I – The techno-progressive project is gaining ground by fostering confusion about its feasibility... let’s see through its rhetorical rebranding!
Beneath the caricatured arguments of the Marxists, one can discern a fundamental shift in the entire techno-progressive rhetoric - the idea that "for the good of humanity, technology must prevail over nature." And unlike left-wing or "environmentalist" politicians, Marxists make this shift all the more easy to spot precisely because of their crudeness. While others slip this idea in subtly, Marxists embrace it brazenly: not only do nature and human freedom (specifically the freedom fostered by local autonomy and direct democracy) have no place in the "inclusive" techno-world they envision, but - following in Engels’ footsteps - they go so far as to imply that freedom is an enemy to be vanquished for the sake of global industrial communism. They even openly assert that nature is, in essence, the enemy of certain groups of people (as seen, for instance, when the French "Paduteam" technocrat Zoé claims at the 36:30 mark here that "women have the most dangerous, most violent relationship with nature... it is technology that restores the balance... submitting to nature means submitting to men").
Yet, like the rest of the Left and state-aligned "environmentalists," Marxists seem to have realized that the old slogans of leftist greenwashing are no longer enough to hoodwink the public when it comes to defending techno-progressive ideology. They then apply the same deceptive rebranding of outdated eco-marketing... Gone is "technological neutrality"; now, "technology is not neutral because it is determined by its production under capitalism" (which actually amounts to saying it *is* neutral, since this claim implies that if it were produced in a system other than capitalism, it would no longer pose a problem). Gone, too, is the "ecological transition"; now, it is "ecological planning" that is supposed to save us.
Yes, indeed: planning the "self-management" - in an eco-friendly way - of a highly complex industrial system operating on a just-in-time basis across the entire planet. A system whose weight now exceeds that of all terrestrial biomass—to cite just one example that easily illustrates the impossibility of such "self-management."*
Yet for leftists, there is no need to give up data centers, AI, or rockets; all it takes is an intelligent, "self-managing" planner (Stalin, Trotsky, or Mao) for the eco-magic to work.
And what about you?
Do you still not understand how 8 billion people can plan to self-manage (in an eco-friendly way) an industrial production system that is intrinsically extractive and polluting?
That is only natural; what they are proposing is rationally impossible. One has to be a deluded fanatic or a member of the technocratic class (with a vested interest in maintaining their privileged social position within the technological system) to seriously advocate for such a solution.
For our part, we were already denouncing this scam when ATR was founded three years ago, and again more recently when the French Left acted as the (falsely ecological) Trojan horse for this "planning" madness.
II – In the face of the recycled leftist myth, let us denounce the hatred of wild nature and non-industrial humanity
Worse still than this irrational cult of green technology - rebranded in the colors of ecology, which is crucial for their "renewable" marketing - is the fact that, for these fanatics, anyone who does not share their unachievable fantasy is dismissed as merely an "oppressor" hostile to humanity, women, trans people, and the inhabitants of "undeveloped" countries (in reality, peoples who escaped and often resisted industrial colonization). This Manichaean (leftist) view of reality stems directly from techno-progressive ideology - which it embraces wholeheartedly - and the premise that any life outside of industry is a wretched existence filled with suffering, that nature is inherently evil, and that only industry can protect us from it. It is the absurd notion that it is better to grow up in a jungle of concrete, screens, and surveillance databases than in a jungle of trees, rivers, and mountains.
And this is the crucial point to grasp. Beneath the barrage of accusations - as false as they are defamatory - of sexism, transphobia, ableism, or even Nazism** that progressives indiscriminately level at anti-tech advocates, lies the real divide: Marxists, like all leftists conditioned by an industrial environment, fear the wild. So, instead, they dream of a life of apartment blocks, smartphones, megacities, ID numbers, and assembly-line labor.
They then claim that their own personal, leftist desire to dissolve into the industrial mass and automated production lines is actually the desire of all humanity.
We reject this claim, believing instead that such an inhumane conception of life can only be the product of urban managers like themselves.
For if we look at history, humanity has everywhere resisted this progressive urge to conquer, plan, and "civilize" the barbarians, the savages, the "reactionaries," and the "boorish" Yellow Vests.
III – What ‘progress’ are we fighting for? Concluding by returning to the heart of the divide with techno-progressives.
From the free peasant Makhno, who repelled the dictatorial thugs of the USSR, to the Colombian Indigenous leader Ati Quigua, who declared, "We fight to avoid having roads and electricity - that form of self-destruction known as 'development' is precisely what we are trying to avoid" - we stand against their progress. We oppose it because their progress comes at the expense of human freedom, which they destroy by replacing local autonomy with dependence on hyper-centralized states and industries (on this subject, see philosopher Aurélien Berlan’s definition of "autonomous freedom").
We also oppose their progress because it comes at the expense of nature... Nature that they destroy and replace with concrete, monocultures, factory farms, and data centers (whether "self-managed" or not).
For us - anti-tech - the "good life" is not a perfect or eternal existence, free from fear or suffering. The good life is one in which every local human community directly controls its own living conditions and the technologies it employs (here, we have in mind Lewis Mumford’s concept of "democratic" technologies) in order to coexist with a living natural world. Not a world heated by an extra 5°C or polluted by mining operations. Anyone - whether man, woman, trans, white, black, or chronically ill - can understand and desire this without wishing to oppress anyone else. It is simply a matter of refusing to be integrated into the "megamachine" and desiring - for oneself, one's children, one's community, future generations, or even the rest of the living world - the possibility of freely inhabiting nature, perhaps in a forest cabin or a fishing village, rather than in the concrete rabbit hutch of a hyper-connected, planned, mass industrial society.
Like Zapata before us - the Mexican revolutionary and folk hero who was himself labeled a "reactionary" in his time - we are anti-tech because we want "land and freedom".
