Abstract:
The idea of human nature can be wielded to justify exploitation and domination, but drawing on the work of Noam Chomsky, Murray Bookchin and others, I argue consideration of our embodied nature can help humans thrive. The anarchist tradition encompasses people’s tendency to reject unnecessary authority, and it invokes the sociality inseparable from human beings. I explain why Chomsky claimed our needs and capacities, like language and creativity, are rooted in biologically endowed scopes and limits. For Chomsky, conceptions of justice emerge from aspects of our nature irreducible to power. For him, dismissing intrinsic nature is nonsensical and useful for those who would exercise control over others. Murray Bookchin advocated a dialectic emphasizing our unique moral reasoning, and he saw the social as the ecological realm of freedom and responsibility. Anarchist-socialist praxis can be understood as defense of our distinctive capacities to recover valuable aspects of suppressed humanity.
Keywords:
anarchism, anarchist-socialist praxis, human nature, Noam Chomsky, Murray Bookchin
How to cite:
Anderson, James. “Anarchist-Socialist Praxis and Embodied Human Nature.” Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture 9, no. 2 (2025): 168-201. https://doi.org/10.14394/eidos.jpc.2025.0018.
Author:
James Anderson
Labor Studies, Mediedia and Cultural, Universisity of California, Riverside
900 University Ave., Riverside, CA 92521, USA
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1227-4618
jameskepanderson@gmail.com
References:
Ackelsberg, Martha. Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005.
Barsamian, David. “The World of Our Grandchildren: An Interview with Noam Chomsky.” Jacobin, February 13, 2015. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/02/noam-chomsky-interview-jacobin.
Bookchin, Murray. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Palo Alto, CA: Cheshire Books, 1982.
Bookchin, Murray. “THE GREENING OF POLITICS: Toward a New Kind of Political Practice.” Green Perspectives: Newsletter of the Green Program Project, no. 1 (January 1986). https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-the-greening-of-politics.
Bookchin, Murray. The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies & the Promise of Direct Democracy. London: Verso, 2015.
Bookchin, Murray. The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism. Montréal, Canada: Black Rose Books, 1996.
Bookchin, Murray. To Remember Spain: The Anarchist and Syndicalist Revolution of 1936. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2001.
Brown, Susan L. The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism and Anarchism. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1993.
Chomsky, Noam. “Noam Chomsky on ‘Manufacturing Consent’ (Part Two).” Interview by Bill Moyers. Moyers, November 4, 1988. https://billmoyers.com/content/noam-chomsky-part-2.
Chomsky, Noam. On Anarchism. New York: The New Press, 2013.
Chomsky, Noam. “On Human Nature.” Interview by Kate Soper. Red Pepper (August 1998). Available: https://chomsky.info/199808__-2/.
Chomsky, Noam. “The Case Against B.F. Skinner.” New York Review of Books, December 30, 1971. Available: https://chomsky.info/19711230.
Chomsky, Noam. “What Kind of Creatures Are We? Lecture I: What is Language?” Journal of Philosophy 110, no. 12 (2013): 645-62.
Chomsky, Noam. “What Kind of Creatures Are We? Lecture II: What Can We Understand?” Journal of Philosophy 110, no. 12 (2013): 663-85.
Chomsky, Noam. “What Kind of Creatures Are We? Lecture III: What is the Common Good?” Journal of Philosophy 110, no. 12 (2013): 685-700.
Chomsky, Noam. “What We Know: On the Universals of Language and Rights.” Boston Review, June 1, 2005. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/chomsky-what-we-know.
Chomsky, Noam, and Michel Foucault, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature. New York: The New Press, 2006.
Curry, Tommy. “A Critique of Western ‘Universal’ Values | Philosopher Tommy Curry.” The Institute of Art and Ideas. Posted January 7, 2025. YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb52Dm7oL1M.
Curry, Tommy. The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2017.
Dupuis-Déri, Frances. “Anarchism and Human Nature.” Social Anarchism (May 31, 2012): 1-4. https://www.socialanarchism.org/issue/45/anarchism-and-human-nature.
Ervin, Lorenzo Kom’boa. Anarchism and the Black Revolution: The Definitive Edition. London: Pluto Press, 2021.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra B. Ramos. New York: Continuum, 2000.
Gilens, Martin, and Benjamin Page. “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 3 (2014): 564-581.
Graeber, David. “Are You an Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!” (2009). Accessed on August 29, 2025. https://davidgraeber.org/articles/are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-maysurprise-you.
Graeber, David. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.
Graeber, David. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. New York: Melville House Publishing, 2011.
Graeber, David. “Turning Modes of Production Inside Out: Or, Why Capitalism is a Transformation of Slavery.” Critique of Anthropology 26, no. 1 (2006): 61-85.
Graeber, David. “The New Anarchists.” New Left Review 13, no. 6 (2002): 61-73.
Graeber, David. “There Never Was a West: Or, Democracy Emerges from the Spaces In Between.” In David Graeber, Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007.
Graeber, David, and Andrej Grubačić. “Introduction.” In Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: An Illuminated Factor of Evolution. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2021.
Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
Gramsci, Antonio. “Machiavelli and Marx.” In Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1971.
Griffin, Eddie. “Breaking Men’s Minds: Behavior Control and Human Experimentation at the Federal Prison at Marion, Illinois.” Journal of Prisoners on Prisons 4, no. 2 (1993): 1-18. https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC3_scans/3.journal.prisons.prisoners.griffin.1993.pdf.
Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. New York: Penguin Press, 2024.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
Martin, Keir, and Theodoros Rakopoulos. “Marshall Sahlins (1930-2021).” Jacobin, April 24, 2021. https://jacobin.com/2021/04/marshall-sahlins-obituary-anthropology-university-of-chicago-teach-in-antiwar.
Marx, Karl. Capital, Vol. 1. Translated by Ben Fowkes. New York: Vintage Books, 1977.
Marx, Karl. “Theses on Feuerbach.” In Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology Including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998.
Putnam, Lillian. “An interview with Chomsky.” Reading Teacher 48, no. 4 (1994): 328-333.
Rocker, Rudolf. Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004.
Sahlins, Marshall. The Western Illusion of Human Nature: With Reflections on the Long History of Hierarchy, Equality, and the Sublimation of Anarchy in the West, and Comparative Notes on Other Conceptions of the Human Condition. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2008.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism is a Humanism. Edited by John Kulka. Translated by Carol Macomber. New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2007.
Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.
Scott-Brown, Sophie. “Inventing Ordinary Anarchy in Cold War Britain.” Modern Intellectual History 20, no. 4 (2023): 1251-272.
Shoatz, Russell Maroon. Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2013.
Solnit, Rebecca. “David Graeber: Beholden.” Guernica, May 1, 2012. https://www.guernicamag.com/beholden.
Wennerberg, Tor, and Noam Chomsky. “Liberty for Property: On Human Nature, Economics, and Democracy.” Z Magazine (1999): 14-22.
West, Cornel. The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991.
Wilkin, Peter. Noam Chomsky: On Power, Knowledge and Human Nature. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Open Access Statement:
This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, as long as the author and original source are properly cited. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Submitting a text to Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture means that the author agrees with the general conditions of this license. The author does and will maintain copyrights and publishing rights for his/her article without any restrictions.