No. However, this is a common attack on socialists by supporters of capitalism and on anarchists by Marxists. Both claim that anarchism is "backward looking", opposed to "progress" and desire a society based on inappropriate ideas of freedom. In particular, ideological capitalists maintain that all forms of socialism base themselves on the ideal of the "noble savage" and ignore the need for laws and other authoritarian social institutions to keep people "in check" (see, for example, free market capitalist guru Frederick von Hayek's work, particularly his Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism).
Anarchists are well aware of the limitations of the "primitive communist" societies they have used as example of anarchistic tendencies within history or society. They are also aware of the problems associated with using any historical period as an example of "anarchism in action." Take for example the "free cities" of Medieval Europe, which was used by Kropotkin as an example of the potential of decentralised, confederated communes. He was sometimes accused of being a "Medievalist" (as was William Morris) while all he was doing was indicating that capitalism need not equal progress and that alternative social systems have existed which have encouraged freedom in ways capitalism restricts.
In a similar way, Marxists often accuse Proudhon of being "petty-bourgeois" and looking backward to a pre-industrial society of artisans and peasants. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Proudhon came from a area of French which, like many other parts of that country at the time, was essentially pre-industrial and based on peasant and artisan production. He therefore based his socialist ideas on the needs of working people as they required them at the time. Unlike Marx, who argued that industrialisation (i.e. proletarianisation) was the pre-conditions of socialism, Proudhon wanted justice and freedom for working people in the here and now, not some (unspecified) time in the future after capitalism had fully developed. He was "petit-bourgeois" only in so far as the French working class at the time was "petit-bourgeois" and was "proletarian" in so far as his fellow working people were.
When Proudhon did look at large-scale production (such as railways, factories and so on) he proposed co-operative associations to run them. These associations would maintain the dignity of the worker by maintaining the essential feature of artisan and peasant live, namely the control of the work and product by the labourer. Thus he used the experience of the past (artisan production) to inform his analysis of current events (industrialisation) to create a solution to the social problem which built upon and extended a freedom crushed by capitalism (namely workers' self-management in production). Rather than being backward looking and worshipping a past which was disappearing, Proudhon analysed the present and past, drew any positive features he could from both and applied them to the present and the future (see also section H.2.1).
Again it is hardly surprising to find that many supporters of capitalism ignore the insights that can be gained by studying tribal cultures and the questions they raise about capitalism and freedom. Instead, they duck the issues raised by these insights and accuse socialists of idealising "the noble savage." As indicated, nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, this claim has been directed towards Rousseau (often considered the father of socialist and anarchist "idealisation" of the "noble savage") even though Rousseau expressly rejected any "return to nature." He stated that "must societies be totally abolished? Must meum and tuum be annihilated, and must we return again to the forests to live among bears? This is a deduction in the manner of my adversaries, which I would as soon anticipate as let them have the shame of drawing." [The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 112] Sadly, Rousseau failed to understand that his adversaries, both then and now, seem to know no shame (similarly, Rousseau is often thought of idealising "natural man" but actually wrote that "men in a state of nature, having no moral relations or determinate obligations one with another, could not be either good or bad, virtuous or vicious" [Op. Cit., p. 64]). This also seems to be the case when anarchists look through history, draw libertarian currents from it and are denounced as backward looking utopians.
What libertarians socialists point out from this analysis of history is that the atomised individual associated with capitalist society is not "natural" and that capitalist social relationships help to weaken individuality. All the many attacks on libertarian socialist analysis of past societies is a product of capitalists attempts to deny history and state that "Progress" reaches its final resting place in capitalism. As David Watson argues:
"When we consider people living under some of the harshest, most commanding conditions on earth, who can nevertheless do what they like when the notion occurs to them, we should be able to witness the contemporary doubt about civilisation's superiority without growing indignant. Primitivism, after all, reflects not only a glimpse of life before the rise of the state, but also a legitimate response to real conditions of life under civilisation . . . Most people do not live in aboriginal societies, and most tribal peoples themselves now face wholly new contexts which will have to be confronted in new ways if they are to survive as peoples. But their lifeways, their histories, remind us that other modes of being are possible. Reaffirmation of our primal past offers insight into our history — not the only possible insight, to be sure, but one important, legitimate entry point for a reasoned discussion about (and an impassioned reaction to) this world we must leave behind." [Beyond Bookchin, p. 240]
This essential investigation of history and modern society to see what other ways of living have and do exist is essential. It is too easy to forget that what exists under modern capitalism has not always existed (as neo-classical economics does, to a large degree). It is also useful to remember what many people now consider as "normal" was not always the case. As we discussed in section F.8.6, the first generation of industrial wage slaves hated the system, considering it both tyranny and unnatural. Studying history, previous cultures and the process of hierarchical society and the oppressed resistance to it can enrich our analysis and activity in the here and now and help us to envision an anarchist society, the problems it could face and possible solutions to them.
If the challenge for anarchists is to smash power-relations and domination, it would make sense to get to the root of the problem. Hierarchy, slavery, coercion, patriarchy, and so on far outdate capitalism and it is hardly enough to just analyse the economic system of capitalism, which is merely the current and most insidious form of hierarchical civilisation. Similarly, without looking to cultures and communities that functioned quite well before the rise of the state, hierarchies and classes, anarchists do not really have much solid ground to prove to people that anarchy is desirable or possible. For this reason, historical analysis and the celebration of the positive aspects of tribal and other societies is essential.
Moreover, as George Orwell points out, attacks that reject this critical analysis as worshipping the "noble savage" miss the point:
"In the first place he [the defender of modern life] will tell you that it is impossible to 'go back' . . . and will then accuse you of being a medievalist and begin to descant upon the horrors of the Middle Ages . . . As a matter of fact, most attacks upon the Middle Ages and the past generally by apologists of modernity are beside the point, because their essential trick is to project a modern man, with his squeamishness and his high standard of comfort, into an age when such things were unheard of. But notice that in any case this is not an answer. For dislike of the mechanised future does not imply the smallest reverence for any period of the past . . . When one pictures it merely as an objective; there is no need to pretend that it has ever existed in space and time." [The Road to Wigan Pier, p. 183]
We should also note that such attacks on anarchist investigations of past cultures assumes that these cultures have no good aspects at all and so indicates a sort of intellectual "all or nothing" approach to modern life. The idea that past (and current) civilisations may have got some things right and others wrong and should be investigated is rejected for a totally uncritical "love it or leave" approach to modern society. Of course, the well known "free market" capitalist love of 19th century capitalist life and values warrants no such claims of "past worship" by the supporters of the system.
Therefore attacks on anarchists as supporters of the "noble savage" ideal indicate more about the opponents of anarchism and their fear of looking at the implications of the system they support than about anarchist theory.