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@PacificNic yeah it's fucking stupid: https://crimethinc.com/2003/12/01/destructive-production-can-we-really-expect-to-manufacture-complex-technologies-in-an-anarchist-society

Here's a critique of it I wrote awhile ago:

I see this really popular sentiment among particularly radical anarchists, even ones who don't consider themselves primitivists, that producing stuff like personal computers is just impossible to do in a manner consistent with anarchist principles. This seems... very untrue to me, but it's almost an article of superiority for some — are *you* willing to do without this wonderful aspect of the modern world? No? Then you're an inferiorly pious monk-like anarchist.

> I hope I’ve shown that you don’t need to be an anti-tech primitivist to see why we cannot expect the production of complex, modern, technological conveniences to continue in an anarchist society, as they require ecological destruction, division of labor, and pronounced hierarchy.

Ecological destruction I can't speak to, but I don't see why the division of labor has to be inherently anti-anarchist or alienating or whatever. We might have to change up how we divide tasks to make them more meaningful and less monotonous, but the main source of alienation from labor isn't specialization, it's a lack of self-direction and investment in/control over the distribution and reward for the end product. It doesn't seem to me like there's any kind of fundamental reason why the division of labor is un-anarchist or impossible to do right, this sounds to me like a fundamentally primitivist notion.

And if the complaint is primarily just that some of the jobs involved in producing computers involved toxic substances or danger than that seems like a reason to increase the agency and compensation of such people and for us to expect fewer people to want to do it (and less often), but I don't think it just simply wouldn't get done at all. Maybe we could start viewing minors as heroes like we do firefighters?

Am I missing like a core anarchist principle that means the division of labor isn't allowed?

And honestly, if so, I've got serious concerns, honestly. I'm not sure how you could have anything *but* a primitivist society without some division of labor. Requiring everyone to directly participate in the production of any product they want seems like it would be difficult from a logistical and even just life standpoint even for basic things like bread.

Nor does large scale industrial coordination require hierarchy. The article tries to show that it does by saying that anarchist principles would organize such large scale production less efficiently, and so hierarchies would form in the interest of more efficiency — but why are we assuming efficiency will be the only, or the most important, value these presumably anarchists producing these things will have?

Most of the rest of the article is devoted to establishing that the process of creating modern computers is extremely complex and interesting, which doesn't inherently mean it's impossible to do, so those parts seemed more like an appeal to emotion to me — trying to overwhelm the reader with details and steps until they feel that it could never be done just because it looks intimidating to a layman. Then again, if you assume nobody is allowed to specialize...