Communalism

Communalism = social-ecological movement inspired by the ideas of Murray Bookchin.

URL = http://www.communalism.org/

Description

Murray Bookchin:

"I wish to propose that the democratic and potentially practicable dimension of the libertarian goal be expressed as Communalism, a term that, unlike political terms that once stood unequivocally for radical social change, has not been historically sullied by abuse. Even ordinary dictionary definitions of Communalism, I submit, capture to a great degree the vision of a "Commune of communes" that is being lost by current Anglo-American trends that celebrate anarchy variously as "chaos," as a mystical "oneness" with "nature," as self-fulfillment or as "ecstasy," but above all as personalistic.7

Communalism is defined as "a theory or system of government [sic!] in which virtually autonomous [sic!] local communities are loosely in a federation."8 No English dictionary is very sophisticated politically. This use of the terms "government" and "autonomous" does not commit us to an acceptance of the State and parochialism, let alone individualism. Further, federation is often synonymous with confederation, the term I regard as more consistent with the libertarian tradition. What is remarkable about this (as yet) unsullied term is its extraordinary proximity to libertarian municipalism, the political dimension of social ecology that I have advanced at length elsewhere.

In Communalism, libertarians have an available word that they can enrich as much by experience as by theory. Most significantly, the word can express not only what we are against, but also what we are for, namely the democratic dimension of libertarian thought and a libertarian form of society. It is a word that is meant for a practice that can tear down the ghetto walls that are increasingly imprisoning anarchism in cultural exotica and psychological introversion. It stands in explicit opposition to the suffocating individualism that sits so comfortably side-by-side with bourgeois self-centeredness and a moral relativism that renders any social action irrelevant, indeed, institutionally meaningless.

It is important to emphasize that libertarian municipalism--or Communalism, as I have called it here--is a developing outlook, a politics that seeks ultimately to achieve the "Commune of communes." As such, it tries to provide a directly democratic confederal alternative to the state and to a centralized bureaucratic society. To challenge the validity of libertarian municipalism, as many liberals and ecosocialists have, on the premise that the size of existing urban entities raises an insurmountable logistical obstacles to its successful practice is to turn it into a chess "strategy" and freeze it within the given conditions of society, then tally up debits and credits to determine its potential for "success," "effectiveness," "high levels of participation," and the like. Libertarian municipalism is not a form of social bookkeeping for conditions as they are but rather a transformative process that starts with what can be changed within present conditions as a valid point of departure for achieving what should be in a rational society.

Libertarian municipalism is above all a politics, to use this word in its original Hellenic sense, that is engaged in the process of remaking what are now called "electoral constituents" or "taxpayers" into active citizens, and of remaking what are now urban conglomerations into genuine communities related to each other through confederations that would countervail and ultimately challenge the existence of the state. To see it otherwise is to reduce this multifaceted, processual development to a caricature. Nor is libertarian municipalism intended as a substitute for association as such--for the familial and economic aspects of life--without which human existence is impossible in any society.9 It is rather an outlook and a developing practice for recovering and enlarging on an unprecedented scale what is now a declining public sphere, one that the state has invaded and in many cases virtually eliminated.10 If the large size of municipal entities and the decline of the public sphere are accepted as unalterable givens, then we are left with no hope but to work with the given in every sphere of human activity--in which case, anarchists might as well join with social-democrats (as quite a few have, for all practical purposes) to work with and merely modify the state apparatus, the market, and a commodity system of relationships. Indeed, on the basis of such commonsensical reasoning, a far stronger argument could be made for preserving the state, the market, the use of money, and global corporations than could be made merely for decentralizing urban agglomerations. In fact, many urban agglomerations are already groaning physically and logistically under the burden of their size and are reconstituting themselves into satellite cities before our very eyes, even though their populations and physical jurisdictions are still grouped under the name of a single metropolis." (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/CMMNL2.MCW.html)

Discussion

What is Communalism?

"Communalism is a revolutionary political ideology, with long historical roots in progressive tendencies, ideas, and institutions. It is deeply embedded in the democratic heritage, which first emerged as a conscious political expression in the Athenian polis some 2 500 years ago, with its remarkable set of institutions of face-to-face democracy, its concept of citizenship and the conscious formation of its citizens through a lifelong civic education of paideia and the existence of everyday civic duties. This communal democratic tradition broadened its scope in the communes of the European Middle Ages, which had communal systems of resource-allocation and formed far-reaching leagues of free cities, then it played a prominent role in the revolutions that shook Europe and North America in the eighteenth century. An equally important root from which Communalism has developed is the revolutionary tradition, that constitutes a continuous legacy of freedom – forgotten by much of the Left today in its generalized state of confusion – in which popular movements have fought injustice, oppression, and exploitation of all kinds, while expanding our ideals of social and political freedom. The struggle for rights and freedoms, as well as a healthy secularism, has above all been planted and cultivated by this revolutionary tradition, while its fruits have been harvested by social development as a whole. Communalism seeks to continue this legacy of freedom by enlarging upon the revolutionary tradition’s most advanced theories and demands and creating the organizations necessary to embody them. Rooted in the Enlightenment, Communalism offers generous prospects for human education and rationality as well as for the practical achievement of historical progress.

Communalism has recently found its coherent theoretical expression, in the works of the radical thinker Murray Bookchin, whose writings on social ecology give Communalism a revolutionary practice of libertarian municipalism, as well as a historical analysis, a dialectical philosophy of nature and society, an ethics of complementarity, and a political economy. Above all, Communalism is a revolutionary political ideology that aims at creating a rational society and ethical norms of production, innovation, and distribution through direct democracy.

The word Communalism first came into use around the time of the Commune of 1871, when in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War the highly centralized and bureaucratic French state all but collapsed and the citizens of Paris established a revolutionary government, boldly challenging other French communes to confederate and to form an alternative to the state. The historical importance of this challenge must not be understated: it pointed to a confederalist alternative for Europe at a time when its modern nation-states were still in the making. Ever since Karl Marx published his pamphlet, The Civil War in France, only two days after the last resistance of the communards was crushed, radicals of all sorts have tended to glorify the Commune. Friedrich Engels described the Commune as the first demonstration of the “dictatorship of the proletariat," while anarchists have used the Commune as a symbol of the “spontaneous expression" of a “bold and outspoken negation of the state," to use Michail Bakunin’s words. But not only did the Commune fail to immediately socialize property, its actual structure was little more than an extremely radical city council. Marxists went on to create “proletarian" states that did not even remotely resemble the revolutionary Commune of Paris, while anarchists got immersed in syndicalism, assassinations, and essentially communitarian enterprises. But in its essence, the Commune of 1871 envisioned a new political system based on municipal democracy, and if it had lived longer than its hectic two months it could have given tangible meaning to the radical demand for a “social republic" that had been raised in the Parisian revolutions of 1848, indeed transcending this demand with its call for a “Commune of communes."

The French word commune signifies a town, a city, or even a moderately small territorial unit that has political and administrative tasks, and it is derived from the Latin adjective communis, which means “common" or “communal." It refers to a local government and local authorities, or what is usually known as a municipality in English. Commune has a richer meaning: it embodies a constellation of rich civic values, loyalties, rights, and duties. As Bookchin has pointed out, the municipality is the most immediate sphere people all enter as soon as they cross the doorstep of their homes. It is a unique public sphere in which they can communicate in a face-to-face manner. The commune gives to human community not only form, but also a new human content, based on solidarity and shared responsibilities that go beyond family life. Potentially, at least, it is a realm of reasoned secularity – of politics – that extends beyond the blood tie of the family, clan, or tribe. Communalism attempts to actualize these potentialities and nourish them by advancing the markedly progressive aspects of Western civilization – that is, a “realm of cities." Through its libertarian municipalism it seeks to recover this sphere of real politics – the full engagement of all citizens in public affairs – as distinguished from bureaucratic forms of public life that usually marks the state. Communalism singles out the truly democratic commune as the rational form of politically organizing society.

Communalists maintain that confederations of free municipalities or communes constitute the political components of a future rational society. To really understand the uniqueness of the Communalist approach we have to recognize how fundamentally it focuses on the municipality. But, for Communalists, it implies not only a territorial administrative unit; it is also potentially a free municipality in the form of a self-conscious political community, and it is this historical goal that informs the Communalist project, whether we deal with Spanish municipios, German gemeinden or Scandinavian kommuner. This historical goal informs the Communalist understanding of the municipalities we are dealing with not only in the future but here and now. Many radicals criticize libertarian municipalism from a purely instrumental viewpoint – either complaining about the gigantic size of many cities today, or the fact that municipal councils run cities like corporations, or the fact that they in many ways are extensions and copies of the nation-state. Undoubtedly, this is true, and these problems will remain real and indeed probably worsen in the years to come. Still, they do not disqualify the Communalist approach, but merely points to challenges confronting anyone who seek to fundamentally change society. Communalists are by no means content with the municipalities as they appear today, and our ideal city does not exist, nor has it existed earlier in history. Accordingly, we seek to engage ourselves fully in rooting out state-like and market-based features of present municipalities – radically expanding their communal dimension." (from: ISSUE # 1 | OCTOBER 2002 of Communalism journal)

Comments by Christian Arnsperger

"As a practical basis for implementing subsidiarity-guided, nested decisions with a view to creating a truly participatory economy that can stand up to the ecological crisis, Bookchin has proposed and expounded a model he calls "libertarian municipalism," embedded in a philosophical doctrine called Communalism. This is no wide-eyed, bucolic dream inspired by some neo-Luddite fantasy of a little house in the prairie, or of a Walnut Grove that is small, hence beautiful. It is an entirely concrete proposal for new democratic governance structures, rooted in the conviction that (a) our current ecological problems are really the visible side of much deeper social-structure and human-relations problems (Bookchin calls this position "social ecology"), and that (b) since Man's domination over nature is really rooted in Man's domination over Man, non-parochial local structures of decision-making need to replace the large-scale, over-sized economic and political structures of capitalist social democracy. This, according to Bookchin, implies a network of bio-regionally embedded communes oriented towards reasonable frugality -- which is, of course, precisely what the "first-world de-growth" portion of the global de-growth compact will eventually require:

"Logistically, 'free nature' [that is, a reasonable articulation between free human agency and the evolutionary fact that humans are an integral part of nature] is unattainable without the decentralization of cities into confederally united communities sensitively tailored to the natural areas in which they are located. Ecotechnologies, and solar, wind, methane, and other renewable sources of energy; organic forms of agriculture; and the design of humanly scaled, versatile industrial installations to meet the regional needs of confederated municipalities -- all must be brought into the service of an ecologically sound world based on an ethics of complementarity. It means, too, an emphasis not only on recycling but on the production of high-quality goods that can, in many cases, last for generations. It means the replacement of needlessly insensate labor with creative work and an emphasis on artful craftspersonship in preference to mechanized production. It means the free time to be artful and to fully engage in public affairs. One would hope that the sheer availability of goods, the mechanization of production, and the freedom to choose one's material lifetsyle would sooner or later influence people to practice moderation in all aspects of life as a response to the consumerism promoted by the capitalist market." (Murray Bookchin, Social Ecology and Communalism, pp. 47-48, © 2007, AK Press)

One of the key ideas underlying Bookchin's thought -- although he doesn't express it in those words -- is that while many goods need indeed to be considered as public and/or global instead of private and subject to international trade flows only, it's of little use to have large, supranational entities profer "ex cathedra" lists of goods to be considered global public goods. What is to be considered a public good is dependent on many local preferences, cultural options, life choices, and so on -- and what is to be considered a global public good should, it seems, emerge from a near-unanimous consensus between cultures, local options, and preferences -- always, of course, subject to certain large-scale constraints such as, in our case, the economic and environmental Kyoto protocols. Of course -- and this will be crucial when we investigate the "Next-Step Economy" in Part 5 later -- Bookchin's approach relies on his confidence that, under favorable circumstances, human beings will actually switch to more frugal ways of life because they will have discovered within themselves a desire to do so. (A desire which, perhaps, under current circumstances, is stifled and even censured by the systemic constraints we are all facing.)

The communalist structure of governance is based on the idea that, as Bookchin puts it, the city or "commune" is organic to human life in a modern society: It strikes the right balance between openness and universality, on the one hand, and human scale and manageable size, on the other. Municipalities, or neighborhoods in larger cities, are the adequate places from where the upward movement of citizen-generated information can begin. This certainly does not mean that the process should also end there, as if we could count on the "blind" emergence of a new economy from merely parochial, uncoordinated decisions made at municipal level. Bookchin is adamant that there should be a confederative logic at work -- and I believe that this confederative logic should, in fact, be induced from the top down in an "optimal social engineering" perspective. The WTransO and the national representatives inside it should be instrumental in pushing for confederalism in all regions and nations, so that each municipality is embedded in a region structured as a "commune of communes" where regional-level assemblies perform the role of coordinating communal information into regional data on desired goods and services, working conditions, investments, and so on. It is fundamentally a matter of pulling all communes into a broader logic where universal constraints of a human as well as environmental nature are taken into account -- and this requires interdependence, not independence. Here is how Bookchin conceives of the rationale for confederalist communalism:

"Any self-managed community (...) that tries to live in isolation and develop self-sufficiency risks the danger of becoming parochial, even racist. Hence the need to extend the ecological politics of a direct democracy into confederations of ecocommunities, and to foster a healthy interdependence, rather than an introverted, stultifying independence. Social ecology would be obliged to embody its ethics in a politics of libertarian municipalism, in which municipalities conjointly gain rights to self-governance through networks of confederal councils, to which towns and cities would be expected to send their mandated, recallable delegates to adjust differences. All decisions would have to be ratified by a majority of the popular assemblies of the confederated towns and cities. This institutional process could be initiated in the neighborhoods of giant cities as well as in networks of small towns. (...) a truly ecological society would open the vista of a 'free nature' with a sophisticated eco-technology based on solar, wind, and water; carefully treated fossil fuels would be sited to produce power to meet rationally conceived ends. Production would occur entirely for use, not for profit, and the distribution of goods would occur entirely to meet human needs based on norms established by citizens' assemblies and confederations of assemblies. Decisions by the community would be made according to direct, face-to-face procedures with all the coordinative judgments mandated by delegates. These judgments, in turn, would be referred back for discussion, approval, modification, or rejection by the assembly of assemblies (or Commune of communes) as a whole, reflecting the wishes of the fully assembled majority." (Murray Bookchin, Social Ecology and Communalism, pp. 49-50 and p. 51, © 2007, AK Press)

Surely, Bookchin is too much of an anti-Statist -- and of an anti-centralizer -- to give enough weight to planet-wide macro-constraints such as those which the WTransO would have to impose. But he can inspire an interesting vista: that of a WTransO which would not only distribute differentiated "growth quotas" to countries, but which might also serve as the Commune of communes at a planet level -- with (as we saw) third-world countries having a disproportionate say in order to create incentives for first-world countries to renounce time-honored power plays." (http://eco-transitions.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-transition-part-4-renewing.html)

More information:

Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1995

For an overview of the ideas of Murray Bookchin, see The Murray Bookchin Reader, ed. Janet Biehl (London: Cassell, 1997) and Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1989). For the Communalist political approach, known as libertarian municipalism, readers should particularly consult Bookchin’s From Urbanization to Cities: Toward a New Politics of Citizenship (London: Cassell, 1995), and Janet Biehl’s clear exposition in The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1997).