Social Ecology

The concept of Libertarian Municipalism does seem central to Bookchin's Social Ecology. Wikipedia says that:

So how are these municipal confederations going to overthrow the nation-state - armed to the teeth as it is? In his article 'Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview' he says that:

So what's it going to be: a movement of 'the people', led by a Left-Green political alliance, driven by a 'democratic desire', becoming elected to local goverments and supporting the development of municipal confederations to gradually replace the nation-state?

Or the working class exercising its dictatorship over the rest of society through the workers' councils, disarming and dismantling all bourgeois states in an international civil war, and instigating a period of transition from capitalism to communism?

The working class need not look back as far as 'golden age' of the Greek Polis, but only so far as the Paris Commune 1871, Russia 1917 and Germany 1918.

Beltov,

For the ICC.

I'd be weary of any tactic which involves being elected to representative government positions, even on a local level. Anyway, you can't get elected and then make people form assemblies. It won't work unless people choose to do it themselves. It would be better to be involved in community unionism and stuff like that in my view.

Bookchin isn't a gradualist.

In other words he's a revolutionary, doesn't think capital can be legislated away. However he thinks the revolution can be built up to through the development of organisations which will lead to a dual power situation, and proposes a specific tactic for doing so - in other words revolution not as millenarian prophesy but as a process which will develop through engagement in society within and against capital.

If you read Bookchin, especially the Third Revolution, you'll find that not only does he not look to the Greek polis as a 'golden age', but also discusses the revolutions you mentioned and several more. If you're going to 'critique' him, perhaps you might gain a bit more familiarity than a single introductory article and wikipediam, or at least admit that you're misrepresenting him.

Russia all over again then, second time lucky?

The electoral aspect of Bookchin's politics isn't central to it, and has to be understood in the context of New England where he's been for a very long time.

Vermont town meetings allow for an assembly of everyone living in the town, and a face-to-face majority vote on an issue leads to it becoming law in that town. In this way, Vermont became a nuclear free state in the '70s/'80s, and iirc it's also the reason why there's zero roadside billboards there as well. They aren't perfect, and they're increasingly being institutionalised, but they're municipal bodies which have existed since the American revolution and which don't rely on representative democracy.

OK,

The central main question is this: who is the revolutionary subject? Which is the only revolutionary force within society capable of making a revolution? Is it this inter-classist soup called 'the people' or is it the working class? Bookchin doesn't seem to have much hope in the latter:

Here we see Bookchin's contribution to two major campaigns of the bourgeoisie:

1. Around the 'death of the working class'.

2. Around the re-invigoration of the defence of 'democracy'.

Both constitute attacks on the consciousness of the working class: the first pushing the idea that the workers shouldn't see themselves as part of an international class but as 'free citizens'; the second reinforcing the myth that change - even a revolution! - being possible via 'democratic' means.

The ruling class would like nothing better than for the working class to be dragged off its own terrain and totally swamped in the great mass of the people, totally atomised and devoid of any class identity. Even as an 'ex-Trotskyist' Bookchin is doing a great service to the bourgeoisie!

So, is it important for the working class to maintain its autonomy from other classes or not?

Beltov,

For the ICC.

So it's OK for the ICC to say that the labour movement is dead, but not for Bookchin to say so?

If you mean that throughout history certain workers' economic and political organisations have either become obsolete due to changing conditions (trade unions, co-ops), or betray by adopting bourgeois positions ('Socialist' or 'Communist' parties) then yes. Certain so-called 'workers' organisations' have become transformed into weapons of the ruling class against the working class. But this doesn't mean that the working class itself has disappeared, that it is incapable of fighting struggles on its own terrain, which is what Bookchin seems to be saying.

The working class has to rebuild it's own movement AGAINST the ideas, methods and forms of organisation prevalent within bourgeois society. In fact, the perspective is for precisely this: the international development of class struggles and fruition of new generations of revolutionaries from within the working class, and those from other classes who seek to throw in their lot with it. And it is precisely why the bourgoisie uses these campaigns and ideas such as 'libertarian municipalism' and 'anti-globalisation' to throw these new generations off the scent and keep them trapped within the dominant framework.

Beltov,

For the ICC.

You've not taken Catch's advice, about actually reading bookchin, have you?

Does OK mean "I see I've been caught out so I'm going to change the subject?". Would you like to respond to any of my post at all?

The "workers' movement" in that context means for me the organisations of the working class - the unions and various political parties that have claimed to represent workers. In the US they're "pretty much dead", and in the UK as well, although some of the TUC unions appear to be trying to stage a comeback at the moment. I don't think it's disputed that class struggle is at a very low ebb, especially in terms of a "movement".

Bookchin's definition of the working class moves around a bit. As has been pointed out here before, some of his useage is informed by a reaction against the very narrow useage of Maoists in the '60s and '70s, who he spent a lot of time dealing with. In polemic he often uses it to mean "industrial proletariat" when he's attacking Maoist and Leninist conceptions of the factory worker as revolutionary subject as opposed to the working class as a whole. For example:

Lenin, State and Revolution

Whether you should use terms with the same concepts attached as the people you're critiqueing, or challenge their useage of the terms itself is what it comes down to.

If you look at "Anarchism, Marxism and the Future of the Left", you'll see him state very clearly that he very much does believe in class struggle, and also that in emphasising sites of struggle outside the workplace, he may also have given the impression he doesn't in some cases.

Were the soviets, factory committees, parisian sections democratic?

Which other classes?

I didn't think you liked him much. Or do you just dislike him less than the ICC?

He's all right, and a godzillion times better than most leftist writers.

Another good post from Sam Frances (way back at the bottom of page 4).

Maybe, but I'm not so sure about that. Representative democracy would, yes, be out, but direct democracy, mandatable, recallable delegates, perhaps rotating juries, would be in. Since this is a thread on Social Ecology:

Murray Bookchin tends to use euphemisms like 'municipality', 'polity', 'federation' to describe what are, in effect, governments, albeit very different, more anarchist, than those we have today. Eirik Eiglad (of Democratic Alternative, there's another thread active on them, seem to be Bookchin followers) is prepared to ditch the euphemisms altogether:

Yes, if you can accept primitivism or something close to it - eco-villages with thatched roofs and woollen clothes. But what if you want high-tech cities? The number of different consumer and capital goods today is enormous, the complexity of planning required staggering. Murray Bookchin is silent on this, but Social Ecologist Peter Staudenmaier at least would adopt Parecon-like methods for the complex inter-communal economy - and that means planning by 'facilitation boards' guided by the normal mandatable delegates and referenda, and, however democratic, once accepted such plans would have to be obeyed.

I don't see why plaaning production through local and federal direct democracy implies primitivism. Technology in itself is not neccessarily good, and there may be a case for using more natural and readily available materials, but thats beside the point. If you meet in your assembly there's no reason why you can't ask the local microwave factory to adjust their product in some way or whatever.

I personally see no point in anarchism or libertarian communism if it doesn't involve people directly participating in the decisions that effect them.

A modern economy is too complex for direct democracy planning. The USSR planners had I think 2 million separate product categories, and things have become much more complex since then. A decision to vary any one of those products has knock on effects on all the others (more or different microwave ovens: means fewer PCs, TVs, fridges, and/or longer working hours, and so on.). No direct assembly could decide all this on its own.

But professional planning staff could (or could attempt to), and could perhaps present the federal assembly with a small number (such as five) different production-consumption plans to pick from, perhaps through referenda. That's a long way from real direct democracy though, you might almost call it "the USSR + voting" - not overwhelmingly attractive.

Social Ecologist Peter Staudenmaier seems to want that:

Hi

This "planning" question is a red herring. Most Capitalist production is heavily planned. There are more people in Market Research than there are in Advertising. Once you get out of the end-consumer markets, it’s a very rational supply chain when it comes to business-to-business commerce. Take Magnetic Drive Pumps, for instance.

Love

LR

Right, Capitalism has lots of planning. And it (unlike Social Ecology) has money, and at least some unplanned competition. That tends to point to Social Ecology needing even more planning than Capitalism. If so, not a red herring in this topic.

I'm sorry, but I'd hold out for some form of directly democratic option to at least be tried. I'm not convined you can dismiss things in theory before you have tried them in practise. And we all know that the USSR model was a sham where a worker couldn't get a bloody screwdriver without going through some sort of beaurocratic process. And failing this I'd rather some form of free market mutualism than an authoritarian system of central planning.

Anyway, why do you suppose that a small amount of planners are more able to do the job than a large amount of workers who know their own capabilites, situations and needs better than anyone? Centralisation, like any authority, representaive or not, is all very well as reguards coming to a decision, but without the involvement of everyone in both making decisions and originating ideas, why suppose it will be the wisest or most beneficial one.

Furthermore, your system of USSR + voting institutionalises decision making power in the hands of a few, and therefore requires some form of armed violence at their disposal to enforce their decisions, otherwise why would those who disagree (not with which option voted in, but with all of the measly five options) follow orders? On the other hand, if everyone is involved in making decisions, why would they not follow the decisions that they themsleves had made?

I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned your model requires a state, and why should it not be used to institutionalise power and wealth, as it is now? I'd rather decentralised planning (even if we don't get 30 brands of shampoo), or market socialism, but anything rather than central planning, democracy like a multiple choice exam and the authority that this entails.

The question is not whether to plan, but who is to plan. If needs are to be met then planning cannot be left to a professional planning elite who supposedly know peoples needs better than people do themselves.

In a capitalist firm the plans go ahead whether or not the people executing them agree with them, because the boss has authority over the workers backed by the violence of the state. How would any system whereby some plan and others take orders work without such a state? It can only work if those who excecute the decisions have an equal say in making them, and therefore implement them because they want to (Why would you not implement a decision you had a hand in making?).

I don't know whether 2 million products can or cannot be planned in a decentralised manner. Be honest, neither do you. But if they cannot, then I'd rather be free and have only two brands of shampoo, than be subjected to the same authority I am now (or worse) and have 15.

It would seem that under anarchism you'd get thousands of different products, each from an individual workplace. Conversely, none of them would be trying to screw the others over as is now.

Hi

Market research firms in an autonomous economy supersede planning like Redtwister's communism transcends democracy.

Love

LR