mountains, New Mexico: Construction equipment belonging to the US Forest has electrical wires cut, tires cut and windows broken by ELF. [35]
* October (mid), 2003; Portland, Maine: The Acadian Green Brigade of the ELF slashes the tires of 8 Boise Cascade delivery trucks and two trailers, glued locks and painted slogans across the building's main entrance. [36]
* October 24, 2003, Martinsville, Indiana: ELF activists sabotage a Wal-Mart construction site. Survey stakes are removed, and walls and machinery spray-painted. Over a dozen pieces of heavy machinery and vehicles are vandalized, with slashed tires, cut fuel hoses, and sand poured in fuel tanks. [37]
2004
* January 22, 2004, Fayetteville, Arkansas: Five Hummer SUVs are vandalized. The letters ELF are spray-painted on the vehicles, tires are slashed and windows broken. [38]
* February 7, 2004, Charlottesville, Virginia: The ELF sets fire to a bulldozer and causes damage to other equipment that is parked off Route 29. This site is to be developed into a retail, commercial and residential community. On their website, the ELF writes that the site was "targeted as part of the ELF's ongoing actions against large-scale developments going up at the expense of what little green space is left in North America." A banner left on the site read "Your construction = long term destruction - ELF" The action causes over $30,000 in damages. [39]
* February 17, 2004, North Lima, Ohio: Vandals break windows in a construction trailer, spray a fire extinguisher and scratch the initials "ELF" on the side of a piece of construction equipment at the construction site of a new showroom for a fireworks company. [40]
* April 20, 2004, Snohomish, Washington: Two homes are destroyed and attempts are made to burn two others at a housing development. A note found at the site of one of the fires is signed "ELF" and reportedly contains statements condemning suburban developments. As well, bottles of flammable liquid are found at two different housing development sites in the area. The action causes an estimated $1 million in damages. [41]
* July 30, 2004, Charlotte, North Carolina: Activists vandalize a fleet of utility trucks owned by Utiliquest, a utility contractor. All the trucks are marked with “ELF” and all have their tires slashed. [42]
* August 3, 2004, Spokane, Washington: A fire heavily damages one $55,000 Hummer SUV and nearly burns two others at the George Gee Hummer dealership. One H2 Hummer has its windows broken and is spray painted with messages that oppose the Iraq war and President Bush. An e-mail sent to local media outlets claims credit for the Eastern Washington Chapter of the Earth Liberation Front [43]
* December 27, 2004, Lincoln, California: Incendiary devises are located in three houses under construction at the Verdera Models construction site on Flores Court in the Twelve Bridges development. Graffiti is discovered on another house under construction in the same development. The graffiti found at the scene includes notations such as "Enjoy the world as is - as long as you can", "U will pay", "Evasion", "4 Q" and "Leave". This house also sustains broken windows. The letters "ELF" are printed in the cul-de-sac where these homes are located. Across the street from this house a tractor is vandalized with the notation "Disarm or die". [44]
2005
* January 12, 2005, Auburn, California: Five un-ignited incendiary devices are discovered in a commercial building under construction that, upon completion, were to be rented as doctor's offices. A letter claiming responsibility for "the actions taken in Placer County (CA)" is received by several media outlets. The return address on the letter indicates it was from "Emma Goldman." Emma Goldman is a major figure in the history of anarchism.
The rambling, two-page letter, which appears to have been computer generated, generally decries various aspects of modern life, including real-estate development, and promises that "We are setting a new precedent, where there will be at least one or more actions every few weeks.” The letter concludes, "With sincere love, 'Agent Emma Goldman and the Crimethinc Senior Officers of the Earth Liberation Front' " and also references eight websites, including http://www.crimethinc.com." The latter website describes itself as an "ex-workers' collective" and generally expresses an anarchistic philosophy. [45]
* February 7, 2005, Sutter Creek, California: The ELF sets fire to the new Pinewoods apartment complex, about 45 miles (72 km) east of Sacramento. Sutter Creek Chief of Police Robert Duke says "there were seven individual fires and some kind of incendiary device with very, very crude triggering mechanisms." graffiti found near the fire reads: "We will win -- ELF." [46]
* March 6, 2005, Fair Oaks, California: Three vehicles – two full-size pickup trucks and a Ford Expedition – are spray-painted with the initials "ELF," and their rear license plates are painted over. A total of at least seven SUVs are vandalized in the Sacramento area during the week. [47]
* April 13, 2005, Sammamish, Washington: ELF partially burns down one of two buildings it targeted in a King County, Washington development. David Ammon, a developer whose property was burned, had planned on constructing two more homes in the area. Police discover an incendiary device which had failed to ignite in a second house nearby along with a sheet condemning the rape of the Earth, clearing of trees, and claiming responsibility on behalf of ELF. It reads, "Where are all the trees? Burn, rapist, burn. E.L.F" The homes targeted are new ones located in a golf course subdivision. [48]
* May 17, 2005, Fair Oaks, California: Several SUVs and trucks are spray-painted with “ELF” and “polluter”, and many also have their tires slashed. A short distance away, the words “bomb the White House” are found spray-painted on a real estate sign. FBI, Secret Service, and a joint terrorism task force are investigating, and trying to find out if the two attacks are related. [49]
* July 27, 2005 Whatcom County, Washington: Arsonists damage two homes under construction. The first causes $100,000 in damages. The second, a few days later, completely destroys another home being built in the area. ELF has taken credit for other arsons in the area earlier in the year that police are investigating.[50]
* September 11, 2005, West Old Town, Maine: The ELF vandalizes at least a dozen large machines at the West Old Town Landfill, which is one of New England's worst polluters. The winter prior, ownership of the landfill had been transferred from the Georgia-Pacific timber company to state hands, in a behind-closed-doors deal which resulted in the expansion of the site and a sweet deal for Georgia-Pacific and Casella Waste Systems who now run the site. The machines had their ignitions ripped out, or superglue poured into them, tires were slashed, two buildings and many vehicles were spray painted, and the fuel in the equipments' tanks may have been tampered with. Officials say the damage will cost tens of thousands of dollars to repair. [51]
* October 3, 2005, Bozeman, Montana: U.S. - A construction site owned by the Kenyon Noble lumber company is vandalized by the Earth Liberation Front causing about $3000 in damage. [52]
* November 19, 2005, Hagerstown, Maryland: ELF claims responsibility for setting four fires in newly-constructed unoccupied homes built by the McLean, Virginia Ryan Homes in the Hager's Crossing subdivision. One building is burned to the ground but the other three sustain less serious damage. The developer estimated the damage at more than $300,000.
Credit for the arson is claimed via an e-mail originating from the e-mail address tree_beard1234@yahoo.com. Treebeard is the name of a giant shepherd, one of a race called the Ents, in J.R.R. Tolkien's cult fantasy novel "The Two Towers." The message reads:
Last night we, the Earth Liberation Front, put the torch to a development of Ryan Homes in Hagerstown, Maryland (off Route 40, behind the Wal-Mart). We did so to strike at the bottom line of this country's most notorious serial land rapist...We warn all developers that the people of the Earth are prepared to defend what remains of the wild and the green...We encourage all who watch with sadness while developers sell out the future of us and our children to join us in resisting them in any and every possible way...The Ents are going to war. [53]
* November 25, 2005, Bothell, Washington: Two pieces of construction equipment are destroyed by fire, causing more than $100,000 in damage. [54]
* November 29, 2005, Bothell, Washington: One piece of construction equipment is destroyed by fire. [55]
* December 14, 2005, Kenmore, Washington: Two pieces of excavation equipment are burned overnight at a housing development, causing around $180,000 in damage. Apparently this is the second fire at this construction site since November. The earlier fire caused $50,000 in damage. [56]
* December 16, 2005, Valley Springs, California: A window is broken and the letters E-L-F were spray-painted on the garage door of a partially constructed home. There is considerable opposition to new development and the required re-zoning in rural Calaveras County, where Valley Springs is located. [57]
2006
* January 17, 2006, Camano Island, Washington: ELF burns down a nearly completed 9,600-square-foot (890 m2), $3 million, trophy house. Investigators say that someone spray-painted a threatening message on a pink bedsheet and draped it across the front gate. [58]
* January 31, 2006, Guelph, Ontario, Canada: A fire destroys a partially constructed home. ELF claims credit for the blaze a few days later, in an email in which the group explains that the fire had been "A STRIKE AGAINST DEVELOPERS, FOR THE LOCAL COMMUNITY" and that it was done "in the memory of William C. Rodgers 'Avalon'."[59]
* March 11, 2006, Salem, Oregon: Three newly-constructed upscale homes are vandalized with pro-environmental slogans which read: "Quit building ant farms," "E.L.F.," "Rent is theft," "Viva E.L.F." and "Don't kill my air." Additionally, a window is broken. According to authorities, this is the second time within the past two years that ELF vandals struck in this neighborhood.[60][61]
* June 27, 2006, Guelph, Ontario, Canada: A fire destroys a partially constructed home at 75 Summit Ridge, in view of the old Eastview Road landfill site. It caused about $200,000 of damage. ELF claims credit for the blaze a few days latter in an email which includes anti-development slogans.[62]
2008
* March 3, 2008, Street of Dreams, Washington: ELF is the primary suspect for the intentional destruction, by using explosive devices, set fire to four multi-million dollar homes from the 2007 Seattle Street of Dreams in Woodinville, Washington, costing $7 million in damage.[6] Authorities describe the act as "domestic terrorism" after finding the initials of the Earth Liberation Front spray-painted in red letters, mocking claims that the homes were environmentally friendly: "Built Green? Nope black! McMansions in RCDs r not green. ELF." [7][8]
* Tuesday the 25th to Friday the 28th of November, Mexico City, Mexico: a group calling itself eco-anarquista por el ataque directo (Eco-anarchist cell for direct attack) claimed responsibility for a number of recent actions, including: half a dozen Molotov cocktails thrown at tren férreo (metro rail) in Mexico City, Incendiary sabotage against Telmex, a Molotov cocktail thrown at a Banamex ATM. These attacks were claimed to have taken place “as a form of 'protest' against the construction of a new rail line (line 12), in Mexico City (D.F.) and Mexico State; already because of its construction many trees were cut down, entire families evicted and land expropriated with large hectares of green areas subsequently deforested.”[9]
2009
* January 29, Mexico City, Mexico: The Frente de Liberación de la Tierra (ELF) claimed responsibility for setting a fire within the College of Sciences and Humanities at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) along with setting fire to and destroying a construction crane. this was in response to the university building upon an ecological reserve.[10][11]
* March 22, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico: Frente de Liberación de la Tierra (ELF) set fire to construction equipment and broke windows of a local bank.[12]
* September 4, Everett, Washington: The ELF claims responsibility for the destruction of two broadcasting towers used by the local radio station KRKO.[13]
Nicaraguan Revolution
A Few Trajectories of People's Armed Struggle in the Western Hemisphere
Dare to struggle, dare to win in Cuba
The Cuban Revolution:
1952
* 1952 March Former president Batista, supported by the army, seizes power.
1953
* 1953 July 26 Some 160 revolutionaries under the command of Fidel Castro launch an attack on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba.
* 1953 October 16 Fidel Castro makes "History Will Absolve Me" speech in his own defense against the charges brought on him after the attack on the Moncada Barracks.
1954
* 1954 September Che Guevara arrives in Mexico City.
* 1954 November Batista dissolves parliament and is elected constitutional president without opposition.
1955
* 1955 May Fidel and surviving members of his movement are released from prison under an amnesty from Batista.
* 1955 June Brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro are introduced to Che Guevara in Mexico City.
1956
* 1956 November 25 Fidel Castro, with some 80 insurgents including Raúl Castro, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos set sail from Mexico for Cuba on the yacht Granma.
* 1956 December 2 Granma lands in Oriente Province.
1957
* 1957 January 17, Castro's guerrillas score their first success by sacking an army outpost on the south coast, and started gaining followers in both Cuba and abroad.
* 1957 March 13, University students mount an unsuccessful attack on the Presidential Palace in Havana.
* 1957 May 28, Castro's 26 July movement overwhelm an army post in El Uvero.
* 1957 July 30 Cuban revolutionary Frank País is killed in the streets of Santiago de Cuba by police while campaigning for the overthrow of Batista government.
1958
* 1958 February Raúl Castro opens a front in the Sierra de Cristal on Oriente's north coast.
* 1958 March 13 U.S. suspends shipments of arms to Batista's forces.
* 1958 March 17 Castro calls for a general revolt.
* 1958 April 9 A general strike, organized by the 26th of July movement, is partially observed.
* 1958 May Batista sends an army of 10,000 into the Sierra Maestra to destroy Castro's 300 armed guerrillas. By August, the rebels had defeated the army's advance and captured a huge amount of arms.
* 1958 November 1 A Cuban aircraft en route from Miami to Havana is hijacked by militants but crashes. The hijackers were trying to land at Sierra Cristal in Eastern Cuba to deliver weapons to Raúl Castro's rebels. It is the first of what was to become many Cuba-U.S. hijackings[1]
* 1958 December Guevara directs a rebel attack on Santa Clara
* 1958 December 28 Guevara's guerrilla troops seize Santa Clara.
* 1958 December 31 Camilo Cienfuegos leads revolutionary guerrillas to victory in Yaguajay.
Dare to struggle, dare to win in the United States
The Weather Underground
1969
* June 18-22 – Students for a Democratic Society SDS National Convention held in Chicago, Illinois. Publication of "Weatherman" founding statement. Members seize control of SDS National Office.[1][2]
* July – Members Bernardine Dohrn, Eleanor Raskin,[3] Dianne Donghi,[4] Peter Clapp, David Millstone and Diana Oughton[5] travel to Cuba and meet representatives of the North Vietnamese and Cuban governments.
* August – Weatherman member Linda Sue Evans travels to North Vietnam. Weatherman activists meet in Cleveland, Ohio, in preparation for "Days of Rage" protests scheduled for October, 1969 in Chicago.
* September 3 – Female members participate in a "jailbreak" at South Hills High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they run through the school shouting anti-war slogans and distributing literature promoting the “National Action.” The term "Pittsburgh 26" refers to the 26 women arrested in connection with this incident.[2]
* September 24 – A group of members confront Chicago Police during a demonstration supporting the "National Action," and protesting the commencement of the Chicago Eight trial stemming from the 1968 Democratic National Convention.[6]
* October 5 – The Haymarket Police Statue in Chicago is bombed; Weathermen later claim credit for the bombing in their book, Prairie Fire.[6]
* October 8-11 – The "Days of Rage" riots occur in Chicago, damaging a large amount of property. 287 Weatherman members are arrested, some become fugitives when they fail to appear for trial in connection with their arrests.[2][6]
* November 8th - Sniper attack on Cambridge Police Station. Two shots were fired. Two Weathermen, James Kilpatrick and James Reaves, were indicted and then subsequently released when a witness recanted his testimony.[7]
* November-December – Karen Ashley and Phoebe Hirsch were among the few Weatherman members to join the first contingent of the Venceremos Brigade (VB) that departs for Cuba to harvest sugar cane.
* December 6 – Bombing of several Chicago police cars parked in a precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago. The WUO claims responsibility in Prairie Fire, stating it is a protest of the fatal police shooting of Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark on December 4, 1969.
* December 27-30 – Weathermen hold a "War Council" in Flint, Michigan, where plans are finalized to change into an underground organization that will commit strategic acts of sabotage against the government. Thereafter they are called "Weather Underground Organization" (WUO).[2][8]
1970
* January - Silas and Judith Bissell placed a home-made bomb under the steps of the R.O.T.C. building. The bomb was made from an electric blasting cap, an alarm clock, a battery and a plastic bag filled with gasoline and explosives.[9]
* February – The WUO closes the SDS National Office in Chicago, concluding the major campus-based organization of the 1960s. The first contingent of the VB returns from Cuba and the second contingent departs. By mid-February the bulk of the leading WUO members go underground.
* February 16: A bomb is detonated at the Golden Gate Park branch of the San Francisco Police Department, killing one officer and injuring a number of other policemen (one seriously). No organization claims credit for either bombing. (See San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing.)
* On February 21, the house of Judge Murtagh, who presides over the Panther 21 trial, is fire-bombed by a WUO cell in New York City.[2][10] The same night, molotov cocktails were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn.[11]
* March – Warrants are issued for several WUO members, who become federal fugitives when they fail to appear for trial in Chicago.
* March 6 – WUO members Theodore Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins are killed in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion,[2][8] when a nailbomb they were constructing detonates. The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer's dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
* March 30 – Chicago police discover a WUO "bomb factory" on Chicago’s north side.
* April 1 - Based on a tip Chicago Police find 59 sticks of dynamite, ammunition, and nitro glyerine in an apartment traced to WUO members.[12] The discover of the WUO weapons cache ends WUO activity in this city.
* April 2 - A federal grand jury in Chicago returns a number of indictments charging WUO members with violation of federal anti-riot laws.[8] Also, a number of additional federal warrants charging "unlawful flight to avoid prosecution" are returned in Chicago based on the failure of WUO members to appear for trial in local cases. (The Anti-riot Law charges were later dropped in January, 1974.)
* April 15 – The FBI arrests WUO members Linda Sue Evans and Dianne Donghi in New York[8] with the help of WUO infiltrator, Larry Grathwohl.[2]
* May 10 – The National Guard Association building in Washington, D.C. is bombed.[13]
* May 21 – The WUO releases its "Declaration of a State of War" communique[13][14] under Bernardine Dohrn's name.
* June 6 – In a letter, the WUO claims credit for bombing of the San Francisco Hall of Justice, although no explosion has occurred. Months later, workmen locate an unexploded bomb.[citation needed]
* June 9 - The New York City Police headquarters is bombed by Jane Alpert and accomplices. Weathermen state this is in response to "police repression."[13][14] The bomb made with ten sticks of dynamite exploded in the NYC Police Headquarters. The explosion was preceded by a warning about six minutes prior to the detonation and subsequently by a WUO claim of responsibility.[15]
* July 23 – A federal grand jury in Detroit, Michigan, returns indictments against thirteen WUO members and former WUO members charging violations of various explosives and firearms laws.[13][14] (These indictments were later dropped in October, 1973.)
* July 25 - The United States Army base at The Presidio in San Francisco is bombed on the 11th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.[13] [NYT, 7/27/70] On the same day, a branch of the Bank of America is bombed in New York.[14]
* July 28 - Bank of America HQ in NYC is bombed around 3:50 AM. WUO claims responsibility.[16]
* September 15 – The WUO helps Dr. Timothy Leary escape from the California Men's Colony prison.[17]
* October 8 - Bombing of Marin County courthouse. WUO states this is in retaliation for the killings of Jonathan Jackson,[18] William Christmas, and James McClain[nb 1]
* October 10 - A Queens traffic-court building is bombed. WUO claims this is to express support for the New York prison riots. [NYT, 10/10/70, p. 12]
* October 11 - A Courthouse in Long Island City, NY is bombed. An estimated 8 to 10 sticks of dynamite are used. A warning was given around 10 min. prior to the 1:23 AM blast by the WUO.[20]
* October 12 - Around October 12 eight bomb explosions occur, Five in Rochester New York, Two in NYC, and One in Orlando FL. Despite WUO bomb warnings three persons are injured.[21]
* October 14 - The Harvard Center for International Affairs is bombed by The Proud Eagle Tribe of Weather (later renamed the Women's Brigade of the Weather Underground).[18] WUO claims this is to protest the war in Vietnam. [NYT, 10/14/70, p. 30] The bombing was in reaction to Angela Davis' arrest and was the first action undertaken by an all-women's unit of WUO.[17][18]
* October - Bernardine Dohrn, Katherine Ann Power, and Susan Edith Saxe were put on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List[22]
* December – Fugitive WUO member Caroline Tanker, who fled the country for Cuba, is arrested by the FBI in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
* December 5th - Five Weatherman are captured for trying to bomb First National City Bank of NY and other buildings on the anniversary of the death of Fred Hampton. These individuals subsequently plead guilty.[23]
* December 11th - Vivian Bogart and Patricia Mclean from the WUO are arrested after throwing an incendiary bomb at the Royal National Bank in NYC around 1:30 AM.[24]
* December 16 - Fugitive WUO member Judith Alice Clark is arrested on the Days of Rage indictments by the FBI in New York.[18]
1971
* March 1 - The United States Capitol is bombed. WUO states this is to protest the invasion of Laos. President Richard M. Nixon denounces the bombing as a "shocking act of violence that will outrage all Americans." [NYT, 3/2/71]
* April – FBI agents discover what is dubbed "Pine Street Bomb Factory", an abandoned apartment utilized by WUO in San Francisco, California.
* August 30 - Bombings of the Office of California Prisonsin Sacramento and San Francisco, allegedly in retaliation for the killing of George Jackson. [LAT, 8/29/71][25][26]
* September 17 - The New York Department of Corrections in Albany, New York is bombed, as per WUO to protest the killing of 29 inmates at Attica State Penitentiary. [NYT, 9/18/71][27]
* October 15 - The bombing of William Bundy's office in the MIT research center. [NYT, 10/16/71]
1972
* May 19 - Bombing of The Pentagon, "in retaliation for the U.S. bombing raid in Hanoi." The date was chosen for it being Ho Chi Minh's birthday. [NYT, 5/19/72][27]
1973
* May 18 - The bombing of the 103rd Police Precinct in New York. WUO states this is in response to the killing of 10-year-old black youth Clifford Glover by police.[28][note 1]
* September 19 – A WUO member is arrested by the FBI in New York. Released on bond, this member again submerges into the underground.
* September 28 - The ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy are bombed. WUO states this is in response to ITT's alleged role in the Chilean coup earlier that month. [NYT, 9/28/73]
* Around October, 1973 the Government requested dropping charges against most of the WUO members. The requests cited a recent decision by the Supreme Court that barred electronic surveillance without a court order. This decision could hamper prosecution of the WUO cases. In addition, the government did not want to reveal foreign intelligence secrets that the court has ordered disclosed.[29]
1974
* March 6 - Bombing of the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco. WUO states this is to protest alleged sterilization of poor women. In the accompanying communiqué, the Women’s Brigade argues for "the need for women to take control of daycare, healthcare, birth control and other aspects of women's daily lives."
* May 31 - The Office of the California Attorney General is bombed. WUO states this is in response to the killing of six members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
* June 17 - Gulf Oil's Pittsburgh headquarters is bombed. WUO states this is to protest the company's actions in Angola, Vietnam, and elsewhere.
* July – The WUO releases the book Prairie Fire, in which they indicate the need for a unified Communist Party. They encourage the creation of study groups to discuss their ideology, and continue to stress the need for violent acts. The book also admits WUO responsibility of several actions from previous years. The Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC) arises from the teachings in this book and is organized by many former WUO members.
* September 11 – Bombing of Anaconda Corporation (part of the Rockefeller Corporation). WUO states this is in retribution for Anaconda’s alleged involvement in the Chilean coup the previous year.[30]
1975
* January 29 - Bombing of the State Department; WUO states this is in response to escalation in Vietnam. (AP. "State Department Rattled by Blast," The Daily Times-News, January 29, 1975, p. 1)[31]
* January 23 - Offices of Dept. of Defense in Oakland are bombed. In a statement released to the press, Weather expressed solidarity with the Vietnamese still fighting against the Thieu regime in Vietnam. [32]
* Spring - WUO publishes "Politics in Command," which is its new political-military strategy. It furthers the line of building a legal, above-ground organization and begins to minimize the armed struggle role.[31]
* March – The WUO releases its first edition of a new magazine entitled Osawatomie.[33]
* June 16 - Weathermen bomb a Banco de Ponce (a Puerto Rican bank) in New York, WUO states this is in solidarity with striking Puerto Rican cement workers.[31][33]
* July - More than a thousand women attend the Socialist Feminist Conference at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH in which WUO supporters attempt to play a major role.[31]
* July 11-13 – The Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC) holds its first national convention during which time they go through the formality of creating a new organization.[33]
* September – Bombing of the Kennecott Corporation; WUO states this is in retribution for Kennecott's alleged involvement in the Chilean coup two years prior.[33][34]
1976
* 1976-1981 the Weather Underground slowly disbands, many members turning themselves in after taking advantage of the Federal Government dropping most charges in 1973 (illegal wiretaps and intelligence sources & methods issues) and of President Jimmy Carter’s amnesty for draft dodgers.
1977
* February - The first issue of Prairie Fire Organizing Committee's magazine, Breakthrough, is published.[35]
* Spring - The John Brown Book Club compiles articles critical of the old WUO leadership and subsequent split in a pamphlet entitled: The Split of the Weather Underground Organization: Struggling against White and Male Supremacy.[35]
* November - Five WUO members are arrested on conspiracy to bomb California State Senator, John Brigg's offices. It is later revealed that the Revolutionary Committee and PFOC had been infiltrated, and the arrests were the results of the infiltration. From this point on, some authors argue that the Weather Underground Organization ceases to exist.[35]
1980
* July - Former WUO member, Cathy Wilkerson surfaces in New York City and is charged with possession of explosives arising from the 1970 townhouse explosion. She is sentenced to 3 years in prison.[36]
* December 3 - Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers turn themselves in. Charges against Ayers are dropped in 1973 (illegal wire taps & foreign intelligence sources and methods). Dohrn is placed on probation. It was discovered that the FBI had discussed a plan to kidnap her nephew, amongst other controversial schemes.[37]
1981
* October 20 - Brinks robbery in which WUO members Kathy Boudin, Sam Brown, Judy Clark and David Gilbert and the Black Liberation Army stole over $1.6 million from a Brinks armored car at the Nanuet Mall, near Nyack, New York on October 20, 1981. The robbers were stopped by police later that day and engaged them in a shootout, killing two police officers and one Brinks guard[37] as well as wounding several others.
1987
Silas Bissell a leader of the Weather Underground Organization, who was once on the FBI's Ten Most is arrested for bombing a ROTC building. His ex-wife, Judith Bissell served three years for the attempted bombing of CA State Senator John Briggs[38]
Earth Liberation Front
* March 11, 1997, Sandy, Utah: A series of pipe bombs and one firebomb claimed jointly by the ALF and the ELF destroys four trucks and leveled the offices of the Agricultural Fur Breeders Co-Op, causing about $1 million in damage.[5]
1997
* March 14, 1997, near Eugene, Oregon: Tree spiking at Robinson-Scott timber harvest site in the Mackenzie River watershed, Willamette National Forest. Joint ALF / ELF claim.[citation needed]
* March 18, 1997, Davis, California: The "Bay Area Cell of the Earth X ALF" takes credit for setting fire to the University of California, Davis, Center for Comparative Medicine facility, which was still under construction.[6]
* July 21, 1997, Redmond, Oregon: Arson attack on the Cavel West meat packing plant. The plant was in the business of slaughtering horses and then shipping the meat to Europe to be sold there. Estimated cost over $1 million. The plant was never rebuilt. Joint ALF / ELF claim. 27 horses were burnt to death in the fire[citation needed]
* November 29, 1997, Burns, Oregon: Fire at the Bureau of Land Management Wild Horse Corrals destroys a horse barn, chutes, pens and equipment, and 400 horses are released. ELF and ALF claim joint responsibility. Damages: $474,000. 6 horses were burnt to death in the fire[citation needed]
1998
* June 2, 1998, Olympia, Washington: The U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal Damage Control building and another U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife station, miles apart, go up in flames on the same morning. The Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front take joint responsibility for both actions. Damages: $1.9 million.[citation needed]
* June 28, 1998, Boston, Massachusetts: ELF defaces the Mexican Consulate in Boston with red paint in support of the indigenous Zapatista Army of National Liberation uprising in the Mexican state of Chiapas. ELF paints blood-red hand prints on the walls, spills pools of red paint on the ground, and paints "VIVA E.Z.L.N." [7][citation needed]
* July 3, 1998, Middleton, Wisconsin: Break-in and release of 171 mink and ferrets from United Vaccines laboratory during a daylight raid. Holes are cut in the fence and 310 ferrets and mink are released. Equipment and windows are also destroyed. The slogan 'Independence Day for Fur Farm Prisoners' is painted at the United Vaccines laboratory during the daylight raid. Joint ALF / ELF claim. [8][citation needed]
* October 10, 1998, Rock Springs, Wyoming: Saboteurs cut the locks off horse pens at a BLM corral, freeing about 40-100 wild horses. Failed incendiaries are found next to a pickup truck and a building. The ELF and the ALF take joint responsibility.
* October 19, 1998, Vail, Colorado: The ELF claims responsibility for burning five buildings and four chair lifts at the Vail Mountain ski resort in Vail, Colorado, causing in excess of $12 million in damages. The action come only five days after a court had ruled that Vail could proceed with its planned Category III expansion into the Two Elks Roadless Area, despite the objections of local environmentalists. In a communiqué, ELF claims that the fires were set on behalf of the lynx. "If there is any critical lynx habitat in the state, this is it!" [9]
* October 26, 1998, Powers, Michigan: About 5,000 mink are released from the Pipkorn farm in the Upper Peninsula. Damages: $100,000.[citation needed]
* December 26, 1998, Medford, Oregon: Fire ravages the headquarters of U.S. Forest Industries. An ELF communiqué issued weeks later says the strike was payback to the company for razing forests and killing wild animals for profit. Damages: $700,000.[citation needed]
1999
* August 7, 1999, Escanaba, Michigan: Two fishing boats are set ablaze in the driveway of a veterinarian who once worked as a mink rancher. A garage door is tagged with graffiti 18 inches (460 mm) high: "FUR IS MURDER. E.L.F." The ELF later claims in an Internet posting it targeted the veterinarian after finding a "Fur is Enough" sign outside his home. Damages: $15,000.[10]
* December 25, 1999, Monmouth, Oregon: Fire destroys the main office of the Boise Cascade logging company costing over $1 million. ELF claim responsibility in a communiqué.[citation needed]
* December 31, 1999, East Lansing, Michigan: Arson of the offices of Catherine Ives, Room 324, Agriculture Hall at Michigan State University. The offices are doused with gasoline and set afire. ELF says the fire was set in response to the work being done to force developing nations in Asia, Latin America and Africa to switch from natural crop plants to genetically engineered sweet potatoes, corn, bananas and pineapples. Monsanto Company and USAID are major funders of the research and promotional work being done through Michigan State University. According to local newspapers, the fire caused over $1 million in damage.[2] "Cremate Monsanto, Long live the E.L.F. On to the next GE target!"
2000
* January 23, 2000, Bloomington, Indiana: Arson destroys a partially-built luxury home. Investigators found a message spray-painted in black on a sign near the house: "No Sprawl ELF." The ELF later issues a communiqué saying it torched the home because it was in the Lake Monroe Watershed, which provides drinking water to the city of Bloomington. Damages: $200,000.[citation needed]
* February 9, 2000, Saint Paul, Minnesota: University of Minnesota, ELF Crop Destruction, $1,000+ in damages.[citation needed]
* March 24, 2000, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Highway 55 reroute, $500,000 in damages done to construction equipment.[citation needed]
* April 30, 2000, Bloomington, Indiana: At least six pieces of logging and heavy construction equipment are sabotaged and a trailer full of wood chips is set ablaze at a road construction site just outside the city. A communiqué from the Earth Liberation Front states its plan was to punish those developing wooded areas around Bloomington, which "have turned what was once forested land into parking lots, luxury houses for rich scum and expanded roads." Damages: $75,000.[citation needed]
* July 20, 2000, Rhinelander, Wisconsin: Vandals hack down thousands of experimental trees, mostly poplars, and spray-paint vehicles at a U.S. Forest Service research station. The ELF claims the attack was against bioengineering, although researchers say the trees were naturally bred (not bioengineered) to grow faster and resist diseases. Damages: $1 million.[citation needed]
* September 9, 2000, Bloomington, Indiana: Fire erupts at the headquarters of the Monroe County Republican Party Committee headquarters. Investigators say a flammable liquid was poured on the building and ignited. The arson was a reminder, according to the ELF communiqué, that the ELF would not sit quietly as politicians pushed for plans to extend Interstate 69. Damages: $1,500.[citation needed]
* October 18, 2000, Shoals, Indiana: Vandals find four pieces of heavy logging equipment in the Martin State Forest and cut hoses, slash seats, destroy gauges and pour sand in the engines, fuel tanks and radiators. They leave spray-painted graffiti including, "Earth Raper," "Go Cut in Hell," and "ELF." Damages: $55,000.[citation needed]
* November 27, 2000, Niwot, Colorado: Arson hits one of the first luxury homes going up in a new subdivision. The ELF later sends a note, made of letters clipped from magazines, to the Boulder Weekly newspaper: "Viva la revolution! The Boulder ELF burned the Legend Ridge mansion on Nov. 27th." The underground group explains in a follow-up communiqué that the arson was driven by defeat of a statewide ballot measure to control growth. Damages: $2.5 million.[11]
* December 9, 2000, Middle Island, New York: Fire erupts in a Long Island condominium under construction. The ELF claims responsibility, saying the homes were "future dens of the wealthy elite." The group, announcing "an unbounded war on urban sprawl," claims it checked for occupants—human and animal—in 16 condos before setting incendiaries in them. Damages: $200,000.[citation needed]
* December 19, 2000, Miller Place, New York: A Long Island house under construction goes up in flames. "Building homes for the wealthy should not even be a priority," the ELF writes in its communiqué. "Forests, farms and wetlands are being replaced with a sea of houses, green chemical lawns, blacktop and roadkill." Damages: $50,000.[citation needed]
* December 29, 2000, Mount Sinai, New York: Three Long Island luxury homes under construction are set ablaze, and a fourth is spray-painted with graffiti: "If you build it we will burn it." The ELF issues a communiqué saying: "Recently, hundreds of houses have been built over much of Mount Sinai's picturesque landscape and developers now plan to build a further 189 luxury houses over the farms and forests adjacent to Island Estates...This hopefully provided a firm message that we will not tolerate the destruction of our island." Damages: $160,000.[citation needed]
2001
* May 21, 2001, Seattle, Washington: ELF sets off a firebomb that caused $7 million in damages at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture. Lacey Phillabaum and Jennifer Kolar plead guilty to the attack in 2006. Bill Rodgers, who was "considered to be one of the top organizers of the ELF and a hands-on participant who allegedly help set the fire bombs inside the UW horticulture center," later commits suicide in an Arizona jail. Justin Solondz, who allegedly helped assemble the fire bombs and joined Rodgers in setting them is now a fugitive.[3] Briana Waters, a student at The Evergreen State College at the time of the bombing, was convicted in 2008 and sentenced to six years in prison.[4]
2002
* January 26, 2002, St. Paul, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Microbial and Plant Genomics Research Center soil-testing lab and construction trailer burned down, construction equipment, including a bulldozer damaged, $630,000 damages Claimed by ELF.
* January 29, 2002, Fairfield, Maine: ELF announced they had sabotaged a “Biotech Park” in a communiqué that read:
We are writing to inform you that there is a Biotech Park being built in Fairfield, Maine. We went there some weeks ago and put a sand/quickcrete mix in the engines, gas, and hydraulics of an excavator and a roller. These were the only machines there, plowing up the land, building bridges over creeks. So we left no trace so when the operators came to work the machines would run and then seize, costing big bucks. Now, we are letting the people know. The park is being pushed by Paul Tessier, a representative of Fairfield, and others. It is in cohoots with Jackson Labs, which is the largest breeder of mice. They grow mice with human ears there! How sick! These people want the park to be an incubator to bring more biotechnology into Maine.
We oppose this for the following reasons... Biotechnology is one more tool by the ruling class to control our lives and make more money. Only the rich can produce biotechnology and even if that wasn't so, we would want no part of it because it sees the wild as incomplete, or as lacking, needing manipulation. Our ancestors lived in harmony on this planet for a long time, now all of humanity's progress is making us sick. And we're gonna trust those that gave us cancer to create new technologies to cure it. No way!
We want to be left alone. No more development. We enjoy life here and are sick of business men coming in and trying to dupe us into trading the good life for their wage slavery. People!!! Take action!!!
The Biotech Park is on route 201 near Kennebec Valley Technical College in Fairfield. KVTC is in on it too. Solidarity to those fighting against the greedy! ELF...ALF...Together with all”[12]
* February 12, 2002, Washington D.C.: FBI testimony before the House Ecoterror Hearing.
Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States (or its territories) without foreign direction, committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives...During the past several years, special interest extremism, as characterized by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), has emerged as a serious terrorist threat. The FBI estimates that the ALF/ELF have committed more than 600 criminal acts in the United States since 1996, resulting in damages in excess of 43 million dollars. [13]
* March 24, 2002, Erie, Pennsylvania: Hundreds of trees spiked in Wintergreen Gorge, crane, generators and pumps torched, other equipment monkey wrenched, $500,000 damages Claimed by ELF. [14]
* May 12, 2002, Harbor Creek, Pennsylvania: 200 mink released from Mindek mink farm Claimed by ALF and ELF.[15]
* August 11, 2002, Irvine, Pennsylvania: A device, containing gasoline, was thrown onto the roof of the Northeast Research Station in the Allegheny National Forest. The ensuing fire caused nearly $700,000 in damages. An e-mail from ELF's office said:
While innocent life will never be harmed in any action we undertake, where it is necessary, we will no longer hesitate to pick up the gun to implement justice, and provide the needed protection for our planet that decades of legal battles, pleading protest, and economic sabotage have failed so drastically to achieve." and that "all other US Forest Services administration and research facilities, as well as all Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) buildings nationwide should now be considered likely targets.
* September 2002, Harbor Creek, Pennsylvania: more than 50 mink released Mindek mink farm Claimed by ALF and ELF.[16]
* September 28, 2002, Richmond, Virginia: 25 windows etched at 1 Burger King and 13 windows etched at each of 2 McDonalds Claimed by ELF.
* November 1, 2002, Richmond, Virginia: Vandals who left messages crediting ELF damaged SUVs in several incidents recently. Twenty-five SUVs on the lot of a Ford dealer were permanently defaced with a glass-etching cream. A week later, SUVs parked near homes were severely damaged with an ax or hatchet. Vandalism and attempted arson have also been reported recently at highway and home construction sites in the area.
* December 28, 2002, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: ELF activists attacked a housing development, severely damaging construction vehicles and the model home on the property.
2003
* January 1, 2003, Girard, Pennsylvania: Jugs of gasoline were set under three vehicles at Bob Ferrando Ford Lincoln Mercury and set ablaze. Two pickup trucks, one Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) and a car were destroyed causing $90,000 in damages. The ELF claimed responsibility for the attack.[5]
* January 20, 2003, Seattle, Washington: Arson at a McDonalds caused $5000 worth of damage. In September, 2005, Christopher W. McIntosh of Maple Shade, NJ, admitted he set the fire by pouring several gallons of gasoline on the roof on behalf of ALF-ELF. In an anonymous phone call he said:
[t]here was an E-L-F-A-L-F hit at McDonald's across from the Space Needle. There will be more. ... As long as Mother Earth is pillaged, raped, destroyed. As long as McDonald's keeps hurting our furry brothers, there will be more.
He was sentenced to eight years in prison. [17]
* March 21, 2003, Superior Township, Michigan: Two luxury homes set on fire in a Superior Township housing development in an action against urban sprawl. Claimed by the ELF. Damages estimated at $400,000. [18]
* March 28, 2003, Montgomery, Alabama: Five government vehicles were vandalized and one truck was set on fire at a Naval Recruitment Headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama. The ELF claimed responsibility for the attacks both in a communiqué and by spray-painting their initials at the scene. Messages that read, "Stop the War," "Stop killing" and "Leave Iraq" were also found along with the ELF initials. [19]
* April 8, 2003, Santa Cruz, California: The ELF claims responsibility for vandalizing 65 SUVs, including about twenty private vehicles as well forty at the North Bay Ford and Lincoln Mercury car dealership. Messages are spray-painted on the vehicles denouncing the war in [Iraq].[20]
* April 15, 2003, Santa Cruz, California: ELF activists attack 15 SUVs with bright orange paint, and in an ELF press release, complain that the local paper did not cover the story. [21]
* June 3, 2003, Chico, California: ELF claims the attempted arson of a new home. The fire burns through a PVC pipe holding water, dousing the flames so the damage was minimal, about $100. "Save our bio-region ELF" is painted on the sidewalk.[22]
* June 4, 2003, Macomb County, Michigan: ELF sets fire to two luxury homes in a Macomb County housing development in an action against urban sprawl. "ELF" and "Stop sprawl" are spray painted on nearby construction equipment. Damages estimated at $700,000.[23]
* June 5, 2003, Chico, California: An arson attempt is made at a shopping center under construction. Workers find remnants of several small fires, and ELF spray-painted on the door of a work truck at the site. The FBI explores connections with arson attempts at two McDonalds in March, and SUVs in May, in Chico. [24]
* June 14, 2003, Santa Cruz, California: Environmental activists scratch the slogan ELF into ten new SUVs, causing $15,000 worth of damage.[25]
* July 2, 2003, South Windsor, Connecticut: Signs of the Earth Liberation Front, "ELF" and "no sprawl," are spray-painted on a newly completed. An unidentified man called police and said the graffiti was done by an ELF activist. [26]
* August 1, 2003, San Diego, California: A 206-unit condominium being built is burnt down causing damage in excess of $50 million. A 12-foot (3.7 m) banner at the scene reads "If you build it, we will burn it," signed, "The E.L.F.s are mad." [27] — sympathizers often refer to themselves as "elfs" or "elves".
* August 22, 2003, West Covina, California: The ELF attacks several car dealerships in east suburban Los Angeles, burning down a warehouse and vandalizing several cars, with such phrases as "I love pollution" written on the cars. All told, more 125 SUVs and Hummers, which were targeted due to their lower than average fuel efficiency, are damaged or destroyed causing $2.3 million in damages.
* August 29, 2003, Fairbanks, Alaska: ELF spray-paints concrete walls and construction equipment at a [Wal-Mart] construction site.[28]
* September 4, 2003, Santa Fe, New Mexico: ELF action against SUV dealer in New Mexico - SUVS spray-painted with messages naming the seven deadly sins. 1/3 of the dealership's stock was marked, leaving thousands of dollars in damages.
* September 12, 2003: Federal agents arrest Pomona, California resident Joshua Thomas Connole in connection with the August 22nd 2003 Los Angeles area arsons. [29] Apparently, the FBI profiled Connole based on his anti-war protest activities. [30] He is soon released due to lack of evidence. [31] The FBI later awards Connole $100,000 and agrees to give him an apology after he files a lawsuit against the agency.[32]
* September 19, 2003, San Diego, California: ELF action against urban sprawl at three separate construction sites in the upscale Carmel Valley neighborhood of San Diego, causing an estimated $1 million in damages. Four unfinished houses were destroyed, two others were damaged and a condominium under construction sustained minor damage. A banner at the site of the first fires read, "Development = destruction. Stop raping nature. The ELFs are mad." [33]
* September 22, 2003, Martiny, Michigan: The ELF claims responsibility for planting plastic bottles containing flammable liquid at an Ice Mountain Spring Water Company (a subsidiary of Nestle) pumping station. The devices are apparently intended to start a fire at the premises but are discovered by maintenance workers before they are set ablaze.
In a written statement, the ELF stated:
We will no longer stand idly be while corporations profit at the expense of all others. To this end, we have taken action against one of the pumping stations that Perrier uses to steal water… Clean water is one of the most fundamental necessities and no one can be allowed to privatize it, commodify it, and try and sell it back to us.
Two months later a judge orders the company to halt pumping water from the wells. Nestle had been removing 200 gallons of water from the ground per minute and was lowering the water table.[34]
* October 6, 2003, Jemez Mountains, New Mexico: Construction equipment belonging to the US Forest has electrical wires cut, tires cut and windows broken by ELF. [35]
* October (mid), 2003; Portland, Maine: The Acadian Green Brigade of the ELF slashes the tires of 8 Boise Cascade delivery trucks and two trailers, glued locks and painted slogans across the building's main entrance. [36]
* October 24, 2003, Martinsville, Indiana: ELF activists sabotage a Wal-Mart construction site. Survey stakes are removed, and walls and machinery spray-painted. Over a dozen pieces of heavy machinery and vehicles are vandalized, with slashed tires, cut fuel hoses, and sand poured in fuel tanks. [37]
2004
* January 22, 2004, Fayetteville, Arkansas: Five Hummer SUVs are vandalized. The letters ELF are spray-painted on the vehicles, tires are slashed and windows broken. [38]
* February 7, 2004, Charlottesville, Virginia: The ELF sets fire to a bulldozer and causes damage to other equipment that is parked off Route 29. This site is to be developed into a retail, commercial and residential community. On their website, the ELF writes that the site was "targeted as part of the ELF's ongoing actions against large-scale developments going up at the expense of what little green space is left in North America." A banner left on the site read "Your construction = long term destruction - ELF" The action causes over $30,000 in damages. [39]
* February 17, 2004, North Lima, Ohio: Vandals break windows in a construction trailer, spray a fire extinguisher and scratch the initials "ELF" on the side of a piece of construction equipment at the construction site of a new showroom for a fireworks company. [40]
* April 20, 2004, Snohomish, Washington: Two homes are destroyed and attempts are made to burn two others at a housing development. A note found at the site of one of the fires is signed "ELF" and reportedly contains statements condemning suburban developments. As well, bottles of flammable liquid are found at two different housing development sites in the area. The action causes an estimated $1 million in damages. [41]
* July 30, 2004, Charlotte, North Carolina: Activists vandalize a fleet of utility trucks owned by Utiliquest, a utility contractor. All the trucks are marked with “ELF” and all have their tires slashed. [42]
* August 3, 2004, Spokane, Washington: A fire heavily damages one $55,000 Hummer SUV and nearly burns two others at the George Gee Hummer dealership. One H2 Hummer has its windows broken and is spray painted with messages that oppose the Iraq war and President Bush. An e-mail sent to local media outlets claims credit for the Eastern Washington Chapter of the Earth Liberation Front [43]
* December 27, 2004, Lincoln, California: Incendiary devises are located in three houses under construction at the Verdera Models construction site on Flores Court in the Twelve Bridges development. Graffiti is discovered on another house under construction in the same development. The graffiti found at the scene includes notations such as "Enjoy the world as is - as long as you can", "U will pay", "Evasion", "4 Q" and "Leave". This house also sustains broken windows. The letters "ELF" are printed in the cul-de-sac where these homes are located. Across the street from this house a tractor is vandalized with the notation "Disarm or die". [44]
2005
* January 12, 2005, Auburn, California: Five un-ignited incendiary devices are discovered in a commercial building under construction that, upon completion, were to be rented as doctor's offices. A letter claiming responsibility for "the actions taken in Placer County (CA)" is received by several media outlets. The return address on the letter indicates it was from "Emma Goldman." Emma Goldman is a major figure in the history of anarchism.
The rambling, two-page letter, which appears to have been computer generated, generally decries various aspects of modern life, including real-estate development, and promises that "We are setting a new precedent, where there will be at least one or more actions every few weeks.” The letter concludes, "With sincere love, 'Agent Emma Goldman and the Crimethinc Senior Officers of the Earth Liberation Front' " and also references eight websites, including http://www.crimethinc.com." The latter website describes itself as an "ex-workers' collective" and generally expresses an anarchistic philosophy. [45]
* February 7, 2005, Sutter Creek, California: The ELF sets fire to the new Pinewoods apartment complex, about 45 miles (72 km) east of Sacramento. Sutter Creek Chief of Police Robert Duke says "there were seven individual fires and some kind of incendiary device with very, very crude triggering mechanisms." graffiti found near the fire reads: "We will win -- ELF." [46]
* March 6, 2005, Fair Oaks, California: Three vehicles – two full-size pickup trucks and a Ford Expedition – are spray-painted with the initials "ELF," and their rear license plates are painted over. A total of at least seven SUVs are vandalized in the Sacramento area during the week. [47]
* April 13, 2005, Sammamish, Washington: ELF partially burns down one of two buildings it targeted in a King County, Washington development. David Ammon, a developer whose property was burned, had planned on constructing two more homes in the area. Police discover an incendiary device which had failed to ignite in a second house nearby along with a sheet condemning the rape of the Earth, clearing of trees, and claiming responsibility on behalf of ELF. It reads, "Where are all the trees? Burn, rapist, burn. E.L.F" The homes targeted are new ones located in a golf course subdivision. [48]
* May 17, 2005, Fair Oaks, California: Several SUVs and trucks are spray-painted with “ELF” and “polluter”, and many also have their tires slashed. A short distance away, the words “bomb the White House” are found spray-painted on a real estate sign. FBI, Secret Service, and a joint terrorism task force are investigating, and trying to find out if the two attacks are related. [49]
* July 27, 2005 Whatcom County, Washington: Arsonists damage two homes under construction. The first causes $100,000 in damages. The second, a few days later, completely destroys another home being built in the area. ELF has taken credit for other arsons in the area earlier in the year that police are investigating.[50]
* September 11, 2005, West Old Town, Maine: The ELF vandalizes at least a dozen large machines at the West Old Town Landfill, which is one of New England's worst polluters. The winter prior, ownership of the landfill had been transferred from the Georgia-Pacific timber company to state hands, in a behind-closed-doors deal which resulted in the expansion of the site and a sweet deal for Georgia-Pacific and Casella Waste Systems who now run the site. The machines had their ignitions ripped out, or superglue poured into them, tires were slashed, two buildings and many vehicles were spray painted, and the fuel in the equipments' tanks may have been tampered with. Officials say the damage will cost tens of thousands of dollars to repair. [51]
* October 3, 2005, Bozeman, Montana: U.S. - A construction site owned by the Kenyon Noble lumber company is vandalized by the Earth Liberation Front causing about $3000 in damage. [52]
* November 19, 2005, Hagerstown, Maryland: ELF claims responsibility for setting four fires in newly-constructed unoccupied homes built by the McLean, Virginia Ryan Homes in the Hager's Crossing subdivision. One building is burned to the ground but the other three sustain less serious damage. The developer estimated the damage at more than $300,000.
Credit for the arson is claimed via an e-mail originating from the e-mail address tree_beard1234@yahoo.com. Treebeard is the name of a giant shepherd, one of a race called the Ents, in J.R.R. Tolkien's cult fantasy novel "The Two Towers." The message reads:
Last night we, the Earth Liberation Front, put the torch to a development of Ryan Homes in Hagerstown, Maryland (off Route 40, behind the Wal-Mart). We did so to strike at the bottom line of this country's most notorious serial land rapist...We warn all developers that the people of the Earth are prepared to defend what remains of the wild and the green...We encourage all who watch with sadness while developers sell out the future of us and our children to join us in resisting them in any and every possible way...The Ents are going to war. [53]
* November 25, 2005, Bothell, Washington: Two pieces of construction equipment are destroyed by fire, causing more than $100,000 in damage. [54]
* November 29, 2005, Bothell, Washington: One piece of construction equipment is destroyed by fire. [55]
* December 14, 2005, Kenmore, Washington: Two pieces of excavation equipment are burned overnight at a housing development, causing around $180,000 in damage. Apparently this is the second fire at this construction site since November. The earlier fire caused $50,000 in damage. [56]
* December 16, 2005, Valley Springs, California: A window is broken and the letters E-L-F were spray-painted on the garage door of a partially constructed home. There is considerable opposition to new development and the required re-zoning in rural Calaveras County, where Valley Springs is located. [57]
2006
* January 17, 2006, Camano Island, Washington: ELF burns down a nearly completed 9,600-square-foot (890 m2), $3 million, trophy house. Investigators say that someone spray-painted a threatening message on a pink bedsheet and draped it across the front gate. [58]
* January 31, 2006, Guelph, Ontario, Canada: A fire destroys a partially constructed home. ELF claims credit for the blaze a few days later, in an email in which the group explains that the fire had been "A STRIKE AGAINST DEVELOPERS, FOR THE LOCAL COMMUNITY" and that it was done "in the memory of William C. Rodgers 'Avalon'."[59]
* March 11, 2006, Salem, Oregon: Three newly-constructed upscale homes are vandalized with pro-environmental slogans which read: "Quit building ant farms," "E.L.F.," "Rent is theft," "Viva E.L.F." and "Don't kill my air." Additionally, a window is broken. According to authorities, this is the second time within the past two years that ELF vandals struck in this neighborhood.[60][61]
* June 27, 2006, Guelph, Ontario, Canada: A fire destroys a partially constructed home at 75 Summit Ridge, in view of the old Eastview Road landfill site. It caused about $200,000 of damage. ELF claims credit for the blaze a few days latter in an email which includes anti-development slogans.[62]
2008
* March 3, 2008, Street of Dreams, Washington: ELF is the primary suspect for the intentional destruction, by using explosive devices, set fire to four multi-million dollar homes from the 2007 Seattle Street of Dreams in Woodinville, Washington, costing $7 million in damage.[6] Authorities describe the act as "domestic terrorism" after finding the initials of the Earth Liberation Front spray-painted in red letters, mocking claims that the homes were environmentally friendly: "Built Green? Nope black! McMansions in RCDs r not green. ELF." [7][8]
* Tuesday the 25th to Friday the 28th of November, Mexico City, Mexico: a group calling itself eco-anarquista por el ataque directo (Eco-anarchist cell for direct attack) claimed responsibility for a number of recent actions, including: half a dozen Molotov cocktails thrown at tren férreo (metro rail) in Mexico City, Incendiary sabotage against Telmex, a Molotov cocktail thrown at a Banamex ATM. These attacks were claimed to have taken place “as a form of 'protest' against the construction of a new rail line (line 12), in Mexico City (D.F.) and Mexico State; already because of its construction many trees were cut down, entire families evicted and land expropriated with large hectares of green areas subsequently deforested.”[9]
2009
* January 29, Mexico City, Mexico: The Frente de Liberación de la Tierra (ELF) claimed responsibility for setting a fire within the College of Sciences and Humanities at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) along with setting fire to and destroying a construction crane. this was in response to the university building upon an ecological reserve.[10][11]
* March 22, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico: Frente de Liberación de la Tierra (ELF) set fire to construction equipment and broke windows of a local bank.[12]
* September 4, Everett, Washington: The ELF claims responsibility for the destruction of two broadcasting towers used by the local radio station KRKO.[13]
Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win in Nicaragua
Nicaraguan Revolution
Monday, March 07, 2011
Some reflections on
anthropological structural
Marxism
Stephen Nugent Goldsmiths College, University of London
The primary topic in this discussion is the brief career of anthropological structural Marxism and the
possibility of its continued relevance. That issue is framed by a more general one: on what basis are
explanatory theories adopted and discarded in anthropology? The discussion of structural Marxism
is framed within recent debates about the desirability of socio-cultural anthropology’s traditional
associations with other sub-fields of anthropology, and it is argued that the isolation of sub-fields is
a regressive theoretical move.
Introduction: explanation and holism
Debates about ‘theory’ in anthropology are typically unresolved, often acrimonious,
and frequently conducted through the wielding of symbolic power rather than prosaic
evidence. In part, the function of and attitudes towards ‘theory’ flow from the problematic
status of ‘ethnography’, at one and the same time a narrative rendering of
empirical material and also a package of material bound by often implicit assumptions
about causality, logical fit, and intrinsic coherence. Another source of the disputatious
character of ‘theory’1 may not be as mysterious as a fetishized ‘ethnography’: the
attempt to maintain alliances with both of what C.P. Snow (1993 [1959]) famously
depicted as the ‘two cultures’ – those of the sciences and of the humanities – such that
anthropology self-consciously balances universalizing and relativizing tendencies.
Recent efforts to resolve this tension/ambiguity by declaring the ‘interpretative’
versus ‘scientific’ détente finished (see contributions to Segal & Yanagisako 2005)
depend primarily on a re-definition of the anthropological division of labour with one
camp assembled around the ‘crisis of representation’ and the other around ‘evolutionary
psychology’ (to cite ideal-type demonizations). This re-definition of the field,
however, does not erase or resolve – except by exclusion – the characteristic, historical
dilemma of an anthropology that has tried to produce social theory that is at once
sufficiently clinical (society/culture as an object of analysis) to be able to historicize
culture and, simultaneously, sufficiently acknowledging of the subjectivity of ‘cultural
difference’.2
One of the issues highlighted in anthropology’s ‘two cultures’ conflict – the sustained
uncertainty about the relative weights of the universalizing and relativizing
tendencies of anthropology – has been the variable character of the criteria used to
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13, 419-431
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decide whether an explanation is strong or weak.3 This disposition is often revealed in
the way ‘theory’ appears so commonly as a label of total affiliation rather than a
working premise, some aspects of which may be retained, others discarded as they lose
explanatory value.A revealing structure-functionalist account of the internal dynamics
of a social system, for example, may offer little insight into processual change, but that
failing indicates the limits of explanatory power, not a generic, ‘theoretical’ inadequacy.
The nominalist character of much ‘theory’ in anthropology underpins the strong
tendency for demonization in the field (see Wolf 1994).
A related issue concerns an eclectic ‘standard’ literature that tends to be cumulative
rather than successional.A new study typically adds to the literature without displacing
antecedent explanations. The history of the development of the field, firmly embedded
in the primary literature itself, may provide a sense of continual re-evaluation,
re-orientation, and re-calibration of the explanatory dimensions of the field,4 but it
may also produce a miasma.5 The ‘theory’ that has maintained a grip over the disparate
elements that comprise anthropological holism is less paradigmatic than episodic.
Areas in which successional explanation rather than interpretation is to the fore may be
only awkwardly accommodated (if at all) within certain holistic views, but are more
often demonized as ‘positivistic’ or simply regarded as belonging largely outside
anthropology.
The decline of anthropological structural Marxism (hereafter ASM)6 may be an
example of an explanatory theory being sidelined not as a weak theory, but as the
wrong kind of theory, ‘wrong’ in the sense that it challenges a prevailing interpretative
holism. Its explanations do not just amount to new additions to the literature, but they
supersede other explanations in a way that stretches some aspects of anthropological
holism intolerably. There is, for example, a holism in functionalist claims about the
interdependence of structures of kinship, politics, and economics that may be descriptively
adequate, but which retains little more than metaphoric power in the face of
accounts of social change requiring specification of causal factors.7 It is one thing to
engage holism for the purpose of accounting for the complex interdependence of many
dimensions of sociality, but another to demand that causal explanation always seek
calibration through holism.8
Although there has been a long historical relationship between anthropology and
Marxism,9 an overt anthropological drawing on the work of Marx and Engels (rather
than ‘official’ Marxism) became a notable feature of anthropological discourse in the
1960s. Vincent (1985: 137) notes that most of the entries in the bibliography of
Wessman’s Anthropology and Marxism (1981), for example, are post-1968, and fully half
date from the narrow period 1973-8. Previous Marxist tendencies in the field, as in the
work of Leslie White and his associates (Price 2004), effectively censored in a McCarthyite
climate, were idiomatically materialist and evolutionist, but the successor
tendency was clearly allied with a New Left/Western Marxist revisionism. A hybrid
anthropological structural Marxism was concerned with multiple forms of determination
and power, not just economic ones. It was as much globally orientated as it was
focused on the extremely local and it accommodated the scale of dependency theory as
well as that of the detailed, village-level study. Additionally, it located modern (i.e.
post-Victorian, Malinowskian/Boasian) anthropological preoccupations (such as the
interrelations of kin-groups and political power) in a long-term historical framework
such that, for example, Sacks’s (1979) analysis of Engels had direct relevance for the
study of domestic labour in late capitalism.
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ASM’s explanatory advance on functionalist orthodoxy occurred in a nested
context: at one level a particular expression of a more general critique of the discipline
occurring in the 1960s;10 at a higher level an expression of a field still comfortable as a
socio-historical discipline rather than in thrall to the humanities.With the general shift
of the field towards the literary-hermeneutic – symbolically benchmarked by the publication
of Writing culture (Clifford & Marcus 1986)11 – and refinement of what was
‘anthropologically holistic’ (vigorously outlined in Segal & Yanagisako 2005), the particular
and subtle qualities of the ASM critique were enveloped.At a further level, while
the literary turn seemed to enlarge the anthropological remit through an emphasis on
multi-disciplinarity, it had as a corollary the tendency for the more scientific (or
scientistic) tendencies to be identified with the cognates of particular sub-fields –
economics, evolutionism, politics, psychology – and in some respects become lost to
the new mainstream in anthropology.
Even if the predominant tendency within the field has been to reconfigure anthropological
holism in a manner openly sceptical of the virtues of scientific affiliations, the
rationale for anthropology’s cultural authority as ‘best-informed interlocutor’ (against
challenges to that status from NGOs, development/area studies, ‘the tourist experience’,
travel writing, and the like) still rests on a science-like and realist disposition (see, e.g.,
Besteman & Gusterman 2005). In key respects, the now largely discarded intervention
of ASM may be seen as a crucial statement of a different kind of holistic anthropology
from that which now asserts itself: that is to say, one more concerned with theoretical
adequacy than theoretical propriety.
Economic anthropology
ASM emerged under the influence of several sources, one of which was an orthodox
anthropological conception of a generic pre-modern, tribal economy in which – in
idealized form – a division of labour was primarily shaped only by factors of gender
and age. Economic anthropology emerged forcefully as a sub-disciplinary specialty in
the context of the geo-political restructuring that followed the conclusion to the
SecondWorldWar, and the dominant theoretical discussions largely turned around the
substantivist-formalist distinction. While ‘economic anthropology’ in one reading
meant ‘economics in a tribal/peasant setting’, it also retained the strong notion of
embeddedness, that is, the expression of economic logic through an array or filter of
social relations (e.g. of kinship and politics), a non-autonomous12 economy along lines
indicated by Polanyi (1944) and particularly well known through Sahlins (1972).
The substantivist-formalist debate, however, was in crucial respects at crosspurposes.
At one extreme, formalists who insisted on a market definition of economic
rationality had little to say about non-market economies, except that they were typically
irrational.At the other, substantivists who insisted that economic logic was always
subordinate to diverse culture-logics undermined the prospect of a generalizable
notion of the economic. Each approach actually concerns a very a different kind of
economic target,with – roughly – substantivism being concerned with the structures of
material provisioning regardless of how they are culturally expressed, formalism being
concerned only with structures of material provisioning expressed in prices.13 The
point about confusion of targets is strongly made by Godelier (1972: xxviii) in his
comments on the contradictory advice provided in Notes and queries on anthropology
(Royal Anthropological Institution of Great Britain and Ireland 1960), wherein fieldresearchers
were instructed both to reject and respect ‘ordinary’ economics.
Stephen Nugent 421
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Another significant influence on the emergence of ASM was the new global expression
of economic formalism through the perspective of a modernization theory that
projected a crude form of economic evolutionism onto the anthropological landscape.
From an anthropological vantage-point, the diversity of anthropological subject societies
(whether codified as tribes, peoples, nations, or races) as well as the diversity of
links that such societies had with larger systems was hardly comfortably expressed by
modernizationist prescriptions. Within the new context and framework offered
by modernization theory – realized in more explicit form with the hegemony of
neoliberalism in the 1980s – the formalist position became an expression of applied
anthropology, and substantivism represented a kind of truculent romanticization of
pre-capitalism. Despite the fact that ‘economic anthropology’ appeared to provide a
richly textured alternative to a monocausal-tending and reductionist modernization
theory, the incommensurability of formalist and substantivist positions with respect to
synthesizing an adequate alternative theory was marked. In a sense, neither provided a
theory adequate to account for what was happening in an anthropological world beset
by a new modernizationist programme,14 yet each contained elements that might be
conjoined in an appropriate synthesis via ASM which – labelled as such, or as political
economy or Marxist anthropology – tried to fuse functionalist and historical accounts.
A new anthropological landscape
The early task of the modern anthropological project was to document and model
extant socio-cultural systems.15 A derived project was the analysis of the institutions
that regulated these apparently self-reproducing systems.16 That ‘investigation of regulation’
project was conducted under a number of sub-field headings (e.g. symbolic
anthropology, structure functionalism, environmental determinism, culture and personality,
etc.), and although there was acknowledged secular change in privileging
certain factors or elements – and hence kinds of tendencies in explanation – the
suggestion that the practice of anthropology itself was shaped by the mode of its own
insertion in the modern world was treated as highly provocative. Both the collections
by Hymes (1969) and by Asad (1974) contained arguments to the effect that although
the subjects and subject matter of anthropology may, in some senses and cases, seem to
be ‘outside of history’, the relationship between anthropology and its subjects certainly
was not. The arguments contained in these two influential volumes were widely
regarded as transgressive, if not scandalous, but it was impossible for critics to refute
the evident systematicity of certain relationships between, for example, national
schools of anthropology and their preferred subjects.Was Dutch expertise in Southeast
Asia a reflection of a natural affinity?WereNorth, Central, and South American peoples
particularly alluring to North American anthropologists? Did Africa and Asia fall under
the gaze of UK anthropology by chance? These associations, of course, were not those
that were directly challenged; rather, the defensive emphasis was placed on the constructions
attributed to those who modestly pointed out that anthropological practice
tended not to be reciprocal (no Inuits doing fieldwork in Shaker Heights, no Dinka in
Peckham) and that political subjectivity tended to be a precondition of anthropological
subjectivity.
ASM emerged in the context of a strongly revised geo-political landscape as the shift
from what is glossed here as the colonial-to-the-neo-colonial was consolidated. The
expected economic depression following the Second World War had not transpired,
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and the immediate post-war years showed an intensification of unsubtle transformation
of pre-capitalist and marginal capitalist societies, the fields of anthropological
inquiry.
Sources of revision
The theoretical borrowings from Marx in ASM tended to be of a non-dogmatic type,
sometimes labelled ‘neo-Marxist’, not the caricature of formulaic application of ‘theory’
– an all-purpose template of historical materialism – but a projection of a series of
hypothetical explanations. In view of the shortage of empirical anthropological material
at the time when Marx and Engels were preparing their theories, the only way to
‘apply’ their theories to such ethnographic material as subsequently emerged was
speculatively/hypothetically. The issue central to ASM’s credibility was not ‘how good
its Marxism was’, but how good the emergent explanations were.17 ASM directly confronted
the insistence thatMarxism is relevant only to the analysis of capitalist societies
by focusing on the dynamics of articulation between pre-capitalism and capitalism,
and less on strict, timelessly valid definitions of those categories themselves.18
‘Structuralism’ also has a qualified and nuanced relationship to ASM, although for
reasons different from those that apply to theMarxist relationship. Structuralism has so
many affinities with incommensurable claimants that a generic definition is impossible.
The versions of structuralism most pertinent to the anthropology of the time are
those associated with Lévi-Strauss and Althusser, but it is the fact that ASM is seen to
draw generally fromthe milieu of structuralism rather than any particular ‘structuralist
authority’ that proves troublesome.
It is Lévi-Strauss’s (1961: 60-1) rather old-fashioned, elementary sociology depiction
which seems most apposite, that is, his allusion toMarx, Freud, and geology – the three
mistresses – as indicating what is intended by structure: something not directly apprehendable,
that is, assumed/hypothesized (and then modelled) on the basis of tangible
evidence (material or behavioural) available to direct examination, quite a ‘normal
science’ approach. While Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism accommodates the more representational
matters (the projection of the mental from the material), Althusser lends a
political economy framework for comparative analysis.
This is not to suggest that ‘structuralism’ and‘Marxism’weremerely adjectives added
for stylistic enhancement, but to suggest that the theoretical abstraction associated with
the more grandiose projects of the period, such as that of Hindess and Hirst (1975), did
not necessarily form a key part of ASM. The theoretical departures implied in ASM
certainly had purchase elsewhere in a broader neo-Marxist set of debates, but in
relation to the orthodoxy of structure functionalism, ASM’s shift was a modest upping
of the explanatory stakes.19 ASM posed the question: at what level of analysis is it
possible to discern the internal structures of Non-market Society X while at the same
time specifying the relations according to which that (pre-/non-capitalist society) was
functional with respect to capitalist society (i.e. subordinate to it and/or co-existing
with it). The strong hypothesis was that it was at the level of economic structures/
material provisioning that one could express both the internal dynamic of precapitalism
and the compatibility of pre-capitalism and capitalism. For illustrative
purposes Wolf (1981) pursues this same line of argument (without resorting to the
more familiar ‘modes of production’ vocabulary associated with ASM) in his comparison
of the kin-based, tributary, and capitalist modes of labour mobilization.
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Despite the emphasis on ‘theory’ in much commentary on ASM, the ethnographic
case studies explicitly flagged as ASM tend to be quite straightforward. The transparency
of explanatory goal is well illustrated in the work of Meillassoux (1981), where,
despite O’Laughlin’s (1977) charge – amongst many others – of a defective and ‘fundamental
ambiguity’, Meillassoux proposes a very plausible explanation for the conservation
of a pre-capitalist domestic community in the presence of exploitation
through articulation with capitalism, an explanation very similar to that provided in
Wolpe’s (1972) analysis of ‘tribal homelands’ and South African apartheid.20
The theoretical precision found wanting in Meillassoux notwithstanding,
O’Laughlin’s‘Mediation of contradiction:whyMbumwomen do not eat chicken’ (1974)
is a display of theoretically uncluttered analysis that draws on ASM in the same way as it
draws on amechanical structure functionalism. There is no‘theoretical’ incompatibility
(or inconsistency) as theory functions to aid explanation, not shore up one or the other
antagonistic positions. In her example, structure-functionalist analysis defines the limits
of an atomized systemwithin whichseniors’ control of external trade goodspermits their
maintenance of culturally legitimated power. The inequalities in that system, however,
which ensure the accumulation of surplus by senior males, ensure the flow/exchange of
essential materials necessary to maintain Mbum ‘autonomy’. This approach does not
dissolve the distinctiveness of Mbum society (or derogate structure-functionalist analysis),
but raises interestingnewissues (e.g.does senior male controlof external trade goods
– and the prohibition on women’s consumption of them – constitute exploitation?). Of
central interest is the way inwhich relations of production that characterize local society
articulate with dominant relations of production in adjacent societies.A similarly lucid
example is provided in the work of Kahn (1975; 1981), where the dynamics of subsistence
and petty commodity production within a Sumatran peasant society maintain an
articulated/semi-autonomous relationship with a set of regional/national economic
structures that significantly shape the boundedness of local society.
These kinds of detailed studies, relatively few though they are,21 represent an ASM
grounded as much in ethnographic reality as in modelling ambition, but they tend to
be overshadowed by a theoretical diversion resulting from ASM’s being just a minor
corner of a generalized Western Marxism.What was to some a multi-disciplinary and
somewhat militantly postured convergence could also become a vortex. The enormous
attention granted Hindess and Hirst’s Precapitalist modes of production (1975), for
example, was part of a theoretical extravagance22 in which the concerns of a historical
materialism-informed exploration of uneven development seemed paltry compared to
emergent hyper-theory. In retrospect, much of the work once identifiable as significantly
related to ASM – the literature of espousal and critique of Althusser, to name one
obvious source – now seems quite tangential to durable, anthropological concerns.
Key fieldwork-based studies are cited in Terray’s Marxism and primitive societies
(1972), the most influential volume of early essays. They represent the first significant
French ASM work to be translated and taken up directly in US and UK anthropology.
They also reveal a tension between evolutionist preoccupations and attempts to characterize
‘primitive’ economy rigorously. Additionally, though, they significantly downplay
the connection between the colonial question and extant ‘primitive social
formations’. Terray notes, for example, of the final two chapters of Meillassoux’s
L’anthropologie économique des Gouro (1964), ‘however interesting the chapters in
which Meillassoux studies the colonial period may be, I think they are far less new and
original than his analysis of the traditional economy’ (Terray 1972: 96).23
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It is with regard to the third matter – the colonial context – that two quite different
tendencies – both identified as ASM – become clear. One of these pertains to the
characterization of the anthropological object – a bounded cultural unit/society/tribe
versus something more abstract. Terray, despite a theoretical armoury that seems to
indicate a demolition of traditional anthropological approaches, recapitulates the traditional
object. The second tendency – social change with respect to the primacy of
economic transformation – is less caught up in the definitional swordplay associated
with concerning the exactitude of the definitions and conditions of modes of production,
and more associated with the question of articulation: that is, how do precapitalist
and capitalist relations and societies co-exist?24
One consequence of the awkward forcing of definitional and explanatory tendencies
under a single heading was that purely ‘theoretical’ work seemed to be far more
voluminous than empirically based work. Additionally, there was some sense in which
economic anthropology approached from a Marxist perspective was regarded as being
implacably ‘economically deterministic’ at the expense of appreciation of ‘culture’, yet
the empirical studies produced ‘under the influence’ (see, e.g., the contributions to
Bloch 1975; Kahn & Llobera 198125) do not actually exhibit this mechanical dependence.
Additionally, the accusation of economic determinism seems particularly disingenuous
in an era of ascendant neoliberalism in which the market prevails and a highly culturalist
anthropology seems to thrive.
While criticism of the shortcomings of other approaches to analysing ‘primitive
economy’ was often excoriating (e.g. Godelier 1972), harsh criticism was reserved for
internecine battles and much of the most revealing work in and around ASM paid little
heed to Marxist credentialism. The influential contributions contained in Bloch’s
(1975) and Kahn and Llobera’s (1981) volumes represent examples of all three of the
tendencies flagged in Terray’s (1972), as well as strong indications of how the explanatory
horizon could be extended. The work of Kahn (1975) and Friedman (1975) in
particular invoked a globalist perspective that decisively pushed the object of anthropological
analysis outside of a debate confined to ‘the local-level’ system and regulated
by the obedient theoretical vocabulary of the kind of empiricism associated with
British structure functionalism.
An optimistic stocktaking was offered in Kahn and Llobera’s (1981) collection, and
ASM seemed to be a strong candidate for combining the advances in synchronic
analysis (which borrowed from structure functionalism, structuralism, and systems
theory26) and analysis over time (longue durée as well as ‘the history of events’, à la
Braudel). The prospect of a maturing ASM in which theoretical advance – which is to
say, refinement of an explanatory agenda – proceeded with a systematic realignment
with the results of the growing body of ethnographic material was short-lived. Instead,
ASM came to be treated as a complex, hyphenate-reject, seemingly a product of a folk
chemistry specializing in the combination of such elements as ‘French’, ‘structure
functionalist’, ‘neo-Marxist’, and ‘structuralist’, and – depending on combination and
context – a perplexing mix of approbation and derogation.
Far from offering a substantial and authoritative link between the anthropology of
pre-capitalist societies and the anthropology of societies-of-various-relationshipswith-
capitalism, the legacy of ASM reflected in Spencer’s ‘Marxism and anthropology’
(1996) and Eriksen and Nielsen’s A history of anthropology (2001) – to cite two critical,
but not wholly unsympathetic accounts – seems quite faint. Spencer notes of ASM and
the attempt to engage class analysis at the local and global levels that ‘[t]hese were
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important issues for any understanding of the modern world (Wolf [1982] provides a
skilful and judicious synthesis of this work), yet the results were oddly unimpressive’
(1996: 353). He continues:
In short, structuralMarxism was threatened by two opposing possibilities: asMarxism it was relatively
indifferent to issues of ethnography and culture and thus was not particularly anthropological; or, in
the hands of ethnographers like Godelier and Maurice Bloch, it did become more obviously cultural,
but looked less and less convincingly Marxist (1996: 353).
Eriksen and Nielsen, who cite Spencer’s ‘neither-one-nor-the-other’ judgement, add
that ‘[t]he fundamental problem with Marxism in anthropology was, and is, that it is
essentially a theory of capitalist society, and that its message about “pre-capitalist
societies” was couched in the language of unilineal evolutionism’ (2001: 116).
Questions of the acuity of these particular judgements aside, it is hard to dispute
Eriksen and Nielsen’s observation of Kahn and Llobera’s optimistic 1981 overview that
ASM‘had already fizzled out as a cohesive trend when the review article was eventually
published’ (2001: 116).
None of these retrospective criticisms, however, is quite convincing in accounting
for the discrepancy between the intensity of interest in the novel aspects of ASM,
however short-lived, and the diffidence of critical commentary shortly thereafter. The
‘oddly unimpressive’ assessment of the legacy of ASM as well as the suggestion that the
failing of ASM was due to its being couched in the ‘language of unilineal evolutionism’
hint at some lack of fit between promise and realization, but this judgement seems to
be based on the appropriateness of labels rather than explanatory adequacy. In the
course of his discussion of Morgan, Terray certainly invokes a stage-ist Marxism, but it
is difficult to see in the protracted debates about modes of production and articulation
(see Foster-Carter 1979) that evolutionist discussion continues to command much of a
position in the overall ASM profile. Similarly, a doctrinaire isolation of ‘Marxism’ and
‘the cultural’ is not so easily recognizable a failing in a literature that seems preoccupied
precisely with the evaluation of the nature of reciprocal relations between economic
and non-economic structures. In sum, the post mortems offered by Spencer and
Eriksen/Nielsen acknowledge the ideological package of ASM far more than they do the
substantive impulse and potential as an advance on existing anthropological theories of
social change, either at the level of the sub-field of economic anthropology or more
generally at the level of socio-cultural anthropology within a holistic framework.
Demise and partial demise
Whether ASM was a logical successor to functionalism or an unwieldy and unsustainable
union of ‘Marxism’ and ‘culture’, its influence was short-lived. For Mintz the fact
that such a development took place at all is surprising. He writes that: ‘If much of the
so-calledMarxist debate seems remote from contemporary social realities – as much of
it is – then in no discipline may its presence seem less probable than in North American
anthropology’ (Mintz, Godelier, Trigger & Hoijer 1984: 12). His explanation for this
improbability applies as well to the UK, for both US and British anthropology cultivated
ahistorical or non-historical positions, with the US projecting its contemporary
Indian natives into the past in order to avoid dealing with them in the present while the
British carefully analysed their colonial natives’ present and regarded them as being
without history, without a past (Mintz et al. 1984: 15). By this reckoning, the last thing
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either anthropological tradition needed was a theory of social change that disrupted
these versions of the ‘ethnographic present’.
Mintz acknowledges Firth’s (1975) attempt to explain the reasons behind the
seeming improbability of British anthropology’s paying any attention to Marxism,
these being: (1) a broadening of anthropological interest to work through other major
sociological figures; (2) a failure of current theory to explain changes in anthropological
material; and (3) a questioning of established institutions and values (i.e. a secular
not an anthropological factor) (Mintz et al. 1984: 17, citing Firth 1975: 42). He goes on
to add an additional four elements of explanation: (1) recognition that the gulf between
‘primitive’ and ‘civilized’ was not perhaps as broad as once thought (and perhaps never
existed at all); (2) realization that to characterize the anthropological subject as ‘savage’
in any sense was misplaced; (3) awareness that the 500 years of the capitalist world
system represented a ‘qualitatively different experience for humankind’; and (4)
acknowledgement of the possibility that anthropological techniques could in fact be
applicable in big, complex societies (Mintz et al. 1984: 17-18).27 The emphasis in this list
is on the degree of fit between explanation and the world as encountered anthropologically
and it was a perception of explanatory shortcoming in anthropology that
made a Marxist approach relevant. The ‘so-called Marxist debates’ are a distraction
(Mintz et al. 1984: 12).28
If the emergence of a Marxist anthropology was improbable, its demise was less
surprising, but its demise was not complete, and this incompleteness hints at a crucial
distinction between theory-by-way-of-explanation and theory-by-way-of-identity.
While ASM, for example, waned in part because of particular, negative readings of its
associations and affinities with structuralism and Marxism, other structuralist29 and
Marxist associations have acquired a degree of respectability and acceptance in various
post-structuralist, semiotic, and literary tendencies well represented in contemporary
anthropological discourse. Even if class- and economically orientated Marxism is
regarded as retrograde, indicative of what some dismiss as folk tales, exhausted master
narratives of social theory (see Tyler 1987), the Marxism of identity/cultural politics is
viable.30
Conclusion
Although ASM is generally perceived as passé, the kinds of things it sought to explain
have neither disappeared magically behind the punditry of ‘globalization’ nor have
earlier ASM analyses of the durability and variety of uneven development been convincingly
superseded by superior explanations.31 Instead, what ASM set out to achieve
may simply have proved too difficult and unwieldy: individualistic, fieldwork-based
analyses of the global encounters among the diverse shadows of pre-capitalism and
capitalism.32 Where it failed was not so much in its theoretical ambitions, but in its
power and relevance to the current cultural landscape, able neither to challenge the
managerial systems of modernization nor to persuade by the power of argument and
fact. This does not negate the ambition of a ‘critical anthropology’ as a social science,
but does render it marginalized.
An associated effect of this marginalization, and one evident in the culturalist swing
in anthropology since the 1980s, is that the effective scope of anthropology is increasingly
seen to lie within a humanities rather than social-scientific tendency. There is a
possibly instructive analogy with the circumstances of sociology as described by
Burawoy, who notes in the case of that discipline that regardless of the potency of
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arguments for and against the pursuit of unified-field andmulti-disciplinary strategies,
the struggle still remains situated ‘in the abiding foundations of the societies that
created them. Thus, to wish them away is to indulge in utopian fantasy’ (2005: 518).
A quite different evaluation bears the weight of opinion in many current overviews
of the state of anthropological theory.Here the tendency is towards modifying, perhaps
to the point of severing, connections with its epistemological roots, ones shared with
sociology. In an indicative piece, Yanagisako, for example, writes:
In sociocultural anthropology, the innovative theoretical and methodological developments of the
past quarter century – including reflexive, feminist, poststructuralist, postcolonial, and transnational
approaches to culture – were not generated by competition between cultural anthropology and other
fields in the discipline; nor were they stimulated by competition with evolutionary approaches to
culture. Rather, they were incited by the growing dissatisfaction of sociocultural anthropologists with
prevailing forms of cultural theory, including structural-functionalist, economic determinist, psychological,
cognitive and androcentric approaches. This dissatisfaction led us to look beyond the boundaries
of the discipline to scholarship in the humanities and other social sciences (2005: 95-6).
Many of the positively evaluated adjectives cited in the passage above, portrayed as
part of an internal conversation in anthropology, were also characteristic of other
tendencies in the field, ASM included, but it remains a matter of debate whether the
critical posture ‘socio-cultural anthropology’ is better served by a narrowed reading
‘cultural theory’. That ASM now commands little attention may in the end – and
ironically – have less to do with the stigma of itsMarxist (and structuralist) associations
than with its fidelity to a conception of the social sciences that continues to acknowledge
the conditions of the societies in which they were created, a contradictory, and not
necessarily conciliatory, space of a ‘disciplinary knowledge’.
NOTES
I would like to thank several anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. Earlier versions benefited
from the comments of Stephan Feuchtwang, Jonathan Friedman, Keith Hart, Joel Kahn,Mike Rowlands, and
Mitch Sedgwick, to whom many thanks.
1 Ortner’s (1984) celebrated article expresses a notion of ‘theory’ that captures an agency + structuremodel
that is – broadly – uncontroversial in socio-cultural anthropology. Attempts to disaggregate the terms are
generally resisted, as in Ingold (2000), for example, and Segal & Yanigasako (2005).
2 Wolf observes that it is now difficult to teach anthropology of the former sort in as much as: ‘It used to
be that we taught our students about the people out there. Now the very same people sit in my classroom
[and] explain the virtues of various medicines and the physical power of witchcraft’ (Friedman 1987: 117).
3 The ‘rationality debate’ provides instructive examples (see Wilson 1970).
4 The genre of ‘reflexive anthropology’ has emerged to accommodate this self-consciousness.
5 The ‘ethnographic present’, for example, often has mystifying effects when extended into the ‘actual
present’.
6 ASM is broadly defined. Here it includes both a UK tendency directly shaped by French influences (and
with very Althusserian overtones) and a US tendency with different Marxist sources and much less structuralist
affiliation. Although Marxism has different histories in the two national traditions (see Mintz et al.
1984),ASM is represented in the simultaneous critique of both fields as exemplified in Asad (1974) andHymes
(1969).
7 Ironically, it is precisely Marx and Engel’s acknowledgment of holism/interdependence of institutions –
prior to the emergence of modern anthropology – that provides such a fundamental link between Marxism
and anthropology (see discussion in Bloch 1985: 94).
8 Sperber (1985: 60-3) makes a similar point in his critique of relativism.
9 See Bloch (1985) and Wessman (1981), as well as Vincent’s (1985) review of same.
10 See Firth (1975) for a UK ‘institutional’ view. The papers in Hymes (1969) and Asad (1974) provide a
thorough overview.
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11 See Scholte (1987) for a critical overview.
12 Sometimes ‘non-market’ is a synonym.
13 Hence, for example, substantivist approaches continue to provide much insight into hidden forms of
domestic labour – even in late capitalist settings – whereas formalism does not.
14 The emphasis is on the new modernizationist programme, exemplified by the wide influence of neoliberalism.
Another one had been going on for 500 years, globalization theory notwithstanding.
15 A ‘task’ still referred back to the ambitions and influences of the founding figures Boas and Malinowski,
hardly figures immune to criticism – often damning – but also figures whose successors never managed to
supplant them, however frequent the father-killing exercises.
16 Even if early on it was recognized that the boundedness of such systems was frequently itself an artefact
of investigation.
17 This – the ‘testing’ of historical materialism on new empirical material – is made abundantly clear in
Terray’s (1972) early discussions, but he also displays what was to become a typical, and destructive, preoccupation
with ‘correct reading’ of canonical texts. Outside the fog of ‘correct reading’, claims that Marxist
analysis applies only to capitalism imply (1) that a capitalist/non-capitalist interface is beyond analysis and/or
(2) that such an analysis cannot be retrospective, such that, by analogy, the appearance of a new species (or
previously thought extinct species) would not be appropriate material for biological analysis.
18 Wallerstein (1974) proposes a different resolution, namely that what the analysis of articulation hints at is
the unsuitability of the units of analysis (‘societies’),the better unit of analysis being the global capitalist system.
19 In crucial respects the key question raised by ASM with regard to pre-capitalism within capitalism may
be seen as a slightly more emphatic statement of the comparativist goal of structure-functionalist explanation,
but going further in seeking to expose a logic of a kind of social reproduction that is apparent in the
ethnographic and historical record, namely the co-existence of pre-capitalist and capitalist types of societies.
20 What O’Laughlin seems to object to is not the explanation somuch as the lack of theoretical consistency:
how, she asks, can Meillassoux be correct in his analysis if he inadvertently displays an ‘underlying pattern of
evolutionist thought in his work’? (1977: 22) The evolutionist shortcoming is compounded by his alleged
functionalism and empiricism, demonized on the same page.
21 Although geographically diverse, ASM as represented in an area-based framework is probably most
strongly represented in a French colonial African literature focused around the ‘lineage of mode of
production’.
22 See Taylor (1975; 1976) for detailed critique, and reply by Hindess and Hirst (1977). Also see Rod Aya’s
review (1976).
23 It is this work of Meillassoux that forms the subject of the second half of Terray (1972).
24 In the US tradition represented byWolf and Mintz, the issue of articulation is treated differently and is
not the novelty it is in a European context, perhaps – as Mintz (Mintz et al. 1984) implies – because of the
different character of the US ‘colonials’ (internal: Indians).
25 The same holds for such US collections as Littlefield & Gates (1991).
26 Both Lévi-Strauss and Godelier drew on Saussurean and computational notions of ‘system’.
27 In this, Mintz turns the table on Terray (and certain critics of Marxist anthropology), by asking not if
historical materialism worked on the primitive, but whether anthropology worked on the non-primitive.
28 A distraction which, in Friedman (1987: 133), led to ‘self-destruction’.
29 Maurice Henry’s classic cartoon of founding-figure structuralists depicts a fleeting unity.Wearing grass
skirts, Foucault, Lacan, Lévi-Strauss, and Barthes converse beneath a palm tree (La Quinzaine Letteraire, 1 July
1967).
30 This has given rise to the odd designation post-Marxism, indicating a rejection whose authority is
derived in great part precisely from its association with Marxism.
31 For comparative purposes see ‘The persistence of underdevelopment: institutions, human capital, or
constituencies?’ (Rajan & Zingales 2006, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research), in which
the underlying cause of underdevelopment is attributed to the ‘initial distribution of factor endowments’,
even though conceding that this distribution may well be ‘a legacy of the colonial past’.
32 Among the other liabilities: preponderance of qualitative rather than quantitative methods; long training
times; extended time in the field; small size and poor funding in relation to other social sciences; advocacy
of interests of others; etc.
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Besteman, C. & H. Gusterman 2005. Why America’s top pundits are wrong: anthropologists talk back
(California Series in Public Anthropology 13). Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Bloch, M. (ed.) 1975. Marxist analyses and social anthropology. London: Malaby Press.
——— 1985. Marxism and anthropology: the history of a relationship. Oxford: University Press.
Burawoy, M. 2005. Provincializing the social sciences. In The politics of method in the human sciences:
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Clifford, J. & G. Marcus (eds) 1986. Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography, Berkeley:
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Eriksen, T.H. & F.S. Nielsen 2001. A history of anthropology. London: Pluto Press.
Firth, R. 1975. The sceptical anthropologist? Social anthropology and Marxist views on society. In Marxist
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Friedman, J. 1975. Tribes, states and transformations. In Marxist analyses and social anthropology (ed.)
M. Bloch, 161-202. London: Malaby Press.
——— 1987. An interview with Eric Wolf. Current Anthropology 28, 107-18.
Godelier, M. 1972. Rationality and irrationality in economics. London: New Left Books.
Hindess, B. & P. Hirst 1975. Precapitalist modes of production. London: Routledge.
———1977.Mode of production and social formation in Pre-capitalist modes of production: a reply to John
Taylor. Critique of Anthropology 8: 2, 49-58.
Hymes, D. (ed.) 1969. Reinventing anthropology. New York: Pantheon.
Ingold, T. 2000. The perception of the environment: essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge.
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——— & J. Llobera 1981. Towards a new Marxism or a new anthropology. In The anthropology of
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Le´vi-Strauss, C. 1961. Tristes tropiques (trans. J. & D.Weightman). London: Hutchinson.
Littlefield, A. & H. Gates (eds) 1991. Marxist approaches in economic anthropology. Lanham, Md.:
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Meillassoux, C. 1964. L’anthropologie économique des Gourou de Côte d’Ivoire. Paris: Mouton.
——— 1981. Maidens, meal and money (trans. F. Edholm). Cambridge: University Press.
Mintz, S., M. Godelier, B. Trigger & H. Hoijer 1984. On Marxian perspectives in anthropology: essays in
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O’Laughlin, B. 1974.Mediation of contradiction: why Mbum women do not eat chicken. InWomen, culture
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Ortner, S. 1984. Theory of anthropology since the sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and History 26,
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Sacks, K. 1979. Sisters and wives: the past and future of sexual equality. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
Sahlins, M. 1972. Stone Age economics. Chicago: Aldine.
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——— 1976. Pre-capitalist modes of production, Pt. II. Critique of Anthropology 6: 2, 56-69.
Terray, E. 1972. Marxism and primitive societies. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Tyler, S. 1987. Stil rayting. Critique of Anthropology 7: 1, 49-51.
Vincent, J. 1985. Anthropology and Marxism: past and present (review). American Ethnologist 12:1, 137-47.
Wallerstein, I. 1974. The modern world system. New York: Academic Press.
Wessman, J. 1981. Anthropology and Marxism. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Publishing.
Wilson, B. (ed.) 1970. Rationality. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wolf, E. 1981. The mills of inequality: a Marxian approach. In Social inequality: comparative and developmental
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——— 1982. Europe and the people without history. Berkeley: University of California Press.
——— 1994. Demonization of anthropologists in the Amazon. Anthropology Newsletter, Mar., 2.
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Yanagisako, S.J. 2005. Flexible disciplinarity: beyond the Americanist tradition. In Unwrapping the sacred
bundle: reflections on the disciplining of anthropology (eds) D. Segal & S. Yanagisako, 78-98. Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press.
Quelques réflexions sur le marxisme structurel en anthropologie
Résumé
Le principal sujet de cette discussion est la brève carrière du marxisme structuraliste en anthropologie et
la possibilité qu’il soit, malgré tout, encore pertinent. Ce problème se situe dans une autre problématique
plus générale : sur quelle base les théories explicatives sont-elles adoptées et rejetées en anthropologie ? La
discussion du marxisme structuraliste s’inscrit dans les débats récents sur l’opportunité des associations
traditionnelles de l’anthropologie socioculturelle avec d’autres sous-domaines de l’anthropologie. L’auteur
avance que l’isolement des sous-domaines est une régression au niveau de la théorie.
Stephen Nugent teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London and the Institute for the
Study of the Americas.He has published on ethnohistory and peasant economy in the Brazilian Amazon and
is currently director of the Centre for Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths.
Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, UK.
ana01sln@gold.ac.uk
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anthropological structural
Marxism
Stephen Nugent Goldsmiths College, University of London
The primary topic in this discussion is the brief career of anthropological structural Marxism and the
possibility of its continued relevance. That issue is framed by a more general one: on what basis are
explanatory theories adopted and discarded in anthropology? The discussion of structural Marxism
is framed within recent debates about the desirability of socio-cultural anthropology’s traditional
associations with other sub-fields of anthropology, and it is argued that the isolation of sub-fields is
a regressive theoretical move.
Introduction: explanation and holism
Debates about ‘theory’ in anthropology are typically unresolved, often acrimonious,
and frequently conducted through the wielding of symbolic power rather than prosaic
evidence. In part, the function of and attitudes towards ‘theory’ flow from the problematic
status of ‘ethnography’, at one and the same time a narrative rendering of
empirical material and also a package of material bound by often implicit assumptions
about causality, logical fit, and intrinsic coherence. Another source of the disputatious
character of ‘theory’1 may not be as mysterious as a fetishized ‘ethnography’: the
attempt to maintain alliances with both of what C.P. Snow (1993 [1959]) famously
depicted as the ‘two cultures’ – those of the sciences and of the humanities – such that
anthropology self-consciously balances universalizing and relativizing tendencies.
Recent efforts to resolve this tension/ambiguity by declaring the ‘interpretative’
versus ‘scientific’ détente finished (see contributions to Segal & Yanagisako 2005)
depend primarily on a re-definition of the anthropological division of labour with one
camp assembled around the ‘crisis of representation’ and the other around ‘evolutionary
psychology’ (to cite ideal-type demonizations). This re-definition of the field,
however, does not erase or resolve – except by exclusion – the characteristic, historical
dilemma of an anthropology that has tried to produce social theory that is at once
sufficiently clinical (society/culture as an object of analysis) to be able to historicize
culture and, simultaneously, sufficiently acknowledging of the subjectivity of ‘cultural
difference’.2
One of the issues highlighted in anthropology’s ‘two cultures’ conflict – the sustained
uncertainty about the relative weights of the universalizing and relativizing
tendencies of anthropology – has been the variable character of the criteria used to
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decide whether an explanation is strong or weak.3 This disposition is often revealed in
the way ‘theory’ appears so commonly as a label of total affiliation rather than a
working premise, some aspects of which may be retained, others discarded as they lose
explanatory value.A revealing structure-functionalist account of the internal dynamics
of a social system, for example, may offer little insight into processual change, but that
failing indicates the limits of explanatory power, not a generic, ‘theoretical’ inadequacy.
The nominalist character of much ‘theory’ in anthropology underpins the strong
tendency for demonization in the field (see Wolf 1994).
A related issue concerns an eclectic ‘standard’ literature that tends to be cumulative
rather than successional.A new study typically adds to the literature without displacing
antecedent explanations. The history of the development of the field, firmly embedded
in the primary literature itself, may provide a sense of continual re-evaluation,
re-orientation, and re-calibration of the explanatory dimensions of the field,4 but it
may also produce a miasma.5 The ‘theory’ that has maintained a grip over the disparate
elements that comprise anthropological holism is less paradigmatic than episodic.
Areas in which successional explanation rather than interpretation is to the fore may be
only awkwardly accommodated (if at all) within certain holistic views, but are more
often demonized as ‘positivistic’ or simply regarded as belonging largely outside
anthropology.
The decline of anthropological structural Marxism (hereafter ASM)6 may be an
example of an explanatory theory being sidelined not as a weak theory, but as the
wrong kind of theory, ‘wrong’ in the sense that it challenges a prevailing interpretative
holism. Its explanations do not just amount to new additions to the literature, but they
supersede other explanations in a way that stretches some aspects of anthropological
holism intolerably. There is, for example, a holism in functionalist claims about the
interdependence of structures of kinship, politics, and economics that may be descriptively
adequate, but which retains little more than metaphoric power in the face of
accounts of social change requiring specification of causal factors.7 It is one thing to
engage holism for the purpose of accounting for the complex interdependence of many
dimensions of sociality, but another to demand that causal explanation always seek
calibration through holism.8
Although there has been a long historical relationship between anthropology and
Marxism,9 an overt anthropological drawing on the work of Marx and Engels (rather
than ‘official’ Marxism) became a notable feature of anthropological discourse in the
1960s. Vincent (1985: 137) notes that most of the entries in the bibliography of
Wessman’s Anthropology and Marxism (1981), for example, are post-1968, and fully half
date from the narrow period 1973-8. Previous Marxist tendencies in the field, as in the
work of Leslie White and his associates (Price 2004), effectively censored in a McCarthyite
climate, were idiomatically materialist and evolutionist, but the successor
tendency was clearly allied with a New Left/Western Marxist revisionism. A hybrid
anthropological structural Marxism was concerned with multiple forms of determination
and power, not just economic ones. It was as much globally orientated as it was
focused on the extremely local and it accommodated the scale of dependency theory as
well as that of the detailed, village-level study. Additionally, it located modern (i.e.
post-Victorian, Malinowskian/Boasian) anthropological preoccupations (such as the
interrelations of kin-groups and political power) in a long-term historical framework
such that, for example, Sacks’s (1979) analysis of Engels had direct relevance for the
study of domestic labour in late capitalism.
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ASM’s explanatory advance on functionalist orthodoxy occurred in a nested
context: at one level a particular expression of a more general critique of the discipline
occurring in the 1960s;10 at a higher level an expression of a field still comfortable as a
socio-historical discipline rather than in thrall to the humanities.With the general shift
of the field towards the literary-hermeneutic – symbolically benchmarked by the publication
of Writing culture (Clifford & Marcus 1986)11 – and refinement of what was
‘anthropologically holistic’ (vigorously outlined in Segal & Yanagisako 2005), the particular
and subtle qualities of the ASM critique were enveloped.At a further level, while
the literary turn seemed to enlarge the anthropological remit through an emphasis on
multi-disciplinarity, it had as a corollary the tendency for the more scientific (or
scientistic) tendencies to be identified with the cognates of particular sub-fields –
economics, evolutionism, politics, psychology – and in some respects become lost to
the new mainstream in anthropology.
Even if the predominant tendency within the field has been to reconfigure anthropological
holism in a manner openly sceptical of the virtues of scientific affiliations, the
rationale for anthropology’s cultural authority as ‘best-informed interlocutor’ (against
challenges to that status from NGOs, development/area studies, ‘the tourist experience’,
travel writing, and the like) still rests on a science-like and realist disposition (see, e.g.,
Besteman & Gusterman 2005). In key respects, the now largely discarded intervention
of ASM may be seen as a crucial statement of a different kind of holistic anthropology
from that which now asserts itself: that is to say, one more concerned with theoretical
adequacy than theoretical propriety.
Economic anthropology
ASM emerged under the influence of several sources, one of which was an orthodox
anthropological conception of a generic pre-modern, tribal economy in which – in
idealized form – a division of labour was primarily shaped only by factors of gender
and age. Economic anthropology emerged forcefully as a sub-disciplinary specialty in
the context of the geo-political restructuring that followed the conclusion to the
SecondWorldWar, and the dominant theoretical discussions largely turned around the
substantivist-formalist distinction. While ‘economic anthropology’ in one reading
meant ‘economics in a tribal/peasant setting’, it also retained the strong notion of
embeddedness, that is, the expression of economic logic through an array or filter of
social relations (e.g. of kinship and politics), a non-autonomous12 economy along lines
indicated by Polanyi (1944) and particularly well known through Sahlins (1972).
The substantivist-formalist debate, however, was in crucial respects at crosspurposes.
At one extreme, formalists who insisted on a market definition of economic
rationality had little to say about non-market economies, except that they were typically
irrational.At the other, substantivists who insisted that economic logic was always
subordinate to diverse culture-logics undermined the prospect of a generalizable
notion of the economic. Each approach actually concerns a very a different kind of
economic target,with – roughly – substantivism being concerned with the structures of
material provisioning regardless of how they are culturally expressed, formalism being
concerned only with structures of material provisioning expressed in prices.13 The
point about confusion of targets is strongly made by Godelier (1972: xxviii) in his
comments on the contradictory advice provided in Notes and queries on anthropology
(Royal Anthropological Institution of Great Britain and Ireland 1960), wherein fieldresearchers
were instructed both to reject and respect ‘ordinary’ economics.
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Another significant influence on the emergence of ASM was the new global expression
of economic formalism through the perspective of a modernization theory that
projected a crude form of economic evolutionism onto the anthropological landscape.
From an anthropological vantage-point, the diversity of anthropological subject societies
(whether codified as tribes, peoples, nations, or races) as well as the diversity of
links that such societies had with larger systems was hardly comfortably expressed by
modernizationist prescriptions. Within the new context and framework offered
by modernization theory – realized in more explicit form with the hegemony of
neoliberalism in the 1980s – the formalist position became an expression of applied
anthropology, and substantivism represented a kind of truculent romanticization of
pre-capitalism. Despite the fact that ‘economic anthropology’ appeared to provide a
richly textured alternative to a monocausal-tending and reductionist modernization
theory, the incommensurability of formalist and substantivist positions with respect to
synthesizing an adequate alternative theory was marked. In a sense, neither provided a
theory adequate to account for what was happening in an anthropological world beset
by a new modernizationist programme,14 yet each contained elements that might be
conjoined in an appropriate synthesis via ASM which – labelled as such, or as political
economy or Marxist anthropology – tried to fuse functionalist and historical accounts.
A new anthropological landscape
The early task of the modern anthropological project was to document and model
extant socio-cultural systems.15 A derived project was the analysis of the institutions
that regulated these apparently self-reproducing systems.16 That ‘investigation of regulation’
project was conducted under a number of sub-field headings (e.g. symbolic
anthropology, structure functionalism, environmental determinism, culture and personality,
etc.), and although there was acknowledged secular change in privileging
certain factors or elements – and hence kinds of tendencies in explanation – the
suggestion that the practice of anthropology itself was shaped by the mode of its own
insertion in the modern world was treated as highly provocative. Both the collections
by Hymes (1969) and by Asad (1974) contained arguments to the effect that although
the subjects and subject matter of anthropology may, in some senses and cases, seem to
be ‘outside of history’, the relationship between anthropology and its subjects certainly
was not. The arguments contained in these two influential volumes were widely
regarded as transgressive, if not scandalous, but it was impossible for critics to refute
the evident systematicity of certain relationships between, for example, national
schools of anthropology and their preferred subjects.Was Dutch expertise in Southeast
Asia a reflection of a natural affinity?WereNorth, Central, and South American peoples
particularly alluring to North American anthropologists? Did Africa and Asia fall under
the gaze of UK anthropology by chance? These associations, of course, were not those
that were directly challenged; rather, the defensive emphasis was placed on the constructions
attributed to those who modestly pointed out that anthropological practice
tended not to be reciprocal (no Inuits doing fieldwork in Shaker Heights, no Dinka in
Peckham) and that political subjectivity tended to be a precondition of anthropological
subjectivity.
ASM emerged in the context of a strongly revised geo-political landscape as the shift
from what is glossed here as the colonial-to-the-neo-colonial was consolidated. The
expected economic depression following the Second World War had not transpired,
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and the immediate post-war years showed an intensification of unsubtle transformation
of pre-capitalist and marginal capitalist societies, the fields of anthropological
inquiry.
Sources of revision
The theoretical borrowings from Marx in ASM tended to be of a non-dogmatic type,
sometimes labelled ‘neo-Marxist’, not the caricature of formulaic application of ‘theory’
– an all-purpose template of historical materialism – but a projection of a series of
hypothetical explanations. In view of the shortage of empirical anthropological material
at the time when Marx and Engels were preparing their theories, the only way to
‘apply’ their theories to such ethnographic material as subsequently emerged was
speculatively/hypothetically. The issue central to ASM’s credibility was not ‘how good
its Marxism was’, but how good the emergent explanations were.17 ASM directly confronted
the insistence thatMarxism is relevant only to the analysis of capitalist societies
by focusing on the dynamics of articulation between pre-capitalism and capitalism,
and less on strict, timelessly valid definitions of those categories themselves.18
‘Structuralism’ also has a qualified and nuanced relationship to ASM, although for
reasons different from those that apply to theMarxist relationship. Structuralism has so
many affinities with incommensurable claimants that a generic definition is impossible.
The versions of structuralism most pertinent to the anthropology of the time are
those associated with Lévi-Strauss and Althusser, but it is the fact that ASM is seen to
draw generally fromthe milieu of structuralism rather than any particular ‘structuralist
authority’ that proves troublesome.
It is Lévi-Strauss’s (1961: 60-1) rather old-fashioned, elementary sociology depiction
which seems most apposite, that is, his allusion toMarx, Freud, and geology – the three
mistresses – as indicating what is intended by structure: something not directly apprehendable,
that is, assumed/hypothesized (and then modelled) on the basis of tangible
evidence (material or behavioural) available to direct examination, quite a ‘normal
science’ approach. While Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism accommodates the more representational
matters (the projection of the mental from the material), Althusser lends a
political economy framework for comparative analysis.
This is not to suggest that ‘structuralism’ and‘Marxism’weremerely adjectives added
for stylistic enhancement, but to suggest that the theoretical abstraction associated with
the more grandiose projects of the period, such as that of Hindess and Hirst (1975), did
not necessarily form a key part of ASM. The theoretical departures implied in ASM
certainly had purchase elsewhere in a broader neo-Marxist set of debates, but in
relation to the orthodoxy of structure functionalism, ASM’s shift was a modest upping
of the explanatory stakes.19 ASM posed the question: at what level of analysis is it
possible to discern the internal structures of Non-market Society X while at the same
time specifying the relations according to which that (pre-/non-capitalist society) was
functional with respect to capitalist society (i.e. subordinate to it and/or co-existing
with it). The strong hypothesis was that it was at the level of economic structures/
material provisioning that one could express both the internal dynamic of precapitalism
and the compatibility of pre-capitalism and capitalism. For illustrative
purposes Wolf (1981) pursues this same line of argument (without resorting to the
more familiar ‘modes of production’ vocabulary associated with ASM) in his comparison
of the kin-based, tributary, and capitalist modes of labour mobilization.
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Despite the emphasis on ‘theory’ in much commentary on ASM, the ethnographic
case studies explicitly flagged as ASM tend to be quite straightforward. The transparency
of explanatory goal is well illustrated in the work of Meillassoux (1981), where,
despite O’Laughlin’s (1977) charge – amongst many others – of a defective and ‘fundamental
ambiguity’, Meillassoux proposes a very plausible explanation for the conservation
of a pre-capitalist domestic community in the presence of exploitation
through articulation with capitalism, an explanation very similar to that provided in
Wolpe’s (1972) analysis of ‘tribal homelands’ and South African apartheid.20
The theoretical precision found wanting in Meillassoux notwithstanding,
O’Laughlin’s‘Mediation of contradiction:whyMbumwomen do not eat chicken’ (1974)
is a display of theoretically uncluttered analysis that draws on ASM in the same way as it
draws on amechanical structure functionalism. There is no‘theoretical’ incompatibility
(or inconsistency) as theory functions to aid explanation, not shore up one or the other
antagonistic positions. In her example, structure-functionalist analysis defines the limits
of an atomized systemwithin whichseniors’ control of external trade goodspermits their
maintenance of culturally legitimated power. The inequalities in that system, however,
which ensure the accumulation of surplus by senior males, ensure the flow/exchange of
essential materials necessary to maintain Mbum ‘autonomy’. This approach does not
dissolve the distinctiveness of Mbum society (or derogate structure-functionalist analysis),
but raises interestingnewissues (e.g.does senior male controlof external trade goods
– and the prohibition on women’s consumption of them – constitute exploitation?). Of
central interest is the way inwhich relations of production that characterize local society
articulate with dominant relations of production in adjacent societies.A similarly lucid
example is provided in the work of Kahn (1975; 1981), where the dynamics of subsistence
and petty commodity production within a Sumatran peasant society maintain an
articulated/semi-autonomous relationship with a set of regional/national economic
structures that significantly shape the boundedness of local society.
These kinds of detailed studies, relatively few though they are,21 represent an ASM
grounded as much in ethnographic reality as in modelling ambition, but they tend to
be overshadowed by a theoretical diversion resulting from ASM’s being just a minor
corner of a generalized Western Marxism.What was to some a multi-disciplinary and
somewhat militantly postured convergence could also become a vortex. The enormous
attention granted Hindess and Hirst’s Precapitalist modes of production (1975), for
example, was part of a theoretical extravagance22 in which the concerns of a historical
materialism-informed exploration of uneven development seemed paltry compared to
emergent hyper-theory. In retrospect, much of the work once identifiable as significantly
related to ASM – the literature of espousal and critique of Althusser, to name one
obvious source – now seems quite tangential to durable, anthropological concerns.
Key fieldwork-based studies are cited in Terray’s Marxism and primitive societies
(1972), the most influential volume of early essays. They represent the first significant
French ASM work to be translated and taken up directly in US and UK anthropology.
They also reveal a tension between evolutionist preoccupations and attempts to characterize
‘primitive’ economy rigorously. Additionally, though, they significantly downplay
the connection between the colonial question and extant ‘primitive social
formations’. Terray notes, for example, of the final two chapters of Meillassoux’s
L’anthropologie économique des Gouro (1964), ‘however interesting the chapters in
which Meillassoux studies the colonial period may be, I think they are far less new and
original than his analysis of the traditional economy’ (Terray 1972: 96).23
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It is with regard to the third matter – the colonial context – that two quite different
tendencies – both identified as ASM – become clear. One of these pertains to the
characterization of the anthropological object – a bounded cultural unit/society/tribe
versus something more abstract. Terray, despite a theoretical armoury that seems to
indicate a demolition of traditional anthropological approaches, recapitulates the traditional
object. The second tendency – social change with respect to the primacy of
economic transformation – is less caught up in the definitional swordplay associated
with concerning the exactitude of the definitions and conditions of modes of production,
and more associated with the question of articulation: that is, how do precapitalist
and capitalist relations and societies co-exist?24
One consequence of the awkward forcing of definitional and explanatory tendencies
under a single heading was that purely ‘theoretical’ work seemed to be far more
voluminous than empirically based work. Additionally, there was some sense in which
economic anthropology approached from a Marxist perspective was regarded as being
implacably ‘economically deterministic’ at the expense of appreciation of ‘culture’, yet
the empirical studies produced ‘under the influence’ (see, e.g., the contributions to
Bloch 1975; Kahn & Llobera 198125) do not actually exhibit this mechanical dependence.
Additionally, the accusation of economic determinism seems particularly disingenuous
in an era of ascendant neoliberalism in which the market prevails and a highly culturalist
anthropology seems to thrive.
While criticism of the shortcomings of other approaches to analysing ‘primitive
economy’ was often excoriating (e.g. Godelier 1972), harsh criticism was reserved for
internecine battles and much of the most revealing work in and around ASM paid little
heed to Marxist credentialism. The influential contributions contained in Bloch’s
(1975) and Kahn and Llobera’s (1981) volumes represent examples of all three of the
tendencies flagged in Terray’s (1972), as well as strong indications of how the explanatory
horizon could be extended. The work of Kahn (1975) and Friedman (1975) in
particular invoked a globalist perspective that decisively pushed the object of anthropological
analysis outside of a debate confined to ‘the local-level’ system and regulated
by the obedient theoretical vocabulary of the kind of empiricism associated with
British structure functionalism.
An optimistic stocktaking was offered in Kahn and Llobera’s (1981) collection, and
ASM seemed to be a strong candidate for combining the advances in synchronic
analysis (which borrowed from structure functionalism, structuralism, and systems
theory26) and analysis over time (longue durée as well as ‘the history of events’, à la
Braudel). The prospect of a maturing ASM in which theoretical advance – which is to
say, refinement of an explanatory agenda – proceeded with a systematic realignment
with the results of the growing body of ethnographic material was short-lived. Instead,
ASM came to be treated as a complex, hyphenate-reject, seemingly a product of a folk
chemistry specializing in the combination of such elements as ‘French’, ‘structure
functionalist’, ‘neo-Marxist’, and ‘structuralist’, and – depending on combination and
context – a perplexing mix of approbation and derogation.
Far from offering a substantial and authoritative link between the anthropology of
pre-capitalist societies and the anthropology of societies-of-various-relationshipswith-
capitalism, the legacy of ASM reflected in Spencer’s ‘Marxism and anthropology’
(1996) and Eriksen and Nielsen’s A history of anthropology (2001) – to cite two critical,
but not wholly unsympathetic accounts – seems quite faint. Spencer notes of ASM and
the attempt to engage class analysis at the local and global levels that ‘[t]hese were
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important issues for any understanding of the modern world (Wolf [1982] provides a
skilful and judicious synthesis of this work), yet the results were oddly unimpressive’
(1996: 353). He continues:
In short, structuralMarxism was threatened by two opposing possibilities: asMarxism it was relatively
indifferent to issues of ethnography and culture and thus was not particularly anthropological; or, in
the hands of ethnographers like Godelier and Maurice Bloch, it did become more obviously cultural,
but looked less and less convincingly Marxist (1996: 353).
Eriksen and Nielsen, who cite Spencer’s ‘neither-one-nor-the-other’ judgement, add
that ‘[t]he fundamental problem with Marxism in anthropology was, and is, that it is
essentially a theory of capitalist society, and that its message about “pre-capitalist
societies” was couched in the language of unilineal evolutionism’ (2001: 116).
Questions of the acuity of these particular judgements aside, it is hard to dispute
Eriksen and Nielsen’s observation of Kahn and Llobera’s optimistic 1981 overview that
ASM‘had already fizzled out as a cohesive trend when the review article was eventually
published’ (2001: 116).
None of these retrospective criticisms, however, is quite convincing in accounting
for the discrepancy between the intensity of interest in the novel aspects of ASM,
however short-lived, and the diffidence of critical commentary shortly thereafter. The
‘oddly unimpressive’ assessment of the legacy of ASM as well as the suggestion that the
failing of ASM was due to its being couched in the ‘language of unilineal evolutionism’
hint at some lack of fit between promise and realization, but this judgement seems to
be based on the appropriateness of labels rather than explanatory adequacy. In the
course of his discussion of Morgan, Terray certainly invokes a stage-ist Marxism, but it
is difficult to see in the protracted debates about modes of production and articulation
(see Foster-Carter 1979) that evolutionist discussion continues to command much of a
position in the overall ASM profile. Similarly, a doctrinaire isolation of ‘Marxism’ and
‘the cultural’ is not so easily recognizable a failing in a literature that seems preoccupied
precisely with the evaluation of the nature of reciprocal relations between economic
and non-economic structures. In sum, the post mortems offered by Spencer and
Eriksen/Nielsen acknowledge the ideological package of ASM far more than they do the
substantive impulse and potential as an advance on existing anthropological theories of
social change, either at the level of the sub-field of economic anthropology or more
generally at the level of socio-cultural anthropology within a holistic framework.
Demise and partial demise
Whether ASM was a logical successor to functionalism or an unwieldy and unsustainable
union of ‘Marxism’ and ‘culture’, its influence was short-lived. For Mintz the fact
that such a development took place at all is surprising. He writes that: ‘If much of the
so-calledMarxist debate seems remote from contemporary social realities – as much of
it is – then in no discipline may its presence seem less probable than in North American
anthropology’ (Mintz, Godelier, Trigger & Hoijer 1984: 12). His explanation for this
improbability applies as well to the UK, for both US and British anthropology cultivated
ahistorical or non-historical positions, with the US projecting its contemporary
Indian natives into the past in order to avoid dealing with them in the present while the
British carefully analysed their colonial natives’ present and regarded them as being
without history, without a past (Mintz et al. 1984: 15). By this reckoning, the last thing
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either anthropological tradition needed was a theory of social change that disrupted
these versions of the ‘ethnographic present’.
Mintz acknowledges Firth’s (1975) attempt to explain the reasons behind the
seeming improbability of British anthropology’s paying any attention to Marxism,
these being: (1) a broadening of anthropological interest to work through other major
sociological figures; (2) a failure of current theory to explain changes in anthropological
material; and (3) a questioning of established institutions and values (i.e. a secular
not an anthropological factor) (Mintz et al. 1984: 17, citing Firth 1975: 42). He goes on
to add an additional four elements of explanation: (1) recognition that the gulf between
‘primitive’ and ‘civilized’ was not perhaps as broad as once thought (and perhaps never
existed at all); (2) realization that to characterize the anthropological subject as ‘savage’
in any sense was misplaced; (3) awareness that the 500 years of the capitalist world
system represented a ‘qualitatively different experience for humankind’; and (4)
acknowledgement of the possibility that anthropological techniques could in fact be
applicable in big, complex societies (Mintz et al. 1984: 17-18).27 The emphasis in this list
is on the degree of fit between explanation and the world as encountered anthropologically
and it was a perception of explanatory shortcoming in anthropology that
made a Marxist approach relevant. The ‘so-called Marxist debates’ are a distraction
(Mintz et al. 1984: 12).28
If the emergence of a Marxist anthropology was improbable, its demise was less
surprising, but its demise was not complete, and this incompleteness hints at a crucial
distinction between theory-by-way-of-explanation and theory-by-way-of-identity.
While ASM, for example, waned in part because of particular, negative readings of its
associations and affinities with structuralism and Marxism, other structuralist29 and
Marxist associations have acquired a degree of respectability and acceptance in various
post-structuralist, semiotic, and literary tendencies well represented in contemporary
anthropological discourse. Even if class- and economically orientated Marxism is
regarded as retrograde, indicative of what some dismiss as folk tales, exhausted master
narratives of social theory (see Tyler 1987), the Marxism of identity/cultural politics is
viable.30
Conclusion
Although ASM is generally perceived as passé, the kinds of things it sought to explain
have neither disappeared magically behind the punditry of ‘globalization’ nor have
earlier ASM analyses of the durability and variety of uneven development been convincingly
superseded by superior explanations.31 Instead, what ASM set out to achieve
may simply have proved too difficult and unwieldy: individualistic, fieldwork-based
analyses of the global encounters among the diverse shadows of pre-capitalism and
capitalism.32 Where it failed was not so much in its theoretical ambitions, but in its
power and relevance to the current cultural landscape, able neither to challenge the
managerial systems of modernization nor to persuade by the power of argument and
fact. This does not negate the ambition of a ‘critical anthropology’ as a social science,
but does render it marginalized.
An associated effect of this marginalization, and one evident in the culturalist swing
in anthropology since the 1980s, is that the effective scope of anthropology is increasingly
seen to lie within a humanities rather than social-scientific tendency. There is a
possibly instructive analogy with the circumstances of sociology as described by
Burawoy, who notes in the case of that discipline that regardless of the potency of
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arguments for and against the pursuit of unified-field andmulti-disciplinary strategies,
the struggle still remains situated ‘in the abiding foundations of the societies that
created them. Thus, to wish them away is to indulge in utopian fantasy’ (2005: 518).
A quite different evaluation bears the weight of opinion in many current overviews
of the state of anthropological theory.Here the tendency is towards modifying, perhaps
to the point of severing, connections with its epistemological roots, ones shared with
sociology. In an indicative piece, Yanagisako, for example, writes:
In sociocultural anthropology, the innovative theoretical and methodological developments of the
past quarter century – including reflexive, feminist, poststructuralist, postcolonial, and transnational
approaches to culture – were not generated by competition between cultural anthropology and other
fields in the discipline; nor were they stimulated by competition with evolutionary approaches to
culture. Rather, they were incited by the growing dissatisfaction of sociocultural anthropologists with
prevailing forms of cultural theory, including structural-functionalist, economic determinist, psychological,
cognitive and androcentric approaches. This dissatisfaction led us to look beyond the boundaries
of the discipline to scholarship in the humanities and other social sciences (2005: 95-6).
Many of the positively evaluated adjectives cited in the passage above, portrayed as
part of an internal conversation in anthropology, were also characteristic of other
tendencies in the field, ASM included, but it remains a matter of debate whether the
critical posture ‘socio-cultural anthropology’ is better served by a narrowed reading
‘cultural theory’. That ASM now commands little attention may in the end – and
ironically – have less to do with the stigma of itsMarxist (and structuralist) associations
than with its fidelity to a conception of the social sciences that continues to acknowledge
the conditions of the societies in which they were created, a contradictory, and not
necessarily conciliatory, space of a ‘disciplinary knowledge’.
NOTES
I would like to thank several anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. Earlier versions benefited
from the comments of Stephan Feuchtwang, Jonathan Friedman, Keith Hart, Joel Kahn,Mike Rowlands, and
Mitch Sedgwick, to whom many thanks.
1 Ortner’s (1984) celebrated article expresses a notion of ‘theory’ that captures an agency + structuremodel
that is – broadly – uncontroversial in socio-cultural anthropology. Attempts to disaggregate the terms are
generally resisted, as in Ingold (2000), for example, and Segal & Yanigasako (2005).
2 Wolf observes that it is now difficult to teach anthropology of the former sort in as much as: ‘It used to
be that we taught our students about the people out there. Now the very same people sit in my classroom
[and] explain the virtues of various medicines and the physical power of witchcraft’ (Friedman 1987: 117).
3 The ‘rationality debate’ provides instructive examples (see Wilson 1970).
4 The genre of ‘reflexive anthropology’ has emerged to accommodate this self-consciousness.
5 The ‘ethnographic present’, for example, often has mystifying effects when extended into the ‘actual
present’.
6 ASM is broadly defined. Here it includes both a UK tendency directly shaped by French influences (and
with very Althusserian overtones) and a US tendency with different Marxist sources and much less structuralist
affiliation. Although Marxism has different histories in the two national traditions (see Mintz et al.
1984),ASM is represented in the simultaneous critique of both fields as exemplified in Asad (1974) andHymes
(1969).
7 Ironically, it is precisely Marx and Engel’s acknowledgment of holism/interdependence of institutions –
prior to the emergence of modern anthropology – that provides such a fundamental link between Marxism
and anthropology (see discussion in Bloch 1985: 94).
8 Sperber (1985: 60-3) makes a similar point in his critique of relativism.
9 See Bloch (1985) and Wessman (1981), as well as Vincent’s (1985) review of same.
10 See Firth (1975) for a UK ‘institutional’ view. The papers in Hymes (1969) and Asad (1974) provide a
thorough overview.
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11 See Scholte (1987) for a critical overview.
12 Sometimes ‘non-market’ is a synonym.
13 Hence, for example, substantivist approaches continue to provide much insight into hidden forms of
domestic labour – even in late capitalist settings – whereas formalism does not.
14 The emphasis is on the new modernizationist programme, exemplified by the wide influence of neoliberalism.
Another one had been going on for 500 years, globalization theory notwithstanding.
15 A ‘task’ still referred back to the ambitions and influences of the founding figures Boas and Malinowski,
hardly figures immune to criticism – often damning – but also figures whose successors never managed to
supplant them, however frequent the father-killing exercises.
16 Even if early on it was recognized that the boundedness of such systems was frequently itself an artefact
of investigation.
17 This – the ‘testing’ of historical materialism on new empirical material – is made abundantly clear in
Terray’s (1972) early discussions, but he also displays what was to become a typical, and destructive, preoccupation
with ‘correct reading’ of canonical texts. Outside the fog of ‘correct reading’, claims that Marxist
analysis applies only to capitalism imply (1) that a capitalist/non-capitalist interface is beyond analysis and/or
(2) that such an analysis cannot be retrospective, such that, by analogy, the appearance of a new species (or
previously thought extinct species) would not be appropriate material for biological analysis.
18 Wallerstein (1974) proposes a different resolution, namely that what the analysis of articulation hints at is
the unsuitability of the units of analysis (‘societies’),the better unit of analysis being the global capitalist system.
19 In crucial respects the key question raised by ASM with regard to pre-capitalism within capitalism may
be seen as a slightly more emphatic statement of the comparativist goal of structure-functionalist explanation,
but going further in seeking to expose a logic of a kind of social reproduction that is apparent in the
ethnographic and historical record, namely the co-existence of pre-capitalist and capitalist types of societies.
20 What O’Laughlin seems to object to is not the explanation somuch as the lack of theoretical consistency:
how, she asks, can Meillassoux be correct in his analysis if he inadvertently displays an ‘underlying pattern of
evolutionist thought in his work’? (1977: 22) The evolutionist shortcoming is compounded by his alleged
functionalism and empiricism, demonized on the same page.
21 Although geographically diverse, ASM as represented in an area-based framework is probably most
strongly represented in a French colonial African literature focused around the ‘lineage of mode of
production’.
22 See Taylor (1975; 1976) for detailed critique, and reply by Hindess and Hirst (1977). Also see Rod Aya’s
review (1976).
23 It is this work of Meillassoux that forms the subject of the second half of Terray (1972).
24 In the US tradition represented byWolf and Mintz, the issue of articulation is treated differently and is
not the novelty it is in a European context, perhaps – as Mintz (Mintz et al. 1984) implies – because of the
different character of the US ‘colonials’ (internal: Indians).
25 The same holds for such US collections as Littlefield & Gates (1991).
26 Both Lévi-Strauss and Godelier drew on Saussurean and computational notions of ‘system’.
27 In this, Mintz turns the table on Terray (and certain critics of Marxist anthropology), by asking not if
historical materialism worked on the primitive, but whether anthropology worked on the non-primitive.
28 A distraction which, in Friedman (1987: 133), led to ‘self-destruction’.
29 Maurice Henry’s classic cartoon of founding-figure structuralists depicts a fleeting unity.Wearing grass
skirts, Foucault, Lacan, Lévi-Strauss, and Barthes converse beneath a palm tree (La Quinzaine Letteraire, 1 July
1967).
30 This has given rise to the odd designation post-Marxism, indicating a rejection whose authority is
derived in great part precisely from its association with Marxism.
31 For comparative purposes see ‘The persistence of underdevelopment: institutions, human capital, or
constituencies?’ (Rajan & Zingales 2006, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research), in which
the underlying cause of underdevelopment is attributed to the ‘initial distribution of factor endowments’,
even though conceding that this distribution may well be ‘a legacy of the colonial past’.
32 Among the other liabilities: preponderance of qualitative rather than quantitative methods; long training
times; extended time in the field; small size and poor funding in relation to other social sciences; advocacy
of interests of others; etc.
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Quelques réflexions sur le marxisme structurel en anthropologie
Résumé
Le principal sujet de cette discussion est la brève carrière du marxisme structuraliste en anthropologie et
la possibilité qu’il soit, malgré tout, encore pertinent. Ce problème se situe dans une autre problématique
plus générale : sur quelle base les théories explicatives sont-elles adoptées et rejetées en anthropologie ? La
discussion du marxisme structuraliste s’inscrit dans les débats récents sur l’opportunité des associations
traditionnelles de l’anthropologie socioculturelle avec d’autres sous-domaines de l’anthropologie. L’auteur
avance que l’isolement des sous-domaines est une régression au niveau de la théorie.
Stephen Nugent teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London and the Institute for the
Study of the Americas.He has published on ethnohistory and peasant economy in the Brazilian Amazon and
is currently director of the Centre for Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths.
Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, UK.
ana01sln@gold.ac.uk
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© Royal Anthropological Institute 2007