José Iglesias Fernández is a critical Spanish economist, closely linked to the social movements of Barcelona and a founding member of the Seminari d’Economia Crítica Taifa ( 1995-2018). He is also a member of the Mesa Cívica de la Renta Básica, the EcoConcern association and the Baladre collective. He has mainly devoted himself to the study and dissemination of the basic income, a subject on which he has published dozens of articles. This article is my response to an interview conducted by a journalist from the website kaosenlared.net on March 2, 2023. https://kaosenlared.net/entrevista-a-jose-iglesias-fernandez-no-hay-utopia-se-hace-utopia-al-pensar/ And my response: https://kaosenlared.net/del-municipalismo-comunalista-de-jose-iglesias-fernandez-al-comunalismo/
We can only agree with José Iglesias Fernández when he warns us that “the future looks bleak if we anti-systems people do not mobilize”. Moreover, this thinker is not content with a simple warning, he immediately makes some proposals to help us mobilize. This call to mobilize us aims at citizen control of town halls through municipal elections, in order to overcome the institutions of the state. The ultimate goal is nothing less than to get out of capitalism and establish communalism.
For my part, I do not find them convincing and I would like to explain why here.
While it is true that municipal institutions are not the Nation-State, they nevertheless form its skeleton and give it substance, acting as the extremities of its nervous system, enabling it to execute its orders, to embrace and control the entire territory and its subjects placed under its dome. These institutions, the nation state, have been patiently formed and perfected over the last few centuries, so that they cannot fail in their mission as a transmission belt. To serve the nation state is to serve Capital, on which its structure and institutions of all kinds depend entirely. The aim is to maintain the current social order (private property, work, etc.) while stimulating the Market, because the latter and the State are the two inseparable poles of Capitalism.
For these reasons, and because the commune is the true place of the struggle against all domination, it is an illusion to try to take the reins of the Nation State Institutions and divert them from their more than defined function. As history teaches us a thousand times over, it is, on the contrary, these Institutions that will always divert us from our emancipatory path1. And even more so when “The moment is one of confirmation of the process of transmutation towards a dystopian capitalism”, this proposal with its strategic allure and its three stages seems naïve to me and in contradiction with the lucidity of its global vision. Remaining nestled in the belly of the economic Leviathan, they will end up devouring us, whatever economic and legal means they may offer us, and for this very reason. Because, by force of circumstance, we will have to bow to the demands of accumulation imposed by the system, as José Iglesias Fernández himself rightly says. The capitalist municipality, like any company, can function with more partners and on a self-management basis, but it must function, that is to say be profitable and competitive, as the municipalist movement in Barcelona has shown, the place where social movements have been most deactivated.
We can no longer afford to enter troubled waters again. It is too late to fail once more, with the demoralization that entails, and then to back down. It is better to go more slowly but to move towards utopia coherently, using means that are already the bearers of a new world, of an end without end. Let us continue to reflect on how to achieve this…
On the need to contextualize
Where state institutions, due to a lack of resources, are but a shadow of their former selves, as in South America, the inhabitants did not wait, they seized this shadow. And these populations do so with their own indigenous and revolutionary tradition, between struggles and cooperative achievements, seeking autonomy in the most important aspects of life, as in Acapatzingo, and the seven other communities of Iztapalapa, Tláhuac and Iztacalco in the heart of Mexico City. When these neighborhoods are restored to good condition by the population itself, it remains to be seen how long it will take the state and/or the army to recover and crush these spaces of autonomy which, let us have no doubt, will resist.
On the other hand, here, in total capitalism, while unhesitatingly anchoring our political activities in the municipality, it is advisable for us to resolutely turn our backs on state institutions, whatever they may be. Starting from the premise that “human beings are ontologically social beings”, let us not disdain coherence, which is also a considerable element of adherence for the utopia that is born in thought to become reality.
Learning from our history
Our revolutionary history, on this Iberian peninsula, with our own traditions, is kept in oblivion because, as Orwell rightly said, “He who controls the past, controls the future; he who controls the present, controls the past”. For the anti-system, however, it represents a great treasure trove of revolutionary experience, with its successes and its mistakes. With fire and blood, these revolutionaries have passed on their valuable experience to us, let us not disdain it. We must learn as when a peasant or a carpenter passes on his knowledge to his apprentices. Guy Debord said that the revolution of 1936 was the greatest revolution of the 20th century, referring in particular to the many agrarian communities, especially in Aragon, where the peasants succeeded in moving closer to libertarian communism, taking control of the municipalities and going beyond their limits.
But it was the result of 60 years of intense preparation throughout the peninsula, many years of struggle but also of culture (athenaeums, rationalist schools, etc.) and the organization of a parallel society (all kinds of cooperatives, trade unions, etc.), on the fringes of and in tension with state institutions. This strategy was promoted by anarchists, themselves influenced by the traditions of local communal organization (open councils). Hence a tendency for Iberian anarchism to claim allegiance to communalism, and to the Paris Commune, to the federal project of a commune of communes.
On the need to update
The militant thinker Murray Bookchin, of Marxist tradition (1921-2006), drew in part on this revolutionary heritage to develop his communalist proposal. One of the first thinkers to claim political ecology as his own, he conceptualized social ecology as early as the 1960s. Questioning history and anthropology, he emphasizes that ecological disasters have their origins in social imbalances and that these are the bitter fruit of domination, starting with that of men over women. Capitalism, born of the destruction of the commons, is the system that brings together and energizes all forms of domination, separation and domination, and which can only grow or die. Consequently, either we defeat it, or it will continue its mad race of wars and destruction of nature and societies until it has nothing left to fuel its growth. And to defeat it, social ecology, consistent with itself, proposes libertarian municipalism, this political tool that it will later call communalism in order to avoid an overly narrow and localist vision but also to claim the legacy of the Paris Commune.
In reality, it is a question of organizing decision-making assemblies in all municipalities, as embryonic institutions of direct democracy, federated and confederated with each other, in parallel with and in tension with those of the State. These assemblies, capable of making concrete and feasible proposals (cooperatives, social centers, social pedagogies, urban gardens, free spaces, etc.) will become agoras for learning to become citizens, to share and exercise the power to decide. Placed outside the state institutions, it is a common place to rid ourselves of the capitalist contamination of our minds, with its technologies, its disinformation, its harassment of information and fake news, its accounting mentality, its competitiveness and its egos. To all that undermines our hearts, our minds and our hopes, we will oppose a horizon and a practice consistent with this imaginary capable of re-enchanting the world.
We must also contextualize and update the proposals of Bookchin, who spoke to us from the USA and stopped writing in 2002. This is how the Kurds of Rojava succeeded in putting their Democratic Confederalism to the test. As far as we are concerned, let us never forget that capitalism dispossessed us with the enclosures and transformed us into pure commodities and that it has thus declared war on us. To defeat it, we need to understand it, to know how it has subsumed society, largely thanks to the institutions of the state (esoteric Marx, critical current of value).
To act here and now
Wherever we live and act, we must understand how municipal institutions work, their political parties always in search of power, but also the other social forces that work for emancipation. Once we have studied and selected those who are likely to enter into this dynamic of wanting to regain the political power that has been taken from them, we propose a dialogue and together we will begin to draw up the first “roadmaps” with all those people and organizations that fight against domination, whether of class, gender or race, the destruction of nature, but also those who create alternatives in all areas. Indeed, all these different groups share a rejection of inequality and domination, but they are on the defensive. They now need to decide to go on the offensive and take charge of their demands and proposals without delegating them, to decide to take their place in the political arena within the decision-making assemblies. Instead of representatives, we will appoint delegates with binding mandates that can be revoked at any time. Then a communalist movement will emerge, full of culture, knowledge and abilities, rich in its differences, but with the deep conviction that their goal is to get out of capitalism.
This is how we can begin to take care of the earth as we take care of each other and envision a new world where we no longer have to suffer the diktat of growth.
All of this is a process, a long and tense journey, and we must prepare to replace capitalist society before it collapses at all levels, otherwise it will be too late, due to the barbarism that is coming. We must compose without rushing between urgency and a constructive position without compromise with the enemy, by creating and gradually withdrawing social functions from the Public and the Private, sometimes by law, sometimes by force, as the case may be, until we achieve a balance of power in our favor. The essential difficulty remains that of taking the first steps, the very steps that communicate the enthusiasm of creating with others and spread our hopes. This is how we can open the path that can only be realized by walking, as the Zapatistas affirm, echoing the words of the poet Antonio Machado.
Floréal M. Romero
See:
- Bookchin’s Remaking society our review here.
- “Acting here and now, thinking about Murray Bookchin’s social ecology” by Floreal M. Romero (Coming soon)
Note:
- In our world, the pedestrian zone of Capitalism, hundreds of examples confirm this. In Saillans, an emblematic village of 1400 inhabitants in the south of France, in 2014, a citizens’ list won the elections and invited the population to participate in direct democracy. After 6 years, the right wing won. In 1980, after 10 years of fierce struggles, the Greens presented themselves politically as the third way in Germany. The great power of the social movements that supported them did not succeed in diverting the state institutions, quite the contrary. Pacifists, they ended up bombing Belgrade, and that was the end of hope. Marinaleda (Seville), a powerful, massive, self-managed movement of the SOC, rooted in the people, was born in 1977 and aroused enthusiasm not only in the Iberian Peninsula but throughout the world. It wanted to go beyond the Municipality and embrace the whole of Andalusia. Taking hold of the elections after forming the CUT in 1979, this party won the elections and took over Marinaleda and obtained a majority in many cities. These were fine achievements, it is true, but in the end the ball deflated despite objective conditions that were very favorable to generalized self-management and direct democracy. The movement was brought back on the right track, that of the State. ↩︎
Translated by TerKo with the help of a free translation tool.
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