April 2020
1) We see a whole “citizenist” current seizing municipalism and communalism. Has the communalist revolution already been diluted in the lukewarm waters of social democracy?
Indeed, a whole “citizens’ movement” sector has taken hold of municipalism, but without displaying the adjective libertarian too much. This is where all the ambiguity begins and a corner of the carpet is lifted that hides this new strategy developed following the disrepair and disorientation of the “Left”. The left is understood here, not in its broader context of a humanist sensibility to which communalist thought fully adheres (struggle against injustices, against the rich, racism, sexism, militarism, for a truly public service, etc.). Here I understand “Left” in its more restricted sense of a strategy of political parties on the left on the vector of representative democracy.
This “Left”, as diverse parties, adheres to the electoral rules of this representative democracy which are established within the strict framework of the State Institutions, this fundamental lever of the political economy. They were studied and developed by the bourgeoisie at the end of its three revolutions at the end of the 18th century (English, American, French). This is why the color of the parties on this political chessboard will never be divisive since the goal of this representative government invariably remains that of facilitating the economy on which it depends entirely. On pain of death, it must boost an optimum flow of commercial transactions, whatever the nature of these exchanges (arms, for example), since the valorization of value is its sole purpose.
The other obligation of this state management is to maintain social peace and its reproduction. Hence the need to curb the class struggle by all means, using both the carrot and the stick. From the outset and for many decades, a whole section of the proletariat was lulled by the Left into the illusion of possible political emancipation: achieving socialism through the state. Some chose the parliamentary route, others the insurrectionary route. After the failure of the Bolshevik revolution and the access to consumerism following the 1930s, and well before the fall of the Berlin Wall, for part of the working class, the emancipatory illusion was shelved. From then on, the Left unmasked and played its assigned role of moderator, that of opposing “liberal greed”. Brought to the helm of the State by its successive electoral victories, it was nevertheless unable to keep its promises to contain this logic of grabbing from the rich, to prevent the erosion of social gains and public services and to maintain purchasing power. Moreover, for a long time, it ignored collateral disasters such as the destruction of life and ended up discrediting itself in the eyes of its electorate.
In the 1990s, citizens’ movements around the world took over in part from the labor movements, the vast majority of which had abandoned the “communist cause” for the “consumerist cause.” These citizens’ movements are mainly supported by the middle classes who have been affected by the successive crises of capitalism and the liberal offensive after the 1980s. They challenge globalization and blame multinationals and finance for all evils. They point to them as being responsible for the impoverishment of the most disadvantaged classes, the commodification of living things and ecological disasters, the dispossession of peoples of their commons and their food sovereignty, etc. And even if capitalism is called into question, it is mainly only in its neoliberal form. Heterogeneous and without any particular organization or party, this movement, which could be considered ideologically close to ATTAC, lacks its own strategy and political tools. Debates and demonstrations follow one another but without managing to structure a real opposition, let alone a political project. In this respect Frédéric Lordon is right: “Debate for the sake of debate, but nothing is decided, nothing is decided and above all nothing is divided. A kind of woolly democratic dream precisely designed so that nothing comes of it.”
It is from this citizen movement that municipalism will emerge in Spain. It all began in 2011, in the wake of the 2008 crisis. An unprecedented mobilization for years, brings together thousands of people in the streets throughout the country. Thanks to the slogan: “we are not merchandise in the hands of politicians and bankers” or by talking about politicians: “they do not represent us”, assemblies spontaneously arise in the squares of towns and villages. What is remarkable is that these demands and demonstrations of the “Indignados of 15M” are supported by 68% of the population. These assemblies are beginning to mobilize for concrete issues such as support for mortgage victims who have been evicted from their homes. The struggles are intensifying and in Catalonia, the demonstrators have gone so far as to surround the parliament in Barcelona. The crackdown was violent, the demonstrations lost steam but did not stop. However, a safety valve defused the crisis: the electoral flight towards representative democracy. But whether or not this flight took place en masse would depend on the quality of the setting and the narrative. Once again, well-worn scenarios would prove effective and efficient.
Throughout the country, a section of the electorate, tired of almost 40 years of bipartisanship, will follow the populist comet that is Podemos. Surfing on the slogans of the 15M movement, this party becomes the fourth largest political group in Spain, with 5 MPs in the European elections of May 2014. In Catalonia, thanks to a tradition of struggle and the clumsy repression of the central power, the nationalist narrative is gaining momentum and taking hold. But even with a majority, this “Catalanism” cannot absorb all the protest, and Podemos as a Spanish party (presenting itself throughout the country) is not popular here, as such. Catalonia also has a strong libertarian tradition and already has a nationalist party (CUPs) that claims municipalism, which it says it has established in certain towns and villages, and which has representatives in the Catalan parliament.
Ada Colau, an employee of an NGO that helps mortgage victims and an activist supported by social movements, ran in the municipal elections with a party (Guanyem) close to Podemos. Supported by social movements, she won her place as Mayor of Barcelona. The team of activists who formed the municipalist list jumped from the street to the offices without going through the opposition – the place they thought they would initially occupy – and the more militant discourse mingled with the institutional discourse. The renewal of the Mobile World Congress1, signed a few days after Ada Colau’s inauguration, was revealing, to say the least. Her new party “Los comunes” (the commons) could well claim to be left-wing and anti-establishment, but the tone was set: they would not be a blocking force. As if to confirm this, a metro strike broke out during this event but was quickly suppressed, setting the tone for this municipalist approach. Little by little, despite the fact that decision-making was broadened through online consultations, especially with party members, and despite undeniable achievements in social matters, the social movements that supported it became disillusioned.
Four years later, in 2019, for Ada Colau, the mayoralty is well worth swallowing the snake of an investiture with the votes of the former French prime minister, Manuel Valls.
We are still in Barcelona and in many other cities that claim to be municipalist, such as Madrid or Grenoble, in a social-democratic approach coupled with a transversal populist tactic with its charismatic figure, except that we are dealing with a metropolis, a mini state in itself.
And without wishing to offend the people involved and acting in good faith or denigrate their commitment to this approach, I feel obliged to shock them. Because, objectively speaking, this is still a despoilment on the part of a social democracy which, using its reputation and a few ideas taken here and there from Bookchin’s thinking, is advancing in disguise under the mask of libertarian municipalism. So, with all due respect to many, by acting in this way the municipalists strip it of all its revolutionary coherence. The same is true, and no less shameful, when they refer to revolutionary movements close to communalist thinking, such as Kurdish Confederalism and the Zapatista movement. In practice, this municipalism is much closer to libertarianism and the coming fourth industrial revolution. A revolution that will take place in the most powerful centers of current capitalist accumulation, which are the metropolises.
As I point out in an article about the last municipal elections in France and published on Mediapart in Pascale Fautrier’s blog: “Ultimately, the municipalism of ‘Barcelona en Comú’, with the extended use of digital technology for ‘joint decision-making’ like that of Grenoble, is completely soluble with modern capitalism Rifkin-style: “The governance of the multipolar city is complex. It is now a matter of governing from a distance, of influencing rather than directing (Epstein, 2005). Power is distributed among at least four types of actors: central decision-makers (at the state or territorial level), local decision-makers (elected officials), associative actors, and private actors who hold capital“2
On the other hand, the communalist revolution, far from being diluted in the lukewarm waters of the new social-democratic municipalist, is precisely its antithesis, its antidote. Our challenge: to create a movement worthy of the name.
2) You mention an “ambiguity” in Bookchin: his relationship to municipal elections. He was committed to them! Why is this lever a dead end in your view?
Mr. Bookchin, in ideological matters, was very concerned with his coherence. Like anyone who has set out to develop an emancipatory thought, while firmly maintaining a guiding principle, he cannot however escape the evolution of the latter, itself part of a constantly changing society. Hence the variations and even contradictions that surface in his work, but no more and probably less than in the writings of Marx or Proudhon, for example.
Due to his social background, his early involvement, his great sensitivity and his tenacious will to understand, he acquired good tools for theoretical analysis at a very early age. At the same time, his involvement in trade union, environmental and civil rights struggles forced him to come into contact with other sensitivities and currents of thought. This neck-and-neck struggle sharpened his analytical research and, more importantly, fueled his emancipatory project.
For him, as for Castoriadis, it is essential to refer to an imaginary as a horizon. It would therefore be a question of society abandoning the above-ground, of coming down to earth and reintegrating its natural environment, in a dynamic and symbiotic relationship, starting from the concreteness of the local in order to be able to extend it territorially and then globally. But this imaginary is not an abstraction; it takes shape starting from what exists and must take root in the best of what is, here and now. Bookchin proposes this imaginary, social ecology, as both a total upheaval of our capitalist society in its production relationship and its indispensable and drastic decentralization.
It is capitalism, in fact, which carries within it this forced dynamic of “grow or die” and the resulting accumulation, causing these veritable structural cancers called metropolises. This synergy is precipitating us towards social and ecological catastrophe. Starting from this radical approach, he will also draw on past experiences, the elements and tools necessary to overcome this capitalism. He will therefore take up history, not the official one but the one to be “unearthed”, starting with the pre-literate peoples, as he calls them, and then that of all the attempts at emancipation, and this, for him, until the end of the 20th century.
These accumulated experiences, examined in terms of their successes and failures, are the building blocks of his political project: libertarian municipalism, which ultimately became communalism. In the latter, the ends are contained in the means. The political is both a place of power extended to everyone and an emanation of society in its symbiotic relationship with the natural environment, with both feeding back into each other.
The “ambiguity” that I see in Bookchin stems from this relationship between ends and means, but is undoubtedly more of a strategic, even tactical issue than a fundamental one. I do indeed see a contradiction in his attitude to municipal elections, although I qualify it for two reasons. On the one hand, I only have access to these writings in French and Spanish translations, and on the other hand, I have little knowledge of the specific political context in the USA. It would seem that the USA, by virtue of its Constitution, offers greater scope for maneuvering at this level.
It is true that Bookchin is keen on municipal elections. He says: “If we do not present candidates in municipal elections, we are not dealing with power.”
But in this respect, in my view he is making two contradictory statements. On the one hand, he asserts that “libertarian municipalism is not an effort to build a more progressive or environmentally conscious municipal government.” He even goes so far as to say that “this type of reformist orientation would neutralize the efforts of a movement to create and expand citizens’ assemblies and their main objective, that of transforming society.”
While I fully agree with this analysis, I find it contradictory to another statement in which he envisages the possibility that a candidate elected in these elections could participate in the municipal council. Going back to his previous observation, some would see this as a delegation of power that would undermine the idea of direct democracy. Here again I modulate my criticism because, in a small village, almost anyone could be part of the municipal council. Also, I wonder how far the State would let the council “play” with its institutional law and what it would do with a decision to municipalize private property, for example.
In any case, what in my eyes is a real contradiction is this proposal which would consist of taking power from a municipality, a State Institution, to “give it back” to the citizens. Unless it is the final stage, the coup de grâce dealt to the State Institutions and therefore to Capitalism, over a larger territory. In that case, this presupposes a prior step, namely the creation of a balance of power to our advantage thanks to a vast, well-structured movement containing the seeds of our own parallel institutions.
But let’s be clear, it is indeed in these ambiguities that the parasitic thoughts that are municipalisms can take root and spread, in all their transversal ambiguities compatible with the capitalism to come, as I pointed out above. I am therefore not systematically opposed to participation in municipal elections. In my opinion, we can use them as rhetorical gymnastics, to immerse ourselves in the power issues of all kinds concerning the municipality and call for the constitution of decision-making assemblies. In cities, this will depend on the possibility of working in a space conducive to developing communication and links between the various social movements and promoting face-to-face interaction between people.
In my book, I do mention this possibility, as a local tactic but totally included in a major strategy that invites social movements to make a pact, to create links themselves, by federating for and through the communalist political dimension. There is an urgent need to create a movement based on solidarity between struggles and alternatives in everyday practical life. Separately, these two approaches wither and are ineffective in facing the current challenge. On the other hand, acting together with a common determination for emancipation, they constitute a powerful synergy, the energy and the driving force of a movement worthy of the name. The primary challenge for us remains to acquire this ability to bring people together, to create bonds in diversity, even in disagreement. Federally organized at the territorial level and far beyond, this movement would be able to transform our lives and give meaning to our actions.
3) Olivier Besancenot and Michael Löwy criticised Bookchin for practising the ‘cult of localism’ and therefore preventing the implementation of ecosocialist ‘planning’ on a large scale. How do you respond to this criticism?
What always surprises me, when referring to certain people with a certain intellectual capacity and a similar sensibility, is the narrowness with which they allude to Bookchin’s thinking. In this specific case, it is indeed Michael Löwy and Olivier Besancenot who are referred to in: ‘Revolutionary Affinities’, in the chapter ‘Ecosocialism and Libertarian Ecology’3
After praising his pioneering role when he put forward several fundamental ideas in 1965, ahead of their time and with which one can only agree, they emphasise the radical nature of his Marxian critique of political economy. ‘The dynamics of accumulation inexorably lead to the collapse of the biosphere and the disappearance of the organic conditions for human life.’ P. 204
But on the next page, the reproaches begin, labelling him a technophile and a champion of abundance: ‘…lack of critical distance towards existing technologies, but also and above all, the illusion of abundance’. And, as if that were not enough, they rudely drive the point home: … ‘– as if the planet’s resources were not limited.’.
However, Bookchin’s approach to technology is much more subtle and goes far beyond the confinement imposed on it by the dominant thinking, whether right-wing, left-wing or eco-socialist. His experience as a foundry worker enabled him to grasp the full ambiguity of technology: ‘Standardised by machines, human beings have become machines’. But he breaks through the narrowness of the dominant thinking on technology with an initial critique ‘…of the social mechanics at work in the functioning of society’4. Far from thinking of technology as neutral, for him it is directly generated by the ‘social matrix’. Predicting the emergence of green capitalism, he castigates ‘the invention of more acceptable technologies’ that perpetuate ‘our anti-ecological society’.
On the other hand, in an emancipated society with ‘an authentic perception of need’, he imagines a locally integrated eco-technology, as a source of energy and raw materials, with minimal or even zero pollution. It would free up time for politics and for all the creative dimensions of human beings, without them being dogged by the pervasive anxiety of precariousness.
Even if all the other criticisms that follow are unfounded5 and undermine the coherence of his thinking and proposals, I have placed particular emphasis on this one because it resonates with the question of ‘planning’ that has been put to me.
The authors, like so many others, go so far as to attribute to Bookchin an almost exclusively localist thinking of his revolutionary proposals from both a political and an economic perspective.
Yet he strongly defends himself: ‘Firstly, I would like to clarify that libertarian municipalism is not “localism” – which, I would point out, could easily lead to cultural regression and a reactionary parochialism and which, for all intents and purposes (fortunately!), is economically impossible for most of the world. No, I am not a localist but a confederalist, more specifically a municipal confederalist, which means that the popular assemblies formed in the neighbourhoods would be linked together by delegates (not representatives!), by means of confederal councils and, from there, by regional, national and continental councils, each of which would have increasingly limited administrative powers.“6
Based on this necessary interdependence of local economies, Bookchin does not reject ‘planning’, except that the term is overused and brings to mind the human and ecological disasters in Eastern Europe7. ‘As early as 1965, he wrote in ‘Toward a Liberatory Technology’: ‘A technology in the service of man must have its base in the local community and be commensurate with the local and regional community. At this level, the sharing of factories and resources can contribute to solidarity between different communities. It can enable them to form confederations, not only on the basis of intellectual and cultural interests, but also on the basis of common material needs. If it draws on the unique resources and characteristics of each region, a balance can be found between autarky, industrial confederalism and a ‘national’ division of labour. » Thus the free and organic society forges the technology that corresponds to it as both its nerve and its skeleton, in order to move beyond the stage of scarcity, but also to weave the links connecting a whole mosaic of eco-communities“8. So if we want to talk about ‘planning’ in this case, why not, but it has the merit of having made it clear that it would not be done through the state, which seems to me to be rather vague among ecosocialists, to say the least.
4) Spontaneity and urban rioting are enjoying a certain amount of success within the European anti-capitalist left. Bookchin, on the other hand, called for organisation, for building a movement and doing so with the greatest number of people. Are we, as he believed, too impatient?
The need to move quickly in our current movements, to call for revolt, even urban rioting, is indeed a recurring question. This is understandable given the increasingly violent repression and the fact that we are on the edge of the precipice. But as Bookchin said: ‘I’m sorry, but the streets will not ‘organise’ us. Only a serious, responsible and structured movement can do so’.
Even though we are practically deprived of cobblestones, the forces of capitalist law enforcement have increased their means of control and repression: digital policing and cameras, increasingly powerful means of repression, brutal and effective strike force, etc. In this respect, we currently have no chance of overthrowing the system. To imagine a reversal of the situation by force, would we be capable of creating something that resembles a utopia without relying on previously constructed structural bases? This improbable hypothesis could only be envisaged from the perspective of an armed assault on the institutions to take back control of the state, or to bury any revolutionary project under a pile of corpses.
Spontaneity, acting alone, results in dispersion. It is therefore doomed to failure followed by despair. But if, instead of opposing it to organisation, we see it as momentum, it becomes, in synergy with the latter, a considerable source of vital energy. It is in this spirit that Bookchin emphasised that a counter-cultural movement needed ‘firm structures’ and ‘counter-institutions’ as much as the saving breath of spontaneity. The history of revolutions shows us that the more a movement is organised, horizontally structured and culturally prepared, the more likely it is to succeed. It all starts with persuasion, starting with concrete problems, and when it becomes contagious, when its implementation succeeds in arousing enthusiasm through the emotions of experience, we have entered a revolutionary process. An ascending process which, with the support of as many people as possible, establishes a balance of power favourable to this process. While the large number of people is one of the conditions for victory, it can only be achieved with a well-structured organisation and a carefully thought-out strategy.
5) How does libertarian communalism link the promotion of assemblies, which are necessarily interclassist, to the class struggle, which Bookchin, as you say, considered to be a ‘front of struggles among others’?
For communalism, it is not a question of renouncing the class struggle; it will take place as long as the classes themselves exist. But at a certain point in history, the character, meaning and purpose of these struggles changed, and this was the case from 1930 onwards. With Fordism and emerging consumerism, the proletariat gradually lost the ‘role’ of ‘revolutionary subject’ attributed to it by Marx and the anarcho-syndicalists. Franco’s victory in Spain sounded the death knell for the greatest proletarian revolution of all time. For Bookchin, he would have to experience first-hand as a trade unionist the defeat of the strikes mobilising 500,000 workers side by side in the USA in 1948, to admit it. What shattered his convictions was not so much the loss as what followed it. In many companies, for example, union executives joined the works council and many workers became shareholders in the company. The working class had ended up swapping its aspiration for communism for that of consumerism.
This is why he comes to the conclusion, in the 1960s, in a context where North American trade unionism is predominantly anti-communist, conservative, even racist and xenophobic, that this struggle, ‘in the classical sense has not disappeared; it has suffered a much more morbid fate by being co-opted into capitalism’. The function of this struggle is now limited to maintaining purchasing power and correcting the abuses of the ruling classes. It was only in the 1970s that movements developed to refuse work and challenge the industrial and trade union order9.
This does not mean that libertarian municipalism abandons the notion of class struggle. It carries it out not only in the factories but also in the civic or municipal arena. This front is important, even basic, because even if it is convinced that the revolution will not come out of the factories, it cannot neglect the role of the workers who take charge of the means of production. Of course, these means do not belong to them, but it is they and the farmers who will be able to ensure the transition from capitalist to socialist society. Undoubtedly starting with demands for simple human dignity in companies, it is a question of going beyond them, of going further. Indeed, he notes that: “… workers, in addition to being class beings, consider themselves human beings, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters deeply concerned with the ordinary problems of life, such as the quality of their neighbourhood, their housing, sanitation, recreation areas, schools, air, water and food – in short, all the problems that concern urban and rural dwellers, regardless of their class status. These general interests, while not supplanting class interests, can transcend class lines, particularly those separating workers from a wide variety of middle-class people.’
He also calls for the taking over of production and the organisation of work by factory committees controlled by workers’ assemblies, which are themselves included in municipal decision-making assemblies.
It is in this context and this very process of citizens taking back control of their lives that communalism stimulates the class struggle, just as it stimulates the struggle against all forms of domination in its assemblies. The type, quality and quantity of production should no longer be decided by the management, or even by the workers in self-managed factories, to meet the blind supply and demand dictated by the markets. These decisions will be ratified by the workers in all areas but as members of the municipal assemblies to which they belong. It is the latter that will have the function of defining the real needs for all and each of the citizens who are part of it. With the municipality having socialised the means of production, the centre of economic power moves to the local level, where these ‘eco-communities’ are responsible for the total management of social life.
In concrete terms, the replacement of the hierarchical society would involve the taking of communal power and the progressive extension of a new paradigm at the confederal, territorial, national and even global level, as we mentioned above.
It is ‘very radical. We must return to the roots of the word “politics” in “polis” […] to rediscover what was at the source of the ideal of the commune and the popular assemblies of the revolutionary era.’ Politics can only be civic, in the strongest sense of the word, and therefore also ethical – insofar as it occupies the field of human relations, based on rationality and cooperation.
6) In his latest book, Frédéric Lordon argues that, in the face of ‘the totalitarian power of capital’, we must oppose a titan as powerful as it is in order to bring it down – what he calls ‘the L point’, i.e. Lenin. That the solution ‘of the isolates’ is futile because the ‘proto-fascist’ tendencies of contemporary states will lead to the destruction of any local and fragmented alternative. You think that it is necessary to ‘empty the state’, not to take it over in order to turn it upside down…
Regarding Frédéric Lordon, I am tempted to make the same remark that I made for Michael Löwy and Olivier Besancenot: a superficial reading of Murray Bookchin’s theses.
This is the case when he states: “I would be tempted to say that the federation of communes comes mainly afterwards: it is what follows the overthrow… if only because I find it hard to see the state-capitalist powers letting a federation of communes flourish with generosity, when its avowed objective would be to overthrow them – that is a Bookchin-style scenario, and I don’t believe it for a second.’ Firstly, Lordon did not clearly explain his ‘point L’, but referring to Lenin we can assume that he is evoking ‘déjà-vu’. It would be a ‘remake’ of the ‘Great Evening’ of 1917, which communalism has turned its back on, just as it rejects the state or the army as a ‘titan’ to ‘overthrow’ the ‘totalitarian power of capital’. For communalism, the means bearing the ends in their entrails, this ‘slaughter’ would only resurrect this same ‘totalitarian power’. While Bookchin certainly seeks to avoid the strategic error of relying on a clay-footed titan, he does not do so to ogle the inconsistency of the ‘isolates’. Far from rejecting power, it is a question of betting on a strategy that carries within it the world of tomorrow. All power is then distributed among all the municipalities united by confederal ties that are both flexible and strong.
Without referring directly to the Zapatistas, one could see their practices evoked in Bookchin’s words: ‘There are communities all over the world whose solidarity makes it possible to imagine a new politics based on libertarian municipalism, and which could ultimately constitute a counter-power to the nation-state’.
Based on this reality, he evokes the urgent need to structure an organisation to create a movement: ‘I would like to emphasise that this approach assumes that we are talking about a real movement, and not isolated cases (my emphasis) where members of a single community would take control of their municipality and restructure it on the basis of neighbourhood assemblies. It presupposes, first of all, the existence of a movement that will transform the communities one after the other and establish a system of confederal relations between the municipalities, a movement that will constitute a real regional power. […]’
And Bookchin adds: ‘Without a clearly definable organisation, a movement risks falling into the tyranny of lack of structure.’
… ‘In closely studying the history of past revolutions, the most important problem I encountered was precisely the question of organisation. This question is crucial, particularly because in a revolutionary upheaval, the nature of the organisation can make the difference between life and death. What became very clear in my mind is that revolutionaries must create a very proactive organisation – a vanguard, to use a term widely used until the New Left poisoned it by associating it with the Bolsheviks – which itself has its own rigorous paideia, which creates a responsible membership of informed and dedicated citizens, which has a structure and a programme and which creates its own institutions, based on a rational constitution.’ …
Setting up an organisation also involves developing a strategy tailored to the location. This strategy is developed according to the context and the forces present. Thus the Zapatista strategy, while also located on the periphery, is different from that of the Kurds of Rojava. In the ‘pedestrian zone of capitalism’, the strategies to be adopted will be similar in many respects, but with specific features related to the history of each place. But the challenge remains that of building a well-structured and powerful movement in order to achieve a favourable balance of power. This is the whole point of confrontation and Bookchin’s strategic proposal of ‘dual power’. A dual power in tension, to structure the movement and prepare it to overthrow the power of capital and its institutions, not only at the local level, as has often been suggested. It would be naïve, even dangerous, to attempt this, because it is at the broadest possible level that the overthrow and immediate replacement of the political institutions of capitalism, and therefore of the state, by those of a confederation of municipal federations, should be brought about.
‘In libertarian municipalism, dual power is supposed to be a strategy aimed at creating precisely the libertarian institutions of directly democratic assemblies that would oppose and replace the state. It aims to create a situation in which the two powers – the municipal confederations and the nation-state – cannot coexist, and where one must sooner or later supplant the other. Furthermore, it is a confluence of the means to realise a rational society with the structure of that society, once realised. The confusion between means and ends is a problem that has always afflicted the revolutionary movement, but the concept of dual power as a means of achieving a revolutionary end and forming a rational society makes it possible to overcome the gulf between the method of obtaining a new society and the institutions that would structure it.’ It is in this sense that I am talking about the need to ‘empty the state’. We will then fill this void with our own institutions of self-government, latent and patiently developed in parallel, throughout this tension between the two powers.
And finally: ‘However, once citizens are capable of self-government, the state can be liquidated, both institutionally and subjectively, and replaced by free and educated citizens in popular assemblies’. ‘ It was precisely this concern for paideia that made Greek political philosophy great: it included educational ideas for making competent citizens, who would not only think systematically but would learn to use weapons for their own defence and for the defence of democracy. Athenian democracy, let me note, was established when the aristocratic cavalry was replaced by the hoplite infantryman – the civic guard of the fifth century BC, which guaranteed the supremacy of the people over the once supreme nobility.’
6bis) Janet Biehl told us some time ago that she distinguished herself from her deceased companion on this point, the State: eliminating all centralisation amounts, in her eyes, to running the risk of seeing the emergence of small local tyrannies no longer responding to the progressive laws of the majority…
I don’t know if this is still Janet Biehl’s thinking on the subject, but I must say that Bokkchin did not rule out the risk. Risk is inherent in any revolution. But in view of recent events, isn’t the totalitarian risk inherent in capitalism a major one, given that through its enforced globalisation no corner of the planet will be spared?
He discusses this in the appendix ‘Confederal municipalism: an overview’ of his book ‘From urbanisation to cities’.
‘But when have fundamental social changes ever been risk-free? It would have been more judicious to say that Marx’s commitment to a centralised state and a planned economy would inevitably lead to bureaucratic totalitarianism than to say that decentralised libertarian municipalities will inevitably be authoritarian and have traits of exclusion and parochialism. Economic interdependence is a fact of life today, and capitalism itself has made parochial autarkies a chimera. While municipalities and regions may strive to achieve a considerable degree of self-sufficiency, we have long since left the era when it was possible to create self-sufficient communities that could indulge in their prejudices. “…
And he continues, comparing it to the risks of a centralised state: ‘… In the case of confederal municipalism, parochialism can thus be verified not only by the constraining realities of economic interdependence but also by the commitment of municipal minorities to rely on the wishes of the majority of participating communities. Do these interdependencies and majority decisions guarantee that a majority decision will be correct? Certainly not – but our chances of having a rational and ecological society are much better with this approach than with those based on centralised entities and bureaucratic apparatus.’ …
The difficulty in understanding ‘libertarian municipalism’ as a project in all its richness and breadth lies, in my opinion, in its very name and in the difficulty in differentiating between the political and administrative spheres. Indeed, from the outset and when we talk about municipalism, we tend to focus on the political and the local and forget its indispensable, vital territorial articulation and beyond, to embrace the whole world. Hence Bookchin subsequently adopted the term ‘democratic confederalism’ taken up by the Kurds during the Rojava revolution. Later, he adopted the term ‘communalism’ in homage to the commune which envisaged, in its internationalist spirit, a genuine ‘commune of communes’.
In the same extract, just afterwards, he explains the importance of distinguishing between politics and administration and emphasises the advantages of confederalism: “Many arguments against confederal municipalism – even strongly confederal municipalism – stem from a failure to understand the distinction between policy-making and administration. This distinction is fundamental to libertarian municipalism and must always be kept in mind. Policy is made by a community or neighbourhood assembly of free citizens; administration is provided by confederal councils made up of mandated and recallable deputies from neighbourhoods, towns and villages. If particular communities or neighbourhoods – or a minority group within them – choose to go their own way to the extent that human rights are violated or ecological chaos is permitted, the majority in a local or regional confederation has every right to prevent such misdeeds through its confederal council. This is not a denial of democracy, but the affirmation of an agreement shared by all to recognise civil rights and maintain the ecological integrity of a region. These rights and needs are affirmed not so much by a confederal council as by the majority of the popular assemblies conceived as a large community that expresses its wishes through its confederal delegates. Thus, policy-making remains local, but its administration is entrusted to the entire confederal network. The confederation is in fact a community of distinct communities based on ecological imperatives and human rights. ’
7) Your book does not address the issue of state repression. However, to take only the most recent French cases, we can see what the state is capable of: the response to the yellow vests demanding to live with dignity is to gouge out their eyes and tear off their hands. How can we imagine that the State will allow autonomous communes to be set up on its territory without crushing them like the first little ZAD that comes along?
Admittedly, in my book I did not address the issue of state repression. However, I did mention it to illustrate its blind and criminal nature. And it is precisely these characteristics, intrinsically embedded in the genes of capitalism, that make me take this subject too seriously to deal with it briefly and superficially. Without really getting to the heart of the matter, I think I have largely addressed this question throughout this interview, which gives me the opportunity to clarify certain aspects of communalism. For which I thank you.
To come back to this subject, the important thing in this book for me was to show how Murray Bookchin, through his own experience, conducted his investigation, his radical analysis of the dominations gradually intertwining until they constituted the one that brings them all together, capitalism, the ‘last turn of history’. Then, how the accumulated experience of past revolutions, combed through with a fine-tooth comb, was used to develop the communalist project. From there, I argue and advocate for the creation of a communalist movement based on our current reality, the ‘here and now’. I take as reference points places and experiences that can serve as both milestones and seeds for building this movement from the local level. I am trying to show the vital necessity of building it with the social ecology horizon and the political tool of communalism.
Otherwise, all these seeds and experiences, both in struggles and in alternatives, will either be defeated by repression and, ultimately, despair, or they will be co-opted. On this basis, I propose a roadmap for ‘unity in dissent’ to highlight the richness that diversity represents, first at the local level, then gradually at broader levels according to the confederal principle. This charter would be addressed to all social movements with the number one objective: to get out of capitalism while building its alternative, namely communalism with its own parallel institutions. I am therefore trying to show how important it is for us to do this so that we do not lose any of our initiatives or our specific efforts, which are geographically scattered.
This bond of complicity for a common goal is in itself a founding act, which is also the first act of self-defence, according to the well-known adage that unity is strength. Without this first step, self-defence will be limited to isolated, ill-considered acts driven by a spontaneity that would lead us to suicide. It would be a question of forming a genuine network across the territory and our ties of solidarity, weaving a protective and mutual aid net in the event of repression. In my book, I address this subject using the example of NDDL. I show that having benefited from the support of a movement already established over a large area and up to the task of this exemplary achievement, the latter could have pushed the envelope a little further and the whole movement would have benefited in return. Solidarity as an act of self-defence is expressed in a thousand ways, as a response, as much as possible in non-violence. In addition, we should consider the possibility of creating specific self-defence groups within this same general self-defence, as has happened with women in Rojava.
Far from considering non-violence as a religion, it is nevertheless a question of considering it as a desirable tactic in a broader strategy because it is a question of investing a dynamic of construction in dialogue, as a foundation, a prerequisite that requires time. This non-violence remains entirely relative because it does not depend solely on us, but it is above all a question of acquiring strength and deep convictions for a later stage. We cannot ignore it, and what is more, it will enable us to intensify our social and political networking through increasingly close ties so as to achieve a balance of power that will be favourable to us. Of course, it is part of a broader struggle involving other progressive political sectors, with the priority of abolishing liberticidal laws. But this abolition will happen all the more quickly if we manage to create a movement that can be taken into account by these other sectors and impose a dialectical relationship in our favour.
7a) [To be seen in the light of your previous answer] Bookchin talked about setting up self-defence militias, and we have seen a kind of illustration of this recommendation in Rojava. But no one among the communalists today is putting this ‘military’ question on the table…
If I have emphasised the subsequent stage so heavily, it is because it is indeed through this same dynamic of construction that we access the essence of a real popular counter-power. This is the whole challenge of this essential and crucial stage because, as Öcalan points out: ‘…the concept of self-defence does not refer to an armed organisation or a military status but to an organisation of society: something that allows it to protect itself in all areas by mobilising all organisations.’10 Of course, at some point, we will need to move on to another, much riskier stage. I am referring to this final stage, that of the inevitable confrontation between two powers because, as Elias Boisjean quite rightly points out in ‘Le moment communaliste?’, Ballast of 19/12/2019, ’… the State, gradually delegitimised, will be led to react. The confrontation that will certainly ensue will determine whether the democratic revolution or the statocapitalist order will prevail.
Yes, this confrontation will be armed, without a doubt, but it will be all the less bloody if we have been able to establish a favourable balance of power and if we have prepared for it as a structured movement and as members of that movement. This ‘M’ (for Movement) moment will be all the more favourable for us if we have covered our backs while patiently developing the most appropriate strategy. This is the lesson of the Zapatistas, who deployed a brilliant strategy on 1 January 1994 with a minimum of deaths, starting from long-established organisational assets and taking the initiative at the ‘M’ moment. But we will not always have this opportunity, which has historically presented itself very rarely. Situations are always different, so we cannot start making unfounded futuristic ramblings, but neither can we avoid the question of the creation of militias.
Thus, when Bookchin refers to the essential education of the citizen for communalism, he unambiguously includes the need to learn to defend oneself, as we saw in the answer to question 6. It is this education that will lead to the organisation of a popular militia ‘composed of rotating patrols for policing purposes and well-trained military contingents to respond to external threats. ’
I think that the anarchist militias in Spain, following this lineage, were an essential reference point for him because for the first time in history, the people had defeated an army. Mainly organised in the CNT, the people had stifled the fascist coup d’état of 18 July 1936 in almost the whole country, in 24 hours and practically without weapons, thanks to their fighting capacity and the close bonds forged in struggle and organisation. And this still resonates in Öcalan’s own reflections: ‘…the fundamental self-defence forces (read armies) have the mission of accelerating and protecting the struggle of democratic society. ’ (Read communalist). This is how Durruti11 described the philosophy, organisation and functioning of the militias:
‘I believe – and everything that is happening around us confirms my belief – that a workers’ militia cannot be run according to the classic rules of the army. I therefore consider discipline, coordination and the implementation of a plan to be indispensable. But all this cannot be interpreted according to the criteria that were in force in the world we are in the process of destroying. We must build on new foundations. In my opinion, and that of my colleagues, solidarity between people is the best incentive to awaken the individual responsibility that knows how to accept discipline as an act of self-discipline. War is being imposed on us, and the struggle that must govern it differs from the tactics with which we waged the one we have just won, but the goal of our struggle is the triumph of the revolution. This means not only victory over the enemy, but it must be achieved through a radical change in man. For this change to take place, man must learn to live and behave as a free man, a learning process in which his faculties of responsibility and his personality are developed as the master of his own actions. The worker at work not only changes the forms of matter but also, through this task, changes himself. The fighter is nothing more than a worker using the weapon as an instrument, and his actions must tend towards the same end as the worker. In the struggle, he cannot behave like a soldier under orders, but like a conscious man who knows the transcendence of his act. I know it is not easy to achieve, but I also know that what is not obtained by reasoning is not obtained by force either. If our military apparatus of the revolution is to be sustained by fear, it will turn out that we will not have changed anything, except the colour of the fear. Only by freeing itself from fear can society build itself in freedom.’
8) To what extent does Bookchin’s cultural identity – American, and therefore federal – affect the possible universalisation of his proposal? France has historically been shaped by Jacobinism and centralism…
The question is not simple because, as I have said elsewhere, I am not an expert on the US Constitution.
It should nevertheless be noted that Bookchin’s early political influences are not to be found in that Constitution. Born in New York but from a family of Russian Jewish exiles, as Janet Bielh points out in her biography ‘Ecology or Catastrophe’: ‘Before the young Murray knew who Washington and Lincoln were, he was already familiar with Lenin and also with the German revolutionary leaders Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht.’ In any case, I think that his interest in federalism and confederalism dates from his break with the Communist Party of the USA and his discovery of anarchism, after the Stalinist repression of the Spanish revolution in Barcelona in May 1937.
Following the discovery of this confederal revolution in his territorial organisation, he first studied the theorists of anarchism and inspirers of the Spanish anarchists of the CNT (National Confederation of Labour), particularly Proudhon and Kropotkin. While pointing out their inadequacies for our current era: ‘Our ideas of confederation must not remain stuck in the anarchist writings of the 19th century’, he carried out his own research and gave more cohesion and coherence to these proposals.
And even if he is alluding to the popular assemblies of New England, the Paris Commune with its federalist proposal of ‘communes of communes’, resulting from the influence of Proudhon, remains the basic reference point for communalism. And this revolution, as an example, nevertheless rose up against the Jacobinism and centralism that historically shaped France. However, this Jacobinism and centralism served as a model for Marxist-Leninists for the Russian revolution and led to the construction of the USSR. Just as anti-capitalist thinking was forged with the birth and development of the latter and the resulting deterioration, confederalist thinking can also be conceived and developed in opposition to the centralism and authoritarianism of the state, regardless of the country in question.
Bookchin had raised an important question relating to the country, the place. That of resonating with the tradition of emancipation of each country. As he says very well in the video ‘The Forms of Freedom’, he wants to talk to people with references that speak to them, that are part of their history, but starting from everyday problems:
‘But I wanted to get to this: How can we reach Americans in terms they understand? This is a big question for me, because in the early 1930s I spoke to Americans in German, in Marxist language. And no one listened, except those who understood German. Then, as German didn’t work, I spoke to them in Russian, in Bolshevik language. …‘ He continues like this with other examples referring to the history of revolutions that have taken place elsewhere. Then he concludes: ’Today we must recreate a Bewegung, a movement capable of speaking to Americans in a language they can understand, mainly English. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from other experiences that are taking place, wherever they may be. We should take them into account, but what interests me first and foremost is how to reach the Americans….’
And then: “Can we build a radical programme, in English, for the future?
Not in German, Russian or Chinese, with all due respect to those movements. And a programme that speaks to them at the level of what is closest to them in their lives: their neighbourhoods, which are dissolving. Their communities, which are also dissolving today. Their neighbourhoods, whether in a city or a village, or in the countryside. Can we draw a movement from this? One that literally leads to the recreation of popular forms of organisation acceptable to the American spirit. Like town councils, at least in New England.’
For me, this is the starting point, the foundation on which to build a living communalist movement, starting from the local level and wherever we are. From then on, action will push us to understand and, within the network, to learn from other experiences.
9) You talk about the ‘sour grapes ’ of collapsologists. What can social ecology do in the face of this new ecological expression that seems to be gaining momentum?
Collapsology, this ‘sour grapes’ covered with a scientific veil, is indeed more than ever on the rise, especially thanks to the worldwide declaration of the ‘pandemic’. One need only observe the spectacular return of certain titles in the best-seller rankings of that barometer of our emotions that is Amazon. Thus Jared Diamond’s The Collapse and Pablo Servigne’s How Everything Can Fall Apart are indeed among the leaders.
Social ecology can accompany its mentors in making an observation, a superficial inventory, one that emphasises the reality of the catastrophe in progress. But the journey will be short-lived. Very soon, once the assessment has been made, the investigation shows us that we are no longer on the same path. Very soon, we realise that in reality, this pseudoscience is part of the problem. Far from questioning the ongoing ecological disasters as having their roots in social injustices, and therefore in capitalist relations of production and domination, it favours a vile consensus. Without doubt unwittingly, they are the heirs of the conservative and reactionary currents, which from the French Revolution onwards saw in the social revolution, and later in the evolution of morals, manifestations of civilisational decline or decadence. Of course, not all of their current mentors are their ideological descendants. Nevertheless, the political transversality resulting from this current indefinable nebula of collapse remains troubling.
The authors ask us to let go of what in this world still breathes, what makes sense in it, on the pretext of having to mourn it. Thus, collapse-ism does not open up any future other than that of monitoring. The State, as distinct from public services and social security (as if it had a monopoly on them), becomes the centrepiece by exercising above all its sovereign functions (police, army and surveillance). Far from collapsing, the State is regaining a vigour that many nostalgics of all stripes thought they would have to consign to oblivion. Is this not a green techno-fascism that is insidiously taking hold in order to prevent any movement of revolt? This is indeed what the news is showing us in all its coldness
Yes, it is indeed about politics, but a politics of the unspoken, from which the actors, but also their interactions, disappear. While we await this ‘brave new world’, facilitated by the discourse of collapse, from all sides, this above-ground ecology sticks to our skin and prevents people who are lucid about the situation and their living conditions from identifying with it, and rightly so. We are faced with a void, we are dealing with a narrative without people and without particular futures. Collapsology creates naked beings, deprived of dreams but filled with nightmares and torn from everything that holds them and everything that matters to them.
If, from a purely collapsological point of view, there are no solutions to combat collapse and, in the end, it only contributes to a form of collective resignation, that of the calf on its way to the slaughterhouse, the situation is quite different when it comes to social ecology. Social ecology also starts from a catastrophism but an enlightened catastrophism, namely: announcing the worst in order to ward it off. The catastrophe only makes sense if it can be averted, captured in a narrative in which we can find very tangible links to our experience. First of all, social ecology as a radical and holistic ecology has analytical tools that enable us to fully understand the issues at stake in the ongoing social and ecological destruction. Our first task with regard to collapsology is therefore to use these tools to publicly deconstruct this harmful montage as a flattening, castrating and paralysing discourse. Subsequently populated by the experiences of the past, those of attempts at emancipation on all fronts, social ecology teaches us that struggles endure and persist because they are rich in peoples and histories, because they have been able to create their own consistency.
My book proposes ‘Acting here and now’. But to act effectively, we need to be aware of where and when we each find ourselves. Let us once again take up the notion of crisis as an opportunity. If we can manage to forget for a moment these flights of the drones that the virtual currents send us in all directions and distract us, then we are in a position to reflect. If we are not already in the stranglehold of the murderous economy, these latest events and those that we are all currently sharing around the world allow us to realise this.
We are currently confined, but weren’t we already in the corridor leading to this confinement? We were in the mobile confinement of agitation and stress, the one that made us go around in circles, agitated in our overcrowded metropolises to sell our labour. Once this had been sold, for the lucky ones, we had to spend the money we had been able to collect by imitating the lifestyle of those who had exploited us. Then, another agitation took hold of us to forget all that time spent bowing down to machines or to other people. And so we revolved around an increasingly undifferentiated and polluted world, and the record for air travel was broken on 31 July 2019, with 30 million people sent through the air at the same time.
With the commotion over, the lockdown has revealed the above-ground prison in which we have been locked up for years. Questions then arise, such as how did we get to this point? How can a simple virus bring everything to a standstill? How did we come to depend so much on what is produced on the other side of the world? The main economic activities are at a standstill, why are other forms of life tending to recover? In what kind of world, what kind of web of lies are we living in? What kind of democracy imprisons millions of people in their homes from one day to the next, people who are already mourning the loss of their freedom? For many, for the poorest, it is already a case of mourning their lives, as they experience their own collapse.
It is to these questions that many people are asking themselves that we must respond intelligently and concretely. So, if ‘first was the verb’, let our reflections now constitute the links that we want to see blossom, develop and materialise. So, for the time being, we are confined to the virtual world. But if we focus our efforts on imagining the future of our struggles and our constructive social and political proposals, we can lay the groundwork for our actions from a communalist perspective. It would be possible to work at different levels, but always and from the outset in connection with each other, whether at the local, regional or international level. I believe there is an urgent need to create a website where we can work together to develop a global strategy that can be adapted to the various local levels. I myself have made a series of proposals in my book, including that of a roadmap or charter to be presented to the various movements of struggles and alternatives, starting with the local level. It is therefore a question of everyday life, of proposing a communalist political programme as a way of tackling the issues that concern us directly.
These examples and proposals, and a multitude of other initiatives, can be linked to alternatives aimed at reclaiming basic elements of our lives. Thus, striving towards genuine food sovereignty is one of the priorities, starting from the local level and short circuits with a system of AMAPs.
As I also say, ‘This is, through their self-management practice, a fundamental link for the exit from capitalism and for achieving autonomy. This strong and pragmatic link between the peasant producer and the responsible and civic-minded consumer opens the way to a “moral economy1” as a stepping stone in a dynamic of transition with a view to exiting from capitalism. In this way, we discover through practice the virtues and the pleasure of working together in difficulty but also in joy. And it is this lived reality that will make us throw into the dustbin of history this perpetual frustration of the false pleasure of consumption that is never satisfied. Thus we open the doors to this dimension of ‘Buen vivir’, as a whole, this dimension so human that the Zapatistas live and transmit to us.
The same will apply to all other areas of life, such as education, food, housing, culture, crafts, industry, etc. All these forms of organisation and collective decision-making will interpenetrate, with the essential aim of providing for the needs of each and every one in a self-managed way, in the pleasure of living. It is up to us to create a dynamic of political self-institution of these commons capable of implementing, first and foremost, the vital solidarity between us humans, extending it to all living beings and the natural environment.’
10) You deplore a certain ‘ecological mystique’. We are indeed witnessing a resurgence of certain spiritualist movements: neo-paganism, New Age, witches… Bookchin never stopped repeating that ecology had to be rational. Do you perceive a danger there for the future of the ecological movement?
This ecological ‘mysticism’ originated in the USA in the 1960s, at the heart of a whole movement ranging from deep ecology to the attempt to make ecology a religion. At the time, it was a reaction of the youth to the dominant techno-economic logic. As such, this hippy movement, Bookchin, still in the 70s, talks about it in ‘Post scarcity anarchism, as: ’the emergence of subcultures’ … ’The very act of refusing life according to bourgeois constraints lays the first foundations for a utopian way of life.’ But when this reaction becomes naturalised in many minds, even in movements, that is when Bookchin reacts. He fears a drift in political ecology along these lines in connection with development, particularly around Sarawak and some other ecofeminists. However, it would be wrong to see this fear as any manifestation of intolerance because: ‘As much as the economy must become a form of ethics in a rational society (which is the form of society I wish to see come to life), I give a place of choice to romantics in human affairs.’ (Bookchin, Dusk Comes Early, unpublished). This shows that his position was really to separate the personal sphere from the public sphere: we can believe what we want, as long as we don’t institutionalise it and don’t use it to justify our actions…
‘[…] it is very important that we prevent the environmental movement from degrading [the concept of spirituality] into a belief, into a vulgar form of atavistic nature worship populated by gods, goddesses and ultimately a new hierarchy of priests and priestesses. People who believe that the solution is to create a new ‘green religion’ or to revive beliefs in gods, goddesses or wood elves are hiding the need for social change under a cloak of mysticism. This marked tendency among deep ecologists, ecofeminists and New Age Greens concerns me.“12
If Bookchin comes to warn of this ecological drift, he addresses it just as much to the political movements on the left that claim to be enlightened. What ultimately remains the common denominator of these protesters of all kinds, beyond their salutary reactions, is their lack of radical analysis. Too superficial, they lead to solutions which, in the end, instead of eliminating domination, only perpetuate it.
Thus: ‘Embracing the particularism into which racial politics had degenerated instead of the potential universalism of a humanitas, the New Left placed blacks, colonial peoples and even totalitarian colonial nations at the top of its theoretical pyramid, endowing them with a dominant or “hegemonic” position in relation to whites, Euro-Americans and bourgeois democratic nations. In the 1970s, this particularist strategy was adopted by some feminists, who began to extol the ‘superiority’ of women over men, even to assert a supposedly feminine mystical ‘power’ and a supposedly feminine irrationalism over secular rationality and scientific research that were presumably the domain of all men. The term ‘white man’ has become a manifestly derogatory expression that has been applied ecumenically to all Euro-American men, whether or not they are exploited and dominated by the ruling classes and hierarchies.’
Despite some groups having claimed them, I do not think that these trends have had the same impact in Europe. Without seeing an immediate danger, I nevertheless insist on the need to remain vigilant to all these tendencies of turning in on oneself in what I call ‘collective individualism’. A phenomenon already denounced by Bookchin in his book ‘How to change your life without changing the world’ published by Agone in November 2019. It is indeed all these trends that mask the urgency of all urgencies, that of getting out of capitalism by setting about building a real movement to achieve it.
1 The Mobile World Congress is the largest annual trade fair for the mobile phone industry. It is known as the ‘mondial du mobile’, ‘salon du mobile’ or ‘congrès mondial de la téléphonie mobile’ in French. It is organised by the GSM Association, an association that brings together 250 manufacturers and 850 mobile phone operators. Wikipedia
2. The city, the IS and the company: from functional to multipolar Emmanuel Bertin and Sébastien Tran. Management Prospective Ed. | ‘Management & Avenir’ 2014/2 No. 68 | pages 54 to 72 See also ‘Les métropoles barbares’ by Guillaume Faburel published by Passager Clandestin 2019.
3 Page 202 of: Affinités révolutionnaires – nos étoiles rouges et noires Milles et une nuit nº85
4 See pages 51 to 57 of ‘Agir ici et maintenant – Penser l’écologie sociale de Murray Bookchin’ Editions du Commun, October 2019.
5 This is the case with the supposedly idealised ‘model’ of the ancient Greek polis and the Athenian ecclesia, as if Bookchin had not realised the limitations of their exclusivist, slave-owning, patriarchal and even imperialist character.
6 Interview with Murray Bookchin by Takis Foutopoulos: http://social-ecology.org/wp/1992/09/the-transition-to-the-ecological-society-an-interview-by-takis-fotopoulos/
7. Bookchin wrote in ‘Beyond Scarcity’ in 1971, long before the fall of the Berlin Wall: ‘To continue to quibble over “planned economy” and “socialist state” – notions born at an earlier stage of capitalism and at a lower stage of technological development – is sectarian cretinism.’
8 See pages 54 of ‘Agir ici et maintenant – Penser l’écologie sociale de Murray Bookchin’ Editions du Commun, October 2019.
9 In ‘Ecology of Freedom’ published in 1982, Mr Bookchin wrote: ‘By considering the factory and technical evolution as “socially neutral”, “scientific socialism” refused to see the role played by the factory and its complex hierarchical structure in conditioning workers to obedience and instilling submission in them from childhood and at all stages of their adult life.’ The Power to Destroy, the Power to Create, L’échappée, 2019, p. 116
10 ‘The Communalist Revolution’, Abdullah Öcalan, writings from prison, Libertalia, 2020
11. Buenaventura Durruti, a young mechanical worker, was one of the main figures of Spanish anarchism before and during the Spanish social revolution of 1936. He was killed during the defence of Madrid on 20 November 1937.
12 Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, ‘What is Radical Ecology?’ p. 45-46. Quoted by Vincent Gerber in ‘Murray Bookchin and Social Ecology – An Intellectual Biography’ Ed Ecosociety 2013
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Translated by TerKo with the help of a free translation tool.
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