Bookchin: living legacy of an American revolutionary
How did Bookchin arrive at the concept of decentralized democracy?
Murray
had spent a lifetime studying revolutionary movements and in fact wrote
an entire history of those movements in his four-volume work, The Third Revolution.
This study reaffirmed his belief that revolutionary change could not be
achieved through activities that remained within the margins of a
society – for example, building alternative organizations like food
co-ops and free schools, as Critichley proposes – or by creating a
massive socialist state, an idea which has been completely discredited
and could never gain any kind of widespread appeal.
Instead,
he felt that we had to employ modes of organization that built on the
best traditions of revolutionary movements – such as the Paris commune
of 1871 and the collectives formed in 1936 revolutionary Spain – an
overlooked tradition that enshrines decision-making at the municipal
level in neighborhood assemblies that increasingly challenge the
hegemony of the nation-state. And because he was an American, he was
also looking for a way to build upon traditions that would appeal to an
American public, such as the committees of the American Revolution or
the New England town meeting style democracy that is still active in
places like Vermont today. These are the ideas he discusses in the
essays in this book.
Bookchin
is known for his writings on ecology, hierarchy and capitalism —
collected under the umbrella of what he called ‘social ecology’. How do
the ideas in this book emerge from the concept of social ecology?
One
of Murray’s central contributions to Left thought was his insistence,
back in the early 1960s, that all ecological problems are social
problems. Social ecology starts from this premise: that we will never
properly address climate change, the poisoning of the earth with
pesticides and the myriad of other ecological problems that are
increasingly undermining the ecological stability of the planet, until
we address underlying issues of domination and hierarchy. This includes
domination based on gender, ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation, as
well as class distinctions.
Eradicating
those forms of oppression immediately raises the question of how to
organize society in a fashion that maximizes freedom. So the ideas about
popular assemblies presented in this book grow naturally out of the
philosophy of social ecology. They address the question of how to
advance revolutionary change that will achieve true freedom for
individuals while still allowing for the social organization necessary
to live harmoniously with each other and the natural world.
Popular
assemblies are part of the renewed importance that Bookchin gives to
municipal organization. When and why did Bookchin begin to focus on
these issues?
Murray had begun thinking about these issues early on, in the 1960s. He addresses them even in 1968, in his essay, “The Forms of Freedom.”
But this question, of political and social organization, especially
consumed Murray in the last two decades of his life, when the essays
we’ve collected here were written. When Murray saw the predicament of
the alter-globalization movement and similar movements, he asserted that
simply engaging in “festivals of the oppressed” failed to offer a
structural framework within which to address deep-seated social and
economic inequities.
He
had spent more than three decades working within the anarchist
tradition but had come to feel that anarchism didn’t deal adequately
with the question of power and political organization. Instead, he
advocated a localized, grassroots democratic social philosophy, which he
called Communalism. He called the political expression of that idea Libertarian Municipalism.
He believed that by developing and institutionalizing general
assemblies on the local level we could re-empower ourselves as active
citizens, charting the course of our communities and economies and
confederating with other local assemblies.
He
envisioned this self-government as becoming increasingly strong as it
solidified into a “dual power,” that would challenge, and ultimately
dismantle, the power of the nation-state. Murray occasionally used the
term Communalism interchangeably with Libertarian Municipalism but
generally he thought of Communalism as the umbrella political philosophy
and Libertarian Municipalism as its political practice, which entails
the running of candidates on the municipal level, municipalizing the
economy and the like.
Read the entire article here.
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From TruthDig.com
Tariq Ali: The Time Is Right for a Palace Revolution
By Chris Hedges on March 1, 2015
PRINCETON, N.J.—Tariq Ali is part of the royalty of the left. His more than 20 books on politics and history, his seven novels, his screenplays and plays and his journalism in the Black Dwarf newspaper, the New Left Review and other publications have made him one of the most trenchant critics of corporate capitalism. He hurls rhetorical thunderbolts and searing critiques at the oily speculators and corporate oligarchs who manipulate global finance and the useful idiots in the press, the political system and the academy who support them. The history of the late part of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st century has proved Ali, an Oxford-educated intellectual and longtime gadfly who once stood as a Trotskyist candidate for Parliament in Britain, to be stunningly prophetic.
| For information about Tariq Ali’s new book, “The Extreme Centre: A Warning,” click here. |
Ali, when we met last week shortly before he delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Princeton University, praised the street clashes and open, sustained protests against the state that erupted during the Vietnam War. He lamented the loss of the radicalism that was nurtured by the 1960s counterculture, saying it was “unprecedented in imperial history” and produced the “most hopeful period” in the United States, “intellectually, culturally and politically.”
“I cannot think of an example of any other imperial war in history, and not just in the history of the American empire but in the history of the British and French empires, where you had tens of thousands of former GIs and sometimes serving GIs marching outside the Pentagon and saying they wanted the Vietnamese to win,” he said. “That is a unique event in the annals of empire. That is what frightened and scared the living daylights out of them [those in power]. If the heart of our apparatus is becoming infected, [they asked] what the hell are we going to do?”
This defiance found expression even within the halls of the Establishment. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings about the Vietnam War openly challenged and defied those who were orchestrating the bloodshed. “The way that questioning was conducted educated a large segment of the population,” Ali said of the hearings, led by liberals such as J. William Fulbright. Ali then added sadly that “such hearings could never happen again.”
“That [spirit is what the ruling elite] had to roll back, and that they did quite successfully,” he said. “That rollback was completed by the implosion of the Soviet Union. They sat down and said, ‘Great, now we can do whatever we want. There is nothing abroad, and what we have at home—kids protesting about South America and Nicaragua and the contras—is peanuts. Gradually the dissent decreased.” By the start of the Iraq War, demonstrations, although large, were usually “one-day affairs.”
“It was an attempt to stop a war. Once they couldn’t stop it, that was the end,” he said about the marches opposing the Iraq War. “It was a spasm. They [authorities] made people feel there was nothing they could do; that whatever people did, those in power would do what they wanted. It was the first realization that democracy itself had been weakened and was under threat.”
The devolution of the political system through the infusion of corporate money, the rewriting of laws and regulations to remove checks on corporate power, the seizure of the press, especially the electronic press, by a handful of corporations to silence dissent, and the rise of the wholesale security and surveillance state have led to “the death of the party system” and the emergence of what Ali called “an extreme center.” Working people are being ruthlessly sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit—a scenario dramatically on display in Greece. And there is no mechanism or institution left within the structures of the capitalist system to halt or mitigate the reconfiguration of the global economy into merciless neofeudalism, a world of masters and serfs.
“This extreme center, it does not matter which party it is, effectively acts in collusion with the giant corporations, sorts out their interests and makes wars all over the world,” Ali said. “This extreme center extends throughout the Western world. This is why more and more young people are washing their hands of the democratic system as it exists. All this is a direct result of saying to people after the collapse of the Soviet Union, ‘There is no alternative.’ ”
The battle between popular will and the demands of corporate oligarchs, as they plunge greater and greater numbers of people around the globe into poverty and despair, is becoming increasingly volatile. Ali noted that even those leaders with an understanding of the destructive force of unfettered capitalism—such as the new, left-wing prime minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras—remain intimidated by the economic and military power at the disposal of the corporate elites. This is largely why Tsipras and his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, bowed to the demands of European banks for a four-month extension of the current $272 billion bailout for Greece. The Greek leaders were forced to promise to commit to more punishing economic reforms and to walk back from the pre-election promise of Tsipras’ ruling Syriza party to write off a large part of Greece’s sovereign debt. Greece’s debt is 175 percent of its GDP. This four-month deal, as Ali pointed out, is a delaying tactic, one that threatens to weaken widespread Greek support for Syriza. Greece cannot sustain its debt obligations. Greece and European authorities will have to collide. And this collision could trigger a financial meltdown in Greece, see it break free from the eurozone, and spawn popular upheavals in Spain, Portugal and Italy.
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It might surprise you to know that most states do not emphasize civic education,
which includes learning about citizenship, law, and governance. So it
is not surprising many US citizens believe government is something far
removed from ‘real life’. Even some of the Founding Fathers said ‘common
man’ couldn’t be trusted to run the country. Somewhere along the line,
the governance of We the People became the domain of They the Few.
We the People are not satisfied. Many have
lost confidence in the national political process and are appalled
at the wars waged in our names, at the broken justice system, our
horrendous record on the environment, the lack of respect for teachers,
and so on. That does not mean we have lost our faith in governance.
That is why a range of emerging practical
solutions being proposed to make governance more participatory are so
intriguing, so that ‘common people’ might play a more meaningful role.
Here are a few of them.
Tom Atlee, author and co-director of the Co-Intelligence Institute,
has proposed ‘deliberative councils’ in which a small group of people
randomly selected come together as a microcosm of the larger population.
These councils study the public issue at hand and make recommendations
to their communities and elected officials. Afterward, they part ways
and new councils are formed when the next issue arises.
Atlee says that this process takes us beyond
partisanship to a place of collective responsibility for our shared
destiny. At the website for his book, Empowering Public Wisdom, he has developed a manifesto. Here is an excerpt:
P. S. REVEL-ution comes from my friend and revolutionary Jon:
Let me tell you what keeps me optimistic, though cautiously so, and I wish others can join me in this. Is here any doubt that this system is brittle--hard but fragile? Look at how terrified they were of Occupy, enough to come down hard on predominantly white young people with force because it was POLITICALLY threatening, like the sixties mass mobilizations against the war which deeply affected the guys and women in uniform to the point of ineffectiveness.
Long ago I adopted a dialectical way of looking at history--long period of quantitative change that suddenly, like a breaking wave that has traveled maybe thousands of miles across open ocean, becomes a qualitative change that leads a disintegration of the existing order. That happened in a positive way (from my perspective) in 1917, 1949, 1959, 1970, 1990, 1998. These were the years of victorious revolutions, either by force of electoral process. However, these gains have in many cases been sabotaged and reversed. But the "game" is still on. The empire is literally UNSUSTAINABLE. It will come to an end, but how and when are the big questions. That is up to us, the people of the world. Now is not the time to allow despair to win.
I have a name for the process we must embrace: REVEL-ution--the conscious and exuberant dismantling of the structures of oppression. It was happening in Egypt, in Wisconsin, in Occupy, and is continuing in Venezuela and Cuba. Join it! Did you know that currently there is in Hawai'i a genuine national liberation struggle for full sovereign independence? Did you know that the US claim to its sovereignty is BOGUS, even today, "statehood" notwithstanding? See www.liberatehawaiithebook.com for more information.
This is the "dark hour before dawn." As we used to say in the sixties, "Can you dig it?" REVEL-ution is groovy!
Dr. Steven Kull, Founder and President of Voice of the People has a similar idea, (with a few important distinctions) – Citizen Cabinets. “The national Citizen Cabinet will consist of a base national sample of at least 800 citizens, plus state Citizen Cabinets of at least 400 citizens and district Citizen Cabinets of at least 300—a total of several thousand in the early stages, rising to 120,000 when it is fully built out. These citizens will be scientifically selected to be representative of each jurisdiction and will be connected through an online interface. Each Citizen Cabinet member will serve for 9-12 months, and Internet access will be provided to those who do not already have it. On a regular basis, members of the Citizen Cabinet will go through an online public consultation exercise – called a ‘policymaking simulation’ because it simulates the process elected officials go through — on a pressing issue facing the federal government. For each issue, Citizen Cabinet members will:Without a collective voice of the whole citizenry to speak wisely and powerfully in our public life, we have become impoverished and imperiled. We need to change that—soon.Our children—and their children’s children—need us to create this powerful collective voice, because it is their voice too. They need us to ensure that it is wise and heeded, because we and they urgently need our politics and our governance to become sensible, sustainable, creative, and just. Our times are perilous. Nearly everything we love is at stake.Thomas Paine once said, in his revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense, “We have it in our power to begin the world again.” It is so, even now.We have it in our power to call forth a voice that speaks our best collective wisdom. We have it in our power to cease collectively degrading our lives and destroying our world. We have it in our power to create a new world together—a world that is a true joy for our children—and their children—to live in. We can and must create a voice that can speak this urgent truth for all of us. FULL MANIFESTO
- Get unbiased background information reviewed by experts and congressional staff from both parties
- Hear competing policy options that are actually on the table and evaluate the strongest pro and con arguments
- Choose from a menu of policy options or go through an in-depth prioritization process that requires making trade-offs, such as creating a budget
- Finally, the Citizen Cabinets’ recommendations will be reported to their corresponding Members of Congress, the President, the news media and the public.”
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P. S. REVEL-ution comes from my friend and revolutionary Jon:
Let me tell you what keeps me optimistic, though cautiously so, and I wish others can join me in this. Is here any doubt that this system is brittle--hard but fragile? Look at how terrified they were of Occupy, enough to come down hard on predominantly white young people with force because it was POLITICALLY threatening, like the sixties mass mobilizations against the war which deeply affected the guys and women in uniform to the point of ineffectiveness.
Long ago I adopted a dialectical way of looking at history--long period of quantitative change that suddenly, like a breaking wave that has traveled maybe thousands of miles across open ocean, becomes a qualitative change that leads a disintegration of the existing order. That happened in a positive way (from my perspective) in 1917, 1949, 1959, 1970, 1990, 1998. These were the years of victorious revolutions, either by force of electoral process. However, these gains have in many cases been sabotaged and reversed. But the "game" is still on. The empire is literally UNSUSTAINABLE. It will come to an end, but how and when are the big questions. That is up to us, the people of the world. Now is not the time to allow despair to win.
I have a name for the process we must embrace: REVEL-ution--the conscious and exuberant dismantling of the structures of oppression. It was happening in Egypt, in Wisconsin, in Occupy, and is continuing in Venezuela and Cuba. Join it! Did you know that currently there is in Hawai'i a genuine national liberation struggle for full sovereign independence? Did you know that the US claim to its sovereignty is BOGUS, even today, "statehood" notwithstanding? See www.liberatehawaiithebook.com for more information.
This is the "dark hour before dawn." As we used to say in the sixties, "Can you dig it?" REVEL-ution is groovy!
