Murray Bookchin

I said decentralisation of food, production and energy - Bookchin's proposals since the sixties. Without deforestation on an even bigger scale than now for wood fires, how can that be done without technology?

Which problematic philosophical views of the world?

oh dear dot i thought you had alot of wit about you, but your hiniting towards wanky anti technology arguments (of a very crude variety I may add) is causing me much concern.

As much as I have problems with Bookchin, I don't think there can be any doubt he wishes to free humanity from work, I think that technology must play a serious role in such endeavour.

On a cruder note Bob Black is a intellectually dishonest cunt who tried to equate syndicalism with fascism cos a small amount of italian syndicalists borke off to embrace corporatist ideas.

Fuck I hate Bob Black!

Already there, mate. (My boss is on holiday this week). 8)

I wouldn't normally encourage this, but there just aren't enough cuss words for Bob Black in the English language, so I feel obliged to encourage Revol to go full tilt on that fuckwad. Bob Black represents the sludgy, filthy, hypocritical bottom feeding feces trough of the US anarchist Left, just as Bracken is his racist, psuedo-situationist parallel. Their both starlet-darling creeps and both have a most pernicious influence in Baltimore's anarchist scene. Talk about fucking trust-fund anarchism...

Bookchin... eh. Too much time stuck around Maoists in the 60's (hence his running parody of Marx disguised as a critique), a bit self-inflated and he's an old codger using his stardom to have a little Vermont collective where he bonks his startstruck female crew. And yeah, I know, that's the aspiration of not a few of you... Other than that, he's written some stuff.

Chris

Bookchin is fantastic. His only problem is that he's too much of a lefty to be a realist (his criticisms of Chomsky for example seem to centre on him having a problem with the more famous man deigning to say that this or that imperfect social setup is less detrimental; communism is not going to happen any time soon - federalism and social services provided by the state might tho). I'm really pro his libertarian municipalism stuff as he moves away from wanky anarcho speechifying to actually saying what should be done now.

He's also very good on the problems inherent with syndicalism which too few leftists and theorists have given any thought to and he hates hippies and consensus.

In "Social anarchism and lifestyle anarchism - An unbridgeable chasm" he effectively obliterates the American 'anarcho' scene, proving irrefutably that not only are most of them a bunch of naval-gazing tossers but that there is actually no further point in speaking to them and all paeons and fleeches to 'not breaking up the movement' should be ignored. Great stuff.

Like every academic he's rather too fond of himself tho, and he likes using abstruse and specific vocabulary to 'show' how clever he is, which makes for painful reading occasionally.

I think you'll find Bookchins criticisms of syndicalism are far from ground breaking and are more likely to scare off crows than develop the debate.

On the plus side his attack on lifestylism is brilliantly scathing.

oh and Listen Marxist is just pure shite!

The Institute of Social Ecology seems to be closing down.

Fucks sake how many times? That was aimed at the pseudo-Marxist Maoist dickwads who came to dominate the SDS, and for them is largely accurate. Unfortunately all his latter "critiques" of Marxism seem to come from that same Maoist group in the 60s! His idea of syndicalism is also I think tainted by his distorted view on marxist terminology of class...

how many time, it's still shit! The fact he attacks crude maoists and calls it a critique of Marxism is just par for the course. He attacks a largely baseless crude/ economist syndicalism and holds it up as a critique of anarcho syndicalism.

Of course his idea of "class" and his rejection of the centrality of the proletariat might be something to do with his ole CP membership.

So if someone wrote a piece called "Listen Trotskyist" aimed at the SWP cosying up to Muslims and working with Stalinists, someone 30 years later should assume it's meant to apply to all Trotskyists all the time then? Should he have based his critique on some non-existent Marxists, or may S ou B in France instead?

It's a view of anarcho-syndicalism held by lots of anarchosyndicalists as you've admitted. And the central thing with his views of anarcho-syndicalism is that it died in Spain and ain't coming back. Like every other 19th century ideology it's not applicable any more, bit of nostalgia's ok sometimes but you shouldn't base your politics around it.

but the simple fact is that anarcho syndicalism in it's mst useful form never restricted itself to organisational blueprints, even within Spain 36 it had many different forms of implementation, from the illegality to legality, between urban and rural, from industry to industry.

I know we (plus John) have gone 'round this before and not got very far, but:

* How many people in the CNT were conscious anarcho-syndicalists? The Russian and French revolutions threw up different organisational forms as well, but these aren't all attributed to Marx, or specific ideologies, or not by anyone sensible.

* If anarcho-syndicalism simply means "organising in the workplace, and in the community", then its distinctiveness as an ideology and practical method of organisation is diluted - it becomes indistinguishable from a number of other ideologies from different historical circumstances that have done that. There has to be something seperating it from anarchism per se, or syndicalism per se, otherwise it's a term with no meaning.

*If it's held to mean workers federated regionally (nationally/internationally) by industry, locally across industry (even if industry is extended to include the unwaged). Then it can rightfully be called a blueprint. If that's not what it is, then you disagree with the majority of anarcho-syndicalists today. If it's a blueprint that wasn't followed strictly in Spain "when it was at it's most useful", then maybe it was useful precisely because it wasn't being applied strictly.

Either way, the CNT-FAI failed in Spain. I think it's as important to be honest about their failures as it is to be honest about the Bolsheviks's failures 20 years earlier. Then maybe finally we can do something useful. I've got a lot of reading to catch up on about Spain, so I can't offer a worked out analysis of exactly why I think things went wrong, but we need to do a lot better than they did.

Ha ha didn't answer that one, did you revol??

I don't follow your point about how many people where consciously anarcho syndicalist? I mean anarcho syndicalism is not an ideology, one of the reasons i have time for it over other various political strands of anarchism.

Anarcho syndicalism does mean organising in the workplace, community and other spheres, but it organises on these in a holistic manner, it does not seperate them, it set up different organs for each but these are to be integrated, something it has done in history more imaginatively than Murray Bookchin has dreamt of in his one man tendency of libertarian muncipalism.

Anarcho syndicalism may have had it's strong expression in Spain 36 and it may have organised in regional, industrial and national structures, these structures are more to do with the actual historical context than some sort of holy grail. The IWA's continued insistance on national structures and having industrial networks mediated through such structures strikes me as ridiculous giving the very global nature of industry.

Lets be clear I think the IWA's attempt to solidify anarcho syndicalism into a structural blue print to be implemented step by step, nevermind an ideological programme is wrongheaded and based on a very fucked up reading of history which turns the spanish CNT into some sort of Platonic form.

I do not call myself an anarcho syndicalist, likewise I do not call myself a Sovietist nor do I call myself a council communist, but I do feel the need to defend it against some of the ridiculous slanders beset onto it by not just the likes of Bookchin but also by its grand guardians in the IWA*.

*note that not all the IWA is guilty of such sectarian nonsense, and even the spanish CNT seems to reserve 90% of it's bile for the international sphere, whilst on the ground it has done much good work with the rank and file of the CGT, not to mention other unions.

well if i was in the Socialist Party I would take great issue with it, and would ponder why the fuck the daft fuck didn't call it "Listen Maoist!"

But it's just not enough to pretend he was just criticising Maoists, he crudely argues that the proletatriat is no longer a revolutionary agent. If he had set out arguing why the moaists definition of proletariat was absurd and how their attempts to model themselves on a homogenous working class were dishonest, elitist and destined to failure, then I would accept that. But he is arguing on a more fundamental level than that.

Hi

You might be right. I've gone off him. By the way, the revolution serves the proletariat’s interests, not the other way around.

Love

LR

For some it's an ideology or organisational blue print, for some it's a specific historical form of organisation - you say this yourself:

That's the point isn't it? That it arose out of particular circumstances and although there's many things to learn from it, we can't replicate it exactly. You agree with that bit right?

Except the idea of libertarian municipalism is to tie together, combine, nay synthesise, the historical legacy of France, Russia, Spain and a few others, and apply the lessons learned to a conscious revolutionary programme. Rather than the infatuation of so many political groups with one or other tendency from 70, 90, 135 years ago; Bookchin looks at the entire revolutionary period and attempts to extract the elements which might still prove useful today. His view is that it's primarily the municipal movements which have shaped the most communistic and revolutionary elements of these events, and that often the most revolutionary agents were those in a transition from countryside to town, not people who'd been fully proletarianised over generations ("disciplined and united etc. etc.").

Some of these things arose spontaneously, but they were crushed pretty fucking spontaneously as well. The class struggle has been fought by only one side for the past 30 years and it isn't ours, what resistance there's been has been easily crushed or assimilated.

I've no interest in being part of some millenarian sect that waits for the big day to come - whether it consoles itself in theoretical discussion like the ICC, or sacrificial ritual like Dissent. There are urgent, pressing, international issues that require at least a defensive response, and Bookchin's ideas at least suggest a practical means of responding to these: through acting in the areas we can actually have some effect, whilst always seeking to federate these activities across regions and internationally.

Again I'm surprised you disagree with that.

Not quite right is it. He argues the proletariat is no longer the revolutionary agent. Most Marxist groups up to then had focused on the industrial worker, ignoring the lumpenproletariat, the peasantry, and women - especially the groups he was discussing. There are two ways to critique something - attack the definitions people use or accept their definitions and work from there.

There was a recognition around this time that the industrial proletariat was not the majority of the working class anymore, nor necessarily the most militant group. There were roughly two ways of dealing with this (other than ignoring it completely)

1. extending the realm of the reproduction of capital into the rest of society as capital was doing - so including students, housewives, the unemployed in the proletarian class (as opposed to "toilers" which would've included non-bourgeios classes in Marx's time) - social factory, total subsumption of labour etc. The imposition of work could no longer take place only in the factory, so was extended to other areas of life.

As such these groups would be as valid revolutionary agents as the formal wage labourer, and since labour-power is social labour, could be said to be contributing to the social labour in much the same way. Ideally their struggles should be co-ordinated and combined rather than left to compete and divide the class.

2. Argue that capital's reproduction was increasingly not taking place in the factory - at the actual point of production - since technological development had created a situation where variable capital was becoming increasingly irrelevant to the productive process - workers no longer identifying with their jobs, deskilling, casualisation etc. etc. all serving to weaken working class power in its traditional strongholds. Taking over the means of production therefore becomes only a small part of what needs to be done to transform society.

As such, non-waged and other groups would be as valid....

Different theoretical approaches, IMO reaching very similar conclusions - a quick look a the Loren Goldner article is an example of this. One may be more "correct", but what's important is how this informs revolutionary praxis, it's no cop just for the sake of it.

well obviously it's the social factory theorists who win in that one.

Not prepared to back anything you say up at all are you?

Is there more to Bookchin than a hippy version of commune-ism with good farming techniques thrown in, plus the odd bit of federated activity 'in a crisis'?

Bob Black on Bob Black

http://www.inspiracy.com/black/ducksanddrakes.html
Nuff said.

I take Bookchin with a pinch of salt. on the one hand Ifound the essay in "post scarcity anarchism" immensely stimulating and refreshing the one where he talks about the revolutionary oorganisation dissolving like a healing thread and not hanging around to dominate the post revolutionary society.(I forget what it was called)particularly as I had just quit the SWP. That one cleared away the cobwebs of Leninism.On the other hand I didn't like the bit in "The Spanish Anarchists" where in the early part of the book, he talks about evangelistic- type anarchists coming from Italy (I think) and spreading the "Idea" which sounds ahistorical.I don't agree with his assertion that the proletariat are no longer a revolutionary force, and think his analysis is wrong when he says that newly -proletarianised groups,coming to the town for the first time, are revolutionary only BECAUSE they have not yet been conitioned to accept the domination of industrial production. Murray Bookchin died in August 2006.

his the third revolution volume 3 is good, but I'm probably only saying that cause it's the first proper book I've read aboot the russian revolution, I was waiting till it came out before I did so. I've just got to the bit where Lenin starts lying. The blaggard! I'm half the way through, so it took him a while! I have been warned aboot the book, but so far it's living up to my expectations pretty much. Focussing on les soviets and such. Basically Lenin promised the workers the earth to get his dirty way with them, the floozy! There, in a nutshell, is my analysis of Russia 1917-24. And Stalin wanted to re-unite the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks at one point. Marvellous!
Anyhoo, ta ta chiefs,
bodach

I think Bookchins arguments elsewhere went along the lines that the industrial, ordered workplace has created psychologically mechanised, ordered proleteriat. There's some truth in this I think.

Bookchins point, if I remember rightly, is that people need to liberate themselves on a deeper personal level, culturally, maybe even 'spiritually' if you like, in order to undo so much of that social conditioning that working in 'the system' has created in them. Workers can't so readily be revolutionary because the experience of working has trained them to be complicit. Again, I think there is some truth in that - the spirit of rebellion, self worth and empowerment, may not be sitting so close under the surface as revolutioanries (marxist or otherwise) would like to believe - it does take nurturing and inspiring - it is not as uttery latent as Marx argued.

Is that fair?

It needs to be remembered, very clearly, that he rejected his early enthusiasm for the counter-culture during the early-mid '70s as soon as he realised where it was headed (or rather, had been heading before it started), and had to spend years distancing himself from both the Deep Ecologists/Primitivists and general lifestylists, at least in part because some slack prose in the '60s and picking the wrong horse for a bit meant some of them tried to ally themselves with him.

revol, we've gone over this loads of times, but I think in terms of arguing against the Maoists he was right - except he was arguing on their terms rather than ripping their terms apart - which in itself was wrong. Again, I think he admitted that some of that polemic got him into trouble later on, and I won't be defending his specific arguments anywhere near as much as I might've done a couple of years ago, still like him though

Well in Russia 1917, in Spain '36, in Japan 1918, there's plenty more examples, much of the revolutionary wave were from those newly proletarianised groups - those who'd experienced the upheaval from countryside to town first-hand, or were maybe second generation proles (or to an extent in Japan had experienced the industrialisation of their village - industry being a little less centralised and most farmers having alternative employment some of the time which was a recent thing there).

And now - if you look at China, Bangladesh, Vietnam - where some of the fiercest, open, class struggle is happening, it's again with the newly proletarianised - land-grabs/primitive-accumulation in China, massive industrialisation etc. etc.

Now I don't think it's that unreasonable to suggest the upheaval from rural to urban, peasant to prole etc. and the erosion of old customs and relationships before new ones had set in was a large contributing factor to the revolutionary wave, and that open class struggle was massively reduced in countries where capital began to stabilise - with Fordism, the welfare state etc. I think it's got more to do with the upheaval than it has to do with the conditioning of the factory though - at least as I read it, although I suppose there's a bit of both.

Ive got Deep Ecology & Anarchism milling around somewhere, before I begin yet another book, any views on this work?

don't read it. If you are a confirmed Libcommer it will shatter all those grand illusions that allows you to cling to 'lifestylism' as a term of abuse/criticism (as originally coined by bookchin). Indeed you would have to consign bookchin to the libcom lifestylism dustbin if you do read it.

Essentially bookchin's contributing essay entitled 'deep ecology, anarchosyndicalism and the future of anarchism thought' is a response to graham purchase's essay (included in the same volume).

It relays, as any politically astute working class militant must relay, working class people do not cling to 'the workplace' as the locus of their of future emancipation. It is a denounciation of workplace fetish, and those, usually middle class academic sorts, who revere it.

He verges on the marcusian (and dare we say foresaw negri) it terms of absolving 'the proletariat' of their hegemonic role as the revolutionary subject.

hmmm, very well. i shall complete that malatesta biog first.