There is definitely an idealization of small, localized communities in a lot of anarchist thought, but there are it's also important to remember there are strands of libertarian socialism that promote economies of scale (which is a different thing than coercive economies) -- or at least are not opposed to them -- and entertain high-tech visions of a post-capitalist future. Notably, Noam Chomsky, of course, a long with a lot of the IWW, anarcho-syndicalism, Diego Abad de Santillan, Rudolf Rocker, whom "green anarchists"/primitivists denounce as "workerist productionist" types.
Bakunin himself, for example, believed states might be superseded by "industrial units":
"Workers' cooperative associations are a new historical phenomenon; today as we witness their birth we cannot foresee their future, but only guess at the immense development which surely awaits them and the new political and social conditions they will generate. It is not only possible but probable that they will, in time, outgrow the limits of today's countries, provinces, and even states to transform the whole structure of human society, which will no longer be divided into nations but into industrial units." [M. Bakhunin]
("Industrial" is not necessarily synonymous with Dickensian heavy manufacturing, btw.)
This type of left-libertarian thinking, which shares a lot of ground with council communism (Anton Pannekoek) exists in a state of tension with the "back to nature"/"dismantle technological civilization" stuff.
-B.
On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 10:39 PM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
"Some anarchists have proposed what they describe as alternative technologies, or what Murray Bookchin liked to call 'liberatory technology' which would presumably bring the benefits of modern technology to small scale production. These proposals are certainly not without merit, but we are still stuck with the fact that there are lots of things that we depend upon which cannot, at the present time, being produced efficiently except by means of relatively centralized production systems."