Communalism

A vision and political strategy, chief proponent [[Murray Bookchin]].

[[Directly democratic]], [[anticapitalist]], [[ecological]], and opposed to domination. Governance through [[popular assemblies]] bound together in confederation.

While originally conceived as a form of Social anarchism, he later developed Communalism into a separate ideology which incorporates what he saw as the most beneficial elements of Anarchism, Marxism, syndicalism, and radical ecology.

– Eco-socialism - Wikipedia

The excitement and solidarity on the ground has yet to coalesce into a political praxis capable of eliminating the current array of repressive forces and replacing it with a visionary, egalitarian—and importantly, achievable—new society. [[Murray Bookchin]] directly addresses this need, offering a transformative vision and new political strategy for a truly free society—a project that he called “Communalism.”

– [[The Next Revolution]]

[[Bookchin]]’s Communalism circumvents the stalemate between the state and the street—the familiar oscillation between empowering but ephemeral street protest and entering the very state institutions designed to uphold the present order.

– [[The Next Revolution]]

Communalism moves beyond critique to offer a reconstructive vision of a fundamentally different society—directly democratic, [[anticapitalist]], [[ecological]], and opposed to all forms of domination—that actualizes freedom in popular assemblies bound together in confederation. Rescuing the revolutionary project from the taint of authoritarianism and the supposed “end of history,” Communalism advances a bold politics that moves from resistance to social transformation.

– [[The Next Revolution]]

Communalist politics suggests a way out of the familiar deadlock between the anarchist and Marxist traditions

– [[The Next Revolution]]

Bookchin instead returns to the recurrent formation arising in nearly every revolutionary upsurge: [[popular assemblies]]

– [[The Next Revolution]]

As [[David Harvey]] observed in his book [[Rebel Cities]], “Bookchin’s proposal is by far the most sophisticated radical proposal to deal with the creation and collective use of the commons across a wide variety of scales.”

– [[The Next Revolution]]

From Marxism, it draws the basic project of formulating a rationally systematic and coherent socialism that integrates philosophy, history, economics, and politics. Avowedly dialectical, it attempts to infuse theory with practice. From anarchism, it draws its commitment to antistatism and confederalism, as well as its recognition that hierarchy is a basic problem that can be overcome only by a libertarian socialist society.

– [[The Communalist Project]]

Communalism constitutes a critique of hierarchical and capitalist society as a whole. It seeks to alter not only the political life of society but also its economic life. On this score, its aim is not to nationalize the economy or retain private ownership of the means of production but to municipalize the economy.

– [[The Communalist Project]]

Finally, Communalism, in contrast to anarchism, decidedly calls for decision-making by majority voting as the only equitable way for a large number of people to make decisions. Authentic anarchists claim that this principle—the “rule” of the minority by the majority—is authoritarian and propose instead to make decisions by consensus. [[Consensus]], in which single individuals can veto majority decisions, threatens to abolish society as such.

– [[The Communalist Project]]

Communalists would see their program and practice as a process. Indeed, a transitional program in which each new demand provides the springboard for escalating demands that lead toward more radical and eventually revolutionary demands

– [[The Communalist Project]]

Significantly, Communalists do not hesitate to run candidates in municipal elections who, if elected, would use what real power their offices confer to legislate [[popular assemblies]] into existence.

– [[The Communalist Project]]

Murray Bookchin

• a [[person]]
  • [[go]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin pull
  • [[quote]] In the late 1990s, he became disenchanted with what he saw as an increasingly apolitical "lifestylism" of the contemporary [[anarchist]] movement, stopped referring to himself as an anarchist, and founded his own libertarian socialist ideology called [[communalism]], which seeks to reconcile [[Marxist]] and anarchist thought.
  • [[the ecology of freedom]]
    • [[social ecology]]
    • [[institute for social ecology]]
  • [[the third revolution]]
  • [[the next revolution]]
  • influenced the [[alterglobalization movement]]
• a [[person]].
  • (noded them in two different machines, forgetting to commit in one, thought it would be fun to keep this and explore the differences.)
  • [[friend]] (post mortem) [[philosopher]] [[communalist]]
  • [[go]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin pull
  • [[quote]] In the late 1990s, he became disenchanted with what he saw as an increasingly apolitical "lifestylism" of the contemporary [[anarchist]] movement, stopped referring to himself as an anarchist, and founded his own libertarian socialist ideology called [[communalism]], which seeks to reconcile [[Marxist]] and anarchist thought.

• [[anarchist]]

Murray Bookchin

I find interesting the tack he took of defining something in between [[Anarchism]] and [[Marxism]]. That appeals to me, part of the whole [[Horizontalism vs verticalism]] thing. Bookchin had chops in both of them so was well-placed for a synthesis I reckon. And I like his municipalist take on things ([[Libertarian municipalism]]) and his ecological concerns ([[Social ecology]]).

I listened to an interview ages back on [[Revolutionary Left Radio]] with his daughter [[Debbie Bookchin]] ([[The Philosophy of Murray Bookchin: An Interview with Debbie Bookchin]]). I remember he sounded like a fun Dad - taking her to the cinema, but waiting outside writing political tracts while she watched the films.

He seems a bit cantankerous.

The only other author I can think of who similarly combines brilliant analysis with bad faith caricatures of his perceived adversaries is Murray Bookchin.

– Center for a Stateless Society » Review: Srnicek and Williams, Inventing the …

His ideas inspired [[Abdullah Öcalan]]. [[Rojava]].

O.G. [[solarpunk]].

[[Communalism]].

Rejecting ecological arguments that blame individual choices, technology, or population growth, Bookchin argues that the ecological crisis is caused by an irrational social system governed by the cancerous logic of capitalism, driven by its competitive grow-or-die imperative and its endless production directed not toward meeting human needs but accumulating profit

– [[The Next Revolution]]

Bookchin’s proposal is by far the most sophisticated radical proposal to deal with the creation and collective use of the [[commons]] across a wide variety of scales

– [[The Next Revolution]]

In the late 1950s, he began to elaborate the importance of environmental degradation as a symptom of deeply entrenched social problems. Bookchin’s book on the subject, [[Our Synthetic Environment]], appeared six months before Rachel Carson’s [[Silent Spring]], while his seminal 1964 pamphlet [[Ecology and Revolutionary Thought]] introduced the concept of [[ecology]] as a political category to the [[New Left]].

– [[The Next Revolution]]

[[ecology]]

[[permaculture]]

[[anarchism]]

[[bookchin]]

[[realm of necessity]]

[[realm of freedom]]

[[struggle of nature and society]]

His favorite word is "Coherence"

[[bookchin quotes]]

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• a [[book]].
  • by [[Murray Bookchin]]
  • #goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21972006-the-next-revolution
  • #go https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-ursula-k-le-guin-the-next-revolution

The Next Revolution

Author : [[Murray Bookchin]]

Publisher : Verso

Has a foreword from [[Ursula K. Le Guin]].

Essays

[[The Communalist Project]]

The Ecological Crisis and the Need to Remake Society,

The second essay, "The Ecological Crisis and the Need to Remake Society," elucidates the core insight of Bookchin’s [[social ecology]]—that the ecological and social crises are intertwined, indeed, that our domination of nature is a projection of domination of human by human in society. Rejecting ecological arguments that blame individual choices, technology, or population growth, Bookchin argues that the ecological crisis is caused by an irrational social system governed by the cancerous logic of capitalism, driven by its competitive grow-or-die imperative and its endless production directed not toward meeting human needs but accumulating profit. Arguing against the extremes of an authoritarian state or totally autonomous self-sufficiency, Bookchin offers Communalism as an emancipatory alternative capable of saving ourselves and nature at the same time.

A Politics for the Twenty-First Century

The first outlines how confederated assemblies can assert popular control over the economy in order to abolish it as a separate social realm, directing it to human needs rather than profit.

The Meaning of Confederalism

“The Meaning of Confederalism” further elaborates on these themes and addresses specific objections to the concept of confederal [[direct democracy]]. It answers common questions such as, Is confederation feasible in a globalized world? How would local assemblies address bigger problems in a democratic manner? Would local communities cooperate or compete with each other, or could [[localism]] devolve to parochialism?

Libertarian Municipalism: A Politics of Direct Democracy

“Libertarian Municipalism: A Politics of Direct Democracy” traces the familiar historical trajectory from movements into parties—social democratic, socialist, and Green alike—which have consistently failed to change the world but instead are changed by it. By contrast, [[libertarian municipalism]] changes not only the content but also the form of politics, transforming politics from its current lowly status as what reviled politicians do to us into a new paradigm in which politics is something we, as fully engaged citizens, do for ourselves, thus reclaiming democratic control over our own lives and communities.

Cities: The Unfolding of Reason in History

Exploring the unique liberatory potential of the city and the citizen throughout history, “Cities: The Unfolding of Reason in History” examines the degradation of the concept of “citizen”—from that of a free individual empowered to participate and make collective decisions to a mere constituent and taxpayer. Bookchin seeks to rescue the Enlightenment notion of a progressive, but not teleological, concept of History wherein reason guides human action toward the eradication of toil and oppression; or put positively, freedom.

Nationalism and the 'National Question'

The essays “Nationalism and the ‘National Question’ ” and “Anarchism and Power in the [[Spanish Revolution]]” elucidate a libertarian perspective on questions of power, cultural identity, and politcal sovereignty.

In the former, Bookchin places nationalism in the larger historical context of humanity’s social evolution, with the aim of transcending it, suggesting instead a libertarian and cosmopolitan ethics of complementarity in which cultural differences serve to enhance human unity.

Anarchism and Power in the Spanish Revolution

In “Anarchism and Power in the Spanish Revolution” he confronts the question of power, describing how anarchists throughout history have seen power as an essentially negative evil that must be destroyed. Bookchin contends that power will always exist, but that the question revolutionaries face is whether it will rest in the hands of elites or be given an emancipatory institutional form.

The Future of the Left

The concluding, previously unpublished, essay “The Future of the Left” assesses the fate of the revolutionary project during the twentieth century, examining the Marxist and anarchist traditions. Bookchin argues that Marxism remains trapped by a limited focus on economy and is deeply marred by its legacy of authoritarian statism. Anarchism, by contrast, retains a problematic individualism that valorizes abstract and liberal notions of “[[autonomy]]” over a more expansive notion of freedom, ducking thorny questions about collective power, social institutions, and political strategy. Communalism resolves this tension by giving freedom concrete institutional form in confederated popular assemblies. The essay concludes with a passionate defense of the Enlightenment and a reminder that its legacy of discerning the “is” from the “ought” still constitutes the very core of the Left: critique directed toward unlocking the potentiality of universal human freedom.

He makes a crucial distinction between statecraft and politics. He sees the state as a force for domination and statecraft as the means by which it is sustained. Politics, by contrast, is “the active engagement of free citizens” in their own affairs.

Reviews

His writings on this theme were published posthumously in a book called The Next Revolution. You wouldn’t read it for pleasure. His style is stern, clunky and verbose, without warmth or humour. But his ideas are powerful.

– Enclaves of Democracy – George Monbiot

Even so, I don’t see Bookchin’s prescriptions as a panacea. I don’t believe he deals adequately with the problems of global capital, global supply chains, defence against aggressive states or the need for global action on global crises. But at the very least, we can create enclaves of democracy in a landscape of domination.

– Enclaves of Democracy – George Monbiot

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