Syndicalism vs. Libertarian Municipalism

Workplace have no socially useful function? What none of them?

Anyway anarcho-syndicalism advocates workplace and community assemblies. I assume then you are talking about non-anarchist syndicalism of the sort practiced by the IWW.

From the SF website

"People are getting together to form Locals – Solidarity Federation groups. Locals put solidarity into practice. In time, each Local will have a premises as a base for solidarity action in the local community. Locals are organising or getting involved in local campaigns across a wide range of issues – both in the community and in workplaces. Issues are wide-ranging: defending our natural and local environment and health; opposing racism, sexism and homophobia; in fact, anything which defends or contributes to our mutual quality of life. It is all part and parcel of building a solidarity movement."

"As Locals and Networks grow, they practise community and workers’ self-management. Eventually, industries will be run by producers and consumers. In other words, by workers (in Networks) and people in the wider community (Locals) who want the goods and services they provide."

I think this answers the questions on the community.

We are also revisiting our Workplace strategy again. We've done this several times as we see the need to constantly update and amend in keeping with changes in society. Regarding pensioners/unemployed etc basically it is down to them to take the first steps in orgsnising. We can't do it for them.

Catalyst is a specifically workplace bulletin. No-one else produces one. Direct Action has hardly any workplace stuff in it.

The jobs people do is another issue. Most working class people can't pick and choose.

This seems to me to be a concept that would promote a regional democracy. The regional issue I think holds many problems. A look at migrant issues will show some that may arise. Democratic systems are something I question. If the democratic rule or resolution is something that is voluntary I will have no problem or objection. If one is held to the decisions of the majority I believe there can be real issues. I recently wrote a post opposing the concept that the majority is 'right' and stating that it can come close to 'might makes right'. How does one avoid a majority tyranny over a minority or coercive force to make others follow in suit with the the will of the voting majority.

Does participation in the voting process mean that one is bound to a decision they have voted against?

I am not of the belief that the world will be divided into one style of organization when power is de-centralized. I do believe this model has potential but will not be implemented for all, but those who choose to follow such a model. I do however see this as a highly workable anarchist model. I do take issue though if this is not a voluntary system.

"Useful' work will also not be controlled by 'workers'. But the purpose of the event (as opposed to the ideal) of 'workers' control' is not so much to run these places as to decommission them... it will become necessary to travel back 'upstream' and release the various binds, ideologies, practices, technologies and so on that were specifically active in every place – the most important element of worker's control is the release from the habit of being a worker. Every human being is employed, from their perspective, as an individual rather than as abstract labour and so it will become necessary for them to play to the end their relationship to their specific workplace. As McIver has rightly said, both 1917 and 1789 released centuries of terrible pent-up traumas which were incomprehensible to those subject to them and which even now we barely understand... this apocalyptic bloodshed cannot be permitted to happen again, or put another way, there was terror because people did not understand what was going on and what possibilities were open to them. The productivist ideology of workers' control does not help at all in this understanding. Therefore, it seems to me that the event of workers control must serve as a therapeutic exercise as workers begin to release themselves both from the role of worker and from the fantasy of control. Obviously, there is a strong socialising element associated with work which will continue to hold for a while at least (most of us will become a species of ghost, still performing tasks which we have become habituated to without those tasks being connected to anything – if we don't perform those tasks then we will intuit, probably rightly, that there will again be a 'red' terror that is the result of an intensified sense of powerlessness and alienation which revolution always induces ). The people previously employed would continue to turn up to their workplace, what else would they have to do?, and would be free to investigate exactly what it was that they were doing before as workers, what their company really did, and how all that fitted into the capitalist social relation. This investigation in very many places would take the form of an active demolition as resources would be redirected. It seems to me that workers' control of (your example) Franklin Mint would be of vital concern, as through it and other equivalent factories*, we might begin to understand the hold it has on so many people's desires (speaking as someone who has inherited treasure hoards of this stuff as older relatives die).

*bookies, off-licences, casinos and penny arcades etc etc, the places where humans are closest to the essence of their desires.

Mike Harman, and better still fort-da game, make very valid points about the nature of a large part of modern day capitalist work and the struggle to liberate ourselves from it - if 'workers control' means anything in most places it is to deconstruct the whole activity and dissolve it into the revolutionary reorganisation of social life.

I have respect for some of Bookchins early work, but his proposals for 'Libertarian Municipalism' are just another detour, redefining communism in terms of democratic formalism no better than it's traditional syndicalist and councilist counterparts and as outdated as traditional syndicalism as a current strategy.

Workers are quite capable of forming assemblies, councils and other forms of organisation to practically defend themselves and in the right objective circumstances to take control and revolutionise their social relations but such organisation cannot be preformed as shells to be filled in advance of the conditions that require them.

I think pro-revolutionaries as a tiny minority need to argue their case wherever they can and wherever the opportunity arises to connect without prescribing in advance the 'correct' forms of action (though we may often have to criticise what exists and argue for what shouldn't be done).